The GottaQuirk eMarketing blog The GottaQuirk blog is a great resource for information about internet marketing. It’s an up-to-date resource on the happenings in the fast-moving eMarketing industry. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 13 4697

Articles from The GottaQuirk eMarketing blog

StarCamp T-shirt: design concepts needed 2007-12-03 09:08:36 I’ve just had a very interesting chat with Neil Blakey-Milner, who is organising Cape Town’s very own StarCamp, and from the line-up that he mentioned it's going to be l33t (yes, yes… I had to drop it in here). During the chat I realised that this is something that really deserves assistance and to do our bit we have decided to supply nifty t-shirts to all the undelegates (P.S. he is also looking for some other help so if you can assist, please give him a call). In true “un” style we thought it would be great if we opened up the t-shirt design to the entire blogosphere. Basically, we are looking for a super creative concept that we can then carefully craft into an award winning t-shirt design. At the last BarCamp we also got involved in helping out and through a similar mechanism we ended up with an awesome t-shirt designed by Mark Forrester which many of the attendees still wear (Rafiq for one). The Brief: Must revolve around the StarCamp unconf ... Design

'Tis the season for online spending 2007-12-03 07:16:27 According to APACS, the UK payments association, today will be the busiest online shopping day in the UK this year. How did they predict that it would be today? Well, Mondays and Tuesdays are considered the busiest online shopping days in general. And today is roughly three weeks before Christmas, meaning there is enough time to get presents delivered before everyone goes on holiday. Historically it’s usually the second last Monday before Christmas (that's the 10th this year) so we will have to wait and see which Monday takes the Christmas cake in 2007! Whichever Monday wins, the important thing to note is that this month is going to be a bumper month if you are running a retail PPC campaign. Over the whole of December, Christmas shoppers in the UK are expected to spend over £5 billion online - and we all want a piece of that mince pie! (Ok, ok, no more cheesy Christmas idioms) If you haven’t started optimising your campaigns for the Christmas retail rush, I sug ...

Of Spam and French Champagne... 2007-12-03 01:23:54 A little while ago, a certain QuirkStar (who will remain nameless) forwarded a chain letter to me with fantastic promises of a free case of French champagne within 15 days if I forwarded it to 10 friends along with a copy to “the source”. The supposed source being the director of education and hospitality services at Spier, sent out in an attempt to “build up their database”. After flinging my verbose response back to the QuirkStar for propagating spam in my direction (“taking the chance” is no excuse), I remembered that one of my mates works at Spier. So I rang him up and we shared a laugh. Apparently the chain letter has caused quite a stir, and the Stellenbosch winemakers receive numerous calls every week from angered plonkers (by plonkers I mean wine enthusiast, obviously) demanding their bubbly. In an attempt to shake off the false promises, Spier went on the front foot and sent out a press release stating that 'Spier has absolutely nothing ... French

The Rubbish Monster 2007-12-02 07:25:15 This is not a new ad, so many of you may well have seen it, or at least heard about it, but I think it is worth another peek. I love this ad because; a)    It addresses one of my pet hates – littering!!! b)    It is educational c)    It is wonderfully animated. So far the ad has won the local MultiChoice Vuka Award for best animation in 2006. It has also won another two awards for the “Commissioned Film of 1 Minute and Under” category at the Kalamazoo Animation Festival International (KAFI) in Chicago, and the “Jury's Special Prize” at the 11th Seoul International Cartoon & Animation Festival (SICAF) in South Korea. The spot was also officially selected at AniFest in the Czech Republic. "The Rubbish Monster" Charity Organisation: Endangered Wildlife Trust Production House: Condor Cape Town Producer: Braam Jordaan Director: Braam Jordaan Concept/Script: Braam Jord ...

