Back from Takasaki

My lovely wife is now back from Takasaki, Japan, after visiting grandma for a few days, who has been unwell and in hospital.

Welcome back, darling! 会いたかったよ！愛してる！チュー！

Get well soon, grandma!

First Jog in Windsor Great Park

Yayoi and I went for a jog in Windsor Great Park yesterday. Those that know me will chuckle at that. I managed around 30 minutes and my legs are aching today. It has been a while!

Yayoi and I also went for a walk around Windsor Great Park on Monday night, taking our normal route around. Imagine our surprise, having been for a walk in the same place at the weekend only two days before, to find all the grass and flowers cut down!

 

Before

After

The large numbers of butterflies around at the weekend were all gone. However, I managed to spot one in the middle of some blackberries that I hadn’t seen before – a Gatekeeper.

I have always had a fascination with butterflies. I remember doing a large project on them when I was at primary school, and one of my most treasured possessions is a case of beautiful butterflies my dad brought back from a trip to Singapore when I was young, including a Rajah Brooke’s Birdwing.

My wife thinks all butterflies are moths and has recently started calling me a 蛾バカ, roughly translated as Moth Geek

蝶々だよ、ダーリング。蝶々！（笑）

Studying English

Yayoi has been working very hard studying English for some time now, going every day to English classes at the Language Upon Thames Language School in Richmond. She has only just recently changed to four days a week, now having one-to-one private English lessons to gain maximum benefits.

We no longer speak Japanese at home. From now on it is English only – for me anyway!

Last week my wonderful wife was putting in extra hours at home in Windsor, sometimes staying up studying until one o’clock in the morning, just so that she could talk with all my friends at the weekend barbecue. She had no need to worry. She handled things magnificently all weekend. I was very proud of her!

弥生へ、

週末ありがとうね。感謝している。英語を話すのは疲れるって分かる。頑張って、頑張って、ありがとう。（愛）

ダーリング、これからも英語頑張ってね。私も家で英語頑張りま～す！（笑）

ダーリングの勉強の姿は素敵だよ。 ダーリングの動力は素晴らしいと思う。英語もうものすごい話せる。

これからも手伝うからね。二人で頑張ろう。愛してる！（笑）

Launching a successful website in Asia

Following on from my previous post on self PR online, I realised I forgot to share details of my time at at my previous company, the launch of the new website, and the results.

Why read on? Well, I have been in digital marketing for over six years now in a variety of roles within blue-chip companies in varying industries. Whilst I would not declare myself a true expert by any means as things constantly change, I have an excellent grasp on all aspects of digital marketing, good experience within all fields of marketing communications in general, and I have had immense success in the field of digital marketing both in Europe and in Asia with the companies I have worked for – particularly in Asia, which is my area of expertise. I have a good job in a good company, and put simply, I’m pretty good at what I do.

As marketers, we are all constantly learning and changing the way we communicate to consumers, as technologies advance and customer habits change. But the basics remain the same. Do what’s right for the customer and everything else should flow from that. By following some of the tips below, hopefully you too can launch a successful website, whether it be in Asia or elsewhere!

My decision as soon as I arrived at the company was to re-structure and re-design the website, starting from scratch with SEO (search engine optimisation) and the customer in mind. Not an easy task, given that 90 percent of our customer base was spread across Japan, China, Taiwan, and Korea, and we sold quite a number of products, but here’s a few things that I made sure were included in the new website that ensured success:

1. A good, logical site structure and an appealing look-and-feel – make it look good from the front and from behind!
2. An intuitive and simple customer funnel – ensure no more than 3 clicks from the home page or the menu bar to desired information to conversion by means of contact or sale!
3. A good internal linking structure – make navigation simple and logical for the visitor, whether human or bot!
4. Logical well-named URLs and page titles – based on keyword and competitor research, pick a keyword for the page and stick to it!
5. Well-written sales-focused description metatags – be creative and beat competitors to the click in organic listings!
6. Well-written, well-optimised copy – make it easy-to-read for visitors, whether human or bot!
7. Focus on one keyword/keyphrase per page – use the words that customers use, not internal jargon!
8. Good use of keywords in image titles and ALT tags – be friendly to those with a disability and help yourself at the same time!
9. A well-structured sitemap – let the search engines do their work and flow through your website!
10. A well-stocked glossary with appropriate internal links - let the search engines do their work and help customers, too!
11. A well-resourced press release section – make each press release a separate page and get customers through the back-door!
12. A partners section and partners pages – get those authoritative links coming in from your industry pals!
13. Publication of our email newsletter online – be an authority in the field online!
14. Employ a user-friendly multilingual-capable CMS – make sure your back-end systems are easy to use and work for you!
15. Permanent 301 re-directs from old pages to new – don’t lose the visitors you already had!
16. Speak to customers in their own language – translate everything, localise it, and help customers, whether human or bot!

