1. Bobby Persons
Villanova University
Show Me the Stats!:
How SME Online Customer Interaction is becoming More Calculated—and More Competitive
In 50 years, there will be few people in the developed world still living on Earth who
have not used Google the entirety of their adult lives. In 50 years, hardly anyone will have ever
experienced using a map on their car dashboard to drive to a relative’s house, having to
physically walk from store to store to compare prices, or simply not knowing the name of that
minor character from that 1980’s film. The rise of the search engine led by Google during the
dot.com boom irrevocably changed the world, leaving us with the capacity to be constantly
connected and knowledgeable, practically anywhere, at any time. And while the search
engine’s effect on everyday man is easy to see and constantly talked about, its effect on
businesses—enabling businesses to come to the consumer and startups to become sector-
giants in mere months—is a lesser-talked-about trend that is arguably more important than the
lifestyle change in individuals. The development of e-mail, newsletters, integrated social media
platforms and public relations campaigns have transformed SMEs (Small Medium Enterprises)
from mom-and-pop stores to companies capable of generating formidable web traffic and
capturing thousands of consumers. Consequently, companies can now plan every move they
make to reach out to potential customers. The emergence of huge data analytics software now
allows companies from dry cleaners to sports teams to calculate exactly how to generate
customers and where they are coming from. The UK-based, small business-focused accounting
firm I work for, Wellers, has seen a complete change in the dealings of its organization and the
2. image of the company through trying to harness this consumer data analysis. Additionally,
Wellers’ aim to link its client service to its blog and its social media platform has shown me an
incredibly research and technology based aspect of a small business that I never would have
expected. Through trying to improve Wellers’ blog and grow their search engine efforts, I have
come to understand that there are a wealth of options for any UK business, especially in the
field of finance, to feasibly grow its business through online technology and customer outreach.
Further, these efforts are paramount and are become deciding factors in the UK between
British businesses that survive and those that do not.
Small businesses have survived for centuries by specializing in the production of their
goods and services to provide people with either more affordable, or higher quality options
than large corporations. However, only in the last decade and especially in the last five years
has the importance of technological marketing arisen in the small business world. The early
Internet was named Web 1.0, referring to the publishing of content by individuals,
organizations and corporations, and the searching of individuals to find what they were looking
for (PCMag.com). Web 1.0 developed into Web 2.0, when companies and organizations started
to realize the strength of the internet community, and started tailoring their content specifically
to the consumer (PCMag.com). Examples of standard Web 2.0 include newsletters, blogs,
community posts and forums, all technological mediums that present the producer directly to
the consumer, offering them help and information. The current sweeping trend towards Web
3.0 turns this into a calculated, automated and computerized science. In this 2007 PCMag
article by Cade Metz, Metz discusses the arising possibility and media given to Web 3.0, or, the
Semantic Web. He cites that many “are skeptical” that the idea of “the Web turning into one
3. big database” actually “[taking] hold” (PCMag.com). Web 3.0 has taken hold, and “has taken on
a new lease of life in the last five years, largely as a result of companies finding new ways to
analyze data” (Guardian Big Data). In Web 3.0, companies can use people’s locations, web
search history, online shopping preferences and more to predict consumer behavior and make
appropriate changes, like sending a product sale or creating a local web advertisement. For
example, the recent trend where multiple adidas and running shoes advertisements appear on
a consumer’s webpage after shopping online for adidas running shoes shows Web 3.0 on a
small scale.
With Web 3.0, large corporations can work with ‘big data’ companies to harvest all of
their current and potential customers’ social media and web browsing preferences, allowing
them to code their systems to maximize the number of their clients and their revenue.
However, small businesses do not have the ability to work with these large data providers or
devote hundreds to a ‘data collecting’ team, so why is Web 3.0 pertinent to small businesses?
Web 3.0 is important because it finally gives Web 2.0 strategies pertinence and calculation.
Before Web 3.0, company blog and social media attempts were futile because with an ever
crowding online market, small businesses did not have the time or resources to keep up with
large company marketing. Now with Web 3.0 and the emergence of data software, small
businesses can concentrate their online marketing efforts to generate web traffic and
distinguish their products and their company ethos from those of larger organizations. My
accounting firm Wellers is seemingly a normal small accounting firm. It has 4 UK offices filled
with chartered accountants who specialize in helping clients with their books and performing
audits. Before the development of their company website and blog platform, Wellers could be
4. practically indistinguishable from the bevy of accounting firms in the European financial capital
of London. However, with a concentrated website and blog effort, Wellers began to generate
web traffic and new clients through emphasizing its customer specialty online: servicing SMEs.