Foot-in-Mouth Syndrome 2007-12-02 02:42:15 Have you ever said something and then immediately wanted to scrub it from your mind – not to mention the person's mind who you’ve just offended? I have, on more than one occasion (and that’s usually per day). I doubt I’ve ever put my foot in my mouth this spectacularly, but it’s something everyone can relate to. Now, while adverts for cleaning products don’t normally float my boat (I’m not what you’d call a domestic goddess), I like this one, and I’d pass it on to my friends. If only to justify that I am not actually the only one who walks around with a mouth full of toes ;-) I especially like that this cleaning ad doesn’t feature a Stepford Wife - I mean really, who hauls out their pearls to scrub the floor *puke*. Comment on "Foot-in-Mouth Syndrome" ...

Does the sun shine out of your arse? 2007-12-01 01:37:03 With the current energy crisis in South Africa, Africa (my bad) there have been loads of adverts promoting energy saving. Unfortunately the majority of them stink of self interest. Kinda like “We care about the world as long as it does not impact our product.” - It kills me! My current favorite: *to be read in the most sarcastic way imaginable* The SABC energy saving campaign that encourages viewers to turn off all appliances, except the TV, during peek “energy” hours – go figure … would hate to cut into their advertising budgets! Then we have the likes of Greenpeace who are well known for using guerilla tactics to get the message across. They use viral media in its truest form – to spread the word! The message is awesome; excuse all the bums and I hope this gets you thinking! Sunshine - video powered by Metacafe So unless the sun shines out of your arse, pass this on and make a difference :-) Rant because I can: On a completely unr ...

Fighting for email standards 2007-11-30 01:44:34 As a designer, I am faced with web standards issues on a daily basis. From getting sites to render correctly, to tirelessly fiddling with code in HTML emails to get them to display perfectly. This is all due to web standards, or the lack thereof, across different browser platforms and email clients. Over the years there has been an increasing effort to develop browsers which comply with these web standards. (You can read more about web standards in Gavin’s post, Trying to sell web standards to the uninformed.) The problem that needs to be addressed though, as far as standards go, is the fact that there is extremely little support for HTML based emails. This has in fact has gone backwards instead of progressing. Getting HTML to render correctly across different email clients is time consuming, frustrating and ultimately placing unnecessary costs on your clients. I'm sure you all get emails almost on a daily basis that are an unreadable mess. This is because different mail clien ...

Setting up 301 redirects 2007-11-27 03:54:04 In SEO, one of the most common errors we come across when looking at new websites is that they are not making use of the correct redirects to address their Canonicalization and URL redirecting issues. Just to jog your memory quickly – there are 2 types of redirects. The first is a 301 Permanent redirect and the second a 302 Temporary redirect. Although both do the job of redirecting the old URL to its new location, redirects can cause some logistical issues for your SEO campaign. The 302 Temporary Redirect acts as an indicator to tell the server (or search engine spider) that the redirect is only a temporary one, and that the old URL is still more relevant than the current (temporary) destination. In the case of a 301 Permanent redirect, the server (or spider) takes note that the old page is no longer relevant and that all the relevance from the old URL should be carried over to the new destination. Relevance, as we know, is important to search engines and without using a 301 ...

Why eMarketing is like the Days of Our Lives 2007-11-26 07:04:15 Web Development is your daughter; Conversion Optimisation is your son. Your Online Reputation is living in a Facebook Social Ads page. PPC using Google Adwords’ is the cousin of an SEM strategy who was married to an Email Marketing campaign who got caught between the banner-advertising grandparents’ Affiliate Marketing affairs and a secretary who loved Viral Videos who happened to stumble upon a WebPR article that let the cat out of the SEO’s white hat. They’re all suspect when updating the Social Network from their Mobile phones. Got it? Well your company’s bottom line depends on it. Like a soapie that you've never watched before it's hard to understand and piece together all the roles that the characters in the eMarketing show play. But once you have it figured out it’s pretty easy to understand. Thankfully there’s eMarketing over Breakfast to speed the process up a bit. Come and have breakfast with us, we’ll introduce you to ...

