Nielsen marketing researchers conducted a global survey recently to find out which of the advertising platforms in use today, including new media technologies, are most trusted by consumers. Since marketers have increasingly powerful tools they can utilize to reach the consumer, why not get a reading on how they are performing? Even more importantly, why not measure consumer trust in various forms of advertising media?

Nielsen does just that, twice per year, among 26,000+ consumers in 47 global consumer markets. The company’s research is well-compiled within a new and concise report, and I urge marketers to read it since Nielsen is willing to share this valuable information.

What emerged from the survey was very revealing: while traditional media still makes its mark on consumers, the most powerful determinant behind purchasing decisions for a whopping 78% of respondents is word of mouth.

Yes. Recommendations from trusted sources, such as family members and friends, carries the most weight with consumers. And while WOM and all forms of advertising media impact vary from region to region, and country to country, the aggregate totals are very telling. By the way, the report also takes pains to break down the information further, by continent and even by country.

Another important fact emerges, also: new Internet-based media platforms may still lag behind traditional advertising media, but the gap is narrowing. However, respondents clearly show that traditional advertising still retains consumer trust.

Here are the aggregate rankings among the 13 advertising categories consumers were polled about:
1. Word of mouth recommendations, 78%
2. Newspaper advertising, 63%
3. Consumer opinions posted online, 61%
4. Brand websites, 60%
5. Magazines, 56%
6. Television, 56%
7. Radio, 54%
8. E-mail, 49%
9. Brand sponsorships, 49%
10. Ads before movies, 38%
11. Search engine ads, 34%
12. Online banner ads, 26%
13. Mobile phone text ads, 18%

The most compelling statements in the report were these by David McCallum, Nielsen’s Customized Services’ global managing director, when he stated: “Furthermore, given that nothing travels faster than bad news—with estimates that reports of bad experiences outnumber good service reports by as many as 5:1—the importance of responsive, high quality customer service is yet again highlighted.”

Proof once again that advertising efforts all combine to get the consumer’s attention, but WOM, good or bad, has the power to sway and influence in a far deeper way.

So, how important is it to engage the consumer, and to deliver consistently good experiences? It might be as important as brand and corporate survival in an increasingly competitive marketplace. . . one in which consumers are increasingly exchanging information with each other.

Main10 is a comprehensive web development, management, and marketing company with services tailored to provide you with everything you need to turn your web presence into a powerful marketing or commerce vehicle. Marketing on the Internet encompasses a wide range of features, and trying to coordinate them all through different companies can be challenging even in the best of times. At Main10, however, they’ve collected all these services under one roof, so now the same people working on your web design are the same people developing your SEO strategies, tracking your progress, and developing any special applications you might require.

Marketing on the Internet is about making yourself available to the countless potential customers who are already searching for you. They’re out there. They just need a way to find you. And since most Internet users never look past the first three pages of search results, the key is to build search engine rankings and position your site where it can easily be found. There are a couple methods that can help you achieve these rankings, and each has its benefits and drawbacks.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of building those rankings and appearing on the first few pages of natural search results. The benefits are that most Internet users tend to trust natural results more than paid results, and it is a non-intrusive way to get noticed since the people who see your site were already looking for what you offer. The downside is that the SEO process can take time, often months, before you start seeing results. It requires patience. But with the right strategy, the right keywords, and the right marketing company, you can reach those high rankings where your customers can find you.

Now compare that to Pay-Per-Click (PPC), which is a different process entirely. In fact, PPC is less a process and more an event. The upside of PPC is that you can use it to get noticed immediately for your chosen keywords. The downside is that it can end up costing you a lot. Maybe too much. You’ll need an Internet marketing company that can run your PPC campaign and make sure that your ROI is right where it should be.

Web marketing – PPC and SEO – can open the door for your potential clients, but that alone isn’t enough to turn a casual visitor into a paying customer. There are still things that need to be done.

You also need to consider your web management, which includes making sure that the structure, usability, and aesthetics of your website all work together to present a professional site that will guide customers to the actions you’d like them to take. The entire system must be carefully managed so that all your hardware and software work together properly.

But now that all that’s in place, what is really happening on your website? Web management must also include extensive analytics, tracking, and reporting. With the right information you can see exactly where your visitors are coming from and how they behave once they get to your site. At Main10 they can eliminate the guess work and make website improvements based on real data.

But Main10 can do more than just develop a pretty website. They can develop any of the various applications or database programs you might need to power your website or add convenience for your customers. At Main10 they can create highly technical and highly specific backend support for your business.

