Please go over, take a look, and say hi.

Eurostar left out in the cold

(Photo by slimmer_jimmer on Flickr)

However, last week Eurostar suddenly found themselves on the harsh end of everything that is good about Twitter, and instead of pushing fluffy sales content to followers they had to reassure customers and protect their brand whilst passenger trains were stuck in the Eurotunnel for hours, leaving concerned passengers on board, and angry passengers at the terminals.

There are a couple of Eurostar Twitter branded accounts that are not acutally anything to do with the firm, but Eurostar do have a Twitter account under the handle @little_break which Eurostar uses to promote holiday offers.  But that changed over the weekend with this account being used to send information to frustrated, angry and upset customers. Twitter, and Facebook were awash with comments from customers, which were far from complimentary about the Eurostar service and their perceived poor handling of the overall situation.  Indeed the timing of Google’s new indexing of social networking sites and ‘live’ search results, has not been beneficial for Eurostar, who are currently getting a royal pasting across the web.

Oh, and haven’t the Eurostar staff also been talking about striking!?

Goggles is an application for Android powered mobile phones, and allows you to use the camera on your  mobile handset to scan certain objects such as a book, or business card.  Depending on what you are searching for a different result will occur. For example, scan a business card and the owners details will appear on your phone enabling you to add them as a contact, email them or simply dial their number.

Another realy nice feature of Goggles, and one I think is better than the QR codes in Favorite Places, is the apps ability to recognize business from the handsets GPS and compass devices.  Stand in a street and point your phone at a restaurant and a little icon appears in the camera window that acts as a link to further info on Google.  I say this is better than the QR codes, because using Goggles, you don’t have to walk up to a building to scan anything.

I’ve already been using Goggles and initially it seems to be very good.  The test will be if you can find reviews on a small Spanish restaurant in a remote fishing town on the coast.

Obviously you need a mobile phone that has the capability to scan QR codes, and you will also need to be close enough to the property to see that there is a ‘Favorite Places‘ sticker in the window and also know that you can scan the code.  Regardess, I think this is a good initiative, and one I hope comes to Europe and the UK.  QR codes are very popular in Japan so I wouldn’t be suprised to see this kick off over there.  Considering Google’s market share is relatively low in Japan (c.30%), then this could be a great way to generate traffic and loyalty.

However, there are other mobile applications, such as Qype Radar which based on your network or GPS location can show you nearby businesses and reviews, which could be simpler considering you don’t need to scan anything, and has the added benefits of being live in the UK and not limited to 100,000 businesses.

Despite that, Favorite Places is an interesting move, and shows that accessing web based data on the move is starting to become pretty mainstream, so expect lots more innovation in this area.

Of course no one but a few people within Google know all the aspects of the search algorithm, but a number of points have been made public:

• Real-time search will now be included so social media is now a very strong factor.
• Quick page load times and general site speed
• Authority of links
• Relevancy to the search query is still the ultimate goal

I have also seen a comment that there is potential for affiliate sites to suffer after the changes.  There have already been cases where affiliate sites have dropped massively in the SERPs after Google decided their was little original content on the page.  So what affect will Google Caffeine have on affiliates?

The likely scenario, is that websites with little original content, but full of affiliate links, are going to lose visibility and traffic quickly after Caffeine goes live.

Sites that have good, original, and frequently updated content with sensible use of advertising will continue to show high up in the SERP and will continue to enjoy the revenue streams they are used to.  I suspect the sites that will be least affected are the ones running successful affiliate advertising today, and will largely provide the bulk of the sales for their respective advertisers.  The sites that are most likely to lose out will be the smaller long tail, who may not have as much time, resource or experience to run well published sites, athough this is a general view, and there will be some exceptions.

What we can expect is to see some major changes in positions across the results, and there are going to be some long nights spent analysing reports and implementing new optimisation strategies.  This is where agencies will really earn their fees, and advertisers hope they have good in-house teams to manage this major change.

Hopefully a number of advertisers took steps to minimise their loss of revenue and have built up good experience to react to this kind of situations in the future, and let’s face this will happen again!

Whilst this is a very small study it does tend to suggest the power of TV over search behavior. What would have really boosted search traffic levels and potentially sales, would have been a short ad campaign to coincide with the shows from the respective companies. Interesting that both brands/toys have a similar pattern. Does this suggest there is the same interest in both toy brands, or are people just searching in general because of the show?

Searches for 'meccano' display the same trend as 'airfix'.

Last week I watched the Sunday repeat of a show on TV called ‘James May’s Toy Stories‘. This show followed James and a group of schoolchildren in making a life size Airfix model Spitfire. I remember at the time thinking this is a great PR piece for Airfix, so this week I’ve taken a look at the very useful Google Insights for Search to see just what impact it had.

