Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: search

  • Santa’s online business checklist

    Santa’s online business checklist

    Regardless of what sector your business is in, the web has become the way customers find us. Giving the key information shoppers are looking for is good start to getting their business.

    An analysis by search engine giant Google of Australian consumers’ online Christmas shopping habits shows how the web is evolving as it becomes the main way customers discover businesses in the crowded marketplace.

    Even if your business isn’t in retail, it’s worthwhile paying attention to the survey as a guide to what customers – both in the business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) spaces – expect online.

    Do you list opening hours?

    Number one failure of many sites is they don’t list opening hours or hide them. Warehouses, distributors and suppliers are particularly bad for this and if you’re in retail it is the unforgivable sin.

    Your operating hours have to be clearly shown on the front page and come up early on a mobile site, people don’t want to navigate ten menus, subscribe to your newsletter or, worst of all, have to call you to find out if you’re open Sundays or in the evening.

    List shut down and public holiday hours

    If you’re in an industry that shuts down during the Christmas break, make it clear when you won’t be available.

    Sending out a terse email message at 10am on the day of the close down and putting a sticky taped note on the front door that your accounts, receiving or sales department will be shut for two weeks doesn’t help your business or your customers.

    Where are your contact details?

    Probably the most bizarre aspect of hospitality industry websites is how many bars and restaurants hide their location.

    This is fine if you’re one of these Melbourne laneway hipster haunts where only the ‘in-crowd’ are welcome, but most businesses actually want customers to find them.

    Have your address and a map on your site showing exactly where you are. If you are in hospitality or retails have a mobile version that shows this first so lost shoppers and taxi drivers can find you.

    Are local listings up to date?

    A lot of mobile phone applications get their data from services like Google Places and True Local so get your listing up to date with these services, making sure you have accurate Christmas trading hours and that their maps accurately show your location.

    The good news for hard pressed retailers is the overseas online threat fades in December as foreign websites can’t guarantee delivery after the first week of the month and local web outlets drop out around the 16th.

    If you want to grab those last minute shoppers – which includes most men – then you’re going to have to make sure they can find you when they pick up their smartphone or log into their computer.

    As Telstra have found, people are no longer turning to the phone directory and calling you for information, they expect contact details and opening hours to be clearly on your web site.

    The web is where our businesses have to be, so make sure you can be found there.

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  • How Google’s identity obsession hurts

    How Google’s identity obsession hurts

    Imagine giving a presentation at a conference where you fire up a live demonstration of a product you’ve been urging the audience to use and the audience start giggling.

    You turn around to find a bright red message at the top of the screen stating your account has been suspended. It wasn’t there the night before and you certainly didn’t receive an email warning you this had happened.

    Embarrassing or what?

    That happened to me with Google Local earlier this and the many stories like it illustrates a serious management problem within the world’s biggest search engine company.

    Local search – where businesses can be found online based on their location – is one of the main web battlefields with Google and Facebook, along with outliers like News Limited and Microsoft, are competing to get business of all sizes to sign up.

    Recently though Google seems to be going out of its way to squander the massive opportunity they have in this sector despite the CEO, Larry Page, identifying local services as one of their priorities.

    Despite Google’s intention to promote Places – as their, and Facebook’s, local search platforms are called – many businesses are finding the company’s arbitrary and often incorrect application of its own rules and Terms of Service difficult to understand and use.

    “I have found that with the ‘moving target’ Google is presenting to businesses” said Bob, a commenter on one of my blogs, “is paralyzing them from doing exactly what Google wants, which is updating and providing fresh content on their listings pages.”

    In many ways, this is a small front on the “nymwars” that has broken out since Google introduced their Plus social media service and started enforcing their “rules” on “real names”.

    Unfortunately their real names “policy” – and I use inverted commas deliberately – is vague and arbitrary with users finding their accounts suspended despite signing up with “the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you” as required by Google.

    Account suspensions are wide and varied; some people, quite legally, have a name without a surname, others have a combination of languages such as Chinese or Arabic, while others have simply fallen foul of the computer and Google’s secretive bureaucratic culture.

    This secretive bureaucracy would be funny if it wasn’t so downright hypocritical. Any correspondence with Google about account suspensions either on Places or Plus is signed off by an anonymous functionary from “no-reply” email address. So it appears real identities, and accountability, don’t extend to the company itself.

    Last week at the Edinburgh International TV Festival, Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt, announced Plus is not a social media platform, but an “identity service”. Good luck with that, Eric as your staff’s arbitrary and often incorrect interpretation of the company’s own rules doesn’t engender confidence in any identity verified by Google.

    That announcement by Google’s chairman should worry investors, as this is a company that is first and foremost an advertising company powered by the best web search technology.

    Management distractions such as becoming an “identity service” or buying a handset manufacturer distract focus from the core business and result in the mess we’re seeing around business and private accounts.

    For the moment, Google Places remains a service that businesses must list on given the visibility the results have when customers search the web for local services and products.

    If you aren’t already on Google Places, do sign up but make sure you get your listing right first time as editing your profile once it’s up risks your account being suspended or cast into “pending” purgatory.

    Should you have already an account, leave it alone as any change risks coming the attention of Google’s anonymous bureaucrats.

    Hopefully, this madness will pass and Google will clarify their policies, ground them in the real world then enforce their terms fairly and consistently. Until then, you can’t afford to rely on your personal and business Google accounts.

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