John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

The thin line between success and failure: 27 July 2009: Marketing by numbers: I often feel the line between a roaring success and abject failure is very thin. Take the changes I made to a B&B website's front page a few days ago. They were fairly subtle, nothing major. Just a tweak of style, a little more warmth, a bit more of a textual hug for visitors.; Our Google traffic for those who didn't already know our name has gone up 100%, and our conversions the same.; In a key place, it can just be a word added or removed that makes the difference. The key is to know what to change especially since it's not all positive, make the wrong change and your Google position can drop, sometimes dramatically.; That's why everything I do is a test, an experiment. So next time, I know what worked. And I do that all day every day. Years of testing. Lots of learning. Lots of knowledge. It makes getting out of bed easier to do .. I want to get in the office and check my lobster pots, see if I've caught anything.; The good thing is, it might take just the right tweak in the right place to get your business to the next level. Tweaks are inexpensive. They might hold the key.; It does make it interesting come invoice time. "So Mr Allsopp, you've charged me this amount, what did I get for my money?", "well, most days I spent 45 minutes working out what to do on your site, then actually doing it took maybe a minute".; The thing is not to confuse activity with progress. You can work as hard as you like at Internet marketing, but if you're not doing the right things, you're wasting your time.; And the difference between second page and first page is a matter of those subtleties and tweaks. Internet marketing snakes and ladders. Make the wrong tweak and it's a snake for you. Make the right tweak, and it's another ladder.
Waterson Carthy: 24 July 2009: There's a slightly embarrassed face people pull when a friend plays them a tune they really like. You know you've at least three minutes of listening, and you don't know where to look.; There was a lot of that at Old St. Stephen's Church in Robin Hood's Bay last night. Built in 1821 and closed in 1870 it is spartan, has no water or electricity, and feels like an early example of an Ikea flat-pack church.; It has a curious layout, with the pulpit in the middle of one long wall, boxed pews, and an upstairs gallery along the opposite wall.; Its location, however, is truly stunning, with views over the whole bay.; I know so very little about religion I'm in serious danger of making a fool of myself but if I had to guess which brand outlet this church represents, I'd have to opt for Church of England, but that raises questions because the CofE churches I've been in had stained glass windows and the usual ornate decorations, so I don't understand why this church seems so puritanical.; Apparently .. and again, I'm so far out of what I know about I could be talking about alien life forms .. in similarly spartan Scottish churches, the folk songs they sing show gospel roots, leading to the idea that that's the seed from which American gospel music came. So I can't moan about white people nicking black people's music any more and anyway, that's another thing I know very little about.; Anyway, in the aisle of that church, various members of the Waterson and Carthy families and harpist Celia Briar played and sang last night in aid of church funds. I'm not sure who was there because I only really saw Martin Carthy. Norma wasn't there, she's in hospital apparently. We missed someone great, I'm told. Mike Waterson .. is that right? He was there. And three ladies, not sure who they were but Eliza wasn't there although she's headlining this years acoustic festival in Scarborough. I took a pew behind the altar and so didn't see a thing. But that's OK. Well, I did think they'd wander up and down the aisle a bit but hey.; Sight is our main sense, most people lead with that, but some, like me, prefer hearing, and what delicious hearing it was.; Music without hiss or crackle. No sampling, modulation or demodulation, no frequency range, no hum, no pops, no background noise. No digitisation, no stereo, no dolby, no bass bins or tweeters. Just them. A church with fine acoustics. And us. You could drink it.; I know nothing about folk music either, but listening to their songs somehow made me think of peering down a hole in the ice to the waters below. It was a view into history, a way of making it live again. Not, perhaps, an even sampling of history .. mostly 'working class' early industrial and agricultural Britain, but seemingly timeless and eternal.; You might like these: Martin Carthy sings Georgie in his back garden, Norma Waterson sings Coal not Dole (they sang this, but as I say, Norma wasn't there), No one stands alone. There doesn't seem to be much on YouTube of Mike Waterson, seems that should get sorted by someone. Here's the nearest I could find to what he sang last night.; Here's a programme about Eliza Carthy in case you want to get excited about this year's Acoustic Gathering.
Food: 21 July 2009: Run, eat, or have sex*. That's basically what the old brain is concerned with. So adding a lovely picture of some food might improve my page.; It did. Before: a 100% bounce rate and 11% of visitors left the site on that page. After: no bounces, and only 6.5% left on that page.; Cool. Add food pictures.; * It's "or" not "and". All three would give you indigestion. Interesting line of thought for selling Rennies though.
