NCompass

Scott Redgate gives a slightly rambling overview of the new AI launch from Google and what it means for ordinary websites - basically less traffic.

Google we know has a fundamental problem over 80% of their revenues are derived from Google Ads, and that is overwhelmingly from their Search Results. So they mess with the search result page (SERP) at their peril.

I suspect we will definitely see Google Ads appearing within their AI products, but we have to be realistic as well. Back when Mobile was launched it was said search would die due to the small screen size, it hasn't, then Google introduced more sections on their SERPs, obviously with a view to expanding the Ads areas, and still SEO survived.

In reality, if a company wants to be part of AI and to be included in AI results, then they need to produce Content. The mantra that Content is King will have to remain when it comes to basic SEO.

Scott is recommending Video and that is fine, but watch this space, Video is very on the target list for AI. But any content is what is really needed.

Google I/O 2024 Reaction - Why SEOs Are Furious Google's AI overhaul could reshape our SEO strategies! Discover why SEO experts are alarmed and what the next steps could be.The announcements!👉 https://dev...

It's the weekend, go have a load of fun, we will! Love a good old Friday, if anyone wants to let me know what they're doing, I'd love to know... I'm working on an old boat and a Landrover. Over and Out!

Marketing Plans now available from NCompass - have you ever considered how to brainstorm for ideas and then put them into a coherent document for actual action steps? Contact us and we will guide you - https://www.ncompass.co.uk/contacts/

I don't want all these posts to end up looking like Adverts - so if you have any questions about anything - just hit reply/comment/post etc - always happy to serve our clients.

How much value is there in outsourcing? Let us sort out your so you can track your visitors and sales better and get a more accurate picture of where your website stands. A simple audit is all you need.

Need a - Look no further... Except we go further than other Domain Name Registrars. Firstly, we'll handle all your , so your domain name will never expire if your credit card does not work... secondly, we'll advise you if we think you're wasting money on Domains when you don't need to.

Content Management Issues - we all have them - we can write for you and we have the expertise and experience to help. But you might have to let go a bit, you cannot do everything on your website, there is a case for leaving someone else to do it.

Are you using WordPress - are you fed up because it always needs updating and upgrading? We offer cheap maintenance contracts - for a small fixed monthly fee, we will forever make your WordPress as updated as it ever can be. Be Secure and Optimise your Performance.

Google Ads - do you need help? Are you making a return on your spend? We're here for anyone that wants to take control over their Google Ads - we can audit and report on what's going on, what's missing and if there are any opportunities.

I've never understood businesses that do not really listen to their customers, if customers want Product X, why sell them product B? Always aim to sell customers your most popular products, it's easy, cheaper and what they want.

Have you managed to upgrade to GA4 - the new Google Analytics, if you want us to help - let us know. I suspect that only a small percentage of websites will have made the conversion by July 2023. There's also going to be a lot of website that simply no longer will bother with Analytics.

I'm on a train... Whoop whoop! It's been at least a year of not more... Very relaxing... Loving it 😍

Enjoying our puppies, they have grown quite large more or less overnight

2021 Website Trends -

First of all a Happy New Year to all our clients, but moving right on, has it been a slow start to the year, Lockdown, Pandemics, Economy, Inaugurations, Scandals, the world moves apace, but what is going on in the world of Website Design.

I could whinge again about the take over of the internet by corporate interests and the rise of the big boys in eCommerce and Digital Trends, but what good is that to you. So instead, a look at what you can do with your website.

Trend 1

We’re moving away from traditional build from scratch websites, this has been going on for years, but is now reaching a maturity as never before, in days gone by you’d pay £10 a month to host your website, but these days you pay £10 a month to build a very worthy website full of Google goodness and easy Admin fun. What’s interesting is the lack of competition in this area and really these are the only names that count. In 2021 – we might see a few names, added, but if you want a website today look not much further than:

WIX.com – dead-easy and effect website, reasonably designed and very cheap and easy to set up. Getting a WIX website to look nice is still a bit challenging, but websites never did look that nice especially on a budget. If you’re a small business you can’t go far wrong with WIX.

