Websites such as Groupon, LivingSocial and even Travelzoo have been getting in on the act, promoting local businesses and driving customers to their venues to sample anything from a falconry day to a three-course meal with champagne.

And it seems these are proving so popular that another established website has decided to jump on the bandwagon and see whether it can succeed where plenty of others have failed.

Gumtree is the latest site to launch a daily deals service for its customers but it claims its offering is different – consumers can use social media to communicate what they want to see.

Customers can give their view on the daily deals through its Facebook page, so they get exactly what they want out of the service.

Hamish Stone, head of marketing at Gumtree, explained: “Consumers are becoming increasingly savvy to the offers that are available, both on the high street and online, so it is vital to offer a unique and different platform in this competitive space.”

Daily deals have proved to be extremely popular in recent months, with local retailers reaping the benefits of the offering in post-recession Britain. However, only time will tell as to whether the long-term impact of the deals – getting repeat custom – is all it’s cracked up to be.

At the moment, local businesses pay a fee to the deals provider before they can advertise and promote their special offer. The deal, therefore, needs to be such that they still make a significant return after paying money out initially. With the voucher culture becoming ever-more prominent in the UK, it’s unclear as to whether people will ever be willing to pay full price for things again!

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According to a new report from Screen Pages, mobile accounts for ten per cent of ecommerce website visits, however, the conversion rate is around half that of PC users.

Some 30 websites were analysed for the report, which looked at more than 1.5 million visitors to ecommerce sites – none of which were optimised for mobile browsing.

The average bounce rates were lower for mobile users – showing sites must be doing something right when they’re engaging smartphone customers. Mobile users were also found to be less likely to view multiple pages per visit. If you think about it, it’s not surprising, since with a smaller screen, mobile users are bound to be less keen to scrawl through hundreds of pages.
Bearing this in mind then, it’s vital for ecommerce sites to ensure they have a mobile-friendly website, otherwise people will definitely take their trade elsewhere. The conversion rates in the Screen Pages report were shown to be a huge 41 per cent lower than those from PC users – really emphasising the importance of trying to engage mobile customers.

Mobile-friendly websites will take some effort to set up and if ecommerce retailers can’t afford that kind of outlay, there is an alternative. Looking at your current website on a mobile device will help you to ascertain if there are any problem areas, which you can then sort out on your main site.

Remember, there are some things which are easy to do on a mobile device – scroll and click, but it’s not quite so simple to type. This is the kind of thing to bear in mind when trying to make a mobile-friendly site – make things big and clickable, not small and fiddly.

You never know what effect these kind of simple changes could have upon your conversion rate. It makes a lot of sense for ecommerce sites to do whatever they can to take advantage of the high volume of mobile traffic they’re seeing come through.

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It’s commonly recommended as a brand strategy; companies are encouraged to interact with their customers via the medium in order to thank them for positive feedback and work on anything which needs a bit of tweaking.

And, according to London City Airport, the use of social media has quite a significant impact on customer satisfaction.

It claims to have drawn in a loyal customer base which is three times more likely to engage with the hub via Twitter and Facebook, compared to the customers of other airports throughout Europe. The customer satisfaction scores are extremely high – 8.7 out of ten – a record level for the hub and this is said to be mainly down to its use of social media channels.

The airport is always keen to respond to its customers’ queries and concerns and this has led to it attracting a growing army of followers on the medium. It tries to keep its customers up to date and informed at all times, which, unsurprisingly, pleases the travellers who use the travel hub.

Chief commercial officer at London City Matthew Hall said social media has, over the past two years, “transformed the way the airport communicates and interacts with customers”. It really does go to show the impact social media can have on creating a loyal customer base.

In order to really make social media work, you’ll need to be consistent – reply to all of your customers, regardless or whether they’re positive or negative in their feedback. And you also need to do it frequently, it won’t work unless you regularly check and update your pages, ensuring your customers stay interested in your social media offering.

