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Recently Aussies may have seen the king of retail Gerry Harvey (CEO of the Harvey Norman chain) on ACA blaming there reduced sales figures over Christmas due to lack of GST not being applied on online sales. Is it really the lack of a 10% tax, or is it just that online stores are simply providing a positive user experience and that is what people are preferring. Shopping online gives you access to the world a global range of products, more competition and offers convenience.

A lot of people may not realise that when they are on the internet shopping for a product they are going through many of the same motions you do, when your in the physical world. Im into cars and technology, so lets use cars for this story.

Im wanting to buy a new car and during lunchtime I head up the road to the local dealerships and I open the door to the showroom and I see the products. I review and look at each one and then I move onto the next showroom, repeating the process.

On my way to each showroom Im thinking about what I saw in the last one, I have narrowed down the model that I like Im now off to the next showroom to check out their offering. Now after going through 4-5 dealerships, I have picked 3 cars that I like from 3 different manufacturers. However at the end of the lunch time break and looking through the brochures that are all presented differently and the questions start, what are the specs again? what do I get for the money? what is standard features? what are optional features? what is the warranty? and the list goes on.

Take this same process online, I go one website like Redbook.com.au. I type in my criteria and select the cars I like, I am able to compare the cars side by side. I see the list price, trade in value, standard features, specs, fuel consumption and a lot of other detailed information. This view allows me to narrow down my choice quickly and easily, then Im off to the dealer to discuss price and get a drive.

The side by side comparison function is a great tool that allows users to quickly identify the product that best fits there needs. This feature is great for sites that allows them to present multiple products from there range in a single view. Another feature we have implemented is a virtual assistant who through a series or questions is able to deliver a set of products that may suit the user. Or Amazons referral feature, where when you are viewing a product you are told “people who bought this, also bought …..” I personally have used this feature alot. There are many ways to create a positive user experience on your website and it can be simply having contact details prominently displayed. This builds confidence in your product and builds repour with your business. Doing what you can to show that you are not a fly by night, will help with your user experience and you can compete with the so called “big guys”.

The user experience online can often be improved by looking at what the experience is like in the physical store. What information can you give the user to inform them enough to build confidence? Imagine the time when you have walked into a shop just browsing and the enthusiastic sales person comes up, (you know the one) and you get all the information about the product and other products all at once. What don’t you like about that experience? If your like me, its the fact that its an information overload, too much all at once.

For me I just want to see what I like and if I want more information, I will get up close to the product, step back check out the other product. Then when I do have the specific questions I do like a hand with my decision.

Learning from this experience and applying to your online store, you can scale back your detailed information and start introducing more information slowly as the user is progressing into the site. This process of layering provides the user cognitive keys that they are getting what they want, slowly they are making up there mind before you have even shown them a “order now” button. Its not smoke and mirrors, its about understanding your users and providing a positive user experience.

I do believe that a positive user experience will convert to more sales for your business, whether on or offline.

Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search are now available – at no charge – from Apple’s Australian iTunes store.

Dragon Dictation is an easy-to-use voice recognition application powered by Dragon NaturallySpeaking that allows you to easily speak-and-see your text or email messages on the iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch instantly.

You may download Dragon Dictation now by clicking here
[http://app.marketing.nuance.com/e/er.aspx?s=274&lid=3410&elq=cd05531c226d4d41bbf6c34a7e5acf00].

With Dragon Search, you can simply speak-your-search queries and get simultaneous search results from a variety of top websites and content sources using either your iPhone or iPod Touch.

You may download Dragon Search by clicking here
[http://app.marketing.nuance.com/e/er.aspx?s=274&lid=3411&elq=cd05531c226d4d41bbf6c34a7e5acf00].

Both Dragon Dictation and Dragon Mobile will support Australian accents and include Australian vocabulary making them the perfect productivity tools for Australian customers.

Do you run a blog or use wordpress for your CMS? Do you have an iPhone, Blackberry, Android or some new Nokias?

If so then you should seriously look at getting the app for WordPress. Updating your wordpress site has just become easy and what’s more, if your out and about you have an idea fire up the app and post away. In fact I’m doing it now.

What I like most about this app is the 3 step set up process.

1: Login to your admin area and navigate to Settings > Writing and enable XML-RPC. (101 clients using the 101 All in one CMS solution, this is enabled by default.)
2: Download and install the WordPress app from your relevant app library.
3: Point the app at your WordPress install type in your details and post away.

