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Friday, 6 January 2012
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The Christmas holidays are a time when many people decide to start a new business or think about how they are going to ramp up their business activity for the year. Whether your business is a bricks and mortar, online business or a mixture of both, this year should be the year to focus on your online marketing to jump ahead of your competitors and take a larger slice of your market for 2012.
We have compiled a checklist of things you absolutely must do in the first month or two of 2012 to ensure you don’t get left behind by your competitors..
- Set up a facebook business page and start regularly communicating with your potential and existing customers.
- Set up a Twitter and Google + presence to ensure you don’t miss out on audiences using those social media platforms.
- Ensure important information on your website has the Facebook ‘like’, Twitter ‘tweet’ and Google ‘+ 1’ buttons so that visitors can easily spread the word about your products and services through social media (which is an excellent way to get free viral marketing)
- If your website is older than 2 years then it is time for a revamp! Many new technologies have come out over the past couple of years to make your site load faster, be more interactive and be able to gain much better rankings in search engines.
- Either learn how do to SEO (search engine optimisation) and devote time each week to do it or hire a professional to assist. SEO provides a significant return on investment if done correctly.
- If you don’t already do it, start doing regular email marketing. Despite the rise of social media, email marketing is still by far the most cost effective method of online marketing and provides the highest return on investment. Check out www.mantismail.com.au for a free trial of our easy to use email marketing platform.
- Look into developing a mobile friendly version of your website. A growing number of people are now accessing websites via mobile devices and we are able to configure your website to detect that the visitor is on a mobile device and automatically redirect them to a ‘mobile friendly’ version of your website.
- Look into if your Facebook page could benefit from a custom tab that pulls data from your website. For example, having a Facebook shop that is linked with your online shop usually results in higher sales from your Facebook community.
For assistance or advice with any of these items, please don’t hesitate to contact us at admin@mantistech.com.au
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Friday, 6 January 2012
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In 2011, for the first time ever, mobile devices (such as Iphones and Ipads) outsold traditional desktop PC’s and laptops. It is estimated by 2015, more people will be connecting to the internet and websites using mobile devices than desktop and laptop computers.
According to a report by the Boston Consulting Group, mobile ecommerce is projected to grow to more than $100 billion USD within the next couple of years.
The rise in popularity of mobile phones (mainly Iphones and Android phones) along with tablets (such as the Ipad) is having a dramatic effect on the retail market. Many shoppers are now either shopping online from their phone while on the couch or out and about. The more savvy shoppers are also using their mobile phones in traditional retail stores to see if they can get a better deal on a product they are looking at (or see what other options are available online that may not be available in the store).
Mobile devices are also being used heavily in the real estate market where potential investors and tenants are now searching for listings online when out an about.
If you already have an online store or website, it may not be enough to cater for the growing mobile market. At Mantis Technologies, we have developed new technology to allow us to detect and serve up mobile friendly sites to your customers.
These mobile sites have two distinct advantages:
- Mobile friendly sites are thought to receive higher rankings in Google when searching on a mobile device. This makes sense as Google can detect which is a mobile friendly site and people using Google on a mobile device are better served with mobile friendly sites rather than traditional sites which are generally quite fiddly to use.
- A good mobile friendly site will be designed specifically for the screen size and also the way a user interacts with their device. This means that the elements of the site that are needed by the mobile user should be rebuilt into a new mobile friendly section of the site that has an interface built to show nicely on the mobile phone and be designed to be used as a touch screen device rather than with a mouse and keyboard. This dramatically increases the usability of the site and therefore results in higher conversion rates and customer retention.
On the 1st January 2012, we launched a mobile friendly site for Lime Tree Kids. If you open up www.limetreekids.com.au/mobile on your smartphone, you will see how a well thought out and developed mobile website should work. Within 24 hours of the mobile site launching, it was already generating many sales and attracted very positive comments from hundreds of potential and existing customers.
At Mantis Technologies, we specialise in developing mobile friendly sites for the Ecommerce and Real Estate marketplace and if you already are using our MantisShop or MantisProperty platforms, we can easily customise our mobile ‘plug in’ site for your website.
There are also some very distinct advantages with creating mobile friendly websites over building ‘apps’. Mobile friendly sites can be built to look and feel like an ‘app’ (see the Lime Tree Kids mobile site as an example. Mobile friendly sites can also be built to ensure they work on all popular phones (Iphone, Android and the Windows 7 phones) whereas apps need to be built from scratch for each device and get approval from their manufacturers to be released which can be a very time consuming and expensive exercise.
Please contact us for more information if you are interested on learning how a mobile friendly site can work for you.
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Friday, 6 January 2012
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We are pleased to announce the official launch of two Facebook apps which plug right into our ecommerce and real estate packages.
MantisShop
If your website is based on our MantisShop ecommerce platform, then contact us for information on implementing the MantisShop plugin for Facebook. This will appear as a ‘shop’ tab on your Facebook business page and allow Facebook users to browse through your products while in Facebook. When they click on a product they are interested in, it will then take them to this product on your website so they can then purchase it (and any other products they want).
We launched this feature in 2011 and found huge success with an increase in traffic and sales for our clients that had this feature implemented.
The Facebook shop automatically takes its information from your CMS so when you add, edit and delete products, they are instantly reflected in your Facebook shop. There is no extra work for you to do to maintain it.
MantisProperty
If your website is based on our MantisProperty real estate platform, then contact us for information on implementing the MantisProperty plugin for Facebook. This will appear as a ‘listings’ tab on your Facebook business page and allow Facebook users to search/browse through your listings while in Facebook. When they click on a listing they are interested in, it will then take them to this listing on your website.
The Facebook listings app automatically takes its information from your CMS so when you add, edit and delete listings, they are instantly reflected in your Facebook app. There is no extra work for you to do to maintain it.
For more information on either of these apps or if you are interested in a custom app for Facebook, please contact us.
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