Funny email attachment I got from a friend. Click on the image to expand it.

For many of our clients, Christmas is important. It’s the end of the year, targets have to be met, and customers are, well, much more willing to part with their euros. Indeed, Christmas is the most significant event in Ireland’s retail calendar. In the UK in 2006, online sales reached £1 billion a week. So what’s the best way to take advantage of this surge in online sales? Here are a few dos and don’ts:

- Firstly (this especially applies if you have good search engine positions) don’t start putting “Christmas gifts” and other such phrases in your page Titles. Your site is not going to get high rankings for these phrases at just one month’s notice. If you really want to optimise your site to appear for these phrases, you need a longer-term strategy.

- Having a ’splash page’ on your website, which will be seen by all users visiting the site, can be a good idea. You can use this page to get across your fast delivery, great prices, wide selection, or whatever your USP is. Be aware though that this may cause a short-term drop in rankings if Google indexes your site during the Christmas month.

- If you’ve got an email database, the run-up to Xmas is a great time to keep people updated on your products. Send a seasonal email - nothing too tacky - with some special offers or a guarantee of delivery before the post cut-off date

- Now’s a good time to have a look at streamlining your site to make sure that users can do business with you. Trim down any forms that are too long, try to shorten the purchase process, and make sure that the site downloads quickly. Most important of all, aim to have a site that users understand instantly when they arrive. A higher conversion rate will have an obvious impact on your sales.

- Don’t have dancing Santas, a ‘Ho-Ho-Ho’ sound file, or Flash animations of holly trees detracting from the purpose of your site. People know it’s coming up to Christmas, and too much of these gimmicks smacks of superficiality.

Let us know of any ideas you’ve had for bringing in visitors and sales this Christmas.

An interesting report on how buzz marketing went wrong in Boston reminded me of a really good article that was in this Tuesday’s Guardian (’Psst! Have you heard?‘), on how not to go about buzz/stealth/guerilla/word-of-mouth/viral marketing.

As consumers get more annoyed with advertising, and as there is so much more advertising around now, advertisers are turning to buzz marketing (catch-all definition: using unconventional methods to promote products with an aim of generating positive word-of-mouth publicity).

Some interesting points in this article:
- It is extremely easy to make a complete mess of a buzz campaign
- Some big companies (Pontiac, Sony, Budweiser) have messed up buzz campaigns
- We’re very close to a public backlash against buzz advertising campaigns
- After foolish stunts like the one in Boston, soon any buzz campaign will have to clearly show that it is advertising, thereby losing the ’shock’ value.

Here’s a good blog on buzz marketing, if you who want to know more.

I’ve been trying out Second Life after reading about it on different blogs and Wikipedia. It’s very interesting indeed, and I can see why it’s become the latest internet phenomenon. Basically, it’s a virtual universe where you can interact with people, explore places, buy property and generally, well, live a second life. Second Life has gotten so popular now that it’s even got a full-scale backlash - Get A First Life encourages people to turn off their computers and get outside to experience the real world.

Anyway, I’ll be trialling Second Life over the next few weeks, and will keep you updated on the adventures of Daithi Malick (they didn’t have Mahon in the list of surnames I could use). In the meantime, here’s a screenshot of a meeting I had with someone in the Blarney Stone pub in Dublin:

If you haven’t seen Truth in Advertising yet, check the trailer out on YouTube. The full version is here, but you have to log in to see it. You need audio for it, and it’s got some coarse language, but it’s a hilarious send-up of the advertising campaign process.

What is with all of these different statistics on broadband levels in Ireland? With ComReg, Eircom, IrelandOffLine, Electric News, Silicon Republic and many others offering different versions of bad news, do any of us know exactly how many people in Ireland use the Internet? And of those, how many actually have broadband?

Apparently, we are 14th out of the 15 pre-2004 EU countries in terms of broadband takeup. According to the CSO (as quoted in Silicon Republic), only 26% of households with internet access actually have broadband, as compared with an EU average of 62%.

IrelandOffline reported in September 2006 that Ireland’s broadband penetration rate stands at a paltry 8%, compared with 27% in the Netherlands, 19% in the UK, 12.6% in Portual and 10% in Slovenia. In terms of broadband, Scandinavia, Benelux, Germany and the UK lead the way. Ireland is an anomaly considering our geographic position, with broadband takeup rates comparable to the ex-Eastern Bloc countries.

Another IrelandOffline report stated that one-third of dialup users in Ireland could not get broadband, and that the digital divide between Dublin and the rest of Ireland is steadily widening.

While broadband takeup seems to be on the rise, with the CSO reporting 47% growth since Q2 2005, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

Given the increasing role of the internet in business, entertainment, shopping and education, it’s a real shame that Ireland is such a laggard.

Just a quick note to say thanks to all who attended the IIA Event yesterday (23rd November). I hope you found my presentation informative and of interest, and if you want a soft copy of the presentation send me an email.

If you’ve been paying attention you’ll know that Google has purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion. I know what you’re saying - “it’s dot-com madness all over again”. YouTube is one of the most popular websites around at the moment, and with good reason - it’s got some really cool videos, like Where the Hell is Matt?, the Dance Scene in Napoleon Dynamite, Ronaldinho’s skills, OK Go’s synchronised treadmilling (if that’s a word), the girl who took a photo of herself every day for three years, and many more.

YouTube gets about 20 million visitors every month, and over 100 million clips are watched every day on YouTube. For many people with high-speed connections and a nice big monitor, YouTube is replacing that traditional box in the corner. When you can skim from an Elvis Costello video to Tommy Tiernan to the famous De Niro scene in Taxi Driver, what need have you for television, with its neverending ad breaks and nights with absolutely nothing on?

The implications of YouTube are revolutionary, and this is why Google has splashed out so much. But the question remains as to how Google stands to make money. Here are the options:

1. Showing a little ‘commercial message’ in the bottom corner of each video. This is interesting, as the ads could be targeted to the content of the video. So, for example, if you’re watching the De Niro clip above, the ad could say, “Get Taxi Driver on DVD”.

2. Using Google AdWords on the YouTube site. I’m not sure if this, done alone, will re-coup the $1.65 billion anytime soon.

3. Charging users to watch videos. I can’t see this happening, there would be an outcry from the YouTube community, and visitor levels would dwindle very quickly.

It’s likely that advertising will find its way onto YouTube in some form or other - Google didn’t splash out that much money to keep such a good thing going - but already people are saying that it was a very smart move. Watch this space - developments here have the potential to affect everyone who works in marketing.

Chemistry’s Shamrock Development (watch on YouTube) is an excellent example of viral advertising. As marketing departments demand increased return on their spend, and in a culture where ‘interruptive advertising’ (ads that interrupt you - TV, radio, pop-ups, etc) is getting more and more stick, an ad that people want to see is gold dust. A classy use of Web 2.0 technology. If you’re one of the few who hasn’t seen it yet, check this article on the Sunday Business Post website. If you thought it was a bit incredible, check out what the PD’s are ‘planning’ for Dublin.

I use Firefox, it’s a much better Web browser than Internet Explorer. It’s got great pop-up blocking tools, it very rarely crashes, and its tabbed browsing makes visiting different websites so easy. Plus, of course, its free, which is the reason that 13% of users (and growing) use Firefox. In Europe, 20% of us use it. In Germany, 39% of internet users browse the Web with Firefox. But, according to the BBC, one in ten UK websites don’t work properly with Firefox. Make sure that your site works well with Firefox - it’s going to get a lot more popular in the coming years.