Κυριακή 9 Δεκεμβρίου 2007

Mystery shopping


Αύξηση των πωλήσεων μέσω καλύτερης εξυπηρέτησης και ικανοποίησης του πελάτη. To MYSTERY SHOPPING είναι ένα απαραίτητο εργαλείο της Διοίκησης και του Management , που αποβλέπει στην αντικειμενική μέτρηση και αξιολόγηση του τρόπου λειτουργίας της εταιρίας με απώτερο σκοπό , τόσο τον προσδιορισμό των αδυναμιών και την άμεση βελτίωση των , όσο και την λήψη σωστών στρατηγικών αποφάσεων. Η μέθοδος του MYSTERY SHOPPING βασίζεται στην επίσκεψη ειδικά εκπαιδευμένων ατόμων στο χώρο πώλησης /παροχής (προϊόντων η υπηρεσιών) που συμπεριφέρονται σαν υποψήφιοι πελάτες 'shoppers'. Κατά την διάρκεια της επίσκεψης οι 'shoppers' καταγράφουν βάση συγκεκριμένου ερωτηματολογίου και αξιολογούν κάθε σημείο και περιοχή ενδιαφέροντος για την εταιρία

Σάββατο 1 Δεκεμβρίου 2007

The Impact of SEO Web Design on Search Engines

The Impact of SEO Web Design on Search Engines

SEO web design is a concept which emphasizes great architectural design principles based on how the search engines determine relevance and site information. The design should be able to give out the information that the user is seeking and at the same time be easily navigable. This is part of search engine optimization because the SEO web design should also be able to satisfy robotic crawlers and spiders in their quest for information regarding the website and other data.

SEO Web Design and Site Optimization

Search engine optimization is more than just a trend nowadays. It is used and applied by almost all sites on the internet that aim to make money and reach online popularity. Among the many strategies of optimizing a web site, SEO web design is one of the topmost priorities.

The impact of the design of the site on search engine robotic crawlers or spiders can help raise the ranking of the site. This is where SEO web design comes in. There are many ways to make the web site more attractive to robotic visitors and human visitors alike. Actually, spiders and crawlers from search engines do not mind the overall aesthetic value of the site. All these robotic crawlers need is the information it can get from the site. The tricky part is how to put relevant information in the site in order for the crawlers to properly index the site due to its relevance. SEO companies who specialize in optimizing web sites must also know how to put a site in front of others in order to bring it to the attention of the Internet users. The search optimizers who will handle your site must be able to know the right strategies to place the web site ahead of others in its field through accepted methods of optimization.

SEO web design is a competitive area where web designers, or what I prefer to call website architects, work hard to come up with ideas and designs that are aesthetically appealing and relevant at the same time. There has to be consideration for ease of getting around the website, being appealing to a wide range of visitors and finding the right place for the website. Making a basic, visually appealing site is easy with the many technological advances available today, but the problem with these advances is that they are sometimes quite tricky to use thus making your website difficult to navigate. SEO web design should be easy to use and friendly to both human and robotic browsers.

Easy navigational access can be done by making the pages of the site easy to navigate to and having easy to understand and use button or labels to click on. The pictures and images on your SEO web design should be just the right size and scale to enable users to see them promptly after clicking instead of taking a very long time to download. Waiting for images and other graphics to load can be off-putting for most visitors and will eventually lead them to another site which is more optimized and easy to view. Even spiders and crawlers will give up on a site which is not easy to navigate and get into.

The overall appeal of the SEO web design should not only be focused mainly on the niche that it is targeted to but also for Internet users who might have stumbled onto the site. SEO web design should have a universal appeal even for the most specialized type of sites on the Internet. Some webmasters or website owners could opt for specialized SEO web designs and these can also be done with the targeted audience in mind. It will also benefit the site if it is indexed as it should be. You might want to have a specific SEO web design which is built around the entire concept of your site and this can add to the ranking if you are quite specific with what you aim to sell or market. If you are marketing a specific product or information, SEO experts can focus on this product or information and build the SEO web design around it.

Another aspect of SEO web design that needs to be considered is what your competition is doing. The saying "know your enemy" is the key here. You do not want to have the same boring marketing strategies as the competition. Why? Because it is a good idea to keep abreast with what they are doing and how well they are doing in this field. There are many site optimization tools that can help analyze and determine what is needed for the site. Hence, in regard to the SEO web design process, content is one of the prime needs and tools of making the site rank high in searches. Finding out or identifying the right keywords to integrate into the site can be crucial in making the site among the top ranking ones. Keyword search tools and having keyword rich content and titles can help to optimize a site efficiently.

SEO web design experts should also bear in mind that there are web strategies that may be unacceptable for search engines. Using these underhand or black hat tricks to perpetuate a site in rank can cause the search engines to ban the site and also the SEO web design company that did the search engine optimization work for it no matter how well the SEO web design is.