Weebly.com – same thing, cheap and cheerful, perhaps one small step up the pecking order… but between WIX and Weebly you have total domination of the basic small business market for less than £20 per year, these really are bargains.

I’ll go one step further at this stage… people have worried that websites from WIX and Weebly aren’t search engine friendly… But if you’re a small business looking for a budget website (i..e. under £500) you really weren’t going to get a lot of SEO for that price. Bottom line, these websites will do just as well.

They also both have eCommerce options

SquareSpace.com – Another step up the pecking order, but Square Space targets a different and more specific market, Photo-based, musicians, artists and interior designs… any website that has a need for a strong image-based narrative. What’s the difference, well as website designers, getting our clients to produce wonderful photos has traditionally been harder than blood from a stone. If you’re a consultancy, or offer professional services, or produce just one or two products… photos are in often in very short supply. So SquareSpace is for the Photo conscious.

WordPress.com – remains king of the Blogs, it’s also the only option on this list that might require separate hosting if you choose, WordPress does offer very low cost fully managed-hosting. But if you’ve something to say or share on the website WordPress is the answer. News, regular updates, subject material, WordPress remains probably the easiest platform to work with. No faff, just a title and a box for some text.

That said, however, WordPress is also probably the most misused Platform on this list, it runs roughly a third of all Internet Websites, but many of them should be on something else if I am honest… you don’t create a WordPress website and then just ignore it. WordPress needs to be worked on frequently.

Shopify.com – if you’ve something that you think will sell well online, and don’t mind the $29 per month then Shopify is the easy answer, there really is no other eCommerce platform worth mentioning, incredibly easy to set up, pick a theme, add your logo and products and you off. Shopify really has chucked the money, mud, thought and design into eCommerce and does it very well nowadays.

The common theme to all of these platforms is the barrier for entry into the business world of getting a website has collapsed, no need to spend ‘000’s on getting your website together… 5 minutes time a month and £20 will do it… Pick a Theme, add some pages and you’re done.

The downside is the day you stop paying is the day your website dies, hmmm, judging by how many dormant websites are probably out there that might not be such a bad thing.

The trend, however, is that these platforms are reaching maturity and are now very viable options for businesses to get online.

Trend 2

Brand and Social Media – a circle is developing… it’s that simple and we see it in the Stats of our clients every day… Most of the visitors you receive to your website will be from people that have already heard about you.

They will look up your website on Google by typing in your name.

Now that all sounds like bad news… the idea of having a website is to allow anyone to find you, strangers as much as your best ever friends and customers. But it no work like that no more.

You’ve got to promote yourself or your business regardless of whether your an artist, small business or giant corporation. And sure you can take out advertising space on Billboards that line the M4 into London… or you can spend a fraction of that money on Google Adwords and other Pay-Per-Click type things… or you can post pictures on Instagram.

I cannot explain the inns and outs of this… but I can say that if you call me up and ask me what keyword people looked up to find your website, a few hundred will have used your Brand name and fewer than 10 will have used your favourite most chased after keyword.

Warning Small Print Coming Up

The reason for this trend, we believe, is the lack of trust-building up between Google and their customers, you and I and anyone searching on Google. If you look up a train time, or cinema tickets or a historical fact. Google is going to give you the answer and that is an excellent service. But if you are looking up your sisters Birthday present, or whether Blue or Pink would look better in the dining room you’ll be hit by a barrage of adverts. Humans simply see through all this… we’re not interested unless it matches exactly what we want.

By this definition, we are suspicious of Google’s guidance, we might click a few adverts and mix things up a little… but is that enough to make us decide and buy? All too often not.

But when it comes to Brand name… word of mouth, someone somewhere has giving us the idea, we look it up on Google, it’s re-enforced by an Advert and kapow we buy into it. Brand is very strong.

