twitterpunch

Ever wondered why you tweet pictures of your cat, tweet about the cost of organic food, or tweet about your social incompetence? Help is at hand, this app will punch you every time you twitter; not just when you do lame, naval gazing tweets.

boat

Useful if you are stuck on an island based reality tv show with 12 muppets and a conflict-baiting camera crew.

ipillow

Really fricking handy when you are on long flights, or pesky train-replacement buses.

vegitracker

Grr! Rip off farmers markets. Simply take a photo of the offending £7 organic vegetable, and this app simultaneously gives you its real supermarket price and tells you what it is; ‘purple sprouting broccoli’ ah!

shawifezam

Make ill communication between you and your partner an historical footnote, by holding your iphone up to your wife/girlfriend mid rant, even 2 seconds is enough, and it will translate to what they really mean. “babble babble babble babble”, ah shawifezam says: ‘Pay me more attention rather than wanking over that fucking iphone’.

catnav

Ever wondered where Flossy goes in the day? Does she really shit in your neighbours garden, as per their allegations? This app tracks your cat’s position on Google maps and publishes it to other catnav users, so you can see your kitty neighbourhood and perhaps impose a curfew if she is fraternizing with that unsavoury tom from number 57.

iphone pro app

This app increases battery life, gives you a 5mp xenon flash camera, enables MMS messages and gives you the connectivity of Bluetooth all for $4.59.

bushcutter

Ditch dragging that epilator on holiday, this app makes light work of even the most forest-like unsightly bikini line.

twat tagger

Take a photo of any twat, any where in the world, and this app will automatically geotag the photo and adds the person to an online facial recognition database so other app users can be alerted when they’ve enter a neighbourhood with a high propensity of twats.

owl unlimited

Having a problem keep track of all your owl’s? This app brings owl management to a whole new level. With geo-owling, feather tracking, and falconry glove care tips all in one place. Solving life’s little problems one app at a time.

Feel free to add your suggestions for iphone apps that money can’t buy in the comments…  Until next time.

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1. Adwords, position #5

If you’ve got an eshop you’ve probably got a Google Adwords campaign running and you are constantly monitoring and re-selecting keywords and bid prices you are paying.  In an expensive keyword niche (bids over £2.00 a-plenty) for a client of mine, I’ve been targeting position 5 with some success.

I’ve not been paying the ludicrous amounts that others are bidding on in this niche. But been tidily mopping up customers for my client at a decent pay-per-click rate. The theory is that your competitors want the top spots, and ad results results 1-3 appear in the main pane, making result 4 the top result in right pane, and a natural psychological target to aim for. However others may be aiming for this right-side top spot, so you can get much better value being position 5, one below this… Try it you can only save money.

2. The more of the internet you own – the more traffic you’ll get

Why not add product reviews and FAQ’s to each product? The more pages that you have on the web, that are related to each product, the more perceived relevance to the topic/item Google will adorn you with.

It’s fairly simple to add a product FAQ module to an eshop, if you have Magento or Oscommerce there are modules for this already. Writing FAQ text should be straightforward, what are it’s uses?, who else uses it?, things to consider?, etc, and it will extra keyword filled pages to your shop. Lovely.

Product reviews, likewise. You can get modules for your eshop and they are fairly easy to set up. But this time you’ll have to ask some of your trusty shoppers for feedback. If they’ve found your shop efficient, they will probably be ok with adding a product review, especially if you direct them to the right page, and thank them, and then you’ll have loads more google indexable lovely content.

3. Google Local

The increasing importance of the Google Locals results (those that appear as  a block in the natural search) can’t be underestimated. An sure you’ve seen them (if you haven’t just do a search now for “plumber <your local city>”). This means that you really must spend some time getting your local listing right. Add photos, opening times, customer reviews, It will all help you. If you have offices/home that is fairly central do add a place mark, it will also do you a favour.