The results paid off, both financially and in terms of improved metrics. 

• Within two to three months, we were on page one of the organic search results in Google Japan and Yahoo Japan, Google Korea and Naver, and Google China and Baidu for the majority of our keywords and products - the majority in position 1 – well outranking all of our competitors, the majority of whom were Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Taiwanese companies. This was down to a big effort on my part spending time and energy ensuring every page in English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Korean was well optimised, doing tweaks as necessary – I guess it helps if you can read Japanese and Chinese and have an aptitude for how languages work (although I cannot read Hangul, I have enough knowledge of the grammatical structure of the language which enabled me to work things out for SEO-purposes after learning which characters made up the keywords).
• Just two to three weeks after launch, the website had a 90% increase in visitors, and a 45% increase in returning visitors. The figures continued to grow month on month.
• The website generated over £1 million in new sales, all the revenue coming from sales of a product which was previously hidden in the old website and nowhere in the organic listings in any country. These sales came from new customers. The website paid for itself and then some!

Of course, these tips only cover internal efforts on the website, albeit a lot of work. PPC search, affiliates, display ads, mobile marketing, email newsletters, direct mail, TV, ATL ads, radio - all the external comms efforts will increase what you can achieve, pull more customers through the door, and hopefully help to increase sales and revenue.

It’s important all the channels you use in your marketing campaigns are aligned in objective if not in message, but always remember that in today’s world your website is usually the first place people will encounter you, your company, and your brand. It’s your shop window to the world, so get it right.

The above tips are not only good for launching a website in Asia, but for any website anywhere. The list is not exhaustive, but get the basics right, be creative, and the rest will follow!

Lunch in Cookham

Yayoi came back from Japan yesterday! 帰ってきてありがとう、ダーリング！（笑）

Yayoi and I had another little daytrip away from Windsor today to where I used to live with my sister – Cookham. The River Thames has been particulary high for a few days around Windsor, and so it was at Cookham, as these photos show. The water was also quite brown – no doubt something has been happening up Oxford way bringing dirt all the way down river!

River Thames, Cookham

River Thames, Cookham

Apart from being a very pretty stretch of the River Thames, Cookham is probably most famous for being the place that inspired Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows and also the place where the famous painter Stanley Spencer was born and buried. Most of his works were of village life in Cookham and there is a permanent gallery of his work at the top of the High Street across the road from the Bel and Dragon pub.

We’ve been before to Cookham for a walk by the river, but today was such a nice day, we decided to take a Japanese picnic lunch of onigiri, kara-age, tamago-yaki, salad, and mango for desert, and sit by the river for a few hours before coming back home and having champagne and strawberries! A lovely day!

奥さんは帰ってくる～！

明日弥生は日本から帰ってくる～！やった！（嬉）

早く会いたいよ、ダーリング！チューーーー！（笑）

Japan recognises the Ainu

This is huge news! On Friday, the Japanese government will finally recognise the Ainu as an indigenous people with a distinct language, religion, and culture.

The Japanese have constantly maintained for years that they are an ethnically homogenous society and that the Ainu do not exist – something which is quite untrue. It is clear that this is a symbolic gesture, especially with the G8 summit in Hokkaido drawing near, but it is a step in the right direction. Only time will tell how this will really affect the very few Ainu left. A great day for them nevertheless.

I have always had an interest in ethnicity and indigenous peoples and their assimilation into societies, with a particular focus on the social identity of individuals – How does an individual see himself/herself? As Ainu? As Japanese? As both? As either depending on circumstance or situation? All very intriguing.

Many people often forget that the Okinawans (Ryūkyūans) are in a similar position to the Ainu in Japan, but not as vocal for various reasons. Many of the complaints from Okinawa these days surround the continued presence of the US military on the islands, which often detract from any discussion on ethnicity and historical discrimination issues.

My Masters thesis was on the changes in Ryūkyūan Identity from the days of the Ryūkyū Kingdom through assimilation into Japan during the time of Meiji in 1879, and from post-war occupation to the present day, where it seems that people’s social identity has come full circle: Ryūkyūan - Okinawan – Japanese – Okinawan – Ryūkyūan. There are some individuals in Okinawa these days who will actually claim that they are Ryūkyūan. I find this fascinating, perhaps because I think of myself as Welsh and not British.

Rent Free Accommodation in Japan

Even after 15 years of being involved with Japan through study, research, and work, and having seen some of the weird and wonderful things that abound, I am constantly amused and amazed by some of the things that occur. This story, where a Japanese woman in Fukuoka, Japan, has been living in a closet in someone’s house for a year – without them knowing! – is unbelievable!