Recently, Facebook and Twitter added location options. Twitter announced in April that they will allow users to attach metadata to tweets. This data could include location information.

Facebook is teaming up with McDonald’s in what some see as the future of location based social networking. When users check in at any nearby McDonalds, they’ll receive reward coupons for the restaurant.
With 100 million Facebook users who check or update their status from mobile phones every day, Facebook and McDonalds are both hoping the project takes off .

The first, smaller location based companies may be concerned about Facebook’s entrance into the market, given the size of the behemoth. Facebook is also planning to allow members to add their location to any status updates.

The early companies offer games, finding friends, and recommendations of places to visit. With the entrance of Facebook, there may be a quicker move toward targeted advertising and coupons from the businesses a person checks in, such as McDonalds.

For users, the value becomes not only the fun of a game, but an opportunity to get personalized deals. For advertisers, the opportunity to reach a specific niche helps them target their advertising dollars.

Should you jump on board location based networking? Many people predict that this feature will grow, particularly as more and more people begin using smart phones. Privacy and safety will be a primary concern for Facebook, as it has been for the smaller players in the business. However, more people being involved means the more concern about privacy and the more attention companies will pay to the issue.

So as a business, its worth watching location based social networking and its worth considering having a presence in the trend.

Let’s take a little gander at these two general categories and see why Apple is so well described by these titles.

Apple’s hypocrisy takes a variety of forms, but one of the easiest to see is the advertising. Apple’s ad campaigns, ever since the first, “throw the computer at big brother,” ground breaking ad have been about the “little guy” versus the “big guy” and about the smart, cool apple user versus the dull, witless and completely uncool user of any other products.

There was the “Think Different” campaign and the “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” campaign, along with the “Switch” campaign, all of which imply that Mac users are somehow inherently wiser, more innovative and just generally have better judgment than those who use PCs. This is ridiculous, smug and arrogant. Clearly, the type of computer you use has nothing to do with how intelligent or innovative you are.

Apple advertises trouble free, crash free computers even though they also have crashes, and they also have notoriously high fail rates on certain pieces of equipment. Somehow, those problems keep getting byes from technology gurus and the public.

Apple consistently exaggerates speeds and device performance ability, with seemingly no consequences, while at the same time they aggressively call out any one else who does the same kind of exaggerating.

And another of the Apple hypocrisies leads directly into my next point. Apple professes to be innovative, individual and unique while at the same time aggressively crushing innovation and individuality while operating on notoriously closed architecture.

That closed architecture is the root of the claims of draconian techniques. Apple keeps it’s developers at arm’s length, keeps a tight leash on developers both by denying applications to it’s app store and by giving developers only limited access, and carefully managing its image in the outside world.

They act as a bully – see stories about them suing college kids for leaking info to the press and having the apartment of Gizmodo’s Jason Chenn searched by police and having his equipment seized after he bought an iphone prototype which was inadvertently left in a bar.

All these techniques leave a bitter taste in the mouth of many, especially those who would like to see the promise of Apple’s professed aura be reflected in the reality.

Obama transformed campaigning and politics through his use of the Internet as a campaign tool.

He did not stop with a simple website, as many candidates have posted in the past, or a simple money raising campaign as Howard Dean and Ron Paul effectively ran.

Obama created a complete internet package for his political campaign that took full advantage of the new medium in ways that had not been fully imagined before.

Remember his videos – which he compared to Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” — on YouTube? Those were viewed millions of times — for a total of 14.5 million hours. How much would Obama have had to pay for 14.5 million hours of television advertising time? According to the New York Times, $47 million.

And with the YouTube videos and internet messages, Obama was able to get his own message out, the way he wanted it told and as long as he wanted it to be. He wasn’t constrained by 30 or 60 second advertising spots, and he wasn’t filtered and quoted by journalists.

His message was framed, produced and presented entirely according to his own standards and what he wanted to accomplish. Best of all in a political campaign, the cost was negligible to reach those hundreds of thousands of potential supporters.

For politicians, this internet opportunity is the merging of all the best possible factors for campaigning: unfiltered messages going directly to supporters, low cost, wide accessibility, and good credibility as a source of information – great messages for individuals and businesses to keep in mind as well.

Your online presentation is an important aspect of your business, and you want the appearance and functionality of your site to reflect your philosophy and your products in a way that is accessible and easy to use.

