state of the_net_issue_22_[1.76_mb]

State of the Netessential eBusiness intelligence for Irish managers

A quarterly bulletin on online activity in Ireland ISSN: 1649

Compiled by AMAS in association with the Irish Internet Association

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issue 22 Autumn 2011

improved and marketed. As Google continuously develops its search platform and its algorithms, internet consumers are becoming savvier about refining searches and finding better matches for their queries.

Google searches deliver leads, for online and offline businesses. And while there is clear value for B2C businesses this search-based world can deliver big-time too for B2B businesses.

Google searches are used by B2B buyers to seek details of new suppliers, pre-qualify bidders for contracts, conduct background checks and to learn more about the people behind the businesses they may deal with.

Poor Google rankings translate into missed business opportunities – sales, engagement and market intelligence. Accessing and interpreting the vast array of data available through free Google tools provides valuable insights into customers, their habits and

preferences for the goods and services on offer. Used well, such data can be used to develop or improve the product or service offering.

So how do you get into Google’s good books? The answer is multi-faceted but comes down ultimately to routine tasks: • Understanding your audience and their needs• Publishing content on a technology platform that is search-friendly and fast• Updating your site regularly with relevant content• Building authority through links and references from authoritative sites• Integrating social media and other channels effectively• Meticulously evaluating site traffic, search behaviour and acting on the trends

Too often a new website which sets out ambitiously to achieve top Google rankings fails because this is seen as a project, not a process. Also, less attention is often paid to the grind of achieving good

organic (free) listings compared with the relatively quick and easy path to page one by advertising on Google and competitors Bing and Yahoo.

Google will continue to innovate, upgrade and add new search features and may continue to attract more legal actions as its domination grows. Internet users will become increasingly more sophisticated in how they use search.

For businesses, there is a huge learning curve but one which Google is happy to help with. Its free online courses are clearly commercially motivated – the more who learn how to run a Google AdWords campaign, the more they will invest in search advertising – but they are the best available. Better indeed, we believe, than many paid-for courses in Ireland.

It’s on the marketing wish list for many businesses – get to the top of the Google rankings and stay there. But how you can create a good presence on planet Google is not always understood. Neither is the real value that the giant gorilla of online search has to a business.

The value begins and ends with customers. A decade ago, or less, they would have turned to the small ads in a newspaper or a local directory to buy a new car, look for a local plumber or start the hunt for a new job. Instead, today they pour in their millions onto Google and trust it to interrogate a sea of web content to deliver relevant results – locally, nationally and globally.

Their search behaviour shapes their purchasing behaviour, how they engage with brands and how products and services are being developed,

In numbers

€48m Value of Irish search advertising market1

54%Proportion of small business owners who would pay for a search listing2

€9.18Example of costly keywords, in this

case “solicitors personal injury”

Where are you on planet Google?

Aileen O’Toole, Managing Director, AMAS

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Sources: 1 IAB Ireland/PwC Adspend study 20102 Ipsos MRBI study of SMEs, November 2010

Ireland has made significant strides in narrowing the gap in broadband adoption with the EU27. Fifty seven per cent of households had broadband in 2010, just three percentage points off the European average. Back in 2005, broadband adoption levels were just 7.4%, which put Ireland in the bottom five among EU countries. Now more than half of Irish households have broadband access.

Separately, the latest ComReg quarterly data research found that broadband subscriptions at the end of March 2011 had increased by 2.1% to 1.62 million from the previous quarter and 10.4% on the previous year. Mobile now accounts for 36% of broadband subscriptions.

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Ireland

EU27

1. Broadband Households with broadband access 2005-2010

Source: OECD, Communications Outlook 2011

© AMAS graphic (www.amas.ie)

What are internet penetration levels in Ireland? How are Irish people using the internet? The answers to the most common questions posed about internet use in Ireland are disclosed in a new European Commission analysis. The main findings, shown in the graphic, indicate a level of digital maturity among Irish people and either the elimination or narrowing of the gaps with other EU27 countries.

At 72%, the number of Irish households with internet access at home is marginally ahead of the EU average. The proportion of people who are considered regular users,

defined as accessing the internet at least once a week, is 64%, slightly ahead of the EU27 average. We score best in laptop use – with 32% saying they use a laptop to access the internet, compared with 19% in the EU27.

Other notable statistics include the proportion of Irish people who download games or other media (20%), who create content for sharing online (14%), who seek information about health (27%), who interact with government services online (27%) and who have never used the internet (27%).

Source: European Commission, Digital Agenda for Europe, June 2011

Profile of Ireland online

2. Internet Use72%of households access the internet at home

64%of population are regular internet users

57%of population look for information about goods online

21%of population read newspapers or magazines online

34%of population use online banking

36%of population order goods or services online

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Top Trends

the opportunity to win online

3. Privacy online Never mind privacy concerns, or that personal data posted on a social networking site can be accessed by a prospective employer. Irish people like to volunteer personal information online, much more so than in other European countries, Eurobarometer research says.