Πέμπτη 29 Νοεμβρίου 2007

Μέθοδοι Ποιοτικής ΕΡΕΥΝΑΣ ΑΓΟΡΑΣ

Κλασικές
  • Ομάδες Συζήτησης [focus groups]
  • Mini ομάδες συζήτησης [mini groups]
  • Σε βάθος ατομικές συνεντεύξεις
Πρότυπες
  • Εκτεταμένες Δημιουργικές Ομάδες [extended workshops]
  • Conflict Groups [ομάδες ειδικά σχεδιασμένες έτσι ώστε να προωθούν την
  • αντιπαράθεση]
  • Quali-quant, σύνθετες μεθοδολογίες με ή χωρίς χρήση υπολογιστή κατά
  • την διάρκεια των ομάδων/συνεντεύξεων
  • Παρατήρηση [On-the-spot observation]
Περιγραφή των μεθόδων

Focus groups: είναι μικρές ομάδες καταναλωτών (συνήθως 6-15 άτομα) που μαζεύονται για να συζητήσουν τη γνώμη τους πάνω σε κάποιο θέμα. Η συζήτηση μπορεί να είναι "ανοιχτή" για την έκφραση οποιασδήποτε γνώμης ή να βασίζεται σε κάποιο ερωτηματολόγιο, δοκιμή προϊόντος κλπ. Η συζήτηση διευθύνεται από έναν moderator που πρέπει να είναι εξαιρετικά έμπειρος στο να κατευθύνει τη συζήτηση εκεί που πρέπει χωρίς να επηρεάζει την έκβαση της. Η συζήτηση παρακολουθείται "κρυφά" από τους αρμόδιους μάνατζερ ώστε η παρουσία τους να μην την επηρεάζει και για να μπορούν να έχουν εμπειρία της συζήτησης από πρώτο χέρι. Τα focus
groups έχουν χρησιμοποιηθεί εκτεταμένα από το σχεδιασμό καταναλωτικών προϊόντων στο σχεδιασμό του εκλογικού μηνύματος πολιτικών κομμάτων, και είναι σήμερα από τις πλέον βασικές μεθόδους συλλογής στοιχείων γιατί επιτρέπουν στους μάνατζερ να εμβαθύνουν στον τρόπο σκέψης και συμπεριφοράς των καταναλωτών και να ανακαλύπτουν πολύτιμα στοιχεία για την ανάπτυξη και διάθεση προϊόντων.

Παρατήρηση: βασικό χαρακτηριστικό είναι ότι ο ερευνητής δεν έρχεται σε επαφή με άτομα για ερωτήσεις αλλά απλώς παρακολουθεί τη συμπεριφορά τους - πχ την αντίδραση ενός καταναλωτή σε ένα συγκεκριμένο προϊόν στο ράφι του σουπερμάρκετ. Η άμεση παρατήρηση είναι η πλέον απλή και συνηθισμένη μορφή του τρόπου αυτού συλλογής. Η έμμεση παρατήρηση αφορά την παρακολούθηση προϊόντων μέσω συστημάτων πληροφορικής. Αν και με τον τρόπο αυτό μπορεί κανείς να συλλέξει εξαιρετικά αξιόπιστα στοιχεία, η σημασία τους είναι πολλές φορές δυσδιάκριτη. Χωρίς την άμεση επαφή είναι αδύνατο να διαπιστώσει κανείς τους λόγους για τους οποίους παρατηρείται κάποια αγοραστική συμπεριφορά.

Τετάρτη 28 Νοεμβρίου 2007

Competitive Analysis SEO

Competitive Analysis SEO

One of the most telling things you can do in any business is study your competitors. Your competition can reveal weakness in your business and open your eyes to new opportunities in your industry. The same is true in the web world, and with search engine optimization in particular. Why does your competitor consistently rank higher than you for important terms? What programming, content, and link building strategies are they using to help attain those rankings? Answer those questions and you'll be one step closer to out-ranking them and bringing that traffic and those sales to your site.

Who should you study?
A lot of industries will have hundreds of direct competitors, and many more indirect competitors. You can very easily get caught up in "paralysis by analysis" if you try to analyze every possible competitor that you have. The purpose of studying your competition is to better your business, so I prefer to limit my analysis to ten sites or less.

You probably already know a handful of your adversaries. Either they were the incumbent leaders in your industry when you began, or your customers constantly remind you that they have lower prices, or every time you Google a phrase in your industry they come up first in the search results. Those sites are the first ones you should add to your list to research. Fill the rest of the list in by picking sites that consistently rank high for the most searched phrases related to your business.

