Fergal's Blog

This is a sticky post so I'll keep it short! Please use the form at top right to sign up for the latest updates and information from the blog, and you'll get a free preview of our SEO for Big eCommerce e-book. for even more frequent updates, follow me on twitter...

Our friend and colleague, Alan Bell is now running the Referral Institute for Dublin South, and he's bringing Master Trainer Jill Green over to run A Room Full of Gems - and how to network with them... A workshop which will teach you how to quickly recognize the behavioural "style" of anyone.

Jill will be leading you through the simple, yet powerful GEMS style system, which helps to identify the best way to communicate and network with people based on certain aspects of their personal style. Take a look at the flyer (PDF) for details and a special "better-than-half-price" offer.

I'll be attending, so hopefully see you there!

by Paddy Ryan and Fergal Byrne

The Problem

The core issue underlying Ireland’s loss of business competitiveness is, and remains, inflated commercial and domestic property prices and rents.

• Business rents are still artificially inflating costs, and most businesses are locked into paying inflated rents that cannot be reviewed downwards.
• The level of salary required to pay for accommodation (rented or purchased) is too high for Irish business to be internationally competitive.
• Property costs are the main driver of relatively high minimum wages and social welfare benefits.
• The massive expansion of the Public Sector payroll has been accelerated by the inflation in property costs.
• Ultimately a huge chunk of the excessive costs in our economy accrue back to the property dinosaur.

NAMA - Part of the Problem, or Part of the Solution?

As NAMA acquires an extremely large portfolio of non-performing loans whose primary collateral are property assets, how is it going to generate income from, or dispose of, this collateral, and protect the Irish taxpayer from huge losses? Indeed, vast tracts of unused commercial and domestic property will rapidly deteriorate if left unused for long periods of time, thus reducing the eventual market value of the assets.
My suggestion is to take these unused and unsellable property assets, effectively owned by NAMA, and make it available to small businesses, for significantly reduced (or free) rents. In return, NAMA could take a modest stake in supported companies, with buyback options for the owners on a 5 to 10 year timescale.
This will have the following effects:

1. Reduce companies' cost base, making many Irish Business more competitive.
2. Save jobs, particularly in the SME sector, where rents currently constitute an outrageous portion of costs, often the difference between success and failure for the business.
3. An effectively free alternative to direct subsidies and investments in “exporting” companies (employment subsidy scheme).
4. Create real downward pressure on the (not very) free commercial property market sector.
5. Prevent deterioration of unused property, thus safeguarding those assets until they can be sold on at a decent price.
6. Generate revenue in the medium to long term from the “buyback” options.

I was listening to the news about the much-delayed launch of the Space Shuttle, and after reading News.com's report of a high number of "debris incidents" an idea struck me.

The video of the debris impacts during the ill-fated Columbia Mission reminded me of snowballs hitting a wall, shattering on impact and turning into a cloud of powder and fragments. I thought "why not put some kind of barrier in front of the heat shield surfaces to take the impact and smash the larger fragments into dust?"

Well, of course, they would have done that if it were practical - wouldn't they? If so, then clearly the addition of some solid barrier or enclosure for the fragile surfaces has been considered and rejected for reasons of weight or complexity. But is there some way of achieving the same benefits at low cost in money, complexity and weight?

Yes, I believe. Anyone who's seen a snowball strike a wire fence would know that the snowball is sliced and smashed into harmlessness very effectively, while not requiring a strong or solid structure. What if NASA placed a shroud of chicken wire (or some high-tech version of same) held out at one meter from the Orbiter's skin? This would be very lightweight and would require minimal support to maintain its shape. The "shroud" could be removed from the Orbiter and stowed aboard for re-use, or simply be allowed to burn off during re-entry.

Is this a crazy idea, or might it just work? Anyone reading this who can pass it on to the guys in NASA, please do so let me know.

Search Engine Optimisation seems to be so important these days, every second person I meet calls themselves an SEO expert. Perhaps they are, but I think that SEO is really a matter of common sense and creative engineering. My partner-in-crime, Paddy Ryan, is currently putting together one of his "Paddy's 1-Pagers" on the subject of SEO for typical information/brochure websites.

Here at Adnet, we've been involved in a number of much larger websites, in particular what we call "Big eCommerce" where the product catalogue can include 10,000-1,000,000+ individual products. Way back in 1998, we built Ireland's first 1 million book eCommerce website for Eason books, and our most recent large website, Enterprise Online, currently has 50,000 products in thousands of categories.

Over more than a decade, we've gained a real understanding of the very great differences between small (less than 100 pages) and very large websites, especially when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. It's obviously impossible to handcraft the content of every page when you have 100,000 of them. It's also clearly impossible to rely on getting inward links to this number of pages.

So, how do some large websites get massive levels of organic search engine traffic, and how do you get your own large website to perform as well? Obviously, that's what this eBook is all about.

