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You may have noticed that this blog, along with many others, is intermittent in nature.

There are a whole range of reasons (excuses?) for this from 'no time' to 'what the heck do I say today?'

Well, Problogger has a great blog on how to keep fresh content on your blog that's well worth a read.

I don't know whether it'll get ridof the excuses, but who knows....?

OK so it applies to large companies rather than SMEs - and let's face it they should have the resources to get things right, although there are so many that just don't - but Internet Retailing reports that "The first UK version of the respected American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) has put ecommerce at the top of the retail tree for overall customer satisfaction". (See NCSI-UK and you have to sign up to see the reports).

But what does this mean for smaller companies?

Well, arguably they are even better - or can be even better - at customer satisfaction, so if they put their mind to it they should be able to deliver even more in their ECommerce offering. Those we know certainly do.

The issue is that so many are "frightened" by ECommerce thining that it is technology (which is true to a certain extent). But what it really is is marketing (including service) and so I am constantly surprised at how few SMEs get in to it.

I know it's a question of education, but given the relatively tiny costs and risks associated with ECommerce - compared with shop rents and leases and etc. - what's to lose?

There again maybe people have to "put their ***** on the line" to get committed?

I am constantly amazed by the different results achieved by different campaigns on AdWords and sometimes at an absolute loss to explain why something happens - it seems that sometimes it just does.

For example here are the results from two completely different clients for the last month.

Campaign..........Clicks..........Impr..........CTR ..........Avg. CPC

Company A ........4,690...........60,498........7.75%.........£0.23
Google.................4,274...........25,422.......16.81%........£0.24
Search partners....416............35,076........1.19%.........£0.20

Company B.........174..............6,864...........2.53%.........£0.40
Google.................120..............5,150...........2.33%.........£0.44
Search partners....54..............1,714..........3.15%..........£0.31

What completely amazes me is that although both campaigns are doing well for the clients is the vast difference between the Google and Search partners results.

We normally see results where Google produces a higher CTR so why, I wondered do we not see this on Company B?

No idea as yet.

Comscore released a report last month that showed that more than 3 out of 4 UK searches are conducted on Google.

With those sorts of figures one has to really start to wonder whether the 'Microsoft factor' will eventually overtake Google too?

The report shows that in June, Google increased its lead as the most popular
search engine in the U.K. to 75.3 percent of all search queries, followed
by eBay (5.5 percent), Yahoo! (4.3 percent) and Microsoft (3.4 percent).

Total U.K., Age 15+ - Home & Work Locations

Property June 2008

Total Internet 100.0
Google 75.3
eBay 5.5
Yahoo! 4.3
Microsoft 3.4
Ask Network 2.4
AOL LLC 2.3
Facebook 2.2

Is there the real chance that people will get bored with Google or is it just so good that people don't care that it's so dominant?

Other notable findings from the Comscore report include:

• There were 3.9 billion total searches conducted in the U.K. during the month.
• 31 million U.K. Internet users conducted at least one search.
• U.K. searchers conducted an average of 124 searches per searcher during the month, or 4.1 searches per day.
• U.K. searchers made a combined total of 937 billion visits to a search engine in May, with an average of 4.1 searches per visit.

Web site: http://www.comscore.com