Internet Marketing News
Victoria web development trends change every single year. For Victoria business owners and decision-makers, it's vital to be familiar with changes to remain relevant and competitive.
The first development trend we will focus on in this multi-part series of articles are Progressive Web Apps (PWA).
A PWA is mobile web page that acts and feels like a regular, native app.
Like apps most users are already familiar with, a PWA can be accessed via the home screen of a smartphone and share many of the same functionalities of native apps, providing a nearly identical user experience.
However, PWA pushes the world wide web forward making website browsing experience closer to native mobile applications and, therefore, more friendly to users. Ultimately, a PWA is a website which offers functionality traditionally available to native apps (e.g. push notifications, offline access, hardware access).
Some of the more popular PWAs currently include Starbucks, Housing.com, Flipboard, Alibaba and Forbes.
The motivation behind developing PWAs is the fact mobile views dominate other devices such as desktops or tablets and there is a big gap between using mobile apps and mobile browsers as applications account for more than 80% of the overall time users spend with their gadgets.
Users want fast, easily accessed tools on their mobile devices and PWAs server this purpose.
Google and Ipsos Reid report that more Canadians will shop for Christmas gifts online this year than ever before.
According to the report, Over Black Friday (Nov. 29) and Cyber Monday (Dec. 2), more people plan to shop exclusively online (42 per cent) than exclusively in stores (33 per cent).
The remaining 25 per cent will use shop both online and in-store for gifts - more than double the proportion of Canadians who said the same last year.
However, Christmas budgets are down 11.5 per cent over Christmas 2012, with shoppers' intended holiday spending dropping to $629 from $711, on average.
""Consumers are generally more conscious this year of value and budget,"" said Alexandra Cohn, principal analyst for retail and technology at Google Canada. ""But we know retailers are cautiously optimistic that sales will remain flat.""
Other highlights from the October 26 report include:
- Although just two in 10 presents will be purchased online, nearly nine in 10 Canadians (87 per cent) will use at least one online source during the shopping process to research deals, read product reviews or compare store prices.
- There has been 44 per cent year-over-year growth in search terms surrounding Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
- Mobile searches on Black Friday and Cyber Monday are up 113 per cent.
- Half of Canadians plan to use their phones as part of the shopping process - up seven points from 2012.
""This is going to be the biggest online Christmas ever - and I don't just mean ecommerce,"" said Rafe Petkovic, head of industry-retail for Google Canada. ""(The Internet) is an increasingly crucial part of Canadians' purchase decision process.""
More than seven in 10 shoppers will purchase gift cards, with dining/entertainment, department store, clothing store and bookstore cards proving the most popular.
In terms of electronics, 35 per cent plan to buy tablets, up from 26 per cent last year; 27 per cent are likely to buy smartphones, up from 21 per cent; and 27 per cent are eyeing gaming systems, up from 25 per cent.
As for when Canadians will be shopping, just 25 per cent won't finish until the last minute. The share of consumers who plan to shop during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, meanwhile, has more than doubled: 37 per cent of consumers, versus just 16 per cent last year.
In October, Google rolled out its "disavow" tool that allows site owners to disavow links to their site.
Why is this important?
Google has become more particular with their algorithm, taking into account poor quality or paid links. This means that hundreds of irrelevant, unrelated links to your site may cause problems, reduce page ranking and positioning and traffic.
Webmasters are now tasked with cleaning up backlinks that may be years old or were put in place by a previous SEO company or developer. The Google webmaster disavow tool makes the process that much easier, identifying and then disavowing possibly damaging inbound links.
Market IQ manages pay per click(PPC) campaigns for many different clients in many different industries. Inevitably, the question is "how much will it cost when a potential customer clicks the link?"
There is no easy answer.
Google Adwords is sort of an auction. However, the Adwords "auction" has several unique characteristics.
PPC keywords and terms are bid on with the goal to achieve one or more three outcomes. These include:
- Ad placement on a specific particular search results page.
- Where or how high on the page the ad appears.
- How much the advertiser will pay for the click relative to the page and position placement.
Up until recently, landing on page one was mostly straightforward: if the bid is highest and the keywords, geographic location and time of day match account settings, preferences and requirements. There are as many as 15 ad spaces available on a page. The highest bids claimed the top three spots immediately above the organic search results.
The highest bidder no longer claims page one, position one.
Ad Rank was added to the mix. Purportedly to improve the user experience by returning more useful and meaningful results, Ad Rank is calculated by multiplying the advertiser’s maximum bid by their Quality Score (QS). Google then ranks the ads from highest to lowest based on Ad Rank.
Advertisera with the best quality score pays the least amount. In some instances, advertisers with better quality scores can pay less than other advertisers to have advertisements appear higher up on the page.
Google AdWords success requires more than simply outbidding the competition in an online auction. It is important improve Quality Score and Ad Rank for both economic and performance reasons. As a website developmentcompany and Internet marketing company, Market IQ and other similar companies are tasked with continually producing quality content both within the Adwords sphere and on the client websites and pages. Simply setting and forgetting PPC accounts costs money and opportunity.