Category Archives: Investigative Study

Small Business Market Domination

Posted on by Luke Wakeford
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Looking for good information to help start a business can be a tricky one when it comes to online sales and social media. I have found a great blog that has this one main goal in mind. Small Business Market Domination.

http://adamsokoloff.com/

I like how there are honest testimonials of how business that Adam has started in the past have failed, however learning from experience has brought him to where he is today running an extremely successful vehicle wrapping business. He has found some really great ways to use social networking and content writing to benefit his website not online in customer retention but in search engine optimisation.

Definitely worth a read.

How Social Media is Affecting Communication

Posted on by Luke Wakeford
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We use different styles of language everyday, we talk to different people of different statures and we adapt our vocabulary to fit. Social Media is no exception, when using twitter we are forced to reduce tweets down to a few hundred characters but we still manage to convey our point. The feeling is that we don’t need to be formal in our communication to be constructive, however I feel that in business especially it is still important to remain professional in the way we communicate.

Using informal language to sell products online is a risk as some people will not enjoy reading it, this is mainly todo with age range and how used people are to communicating in this informal style. However, using this type of language to market and advertise does have its benefits in the amount of text needed and the character that is portrayed to the customer, hopefully customers who are used to this language will feel comfortable around your company and website which could lead to a sale.

Source: http://gigaom.com/collaboration/how-social-media-is-affecting-the-way-we-speak-and-write/

Great Product or Great Marketing?

Posted on by Luke Wakeford
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Just stumbled across an interesting conversation…

http://www.linkedin.com/answers/marketing-sales/business-development/MAR_BDV/682570-18713463

I think the initial question here had me thinking about my product and that I wanted to have both a great product and great marketing. However if you could only choose one it gets interesting. A great product with lesser marketing will still build custom although slowly, because you may find that people still love your product. if you have a lesser product with great marketing (as a lot of the people in the mentioned thread said) you may get a quick uptake but the product will soon be realised as bad and you will have wasted great marketing on a naf product.

having said that I also think that the best product with no marketing can be completely overlooked. and you may find that your product becomes invisible below everyone else’s products.

Analytics Data

Posted on by Luke Wakeford
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So when I launched RSVP I embeded some google analytics code to track the usage over the test period. one of google analytics new features id a good flow diagram that shows how users arrived at the site, navigated to other pages and also dropped off. below is a screenshot of the diagram, it is interesting to reflect on pages that users dropped off at and re-think how these pages could be positioned differently within the site to prevent early dropoffs.

as you can see a very large number of people dropped off after landing on the homepage. This will be down to the site being under test, and after asking people to have a look at the site they may have just rounded the home page and then backed up. obviously as the site is under test and the SEO rankings will not be very high at this stage this data is not overly useful. however it is a useful tool to consider when maintaining a website.

Social Media marketing

Posted on by Luke Wakeford
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Social Media Marketing is the process of providing new social avenues for customers to communicate with your company. some social media marketing tools include the following.

  • Social Media Monitoring
  • Social Aggregation
  • Social Book Marking and Tagging
  • Social Analytics and Reporting
  • Blog Marketing

I think that this description of social marketing includes more of the social applications compared to the concepts behind marketing in social environments. it is useful to look at both and investigate how to use social applications to infiltrate social environments.

Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World
you can find a great article about the world of internet marketing in a time of mass social networking and e-commerce at the link below.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122884677205091919.html

The article discusses how companies approach using web 2.0 functionality to engage with users during the development and after the development of their products.

  • Speed of communication
  • Community Spirit and Rewards/Insentives
  • Honest opinions positives and negatives
  • Cheaper than the cost of focus groups and face time

Questionnaire Questions

Posted on by Luke Wakeford
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In order to collet data for my investigate study I am going to conduct testing and questionnaires using the two versions of the RSVP product. The following is a draft list of the questions that I am going to be asking.

  • What age category do you fall under? (please circle)
  • 16-18 – 19-29 – 30-39 – 40-49 – 50+
  • What level of computer knowledge would you say you have? (please circle)
    basic – intermediate – advanced – professional
  • Roughly how many times do you access the internet every day?

  • Assuming that you were looking for a web based solution to manage an events RSVPS, based on your first reaction of each sites design, look and feel, Please answer the following questions. (please tick one)
  • Which site did you find the most user friendly.
  • Which site did you find the most social.
  • Which site did you find the most aesthetically pleasing.
  • Which site would you feel happy using to manage your event. (taking in to account that friends and family would need to use the site in order to RSVP to your event)
  • Which site would you prefer to use personally.

Reasons behind the questions.
- I will need to find out the age of the test users so that I can put the results in to categories, and then for the final product determine the target audience.
- I want to know the level of computer knowledge people think they have in order to determine how they are thinking when they view the website, some people will know exactly how to navigate a site like this, but others will find it more difficult, this will help when adding instructions/tutorials to the actual site and interface.
- knowing how many times the user will access the internet per day gives me again a rough idea of how serious a internet/computer user they are, but is also useful as a statistic within my investigative study.
- The rest of the questions are based around the users reaction to the website and they are only given the two options (site 1 and site 2). These questions will be useful again when writing up a report for this project and when building the final product, however they do help me determine (based on age group) who the target audience is and if the site is appealing. One of the last questions involves asking wether the user thinks the site is friendly enough for their friends and family to use, this could be a killer answer, but is very useful to know if the site is up to its job, that people will know how to RSVP.
- I will probbaly end the questionaire with a comments box, so users can have theyr say, if they have any comments on the design or