From the app you can manage, comments, posts, pages, media and it even supports Geo-tagging. The published status is available for scheduled publishing, saving a local draft, or saving a draft to WordPress.

Couple of things so far:
No HTML view. Alot of the time our clients have problems with their content and it’s HTML related. This would not be a feature utilised by the majority, but on I thought would be great.

No access to the plugins, though again would a majority of users need it? All-in-one SEO is one plugin that I think would be great to have access to. Most of the others especially in the 101 CMS solution look after themselves.

No rich text editing or linking to other pages.

Permalinks don’t seem to be available which again is only minor as majority of our users set and forget, leaving the product to take care of them.

All in all this app is great for getting the content into the blog quickly and easily. Its quite purposely designed to not be everything for every one and stays true to the emphasis on simplicity, which is what lead 101 to use it to base our CMS solution on.

If you have all the ingredients I recommend trying it out for your self. You may just find your not tied to that desk any more. (at least for the simple things any way.)

Im out of the office a lot with working onsite and interstate and I have always struggled with keeping everything in sync and having access to my new emails, sent items and drafts on all my devices. The amount of times that I have required a file sitting on the office computer to make a simple change to update a clients website, but had to wait hours until I was back in the office was starting to get in the way of the productivity and responsiveness that 101 prided itself on.

I had to start searching for a portable solution, one that would allow me to be as productive while Im out of the office as I am in the office. Apples’ MobileMe was that solution.

I did look at other cloud services, though why I chose MobileMe was simply that it integrated seamlessly into my existing setup. I simply enabled the service and it was tightly integrated into the Mac OS. To the point where I can now sync my iMac’s preferences to the MacBook and all my settings are familiar and no more sitting the two screens side by side to compare settings. I set once on either and the change replicates.

Accessing files on either machine is now done over the air via the MobileMe service. When network connected the IP address of each machine is authenticated within your account and you now remote in to each machine, via file or screen sharing. Screen sharing is great especially to access applications on the iMac that you don’t have access to on the mobile device. I can quickly access the application open files and save the changes.

Last but not least is how handy it is to be able to update my email, calendar, address book on any of my devices and almost instantly each of my devices are updated.

If you are looking for a portable solution, then MobileMe is certainly worth a look at. However like with every bit of tech do your homework and see how the tech works with your existing processes.

We recently discovered that a clients website was not viewing correctly on the iPad. We thought that was strange so fired up our iPhone to test the site using mobile Safari, the same as on the iPad. The site worked, which was even more strange, doesnt the iPhone 4 and iPad share the same O/S? We thought it strange so without having an iPad in the business (now looking to get one as we have a justified business reason. A small one but lets grab it so we can have more toys.)

After looking around for an iPad emulator and only finding one that is an iFrame surrounded by a picture of the iPad as a border, mostly good for resolution testing. We then started to play around with the User Agent in Safari setting the user agent to iPad still didn’t show the error that was reported on the iPad. This was strange and we kept hunting only to find the answer was under our nose all the time. The Apple SDK comes with an iPad simulator, likewise an iPhone simulator. After installing xCode and the iPad SDK we now have a iPad simulator in the business to test websites on. As we are running a local dev environment using Apache under Snow Leopard we can access sites on our local server. This is great test iPad compliance before the site is in production, got to be happy with that.

To get the iPad simulator running, after installing the SDK simply create a new iPad application and before you even turn your hand to code select Build and Run. This will load the iPad simulator, press the Home button and then you can load Safari. From Safari type in your website address and take a look at the site using a soft version of the iPad.

Moral of the story is if you are wanting to test your site fully for compliance with the iPad you need to either have one in the office or get the Apple SDK.

From my Apple feed this morning:

Apple today announced that in less than 48 hours since its launch on Wednesday, more than one million users have joined Ping, its new social network for music. Ping lets users follow their favorite artists and friends to discover what music they’re talking about, listening to, and downloading. “One-third of the people who have downloaded iTunes 10 have joined Ping,“ said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services. “As many more people download iTunes 10 in the coming weeks, we expect the Ping community to continue growing.“

I think this shows the full potential of social media and how quickly a product can be grown and obtain such exposure in such a short amount of time. People like to interact with each other and social media provides that interaction albeit via a computer. The medium provides users a platform to quickly find information from their friends, stay in touch, share and learn. I think the sharing and learning is the key to peoples take up of the medium with people learning and being exposed to different experiences, which they may not have ever experience if it wasn’t for a friend of a friend.

Apple is a company that has seen the potential of social media and it will be interesting to watch the growth of Ping and how it evolves the Apple product line.

