Archives for April 2011

Australian online marketing trends – 2011

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The state of the internet has come a long way and in 2011, online marketing trends are constantly changing.

With the increasing popularity of mobile internet usage, online video, social media such as Twitter and Facebook and the increasing popularity of WordPress (a blogging platform) it is apparent that these these tools make a huge impact on business and personal communication.

Mobile Internet Usage

Today, the internet has become more of a necessity, with the convenience of online banking, shopping and communication. Nearly half of Australians own a mobile phone with internet capability. The most popular way people use their mobile phone is to conduct searches, and 35% of the market share goes to Nokia phones, with 28% going to the Apple iPhone.

The most popular mobile social networking done by Australians is Facebook, which is 98% of users, followed by Twitter at 20%, and MySpace at 17%. Because so many Australians use their mobile phones to browse the internet, online marketing through this avenue should not be overlooked. Mobile internet usage is only increasing, and will likely rise in numbers very quickly.

Source: http://www.onlinemarketing-trends.com/2011/01/mobile-internet-statistics-in-australia.html

Online Video

In Australia, online video is a way for people to be informed about news as well as a form of entertainment. Therefore, the importance of using online video in marketing is ideal to promote a business or specific campaign.

According to a press release on PRNewsWire, internet users in Australia watched a total of 961 million online videos, with Google Sites ranking as the top video property with 503 million videos viewed, representing 52.4% market share. YouTube.com accounted for more than 99 percent of all videos viewed at the Google property. Microsoft Sites ranked second with 33.2 million videos (3.5 percent market share), followed by Facebook.com with 13.5 million videos viewed (1.4 percent market share). The average view of videos viewed monthly were 8 hours of video, with more males viewing videos than females. The age group of these viewers were between the 15-24 and 25-34 age bracket, making it apparent that video is a vital part of engaging with and promoting business.

Source: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/in-australia-men-watch-twice-the-amount-of-online-video-as-women-111360424.htm

Twitter Usage

As far as Twitter usage goes, twitter.com has 1.1 million unique Australia visitors each, with an increase by 100,000 since January 2011. This shows that Twitter is a popular social networking channel, with potential to grow with more users. Developing marketing strategies and campaigns on Twitter is definitely something for business owners to think about.

Source: http://www.socialmedianews.com.au/social-media-statistics-australia-march-2011/

Businesses actively using Facebook

According to SocialBakers, Australia is ranked 16 in the amount of Facebook users with about 10,035,700 users. With this many Australian visitors to the Facebook site every month, users are more likely to view Facebook business pages.

Businesses surveyed by MYOB Business Monitor revealed that only 18% of business owners used social media like Facebook, YouTube, MySpace or Twitter to promote their business. This low percentage, compared to the amount of people logging onto Facebook shows that businesses can really benefit from promoting their businesses using Facebook, as well as other social media sites.

Current businesses that have created Facebook pages are international brands, such as Coca-Cola, Pringles, Toyota and KFC. Since any business can create a Facebook page, there is no better time than now to do so.

Sources: http://www.socialmedianews.com.au/social-media-statistics-australia-january-2011/
http://myob.com.au/myob/news-1258090872838?articleId=1257828849917&year=2010
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/alan-long/2010/10/12_things_you_need_to_know_abo.html
http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/australia
http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-pages/brands/australia/

WordPress popularity

WordPress has increased in popularity, with many top sites using the self-hosted version. Because of it’s flexibility with plugins and themes, as well as ease of use, many people are moving away from the typical HTML website and using a CMS platform. WordPress has been the most popular self-hosted blog compared to others such as Drupal, Expression Engine and Blogger. According to Technorati 2010 State of the Blogosphere, WordPress has a commanding 40% market share of all blogging/site platforms.

Source: WordPress Popularity

WordPress plugins

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One of the core benefits of using wordpress to build both web sites and blogs is the huge amount of plugins available for the platform. Rarely do we have a need that can’t be done by an existing plugin.

If you’re new to all of this, a wordpress plugin is simply a tool that’s been created to do a specific job and add some functionality to the base wordpress platform. They are mostly free or donation-ware so often its a matter of finding the one you’re looking for, download it and you’re done.

