Thursday, December 30, 2010

Why Setting Up Of Targets Is Important For Business Performance


Every journey starts with a destination and time frame in mind. If there is no destination then that is called wandering. Business is also a journey which you embark because you want to achieve something – money, fame, knowledge, satisfaction for something done with the best of abilities, etc.

 When you set up targets at the beginning of the year you get a direction for the future and you get a chance to analyze and look back  at the plus points and the minus points of  the past year.

Once you set realistic and smart targets it is possible to chalk out a plan for achieving them. Hence , they give you a direction and you start thinking of how to make them real. Some of the things which get included in the plan are:

  • What resources you need to achieve the target?
  • What strategies you need to set to achieve the target?
  • What is the financial implication for achieving  the target?
  • What improvements are needed in the existing structure of the organization?
  • What would be the KPPs – The Key Performance Parameters?
  • What attitudinal changes are required in the organization -  as the first step taken in order to hit the target is to set a positive frame of mind that it is achievable and possible?
  • The whole team has to have that positive spirit?

The answers to these very questions give you the direction and you start seeing the path ahead.
But, the targets should be smart , realistic , achievable and time bound as only then responsibilities can be assigned and valuable resources like time and money can be allocated.

I believe that brain storming to set the targets  on the basis of past performance and the future trends  is a must at the outset of every year .

The periodic review of the targets set surely give a clear idea about where the business is heading to and if inspite of a lot of effort and planning the targets become difficult to achieve then those situations tell you a lot about the market conditions and hence again you can gear the direction accordingly.





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Ecommerce & Mobile Web 2011 – Time To Take Your Store Online If you Want To Future Proof Your Business

The latest buzz on the gizmo gadget scene is that Smartphone usage is set to increase dramatically with the sales volume forecasted to rise from 174 million in 2009 to 500 million in 2014 with a CAGR of 16.28%.

News is also dominated by headlines like : 

  • Smartphone sales jumped by 34 per cent in third quarter of 2010: IDC India 
  • "Overall, Indian smartphone sales are expected to touch 5.96 million units by end of 2010," says Naveen Mishra, lead analyst, Mobile Handsets Research, IDC India. 
  • "The propensity to adopt feature phones and smartphones is greatest amongst the youth and business executive segments, whose purchase decisions are often driven by peer group influence and workplace usage patterns, as well as larger disposable incomes and willingness to experiment with new technology platforms," Anirban Banerjee, associate vice-president, research, IDC India mentions in an official communiqué. 
The phones are being used more like laptops . The desktops were discarded for laptops and now smartphones are being seen replacing the laptops in increasing numbers.

With more and more Apps. Being available for smartphones the ease with which you email, communicate, connect to social media sites, play games or even surf websites on these phones is making people use the phone more than their laptops.
According to John Shen, the Lab Director at Nokia Research Center, the smartphone of 2015 will go even further: You will be able to link phones together to form a cluster where a group of phones provides PC-like processing capability.

In short the web is becoming more and more mobile . This is backed by the statements made by the people in the online industry during this season on online sales:

  • Daily online sales exceeded $1 billion on six days this season, which was twice as many days as a year ago, said Michael McNamara, a vice president at SpendingPulse. The growth meant online sales grabbed a larger share of the season’s total sales, he said. 
  • “Today eCommerce accounts for a much larger share of overall retail sales compared to a few years ago. And during this holiday season, it registered double digit growth for 6 out of 7 weeks,” Michael McNamara, vice president of MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse, said in a news release. 
The main point to be noted is that the chidren of today get their first phone by the age of thirteen and are also used to the mode of cashless payments. 

Hence it is very important to note that the teens and twentys of tomorrow will be more accustomed to online buying, if your store is online and has a wide presence on the web then your business has a future else there is a full possibility that you lose the online market share to your competitor who might have gone online and mobile before you.
The web removes the geographic boundaries and offers you the option to target the local and the global markets depending on your online strategies.

As the smart phones become smarter we also have to become smarter to adopt the revolutionary and evolutionary changes and learn how to balance our virtual and real lives at the same time benefitting from the benefits of the online world .

