three ways to quickly compare your site with your competitors’

Easily compare sites’ social media presence, traffic and Google rankings with some great free tools, suggests Ann Smarty (great name!) at Search Engine Journal.

fast web pages, happy customers

Some pages on retail shopping sites take almost 10 seconds to open, according to a new Nielsen Online study of major shopping sites. Woah, that’s way too slow … g0odbye customers!

Don’t be like Noel Leeming, which in the study came  in slowest at a time of 9.57 seconds. Make sure your site’s pages open fast before you scare off visitors.

One way to do this is to have keep data-heavy information on the page to a minimum. That means, for example, ensure all your photos are optimised to good web sizes and stay away from too much animated Flash content.

Also consider, if many of your clients are overseas, basing your website on a web server in the country where most of your clients are, or have specific sites for each country. It’s cheap and easy to have your site hosted with an overseas web host, And the closer the site is to its customers, the faster the site’s pages will open for those customers – keeping them happier and more active on the site.

Nielsen Online general manager Ivan Fuyala was reported saying that the accessibility and viability of a website is a key business success metric.

“If consumers can’t reach you quickly online, it won’t take long before they start looking to competitors instead.”

65 bite-sized web-marketing tips

Here’s 65 web marketing tips (thanks Futurebuzz) to think about, but before you read ‘em … read this piece about the critical importance of patience online!

don’t leave me this way

Here’s some great information about 14 free tools to help you understand your web visitors, why they leave your site and what you can do to make them stay longer.

There’s tools that show where people go on your site, tools that show where people try to go on your site (i.e clicking on things that aren’t links), there’s even a tool that films every move a visitor makes on your site or shows you where on a form people stop entering information and leave your site.

You’ve spent a lot of time and energy getting people to your site. Now work out how to make them want to stay there!

see exactly what the world is searching for

A powerful new marketing tool from Google — Insights for Search — takes the guesswork out of determining what people are searching for. It lets you compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames.

You can quickly and easily see in graphs, timelines and hot spots on maps what searches people make, and when and where they do it. Then you have the knowledge to adjust your website and keywords to attract the searches that get the best results for your business.

We say: awesome technology, easy-to-use, powerful results.

Insights will show you:

• which advertising messages people prefer
• when seasonality works in your favour (for example, a ski equipment business may want to find out when people search for ski-related terms most often)
• what search terms competitors have success with and so how to differentiate from them
• which parts of the world particular search terms are more popular in
• which search terms are becoming more popular.

Google has plenty of clear instructions and examples on how to get the most out of the tool.