study : influence and impact of the internet on consumer behaviour and decisions

This is just a copy past of the conclusion

more info here:

http://releases.fleishmanhillard.com/index.html

pdf of the study :

http://releases.fleishmanhillard.com/download/The-Digital-Index-Influence-Key-Findings.pdf

LONDON, 12 June 2008 – Fleishman-Hillard International Communications, in conjunction with Harris Interactive, today announced the results of the Digital Influence Index (DII) – a study designed to track and measure the influence and impact of the internet on consumer behaviour and decisions in the UK, Germany, and France.

Key findings include the following:

• Across all three countries addressed by the study, the internet has roughly double the influence of the second strongest medium – television – and roughly 8 times the influence of traditional printed media. This shift in consumer influence indicates a need and an opportunity for companies to reprioritise the mix of communications channels they use to reach their customers.
• Consumers use the internet in different ways to make different decisions. For example, consumers are more likely to seek opinions of others through social media and product-rating sites when making choices that have a great deal of personal impact (e.g., healthcare options or major electronics purchases). But they do use company-controlled sources when making transactional decisions on commoditised items, such as utilities or airline tickets.
• While consumers see the clear benefits of the internet on their lives, they continue to have concerns about internet safety and the trustworthiness of some online information. In the UK, for example, 66% of online consumers say the internet helps them make better decisions, but just 28% trust the information companies provide on the internet.
• Although most survey results were consistent across all three countries, use of the internet shows distinct national differences. Germany leads the three countries in Web research, for example, while UK consumers are the most likely to have created an online profile site on a social networking page.

SEO - Optimize your page - off page

To be found by Google you need others sites linking to your pages.

So this is the best one for me, the one criterium where you have to make your imagination works because, now you have to find links that link to your site !!!!

why
Google is scrolling the web for all links and read them (almost) then (cfr the PR concept) this is one of his best tool to know what people are thinking about (you) a page.

Google is taking in account:
- the link
- the title/alt on that link
- the name of the link

Except for the link the rest is depending on the “webmaster” of the other site, SO THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE TO CONTROL BUT YOU HAVE TO WORK A WAY AROUND

And there comes the imagination depending of course of what is the content of your website. If you sell ipod it’s easy but if you sell homeappliance then is more difficult

The basics : How to have the best back links

• Texte on the link
• The link is a page in relation with the link (themes)
• Site is well known
• PR is good
• Few link on the page
• Link is in the middle
• Link is in pure html (no javascript..)
• So ideal backlink is a natural one
• Internal link are important and you control them
• Good navigation (surfer and robots)
• Avoid « clic here »
• Choice your word
• Change text on link
• Do a site map

How to GET the best back links

• Subscribe to directories ( most important : http://www.dmoz.org/, http://www.google.com/dirhp?hl=fr)
• Quality content, drives people and webmasters will link to you
• Use news information RSS
• Exchange link (here prepare well your html code to give for the exchange)

My tips

1. subscrire to directories (general one but specific to your domain)
2. use your top 10 keywords and look the backlink of the people before you in the result (competitor or resellers…)
3. try to exchange links with the company you work with (dealers…) BUT give them the correct html code you want them to use (use www.google.com/trends to find the best keywords and also adwords)
4. job offer : when publish them use a link to your site
5. use your networking tools to put your link (linkedIn), ask all your coworker to add the link of your website on their profile
6. subscribe to 1 or 2 official web alumni, organisation … like www.iab.com
7. Create on wikipedia a presentation page and check witht your top keyword if you can add comment on some other articles (ps be aware of the site with nofollow link they seems useless but you never know
8. create a page on youtube, dailymotion, … if you have video or even if you have (use video already existing)
9. create a blog speaking about your products
10. find blog that speak about you and send them information
11. create crosslinks between all your website (national or international)
12. if you are a sponsor or make collaboration ask to put your link on they website

Google testing Digg-it alike function and interface

Google is experimented function that allow surfers vote on search results, and/or recommend other results than those given. This is first randomly tested on some users before you can found it as option in google (if it pass the test of course)

The screenschot is coming from a reader of techcrunch

I waiting forward for this like always

iGoolge will bring social applications

Who is not using iGoogle as a start page ?

Shame on you !! iGoogle it’s simple google home page but with extra personnalisation tools, RRS, application, weather, clock, games, …. everything you can imagine. Just addd “/ig” after your country google or on www.google.com/ig

The next version of iGoogle that brings social applications is tested (april) in a small number of randomly selected Google accounts.

The new iGoogle places the tabs on the left-hand side of the page and you can expand the tabs to see the list of gadgets and status information, like the number of unread Gmail messages. There’s a new chat feature borrowed from Gmail that lets you chat with your contacts while visiting iGoogle - that means iGoogle gets a sense of presence because you’ll know when your contacts are online. Since the chat feature will be enabled by default, it’s obvious that Google will be able to add options for sharing items and discussing posts with the contacts that are online.

iGoogle also adds a list of updates from your contacts similar to Facebook’s newsfeed: you can see stories shared by your contacts in Google Reader, recent photos uploaded to Picasa Web Albums, Google Talk status messages, shared iGoogle themes and gadgets.

Another change is that gadgets have an expanded interface, called canvas view. Gadgets authors will take advantage of this to display more information and make their gadgets more interactive, while your feeds can be read in a Google Reader-like interface. In the future, iGoogle will support OpenSocial applications and the transformation to a social site will be complete.

When is this plan to be life ? Summer time, sunshine…

Flash Files Can Now Be Found And Indexed

If Google cannot find something, it doesn’t exist. That has been one of the biggest drawbacks to creating a Website or application that displays itself as a Flash file.
Search engines could see the file, but they could not see what was in it. Until now. Adobe has come up with a way for the search engines to read SWF files and index all of the information they contain.
That means any text or links in a Flash application can now be indexed. This is a huge step forward for Adobe and anyone who develops in Flash/Flex.