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Monday, December 27, 2010

The Power Lies In The Hands Of The People (The User) In Co relation To Search And The WWW

Abraham Lincoln defined Democracy as the government by the people, of the people and for the people and that has been universally accepted and we have seen time and again that the people when in unison accept anything then every kind of authority has to bow down before that and accept it whole heartedly.

Well, this article is not about government and politics as I am not interested in either of them but the above definition of democracy is applicable to every field not only in politics.

Let us co relate this with the WWW with a focus on the search industry. As we have seen that the search engines when they started they had very simple algorithms and the main task for them was to index the web and the users had to understand the mechanism of the search engines and try to learn how to search i.e what keywords and phrases to query so as to find what they wanted as the index was limited and did not get updated  so fast.

 As this problem of indexing  has been solved by the search engines and now with Google Caffeine and the advanced indexing techniques by Bing the user has an advantage and search is a child’s play now , with right from a 10 year old student to a 70 year old grandma searching and finding what information they want with great ease on the web. Especially now with so many search options.

 As we can see the trend  web 2.0 focused totally on the user, the users wanted a dynamic  and a rich user oriented experience so all the developers started working on developing such websites and the search engines also started working on their algorithms to index such content.

When the social media sites got swarmed by the people the search engines were not far behind and now they have incorporated the social link graph in their algorithms and the SERPs get affected by the social signals. Even on the local search it is the reviews by the people which affect the rankings. 

Hence,  the search engines gear and navigate their development efforts according to the peoples demand, likes and dislikes and changing search behavior .  So, as the searchers become more net savvy and as search experience becomes more and more just a click away in fact  , now it has become instant before you can type the whole query Google is trying to think for you and offer options  at the speed of your thoughts.

In short , we get what we ask for. Making the search experience more rich is not only the job of the search engines but all the people involved in the whole process.  But, it is the end user who has the maximum importance here. Hence the quality , algorithms and the display of the search engine results are also directed  - directly or indirectly by the people, for the people and of the people’s choices.

First it was the user’s  ease of navigation and user experience which was focused upon and given importance to (i.e Content For The User)  by the WWW and now it is their opinions and views (user generated Content – Content by the user) which is important .

Next evolution on the web  is curation of  content  which should reflect  a merger of the content  and will truly reflect the 3 principles of democracy (content of the user, by the user and for the user )  in every topical online industry and sites like http://www.serpd.com are testimony to it.

No wonder they say that "Content Is king" but  "The User Is The Emperor".
  

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The Power Lies In The Hands Of The People (The User) In Co relation With Search And The WWW

Abraham Lincoln defined Democracy as the government by the people, of the people and for the people and that has been universally accepted and we have seen time and again that the people when in unison accept anything then every kind of authority has to bow down before that and accept it whole heartedly.

Well, this article is not about government and politics as I am not interested in either of them but the above definition of democracy is applicable to every field not only in politics.

Let us co relate this with the WWW with a focus on the search industry. As we have seen that the search engines when they started they had very simple algorithms and the main task for them was to index the web and the users had to understand the mechanism of the search engines and try to learn how to search i.e what keywords and phrases to query so as to find what they wanted as the index was limited and did not get updated  so fast.

 As this problem of indexing  has been solved by the search engines and now with Google Caffeine and the advanced indexing techniques by Bing the user has an advantage and search is a child’s play now , with right from a 10 year old student to a 70 year old grandma searching and finding what information they want with great ease on the web. Especially now with so many search options.

 As we can see the trend  web 2.0 focused totally on the user, the users wanted a dynamic  and a rich user oriented experience so all the developers started working on developing such websites and the search engines also started working on their algorithms to index such content.

When the social media sites got swarmed by the people the search engines were not far behind and now they have incorporated the social link graph in their algorithms and the SERPs get affected by the social signals. Even on the local search it is the reviews by the people which affect the rankings. 

Hence,  the search engines gear and navigate their development efforts according to the peoples demand, likes and dislikes and changing search behavior .  So, as the searchers become more net savvy and as search experience becomes more and more just a click away in fact  , now it has become instant before you can type the whole query Google is trying to think for you and offer options  at the speed of your thoughts.