Many SMEs, especially those in the UK, view creating and maintaining a cutting edge
website as an unnecessary payment in the customer-to-product-purchase chain. In order to
jump ahead as an accounting firm unfamiliar with tech advancements, my manager—Chris
Thompson Marketing Manager of Wellers—uses the Boston based marketing blog company
HubSpot religiously. HubSpot provides great interactive support, well thought out blogs and
frequent content, all with a small business focus. My manager switched to HubSpot after seeing
articles documenting how “while 78% of marketers reported that their broader marketing
campaigns were at least somewhat driven by website optimization results, only 47% of
marketers indicated that their web design or product development actually changed as a result
of optimization lessons” (HubSpot Compelling Web Design). Like many other SME’s, Wellers
clearly recognizing the exponentially growing power accessible to them in the form of the
Internet, but were not yet inspired enough to start changing their businesses’ web
compatibility. A common argument, and one that faced Wellers expressed, “We are a small
businesses serving specific niche markets, if they [our (potential) customers] have already
accessed our site why does it matter how it looks?” (Chris T interview). This argument may have
had some credence ten years ago, but in this day and age, a majority of the validity we
prescribe a company comes from the appearance of its technological image. As listed by the
Boston based marketing blog company HubSpot, “$1.1 trillion of all retail sales in 2011 were
‘web-influenced,’” “40% of people will abandon a web page if it takes more than three seconds
5. to load,” and “48% of users say that if they arrive on a business site that isn't working well on
mobile, they take it as an indication of the business simply not caring” (HubSpot Compelling
Web Design). Elements that appear, for instance, unrelated to a company’s accounting service
like web and mobile compatibility can manifest to millions more in sales or on the other hand
immediately lost potential customers. In fact, a website’s bounce rate, or the rate at which
people that enter a site leave, “spikes to 100% when a page takes 4 seconds or more to load”
and “jumps to 150% if a page takes 8 seconds or more to load” (HubSpot).
Similarly, page layout is just as important to manage as web functionality. HubSpot
outlined the following timeline of web development in its exposition of the last 20 years of web
design: Antiquity (text on a page) → The Middle Ages (organized content) → The Renaissance
(relevant web design) → The Enlightenment (increased webpage “browseability”) → The
Industrial Revolution (webpage structured for aesthetics and maximizing search engines) →
Today (HubSpot 20 years). Nowadays, only very small or technologically negligent businesses
manage websites resembling HubSpot’s Internet Middle Ages; practically none are identifiably
in The Renaissance as the era’s use of Flash and media links was passed as a brief fad (HubSpot
20 years). Most businesses find themselves in the ‘Enlightenment-Today’ portion of HubSpot’s
timeline, and while this may seemlike an achievement, a website boasting full-fledged
technology of today versus one in the Enlightenment can be the difference between 10 years of
advancement. To put this in perspective, 10 years ago YouTube was not yet created, Facebook
just started, and the Nokia 2600 was the bestselling mobile, which had no camera or Bluetooth
capability and advertised, among other things, a colored display (Engadget).
6. Wellers’ web development lies between HubSpot’s Industrial Revolution and Today
segments of its timeline. Its webpage sports countless linked images, full website, company and
contact information below its homepage, an effective scrolling front panel and succinct drop
down menus under each toolbar. Additionally, the majority of its text is succinct and well
placed, social media outlets have embedded share options, and its website spans the entire
page without overwhelming the visitor with color. I reminded Chris that on my first day of work,
I perused the company website to get a good feel for my upcoming blogging work. Chris
laughed when I remarked that the site looked ‘clean,’ responding that “people say that about
the website a lot,” adding that, “clean is good, I like clean”(Chris T interview. Bryon Thomas
likes clean too. Bryon is an online marketing strategist, and when interviewed by the Guardian
regarding ‘tips for designing a business website,’ he advised that “there are trends [to help
business owners become distinctive],” and that the successful trend “for 'marketing' sites” is
one “that's very clean, with one message, one video and one button click” (The Guardian Top
Tips). Chris currently outlines the next step towards improving the site’s ‘cleanliness’ as
installing a systemof buttons as mentioned by Bryon, to provide easy access to all aspects of
the site (Chris T interview). This syncing of the website is the crucial step Wellers’ envisions that
can pull in its website visitors to its technological platform, namely its blog and social media
strategy.
