NEW MEDIA GURU NEWS:
Managing Director of New Media Guru (NMG), Mohit Maheshwari, recently conducted a Webinar on ‘Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Medium Businesses’. The Webinar focuses on Digital marketing ploys, tips and tools for SMB’s and Startups to build and grow a business online.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN ECOMMERCE?
As per the recent study, eCommerce sites can use urgency in various ways to augment conversions. Why use urgency in Ecommerce? The approach can work as it compels the customer to make a faster decision about the prospective purchase, based on this new information.
If you have followed the growth path of mobile eCommerce, The month brings you clashing indications from the press and respected researchers like Forrester that seem to offer conflicting opinions about web shopping on mobile devices.
However, the business whose website is optimized for a desktop/laptop experience should see a win –win situation (i.e., revenue) for those who get their mobile strategy right. Read more to grab a few tips for merchants on how best to create a mobile eCommerce strategy that will deliver a great experience.
We believe that the window of time for businesses to develop and execute their mobile strategy is closing and that future growth will depend on providing a great mobile shopping experience.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN .NET DEVELOPMENT?
The latest Windows Azure release makes building applications hosted in the cloud even easier. Scott Guthrie (builds a few products for Microsoft) released another massive set of enhancements to Windows Azure. The capabilities include new Windows Azure import/export service, general availability of our Hadoop service in the cloud, WebSocket and Remote debugging support. To add to the list, a Window’s Azure account holder can also get segmented customer push notification support with tag expressions, Continuous delivery support for web sites + cloud services, Support for partitioned queues and topics, New billing alert service and much more. Learn more about the capabilities in detail at ScottGu’s blog.
Microsoft announced release of ASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio 2013 RC that has a lot of useful features for developers using ASP.NET. The new release should make your development experience more enjoyable and efficient. Check out the release notes to know the latest Visual Studio Web Tooling Enhancements.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN CREATIVE?
A designer may create a well-crafted and well packaged design product, but the probability is that it won’t remain same while bringing it to life. Here comes Specctr, a plug-in for Adobe applications that converts a visual design to production by allowing the designer to specify the form (spacing, width and height, colors, fonts, etc.) and function (hover states, transitions, user flows, etc.). It automatically creates a specification and generates a blueprint for the design, which saves time. (Currently, versions are available for Fireworks, Illustrator and Photoshop, the first of which you can read about in “Blueprints for the Web: Specctr Adobe Fireworks Plugins”.)
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN SEARCH?
Google partnership is now global! Google launches Google Partners – a platform for the digital marketing community that aids businesses and agencies grow and thrive together and empower them with new leads, new tools, new opportunities. A platform for building closer relationships with clients, google partners is a better platform to connect with clients, take certification exams, gain insights tailored to your business and much more. Grab complete information on this here!
In a past declarations, Google stated that phone calls would soon be added as a significant conversion type as part of AdWords. So, it now turns into reality and phone calls from mobile click-to-call ads will be added to the regular Conversion columns that allow them to be utilized with automated bidding solutions like Conversion Optimizer. These conversions are functional in countries where Google forwarding numbers are available. Adding up, calls made by customers from your mobile and desktop ads will be calculated in your “Estimated Total Conversions.” (newer column to gauge the complete value business getting from AdWords). Read more!
Making Better Use of Ad Extensions: Google Adwords has announced the enhancement of AdWords auction as per which it will be helping in consistent and more relevant showcasing of ad extensions and formats. This means improvements in click through rates and overall campaign performance. Every Adwords auction will highlight the highest as well as the most useful combination of ad extensions and formats. Moreover, now, ad extensions can affect the positioning of your ad on the search result pages. Therefore, it is recommended that businesses make use of ads that complement or support their business type. Giving more importance to Ad Rank might help you in improving/increasing your Quality Score and/or bid. Apart from this, Google Adwords has also given certain recommendations to make better use of ad extensions. You can read in detail about how ad extensions and ad ranking work.
Unleashing Shopping Campaigns: For the better promotion of products and services on Google, Google Adwords has recently announced a new campaign type of Product Listing Ads that is the better way to promote your products on Google. The shopping campaigns are used to organize your bids and report performance. The new campaign being introduced comes with the benefits like browsing inventory directly in Adwords. These shopping campaigns also have a mechanism to view and keep track of your performance data allowing you better understanding of consumer shopping behavior. These will also provide you a good insight into your competitors’ performance and landscape of activity online. Read in detail about how to install and get started with shopping campaigns.
Now, for many items on Google Shopping, users can see a 360° view of the products. These interactive images bring users the in-store feeling of holding and touching a product.
Also, check the list of Upcoming Google Fall Webinars! These webinars will focus on the use of digital marketing to build brand awareness and certain tools to drive sales.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN MOBILE?
Demand for mobile payment application is skyrocketing, thus Mobile wallet has become one amongst the most popular services that has almost overtaken the conventional methods of payment. It has also created a buzz in the Banking sector.