Build Trust

Your company website projects an image and an attitude. Really, the business website should be considered a part of your overall marketing campaign. The immediate impression that a visitor gets from your website tells them about your business.

If your site is well organized, well designed, and fully functional, then customers will trust your business and the products you offer. If the website looks amateur or filled with frivolous advertising unrelated to your products, they’ll likely have a negative impression and distrust your business.

Invest in great web design to create the image you want you business to portray.

Ease of Use

Great web designs are also easy to use. Make sure that there are plenty of links that connect customers with important information, and that they can easily get back to where they want to be on your site.

Today’s customers expect high quality, professional design on a website. They do respond to good marketing and great design, and want to be able to navigate around a site easily. They want to find the information, products and services that they need quickly and logically, or they’ll soon be off to find another site.

Functionality

Your website design also needs to be functional. Links need to be active, and the code needs to be complete. Simple coding errors can lead to “broken” websites that can’t be seen by viewers. Even simple things can prompt viewing errors. Not only does this deter customers, but your Google rankings drop with non-functional links.

You want to be sure your ecommerce solution is intuitive, security and functional so that your customers feel comfortable making purchases on your site. Any ease of use functions add to customer satisfaction, and that leads to repeat purchases.

Get Design Expertise

The web designers at Webdatamation know just how to design effective and creative websites that meet customers’ needs. Our designers can add any elements for interaction, information and commerce to make your site both highly attractive and highly functional.

Save yourself a lot of time and trouble giving directions by embedding a Google Maps locator right on your website using Google Maps API.

This tool allows you to use JavaScript to place a Google Map into your site, pinpointing your location with the superior accuracy that internet users have come to expect from Google Maps.

You can add different utilities for manipulating maps that are the same as the tools your customers are used to using on the Google Maps page. You can also utilize the numerous utilities available for manipulating maps, and add content to your maps by using various other services.

The Google Maps API will let you create a robust, customized map environment that is familiar to your customers and unique to your business. You can choose from normal, 2D maps, satellite maps, and hybrid maps showing some photographs and prominent roads.

There are many other features you can add to your map, like street view, street view points of view, geocoding and reverse geocoding (converting physical addresses into geographic coordinates of latitude and longitude), and a local search bar.

If your website is free and open access, then Google Maps API is free for your use.

You can actually earn advertising revenue from using your Google Maps API. The new GoogleBar has advertising beside local business search results. You can earn from this advertising if you have a link from the GoogleBar to an AdSense account. It’s easy to sign up for an AdSense account, as well.

For an overview of the Google Maps API and an introduction to the many features, check out the website at http://code.google.com/apis/maps/.

For instructions on how to utilize many of the features of Google Maps API, including the advertising feature, click here: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/services.html#Advertising

Suppose I have a website that is an equivalent to exporter-importer yellow pages. A prospective buyer visits my website to see if he can find prospective sellers for his product. After every 2 search pages I ask him to register or login.  He gets frustrated and leaves my website for another similar website which allows him to search prospective sellers at length and only asks for registration or login when he wants to see the contact info. I lose a customer, but with web analytics I can find out why my customers are leaving the site. Not just this! In addition to this behavior or design analysis, the analysis also includes detecting the personal preferences of customers who frequent one site and determining if a customer will repurchase the service or product you are offering. This detection and analysis is done by monitoring the amount of purchases in terms of money by a customer in the past, finding out the geographical locations from where you get the maximum or the least number of visitors or customers and finding out the number of visitors who actually turn customers of your service or product. Other metrics include predicting which products or services are most likely to be bought by your customers among many others.

Web analytics can also help you to determine the effectiveness of your marketing and advertising campaigns. Until then, play around with the analysis tools provided by your web hosting provider or you can even get started with Google analytics. Uncover hidden secrets of what your customer wants!

Don’t…

Blindly test

Traffic in December is unlike any other month of the year. Conversion rates go up, and cost per conversions go down. If you are running split or multivariate tests throughout the month to see which ads or pages convert the highest, do not blindly trust that the data will carry over into January. It is not uncommon to see the highest converting pages (or ads and keywords) not be the highest performer once the buying excitement of the holidays melts away.

Make major site changes

According to a recent Advertising.com study, 75% of all shoppers are visiting 2-5 sites before making a purchase. We also see many visitors come back to a site a few times during a short span of time in completing their purchases. You do not want to confuse these shoppers. These visitors should be able to use the exact same navigational method to find that product or shopping cart every time they come back to the site. If you are changing a website’s layout, you can confuse those potential buyers and lose their dollars.

