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Entries tagged with marketing:

Why your sales pitch sucks

Jul 25th

Like a number of other website owners, I get a lot of email offers from search engine optimisation experts who try to pitch their cheap services.More >>

Why I offer simple template based design

Jun 13th

I've received several enquiries from small business people lately, asking why I only seem to offer template customisation in the small business packages that I promote.More >>

A brief introduction to Google Places

Apr 27th

Recently I was asked by a mate of mine why I thought submitting his business to Google was worth doing. Watch this two minute promo to find out why every small business should register their online profile right now: Google places used to be known as local business center, but irrespective of the recent name change, it offers tremendous marketing value to all small businesses looking to attract more customers. If you haven't registered your business yet, then you need to get a move on.More >>

Small business web consulting

Apr 20th

Are you thinking of building a website for your small business? Or perhaps your existing website isn't working as well as you expected? While most of us know of someone, who knows someone, who knows someone who designs websites, like everything in life, you get what you pay for. If you want to save money, you're going to have to get it done right the first time.More >>

Google improvements for home based businesses

Apr 1st

Here's some great news if you're a service based business and working from home.More >>

Things that matter in small business web design

Mar 22nd

Things have changed lots around here in the last couple of weeks. If you're one of a minority of regular visitors to this website, you would have noticed that immediately.More >>

Amazon still fails for Australians

Jan 25th

Amazon has spent a good number of years building their brand. They apparently pride themselves on providing great service, and apart from some idiotic policy decisions, they probably haven't lost too many customers.More >>

The Ultimate VoIP Offer?

Nov 23rd

I recently got spammed by Vixtel, a new startup in the VOIP arena, whose incredible offer seemed to indiscriminately extend to anybody who loves a good bargain:More >>

Customer focus calculator

Nov 9th

As a website owner, are you focusing on the customer or on yourself? Today, I discovered a free analysis tool to test the effectiveness of your website.More >>

Social media misconceptions

Oct 5th

Ayelet Noff, over at Blonde 2.0, makes some very good points on the typical misconceptions that exist about social media.More >>

Improving business communication

Sep 7th, 2009

While I was sceptical at first, I'm increasingly thinking that Twitter can be a tremendously effective business application.More >>

Online questions to Tourism Australia

May 4th, 2009

This one's been circling the globe lately but since I love it so much, I'm sharing it with all you folks who may not have had it dropped in your mail inbox.More >>

Spamming people doesn't do your campaign much good

Oct 27th, 2008

I got this spam from the American Hunters & Shooters Association today, asking me to become a member, even though I live in Australia, and even though I hate guns:More >>

Don't mislead your customers

Oct 6th, 2008

While using a misleading keyword phrase in your adwords campaign may get your website more traffic, it's also very likely to backfire because your potential customers won't buy from you when they find out you lied.More >>

Spamming the search engines with deliberate typos

Sep 8th, 2008

With so many websites competing for the same keywords, it's possible to attract some visitors by deliberately spelling keywords badly. While this will make you look pretty silly in most peoples eyes, the minority who can't spell may still get to your website via a search engine.More >>

Bank of America phishing scam

Jul 28th, 2008

Got this phishing scam from some knuckleheads in the USA who must have been hoping that (1) I'm a Bank of America customer and (2) that I'm even dumber than they are:More >>

Oztion's biggest obstacle?

Jul 21st, 2008

Oztion, the Aussie alternative to Ebay, have been spending lots of money on radio advertising lately. While appearing to try and cash in on the very bad publicity Ebay have been copping lately, Oztion have been building brand awareness with the phrase:More >>

Microsoft gives away fake prizes

Jul 7th, 2008

I got spammed by the giant of Redmond a couple of weeks ago, offering me cool prizes, just to search the web using their struggling search engine.More >>

Trust the Midas touch?

Jun 16th, 2008

I received this mainsleaze spam a few days ago from Midas. Now this is supposed to be a reputable, mainstream company but stupid actions such as this are likely to damage their reputation for quite a while:More >>

Dell phishing scam

Jun 9th, 2008

I received this email, claiming to be from Dell, and offering to give me a free laptop, just for answering a short survey:More >>

Microsoft's cashback and Yahoo

Jun 2nd, 2008

Microsoft recently announced that it's willing to pay people money for using their crappy search engine, provided the people buy something, and provided the people live in America.More >>

Bruce Servicepack and the Vista Street Band

Apr 28th, 2008

A fake band with its own fake groupie in an embarrassing internal video promo which aims to get a corporation to eat its own dog food: You'll love the lyrics, I promise. Not to mention the enthusiastic jumps into the air, complete with freeze-frames.More >>

