Browsing via mobile devices grew by 148% worldwide last year and for retailers and publishers, this represents an opportunity to engage with customers and increase revenues. The new generation of handheld devices, led by the iPhone, has dramatically improved the quality of web browsing but to date many companies are not taking advantage of this new opportunity.

Many major UK retailers and brands are yet to embrace mobile ecommerce and premium brands, such as Burberry and Conran have still not even developed a basic mobile-friendly site. The result of this is user frustration even for a mundane task such as trying to find a store location on a handheld device (let lone make a purchase). John Lewis & ASOS amongst others have created a sub domain (m.domain) which supports their initial mobile offering and these sites do deliver decent user experience and functionality.

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I’ve read before how ideas tend to spread like germs, often occurring to people around the same time, independently of each other. The discovery of DNA and the Theory of Natural Selection were both arrived at by different scientists independently of each other. Anyway, these lofty pretensions are just meant as a preamble to introduce the fact that Rand Fishkin blogged about this subject last week, while I was preparing my own post and I immediately became Alfred Russel Wallace to his Charles Darwin.* Regardless, I have pressed on and tried to add to the discussion and avoid any overlaps by focusing on keyword strategy and therefore addressing PPC as well as SEO. Search as a marketing channel is so attractive because it enables companies to get in front of prospects who are already looking for their products. However, does that mean search is redundant when there is no one looking for your products?

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The second half of 2010 saw the launch of Google’s Hotpot, a reaction to Facebook’s own location-based social network “Places”, in turn a reaction to the trail blazed by Foursquare. Both companies seemed to be taking a leaf out of the other’s book – Google adding a social element to their search engine and Facebook adding a business element to their social networking site. This post is not related to anything as trivial as a Harry Hill style “which is better…FIGHT!!!” scenario; my interest is purely in the ever changing search environment and how both companies are edging towards a middle ground of ‘social search’, and the inevitability of search becoming a far more  personalised, social activity.

So, first things first; what are Hotpot and Places? Let’s start with Facebook Places.

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A client received an email yesterday that purported to be from Google Adwords. He forwarded it to me as we manage his account and normally he doesn’t get any correspondence from Adwords. As you can see it is telling him that some of his ads have stopped and he must click a link to restart the ads and see tips on how to avoid future stoppages.  The email is another phishing scam but is one of the more accomplished efforts I’ve seen. It stands up quite well to light scrutiny. Clicking the link takes people to a page where they are prompted to enter their login details, password and personal information.

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Today I wanted to cover an old technique that many clients don’t seem to embrace enough. I am referring to split testing, if you are not familiar with it that’s okay. It’s the art of scientifically testing two or multiple items one against the other through a period of time.  In marketing the purpose of the tests can be very diverse from different wording in your content to trying different call to action buttons. The variables are endless and so are the tests. So what does this all mean and why is it related to dating you may ask? Well let me tell you that this is the true story of a friend who happens to have used simple A/B testing whilst trying to find a date online. Our friend (who has requested to be kept anonymous) shared the story with us and we thought that it was really ingenious and funny as well as a great source of creativity and inspiration. In this case our friend A.K.A Mr. D had created a bunch of profiles on several dating sites like The Guardian’s Soulmates and Lovestruck.com amongst others. He had pretty much the same information on all of them, bio, picture, interests etc. At this point he thought that he had done all that was required to get bombarded with requests for further information and consequently a date.  Sound familiar? Yet, Mr. D had made a crucial mistake. He picked the information and images himself without any additional feedback. Being somewhat unsuccessful on his first couple of months he started investigating what it was that was making his profile less appealing than he had hoped. The most obvious in this case was the profile picture; this is by far the most important aspect of a profile in this sector. We are very much led by first impressions so this was the first variable that needed to be looked at.

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This week an online campaign to find a missing 14 year old girl, Serena Beakhurst, was happily successful in helping find her and bring her back to her parents. Classified by the police as a “runaway” rather than a missing person and initially ignored by the media, friends and relatives went online and quickly captured people’s attention on Twitter. A Facebook group was also started and quickly gained members. Among the retweeters, followers and fans were several celebrities and other influential people with large numbers of their own followers. As such, the publicity grew quickly and the profile of the campaign heightened.

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