Background in marketing & business development, working in both IT services & consumer retail. Expertise is in developing & implementing eCommerce strategies for SME's within retail - Robert Dyas & Betterware.
Following nearly 2 years as an eCommerce Consultant at e-inBusiness, an E-commerce agency, I now run Digital Juggler, an e-commerce and digital marketing consultancy. I specialise in planning, implementing and managing commercially sustainable e-commerce programmes. I am also experienced in people management, both teams I have directly managed and business partners/agencies.
I am a guest blogger for Econsultancy and Expert Editor for Smart Insights.
Why forward thinking is the best way to plan your SEO
An interesting recent blog from Joost de Valk set out an ‘ethical’ stance for SEOs, arguing that ‘outing’ bad practice is healthy and an important way of preserving the reputation of the industry.
The basic thread is that SEO should be built on foundations of quality and integrity, not just an obsessive drive for short-term results.
It’s clear that the SEO industry is still drawn on the whole black hat vs. white hat issue. What is ethical to one person can be unethical to the next.
Despite this internal dilemma, with still more than 80% global market share, it is what Google thinks that dictates a lot of SEO strategy.
This blog is a reasoned view based on my own opinion and learning from various reports, blogs and Twitter conversations...
Will Google+ encourage a new wave of link spam?
It was about time we had another buzzphrase to obsess over, and Google Search, plus Your World (so concise) fits the bill perfectly.
Here is a social search algorithm update that ticks so many boxes it's like SEO bingo heaven.
I’ve read a lot of articles (some brilliant, one of which is Russell McAthy over on Freshegg, and some have no substance) about the implications of Search+.
After I let all the info sink in, a penny dropped. The conclusion I came to was that Search+ will inevitably be a new source of link spam...
Does your web team know how to use Webmaster Tools?
Is your web team using Webmaster Tools to improve site performance? If not, they should.
This post is for owners of e-commerce websites who don’t get involved in day-to-day operational trading/site optimisation and web managers/admin staff who aren’t using Webmaster Tools daily.
Ok so this isn’t new thinking, it’s not going to blow your mind with its creativity or innovation. But it’s important; the basics are essential.
I still meet Client teams (and occasionally agency staff) whom have either never heard of Google Webmaster Tools (yes I am going to focus on the mighty Google as it still dominates global market share, stats here.), or don’t really know how or why they should use it.
They really should use it as part of the overall site management toolkit.
Read on to learn why and see how easy it is to use the data to help inform your planning process.
Keeping product data clean: five steps for quality and consistency
Whether you’re in B2C or B2B,
product data influences buyer behaviour. The quality and clarity of your data
will influence the decision making success of website visitors.
Good decisions require high quality data. The more complex the purchase decision, the higher the demand for detailed product information.
There is a direct cost to poor product data; someone has to retroactively go back and make changes, which can be incredibly time consuming.
In previous roles, I have spent long evenings correcting data mistakes because it wasn’t done properly in the first place. Not a good use of anyone’s time.
Short vs long form: hitting the target with landing page depth
It's an emotive debate this long vs short landing page one. I have read a lot of tirades against annoying sale pages that scroll and scroll forever.
However, I have seen enough of these long form pages (Here's Econsultancy's landing page) to know that people are using them for a reason. It can't be coincidence.
And some of the companies using long form are respected brands (e.g. Amazon) with digital pedigree, so why would they contravene the basic tenets of usability and user experience?
This blog looks at the approaches and tools you can use to optimise your landing pages and take the emotion out of design and decision making.
Five reasons why B2B marketers need a coherent approach to digital content
In an interesting though at times over-excited Marketing Manifesto ebook Velocity proposes six B2B Staples, the first of which is content marketing.
Content has always been important to B2B, so why all of a sudden am I writing a blog post about it? For the simple reason that the business audience mindset has been shifting and digital content is the new brochure.
Mistakes I’ve made managing agency relationships
It’s a long road this path to digital enlightenment, and it involves many crossroads and epiphanies.
In the past 10 years I’ve been implementing digital campaigns, defining e-commerce strategy and I’ve been agency-side responsible for a challenging set of retail accounts. I’ve been on both sides of the fence when dealing with agency relationships.
This blog takes a peek at the wonderful mistakes I’ve made that today put me in a position of strength and confidence. You might well recognise some of these from your own experience, you might be able to suggest some more; we’re human after all.
Nine lessons I've learned managing e-commerce teams
When I was a boy, I thought like a boy. It's true. When I first managed people in e-commerce, I didn't really know what good management was.
I had some good and bad experiences with my own managers but had never stopped to think what my team thought of my leadership style. Ironically it took the worst Director I've ever worked for to show me how to improve my management skills.
This blog offers nine techniques that, from personal experience, I know to be effective in managing and motivating a team. Management is about people, pure and simple. Forget the numbers; if you can't lead, motivate, support and inspire, those targets are history. Please take a read and then share your thoughts.
Six handy tips for small charities to promote their websites
I’ve been working with small charities and have been struck by the struggle they face when planning what do to with their websites. The big brand national charities have the luxury of employing web managers but smaller local charities don’t have the budget and there is often no in-house experience. So what should they do?
A website is essential to get mindshare even if it’s not driving direct revenue, so I started to think of a hit list small charities could work from to get their websites beyond the purely functional.
Six rules for producing optimised web content
Content is king for many reasons but principally because content helps satisfy your visitors’ information needs, driving conversion, and it enables search engines to include your webpages in SERPs for relevant keywords and phrases.
So why do many web owners fail to keep their websites fresh and leave old content hanging around waiting to be put out to pasture? The common theme I’ve picked up on is that web teams struggle to know what content to produce and how to prove that the time invested has an ROI, so it becomes their bete-noire.
This blog tackles the first dilemma and sets out simple rules that will help structure the creation of relevant content.
