Folding up the England flags – 4 years is a long time

All over the UK, houses are returning to pure brick and glass as the long-suffering England supporters fold up their flags and put them into storage.

There are many analogies that can be drawn between business and the failure of England to beat Germany yesterday but the subject I’d like to focus on today is the 4 year gap before the next World Cup.   Whatever people may say about the coaching of the team, the players themselves, and whether the second England goal not counting was a pivotal point, the simple fact is that England are out, lessons may be learnt, and it’s time for business owners to turn their football passions to some practical use.

Looking back to the 2006 World Cup, it would be fascinating to see how well individual businesses have move forwards in that 4 year time period.   This means not just from a financial perspective but in other ways as well (e.g. improving efficiencies).  

Focusing purely on the financial perspective, all those ardent England supporters who run businesses would hopefully have progressed somewhat in the past 4 years.  It is perhaps worth putting a percentage figure on that – has business risen 10%, 20%, 30%, more%?   Perhaps it’s declined?   The Custwin business, for example, has seen an increase of over 300% (financially) since the last World Cup.

But it’s not just about financial improvement of course – businesses can advance in many other ways.  The key point here is that in a 4 year period, businesses should have advanced. 

In another 4 years time England should hopefully be at the next World Cup.  2014 seems a long way off and there’s so much potential for businesses in this country to advance within that time period.  In our day to day work we witness businesses failing from just one perspective (poor website and online marketing strategy, which is like a cancer eating away at the potential success of so many businesses), but there are many ways to create business efficiency and growth, the ‘web’ being just one (albeit an important one).

I’d encourage any business to look back to the last World Cup and assess how things have progressed (or not) since then.  If the view is that things should have been better then perhaps it’s worth focusing on what can be improved in order to put the business into a much stronger position in both the short term and the longer term – leading up to the next World Cup.  

Not every business initiative will work.  For example, many companies try to enhance the strength of their website but don’t gain the results they feel are deserved.  Much like Frank Lampard, the goal seemed to have been achieved but something just didn’t go right.  In the case of the England team, that negative experience probably had a detrimental impact on their performance in the rest of the game. 

But it would still have been a poor excuse. 

So what if the goal didn’t count?  Surely the efforts before that point should have been stronger, and surely the knock-back should have created more passion into turning that negative into positives (through more goals)?   Turning this to business,  the company that has spent time and money on strengthening their website may have felt they’ve reached their goal but if the strategy behind those website changes was flawed then the goal (gaining more business) wasn’t actually achieved.  The company then has the choice of thinking “well, that didn’t work – the web is rubbish” or thinking “we need to beat our competitors so let’s turn this around into a good result”.  Sadly, whatever business initiative hasn’t worked in the way desired (web or otherwise), it’s too easy to think that it just didn’t work and to take the focus off that subject when instead the failure should be analysed in more detail.

4 years is a long time in business and there is much opportunity to re-allocate the passion for England into a passion for business success in England.  So take a few minutes to see how successful your past 4 years have been and picture yourself sitting there, watching the first England match of the 2014 World Cup.   Will your business have progressed or not?  

When the time comes to take the England flags back down from the houses in 2014 you may or may not be pleased about how the team have performed.   But to be in the position where you can sit back and think “actually, it doesn’t matter – my business has advanced brilliantly while my competitors have fallen by the wayside”, is a pretty good consolation prize.

England v Success – The World Cup of Business

If you walk around any part of England at the moment you’ll find houses adorned with England flags.   The more passionate about England, the less brickwork is visible.   There is a lot of passion about our national football team.

But imagine what could be achieved if that passion for football could be translated into a passion for business success?  A recent example I’ll share with you can probably be replicated several times over …

A house nearby me has a serious amount of England stuff all over and around it.  When the games are on, they party and there’s no doubting the passion.  I got talking to the owner of the house who happens to have a (small) construction company.   He was talking about England and how all his mates go to his place for the games.  It turns out that his mates also include other people who are business owners or are high up in their businesses.   On match days such as today you could consider it to be a gaggle of business opportunity all wrapped up in white and red plus copious amounts of booze.