SEO company charges: 18 July 2009: A friend contacted some SEO companies and told me how they charge. I didn't know. Here's the idea.; You say "I'd like to be on page one of Google for the phrase 'blue margarine'". They say "that'll be £100 a month". If you agree, it's a two year contract, and they charge you £100 a month for each month you are on page one of Google for that phrase.; Less popular phrases cost less, more popular ones cost more. Basically, they are looking up the Pay Per Click cost for the phrase and working it out from there.; I said it seemed interesting and he said he didn't think they were selling much that way because once he called the company, they were all over him like insurance sales, pushing him into buying.; He said he "felt dirty" having spoken with them. I wondered whether it he felt they were using their knowledge against him. He jumped at that. "That's exactly it, I hadn't worked it out before, but that's exactly it. I felt like they knew something I didn't that meant they'd make lots of money for not a lot."; As IT practitioners we clearly work in a complicated area, and one of the key parts of the British Computer Society code of practice is that we shouldn't use our knowledge against the ignorance of our clients. We are not here to take clients money based on secrecy. We are supposed to do a professional job for a fair price. That's why I'm a member.; The other thing that bugs me about this pricing method is .. there's nothing there that says they'll do anything about your website. If they are not going to help you do all the good stuff like improve your site, talk about blogging, Facebook and Twitter and how to integrate them into your site in order to provide new channels of communication with your clients leading to good news travelling around cyberspace (if we still call it that), then they are left with link building.; Manual link building is hard work. Automated spammy robotic link building is easy (and so, not worth the money they are charging).; So what you're buying into here is a system that would encourage the crappy side of SEO. Comment spamming, buying links, that sort of thing. It's not good.; So, err, use me instead. Tadaaaah. Did you see how subtly I managed that?; Seriously .. their way is candyfloss. Mine is a full meal. My methods are satisfying because they make sense, they feel right, they build your business and your brand and leave your customers wanting more. I'm not 'just' SEO. I'm about getting your business and your customers to love each other online. Yes really. I want your customers to be thinking great things about you and telling their friends online. Now that's a link building programme I can buy into.
Rare control: 18 July 2009: I have the rare opportunity to compare a business I am doing SEO and Internet marketing for with an almost identical business where I'm not.; It's important because they are seasonal businesses so, without a control, any improvement I claim may just be down to the season, the economy or whatever.; So. Comparing this month to last, for my business, traffic grew by 11% and conversion by 27.88%, meaning 'business' grew by almost 42% month on month.; With the 'control' business, traffic grew by 12.5% but conversion dropped by 18.4%, so 'business' only grew by 3%.; The John Allsopp effect, then, has been a 38% growth in business month on month.
Morrisons trip: 16 July 2009: Tesco is the worst at this, but trained by them, we always check that any offers we've purchased at a supermarket are actually shown on the receipt. Currently, this has happened on the last two supermarket visits. So at Morrisons today I bought two coffees instead of one because they were on offer, and they didn't appear on the receipt and I ended up at the customer service desk hidden well out of sight of the checkouts.; Heather served me. I showed my receipt and the coffees. She tannoyed for a call from groceries and while we waited I said something lighthearted which she didn't acknowledge.; When the call from groceries came, she asked them to check the shelves because "I have a customer who seems to think they are on offer".; "seems to think"? I don't know why, but that's really, really bugging me. I don't even know what it really means. Yes, I do appear to think that. I'm quite clear on it, so it's evident yes I do think that. Ah .. got it. "Seems to think" implies that I might be pulling a fast one. I might be saying that I think the coffees were on offer, but actually just trying to get away with something I know is untrue. She was accusing me of being dishonest. That's why it's bugging me.; Anyway, groceries called back and said, no, my coffees aren't on offer, but the offer notice was in front of the coffees I bought. Right. So she said "I'll give you your 38p". Thanks.; She didn't say sorry. I mean, I don't want a squirming apology .. just a normal interaction would be good.; My view is that the supermarkets are not too bothered about tightly policing their offers because mostly they gain from it. If I hadn't checked my receipt, they'd have gotten me to buy an extra coffee. And people buying the coffee that is on offer would mostly buy one, so the supermarket wouldn't pay out on the offer very often.; Anyway, check your offers. And if you serve customers, be nice. It makes the world go around.
