The new media breakfast is, for one night only, becoming an evening event: The New Media BBQ on Wednesday 8th of June.

We are making a team night out of it and all heading over from Edinburgh on the 4.15 train out of Waverley.  The good news is that this is officially “training” for tax purposes as the fatBuzz team have lined up a really great speaker to talk about “What Scotland can learn from Silicon Valley”.  Rumour has it there may be some food and beer and it’s pretty likely we will be on the last train on the way back.

You of course would be very welcome to join us and make it an Edinburgh delegation.  Book your tickets here and we will see you there (feel free to let us know you are coming in the comments below)

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Update 04/04/11 – We are in!

Update 25/03/11 – The BYOB house warming is on the 7th and open to all friends of Attacat – let us know if you are coming on Facebook or Amiando

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After almost doubling in size to 9 full-time staff in under 12 months something had to give, and, as our Stockbridge office was unresponsive to our wishes and prayers to grow another few feet, we had to find somewhere else to stretch out.

After 4 months of negotiations (yes really!) we finally reached agreement this morning on a pile of paperwork that would be big enough to fill our current office.

St Stephen Street has been Attacat’s base for seven years. I met my wife here 12 years ago (in a restaurant, not the office) and the street’s bars have accounted for a significant portion of my beer intake for more than 20 years. So it is with some sadness that my association with the street is coming to an end.

However things change and it is exciting to be moving on to bigger and better things.  It will also be a relief to no longer have to have my desk in the kitchen as I am now!

George Street

Our new address from Friday 1st of April will be………..

3rd Floor, 86 George Street, Edinburgh, EH2 3BU.  The phone number will remain the same (0131 220 1441)

Don’t worry, we haven’t suddenly gone corporate.  Yes it’s an upgrade from the bunker and to us it’s pretty slick.  Your average lawyer though will still be pretty underwhelmed and our prices will not be changing!

We look forward to welcoming you there in due course and standby for the house warming party.

Improving websites has always been an internet marketing essential and since the arrival of Kiril at Attacat, it’s something we have been focusing on even more. His passion and expertise in what we describe as “conversion rate optimisation” (aka “website thinknig”) has really got my grey matter stirring and changed the way I think about improving websites quite dramatically.

photo credit: j-william

A Common Website Tale

For many years we have been producing detailed reports on clients’ websites. These reports highlight numerous ways of improving the usability and the general ability for the website to persuade visitors to become paying customers.

These reports have always been greeted with huge enthusiasm by the clients. Typically they get circulated to everyone with an interest in the website including all senior management and it wouldn’t be uncommon for the CEO to pick up the phone to tell us what an eye opener it has been.

However in so many cases, 12 months + on, the same unchanged website still exists. The problem lies in the fact that the reports highlight so many issues (sometimes hundreds).

Even though the reports included a short list of the most critical changes our clients would conclude that there was nothing for it but to go away and do a complete redesign of the site from the ground up (“what’s the point of making the critical changes now if we are rebuilding anyway”).

Total redesigns need to be avoided wherever possible.

The Website Mountain

Complete rebuilds feel like mountains to be climbed. Complete rebuilds get put on the “next budget year” list. Things on next budget year lists often get superseded by “higher priorities”.

Where the redesign does progress, there is a perceived need for the new website to be so perfect that the development proceeds at a snail’s pace. In the worst cases, redesigns get bogged down in extreme “scope creep” (that horrible process of every stakeholder saying “oh could you just change that”).

While all this is going on, site visitors continue to bounce off your website. The return on investment on all the work that has gone into identifying and solving issues remains at a big fat zero.

When the new site finally does launch, so much time has elapsed that it’s not uncommon for the key issues to have been forgotten and superseded by “important” requests from “important” people. The end result being that the new website ends up being little better than the old one.

Bite-sized Chunks

There is a better way. A much better way. The philosophy is similar to that espoused by “Lean Start-up” protagonists – disciplined focus on the easiest solutions to the biggest problems faced by customers, all the time with fast iterations. So rather than a major change occasionally (i.e. complete rebuilds) you should focus in on making small (but significant) changes frequently.

It’s not about identifying issues. It’s about identifying your BIGGEST issues. The ones that are having the most impact on reducing your site’s financial performance. The process of identifying the issues (which includes effective use of web analytics, low cost user testing and surveys) is scientific, yet surprisingly low cost.