Meet my friend Pain, fool! 2007-11-25 02:04:22 This Snickers ad is a bit old and dated now, but I remember the buzz that it caused about a year ago when most of us were still stuck in our tongue-in-cheek retro-appreciation of David Hasselhoff, Chuck Norris and Mr T. Riding on the fad it managed to find itself in quite a few inboxes and blogs. Comment on "Meet my friend Pain, fool!" ...

Mom is Santa 2007-11-24 00:23:19 Ouch! How's this for a cringe-worthy Christmas ad from CardClips? Ho ho ho... Comment on "Mom is Santa" ...

Technostalgia Just Aint What is Used to Be 2007-11-23 06:48:27 Nothing has quite been the same for me since I first got online. My first ventures online were across a 14.4 Kbps modem downloading Grand Funk guitar tabs and fooling around with Back Orifice over mIRC – running up ludicrous Telkom bills that I’d have to explain to my parents at the start of every month. I’m one of those people that are never bored online, and I’ve been online long enough to watch it evolve from a lackadaisical cesspool of spam porn and webpages with way too many gifs, into a veritable goldmine of logic, ideas and latent potential. Here are a few terms which aren’t tossed around quite as frequently as they were in the 90s: Telnet Netiquette ASL? Flaming Gopher The Y2K Virus Virtual Reality Bulletin Board Service Netscape Navigator And, with time, terms like MySpace, Outlook and Chris Crocker will most likely also fade out into obscurity. Comment on "Technostalgia Just Aint What is Used to Be" ...

What's a good conversion rate for my website? 2007-11-23 01:19:36 I found this post on the Top 10 US Online Retailers by Conversion Rate on Grokdotcom.com… 1800flowers.com - 29.4% Proflowers.com - 25.9& Roamans - 21.4% QVC - 19.7% Talbots - 17% Lane Bryant Catalog - 16.7% LL Bean - 16.6% Ritzcamera.com - 16.2% Office Depot - 16.2% Lands End - 15.7% Source: Nielsen/NetRatings Eish! In my experience, the vast majority of websites convert less than 1% of their visitors, but that’s because conversion optimisation is generally the last thing on the mind of the website owner - unfortunately.   As Bryan said “Tell me why your goal isn’t a 10% conversion rate?” Comment on "What's a good conversion rate for my website?" ...

www.google.your.back.yard 2007-11-22 02:32:23 Recently, there's been quite a bit of discussion around Google’s localised search extension on Google Web Master Tools (WMT). The addition allows web masters to specify if any section on their site (top level domain, sub-domain, or directory) targets a specific geo location. The location can range from country right down to suburb level. Sound complicated? Well, Google has spent a lot of money incorporating this into their algorithm. By making use of the your (the searchers) IP address, they can accurately pin point your location down to your suburb. Hence being able to supply you relevant results for services in your community. To briefly explain: If you had a small locksmith service in Clapham – London, then you would only need to optimise your website for the phrase Locksmith after which you would log into Google WMT. You would then, on the dashboard, go to “Tools” and click "onset geographic target”, then select the option “Associate a ... Google

Viral Video poised to explode and take South Africa with it! 2007-11-21 05:33:38 Viral Marketing is one of the eMarketing services South Africa is yet to fully embrace and utilise to its full potential - even though it is tremendously powerful and provides an ROI right up with the rest of the high return yielding services. The reason for this slow uptake is two-fold: Firstly, South Africa is rather short in the bandwidth department. Individuals lack the breathing space to send really cool emails/videos around (we tend to get into trouble…or burst our all too expensive cap). Secondly, the market place is still quite unaware of the strength of this eMarketing service. Last week was an interesting one for me and it shed a lot of light on just how fruitful the next couple of years are going to be for South Africa – certainly from an online perspective. It started off on Monday (as weeks tend to) when I flew to Jo’burg and met with Stafford Massie of Google South Africa for a very interesting and reassuring chat. From what he was saying, Google ...