July 29, 2008 by D2.

We all have read the papers, read online — high gas prices are here to stay and here to hurt our wallets.  There is however one good effect of rising gas prices.  The good effect is the increase in sales for companies utilizing e-Commerce stategies to sell their goods and services online.  The table below shows the current effects on consumer buying that we are seeing.

If your company has yet to embrace e-Commerce as part of their sales strategy, they should.  Contact D2 at info@d2techgroup.com for all of the latest info and techniques on how to wrap e-Commerce offerings into your company.

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July 28, 2008 by D2.

One of my favorite sites, www.emarketer.com provides this article….

‘Show me the model!’
According to a new study from Kelly Blue Book, conducted among in-market car buyers, 90% of online vehicle shoppers would prefer to view actual photos of new vehicles currently on the dealer’s lot than view stock photography of a vehicle they are interested in buying.In other words, customers want to see exactly what they would be buying.While it may not be much of a surprise that when it comes to purchasing a used vehicle, viewing photos of the exact vehicle, its options, condition and mileage help a potential buyer make a purchase decision, the study also found that when it comes to buying a new vehicle, shoppers want the same thing.

New or used, in-market shoppers want to see photos of the exact vehicle on a dealer’s lot prior to driving to the dealership.

In fact, 74% of car shoppers say they are more likely to visit a dealership if they are able to view a picture of an actual vehicle currently available on the lot, rather than stock photography. What’s more, 53% would be more likely to buy that particular vehicle.

All of this could be a problem, because today most dealerships use stock photography of new vehicles to showcase current model-year vehicles.

“The online automotive shopping and buying process must continue to evolve,” said Mike Romano of Kelley Blue Book.

A company statement cited recent research showing that nearly 70% of new car shoppers are turning to the Internet for research. Nearly half of these shoppers visit at least one dealership Web site during the research process, making the information found there crucial to new customer acquisition.

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June 15, 2008 by D2.

A wonderful article I happened to come across…it’s major long but well worth the read!

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Every website needs a domain name. Example “WebBootCamp.com” is a domain name. Your domain is your website address, a.k.a. URL (universal resource locator). Should you use your company name for your domain? Maybe, maybe not. Is it memorable? Easy to spell? Does it contain keywords that relate to your business? For more considerations on choosing a domain, I’ve put together the following checklist.

Pick a memorable name. How catchy is it? Would the average person be able to remember just your website name, without looking through their bookmarks (if they have even bothered to bookmark it, that is)?

Make it easy to spell! Face it, most people can’t spell. Try to target for the masses when you pick your name. Think of everyone having a 7th grade education. Make it short, try for a two or three word domain. When possible, name your company the same as your domain name. Whether you actually add .com to your company’s name makes little difference.

Use keywords in your domain. Try services like http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/, https://adwords.google.com/select/tools.html, and wordtracker.com to see what people are searching for, in BIG NUMBERS, related to your subject.

Don’t use numbers or hyphens. These are easily overlooked or forgotten when people type in your domain. Unless you’re using a stand out combination like 911alert or 123homerepair, don’t go numeric. If you use hyphens, then every time you tell someone your domain, you have to say “it’s blah-blah-blah.com - with the hyphens”. This is not impressive, and you risk losing traffic to blahblahblah.com. You’re asking your potential customers to work harder, to remember tedious details about your name. Simplicity is important, because you want them to find you. You’re building a brand here.

Don’t buy any other extension except a “.com” This is the best branded domain extension, highly known and trusted. Any other extension is practically worthless, in my book. In addition to being first in the minds of the public, remember also that most people trying to find a company will put a com after that company’s name in their browser. It’s second nature to most of us. A .org can bring attention for non profits, but even most of those companies will try to purchase a .com as well.

Avoid running names together that end in a vowel and begin in a vowel. EXAMPLE: freeebook.com Also try to avoid having the second word start with the same letter as the last letter of the last word. These combinations can look weird, and are often likely to be misread or simply forgotten. By avoiding these two combinations, along with numbers and hyphens, we make sure our words (and our brand) will stand out.

EXAMPLE: WebmasterNow.com

Good For Starting Sentences, Not Domains

Avoid starting your name with THE, or A, if being used as the word A. EXAMPLE asimplehome.com - “a” is likely to be forgotten. While it is true that directory listings usually list alphabetically, search engines do not.

If you can come up with a catchy name starting with “a”, by all means, do so. You may find yourself first in the yellow page listings. Have a look there first, and see what the competition looks like. What are their names, how do they rank?

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. You’ll see that names starting with numbers get displayed first (for non paid listings). So the big question becomes, is yours the type of product or service that will do well from yellow page traffic? You must carefully weigh this against overall branding of your company.

You could of course, have more than one domain, and more than one brand for your company, but be careful about promoting the same sites with different names to the same search engines. You could find yourself banned from those search engines altogether.

Brand New?

Don’t pick your name as your domain name, unless you’re famous. Names aren’t keywords (won’t help your search engine rankings), and usually easily forgotten. Unless you’ve built a big brand around your name already, stick to a good key phrase! It is much easier to brand.

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August 21, 2006 by D2.

We all know that Google is the king of search in the U.S.  Google has steadily gained market share and accounts for approximately 42% of all searches.  Yahoo! falls in at 28% and MSN at 13%.  This brings me to my point….Search Engine Marketing.

About 80% of Internet surfers get their information thanks to search engines.  Americans use search, and by that I mean 38 million of them every day!  Lets do some quick math, that’s 30 million using search each day.  What is your business doing to reach these 30 million Internet users?  Search engines are one of the most effective and powerful forms of advertising in the world. 

So how do you get your product/service in front of 30 million people?  The answer is search engine marketing.  Statistics show that the average user doesn’t go beyond the first 20 results brought back from a search.  Think about the last time you searched, did you go beyond 20?  Probably not. 

So in order to be successful and seen on the Internet, specifically in search engines, you must be placed at least in the top 20 for your keyword.  Keyword, what’s that?  Oh the dreaded keyword, yes keywords are what the “searcher” searches to find your company.  Lets say a golfer is searching for a new driver, he may enter “golf clubs” or “golf driver”.  You want your keywords to match up with his, so selecting keywords correctly is vital for your search engine marketing plan. 

WARNING:  Shameless Plug (I do a lot of these)….At D2 Technology Group, we have the expertise to help you select your keywords to achieve immediate traffic to your site.  We conduct extensive research to select the most effective keywords for your target market.  We “think outside of the box” for you, often the biggest problem with search engine marketing is the wrong keywords.  We make sure this doesn’t happen and the benefit you receive from D2 is constant monitoring of your search program.  If we see an area where we can improve your program, we do it!  Interested in learning more?  Contact us today at info@d2techgroup.com!  We are happy to discuss with you the benefits of marketing your web site to 30 million people every day. 

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