WSI WebStrategies Blog

Have you tried Google Calendar or Google Docs yet?  If not, you should check them out.  You can get there by clicking on http://www.google.com/apps/.  Google, as part of their desire for "world dominance", has brought forth some great tools for online collaboration, including a web-based calendar that you can share with those you deem appropriate, and a document management platform in which you can share all types of documents. 

We find these tools to be great ways for people to collaborate.  These are cost effective (free is good) solutions to situations in which groups of people seek to coordinate schedules by sharing their calendars, and want to share documents.  As a web development company, it is more important that we find cost effective solutions for our clients rather than find and/or build a custom solution.   We have found this to be the best way to retain clients for the long term. 

If you have a need to share a calendar with other people, check out Google Calendar.  If you get frustrated emailing attachments around the world, modifying them and having several versions saved on individual computers, check out Google Docs.  All it takes is to sign up and remarkably, there's no fee.        

Day after day we see clients wasting their internet marketing money.  It's a shame.  At least some clients have the wisdom to make sure their websites have an analytics tool, but in many cases they dont' know how to interpret the data.  

A client we recently began working with was spending a large amount of money on search marketing, but wasn't getting the sales conversions.  Fortunately the client was smart enough about adding an analytics package to the website.  One great thing about the internet is that everything can be measured...and as they say, "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it."  A close inspection of her web analytics revealed very high bounce rates for almost all the keywords people were using to find the company.  The company was spending internet marketing money and getting very little, if anything, for it.  The keywords were all relevant, but not converting.  Why you ask?

In this case, the website is the problem.  A comparison of competitors' websites revealed this one was sub-standard.  Additionally, appearance and the messaging that came from the content were weak - and this created a lack of credibility for the company in the minds of the site visitors.  Long story short, our client was investing money to generate traffic to a site that failed to attract and convert those visitors...a real waste of precious financial resources.

The morale of the story is - invest in good web design, have a strong web analytics package and measure the effectiveness of your search marketing efforts.

It's one thing to get visitors to your website - it's another thing to motivate them to take the action you want them to take.  And as we know, it's all about sales, and the following information will help you maximize your internet marketing investments.  We're talking "landing pages" here.  That is, pages specifically designed to connect with the search phrase the visitor used to find your site.  Here's an example...

A company that provides inexpensive moving services might be targeting key-phrases that relate directly to home moving.  It also might be targeting phrases relating to moving rental trucks as a way to convince those visitors to use the company's moving services rather than rent their own moving truck.  When a customer searches for "moving truck rental" and clicks on that item on a search results page, he/she expects to see something about moving truck rentals.  If all your website presents is information about regular moving services, it is likely that customer will not find the information relevant to what he/she searched for and leave your site.  The result - search marketing money spent and no sale.

A web development technique to convert that customer to a sale is to design a "landing page" that relates to moving truck rental.  Perhaps that page shows an image of a rental truck and then talks about why people thinking about renting a truck should consider another type of moving service.  By doing this, the customer lands on a page that provides information about moving truck rentals and then works to persuade the customer to consider an alternative.  While you won't persuade every visitor with this type of approach, you will certainly improve your sales rate from what it was.

      

You may be hearing a lot about social media marketing.  Or you might just be hearing about this thing called Web 2.0.  Social media marketing is part of the Web 2.0 revolution.  It's all about using online communities and resources to communicate with others on just about anything.  It's turning upside down many of our traditional beliefs in marketing - and I'm not just talking about internet marketing. 

Think about social networking online to be the electronic (or online) version of talking to our friends, neighbors and family members about anything.  We often talk about our social networks - the people we talk to about a variety of things including getting their opinions about products and services.  The internet, through these online communites, is quickly becoming a meaningful and convenient place to solicit people's opinions on a variety of things.  These online communities take the shape of blogs, wikis and forums, and could very well include comments (good and bad) about your company's products and services.  Rather than hoping no one is saying anything negative about you, get involved.  There are numerous examples of companies using social media networking to strengthen their offerings and turn criticism into good will.         

Do a search for your name and your company, and look through what people are saying, if anything, about you.  Log into some of the large social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. and do a search for your company and name.  Find out what people are saying about you.  Then, get yourself involved in social media marketing and get in front of this new marketing medium. 

The Web Marketing Association has awarded us a Standard of Excellence Award in the B2B category for the Creative-va.com website design project.  We're naturally proud but not totally surprised.  After all, we specialize in developing internet marketing business plans that meet the objectives of the organization in a compelling and creative way.  The client, Creative Office Environments located in Hanover, Virgina, has focused their growth on the future of work.  Creative is a very forward-looking organization so the website had to deliver a contemporary and visionary message through it's creative graphic design.

