Hello, all.
It’s been a hectic time for SPIDERtel since our last newsletter. Keeping up with the near-daily changes in the search engine positioning world consumes a lot of our time. But as many of you know, our web design services is where we focus the lion’s share of our energy.
This past quarter, we were recognized with two awards that suggest our efforts are paying off. First, we were honored with a ’25 Under 25 Award’, a new Kansas City award showcasing superior businesses with under twenty five employees. And, just recently, a SPIDERtel built and maintained web site (www.optionstrategist.com) was given a Forbes Magazine Best of the Web Award.
Needless to say, we’re proud of the recognition and we thank all our customers for allowing us to provide them with innovative web solutions.
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This Issue's Focus:
1. AOL To Integrate Netscape
2. Email Newsletters – Are you attached?
3. Internet Commerce Up
4. Inktomi Eliminates Free Submissions
5. Watch Out for Teoma
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1. AOL To Integrate Netscape
Just when we thought the browser war was over and Microsoft could declare victory, AOL recently announced that it will be integrating the Netscape browser into it’s next software update (AOL 8.0). So, overnight, Netscape is set to go from under 25% world-wide penetration to perhaps 50% or more within a few years.
What this means is that web marketers and designers alike are going to need to pay very close attention to how their pages are viewed within Netscape browsers. In some cases, the way Netscape displays pages versus Miscrosoft’s Internet Explorer can be strikingly different. If you have both browsers on your computer, take a moment to look at a few web sites in both browsers to see how they differ. We encounter many sites where the pages are not viewable at all within Netscape.
Frankly, I’m wondering why it’s taken AOL this long, since, after all, they own Netscape and have even sued Microsoft over anti-competitive practices related to its browser. Fortunately, we’ve been optimizing all our sites for Microsoft and Netscape browsers since day one.
2. Email Newsletters – Are You Attached?
We’re constantly surprised when we receive promotional email messages that are contained within a download. In other words, we receive an email with a subject, but no text in the message, and an accompanying attachment. The attachment may be a pdf file or a Word document. Almost without exception, we’ll delete the email message and the attachment without opening it.
We’ve always encouraged and helped our clients to produce emails with text and compelling html (images and links), believing that sending the attachment only would result in the lowest possible readership. In a recent Internet Retailer article, these conclusions were validated in a series of tests performed for an online vendor. The tests showed that twice as many people responded to an email message that had either plain text or html, as opposed to a message with no text or html and an attachment only.
Crafting an email newsletter is both a science and an art. The beauty of the Internet is that it allows for rapid responses and evaluation, permitting the perfection of email newsletters. We have found that sending email with links to your web site for additional information on the subject can increase the response rates.
3. Internet Commerce Up
The Commerce Department reported that Internet sales jumped 13% in the fourth quarter (that’s the three full month’s following September 11) to over $10 Billion. For the full year, the increase from 2000 was over 19%, to over $32 Billion.
As major e-Retailers bankruptcies have come to a virtual halt (no pun intended), the real story is that people continue to use the web as a channel for buying (and selling) products and services. The big bubble may have burst, but there’s plenty of opportunity left for real companies to provide real services to real people, virtually (pun intended).
4. Inktomi Eliminates Free Submissions
Want to be found in the HotBot web site listings? For some time, HotBot has displayed results from Inktomi’s database. It used to be that all you had to do use Hotbot’s free submission page to get into Inktomi’s database. But, recently, Inktomi has turned off this submission tool. What remains is a paid inclusion service offered through Inktomi partners, which essentially guarantees that your pages will be part of the database, but not where they will appear on searches.
As we’ve reported here consistently for years, the Search Engine games change constantly. Keeping your site found in the search engines requires a persistent, concentrated effort and, unfortunately for some, a budget.
5. Watch Out For Teoma
Ask Jeeves recent purchase of up-start search engine Teoma is beginning to look like a sound investment. The critics are praising Teoma (teoma.com) for it’s integration of intelligent search algorithms and accurate results, and suggesting that Teoma could give Google a run for its money.
The real power of Teoma may be that when a search is conducted, Teoma queries related web site communities it considers to be authoritative on the search phrase. The results are displayed with links to additional resources on the subject matter. All results are calculated real time, so the links that are produced may change based on information available throughout its database.
While Teoma has not risen to a level of popularity that demands web marketers be in their database, we have put Teoma on our radar screen as an up and coming search engine to pay attention to. More to come.
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In Closing
The art of web marketing is constantly in a flux. New technologies come, old go. But, there’s one thing that’s constant and that’s the fundamentals … creative but intuitive messages, sound business models and excellent customer service.
Good Luck in all your marketing efforts!
