Google Boosting Mobile-Friendly Websites to the Top of Search Results — Ecommerce Blog by Shopify

Google Boosting Mobile-Friendly Websites to the Top of Search Results — Ecommerce Blog by Shopify



More people are visiting your website through smartphone and tablet browsers.  If it's not formatted (responsive) for these devices, your search rankings will drop and customers will abandon your site because viewing and navigating is difficult.  Here that sound?  That's your competitors' cash register ringing (actually it's the cha-ching of their tablet based POS app doing an electronic transaction).



There are several responsive platforms available (like Shopify) where you or a design company like Hockey Science & Technology can build a site.  You pay a monthly hosting fee from about $22 to $40.  Alternatively, you can have a custom site built for your needs.

Try visiting your site to see how it looks and see what information you can easily access.  Have your customers try it to get their feedback and then take action.  

Stick Business is the official magazine of Hockey Science & Technology.  News, information, products and services to develop and operate your business.  Connect with Stick Business on Linkedin, Twitter and StickBusiness.net.

#HockeyDay Marketing.

Hockey Day in Canada and the US is this month.  If you are a sports retailer, skill centre or product company, this is a prime time to promote your brands...on social media.

A simple retweet or post with #HockeyDay or #HDIA will do nothing for your business.  A planned paid campaign on Twitter or Facebook will net you results.  Through your account, write a creative content post with an image, select geographic areas, enter keywords (hint: #HockeyDay), select gender, devices, campaign dates and set budgets.  Launch and watch your reach and engagements go up.  Be ready to reply to direct messages, emails or even answer the phone.

Need help?  Connect with your marketing agency or Hockey Science & Technology.

Stick Business is the official magazine of Hockey Science & Technology.  News, information, products and services to develop and operate your business.  Connect with Stick Business on Linkedin, Twitter and StickBusiness.net.

Digital Presence Effectiveness.

Your business has a website, social media accounts and maybe some mobile presence.  How effective are these for your market reach and engagement (leads, inquiries, customer service, sales)?

Hockey Science & Technology has developed a model to measure or score the effectiveness of your digital activities.  This week, an assessment was done for two hockey product companies and one athletic school.  The highest score was 2.6 out of 10.  In these cases, their website was not working hard enough for the brand, social media was the equivalent of talking in an empty room and without any mobile presence, prime market customers were likely engaged with other brands.

A few low cost changes could move your score up to 4 or 5.  A planned digital ad campaign can move the score to 6 or 7 and the change in your business will be noticed quickly.  Graduating from the limits of web and social media to your own mobile app investment will get you above 8 out of 10.

Curious about your DPE and what needs to be done to improve your score?  Contact us at info@thehockeylab.com

Stick Business is the official magazine of Hockey Science & Technology.  News, information, products and services to develop and operate your business.  Connect with Stick Business on Linkedin, Twitter and StickBusiness.net.

Twitter can now help you sell more sticks and tix.

In the January 22, 2015 blog post, I mentioned how organic use of Twitter does not allow you to see the reach of your tweets.  Well, now you can.  Twitter app users with iOS devices can easily see how every native tweet performed.  Open or expand your tweet and near the bottom, tap "view tweet activity".

You will see how many people saw your tweet and how many engaged with your tweet.  You can also see this information on the Twitter web-based app by going to http://analytics.twitter.com and login with your Twitter account.

For many of you, this will show you how ineffective your organic content marketing on Twitter is.  See symptoms of OSM at Hockey Science & Technology.  However, with paid or promoted social media, you can reach thousands of people in your market.  Twitter has just launched Quick Promote to make it easy for you to reach beyond your followers with your tweets.

Twitter also has a deeper targeting ad platform so you can sell more sticks or tix.  Hockey Science & Technology can help you manage your advertising and content.

Dean Sprung,

Stick Business Editor

Stick Business is the official magazine of Hockey Science & Technology.  News, information, products and services to develop and operate your business.  Connect with Stick Business on Linkedin, Twitter and StickBusiness.net.

Twitter Cards for your website.

This is not about Twitter share or follow buttons for your site. You should already have those essential features available to your visitors. This is about simple code that you can add to any of your web pages that attaches information when someone shares content from your page or someone creates a tweet with a link to one of your pages.

In this example, Summary Card code had been added to the company's website. In my tweet, I included the company's website link www.skateanywhere.ca. My followers who select that tweet from their timeline are automatically presented with additional information about the company as you can see in the image. 

From a marketing perspective, this digital tool allows you to describe your company or brand in your own words, images or video, drive traffic to your site and look at performance through analytic reports provided by Twitter.

Twitter has a few other types of cards to achieve different outcomes for your content. You need to be comfortable with adding meta tag code to your site and be able to provide the properties or assets required to generate the card. If not, contact your resident web guru or seek the services of digital presence experts like www.HockeySciTech.ca

Stick Business is the official magazine of Hockey Science & Technology.  News, information, products and services to develop and operate your business.  Connect with Stick Business on Linkedin, Twitter and StickBusiness.net.

Is your business suffering from Twitter OSM?

OSM is  Organic Social Media. 

Here are the symptoms of OSM using Twitter:

• % of Followers to number of tweets is low.
• Your tweets have very few retweets, favourites and result in no new Followers.
• You spend a lot of time trying to get more Followers with no success.
• Number of Following is stuck at 2,001.
• You use hashtag #FF.
• You sent a tweet but have no indication how many people saw it.
• Your activity has not increased your sales.
• Every month, about 2% of your Followers stop using Twitter.

You really want your time and efforts using Twitter to look like this:

Learn more about Twitter OSM and what changing it can do to greatly improve your business here.  

Stick Business is the official magazine of Hockey Science & Technology.  News, information, products and services to develop and operate your business.  Connect with Stick Business on Linkedin, Twitter and StickBusiness.net.

Hockey Science & Technology New Website.

We've been so busy with client projects that we never had the time to update our own website until now.

Learn about our services by category, download and use our active media or discover ways to develop your hockey business, league or association with our Stick Business magazine.

Hockey Science & Technology is an agency with media properties, designers and programmers. We look after the digital health of your business, league, association or team.  Connect your brand with the hockey market with our advertising properties and our managed services for your mobile, social, web, print and location media.

Stick Business is the official magazine of Hockey Science & Technology.  News, information, products and services to develop and operate your business.  Connect with Stick Business on Linkedin, Twitter and StickBusiness.net.