Do you have a WordPress blog? Periodically, the technology changes and new plugins are created or old ones become more useful.
For example, this one lets you change your site’s background in multiple ways. Design sites, product sites and artists can make good use of these options to show off their wares.
Or maybe you want to add more zing to your blog’s posts? Try this improved editor.
If you’re daring, your (or your web person) can try to add some of these useful snippets.
If you’ve ever wanted a website or web work done for you, then you may not know enough about it to even know what you’re asking for. A good web person will ask what you’re trying to accomplish, suggest a few options and their costs and benefits and finally, offer a strategic assessment of the best use of the client’s efforts.
This was a job description posted to the Elance website, where you can hire freelance web people to do web work for you. What should this customer have known?
“Elance: I am a network marketer and need a facebook fan page created with SEO because I intend to use ppc. I would also someone to maintain those pages. We will discuss in greater detail via phone. – avg bid $200″
To translate all this into simpler terms:
1. Create a Facebook page and maintain it.
2. It should then rank well in internet searches.
3. The customer intends to use paid internet advertising.
4. They want to pay roughly $200.
To simplify it even further, you can’t do all that at once. It’s not a bad idea to do all these things but this must have been a network marketer who is new to Facebook and Search Engine Optimization. Let’s address a few things you should know if you were this customer.
1. Creating a Facebook page is free and easy. Maintaining it is going to be an ongoing project. A Facebook page should be updated 2-3 times per day AND you would need to chat with customers. As the business owner, if you pay someone else to do this it will cost a lot more than $200. The first week might cost you $200 alone.
2. A Facebook page is not going to rank well in internet searches. Facebook doesn’t get along with Google, who will probably be sending you the most visitors.
Even more than that, Facebook isn’t set up for SEO (Search Engine Optimization.) It doesn’t matter what you post on your Facebook page, the search engines will never see it and send people to it.
By all means, have a Facebook page – it’s just not that valuable for SEO.
3. PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising is what you see when you do a search and all those ads appear on the top or right side of your search results page.
PPC can be a valuable way to bring people to a web page. It can be expensive, depending on what you are bidding on. Each click can be $1 or more… at best, $200 might buy 200-500 visitors and you pay for them even if they don’t buy anything from your website.
Also, PPC is a totally separate thing from SEO. It can help somewhat, but the value of PPC is bringing primed leads to your webpage to buy something.
4. $200 is not going to buy you very much SEO. SEO is an ongoing process and should be revamped monthly, doing more of what works well for your business.
Much depends on what industry you are in, how competitive it is in your location and how wide a reach you want.
Some companies will charge you thousands of dollars per month for this – just for your local area. It’s not unreasonable if you want bigger success – it takes time, research and manpower on an ongoing basis.
Still other companies would take your $200, make a Facebook page for you and then tell you that you are fully optimized and to expect great results.
Again, this customer didn’t want anything crazy. They wanted to have a Facebook page that performs well. However, they just didn’t have an idea what they were asking for and how much it would cost in full.
Good day,
Some of you may have a Joomla based website. On January 5th, there was a security update. And then again on February 3rd and March 6th and March 16th and on April 4th.
Some of the updates were not all that important but others were. You may, if you have a Joomla website, wish to log in and run some updates. You don’t want any security vulnerabilities.
A guest post by Isabella Woods
Growing Your Business Is About More Than Just Web Pages
Many businesses make the mistake of seeing their online presence as no more than a fancy brochure. They hire some designers, write some fairly solid sales content and a few months later they are live with a pretty new website. Sure not many people actually visit it or sign up as a result of visiting but it’s more than they were receiving before so it’s seen as a success and not much more is done to improve matters.
Understanding The Sales Funnel And How Web Technology Fits In
The most frustrating part about this misunderstanding about how business on the World Wide Web works is that most businesses would never dream of operating in the same way in the face to face retail market. A visit to a furniture store reveals exactly how well retailers understand the concepts. An advertisement for discounts in their new catalogue shows in a large window poster. When customers ask for a copy of the catalogue sales staff are quick to take their name and address so next months catalogue can also be supplied before showing the customer the stock and offers this month. Obtaining contact details to enable future interaction is crucial to sales due to the effect of the ‘Sales Funnel’.
