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Friday 16 November 2012

5 Reasons why taxonomy is important for a website

Site taxonomy is very important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Taxonomy can drive your breadcrumb navigation which is one of the important factors for effective SEO.
Taxonomy serves as a roadmap as it describes the present and the future content too. Now let’s take a look at the following reasons why Taxonomy is important for a website:
·         Improve information retrieval (faceted search) – Users always want more precise information during search results. This can be achieved only by faceted search. Faceted search enables users to create their own custom search path rather than forcing them to use specific path. Facets reduce ambiguity in queries, enhance user experience and avoid irrelevant results. It enables users to quickly drill down through thousands of matches.
·         Localization & Content re-use – Localization, translation & content re-use are time consuming tasks. Taxonomy lowers translation costs, maximizes content reuse and thereby enhancing brand value.
·         Increase Upselling and cross-selling opportunities – Taxonomy indirectly improves customer retention by facilitating  better keyword search decisions, which in-turn increases upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
·         Improve navigation –Ensure that all web pages are properly and consistently tagged with keywords and search engine is configured to search only keyword tags, so that if user enters the keywords, all relevant pages gets listed.
·         Content Enrichment – In addition to the findability, the naming of terms and concepts should be given importance. If the user enters different words or synonyms then some relevant pages gets missed. To avoid this, create a controlled vocabulary in the form of a synonym look-up table. The search engine searches for the word or phrase on the table, whose terms are matched with text of the documents.

Reflection of taxonomy in organization structure
By integrating taxonomy, you can achieve a more efficient search experience and improve the organizational structure of your website.

 

Thursday 8 November 2012

11 Reasons why websites should have social media

In the last few years, the numbers of social media websites have expanded greatly as they found social media as an ever-evolving communications tool. Social media is not only great in connecting people but also in reaching out to customers. So what are you waiting for? If you want to take advantage of social media, here are the reasons why you should have social media:
#1: Connecting people – Social media helps connecting people faster, so only many corporate companies provide intranet social networking sites. The most accessed social media website identified by a recent research was twitter, followed by Facebook, LinkedIn and company intranet.
#2: Quick & Responsive communication –Social media offers a good opportunity to provide responsive service to wider audience. Addressing consumer complaints constantly can turn into good testimonials when handled with utmost care.
#3: Promote business – Provide interesting and useful content on the website and involve social media to your website. It will do magic for your website. Users will start sharing your interesting content with their friends and also provide recommendations for your product. These recommendations act as an effective way to promote a business and to expand your reach. 32% of consumers use social media specifically to connect with other consumers or to share positive experiences.
#4: Expertise – Every organization’s dream is to establish themselves as an expert in their field. To become an expert, you can use social media to ask and answer questions related to your field. Several senior officials hang out on this space, to perfectly flaunt their expertise.
#5: Direct Online Marketing – Companies always push sales offers through social networks, but they weren’t successful enough in it. So which works effectively? Yes, email works very well along with social media for direct marketing purposes. Create attention and interest through interaction, participation and education. As a brand provide value and trust through social media that allows a community to interact with the brand. Once trust and value are established, now it’s time to add interested community members to email list, to send commercial messages and offers.
#6: Create positive brand experience -  Social media is a two-way channel. 55% of consumers say they engage with brands through channels like Facebook and other social networks to learn about new products, enter unique promotions and contests. Customers have high expectations when connecting with brands through social media. All brands strive to make their online presence as engaging as they can. One such way of increasing online presence is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). To provide effective SEO, perform a thorough research of keywords that are likely to lead users to your website.
Social Success
#7: Build Trust factor – For big brands, building trust with potential customers is a business goal. But big brands often deal with several businesses for the same customers. So it is better to build a solid positive online reputation to stand out of the market competition. 84% of survey respondents said brands needed to prove they are trustworthy before customers start their online interaction, by displaying customer reviews and recommendations on social networks – Source: e-Marketer. Also maintain consistency amongst social and offline messages, as this will not only build trust but also your brand identity.
#8: Best customer experience – If companies actively engage in social media, they can identify customer sentiments and analyze feedback & recommendations to tweak their strategy to improve productivity and thereby revenue.
#9: Fun and engagement factor – Provide value to your company and services by offering content, apps, videos, contests daily in a creative way. Post or push suitable marketing content through social media at right times especially on Thursday and Friday, as Monday to Wednesday customers will be more focused at work. Use call-to-action words such as post, comment, submit, etc. in the post, as those are the direct words which are effective amongst customers.
#10: Social responsibility – Socially responsible brands gain more market as they are letting their customers know that they are giving back to their communities. It is used to promote campaigns and charity for a good cause. For example, ASICS has an exclusive Facebook page containing details about charity events such as Marathon, The soles4souls, etc., to create transparency by letting their customers know that they give back to the society.
#11: Transparency – Transparency is how people discuss about issues associated with your brand online.  65% of companies have their social media links on the home page of their website. These companies have succeeded in building transparency amongst wider audience. The more and more transparency we achieve, the more and more expansion of breadth and depth of engagement with visitors.
In general, social media is a boon for companies who want to improve their brand identity and expand their reach. The more you involve in social media, the more you can achieve as a successful brand.