Beeny's website: 15 July 2009: Gotta love Sarah Beeny on the telly talking about property, she surely knows her stuff, but you could see she was outside her comfort zone with the website recommendation she made last night for the Tavistock Railway Station nutcases.; They developed their own website which looked old fashioned and text heavy, and Beeny presented them with a mock-up of a website that seemed to me had been put together by the TV team. It used their architectural model of the building, and was image-heavy. It looked fabulous, but looking good is only part of the solution.; The questions to ask are: "how usable is it?", "how findable is it?", and "how easily can it be maintained into the future?"; Part of the reason for using the architectural model was that they wanted bookings but hadn't finished the building work yet so there was nothing to photograph.; I've a few issues with this. Everyone knows that an artists' impression is a poor substitute for a photograph. It's someone trying to pull the wool over your eyes. So as soon as photographs become available, they are going to want those on the site.; Beeny said her website would cost £3-4,000. A good chunk of that would be for the graphics.; I think they'd spend that money getting a lovely website and then discover, because it's graphics-led, that it was hard (costly) to maintain. So four weeks (or whenever) later when they say "Ah, we've got photographs now", they'd be faced with another £1,000 to update and change the website. And it's unlikely to be something they could change themselves, tying them to their provider.; Really, I've got two major problems. One, I didn't like the impression given that the old site was text heavy and old fashioned and that the cure was to make it graphics heavy. The web isn't TV, it's the web. On TV, do what you like with graphics, make dinosaurs come to life, we'll all sit and enjoy the show. On the web, we're all using different equipment and have different speed lines and increasingly we're using mobile devices to access the web. I doubt her graphics-heavy website would display on a phone. The rule for the web is to provide content in the format people want it, which means graphics, showy though they may be, are not always the solution.; My second problem is there was no mention of marketing the site. It's OK to spend that budget if you want, but half of it needs to be spent on search engine optimisation otherwise no-one will find the site.; In order to generate traffic, normally you would work out what people are searching for that's relevant to what you're selling, and then write about it on pages on your site. Maybe "Tavistock holiday accommodation" would be a start.; A nice site **might** convert visitors into bookings. But you need the traffic first. It's like the old hi-fi rule, spend all your money on your turntable, then buy the amp and speakers with Green Shield stamps or whatever. Basically you can't make up for what's missing at the start so focus your energy at the source and upgrade the rest later.; If you don't have traffic to your website, nothing else matters. Spend the money on search engine optimisation. If, in fact, you spent **all** your money on search engine optimisation, that wouldn't be a bad thing. Because to do search engine optimisation you have to write content that's focussed on the search terms that mean the person searching wants what you're selling.; By concentrating on search engine optimisation, you're building a lean solution. You're answering their search query. It keeps you focussed. It saves you money.; When you've got traffic, people visiting your site with a clear problem to solve that you've got the answer to, you could put up a [don't press this] button and you'll make money.; But to make the most of your site, you can make changes gradually and test the results (you can't do that without traffic). Then choose the best option and set up another test. Websites are fluid and ongoing because the economy, your business, your market and your customers are changing all the time. Websites are not like brochures, you can keep changing them .. if you've designed it to be flexible.; Your customers will tell you what they want to see on your site and how they want to see it. All you have to do is listen.; Anyway, they didn't go with Beeny's graphics in the end. It's a lesson in not taking people's expertise out of context, something I've blogged about before. Listen to Beeny about property, but she's just an ordinary person when she talks about canal cruises, websites, or how to hunt caribou.; The Tavistock Railway Station nutcases still have an issue with price, I see.
Rage Tutu: 14 July 2009: Every now and then the band I'm in has a vote for new songs to cover. Needless to say I designed the voting system and it's working really well now (it was the cause of arguments initially .. people used to getting their own way by argument or some sort of power feel a bit put out when the quiet people get an equal say :-) ).; Anyway, one band member's suggestion is Rage Against The Machine's Bullet In The Head.; By contrast, I heard extracts from delightful interview with Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Radio 4's Today programme (looks like you're supposed to listen to the program in full, but skip forward to 08:42 (2hrs 42s)) in which he flirts with danger, giggles and has the most fantastic laugh while being just as revolutionary and controversial.; Interesting to compare the two approaches to the same goal. Is it the American versus the African way? Despite my own rage against religion, I have to say I prefer Tutu.