Forget to add a recommended gift buying section

We’re all short on time. Choosing the perfect gift takes time. Many of us never know what to buy for our spouse, let alone for the office Christmas party gift exchange.  Offer a recommended buying section. Break the recommendations into several sections. While you should examine your products in determining how to section them out, here are some common categories:

Ladies	Under $25
Men	Under $50
Niece (or young lady)	Under $100
Nephew (or young boy)	Over $100
Mother
Father
Grandmother
Grandfather
Wife
Husband

And the chart could easily keep going. Think of these categories: Infant, Toddler Boy, Toddler Girl, Boys (4-12), Girls (4-12), Teen Boy, Teen Girl. Examine your products, and then see which audience demographics fit best for classifying your recommended gift section.

Treat the Thank You page as just a thank you

Just because someone completed a purchase on your site, it doesn’t mean they are done shopping. If someone gave you their credit card, they put some trust into your site. Offer  additional suggestions for complimentary products, either yours or your partners, on the thank you page. At the least, call out your email newsletter where they can be updated with your latest specials and products.

This marketing should extend past the Thank You page and be included in the confirmation (receipt) email as well.

Forget about first page bids

The holiday season converts well. Bid prices will go up. The ads on the first page receive most of the clicks. At this time, you cannot forget about first page bids. Have your keyword report emailed to you each morning so you can quickly make sure your top keywords are on page one.

Always use the negative keyword ‘free’

‘Free’ is one of the most commonly used negative keywords. However, if you use it, you will not show up for highly desirable searches like ‘last minute Christmas gifts with free shipping’ or ‘free delivery Sony plasma TV’.

Make shoppers register before buying

The fewer barriers to conversions that exist, the higher your conversion rate will be. Forcing someone to register before checking out adds a barrier to conversion. Do not require shoppers to register, confirm an email address, or do any action other than inputting their credit card and shipping address.

Give up too early

Last year, as the days grew closer to Christmas, the online spending grew as well. According to comScore, last year there was $430 million spent on black Friday, $610 million on Cyber Monday, and an amazing $660 million spent on Green Monday.

Do…

Show delivery dates and shipping options

Everyone wants to make sure their package will arrive before Christmas. One of the fastest ways to lose a repeat customer is for your shipment to reach someone on December 26th. Reinforce delivery date options throughout your site. “If you order by today, we guarantee your package will arrive by December 21st”. In your shopping cart, make sure you call out the delivery options and the arrival date for the product.

Offer multiple delivery options

You will have some shoppers who want to ship their purchases to multiple locations. Do you allow your shoppers to ship to either an address that is not their billing address or to multiple addresses?

Offer gift wrapping

This is a quick way to add a few dollars to each checkout. You should also allow the buyer to choose not to have the receipt included in the package in case it’s being delivered to another address. Don’t forget, some people will want the receipt included so that the item can easily be exchanged (especially in the case of clothes).

Offer gift cards

Even if you have a nice recommended gift section, there will always be those who don’t know what to buy. Offering gift cards is a great way to have the undecided audience buy from your store. You should also allow someone who buys a gift card to receive either an email certificate (for those who are shopping on the 24th) or a physical card which they can put inside a nice envelope.

Give affiliates special banners or offers

Do not forget your affiliates. Your affiliate manager should reach out to your affiliates over the holiday season. Special banners, offers, or even some recommended products can go a long ways towards increasing your sales through your affiliate channels. If you have a sale, special shipping offers, or guaranteed returns – make sure affiliates know that information so they can use your offers in their presale pages.

Have wish list options

When we’re shopping for Christmas gifts for others, we often find things we’d like ourselves. Let your shoppers save items into a wish list that they can share with others. Make sure others can easily find wish lists and can search for someone they know. This is a great way to increase your shopper’s interaction with your site.

Save for later

Admit it, you shop from work. Most of us have. However, we’re often reluctant to actually pull out the credit card while sitting at the desk. Make sure that your visitors have a way to save their shopping cart items so that when they return from their computer at home they can finalize their purchase. According to Advertising.com, one third of consumers spend 2 or more days researching a purchase before actually buying. Make sure this third of consumers has a way to easily find their way back to the products they are interested in on your site.