The conversation got interesting when he let slip that business wasn’t going so well.  He knows there’s been a downturn but yet some of his competitors seem to be doing better than him.  So I looked at his website and part of his problem became clear as it was woefully inadequate in so many ways.  Of course, a website is just one element in the mix of gaining new business but it’s my area of expertise so I can only talk about that.

So what we have here is someone in business who is extremely passionate about England in the World Cup, but who doesn’t have the same passion for his own business.  It just made me think about how fantastic it would be if we could bottle the passion people have for their interests (e.g. football) and then sprinkle it over people’s own businesses.    Just imagine what it would be like to sit down with a business owner and run through their website opportunities, with them exuding a similar passion to what they will be displaying during the game this afternoon.   How amazing would the result be?!

Whether England win or lose today, it’s worth looking at that phrase: ‘England v Success’.   If England don’t go through to the next round (or whenever they get knocked out if they do), people will still have businesses to run.  Long after the flags have come down from the fronts of houses, how many of those ardent England fans will have considered that they can transfer their passions to their businesses so that they can start beating their competitors? 

In the World Cup of Business the games are played on a rolling basis.  Those that don’t focus on strengthening their businesses (including website strategy and online marketing) will find themselves like Scotland, Ireland and Wales this year – not even making it through the qualifying stages.

So at the end of this World Cup, whoever wins, it may be worth thinking of that team as being the equivalent of your biggest competitor – what is it that makes them perform better than everyone else in your industry sector ‘world’?

nPower – how to create negative publicity

Readers of Martin Lewis’ MoneySavingExpert may have seen this week that there was an offer to win a free £400 fridge.  The offer was perfectly genuine (http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/free-energy-efficient-fridges) and the added attraction is that nPower wouldn’t use your details to cross-sell to you.

However, when trying to go to that website, even a couple of days after the offer was first announced, I was greeted with the page shown below …

While it’s a tick in the box for having a decent looking error page, you do have to wonder why such a huge company are still having technical difficulties with their website two days after the offer was in the public domain.   It makes you wonder how many people they have working on the technical side of things and how such incompetence can be allowed to happen.   It also makes you wonder whether such incompetence may be replicated in other parts of the business.

Although this particular promotion has no intentions of cross-selling to other services that nPower provide, what impression are they sending out by having a website that can’t cope with traffic levels and has clearly had problems for a couple of days?    If nPower try to sell me something in the near future, I’m likely to associate their name with inefficiency and so would be less likely to respond to them positively.

In this case, nPower are the unlucky ones to be highlighted but it can equally apply to any other business that doesn’t put processes in place to cope with demand, or that doesn’t have a plan in place to fix problems (such as a website page or site being inaccessible).    The same rules as ever apply – don’t make yourself highly visible online if it’s going to come back and bite you.

Website development costs – why they need to be spread out

For most of the past decade I’ve been working with companies that want to gain more from their websites.  In that time though there’s always been one consistent sticking point – the costs to redevelop an existing website/create a new website from scratch.

The sticking point is always price and it’s a mammoth task to convince a client that it’s worth investing more rather than less.  There are so many web developers nowadays and with that comes a wide range of costs for a website to be developed.  While I accept that there are a few gems of developers who will create a fully CMS website, that gives clients all the editing/adding access required – for under £1,500, they’re in the minority.

From the clients point of view (and I’m talking mainly about smaller businesses here), once the costs of a new website go beyond the £2,000 mark, they start to lose interest.  Is it that web developers are greedy?  In some cases, yes, but in the majority of cases, no.   Any web developer that is good will spend an extensive amount of time on creating a website and so expects to get paid accordingly.  This puts them in a difficult position when a client has, say, £1,500 – £2,000 on the table but won’t pay any more.  Is the web developer to walk away or are they going to necessarily cut a few corners (or make a loss on the project)?

I’ve now seen many examples where clients ideally needed to spend extra (typically, around £3,000 instead of up to £2,000) to get a website that is truly what will benefit them (i.e. will play its part in generating business).   Right now I’m involved in a project where the budget is £2,000 and the client has been told that the chosen web developer isn’t able to create the result I want for that budget, but there’s no extra budget in the pot.  Ultimately, the result will be a website that won’t get the level of results desired.  What’s ironic about this is that the extra £1,000 invested now would be easilyrecouped within two months maximum (because the new website would be totally what was needed, instead of a compromise, and so would generate more business to recoup that extra investment).