Content sharing is adding a great deal of variation in user experience. Other than sharing pictures, videos and songs over the mobile phones and mobile internet, content sharing will extend to notes sharing, study media and information sharing app as well. As usage of Smartphone is boosting, demand for social and gaming application is on the rise. The new OS has launched with more feature and functionality. There are many different platforms are present for this ranging from Android, IOS, Blackberry, bada, etc. Many more customers are using these and the focus is on content sharing.
The app store is seeing new products is being offered to business and individual. Many small businesses and enterprise have started using existing application and develop new applications to streamline their business. Apple has launched its independent and dedicated section for business fraternity .Take a look!
You can read more about Top 7 business application you should download .
Cloud Computing is changing the way information is stored. The eventual drift is to support businesses to switch over to a competent and cost effective method of doing business. Security issues are being worked out as well. Rack space has launched its mobile stacks. Rackspace mobile stack is hosting a variety of product that is offering a service from MbaaS (Mobile backend as a service) to performance testing , Application Lifecycle management and cloud based compilation of source code. Check out the applications on rackspace mobile stack!
Amazon has started offering Mobile Push messaging through SNS (Amazon simple notification service) Following are a few must download for android user. A similar version is available in IOS also.
- Dropbox
- Box
- Skydrive
- Google drive
- Verizon cloud
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN SEO?
Panda, Penguin and other updates were changes to parts of the old algorithm, but not an entire replacement of the whole. Hummingbird is a brand new engine, though it continues to use some of the same parts of the old, like Penguin and Panda. Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query — the whole sentence or conversation or meaning — is taken into account, rather than particular words. “Conversational search” is one of the biggest examples.
Google Hummingbird’s foundation lies in conversational search, in which searchers ask search engine questions rather than enter short keyword phrases, and Google interprets the query and processes it accordingly. Conversational search has long been a goal of search engines, but the rise of mobile in the past year has made conversational search even more important.
How search has changed in 2013 and how those changes have impacted the role of search marketers. Here are some indicators –
- The most recent research from Walker Sands indicates that mobile traffic now accounts for 28% of website traffic, up a massive 67% year-over-year.
- Google also announced that they now have the ability to index information housed within mobile apps just as they do for websites.
- Mobile app innovation could really be measured another area of search engine optimization, both by the addition of app indexing in Google mobile organic search and within the search platforms of the iTunes App Store and Google Play themselves.
All these changes propose that SEO is becoming a much more holistic and SEOs will now need to have a hand in all things marketing) to ensure that all of the hard work and investments a business makes — from websites to apps to content — is searchable.
Read here what more happened in search this month?
Recently, Google place listings got integrated into Android’s phone app. The users of Google’s new mobile operating system, “KitKat,” can look for businesses right from within the Phone app. Read more about the integration in general! Though, the results of this effort were not very pleasant and users faced issues like poor search experience and disappointing local results. Google Search app, or the Google Maps app is found to be a better ploy than clicking to call from links in the listings there.
Google has a new manual action penalty within their guidelines named image mismatch. It is when the images on your website do not match what is shown in the Google search results. Google words it as “your site’s images may be displaying differently on Google’s search results pages than they are when viewed on your site.”
What’s more? Google rolled out CPM bidding by viewable impression in AdWords. Advertisers will only be charged for ad impressions that can in reality be viewed in-screen by users, somewhat than on the conventional served impression basis.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN VIDEO MARKETING?
YouTube recently unveiled TOP FANS , an innovation that helps boost interaction with the most engaged viewers on a video posted on YouTube. A few months after, it has come up with another interesting tool: FAN FINDER, which is a brilliant initiative designed to connect your channel with new fans and expand your viewer base, at absolutely zero cost.
Turning the video into a TrueView video ad, enables the viewers to skip the option in 5 seconds. The purpose of the FAN FINDER is to reach and target the right audience/viewers of your video.
Create and upload your ad to your channel, then submit it to Fan Finder.
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN SOCIAL?
Amongst the many changes that Apple Inc. is witnessing after Steve Job is a fascinating shift in marketing and business strategy paradigm. Tom Cook recently got a Twitter Account for Apple, and is actively Tweeting. Though it is too early to decide how and what Tweeting means to Apple, it is rather interesting to see Apple change in a number of ways. For a company that has never been supportive of Social Media space, purchasing TOPSY LABS has been quite a big move. This recent development in Apple’s world needs a detail look into what TOPSY brings for Apple.
A renowned innovator, Facebook has now come up with a new design for its follow button as well as the Like Box plug-in. All the big and small changes being introduced by Facebook are a part and parcel of a greater strategy of design revamp. There are a number of other changes that Facebook is going through consistently, including campaign structure updates and changed browser requirements.
Read more recent Facebook updates!