The three entities involved in PPC advertising are the visitor, the host that carries the advertisement and the advertiser, who has advertised a product or service on the host website, usually a leading search engine. In this form of advertising, advertisers have to bid on keywords and phrases. Whenever someone searches a product or service using certain keywords, the search result page will feature those advertisements which contain the keywords using which the visitor actually searched in the first place.

The internet is fast becoming the battle ground for business to garner their share of the market. With increasing internet usage, people around the world are searching for all sorts of products and services online these days. It has therefore become important for almost every business to have a significant online presence. Merely having an online presence though will not guarantee business. Websites need to attract traffic and this is where PPC advertising steps in.

PPC advertising is growing rapidly at a mind boggling pace. Its popularity can be gauged from the fact that out of the total amount of money that is spent on search engine advertising, a whopping 81% is spent on PPC advertising. These figures do not come as a surprise to those businesses that have benefited from PPC advertising. There are several success stories of businesses that have been able to make the most out of PPC advertising campaigns.

The key reasons for the popularity of PPC advertising include:

1. The risk involved is low since the investment is minimal.
2. These advertising programs are fast to implement when compared to other media.
3. Advertisers can manipulate ad positions and also control costs with them.
4. Instantaneous results are a good possibility with PPC advertising.
5. PPC advertisements give an opportunity for businesses to test their products for online marketing feasibility.

PPC: A Brief History

Contrary to popular perception PPC advertisements are not a recent phenomenon. They have been in existence for well over a decade now. The term was increasingly heard during the mid 1990s when the dotcom boom happened. One of the companies that pioneered the concept was goto.com which later on was rechristened Overture. In 2003 Yahoo took over Overture. The actual PPC scene began to see hectic activities once Google launched its ‘Ad Words solution to PPC. Almost every major search engine is into this form of advertising these days.

The minimum price for click which is popularly referred to as ‘cost per click’ varies from one search engine to another. It also depends on the competition involved for a particular keyword list or phrase. It is for this reason that particular keywords and phrases are known to cost more on leading search engines.

Steps Involved in an Effective PPC Advertising Campaign

Although PPC advertising can look a relatively simple process, there are several issues that you will need to deal with once you decide on an advertising campaign. From choosing the right keywords to designing an attractive landing page, you will need to take care of several aspects.

A PPC Ad.
Several businesses have taken advantage of PPC advertising to make profits. With proper planning, you can implement a meaningful PPC advertising campaign, which can in turn mean more profits to your business. Let us look at the steps involved in making an effective PPC advertising campaign.

1. Selection of the appropriate keywords or phrases is the first step involved in PPC advertising. Remember, keywords and phrases are the cornerstones of success in a PPC advertising campaign. They are the foundation on which the entire campaign is built upon and developed. If you are already advertising on other media, then you also need to ensure that your PPC advertising campaign also complements them too.
2. Before you implement your PPC advertising campaign, you must first of all decide your budget. Proper planning will ensure that you do not overspend, while at the same time get effective results from your advertising campaign.
3. You must be clear as to who your target consumers are. This way you will ensure that you reach potential consumers through effective advertisements.
4. One way to target your target consumers would be to decide on a niche. Even if your niche market were to be small, a well directed and created PPC advertising campaigns can work wonders for your niche business area.
5. It is not enough if you just advertise and then assume that it would be effective in getting more business. You should constantly monitor your PPC advertising campaign. Always remember that the internet is a dynamic place, where things change very fast. You therefore need to make sure that your PPC campaign is in tune with the changing trends.
6. You must have a close look at statistical reports that are associated with your online advertising campaign. This will help you gauge the effectiveness of your PPC advertising campaign.
7. The best way to go about creating a PPC advertising campaign would be to hire the services of professionals. This is so because they will be experienced in creating the right copy or content for your PPC advertisement. A well written and concise copy can make the difference between success and failure in a PPC advertising campaign.
8. Along with working on your PPC advertisement, you should also simultaneously make sure that your website is attractive and easy to navigate, since your PPC advertisement will be leading web visitors to your website.

This form of advertising ensures a win-win situation of all the parties involved and it is no wonder that it is growing at a rapid rate. With increasing internet connections, the future holds immense possibilities for PPC advertising.

Reader DjCarbon pinged me this morning with an interesting bit of news. Above you see the first two entries for the search “i’m a PC” in Google – Apple has essentially hijacked the dialogue about personal computers, forcing Microsoft to take a stand through their new commercials. The “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” commercials are odd and insidious but, as we see here, Apple has distanced itself from the profit-averse desktop PC market and created a new category. It’s not a PC you’re buying, fanboi, it’s not a beige box with a keyboard and a crappy LCD. No, you’ll never have to open the case, Mac-lover. You’ll never have to upgrade the operating system. When you walk into the Apple store you aren’t shopping for a PC – a personal computer, to reengage that acronym’s original meaning. You’re buying something much cooler, right?