Simply defined the Sales Funnel works as follows. Imagine opening a new website to sell 0 interest credit cards. If you have a sales brochure type site only you might sell to say five per cent of your visitors. Few users will bookmark your site and return of their own accord. However, if you have a newsletter that contains dozens of exclusive deals and offer that to your visitors through a well designed squeeze page (a page designed to obtain sign ups for newsletters) as many as 15%-20% more might sign up for additional information. Naturally the ability to market to those people by e-mail knowing that they are interested specifically in credit card deals is an extremely lucrative option for you and much better than simply hoping they return to a brochure site or sign up on the first visit (which some users will still do).
Even better for your results will be segmenting your list and understanding the individual requirements of your users. The furniture store will send a beds catalogue to customers who told sales staff they are looking for a new bed and the credit card site will send e-mails about their balance transfer rates to those looking to move money from another card not a selection of deals about foreign cash withdrawals. The logic is identical on and offline but for some reason many businesses fail to interpret the great techniques they use offline into a successful online model.
Moving Beyond E-Mail Into Social Interaction
Some businesses are more ideally suited to social interaction than others and the opportunity will therefore vary significantly. Financial sites such as the credit card business might struggle a lot more to get customers to follow on Twitter than a designer bag store for Women who offer regular discounts via the social network alone. Products like this combined with good local offers and a social following can be significantly more effective than e-mail alone (which is way more effective than Web alone) due to the fact that it will be very often re-shared (re-tweeted etc) with your potential customers. Other Women in your store’s area looking for handbags will be notified of your offers by their friends – can you imagine a more powerful and effective sales manager than a personal friend of a potential customer?
Having Something More To Say Is Crucial
It’s important to follow all this discussion of sales messages and increasing your conversion rate with the important advice that you must have something more to say than just sending out advertisements. Users will quickly unsubscribe if you have segmented your list poorly so they are reading information they don’t want to see or if you just try to sell to them all the time. A good example would be having a debt counsellor write some tips about getting out of debt for your credit card newsletter or blog one month. It’s fine to have some subtle sales messages in there too of course – if the counsellor is suggesting moving to interest free cards as part of the process make sure to have some offers at the side of the advice!
Embracing all the sales and marketing technology available online from simple websites to e-mail and social tools will yield significantly better results than a stand alone brochure site ever could. Ensuring your campaign is optimised, well segmented and that you have something interesting to say to your customers will make the difference for your business.
Why is a web designer posting about the Starbucks logo? We’ll come back to that.
As you may have heard, Starbucks changed its logo last year. They took the outside ring and words away and featured the “siren.”
If you read the comments below the corporate statement, you’ll see a lot of reactions, most of them negative. A lot of people are really upset about this change. Why do you suppose that is?
Remember your favorite meal that your mother, spouse or whomever cooks for you? It’s comfort food. And coffee is comfort food.
By changing the logo, you change the symbol of the company, right? You are changing what the company stands for. You are changing what people are comfortable with.
But Starbucks wants to move beyond just selling you coffee. It’s a global brand with a lot of potential. You might even like to have other Starbucks products because you like their quality, so you want them to grow and expand what they offer. If you’re a shareholder, then it is very likely you want them to be successful at this.
The problem comes in that the mermaid visual doesn’t really embody the culture, the spirit of providing people their comfort food. So people feel like Starbucks is abandoning them. They won’t be able to get the coffee they NEED.
Yes, we understand that the siren is supposed to represent seafaring Seattle history with a touch of history, mystery and the muse. However, singing sirens from myth drowned and ate delirious sailors while mermaids symbolized lustful temptation, love of the sea and the nature of the sea itself. The sea can be breathtakingly beautiful, tender, violent and deadly. Even if the average person isn’t consciously aware of all these cultural influences, they are still affected by them. Perhaps, to a degree, this new image has a slight feel of the unknowable or potentially dangerous, to some small degree. It’s all just murky enough association that it inspires a momentary hesitation before first accepting it.
After a while, the new logo no longer threatens. Customers will find that the “new” Starbucks is not trying to separate people from their coffee. All’s well that ends well.
So why is a web designer talking about Starbucks logos and mermaid symbolism?
Your website is your formal public face. As you can see from Starbucks’ logo redesign, you can easily cause confidence in your public face to waver. Starbucks will be able to handle losing a few thousand upset customers but most website owners would rather not.
What is needed in a website is to accurately represent the person or the business it represents. A little experience and common sense can go a long way toward improving and increasing the visitors to your website.
Call us for a consultation at (518) 882-3065 or email us. We can help you make sure your website best reflects what you do.