We’re chuffed to bits to have made the shortlists for 7 categories at the forthcoming UK Search Awards.

We’re up for:

• Best Agency
• Best SEO Campaign (for icelolly.com)
• Best PPC Campaign (for sunsave.com)
• Best Use of Search in Travel (for icelolly.com)
• Best Use of Search in Retail (for fawkes-cycles.co.uk in collaboration with Citrus Lime)
• Best Blog  (for 8ball.co.uk blog)
• Best Integrated Campaign (for 8ball.co.uk)

You can see all the shortlists here.

We’re up against some tough competition but are all thoroughly looking forward to the awards ceremony at the Emirates Stadium on 3rd June.

Keep your fingers crossed for us!

You’ve probably noticed today’s Google Doodle in celebration of its 13^th birthday. That’s right! Google is now officially a teenager. Let’s hope it manages to evade the hormonal temper tantrums and spotty face.

We won’t rehash the timeline here – they did a fantastic job of that to mark their 10^th birthday with their own Google Timeline. So instead of looking back over 13 years of ups and downs, bad decisions and good decisions we’re looking instead at what we hope Google achieves before its 18^th birthday!

What We’d Like to See in Google Add Before its 18^th!

Some of these might be a little bit, erm, sci-fi, but here are the features some of the Tecmark team would like to see implemented before Google turns 18.

• Telepathic search. Yes, some of us would actually like to be able to have Google read our minds to save us typing or talking. The early signs are there… Instant!

• The ability to personalise the algorithm a little bit. Granted, social search is letting you choose to see results based on what your social contacts have searched but we’d like the ability to chop and choose (easily, please!) which social platforms count and to generally just have more ability to configure our results. (The SEO in me thinks this is dangerous. The Google user in me loves it).

• The SEOs amongst us would like to be able to see historical search results, please? Enter a date and a search and get a complete picture of how the results for that search looked.

What do you reckon our chances are?

Over 12% of traffic to UK websites now originates from a mobile device.  This is growing month on month so it’s imperative that you’ve giving your mobile users a positive experience on your site. Thanks to Google Analytics, it’s pretty straightforward to identify tell tale signs about whether or not your mobile users are taking to your site the same way they would on a desktop.

Before taking any of the numbers we talk about below into consideration, you should take into account the following:

• Seasonality. Maybe your site sees fluctuations in both traffic levels and user interaction according the time of year. As such, try to look at data that spans a year or, in the very least, compare metrics with the year before.

• You should really only be comparing mobile stats against site average or desktop only stats. For example, maybe your mobile traffic has a bounce rate of 70%. This might look awful on paper, but if your site average bounce rate is 75% it actually means your mobile bounce rate is better. So get a good idea of your site’s average performance before reading too much into mobile traffic statistics.

• Mobile users often have different expectations. So, for example, if someone types ‘shoe shop,’ into Google from their computer at home, it’s a fair assumption that they’re looking for an online store to make an online purchase. If someone types it in from a mobile device, there’s a good chance that they’re looking for one close to them while they are out on the move – therefore they could actually be expecting to see an address, a map or some directions from where they are. If a user is presented with something unexpected, their behaviour is often different on the site. So if you do not have a specifically optimised mobile website that caters for this, then your mobile traffic could be behaving differently for that reason.

Key Metrics to Look at

Bounce Rate: As much as I have a problem with using bounce rate as the ultimate means of measuring whether a website is ‘good,’ I do believe it has its place here. However, it has to be relative to your site as a whole. So, by all means,  compare the bounce rate of your mobile users to your non-mobile users as a means of assessing whether or not there might be an issue with the user experience for mobile users on your site.

Average Time on Site: Again, this should be compared to the website as a whole. If your site in general has a particularly low average time on site, then you would expect this to be the case for mobile users too. But let’s say your non-mobile users spend an average of 5 minutes on your website and your non-mobile users spend 2 minutes, then there’s potentially a cause for concern there.

Number of pages viewed: As with anything else, this should be considered in comparison to the same figures for your non-mobile users.

