The Great Irish Online Survey : 2010

We plan to run a survey in a couple of weeks that we hope to get responses from Irish consumers regarding shopping habits, attitudes towards brands, payments, security, design and continuity. Respondents may be involved in the web industry but we'd like to separate the results out as much as possible.

The overall aim is to get a better idea of how people buy online and how to improve the experience for everybody. It should also establish some facts on which Web UX can be improved.

If you are involved in the Irish Web Industry - a shop owner, designer, PR, agency, industry body for example - and would like to help create, publish and invite respondents as a partner, then we would like to hear from you. We'd also like to publish any special offers/freebies that partners would like to give.

The data will be shared with partners equally for their own analysis.

The Great Irish Online Survey : 2010

We plan to run a survey in a couple of weeks that we hope to get responses from Irish consumers regarding shopping habits, attitudes towards brands, payments, security, design and continuity. Respondents may be involved in the web industry but we'd like to separate the results out as much as possible.

The overall aim is to get a better idea of how people buy online and how to improve the experience for everybody. It should also establish some facts on which Web UX can be improved.

If you are involved in the Irish Web Industry - a shop owner, designer, PR, agency, industry body for example - and would like to help create, publish and invite respondents as a partner, then we would like to hear from you. We'd also like to publish any special offers/freebies that partners would like to give.

The data will be shared with partners equally for their own analysis.

Should every business be on Facebook Fan Pages? No....

If only to start a balanced debate on what companies are really achieving through Facebook, I've started a debate on the Irish Webmasters Forum about it. With facts like "400 million potential" customers on Facebook, its quite scary for business owners - who need, more than ever, to make more sales - to ignore.

That makes this post very hard to write. Its been on my mind for months now. Facebook and in particular fan pages, are being sold as a cure-all, ignore-at-your-peril, never mind the obvious must-have for businesses. If only it was that simple....Well I've discussed it with lots of smart people that I really know and I think it's worthwhile opening up the topic for a little bit of discussion.

But 400 million customers? So Irish taxi drivers will be able to magically overcome geographical and legal (not forgetting commercial) constraints and pick up punters in New York? And Irish accountants and solicitors will be able to get work in Japan and Mexico. Because Facebook will bring you together.

Not forgetting language barriers, exchange rates (remember Ireland is still at the top of the top most expensive countries for things like mechanics, accountants, solicitors - well any skilled labour) etc.

Working in Primary Position puts me in unique and privileged place - we have access to over 200,000 visits per week through Irish websites that come from a variety of different sources - Direct, Search and Referral.

Visits from Facebook fall into the Referral variety. The % makeup between Search and Referral varies from 90% to 50%. Sometimes traffic from Direct/Referral spike with events, news, e-zines. Its all part of the rich tapestry of online traffic. Facebook accounts for less than 1%. That's an absolute fact. Many have very successful Facebook fan pages with 000's of fans. Naturally grown too.

While Facebook is an exciting, useful, fantastic tool - generating less than 1% of your traffic means that you have to generate 99% from somewhere else. Facebook is good for peer referral, peer review and a good indication of how people see your brand/product/service. Its a good traffic recycler (maybe the visitor didn't buy but he can recommend you) - but its not a core generator. Generate 100 visits from Search to get 1 Facebook fan - probably need to have 1000 really. That means a lot of work.

Want to sell online? Try Facebook...

A very interesting idea was sent to me this week. A shopping cart for facebook. A facebook application that you can literally add to your profile or possibly even your fan page. It lets you sell directly through facebook, without having to send people back to your site.

I think this could be a really good idea for some people and it brings more and more of a person-to-person commercial element on the site. It looks quite good and the little test drive I gave it demonstrated it was quite workable. It was also developed in Ireland, which I think is also cool.

We have quite a few B2C clients that I'm hoping will be able to make good use of this. It also looks quite good for Charities who will be able to take donations straight from their followers. I'd also love to know what other people think. You can find the app here http://www.facebook.com/Vendorshop

Domain names and Northern Ireland

This has been an issue for a while. With most situations, we advise businesses to create localised content when targeting different countries (in both their own language and their target markets), Northern Ireland is in a difficult position. Forgetting the political situation, Northern Ireland is part of of the .UK ccTLD group. This includes co.uk, .com.uk, .org.uk, and so on.