In short , we get what we ask for. Making the search experience more rich is not only the job of the search engines but all the people involved in the whole process.  But, it is the end user who has the maximum importance here. Hence the quality , algorithms and the display of the search engine results are also directed  - directly or indirectly by the people, for the people and of the people’s choices.

First it was the user’s  ease of navigation and user experience which was focused upon and given importance to (i.e Content For The User)  by the WWW and now it is their opinions and views (user generated Content – Content by the user) which is important .

Next evolution on the web  is curation of  content  which should reflect  a merger of the content  and will truly reflect the 3 principles of democracy (content of the user, by the user and of the user )  in every topical online industry.

No wonder they say that "Content Is king" but  "The User Is The Emperor".
  

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Saturday, December 25, 2010

Selected Blog Posts About Twitter And Social Media For 2010 Posted By WebPro Technologies

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Wednesday, December 22, 2010

A Talk By Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg On : Why we have too few women leaders?

Sheryl Sandberg gave an encouraging talk at the TED Women Conference recently. She pointed out the main reasons why women lag behind despite qualifications, talent and capabilities and lose out on the much deserved positions as they go up the ladder.


According to Sandberg “Women systematically underestimate their own abilities,” Sandberg stated before citing data that explained why. For example, men tend to cite themselves as the primary reason for success, while women tend to cite external factors. 57% of men are negotiating their first salary out of college, while only 7% of women do the same.



As an aspiring career professional many years back in the 1980s I always had the notion that women in the developed countries have more opportunities and succeed more than the women in the developing countries. But, today when I hear this talk I get the message that the scene was not very different there either. The problems and dilemmas faced by women are same globally and the choices that a woman has to make also have the same basis – Family + Career.

According to a survey by NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Service Companies- NASSCOM is the premier trade body and the chamber of commerce of the IT-BPO industries in India.) a few years back India had the most no. of highly educated unemployed women not because the jobs were not available but because Indian women valued education but did not mind giving up their careers to give full attention to the children and families and that it is done willingly with an element of duty and pride.

But, now with the power of the internet working from home is an opportunity that opens up the doors to doing justice to home and career with some amount of planning, hard work and focus. We have to stop blaming the society and men and start focusing on what we can do to realize our dreams and forge our way ahead.

I think that times are changing and gradually the society will have the much needed balance at the work places but only education can make the difference not only the academic education alone but the lessons we learn from our parents by observing them on a day to day basis and thereby form our perceptions to life. That onus lies on both the partners. As I think that every human being whether a man or a woman has a duty towards themselves, towards their families and towards the society as a whole.

I hope the fathers who have daughters listen to this and try to instill the much needed confidence in their daughters and as mothers we try to inculcate the right values in our sons to make them understand the importance of home and work equally so that later on they can do justice to the girls they get married to.

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Sunday, December 19, 2010

The Right Approach To Social Media With A Focus On Twitter


Social media is a conversational  and a communication platform and everyone wants to know how it should be managed or how it should be used effectively as a communication tool so that the conversations generate a favourable link graph.

Since the search engines have announced the importance and influence of social media and the social link graph on SERPs everyone wants to work out a social media presence and strategy and blend the social media presence to positively enhance their SEO efforts and their  search engine presence.

Firstly, since it is a communication platform all the rules of effective communication apply to social media conversations also. Since I am more of a Twitter person rather than a Facebook person, I would like to share with you about social media focusing on Twitter. According to me Twitter is one of the best and widely used microblogging platforms.   

The points to keep in mind while using Twitter in order to improve your social link graph :
  •      Follow authority people and peers  of your industry.
  •          No. of followers are important but what is more important is their interaction and their being interested in what you tweet.
  •          Twitter is a conversational platform at a very wide scale. One tweet tweeted has the maximum possibility of getting  Retweeted by each of your followers and then by each of their followers – A chain reaction so to say.
  •          So, Twitter has a possibility of a very wide reach making your message reach to people in exponential numbers.
  •          Participate in Twitter chats on topics related to your industry. This helps you to establish your identity and put your point forward gaining you important followers in return.
  •          Use #Tags while chatting and posting topic related tweets to be in that timeline and be found in the Twitter search for that term.
  •          If  the no. of retweets are increasing that means the people want to share what you are writing and your  reach is widening.