At Wellers, the firm’s social media platform is almost entirely dedicated towards
publicizing and supplementing the company blog. Wellers’ approach to its blog currently
involves a smorgasbord of article types, including client how-to’s, press releases, personnel
activities, business accomplishments and expositions for the firm’s budding small businesses.
7. With time, Wellers will begin to incorporate these different article types into a structured
format, which I have helped by designing and providing content. Down the line, Wellers may
focus on more in depth structuring of its content; for example every Monday features a “how-
to” post featuring an employee explaining a concept via video, while every other Thursday a
blog post is published endorsing a different start-up business client of the company. This has
already begun to develop through Wellers’ corporate newsletter, a tactic that when I entered
the firm, I had associated with 2002 and emails in my spam folder. However, as San Francisco
native Josh Dzaliek urges in his popular Loose Articles blog, “newsletters are active, not passive”
(Dzello Newsletter Comeback). With the takeover of the social media feed, any outlet at any
time can post content. While this was a great feature 3 years ago, now social media feeds are
so saturated that we constantly need to filter our feeds to gain the information we are looking
for (Dzello Newsletter Comeback). Further, small businesses do not have the marketing
capabilities of a professional comedian or Coca Cola and therefore their messages get lost
among the more numerous, more eye catching advertisements of large corporations. Stepping
away from Twitter during a work day can leave a tech savvy individual with hundreds of
updates to sift through, potentially losing important SME updates amongst the masses. What
makes newsletters an active source of information is that a newsletter cannot be quickly
scanned or lost in between other content. A client must make the active choice to open or trash
a newsletter, ensuring the company at least a few seconds in which the client ponders whether
or not they would like to learn more information (Dzello Newsletter Comeback). Through this
medium, companies can send regular information to purposely subscribed individuals, and can
8. track the data analysis provided on whether or not the content was viewed, read, and for how
long.
The Wellers blog, and my involvement with it in the past month, lived and died by these
data analysis statistics. In order to maximize results, I began the process of cataloging key
words for all the upcoming blog topics. Google offers a subscription service called Google Ad
Words in which any term, such as accounting, will be provided a list of the most searched,
closely related key words on Google’s search engine. For instance, key words similar to
accounting included audit, HMRC tax and chartered accountant. Google Ad Words further
subdivides these terms by listing them based on their Average Monthly Searches and their
Competition, or the number of businesses that are using the terms as promotion tools. The
term Chartered Accountants may have a high 80,000 average monthly searches, but because it
is included in so many names of accounting firms, my company would have no chance rising to
the top of google’s suggest links by maximizing the use of that term. However, many individuals
and businesses want to simply calculate their personal tax allotment, and the term tax
calculator has high monthly searches and Low Competition. Using this term repeatedly in a blog
post’s text and in its url can optimize the chances of the blog being a primary link when people
search for an online tax calculator, helping to bring web traffic and overall business to Wellers.
Other strategies like attractive text formatting, using multiple links to content inside and
outside the company website and a colorful picture or diagram can help zero in on web
involvement. Then, Wellers’ data analytics personnel sends a report after each newsletter,
delivering the statistics on the three to four blogs provided in each one. Key statistics include
the number of bounces (emails that did not reach their intended recipients), newsletter
9. subscriptions, emails opened and clicks, whether a subscriber clicked open a blog or clicked the
‘share to twitter’ embedded option.
Wellers is still a ways away from true long term search engine optimization success.
While continually updating the company webpage, syncing the blog with the webpage, further
researching SEO tactics and sharing on social media is a valiant start, the process is not
complete and it needs time. As Brian Hughes from SocialMediaToday asserts, “Before giving up
on an SEO strategy, give it at least 3 or 4 months to take root. If you’re actually committed to
long-term SEO success, you may have to wait as long as a year to see really outstanding
progress” (SocialMediaToday). In addition, not only constant content, but diversified content
from all departments of the firm at Wellers must start to command a larger percentage of daily
work; true SEO success cannot be achieved from a half-effort. Nonetheless, Wellers growing
technological image is making slow strides through data analytics but especially in comparison
with its colleagues, perceivably stuck in HubSpot’s so-branded Enlightenment stage. As Chris
Thompson constantly remarks, “American companies are more organized and interested in
technology. The trend that hit America a few years ago is about to hit the UK” (Chris T
Interview). This calculated customer outreach has already showed itself vital on Wellers’ small
stage, and can only undoubtedly begin to weed out SMEs stubborn to become tech savvy.
Looking at the US and data analytics trend, it is only a matter of time before UK small
businesses that miss the SEO train will be scratching their heads as their competition races full
speed ahead.