And where do we hear most of our Brand Names from and that’s Word-of-Mouth or in digital speak Social Media? Social is by far the bigger keyword… and who hasn’t typed into WhatsApp – ‘what would you like for Christmas?’ or words to that effect.

The trend in 2021 is going to get significantly stronger for Social Media and while at some point in the future the end might be insight for Facebook… it won’t be 2021. Business has invaded and it is not about to let us escape that easily.

Conclusion

I’m only focussing on these two narrow trends for the moment, the reason is that with small SME’s in mind these are probably the two most important trends for 2021 in regards to Website Design. We’ve seen website become more uniform or homogenised, the layouts look the same, the mobile experience is that same, the checkout process is the same… there’s less room for innovation and experimentation particularly at the lower end of the investment market.

Thus the reduction in the cost barrier to entry is very welcome, Websites get a job done and in 2021 we can do it quickly, easily and well.

Within the industry then the trends are positive and good… the problems businesses face in 2021 lie outside of the Internet and probably in the bigger off-line area. For now, just make sure you upload a few photos to Instagram.

The post 2021 Website Trends appeared first on NCompass Ltd.

2021 Website Trends - NCompass Ltd Happy New Year - a fresh look at some website trends for 2021, social media rises, brand rises, we concentrate on the positive trends.

Happy Christmas - https://mailchi.mp/2fcd5e021a74/merry-christmas-2020 - we know it's been an incredibly tough year for many, but we remain dedicated to helping clients through 2021, for now, however, let's just rest and relax for a few days over Christmas and New Year

Web Design in 2020 -

I want to sum up the year that has been, and it has been massively interesting, full of ups and downs, ins and outs as much around COVID or Brexit as around Web Design itself. But here are some of the highlights of our year for you.

2020 started extremely well, a full office, bustling clients, busy bees we were back then, but in March COVID struck and we were simply forced to clamp down in every area.

Our main exposure was the marketing services we do for clients, it was so easy to just stop Adwords or SEO, no-one understood the implications and to switch off marketing expenditure was an easy call. We had to agree with clients, why spend when people just stopped buying.

However, that passed, more quickly than one realised and actually those that did not stop their marketing activities benefited most. eCommerce was up, by factors unheard of in eCommerce terms… while websites were making up the shortfall of traditional sales, some exceeded all expectations.

Not quite everyone was so lucky, but in practical senses, not a single client of ours has gone under, suffer yes, but no-one thankfully has gone bust. We ourselves took our biggest hit in April, did a bit of furloughing in May and June and emerged into the summer in reasonable shape.

GetMeHome was launched in April as well, it shows the strength of our team as within 48 hours we had a fully functioning website and social media presence designed to help UK travellers of all sorts funnel their frustration with airlines and travel companies to return home. We achieved such success that we were noted and subsequently shut down by the Foreign Office as they rather hopelessly grappled with the situation. We remain convinced that our little effort spurred the true authorities on to action.

Website Design however did change, or rather companies looked at their website offerings and gave more attention to them. One result is a more active interest in managing the online experience of customers.

How can I put this better… For far too long we have campaigned that companies should look closely at how their customers see them via the web. That covers a lot of aspects from a Twitter account to the checkout experience on their website. A lot of companies in recent years have been somewhat bewildered by just how much needs to be done online, whether just starting out or playing catch up to competitors the sheer volume of work required is staggering.

We used to say, when we started up www.buyatree.com back in 1998, we could sell a few Christmas Trees standing on the side of the road with a Van nearby and make £5000… or we could create a website, employ a dozen people, rent a warehouse, sell hundreds, if not thousands of Christmas Trees, do marketing, upsell new services and move the whole Christmas Tree business online and still on make £5000 at then of the day.

That is the point of today’s Internet, it’s not a place of rich pickings and easy money, its hard work and grind to build a brand and get sales… and it’s repetitive, slack for even a few months during Lockdown and you lose out.