It’s also not about perfect solutions. Instead the focus is on coming up with the cheapest to implement change we can make to improve this big problem. The argument being that even a small improvement on a big problem will lead to a significant overall improvement.

It does involves testing and measuring of changes. Through this approach you ensure that you quickly find out if you are going down a blind alley and can switch focus back on to the main routes. You also find out what really makes a difference so you can make more informed opinion about future changes than you would be able to do in a complete rebuild situation.

It’s also a continuous process, not a start, stop one. Once changes are made, the cycle begins again immediately to identify the next biggest problems and set of easy to implement solutions. So rather than a new website every three years, you have one that evolves continually. Can you remember the last time Amazon did a major redesign? No? That’s because (give or take!) they haven’t, they have continuously evolved instead.

Such an approach brings rapid return on investment and will inevitably take you much further forward than the “total rebuild” and it will do it for less cost and less time.

In today’s world there are so many free and low cost tools available that such a continuous evolution is a state of mind that even the small business can afford. Sure an SME probably can’t afford to be running several tests a day as Amazon probably does, but certainly there is no reason why a monthly, or worst case, quarterly cycle shouldn’t be affordable to any company that sees their website as a serious sales channel.

In the relatively short time we have adopted these practices with our clients, the returns have been impressive. One small change for example being worth £1 million a year yet identified and changed for less than £2500. Looking back it was obvious, but without the disciplined process, the obvious would likely have been missed for several years to come.

Google rolled out Instant and it was the talk of the town.

Yet last week Google made one of the most significant changes it has ever made and it has hardly created a ripple beyond the search engine optimisation community. It’s very big news for anybody wanting to rank for local search phrases (e.g. “Water Coolers Edinburgh” rather than “Water Coolers”)

The early reports put me into a flat spin until past experience told me that it rarely pays to react too quickly to a Google change. This is especially true when the reported changes simply don’t feel right from a user’s persepctive. Since then it has become clear that initial reports over-exaggerated the impact of the change but this is still an important move by Google and unlike many changes to Google, does actually require some changes to the way SEO is approached. Indeed we’ve got a new local algorithm to think about which I discuss below.

The Layout Change

For a good while Google’s map listings have been appearing in the main search engine result pages (SERPs). Before the change you would get a map in the main lisitng with a number of mini-listings for each of the places Google thought relevant. Now the map has moved and the mini listings have become even more prominent than the usual main listings.

The new layout is shown below, highlights include:

• The top 3 results continue to be sponsored listings (Google AdWords pay-per-click)
• The main results at the top of the page are now a hybrid mixture of ‘traditional’ organic results & map listings. We are seeing lot’s of variations in layout, some dominated by places listings, others much less so.
• The new map listings should experience better click rates due to the visual “pull” of the image and marker that is now included
• Reviews are much more prominent, so this is something we all need to put greater emphasis on
• The Google map is now shown on the top right hand side of the screen (this is likely to mean a reduction in the number of clicks on sponsored listings that normally occupied this space). Furthermore, the map actually scrolls with the screen, covering the PPC ads as it scrolls and making them unclickable.
• Further organic listings are shown below (and sometimes throughout) the map listings
• All further sponsored listings are shown below the map on the right hand side (we are already seeing increased competition for top 3 spots following this change)

A New Algorithm

All the place listings and the normal listings are now intermingled. This could have been achieved largely as a layout change but…

The order the places listings appear in the main results is different to the order you see if you do a search on Google Maps (which is still using the old rather flawed maps/places algorithm). This tells me that Google has added some additional means for deciding how to order map results.

One approach could have been to simply use the usual organic algorithm (i.e. simply continue to rank as before) and then simply change the organic listing to a places one if appropriate. They haven’t done this however as you can find many places results that weren’t in the main listings before. Further this approach would not have allowed Google to include companies who have no website but do have a places listing.

They must therefore have created a hybrid algorithm of sorts in addition to the “blend” type algorithm. They’ve come up with a way to compare apples and pears.

Pears (the “normal” listings) were ranked based on website content, links and other signals whilst the apples (place listings) were ranked on aspects such as reviews, citations and the quality of the content on the Google Places page. It seems that local queries are now being ranked based on a combination of these elements.