Mobile is going big! As per latest research, mobile is the new way of doing business. Statistics has it that as of September 2013 there were around 874 million people who were using Facebook mobile apps as shown by 3q earning for Facebook 2013. In the times to come, Facebook marketing would be devised in a manner that they will be cut out to fit the mobile strategies, one of which is geo-targeting.
With social messaging growing at a frantic pace, a number of messenger service providers guarantee excellence in their offer. However, the surprising fact is that Facebook has admitted to being lacking in this periphery. In a recent research that talked about social messaging apps in five countries, WhatsApp emerged as the leading social messaging provider. Interesting and intriguing data has been published on mobile messaging indicating that SMS will remain the most popular mobile communication platform. Know more about it here!
The most important chunk of demographics that affects social media usage is highlighting a trend that was predictable yet surprising. According to a recently published report, Facebook has a lot to worry about. Wechat, Vine, Flicker and Instagram are eating up on the market share. Amidst all this, Facebook was reported to make efforts for purchasing SnapChat.
Deutsche Telecom and Twitter recently signed a deal according to which the two are now strategic partners, a move that will push micro blogging in Germany. Though the deal is considered an unusual one by both the parties, Twitter has earlier partnered with a number of other Telecoms; however, those are a part of the developing world. A statement entails all the possibilities of this new strategic partnership.
Videos are one of the oldest modes of communication that exist and are still going extremely strong. Advertisers are learning how to use videos to their maximum potential and create more impactful videos that have a share ability value. As per a recently published report, that is backed by tremendous statistical value, in the last eight years video ad sharing has increased 50 times. More interesting data and trends show how advertising has changed owing to brand video sharing. Read More!
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN ANALYTICS?
Faster website performance is one of the key factors for better ranking on the WorldWideWeb. This is the establishment of a research that talks about user preference on website loading speed. This is something that even site owners agree with. The report also mentions a Speed Suggestion Report by Google analytics, listing down the guidelines with regard to site speed. It also talks about a PageSpeed Insights tool that helps in analyzing the contents of a web page and calculating the speed of that page. Know more in detail!
For making navigation over 270+ data points the Core Reporting API exposes, a new version of Dimensions and Metrics Explorer has been launched. This is the 2ND version of the Dimensions and Metrics Explorer. The tool is made using the Metadata API. This technology has made it extremely simple to identify valid combinations as well as to get descriptions.
An enhanced search experience for mobile search users is finally there. In-app content is now making way into Google search. Google Analytics talks about how “Google Analytics for mobile apps users, opens up a new world of insights into areas like revenues, engagement and overall app usage.” The crux of the matter is that with this new gateway, users will be able to experience a seamless search while accessing or using app content through Google.
Google Analytics lists interesting insights into how Universal Analytics is being used for measuring Twitter. The report mentions a few steps for setting up technicalities that enable this function. The analytics of Twitter are visible and monitored on a dashboard which gives the entire analysis. The new set boasts of being real-time. Read more!
Custom Dimension is one of the new features of Universal Analytics that ropes in customer business data into the Google Analytics platform. The feature helps by collecting immensely useful information, for example, it can collect friendly page names. This means more refined yet detailed search results.
Other than its various routine analytic functions, Google Analytics now also promises a number of ways of optimizing AdSense revenues. Google Analytics therefore recently launched new capabilities for its AdSense integration, which are extremely critical for websites that use AdSense for monetization. Google AdSense and Google Analytics now invariably need to be linked to such accounts. The report published by Google Analytics also talks about the technicalities of the same. Check out the details!
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN CONTENT?
The greetings will now be personalized… FIVERR: A company that is working on the idea of video greetings for the Indian markets. This is a new dimension to the concept of video based messaging.
Brand can create short form stories with Twitter Timeline tools. This new format allows users to drag and drop tweets into a self-contained story that can be shared and embedded. Further showcasing integration of story telling approach within social media.
After the Panda and the Penguin, the announcement about Hummingbird being adopted by Google, has once again caused the online world to shake up with fear and apprehensions. SEO is revolutionizing because of the innumerable guidelines being modified. The Hummingbird has been brought in for the purpose of taking care of ‘long tail’ search queries. It will also be playing a useful part for search that contains geographical context. Overall, the purpose of the new changes being introduced viz-a-viz the hummingbird is to improve the SERP within Google. Check out what all is there in the Hummingbird update!
With Google completing almost 15 years since inception, the need of the hour is to get business kicking through it. The Hummingbird was recently introduced to Google. But why ‘HUMMINGBIRD’? As per an online report, Hummingbird means a small nectar eating bird that has an extremely fast metabolism. The Hummingbird for Google will mean precise and fast. 3 things you need to do as per this new algorithm.
Thanks to Google’s Hummingbird, Content is now the core of online marketing and SEO. When it comes to content, using concepts, making each concept stand out and employing a four-point content strategy are key. Read more on Hummingbird and the content strategy!
Upcoming – Industry Roundup, December 2013
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