Year: 2008

Daily Telegrapg article published

Here I am in the Daily Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/digitallife/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/06/21/dlclaud121.xml

Social networks are really boring

Women are natural social networkers; indeed the stereotype of “chatty” women (false as it is) suggests that the world of social networking is a natural place for women to go online. And you wouldn’t be wrong. A new analysis of more than 50 million social networking members shows that women

Online Business

Could you run your business without the Internet?

The UK supermarket, Sainsbury’s, is rather red-faced at the moment. For the past 24 hours it has been unable to operate it’s online store, costing it around £1m in lost revenue. That’s bad enough, but the company has also had to face several media stories about its failure, such as

More nonsense from the UK Government about the Internet

Everton fan Andy Burnham is “in charge” of the media in the UK since he is the Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport. However, rumours reach me that he is considering setting up the equivalent of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) for the Internet. The PCC is an

Email

How to get your emails opened

Getting your emails opened can be a real problem. We are being drowned in a sea of email messages, texts, RSS feeds, Twitters and all sorts of instant messages. Is it any wonder that people fail to open emails? I was in a client’s office the other day and she

Content Marketing

Unique content is vital on your web site

Marketing experts are constantly banging on about our “USP” – our unique selling proposition; for anyone to be interested in us we need to be different. Online, uniqueness is even more important. There are just too many place to go, sites to visit and people to contact who all do

Assumption is your enemy when it comes to online business

People often assume things about the Internet, yet frequently those assumptions turn out to be incorrect. For instance, many business owners I meet assume, it seems, that email marketing is dead. Yet, despite the problems caused by spam, email marketing is still the most successful method of selling online. Another

Your web site will love you – literally

Researchers in six of Europe’s top academic establishments have recently started work on a multimillion Euro project designed to help computers understand our emotions. Called The Semaine Project, the work has already produced some results – for instance in the area of non verbal communication. The studies are not as

blank
Online Business

What Internet Marketers can learn from golfers

Golfers the world over have their eyes fixed on San Diego this week because it is the start of the US Open Golf Tournament. The world’s top golfers are chasing one of the top prizes in the International game and they will do everything they possibly can to prevent the

How to get in touch with your online customers

Customers are a funny lot aren’t they? Some want you to email them, others prefer letters in the post and some would rather have a phone call. Just what are you supposed to do for the best? And just when you think you have cracked it, everything changes and some

How to avoid shopping cart abandonment

Your shopping cart on your web site is more likely to be abandoned than used. Around six out of every ten people who select a product for purchase, give up just before pressing the “pay” button. It’s rather like walking up to the checkout in a bricks and mortar shop,

Your social networking friends are just chance happenings

Friends are people we share common interests with, who have the same values and morals, who cheer us up when we are down and who truly understand us. At least that’s what we would like to think. However, new research from psychologists in Leipzig shows that friendships are actually down

Think local, not global, to make the most of the Internet

People are creatures of habit; we tend to do similar things each day. However, when asked about what we do in surveys or in research studies, guess what? We lie. We like to tell researchers what we think they want to know, or we want to make ourselves seem more

Credit crunch, downturn? Not on the Internet..!

Business owners are looking increasingly worried these days. Almost every conversation turns to the so-called “credit crunch” or to a potential recession. People are worried that a financial crisis is looming for business. Each day in the newspapers we read about job losses, businesses closing and companies having difficulties in

Your web site needs to create social currency

Anthropologists in the USA have just published the results of a year-long study performed on behalf of the Associated Press and which has some pretty important findings for all web site owners. The study’s results were announced today at the annual World Editor’s Forum in Sweden. The research is a

Web design is not that important

Business owners who decide to set up a web site, or revamp an existing one, seem to always start by talking to web designers. The discussions then get focused on the look and “feel” of the site, colours and site structure. Apart from the fact that this takes the business

Don’t put your money into Internet banks

City bankers are a funny lot; they live in a world which few people inhabit. They have annual bonuses in the millions, they swig champagne as though it were water and they buy Porsches as though they were going out of fashion. At least that’s the stereotype we have all