A website designed to communicate the "future of work" was an interesting project.  We had to be a bit edgy when it came to copywriting, and a bit out-of-the-box when it came to images.  We also deployed some interesting flash applications that communicated a futuristic perspective.  We're thrilled that our web design project was nominated and even more proud that it was selected for an award.   

  

In the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) a phrase that often comes to mind is "Content is King and Links are Queen".  We are seeing some trends that indicate we should switch this around and consider Links as King.  Nevertheless, it's really hard to win the internet marketing and rankings battle without an aggressive link building campaign.  The search engines consider incoming links to your website as a "vote" of your popularity or importance.  The more "votes" coming to your site from other websites, the more important you become. 

Getting a vote from a very important website, counts much more than a link from a website that's less prominent from the search engine's perspective.  For example, a link from our website (www.webstrategiesinc.com), which has a Google Page Rank of 4, has much more impact than a link from a less prominent website.  In other words, a link from our website is approximately four times more powerful than a link from a website that has a Google Page Rank of 1.  It's not exactly this simple, but it's a way to think about the impact of links from other sites.     

It's critical to make sure your content is rich and optimized.  But if you really want to get ranked in the top 5 for search terms that have good frequency, you better charge up your link building activities. 

I did an evaluation of a website today that was really disappointing.  The website design included a very thin horizontal navigation bar with relatively small print and poor contrast.  In addition, there were no text or image links on any of the pages.  So, how the heck can the average visitor, who we know doesn't give us a lot of time to engage him/her, get interested in the information on this website? 

We tell our website design clients everyday - don't make your website visitor rely on the main navigation bar to move around your website.  Instead integrate on-page (content area) text and image links that make sense to move your website visitor from page-to-page through the selling process on your website - that is, if your website has a selling process.  Make your main navigation bar obvious but don't rely on that technique to optimize on-site conversions.  Add some text linking and use some graphic design techniques to create some interesting intra-site links that move your online prospect from the introduction of your company to your desired call-to-action.  Make your internet marketing investment payoff and hire a web designer that knows how to make this happen.   

Websites can be very effective lead generation and selling tools.  Unfortunately, most website design fails miserably at it because page layouts and content (text, pictures and images) would fail Marketing 101.  Heard about AIDA?  No, I'm not talking about your aunt from California.  I'm talking about a tried and true selling process that should always be part of your internet marketing strategy.  AIDA stands for Attention - Interest - Desire - Action.  The AIDA method is the foundation for selling and marketing programs worldwide.  Think about it.  First you get someone's Attention.  That's not easy with all the things we have going on in our lives.  Next, you provide information that generates some Interest from your prospect.  Then you fuel that interest with some features and benefits information creating Desire.  Once your prospect has a desire to take the next step, you present him/her with a call-to-Action. 

To make this a little easier to understand, think of AIDA this way.  Get Attention through an engaging, unique headline that generates the website visitor to read more - just like reading a newspaper.  Generate some Interest by providing a good, short opening sentence or paragaph.  Then, gain the Desire by listing in bullet point fashion some features and/or benefits.  Finally, get your prospect to take Action by providing them an obvious and interesting call-to-action like "sign up" or "call today" or "add to cart" or some other action you'd want your website visitor to take.  Integrating AIDA into your website design will certainly improve your online conversion rates.

 

WebStrategies recently became a Google Adwords Certified company thanks to the effort of Chris Leone, our Manager of Internet Marketing.  Chris received his GAP (Google Adwords Professional) certification after much experience and passing the certification exam.  Research reports there are only about 1,000 GAP certified people in the entire US, and we're proud one of them works at WebStrategies.  Google Adwords presents significant opportunites for our clients to generate meaningful web traffic and we work with many of our clients using Adwords Search Marketing campaigns.  Chris and the entire WebStrategies team are dedicated to making our clients' web presence pay off through a variety of internet marketing programs.

Do you know what your Bounce Rate is?  Are you aware of which of your targeted keywords are most productive - least productive?  If you don't have the answers to these questions, you might just be wasting some of your search marketing money.  Bounce rate is the percent of website visitors that only look at one page in your website.  In some cases that mght be OK, but most of the time it's not.  The other question is - which of my targeted keywords have a good bounce rate or a bad bounce rate.  A good web analytics package can provide you tons of info about things like this.  We install Google Analytics on all our clients' websites and study bounce rates by keyword.  This tells us what the most relevant and/or most productive keywords are enabling us to refine our internet marketing investment.  Get a good analytics package installed on your website and starting studying your bounce rates.