The eBook is very easy to read, follow and put into practice. It's made up of a series of "Tips" which each provides a lesson on large-scale SEO, with information from our research and experience on why things work the way they do, how to approach improving aspects of your own large site, and links to further information, tools and resources.

Preview the eBook Now

We've put Part I of the eBook up on this site for free. It'll give you a lot more than a flavour of the content and usefulness of the eBook - you'll be able to start improving your natural search engine traffic just by using the information and insights contained in this free preview. Here's what's covered:

• Introduction to the eBook - how big sites differ so much from small ones.


• Tip 0 - Before You Start things you should do to get basic information on the performance of your web site; setting up analytics and XML Sitemaps


• Tip 1 - There Are Only 5 Pages - recognise that your large web site only really has 5 different types of page, and tailor your efforts to each one. What to concentrate on for each type of page, and what kind of search engine traffic to expect for each.

To get your preview copy of the eBook, simply sign up for my mailing list at top right, and you'll get a link to Part I on the thank-you page.

Dear Minister,

For the next few months, you and your officials in the Department of Finance will be engaged in several rounds of discussions with the other Government Departments in order to arrive at the 2010 Book of Estimates.

This process is known to some as the "Milk Round" but clearly there won't be so much cream this time...

I have an idea which might be of interest to you and which could, if implemented in some fashion, save this country from the very worst effects of the Budget you are currently planning this Winter.

The traditional procedure, as you know, is for Finance negotiators to tell sections of Departments that their budgets are going to be X% of last year's, and then following some haggling they agree some figure between X and 100%.

My idea is to instead walk in and say "Your budget is, as of this moment, exactly zero, and if you want any money from us you must construct a valid case for every million you seek."

This will, in almost all cases, result in a figure well below the X+ which would normally be arrived at, and will also force the recipients to concentrate their reduced budgets on the most vital areas of expenditure, rather than the usual "filling-out" which is normally necessary to spend out the previous years' allocation.

I spoke to Tom Kitt and Pat Rabbitte about this last evening, and they indicated that there's the kernel of something worth considering here. I explained to Deputy Kitt in particular that, in the face of the fact that Fianna Fail are doomed to lose every election in the forseeable future, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by adopting the most radical measures to rescue the country from the mess you've gotten it into.

It is possible, in my view, for some version of this approach to yield dramatic savings in Budget 2010, possibly of such magnitude that resources can be found to stimulate economic activity in the same Budget, as opposed to the otherwise inevitable drain which we all currently anticipate.

Yours Sincerely,

Fergal Byrne

This book is a single-volume recipe for saving any small business from the pain and suffering of (in his words) "infancy" and "adolescent survival." Gerber, using his conversations with a real (though anonymised) small business owner, takes you through the step-by-step process of turning your struggling business (which he calls "the worst job in the world") into a mature, systematised, prosperous vehicle for you to achieve your aims and ambitions.

Unless you're already there, I'm seriously saying stop what you're doing right now and get this book!

As part of our full-service web marketing activity for Budda Bag, we're moving the hugely popular "Budda Blag" to Twitter. We've set up the Twitter account (follow @buddabag here) and followed a number of UK-based users in the areas of interior design, furnishings, property development and so on.

The essence of the Budda Blag is that customers and site visitors can "blag" a free Budda Bag worth several hundred pounds/euro simply by coming up with a snappy, witty, or poignant reason why they deserve one of these highly practical and attractive pieces of furniture. The site currently hosts a web form which people have been using in their hundreds to win each month's prize.

Now Tweeple can use Twitter to do the same, by following @buddabag and the Tweeting their blag starting with "@buddabag" - obviously they'll need to keep their blag nice and short in order to fit into the 140-character limit of a Tweet.

7gut5yicpm

Steve Cassidy, head of Enterprise Online has been shortlisted for the IIA-Enterprise Ireland Internet Entrepreneur Award 2009 for his part in developing the company's eCommerce business, well known for its Live Haggle.

Enterprise Online, developed in partnership with Adnet, can be visited at http://www.enterprisesales.ie

The Irish Internet Association - Enterprise Ireland Net Visionary Awards are among the most-respected Internet-related awards in Ireland, being backed by two of the leading organisations in the industry.

Their site describes the Internet Entrepreneur Award, for which Steve Cassidy has been shortlisted, as follows:

"The Net Visionary Internet Entrepreneur Award recognises individuals that have achieved substantial breakthroughs in building a successful internet business. He or she will have shown strategic vision and demonstrated impressive tactical abilities in achieving success online.

Nominations should be for an individual/company who has built a successful, business enabled by the internet, in the past two years. There should be evidence of long-term sustainability in the business."

The shortlist was decided by a panel of judges (details on the site) but the final recipients will be decided by a public online vote at http://www.iia.ie/net-visionary/vote/ which has just opened.