Ireland ranks highest in the EU for divulging information about what we do, where we go and what we like. Irish people with social media accounts are also noticeably more contactable online than the average European.

Almost half post their addresses on their profile page while more than a quarter post their mobile phone numbers. These figures put us ahead of the EU average, where 39% publish addresses and 23% publish telephone details on their social network pages. Remarkably, almost one in ten Irish social networkers publish their passport numbers. Source: Special Eurobarometer 359, June 2011

What we share on social media

4. LocalisationIreland exported over €15 billion worth of goods to the six EU coun-tries listed in the graph in the first half of this year.

It seems that a large number of people from those same countries are not keen on the idea of carrying out online transactions in English, according to a 2011 Eurobarometer report on user language preference.

Eurobarometer looked at the online language preferences of nearly 14,000 respondents from across Europe and found that just under half felt they were miss-ing out on interesting information if the web-site was not available in their own language.

On average, 90% said that, when available, they always use a website in their own language.

Source: Flash Eurobarometer, User Language Preferences Online, May 2011. (Data January 2011)

mobile

26%

photos

54%

address

49%

name

85%

nationality

61%

hobbies

52%

Graph title


Disagree Agree

Italy 61 35

Spain 50 51

France 49 50

Germany 40 59

Belgium 33 63

Netherlands 32 67

EU27 44 53

Accept an English website

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Percentages above add to totals other than 100 due to rounding and “don’t know” responses

www.amas.ie

5. Cookie chaosYou can hardly move on the web without bumping into cookies – those nuggets of information that a site can put on your computer and retrieve later to recognise you or your machine. Cookies are used for everything from site metrics to serving up adverts or remembering a shopping basket as you hop from page to page.

In July, Ireland introduced new online privacy regulations: in particular, sites must now obtain consent from visitors before issuing persistent cookies (the ones that linger, unlike session cookies that disappear once you leave a site).

How many Irish organisations are affected? How should they change their sites to comply with the new rules? The situation is confusing, with conflicting interpretations, but one thing is clear: your website probably already uses this type of cookie.

282 websites with

no cookies

websiteswith cookies

Source: AMAS survey, August 2011


Websites with cookies

In August 2011 AMAS surveyed a sample of 30 leading Irish websites. Just two didn’t use any cookies. The rest used a total of 220 cookies – over seven per site. Of these, 123 were persistent cookies – about four per site – and all 28 sites had at least one persistent cookie.

One Irish site in the survey had a total of

20 cookies, of which nine were persistent. Another had a cookie with an expiry date a quarter century from now – 22 August 2026. Yes, cookies are set to be around for a long, long time to come.

We also tested six localised sites of major international players and found similar results.

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20.2

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8.8

6.3

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Don’t know

21-30%

11-20%

31-40%

51+%

41-50%

0-10%

Average open rates51%49% Yes

No

Source: Newsweaver and Marketing Institute of Ireland, Email Marketing Insight 2011

Social media in emails6. Email

Click-through rates (CTRs) and open rates are the most important metrics used by Irish marketers to track the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns. Research conducted by Newsweaver among 400 members of the Marketing Institute of Ireland confirmed that email continues to be popular, with 84% saying it was an important part of their marketing strategy.

Sixty per cent of the sample said that they track CTRs, and 54% track open rates. As the graph shows, open rates vary considerably but an impressive fifth of the sample state they are achieving open rates of between 21% to 30% on their emails. Open rates for B2B campaigns appear to have the edge on those for B2C campaigns.

Social media is increasingly being integrated into email campaigns, with just over half of the sample saying that it is a feature of their mailshots. Usually, that takes the form of embedding links to Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn accounts but some marketers go further and allow their subscribers to “like” or “share” the email content.

Email marketing is not without its challenges, the greatest of which were identified as “inbox overload” and “spam”, followed by “deliverability” and “unwillingness of people to opt in to new email lists”.



Top Trends

Cloud computing was the recurring tech conference theme of 2010, but have we matured from hype to reality since then? Outside media and conference coverage, the focus for many businesses - particularly within the SME and public sectors - has shifted from a technology indulgence to more practical questions, including an appropriate

cloud deployment strategy and tactics for deployment.

The IIA Cloud Computing Working Group carries out an annual survey to measure cloud computing in Ireland. This has consistently identified three high-level challenges for SME cloud deployment: access to quality broadband, level of understanding and security concerns. The recent survey by the small business association ISME of its members cited the same issues and recorded similar results.