Ireland on the other hand has the .IE ccTLD extension, and for reasons unknown to me, doesn't have the .gov.ie, .co.ie, .org.ie subs. Which means the Governments' domain names are as exclusively recognisable as that of countries who do have a .GOV.xxx domain TLD.

Most people in Northern Ireland, with a UK/NI ISP, would have Google.co.uk (or Bing.co.uk or Yahoo.co.uk*) as their home page. Therefore their results are "localised" to UK results. Bear in mind that Belfast does have a UK Local Search (Dublin currently doesn't, at time of writing).

Thus business on either side of the border may have to consider having a .IE and a CO.UK for their business - which adds a bit of a nightmare to their content management and online Brand development.

As with .COM's, the lack of availability of domains on a global and national space is a growing problem. Many companies share the same names, and even with regional ccTLD's, the problem persists, as company names aren't always exclusive (unless protected by Trademark or other Registration). The problem is exacerbated for Northern Ireland, which is growing in it's connectivity with its neighbour to the South. There is no real border anymore, calling Northern Ireland from the South doesn't require an international extension.

The problem is, in part, that the web is still governed by a US-centric view of the world and a continued lack/resistance to localise, due in part to the pervasive myth that having a .COM (or indeed any TLD) is going to make your business global. Worse is the frightening trend that many Web design companies-cum-online marketing types still sell .IE domains only to companies clearly targeting other countries.

Its for this reason that I've never been a big promoter of the .EU domain. I just don't get it's point. Its no more relevant to someone in France or Ireland or Italy than any other domain bar their own. Given the different population and area sizes of some countries - and their own regional independence questions, perhaps the .EU needs to be localised. :-). The .IE covers a much smaller population than do .FR, .IT and .DE - so their localisation issues are probably much greater.

Thank you to @IvanODonoghue who pointed out that Scotland and Wales are probably in a similar predicament, as are maybe other ethnic groups living as part of a wider national

*Yahoo however, includes .CO.UK as potential Irish matches, particularly if hosted in Ireland

Just Google It! Advertising, Quad Bikes and CTR

A couple of companies are now running "Just Google It" advertisements - both as sign boards and on radio - loosely based on Imagine! Broadbands WiMax ad (for which they didn't rank until they changed their page title - which I suggested although I doubt they picked that up from me). I think this is quite a clever idea - although I'm not really sure if it's working for them yet.

The most recent ads I've seen are one for an adventure centre (Quad Bikes) in the middle of the country somewhere around Mountrath I think and the new Advertising ad by Advertising.ie. In the first instance, the adventure centre used a person's name (I'm still not sure why it's so common to trade under your name in Ireland but there you go) - which I struggle to remember. Possibly because the name was quite common and that I've never met that person but if it had been Irish Adventure Centre for example, I might have a better chance of remembering it.

The "Advertising" campaign is quite clever - the radio advert demonstrates the companies full range of services but alas, despite registering the domain of the same name, the site ranks #3 in pages from Ireland. Also, I couldn't remember if the ad said "Advertise" or "Advertising" - it turns out it it was the latter - and they don't rank at all for "Advertise".

If you're going to rank #3, then you have to consider the other 9, 18 (including indented), 36 (including youtube, live, suggested, adwords) places that you've now brought people in front of that don't connect to you.

This is what I mean: see the image links and adwords on the side and middle?

The links at the bottom offer video and suggested search.

Certainly, the user will be able to find the site they are looking for - but the online marketing person should have built a wider profile to provide better auxillary results pages to increase the click through rate.

From initial analysis using the Google CTR tool for organic results, we can tell that even if your domain and company name exactly matches the search phrase keyed - unless you have more than one result on the home page, your Click-Through-Rate can be as low as 50%. This is a fary cry from the originally touted 75% average CTR for the #1 position - we haven't seen anything close to 75%.

Bizcamp Limerick is back on!

That's right! Bizcamp Limerick is back on at the Kemmy Business School at the University of Limerick on the 8th May, 2010. Visit Bizcamp.ie to register to attend and/or talk. Last year's Bizcamp Limerick was an outstanding success and its great to have a follow up event! We also have a LinkedIn group and twitter account @bizcamp - so please stay in touch.