Wampit® is one of the UK’s favourite online business directories.

It’s important for us to keep growing, coupled with providing  up-to-date and relevant processes / products.  This is in the pursuit of giving our customers the best possible service, and in turn generate quality sales enquiries for their business.

So we’ve been working hard over the last few months reviewing our free and paid-for products on all our global sites against the following criteria:

• Relevancy
• Popularity
• Quality
• Performance

The great news is that after completing this internal analysis, and also speaking to our customers, we have decided to move some of currently chargeable upgrades into the free advert section – these products are:

• Extra images (up to 3 extra images – previously £2.99)
• Discount Info (scrolling discount text on advert – previously £9.99)

This change means we now provide the most content / features for free when compared to other quality business directories.  Please click on the following link to see how we compare to the Top Business Directories in the UK.  Our FREE features are now:

• Contacts (Business Name / Address / Phone)
• Email
• Map Link (opens address in Google Maps)
• Business Description (massive 3,000 characters)
• TwitterLIVE (shows your live tweets)
• Video (upload a promo business video)
• A unique web page for your business
• Company Logo
• 3 extra images
• Discount Info (a scrolling line of text)

Our chargable upgrades are now:

• Web Link (globe link to your website)
• Priority Status (appear above free listings)
• PDF Upload (attach a brochure / price list)
• My Links (link to your favourie networking sites)

We’re really excited about these changes and have also wrapped them up in a brand new sign-up form that’s easier to complete, and utilises the latest dynamic Web 2.0 technologies.

New Sign-Up Form – Section 2 (Free Advert Content)

All the fields in this section are published on the free advert – we have made the following UX (User Experience) changes to this form:

- Simplified content headings
- Dynamically add / remove images
- Clear ‘hit counter’ information
- Promoted the video option
- Increased the size of the business description fields
- Quick help links on every area of the form (?)

We’ve tested our changes with a selection of our customer base and also canvassed generic opinion from web users.

We’ve also been fortunate to have input and guidance from one of Google’s senior UX expert to make this form ‘best practice’.

New Sign-Up Form – Section 3 (Upgrades)

We love our new upgrades section and think it showcases our best products that increases enquiries for our customers.

Now when you choose a product a very stylish and simple ‘Upgrade Calculator‘ is dynamically displayed.

Business Directory Upgrades

This change supports our products ‘pick-a-mix‘ design, i.e. upgrades can be quickly added or removed from Section 3 or directly in the Upgrade Calculator by clicking on the red cross.

This process makes it easier to see the true cost of our upgrades, and achieves our 100% transparency goal in terms of our service and prices.

The ‘My Account’ form (the page existing customers use to amend / update their business profiles) has also been updated with this new functionality.

We hope you like our new sign-up and My Account page / functionality as much as we do.  Please let us know what you think.

Existing Customer?

If you are already on Wampit® then you can log into your account management page now and add the new free upgrades to your business profile – simply:

1. Visit the Wampit® homepage for your country
2. Click on ‘Log In’ and enter your email and password
3. The new form will be displayed - select the options in Section 2

New Customer?

If you are new to Wampit® and don’t have your business listed yet then please click on ‘Create FREE Advert‘ button on our homepage – the new form with the enhanced features will be displayed.

But What Do You Think?

So you can see we’re very pleased with the look and functionality of our new account pages – but what do you think?

Please let us know by using the Contact Us on any one of our world sites or add a comment to this blog.

Christmas Advertising

The festive season is one of the busiest times of the year for a lot of companies – especially those in the retail sector.  

So it’s particularly important for companies to advertise their products and services to make sure they make the most of the seasonal opportunities.

The following are two main marketing areas that are especially important to target during December:

• Promoting your discounts and offers on the Internet
• Promoting via email campaigns to your existing customers

Advertising Your Discounts on The Internet

Money is tight for a lot of people this year due to the current economic situation.  So it’s more important than ever before for companies to create and promote offers and discounts they are running.  This is a great way to win new customers and subsequently build a relationship with them during the year/s ahead.

There are many ways to advertise your promotional offers and discounts these days, especially with the popularity of the Internet – here are our top 5 tips:

1. Create a landing page on your site dedicated to your offer, e.g. wampit.co.uk/christmas
2. Promote the page on the homepage of your website
3. Put a link to the offer page in the signature of any forums you participate on, e.g. My Local Forums
4. Create a dedicated AdWords campaign (put the actual discount details in the advert)
5. Update the advert content on any business directories you advertise on

Using Email to Promote Your Christmas Offers

Email is a great way to communicate with your current customer base.  It builds trust and also keeps your business and its products in their mind (so they will consider you for future purchases).  Having a Christmas email campaign is an important part of your overall email marketing strategy.  Here are our top 5 tips on how to create a great Christmas email campaign:

1. Amend your current HTML email with a Christmassy look and feel
2. Wish your Customers a Happy Christmas
3. Add your seasonal offer at the top of the email (simple text and use a Christmas image)
4. Add a big button that will direct them to your site, e.g. ‘Christmas Offer Info’
5. Track the performance of your email campaign with a service provider like MailChimp or CampaignMonitor

In Summary

A little time invested in these two areas will pay dividend to your business, both in terms of building customer loyalty and coupled with generating more customer enquires / revenue.