Using the information to your advantage
Pretty quickly you'll start to realize that all of the sites you're analyzing have been around for a few years, are indexed frequently and thoroughly, and have a lot of quality backlinks. So how do you get there? Well there's nothing you can do about site age, but the rest are very much in your control: you can model title tags and page headings after the competition, you can structure your site and internally link the way that they do, you can add sections related to topics that they rank high for, and you can most definitely expand your link building plan by studying what has worked for them. Ultimately, analyzing and understanding your competition will reduce your learning curve and accelerate the growth of your site.

Παρασκευή 23 Νοεμβρίου 2007

ΕΡΕΥΝΑ ΑΓΟΡΑΣ

ΟΡΙΣΜΟΣ ΤΗΣ ΕΡΕΥΝΑΣ ΑΓΟΡΑΣ:
Η ΣΥΣΤΗΜΑΤΙΚΗ ΣΥΛΛΟΓΗ ΚΑΙ ΚΑΤΑΓΡΑΦΗ ΠΛΗΡΟΦΟΡΙΩΝ ΠΟΥ ΑΦΟΡΟΥΝ ΣΤΟ MARKETING ΤΩΝ ΠΡΟΪΟΝΤΩΝ & ΥΠΗΡΕΣΙΩΝ


Έρευνα Αγοράς

Η έρευνα αγοράς είναι ουσιαστικά, μια φωτογραφία μιας δοσμένης αγοράς και μια προσπάθεια πρόβλεψης της μελλοντικής πορείας, ενώ τα επιμέρους στοιχεία τα οποία μας ενδιαφέρουν, και για τα οποία συλλέγουμε πληροφορίες και τις αναλύουμε είναι:


  • Το περιβάλλον της αγοράς
Το περιβάλλον της αγοράς, είναι όλοι εκείνοι οι εξωτερικοί παράγοντες, που είναι ανεξάρτητοι από την ίδια την λειτουργία της αγοράς, αλλά που οποιαδήποτε αλλαγή τους, επηρεάζει άμεσα την συμπεριφορά της.


  • Η δομή της αγοράς

Η ανάλυση της δομής της αγοράς είναι η μελέτη των οργανωτικών χαρακτηριστικών της αγοράς, τα οποία παίζουν σημαντικό ρόλο και επηρεάζουν την λειτουργία μιας επιχείρησης.
Η δομή της αγοράς μπορεί να καθοριστεί σε σχέση με την σπουδαιότητα που έχουν οι μεμονωμένες επιχειρήσεις, ή οι κλάδοι σε μια οικονομία.


  • Το μέγεθος της αγοράς

Η έννοια της δυναμικότητας της αγοράς, περιλαμβάνει δύο σημαντικές διαστάσεις, αυτή της πραγματικής αγοράς, και αυτή της δυνητικής αγοράς, ενώ η μεγέθυνση της αγοράς, προσπαθεί να πετύχει την κάλυψη της.

Οι διαστάσεις της αγοράς δεν είναι δοσμένες, αλλά παρουσιάζουν κινητικότητα, με την έννοια ότι η ικανοποιημένη ζήτηση, δεν είναι ίδια με την πραγματική ζήτηση, και αντίστροφα, οι πραγματικές πωλήσεις, δεν είναι αυτόματα ίσες με τις δυνητικές πωλήσεις.


  • Η δυναμικότητα της αγοράς

Η δυναμικότητα της αγοράς μπορεί να μετρηθεί σαν το συνολικό μέγεθος της ζήτησης ή της προσφοράς, αλλά και σαν το αποτέλεσμα των σχέσεων προσφοράς - ζήτησης, έτσι όπως εκφράζεται στην συνάντηση παραγωγών καταναλωτών.



Having Trouble Improving Your Google Ranking?


Having Trouble Improving Your Google Ranking?

Google is by far the most important search engine on the net. To rise to the top of their search engine, you need to improve your link popularity and you need to understand how they measure your link popularity (over 50% of all search engine traffic comes from Google, and if you can rise to the top, you will likely rise to the top of all the other search engines as well).

Link popularity is defined as the number of sites that are linking to your site. Some websites have thousands or even millions of sites linking to them, while others might have only a few. The search engines use the number of inbound links your site has as a measure of how important your site is, which translates into your search engine ranking.

The actual number of links to your site is not the only variable used to calculate your link popularity. The search engines also examine the relevance of the links to the subject matter of your site. For example, if a website that sells vitamins has 4,000 inbound links, but the source of most of the links are websites that have nothing to do with vitamins, then the algorithm that search engines use to determine link popularity will take that into account, and the link popularity score will not be very good.

It is possible for a website with a relatively small number of quality inbound links to be ranked higher than a site with a bunch of irrelevant or insignificant links. If I have a website that offers quotes for auto insurance, and I have 800 quality inbound links, then I might receive a much higher search engine ranking than another mortgage site that has 3,000 links that stem from link farms or Free For All (FFA) pages.

