Internet Marketing and eCommerce Expert – Nigel Burke's Blog

We have seen different shopping carts and eBay listings but what is one of the most important things you’ve noticed about the products and listings? There is the layout of the site, the functionality and then there is the quality of the product images.

Do your product images look professional? Do they say ‘buy me’ to the viewer?

The Benefits of Great Product Images
Having high quality product images for you shopping cart and website can make or break the success of it. Too often I see websites with poor to average photos of products. The business has done a lot of work to the website in getting it ready and spending money to drive customers to the website, then they display poor photos of their products.

Have a look at the flyers that come in your mail box from Woolworths, Coles and other retailers. All the product images are perfect. They want you to buy their products so they have the best product images. You too can have great product photos by spending a few dollars or buying the equipment and doing it properly yourself.

Do-It-Yourself Photography
If you want to do this yourself because you have a large number of images, a bit of time and a turnover of products, you can invest in some photography tents by searching through eBay. Most digital cameras today can take high quality photos if you know how to. There are a lot of resources on the Internet to show you how.

Professional Photography
If you have a limited number of products that you will have on your website, it may be better to use a third party photography studio. You can send them your products, they’ll take the photos, optimise them, send you quality images and send your products back.

With your new high quality product images, you will be selling more products immediately.

Everyone is talking about internet advertising but how much is really being spent on Internet advertising? Is it increasing or decreasing? Is it all just hype?

No, it is not hype and it is increasing everyday. A report compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) shows Australia’s commitment to this form of advertising with 18.5% growth for 2008-09 financial year compared to the previous financial year. We spent $1.8 billion dollars for the year, ending 30 June 2009 and $453 million in the last quarter.

Where is Internet Advertising Spent?
Internet advertising can be broken down into the following areas including % of total advertising expenditure -

• Search and Directories – 49% (25% growth)
• General Display – 27% (19.6% growth)
• Classifieds – 24% (6% growth)

This is definitely a strong growth area where the big players are putting in large amounts because they see the value in it. I can only see this area increasing compared to other advertising mediums including TV, radio and magazines.

If you are not listed in either of the three main search engines, you are missing a lot of valuable traffic. That is traffic that could generate you sales and leads. But how do you know if you are listed? Do you just type your business name in and if you cannot find your link, then you must not be the search engine at all?

How do you check?
You can check by typing in the following to any search engine – site:yourdomain.com.au (changing the word yourdomain.com.au to your domain name (ie. site:avs.net.au)

• Google
• Yahoo
• Bing

This will bring up a listing of all the entries that the search engine has of your website.

If you no results are found, then you are not listed in that search engine. In the near future, we will show you two ways that will get your site listed on all the major search engines.

Microsoft Windows 7 has been described by experts as simplistic, requires less resources and easier to use. This sure doesn’t sound like a Microsoft product to me but have they got it right this time? Vista bombed out as a resource hog, that slowed down computers, full of bugs and even retailers rolled back to offering Windows XP to customers. If a operating system is not favored by retailers, what are consumers to think?

Windows 7 is a lot less resource hungry. A quick look in Officeworks with two laptops side-by-side, showed that Vista was using 1000 MB of memory and Windows 7 was using only 750 MB of memory. That’s 25% less memory being used, a difference I think that would be noticeable on most computers.

Windows 7 Features
A cool feature for Windows 7 is the multi-touchscreen functionality. This allows you to control the computer with a touchscreen monitor and you can use two hands or fingers on the screen at once. If you have used an iPhone or iTouch, you will know what I mean. You can zoom in and out on objects using two fingers or move them around.

Microsoft are wagering a lot on Windows 7 to be successful but the launch has been relatively quiet which makes you wonder what Microsoft are up to. Bill Gates has not done a big publicity speech and there has not been much in advertising for Windows 7. If anything, people like Gerry Harvey have a lot riding on it because PC sales overall are down.

Here is a link to the tour of Windows 7 – http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/features/tour.aspx

Have you used Windows 7?
Are you running it now?
Are you going to upgrade to Windows 7 and if so, when do you plan on doing it?

I plan on upgrading shortly because I think it’s going to run smoother than Vista and XP.

Nigel Burke

Welcome to my blog. The purpose of this blog is to help Australian businesses succeed on the Internet. You could be setting up your first website or looking at increasing sales on your current website.

The Internet world is constantly evolving and you’re too busy working in your business. It’s near impossible for the average business owner to keep abreast of the latest marketing techniques and web technologies. In a time poor world that we live in, I hope to inform you of the latest developments that you can implement into your online strategies.

Expect to hear the latest news, insights and my advice on running a successful website. This will include information about domains, web design, internet marketing and social media.