Now imagine trying to get a marketing company, a separate management firm, and any number of different developers to work smoothly together. The developers always want to do certain things while the marketers want to do something else, and the web managers have agendas that don’t match up with anyone. Running a business is hard enough without the added problems of coordinating between so many companies.

Main10 eliminates that problem and pulls all those services together. The Internet is a wide open marketplace, and the comprehensive solutions offered by Main10 can help you be part of it.

Main10 is an industry partner of WebSTAT LLC. If you are interested in any of their products or services, please visit their website at http://www.main10.com/webstat/.

Recently, while visiting clients and prospects in

The term disruptive technology was coined by Clayton M. Christensen and introduced in his 1995 article Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave, which he coauthored with Joseph Bower. He describes the term further in his 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma. In his sequel, The Innovator’s Solution, Christensen replaced disruptive technology with the term disruptive innovation because he recognized that few technologies are intrinsically disruptive or sustaining in character. It is the strategy or business model that the technology enables that creates the disruptive impact. The concept of disruptive technology continues a long tradition of the identification of radical technical change in the study of innovation by economists, and the development of tools for its management at a firm or policy level.

Christensen distinguishes between “low-end disruption” which targets customers who do not need the full performance valued by customers at the high-end of the market and “new-market disruption” which targets customers who could previously not be served profitably by the incumbent.

“Low-end disruption” occurs when the rate at which products improve exceeds the rate at which customers can adopt the new performance. Therefore, at some point the performance of the product overshoots the needs of certain customer segments. At this point, a disruptive technology may enter the market and provide a product which has lower performance than the incumbent but which exceeds the requirements of certain segments, thereby gaining a foothold in the market.

How low-end disruption occurs over time.

In low-end disruption, the disruptor is focused initially on serving the least profitable customer, who is happy with a good enough product. This type of customer is not willing to pay premium for enhancements in product functionality. Once the disruptor has gained foothold in this customer segment, it seeks to improve its profit margin. To get higher profit margins, the disruptor needs to enter the segment where the customer is willing to pay a little more for higher quality. To ensure this quality in its product, the disruptor needs to innovate. The incumbent will not do much to retain its share in a not so profitable segment, and will move up-market and focus on its more attractive customers. After a number of such encounters, the incumbent is squeezed into smaller markets than it was previously serving. And then finally the disruptive technology meets the demands of the most profitable segment and drives the established company out of the market.

“New market disruption” occurs when a product that is inferior by most measures of performance fits a new or emerging market segment. The Linux operating system (OS) when introduced was inferior in performance to other server operating systems like Unix and Windows NT. But the Linux OS distributed through Red Hat is supposed to be inexpensive compared to other server operating systems. After years of improvements in this easily available operating system, the functionality has improved so much that it threatens to displace the leading commercial UNIX distributions.

Not all disruptive technologies are of lower performance. There are several examples where the disruptive technology outperforms the existing technology but is not adopted by existing majors in the market. This situation occurs in industries with a high investment into the older technology. To move to the new technology, an existing player not only must invest in it but also must replace (and perhaps dispose of at high cost) the older infrastructure. It may simply be the most cost effective for the existing player to “milk” the current investment during its decline - mostly by insufficient maintenance and lack of progressive improvement to maintain the long-term utility of the existing facilities. A new player is not faced with such a balancing act.

We wish to thank Robert Austin, PhD. of  Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman for his insight.

Server Monitoring - We’re going to highlight a little known feature of nextSTAT that allows you to monitor the critical services on your web server and notify you of any web problems.

To View Click Here

In today’s world where the web is the heart of your business you must have a means to evaluate the metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPI)   that impact customer experience, regulatory compliance, brand awareness and marketing effectiveness.  Let’s face it, how many times have you visited a site and found a broken link?  In addition to this you must be able to compare your web quality and performance versus the websites of your competitors. The days of a simple brochure-ware site that is put together quickly and maintained easily is history.   Successful enterprises must have a comprehensive web presence consisting of:

• Many growing interlinked sites covering individual countries, markets, products or audiences.
• A reliance on 3rd parties in design, deployment, content creation, feeds, hosting, linking, etc.
• A complex technical environment. RSS, Blogs, Flash, payment systems, personalization etc.
• Ever-rising user expectation, fueled by small entrants and heavy hitters.

Companies are spending millions of dollars, building, delivering and managing…and then promoting their web presence.  This is the key battleground in the fight for market share.   Yet we all have visited websites, experienced difficulties and been frustrated by poor quality.   In general, we leave these sites for a competitor that is a click away.  This affects sales, investors, media—everyone!There is no longer a place for an online presence that falls short of customer expectations.  Everyday we see sites that fail web standards, fail legal requirements, and expose the business to reputational risk.  A poor quality sites costs sales, undermines brand value and reduces investor confidence.

