Some of Alan's views on this digital marketing malarkey ... there's more on: AlanCharlesworth.com

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Navigating to a sat nav made hard


So I was looking to buy a new Sat Nav. Basically, it was to be an upgrade of the one I have now – so I had already decided the exact device I wanted ... a Garmin 2699 LMT-D.

Obviously, I could have ordered one from any amount of online stores [for around the same price], but this one was slightly bigger than the one I have and I wanted to check it would fit OK on the dash of my car – so I wanted a local bricks-and-mortar store.

I was pretty sure that Currys sold Sat Navs and as my local store is about 2 miles from where  live and a mile from where I work, I went online to check price and availability. But when I arrived on the Currys.co.uk homepage, I could not see any kind of navigation bar to get to the right department [a navigation bar is pretty much a standard design feature for online retailers]. After a while I realised I was going to have to call up the navigation feature, and clicked on the 'menu'. Which gave me this list ...



Hmmm, I thought, obviously I was wrong – Currys did not sell Sat-Nav systems.

So ... I put "Garmin 2699 LMT-D" into Google and searched on 'shopping' – and guess what the  'best match' came up as ...



Yep, Currys ... and note the message that it was available at my local store. So I clicked on the link, which took me to the following page on Currys' website.
The URL tells you where on the site Sat Navs are located.

I'll let you do the analysis of just why Currys.co.uk does not seem keen to sell 'broadband and Sat Nav' along with their phones.

FOOTNOTE: I went to my local Currys, and there discovered that they do not stock the Garmin 2699 LMT-D - but they could get one delivered to the shop for tomorrow. I took my £159.99 home with me and ordered it from Amazon. It will be delivered to my place of work in the morning.

I have a background in retail; I understand the cost of stock and stock control. I also understand online and multi-channel retail. I think Currys have just got this wrong. 

Friday, April 1, 2016

Back to the future


So I was looking for a website with information for visitors to Vienna ... and sitting near the top of the Google SERP was this site – aboutvienna.org.


It was full of useful – if limited – information over a number of pages, then I noticed the footer on the pages.
Yep ... it is a sponsored – they say 'powered by' – site. So what's the story?


Well, I can recall that nigh-on 20 years ago I held an 'e-commerce' [that's what we called it then] session for hotel and B&B owners during which, as part of the SEO session, I advised them that including visitor tips on their website would help get to the top of the search engines [yes, engines, there where six main ones and Google was over 10 years away]. Or they could sponsor a tourist website as a kind-of back door way onto the SERPs.
 
If you were to come across a 'new' online marketer she or he would call it 'content marketing'.