Chris Nuttall and David Gelles have reportered in the Financial Times  (Published: March 16 2010) that social networking website Facebook has capped a year of phenomenal growth by overtaking Google’s popularity among US internet users, with industry data showing it has scored more visits on its home page than the search engine.

In a sign that the web is becoming more sociable than searchable, research firm Hitwise said that the two sites accounted for 14 per cent of all US internet visits last week. Facebook’s home page recorded 7.07 per cent of traffic and Google’s 7.03 per cent. Some other highlights;

• Facebook’s membership has more than doubled in the past year, passing the 200m mark last April and 400m in February.

• Google has responded to the ascendancy of the social networking site with its own Buzz service last month. Buzz allows users to add status updates, friends, pictures, videos, location information, comments and links to other networking sites.

• Internet users worldwide spent more than five-and-a-half hours a month on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter in December 2009, an 82 per cent increase over the previous year, according to the Nielsen Company research firm.

Enform believes that this points to Facebook becoming the ubiquitous home page for more users in place of search engines and other social media sites. In fact, it suggest the evolution of social media away from its perceived position as simply another kids thing to that of a multi-modal contact and virtual “touch-point” for connected individuals and usomer’s.

They used to say “you have to be on Google” to make it on the web… now Facebook?

Just a quick little test of the new Wordbook plugin for Wordpress that allows direct post of blogs onto your Facebook page… pretty cool!

Typical browser usage

I’ve tried to stay out of this battle for the past 3 years but the last few days have seen me enter the fray. The attached screen shot from Google Analytics for a typical web site shows 55% of visitors have Internet Explorer followed by Mozilla Firefox with 32%. Digging deeper we see that Explorer version 8.0 has 44% of its group with 7.0 at 39% so 56% of these visitor are using older Explorer versions than current.

The point of this is that though Internet Explorer is clearly the market leader in use, I have had nothing but problems with it over the last few months. The Mozilla fans around me are used to getting short change from me when pushing their barrow because its a simple question of “what’s in it for me?” I know Explorer, its familiar to me, what can Mozilla do extra that is worth my time to invest in learning to use it etc?  The answer now is simple, just having a working browser that doesn’t crash or freeze multiple times a day.

Despite nourishing it with all its regular updates and keeping it watered with regular system shutdowns, Explorer 7.0 would constantly stumble with Java scripts and Ajax routines (common programs within sites increasingly used to enhance user experience). The dreaded “Not Responding” threat would hang over me like a sword as I waited those extra few minutes hoping Explorer had just stepped out for a quick fag but the truth hung around like a bad smell building from the corner of the room. Finally, forced shut down for Explorer… do I want to report it and tell Microsoft about it AGAIN?. Sure, that will be the 12th time today but….

With some spare time on the weekend, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade to version 8.0. Its well out of Beta (pre-release stage) and should be patched up to work properly by now. Install, restart, follow the bouncing ball and all seems to be working fine. Some extra features make it more useable but nothing revolutionary compared with the Mozilla version I’ve been quietly using on the side for special operations secret to Explorer, but a welcome step forward. That is until we crash again…. and again… and again.

Enough is enough, Mozilla is updated, told to take over the front seat with Explorer banished to the cupboard along with the old camping gear that you might need one day. Firefrox seems to positively beam at the opportunity, it flies through updates and refresh compared with Explorer. Any minor hick-ups are dealt with sensibly with warnings and graceful reaction and not one lock-up or freeze in 24 hours of doing largely the same things that would require 10+ Explorer restarts. Sounds like a fairy tale where everyone lived happily ever after…. if only fairy tales were true.

In real life we are forced to deal with compromises and in the last hour I have had to face the reality of this with Mozilla Firefox. A program I use seems to work fine with Mozilla but issues with displayed HTML formatting had me pulling my hair out blaming everyone except my software. As a final desperate measure (and in response to a suggestion from a learned web man) I went back to the cupboard, pulled out Explorer and fired it up with the application. Bingo, no problem and now this specific program looks just like it should.

The moral of this story is that computing and the web will always be about compromise. Expect to make choices about the tools you use and be prepared to have a different shaped hammer in the other draw just in case your day-to-day one doesn’t quite work for something. But as far as your customers go, DON’T run the risk of forcing them to adopt to you and your technology decisions.

• Always test your site on all common browser platforms (including Google Chrome)
• Always err on the safe side and make sure it works on older legacy versions, even if it means losing some cutting edge functionality for the moment.
• If your customer claims they can’t use your site properly there’s a good chance they’re right so investigate it properly.

