NZS.com Newsletter December 2008

It's finally here! Welcome to the Christmas special of the NZS.com newsletter, your last hot net tips and tools from us for 2008!

This month we look at booking your travel online for the holiday season, Christmas shopping online versus in stores, some quick SEO and SEM tips to implement before 2008 is out, and why the entertainment industry is still booming.

Contents:

• Top Ten Sites
• Book Travel Deals Online
• Christmas Shopping by the Megabyte
• Quick SEO and SEM Tips Before 2008 Is Out
• The New Luxury

With the festive period rolling in, your diary is probably already full with dates for BBQs, parties and other social gatherings. It's the silly season, and we're gearing up for another good one. With events galore, have you remembered to get all of the decorations and supplies that you'll need this season? Check out the top ten click-throughs from NZS.com for the Christmas Party and Events Supplies section from last month:

Rank	Site Name	URL
1.	Christmas Treasures	www.christmastreasures.co.nz
2.	Christmas For Everyone	www.santas-christmas.co.nz
3.	Christmas Shop	www.christmasshop.co.nz
4.	Christmas Displays	www.christmasdisplays.co.nz
5.	Ogilvies	www.ogilvies.co.nz
6.	The Christmas Heirloom Company	www.christmasheirloom.com
7.	I Love Christmas	www.ilovechristmas.co.nz
8.	Decorative Lighting Solutions	www.decorativelightingsolutions.co.nz
9.	Xmastrees.co.nz	www.xmastrees.co.nz
10.	Santa Claus Suit Hire Company	www.santasuithire.co.nz

Are you set with your holiday season travel plans yet? For most of us, the answer to that question might still be no, even though we're only 2 weeks out from the festive break. The reason? Searching for the best travel deals can be such a tasking experience it's enough to make you want to stay home!

Trying to find the cheapest flights and best accommodation for you and your family isn't always easy, especially when you don't know where to start. Scour the daily paper every morning looking for flight sales? Open five windows or tabs at once and compare site after site (and trying to remember which prices included taxes and other costs and which didn't)? It's all a bit much, especially at this time of year.

Luckily, NZS.com launched a brand new travel deals section last month - and we're about to make planning your holiday a whole lot easier for you. Our new travel page is powered by Wego, and searches over 100 different travel websites, including online travel agencies like Zuji, consolidators like Orbitz, airline websites, and hotel websites. This means we can find you the best deals available online, even sale fares and limited promotional deals from budget airlines like Pacific Blue and Jetstar.

It's fast, it's easy, and you can customise just about every variable - from flight times to price range - so make sure you plan your travel this Christmas via NZS.com's New Zealand travel deals section, and browse our planning a vacation article for a run down on how to book your holiday online.

According to a recent US study, consumers now prefer online bargain shopping to in-store shopping for holiday gifts. It seems busy malls and shopping centres aren't the primary place for Christmas presents anymore for those who normally purchase products online at least four times a year.

The reasons for finding bargains online are mainly attributed to the potential savings in time, which 88% of respondents designated as their key reason for shopping on the net. Locating hard to find products, avoiding mall crowds and greater selection were also deciding factors that made shopping online more attractive as opposed to visiting physical stores.

E-tailing Group, the body who conducted the survey, stated that value spending is definitely the mantra this year as multitasking shoppers keep tabs on the web to get the best deals:

"Holiday gift buying is particularly impacted by this propensity for shopping smart as consumers preview online to get the most for their money."

More than half of online retailers expect their holiday sales to increase at least 15% over last year, with over 40% adding to or improving their website for the customer's benefit since the last Christmas period.

Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board Consumer Research Centre recently undertook a survey of 10,000 US households about their opinions towards Christmas shopping online:

"Free shipping, exclusive online deals and discounts are among the incentives shoppers expect this year (over in store shopping)".

Shipping charges are the most frustrating aspect of online shoppers said around 45% of respondents, with 90% saying free shipping would serve as motivation to spend more online this Christmas. 71% said deals that were not available in stores would further boost their preference for online spending.

