What ever it takes

2009 will be a bumpy ride, only a miracles can save us and we are desperate, we tend to believe in miracles rather than believing that miracles don’t exact.

Don’t believe in miracles, go all out, do whatever it takes to get things done, to preserve one’s job, income, house and sanity. Don’t go down without a fight. Things will get WWE Royal Rumble last man standing. We are kids on the island in Golding’s Lord of the Flies, dirty, naked and crazed, a Pavlovian feel.

31 December 2009 will be interesting…

2009

The new year is here? To good marketing and sales. To common sense and hard work. To the improvement of the economy and the advancement of the information age.

The State of Search Engine Marketing in Singapore

Search Engine Optimization

Small and medium companies who have the slightest sense to integrate search engine marketing into their website tend to be either pro search engine optimization (SEO) or pro pay per click (PPC) but seldom both. Bluffingly the reasons (whatever they are) are made without statistics and analytics insights and tend to be condensed into the following.

“We have no enquiries/business from Google/Yahoo? etc.”

Excuse me. Have they look into their website? Would they use the website if they were not staring at it everyday and admire it as a vangard of high tech marketing? Is their contact me button squeezed away into the corner and below the fold?

If you want to make search engine marketing successful, you have to really go into it. Do both SEO and PPC at the same time userability, social marketing, analytics and testing. Then do more and do them again and again because marketing is always changing to reward effort and intelligence.

If your website looks like the homework which was being chewed by the dog,
panic, then talk to someone who knows, read a book or wait for my next few posts.

Christmas

Its Christmas and I haven’t done a thing yet… pushing onto 3pm.

The Singapore Flyer Incident

The Singapore Flyer is our local version of the London Eye. Yesterday its power got cut off leaving about two hundred passengers stranded along the giant wheel for about 6 hours.

Inconveniences aside, their online crisis management is quite non-existent. Currently their website shows almost no information about this incident and treated it like a minor technical issue stuck at the corner. Are they even attempting to address their potential customers. Then again, their information is not up to date.

Geez don’t they have some kind of proper updates? One might say that its not practical to have people working past working hours and into the holidays. However, the internet is a 24/7 platform and proper online crisis update management steps have to be put into action.

In contrust to the “F- grade” online PR efforts of the Singapore Flyer’s online team, Mumbai’s Oberoi Hotel website showed regular realtme updates during the terror attacks (it must be gutwrentching for the online team I guess) wtih the tragic details. But those details have to be known. Its professionalism at its best.

Top Sites in Singapore and Web Analytics

I am doing short survey on popular sites in Singapore and which Web Analytics are they using using Google AdPlanner and the discovery tool from Web Analytics Demystified. Foreign sites are excluded.

Here goes…

1. Singapore Street Directory (www.streetdirectory.com) - None

2. Channel News Asia (www.channelnewsasia.com) - Google Analytics and Omniture SiteCatalyst

3. Asiaone (www.asiaone.com) - None

4. Starhub (www.starhub.com) - Nielsen//NetRatings SiteCensus

5. National University of Singapore (www.nus.edu.sg) - Google Analytics

6. Jobstreet (www.jobstreet.com) - Google Analytics

7. Hardwarezone (www.hardwarezone.com) - Google Analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings SiteCensus, Quantcast

8. 88db.com - Google Analytics

9. Straits Times (straitstimes.com) - Nielsen//NetRatings SiteCensus

10. Stomp (stomp.com.sg) - None

11. Singapore Expats (singaporeexpats.com) - Google Analytics

12. One Motoring (onemotoring.com.sg) -  WebSideStory HBX

13. Zuji Singapore (www.zuji.com.sg) - Omniture SiteCatalyst

14. SGcarmart (sgcarmart.com) - Google Analytics

15. Eguide (eguide.com.sg) - Google Analytics

16. St701 - Google Analytics, Omniture SiteCatalyst (Banner)

17. Airasia (www.airasia.com) - None

18. Hungry Go Where ( hungrygowhere.com) - Google Analytics

19. Sgclub (sgclub.com) - Google Analytics

20. Property Guru (www.propertyguru.com.sg) - Google Analytics

Personally, although I find the list quite a compelling reason in favour of using web analytics (which I would certainly recommend), I would not jump to that conclusion that web analytics are correlated to website popularty and success.

Some of the companies up there uses web analytics just to get top line figures and not to provide real insights for optmization, testing and actionable reports, most of them would have done well without web analytics anyway because they provide a vital need.

I am not sure if any of them would provide for a suitable case study as the Singapore web analytics scene is still very new. A proper case study should be able to demostrate how actionable reports help to being about change on the webite which will lead to more useful activity on the website (not dead ones with high bounce rates)

I just have to open my eyes and observe even more.

First Steps to being a Web Analytics and Marketing God

Right now, I am at level zero on the ladder. I am beginning to realize the incompetibility of reasoning and logic to any online situation. Any guess, even an intelligent guess will be wild at best and way off at worst.

I have to make the leap to being a web analytics and marketing god in less than a year. I am not sure how can this be done but somehow or another it has to be done. Of course the most obvious path is to handle a web analytics tool myself and apply the reports to whatever marketing and sales situation thrown to me. Yes throw me into the deep end and force me to learn for to swim.

Easier said than done. Firstly, someone have to throw me such a tool to play with. Secondly, the same person will have to assign me a few scenero to work with. Fingers crossed. Hope my Christmas dreams will come true.  I can start by installing Google Analytics on this blog.

The training starts now. I need to run lots of simulation first.

The primary purpose of marketing a website

The primary purpose of online marketing is to generate leads and to improve the user experience of the website. For any other purposes, the marketing budget can go to hell.

A tool is only as good as the person using it

“Search marketing is great and terrific, yadda yadda”… How many times have we heard phrases like this over the past few months?

For god’s sake! Calm down! Get a grip! I have used search marketing tools many times in my life and most of those caused me severe anxiety and sleepless nights. They are not magic wands or the magic bullet. I have even seen traditional marketing having more impact than search marketing.

What search marketing presents is another marketing option, no more no less.  Its up to the advertiser or marketer to find the right mix to all his options. There is no clear differentiation offline and online. Offline affects online and vice versa.

The easiest example is most people research a product online from an offline advert. The second easiest is that they usually end up choosing something else.

How to make your marketing a success?

Engage, measure, be creative, hard work…

The new Wordpress 2.7 looks awesome

I hope I don’t sound like a kid from now on…