So what’s the answer to this problem?  

I feel the answer is that website development costs need to be spread out.   In the same way that someone may buy something and pay for it over a period of months, web development could be treated in the same way.   Given the choice, I personally would spend £3,000 or more on a website (if I knew what difference that would make) than £2,000 and what would make me do that would be if I was offered the option to spread the payments (e.g. over a 12 month period).

Understandably, many web developers wouldn’t want to be involved in a project that took 12 months to get paid for but I feel that those who would adopt that mindset would be those that would gain more business through positive referrals onto new potential clients.    Or how about an innovative financing company being prepared to pay the web developer the whole costs in exchange for taking on the responsibility for getting payments from the client, with the cost of the project having been uplifted accordingly.   So, a £3,000 project then becomes £3,300 and the end client is tied into a commitment to pay over the 12 months and the financing company make £300 for what would be minimal effort.

I’ve been waiting for such innovations to happen in recent years but as yet, I’m seeing little evidence of it happening.  OK, it happens with some smaller web developers and those who perhaps aren’t up to the standards required to get the desired fantastic website, but those who are capable of creating fantastic results for clients don’t seem to ‘get it’ that they need to be offering such financial incentives.

From the viewpoint of the company buying the website development they will immediately get a website that performs to a much higher standard and although paying more than they may have wanted to, can spread those payments over several months.  If the website is right and it’s marketed properly then they’ll make that money back in no time.

From the viewpoint of the web developer, within a few such projects there becomes a steady input of cashflow over the months (less feast and famine), clients will love them more because they’re getting great results without a big initial financial hit, and ultimately, the relationship will be stronger and likely lead onto the web developer being recommended onto others.

To me it all looks very simple and it’s not dissimilar to how Custwin works – huge amounts of time are used initially on clients (so there is effectively a ‘loss’ in the early months) but the results come in faster and the client is then happy to pay each month thereafter.  Any web developers that offer such a way of spreading website payments, and is up to the standards we expect for client websites, would be people we’d be wanting to talk to.

Google Backgrounds – Copying Bing.com or Just Search Engine Evolution?

10th June 2010 was the day that the Google page changed, introducing background images instead of there being the familiar blank space.   Who knows what was behind that decision but there are likely to be comparisons to Bing.com, who have been providing pretty pictures for some time now.   Are Google copying Bing?   Possibly (but with a customisation twist).  Are Google concerned about the might that Bing will likely become in the next couple of years?  Most probably, which could explain why they’re trying to make themselves look a bit more like them.

At first I thought that the move towards bringing in colour to the background may have some sort of environmental benefit (less energy used) but the great posting at http://hubpages.com/hub/How-much-power-do-we-save-if-GOOGLE-screen-turns-black-or-grey made me think otherwise (while also being quite educational about energy savings in general).

What interests me is the impact the Google backgrounds change will have on productivity.   Although there’s an argument that the introduction of colour backgrounds will have a slightly positive impact on energy usage, let’s look at the (slight) downside:

1. People will spend time on changing the background image to the range available, or may add their own background image.  This in itself will reduce productivity (multiply the few seconds to few minutes people play about with the background up by the millions of people likely to do it).

2. If going with the automatically changing images, people will naturally spend a bit longer just looking at the Google page, which is time wasted.

And in the name of balance, some possible positives from the Google backgrounds …

1. It could make Google look a bit cuddlier and not so corporate (giving people the option to change the backgrounds).

2. People who choose to put their own favourite images as their background are more likely to stay using Google because they like that image (in the same way that they’d like a screensaver image or wallpaper).

We do also have to ask the question: “What happens to the Google logo art?”  A pretty picture in the background is highly likely to clash with any Google logo art – more so if people use their own pictures as backgrounds.  So does this mean the end of the Google logo art that we’ve become so accustomed to or will people’s Google search pages end up being a clashing mess between logo art and background image?  