More dodgy deals on Ebay

Apr 7th, 2008

Quite a while back I outlined from personal experience one way dodgy sellers continue to scam buyers on Ebay. Well here's another one, except even the Ebay support people can't explain how this particular scam works.More >>

Live advertising on Google

Mar 17th, 2008

I just noticed that Live now advertise on Google. How peculiar that a Google's competitor would pay money to Google, just to have a user redirected back to its own search engine results page.More >>

Shame on you, Toshiba

Feb 25th, 2008

A big thumbs down to Toshiba for their negligent decision to not offer any refunds to people who trusted them enough in the last couple of years to buy one of their HD DVD players.More >>

Shop smart and save?

Jan 21st, 2008

So says the slogan on most of the product pages at Getprice, the Aussie online comparison shopping resource. Their contact page event tells us that:More >>

What do Dimmeys sell?

Dec 21st, 2007

This is what happens when you get your website builders to make your brand new website and they forget to change the content meta tags:More >>

Scamming the scammers

Dec 17th, 2007

Warning: This post contains concepts and phraseology which may be offensive to some of our readers.More >>

We sell America for the ruble!

Nov 13th, 2007

I've been copping a spate of Cyrillic spam in the last few weeks, which my mailfilter has been happily dumping into the garbage, where it belongs. Here's a recent example:More >>

Ebay and the Skype hype - deux

Oct 26th, 2007

A couple of years ago I wandered if the Ebay executives made some bad decisions while under the influence of alcohol. Now, Australian IT reports that:More >>

The anti-piracy parody

Oct 20th, 2007

Anyone else spotted the irony in The IT Crowd's parody of anti-piracy advertisements? Yep, the bloke who ripped it and then uploaded it to Youtube was committing piracy.More >>

20 usability tips for bloggers

Oct 14th, 2007

Do you have a blog but need some ideas on how to make it work better? If so, make sure you read Tom Johnson's fantastic usability tips for bloggers. Here's the gist of what Tom's saying:More >>

Westpac's website woes continue

Sep 8th, 2007

The SMH Blog reports on Westpac's continuing problems: Thousands of Westpac customers went without their internet banking and online broking services for most of yesterday following a website glitch which, as of this morning, has still not been completely fixed.More >>

Here's Johnny

Jul 22nd, 2007

Now here's a man we can all trust folks. He published his very first video on Youtube, telling us just how committed his government is to the global issue of climate change, despite the perception to the contrary.More >>

Structuring the page title tag

May 25th, 2007

While it's quite normal for website page titles to incorporate the site name, there are a couple of differing opinions on how this should be structured. One school of thought suggests that the site name should have prominence, like this:More >>

Stupid defaults in web forms

May 21st, 2007

One of the more important decisions in software application design is that user choices in forms should have default values, where possible, and those default values should be the most likely ones that most users would want chosen.More >>

More spam than legit email? You betcha!

Apr 20th, 2007

Nate Anderson over at Ars Technica quotes an IDC report that predicts this is the year where spam will for the first time outnumber real email. I have no idea how the folks at IDC came to that conclusion but looking at our own ISP's internal statistics, that's already happened well before this year.More >>

Social engineering victims or just a crap bank?

Apr 3rd, 2007

In the past few weeks, I've had three cold calls from three different people, all from blocked numbers, and all claiming to be from the National Australia Bank.More >>

Don't waste my bandwidth

Mar 25th, 2007

I got spammed recently by some knuckleheads who curiously must have thought I'd somehow be interested in their cheesy and unsolicited newsletter. The email consisted of a whopping 415Kb embedded JPEG image and a short text intro:More >>

Search engine referrals

Jan 2nd, 2007

The other day I was looking at our website's stats to get an idea of search engine referral ratios. While I fully expected Google to win comprehensively, the actual figures based on the last 10,000 page views were certainly an eye-opener:More >>

Merchants of Deception

Nov 30th, 2006

Just finished reading Merchants of Deception by Eric Scheibeler and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who has suspected that there might be dodgy goings on at Amway, one of the largest privately held companies in the world.More >>

Is your website used for relay spam?