I’ve queried the term ‘airfix models‘ over the last 30 days and the data is not overly surprising in that search queries peaked when the show originally aired on Tuesday 27th November, and then again on Sunday 1st when the show was repeated. Since then the searches for this term has remained slightly higher than the trend before the 27th. So whilst this may not be that surprising, it does corroborate that fact, that TV is still a huge force in driving people online to search for products.

Clear spikes in searches can be seen when the TV show aired.

Only Airfix know if this extra search traffic led to an increase in sales, but it is clear that all advertisers should be aware of the powerful affect TV has on search use, and to ensure that they have a well implemented search strategy to take advantage of the spike in interest.

Tonight’s show was focused on James building a garden made out of Plasticine which was displayed at the Chelsea Flower Show. I’ll check Google Insights next week to see if there was a similar spike in plasticine related terms as there was for Airfix.

So taking all of this into account, what can be done with paid search to minimise the negative effects, or even capitilise, on a postal strike?

• If an advertiser has the option of using a different postal service to the Royal Mail, this should be highlighted in the ad text as it could be a USP over competitors.

• If a strike takes place in the lead up to Christmas, make sure the last delivery date is clear in the ad text, to ensure customers know when they have to order items to arrive in time for Christmas.

• As the delivery times will be affected some advertisers might decide to offer free postage to compensate.  Again this should be clearly mentioned in the ad text as a KSP.

• In keeping with best practice of making sure the customer receives no suprises between the ad text and what they find on the site, you should state the typical number of days for delivery.  This will stop users clicking on your ad who wanted a quicker turnaround time than can be supplied and you will preserve more of your budget and protect ROI.

• Is there a ‘buy and collect’ service available that can be promoted.  This would give the customer all the benefits of shopping online, but the guarantee of getting their purchase when required.

The danger for the e-commerce sector is that many consumers may turn to the highstreet to make physical purchases of their goods if they feel they cannot rely on the Royal Mail to provide normal delivery times.  In an already tough climate, this will put even more pressure on the online retailers to hit targets and a lot of the focus will undoubtedly fall on PPC.  Agencies should be talking more than ever to their clients so that strategies can be devised early and make sure there are clear objectives and tactics in place.

All of this creates a great example of the advantage PPC has over SEO in terms of immediacy.  Whithin the space of an hour, a strategy can be formulated and implemented to react to an outside influence giving the advertiser the oportunity to reduce any potential losses or possibly increasing performance due to an advantage they may be able to exploit.  To do this through SEO particularly, or any other form of online advertising would take a lot longer to implement by which time the event may have already passed by.

To read more about using PPC and SEO together, see one of my previous posts.

Scan the code with your phone!

When I was in Milan recently a colleague showed me a small piece of laminated paper that he carried around in his wallet.  On this bit of paper was an image about the size of a stamp that was made up from a random looking pattern of black and white shapes.  He explained to me that I was looking at a QR code that contained his contact details on.  I was slightly impressed, but asked the obvious question, why would you need that?  It was then further explained to me that certain smart phones using specific software and the integrated camera could read the information and display it/save it to the phone.  Now I could start to see the possibilities. It is very easy to create your own code at sites such as kaywa.com, you save the image and can either print it out, or place it somewhere.  With more and more people using an iPhone or an Android phone, which can both read these QR codes, I have actually created a code containing my contact details and have added this to my email signature.  Looks VERY geeky, but useful if people want to quickly add my mobile number to their phone contact list.

QR on a Pepsi bottle

It’s possibly a case that now I know about these QR codes I’m looking out for them more, but I’m sure that I’m starting to see there use more and more.  Whilst buying a large bottle of Pepsi recently, I saw a QR code on the wrapping.  I therefore scanned it into my phone which revealed a single embedded URL.  I clicked on the URL and was taken to a specific promo site on my mobile which had further links to videos, competitions and further info.  Pretty cool. These QR codes are very popular already in Japan, where mobile technology has always been ahead of what we have in Europe.  I’m pretty convinced that we are going to see their use over here increase a lot over the next 6 months.  I’ve already had a number of people ask what that ‘odd looking image’ is at the bottom of my signature, and today I see a colleague in Spain has followed suit and has his own QR code in his email signature. If you read my last post about tracking offline visits to a website, you might already be thinking how a tracking redirect code could be embedded into the QR code, giving you some insight into how many people are scanning these codes and also tracking for sales conversions. This sounds like pretty powerful stuff to me so expect to start seeing this codes more and more.  In fact, why not creating one of your own?