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Which is just as well because even though the exchange saw Bing praised for “using tweets to make search better” things seem very basic right now. I struggled to get any tweets to appear following a Bing search, and in order to get those I had to look for results on “@Twitter” and “@Bing”. By way of a further experiment, I decided to look for one of the microblogging site’s most popular and prolific users, but a search for “@Stephenfry” led Bing to ask if I’d meant “@Stephen Fry”. Not particularly useful.

When this is compared to the way in which Google used to display tweets, offering as it did realtime updates on queries at the top of the results page (and plenty of them to), it’s easy to see just how far Bing has to go in order to truly make tweets part of its search experience. Of course, it had there been a major breaking news story at the time of my limited test things may have been different, but it doesn’t seem likely.

One also has to ask what both parties expect to gain from a stronger partnership. The exposure Twitter gained through Google would have helped boost the number of people signing up for the social network, but Bing has a significantly smaller user base. Furthermore, with Twitter growing in popularity, it is now many people’s first port of call for breaking news. Take the recent London riots where a number of journalists who were actually reporting on events used Twitter to keep the public up to date. Personally, I followed events via a few trustworthy accounts on the microblogging site using a Twitter client on my mobile, the Guardian and BBC’s live blogs, radio and TV. I didn’t once put the phrase “London riots” into a search engine because there was a quicker and easier way to access information.

Ultimately, it’s not hard to see Twitter making realtime search obsolete. Who wants to log on to a PC in order to use a search engine, or faff on with the mobile equivalent, and then wade through results when, if you’re following the right people, Twitter will present the information to you with nothing more than a quick refresh? With this in mind, the value of joining forces with a search engine is, in the long term, questionable.

For this reason, the stronger partnership between Bing and Twitter cannot merely focus on displaying tweets on search engine results pages, they also need to look at seamlessly integrating them into mobile search and perhaps even try offering smartphone users something completely new in order to grab a bigger slice of this vastly important emerging market. Sadly, given that the pair appear to be starting from such a poor position, it’s hard to see them coming up with anything even remotely approaching revolutionary.

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You get the impression that T-Mobile certainly think so as they continue push their Life’s For Sharing campaign down the throats of anyone who has a TV, computer or mobile phone. Having used the now hackneyed flashmob to great effect, their latest ad saw the company set up a real-life version of Angry Birds in Barcelona and then filmed the results as a group of unfeasibly attractive young people, who just happened to be passing by, launched (fake) birds at (also fake) pigs.

It was a huge success and according to the Internet Advertising Bureau was shared 438,246 times, hardly surprising when you consider how popular Angry Birds is. But did the ad really create any extra value for T-Mobile, or was it just passed on with a simple message “isn’t this cool?”? Brand recognition is obviously the aim here, but given the firm was recently widely mocked for the patronising way it communicated a change to existing users’ terms of use that recognition might not necessarily be positive.

Further clues as to the actual effectiveness of viral ads can be taken from last month’s second most successful offering, which came from the English National Opera. It took a clever idea – the conceit being what would happen if you were to interact with the real world the same way you interact with things online – and executed it well. It was shared 64,630 times, a long way behind T-Mobile but still a respectable figure. However, it’s highly unlikely anyone who shared the ENO ad then went on to buy a ticket for Two Boys, the piece it was promoting, rendering the exercise pointless. Opera, for reasons far too complex to examine here, is an elitist pastime and it’s going to take more than a good viral ad to break the long established demographic barriers that exist.

Clearly there’s an element of gimmickry about viral ads, but the most important thing to remember about them is that they may not always do what you want and if that happens you’re wasting your money. Viral ads may look flashy, but there can be much more effective ways of using your online marketing spend.

You can watch the T-Mobile ad here…

And the ENO ad here…

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The move has been seen as a response to Google’s latest attempt to gain ground in the social media sector, with Google+ offering video conferencing as one of its standout features.

It is also likely to lead to stronger ties between Facebook and Google’s closest search rival Microsoft, which recently agreed a £5 billion deal to buy Skype.

Quite whether the Skype/Facebook tie-up will pay off remains to be seen. The social networking site’s instant messaging service is far from reliable and this will doubtlessly lead to scepticism about its ability to integrate video chat successfully.

