Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Google Alert - strategic tool to keep a watch on your competitors' moves

Internet is too large to keep a tab on any single entity forgot about the flock of competitors. What if you wish to be continuously updated about moves your competitors make in the market - new blogs, twitter updates, news, forum discussion or video post. Google Alert can help you do that.

Google Alert is here for quite a long time and are used by many to stay updated on the subject of their interest. Few smart organisations use the service as a strategic tool to stay updated about their competitors’ move in the market - as and when they happen, automatically delivered in the mailbox.



How to setup Google Alert?

  1. Go to http://www.google.com/alerts
  2. Specify term or phrase (similar to search term) you wish to receive alerts for. For example name of your competitor or specific product of a competitor.
  3. Select the type of contents you wish Google to scan to send you updates from - Blogs, News, Updates (mostly from Twitter), Discussion and Video. You can also specify Everything here to receive updates from all types of contents.
  4. Select frequency - Daily, Weekly or As it happens.
  5. Specify whether you want to receive the best results only or all the results.
  6. How you want to receive the alerts - as an email or as an RSS feed?
  7. Click on Create Alert and Its done.
  8. You can manage your alerts later on to delete or edit alerts that you have setup.

Google Alert is really effective in sending updates. Try it and share your experience.

You can tell us what you want to read on our blogs on feedback@wrofit.com.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

How Google Instant Preview can affect your web traffic and what actions you can take?

First of all a very happy new year from Wrofit family. May this year bring tremendous success to your business.

Second, thanks for your feedback on our blogs. We concluded from the mails that most of you want to learn more about practical aspects of online business success. We have taken a note of that and now framing our writing as per your requirements.


This is the first blog in new year about a recently launched feature in Google search called  Instant Preview. It seems very promising and may get adopted by users as a routine way of search efficiency. If this happens (chances are very bright), this blogs would prove very useful for traffic management. Do send your feedback on feedback@wrofit.com.


After Google Instant Google has recently introduced Instant Preview – a search feature that lets you see the screenshot of a page before you visit the site. 




It saves a lot of time and makes your search much more efficient. Just click on the tiny magnifying glass next to the search results and Google will show you the screenshot of the page right there. Interesting hmmm!!

How this new feature will affect traffic to your website coming from Google and what you need to do to maintain leadership position?

You have to be more predictive about information needs of your target audience

If you think twice, Instant Preview provides an additional level of search – search inside your webpage even without actually visiting it. Google Instant Preview shows orange boxes inside the snapshot highlighting the search phrase on your webpage. 






You have to be smarter and more predictive about information needs of your prospective visitors and have to highlight areas/headings on your web pages containing relevant information. Smart use of headings, colors, images and videos will make a big difference here. Again this will pose new challenges to information architectures at web design companies.

It will set professional apart from the unprofessional

Your website layout always translates into how professional you are about your business and how serious you are about quality of your products/services. Now potential customers can sense your quality commitment even before landing your website. It s threat much larger than you assume and make a huge impact on your top and bottom line if you still are reluctant to spend for quality high web presence.

Flash hurts on Google Instant Preview

Flash animation/effect can be a great way to give your visitors engaging and unforgettable experience but it will be of little use to attract visitors through Instant Preview and probably may work against you. This could be hurting to Flash websites but Google Instant preview shows annoying images for Flash websites similar to what you see when Flash plug in is not installed on your computer. 






I hope Google must be working on this as Flash/Flex are very promising as web development platform.

It will bring more qualified visitors

Not all visitors and prospects, neither all prospects are customers. Instant Preview will bring more qualified visitors to your website. This may shrink numbers in your Google Analytics for a while but in long run, this will make you more productive as an organization by focusing your resources on more promising prospects.

Being unique will pay

Typical will be invisible - that’s true even for the websites. Human beings are always attracted towards novelty especially when there is no cost involved. Now you have to be unique in addition to being professional and attractive. This will give rise to innovation in web design approach especially in a country like India where most marketers and agencies are stuck with cliché type of web design methodologies.


Do send your feedback on feedback@wrofit.com. It will motivate us working an extra hour a day to bring you more useful stuff.