  •          The no. of mentions also means people are conversing with you and replying to you – That again is a positive influence.
  •          On Twitter many start as an explorer trying to explore the Twitter social media potential , then  they start sharing what they read by posting the related links i.e they  tend to become curators . Both the stages have their own benefits.
  •          If you balance on both that is share content from other sites and tweet links from your blogs and sites and post valuable info. based tweets then you make your social link graph more favourable.
  •          Only blowing your own bugle amounts to being egoistic, if you retweet, share and post links of other  quality content your followers shall always have that curiosity element and would surely want to read the tweets in your timeline and add you in their Twitter lists or subscribe to your tweets.
  •          Getting listed in more and more no. of lists related to your industry and along with authority Twitter accounts adds the necessary goodwill to your twitter account.
  •          If you observe the Twitter page all these parameters  are available in your account and you can keep a daily track of all these parameters yourself easily.
  •          Use Twitter influence measuring tool like www.klout.com to know where you are heading to.
  •          Last but not the least be a natural when it comes to conversations as twitter interactions are like any other normal business conversations you might have over the phone, email or via any other communication tool to discuss something. The only difference is that you are reaching to a wider audience and everyone will have their opinion which maybe positive or negative.
  •           Be prepared for the bouquets along with the brick bats. As people may praise you or they may even criticize and out rightly reject what you say, And, its cool as you cannot please all the people all the time and you should not even try. But, try to put you point forward if criticized.
  • Humble explanations are necessary but getting  into dirty fights online give a very negative impression and may cost you some followers and more criticizm.
  •          Please do not automate your tweets as that amounts to the height of insensitivity and it is better to have few focused and valuable conversations rather than just posting automated  tweets indiscriminately . The human element is very much required in the interactions. 

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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

SEO And Online Presence In 2011


It is that time of the year again when each one of us ponders over the decisions and follies made in the past year and plan and make resolutions for the coming year. This is applicable to our personal as well as professional lives.

I have given some thought to the online scenario with a focus on SEO for 2011 which I would like to share.

Firstly, at the very outset I would like to dispel any doubts and fears if any SEOs have regarding the demand for SEO services in the coming year. According to me the  SEO Services will be   the most sought after services and the demand curve for the same will surely show and increasing trend.

Though SEO is going to have a much wider connotation in the coming year and the SEO services deliverables will include much more than just on-page tweaking of titles and meta tags. What is going to be of importance is the off-page optimization.  Off-page optimization will  also be much more than just trying to get links from here and there randomly. The off-page efforts shall have to be more organized and the whole process shall have to be focused on creating a brand and goodwill online. Just having a site linking to you may not pass on the much needed link juice for pushing the SERPs.

With search engines confirming the use of the social media signals for rankings the social link graph and the social media parameters are fast becoming  the basis of off-page optimization passing on the necessary nectar or the link juice for boosting or maintaining the SERPs.

Currently the Facebook and Twitter social link graph and data are of utmost important. Social media sites is a conversational type of medium which involve a dialogue, sharing of links  and  now is also truly social in nature and is making the birds of a feather flock  together  and like minded people are seen sharing news , ideas and views. Though at present there may be a lot of noise on the social media but soon it will evolve into a platform where discussions and opinions  and links shared by the authority accounts related to the concerned industry will gain a lot of weight. Hence how your social media interaction is managed  will be the key to the success or failure of the online campaign.

Apart from the social media - the blog posts, the presence on the community forums, the links in the email signatures, guest blogging, User generated content on your blogs and any other external  link from the WWW which adds value to your website is going to establish your identity, brand, goodwill, reputation thereby increasing visibility and also will add the necessary life needed to push the SERPs.

Hence you can say an overall online presence on the WWW which gives you a chance to rank on all the search options will be the key to have a successful SEO campaign.