Christmas Advertising

Okay so we’re all familiar with the responsible message from the Dog’s Trust, ‘A dog is not just for Christmas’ – well the same principle applies online. 

We don’t mean you need to take care of a virtual dog, no, what we mean is that you should take care of the online content that promotes your business, and make sure you update it regularly throughout the year.

It’s at this time of year that business tends to slow down a bit, and as a business owner you have time to plan your strategy for next year.  So why not take some time now and do just a couple of free marketing activities before the Christmas holidays:

1. Register your business on the top quality UK free advertising services
2. Update the content on your current advertising providers

Please see this article that lists the Top UK Business Directories and details their pros and cons regarding the services and products they offer.

You may have already promoted your business on forums, blogs, directory sites and paid for advertising services.  So now is the time to review the content about your business and make sure it’s up-to-date and relevant.

Also, in the run up to Christmas many people are looking for online deals and special offers, so if your business is running a promotional event then make sure you brag about it on your advertising services.

So in summary, don’t leave your free advertising out in the cold this Christmas – bring it in by the fire and give it the love it deserves.

Do Business Directories Make Money

Okay so perhaps you’re a bit inquisitive and what to know if business directory sites make money, and if so, then how they do it.  Or perhaps you’re interested in starting your own business directory and want to know more about the potential revenue streams.

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High Usage Business Directories

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Medium Usage Business Directories

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Low Usage / Low Quality Directories

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What Are The Revenue Streams?

So specifically how has this impacted the Business Directory sector?

So what is a top quality Business Directory?

If a directory charges for links back to your site then these should have a ‘nofollow’ HTML attribute set against the link (this blocks any page rank from being flowed from the linking site).  This is in line with Google Webmaster policy because their algorithms use links as one of the key indicators when determining ranking – people paying for links compromises this process.

So does that mean links to my website from Business Directories are useless after Google Panda?

What’s a Good Strategy for Advertising on Panda Friendly Business Directories?

About the Author:

Firstly, the term ‘Yellow Pages’ is a globally recognised meaning for a telephone directory of companies.  In some countries the term is trademarked and the business is operated by the IP holder, however, in other countries like the USA, the name is not registered so many people can legally use the name with their business directory service.

Specifically, in the UK the brand is owned and operated by Yell Group and is listed on the London Stock Exchange.  The company was originally owned by the GPO and later BT and set up the first directory in Brighton in 1966.  During the subsequent 40 years the business grew from just the one directory area in the UK to over 100 at the peak of its performance.  In the 2000’s the company invested heavily in foreign markets headed up by CEO John Condron at the time – this was a controversial decision given the inevitable decline of printed media due to the actual and forecast growth of the Internet and supporting technology.

In 2003 Yell decided to float on the LSE with an initial IPO of 276p – over the next 3 years the company enjoyed steady share price growth achieving 634p in Feb 2007.  However, the party wasn’t to last as soon after the share price fell rapidly over the next 2 years to just 13p in March 2009, and has stayed low up until today at just 4p.

So why has the ‘Yellow Pages’ brand and confidence in its abilities fallen so much in recent years after such a long history of growth and expansion?  Well the answer is quite clear today and really can’t be blamed on the benefits of hindsight.  Just 13 years ago you didn’t have to be an Internet guru or strategist to realise that print media will inevitably decline at some point.  If you think back, offices were already implementing paperless solutions, early adopters of the Internet were already looking for businesses online and expecting richer content, technology was developing at a rapid pace enabling the publication of data faster and more accurate than ever before, homes across the UK were buying more computers per year than television sets.  However Yell kept doing what it’s always done and concentrated its core efforts on printed media (as it worked so well for them in the past) – they did dabble in Internet technology but really just published the Yellow Pages business directory on the net.  In the UK Yell brought out a product called ‘YP Ad Online’ – as the name suggests, it was simply publishing printed media content online – not the most forward thinking publishing strategy you may think.

Simply put, Yell didn’t grow up with and embrace the Internet – in the early years it saw it as an auxiliary product to the printed directory media, and still invested most of its RAD, processes and money in the printed and 118 offerings.  This resulted in Yell being on the back-foot, and 10 years too late to exploit its brand and the potential it once had to be a market leader of providing advertising services on the Internet, thus enabling it to migrate its offline / printed media customers to online solutions and products.