That said, it offers obvious upsides to both companies – Facebook should be able to offer a service which rivals the videoconferencing of Google+ and Skype will be able to leverage the 750 million users Facebook currently has.

In fact, you could argue that the social networking site, which was rumoured to be preparing a bid for Skype before Microsoft pounced, will end up with all of the benefits the potential acquisition would have brought it without having to shell out £5 billion for the privilege. Not a bad piece of business if things work out.

Of course, the project will only bear fruit if it can be implemented successfully, but regardless it certainly shoes that Google+ won’t have everything their own way.

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Although the results revealed the average search query is, as expected, pretty short – the least verbose, AOL users, average 4.17 words per search and the most, Ask.com users, 4.74 words.

However, things became a little more interesting when the company looked at how often people used queries of eight words or longer, a figure that stood at almost 15 per cent for Ask.com searches. Just 8.38 per cent of AOL searches, the next highest figure, featured eight or more words.

This won’t be much of a surprise to anyone who is familiar with Ask’s history – it sprung out of Ask Jeeves, which was as much a question and answer service as a search engine and has recently switched back to this business model.

So why, when Google is so dominant, should firms bother to optimise longer phrases with Ask in mind? The answer may depend on the demographic you are targeting. Longer searches are often associated with older, less confident web users and those companies looking to target older age groups may find it beneficial to optimise for some of the question-type searches that Ask encourages.

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The service, which pulled information from a range of social networking sites, most notably Twitter, offered searchers a constantly updating stream of information – anyone who has ever searched for information on a breaking news story on the main Google page will have seen it in action.

Its demise seems to be down to two factors – the culmination of a contract with Twitter which allowed tweets to be used in this manner and the search giant’s plans to integrate its new social network, Google+, into a revamped version of the tool, which is set to be launched at an unspecified point in the future.

The lack of real time search won’t be a huge loss for average searchers – the various different search functions it offers mean relevant information will still be at their finger tips. However, it isn’t the best news for Twitter as it has lost what would have undoubtedly been a significant source of high-quality traffic. Tweets, as long as they are public, will still be indexed but being at the top of Google on breaking news stories looks like a thing of the past for Twitter and as everyone knows being at the top of a results page is crucial.

It doesn’t take too much imagination to see how this will damage the microblogging site – exposure levels will fall significantly as people who may have never considered signing up will no longer have it thrust in their face when using the world’s biggest search engine. Fewer people click through, fewer people sign up. It’s clear that Google, which is looking to make serious inroads into the social networking market, wasn’t exactly enamoured with the idea of sending people to one of its rivals while it attempts to build up its own user base.

Which brings us to the second group of people who will suffer from this move – publications that operate behind a paywall and those who write for them. The nature of a paywall is such that an article’s exposure to the wider internet is pretty much non-existent. Stories aren’t indexed and many of those operating with this model have also taken a stand against aggregators such as NewsNow, with the obvious consequences.

Twitter is a neat way round this. Writers working for subscription-only digital services can use the service to promote their material while giving people some idea what they’re going to be getting. Converting followers into subscriptions is never going to be easy, but at least it ensures they’re not operating in a world of total digital anonymity. Google’s real time search allowed them to have their cake and eat it. A Times journalist, for example, could fire off a piece about a breaking news story, tweet a brief description with a link and then expect to see his message floating around the top of Google despite the fact the publication itself isn’t indexed. With the death of real time search that option is no longer available to them, meaning Twitter is a (slightly) less attractive proposition for journalists than it was.

It’s tempting to view this move by Google as it sticking two fingers up at News International and other corporations who have decided they want as little as possible to do with the search engine, but it’s far more likely to be another move designed to hurt Twitter and other social networking sites.

Once real time search is resurrected with Google+ as its driving force it will be able to offer journalists and celebrities the very tempting incentive of once again seeing their messages appearing at the top of a Google results page just by joining a different social network site. If that happens, it’s not a massive leap to suggest a significant number of fans will follow suit as they look to keep tabs on the people who interest them. Is it really giving the search giant too much credit to suggest that this thought has played at least some role in the decision to reshape its real time feature?

