With almost 1,000 organic daily site visits, www.yankee.co.uk is one of the largest distributors of Yankee Candles in the UK and Ireland.

Graeme Ferguson, Managing Director of Yankee Store Ltd, is delighted with web traffic to his refreshed website. 

“Last Christmas our site was receiving an average of 60 organic visits a day and this December we’re seeing nearly 1,000. 

“While E-commerce sites will always perform best at this time of year to witness such growth in traffic in 12 months is absolutely incredible.”

The Centre for Retail Research, is expecting online Christmas spending in Britain to reach a total of £13.4bn. This expected online spend was highlighted on Cyber Monday (5th December 2011).

“We experienced a significant surge in online traffic and received a higher than average quantity of online orders but were well prepared for the increase in demand. Our dispatch teams worked extremely hard to get the orders processed and the site coped particularly well, maintaining speed and performance.” 

Graeme Ferguson attributes much of the site’s success to the Belfast web specialists The Web Bureau.

Colin Graham, Technical Director of The Web Bureau said: 

“80% of the population are now hooked up to the Internet and of that number 75% research purchases online before buying.

“These figures highlight how important it is that firstly consumers can find your website and secondly that you make it appealing to purchase from your website. 

“For www.yankee.co.uk we wanted the site to be attractive as well as easy to use but we also implemented a successful Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy resulting in the site being ranked within the top 3 Google results for related search terms.

“To encourage repeat visits several additional features were integrated into the site. This included competitions, a media centre to upload product images and videos and a Paypal payment option.

“Links to the company’s social media pages have also been incorporated allowing customers to contact the company via the most suitable medium. 

“We’re pleased the site is already delivering such great results and the online marketing strategy is producing high levels of organic traffic.”

Graeme Ferguson, Managing Director of Yankee Store Ltd who also has six stores across Northern Ireland, said:

“Working with The Web Bureau we were able to upload a ‘review’ feature for our customers to leave their own thoughts and opinions on products. This is a great indicator for us of what is popular with the customers and allows us to select our ‘fragrance of the month’.

“Customer feedback is very important to us and the response to the site has been very positive. Happy customers results in return visits and that’s the principal aim.”

More information on The Web Bureau can be found at www.thewebbureau.com

The Web Bureau can also be followed on Facebook and Twitter.

Previously there was no real distinction between a brand’s Twitter page and an individual’s personal page – both were places where content could be pushed into their followers’ streams but neither had a particularly strong identity.  The recent update provides Marketers with an opportunity to customise headers to make their logos and taglines more prominent and feature a particular tweet of their choice at the top of their page, where it will remain and automatically expand, perhaps revealing a photo or video without any action required by your followers to access the expanded content.

1. No Advertising - Like Facebook, organisations are not charged to use the network to engage with their audiences but one key distinction that will appeal to the masses is that Google Plus does not plan to include adverts within their business pages.

2. Combined Features – Google Plus business pages allow businesses to create circles for different groups to share specific information, like Facebook Groups but they also allow users to post public updates to all contacts which can be commented on and +1’d, like an individual’s Facebook page.

3. Less Restricted – Within Google Plus it is easier than Facebook to find people and organisations with shared interests but the service is not quite as open as Twitter’s model.

4. Everyone can see your posts – Within Facebook, your posts no longer appear within all your fans newsfeeds. It depends on how interesting your page’s content is, the level of interaction your fans make with your content and how recent and consistent your updates are.  Within Google Plus, when someone puts you in a circle, they will always see your Google Plus posts in their stream. 

How Can Business Use Google Plus to Their Advantage

As the facilities offered by Google Plus evolve over time, an endless list of possibilities is likely to emerge. A few initial ways in which businesses can reap the rewards for their loyalty to Google include the following:

1. Brand Loyalty – businesses can use their Sparks to their advantage by engaging in commentary on popular news items, identifying topics for discussion within their own blog posts and content marketing strategies and simply monitoring who is mentioning your site. 

2. Customer Segmentation – The Circles facility presents an opportunity to segment your contacts into different groups, such as customers, potential customers and peers.  Various customer groupings may be made according to their size, spend, stage of the relationship and such like so that communications can be tailored to be more relevant to each.