Graham Charlton

UK's online gambling sector worth £2bn in 2012: stats

Sports, and especially 'in-play', betting is leading the growth in the UK's online gambling market, with the sector worth more than £2bn in 2012.

For example, football betting has grown by 69% during 2011 to 2012, making it the second most lucrative, after horse racing.

Stickeyes has released a report on the sector, which looks at the top 50 keywords driving online search, and which brands are cleaning up.

Here are a few highlights from the study...

by Graham Charlton 25 March 2013 16:41pm 4 comments

Is site search less important for niche retailers?

Is site search less important for niche retailers than larger ecommerce sites?

It's an interesting question, and one which came up when I was moderating the Site Search and Naviagtion roundtable at Digital Cream last week.

Roger Willcocks of Screen Pages has been sharing some stats on 21 of his clients' ecommerce sites, and finds that onsite search doesn't play a huge role in navigation.

However, when it is used by visitors, it more than pays its way...

by Graham Charlton 25 March 2013 09:08am 2 comments

QR codes: the good, the bad and the ugly

Over the past couple of years, QR codes have cropped up everywhere from billboards to ketchup bottles, and have become a must-have gimmick for some marketers.

At our Digital Cream event this week, I was discussing QR and mobile marketing with Mark Brill, who had been moderating the mobile roundtable.

The upshot is that, when used well, QR codes can be a useful tactic for marketers, when used badly they're utterly pointless.

Mark showed me some excellent examples of QR codes, good and bad, from his Pinterest page.

Here is a selection of those....

by Graham Charlton 22 March 2013 14:12pm 27 comments

10 interesting digital marketing stats we've seen this week

Here are some of the most interesting digital marketing stats we've seen this week.

Stats include mobile strategy, interactive and outdoor advertising, email open rates, and online customer service.

For more digital marketing stats, check out our Internet Statistics Compendium.

by Graham Charlton 22 March 2013 13:02pm 3 comments

This week's top six infographics

Once again we round up six of the best infographics we've seen in the past week.

The topics include social media demographics, creative employment, Google+, and when to post on Facebook...

by Graham Charlton 22 March 2013 10:48am 7 comments

Five examples of local PPC best practice

Local search is becoming increasingly important as consumers look to find information about the products and services near to them.

For example, 81% of UK smartphone internet users have looked for local information with their devices, and these people are just as likely to purchase in your store as online.

There’s an extremely valuable amount of traffic available for local queries, so if you are a local business it becomes extremely important to deliver your messaging to these searchers.

Google has focused heavily on improving its local search results experience, and queries that trigger a local results page have increased in number, so that the location no longer needs to be part of the search query.

Google integrates data from Google+ to its map listings, so the easiest way to make sure your business is appearing on a map search is to ensure your Google+ business page is set up and using the correct address.

Here are five examples of PPC ads using location to enhance listings and (hopefully) increase CTR...

by Graham Charlton 26 March 2013 11:36am 6 comments

Why you should make it easy for customers to contact you

Customer service online is all important, and businesses should be making it easy for customers to contact them to resolve any issues.

However, some sites seem determined to prevent, or least make it difficult for you to contact them. Whether through missing or hard to find contact details, charging for customer service calls, or taking weeks to reply to emails.

Perhaps these firms think they are saving money or easing pressure on customer service staff by doing this, but I fear they are just annoying the hell out of their customers, which is rarely a good idea.

by Graham Charlton 25 March 2013 12:53pm 31 comments

More reasons for retailers to offer wi-fi in stores

Rather than fret about the dangers of 'showrooming', retailers should provide wi-fi for mobile users, as this influences the choice of store for almost 80% of consumers.

A new report by JiWire, which provides ad-supported wi-fi, finds that retailers needn't fear the mobile shopper.

by Graham Charlton 15 March 2013 09:37am 1 comment

Is eBay wrong about the value of paid search?

This week, eBay released a study into the effectiveness of paid search ads which concludes that, for the auction giant at least, 'the efficacy of SEM is limited at best'.

It's an interesting study, and well worth a read, but the report's conclusion applicable to brands in general, is it just less effective for eBay, or is there something wrong with the brand's PPC strategies?

I asked a number of experts about the report, and whether they agree with its conclusions....

by Graham Charlton 15 March 2013 10:45am 16 comments

Will online reviews work in an offline setting?

We all know that consumer reviews work online, so it makes sense to apply this tactic in an offline setting, on TV, print ads and elsewhere.

I'm writing this as a result of the recent launch of Reevoo Everywhere, a new product designed to enable brands to use reviews across different channels, but it's perhaps surprising that this hasn't been tried before, or at least not so I've noticed.

So, can this tactic work, and how can brands use reviews offline?

by Graham Charlton 14 March 2013 10:22am 12 comments