It seems at last clients might just be beginning to realise this, harsh as it sounds. However, the biggest lesson that has been learnt is that Companies have to get involved and ensure their brand is exposed their way online. You cannot leave this up to some fancy website designer in a fancy office. The company needs the control in house more than ever.

And it is this that has affected us here, supporting our clients, more than anything else in 2020. How do we give clients more control and more say in what they want on their website. While at the same time using our expertise and experience to guide them to the right solutions.

In the second half of 2020 – we did find ourselves guiding a lot more than building and this came with problems of its own. The Internet has diverged yet more between those with deep pockets able to splash big money on things and the little guy on a shoestring. What’s been missing is the middle guy, which is our traditional patch. With overheads, staff and offices we have to bill at specific rates just because that is the way life works, and that makes it tough for the little guy on a shoestring. And with our limited resources, it’s tough to get the really big jobs as that remains the domain of big international and London based Agencies.

What we have not done I am glad to say is rip anyone off. We’ve always taken the line a job is worth X. It’s not about what you can get away with, it’s about being fair for the work you do and that is a founding principal here at NCompass.

Autumn, led to more lockdowns, but also some recovery. We think everyone realised that life was not going to stop, or more the point, life has to carry on and people need food on the table, so Autumn was actually manically busy, new websites launched, upgraded marketing activated and a build-up to Christmas that really has been like no other.

And now finally Brexit – it’s not hit yet, but there is a very practical side that needs to be addressed when the time comes, practical because websites will have to change, people that offered delivery to EU countries will need to make changes. What those changes are, is not yet set in stone, but you can rest assured we are thinking about them and ready to make those changes when they are announced.

I will leave you with one last thought on the Year and the Brexit issue where it comes to website design. UK consumers are going to be shocked and annoyed when they are asked to pay extra fees and taxes or fill in additional paperwork for them to receive parcels of their web-based orders from the EU. It has not hit home that consumers in Switzerland, Norway and other countries do this as a regular part of their web ordering expectations. But UK consumers will be quite unprepared for this interference in their day to day life.

2021 – is going to be exciting and big. Bring it on.

The post Web Design in 2020 appeared first on NCompass Ltd.

Web Design in 2020 - NCompass Ltd A look back at website design through 2020 one of the most momentous years we have experienced so far and it looks like 2021 is no different.

These guys seem good.

QR Code Tracking Platform - qrd.by Create professional marketing campaigns with dynamic QR Codes. Design QR Codes with your logo in various formats and track where your QR Codes are scanned.

When is the best time for marketing -

With quite so much going on pretty much anywhere, when it is a good time to promote something or to do marketing. How do you gain the smallest edge in peoples attention, your foot in the door, a reaction even.

Since last writing, we’ve gone into another Lockdown, there’s a vaccine somewhere, the US elections have happened, Belerus has explored there a war in Armenia and China has signed the world biggest trade deal with Australia and most other Asian countries.

All I want to do is send out a small borchure to a few clients and hope they appreciate my sevice that little bit more.

Truth is there is no such thing as a ‘good time’ or if you are a bit more optimistic there’s never a ‘bad time’. You just goot a do it.

And so that is the way of marketing, we can use data to predict a little bit of when people might open an email, but you know what if you’re sending to 10,000 emails thats a positive variation of maybe 5%… otherwise its completely random.

If I had any real advice to serious marketeers in todays mad and busy world it would be little and often… And then e have the rise of social media, relentless as it maybe, we’ve been saying for years now – you have to take notice. Little and Often… while competitors have gained 1000’s of likes and followers, you mighty difficult to catch up now.

I had a client worried that they would get bad reviews… so we never added Reviews to their website… then they complained with their nearest competitor was taking all the traffic and had over 100,000 reviews. We now have about 200…

Little and Often is the answer as as the need to get on board new technoligies quick. I am probably most at fult here, advise caution and not wanting to waste money, but in reality – if you’re not an early adopter then it’s time-consuming, expensive and inordinately hard to catch up… will anyone ever overtake Amazon now?

So – when it comes to marketing – it’s always a good time to just Go For It.

