Archive for April, 2008

Developing an excellent corporate website is a good way of luring high-quality staff, TMP Worldwide has claimed.

Eddie Allen at the digital consultancy said today that such a website would form a "starting point" for any firm trying to "attract…new talent".

Potential development ideas include segmenting recruitment areas of the site into microsites for easy navigability - and personalising through user-generated content.

"For the short term, it is about targeting communication to appeal to every potential applicant," Mr Allen added.

TMP Worldwide’s viewpoint was agreed with by the interactive director at Euro RSCG Riley, Drew Spencer.

"Corporate recruitment websites…should be able to recognise someone they’ve seen before and help them find the most relevant information," he told Onrec.com.

"They should also have a very good understanding of the company’s recruitment process and procedures and help to ensure that the process flows smoothly for both the company and the candidate."

Businesses considering paid links face a Google-related dilemma, a new blog post on e-consultancy has claimed.

Marketers hoping to improve their search engine optimisation need to weigh the benefits of the links against the fact that the search engine firm "doesn’t like" them, the website said.

Indeed, the website has got tough on paid links in recent months - penalising link brokers, buyers and selling through the dreaded ‘minus 50′ devaluation.

"Google quite simply doesn’t want websites to be able to buy their way to the top of the search engine rankings," the post added.

"It isn’t a question about relevance because nobody buys their way to the top of the search results for a phrase that isn’t related to their site."

However, e-consultancy also counsels that "abuse is so widespread" by firms that Google is "totally powerless".

Nevertheless, the fear of devaluing should be enough to prevent paid link buy-ups in the long term, the post concluded.

"Why pay £1000 for a permanent link when Google can devalue it at the drop of a hat?"

Advice on web analytics has been offered by John Wyllie, who oversees the division at GE Money.

In conversation with e-consultancy, the executive counselled against the use of Google Analytics.

GE Money is a financial firm currently operating in the UK, which offers mortgages, loans, insurance and credit cards.

It currently operates around 50 businesses in 30 different nations - meaning that its web analytics division is complex and wide-ranging.

Four separate research centres are currently run by the firm in Canada, India, Europe and China.

Mr Wyllie commented: "One or two businesses [within GE] may have [Google Analytics] from a legacy implementation."

He added: "People say [it] is free and it is true - it is free. But for me, that cost is irrelevant because where we really want to spend our money is the people and the talent that will drive value, as well as the technical skills to get analytics implemented."

Increased regulations should be introduced in order to better protect the personal details of web users, new research has suggested.

A poll conducted by technology website vnunet.com showed 77 per cent support for mandatory encryption of all personal details held by UK firms.

In addition, 17 per cent said that the cost of implementing the new legislation should be subsidised by governments.

Around three per cent of poll respondents, however, said that current technology is "not sufficiently mature" to justify mandatory encryption.

A further two per cent said that management overheads were "too high" to justify such a scheme.

"Encryption technology is considered by many to be an effective and affordable way of helping to ensure that when devices containing sensitive information are lost or stolen, the data cannot be accessed by unauthorised users," the report added.

The website conducted its research at last week’s Infosec web security show in London.

Around 60 per cent of British marketers run only "basic" or "intermediate" email marketing campaigns, new research has revealed.

According to Alterian, just five per cent of the total can be classified as "expert" in using email to drive sales - with the remaining 32 per cent classified as "advanced".

The results were derived through marketers being asked ten multiple-choice questions and the level of marketing was determined by the responses to each one.

Alterian’s chief executive officer David Eldridge said: "With this assessment, we hope that participants will gain a new level of insight into their current level of e-mail marketing proficiency.

"We [can] provide participants with tips on how they can use Alterian applications…to grow from the Basic User group to the Expert and Pacesetter levels."

The comparative sophistication of over 700 marketers, agencies and services providers were measured by Alterian over the course of its research.

One in three Britons with bank accounts logged on to internet banking sites this January, new data from comScore shows.

A total of 10.9 million people were found to have used the sites across the month - with RBS customers the most numerous at 2.9 million users.

Around two million of this total used the online banking facilities of NatWest - which is owned by RBS.

Lloyds TSB’s site was visited by 2.8 million people - with its users visiting the site an average of seven times.

Around 2.4 million HBOS customers also logged on - with Halifax counting two million visits and the Bank of Scotland (BOS) an additional 400,000.

BOS customers counted the second-highest average of site visits for the month, at 6.3.

HSBC also served 2.4 million customers an average of 5.2 times - and Barclays received an additional 1.7 million an average of 5.9 times.

New legislation which might make losing customers’ personal data a criminal offence has been passed by the House of Lords, ZDNet.co.uk reports.

The amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill was introduced by Liberal Democrat Peer Lady Miller - and seeks to cover anyone who disclosed information to the public "recklessly".

This follows two recent high-profile security breaches from HSBC and HM Revenue & Customs, in which the personal data of millions of Britons was accidentally lost.

Following the Lords vote, a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said that the government would now consider making the new offence law.

"The government has previously acknowledged that it needs to improve trust and confidence in the arrangements to protect personal data and is currently in the process of doing this," he said.

Research from the government, released last week, shows that overall security breaches have fallen by a third since 2006 - but that spending on shoring up data security has been trebled over the same period.

One of the most popular newspaper websites in the UK has prioritised user generated content in its new redesign.

Increased provision of user’s comments and usage of blogs were both noted by E-consultancy in its review of the Daily Mail’s site overhaul.

Links to "top blogs" and "more prominen[t]" comments sections were both found to be new developments at Dailymail.co.uk.

Aesthetically, the site has received a radical overhaul - with new landing page management leading to a "less cluttered" look and more white space, allowing users to focus on selected stories more easily.

However, e-consultancy flagged up the slow loading speed of some web pages as a potential problem for the newspaper.

Further suggestions for improvement also included the adding of subsections on its navigaition options - allowing users to find story clusters in individual sections more easily.

‘About us’ sections should be incorporated into websites’ blogs in order to encourage users to return and to convert traffic into sales.

According to an article in Search Engine People, inserting company data into blog posts is a good way of imparting information to potential customers.

Using a "loop strategy" in order to boost the number of pages viewed by customers also came highly recommended by the report’s authors.

The technique works by the site developers’ second-guessing readers’ page preferences and tailoring inter-site links accordingly.

Jennifer Osbourne at Search Engine People noted that many impressive sites had neglected to include ‘about us’ sections in otherwise impressive blogs she had visited herself in the past.

"I find myself thinking: ‘Wow’. Why haven’t I heard of these guys before? Who are they?" she wrote.

"And sadly, I’m left wondering because there is no ‘about us’ page. And if you’re afraid to tell me who you are - then I don’t trust you."

Using tactics designed to frustrate spammers attempting to bombard sites with bot-comments can prove an effective step towards better security, a Google expert has claimed.

Matt Cutts, who leads the search engine firm’s Webspam operation, told a US conference that captcha systems were a good tool for this purpose.

These are programmes which pose questions to users submitting comments onto a website - designed to ensure that the poster is a real person and not a spambot, Bluhalo reports.

Mr Cutts also had some general comments in his speech regarding Google’s position on search engine optimisation.

"SEO is not spam. Google does not hate SEO," he claimed.

"There are plenty of white-hat SEO [companies] who can help you out."

The reference to "white-hat" SEO refers to responsible users of the technique - as opposed to "black-hat", on the other hand, refers to SEO practices such as spamdexing, which are widely regarded as unethical.