Why do websites fall short?

• Lack of clearly defined and reportable standards
• Reliance on 3rd party content and services
• Failure to thoroughly test
• “Glitz” spending instead of core investment

How do you solve this problem?  You must develop a specific plan, based on the quality, performance, and compliance (web, brand, corporate and regulatory) standards you have set and then prioritize the corrective action required.  A good plan or service can help you identify the problem in detail right down to the line of code.

The benefits of doing this are enormous.

• Reduced delivery lead times, so you can come to the market faster
• Reduced maintenance time and cost so you are more flexible and efficient
• Improved website perform\ance and lower site infrastructure costs from better code
• Improved platform security and control of content.

The bottom line is improved user experience from using consistent user-oriented standards and reduced legal risk due to compliance failings.  This means happier customers and more money in your company coffers.

California may require websites to provide access to visually impaired users under ruling made in the long running case of the National Federation of the Blind vs Target.

The case centers on Target not providing basic accessibility to vision impaired users via the use of alt tags for images, keyboard options for navigation and missing navigation headers.

US District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel in the Court for the Northern District of California had previously found that “the inaccessibility of Target.com impeded full and equal enjoyment of goods and services offered in Target stores” and has now ruled that the case is eligible for class action status, despite attempts by Target to have the case thrown out.

The result of the case will have far broader implications for the many startups and Web 2.0 companies operating in California, with many sites having to factor access into their services and sites or risk the prospect of legal sanctions.

Whilst the basics as easy enough: tagging images and making sure that sites can be accessed through text based browsers, the use of Ajax and other means of scripting sites means that the traditional html tagging may not either be available, or more difficult to implement.

There is some suggestion from the court case that accessibility may also be required under the Americans with Disabilities Act as well, meaning that although the ruling is currently focused on California law, it could extend to the rest of the United States.

More information on making websites accessible to those with visual impairments can be found at the American Foundation for the Blind.

When we sell something, a verbal thank you is almost automatic — so automatic sometimes it can be perceived as less than genuine – a “comment on the weather” filler at best.

Should we do more? Of course.

Most of us work extremely hard to bring in new customers and once we do, we’re given an opportunity to begin building a “barrier to entry” for our competitors – a much more enjoyable position than fighting through gatekeepers and prospect apathy.

A quick sales check…

During a typical year, how many non-verbal expressions of gratitude do you and your team give to your important prospects and/ or customers (beyond an email)?

What’s the appropriate number? Tough to say, really. It depends on so many different variables (e.g., your margins (what you can afford), the potential future business from the customer and/ or the customer’s colleagues (referrals), what your customer might personally feel is appropriate, etc.).

Start with a handwritten note of thanks – making it a rule rather than the exception.

Then, invest some time outside the money hours (you and/ or your team) in developing some creative ways to show your gratitude year-round.

There are roughly 250 sales days a year for most people. Each is an opportunity to sell. Each is an opportunity for gratitude.

Be real. Be constant. Begin.

 Tell me a little bit about your business and what you do? 

The Ask Patty.com, Inc. website, Blog and Second Life venue is a safe place for women to get advice on car purchases, maintenance and other automotive related topics. Women can shop for vehicles at our network of certified female friendly dealerships across the US. AskPatty.com is a 2007 sponsor of the No. 112 AskPatty.com Chevrolet driven by the highest ranked professional female race car driver Deborah Renshaw, who heads up the panel of automotive expert women.Ask Patty Certified Dealer Program:

Properly armed with the right tools and training Ask Patty Female Friendly certified dealerships can increase their share of the largest and fastest growing demographic of new vehicle buyers in the U.S. — Women Consumers. The Ask Patty Certified Dealer program was designed specifically for car dealerships to attract, sell, retain and keep loyal women consumers.

 What are a few things you like best about NextSTAT? 

Very easy to use interface. The ability to view visitor data and behavior in so many different ways. The granularity of data helps me make good decisions on what content on AskPatty.com, the blog and carBlabber.com is really being utilized by visitors and why. You can slice and dice so many data points and I need this ability to track my business.

How are you using NextSTAT to help your business and bottom line? 

Primarily. AskPatty is a social network car community for women and NextStat helps me understand our growth patterns of unique visitors , page views, demographics and again what content women are really interested in so we can provide more of what women are interested in. Growth of traffic helps more women find dealerships in our certified female friendly network and helps us leverage larger advertising opportunities.  