 

Conversion Rate: Bounce rate, user time on site and pages viewed is relatively unimportant if the conversion rate is remarkably high. Maybe your mobile users are spending less time on your site because they’re finding their way more quickly to conversion?  This is another absolutely key element to consider.

Optimising for Your Mobile Users

In September 2009, less than 0.1% of traffic came from a mobile. By February 2011, this was over 8% in by the end of July 2011 it had grown again to more than 12%. Mobile usage is anticipated to exceed desktop usage by 2014 so this is no longer an insignificant proportion of users.

Mobile optimisation is essential and includes:

• Building a site that displays clearly and easily on a mobile device

• Tailoring content to a mobile user’s expectations and requirements from your site

• SEO campaigns tailored specifically for mobile.

In August, Tecmark had the pleasure of working on a iPad app that featured in Paramount’s stand at the Empire Big Screen event at the O2 arena in London. We worked alongside SML Marketing & Events and Global.

The app was inserted into the stand and gave visitors an interactive experience enabling them to view trailers, photos, cast content and many more features for new and forthcoming releases such as Cowboys & Aliens, Super8, Tin Tin and Puss in Boots.

The stand featured “real life” cowboys and cowgirls, they ran competitions throughout the three day event. It attracted some big crowds – particularly when the cowboys burst into song.

It was an absolute pleasure to be a part of the event and to be involved in the app development. And here’s a couple of piccies:

One of Tecmark’s most recent projects is Spike’s House Party, a game developed for Oxfordshire DAAT.

The game is designed to increase awareness of the dangers of drugs and alcohol usage. The app is available, free of charge, on Android here and will be available for iTunes very soon!

I love my Smartphone (an iPhone in my case). I really do. More than I’ve ever loved any other inanimate object in my entire life. And I’m not alone. Comscore reported recently that there is now a 41% Smartphone penetration in the UK alone and we’re using our beloved gadgets and gizmos for way more than just making a few phone calls. We watch videos and TV, we send emails, we Tweet, Digg, StumbleUpon, we Facebook, we search for things, we read, browse, plan travel, book holidays, fling cartoon birds at cartoon pigs, check the football scores, learn languages, find discounts, listen to music, share music, create ‘music’ (I love Songify), we take photos, share them, we record videos and upload them, we catch up on the news…

The list goes on. But what figures emerging show recently is that we’re also engaging in more mobile shopping. We’re buying products and services (not just app downloads or music) through mobile apps and mobile websites.

Being the gadget loving bunch of geeks we are, we’re regularly reading articles and pulling out the key statistics on the growth of mobile (as well as conducting our own research). Here are a few of our favourites from the past few months.

Mobile Apps

• As of September 2011, there are more than 425,000 apps on the Apple App Store and there have been over 15 million downloads. (Source: Apple)

• As of September 2011, there are more than 277,000 apps on the Android Marketplace and there have been over 6 billion downloads. (Source: Research2Guidance)

• Mobile users spend 81 minutes a day using apps – surpassing the 74 minutes spent per day on web (As read on Guardian.co.uk).

Mobile Commerce

• 1 in 3 Smartphone users would use contactless payments via their Smartphone if they had the opportunity. (Source: Yougov)

• The average value of a transaction carried out on a mobile device has increased by a whopping 43% in the last 12 months. (Source: IAB)

• Smartphone users prefer to make purchases via a mobile website than an app and the average transaction value is higher on a mobile site than in an app.  (Source: IAB)

• Paypal processes $10 million per day in mobile transactions. (Source: Official Paypal Blog).

• 78% of potential car buyers say they will use their mobile device for both researching and making their purchase. (Read on: GoMoNews)

• There is one purchase every single second through Ebay’s mobile apps. (Source: Mobile Commerce Daily)

• Ebay generated $2 billion worth of sales through mobile devices in 2010. (Source: Mobile Commerce Daily)

Mobile and Social Media

• There are more than 250 million active Facebook users accessing the social media platform from their mobiles. (Source: Facebook)

• Users who access Facebook through their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook as those who do not. (Source: Facebook)

• 40% of Tweets come from Mobile. (Read on Mashable)

• 10% of all Youtube video views are mobile – that amounts to 320 million daily views. (Source: Youtube).