Apparently the Google home page will be back to normal tomorrow (11th June) and people will then have the option to select how they want it to be displayed.   It’s been about a year since Microsoft started the concept of a pretty background picture and now (however much they’d attempt to deny it) Google have copied it and added a bit more.   A year from now it’ll be interesting to see how much further things have moved on with how the search giants treat their home pages.

Hadrian’s Wall Taxi Company – A Glimmer Of Innovation

Following on from the last blog that focused on the lack of innovation along the Hadrian’s Wall trail, I remembered that there was just one bright spot, which started before the walk and continued during the walk. 

I’d set up Twitter so that I was picking up on anyone tweeting about Hadrian’s Wall, a few weeks before going.  It was set up to get a feel for what people were experiencing.  Within those tweets there were some retweets from advancedtaxis, apparently picking up on when people discussed things to do with Hadrian’s Wall.

During the actual walk I tweeted a comment along the lines of ‘Day 1 of Hadrian’s Wall walk – incredibly tired’.  That got retweeted by advancedtaxis and I thought “Wow, that’s forward-thinking!”.   There was me, exhausted, potentially in need of a taxi during the week (IF giving up of course!) and a local taxi firm had put themselves right in my line of sight.

During the rest of the week I kept an eye on their tweets and noticed that they weren’t retweeting everything to do with Hadrian’s Wall but just tweets that could have been from people who may feasibly need taxis.  It would have cost them nothing to do that and anyone could have been a potential client.  In terms of brand awareness, even before leaving the comforts of home to go on the walk I was aware of that taxi company so if there was such a need it would have been relatively easy to get the taxi service.

Contrary to the last blog, this example shows that there is a bit of innovation happening, and there may also be others promoting their businesses in a similar way along the Hadrian’s Wall trail route (I just didn’t notice them).  We’ll probably see a lot more of this in the future as businesses get to grips with the opportunities that the web provides, and it’ll be fascinating to see how things evolve.

Hadrian’s Wall Trail Businesses Living In The First Century

I’ve just come back from a coast-to-cast walk, which followed the Hadrian’s Wall trail.  It wasn’t a walk in the park and in fact was a real challenge.  It did highlight though how much lack of innovation there was from businesses in the area.  

Although most people doing such a walk will be quite well prepared, many people (myself included) will become a mass of blisters and leg pain.  Both online and offline there appeared to be little to cater for such needs along the way.  Key gaps needing to be filled were:

1. Lack of refreshment facilities within huge ranges of the trail.  At one point the (innovative) coffee truck man was practically mugged for a much-needed drink after several miles of nothing.  I can’t remember what he charged for the coffee but it could have been well above the norm and it wouldn’t have mattered.
2. Lack of first aid provisions.  It took 4 days into the trail to find a place that sold Compeed – much needed for blisters.  Although it was overpriced, it could have cost more and would still have been bought by those in need.
3. Lack of supplementary services.  What does a leg or foot massage cost in everyday life?  Whatever it costs, that fee could have been easily raised to capitalise on walkers who would have been willing to pay the price to have legs reinvigorated to give them a better chance for a fresh start the next day.

What should have happened along the Hadrian’s Wall trail?  Or, in fact, any form of walking trail where there will be needs for goods and services …

A grasp of where the opportunities are. 

This applies to both online and offline.  Offline, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to work out where there are long stretches of any walk where facilities are poor (for example, refreshments), and to capitalise on the needs.  Online, just being aware of what people are saying on Twitter can raise opportunities.  Last week was a typical example …

I did tweets that included the words ‘Hadrian’s Wall’ and other words such as ‘aching legs’, ‘blisters’, ‘compeed’, ‘pain’, ‘leg massage’ and more.  Someone innovative, picking up on such tweets, would be in a position to capitalise.  Let’s say that someone saw a tweet that referred to Hadrian’s Wall – something along the lines of:

Day 3 of Hadrians Wall today – legs aching like hell!  Running out of compeed.

If that person offered leg massage services then they could respond to that tweet accordingly.  At the same time of giving such a service they could sell Compeed (at an inflated price no doubt) and also build a relationship with the guest house/hotel being stayed at, to capitalise on walkers who may need such services in the future.

