Google AdWords is a wonderful sales tool. But the system is complex, and Google’s defaults are a far better fit for Google than their advertisers. As a Qualified AdWords Professional, Dave Collins has worked with hundreds of AdWords accounts for more than nine years. Two facts emerge time after time: Fact 1: Most accounts lose money without the account holder … Read More
Track ANY website changes (for free) with Google Reader
Google Reader is one of those tools that I like, understand, but don’t really use. At least not until now. I’ve been using FeedDemon longer than I can remember; certainly long before most normal people had ever heard of RSS feeds. And that’s the root of the problem with RSS: Most people have never heard of it, many of those … Read More
Preaching to the choir is good for your business
A good friend told me that he’d recently been buying a lot of things in preparation for the birth of his first child. And like any red-blooded male, he’s been doing most of his shopping online. The father-to-be that is, not the child. Following almost every order, the company he bought from sent him an email containing a coupon towards … Read More
Google vs. Google
Ever since Google settled onto their throne as the undisputed King of the search engines, people have been predicting their demise. History has taught us that no King will rule forever, and at some point, even the mighty Google will fall from grace. Yet a pattern appears to have emerged in the online world. Interesting new services and products emerge, … Read More
Short, sharp headlines that work
A newspaper headline is written in large letters, and is supposed to indicate the content of the article. Front page headlines are the most important, as they need to be eye catching enough to snare the interest of passers-by. You can probably see where I’m going with this. Our own company sells services to help (mainly) software developers increase their … Read More
Time to say goodbye to Jakob Nielsen?
If you haven’t yet heard of Jakob Nielsen, I can only assume that you have memory issues. Welcome to my world. Jakob Nielsen has been described as the guru, king and world’s leading expert on website usability, and even the stoic Financial Times describe him as “perhaps the best-known design and usability guru on the Internet“. Perhaps. So it is … Read More
Google AdWords: The machine is broken. Please fix it.
On April 10th 2009 we wrote a blog entry entitled New AdWords Ads Increasingly Getting Stuck in the ‘Under Review’ Black Hole: “It seems like every new ad I create takes longer and longer to actually begin running. Depending on the client, and which AdWords GUI format they’re using, the new ads assume the label of ‘under review’ or ‘Active’, … Read More
Why won’t website visitors do what I want?
Pulling-in targeted visitors to your website is relatively easy. There’s Google AdWords, AdCenter, press releases, twitter, blogs and hundreds of other opportunities for jumping in front of the right people and waving your arms around so they don’t forget you. Getting them to stay, however, is more difficult. Many small and medium-sized companies make the mistake of too many assumptions. … Read More
Embrace the disposable customer
In days gone by, it was considered good business practice to treat your customers well. They were handled promptly, courteously and with genuine respect. Thank goodness those days over. Today’s customers are disposable. As soon as their credit card details have been processed we can cut them off, forget about them, and ignore them when they need our help. Why? … Read More
Plagiarism, theft and business – why are so many companies stealing our content?
We all work hard to create and fine-tune our website content. And an unfortunate reality is that there are a lot of people out there who are quite happy to steal our content for their own purposes. Take this page on our own website, actually I should rephrase that. Take a look at our Google AdWords Management page: In particular: … Read More