The local markets have a lot to offer and ignoring the local scene and aiming for the global scene will surely be a very big folly for any business especially for the SMEs. Think global and act local will be the needed approach that any business would be expected to have.

Tuning your website and yourself for the mobile web is one more thing that needs to be focused on . With the kind of the increasing trend shown in the sale of the smart phones especially in the last quarter of the year says that the web is going mobile.

In short, we can summarize as follows:
  • Have great content on your site
  • Have a social media presence
  • Engage and interact on social media establishing an individual and business persona
  • Have a blog  with a focus on your main line of business which you keep on updating regularly
  • Participate in conversations of your topical communities
  • Take guest blogging seriously
  •  Do not ignore the Local Search
  • Go mobile

The overall aura generated from all these efforts put together will create your online brand and identity which in turn will reflect on your current and potential  online business. 

 The search engine bots will measure all these signals according to the algorithms which the programmers have worked on, the online visitors will make judgments on the basis of what they read on the various platforms about your business and your ROI  and social media mentions and comments will give you the answer to where you are heading to on the web world .

All put together SEO is going to emerge as Web Presence Optimzation rather than Search Engine Optimization maybe we need to have a new term for SEO  as in order to reach the search  engines and SERPs,  first you need to have an over all presence on the web.

Hope all of you have a great time analyzing the past year and get great innovative  ideas for the future.

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Sunday, December 12, 2010

Information Architecture – The Foundation Of A Web Layout And Design

 Visitors come to your site with the expectation of getting the relevant information about the subject they are searching on. When they find your site via the search engines or any other source ranking for the relevant keyword the first and foremost search on the website found is for the content and information about it.

Hence, we give a lot of importance to SEO and landing pages. Getting the targeted visitor is the first step. The possibility of this visitor getting converted to an enquiry depends on many on page factors of the landing page.

Companies usually work a lot on the SEO and other online marketing activities to get the visitor to the site but the layout and design many times is neglected and does not have a focus on making the visitor spend more time per page and visit more pages.

The visitor will spend more time on the landing page only if the relevant content is available in the form of text, images and videos if necessary. He will go ahead and click to view more pages if the site navigation is prominent and every page has links to every other page on the site. The ease of navigation is the key to lowering the bounce rate.

Information architecture (or IA) is the art and science of defining the structure, organization, navigation, space for Ads. and indexing of a Website.

Information Architecture , Web Design, On-Page SEO and Content Development have to all work in cohesion and the team members responsible for each of these aspects most of the time will have difference of opinion in order to put their best foot forward but despite all the differences the final conclusion has to have the best of all the aspects . The end result has to be user focused and should also offer the content to the search engine bot with ease.

Many websites start small with limited content but gradually go to become more and more content rich. Hence, the scope for the growth of the website in terms of additional links to be added to the navigation structure and any other additional aspect to be added should be taken into consideration to enhance the website with time qualitatively. Else it results into a chaotic situation resulting into a lot of clutter on the webpages and an ultimate decision of redesigning the website.

Just as an architect designs the building layouts first keeping in mind the aesthetics, strength, natural calamities, lighting, other essential supplies and makes the optimum use of the area, the IA has to have a focus on the visitor and design the web pages accordingly.

The main elements of any web page are as follows:


  • The Company Logo
  • The Tag Line Of The Company
  • H1 Headings
  • Breadcrumb navigation
  • Search form
  • Links to other companies where you have a presence on
  • Social Media Sharing Buttons
  • Global navigation links for the site
  • Local content navigation
  • Primary page content
  • Contact Details
  • Copyright And Privacy statements
  • And of course the relevant content of the page


Once the rough layout is finalized , utilizing every area of the page to attain and retain maximum attention of the visitor is crucial hence the placing of every element of the web page is very crucial.

According to the poynter eye tracking study  the visitors usually start reading from the left most text and the eye-balls move further as follows:




The optimum architecture does not get worked out at the very first go. There have to be a series of testing and tweaking to come to a conclusion and a layout to be used for a long time.

