The fool.co.uk quietly launched their lovemoney.com site in December last year.
Fool.co.uk
LoveMoney.com
The fool have always been fairly forward thinking and have embraced newer technologies with the build of the new comparison site. They managed their build via 37s Basecamp and started a blog detailing the development.
A Community area (comments, forums etc.) to encourage UGC
Video (integration of blip.tv)
Google Analytics – free and largely effective stats
address HTML tags for good semantic markup
OpenX for a an open standards Advertising platform
Coders with a sense of humour: Thankyou for using: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Collaborative coding: Comment: Colin, we need to add the zone name dynamilcally to the and of the archivce link so we jump to the correct area on the page
Keep Going (a few things they could work on)
Headers – Where is your h1? fixed!
META Tags – improve your descriptions and keywords
Semantic HTML – change those ugly ASP generated variable names
List Nesting – You have to dig down 11 levels before the h2 content starts
Swiftcover are using some bleeding edge technology to promote their brand. Are you?
They’re advertising on Spotify. Spotify is billed as the itunes killer and is well worth the download. The ads are upbeat and are targeting the customer in an area that is completely devoid of car insurance ads.
They’re introducing dynamic ads. These ‘widgets’ will allow a quote to be shown within the ad itself. They’re being trialled on MSN
Google are testing (and have confirmed) a change in search results by displaying images known as favicons next to the URL. Are sites seeing an increase in click through rate – we’re waiting to find out.
Now here’s a trick to see whether you’re in the test. Using this URL, replace yourdomain
http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=YOURDOMAIN
Is the big personal finance comparison company in real trouble or are they just trimming away the fat in hard times? Wagging mouths in the world of recruitment would have us believe that the public company, Moneysupermarket, have made over 100 staff redundant already and that they’re now heading into a new round of lay-offs which could see the total rise to just short of the 200 mark.
Is this a sign of how much everyone is suffering in the credit crunch? Or is Moneysupermarket a beast that feeds well in good times but struggles in bad times? An over-reliance on a small number of loan providers and the withdrawal of the majority of the mortgage products on the site meant that they were always going to suffer. And despite making some gains through the credit crunch related products, it looks like the total made redundant will reach nearly 200 staff. That’s not a small step when you’re just striving for ‘efficiencies’.
Still, at least the company can profit from their departing staff – they won’t have far to look for their payment protection plans, mortgage and pension advice. They can just follow the advice provided by Moneysupermarket in their redundancy survival guide …of little consolation me thinks!
Departing Moneysupermarket staff, feel free to share your views on this. Are there troubles from within the mammoth comparison beast? Are the shareholders struggling to stomach the share price dive since the flotation? Is there a bright future beyond the current climate?
Google recently posted an interesting insight on their blog regarding their Adwords system. They say they’re finding that more and more people are becoming more knowledgeable about the various advanced tools which they’ve released to the paid search campaign managers across the globe. However, they’re finding that many of these guys haven’t quite grasped the concept about how the Google Adwords auction process actually works.
“Bid times quality score” I hear you all cry. Of course. But this little tutorial from Google can help you to re-focus the mind when you’re staring at a bunch of figures from your Google report and you can’t see the wood for the trees because of all of the trial and error work you’ve put in to ‘test’ the system.
OK, so this could be seen as child’s play to the experts. But there are huge number of insurance advertisers using the Adwords system who don’t use an agency or simply don’t have the experience but think they ‘have to be there’ or they’ll be losing out.
Tescocompare are embracing new technologies including A/B Testing. We’d love to know what effect this has had on conversion. When you’re dealing with tens of thousand of customers per day, you should be able to see these differences fairly quickly. If anyone from TescoCompare is reading this – can you provide any feedback?
Just after the Telegraph’s latest data leak, The Guardian kick them while they’re down. With the release of their new Open Platform, The Guardian are one of the few newspapers to really understand the Internet.
We’ll let you read the various news stories about it but think for a second what would happen if a finance aggregator produced an API to their anonymised data? I know some people who would pay for that.
