The search engine has laid down its rights to be depicted as one of the basics of the Internet. It has consolidated its power in terms of aiding surfers do their Internet-related activities. It has been found out that 9/10 Internet users utilize search engines to be able to look for the information that they need.
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Source: HSMAI’s Marketing Review: 12 Technologies and Trends That Are Transforming Digital Marketing
The size of social media environment is substantial and growing.
One report issued in September 2006 provides the following statistics: number of blogs worldwide: 50 million; videos downloaded from Youtube each day: 100 million; number of members of the Myspace social networking site: 107 million.
The ubiquitous web: In the Untited States, the city of Philadelphia plans to become the nation’s first completely wireless city.
Under its Wireless Philadelphia initiative, the city will offer high speed, wireless, broadband Internet across the entire city, an area of 135 square miles. In South Korea, already the world’s most Internet-enabled society, far reaching inititiatives are underway to create no fewer than 15 “Ubiquitous Cities”.
A question that comes up once in a while, or more accurately; many times in a while, is “What is Web 2.0?”. This term is a typical ‘buzzterm’ in that it was coined as a serious means of describing an evolutional phenomenon, but sounded so good that the marketeers started using it and in no time the world is ‘a-buzz’ with Web 2.0 and hardly anyone knows what it means anymore. Instead of repeating the same story verbally a dozen times, we will try to explain it here.
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Source: HSMAI
More people are booking online than ever before — and hotel companies have been trying hard to get these customers to book through their websites. These efforts have paid off. The majority of persons who make hotel reservations online are now booking directly on the hotel or brand website rather than going through the big travel portals. This is quite an achievement for the hotel industry despite many new websites attempting to book or refer hotel reservations. Hotel companies are paying less money to travel portals and are establishing more relationships directly with their guests.
One big reason why more customers are using hotel sites to make their reservations is that hotel companies have significantly improved their websites. The quality of the experience with the website can influence customers’ decision making, ultimately reinforcing loyalty or losing customers for the brand.
In 2004 and 2005, hotel websites were outscored by Yahoo! Travel and Hotwire for satisfaction with the online reservation experience. But now, for the first time, hotel web sites scored higher in satisfaction (providing a better reservations experience) than popular travel web sites. To make these gains, hotel sites have improved their navigation, design, usefulness of information, ease of booking and other critical components of the online experience.
The top performing hotel site for 2006 was Drury Inns. According to travelers, Drury’s website delivered the best user experience compared to all other hotel brand websites. Sleep Inns (Choice) and Courtyard by Marriott finished closely behind Drury. Hotel and brand websites have improved significantly and now, many of these sites outscore the best Internet travel portals in overall satisfaction with the online experience.
Every year the level of sophistication of website visitors goes up one notch. Where we had to be very careful with Flash or CSS five years ago we can now safely use them across the board. Where video or byte-heavy images were an absolute no-no in the old days, people are now downloading whole movies at lightning speeds. But does this mean that we can also let go of the long-standing rule which says that all websites should be built with a minimum system requirement of 800 x 600 pixels resolution?
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Source: Yahoo!
There are more people using online search than ever before. In fact, most adults who buy online rely on search engines to research their purchases. Here’s a quick look at who’s searching and why:
A domain name is a technical construct, but it is also an administrative entity. When someone registers a domain name he/she has to register the owner and the contacts associated with the name. These contacts are the administrative contact, the billing contact and the technical contact.
When you want to have (created) a website for your company you will need a domain name. You can register the domain name yourself or you can let the company that builds your website register it for you. When you register the domain name yourself, there’s usually no problem, but problems can arise when you let someone else register your domain name.
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Source: HSMAI
Search engine marketing this year is projected to grow by 39% - the fastest growth of any online segment - according to a report from Outsell Inc. The national study also found that Net marketing will rise by 18% this year, compared to a 5.8% growth rate for all U.S. advertising.
According to the second annual report on ad spending from Outsell, Inc., U.S. advertising is expected to grow 5.8 percent in 2007. The national study of advertisers, controlling about $6.5 billion of spending, shows that companies plan to increase their online spending by 18 percent this year, faster than for any other major media type. Advertisers also plan to raise their spending for advertising on search engines by 39 percent, the fastest of any online media method.
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By Patricia Bruscha, Source: HSMAI
In today’s medium of sophisticated online marketing, optimizing a website really is a separate art requiring some specific skill sets. Boldly stated: the majority of webmasters today do not have the proper training or knowledge to utilize optimization techniques to properly craft a marketing message, or to position a website for the right target audiences. Relying on your webmaster alone to handle your search engine optimization is about as crazy as hiring your mechanic to decorate your house.
This seems to be a reoccurring topic with numerous people I speak with, all claiming that they “don’t need to optimize their site” because their webmaster does it for them! Unfortunately the phrase Search Engine Optimization has become so overused that anyone stating they “practice optimization best practices” are not measured against any type of industry standard. Can you imagine if you had to pass an optimization certification to practice SEO? I wonder what that would look like and if any of today’s webmaster’s would be able to pass it? I know I am venturing into dangerous territory here, as I may not receive the most popular vote from webmasters out there; however I never claim to have the knowledge to program a site.
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When you work within an industry you tend to forget that not everybody knows what terms mean. For instance, when we have a meeting with the accountant I need to ask for an explanation every 10 sentences. The same goes, of course, for what we do and the terms and abbreviations we use. Therefore, for the benefit of our clients, we would like to explain what we mean when we use certain words. Below you will find the definitions we use at Dragonfly:
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