The question I continue to muse over is why display the places listings in “packs” (as noted by Andrew Shotland) – surely it would make sense to view each entity you want to list seperately. I can only assume that this is part of the solution to being able to rank entities with no websites? Packs also worry me for another reason. I suspect it may lead to sudden movement in ranks for companies as Google simply calculate that a query deserves a different “pack” arrangement.

A Quality Improvement… But Who’s in Trouble?

In most aspects, these changes are good news for the user. For companies looking to get traffic from these phrases, the news is mixed.

For a couple of years it has been relatively easy to achieve good rankings in the map listings. This has been a god-send for sites that are unfit for purpose. That party may not yet be over but it is certainly starting to thin out. Now that you need to consider traditional organic factors as well, your website and online marketing become important. That means your SEO consultant has no choice to be all over your site as well as your reviews etc.

Other losers will be those who don’t have a local presence but are looking to target local searches. If you are an agency or directory type, you do need to re-think things; there’s writing on the wall, though it isn’t immediate death as some have claimed.

If you’ve been focusing on more rounded SEO (good design, content code & online marketing) and you are a local, then chances are your quids in.

Last month, as featured here on the Brain, Attacat Joel took part in the first New Media Breakfast in Renfrewshire.  Here’s an interview with Renfrewshire’s Chamber of Commerce Chief, put together as ever by the fatBuzz team.

Facebook in Renfrewshire Chamber of Commerce with fatBuzz from fatBuzz on Vimeo.

Despite the Pope’s best effort, this mornings’ New Media Breakfast was very well attended. A good 60+ risked the traffic disruption. Below are my notes taken at the event, published a couple of hours later than intended due to lack of connectivity.

This morning’s breakfast was led by Gordon White from fatBuzz.  I did a quick slot on the relationship between SEO & Blogs.

Gordon kicked off with a video (below) of Seth Godin and Tom Peters.

Tom Peters:

No single thing in the last 15 years has been more important to my professional life. Blogging is the best marketing tool bar none

Why Blog?

• Single most important word: Trust – Generates brand trust, personal trust
• Humanises the organisation. Example given of Kenneth Martin at Blog Architects who has been blogging about donating his kidney to his Dad. A clever mix of personal and corporate to bring personality to the organisation. It has raised the profile of his architecture practice, striking a balance between industry commentary and personal life. Kenneth feels that the blog is the most powerful part of his social media strategy.
• Promote yourself as an industry expert – e.g. impact of legisalation, industry trends, comment on articles in traditional trade press etc. You could even interview competitors – shock horror?!
• Use as a syndication platform – You can use your blog as the hub of your social media presence that you can then use to seed your Twitter, Facebook page, LinkedIn etc.  This saves time and keeps control of the content.  Imagine if you’d decided to put all your content only onto Bebo a few years ago. Those doing the same now on Facebook will likely live to regret that. By having the content on your own blog, you continue to control all your content. When the next Facebook arrives, you can then simply start sending your content there rather than trying to start again from scratch.
• Adds an interactive element to your website – illustrated with a great case study: the Attacat Brain! (not at my request honestly!)
• Telling stories – blogs are great for making things interesting. The example given was the McKay whisky barrel flooring post.
• Engaging in conversation
• SEO – I did a quick cameo appearance to discuss Blogs and SEO.  You can read full notes on that here.

Which Platform?

Many of the leading blogs use different platforms e.g. Huffington Post – Movable Type, Masahble – WordPress, Google Blog – Blogger. However the advice is to use a mainstream one.

The 5 most used (at least easy to identify) blog platforms:

• Blogger
• WordPress (self hosted .org and hosted at .com)
• Typepad
• Tumblr
• Posterous

Things to consider when choosing a platform:

• Customisation – note Blogger is more customisable than many believe (but not necessarily as customisable as others)
• Plugins – Plugins can add significant functionality to your site e.g. polls, sharing widgets, great SEO tools etc etc. WordPress is the clear leader on this front. Be be careful about plugins that are not supported if they are business critical (In most cases though, when one doesn’t work, someone else will write one that does, so don’t worry too much)
• Advertising – do you want to make money from advertising. Gordon recommends Google’s Blogger for this.
• Can you export your content to different platforms?
• Whether or not you can have it as part of your website or not?
• Can you have your own domain name?