If you try to acquire inbound by using link farms or FFA pages, not only will it hurt your search engine ranking, but you might get permanently removed from the search engine listings. Links farms are sites where you can instantly exchange links with all the sites listed in that directory. FFA pages are pointless link directories. The search engines usually discount any links that come from either of these sources.

Now that we understand what link popularity is and how it works, we need to look specifically at how Google measures it. They use a number of variables in their algorithm to calculate your overall link score. The higher your score, the higher you will be ranked in the search listings.

One factor that Google uses in their algorithm, obviously, is the total number of sites linking to you. The more links you have, the higher your score will be. However, their algorithm is a little more complicated than that, and it is possible for a website with fewer links to be ranked higher than a website that has more links.

The reason for this is because Google also measures the quality of your links. If your website is about vitamins, and the site linking to you is a video game site, then that is not considered a quality link. The link still helps your score, but the link would help your score much more if it were from a website whose subject matter is the same as yours.

Also, Google gives a higher score to a link if it comes from a page that has actual content that relates to your keywords. For example, if your site is about jewelry, and another jewelry website has posted a link to your site on their links page, that link is not as valuable as a link to your site coming from a blog or a message board where a lot of information about jewelry is being written or discussed.

Also, they give an even higher score to a link if it contains anchor text that matches one of the keywords that describes your site. For example, if I have a site that sells lawnmowers, and a blog about lawnmowers has posted a link to my site, it helps my score even more if the link text (also known as anchor text) is LAWNMOWERS. To learn more about anchor text, go to a search engine and look up ANCHOR TEXT and you will be able to learn about it.

Another factor used by Google to score your link popularity is the diversity of keywords contained on sites linking to you. For example, if you have a site that sells handbags, and all the links to your site are from other sites that contain nothing but the keyword HANDBAGS, Google considers that to be abnormal. To get a higher score, you need to have links coming from sites that contain a variety of keywords related to handbags, such as BUY HANDBAGS, LEATHER HANDBAGS, etc.

It is difficult to increase your link popularity, but now that you understand how your score is calculated, you can devise a plan to improve your score. You might want to consider posting to forums and blogs that contain information that is related to your site, and when you post, include a link to your site.

Τετάρτη 21 Νοεμβρίου 2007

Why Keywords Are Vital To An Seo Campaign?


SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the optimization of a web page in order that it ranks higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) for specific keywords or keyword phrases. The pages that rank higher typically gain the greater amount of search engine traffic compared to pages ranked lower for the same keyword.

The majority of web users click on one of the top 5 results on the first page when they complete a search. As such, the ultimate goal of any SEO (Search Engine Optimizer) is to gain one of these coveted top spots, with the number one ranking being the primary objective.

Targeting Keywords

However, a top position for any keyword won't suffice. In order to increase your ROI, it is vital to ensure that you target the most appropriate keywords for your pages, and for your business. While generic, or very general topic keywords, may have the highest number of searches conducted in a month they are also the most competitive and typically least productive.

Competitive Keywords

The more competitive a keyword the more pages that you need to compete with in order to benefit from an SEO campaign. Many of the pages that appear at the top of the list will also be well optimized and have a powerful link profile, making it difficult to rank highly.

Improved Conversions With Targeted Keywords

General topic based keywords have also proven to have lower conversion rates compared to more specific keywords. Targeted keywords generate targeted visitors, and targeted visitors are much more likely to be active while on the pages of your website.

How Keyword Research Helps

Keyword research helps you to identify keywords that are relevant, targeted, and preferably less competitive. By finding the right blend of these factors you can minimize the time it takes to rank well, actually increase the number of visitors, and improve your conversion rates. Targeted keyword research leads to better profit opportunities and improved ROI.

Tailoring Your Keyword Research To Your Needs

Every page of a website needs to be treated as an individual project, especially in terms of marketing. Each page will usually attract different visitors in different stages of the purchasing process. Deep product pages will often catch visitors while they are at their most profitable - when they're ready to buy. General pages and even product category pages can be used to attract more general terms, but they should still be properly researched and targeted very precisely to your target market.

Niche Keywords

Niche keywords are often talked about as being the ideal variety of keywords for a page. A niche keyword is a highly targeted, very specific keyword. It is geared towards a corner of the market in which you operate and typically has very few competing pages. Niche keywords don't usually create much in the way of traffic but the traffic that they do create is highly targeted and very active. It attracts excellent conversion rates ensuring that you get a good return on your marketing investment.

Δευτέρα 19 Νοεμβρίου 2007

MYSTERY SHOPPING, ΕΡΕΥΝΑ ΑΓΟΡΑΣ, MARKETING CONSULTING , ΔΑΝΕΙΑ ΕΠΙΧΕΙΡΗΣΕΩΝ, MARKETING PLAN