Thus, at the moment have had the following extensions available:

Location Extension
Call Extension
Sitelink Extension
Product Extension
Social Extension
Video Extension

Google, however, are testing two more extensions to help us customise our ads (and increase Google’s revenue!)

Communication Extension

This extension allows to collect user information withot the user actially visiting the landing page:

The extension comes in the following flavours:

Subscribe to a newsletter
Request a call
Request an email

The extension should naturally increase the volume of leads. However, there is a question we have to ask before we jump on the new Google wagon: Will that affect lead quality? There is a chance users who submit a contact request without viewing the landing page may quickly drop out of the funnel. That would mean not only a wasted click, but also wasted resources to respond. Is user engagement becoming a fad??

For the Analytics-obsessed: first-click conversion attribution may be difficult as the first click would take place outside the website.

The extension is currently in beta testing in North America, and Google are secretive about their plans for the UK & Europe. Fears have been expressed that full release of the extension have the effect of the first mouse-laden ship arriving in Australia…

Offer Extension

Google’s new extension is primarily directed at e-commerce. The extension would allow users to either directly redeem a special offer by landing them on the relevant offers page, or save or print offer details for in-store redemption:

With voucher websites rapidly gaining advantage over the “traditional” price comparison engines, Google are going with the spirit of the time. The Offers extension is the vanguard of Google Offers, already rolled out in some of US cities: when setting up the extensions, advertisers may choose to land the Extension traffic on a Google-hosted offer page.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the coming months. Advertisers may see improved CTRs and, consequently, quality scores & CPCs. From the SEO perspective, it will certainly be yet another addition to the rich content results on the more and more crowded Google SERPs…

Outside Northe America, Offer Extensions are currently only available to whitelisted users in the UK. Search Star will be testing in the coming months and will duly report!

Here I introduce Joe Leech @mrjoe; User Experience Director at CX Partners, who argues that the structure and design of these forms is an under-appreciated yet incremental part of web site design and usability.

All too often, we come across beautifully designed websites filled with sharp and smart content and appealing, approachable layouts, but come the form-filling-out stage, you find your once reasonable and rational browser-mind wanting to punch the website in the face. We’ve all been there.

Here’s the trouble with forms;

1. What’s a *mandatory field?

The use of asterisks in forms confuses not only the layout, but the poor punters ploughing through the questions, too. Most people won’t bother to notice them, and even if they do, there is usually nothing to explain their meaning. Humans will fill in the forms and humans use words, not symbols. Whilst filling in the details, users will assume any information asked for is necessary, so why make it more complicated? If it’s really a situation of life or death (which I find very hard to believe!), mark the optional fields, not the compulsory ones. Plus, when was the last time you used the word ‘mandatory’ in the office, anyway?

2. Scrolling from here to infinity…

Your date of birth is one of the few things about yourself that will never change (for the honest bunch amongst us, at least). However, the format in which it needs to be entered seems to be as varied as the dates we put in them. I’m referring to the dreaded number scrolling tool.

Why? We don’t use it when we enter our pin at the cash machine, we don’t do it when we dial a phone number and we shouldn’t have to use them when we chose our date of birth! Selecting your age from such a complicated and temperamental tool usually takes so long you’re at least another year older by the time you’ve cracked it. Keeping things simple will always be the winning formula.

3. Out of sight, out of mind…

As you happily click around an e-commerce site browsing freely and purchasing at will, you get to the final hurdle of checking out to find yourself faced with one of these:

Before this seemingly harmless logo pops up on your screen, security is the last thing on your mind. You’re looking forward to receiving your cool new iPhone case you’ve snapped up for 43p from eBay, or worrying about how to explain to your wife why you needed your new 12 foot world map from Amazon (“…but it had FREE super saver delivery!”). It is not until the logos plant the seed of doubt that anyone contemplates the (very slim) chance of any personal data slipping through the fingers of protection. Joe Leech points out that many studies have proven users to be more honest and open when the issue of security was simply omitted from a data collecting survey. The levels of security were always implemented and data was equally as safe, its just the users weren’t reminded about the issues or levels of risk.

Of course, data protection is important to all of us and we all want to shop with confidence, we just don’t need to know about the boring bits behind the scenes. In other words, reassuring people about their privacy makes them more, not less concerned.

4. Form now on…(again, sorry)

Forms don’t need to be complicated to be successful. When it comes to useful and friendly form design, stick to the following:

1. Ask for what you need and nothing more in the most user-friendly format you can.

2. Leave choice to a bare minimum.

3. Let humans be human.

Simples.

Dan, on my first day of work you made me build my own (Ikea) desk.

I spent the first 3 winters freezing to death: I built up a work wardrobe based on tog values.  The fan heater lived at your feet and I was only ever warm when you were out of the office for the day and I could relocate the heater.

