E-Commerce Exhibition 2010
This year’s e-commerce exhibition was run at the London Olympia on the 19th and 20th October. By all accounts of those who had attended the previous years it was busier and better than the previous year.
Stands
Girls from the UKFast Host Stand
UKFast had one of the biggest stands there.
Besides the lovely girls on their stand and promoting their carbon neutral ethos, UKFast had these tips to share:
- Since August 2010 Google has changed it search engine model and organic searches now can return upto 7 results per page for the same website rather than the one as previously. A point worthy of some thought.
- Google's addition of Twitter updates (which was implemented by Google autumn 2009) now means search results include relevant Twitter updates.
There were a lot of Online Payment Centre Solutions:
These were offering alternative solutions to the likes of WorldPay and RBS WorldPay.
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RBS WorldPay
Big UK players but didn't have anything special for existing customers.
- In this picture above, the lovely Anapolia at the clickandbuy stand. They are a German company and say that they are the 2 largest online transaction processing company after WorldPay. Anapolia said they are different in that they can accept debit cards which are prevalent in German and through the rest of Europe.
- EVP International – a smaller Lithuanian company offering transaction processing with a special focus on central and eastern Europe.
- Packnet Services. Another online transaction processing company with a focus on
the US/UK market. They use a bank account to clear payments on behalf of customers.
- CreditCall Another world wide credit card clearance company.
Attended a 30 minute Google – Intoduction to Google Products Seminar.
A well presented session. Gained some SEO tips regarding what Google look for when ranking your website, namely Page Relevance and Links to your site.
However Google admitted without confessing that they tweek the system as they think it right that billion dollar companies like Amazon for example should appear at the top of the organic search list for the search term – amazon.
Adwords –
Google said to be very aware of seasonal trends when running your Adword campaign as this will determine what users are searching for at the time. A good example given was Stena Ferries capitalisation of the air travel disruption by the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud this year by running a tailored Adword campaign.
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Adwords should be compelling
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Ranking of Adwords is awarded for Relavance, Click Through Rate and the the Landing Page Quality.
My personal take – Adwords simply burns a hole in one's pocket but there you go. Google says it's all about market forces and how much it's worth to you.
Display Ads – if you didn't know, Google own Youtube
Youtube has a seriously huge audience (Google claims it's the second largest search engine – a reflection of the society we live in today, I guess) and a company would do well to invest in producing and hosting entertaining videos. Google encourages E-commerce entrepreneurs to develop a Brand Channel.
According to Google internet use via mobile will overtake pcs by 2013.
SEO Guys - DotAgency
I spoke with these guys extensively. The cool dude on the right is my friend Anthony. He uses DotAgency the for his emailing campaigns (Investment Banking Sector) and finds them cost effective at about 100 pounds a month for 25,000 managed emails. They are also doing SEO work. Speaking with them on Monday.
Rest of the Conference.
There were some interesting people doing very interesting stuff.
French companies had a strong presence. These two lovely girls offered said they could get us bulk purchase of digital signatures at a very competitive price.
I spoke with Steve Bolton who said they can offer use competitively priced digital signatures for two web hosting servers.
Richard Jones on the left from i-kos . He is very passionate about developing e-commerce systems for companies on the Drupal platform.
There was only one company that I saw selling middle ware solutions. This was Martin Gordon-Kerr at Orion Consulting. The said they can implement a full document management solution for companies. Have Hitachi and Oki Printers on their books.
Ran into an old colleague, James McCormick - with whom I used to work with at Pitney Bowes MapInfo. He is now at Gomez. These guys do web performance stuff and more which I will look into when I get a chance.
Lunch was a garlic bread, Hot American Pizza and coke. Take away style. I also managed to squeeze in a back massage which was nice 🙂 A very worthwhile expo all in all.