Oct 28th, 2006

Most websites have contact forms, which allow customers to get in touch with the website owners, without the owners necessarily having to reveal their contact email address. The customer typically fills in their name, email address and some message text. When the customer submits the contact form for processing, the server software then constructs an email message and sends it to the website administrator or owner.More >>

Google loves blogs

Oct 23rd, 2006

If you want any proof that Google loves blogs, have a look at some specifics for our own website below:More >>

Image spam is back

Oct 18th, 2006

Image spam seems to be back, bigger and more annoying than ever. What's even more annoying is that this type of rubbish is also difficult for spam filters to catch due to its nature. For instance, looking at the following sample image clearly shows us that if we have our email client configured to show HTML images, we'll see something like this:More >>

Sensis relevancy - deux

Oct 6th, 2006

Recently I documented the poor communication skills of the people behind Sensis, the yellowpages and whitepages company, now also promoting themselves as The search engine for Australians.More >>

Sensis ignoring your business? Sure, but why?

Sep 23rd, 2006

Do you operate a small business, here in Australia? If so, is it listed in the online versions of the yellowpages and whitepages directories?More >>

Ebay shill bidding

Sep 8th, 2006

In the online auction marketplace, shill bidding is the corrupt practise of bidding on your own items or having friends (or other corrupt associates) bid on your items, purely to artificially inflate the final price and make the legitimate buyers pay more for the item you're selling.More >>

Undelivered mail returned to sender

Aug 29th, 2006

The clever little spammers must be desperate. Lately they've been using the old undelivered mail returned to sender as the mail subject, in order to get our attention.More >>

How to lose a customer, Amazon style

Aug 22nd, 2006

Having been assigned the job of transferring some 20-odd kilograms of VHS-C and Video8 tapes to DVD, I set upon the task of researching video capturing, editing and authoring software.More >>

Satisfied with wannabe broadband

Aug 10th, 2006

Apparently, according to our very own Senator Coonan, most Australians are perfectly satisfied with what I referred to as wannabe broadband, some twelve months ago.More >>

Better web security with SiteAdvisor

Jul 14th, 2006

Everyone who's used the web has at some point encountered spyware attacks, online scams and spamming sites which earn their profits by taking advantage of user ignorance. While Ad-Aware and Spybot S & D are two must-have tools that no Windows user should be without, there's an excellent and free browser plugin from McAfee which warns you before you interact with any of the millions of dangerous websites out there.More >>

Why every business needs a CMS

Jul 7th, 2006

According to Melbourne IT, while more than 90% of internet users get to websites via search engines, more than 50% of all Australian businesses who have a website cannot easily be found in a major search engine like Google.More >>

A year of blogging

Jun 6th, 2006

It's been exactly one year since we obliterated our traditional website and joined the blogosphere.More >>

Hottest search engine optimization software?

Jun 2nd, 2006

That's what the people behind the RankAttack SEO Technology website claim anyway. Apparently, their aggressive technology (whatever that means) enables the overwhelming majority of webmasters to enjoy improved rankings with the search engines in a matter of just days. Yes, that's right, days. Not weeks, not months but days.More >>

Quality content matters more than ever

May 19th, 2006

A few weeks ago, the search engine marketing firm iProspect published the findings of their study in search engine user behaviour which revealed a definite increase in the importance of websites getting top natural search results.More >>

Spamming search engines with invisible text

May 11th, 2006

Got some SMS spam from my current spouse telling me she found the chaise lounge she was (apparently) looking for and could she buy it while it was a bargain of a lifetime?.More >>

Show stolen web content with Autoblogger

May 4th, 2006

The RSS syndication format is gaining rapid acceptance in the computing community. While blogs such as this one have always provided RSS content, the mainstream media are finally starting to catch on to the benefits RSS offers to the consumer.More >>

Is SEO overrated?

Apr 29th, 2006

For those who visit here regularly, my views on search engine optimisation techniques are pretty much known. Recently, I engaged in an online discussion in a forum thread which attempted to get different opinions on whether SEO was in fact overrated.More >>

Looks and smells like comment spam

Mar 18th, 2006

Lately we've been getting a few of these types of comments, which seem to slip through the cracks, even though we're using one of the best anti-spam applications there is:More >>

"Our Dale" gets gold but loses some respect

Mar 6th, 2006

It now appears that Dale Begg-Smith is quite a bit more than the spam man he was initially labelled by some sections of the media. According to this article from The Age, it seems that a number of people have been busy trying to uncover Dale's shady business practices.More >>

Sensis relevancy

Mar 2nd, 2006

About 18 months ago, Sensis launched its new multi-content search engine to much fanfare. According to the ZDNet article Telstra launches search heavyweight, the Sensis management had high expectations that their new search engine would be the one others would eventually be compared to, because apparently:More >>