So what’s the future for Yellow Pages globally and specifically Yell Group in the UK / USA and Spain with nearly £3b worth of debt?  Well it’s not too late for management to finally wake up and start developing relevant products people will actually want to buy without being sold to.  Yell really need to stop blaming the ‘economic environment’ and navel-gazing by commissioning internal ‘in depth reviews’ as per its latest 2011 Q3 results – you don’t read about Google’s revenues in AdWords dropping or being impacted by GDP.  They constantly out develop and out-perform the market though innovation and exploitation of new technologies, and produce advertising solutions that people want, understand and most importantly work.

Yellow Pages in the UK is still a respected and trusted brand, however, with each day that goes by this is eroding faster than a dictator’s grasp on a war torn country - so someone better act quickly.  The brand is an institution that we have all grown up with, however, brands (no matter how super) are all fragile and bad management, strategies and products will almost certainly kill a company in today’s fickle, fast-paced, fast-growth technological world – you only have to look around at brands such as Woolworths to realise that.

So do people still use the good old Yellow Pages printed product?  Well according to Yell and their published online Facts and Stats they do – in fact they claim over 80% of UK adults use the printed business directory.  However, when you look at the small print this figure was actually generated in 2006 – that’s 5 years out-of-date and of course we’re living in a different world now.  A more recent statistic published by Yell indicates the book is used over 600m times in 2009/2010.   Whatever the current figure is I personally don’t know of a single person that uses the book anymore – except by boys wanting to stand on them at Christmas to reach up to kiss a girl under the mistletoe (perhaps their 1990’s TV campaign of that very situation was a subconscious prediction of their fate).  Perhaps a cynical person may assume that the book only survives today due to the capabilities of an efficient and formidable 3,000 strong sales force.

1 – Not linking online adverts to their website…

If a potential consumer is online looking for a business then they are online for a reason – it is their preferred method of searching and in making a decision on whether to contact that particular business.  If they find your advert, research has shown that they will want to stay online and look at your website – if you scrimp on this area (Weblinks are now very low cost in most directories), you risk the chance of that potential buyer moving to the next relevant business advert in your area that does let them link to their website.

At Wampit®, we have even seen examples of businesses trying to avoid paying for a weblink by adding it to the info on their advert e.g. “Visit A1 cars dot com for more info”.

Seriously – not only does this look cheap, but businesses can’t really expect someone to then leave the directory and manually type in the web address into their search bar, or expect them to go back and Google the name in order to then link through to the site.

2 – Not asking people where they found your business…

Whether you have paid for your advertising or taken advantage of a free listing, how can you possibly know whether your advertising is working for you unless you ask people?  Again from experience we know that many business owners or their staff don’t do this.  It takes just a few seconds to ask everyone that calls you, orders online or even visits you how they found you.  From this simple exercise, within a month you will have built up a great picture of where your business is coming from and then you will be able to accurately adjust your ad spend accordingly.

3 – Not keeping your online details up to date…

If you have listed your business online, then you must keep your details up to date.  This helps keep your advert fresh and enables you to utilise you advertising more effectively by updating your advert with any latest offers or latest products / services.  Alternatively,  just using the advert to promote certain products / services that you want to focus on more at that particular time.

Some online directories may have already listed your business and are just waiting for you to ‘claim’ or ‘update’ the advert.  Most quality sites like the Wampit® business directory enable you to ‘claim & update’ your advert completely free of charge.

1. If an online business directory is free it can’t be very good…

WRONG – Free business directories promote themselves in many clever and cost effective ways across the Internet and business communities, enabling them to offer a free service to businesses.  They can generate revenue either via optional extras that a business can buy to enhance their free advert, through discrete banner advertising, or using a mixture of both.  In fact even the large established directories have recently changed their business models to enable various forms of free advertising.

2 – The higher cost online business directories must be better…

WRONG – For the large established business directories, the high cost of advertising is not just linked to the quality of the expected response, but also to the operational costs of that business.  Larger companies have many mouths to feed, operational premises to run, and high running costs – this means the cost of their advertising has to be higher to enable the business to turn a profit.

Many free business directories are purely online and do not have any of these crippling overheads and therefore can offer a free quality service.

3 – People only know about the big online directories…

WRONG – An online business directory on the Internet today relies more on its presence in Google rather that its brand / name.  With all good online directories like the Wampit® business directory, every free advertiser is given their own unique web page that is submitted  to all major search engines.  This results in a link to their free directory advert appearing within the search engines results.  As Google accounts for approx 85% of the search market it is important for online directories to get this bit right.

If you want to see how successful a particular directory is at getting its advertisers listed in Google, just type ‘site:’ followed by the company web address and you’ll see how many pages of a particular website Google has picked up and is displaying in their search results – try the following for example: site:www.wampit.co.uk