And get us to help… as we will do our best.

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When is the best time for marketing - NCompass Ltd Early Adopters do well if they get it right, so how to work out the best time for marketing? Take a read of our advice

Have you ever wondered about Direct Traffic in Google analytics - perhaps now is the time to have a quick review of the situation
https://www.ncompass.co.uk/blog/2020/10/27/the-mystery-of-direct-traffic-in-seo/

The mystery of Direct Traffic in SEO - NCompass Ltd It's time to start tracking and defining Direct Traffic as reported by Google Analytics to better understand where visitors are coming from.

The mystery of Direct Traffic in SEO -

If you know your Google Analytics and please guys, you’re my clients I know quite a few of you hardly ever check, but if you do – please pay attention to your Direct Traffic.

My quest started when I realised that WordPress was automatically adding a specific Tag to all external links on their platform. If you wanted to link to Spotify you usually write something like this:

Spotify

However, that code would mean users leaving your website to go to Spotify’s… not what you want. The solution was to force the Browser to open an external link in a new Tab or window – like this:

Spotify/a>

The ‘target=”_blank”‘tells the browser to open in a fresh blank window. So far so good. However, the Internet has been debating this for years. The arguments flow for and against this simple solution to effectively keep users on your website. Those for it saying – why not refer people to a fresh page when looking at some different content and those against saying this harms the very essence of sharing information online.

The reality is more simple… we’re in it for the money and it makes no financial sense for anyone to ever leave your website. Most content providers still use this simple technique to open a new browser window.

Tracking and Hacking

The first good news is that if a user can click an external link, so can Google. Google can form a relationship between the two websites. If you put links to your website on another website – you get kudos and you can track where people come from. Spotify can literally see where their customer has found their links.

Slightly more maliciously, there’s a weakness in that it is possible to track links back to where they come from and possibly control the referring website. So, if someone wants to trace that Spotify link back to your website they could, in theory, harm your website. All a bit techie and unlikely.

The result, however, is that nig name platforms like WordPress and Shopify have battled to prevent this hacking or malicious use of Browsers. Simply put they have used some very old tech to block this.

Now each time you set a link to open in a Blank window, WordPress, Shopify and others will automatically add the following code to your links:

Spotify/a>

Noopener is fairly straightforward. It tells the browser to NOT open the page it was referred by. If you add this link to your website Spotify cannot then open your website page as a consequence. That protects your website from the malicious stuff I mentioned above.

Noreferrer, however, tells the Browser not to pass on where a link came from. In other words, Spotify knows a user will have landed on their website but they don’t know where from. The information is not sent.

A word to the wise, the noreferrer tag does not harm SEO, your website still gets the kudos for the link, it just does not send the information on.

Enter Direct Traffic

And now we come to the core of this piece, your contacts, friends, family, clients, suppliers, customers and social media are furiously following your instructions and adding lots of lovely links to your website for your SEO. With these new additions of noopener and more importantly noreferrer. The result of this is that you can no longer tell where your visitors have come from. The browser is not passing on this information. Google Analytics is just putting all this traffic to your website in the ‘Direct’ traffic box.

Direct Traffic is that area of Google Analytics that used to be about people phyiscally typing in your url painstakingly into their browser to see your website. They might have read a flyer or an advert in a magazine and be actually typing in the URL.

However, these days it’s far more likely that Direct Traffic consists of all the traffic Google cannot explain. A sort of junk dumping ground and, to be honest, that’s exactly the position we have taken when doing SEO. Direct traffic is the unknown stuff and thus can be ignored.

There is more… always more… Direct Traffic, nowadays, also consists of a lot of App Traffic. If you have a mobile and view an App like LinkedIn or Twitter, see a link click on it. Google Analytics will have no idea where it has come from.

And this is the key… no longer should we be ignoring ‘Direct’ traffic – instead we need to be explaining it at every opportunity. We also need to be finding ways to improve tracking and reduce this black hole of Direct traffic.