The benefit of this is you can build sites really quickly, with loads of functionality without having to manually write a load of code.

So what can wordpress plugins do?

Well its probably a shorter list of what they can’t do, take a look at some of these for starters.

  • Contact forms
  • Shopping carts
  • Sitemap generators
  • Google analytics integration
  • Image management tools
  • Antispam for your contact forms
  • Social bookmarking tools (twitter / facebook etc…)

As developers that build many sites in wordpress you do have your favourites, in fact we have built a custom installation that we use for our work that bundles wordpress together with a load of plugins that we use on almost every job, saving time and effort.

FancyBox Image Plugin

We do however come across new plugins from time to time that we grow to love really quickly.

FancyBox is a great example of this. After looking around for a while for a plugin to display images in a floating layer (ever been to the apple.com web site, you’ll know the effect we mean), we decided that FancyBox was the one that most suited our needs.

We use this right here on our site, click the image opposite to see it in action.

The great things about plugins like this is that you can install them, read the quick documentation and have a terrific effect working in less than 15 minutes.

Another reason that developing on the wordpress platform is faster and more efficient than building sites from scratch.

If you have a wordpress installation you can view the plugins you have installed in your wordpress administration screen, look for the “plugin” heading on the left hand side.

Does your domain name suck?

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Ok, perhaps the title is a little confronting but it is straight to the point!

Domain names are nothing new, more and more businesses have at least one, the rate of growth is still astounding. In Australia alone our registry (ie domains that end in .au) grows at about 24% per year*

That means that there is still a large number of people registering a new domain name, so this article is for them – a few tips to observe when choosing a name. Of course if you already have a name its probably worth a quick read, perhaps see if you have made a good decision.

If you’re using your domain name to promote a business, product, service or other information it should be able to stack up against a couple of key points.

Run your potential domain names against this quick test.

1) Easily communicate the name

Ok this may sound silly but read on before you think I’ve over simplified this.

[Customer on telephone] What’s your web site address?

[you] renov8.com.au

[Customer on telephone] Hmm I entered that – it doesn’t work

This is a really common mistake. Try to avoid unusual spellings and funky ways of creating a word that does not exist. You will confuse your customers and they won’t be able to find your site. Listen to the radio and I guarantee you that you will hear one of these examples each day, where the domain name is mentioned in the radio ad but its not obvious what the address actually is.

If you have a company / product / brand name that is spelt like this, try and also register the common accepted spelling as well, and point that domain name to your web site.

2) Buy other versions of the domain

Commonly in Australia, businesses use domains ending in com.au or just .com (other countries all have country codes like co.nz for New Zealand etc.. ) so when you are looking to secure a domain try and get other versions of the name that users may inadvertently try to find you on.

For example: If you register JohnsRemovals.com.au try also to register JohnsRemovals.com – you’d be surprised how many people will just naturally type in your address with just the .com ending.

A similar story can be found within name spaces as well. Once again, in Australia we have two common commercial name spaces; domains that end in .com.au and in .net.au.

I’ve seen many an example where a business has their name in net.au but they have not also bought the com.au version of the name. Again for the same reason buying the com.au version will pick up more traffic as its ingrained in peoples mind that a web site ends in com.au

3) Be creative with your domain

In many cases the name that you want is not available. With so many domain names already registered it is hard to get what you want first time around. So perhaps it does not always need to be the name of your company. Sometimes something a little different will stick in people’s minds as well.

So if you operate a gym in Sydney you may be tempted to register SydneyGymnasium.com.au, which would be fine but possibly not available. Why not a name that describes what you do like GetFit.com.au.

What else to consider?

There are many other things that can be taken into consideration:-

  • Rather than just the com.au and com version, if your business intends to reach users in other countries, consider securing international domain names as well
  • Misspellings. If there are common misspellings of your name register those as well
  • Consider contact an expert to have your ideas put through a more ridged processes: Our staff at The DMA have many years experience in managing corporate domain portfolios and can advise on many other topics (Intellectual property concerns, trademark infringement etc.. )

* Source Ausregistry Statistic