Retailing in the Recession - a playbook.

Just got this whitepaper from WPP's retail knowledge initiative - The Store titled "Retailing in the Recession". This is the 1st in a series of "playbooks" to help retailers and brand owners succeed in today’s unpredictable climate. I believe you will find this insightful although it does tend to address the US market trends - however, a number of them are applicable for Asia as well.

I have linked it here for a free download, although you will need to register on the site to access the document. When on the site, also check out the demos of the last mile effectiveness measurement tools.

My A to Z list of digital tools. (ABC)

This is a list which I have complied after a request from a few friends, who wanted to be more effective with their own online presence. A to Z listing of online tools is a compilation of tools which can assist you in being in better control of your digital marketing effort. These are effective, insightful, very useful and have been tested extensively. Together they can provide a very comprehensive ability to manage digital marketing – and you would notice that a lot of them are free. These are my personal favourites and not in any specific order;

A.

This tool forecasts the impression count and predicts demographic distributions of keywords.

B.

This tool helps in visualizing and analyzing the customers' search sequences.

C.

This tool helps test & improve a website performance. It calculates the size of individual elements and sums up each type of web page component. Based on these page characteristics the script then offers advice on how to improve page load time.

Read about more tools on my A to Z list of digital tools. Click here.

My A to Z list of tools contd. (DEFGH)

D.

This tool allows one to analyse changes which have occurred across the category over a period of time - actually way back to the start of the internet revolution.

E.

This tool allows you to triangulate traffic graphs from Alexa, Compete, and Quantcast of any website you're browsing. Very handy.

F.
This is a open source link analysis tool ideal for SEO

G.

This is a free and easy analytics tool that allows one to track a website more easily and effectively.

H.

comScore's Brand Metrix measures the impact of online advertising on a brand’s level of awareness and the attitudes and perceptions towards a brand. Also check out it's other tools.

Read more about digital tools on my A to Z list ; Click here

My A to Z list of tools contd. (IJKLM)

I.

This is a great tool that’s helps you generate heat maps of what and where people clicked on your site. This tells you what’s hot and what’s not, so you can make changes that matter.




J.
Good ol' good ol'. Basics of SEO. This one and about 10 others are mandatory.


K.
Another great tool which generates heat maps of useage patterns of the website.


L.
This tool allows you to compare feed subscribers across various sites. Great way to look at competitions effectiveness.


M.
A very effective tool for one to stay informed and updated about latest & relevant news, queries and topics / content pertaining to the website.

Read more about digital tools on my A to Z list of digital tools; Click here

My A to Z list of tools contd. (NOPQR)

N.
With this tool you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames. Helps you gets better SEO results.


O.
Net Promoter is both a loyalty metric and a discipline for using customer feedback to fuel profitable growth in your business.



P.
Piwik is a downloadable, open source web analytics software program. It provides you with detailed reports on your website visitors: the search engines and keywords they used, the language they speak, your popular pages… and so much more.



Q.
PostRank measures audience engagement and provides integrated tools to enable you to customize your RSS subscriptions.





R.
Quantcast provides publishers, marketers and agencies unmatched capabilities to measure, organize, discover and transact based on directly-measured traffic and inferred audience data.

Read more about my digital tools on my A to Z list of digital tools ; click here

My A to Z list of tools contd. (STUVW)

S.
SearchStatus is a toolbar extension for Firefox and Mozilla that allows you to see how any and every website in the world is performing. Designed for the highly specialised needs of search engine marketers, this toolbar provides extensive search-related information about a site, all conveniently displayed in one discreet and compact toolbar.

T.
You can use readability.info to analyze the characteristics of your writing and ascertain a multitude of readability scores.

U.
Statbrain uses different resources on the web combined with mathematical and statistical methods to estimate how many visits a website has.

V.
Technorati collects, organizes, and distributes the global online conversation.

W.
With Google Trends, you can compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics.









Read about the last three tools on A to Z list of digital tools ; Click here

My A to Z list of tools (XYZ)

X.
Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.



Y.
Find out how well your site is doing in popular search engines, social bookmarking and other site statistics.




Z.
Site Explorer allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search. View the most popular pages from any site, dive into a comprehensive site map, and find pages that link to that site or any page.

Hope you are able to put the tools on this list to their effective use.

Click here to go back to the top of the list.

Missed out on SunTech Days?

If like me, you too missed out on the SunTech Days in Hyderabad this year; don't give up hope just yet. Here's a virtual ring side seat to the action in Hyderabad.

I am still hoping to find my way there... although a day late.

Marketing Buzz

Marketing Buzz is the new blog authored by Rajesh Ghatge. The blog is worth a read and worth indexing for future posts. Visit the blog from here.