Quick and easy websites: 13 July 2009: For those wanting a quick and easy website, I currently charge £300 for the first page, £100 for each page thereafter, £10 for each photograph used, and hosting and a domain name (maybe £60). I used to think that wasn't the cheapest offer around, but then I discovered that unlike others, I'll write all the text and take all the photographs.; Where I do spend less time is on the graphic design. I think it's more important to make a site that works than spend all my time making it look pretty. Anyway, often the prettier a site is, the more likely it is to break when someone wants larger text or uses, say, a mobile phone to access it. A website has to be designed to be there in the search engine results when your target prospect enters the search term that means they want what you sell. When they see your listing on the page along with maybe twenty others, it should speak to them. When they land on your page, it should solve their problem.; To manage that whole process, I need control over everything. Dodgy photographs need to go in the bin. Blather is out too. No-one wants to read what you want to tell them. They just want what they want. All you have to do is organise yourself around giving it to them.; So I was gratified to have to write a hosting renewal letter to a client who spent just under £500 with me a couple of years ago for a single page website for her shop. I was pleasantly surprised to see the website was getting 200 visitors a month through keyword searches alone, and that almost all of those were proper sales-enquiry terms not just searches on the name of the shop from finger-lazy existing customers. She had multiple first page Google listings. All that .. 200 potential new clients a month .. from a single web page I haven't touched in two years.; This stuff does actually work you know, it's not just talk :-)
Paid listings: 13 July 2009: Marketing by numbers: When a website links to your website it normally passes some of its Page Rank to you, within Googleworld at least. Page Rank is a score that represents how many inbound links point to your page. Popular pages have more links. Google takes that into account when deciding in which order to list websites when you use Google search.; Clearly, this opens up a way for those with money to dominate Google search. If all you have to do is pay someone to put a link to your site in their site, those with deeper pockets will dominate.; Google lives or dies by the quality of its search results. Its income comes from pay per click ads. If people perceive Google search results are less effective than Microsoft's or Yahoo!'s, they'll simply use those engines and Google will lose income. Google does not, therefore, want people to be able to pay their way to the top.; So Google publishes quality guidelines which state that you can buy and sell links for traffic, but not to manipulate search results.; They provide a tag attribute rel="nofollow" to add to paid links. This tells Google not to pass Page Rank along that link. That's fine.; Once a rule like that is in place, there's a huge pressure to conform. If I'm promoting a site and I come across a competitor who is buying links for PageRank, be absolutely sure, I'll report them through the above link. I'd encourage you to do the same.; So, don't be tempted to buy links to improve your search engine position. Buy for traffic only and make sure you're not in breach of the guidelines or some nit picking bookish whining paper pushing bastard like me will report you. Button power!
Page one listing: 11 July 2009: Marketing by numbers: So, for my B&B client I've gotten them a page one listing, third highest ranked B&B in Scarborough for the keyphrase that matters most (not some crappy niche phrase). The only problem is, I can't quite work out what worked. Actually, that's not the only problem. When I refresh the search, I get a different result. I'm told that's because when I refresh I get allocated (randomly) to a different server farm at Google. And if one farm's made a recent change but another is yet to, then we see seemingly random differences. Let's hope it settles down with my client on the front page :-)
Pages: 10 July 2009: Marketing by numbers: I've a client in a fairly hard area where I'm struggling to get them a good position in Google. I'm working, and they are dropping, currently in position 373 or similar. But suddenly, their Facebook Page came up in position 38.; So I think Facebook Pages are increasingly important. Remember, a Facebook Page is for a business. It's a different thing to a normal Facebook account which is for you, personally. You can have multiple Facebook Pages.; It doesn't take long to set one up and it can provide a quick and easy website if you're starting out in business. Plus, of course, it provides all the social, viral and interactive functionality you'd expect from Facebook. For instance, if your client 'fans' you (people 'fan' Pages rather than 'friend' your personal account on Facebook) then all their friends will see it. Which is a bit like a personal recommendation. It's also a nice way to get your message out to a demographic or interest group. Plus, your page will probably appear in the Highlights section for a while, too.; If you don't know how to do it, nor how to integrate your Facebook Page into your business, I can help. Whatever, it seems to be increasingly important you have one.
Tesla: 10 July 2009: I've a list of things I want to blog about that I'm not getting the time to, and one is Nikola Tesla. Since it's his birthday, perhaps today's the day. And since Wikipedia has already written about him fascinatingly enough, maybe there's nothing more I need to do.