The Telegraph has inadvertently released its full databases due to poor security measures (an SQL injection attack using standard tools). The Telegraph has not commented on this data leak but there are many hacking blogs that are already harvesting email addresses and passwords.
There’s always plenty of constructive talk, whispers, rumours and conspiracy theories on the internet about past, present and future Google algorithm updates. One such update seems to have happened in January 2009 and a significant number of people are still twittering, blogging and rant and raving about it.
My message to them – STOP WHINING and think about it constructively for a second! The general concensus of the last big update has been that Google is now favouring the bigger brands in the SERPs. OK, so that may be the final result but sto think about why that might be the case and you might see how you could jump on the bandwagon and benefit yourself (whatever the size of your brand).
Could it be that instead of selecting the biggest brands or highest Adwords payers in each sector and artificially promoting them in the SERPs, Google may be doing something else which is causing the same effect? Perhaps it’s not beyond all realms of possibility that the update has actually emphasised Google’s data and focus on user behaviour instead?
An emphasis change towards user behaviour would explain why the biggest brands and a select few others are performing better in the SERPs. Certainly when it comes to insurance, a bigand well known brand can result in better form conversion, site stickyness and above all, perseverance. It’s not a guarantee but it certainly helps.
We know this is seen as an important element of the algorithm because Google has told us it is. We know they have the data because they give us the wonderful and FREE tools to see it for ourselves. Perhaps the focus of these tool (Webmaster Console and Analytics) gives us an indication of what Google sees as important – bounce rates, in bound links concentration, broken link reporting, most popular pages, time on site, total traffic, goals and conversions etc. Tons of ways of looking at how your site is performing for your customers.
So instead of whining about Google, perhaps have a look at your offering to the customer. Is it performing as well as it could? Can you squeeze out another few per cent on some of those important stats? If you can, perhaps you’ll see your SERP positions improve. If not, at least you’ve made the traffic you are getting work better for you …and the customer! A more productive use of your time than whining about Google to hundreds of thousands of other powerless webmasters who should be doing the same thing.
A new venture, led by the infamous Richard Mason (ex-Moneysupermarket), plans to bring together the combined strength of the various online personal finance comparison serivces. Everyone in the industry tends to understand something slightly different about the intentions of the “Comparison Consortium” but with Richard Mason leading the charge, you can expect it to suit MoneyExtra fairly well.
The interesting news is that a press release which is doing the rounds at the moment tends to suggest that the regulation of the “comparison industry” is just around the corner. According to a number of sources (the Insurance Times among them), The Comparison Consortium will be working with organisations such as BIBA to self regulate the personal finance comparison industry.
This comes as interesting news when an similar effort in 2008 fell flat on its face – apparently due to a clashes of egos and mis-aligned objectives among the proposed members. So how would another attempt work any better – is Richard Mason hoping that the size of his ego will eclipse everyone else’s and lead them down a new path to success?
A consortium of comparison services is essentially another Moneysupermarket. Is this the angle Richard Mason is coming in from? Has he found MoneyExtra to be lacking on its own strengths? With “mine’s bigger than yours” likely to dominate discussions amongst the consortium members, who’s likely to be included – anyone smaller or more specialist than MoneyExtra? Or will the likes of GoCompare, Confused and uSwitch get a chance to join the party?
Plenty of thoughts to blossom from this and we know there are plenty of top executives out there who’s eyeballs hit this blog. What are your thoughts on this ladies and gentlemen?
Welcome to Insiders View. Originally an Insurance Blog, this site has evolved in to providing you with news and latest tricks on internet marketing and SEO. We also provide general information about the comparison market in the United Kingdom.
This site is run by two 'insiders'. We have kept our identity secret so that we can remain impartial - what you get is our true opinion, however damning.
Tescocompare are embracing new technologies including A/B Testing. We’d love to know what effect this has had on conversion. When you’re dealing with tens of thousand of customers per day, you should be able to see these differences fairly quickly. If anyone from TescoCompare is reading this – can you provide any feedback?
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