Tea was made using a WW1 kettle.

I was your first employee. Thanks to economy (see above), hard work and real love and care for our customers, there are now 8 of us!

Thanks to economy, hard work and real love and care for our customers we now have cosy warm offices with ready-made desks and hot chocolate machines.

However, on our 5 year Anniversary you went on holiday

In the early days, search engines would focus primarily on the presence and density of keywords on a page. The major fallback of that, exploited by ‘black hat’ SEOs, was the lack of analysis of relationships between keywords. Thus, a query: “walk in bath” could have a page of a Mobility Bathing Solutions website compete against Walking Tours of Bath, Somerset and a blog of a mum from Bath describing the first steps of her baby…

Latent Semantic Indexing allows search algorithms to build semantic maps of keywords, from which groups of potential semantic relatives are formed. Thus, when processing the search query “walk in bath”, an algorithm could rank the page according to the presence/density of such keywords as “disability showers”, “bath aids” or “nationwide mobility”.  An example of a semantically complete paragraph could be:

For a person with limited mobility, bathing may pose a challenge. Luckily, mobility companies offer ranges of solutions such as walk in baths, disability showers and bathing aids to meet all the bathing needs and bring ease and comfort into a disabled person’s daily routine.

In short – it is all about understanding the intent of the user and matching his search with semantically relevant, well-composed and genuine content. In the end, all search engines attempt to emulate a human user with their intrinsic semantic categorisation of the world.

We’ve decided that alcohol is generally well received and so up until the end of February 2012, anyone referring us a new client will be sent a case of champagne from Great Western Wine when we issue our first invoice – very simple!

So, if you know any businesses in need of help with their Pay-Per-Click, please don’t hesitate to send them our way. In exchange, we will not only share with them our expertise, but reward you with 12 bottles of champagne for the introduction!

Who do you know who we should have chat with?

Our main charity client is Send A Cow and we have worked with them using Google Grants since 2009. We’d love to add more charities to our client list applying our experience and skills to help more charities raise funds and make a difference.

If your charity has an existing Google grant then please get in touch to see how we can help you maximise the value of Google’s grant.

If you are a UK charity and not in receipt of a Google grant then call us and we will help you get one to further promote your charity and raise funds. There are certain eligibility guidelines but we’ll do our best to help your application.

Our new address: The Innovation Centre, Broad Quay, Bath. BA1 1UD

Our new telephone no. 01225 583838

BigTallOrder are a large & tall mens clothes retailer who we’ve worked with for c. 3 years. We met them after another ecommerce business (www.dfsales.co.uk who we also still work with) referred us to them saying we could boost their profits & cut costs.

BigTallOrder’s PPC driven sales are up 53% YoY and their cost per sale is down 7% YoY. Critically in Nick’s opinion several of his competitors have gone bust and he is still trading profitably in an increasingly tough market.

Nick also wanted to tell me what a great job his Account Manager at Search Star was doing. He puts the success largely down to her hard work.

A great call to receive – congratulations to the Account Manager & to to Nick for being kind enough to call.

1. This December 350 million hours will be spent shopping online by the UK Internet population. This translates to an average of 8 hours and 45 minutes spent per person on shopping websites over the course of the month.

2. 2.1 billion visits will go to online retail sites in December with new record peaks in traffic both pre and post-Christmas.

3. Lego will be the most searched for toy this Christmas, in particular Lego Star Wars games and sets.

4. Cyber Monday (5 December) will be the biggest pre-Christmas shopping day online with 85 million visits to retail websites from UK Internet users.

5. Monday 19 December will be the biggest day of December for online Grocery visits as people do some last minute food shopping but also check store opening times across the Christmas period.

6. iPhones will be a third more popular online than iPads this Christmas. If search intent was reflected in sales, for every 3 iPads Apple sold this Christmas they would sell 4 iPhones.

7. Facebook will see a new peak in UK Internet visits as friends share messages of good will with one another. 25 million hours will be spent on Facebook on Christmas Day alone.

8. Searches for the post-Christmas sales will start earlier than ever this year, with eager shoppers starting to do their research online as early as Christmas Eve.

9. Friday 23 December will be the biggest day of December for retailers receiving traffic from email as the multi-channel retailers prepare their customers for the post-Christmas sales.

10. The fashion sector will be the most reliant on Facebook traffic this Christmas, with TopShop, River Island and ASOS among the biggest recipients of Facebook traffic.

11. 12 million hours will be spent watching video clips on BBC iPlayer this Christmas with the biggest driver of traffic being the Dr Who Christmas special.

12. Hull will be the online shopping capital of Britain of December 2011, with proportionally more people doing their Christmas shopping online than any other city in the UK.

(Source: Robin Goad at Hitwise)

I think it rather well made & interesting. Let me know what you think.