We are at somewhat of an impasse without the basic broadband infrastructures in place. But if we proceed

on the understanding and good faith that this is a Government priority, we can focus on the positive. In the ISME study, 46% of members had reduced operating costs by introducing a more aggressive strategy for online business. SMEs are clearly benefiting from their investment and this message is resonating.

But what of the other two challenges - lack of understanding/expertise and security concerns? The IIA and ISME surveys recorded broadly similar results. For example, “lack of in-house expertise” was cited by 40% of ISME respondents and “lack of understanding” was cited by 35% of IIA respondents.

The IIA is committed to addressing these issues, and the Cloud Computing Working Group has designed its Decision Support Matrix to support Irish businesses in devising a contextually appropriate cloud deployment strategy.And since Minister Bruton’s announcement at the IIA annual conference of a €5m investment in a cloud computing centre, the Government has also convened its own high-level cloud computing forum, comprising government department representatives and state agencies. The IIA has made a submission to the forum to ensure perspectives and insights from vendors, SMEs and MNCs.

Down to earth on the Cloud

Joan Mulvihill CEO, Irish Internet Association

Maybe it’s because Irish people are unusually hirsute. Or maybe we just can’t resist some pampering. Either way, Irish people seem to be throwing a lot of money at laser hair removal lately – about €273,000 in July alone, according to online deals hub Sift.ie. It’s a strange statistic for a country that is wading neck-deep through a recession, but it’s not the only one.

Deals for fish pedicures, spa treatments, hairdressing and dermatological therapies have become increasingly popular over recent months. The online deals phenomenon is little over a year old but it has grabbed the attention of Irish consumers.

Some 120,000 people purchased online deals in July 2011 from the likes of Living Social, Groupon (CityDeal) and GrabOne, according to data from Sift.ie. These deals were worth an estimated €3.9 million worth of sales in July – more than double what they generated in May 2011.

7. Online deals

Groupon remains the biggest of the deals companies with a 53% market share, while LivingSocial takes second place at 22%, according to this data.

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May 11 June 11 July 11

Value of online deals in millions

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May 11 June 11 July 11


1.5

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Source: Sift.ie

Sift.ie tracks code and verifies its information with deals websites

© AMAS Ltd.Published by AMAS Ltd., 38 Lr. Leeson Street, Dublin 2, Ireland. Tel: +353 1 6610499

Email: [email protected] Web: www.amas.ie

Irish exporters need to rethink how they use the internet to tackle new markets, in the light of the research published about consumer buying behaviour (see page 3 Localisation). The takeaway is that people in many European markets won’t buy from a company whose website is not in their own language.

Nor, it would appear from other research, are they likely to engage with a business which offers an English-only website or, worse, a site with partial or poor translation. On top of this, exporters won’t make real strides in overseas markets if they consider localisation to be

all about translation.A company website acts as a silent but powerful sales and/or marketing representative in an export market. It is where the prospective buyer will go to check out credentials and get a sense of the company, its products and services.

ProgressA couple of minutes, if even that, on the website will resolve the questions that buyers have about the prospective supplier and whether they want to progress to the next stage of the buying cycle.

Relevant, professionally translated content is very important. But so too are some other localisation issues: • Can the site be found through that market’s

search engines? • Is the technology platform capable of supporting the chosen languages? • Is the content buyer-focused and up to date? • Is the messaging and imagery appropriate to the audience and the chosen market? • Is there an infrastructure in place, in that market or at head office, to handle queries?

Exporters who engage in active prospecting in target markets –

going to trade shows, or cold-calling prospective customers – can find that the absence of a professional, localised web presence damages the sales drive.

But those who recognise the importance of localisation, and invest in planning and tuning their web presence to match market needs, can reap real returns.

AMAS conducts localisation planning as part of an internet strategy service for exporters.

Localisation is about more than translation

AMAS: what we doAMAS is an internet consultancy with a simple goal – help our clients to exploit the internet. Large corporates, government bodies and, increasingly, high-potential businesses retain us to develop and help implement internet strategies.

We cut through the clutter and the complexity to allow our clients to capitalise on the unlimited opportunities offered by the internet.

Services:• Strategy• Research• User experience• Content• Training • Marketing• Project management

Fiachra Ó MarcaighDirector, AMAS

AMAS has won a contract to devise an internet strategy for Northern Ireland Electricity (NIE), which owns and maintains the electricity network and which was recently acquired by the ESB.

The contract involves:

• Conducting audience research for a new web presence• Gathering internal and stakeholder requirements

• Scoping and specifying website and applications • Assisting NIE to procure website design and site technologies• Supporting the implementation of the web strategy

Follow us:For digital research and insights, follow AMAS on Twitter @AMASinternet

Contact Us: Aileen O’Toole, Managing Director on +353 1 6610499 or [email protected]

AMAS wins NIE internet contract