Now, however, Microsoft is attempting to wrest that concept back from Apple. Think about the advertising thus far. We began with the Mojave Project, a Folger’s Taste Test involving folks who probably know Windows as the program that boots up when they walk into the office in the morning. This made it clear that the original “Wow” tag-line Microsoft used for Vista was still applicable – clearly the “Wow” didn’t stick so they had to reinforce it – and reminded us that Vista still exists. The Mojave commercials attacked the first complaint about OS X vs. Windows: interface creativity. Whereas OS X has been using photo-realistic icons and sexy docks for years, Windows has been as attractive as the interface on a stud finder – press a button and something that you don’t understand causes the device to blink and beep, you drill, and 99% of the time you generally trust that you got the right outcome (but sometimes you hit a power line and blow everything up). While this is OK for power tools, this is sub-par for a computer operating system.

Vista was designed to inject some life into that tired old paradigm, to make the operating system as cool as the games that were being played on it and the applications it was running. In my mind, they succeed but clearly the majority – especially in IT – doesn’t think so so maybe they can’t talk up the technical points anymore. So where should they go next? Convince people that Vista is fun and quirky.

We then visit Jerry and Bill. OS X and Linux have faces – Jobs and Linus – and stories. Windows was spat out whole by a faceless organism, something like the afterbirth of robotic coding grubs hidden in the spire of the Space Needle. So you have a nebbishy little man and his goofy sidekick reframe the rhetoric of PCs. It’s not about the computer, it’s about Bill just as Apple isn’t really about the hardware but about the salesman.

Here’s Bill’s auto-reply:

this is an exciting time… wait, you know what? it’s always an exciting time. i am as excited and passionate about Microsoft as i was when we were Micro-soft. the goal never changes for us, so everyday seems like the first day, and the first day was really just about one thing: connecting people.

maybe this didn’t answer your question at all. but I wanted to say it anyway. i mean, this is an auto-response email. and i will try to answer a few of them, but they will all say the same exact thing…

this is an amazing company. and, yes, the future really is delicious.

Mmmmmm…

Bill

Vista, you see, is the cake. If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, you’re probably not the audience for this commercial but to everyone else the cake isn’t a lie – it’s just moist and delicious. So the face of Microsoft has been changed from buttons and windows to a nerd doing the robot. We’re on the way to anthropomorphizing this product in the consumer’s mind.

So now we have the “I’m a PC” commercials. All of the folks with a Windows.com email address are actual Microsoft employees. They’re separating Microsoft and Windows from the hardware on which it runs and pulling the image of a man in beige out from under Apple’s messaging. Once you see Deepak Chopra saying “I’m a PC,” the reasoning goes, you’re less likely to accept that the affable fool John Hodgman truly represents the Windows PC market. This sort of torsion – the spinning of concepts to achieve Microsoft’s end result – is probably the real goal. They don’t want to be a physical box anymore, they want to be the cool product that happens to come inside that box. With companies like HP and Dell installing Linux as an optional OS and Apple planning – as far as we can tell – a considerably cheaper MacBook, Microsoft needs to convince all of us that Windows and, most importantly, Windows Vista, is still a great product.

Will they succeed? Yes. Apple will phase out its commercials and Windows Vista will sell millions of copies on pre-loaded machines. The only downside at this point is what Apple and Linux will continue to do to erode Microsoft’s market share, not to mention Google and the entire Web 2.0 infrastructure. Microsoft will be with us long after we’re all dead and gone. It is an example of American ingenuity and reach, and it serves a global market in ways even the robber barons and colonizers couldn’t imagine. But Windows is essentially a commodity, something like water. It’s easy to convince people to buy water in cool new packages but in the end, if given the choice, it’s hard to convince people to stick to one brand of water or, if offered water for free, convince them to turn around and pay for it. Microsoft is turning from a software company to a “service.” They can’t become a verb like Google and they can’t become a lifestyle like Apple but they can be a cool guy in a fleece vest and they can be Deepak Chopra. They can be anything you want them to be, really, as long as it’s not an ugly box under your desk that you accept and on occasion hate.

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