 What kind of results are you seeing with NextSTAT? 

Accurate and real time reporting which is essential  to manage Ask Patty’s fast growing web properties.

What are you future plans with NextSTAT moving forward with your website?

Learn more about additional feature sets and how this can help grow and leverage advertising opportunities on AskPatty.com and CarBlabber.com.

If you are thinking about redesigning your web site, consider the following list of tips that I call “The Important Sevens”.  These tips will help you create a website that will work efficiently and also make your visitors happy.  Most importantly, these tips will help attract new users and customers.

Tip 1 – User Interface/Navigation

So, you have succeeded in landing the first visitors to your site. Now you need to make them go through the site. In designing your web site, it is crucial that you define your most important links. That, of course, is where you want your user to click. In most cases it’s at the top of your page, or on the far left that users tend to look at. Keep those important links uniform to the rest of the site. This will allow the user to easily navigate and go where you want them to.

Tip 2 – Site Optimization

A quick loading site is the way to go.  A common problem I see frequently is that you have this amazing looking site, but it takes too long to load.  Even with today’s technology in broadband and fast connections, a slow loading site can force a visitor to not even bother and go somewhere else.  Don’t place “heavy” graphics all over your site.  This is usually the primary cause of a site taking more than 10 seconds to load.

• Optimize your code.
• Limit the amount of graphics.
• Favor text links over graphical buttons. Text links can still look great by using CSS code.
• Spread your content.

Tip 3 – Layout – The Clean, the Busy, the White Space

There can be many arguments about what truly defines “White Space”.  What are elements that clutter a page? Large amounts of graphics, one too many types of fonts, oversized ad banners, and too many colors.  Shoot for a clean and non-busy page.  If you achieve the right amount of organization with white space, you can give your site a sense of cleanliness and well defined neatness.  Spread your content out. If you have a page that contains an excessive amount of content, split it out to another page.  Keep it simple.  Deliver a powerful impression to your visitors that they are browsing a professional page that is easy to read and navigate.

Tip 4 – Cross Browser Performance

Cross Browser Performance is an important issue to deal with. We all know that the popular Internet Explorer is usually the browser most commonly used.  In my early days of designing and building sites I would only test my site using Internet Explorer. I soon learned the hard way that users were getting errors in other browsers.  This opened my eyes to Mozilla’s Firefox, Opera, Safari, and other various web browsers. It is important to remember that not everyone uses only one browser. This, sometimes, can make it tricky when you are coding your site.  Be sure to test in multiple browsers. One line may look good in Internet Explorer, but in Firefox, that line can be in the middle of your page, off positioning your graphics, and fumbling the success of the design. Our nextSTAT product has a browser report that will tell you the web browsers being used by your visitors.  Make sure you’re catering to everyone!

Tip 5 – Resolution Sizes

In today’s market, there are several resolution sizes that are commonly used worldwide.  They range from the original 800×600 to sizes 1600×1200 and beyond. Don’t forget widescreen sizes. When building your site this is an important factor to always keep in mind. You will want to design and build your site so that it works and, most importantly, looks good at all of those resolutions. Try to use percentages instead of pixels.  Again, nextSTAT has a report that will tell you which Screen Resolutions are being used to view your site.  Use this data to improve your visitors’ experience!

Tip 6 – Fonts

Have you ever loaded a site with large bold bright yellow fonts on a white background?  Ever seen a site that uses fonts so small you have to turn your zoom cam on?  Avoid making fonts too large or too small. It’s not professional and can easily turn a future customer or visitor away. Get back to the basics and keep it simple.  Try and use one set of fonts for the entire site that is readable by your target audience.  A rule I like to stick with is “No more than one”. Stick with fonts that are recognized by all computers.  Fonts like Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, are generally safe to use.  Fancy fonts might look good on your machine, but have the potential of looking completely different on another.

Tip 7 – Links

Some of my most frustrating internet experiences have occurred when browsing a site and finding a dead end or a broken link.  You spend precious time trying to find the page you want to access, but instead get a headache.  Ensure your entire set of links go where they were destined to.  Avoid sending your users into a loop of never ending “click here’s”.  Keep it straight and get them to the page they’re looking for as fast as possible.

Remember we all want to make our visitors happy.  Consider these tips the next time you create a site.  Keep it simple, keep it clean, and deliver a powerful, professional looking site.

Campaign Tracking - Many website owners spend a lot of time and money tying to get visitors to their site.

To view, Click Here