The analytics play a major role in giving the details needed to take the important decision. Each and every metric of the analytics report conveys the absolute measure of the same but the co-relation to each and other is more important than the stand alone data. An example for this is explained in one of our post on http://blog.webpro.in/2010/12/high-bounce-rate-landing-page.html 

A constant tracking and monitoring is required for SEO – to see if the Search engine robots are getting their material and the same tracking and monitoring is required to check if the visitors are retaining their interest by spending more time and navigating to other pages to read more and finally are they responding to the call to action of the page, i.e filling the form, contacting the company, buying the product or asking for more information, whatever the case maybe.


If the targeted, new visitors are responding to the call to action on the page and online sales and the ROI from the SEO money invested is on an increasing trend then I think the purpose of having a website is being achieved . But, there is always scope for improvement.

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Saturday, December 11, 2010

Capture The Spirit Of 2010 Searches with Google's 2010 Zeitgeist

See how  the World Searched with Google's 2010 Zeitgeist. Google has uploaded a video on YouTube which re-lives  top events and moments from 2010 from around the globe.




The Text List  Capturing The Spirit Of 2010 Searches Is As Follows:

·         Fastest Rising
1.     chatroulette 
2.     ipad 
3.     justin bieber 
4.     nicki minaj 
5.     friv 
6.     myxer 
7.     katy perry 
8.     twitter 
9.     gamezer 
10.  facebook 

·         Fastest Falling
1.     swine flu 
2.     wamu 
3.     new moon 
4.     mininova 
5.     susan boyle 
6.     slumdog millionaire 
7.     circuit city 
8.     myspace layouts 
9.     michael jackson 

·         Fastest Rising in Entertainment
1.     justin bieber 
2.     shakira 
3.     eminem 
4.     netflix 
5.     youtube videos 
6.     lady gaga 
7.     kesha 
8.     nicki minaj 
9.     grooveshark 

·         Fastest Rising in Sports
1.     mundial 2010 
2.     olympics 
3.     espn3 
4.     fifa 11 
5.     randy moss 
6.     miami heat 
7.     mourinho 
8.     wayne rooney 
9.     cricket live score 
10.  david villa 

·         Fastest Rising in Consumer Electronics
1.     ipad 
2.     iphone 4 
3.     nokia 5530 
4.     htc evo 4g 
5.     nokia n900 
6.     blackberry apps 
7.     duracell mygrid 
8.     트위터 
9.     otterbox 
10.  pdanet 

·         Fastest Rising in Food & Drink
1.     masterchef 
2.     食べログ 
3.     cupcakes 
4.     jimmy johns 
6.     dominos pizza menu 
8.     guacamole recipe 
9.     applebees menu 

·         Fastest Rising Maps Searches
1.     anhembi parque 
2.     wm gucken 
3.     world cup 
4.     bundeskanzleramt 
5.     rio branco 
6.     mt everest 
7.     kew gardens 
8.     tour eiffel 
9.     oxford street 
10.  nürburgring 

·         Fastest Rising People
1.     justin bieber 
2.     katy perry 
3.     selena gomez 
4.     kim kardashian 
5.     eminem 
6.     lady gaga 
7.     miley cyrus 
8.     taylor lautner 
9.     megan fox 

·         In the News
1.     haiti 
2.     besiktas 
3.     chile 
4.     earthquake 
5.     lady gaga 
6.     iphone 4 
7.     jörg kachelmann 
8.     menowin fröhlich 
9.     mobile technology 
10.  oil spill 

·         Fastest Rising Translations
1.     vancouver 2010 
5.     beijing apartments 
9.     energia solare 
10.  dubai tours 

·         Fastest Rising Health Queries
1.     hcg diet 
2.     dr oz 
3.     aspergers 
4.     mcdonalds nutrition 
7.     cholera 
8.     nfp 
9.     vacina h1n1 

·         Fastest Rising Humanitarian Aid
1.     donate to haiti 
2.     donate to pakistan 
3.     text to donate 
5.     download to donate 
6.     red cross canada 
9.     donate now button 
10.  csl plasma 

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