Google measure web site “bounce rate” as the percentage of visitors leaving within 30 seconds of arrival, make sure your site is not a growing part of that important metric.

Automailer custom template

If you like the Automailer idea but want to make sure you have your own unique look and feel, just ask us about building custom templates. Apart from the standard, simple  multi-column formats most often used we can also build custom templates as colourful or as simple as you’d like.

The options are only limited by cost and imagination. Enform can help you work out what works and even test it for you with version control.

Talk to Enform about custom templates.

Google Analytics Dashboard

Web analytics is one of the most powerful yet underrated online marketing tools on the web. Google Analytics is not the most powerful but it has one significant advantage over many others – its free.

Wikipedia defines web analytics as “the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage”. Have a look at their excellent summary here and consider the possibilities available via a well set up tracking engine.

Imagine knowing which specific pages your customers from Albania looked at and how they were referred to that page? What time of the day was it? Was the Albanian interest level the same as the same time last year and how many converted to a sale or reached the specified goal target? And how does your site compare with your peers or competitors and which words generate the most inbound traffic through native search?

These are but a small sample of what’s available free through Google, its easy to setup and the reporting options are more extensive than most people will every try.  If you have the functionality installed, ask Enform to help you show what’s possible. If you haven’t got analytics tracking yet, talk to Enform about helping you set up.

2.6 kg Brown Trout

The larger fish is a 2.6kg Brown Trout caught while trolling round the lake perimeter while the other smaller Rainbow took a lure while casting and retrieve close to a rock wall. Both put up a great fight and were carefully prepared for the table shortly after.

Rainbow Trout

The good news is that you’re site is getting heaps of referrals from Google images, thet bad news is that they all resolve to a generic images URL. How do we find the referring or keyword text?

 Ten points to Beno John for putting together a solution using this script . Once done, you can then track inbound in your analytics account.

Automailer Campaign Dashboard

Permission based email marketing is still the core of any successful online marketing strategy and is essential for both staying in touch with your existing customers, promoting leads to new customers and finding new prospects. When coupled with a strong web site and a pro-active subscriber and user focus its easy to get your customer and product users to sign up and listen to what you have to say.

The Enform Automailer software package has been built specifically for our clients them better manage this very important aspect of electronic marketing, the email mail list.

The emphasis on “permissions” is critical here and is what separates your regular email from SPAM. Enform Automailer have all the tools you need to integrate with your web site for automatic user subscription as well as allowing for import upload of new subscriber or even manual addition all online via your own custom or XYS Pty Ltd portal.

Enform Automailer is state of the art and the most cost effective way to keep in touch with your clients without risking your online reputation or your mail server integrity.

To read more about it go to the Automailer page or ask us for an online

Enform has released the results of the Australian performance products usomer survey to help automotive performance brands better understand their customer and the rapidly changing market.  Enform targeted over 15,000 performance enthusiasts and industry participants and invited them to complete an online survey. 

 The survey covered the following issues:

• sources of performance product information and research used
• purchasing intentions including most likely buying channels
• online sources used for researching or buying performance products
• performance brands used in Australia, awareness and related Net Promoter Scores (NPS)*

Jim Gurieff, director of Enform says, ”We believe the results of the survey have uncovered a great opportunity for any Australian automotive performance brand that is looking for export opportunities and more effective and efficient ways to market their products in the performance sector.”

 A highlight summary of the questions and answers can be downloaded here.

Enform Networks is not aligned with Satmetrix or Bain & Co though we value and use the NPS* system to help clients build better and stronger brands that can grow at a faster rate. Global research (including Australia) has shown that brands with the highest NPS in their sector consistently out perform their competitors in growth and financial performance.

 In a nut shell, NPS is a simple but remarkably effective new method for measuring customer loyalty. A higher NPS delivers more powerful and more vocal customer advocacy resulting in cascading brand referral independent of conventional marketing and promotional spend.

NPS provides a simple comparable measure of customer satisfaction and future business growth by looking at customer loyalty perception which is often different to performance perception. That is, a brand or company could be considered as a “can do better” in its delivery performance while still retaining an excellent NPS indicating a strong referral and recommendation base.

For this reason Enform places high value in NPS when planning and deploying usomer promotion and support campaigns to create and leverage the “Buzz”.

The web and social media turbochargers the speed and reach of any message.  It will therefore leverage and multiply the result toward the positive or negative.

Click the link to download a copy of our NPS Explained document enform_nps_outline1