Despite slowing retail sales amongst many other channels, online Christmas shopping is likely to be one of the few industries which spurs on this season. Books, clothes, movies and toys are expected to have the highest volume sales this year - so don't forget to check our advice on buying Christmas gifts this year.

Somehow it's happened again, another year has flown by and it's the festive season! Like all of us here at the NZS.com office, you're probably frantic trying to fit everything in before the year is out. Want to get some quick SEO and SEM fixes done to your website before 2008 rolls into 2009? Take a look at these two quick tips below:

Duplicate Content:
In one of our previous newsletters we ran over duplicate content specific to the page content on your site, but did you know that repetitive page titles can also be considered duplicate content?

Normally, these duplicate issues are created unknowingly, perhaps without thinking about it or simply because of the way your content management system generates your page make up. The repetition of your brand name is the most common duplicate issue with page titling, which is fine to have on every page, but remember it's not the most important thing for optimal SEO.

Additionally, just having your brand name as your only page title on every page can give search engines the wrong impression about your site. Search engines may judge pages as duplicate before even looking over your page content if there isn't very much supporting text on the page.

As a fix before 2008 is out, add in a targeted keyword phrase describing what is on each page within your site to the page title. Then if you want to, have your brand name following it, rather than preceding it. This gives you a greater chance of bringing qualified traffic to your site from search engines.

Keywords:
Creating pages and facilitating paid search engine marketing (SEM) without doing keyword research can significantly harm the effectiveness of your paid keyword advertising efforts. Don't handicap yourself by simply guessing the keywords which you think your target market is searching for, or moreover going for the keywords you'd like to target, even if your competitors are already targeting them.

Where possible, do your keyword research before publishing pages within your website (or ideally before setting your website up in the beginning), and before you choose keywords for your paid advertising. For a quick fix for the end of 2008, there are a variety of keyword tools offered online which you can use to relook at the keywords you are targeting on your site (many of them paid but with free trial versions, such as Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery and Seobooks). Don't forget to utilise the various options offered by Google including Insights, Trends and the Adwords keyword research tool. Then, you can choose your advertising keywords wisely, which will correlate with the targeting keywords on your web pages.

Reminders of the current world economic state may be hard to dodge in our media-filled lives, but the effects of this doesn't mean we're scrimping on luxuries - just a change in the kind of luxuries we're consuming.

The entertainment industry believes that sectors like video games and DVDs will be buffered from the effects of the financial crisis that are hitting many other industries. When the film Iron Man hit DVD stores on September 30 in the US, the same week that the $700 million bailout bill was in proposition, the movie sold a record 500,000 copies on Blu-Ray for the first week. Similarly, the new James Bond film Quantum of Solace, which opened in New Zealand at the end of November, pulled in nearly US$30 million more on its opening weekend in the US in mid-November than its predecessor, Casino Royale. Casino Royale was released in the same month in 2006, in a much stronger financial climate.

While there is no question many are tightening their belts on luxuries, it seems lower-priced entertainment is making a big shift to replace the luxuries of the past. While parents may have taken their children on a waterskiing holiday over Christmas in previous years, the trend this year may be buying a gift in the form of a Nintendo Wii console and a few supplementing Wii Fit games to virtually ride the waters.

Consumers are expected to buy up larger this year on in-home entertainment (so far the video game industry has experienced 20% more growth on trajectory, in part owing to the introduction of three new consoles). Instead of buying a new car or taking a trip, consumers are moving to a more cost-conscious way of enjoying their disposable incomes. This means you shouldn't be surprised when you find yourself with more virtual entertainment than you can shake a stick at this Christmas!

We're interested in your opinion, if you have anything you'd like to hear about in the newsletter, let us know.

Have a safe and merry Christmas from the whole team at NZS.com.

Images from Flickr: Gifts, Wii Play, Macbook.