Solution for Direct Traffic SEO

Here goes:

UTM Links – https://raventools.com/marketing-reports/google-analytics/url-builder/
Make every link count and specify the UTL parameter to precisely match your needs. If you have an editorial on The Sun website set up your Campaign Source, Medium and Name. This will override the noreferrer information and provide you with more detailed traffic analytics.

Landing Pages – if you really have managed to get an editorial on The Sun’s website then create a landing page for them to land on… use ‘yourdomainname.com/thesun’ and on the resulting page Welcome Sun Readers – make the page count for the readership it is directed at.

Direct Traffic Complancy

I will finish off… what’s happened in the past is we’ve been lazy, there is so much traffic out there to websites that we simply have not accounted for. Truth is, while SEO traffic is declining or Mobile traffic increasing, there is more traffic that is unexplained.

And it needs to be explained and more to the point with just a few extra steps it can be explained. Next time you give your link to anyone knowing they might use it online, do it properly. Go the extra mile and either send them to a right page on the website (that you can measure) or add UTM tags so you can track. It is quick and easy.

And if you are successful at doing that, then you might be able to justify the signwriting on your van. When people really do type in a URL for your website – they will have read it in some traffic jam somewhere.

The post The mystery of Direct Traffic in SEO appeared first on NCompass Ltd.

The mystery of Direct Traffic in SEO - NCompass Ltd It's time to start tracking and defining Direct Traffic as reported by Google Analytics to better understand where visitors are coming from.

Very sadly, NCompass only seems to lose clients in two ways, liquidation or growing out of us. We were very sad to see the brilliant catering company that we know so well - go this way... In truth, they had out-grown us in quality and size... they needed more services that we had resources for... we feel and hope that we helped with that journey to the top. All the more sad to see it all go under in such a short time.

Hattie Mauleverer COVID19 took my business don't let it take all the others. Our events industry needs help.

Taking Risks in Website Design -

I was shared a video on Facebook of an Interview with Lee Presson a musician in San Francisco, no big deal so far, but his comments resonated deeply. Here’s roughly what he accused me of:

In the ’50s and ’60s music world, the executive was filled with stuffy overweight cigar-smoking old men… they controlled entertainment and more or less that was it… It was the days of the big Hollywood producers – who fundamentally had no idea that what the sixties were about to unleash.

But they took a punt… these old guys more or less said – let’s see what happens… virtually no market research and they could hardly claim they even liked the music they were listening to.. You only have to watch movies like Bohemian Rhapsody to see what I mean.

Bohemian Rhapsody Executive Scene

However, Lee goes on to suggest that within his Music Industry these older guys a) retired and b) gave way to a younger crowd of so-called experts. Risks were calculated, research was undertaken, but fundamentally the young guys who started out as ambitious coffee boys actually increasingly turned around and said they have the measure of this, they know what young people like. And they made the decisions.

And that is what I suspect I am guilty of… not taking enough Risks, not suggesting client go for it, take a chance, see what happens.

In my defence, I dislike the idea of wasting client money, or even spending it, I started out in an era of try everything – it’s free on the web. But not true any more, half-decent services cost money, unknown Apps or subscriptions can be expensive mistakes, but we would never know unless we tried them.

I am embued with the idea that the web is the wild west of the modern world everyone is in for the quick buck and not too worried about the scams out there.

But we need to know how to take a chance, go with the flow, try something and see what happens.

I get daily emails – have I seen this service or tried this idea. I act as a filter for my clients looking to expand… and of course, I increasingly rely on a world of what I know. But this has to change.

So my commitment to you my clients when taking risks in website design is to be more open about the new ideas to increasingly go with it and experiment and see what happens. Send me your ideas, email me the weird and wonderful offers you receive and I’ll increasingly try to be less judgmental and more willing to ahem spend your money for you.

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Taking Risks in Website Design - NCompass Ltd Is it time to let go a bit, here I commit to taking risks in website design to see what happens, experiment and expand on what is possible.