Steve Cassidy, Managing Director of Enterprise Sales Ltd., which operates the site, has spent the past two years transforming his 15-year-old family business from a supplier dependent exclusively on the Construction industry to the provider of "everything you need" to the domestic, office, educational, government, and industrial sectors. This transformation has been spearheaded through the development of the website and associated activities.

Spending much of his time identifying new sources of needed products at the best possible prices, Steve has also led the development of some unique features on the site itself. The foremost among these is Ireland's only "Live Haggle" - where a customer can make an offer for an item and, within hours, see their own agreed "Haggle Price" appear live when they visit the site to shop.

Steve sees the Haggle as a win-win-win for supplier, himself and his customer. The Haggle is the beginning of a personal connection, where customers can negotiate for an even better price, the supplier can sell more product during a difficult time, and Steve can argue for an improvement in the price for everyone else.

While other online retailers are taking down their phone numbers in an effort to cut costs, Enterprise Online is adding new features to enhance the sense that there are real people ready to assist the site's customers. A sophisticated instant chat system, allows Steve's staff to answer questions about products, delivery and use of the site; every product has an "Ask for Further Information" button, and of course customers can beat down the price by using the Haggle.

The product range has expanded from about 4,000 (mainly construction-related) products in 2006, to more than 30,000 today, including everything from laser cartridges to toilet paper. Another 22,000 tools and DIY products are being loaded up over the next few weeks, followed quickly by a large range of computers and computer supplies.

Unlike many eCommerce sites, which provide optional products like books and music, Enterprise Online specialises in "everything you need" whether for a business or domestic customer. In these challenging times, the last thing people want is to be exploited by being charged over the odds for necessities.

You can vote now for Steve Cassidy by going to the site at http://www.iia.ie/net-visionary/vote/ or click on the Awards banner on Enterprise Online's site at http://www.enterprisesales.ie

Uploaded to pix.ie - rather excellent system there, by the way.

Been reading a number of books, all on Safari:

Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click?
by Susan M. Weinschenk Ph.D.
(Safari, amazon.co.uk, amazon.com - affiliate links)
Based on neuropsychology, this book examines the way real people tend to react to what you do and say with your website. Using a combination of research findings and explanations, the author provides a comprehensible framework for understanding how the way you design your site and the words, images and messages you use can affect your audience in unconscious ways. While you must take a lot of this with a pinch of salt, it's certainly a fascinating and enlightening read.

So What?: How to Communicate What Really Matters to Your Audience
by Mark Magnacca
(Safari)
This excellent book (still in Rough Cut form, but complete bar some edits) looks at the way you communicate with your audience (in the broad sense) and asks you the question they're asking - So What? Using a series of anecdotes and examples, the author shows how letting go of what you want and concentrating on the motivations and needs of your audience can revolutionise the effectiveness of your communication and improve the outcomes.

33 Million People in the Room: How to Create, Influence, and Run a Successful Business with Social Networking
by Juliette Powell
(Safari, amazon.co.uk, amazon.com - affiliate links)
This book is a good introduction to the whole area of using Social Networking sites and systems for your business, has a good overview of the top few sites as well as some interesting niche players.

We've signed up a twitter account @haggleforit for our flagship e-commerce site, Enterprise Online, and we're using it to let people know the kinds of savings they can make using our unique "Live Haggle" feature. We'll let you know how this foray into the world of tweeple develops.

Burren Yoga Holidays and Yoga Retreats is one of our oldest and best website clients. Over a number of years, Dave Brocklebank has developed his content to an enormous and comprehensive resource for anyone interested in Yoga in all its variety. One of the consequences of this has been the great success in drawing high-quality natural search engine traffic to the site, with an excellent conversion to bookings and business.

Over recent years, Dave has been working on learning and honing his skills as a photographer, and with his usual determination has become an excellent and sensitive illustrator of both the activities in the Centre and the beauty of the surrounding countryside. We've just performed a seriously overdue upgrade of the image rotation animation on the front page of the site, which now shows 10 images randomly chosen (each time you load the page) from over a hundred very fine photos provided by Dave.

Today we went live with the major upgrade to the Westport Woods Hotel online booking system. The system now uses BedBookings, which has been fully integrated with the hotel's in-house hotel management software. Live updates travel in both directions to ensure that the online booking system provides up-to-date availability and pricing information.

This development, which has been in progress since early December, is the result of collaboration between Adnet, hotel staff and Paragon Systems. We look forward to further enhancements to the system in the coming weeks and months.

Today we launched the new-look, updated website for Westport Woods Hotel. This represents only the first delivery in a long-term plan to maximise the potential of the hotel using co-ordinated online and offline marketing activities.

The new content, prepared by Lesley Emerson of PR West in Westport, in close collaboration with hotel management and Adnet, is a significant improvement in helping tourists and business travellers find the information on all the products and services provided at the hotel.