Yes Im an Apple convert, but for good reason.

iStock photo is a great resource for getting those generic images that you need to fill space, bit in a banner and even help tell your story in your blog. Now to make that even easier I have just read in my regular newsletter from iStock that thanks to a new plugin by an iStock member gutewolke, WordPress users now have millions of low-cost, high-quality iStockphoto images at their fingertips.

The plugin is able to pull tags from your blog post and into iStocks search engine, from which it uses to suggest appropriate images. The entire transaction can be completed in a matter of seconds. Deliver the strong visual impact you need without a lot of extra effort, and you’ll have more time to start thinking about what you want to write next. The plugin, co-developed by Lee Torrens and Amos Struck, is available in the WordPress Plugin Directory.

After a 2hour Skype session with my mate at UnekeFurniture.com discussing how we are going to re-design his site and what social media can do for his online marketing, I was really inspired to hear his story, which I will share with you below.

My mate was looking to set up a home theatre in his house and was researching products, after a bit of time on Google he stumbled across a home stereo enthusiasts forum. After jumping in and taking a look around grabbing some good information about products and different configurations. He decided to start a new thread, “What do you think should be in the perfect entertainment unit?” Now here is the thing, my mate makes custom furniture and it is hot stuff (check out his site).

Not thinking anything of it apart from getting some information about what these guys would like in a cabinet, which he could build into his. Within under an hour there were 37 replies all from people with great ideas, my mate jumped in as part of the conversation offering his thoughts, suggestions and alternatives to other ideas from an expert cabinet makers point of view and the community really took to it.

Within a couple of days of being a member of the site, he had many enquiries and additional traffic to his site and within a couple of days had booked a job, making a perfect entertainment unit. Now this wasn’t the intent of his post, nor being on the forum in the first place, but what a great outcome.

This was very interesting to me, this story highlighted the value of social media and building your online networks. Getting involved in community forums is a great way of referral promoting your products and/or services. Being an active member of an online community can help you to learn new techniques in your industry, share your information, engage directly with consumers to find out what they like, desire and think they would pay for and like Twitter be known for being an expert in your field. Im not advocating spamming online communities, though I feel if you have something to contribute you could see benefits to your business, be it in selling products or simply gaining a new perspective.

What I would like most to share out of this story is just how little effort and money it took for my mate to promote his services that resulted in a sale. Word of Mouth or referral marketing is a powerful tool for you business and shouldn’t be under-estimated. Our business was built on it, still to this day we do not pay for over priced advertising and 101 Web Technology continues to grow. Lets Skype sometime or follow me on Twitter @phil_at_101 to find out what social marketing can do for your businesses bottom line.

Takeaway pizza company Domino’s Pizza has increased online sales to £56.9m in the first half of 2010, boosted by an increase in online marketing activity. The company also states that over 30% of its UK sales are now completed online.

Embracing social media the company launched their Foursquare promotion in May, which encourages users to check-in at their locations. Their Facebook page has over 37,000 fans so stated CEO Chris Moore in the companys earnings statement. Starbucks is another great example of using social media to its best, during their Free Pastry Day the company was able to attract $1million people to their stores.

Both of these are great examples of how a company embracing social media has seen real and measurable growth, not to mention the brand awareness. The question I would pose to you as a business owner is what would an increase in 30% of profits mean to your business?

The potential of social marketing is massive and is limited only by your imagination and creative ways you embrace an utilise the technology.

Internet Marketing, is it simply copyrighting, search engine optimisation and having a consistent online and offline brand? Are you considering your website as part of your marketing strategy? If so then are you considering all the marketing options you have available to you on the internet?

We believe a great looking website that presents a consistent brand is just the start of Internet Marketing and not the end game. Internet Marketing is more then just marketing your business online, we believe it is a discipline that requires knowledge of the arena, knowledge of the business, the target demographic. We believe it requires knowledge of the tools available to extend your brand and take it international. For instance have you thought about how Twitter can help drive more traffic to your website? What about YouTube, thats just for people looking for there 15mins of fame isn’t it?

Lets start thinking beyond building a great looking website, lets start focusing our attention on how that great looking website is going to make us money while we sleep, while we are on holidays and while we are doing the things we do when we are not working.

If you have a website then Internet Marketing is for your website and business. You have a website and you have the potential to turn that website into a business tool, not just a place to house photos and example of previous projects.

Contact 101 Web Technology to discuss an Internet Marketing strategy that will suit your business.