Adobe announced, yesterday, that it is working with (search engines) Google and Yahoo to make flash files (in the SWF format) searchable.  This includes existing SWF content across all versions of the SWF file format. If you have ever been in any capacity that entailed wrestling with this issue, chances are.

It only the text in the Flash (no pics no movies), it’s not really a new stuff but a new way of doing it, specially for the RIA application (rich application)

For more on the news, check out the following links:

• Adobe SWF searchability FAQ
• Adobe Advances Rich Media Search on the Web
• Google, Yahoo to search inside Flash files
• Flash and SEO
• Technorati
• Webranking info (FR)

SEO - optimize your domain name (url)

When choicing your domain name of your website you have to think twice before choicing it.

First is what is the objectif of the site ? I mean will you base all on SEO or only “communication”. Do you want it to be found or not

All joke aside, this is really important for example:
- You launch a online game for 3 weeks and all the communication is based on off line ads and also viral marketing … then the domain name should really be the same as the name of your game.
- If you want to create a site for online sales of e.g. sunglasses and your main source of visitor has to be surfer then you need to think carefully at your domain name.

What do i mean by think carefull at your domaine name:
- it should be in the language people will use to find you
- it should include the 1 or 2 main keywords people will use to search what you sell (not you but what you sell !! (i repeat), if your company name is “Ghuim” and you sell sunglasses people will never type “ghuim” but sunglasses)
- if you use 2 words use “-” between them, then Google will take the 2 words in account more deeply, Like i told you I work a www.siemenselectromenager.be et we should have token www.siemens-electromenager.be
- do you 2 domaine name this will not help you (see futur post on this topic), I mean one with the best words and one with a shorter for communication.

Google Analytics dominates the top 500 websites

Hi,

I have read this article :

Google Analytics dominates the top 500 websites

And I take the opportunity to tell you what i think of this Tools –> EASY you have to use it.

Again this Analytic tool from Google is one of the best tool for webstatitics and it’s free (depending of the volume of course, but if you use Google Adwords then it’s stays free).

You can do whatever you want with it and it’s really user friendly (again you need a Google Account)

Some extract: “Google Analytics has only been available for about two years, but is already used by one third of the top 500 websites in the world.

We here at Pingdom use Google Analytics ourselves and were curious to see how many of the top web properties out there use it. We put the Alexa global top 500 websites under the microscope and found that 161 out of these 500 websites are using Google Analytics, which is 32.2%.”

Links:
- Google analytics
- full article : Google Analytics dominates the top 500 websites

SCRED - The solution to manage expense between friend

Scred is a community-oriented cost balancing tool — a ’street credit’ between trusted people

With Scred you can:

• Create a pool for your friends or for an activity.
• Balance your debts and shared expenses. These will be automatically shuffled within a pool.
• Manage transactions in multiple currencies and Scred will work out the rates.
• Let Scred tell you who owes what after a long trip.
• Use Scred on a mobile phone, even without a network connection on the phone!
• All basic Scred features are totally free of charge.

Screding makes life easier!

So say you are spending a weekend together at a cottage. Mike pays for the petrol to wherever you are going, and Lisa pays for the food. Other small expenses pop up along the way, as they tend to do. After the trip is over and you’re finally safe from the mosquitos Scred will work out all the complex shared expenses between participants back and forth and will tell you exactly what each person owes, and who is expecting money. All you need to do is to lie back and relax.

Download
https://www.scred.com/index

Navigation Vertical

Definition of objectif

The user needs to navigate through a site to locate information and features and have a clear view of their current position in the site. The navigation can have few or a lot of categories.
Why use more than 1 level of navigation

The question here is not if the navigation has to been horizontal or vertical. The tabular metaphor is well-known in user interface and facilitates easy navigation between groups of information. By showing the current position in the two topmost levels the users know where they are and can also jump to other categories.

Use When

• Tabs provide context. They offer the ability to give visual indication of a user’s location within a body of information.
• Tabs provide navigation. They provide the ability to navigate the site.
• The number of elements in the toplevel and in the second level each are less than 10.
• The category titles are relatively short.
• Users want to see where they are now.
• You need to indicate the user’s current location in the set of available options.
• Users want to know how to get back to the main page

Solution

• Present a single-line row of tabs in a horizontal bar under the site branding and header.
• The first tab in the top-level is reserved for the home page if there is not any other “Home” destination.
• When the list of categories becomes too long, consider using a vertical navigation.
• The selected tab should come forward in terms of prominence from the other tabs. Unselected tabs should sit back visually to reinforce the notion of where the user is via the selected tab.
• The page that is delivered by selection of the tab should be visually connected to the tab via design cues: color, brackets, borders etc. Selection of another tab redraws the entire page and presents the new information tied to the new selection.
• Never stack multiple rows of tabs as this leads to confusion about the selected layer versus inactive layer.
• The topmost tabular is always visible while the other tabular changes depending on the current top-level selection.

This pattern from other collections

http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/pattern.php?pattern=navigationtabs
http://groups.ischool.berkeley.edu/ui_designpatterns/webpatterns2/webpatterns/pattern.php?id=11
http://www.welie.com/patterns/showPattern.php?patternID=doubletab

How to keep safe your data over time ?

How to keep safe your data over time,
This question is coming up with my “digital” photos, everday we take pictures and everyday we have more and more pixels so bigger and bigger files …. But were to put them and how be sure not to lose them.

After some researchs I found this GREAT article about How to keep safe your data over time ?

To resume 5 solutions: