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Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising.[1] SEM may incorporate search engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site architecture to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages to enhance pay per click (PPC) listings.[2] In 2007, U.S.

advertisers spent US $24.6 billion on Search engine marketing.[3] In Q2 2015, Google (73.7%) and the Yahoo/Bing (26.3%) partnership accounted for almost 100% of U.S.

search engine spend.[4] As of 2006, SEM was growing much faster than traditional advertising and even other channels of online marketing.[5] Managing search campaigns is either done directly with the SEM vendor or through an SEM tool provider.

It may also be self-serve or through an advertising agency.

As of October 2016, Google leads the global search engine market with a market share of 89.3%.

Bing comes second with a market share of 4.36%, Yahoo comes third with a market share of 3.3%, and Chinese search engine Baidu is fourth globally with a share of about 0.68%.[6] As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 1990s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly.

Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text[7] in 1996 and then Goto.com[8] in 1998.

Goto.com later changed its name[9] to Overture in 2001, was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing.

Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program.

By 2007, pay-per-click programs proved to be primary moneymakers[10] for search engines.

In a market dominated by Google, in 2009 Yahoo! and Microsoft announced the intention to forge an alliance.

The Yahoo! & Microsoft Search Alliance eventually received approval from regulators in the US and Europe in February 2010.[11] Search engine optimization consultants expanded their offerings to help businesses learn about and use the advertising opportunities offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing primarily upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged.

The term "Search engine marketing" was popularized by Danny Sullivan in 2001[12] to cover the spectrum of activities involved in performing SEO, managing paid listings at the search engines, submitting sites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals.

Search engine marketing uses at least five methods and metrics to optimize websites.[citation needed] Search engine marketing is a way to create and edit a website so that search engines rank it higher than other pages.

It should be also focused on keyword marketing or pay-per-click advertising (PPC).

The technology enables advertisers to bid on specific keywords or phrases and ensures ads appear with the results of search engines.

With the development of this system, the price is growing under a high level of competition.

Many advertisers prefer to expand their activities, including increasing search engines and adding more keywords.

The more advertisers are willing to pay for clicks, the higher the ranking for advertising, which leads to higher traffic.[15] PPC comes at a cost.

The higher position is likely to cost $5 for a given keyword, and $4.50 for a third location.

A third advertiser earns 10% less than the top advertiser while reducing traffic by 50%.[15] Investors must consider their return on investment when engaging in PPC campaigns.

Buying traffic via PPC will deliver a positive ROI when the total cost-per-click for a single conversion remains below the profit margin.

That way the amount of money spent to generate revenue is below the actual revenue generated.[16] A positive ROI is the outcome.

There are many reasons explaining why advertisers choose the SEM strategy.

First, creating a SEM account is easy and can build traffic quickly based on the degree of competition.

The shopper who uses the search engine to find information tends to trust and focus on the links showed in the results pages.

However, a large number of online sellers do not buy search engine optimization to obtain higher ranking lists of search results but prefer paid links.

A growing number of online publishers are allowing search engines such as Google to crawl content on their pages and place relevant ads on it.[17] From an online seller's point of view, this is an extension of the payment settlement and an additional incentive to invest in paid advertising projects.

Therefore, it is virtually impossible for advertisers with limited budgets to maintain the highest rankings in the increasingly competitive search market.

Google's Search engine marketing is one of the western world's marketing leaders, while its Search engine marketing is its biggest source of profit.[18] Google's search engine providers are clearly ahead of the Yahoo and Bing network.

The display of unknown search results is free, while advertisers are willing to pay for each click of the ad in the sponsored search results.

Paid inclusion involves a search engine company charging fees for the inclusion of a website in their results pages.

Also known as sponsored listings, paid inclusion products are provided by most search engine companies either in the main results area or as a separately identified advertising area.

The fee structure is both a filter against superfluous submissions and a revenue generator.

Typically, the fee covers an annual subscription for one webpage, which will automatically be catalogued on a regular basis.

However, some companies are experimenting with non-subscription based fee structures where purchased listings are displayed permanently.

A per-click fee may also apply.

Each search engine is different.

Some sites allow only paid inclusion, although these have had little success.

More frequently, many search engines, like Yahoo!,[19] mix paid inclusion (per-page and per-click fee) with results from web crawling.

Others, like Google (and as of 2006, Ask.com[20][21]), do not let webmasters pay to be in their search engine listing (advertisements are shown separately and labeled as such).

Some detractors of paid inclusion allege that it causes searches to return results based more on the economic standing of the interests of a web site, and less on the relevancy of that site to end-users.

Often the line between pay per click advertising and paid inclusion is debatable.

Some have lobbied for any paid listings to be labeled as an advertisement, while defenders insist they are not actually ads since the webmasters do not control the content of the listing, its ranking, or even whether it is shown to any users.

Another advantage of paid inclusion is that it allows site owners to specify particular schedules for crawling pages.

In the general case, one has no control as to when their page will be crawled or added to a search engine index.

Paid inclusion proves to be particularly useful for cases where pages are dynamically generated and frequently modified.

Paid inclusion is a Search engine marketing method in itself, but also a tool of search engine optimization since experts and firms can test out different approaches to improving ranking and see the results often within a couple of days, instead of waiting weeks or months.

Knowledge gained this way can be used to optimize other web pages, without paying the search engine company.

SEM is the wider discipline that incorporates SEO.

SEM includes both paid search results (using tools like Google Adwords or Bing Ads, formerly known as Microsoft adCenter) and organic search results (SEO).

SEM uses paid advertising with AdWords or Bing Ads, pay per click (particularly beneficial for local providers as it enables potential consumers to contact a company directly with one click), article submissions, advertising and making sure SEO has been done.

A keyword analysis is performed for both SEO and SEM, but not necessarily at the same time.

SEM and SEO both need to be monitored and updated frequently to reflect evolving best practices.

In some contexts, the term SEM is used exclusively to mean pay per click advertising,[2] particularly in the commercial advertising and marketing communities which have a vested interest in this narrow definition.

Such usage excludes the wider search marketing community that is engaged in other forms of SEM such as search engine optimization and search retargeting.

Creating the link between SEO and PPC represents an integral part of the SEM concept.

Sometimes, especially when separate teams work on SEO and PPC and the efforts are not synced, positive results of aligning their strategies can be lost.

The aim of both SEO and PPC is maximizing the visibility in search and thus, their actions to achieve it should be centrally coordinated.

Both teams can benefit from setting shared goals and combined metrics, evaluating data together to determine future strategy or discuss which of the tools works better to get the traffic for selected keywords in the national and local search results.

Thanks to this, the search visibility can be increased along with optimizing both conversions and costs.[22] Another part of SEM is social media marketing (SMM).

SMM is a type of marketing that involves exploiting social media to influence consumers that one company’s products and/or services are valuable.[23] Some of the latest theoretical advances include Search engine marketing management (SEMM).

SEMM relates to activities including SEO but focuses on return on investment (ROI) management instead of relevant traffic building (as is the case of mainstream SEO).

SEMM also integrates organic SEO, trying to achieve top ranking without using paid means to achieve it, and pay per click SEO.

For example, some of the attention is placed on the web page layout design and how content and information is displayed to the website visitor.

SEO & SEM are two pillars of one marketing job and they both run side by side to produce much better results than focusing on only one pillar.

Paid search advertising has not been without controversy and the issue of how search engines present advertising on their search result pages has been the target of a series of studies and reports[24][25][26] by Consumer Reports WebWatch.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also issued a letter[27] in 2002 about the importance of disclosure of paid advertising on search engines, in response to a complaint from Commercial Alert, a consumer advocacy group with ties to Ralph Nader.

Another ethical controversy associated with search marketing has been the issue of trademark infringement.

The debate as to whether third parties should have the right to bid on their competitors' brand names has been underway for years.

In 2009 Google changed their policy, which formerly prohibited these tactics, allowing 3rd parties to bid on branded terms as long as their landing page in fact provides information on the trademarked term.[28] Though the policy has been changed this continues to be a source of heated debate.[29] On April 24, 2012, many started to see that Google has started to penalize companies that are buying links for the purpose of passing off the rank.

The Google Update was called Penguin.

Since then, there have been several different Penguin/Panda updates rolled out by Google.

SEM has, however, nothing to do with link buying and focuses on organic SEO and PPC management.

As of October 20, 2014, Google had released three official revisions of their Penguin Update.

In 2013, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held in Lens.com, Inc.

v.

1-800 Contacts, Inc.

that online contact lens seller Lens.com did not commit trademark infringement when it purchased search advertisements using competitor 1-800 Contacts' federally registered 1800 CONTACTS trademark as a keyword.

In August 2016, the Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint against 1-800 Contacts alleging, among other things, that its trademark enforcement practices in the Search engine marketing space have unreasonably restrained competition in violation of the FTC Act.

1-800 Contacts has denied all wrongdoing and appeared before an FTC administrative law judge in April 2017.[30] AdWords is recognized as a web-based advertising utensil since it adopts keywords that can deliver adverts explicitly to web users looking for information in respect to a certain product or service.

It is flexible and provides customizable options like Ad Extensions, access to non-search sites, leveraging the display network to help increase brand awareness.

The project hinges on cost per click (CPC) pricing where the maximum cost per day for the campaign can be chosen, thus the payment of the service only applies if the advert has been clicked.

SEM companies have embarked on AdWords projects as a way to publicize their SEM and SEO services.

One of the most successful approaches to the strategy of this project was to focus on making sure that PPC advertising funds were prudently invested.

Moreover, SEM companies have described AdWords as a practical tool for increasing a consumer’s investment earnings on Internet advertising.

The use of conversion tracking and Google Analytics tools was deemed to be practical for presenting to clients the performance of their canvas from click to conversion.

AdWords project has enabled SEM companies to train their clients on the utensil and delivers better performance to the canvass.

The assistance of AdWord canvass could contribute to the growth of web traffic for a number of its consumer’s websites, by as much as 250% in only nine months.[31] Another way Search engine marketing is managed is by contextual advertising.

Here marketers place ads on other sites or portals that carry information relevant to their products so that the ads jump into the circle of vision of browsers who are seeking information from those sites.

A successful SEM plan is the approach to capture the relationships amongst information searchers, businesses, and search engines.

Search engines were not important to some industries in the past, but over the past years the use of search engines for accessing information has become vital to increase business opportunities.[32] The use of SEM strategic tools for businesses such as tourism can attract potential consumers to view their products, but it could also pose various challenges.[33] These challenges could be the competition that companies face amongst their industry and other sources of information that could draw the attention of online consumers.[32] To assist the combat of challenges, the main objective for businesses applying SEM is to improve and maintain their ranking as high as possible on SERPs so that they can gain visibility.

Therefore, search engines are adjusting and developing algorithms and the shifting criteria by which web pages are ranked sequentially to combat against search engine misuse and spamming, and to supply the most relevant information to searchers.[32] This could enhance the relationship amongst information searchers, businesses, and search engines by understanding the strategies of marketing to attract business.

Marketing mix

The term 'Marketing mix' is a foundation model for businesses, historically centered around product, price, place, and promotion (also known as the "4 Ps").

The Marketing mix has been defined as the "set of marketing tools that the firm uses to pursue its marketing objectives in the target market".[1] Thus the Marketing mix refers to four broad levels of marketing decision: product, price, place, and promotion.[2] Marketing practice has been occurring for millennia, but marketing theory emerged in the early twentieth century.

The contemporary Marketing mix, or the 4 Ps, which has become the dominant framework for marketing management decisions, was first published in 1960.[3] In services marketing, an extended Marketing mix is used, typically comprising 7 Ps, made up of the original 4 Ps extended by process, people, and physical evidence.[4] Occasionally service marketers will refer to 8 Ps, comprising these 7 Ps plus performance.[5] In the 1990s, the model of 4 Cs' was introduced as a more customer-driven replacement of the 4 Ps.[6] There are two theories based on 4 Cs: Lauterborn's 4 Cs (consumer, cost, convenience, and communication), and Shimizu's 4 Cs (commodity, cost, channel, and communication).

Given the valuation of customers towards potential product attributes (in any category, e.g.

product, promotion, etc.) and the attributes of the products sold by other companies, the problem of selecting the attributes of a product to maximize the number of customers preferring it is a computationally intractable problem.[7] The correct arrangement of Marketing mix by enterprise marketing managers plays an important role in the success of a company's marketing:[8] The origins of the 4 Ps can be traced to the late 1940s.[9][10] The first known mention of a mix has been attributed to a Professor of Marketing at Harvard University, Prof.

James Culliton.[11] In 1948, Culliton published an article entitled, The Management of Marketing Costs[12] in which Culliton describes marketers as 'mixers of ingredients'.

Some years later, Culliton's colleague, Professor Neil Borden, published a retrospective article detailing the early history of the Marketing mix in which he claims that he was inspired by Culliton's idea of 'mixers', and credits himself with popularising the concept of the 'Marketing mix'.[13] According to Borden's account, he used the term, 'Marketing mix' consistently from the late 1940s.

For instance, he is known to have used the term 'Marketing mix' in his presidential address given to the American Marketing Association in 1953.[14] Although the idea of marketers as 'mixers of ingredients' caught on, marketers could not reach any real consensus about what elements should be included in the mix until the 1960s.[15] The 4 Ps, in its modern form, was first proposed in 1960 by E.

Jerome McCarthy; who presented them within a managerial approach that covered analysis, consumer behavior, market research, market segmentation, and planning.[16] Phillip Kotler, popularised this approach and helped spread the 4 Ps model.[17][1] McCarthy's 4 Ps have been widely adopted by both marketing academics and practitioners.[18] The prospect of extending the Marketing mix first took hold at the inaugural AMA Conference dedicated to Services Marketing in the early 1980s, and built on earlier theoretical works pointing to many important limitations of the 4 Ps model.[19] Taken collectively, the papers presented at that conference indicate that service marketers were thinking about a revision to the general Marketing mix based on an understanding that services were fundamentally different from products, and therefore required different tools and strategies.

In 1981, Booms and Bitner proposed a model of 7 Ps, comprising the original 4 Ps extended by process, people and physical evidence, as being more applicable for services marketing.[20] Since then there have been a number of different proposals for a service Marketing mix (with various numbers of Ps), most notably the 8 Ps, comprising the 7 Ps above extended by 'performance'[5].

The original Marketing mix, or 4 Ps, as originally proposed by marketer and academic E.

Jerome McCarthy, provides a framework for marketing decision-making.[6] McCarthy's Marketing mix has since become one of the most enduring and widely accepted frameworks in marketing.[21] Table 1: Brief Outline of 4 Ps[6] Products may be tangible (goods) or intangible (services, ideas or experiences).

Price may also refer to the sacrifice consumers are prepared to make to acquire a product (e.g.

time or effort).

Price is the only variable that has implications for revenue.

Price also includes considerations of customer perceived value.

Considers providing convenience for consumer.

May comprise elements such as: advertising, PR, direct marketing and sales promotion.

Product refers to what the business offers for sale and may include products or services.

Product decisions include the "quality, features, benefits, style, design, branding, packaging, services, warranties, guarantees, life cycles, investments and returns".[24] Price refers to decisions surrounding "list pricing, discount pricing, special offer pricing, credit payment or credit terms".

Price refers to the total cost to customer to acquire the product, and may involve both monetary and psychological costs such as the time and effort spent in acquisition.[24] Place is defined as the "direct or indirect channels to market, geographical distribution, territorial coverage, retail outlet, market location, catalogues, inventory, logistics and order fulfilment".

Place refers either to the physical location where a business carries out business or the distribution channels used to reach markets.

Place may refer to a retail outlet, but increasingly refers to virtual stores such as "a mail order catalogue, a telephone call centre or a website".[24] Promotion refers to "the marketing communication used to make the offer known to potential customers and persuade them to investigate it further".[24] Promotion elements include "advertising, public relations, direct selling and sales promotions." By the 1980s, a number of theorists were calling for an expanded and modified framework that would be more useful to service marketers.

The prospect of expanding or modifying the Marketing mix for services was a core discussion topic at the inaugural AMA Conference dedicated to Services Marketing in the early 1980s, and built on earlier theoretical works pointing to many important problems and limitations of the 4 Ps model.[19] Taken collectively, the papers presented at that conference indicate that service marketers were thinking about a revision to the general Marketing mix based on an understanding that services were fundamentally different from products, and therefore required different tools and strategies.

In 1981, Booms and Bitner proposed a model of 7 Ps, comprising the original 4 Ps plus process, people and physical evidence, as being more applicable for services marketing.[20][25] Table 2: Outline of the Modified and Expanded Marketing mix Service personnel who represent the company's values to customers.

Interactions between customers.

Interactions between employees and customers.[27] The space where customers and service personnel interact.

Tangible commodities (e.g.

equipment, furniture) that facilitate service performance.

Artifacts that remind customers of a service performance.[29] People are essential in the marketing of any product or service.

Personnel stand for the service.

In the professional, financial or hospitality service industry, people are not producers, but rather the products themselves.[30] When people are the product, they impact public perception of an organization as much as any tangible consumer goods.

From a marketing management perspective, it is important to ensure that employees represent the company in alignment with broader messaging strategies.[31] This is easier to ensure when people feel as though they have been treated fairly and earn wages sufficient to support their daily lives.

Process refers to a "set of activities that results in delivery of the product benefits".

A process could be a sequential order of tasks that an employee undertakes as a part of their job.

It can represent sequential steps taken by a number of various employees while attempting to complete a task.

Some people are responsible for managing multiple processes at once.

For example, a restaurant manager should monitor the performance of employees, ensuring that processes are followed.

They are also expected to supervise while customers are promptly greeted, seated, fed, and led out so that the next customer can begin this process.[31] Physical evidence refers to the non-human elements of the service encounter, including equipment, furniture and facilities.

It may also refer to the more abstract components of the environment in which the service encounter occurs including interior design, colour schemes and layout.

Some aspects of physical evidence provide lasting proof that the service has occurred, such as souvenirs, mementos, invoices and other livery of artifacts.[30] According to Booms and Bitner's framework, the physical evidence is "the service delivered and any tangible goods that facilitate the performance and communication of the service".[31] Physical evidence is important to customers because the tangible goods are evidence that the seller has (or has not) provided what the customer was expecting.

Robert F.

Lauterborn proposed a 4 Cs classification in 1990.[32] His classification is a more consumer-orientated version of the 4 Ps[33] that attempts to better fit the movement from mass marketing to niche marketing:[32] After Koichi Shimizu proposed a 4 Cs classification in 1973, it was expanded to the 7Cs Compass Model to provide a more complete picture of the nature of marketing in 1979.

The 7Cs Compass Model is a framework of co-marketing (commensal marketing or Symbiotic marketing).

Also the Co-creative marketing of a company and consumers are contained in the co-marketing.

Co-marketing (collaborate marketing) is a marketing practice where two companies cooperate with separate distribution channels, sometimes including profit sharing.

It is frequently confused with co-promotion.

Also commensal (symbiotic) marketing is a marketing on which both corporation and a corporation, a corporation and a consumer, country and a country, human and nature can live.[38][39][40][41][42] (C1) Corporation – The core of 4 Cs is corporation (company and non profit organization).

C-O-S (competitor, organization, stakeholder) within the corporation.

The company has to think of compliance and accountability as important.

The competition in the areas in which the company competes with other firms in its industry.

The 4 elements in the 7Cs Compass Model are: A formal approach to this customer-focused Marketing mix is known as 4 Cs (commodity, cost, channel, communication) in the 7 Cs Compass Model.

The 4 Cs model provides a demand/customer centric version alternative to the well-known 4 Ps supply side model (product, price, place, promotion) of marketing management.[43] The compass of consumers and circumstances (environment) are: EXIBIT:7Cs Compass model(1979) in Japan(Courtesy: © Koichi Shimizu, Japan) These can also be remembered by the cardinal directions marked on a compass.

The 7 Cs Compass Model is a framework in co-marketing (symbiotic marketing).

It has been criticized for being little more than the 4 Ps with different points of emphasis.

In particular, the 7 Cs inclusion of consumers in the Marketing mix is criticized, since they are a target of marketing, while the other elements of the Marketing mix are tactics.

The 7 Cs also include numerous strategies for product development, distribution, and pricing, while assuming that consumers want two-way communications with companies.

An alternative approach has been suggested in a book called 'Service 7' by Australian Author, Peter Bowman.

Bowman suggests a values based approach to service marketing activities.

Bowman suggests implementing seven service marketing principles which include value, business development, reputation, customer service and service design.

Service 7 has been widely distributed within Australia.

Digital Marketing mix is fundamentally the same as Marketing mix, which is an adaptation of Product, Price, Place and Promotion into digital marketing aspect.[44] Digital marketing can be commonly explained as 'Achieving marketing objectives through applying digital technologies'.[45] Product Thanks to the interaction and connection of the Internet, Product has been redefined as 'virtual product' in the digital marketing aspect, which is regarded as the combination of tangibility and intangibility.

Through the form of digital, a product can be directly sent from manufacturers to customers.[46] For example, customers could buy music in the form of an MP3 rather than buy it in the form of a physical CD.

As a result, when a company is making strategy for Internet marketing, it is necessary to understand how to vary their products in the online environment.

Here are some indications of adapt the product element on the Internet.[45] Price Price concerns about the pricing policies or pricing models from a company.

Due to the wide use of the Internet, many applications could be found in both consumer's and producer's perspective.

From consumers' side, the Internet enables people to make a comparison to real-time prices before they make a consumption decision, which is time-saving and effort-saving for the consumers.[47] As for the suppliers, they can adjust prices in the real-time and provide higher degree of price transparency with customers.

Besides, the Internet is more likely to ease the pressure on price because online-producers do not have to put budget on renting a physical store.[45] Hence, making new or adjusting pricing strategies is essential for the company that wants to enter the Internet market.

Pricing strategies and tactics see also: Pricing Place With the application of the Internet, place is playing an increasingly important role in promoting consumption since the Internet and the physical channels become virtual.[44] The major contribution from the Internet to the business is not only making it possible to selling products online, but also enabling companies to build relationships with customers.[48] Furthermore, since the convenience of navigating from one site to another, place from the digital marketing perspective is always linked with promotion, which means retailers often use third-party websites such as Google search engine to guide customers to visit their websites.[45] Promotion Promotion refers to selecting the target markets, locating and integrating various communication tools in the Marketing mix.

Unlike the traditional marketing communication tools, tools in digital marketing aim at engaging audiences by putting advertisements and content on the social media, including display ads, pay-per-click (PPC), search engine optimisation (SEO), influencers etc.[45] When creating online marketing campaigns, Chaffey and Smith suggested that they can be separated into six groups:[49] Automatically selecting the attributes of a product (in any category, i.e.

product, promotion, etc.) to maximize the number of customers preferring the resulting product is a computationally intractable problem.[7] Given some customer profiles (i.e., customers sharing some features such as e.g.

gender, age, income, etc.), the valuations they give to each potential product attribute (e.g.

females aged 35–45 give a 3 out of 5 valuation to "it is green"; males aged 25–35 give 4/5 to "it can be paid in installments"; etc.), the attributes of the products sold by the other producers, and the attributes each producer can give to its products, the problem of deciding the attributes of our product to maximize the number of customers who will prefer it is Poly-APX-complete.

This implies that, under the standard computational assumption, no efficient algorithm can guarantee that the ratio between the number of customers preferring the product returned by the algorithm and the number of customers that would prefer the actual optimal product will always reach some constant, for any constant.

Moreover, the problem of finding a strategy such that, for any strategy of the other producers, our product will always reach some minimum average number of customers over some period of time is an EXPTIME-complete problem, meaning that it cannot be efficiently solved.

However, heuristic (sub-optimal) solutions to these problems can be found by means of genetic algorithms, particle swarm optimization methods, or minimax algorithms.

Pricesearcher

Pricesearcher is an independent e-commerce search engine launched in the UK in 2016 which helps shoppers find the best prices for products online.[1][2] It does not use the traditional Price Comparison Website (PCW) model adopted by comparison sites such as Moneysupermarket.com and search engines such as Google Shopping[3][4] where retailers pay to list their products for sale.[5] Since its inception, it has listed products from online retailers, without charging a listing fee or commission for sales.

Product search results are consequently unaffected by a retailer's marketing budget or lack thereof.

Shoppers are able to use the vertical search engine as a price-checking tool, to see whether the goods they find 'on sale' elsewhere are genuinely a good deal.

Pricesearcher began as a small, self-funded project by Samuel Dean[2] in 2011, with the aim of indexing all products available to buy online to give shoppers a clear picture.

Dean used Peopleperhour in the early days to find freelancers to work on the initial project.

Then in 2014, he recruited Raja Akhtar, a PHP specialist, and the two worked together in their spare time.

Akhtar is now Head of Web Development at Pricesearcher.

In 2015, they recruited a freelance DevOps engineer, Vlassios Rizopoulos,[6] to help speed up the product indexing process.

In 2017, Rizopoulos became Pricesearcher's Chief Technology Officer.[2] Their goal was to list a searched-for item in one view, from retailers, marketplaces, classified advertising sites, brands and shopping comparison sites.[2] As the product index increased, funding was sought.

In 2016, Pricesearcher was launched and received its first outside seed funding from private investors.

Retailers who joined the Pricesearcher search engine in their first year were Amazon,[3] Argos, IKEA, Mothercare, Currys, PC World, Dreams (bed retailer), Wilko, King of Shaves, JD Sports.

Many more have joined since.[3] In September 2018, Pricesearcher was selected to join the London Stock Exchange's capital-raising programme.[7] In October 2018, former Amazon UK Head of Pricing Weldon W.

Whitener joined Pricesearcher as Chief Analytics officer.[8] In January 2019, Pricesearcher becomes a Google CSS Partner (Comparison Shopping Services)[9] In March 2019, Pi Datametrics and Pricesearcher Launched a Joint product for digital retailers "The first ever combining of organic search data and online product price data in a single report, PricePoint allows retailers to highlight where the winning pricing opportunities exist online, alongside organic visibility."[10] Pricesearcher enters a new partnership with latestdeals.co.uk where their technology is powering product search and product comparison for their consumers.[11] Latestdeals.co.uk is a uk website dedicated to the promotion of deals, vouchers, and freebies.

Pricesearcher went into Administration and on the 12th March 2020 Appointed Quantuma LLP [12] On the 20th March, Founder Samuel Dean and Jack Sundt formed a new business, Pricesearcher Technology Group Ltd [13] Pricesearcher uses PriceBot, its custom web crawler, to search the web for prices, and it allows direct product feeds from retailers at no cost.[3] The search engine's rapid growth[3] has been attributed to its enabling technology: a retailer can upload their product feed in any format, without the need for further development.

Pricesearcher processes 1.5 billion prices every day and uses Amazon Web Services (AWS), to which it migrated in December 2016, to enable the high volume of data processing required.[14] The rest of the business uses algorithms, NLP, Machine learning, data science and artificial intelligence to organise all the data.

As of February 2018, Pricesearcher is processing 2,500 UK retailers through PriceBot.

A further 4,000 retailers are using product feeds to submit product information to the search engine.[2] In 2019, Pricesearcher launched a browser extension tool, compatible with Firefox and Chrome, which pops up on visited websites to let the user know if they product they are looking at, is listed anywhere else on the internet, for less.[15][16] Like Google’s web crawler, GoogleBot,[17] PriceBot identifies online retailers and crawls their websites looking for products that are being sold.

Retailers can submit their own websites for crawling by PriceBot.[3] Pricesearcher is free to use for both shoppers and retailers.

It operates like Google and indeed.com as a free-to-list search engine.

Future revenue will come from an Adwords-type advertising model; the most traditional advertising model for search engines[2] Data collected by Pricesearcher was presented at the Brighton SEO Conference in a presentation: "What we have learnt from indexing over half a billion products".[2] Using the first 500 million products, Pricesearcher found that the average length of a product title was 48 characters (including spaces).

Product descriptions averaged 522 characters, or 90 words.

44.9% included shipping costs.

40.2% did not provide dimensions such as size and colour.[2] Their research shows that many retailers could improve their product listings by using brand terms as product keywords, using GTINs and putting product attributes in separate fields.[18] Between December 2016 and September 2017, Pricesearcher recorded 4 billion price changes globally.

The country with the most price changes was the UK – one every six days.[2]

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a privately held technology company and provides a SaaS ecommerce platform.

The company was founded in 2009 and has 600+ employees with headquarters in Austin, Texas.

[1][2] Its features include customer groups and segmentation, search engine optimization (SEO), web hosting, and more.

[3] BigCommerce was founded in 2009 by Australians Eddie Machaalani and Mitchell Harper following a chance meeting in an online chatroom in 2003.[4][5] In August 2009, the two relaunched a hosted version of Interspire Shopping Cart called “BigCommerce”[6] and opened its first U.S.

office.

BigCommerce was 100% bootstrapped[7] until July 31, 2011, when it closed $15 million in Series A funding from General Catalyst Partners.[8]

Search engine results page

Search engine results pages (SERP) are the pages displayed by search engines in response to a query by a user.

The main component of the SERP is the listing of results that are returned by the search engine in response to a keyword query.

The results are of two general types, organic search (i.e., retrieved by the search engine's algorithm) and sponsored search (i.e., advertisements).

The results are normally ranked by relevance to the query.

Each result displayed on the SERP normally includes a title, a link that points to the actual page on the Web, and a short description showing where the keywords have matched content within the page for organic results.

For sponsored results, the advertiser chooses what to display.

Due to the huge number of items that are available or related to the query, there are usually several pages in response to a single search query as the search engine or the user's preferences restrict viewing to a subset of results per page.

Each succeeding page will tend to have lower ranking or lower relevancy results.

Just like the world of traditional print media and its advertising, this enables competitive pricing for page real estate, but is complicated by the dynamics of consumer expectations and intent— unlike static print media where the content and the advertising on every page is the same all of the time for all viewers, despite such hard copy being localized to some degree, usually geographic, like state, metro-area, city, or neighbourhood, search engine results can vary based on individual factors such as browsing habits.[1] The organic search results, query, and advertisements are the three main components of the SERP, However, the SERP of major search engines, like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, may include many different types of enhanced results (organic search, and sponsored) such as rich snippets, images, maps, definitions, answer boxes, videos or suggested search refinements.

A recent study revealed that 97% of queries in Google returned at least one rich feature.[2] The major search engines visually differentiate specific content types such as images, news, and blogs.

Many content types have specialized SERP templates and visual enhancements on the first search results page.

Also known as 'user search string', this is the word or set of words that are typed by the user in the search bar of the search engine.

The search box is located on all major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Users indicate the topic desired based on the keywords they enter into the search box in the search engine.

In the competition between search engines to draw the attention of more users and advertisers, consumer satisfaction has been a driving force in the evolution of the search algorithm applied to better filter the results by relevancy.

Search queries are no longer successful based upon merely finding words that match purely by spelling.

Intent and expectations have to be derived to determine whether the appropriate result is a match based upon the broader meanings drawn from context.

And that sense of context has grown from simple matching of words, and then of phrases, to the matching of ideas.

And the meanings of those ideas change over time and context.

Successful matching can be crowdsourced, what are others currently searching for and clicking on, when one enters keywords related to those other searches.

And the crowdsourcing may be focused based upon one's own social networking.

With the advent of portable devices, smartphones, and wearable devices, watches and various sensors, these provide ever more contextual dimensions for consumer and advertiser to refine and maximize relevancy using such additional factors that may be gleaned like: a person's relative health, wealth, and various other status, time of day, personal habits, mobility, location, weather, and nearby services and opportunities, whether urban or suburban, like events, food, recreation, and business.

Social context and crowdsourcing influences can also be pertinent factors.

The move away from keyboard input and the search box to voice access, aside from convenience, also makes other factors available to varying degrees of accuracy and pertinence, like a person's character, intonation, mood, accent, ethnicity, and even elements overheard from nearby people and the background environment.

Searching is changing from explicit keywords: on TV show w, did x marry y or z, or election results for candidate x in county y for this date z, or final scores for team x in game y for this date z to vocalizing from a particular time and location: hey, so who won.

And getting the results that one expects.

Organic SERP listings are the natural listings generated by search engines based on a series of metrics that determine their relevance to the searched term.

Webpages that score well on a search engine's algorithmic test show in this list.

These algorithms are generally based upon factors such as quality and relevance of the content, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness of the website and author on a given topic, good user experience and backlinks.[3] People tend to view the first results on the first page.[4] Each page of search engine results usually contains 10 organic listings (however some results pages may have fewer organic listings).

According to a 2019 study,[5] the CTR's for the first page goes as follows: Every major search engine with significant market share accepts paid listings.

This unique form of search engine advertising guarantees that your site will appear in the top results for the keywords you target.

Paid search listings are also called sponsored listings and/or Pay Per Click (PPC) listings.

Rich snippets are displayed by Google in the search results pages when a website contains content in structured data markup.

Structured data markup helps the Google algorithm to index and understand the content better.

Google supports rich snippets for the following data types:[6] Featured Snippet is a summary of an answer to user's query.

This snippet appears at the top of organic results on SERP.

Google supports the following types of featured snippets:[7] Search engines like Google or Bing have started to expand their data into Encyclopedia and other rich sources of information.

Google for example calls this sort of information "Knowledge Graph", if a search query matches it will display an additional sub-window on right hand side with information from its sources.[8][9] Information about the product (example Nike), hotels, events, flights, places, businesses, people, books and movies, countries, sports groups, architecture and more can be obtained that way.

Major search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing primarily use content contained within the page and fallback to metadata tags of a web page to generate the content that makes up a search snippet.[10] Generally, the HTML title tag will be used as the title of the snippet while the most relevant or useful contents of the web page (description tag or page copy) will be used for the description.

Search engine result pages are protected from automated access by a range of defensive mechanisms and the terms of service.[11] These result pages are the primary data source for Search engine optimization, the website placement for competitive keywords became an important field of business and interest.

Google has even used Twitter to warn users against this practice[12] The sponsored (creative) results on Google can cost a large amount of money for advertisers.

The most expensive keywords are for legal services, especially personal injury lawyers in highly competitive markets.

These keywords range in the hundreds of USD, while the most expensive is nearly 1000 USD for each sponsored click.

The process of harvesting search engine result pages data is usually called "search engine scraping" or in a general form "web crawling" and generates the data SEO related companies need to evaluate website competitive organic and sponsored rankings.

This data can be used to track the position of websites and show the effectiveness of SEO as well as keywords that may need more SEO investment to rank higher.

Search advertising

In Internet marketing, Search advertising is a method of placing online advertisements on web pages that show results from search engine queries.

Through the same search-engine advertising services, ads can also be placed on Web pages with other published content.[1] Search advertisements are targeted to match key search terms (called keywords) entered on search engines.

This targeting ability has contributed to the attractiveness of Search advertising for advertisers.

Consumers will often use a search engine to identify and compare purchasing options immediately before making a purchasing decision.

The opportunity to present consumers with advertisements tailored to their immediate buying interests encourages consumers to click on search ads instead of unpaid search results, which are often less relevant.

For the online user, Sponsored Search Advertisement offers highly relevant search results which are based on the consumer’s own queries and, thus, they are considered less intrusive than banner advertisements or pop-ups advertising.

In addition, Sponsored Search Advertisement reduces online user search costs and increases the accessibility to useful information within a limited time frame.

Consequently, Sponsored Search Advertisement has become an important element of online users browsing and information searching experiences on the Web.

Search advertising is an alternative to SEO and SEM.

Web advertising before 1998 consisted of banner advertisements generally priced by the number of impressions delivered (i.e., Cost-Per-milli (CPM) pricing).

GoTo.com (renamed Overture in 2001, and acquired by Yahoo! in 2003) created the first sponsored search auction, and Google’s first sponsored search auction followed in 2002.[2] Search advertising is sold and delivered on the basis of keywords.

The user of a search engine enters keywords to make queries.

A keyword may consist of more than one word.[3] The user interested in the product or service searches using a specific keyword or search term which lets them interact with advertiser's website.

Search engines conduct running auctions to sell ads according to bids received for keywords and relative relevance of user keywords to ads in the inventory.

The keyword “home mortgage refinancing" is more expensive than one that is in less demand, such as “used bicycle tires.” Profit potential of the keywords also plays into bids for ads that advertisers want displayed when the keywords are searched by the user.

For example, "used book" may be a popular keyword but may have low profit potential and the advertiser bids will reflect that.

Search engines build indexes of Web pages using a Web crawler.

When the publisher of a Web page arranges with a search engine firm to have ads served up on that page, the search engine applies their indexing technology to associate the content of that page with keywords.

Those keywords are then fed into the same auctioning system that is used by advertisers to buy ads on both search engine results pages.

Advertising based on keywords in the surrounding content or context is referred to as Contextual advertising.

This is usually less profitable than Search advertising which is based on user intent expressed through their keywords.[citation needed] Advertisers can choose whether to buy ads on search result pages (Search advertising), published content pages (contextual advertising), or both.

Bids on the same keywords are usually higher in Search advertising than in contextual advertising.[citation needed] In 2013, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held in Lens.com, Inc.

v.

1-800 Contacts, Inc.

that online contact lens seller Lens.com did not commit trademark infringement when it purchased search advertisements using competitor 1-800 Contacts' federally registered 1800 CONTACTS trademark as a keyword.

In August 2016, the Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint against 1-800 Contacts alleging, among other things, that its Search advertising trademark enforcement practices have unreasonably restrained competition in violation of the FTC Act.

1-800 Contacts has denied all wrongdoing and is scheduled to appear before an FTC administrative law judge in April 2017.[4] Search advertising activities can be measured in five ways: CPM: Cost per thousand viewers was the original method used for pricing online advertisements.

CPM remains the most common method for pricing banner ads.

CTR: Click-through rates measure the number of times an ad is clicked as a percentage of views of the Web page on which the ad appears.

Banner ads have CTRs that are generally 0.5 percent or less.

In comparison, individual search engine ads can have CTRs of 10 percent, even though they appear alongside organic search results and competing paid search advertisements.[5] CPA: Cost per action quantifies costs for completing specified activities such as attracting a new customer or making a sale.

Affiliate networks operate on a CPA basis.

CPA systems function most effectively when sales cycles are short and easily tracked.

Longer sales cycles rely on exposure to multiple types of ads to create brand awareness and purchasing interest before a sale is made.

Longer sales cycles and sales requiring multiple customer contacts can be difficult to track, leading to a reluctance by publishers to participate in CPA programs beyond initial lead generation.

CPC: Cost per click tracks the cost of interacting with a client or potential client.

In traditional marketing, CPC is viewed as a one-way process of reaching target audiences through means such as direct mail, radio ads and television ads.

Search advertising provides opportunities for two-way contacts through web-based chat, Internet-based calls, call-back requests or mailing list sign-ups.

There are some guidelines to establish minimum acceptable counting procedure for clicks.

Each and every click has a life cycle which is known as click referral cycle.

It comprises four stages: Initiated click, Measured click, Received click and Resolved click.[6] TM: Total minutes is a metric being used by Nielsen/NetRatings to measure total time spent on a Web page rather than the number of Web page views.

On July 10, 2007, Nielsen announced that they would be relying on TM as their primary metric for measuring Web page popularity, due to changes in the way Web pages provide content through audio and video streaming and by refreshing the same page without totally reloading it.[7] Page refreshes are one aspect of Rich Internet Applications (RIA).

RIA technologies include AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and Microsoft Silverlight.

Methodological questions regarding the use of total minutes for Search advertising include how to account for Internet users that keep several browser windows open simultaneously, or who simply leave one window open unattended for long periods of time.

Another question involves tracking total minutes on HTML pages that are stateless and do therefore do not generate server-side data on the length of time that they are viewed.[8] Search engine advertisements are purchased on the basis of keywords.

Ad buyers engage in running actions for keywords, with popular keywords costing several dollars per click through.

Search engines use algorithms to determine the position of ads according to click through rates.

Ads with poor click through rates can be pushed down to the bottom of the first page of search results or onto subsequent pages.

Even though advertisers are only paying for click throughs, the algorithms assigning ad positions based on ad popularity provide incentives for optimizing keyword selection and other cost control measures.[9] Without cost control measures, it is possible for ad buyers to spend twenty five to fifty percent of their ad budget ineffectively.[5] Cost control measures can include:

Crash Landing on You

Crash Landing on You[3] (Korean: 사랑의 불시착; RR: Sarangui Bulsichak; MR: Sarangŭi pulshich'ak; lit.

Love's Emergency Landing) is a South Korean drama directed by Lee Jeong-hyo and featuring Hyun Bin, Son Ye-jin, Kim Jung-hyun, and Seo Ji-hye.

It is about a South Korean woman who accidentally crash-lands in North Korea.

It aired on tvN in South Korea and on Netflix worldwide from December 14, 2019, to February 16, 2020.

It is the highest rated tvN drama and the third-highest-rated Korean drama in cable television history.

Crash Landing on You tells the story of two star crossed lovers, Yoon Se-ri (Son Ye-jin), a South Korean Chaebol heiress, and Ri Jeong-hyeok (Hyun Bin), a member of the North Korean elite and a Captain in the North Korean Special Police Force.

One day while Yoon Se-ri goes for a short paragliding ride in Seoul, South Korea, a sudden tornado knocks her out and blows her off course.

She awakens to find her paraglider had crashed into a tree in a forest in the DMZ in North Korea (an area forbidden for South Koreans).

She then meets Ri Jeong-hyeok and falls into his arms when descending from the tree.

Ri Jeong-hyeok eventually gives Yoon Se-ri shelter, and develops plans to secretly help her return to South Korea.

Over time, they fall in love, despite the divide and dispute between their respective countries.

Her family suppresses the news of her disappearance out of fear that it will depress the stock price of the family-controlled chaebol.

In particular, Se-ri's two brothers, Se-jung and Se-hyung who are rivals, both claiming to be the rightful heir to their father's company.

Just before Se-ri's disappearance, their father had announced that he planned to anoint her as heir because his sons are incompetent.

Her brothers are supported by their equally ambitious wives, Do Hye-Ji (Hwang Woo-seul-hye) and Ko Sang-a (Yoon Ji-min).

Se-ri's and Jeong-hyeok's story is intertwined with that of Seo Dan (Seo Ji-hye) and Gu Seung-jun (Kim Jung-hyun).

Dan is the beautiful daughter of a wealthy North Korean department store owner.

She has been studying cello in Russia for several years but returns so that she can marry Jeong-hyeok, to whom she is engaged through an arranged marriage (and whom she has only met a few times).

As she returns to Pyongyang, she crosses paths, not for the first time, with Gu Seung-jun.

Gu Seung-jun, who had previously been engaged to Se-ri, fled to North Korea (under the protection of corrupt North Korean officers) in order to escape from the pursuit of Se-ri’s brother Se-hyung, under whose incompetent watch he had embezzled large amounts of money.

Although their initial encounters are unpleasant, they eventually fall in love.

The story follows Jeong-hyeok and Se-ri as they try to get her home.

They are impeded by Cho Cheol-gang (Oh Man-seok), an evil State Security officer, who a number of years ago had arranged for the murder of Jeong-hyeok's older brother, an officer who tried to expose him.

The story eventually shifts to Seoul where both comedy and drama ensue for all four main characters, Se-ri’s family, and the arch-villain Cho Cheol-gang.

The premise of Crash Landing on You was inspired by a real event involving South Korean actress, Jung Yang.[2][10] In September 2008, Yang and three others had to be rescued after bad fog had caused their leisure boat to drift "into the maritime boundary between North and South Korea."[11] Park Ji-eun, the drama's screenwriter, was introduced to North Korean defector turned film adviser and writer Kwak Moon-wan, who became part of the drama's writing team.[12][13] Kwak, who studied film directing in Pyongyang and had also been a member of an elite security force protecting the Kims, helped in crafting the drama's plot and in conceptualizing the setting and scenes in the drama portraying North Korean life.[12][13] The production process proved to be "painstakingly meticulous", owing to South Korea's relationship with North Korea where most of the story's plot ensues.[14] The use of the honorific Chairman to refer to North Korea's leaders was avoided, and the North Korean lapel pins used by the cast members taking North Korean roles were one third smaller than their actual size.[15] Props manager Joo Dong-man said the crew did not have a "guidebook on multiple hurdles he had to hop over — skillfully and delicately – to accurately depict the country while dodging criticism" and, thus, had to be careful "not to misrepresent the state".

They worked with guidance from North Koreans living in South Korea and research.[14][2] The first script reading took place on July 31, 2019 in Sangam-dong, Seoul, and filming overseas started at the end of August 2019.[16] North Korean scenes were shot in South Korea and Mongolia.[2] Scenes that took place in Switzerland were shot on location.[2] On Rotten Tomatoes, Crash Landing on You has two (out of two) positive reviews.[17] Variety Magazine named it one of "The Best International Shows on Netflix."[18] Jo Walker of The Guardian's "Stream Team" called it "addictively off-the-wall, heartbreaking and hilarious."[19] Time ranks Crash Landing on You as one of the best Korean dramas to watch on Netflix.[20] Aljazeera has also cited the drama as one of the most recent hallyu’s success.[21] Early in its run, Crash Landing on You was the fourth highest rated Korean cable drama.[22] The final episode's ratings made it the third highest rated Korean drama in cable television history, surpassing fellow tvN dramas Reply 1988 and Guardian: The Lonely and Great God.[23] Crash Landing on You emerged as one of the top shows on Netflix (who owns the distribution rights outside South Korea) and continued to enjoy widespread popularity even after the show has ended.[24] It became a hit in South Korea.

With 1.75 billion online views, Crash Landing on You outperformed the prior leader, Mr.

Sunshine, for most viewed drama clips by 200 million views as of February 17th, 2020.

[25] It was also a hit in Singapore,Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand.

A-list celebrities from these countries posted pictures on their social media platforms stating that they are currently binge-watching the drama.

Some even photoshopped themselves on photos with lead stars Hyun Bin and Son Ye-jin.

[26] The drama was also an immense success in China.

The hashtag for the drama’s final episode has received over 460 million views on China’s Twitter-like—Weibo.

The streaming website for the South Korean drama, which holds the copyright in China with Chinese subtitles, crashed on the night it aired the final episode due to the enormous number of users.[27] The drama also became a big hit in Japan reaching number 1 on Netflix.It became viral on the internet with many Japanese celebrities stated that they binge watched the show.

[28] According to Yahoo Japan,the drama attracts a wide range of people.

One of The North Korean scenes where there was a blackout also gives a nostalgic feeling to Japanese people in their 50’s because they were familiar with the power shortage when they were young.

Also, the success of the drama helps revive the hallyu wave in Japan that has been declining for years.

[29] Although the series' depiction of North Korea is fictional, it has received praise "for its portrayal of everyday life in the North, even down to accents and words."[30][31] It also received positive reviews from North Korean defectors.[15][12] A North Korean defector, who had served with the Supreme Guard Command (which protects the ruling Kim family) worked as an adviser for the series, providing the writers with details about life in North Korea as well as North Korean governmental agencies that added credibility to the show.[32] One of the extras (who portrayed a North Korean villager) is a writer and actress from North Korea who states that she felt "like [she] was actually back in a North Korean village."[30] Yun Suk-jin, a professor at Chungnam National University, also notes that the series "changed the stereotypes on North Korea and candidly showed that it too is a place where people live."[30] Sarah A.

Son, Lecturer in Korean Studies at the University of Sheffield also agrees, noting that Crash Landing on You responds to the "socio-cultural divide" between the North and the South, which academic scholarship cites as one of the biggest obstacles to future unification.

Son argues that "through the re-framing of stereotypes, albeit with some creative licence, Crash Landing on You arguably humanises the North for its audience in ways that inter-Korean dialogue has not in recent years.

Despite its soft-focus romanticisation of the political situation, Crash Landing on You brings the pain of the division to a personal level for a generation of Koreans who, unlike their grandparents, have no memory of what it was like to be a single nation."[13] Joanna Elfving-Hwang, associate professor of Korean studies at the University of Western Australia concurs, stating that “North Korea tends to appear in our imagination as the ‘axis of evil’, we think of [negative things like] nuclear weapons and human rights abuses…this drama has dared to think about North Korean people differently and represented them as quite human and quite Korean.”[33] Steve Hung Lok-wai, a Korean affairs expert from Chinese University of Hong Kong states that the drama sidestepped larger political issues through a narrative that did not end with the defection of either character.

Thus, he argues, it's "quite smart because they avoided all the real taboos but made it believable enough where it would make people think about these political problems."[33] John Delury, a professor at Yonsei University, praised the series for its decision to draw parallels between powerful families in both the South and the North, and to humanize North Koreans beyond generic stereotypes.[34] There were also critical responses to the themes of the drama in both regions.

In January 2020, The Christian Liberal Party (CLP) filed a complaint in South Korea against tvN at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, accusing the network of glamorizing North Korea through this series, in violation of the National Security Law.[35][36][37] Then, in March 2020, a few North Korean media outlets criticized unnamed South Korean programs and films that explored relations between North and South Korea.

While Crash Landing on You was not directly mentioned by the media outlets, it was perceived to be among the referenced works.

Another is the 2019 film, Ashfall, although that film was also not directly cited in the articles.[38][39] The success of the drama helped to boost brand items due to product placement.

The lead characters portrayed by Hyun Bin and Son Ye-jin ate Gold Olive Chicken, a product which had a 100% sales improvement due to the show.[2][40] There was also an increase in sales of the Swarovski earrings worn by Son Ye-jin.[41] The following is the official track list of Crash Landing on You: Original Soundtrack.[42][43][44] The tracks with no indicated lyricists and composers are the drama's musical score; the artists indicated for these tracks are the tracks' composers themselves.

In this table, the blue numbers represent the lowest ratings and the red numbers represent the highest ratings.

Mellat Investment Bank

Mellat Investment Bank, also known as MellatIB (Persian: تامین سرمایه ملت‎, Tamin Sarmaye Mellat) is an Iranian investment banking firm based in Tehran.

The company offers investment banking services.

Mellat Investment Bank is a private joint stock company.

It is regulated by the country’s Securities and Exchange Organization (SEO) as part of the government's economic reform of the banking system.

Mellat Investment Bank was established under the license of Security Exchange Organization on 30 August 2010.[1] The company began operations on January 18, 2011 and provides various types of financial services such as brokerage, broker-dealer, market making, asset management, Advisory services, underwriting, firm commitment, holding seminars and conferences regarding Islamic financing systems such as Sukuk and all other permitted financial services.

The Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) admitted Mellat Investment Bank into its membership in 2014.

MellatIB provides financing and underwriting services.

It helps with public offering of equity Islamic "debt" instruments including different kinds of Sukuk).[2] Seyed Rouhollah Hosseini Moghaddam, former deputy of the Tehran Stock Exchange, on june 2019 was selected as the new CEO of Mellat Investment Bank.

The Mellat Financial Group is the largest shareholder.

, Mellat Brokerage Company, Mellat Leasing Company, Mellat Exchange Company, and Tadbirgaran Behsaz Mellat Company.

Mellat Investment Bank is organized in four business units:

Fruition

Fruition is a full service digital marketing agency based in Denver, Colorado that provides web design & development and Internet marketing services to multiple international corporations.[6][7] The company is also known for its Google Penalty Checker tool.[8][9][10][11] Founded in 2000[12] by current CEO Brad Anderson,[2] Fruition initially began as an SEO company.

It later expanded to the larger niche of digital marketing.[12] The company's core services now include SEO, website development & design,[13] app development, digital marketing, and brand & reputation management.[4][5] Fruition was first trademarked in 2002, and registered with the World Intellectual Property Organization in 2007.[14] In 2013, Fruition released its Google Penalty Checker tool, which has notably been the subject of multiple news reports.[9][10][11][15][16][17] It is a proprietary tool that uses statistical analysis and third-party data to determine if a website had been hit by a Google penalty, as well as which particular update caused it.[18][19] Once the tool is granted access to a Google Analytics account,[10][20] it uses algorithms involving bounce rates, organic traffic, new vs.

repeat visits, and page views, among other data, to evaluate a possible Google penalty[3][9][16][17] due to a recent update.[11] It provides a graph of all the updates and the percentage of their effect on the site.[10] The tool is free for up to two sites, after which pricing is applicable.[9][20] The tool has been noted to be beneficial for businesses that do not stay up to date with Google updates.[11]

Extracurricular (TV series)

Extracurricular (Korean: 인간수업; RR: Ingansueop; lit.

Human Class) is a South Korean television series directed by Kim Jin-min, starring Kim Dong-hee, Jung Da-bin, Park Ju-hyun, Nam Yoon-soo, Choi Min-soo, Park Hyuk-kwon and Kim Yeo-jin.

It was released on Netflix on April 29, 2020.[1][2] A top student who runs an illegal business is caught by one of his classmates who starts blackmailing him.

On April 22, 2019, Netflix announced through a press release that it would distribute a new Korean original series entitled Extracurricular and produced by Studio 329, confirming at the same time that the main cast would consist of Kim Dong-hee, Jung Da-bin, Park Joo-hyun, Nam Yoon-soo, Choi Min-soo, Park Hyuk-kwon and Kim Yeo-jin.[3][4] The series is written by Song Ji-na's son Jin Han-sae and directed by Kim Jin-min, whose wife Kim Yeo-jin is starring in the series.[5] Filming, which ended on August 6, 2019, mostly took place in Seoul.[6][7] On April 28, 2020, the press conference was held online due to the coronavirus pandemic, in presence of actors Kim Dong-hee, Jung Da-bin, Park Joo-hyun and Nam Yoon-soo, executive producer (and Studio 329's CEO) Yoon Shin-ae, and director Kim Jin-min.[8] The series being released a few months after the Nth room case opened, director Kim said that "the incident was so shocking that [he] felt frightened.

Extracurricular could become an opportunity to discuss this uncomfortable reality.

As a creator, [he] felt [he] had to deal with the issues of our society with more depth and responsibility."[9] On April 29, some of the cast and crew attended a special one-day class by Professors Kwon Il-yong (South Korea's first profiler), Park Mi-rang (a criminologist) and Seo Min-soo (from the Police Human Resources Development Institute), which was broadcast live on Netflix Korea's YouTube and V Live channels.

They discussed the reality of youth crime in society.[10] On March 19, 2020, Netflix Korea announced through Twitter that the series would be released on April 29.[11] On April 16, the official trailer was released.[12][13] John Serba of Decider said that "Extracurricular is good, funny stuff.

The debut episode's near-miss ending isn't entirely satisfying, but that's not likely to stop you from binging the crap out of this show."[14] The series has also "gained rave reviews for its clear depiction of the struggles of teenage students."[15]

Yandex.Metrica

Yandex.Metrica is a free web analytics service offered by Yandex that tracks and reports website traffic.

Yandex launched the service in 2008 and made it public in 2009.[2] As of 2019, Yandex.Metrica is the third most widely used web analytics service on the web.[3] Yandex.Metrica uses a simple JavaScript tag that a webmaster implements on their website.

The tag collects audience, traffic, and behaviour data for the website.

Metrica can be also linked with Yandex.Direct online advertising platform to collect ads conversion rate.

Content writing services

Content writing services (also known as online Content writing services and content marketing services) is a category of work that first surfaced in the early 1990s, due to an exponential rise in online activities.[1] Content writing aims to provide the "speech" to a website, summarising what the website is about and explaining what the site offers to potential customers.

The availability of the global job market means Content writing services vary in the paid-for services on offer.

In general, most content writing organizations offer the writing of article copy, blog posts, press releases, web page information, product descriptions and other corporate material.

While different pricing scales apply to these categories (depending on the company), most providers charge a fixed "by the word" rate.

Adoption of the World Wide Web spread across the globe during the early 1990s.

With it came the ability for businesses to represent themselves through a website, enabling visitors to obtain relevant information and engage with their favorite brands.[citation needed] Later came search engines like Yahoo, Google, and Bing.

Their goal was to categorize information found on the internet and present it to those who were searching for it.

This information, known as web content, became intrinsic to the modern Web in years to come.[citation needed] The demand made by search engines for credible and well-organized information led to the development of commercial Content writing services.[citation needed] Content writers aim to write the company's desired text in a manner that completely aligns with the brand's values, ethos and style.

The 21st century distinguishes Content writing services into multiple segments.

Such categorization comes from a diversified approach of presenting information in the World Wide Web Consortium.

Today, in addition to its utilization for commercial descriptive purposes, individuals have taken up writing as a means to communicate with their global audience.

The main subdivisions of Content writing services today include.

TOWeb

TOWeb is a WYSIWYG website creation software for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X that makes web publishing easy.[1] The latest version 5 creates HTML5/CSS3 responsive websites compatible with any device.

It has some limitations such as one can not open an external web site for editing.[2] The first version of TOWeb was developed during 2 years from 2003 to 2005 under the project name "WebGen".

It was primarily intended for beginners without any HTML knowledge[3] in website creation.

The first version 1.0 was released on August 6, 2005.

The following releases 2.0, 3.0, 4.0...have brought new features like the ability to create online stores.

The latest version 5.0 released on June 2013 follow the Responsive Web Design trend by allowing the creation of websites compatible with any device.[4] TOWeb is available in the following languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese.

Media agency

Media agencies advise companies on how and where to advertise, and on how to present a positive picture of themselves to the public.[1] Primary services include advertising, public relations and other forms of media management.

Media agencies were first launched with their main focus being the transaction of media space more efficiently than the mainstream advertising agencies[2], which had previously managed the process of media buying.

A Media agency ensures that a marketing message appeals to consumers, appears in the right place, at the right time and that the advertiser pays the best possible price.

There are cases, mainly within the large conglomerates, where both media and creative agencies are housed under one roof, however their P&L usually remains separate.

Media Buyers, or practitioners in media, are the people who liaise with publishers from various media titles.

They are equipped to advise and negotiate targeted media inventory dependent of the briefed key performance indicator.

Media agencies act as independent brokerages that transact in media space and take control of the marketing process once the creative agency has completed its remit of preparing and releasing the targeted creative message.

Media Agencies follow a structural hierarchy as seen in the creative agency environment.

The usual hierarchy is These titles may vary slightly from one company to another.

Digital Media Agencies (also known as Digital Agencies) offer a varied array of services including Display Media Planning and Buying, pay per click (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO), Marketing Technology Services, social media marketing, online reputation management and programmatic media.

Agencies have been the traditional power brokers in the media inventory.

A recent phenomenon is seeing agencies developing their trading models in the form of a trading desk that transacts in media inventory.[3]

Shopping directory

An online Shopping directory is a "Yellow Pages-Style" web directory that specializes in ecommerce sites (which are websites that sell products or services).

Inspired by the organizational structure used in traditional shopping mall directories, online shopping directories organize ecommerce sites by their category and subcategory of goods sold.

Without the constraints related to shopping at a physical mall (e.g.

distance, location, hours of operation, access to transportation), an online Shopping directory serves to aggregate all ecommerce sites in one centralized location in order to help a user decide where to shop online.

A Shopping directory is different from a comparison shopping website (which is also referred to as a comparison shopping engine or a price comparison shopping site).

While comparison shopping websites present product listings, by category, so a user can compare pricing on same and/or similar products, a Shopping directory does not provide product comparison, review or sale.

Examples of comparison shopping websites include: Google Shopping, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, TheFind.com A Shopping directory is different from an online marketplace.

Marketplaces sell products and/or services that are aggregated from various ecommerce sellers but sold under the branding and infrastructure of the named marketplace itself.

Examples of online marketplaces include: Amazon, Etsy and eBay.

A specialized form of a Shopping directory is a coupon, daily deal and/or promotional savings site.

Coupon sites provide a niche web directory centered on deal aggregation by listing only ecommerce sites that offer additional savings to the user.

Coupon sites are very popular with users but often are viewed negatively by merchants.[1] Examples of coupon sites include: Retailmenot, Coupons.com, Groupon Free directories such as the Open Directory Project, often updated by volunteers, lost their prominence and relevancy in today's search-driven internet.

Before the increased popularity of the Google search engine, shopping directories, such as that found at the Yahoo! Directory or the PayPal Shopping directory, played a prominent role in users' online shopping habits and behavior.

As Google gained dominance, users adapted their shopping search behavior to the new system.

Most search engines took over the role traditionally filled by shopping directories.

Recently, criticisms have emerged over the limits of using search engines such as Google and Bing for use in the ecommerce cycle.[2] The dominance of the SEO structure in search makes competition fierce among merchants as they struggle for positioning on the Google search results pages.

New methodologies for shopping directories are emerging as startups look to bridge the gap between ecommerce and search .[3] As ecommerce continues to grow, startup companies are reinvisioning the Shopping directory to make it more relevant to the growing needs of online shoppers.

Microstock photography

Microstock photography,[citation needed] also known as micropayment photography, is a part of the stock photography industry.

What defines a company as a Microstock photography company is that they (1) source their images almost exclusively via the Internet, (2) do so from a wider range of photographers than the traditional stock agencies (including a willingness to accept images from "amateurs" and hobbyists), and (3) sell their images at a very low rate (from US$0.20 to $10 in the US) for a royalty-free (RF) image.

A number of microstock sites also sell vector art, and some sell audio (music) files, Flash animations and video as well as images.[1] The pioneer of Microstock photography was Bruce Livingstone, who created iStockphoto, originally a free stock photo site that quickly became an industry phenomenon.[citation needed] Livingstone sold iStockphoto to Getty Images in February 2006 for US$50 million.

Many other sites sprang up in the years after iStockphoto's inception.

Some of the larger ones are Alamy, Bigstock, Fotolia, Depositphotos, 123rf, Featurepics, Pond5, Can Stock Photo, Dreamstime and Shutterstock.

After a few years of initial growth, the microstock industry began a period of mergers and acquisitions.

The acquisition of iStockphoto by Getty Images in 2006 was followed by acquisition of StockXpert by Jupiterimages during 2006.[2] Consequently, Jupiterimages, a wholly owned subsidiary of Jupitermedia, was bought by Getty Images in 2009 for $96 million in cash[3] and resulted in the closure of StockXpert in 2010 because it was perceived to be non-strategic for Getty compared to iStockphoto.

After the sale, Jupitermedia changed its name to WebMediaBrands.[3] BigStockPhoto was purchased by Shutterstock in 2009.

Starting from limited RF license, all agencies added various Extended Licenses; sites based on a "pay-per-download" principle introduced subscription and vice versa.

Shutterstock, which was the only 100% subscription-based microstock agency, introduced a pay-per-download scheme and later acquired BigStockPhoto to extend their presence in pay-per-download niche.

Newcomer Cutcaster.com extended the pricing model by introducing a model where contributors could set their start price or could choose to use a pricing algorithm and they allowed a buyer to pay the price shown or bid on the content and name their price.

Microstock prices were significantly adjusted several times by the respective agencies in the last three years across multiple sites.

Many microstock agencies started to sell video in addition to static pictures, and some started to sell sound clips.

2011 marked the first signs of microstock photographers becoming a field of professionals.[citation needed] Photographers with large, market-relevant, or high-quality portfolios now often collaborate with each other and negotiate with less-established agencies for better commissions or search positioning, and the increasing popularity among photographers of photography portfolio management solutions to increase their throughput and improve metadata quality to better align with principles of SEO in image search algorithms.

In 2012, Shutterstock became the first microstock agency to complete an initial public offering.

The agency now trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SSTK.[4] In December 2014 Adobe acquired Fotolia for US$800 million in cash.[5] Each microstock agency uses a different pricing and payment scheme.

In some instances the same photo can have several prices.

Photographers can upload the same pictures on multiple sites or, with some agencies, become an exclusive supplier and receive an increased commission and additional benefits.[6] There is no fee to post photos on a microstock agency website.

However, microstock agencies do not accept all submitters or all photographs.

Each employs a team of reviewers who check every picture submitted for legal issues and technical quality, as well as artistic and commercial merit.

Photographers add keywords that help potential buyers filter and find pictures of interest.[6] Some professional photographers who do not participate believe that microstock devalues the practice of photography, and that the business model is unsustainable.

They see the growth of microstock sites as reducing their own incomes.[6] In 2015, hundreds of microstock contributors joined together to create the open-source Symbiostock project[7] and associated Symzio agency[8] in an effort to offset this devaluation through independently controlled pricing.

A development that counters these critical opinions is the advance of on-demand photography (or crowd sourced photography, photography marketplaces, etc.).

With the higher penetration of smartphones with ever-better cameras, most amateurs can create high quality photography wherever they are.

Crowd photo services like CrowdFoto.net or imagebrief.com try to tap into this vast potential by giving clients the possibility to publish a request (or briefing) that can be picked up and worked on by literally everybody who finds the briefing on their platform.

These services reinstate the traditional model of a client asking a photographer to create a photo, but make use of the broadened number of amateur photographers.

Ashmanov %26 Partners

Jimdo

Jimdo is a German website-builder and all-in-one hosting solution, designed to enable users to build their own websites without any web design experience.

The company is privately held and headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, with offices in Munich and Tokyo.

Jimdo has two products; Creator and Dolphin, both of which offer free and paid plans.

Jimdo Dolphin is an AI-powered website-builder designed for users with basic computer skills and automates most of the website building process.

It uses artificial intelligence to get to know the user, their business, and their goals, then builds a website that is already fully personalized to meet their needs.

Jimdo Creator is a drag and drop style website builder and hosting service which is suitable for users with some coding skills.

Jimdo was founded in 2007 by Matthias Henze, Christian Springub, and Fridtjof Detzner.[4] While they were still in high school, Springub and Detzner started their first internet agency designing websites for small businesses in Cuxhaven, Germany.

When Matthias Henze joined the company in 2004, the team decided to build their own content management system which would go on to become Jimdo in 2007.[5] In April 2009, after Yahoo! announced that GeoCities was closing, Jimdo announced that former GeoCities users were welcome on Jimdo.[6] Jimdo started the "Lifeboat for GeoCities" promotion to help users transition to Jimdo.[7] Jimdo offered a 10 percent discount to users who moved from GeoCities and Google Page Creator to Jimdo.[8] In 2010, Jimdo added a "store" service that allows Jimdo website owners to conduct electronic commerce services.[9] Also in 2010, United Internet withdrew from the company's board.[10] In February 2012, the 5 millionth Jimdo site went online[11] and in November 2013, the 10 millionth.[12] As of July 2019, over 25 million websites have been created with Jimdo.[13] On 8 June 2015, Jimdo secured 25 million euros worth of investment from the American company, Spectrum Equity.

With this investment, Spectrum Equity now holds a share of 26.7 percent of Jimdo GmbH[14] although the company remains privately held.

In October 2016, Jimdo laid off 25% of its staff in a bid to regain focus, after founders recognized that the company was getting slower at product development.

Co-founder, Henze, described the decision as Jimdo’s “most difficult moment.”[15] In 2017, Jimdo launched its new artificially-intelligent website builder, Jimdo Dolphin.[16] The new AI-powered product enables users with basic computer skills to build their own websites.

The Jimdo head office is in Hamburg, Germany.

It also has offices in Munich and Tokyo.

As of 2019, Jimdo has an international team of 220 employees from around the world.[17] Jimdo offers two different services; Creator is the company’s original drag and drop website builder, and Dolphin is the company’s new AI website builder.

Both products offer free and premium subscription plans.

As of 2019, there are seven languages available: English, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, and Spanish.

The English-language service uses American English.

To increase speed and performance for their worldwide user base, Jimdo maintains data centers in Germany and Japan.[18] Jimdo Creator was launched in February 2007.[19] It is a website builder that is suitable for users with some technical expertise, who want to build their website from scratch and customize it using code.[20] Creator offers a Free plan and four premium subscription plans; Pro, Business, SEO Plus, and Platinum.[21] Users on the Free plan have their website available under a subdomain (for example "www.yourwebsitename.Jimdofree.com").

This free service from Jimdo allows the user to build a website using a professional template with access to all Creator’s basic features, including: Jimdo Creator has four premium subscription plans; Pro, Business, SEO Plus, and Platinum.[22] All premium plan websites are free of advertisements and automatically optimized for use on mobile devices, including tablets and smartphones.

The Business, SEO Plus, and Platinum plans come with unlimited storage and bandwidth, the option to add an online store, and advanced SEO features that enable the user to improve their website’s search engine ranking.[23] Jimdo Dolphin was launched in March 2018, with a preview release in October 2017.[24] It is an AI-driven website builder that is designed to make website building accessible to users with no experience.

Dolphin gets to know the user, their business, and their goals, then builds a website that is already personalized to fit their requirements.[25] Dolphin offers the user fewer options than Creator, to make the process of building a website as fast and as simple as possible.

On its release, Jimdo’s CEO and co-founder, Matthias Henze, said the company had seen “an opportunity to make website creation radically easier,”[26] describing Dolphin as “a new kind of website builder that asks you brief questions about your business, and then creates a totally personalized website with text, photos, and other details already filled in.” [27] Dolphin users are guided through the website creation process by a wizard, which prompts them to answer questions about the purpose and goals of their website.

Users have the option to connect their social media accounts and automatically sync images from their social profiles to their website.

Dolphin then builds a personalized website complete with texts and images, tailored to the user’s industry and specific goals.

Once their website is created, users can choose to use the integrated Assistant to guide them through each step of the website building process and learn to use features like Dolphin’s automatic SEO.[28] In December 2018, Robert Brandl, from WebToolTester.com reported “impressive” results with Jimdo Dolphin, “You can actually create a first draft [of your website] in just 3 minutes [...] If you’re prepared to invest another hour or two into customizing the text and adding further subpages, the final product can be made to look really impressive.” But describes the “basic level of SEO optimization” as “disappointing as it stands.”[29] In January 2019, Top10.com described Jimdo Dolphin as, “[...] an extremely easy and hassle-free way to create your perfect website.

Simply input your information, tell the website builder what styles you’re into, and you’re done.

In less than 3 minutes you have yourself a one-of-a-kind and professional looking website.

If at any point you want to make changes to your site, just click on the element and edit away.

It’s clear why Jimdo Dolphin was used to create over 20 million websites – the tool works.”[30] In February 2019, Chris Singleton from Style Factory gave Jimdo 3/5 stars, “It’s well-suited to small businesses that require a simple online presence and/or shop, but don’t have the budget, expertise or time to grapple with more complex systems.”[31] In October 2019, Hendrick Human from WebsitePlanet.com rated Jimdo 4.7/5 stars, “If you’re new to building websites and all you want is a simple website with a blog or online store and decent SEO, then it’s not a bad option.

If you have bigger plans for your site, there’s a good chance you’ll find Jimdo [Dolphin] too restrictive.”[32] In February 2019, Jimdo added an online “store” to its new website builder, Dolphin, to let users conduct electronic commerce.

The drag and drop style is suitable for users without any technical knowledge who want to sell products online.

Users can choose to receive payments via SEPA Direct Debit, credit card or PayPal.[33] “The top two [Jimdo Dolphin subscription] plans make it easy to start an e-commerce store.

You just start adding products.

Both plans allow you to add as many as you like, but the eCommerce plan is limited in that you only have 50 pages to work with.

You can take payments using SEPA Direct Debit, PayPal, or credit card.

And unlike some e-commerce website builders, Jimdo does not take a cut of your sells.” Frank Moraes from HTML.com.[34] Dolphin users can choose from five subscription plans when building their website or online store with, including a free plan and four premium plans.

Dolphin’s free plan, Play, includes many basic features included in the paid plans.

Play customers get a personalized subdomain (e.g.

www.yourwebsite.Jimdosite.com), HTTPS encryption, and up to 5 website pages.

Play websites have advertisements on them.

Dolphin’s premium plans include a free domain for the first year, email features, extra storage and bandwidth, more responsive customer support, access to the Jimdo Boost and Jimdo Live Chat apps, additional website pages, and no advertisements.

Unlimited plans also include access to the Business Listings app which allows users to synchronize their business information on multiple online platforms including Facebook, Google, and Bing, for increased online visibility.

Jimdo launched its first mobile application in February 2014.

As of October 2019, Jimdo has four apps available for iOS[35] and Android.[36] Two months after the service launch in 2007, Rafe Needleman of CNet gave a positive review to Jimdo.

Needleman described Jimdo as a "good service for creating a quick site to document a trip or other event, or to prototype a simple personal or business site." He also said that Jimdo was not "mature enough yet" for use by a United States-based small business, "but it's worth keeping track of.[39]" In 2010, VentureBeat reported on the opening of the US office in San Francisco and the launch of an online store feature, concluding "US readers will probably hear more about the company in the coming months".

In 2012, David Pogue cited Jimdo in The New York Times, as a recommended replacement for the website building feature in Apple’s “MobileMe” service, following Apple’s decision to shut down the service on June 30th 2012.

Reasoning that, “Jimdo’s design templates are better looking [than Weebly’s], and the paid plan offers more advanced features.

You can even sell stuff from your Jimdo site.”[40] In 2013, USA Today commended Jimdo for “how easily it handles e-commerce” and its “ease of use,” recommending it for small business owners who would be “unlikely to find a simpler solution.”[41] In June 2018, following the release of Jimdo’s new AI-driven website builder, Dolphin, Forbes writer Alison Coleman hailed the service as an alternative to “traditional website builders” that have “become extremely powerful and able to create extremely sophisticated results, but for most people they still take too long and involve a steep learning curve.” In contrast, Jimdo Dolphin “pulls everything together quickly and their online content is ready and waiting.

From there [Dolphin] provides further support, for example, handling some of the SEO tasks.”[42] In October 2019, Jimdo secured its first celebrity endorsement and released a television commercial[43] featuring the American actor, Neil Patrick Harris.[44][45]

Competitor analysis

Competitor analysis in marketing and strategic management is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors.

This analysis provides both an offensive and defensive strategic context to identify opportunities and threats.

Profiling combines all of the relevant sources of Competitor analysis into one framework in the support of efficient and effective strategy formulation, implementation, monitoring and adjustment.[1] Competitor analysis is an essential component of corporate strategy.[2] It is argued that most firms do not conduct this type of analysis systematically enough.

Instead, many enterprises operate on what is called "informal impressions, conjectures, and intuition gained through the tidbits of information about competitors every manager continually receives." As a result, traditional environmental scanning places many firms at risk of dangerous competitive blindspots due to a lack of robust Competitor analysis.[3] One common and useful technique is constructing a competitor array.

The steps may include: Two additional columns can be added.

In one column, a company can be rated on each of the key success factors (try to be objective and honest).

In another column, benchmarks can be listed.

They are the ideal standards of comparisons on each of the factors.

They reflect the workings of a company using all the industry's best practices.

The strategic rationale of competitor profiling is simple.

Superior knowledge of rivals offers a legitimate source of competitive advantage.

The raw material of competitive advantage consists of offering superior customer value in the firm's chosen market.

The definitive characteristic of customer value is the adjective, superior.

Customer value is defined relative to rival offerings making competitor knowledge an intrinsic component of corporate strategy.

Profiling facilitates this strategic objective in three important ways.[4] First, profiling can reveal strategic weaknesses in rivals that the firm may exploit.

Second, the proactive stance of competitor profiling will allow the firm to anticipate the strategic response of their rivals to the firm's planned strategies, the strategies of other competing firms, and changes in the environment.

Third, this proactive knowledge will give the firms strategic agility.

Offensive strategy can be implemented more quickly in order to exploit opportunities and capitalize on strengths.

Similarly, defensive strategy can be employed more deftly in order to counter the threat of rival firms from exploiting the firm's own weaknesses.[3] Firms practising systematic and advanced competitor profiling may have a significant advantage.

A comprehensive profiling capability is a core competence required for successful competition.[3] A common technique is to create detailed profiles on each of the major competitors.[5] These profiles give an in-depth description of the competitor's background, finances, products, markets, facilities, personnel, and strategies.

This involves: Scanning competitor's ads can reveal much about what that competitor believes about marketing and their target market.[6] Changes in a competitor's advertising message can reveal new product offerings, new production processes, a new branding strategy, a new positioning strategy, a new segmentation strategy, line extensions and contractions, problems with previous positions, insights from recent marketing or product research, a new strategic direction, a new source of sustainable competitive advantage, or value migrations within the industry.

It might also indicate a new pricing strategy such as penetration, price discrimination, price skimming, product bundling, joint product pricing, discounts, or loss leaders.

It may also indicate a new promotion strategy such as push, pull, balanced, short term sales generation, long term image creation, informational, comparative, affective, reminder, new creative objectives, new unique selling proposition, new creative concepts, appeals, tone, and themes, or a new advertising agency.

It might also indicate a new distribution strategy, new distribution partners, more extensive distribution, more intensive distribution, a change in geographical focus, or exclusive distribution.

Similar techniques can be used by observing a competitor's search engine optimization targets and practices.[7] For example, by conducting keyword research, one may be able to determine a competitor's target market, keywords, or products.

Other metrics allow for detection of a competitor's success.[8] Little of this intelligence is definitive: additional information is needed before conclusions should be drawn.

A competitor's media strategy reveals budget allocation, segmentation and targeting strategy, and selectivity and focus.[9][10] From a tactical perspective, it can also be used to help a manager implement his own media plan.

By knowing the competitor's media buy, media selection, frequency, reach, continuity, schedules, and flights, the manager can arrange their own media plan so that they do not coincide.

Other sources of corporate intelligence include trade shows, patent filings, mutual customers, annual reports, and trade associations.

Some firms hire competitor intelligence professionals to obtain this information.

The Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals maintains a listing of individuals who provide these services.[11] In addition to analysing current competitors, it is necessary to estimate future competitive threats.

The most common sources of new competitors are: The entrance of new competitors is likely when:

Online advertising

Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers.

Many consumers find Online advertising disruptive[1] and have increasingly turned to ad blocking for a variety of reasons.

When software is used to do the purchasing, it is known as programmatic advertising.

Online advertising includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising.

Like other advertising media, Online advertising frequently involves a publisher, who integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher's content.

Other potential participants include advertising agencies who help generate and place the ad copy, an ad server which technologically delivers the ad and tracks statistics, and advertising affiliates who do independent promotional work for the advertiser.

In 2016, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable television and broadcast television.[2]:14 In 2017, Internet advertising revenues in the United States totaled $83.0 billion, a 14% increase over the $72.50 billion in revenues in 2016.[3] Many common Online advertising practices are controversial and, as a result, have been increasingly subject to regulation.

Online ad revenues also may not adequately replace other publishers' revenue streams.

Declining ad revenue has led some publishers to place their content behind paywalls.[4] In early days of the Internet, Online advertising was mostly prohibited.

For example, two of the predecessor networks to the Internet, ARPANET and NSFNet, had "acceptable use policies" that banned network "use for commercial activities by for-profit institutions".[5][6] The NSFNet began phasing out its commercial use ban in 1991.[7][8][9][10] The first widely publicized example of Online advertising was conducted via electronic mail.

On 3 May 1978, a marketer from DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), Gary Thuerk, sent an email to most of the ARPANET's American west coast users, advertising an open house for a new model of a DEC computer.[6][11] Despite the prevailing acceptable use policies, electronic mail marketing rapidly expanded[12] and eventually became known as "spam." The first known large-scale non-commercial spam message was sent on 18 January 1994 by an Andrews University system administrator, by cross-posting a religious message to all USENET newsgroups.[13] In January 1994 Mark Eberra started the first email marketing company for opt in email list under the domain Insideconnect.com.

He also started the Direct Email Marketing Association to help stop unwanted email and prevent spam.

[14] [15] Four months later, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, partners in a law firm, broadly promoted their legal services in a USENET posting titled "Green Card Lottery – Final One?"[16] Canter and Siegel's Green Card USENET spam raised the profile of Online advertising, stimulating widespread interest in advertising via both Usenet and traditional email.[13] More recently, spam has evolved into a more industrial operation, where spammers use armies of virus-infected computers (botnets) to send spam remotely.[11] Online banner advertising began in the early 1990s as page owners sought additional revenue streams to support their content.

Commercial online service Prodigy displayed banners at the bottom of the screen to promote Sears products.

The first clickable web ad was sold by Global Network Navigator in 1993 to a Silicon Valley law firm.[17] In 1994, web banner advertising became mainstream when HotWired, the online component of Wired Magazine, and Time Warner's Pathfinder (website)[18] sold banner ads to AT&T and other companies.

The first AT&T ad on HotWired had a 44% click-through rate, and instead of directing clickers to AT&T's website, the ad linked to an online tour of seven of the world's most acclaimed art museums.[19][20] GoTo.com (renamed Overture in 2001, and acquired by Yahoo! in 2003) created the first search advertising keyword auction in 1998.[21]:119 Google launched its "AdWords" (now renamed Google Ads) search advertising program in 2000[22] and introduced quality-based ranking allocation in 2002,[23] which sorts search advertisements by a combination of bid price and searchers' likeliness to click on the ads.[21]:123 More recently, companies have sought to merge their advertising messages into editorial content or valuable services.

Examples include Red Bull's Red Bull Media House streaming Felix Baumgartner's jump from space online, Coca-Cola's online magazines, and Nike's free applications for performance tracking.[20] Advertisers are also embracing social media[24][25] and mobile advertising; mobile ad spending has grown 90% each year from 2010 to 2013.[26]:13 According to Ad Age Datacenter analysis, in 2017 over half of agency revenue came from digital work.[27] Display advertising conveys its advertising message visually using text, logos, animations, videos, photographs, or other graphics.

Display advertisers frequently target users with particular traits to increase the ads' effect.

Online advertisers (typically through their ad servers) often use cookies, which are unique identifiers of specific computers, to decide which ads to serve to a particular consumer.

Cookies can track whether a user left a page without buying anything, so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ads from the site the user visited.[28] As advertisers collect data across multiple external websites about a user's online activity, they can create a detailed profile of the user's interests to deliver even more targeted advertising.

This aggregation of data is called behavioral targeting.[29] Advertisers can also target their audience by using contextual to deliver display ads related to the content of the web page where the ads appear.[21]:118 Retargeting, behavioral targeting, and contextual advertising all are designed to increase an advertiser's return on investment, or ROI, over untargeted ads.[30] Advertisers may also deliver ads based on a user's suspected geography through geotargeting.

A user's IP address communicates some geographic information (at minimum, the user's country or general region).

The geographic information from an IP can be supplemented and refined with other proxies or information to narrow the range of possible locations.[31] For example, with mobile devices, advertisers can sometimes use a phone's GPS receiver or the location of nearby mobile towers.[32] Cookies and other persistent data on a user's machine may provide help narrowing a user's location further.[31] Web banners or banner ads typically are graphical ads displayed within a web page.

Many banner ads are delivered by a central ad server.

Banner ads can use rich media to incorporate video, audio, animations, buttons, forms, or other interactive elements using Java applets, HTML5, Adobe Flash, and other programs.

Frame ads were the first form of web banners.[19] The colloquial usage of "banner ads" often refers to traditional frame ads.

Website publishers incorporate frame ads by setting aside a particular space on the web page.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau's Ad Unit Guidelines proposes standardized pixel dimensions for ad units.[33] A pop-up ad is displayed in a new web browser window that opens above a website visitor's initial browser window.[34] A pop-under ad opens a new browser window under a website visitor's initial browser window.[26]:22 Pop-under ads and similar technologies are now advised against by online authorities such as Google, who state that they "do not condone this practice".[35] A floating ad, or overlay ad, is a type of rich media advertisement that appears superimposed over the requested website's content.

Floating ads may disappear or become less obtrusive after a pre-set time period.

An expanding ad is a rich media frame ad that changes dimensions upon a predefined condition, such as a preset amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage, the user's click on the ad, or the user's mouse movement over the ad.[36] Expanding ads allow advertisers to fit more information into a restricted ad space.

A trick banner is a banner ad where the ad copy imitates some screen element users commonly encounter, such as an operating system message or popular application message, to induce ad clicks.[37] Trick banners typically do not mention the advertiser in the initial ad, and thus they are a form of bait-and-switch.[38][39] Trick banners commonly attract a higher-than-average click-through rate, but tricked users may resent the advertiser for deceiving them.[40] "News Feed Ads", also called "Sponsored Stories", "Boosted Posts", typically exist on social media platforms that offer a steady stream of information updates ("news feed"[41]) in regulated formats (i.e.

in similar sized small boxes with a uniform style).

Those advertisements are intertwined with non-promoted news that the users are reading through.

Those advertisements can be of any content, such as promoting a website, a fan page, an app, or a product.

Some examples are: Facebook's "Sponsored Stories",[42] LinkedIn's "Sponsored Updates",[43] and Twitter's "Promoted Tweets".[44] This display ads format falls into its own category because unlike banner ads which are quite distinguishable, News Feed Ads' format blends well into non-paid news updates.

This format of online advertisement yields much higher click-through rates than traditional display ads.[45][46] The process by which Online advertising is displayed can involve many parties.

In the simplest case, the website publisher selects and serves the ads.

Publishers which operate their own advertising departments may use this method.

The ads may be outsourced to an advertising agency under contract with the publisher, and served from the advertising agency's servers.

Alternatively, ad space may be offered for sale in a bidding market using an ad exchange and real-time bidding.

This involves many parties interacting automatically in real time.

In response to a request from the user's browser, the publisher content server sends the web page content to the user's browser over the Internet.

The page does not yet contain ads, but contains links which cause the user's browser to connect to the publisher ad server to request that the spaces left for ads be filled in with ads.

Information identifying the user, such as cookies and the page being viewed, is transmitted to the publisher ad server.

The publisher ad server then communicates with a supply-side platform server.

The publisher is offering ad space for sale, so they are considered the supplier.

The supply side platform also receives the user's identifying information, which it sends to a data management platform.

At the data management platform, the user's identifying information is used to look up demographic information, previous purchases, and other information of interest to advertisers.

Broadly speaking, there are three types of data obtained through such a data management platform: This customer information is combined and returned to the supply side platform, which can now package up the offer of ad space along with information about the user who will view it.

The supply side platform sends that offer to an ad exchange.

The ad exchange puts the offer out for bid to demand-side platforms.

Demand side platforms act on behalf of ad agencies, who sell ads which advertise brands.

Demand side platforms thus have ads ready to display, and are searching for users to view them.

Bidders get the information about the user ready to view the ad, and decide, based on that information, how much to offer to buy the ad space.

According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, a demand side platform has 10 milliseconds to respond to an offer.

The ad exchange picks the winning bid and informs both parties.

The ad exchange then passes the link to the ad back through the supply side platform and the publisher's ad server to the user's browser, which then requests the ad content from the agency's ad server.

The ad agency can thus confirm that the ad was delivered to the browser.[49] This is simplified, according to the IAB.

Exchanges may try to unload unsold ("remnant") space at low prices through other exchanges.

Some agencies maintain semi-permanent pre-cached bids with ad exchanges, and those may be examined before going out to additional demand side platforms for bids.

The process for mobile advertising is different and may involve mobile carriers and handset software manufacturers.[49] An interstitial ad displays before a user can access requested content, sometimes while the user is waiting for the content to load.[50] Interstitial ads are a form of interruption marketing.[51][52] A text ad displays text-based hyperlinks.

Text-based ads may display separately from a web page's primary content, or they can be embedded by hyperlinking individual words or phrases to the advertiser's websites.

Text ads may also be delivered through email marketing or text message marketing.

Text-based ads often render faster than graphical ads and can be harder for ad-blocking software to block.[53] Search engine marketing, or SEM, is designed to increase a website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Search engines provide sponsored results and organic (non-sponsored) results based on a web searcher's query.[21]:117 Search engines often employ visual cues to differentiate sponsored results from organic results.

Search engine marketing includes all of an advertiser's actions to make a website's listing more prominent for topical keywords.

The primary reason behind the rising popularity of Search Engine Marketing has been Google.

There were a few companies that had its own PPC and Analytics tools.

However, this concept was popularized by Google.

Google Ad words was convenient for advertisers to use and create campaigns.

And, they realized that the tool did a fair job, by charging only for someone's click on the ad, which reported as the cost-per-click for which a penny was charged.

This resulted in the advertisers monitoring the campaign by the number of clicks and were satisfied that the ads could be tracked.[54] Search engine optimization, or SEO, attempts to improve a website's organic search rankings in SERPs by increasing the website content's relevance to search terms.

Search engines regularly update their algorithms to penalize poor quality sites that try to game their rankings, making optimization a moving target for advertisers.[55][56] Many vendors offer SEO services.[26]:22 Sponsored search (also called sponsored links, search ads, or paid search) allows advertisers to be included in the sponsored results of a search for selected keywords.

Search ads are often sold via real-time auctions, where advertisers bid on keywords.[21]:118[57] In addition to setting a maximum price per keyword, bids may include time, language, geographical, and other constraints.[21]:118 Search engines originally sold listings in order of highest bids.[21]:119 Modern search engines rank sponsored listings based on a combination of bid price, expected click-through rate, keyword relevancy and site quality.[23] Social media marketing is commercial promotion conducted through social media websites.

Many companies promote their products by posting frequent updates and providing special offers through their social media profiles.Videos, interactive quizzes, and sponsored posts are all a part of this operation.

Usually these ads are found on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat.[58] Mobile advertising is ad copy delivered through wireless mobile devices such as smartphones, feature phones, or tablet computers.

Mobile advertising may take the form of static or rich media display ads, SMS (Short Message Service) or MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) ads, mobile search ads, advertising within mobile websites, or ads within mobile applications or games (such as interstitial ads, "advergaming," or application sponsorship).[26]:23 Industry groups such as the Mobile Marketing Association have attempted to standardize mobile ad unit specifications, similar to the IAB's efforts for general Online advertising.[52] Mobile advertising is growing rapidly for several reasons.

There are more mobile devices in the field, connectivity speeds have improved (which, among other things, allows for richer media ads to be served quickly), screen resolutions have advanced, mobile publishers are becoming more sophisticated about incorporating ads, and consumers are using mobile devices more extensively.[26]:14 The Interactive Advertising Bureau predicts continued growth in mobile advertising with the adoption of location-based targeting and other technological features not available or relevant on personal computers.[26]:14 In July 2014 Facebook reported advertising revenue for the June 2014 quarter of $2.68 billion, an increase of 67 percent over the second quarter of 2013.

Of that, mobile advertising revenue accounted for around 62 percent, an increase of 41 percent on the previous year.

Email advertising is ad copy comprising an entire email or a portion of an email message.[26]:22 Email marketing may be unsolicited, in which case the sender may give the recipient an option to opt out of future emails, or it may be sent with the recipient's prior consent (opt-in).

Businesses may ask for your email and send updates on new products or sales.

As opposed to static messaging, chat advertising refers to real-time messages dropped to users on certain sites.

This is done using live chat software or tracking applications installed within certain websites with the operating personnel behind the site often dropping adverts on the traffic surfing around the sites.

In reality, this is a subset of the email advertising but different because of its time window.

Online classified advertising is advertising posted online in a categorical listing of specific products or services.

Examples include online job boards, online real estate listings, automotive listings, online yellow pages, and online auction-based listings.[26]:22 Craigslist and eBay are two prominent providers of online classified listings.

Adware is software that, once installed, automatically displays advertisements on a user's computer.

The ads may appear in the software itself, integrated into web pages visited by the user, or in pop-ups/pop-unders.[59] Adware installed without the user's permission is a type of malware.[60] Affiliate marketing occurs when advertisers organize third parties to generate potential customers for them.

Third-party affiliates receive payment based on sales generated through their promotion.[26]:22 Affiliate marketers generate traffic to offers from affiliate networks, and when the desired action is taken by the visitor, the affiliate earns a commission.

These desired actions can be an email submission, a phone call, filling out an online form, or an online order being completed.

Content marketing is any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers.

This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including blogs, news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, how-to guides and more.

Considering that most marketing involves some form of published media, it is almost (though not entirely) redundant to call 'content marketing' anything other than simply 'marketing'.

There are, of course, other forms of marketing (in-person marketing, telephone-based marketing, word of mouth marketing, etc.) where the label is more useful for identifying the type of marketing.

However, even these are usually merely presenting content that they are marketing as information in a way that is different from traditional print, radio, TV, film, email, or web media.

Online marketing platform (OMP) is an integrated web-based platform that combines the benefits of a business directory, local search engine, search engine optimisation (SEO) tool, customer relationship management (CRM) package and content management system (CMS).

eBay and Amazon are used as online marketing and logistics management platforms.

On Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and other Social Media, retail online marketing is also used.

Online business marketing platforms such as Marketo, MarketBright and Pardot have been bought by major IT companies (Eloqua-Oracle, Neolane-Adobe and Unica-IBM).

Unlike television marketing in which Neilsen TV Ratings can be relied upon for viewing metrics, online advertisers do not have an independent party to verify viewing claims made by the big online platforms.[61] Advertisers and publishers use a wide range of payment calculation methods.

In 2012, advertisers calculated 32% of Online advertising transactions on a cost-per-impression basis, 66% on customer performance (e.g.

cost per click or cost per acquisition), and 2% on hybrids of impression and performance methods.[26]:17 Cost per mille, often abbreviated to CPM, means that advertisers pay for every thousand displays of their message to potential customers (mille is the Latin word for thousand).

In the online context, ad displays are usually called "impressions." Definitions of an "impression" vary among publishers,[62] and some impressions may not be charged because they don't represent a new exposure to an actual customer.

Advertisers can use technologies such as web bugs to verify if an impression is actually delivered.[63][64]:59 Similarly, revenue generated can be measured in Revenue per mille (RPM).[65] Publishers use a variety of techniques to increase page views, such as dividing content across multiple pages, repurposing someone else's content, using sensational titles, or publishing tabloid or sexual content.[66] CPM advertising is susceptible to "impression fraud," and advertisers who want visitors to their sites may not find per-impression payments a good proxy for the results they desire.[67]:1–4 CPC (Cost Per Click) or PPC (Pay per click) means advertisers pay each time a user clicks on the ad.

CPC advertising works well when advertisers want visitors to their sites, but it's a less accurate measurement for advertisers looking to build brand awareness.[68] CPC's market share has grown each year since its introduction, eclipsing CPM to dominate two-thirds of all Online advertising compensation methods.[26]:18[67]:1 Like impressions, not all recorded clicks are valuable to advertisers.

GoldSpot Media reported that up to 50% of clicks on static mobile banner ads are accidental and resulted in redirected visitors leaving the new site immediately.[69] Cost per engagement aims to track not just that an ad unit loaded on the page (i.e., an impression was served), but also that the viewer actually saw and/or interacted with the ad.[70][71] Cost per view video advertising.

Both Google and TubeMogul endorsed this standardized CPV metric to the IAB's (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Digital Video Committee, and it's garnering a notable amount of industry support.[72] CPV is the primary benchmark used in YouTube Advertising Campaigns, as part of Google's AdWords platform.

The CPI compensation method is specific to mobile applications and mobile advertising.

In CPI ad campaigns brands are charged a fixed of bid rate only when the application was installed.

In marketing, "attribution" is the measurement of effectiveness of particular ads in a consumer's ultimate decision to purchase.

Multiple ad impressions may lead to a consumer "click" or other action.

A single action may lead to revenue being paid to multiple ad space sellers.[73] CPA (Cost Per Action or Cost Per Acquisition) or PPP (Pay Per Performance) advertising means the advertiser pays for the number of users who perform a desired activity, such as completing a purchase or filling out a registration form.

Performance-based compensation can also incorporate revenue sharing, where publishers earn a percentage of the advertiser's profits made as a result of the ad.

Performance-based compensation shifts the risk of failed advertising onto publishers.[67]:4, 16 Fixed cost compensation means advertisers pay a fixed cost for delivery of ads online, usually over a specified time period, irrespective of the ad's visibility or users' response to it.

One examples is CPD (cost per day) where advertisers pay a fixed cost for publishing an ad for a day irrespective of impressions served or clicks.

The low costs of electronic communication reduce the cost of displaying online advertisements compared to offline ads.

Online advertising, and in particular social media, provides a low-cost means for advertisers to engage with large established communities.[58] Advertising online offers better returns than in other media.[67]:1 Online advertisers can collect data on their ads' effectiveness, such as the size of the potential audience or actual audience response,[21]:119 how a visitor reached their advertisement, whether the advertisement resulted in a sale, and whether an ad actually loaded within a visitor's view.[63][64]:59 This helps online advertisers improve their ad campaigns over time.

Advertisers have a wide variety of ways of presenting their promotional messages, including the ability to convey images, video, audio, and links.

Unlike many offline ads, online ads also can be interactive.[20] For example, some ads let users input queries[74] or let users follow the advertiser on social media.[75] Online ads can even incorporate games.[76] Publishers can offer advertisers the ability to reach customizable and narrow market segments for targeted advertising.

Online advertising may use geo-targeting to display relevant advertisements to the user's geography.

Advertisers can customize each individual ad to a particular user based on the user's previous preferences.[30] Advertisers can also track whether a visitor has already seen a particular ad in order to reduce unwanted repetitious exposures and provide adequate time gaps between exposures.[77] Online advertising can reach nearly every global market, and Online advertising influences offline sales.[78][79][80] Once ad design is complete, online ads can be deployed immediately.

The delivery of online ads does not need to be linked to the publisher's publication schedule.

Furthermore, online advertisers can modify or replace ad copy more rapidly than their offline counterparts.[81] According to a US Senate investigation, the current state of Online advertising endangers the security and privacy of users.[82] Eye-tracking studies have shown that Internet users often ignore web page zones likely to contain display ads (sometimes called "banner blindness"), and this problem is worse online than in offline media.[83] On the other hand, studies suggest that even those ads "ignored" by the users may influence the user subconsciously.[84] There are numerous ways that advertisers can be overcharged for their advertising.

For example, click fraud occurs when a publisher or third parties click (manually or through automated means) on a CPC ad with no legitimate buying intent.[85] For example, click fraud can occur when a competitor clicks on ads to deplete its rival's advertising budget, or when publishers attempt to manufacture revenue.[85] Click fraud is especially associated with pornography sites.

In 2011, certain scamming porn websites launched dozens of hidden pages on each visitor's computer, forcing the visitor's computer to click on hundreds of paid links without the visitor's knowledge.[86] As with offline publications, online impression fraud can occur when publishers overstate the number of ad impressions they have delivered to their advertisers.

To combat impression fraud, several publishing and advertising industry associations are developing ways to count online impressions credibly.[87][88] Because users have different operating systems, web browsers[89] and computer hardware (including mobile devices and different screen sizes), online ads may appear to users differently from how the advertiser intended, or the ads may not display properly at all.

A 2012 comScore study revealed that, on average, 31% of ads were not "in-view" when rendered, meaning they never had an opportunity to be seen.[90] Rich media ads create even greater compatibility problems, as some developers may use competing (and exclusive) software to render the ads (see e.g.

Comparison of HTML 5 and Flash).

Furthermore, advertisers may encounter legal problems if legally required information doesn't actually display to users, even if that failure is due to technological heterogeneity.[91]:i In the United States, the FTC has released a set of guidelines indicating that it's the advertisers' responsibility to ensure the ads display any required disclosures or disclaimers, irrespective of the users' technology.[91]:4–8 Ad blocking, or ad filtering, means the ads do not appear to the user because the user uses technology to screen out ads.

Many browsers block unsolicited pop-up ads by default.[92] Other software programs or browser add-ons may also block the loading of ads, or block elements on a page with behaviors characteristic of ads (e.g.

HTML autoplay of both audio and video).

Approximately 9% of all online page views come from browsers with ad-blocking software installed,[93] and some publishers have 40%+ of their visitors using ad-blockers.[4] Some web browsers offer privacy modes where users can hide information about themselves from publishers and advertisers.

Among other consequences, advertisers can't use cookies to serve targeted ads to private browsers.

Most major browsers have incorporated Do Not Track options into their browser headers, but the regulations currently are only enforced by the honor system.[94][95][96] The collection of user information by publishers and advertisers has raised consumer concerns about their privacy.[31][64] Sixty percent of Internet users would use Do Not Track technology to block all collection of information if given an opportunity.[97][98] Over half of all Google and Facebook users are concerned about their privacy when using Google and Facebook, according to Gallup.[99] Many consumers have reservations about online behavioral targeting.

By tracking users' online activities, advertisers are able to understand consumers quite well.

Advertisers often use technology, such as web bugs and respawning cookies, to maximize their abilities to track consumers.[64]:60[100] According to a 2011 survey conducted by Harris Interactive, over half of Internet users had a negative impression of online behavioral advertising, and forty percent feared that their personally-identifiable information had been shared with advertisers without their consent.[101][102] Consumers can be especially troubled by advertisers targeting them based on sensitive information, such as financial or health status.[100] Furthermore, some advertisers attach the MAC address of users' devices to their 'demographic profiles' so they can be retargeted (regardless of the accuracy of the profile) even if the user clears their cookies and browsing history.[citation needed] Scammers can take advantage of consumers' difficulties verifying an online persona's identity,[103]:1 leading to artifices like phishing (where scam emails look identical to those from a well-known brand owner)[104] and confidence schemes like the Nigerian "419" scam.[105][106][107] The Internet Crime Complaint Center received 289,874 complaints in 2012, totaling over half a billion dollars in losses, most of which originated with scam ads.[108][109] Consumers also face malware risks, i.e.

malvertising, when interacting with Online advertising.

Cisco's 2013 Annual Security Report revealed that clicking on ads was 182 times more likely to install a virus on a user's computer than surfing the Internet for porn.[110][111] For example, in August 2014 Yahoo's advertising network reportedly saw cases of infection of a variant of Cryptolocker ransomware.[112] The Internet's low cost of disseminating advertising contributes to spam, especially by large-scale spammers.

Numerous efforts have been undertaken to combat spam, ranging from blacklists to regulatorily-required labeling to content filters, but most of those efforts have adverse collateral effects, such as mistaken filtering.[6] In general, consumer protection laws apply equally to online and offline activities.[91]:i However, there are questions over which jurisdiction's laws apply and which regulatory agencies have enforcement authority over transborder activity.[113] As with offline advertising, industry participants have undertaken numerous efforts to self-regulate and develop industry standards or codes of conduct.

Several United States advertising industry organizations jointly published Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising based on standards proposed by the FTC in 2009.[114] European ad associations published a similar document in 2011.[115] Primary tenets of both documents include consumer control of data transfer to third parties, data security, and consent for collection of certain health and financial data.[114]:2–4 Neither framework, however, penalizes violators of the codes of conduct.[116] Privacy regulation can require users' consent before an advertiser can track the user or communicate with the user.

However, affirmative consent ("opt in") can be difficult and expensive to obtain.[64]:60 Industry participants often prefer other regulatory schemes.

Different jurisdictions have taken different approaches to privacy issues with advertising.

The United States has specific restrictions on online tracking of children in the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA),[114]:16–17 and the FTC has recently expanded its interpretation of COPPA to include requiring ad networks to obtain parental consent before knowingly tracking kids.[117] Otherwise, the U.S.

Federal Trade Commission frequently supports industry self-regulation, although increasingly it has been undertaking enforcement actions related to online privacy and security.[118] The FTC has also been pushing for industry consensus about possible Do Not Track legislation.

In contrast, the European Union's "Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive" restricts websites' ability to use consumer data much more comprehensively.

The EU limitations restrict targeting by online advertisers; researchers have estimated Online advertising effectiveness decreases on average by around 65% in Europe relative to the rest of the world.[64]:58 Many laws specifically regulate the ways online ads are delivered.

For example, Online advertising delivered via email is more regulated than the same ad content delivered via banner ads.

Among other restrictions, the U.S.

CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires that any commercial email provide an opt-out mechanism.[113] Similarly, mobile advertising is governed by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA), which (among other restrictions) requires user opt-in before sending advertising via text messaging.

new product pricing strategies

The different types of pricing strategies are cost plus pricing, target return pricing, value based pricing, and psychological pricing.�It is very important for every business type brick or mortar or bits and bytes.Pricing is one very important aspect of any business and one has to be very keen and has to look into various factors before taking a decision about pricing.

It is very important for every business type brick or mortar or bits and bytes.

There are various pricing strategies that exist; here is a small discussion on all types of new product pricing strategies.

The different types of pricing strategies are cost plus pricing, target return pricing, value based pricing, and psychological pricing.

There is no best method or strategy to calculate price.

Pricing for every business has to look upon various factors and thus has to decide on pricing strategy accordingly which suits that business best.Cost Plus Pricing- In this method the price is calculated keeping in mind three major factors, production cost of goods, fixed cost at current volume and last but not the least profit margins.

Every business operates for profit and thus while calculating price profit is a major area of concern.

Let us explain it with the help of an example suppose the production cost per unit of a company at present is dollar 20 including raw material and all factors of production.

The fixed costs incurred by the company is dollar 30 per unit.

Total cost incurred by the company is dollar 50.

The company decided to operate at 20% mark up than the calculation will be dollar 10(20% * dollar 50) and this way total cost or price comes up to be dollar 60.

Thus to operate at profit it’s very important that you calculate your cost appropriately and predict your sales well.Target Return Pricing- Price is set in a way which helps to achieve a target return on investment (ROI).

Return on investment can be explained as all the organization exists if it yields output at least comparable to input.

No organization can run in long run if it doesn’t get minimum output which is equivalent to input.

Let’s understand this with an example assume the same situation discussed in above example and also consider that you have invested 10000 dollar in the company.

The expected sales volume for first year is 1000 units.

If you want to cover all your investment in first year itself you would want company to make a profit of 10000 dollar in first year itself.

The profit estimate on 1000 units is 10000 dollar that means 10 dollar per unit.

The cost incurred is 50 dollar per unit, thus the price comes to be 60 dollar per unit.Value Based Pricing- The product is priced based on the value it creates in the minds of the customer.

This pricing strategy is considered as the most profitable form of pricing strategy if achieved as it is somewhat difficult to achieve as compared to other methods.

In this method you charge the customer on variable basis which are based on the results achieved.

The most extreme variation on this is "pay for performance" pricing for services.

Let us explain it with example�say that your widget above saves the typical customer $1,000 a year in, say, energy costs.� In this particular case 60 dollar seems to be very cheap and like a bargain.

Now if the product is really producing that kind of energy savings for the customer than the company should charge dollar 200 or dollar 300 from the customer.

In this particular case the customers will be happy and willing to pay this amount as they will recover their money in a short span of month time.Psychological Pricing- The ultimate consideration which has to be taken by a company while deciding on pricing is consumer’s perception about the company’s product and service and whether they find the price decided by you worthy� to pay or not.

The various methods for this are positioning, if you want yourself to position as low cost leader you will have to price your products cheaper than the competitor’s product but if you want to position your products as quality products you will have to price it higher than your competitors do.

The second criterion considered is popular price points this talks about there are certain "price points" (specific prices) at which people become much more willing to buy a certain type of product.

Let us explain it with the help of the example "under $100" is a popular price point.

"Enough under $20 to be under $20 with sales tax" is another popular price point, because it's "one bill" that people commonly carry.

Meals under $5 are still a popular price point, as are entree or snack items under $1 (notice how many fast-food places have a $0.99 "value menu").

Now if you drop your price below the popular price point it will lower your profit margin but it will be an added advantage and attraction for the customers and thus will lead to increase in sales.

And this increase in sales will elevate the profit margins as the concept of economies of scale will come into picture.

The last and very important factor to be considered is fair pricing, sometimes the value of the product does not matter directly even if you don’t have direct competition.

The consumers have their own set of mind and thus they themselves decide for a fair price for a particular product now if you want to charge them higher than that because of you product’s quality they are unwilling to pay.

The market research is a very good to deal to mark out what is the fair price for a product in the minds of the customer.

After you have decided on pricing strategy you should remember that there has to be a relation between pricing and valve which can be gauged by price value matrix.

5 mistakes to avoid when pricing your services

Struggling to put a value on what you�re worth? Here are 5 things you should avoid so that you don�t undervalue and undercharge when pricing your services.

online customer data protected with act cloud pricing services

ACT�� cloud pricing is managed online at very cost effective rates.

The web services of the ACT offers anytime anywhere access to the users.Business organizations can get customer management software ACT to manage their firm.

ACT is robust customer management software which brings all client data at one place.

The software secures existing prospect client information at one place.

ACT is one of the best accounting software for managing client data.

Customers are prime business partners of a company who work for longer term to establish a better company and business.

Previously the customer data was managed by the professionals as paper based records and all the contacts were on the managed by them while now ACT is a sage product that emerged as a transformer for the businesses.

Since the launch of this software, the client data are secured on the server of the firm.

�With ACT the existing are automatically saved in the database by the software and similarly all the prospect customer data is saved on the application.

ACT is a simple solution designed in simple languages so even less knowledged users can understand the application.

for new users who have no knowledge on the application can get the various means to learn the application.ACT software knowledge:ACT is available free trail software for all the global users.

Users can install the app on any device and learn the application.

The 30 day trial is for users to learn the actual application processing while Sage offers other means to learn the software such as webinars, tutorials and online portal videos.

Online portal videos are of the best source of the learning because they have entire application functionality elaborated.

ACT is multiple user application environment software which means all the authorized users of the company can collaborate on the real time application.

The authorized users of the firm can collaborate on the application to share the client data.

Multiple user access features enables users to share and work in sync for the accounting and commerce.

ACT application software is one of the easiest applications to secure client data.

It can integrate with any other application to access and secure the data of a customer.

The application is scalable and very flexible to hold all kinds of client data in the system.

�ACT can host on cloud and desktop server which best suits the business.

Desktop hosting is a traditional approach that runs on premises.

The on premises hosting provides local hosting of the application and offers more security to client data while it has more operating cost to manage the infrastructure, maintenance and IT.�ACT cloud pricing is the web hosting of the customer contact management application.ACT cloud pricing is hosted on remote cloud servers where it considered secure.

Only authorized users have access to cloud data as the data hosted online is encrypted.

Cloud hosting of ACT cloud pricing application software is managed by hosting providers online.

They offer low cost services to manage the client data online.

Web hosting of the ACT is secure and ensures only valid users have access to the web application.

ACT is managed online with high security, daily schedule backups and support services.

how to set your

Confused about pricing your services or products? Put your pricing through the "Right Price Test" with author and consultant Tessa Stowe.

three telecom services on one bill from comcast with their brand new bundled service plan

Things just keep getting better and better for Comcast customers and it doesn�t look like things are going to change soon.

This is because Comcast now has you covered with discount pricing on all of your homes internet, phone and TV entertainment needs.

It�s also now all the latest digital technology, so not only is the pricing better but the services are also the best you can get.

are project based consulting seo services worth it

Article discusses how to calculate pricing for SEO services as it is very easy to calculate project based fees but the result might be ambiguous and� to implement value based pricing many other factors needs to be considered.As a pricing and business model, project-based consulting is a fairly common practice.

As is evident in the name, it involves charging clients with a flat project fee based on estimated breadth of work, duration and manpower requirements.

Many SEO firms have pre-packaged services on offer, and almost all try to tailor their bids on client needs.

But given the prevalence of many other pricing models such as pay-per-hour, performance-based and profit sharing each having their own unique advantages, is this pricing model still worth it both for service providers and their clients?Certainly, this pricing scheme has its advantages.

For one, a well-constructed project-based agreement holds the provider and the client to an agreed set of deliverables and costs, instilling a real sense of accountability that is present in longer-term contracts while still retaining some flexibility that is inherent in hourly consulting models.

Project completion and a standard of quality is also readily established before a program is implemented which lessens the headaches for both parties.

The fee structure of project-based consulting is also relatively simple, especially compared to contracts, performance-based and profit-sharing agreements.

A specific project has one price, which is especially helpful to marketing departments on the client side when they present their plans and budgets to their CFOs.

This simplicity also benefits SEO firms, since they can easily advertise budget-friendly rates while increasing the likelihood of repeat business and lasting relationships.

In most new SEO projects, additional work are almost inevitable.

With this pricing model, any extra services can be billed separately and split into more financially manageable clusters that will prove friendly to changing client needs and budgets while assuring a steady cash flow for SEO firms.

Of course, these are not automatic benefits.

The progress of an SEO project often entails many changes of direction, adjustments and problems, and ultimately, this model might not be the most flexible and responsive when it comes to dealing with unforeseen situations.

The key to making the most out of project-based agreements is in the details.

Given SEO�s dynamic nature, it is important to flesh out the parameters of any agreement for SEO work while identifying potential problem areas that might take more time and cost more money.

Again, both parties should bear in mind that whatever agreement they enter into are based on estimates; fees, deadlines and deliverables should be arrived at reasonably and spelled out in as much detail as possible.For clients trying to choose among several project bids, an important factor to consider is the provider�s transparency in discussing the actual work that is going to be done and for how long.

This is useful in forming realistic deadlines and establishing quality expectations throughout the project�s duration.

Try asking for case studies or go directly to their previous and current clients for a better idea of how they deliver.

Also, be wary of overpromising and undercharging contractors.

Their claims of fast results or cheap upfront fees should be taken at face value because even the most veteran of SEO professionals readily admit that as with any other form of marketing, SEO offers no shortcuts and most definitely takes time, effort and yes, considerable expense.

how to win tenders by right pricing strategy

Your pricing of a tender Should be different to your normal pricing strategy.

The first point to remember is that a scale made through the tendering process can have very good margins and that non related costs such as the advertising, marketing and allowance for bad debts should not be included in the pricing.Obviously your pricing of a tender will be different to your normal pricing strategy.

The first point to remember is that a scale made through the tendering process can have very good margins and that non related costs such as the advertising, marketing and allowance for bad debts should not be included in the pricing.People who talk about the tendering market being competitive are often using their general list price levels in their tender, which usually have these additional costs built in.The only real marketing cost associated to a tender is the preparation of the tender response itself and in many cases the bulk of this can be standardized.Pricing the ServicesWhere a service is being offered, a similar technique to product pricing can be determined if the service is broken down into clear units.

For example, tiling can be broken down to a square meter price.

If your current pricing schedule for service is not clearly defined to units, it could be a very worth while exercise to calculate these figures to get a better indication of what profits are really being made when selling to the general public.

If you are serious about tendering your pricing will need to be very accurate.

It would not be ideal to win a tender to find out it was not profitable.If you have any doubts about your current pricing structure and future tender pricing structure, a cost accounting firm is going to be an excellent resource to use.Remember, once your tender price is clearly established, it can be constantly reused to respond to several tenders.Tips on PricingIt is important to consider some guidelines when preparing your tender price.They include:Always submit your lowest possible price for the service.

If you wish to provide additional services then offer separate price for the extra service.Your price should make you a reasonable profit.

You may in some tender decide to reduce your margin and break even.

You may even make a small loss if you have other objectives.

These could be to keep a team together during difficult times, or using the project simply for marketing purposes.

Be careful about putting in loss making tenders.

The costs may not be worth the risk.Aim to meet or exceed your client�s price objectives.

That is, try to submit a lower price than your client expects.

You may even try to do the job in less time, or do it faster, or with fewer resources than your client expects.Try to avoid a single fixed price.

This may b difficult particularly if the client has included a price schedule that requires a single fixed price.

You should then include a price menu that details prices under various conditions.Ensure the price of cost schedule has been completed against all items for which you wish to tender.If you are dealing with a product, which is exceptionally good or difficult to maintain for the period of warranty, take care of margin before giving your required price.All rates should be quoted in English, both in figures as well as in words in the schedule of rates in such a way that manipulation is not possible.Consider all tax related issues carefully before arriving at final price.Pay extra attention to factors like delivery on F.O.R or F.O.B basis, octroi paid or to be paid basis, transit insurance, etc.If it is important item, take currency fluctuations/custom duty, etc.

in account.Remember if you are a regular visitor of�www.tenderserviceonline.com�you can get many more useful tips on tendering.

customized act cloud pricing for users

For using ACT cloud pricing services a computer with an internet connection, a web browser are the three most generic needs to access.As a business owner one can find many accounting management software available to choose one.

Sage ACT is exclusively best services in this segment because it’s a very cost efficient to the trade and commerce industry.

The application is available for those who want to customize according to business requirement.

Customization is offered at a very reasonable price as the owners have to pay for only those modules which are accessed.

It’s a loss for a company to pay extra for those modules which does not solve a purpose.

When a service is offered at a high cost then the clients have to think before investing because it will add up more costing.

Extra costs are avoided because a company is trading and to achieve more revenue is the target.

It’s a great cost saving method for a company to access customized needs.

Moreover on achieving hosting organization pay a monthly rental which does not put enough pressure on the revenue.

Pay as long as services are access from the hosting company and when stopped the services are terminated.

No need to sign up contracts for ACT cloud application program.ACT Cloud pricing is based on client request and modules services like manufacturing, payroll, invoicing and inventory are offered.

Hosting is a reasonable service for companies want the best in class technology products.

There are no IT costs to manage infrastructure of the company.

The software is efficient to provide independency to the companies to operate the task of accounting anytime anywhere by the users.

Also those users who have genuine login access can share the application with other valid users.

The software program is password protected hence no unauthorized user can access the system.

Its highly secure and protected software system where only paid Sage clients can operate the business.

ACT cloud pricing is very attractive tool to retain customers while offering best services.

All the data are hosted on cloud and securely saved to the database.

Data protection and recovery are major services offered by the hosting company.With ACT cloud data can also be saved on own computer while working.

There is an option provided to all the users of ACT using cloud services.

A company can also integrate the ACT application with another application like Excel or Access both these programs are easy to integrate.

Moreover there are some other applications too that can be integrated so according to the need of the organization a company can integrate the two applications.

All the updates to the ACT and the operating server are updated by the software automatically wherever a new release is generated.

Therefore it eliminates the manual update method when many times users have to put extra time to do these.

Time saving and more efficiency to work are delivered by the ACT cloud pricing program.

ACT runs on any device so a user has freedom to choose device, a laptop, computer, tablet or a small gadget like smartphones.

All these devices are compatible to ACT cloud and users are free to access cloud services.

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If your items aren�t selling, then you might have a bad pricing strategy.

There as many pricing strategies in the world as there are buyers � if you look at two businesses selling the same thing, often the only difference you�ll be able to find between them is pricing.

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Sage ACT is contact customer management software application that incorporates all the data of customers of an enterprise.

Previously during the days of manual accounting and bookkeeping system, the p...Sage ACT is contact customer management software application that incorporates all the data of customers of an enterprise.

Previously during the days of manual accounting and bookkeeping system, the process of customer management was also manual.

Now the entire process is computerized with latest technology advancement therefore accountants have less tedious task to operate all modules of accounting.

The software application itself performs major business tasks thus making business processing of customer information automated.

ACT integrates quickly with all applications of Microsoft and others allowing easy data integration.

The application can integrate to save or access any customer information from the source designated by the user.

ACT by Sage is one of the best-selling customer contact management solution in the industry.

The application has millions users worldwide that has simplified their customer database management.

Moreover the application stores all sorts of customer data of the company either a prospect or existing customer.

Users or professionals of the enterprise can login the application and access the client data whenever required.

To this secure database, security is maintained tight so that only authorized users have access to the application.ACT free trial offers an easy glimpse of the application to all non-users or less knowledgeable professionals.

Users can visit Sage website and install the free trial session.

Users must remember the trial of ACT is valid for only 30days so get most of it.

However other methods like webinars and tutorials are available all the time.

Purchasing a new license copy is advisable to get it directly from the Sage online or contact the customer support team.

New customers who wish to get license copy are offered good discounts from Sage.

This is an opportunity to save some money for the firm and gets agile application software.

ACT cloud pricing software can be hosted on cloud and desktop whichever is benefiting the enterprise progress and development.

ACT cloud pricing is low cost solution compared to on premise hosting of the application.

Desktop hosted application is accessible to authorized users on premise.

Here the application is hosted securely on local servers managed and operated by professionals.

The operating cost of the local hosted application is higher as company owners need to manage IT, infrastructure and maintenance costs while these costs are managed by hosting providers.ACT cloud pricing of the application is lowest and affordable to all small and medium firms.

On cloud, users are free to access the web hosted application anytime, anywhere.

Cloud is a remote server maintained by professionals and technical experts.

Authorized users can work from home, office or caf� connecting the system with an internet connection, a web browser.

Even the users can install app on small devices like smartphone, tablets and stay connected to web hosted customer application which means valid users have access all the time.

Hosting providers deliver bank level security to the data hosted online and backup the same on schedules.

They offer technical support services to all clients 24x7x365 for which accessible via phone, emails or web chat.

get the low cost act cloud pricing solution of crm

ACT cloud pricing is managed by hosting service providers who offer backups on schedules, bank level application protection, robust 24x7 customer support helpdesk and subscription based services to global clients.It is evident that a customer is the key to a business success and therefore ACT has appeared to the best solution for managing customer information.

The application restores all the data of a client not only the current client data but the prospect customers as well.

A prospect customer is the addition to a business profile that blooms growth and development of a trade and commerce.

A company needs new clients and customer to keep its revenue growing and developing in the right direction.

ACT is a sage product which constitutes all the data and related information of the clients.

The application is an automated software product that itself restores the client information in the respective database.

It is the functionality of the application that restores the customer data and accountants or bookkeepers are not doing any manual customer data entry.

The paper based client information has vanished since the Sage application ACT came into popularity.

Many organizations have embraced this software to make their client data accessible from any destination.

Using a small device like mobile or a tablet, a user can access the any client information from any global destination.

This is due to the vast development in technology which allows users to access and retrieve information from any source on mobile with internet and a browser.ACT cloud solution:Users can install the ACT application on any system because most devices are compatible to ACT software.

Professionals do not need to configure system settings because ACT is a very scalable product because of its compatibility.

ACT can integrate with any other applications such as Microsoft office, MAC, UNIX and Linux thus the application integration makes the customer contact information sharing and restoring easier for businesses.

Users can define the data source and the application integrates flawlessly.

Free trial of ACT gives immense knowledge of the application.

Users can install the app quickly and learn.

ACT customer contact application can be used to learn through other means such as webinars and portal videos.

Choosing a hosting method for the application is a customer preference.

Its customer choice to select a method to get the advantage for learning the application for free along with the hosting process.

ACT hosting on desktop and cloud is chosen to get the advantage of the CRM application.�ACT cloud pricing is the cost of the web services of the application on remote servers.ACT cloud pricing is cost effective solution hosted on secure online servers to host the application.

Cloud ACT is accessible to authorized users as it is protected with advanced security.

Data hosted online are encrypted that means only authorized users can access the CRM application.

ACT cloud pricing is just the same as accessing Google and Hotmail services online while desktop is on premise hosting of the application.

On cloud hosting, the authorized users are free to access the web hosted application anytime, anywhere on any device while desktop users have access on premise.

Desktop has high cost of operation and security is robust.

yes or no the sharing prices on your website debate

Do you post pricing on your website? If not, what is your reasoning and if you do post pricing do you promote the value to equate with these prices? There is no definitive absolute right or wrong answer and experts are all divided.

If you do not list pricing, you may want to state why without alienating the prospective lead.

If you do list pricing, do your research on the best methods and what your competitors do.Why displaying fees on your website may provide an advantage over your competitionMany small businesses use their web presence to generate leads to feed into their sales process.

Each page has a purpose with variations on the intended users the business hopes to appeal to.Each piece of content has its purpose but overall the reason is to entice users to get in touch.

In keeping with that, it seems reasonable to display your price structure so your leads are qualified before they get in touch.Or does it?Not all visitors to your website will be leads.Not all industries are alike.Competitors may be surfing your site to see what you charge with the intention of undercutting your rates.

If they know you are consistently trying to attract leads from the same base, then having lower prices displayed can give them an advantage over you when bidding on projects or submitting proposals.Prices in your industry could vary based on many other variables.Understanding why or why not requires a little bit of elbow grease and a balanced perspective of the issue.How to Know if You Should Display Your PricesWhile this Moz article referencing website pricing is dated, it does makes some very good points about why you should display pricing.If you display pricing you should also convey value.

A value proposition including a pricing tier can address variables related to your business that can actually set you above the competition.Listing pricing without context or with only a few lines to convey value won’t draw in a user reviewing multiple options.

You may be more expensive than your competitor but you might also be offering a lot more for what you charge.

Make sure your leads know!This could also be a reason to not display pricing as well.

If you have already evaluated your competitors and they have tiered pricing that beats the value of what you offer, then take the time to assess how they’re able to provide more at a lower cost.If you’re feeling ambitious you can even call them to clarify what they’re offering and ask for examples of it in practice.

Sometimes the value stated on the site is misleading so don’t take your competitor’s claims at face value.What if Your Competitors Aren’t Displaying Pricing?Your competitors may not be showing how much they charge but that doesn’t mean you can’t.A money-focused business can sometimes be more focused on its own bottom line than servicing its customers.

Your competition isn’t just related to price so if you’re up against established pros in your industry you can overcome the hurdle of their online presence being much stronger (more reviews, more activity) by doing what they won’t.State the reason for listing the different pricing tiers.

Each should have a unique reason for being there beyond just profitability.Since you already developed the pricing for a reason you should know why.

It could be who you’ve serviced in the past or based on your own research.

Be up front and honest about why you charge what you do since eventually that conversation will happen anyway.You can leave prices off site and save that until you’ve spoken with the lead with the hopes of selling them past any objection to your pricing or you can remove that step by stating the sales points with the price on your website.Your competitors are a guide but not a rule.

If you feel as though they’ve left their prices off their site for a reason that doesn’t apply to you then don’t hold yourself back from showing your own prices.What if Your Competitors are displaying Their Prices?If your competitors are up front about their prices but you feel as though doing so would put you at a disadvantage then the same question you should ask yourself is the obvious one your leads will want the answer to: why?A bad experience could have put you off or just the anticipation of leads getting sticker shock.Maybe you don’t want the competition being educated on your prices? Sometimes your reasons will be very valid but be prepared to have an answer if your lead is shopping around and the question comes up: I saw on XYZ’z website they offer A for $XX and you’re now saying you also offer A for $XX.

How come you don’t put that on your website?Have an answer and a good one.

Include an anecdote if the reason is a bad experience or you will be stuck stammering to explain why and risk looking like you’re being dishonest before you’ve even started any sort of business relationship with your lead.Displaying Prices Is Up to YouAt the end of the day, displaying prices on your website is your choice.

There is no absolute rule of thumb to follow.

Assess all factors involved and make the right decision for your potential customers.If you are withholding pricing with good reason you can even state it on your site but if not then you may want to rethink the decision.Keeping an eye on your website stats can play a significant role in helping you decide whether displaying prices is working or not.

If you’re feeling ambitious, you can place all pricing on one page and then check your Google Analytics to see if that’s where the trail ends.If users are getting as far as the price page and not contacting you then it could be that your price page isn’t conveying enough value to justify the prices.

manage customer records with low cost act cloud pricing

ACT cloud pricing offers low cost hosting of the CRM application.

Hosting providers offer data backup and management services along with technical support 24x7.ACT is the customer relationship module that operates as SaaS based services for managing the customer data on servers.

SaaS is software as a service solution which automates the customer and client relation data to a database for its client.

The application is easy to use and provides simplified understanding of the business flow for the end users however Sage offers technical help to know the application.

The application records existing customer data in the application database and the prospect customer information is also registered in the same database therefore it has ability to secure all the data of a client existing and prospect at one place.

Therefore customers and users of the application can easily navigate the system to get any client information and it is shared among the authorized users of the application.ACT is feature loaded:New users who have less knowledge on the application can get ACT application app installed on their device.

The application is compatible with all devices in the market hence users are free to install on any system.

Customers do not have to configure the system requirements to operate the ACT application as it is automated system.

The free trial version of the application is available to all the users and this offers ends after 30 days so users should be aware of the validation data of the trial software application before it expires.

Sage offers other options like online tutorials and videos which are global access to all users while live and recorded webinars are other ways to learn the application process to operate customer data.

The simple application process delivers easy understanding of the system.

Further, the most amazing feature is scalability of the system that integrates with any other application like Microsoft solutions, MAC, UNIX and Linux performs easy data migration from one source to another which is user defined.

Clients can purchase the application license from Sage and may get discounts on first license purchase.

A company owner decides the method of hosting the application either on desktop or cloud.

ACT cloud pricing is the web technology that boosts automation of the accounting CRM module at low costs.Accountants and bookkeepers can save time to operate multiple clients’ information in the database and most importantly accurately with secure and reliable ACT cloud pricing software.

The automated ACT cloud pricing CRM application can save correct data of customers and allows other users of the system to collaborate on the real time application system.

ACT on desktop offers business controls on the premise where professionals manage the servers and other maintenance costs of the firm.

Local servers secure the data and professionals can work only from in-house location as access outside the premises is not allowed.

Cloud hosted of is secure online solution where hosting companies offer low cost services to operate client data.

Cloud services are web based services which requires only internet enabled on any system to access the application therefore access of freedom is universal anytime, anywhere on any device.

insurance back office services pricing secrets revealed

�Even after all these years of doing business, both as a customers and as a supplier, I am constantly amazed with the number new tricks that suppliers come up with to try and make a buck extra from a ...Goal:�Whether you are a company that is working with a service provider for the first time or if you have been already been working with one, you want to make sure that you are getting the best value for your money.Background:�In order to achieve your goal, you have to first start by understanding your internal costs for the service in question.

From what we have seen the components of the cost are:Most companies fail to look at all these costs as total employee cost.

U.S companies believe that the ratio of labor cost to overhead (All costs from 2 through 8), is 1:0.5 meaning, if the labor cost is $40,000/person/year the actual cost to company is $60,000/person/year.

But this is not true.

In reality, the ratio is 1:1.If you are working with an off-shore supplier, your total cost should reduce to just about your direct labor cost (Roughly 40% savings).

If you are working onshore you can expect a reduction of 5-10% of your cost.The key point to establish in any pricing agreement with your supplier is to make sure that you and your service provider both gain when your business comes out ahead.

That way you have alignment of interest.While the outline provided above is a good win-win strategy, most suppliers try little tricks listed below.

This is insincere and not in the spirit of the win-win relationship.

DON�T fall for these tricks!Trick 1:�Setup cost:�Most service contracts should have no major setup costs other than training and IT connectivity.

Suppliers should not be charging extra for setting your business up in their environment.

This is a strict NO-NO unless you are asking your supplier to set up a special infrastructure for your needs.IT cost: We have met some suppliers that charge extra for bandwidth, standard hardware, software, etc.

Again, unless you have special hardware, software requirements no supplier should be charging you for their IT costs.Trick 3:�Training cost: Training for operations should be on the suppliers.

Especially ongoing training.

This is one of the key values that you get out of an external service provider.

�Trick 4:�Minimums:�A service provider worth their salt should not have a minimum.

If they have minimums, it simply means that they don�t want your business.

Do you really want to work with a provider that thinks that you are too small to work with them? Ask this question without fail and if a suppliers says that they have minimums, tell them that you DON�T want to work with them since you as a customer that don�t matter to them!Trick 5:�Communication cost:�Don�t let a vendor convince you that there is a cost to communication that is extra.

In this day and age if both of you are ready to accommodate a little, you will be able to communicate with the fixed overhead that you already have for your internet bandwidth.Trick 6:�Quality costs: Some suppliers charge extra for giving you required quality.

This is rubbish! If someone says that they are going to keep a quality person or team that is going to cost you extra, just kick them out.

Quality and Timely delivery is the Key Result Area (KRA) for your service provider.

They can�t be charging you extra for this.Trick 7:�Management cost:�We have seen service providers charge customers extra for management overheads.

You can have a resource allocated for management but they should not be charged more.

They should be made available to you for the same labor cost as your other resource.

You should insist on this.On the other hand we have seen customers do things that kill supplier relationships.

Remember, if your partner is hurt, in the end it is going to come back and hurt your career and your company.

We have listed a few common mistakes made by customers.Mistake 1:�Price Squeeze: Don�t push your supplier on the price all the time.

In the end if the price starts to hurt them, it will show in bad quality and bad service that will result in business impact for your organization.Mistake 2:�Paying Late: Pay your suppliers on time.

This is critical for their success.

While having a big Account Payable (AP) is good for your company in the short run, suppliers live and die by cash-flow.

May sure you pay them in a timely manner and help them run their business well.Mistake 3:�Timely invoicing:�Push your suppliers to invoice you every month on a specific operating rhythm.

This will help you manage your cash flow better.Mistake 4:�Resource productivity management: Never get into the management of individual productivity of your supplier resources.

This will get you back where you started.

Your Key Result Area (KRA) is to get the job done.

Just set a goal at a department level and let the supplier deal with the resource issues.

That is the value you are getting from the relationship.Follow these guidelines and you will come out ahead all the time.�Vantage Agora will help YOU save money by saving upto 40% of your operations costs! All this with NO surprise pricing, NO start-up charges, NO obligation trials and NO minimums! Meet the best back-office and operations teams at the�TMPAA mid-year meeting�at Boston.

Visit us at booth #13 or contact Mike Fieseler (VP Business Development) at (216) 802-8283 or email�mikef@vantageagora.com�for more details.

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SEO Services in India are very cost effective.

Establishments in the UK are aware of the Dollar-Rupee and Pound-Rupee equation and know they can save a lot of money through SEO Outsourcing.

Hence, they go about doing this well and outsource all of their website optimization work to Indians.

The quotes are reasonable, justifying the decision to Outsource SEO.

One of the reasons why the pricing of the service is kept reasonable is because the projects come in bulk.

So the moment they show up in huge numbers, it becomes tough to refute them.The quality and professionalism that Indian service providers put into their SEO Services is legendary and is well known within world circles.

People all across the world know about the commitment that the Indian SEO Outsourcing fraternity serves its clients with and the way in which they deliver service.

They are swept off their feet because of this exemplary commitment and always approach Indian service providers.

They know the job will be done well.The deadlines are fixed.

Outsource SEO work to Indian vendors, and the date and time that has been mentioned in contract about delivery is honored anyhow.

Indian vendors never compromise on that.

Once they make a commitment that the campaign will be done and delivered by this time, they make it a point to honor it.

Virtues like credibility and punctuality have helped India emerge as a strong contender for SEO Outsourcing.

These virtues are upheld every time a shipment is delivered from India.Indian SEO Services providers are known to innovate.

They are never satisfied by the routineSEO Outsourcing features and are always pumped up to remix them and try coming out with something new.

This approach to innovation and breaking out of all conventions has helped them successfully complete projects and fetch their client good inspiring results.These are some benefits out of a huge list that organizations get whilst outsourcing SEO work to India.

The websites handled by Indian service providers look different over the web.

Their performance makes it evident that the work must have been handled by an Indian vendor and hence, becomes evident when it starts performing and bringing in results.

The benefits are there for everyone to see.

They are not fudged as they cannot be concealed under any carpet.

They are there for everyone to see and experience.

Most of all, it is the website administrators who have the time of their lives enjoying the website that has recently been optimized and been made capable enough to bring in a lot of business.

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Basically, the cost of SEO depends on many different factors, such as business goals and competition.

Next, we will discuss in detail how much you should pay for SEO services, how to determine the price and what to consider when hiring an SEO service provider.

Webmasters who want to optimize their sites with Google have to face the most important problem with these costs.

The fact that search engine optimization is very important is understood by many companies today, but trust is the reason why the budget, especially at the beginning of many companies, is very limited.

Studies show that traffic potential for mobile and desktop SEO is about 20 times better than search engine advertising (SEA).

However, according to search engine marketing experts, 87% of the marketing budget for SEA research is spent.

Yes, Google Ads is a great way to drive website traffic and should be part of any online marketing strategy, but it also benefits from search engine optimization, especially in the long term.

Search engine optimization is so profitable because over time it produces a snowball effect.

As soon as all the important keywords are covered with pages for research purposes and the corresponding position is determined based on the authorizations, the process becomes more self-sufficient.

Visibility will give your site a new backlink.

Existing authorizations simplify the conquest of new keywords or set of keywords.

The older the URLs become, the easier they will be to reach top rankings on Google.

In some niches, search engine optimization simply cannot pay off.

This may be due to the fact that the potential income is too small, the budget is too low or the competition is fierce.

SEO needs a big investment, which takes 6 to 12 months before it starts paying off.

This is not impossible or reasonable for any company and industry.

In this case, investing in an AdWords campaign should be the first step.

Here you can invest very specifically and generate quickly.

Once you understand which keywords lead to sales or sales opportunities, you can still choose an SEO campaign.

The actual price of search engine optimization depends on many factors.

For each specific order, you will have a separate SEO quote based on broad competition analysis and small keyword research.

For this, a keyword set is determined together with the potential customer.

This has therefore led to five main competitors.

Then calculate the monthly budget needed to reach competitors for a certain period of time.

Of course, this is only an estimate, because Google's algorithms and competition will not stand.

This is why the huge demands for resources are completely useless and only indicate why the customer does not understand the reason.

It can only be an SEO package for small projects.

As for the continuous optimization of search engines, there is only a separate solution.

Are you already a famous brand.

What are your expectations for the campaign? The following points must be clarified in advance: Think about how many customers/guests/clients you need on the Internet so that SEO offers can be useful to your company.

However, don't forget that SEO takes time and may have little effect in the first 6 months.

Depending on the competitiveness of the keywords, significant success can take years.

Be sure to clarify these issues with potential SEO providers.

It may not be able to say any specific information, but at least there is usually some empirical value.

How does SEO billing work? To answer questions about the cost of SEO, it is necessary to present them in more detail, as the pricing model is also decisive.

In fact, you can choose between hourly or daily rates, fixed monthly rates, results-based payments, and profit-sharing.

Hourly and daily rates offer maximum flexibility when debugging an SEO service provider.

But it is clear that hourly and daily rates are more expensive.

The cost is usually from 50 to 200 Dollars per hour or from 400 to 1600 Dollars per day.

Trust in service providers is crucial because it is not always clear how many SEO professionals actually work.

If you lack the necessary experience, even the online courses can only give a limited understanding.

Fixed fees are a very popular billing model in the SEO industry.

The duration of the contract is generally from 6 to 24 months.

The flat rate is generally between $ 500 and $ 10,000 per month and includes a specific time package or a complete package to optimize OnPage and OffPage.

The important thing is that not all months are the same.

This is why the costs and investment timThe intensity of patient care as a cost factor The real SEO requires time and money.

Therefore, SEO consultants must search in many directions and do a complete job to get the best results.

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