Recommendation: Use backupify to back up your blog. It will back up all sorts of other things too including Google Docs and social media sites.

Some functionaility to consider adding to your blog:

• Get your own domain name
• Add sharing buttons.
• Link to your other web presences (can’t do that word)
• Twitter feeds (can get from Twitter)
• JustGiving widget if you are doing any fund raising
• Your own company widgets – e.g. if you are a property company, add your property search to the side of the blog

What Content?

Gordon gave many examples, many of which I missed – sorry.

• Nest: Just showed their new business cards – a seemingly dull topic but because the design is so good and the passion comes through, it gets the message over that they care about their brand
• It doesn’t always have to be text based. The Satorialist is a blog of great pictures of New Yorkers.  Gordon mentioned a Glasgow equivalent called Les Garcons de Glasgow
• STA Travel – Gave round the world tickets to two students a year on the understanding that they blog about where they are.
• (There have been many other content ideas that have been shared at the New Media Breakfasts such as the ones on Podcasting and Facebook that can be also be applied effectively to blogging.

Some good habits:

• Be linky!
• Use Tags
• Encourage sharing
• Syndicating Content – Delvr.it is one way of syndicating content out to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. Makes it easy and instanteous.

Promoting Posts and Encouraging Engagement

When the event was run in Glasgow, a short but very interesting talk was given by Gordon Macintyre Kemp on how he promoted his post “42.5 Tips on How to Tweet for Business” on the Drum Blog

So how did he do it.  He started by writing it well!

He then promoted it by Tweeting. He then went to a competitor site, and followed 500 of thier followers. The first tweet they would’ve seen was Gordon’s blog post. They then retweet.

He then sent another tweet out saying that 70 others have retweeted it and 2000 had read it. That generated even more retweets.

Gordon likes the Topsy button because it showed who the most influential retweeters were. You can then start to build relationships with them. He’s saved them to a list on Twitter and he now RTs their posts and starts messaging them. Has another list of VEP (Very engaged people) who RT almost everything Gordon says.

The end result: Leads from 5 major brands and 5 Scottish SMEs

(Side note – Gordon’s website, like the Attacat site is entirely built on wordpress and tweaked to look like a site)

Encouraging Comments, Engement & Conversation

“First Question Syndrome – blog comments are a bit like the “Any questions?” moment at an event – for some reason nobody want to be first”

• Invite people to comment
• Reciprocate comments – comment on friend’s blogs, so they’ll do the same to you.  Create a syndicate of half a dozen or so people who all comment on each others posts
• Answer comments! Make sure if people engage with you, you engage back
• Add comment to other blogs and refer to yours (but don’t over do it!)
• Link to it from Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In etc
• Mention it in video or audio podcasts

So how are you getting on?

If you been inspired to post today as a result of the breakfast (or as a result of the Glasgow event), be it about the event itself or otherwise, please tell us in the comments below and feel free to add a link!  (Thanks to Nadine Pierce at Eden Scott for this great idea!).

The next breakfast will be an internet marketing question time. 24th September in Glasgow, 21st October in Edinburgh. Booking details.

This morning sees the first New Media Breakfast being run in conjunction with Renfrewshire Chamber of Commerce and of course fatBuzz.

It’s an updated version of the Facebook event recently run in Glasgow and Edinburgh.  The speakers are fatBuzz’s Gordon White and our very own Attacat Joel.  Hannah took full notes last time which you can read here.  I’ll try to capture the updates below.

The event was kicked off with the trailer for the forthcoming Facebook film (bound to be an Attacat trip if you want to join us).

Gordon noted the stats showing social media use exceeding use of search engines for the first time in May (Attacat view: think quality not quantity 😉 )

But how does it fit into marketing? Proctor & Gamble aim to establish meaningful Facebook communities around all their brands in 2010. Should you be doing the same?

A fun and at the time, ground breaking, use of Facebook was the Ikea photo tagging viral featured in this video

Privacy Update

Look into Facebook places settings in privacy. It’s possible, with the default settings, that your friends can check you into places without you being there and without your permission (been to a brothel recently?). Easily changed in your settings.