As Facebook’s triumph over MySpace shows most people are happy enough with one social networking profile that does everything they want and Google+ is an obvious attempt to combine the plus points of Facebook and Twitter while addressing their downsides. However, social networks are nothing without people and Google+ needs to work hard to get the substantial number of users which push it past the “nice idea stage”, something the firm has failed to do with offerings including Buzz. If Facebook and Twitter can find the right response to this new rival Google+ may be left on the sidelines, no matter how many clever plans are hatched.

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In the latest Google Webmaster Central video Matt Cutts, head of the firm’s Webspam team, explained that homepage content is absolutely crucial if people want to rank highly.

However, he did admit that bigger isn’t always better and sites which were overloaded with homepage content can become cumbersome and slow to load, something that will anger users.

Clearly then, there’s a balance to be struck especially with current design trends leading to an increasing number of sites embracing multimedia content and featuring it prominently on their sites.

According to Cutts, in these sorts of situations high-quality SEO is even more vital as less text means less space to do a good job.

“If you have more content on a home page, there’s more text for Googlebot to find, so rather than just pictures, for example, if you have pictures plus captions – a little bit of textual information can really go a long way,” he said.

So there you have it, search engine optimisation is vital and can still be achieved even if you don’t have large volumes of text on your home page. (For the record, Cutts’ blog is a little more old school and features around five entries on its homepage and he seems to do just fine when it comes to ranking for SEO-related terms, which is exactly what you’d expect.)

Content remains king, and with a good-quality, well-optimised home page you can expect to increase your search engine visibility significantly.

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It’s little wonder then that United’s manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, is less than impressed with the service, suggesting people should get “down to the library and read a book” instead. For once though, and in this case unsurprisingly, his players haven’t heeded his words and several of them remain on Twitter. And perhaps Sir Alex should be a little more open minded, especially after his star striker Wayne Rooney successfully used the service to deflect some adverse publicity over the weekend.

Rooney was snapped coming out of a hair transplant clinic and the images were featured on the back page of a popular Sunday newspaper. Faced by a story which, with a lack of actual football to report on, could have run for days before another inconsequential scoop was found to take its place the striker used Twitter to confirm he had indeed had a transplant. This, combined with the picture of the end result which he later posted, ensured the story was largely nipped in the bud. There was no speculation and no desperate paparazzi following him around hoping to get a snap of his new barnet.

The story still ended up in the papers but “Wayne Rooney admits to hair transplant” is harder to spin out than “Has Rooney had a hair transplant?”. In fact, the stories have focused as much on his use of Twitter than the actual “substance” of the matter.

As a result the general consensus seems to be Twitter is fantastic and a great way to break down barriers between players and supporters, as well as allowing them to take control . If only things were that simple. Rooney himself has demonstrated that Twitter can have a downside for its celebrity users. Just a few weeks ago his account hit the headlines for the wrong reasons after he seemed to challenge another user to a fight – Rooney’s claim he would put the fan “to sleep” was seen as a threat to knock him out, rather than an offer of coco and a bedtime story. As stories go, it was as minor as news of Rooney’s hair transplant but it should serve as a reminder that Twitter isn’t a one-way ticket to an improved public image.

Anthony Weiner, a US congressman, knows this to his cost. When a photo of a gentleman’s crotch clothed only in a pair of underpants was sent from his account to one of his female followers it quickly disappeared and Weiner blamed hackers. Days later he was force to back down, admitting that the photo was indeed him and he had sent it. What fate will befall Weiner remains to be seen, but there’s no disputing his impropriety has made him a laughing stock and his reputation may never recover.

Although Twitter may seems like an excellent way to bypass the media and get your message directly to the public it’s not without its drawbacks. For celebrities and businesses the service can be an invaluable tool, but it’s also one more place where they need to be on their best behaviour. As Weiner has shown – a little too graphically it seems – it’s hard to cover up your mistakes once they’ve been unleashed on to the internet.

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