Recent Articles

Ryanair – ethically corrupt? Passenger Compensation

April 22, 2010 · Leave a Comment 

Ryanair announces that they will only pay compensation to passengers disrupted by the Icelandic Volcano to the value of their ticket, is this fair or low cost to far? The recent eruption of Eyjafjallajokul in Iceland has undoubtedly caused significant disruption for thousands of passengers who rely on air travel to meet their business or personal holiday requirements. That said, any discussion over whether the blanket ban was right or wrong is essentially fruitless from the point of view of any reasonable person. It is easy... [Read the full story]

SEO for Dummies – Part 1 – Where are we now?

April 21, 2010 · Leave a Comment 

SEO for Dummies - Where are we now? As this is a project, we need to set a benchmark and judge success or failure. This is important and to some extent can be done through Market Samurai and its interface that shows your traffic rank based on chosen keywords over time. This sound simple enough but initially we need to take a step back and decide on the keywords we will target. This is not so simple. Keywords and descriptions clearly should match the content of the site which I suppose is the first question I will try to... [Read the full story]

SEO for Dummies – SEO Software Review

April 21, 2010 · 1 Comment 

SEO for Dummies - SEO Software Review It has been 2 weeks since my last post about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and the ongoing project to get this site sorted. During that time I have read as much as I can on the subject and have come across various different software packages and services offered on the net that will apparently get my site to number 1 in google and other search engines with little or no effort from myself blah blah blah. With that said I have come across some some SEO software packages that do not... [Read the full story]

SEO for Dummies – Configuring WordPress

April 7, 2010 · Leave a Comment 

SEO for Dummies - WordPress Settings The default installation of WordPress is not great for SEO. In order to understand why you need to consider the basics of SEO and then compare those basics with the default settings and design of WordPress. SEO Basic Principles From what I have read, successful SEO should follow a number of basic principles, in no particular order: Write Original Content (well hopefully no surprises there) Use META data in the Title and Description tags of your pages to represent the content of your... [Read the full story]

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for Dummies

April 7, 2010 · Leave a Comment 

SEO for Dummies: A casestudy in learning about SEO Although I am aware of SEO and online PR I have never really taken much of an interest in it when it comes to this website. SEO is great if you want lots of visitors and you need them to find you within the competitive google rankings market, however marketing101 was initially set up to allow students to download lecture materials amongst other things and as I saw them on a regular basis I saw little need to involve myself in the ‘hassle’ of making this site... [Read the full story]

Apple iPad – first impressions, devil’s advocate, an FAQ

January 28, 2010 · 4 Comments 

Apple's iPAD Apple has now shown everyone their new product the iPad, pitched between the traditional laptop and the smart phone. Now I have to admit I am generally a fan of apple over microsoft. I am typing this on my Mac Book Pro and also have an older iMac in the house. I am not however an iPhone user for 3 reasons, firstly when I bought my most recent phone I needed 3G and apple’s iphone did not have that at the time plus I wanted a keyboard as I am all thumbs and I wanted a diary that would show me a weeks... [Read the full story]

Marketing101 goes mobile – iphone

December 2, 2009 · Leave a Comment 

Marketing101 on the iPhone. As part of the on going development of this site I have decided to try and make it a little more mobile friendly by including an iphone version which should load automatically when you visit the site from the iphone browser. The site detects that you are using an iphone and some other mobile devices and uses a different template to display the same information but in a slightly different format for reading and accessing on the smaller screen. It is still early days and I am sure there will be... [Read the full story]

Why Does Panorama Hate Ryanair? A complete, objective viewpoint?

October 13, 2009 · 2 Comments 

Michael O'Leary Chief Executive of Ryan Air in the firing line, again! I have to admit I was looking forward to the latest BBC edition of Panorama broadcast last night on BBC1. I was expecting some detailed objective journalism into the operations of arguably the largest airline in country and the way it operates. I was also expecting something unknown or a revelation of bad practice broadcast in the public interest. Sadly this was not the case. As the title suggests a ‘Panorama’ could be seen as a complete view... [Read the full story]

Internet Advertising tops traditional media

October 1, 2009 · 1 Comment 

This week is a defining moment for the power of the internet and its affects on traditional marketing practice. It has been widely reported as a result of new figures released by the Internet Advertising Bureau that the Internet has finally taken over from television as the most popular advertising medium for business in the UK with a market share of 23.5% compared to television with 21.9%. This has to be seen in the context of a declining advertising revenues with TV adverting dropping 17% year on year. It also should be... [Read the full story]

Internet Marketing Week 3 – Competitor Analysis Using Visio

February 19, 2009 · Leave a Comment 

One of the exercises for Week 3 of Internet Marketing is to perform a competitor benchmarking for online services for an orgainsation of your choice. Essentially this involves the comparison of competitors and the awarding of a score based on some kind of objective analysis. Check page 88 of the Chaffey Text. To assist with the presentation of such information you could use an application such as Microsoft Visio to show a table. I have uploaded a word doc with basic instructions here  Read More →

Useful places for researching websites

February 13, 2009 · Leave a Comment 

I have received a number of emails about the choice of website to analyse as part of the assessment for Internet Marketing. Sometimes the fact that I am not constraining you in any way appears to make the assessment harder when in fact it is really an opportunity to research something from a practical business sense as well as the standard academic perspective. HAVE SOME FUN! The following sites may assist your analysis. 1. http://www.Alexa.com also try http://trends.google.com and http://www.netcraft.co.uk A great place... [Read the full story]

Internet Consumer Behaviour

October 22, 2008 · Leave a Comment 

There are many reasons why a customer may or may not decide to purchase a product online; reasons that are often related to the product features themselves, but, in some circumstances the decision to purchase has little to do with the actual product or the price people are prepared to pay. Key issues surrounding trust, privacy and security of personal information[1] have an enormous effect on the relationship between a potential customer, a website, and the business operating it. The value of ‘word of mouth’ communications... [Read the full story]

Internet Distribution

October 22, 2008 · Leave a Comment 

It is accepted that the travel and tourism industry is heavily reliant on information. This information is required by the customer as the intangibility of the product and the method of payment prior to consumption can have a negative effect or produce a fear of purchasing the unknown[1]; the greater the level of information available the greater the likelihood of purchase. Airline travel has become a mass-market product and as such, information has to reach the widest possible audience. Traditionally the high street intermediaries... [Read the full story]

Internet Research – Secondary Data

October 2, 2008 · Leave a Comment 

The Internet is not only a tool for promoting and doing business. It is a tool for researching and gathering data on the external environment, competitors and customers. Many traditional resources such as newspapers and magazines are readily available on the Internet such as TheTimes Online (http://www.timesonline.co.uk) and The Radio Times (http://www.radiotimes.com/). More recently, increases in the availability of broadband and faster Internet connections have allowed the ‘streaming’ of television programmes such... [Read the full story]

Corporate Social Responsibility & Ethics

October 2, 2008 · Leave a Comment 

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Ethics have been affected by the Internet in two interesting ways. Visit many of the large corporate websites that you may have heard of such as McDonalds[1], or even cigarette manufactures such as Philip Morris[2] or British American Tobacco [3](BAT) and with little effort you will surely find references and pages dedicated to CSR within those organisations. Clearly those organisations place significant importance on CSR to dedicate time, money and marketing expense to such programmes.... [Read the full story]