Dan - 30/11/05 - Events - We held our Putting the Pieces Together briefing yesterday. I'm pleased to say it was a great success.

The idea behind the briefing was to discuss the concept of delivering an integrated online experience to help improve customer satisfaction and improve website effectiveness. We invited people involved in running web presences in their organisations.

The event was heavily oversubscribed. Not only was this great for Chameleon's promotional purposes, but it also really demonstrates there is genuine industry interest in focusing on a user-centric online presence, taking a holistic stance to web technology and really getting the best return on investment.

Represented in the audience were leading names from many industry sectors, including Media, Publishing, Hospitality, Charity, Manufacturing, Retail and Education.

On the basis of the strong response and audience feedback, we'll be running the same briefing again in February, so keep an eye on this site for details.

Drew - 16/11/05 - Engine Watch. The Jagger Google algorithm has settled (the algorithm is the formula Google uses to index and rank websites) so now is a good time to take a look at your traffic stats and evaluate the effects on your website.

TIP: Compare the volume of users you've attracted this week with one a month ago. Analyse the keywords people used to find your site and take note of any new keywords or any important keyword phrases that might have dropped from the list.

SEO: This analysis is especially important if you have any search engine optimisation, because the strategy will now need a reassessment for it to be as effective.

Dan - 16/11/05 - Comment - I went to a useful round-table discussion on e-marketing yesterday hosted by DM Business Magazine.

The main aim was to look at the online tools direct marketers have at their disposal to blend into the overall marcoms mix, with particular reference to search marketing. Other topics under the spotlight were the use of mobile marketing (surely a promising area) and email marketing.

Chameleon was invited because, as a full service web agency, we could bring an integrated, umbrella viewpoint to the table.

Here's a quick summary of some key points:

• Spend on paid search is growing faster than pretty much any other advertising medium (as Chris Thorn pointed out in his blog entry last month). The UK market looks to be worth in excess of £600M this year.
• Natural search engine optimisation is becoming a priority, and results can be gained more quickly than ever before. Optimising sites for relevance gives a better experience for users and encourages engines to index more favourably. Black hat optimisation techniques (i.e. unethical activity to trick engines) no longer work and blacklisting as a result is a real threat.
• Mobile messaging is very personal and direct, yet is not necessarily seen as intrusive. Offline methods are very useful in driving mobile response to campaigns. Messaging technology is likely to converge in the future.
• Email campaign recipients are becoming quite jaded about the amount of mail they receive. At he same time, systems are getting better at filtering. So, buy-in and relevance are crucial in effective email communications.

The full article will be in February's issue of DM Business, so watch out for that...

Dan - 03/11/05 - Comment - Multi-channel thinking. It seems to me that there is a growing trend, or at least a desire, for companies to be much more multi-channel in their approach to marketing and customer service than ever before.

(In fact it's no co-incidence we're running a briefing on this very topic.)

As consumers or business customers, we are communicated to and serviced using a variety of online channels - email, web, SMS, RSS - as well as the usual offline methods. That's the way we want it. Whatever's easiest and most effective.

It seems the inexorable growth of the web has forced organisations' hands a little, and there is certainly some truth to the suggestion that many organisations were not necessarily in a position to embrace this shift straight away. It's easy to understand the adoption of a silo approach to online activity (promotional emailshots done by the DM dept, e-commerce by the web team, newsletters by customer services or marketing, etc.) when technologies have evolved at their own pace, and takeup too has been varied.

The challenge now is to put all these activities where they naturally belong (assuming they're not already there): as individual pieces of an overall integrated sales, marketing and service mix. And of course, it's one thing using multiple channels; it's another being really smart about it. That's surely one way to differentiate in customer acquisition and retention.

Dan - 02/11/05 - Press. Vicky won the award for Best Woman in Technology (small business category) last Thursday at The Women and Technology Awards. This is a new, but prestigious, series of awards sponsored by BlackBerry and covered by The Independent. It recognises the contribution Women make to the tech industry.

The awards got national coverage on The BBC, Silicon.com, and in The Independent.

You can also read our full news story on this site.