New Case Studies

Phoenix Car Company, a leading Scottish Car Dealer are providing the venue for this mornings event, so some time was spent looking at their Facebook page.

(Attendees arriving for the breakfast at Phoenix Honda)

Attacat Joel looked at how BrewDog (the social media savvy Scottish brewer) could use Facebook ads to attract drinkers into their Aberdeen pub using Facebook ads.

Apparently there are still 80 wannabee ninjas in Edinburgh (according to Facebook profiling options)

I’m sure I missed other updates but there’s masses on the post from the previous Facebook event.

Thanks to Renfrewshire Chamber for having us!

The Edinburgh New Media Breakfast this month coincides with the Pope’s visit to town.

(Tickets & Info about this Breakfast | More about New Media Breakfasts (#NMB))

photo credit: roblisameehan

The Pope has been gracious enough to ensure that the worst of traffic disruption will not start until well after the Breakfast has finished. We assume this is because of his known enthusiasm for this month’s topic: blogging (The breakfast will be led by Gordon White from fatBuzz, I’m going to be doing a ten minute slot on SEO & blogs as part of the Breakfast)

There will be some closures in place that will make getting to and from the breakfast a little more difficult than usual.  To save you the trouble of deciphering the various traffic info documents, I’ve been through them in detail and here is my interpretation.

Getting There

Gordon will start his talk at 8 (i.e. more promptly than usual) so please aim to arrive a bit earlier.  This is to ensure that it is easier to get away afterwards (see below).

• By Car – At this time the only places to avoid are Holyrood, Holyrood Park and part of Princes St. Crossing Princes St should not be too difficult as you will be able to get across at the Mound or the Bridges. Parking is going to be less straight forward as parking around the venue is going to be suspended (see shaded area on map for suggestions for nearest on street parking)

(Larger Map)

• By Bus – several routes are operating on special timetables and altered routes.  Detailed info here.
• On Foot – Shouldn’t be a problem

Getting Away

The Mound will be shut by the end of the Breakfast so if you need to drive to the north of Edinburgh, use the bridges.

At 10.15 most of the arterial routes coming from the West including the Western Approach Road and Corstorphine Road will be shut until 11.30 as his Holiness comes into town from the airport.  It is anticipated that the breakfast, including the Q&A will be finished by 9.30 at the very latest to give those who need to get west the chance to get clear without any problems

Almost all roads will be reopened by 3.30 in the afternoon so getting home in the evening should be no problem at all.

Viewing the Pope

If you want to see the Pope whilst you are in town, then from what I can work out he will be coming down Princes St at around 12ish.  My daughter and I will try to catch him between 12.30 and 1.00 as he makes his way up towards Morningside for lunch.  If you want to join us let me know!

Attacat Ben was talking this morning at the Glasgow New Media Breakfast on his pet topic of Google Analytics.  (The presentation will be repeated in Edinburgh next week)

Ben set the attendees five bits of home work that they could do today to make changes that will improve their site.

1. Referring Traffic with Goals

Identify the referring sites delivering you the most goals.  Think what you can do to increase the number of visitors from that site.  Can you build a relationship with that site?  Can you convert the existing traffic more easily.

Google Analytics – Referrals and Goals from Attacat Internet Marketing on Vimeo.

2. Keywords Report with Goals

Find the 10 keywords driving the most conversions (goals).  Then see where you are ranking in the organic listings.  Then seek to improve the ranks on these phrases where you can.

3. In-site search

Your home work is to either set it up, or to examine the report.  Look at the top ten searches and then put them into the search box on your site.  Can you improve the experience?  Could you stock the product they are looking for?

4. Play with Advanced Segments

In the Analytics dashboard, have a play with advanced segments.  Look for rises and falls in particular segments when compared against the rest of your segments.  This sounds much more complicated than it is:

1. In the “Dashboard” (first report page you come to) click the “All Visits” button



2. Select the three major traffic source segments (Search Traffic, Direct Traffic and Referral Traffic in addition to the all visits one that was pre-selected)



3. Look for lumps and bumps!

5. Utility pages on Exit Page Report

Exit pages can be difficult to read but if you focus in on the “utility pages” (delivery page, faq, about us) then you can get insight.  When someone visits these pages, they have a question in mind.  If you have a high exit rate, that question is not being answered.  Try to work out what that question could be.