Better than that, where’s the innovative person who is monitoring numerous types of tweets and bridges the gap between suppliers of products & services and those who need them (for a commission fee)?

Hadrian’s Wall was built in the first century.  If Twitter had existed back then there’s a pretty good chance the Romans would have been using it, along with all their other efficiencies.   Fast forward to the 21^st Century and we have a simple issue of supply and demand and the opportunity to capitalise on it by being more ‘online aware’.   In any situation where people need something and have no alternative options (whether that be relief from leg pain, refreshments, or something else), then the lack of supply or competition means there are opportunities to gain higher than normal revenues for what’s supplied.

No More Botox In Adwords – How This Will Affect Google

For those companies wanting to use the word Botox in their Google Adwords (PPC) advertising campaigns, this is no longer possible.  If you type a phrase such as ‘botox courses’ into Google you’ll see no Sponsored Links at all.  A veritable desert of adverts, which looks quite strange compared to the norm.

For some time, Google had been awkward about allowing advertisers to use the word ‘Botox’ in their adverts.  At that time advertisers could use keyword phrases that included the word ‘Botox’ but couldn’t actually use the word in their adverts (although some advertisers were allowed, for reasons that Google never explained).

But none of that matters now because the playing field is totally level – no advertisers at all are allowed to use the word ‘Botox’ in their campaigns.  The reasons for the ban on Botox appear to be related to the medical nature of the product, not helped much by legal cases related to its alleged misuse.

Historically, Google has always called the shots when it comes to what advertisers can and can’t do with the Adwords system and although Google is really annoying sometimes, it’s rare to see it completely ban a keyword phrase from being used by advertisers.

So where does this leave companies who are providing Botox-related services or products?  This depends on how much foresight they’ve had.  If they’ve got poor natural search engine positioning or are doing little else in the way of marketing, they’ll find themselves with a big hole in their enquiry levels.   A hole that could mean the end for some companies.

Let’s look at this from the viewpoint of the companies that provide Botox-related services and products.  Their options (online) are:

1. Go to the competition (principally Bing and Yahoo) and use their PPC systems to try and pull in traffic.  Unfortunately, the challenge here is that those systems have paltry levels of users compared to the mighty Google so although some clicks could be gained, they’re going to be minute in comparison to what was possible with Google Adwords.
2. Rapidly look at their organic SEO to see what can be done to enhance their Google positioning.  This will be extremely painful for those companies that have had their heads in the sand for so long, assuming that PPC will forever bring them business.  Those that had no concept of sales risk management will have a nasty wake-up call.
3. Get more into other forms of online visibility raising.  For example, banners on relevant websites, becoming more active in online forums, on Twitter, and email marketing directly to potential customers.

So, limping away from Google Adwords advertising, licking their wounds, what’s going to happen with these companies and how will that have a negative impact on Google?  Here are some thoughts:

1. Companies will get better at organic SEO and other online visibility activities, will get their levels of business back, and will tell all their contacts about how they don’t need to spend money on PPC advertising anymore.  That will raise the awareness of PPC alternatives with other companies/contacts, who may well decide that PPC represents too many eggs in one basket, they’ll start to look at other forms of online visibility, succeed at it, and that leads to less PPC revenues for the likes of Google.
2. Those companies that decide to use PPC on other systems such as Bing or Yahoo will become less loyal to Google, may even start using those search systems more, and so take eyeballs away from Google.
3. Some advertisers that have had their Google Adwords Botox visibility taken away by Google will fight against the system and may refuse to click on adverts themselves (on principle).
4. Those companies (such as Custwin) who use PPC as one of the methods to help clients gain more business, will start to advise clients to focus less on Google PPC (or PPC in general), which takes revenue away from people like Google.  Multiply that up by several companies similar to Custwin (that have had clients go through the same challenges), and you start to see dents appearing in the Google revenues.

At the end of it all, Google stopped the use of Botox in Adwords for reasons that they consider to be best.  What this proves though is that advertisers are very much at the mercy of Google decisions and so, as always, it’s vital for any company to have in place a good mix of marketing activities, online and offline, so that any such storms can be weathered.