I’ve always believed that technology, like the web, should be an enabler. It should make things easier, not harder.

When I research and shop online, I have reasonable, but elevated, expectations. I expect that the process of learning about a product or service and making a purchase will be as easy as it is in person or over the phone. I place extra emphasis on this because I have two children and extra-curricular activities; so most of my online shopping takes place in the wee hours of the night.

As a teenager, I remember lining up for concert tickets the night before they went on sale. A lot of fun for a teenager, but I’m much happier to pick and choose my tickets online. Yet, because most ticket sales go through TicketMaster ™, or are self served via Tickets.com or other solutions, it’s usually is a disappointing experience.

Occasionally, my wife and I will make it to a concert, but mostly we purchase tickets to sporting events. Baseball, in particular, is an event where the guy sitting across the aisle from you could be paying $20 less per ticket. I only care about my view and like to compare many options, something that most ticket services make very difficult online.

For Example: Looking for tickets for my beloved Cubbies, seating options include only Best Available (Read: Most expensive.) or you can pick a section that has availability for your game of choice. After choosing a section and entering the security image code, your tickets are displayed and the problems begin:

1. You are only shown one option in that section. Why not give 4-5 best options in the section that you selected? All seats in a section are not created equal!

2. To request different seats you have to start over! You have to select a section, enter the security code again, etc. and when you get to the new ticket selection, your other options are gone. Why can’t you just click on the displayed seating chart? Why can’t they follow Amazon’s Lead by offering additional recommendations: “If you like Terrace Reserved, you may also like these wonderful bleacher seats?” Or better yet, multiple seats in every section — have everything available on one page!

What’s most frustrating to me is that if I was purchasing in person or over the phone, the rep would quickly offer many available options. Why would you want your website to make it harder for your customers to do business with you?

Enter StubHub. StubHub is a ticket reselling marketplace that was acquired by eBay last year. I had the pleasure of using StubHub to look for tickets to a sold out game that I wanted to attend.

StubHub is what online ticket buying should be:

Select the event, select buy or sell and all available tickets are displayed. Results are sortable by quantity, section, row and price. And perhaps the best innovation, an interactive seating chart. As you rollover sections at your venue, the number of tickets and price range are displayed for each section and you can even turn on and off individual sections on the map.

I hope that the entrenched players learn something from StubHub and make online ticket buying what it should be – Easy.

These days everybody wants your advertising dollars. “Give us your money and we will make you number one, give us your money and your business will double in profit.” But the real question every business person should be asking is, “What kind of ROI am I getting on my advertising dollars?” This question will weed out the competition. Why? Advertisers have no problems spending your money, but if you ask them to track where your money is being spent some of them will start to choke. However, that’s not the case with a good internet advertising company backing you. For once you can have your cake and eat it too.

Where are the Results?

First off, you don’t pay if there are no results. When is the last time your ad agency told you that if your TV, print or radio campaign didn’t drive traffic they would foot the entire bill. I used to work at a traditional ad agency and I didn’t hear those words come out of anyone’s mouth. It was always “well let’s see what we can do to improve it,” but no one was giving money back. In the case of internet advertising, when they click on your sponsored ad you pay for it and when they don’t click on your ad you don’t pay for it. Have you found a deal that good with a traditional ad agency? If you are one of the rare one’s who have, don’t let them go. If you’re one of the 99% whose paid and seen no results, you should consider internet advertising, especially since you can track it.

How can I track it?

Having access to track your ad and knowing your ROI is definitely a plus for any business person. Tools such as Google Analytics, Omniture, Hit Box, and others allow you to track the users that visit your site, in great detail. Google Analytics allows you to track what pages a user visited the most, what city they are searching from, what keywords caused the most conversions on your page and so much more. Lets do a hypothetical for a moment- What if you’re located in Kansas Missouri and you sell stuffed animals. Let’s say you’ve been thinking about expanding your business and opening up a 3rd location in a major city but you’re not sure where. You’ve thought about Atlanta, Chicago, and Dallas and everyone’s been telling you to open a store in Atlanta. After looking at Google Analytics and checking your financial books you realize that 55% of your revenue is coming from the internet, and more than 35% of those people have searched to see if there is a store near them. Furthermore, you see that most of your internet conversions are coming from people located in Chicago. Bingo! Now you know where to open your second store. How easy was that? But you’re a busy business person and you don’t have time to track?

A Good Internet Ad Agency

That’s where More Visibility can help. We specialize in SEO and SEM and can help you reach your goals. We will look to see what keywords are driving traffic and which ones are taking up space and need to be removed. The best part is that we will show you how to use Google Analytics so you aren’t 100% dependent on us. We believe in educating our clients and treating them like partners. That way, when you’re flight is delayed at the airport at 10 PM at night you can login to Google Analytics and see your ROI and know your advertising dollars are being well spent.

The next time you think “Where should I spend my advertising dollars?” Think about your ROI, can you truly track it? Can you login to Google Analytics and say I’m spending $1000 a month and gaining $3000? When you truly consider your advertising company by these standards I guarantee you More Visibility will be one of the last one’s standing.

We have all been hearing the rumblings about mobile ads for the past few years, but where is mobile advertising today? Has this new channel really started to show its true potential as a viable source of traffic yet?

Whether texting, looking up the basketball scores or scanning the latest news, we are all spending more and more time on our phones. Many professionals have now traded their regular mobiles for the latest version, high-tech PDAs. So is it possible that we have been hit with advertisements and just not seen them?

Currently a $1-billion dollar marketing channel, accounting for just .2% of all advertising, EMarketer is now estimating mobile ad spend to grow to over $19 billion in just four years!

This means that the channel is really an un-tapped area for many merchants and should be tested now, while costs are just a fraction of ‘traditional’ Internet ads. Advertisers can choose to create specific mobile campaigns that target a certain demographic, just as you can with search. Further, search engines continue to grow their mobile capabilities, including mapping, GPS, and advertisement all in one!