The (broken) Da Vinci code challenge

Feb 16th, 2006

Sony are at it again. This time it's Sony Pictures contributing to the web monkeys of the year awards.More >>

Google death sentence

Feb 13th, 2006

Now that BMW and Ricoh have been caught spamming the search engines and their German websites have been removed from the Google index, I hope that BMW and Ricoh sack those idiots who obviously thought that trying to fool the world's biggest search engine was a good idea.More >>

Coke Zero (Out of Ten)

Jan 25th, 2006

Apparently, Coke are pumping in some $18 million on the new Coke Zero campaign in the hope of getting lots of yuppies switching across to the new no real sugar, just artificial sweeteners (but we guarantee that it's good for you) fizzy drink.More >>

Dumbest moments

Jan 4th, 2006

Q: Who said this? I don't care if people think I'm a dumb blond or stupid or an overage actress or over the hill. I don't care because I'm gonna have a very successful Internet company, and I'm gonna have $100 million in the bank and I don't really give a shit what anybody thinks!More >>

Sony software: dumb, dodgy and dishonest?

Dec 20th, 2005

For as long as the their executives continue to attend stupidity classes, Sony will continue to cop a battering from the consumers. Their Star Wars Galaxies online game has earned comments like:More >>

How much is a website?

Dec 9th, 2005

After some six years of web development, I still get the I want a website, how much will it cost question on a regular basis. Over the years, I have learnt to reply with:More >>

Sony software: dumb, defective and dangerous

Nov 23rd, 2005

Sony have embarrassed themselves recently with their dumb, defective and dangerous attempt at copy protecting some CD releases under their Sony BMG label.More >>

I want to sell things on the internet

Oct 25th, 2005

What follows is an actual recent conversation between a customer support representative at Net Solutions (our ISP/host) and a prospect. As a matter of good taste, the names have been changed to protect the innocently ignorant:More >>

Home pages are becoming redundant

Oct 9th, 2005

Recent usability testing conducted by Mark Hurst boldly asserts that Google has made home pages virtuallyMore >>

Is Amazon spying on you?

Sep 30th, 2005

Have you purchased a Dell computer recently? If you did, then you may have also copped the Alexa Toolbar for free, as part of the pre-configured Internet Explorer. This seemingly handy little utility offers a number of features to allegedly enhance your browsing experience and looks similar to this:More >>

A browser hijacking experience

Sep 23rd, 2005

I would like to share my browser hijacking experience with you. As a web developer I still have to use Microsoft Internet Explorer from time to time to test web compatibility. On this particular day, I, like a million others got compromised somewhere down the track while visiting legitimate sites of interest.More >>

Ebay and the Skype hype

Sep 20th, 2005

Ebay has just recently committed to coughing up $4.1 billion (US) for Skype, that wonderful example of VOIP technology, which is really, really cheap and works pretty well, most of the time, for most users.More >>

Search engine meta tags - deux

Sep 16th, 2005

In my previous post about the relevance of search engine meta tags I claimed that the keywords meta tag was almost useless these days. As a follow up, I thought I'd show you a real-world example.More >>

Dell is confused

Sep 12th, 2005

Hey Dell, Plastered at the top of your Australian website's pages is:More >>

Search engine meta tags

Sep 6th, 2005

This is old news but perhaps it's worth mentioning again. Quite some time ago, Danny Sullivan from Search engine watch had written an excellent article, which ought to re-read by every so-called webmaster and anyone else claiming to understand search engine optimisation.More >>

Readnotify. Spyware?

Aug 24th, 2005

When I first heard of this from a colleague of mine, and based on her enthusiastic explanation, I thought it was just another shonky internet venture. But I was only partially right, it's a little more sinister than that.More >>

Weasel words

Aug 22nd, 2005

One of the less insidious repercussions of America's global business culture has caused such a degradation of our language that nobody is really sure what corporate sentences mean any more. But to make things even worse, slick corporate marketing language, littered with weasel words is infesting other aspects of our communication too.More >>

Cook Islands business domains

Aug 20th, 2005

Google has a localised presence in most countries around the world. Yesterday, while looking at the extent of their dominance, I noticed that one of the places they do have a localised presence is in the Cook Islands, in the heart of the Pacific.More >>

Flash blocker

Aug 18th, 2005

All advertising is annoying. But Macromedia have upped the annoyance factor by a couple notches with their irritating technology which allows websites to get around popup-blockers and ad-blockers. Since most browsers don't have the ability to turn off Flash on an individual website basis, many commercial websites have now adopted it as a means of advertising their wares.More >>

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