4. Youtube product reviews

Google is integrating video results from Youtube (Google owns Youtube), into it’s search engine results pages (SERP’s). So if you’ve got a cam, and have time to add a short video reviews/road tests of several of your products, then do it! It’s all going to help add to your branding and number of results you have on page 1 of your keywords SERP’s.

Don’t forget to add an ident/branding to your company on the video so people can type the URL in afterwards.

5. Livechat

Am sure you’ve seen the “to speak to a live person click here”, and if you click, a dialog opens with a salesperson from the site. If you’ve paid for Adwords visitors you really want to be converting as many of them as possible into purchasing customers not throwing your money away.

There are several systems out there and they are all fairly easy to integrate. They could increase your conversion rate dramatically! Got to be worth a shot.

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Hope you have a few more ideas  how you can improve your eshop, and make it a success (when the high street  is suffering!)

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Recruitment consultant, and temporary staff

“Companies are not taking on new permanent staff. So we are focusing much more on promoting the flexibility of temporary staff”, says Chris Boskall of a local recruitment agency. “We’ve also taken the measure of guaranteeing our staff, if our staff don’t turn up, we offer compensation to the company. This is a great way of enabling companies to take on staff with minimum risk”

“We’ve been expanding the number of pages in our eshop. Now for each product in our eshop, we have a set of frequently asked questions, this increases the page we have indexed in Google, and the likelihood of our ranking increasing.”, says Tim Taylor, manger of an office communications system eshop. “The second thing we’ve done is started to create a set of product review videos which we’ve put on youtube, as google is increasingly adding video results to its search”

Cornershop, and door drop

“We’ve seen less contractors come in for their morning pasties as building work slows, locals not buying as much bread/milk/newspapers, and even kids not coming in after school for sweets. The recessions is hitting us from all angles”, says Anthony Paul, owner of small cornershop in Swansea.

“We’re only now awaking up to how we can get more customers in. We have some great prices on wine and beer, so we’re starting a local newsletter for the neighbouring street, and we’re adding community news, photos of our friendly staff, and information on our offers”, Continues Anthony, “and doing a fortnightly ‘neighbourhood news’ leaflet drop to our surrounding streets. We are optimistic we can survive”.

Property Solicitors, and open door surgeries

“It was clear to us that property conveyancing would be hit, so we’ve been diversifying our services to include wills and probate, and commercial property -  which we’ve found is still going strong compared to residential”, says Karen Smith director of a Cardiff solicitors. “We’ve started a Google Adwords campaign, and a started a series of ‘open door surgeries’ in surrounding communities where people can drop in and discuss their legal issues. We’ve had some great press of this, and are expanding the number of surgeries we offer.”

PR Company, and e-newsletters

“Having a client list that we keep close contact with, we are in-tune with their sentiments, and try and react to their needs. That said, the recession really has hit the PR industry. Advertising and marketing are the first areas to be cut, where inversely these areas are critical to a companies survival”, says Tom Hall manager of 4 person PR agency.

Tom continues, “Our strategy has to been to reiterate our benefits, namely consistent measurable exposure for businesses, and now push our ongoing marketing tools such as management of company’s e-newsletter and their website content with search engines in mind”

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He touched on the recession, which is why I’m mentioning him here, and he said a few interesting things:

The first thing he said was about the virtual quality of money – the fact that it’s not real. It’s been said before but is always worth repeating. If you think about that for a while your mind takes you to some interesting places and provide some interesting thoughts about your work and how you do it.

The third thing was that he gets very annoyed with pundits on the news comparing it with recessions of the past (‘82, 70’s, 30’s) as globalisation has made this recession completely unique and therefore incomparable He was frustrated that nobody on the political stage had picked this point up. This is a really good point, and if like me you listen to the news too much it might be worth keeping in mind; there are no historical precedents for this and although we know what caused it, we don’t know how it will pan out. This time there are millions and millions more people in the world who a) have more and b) want more than any other time in the past.

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