Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 2:38:23 PM
How important is a good email address to your organization? Obviously, the email service must be reliable and provide relatively good junk filters. But for some reason many people don’t consider a “good” email address as being branded to their organization’s web presence.
This means saying goodbye to AOL, Earthlink, Comcast, so on and so forth. If you’re the Smith Agency and you have www.smithagency.com, then why are you still using smithagencyrules@aol.com? Not only are you giving AOL some free advertising, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
There is a certain element of professionalism involved with email. For example, if you see two email addresses – smithagencyrules@aol.com and john.smith@smithagency.com – which of the two firms are you going to think is bigger, better, and knows what they’re doing?
So dump AOL, Comcast, or whatever it is you’re using and brand your email address with your organization. If you’re worried about not receiving email sent to your old AOL address, this is a simple mail forwarding matter – much like how the postal system handles forwarding. Don’t use little technical issues as an excuse – and don’t continue sending unbranded, unprofessional email!
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Posted on Sunday, April 06, 2008 1:41:53 AM
In the first post of our “Is Your Site Stale” series, we posted a picture of an old bag of potato chips. The picture was actually a last minute addition. An incidental inclusion.
What was interesting was the attention it garnered. After showing the site to a handful of various people (prospects, partners, journalists, clients), all eyes immediately darted toward that bag of stale chips. We were asked immediately, “So what’s up with that bag of chips?”
What’s the point? Something as simple as a photo can catch the attention of people. What on your site gets people asking questions and reading more into your content?
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Posted on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 3:07:28 PM
The hardest part of keeping a site fresh is setting aside the time to actually do it. At first, it seems like an exercise in futility. You may spend hours every week keeping your site fresh only to see your traffic go nowhere.
It can be frustrating. However, keeping your site fresh isn’t an overnight project. It takes persistence and craftsmanship. We can even throw in the old “building a house” cliche. Laying the foundation is the hardest, most time consuming aspect of the process but once it’s done, you can build anything. In other words, you need to establish a foundation on which you can constantly update your web site quickly with useful information.
What does this mean exactly? Let’s roll through a list of actions you must take.
1. Have a plan
Yes, everyone preaches having a plan. But this is important. You need to at least have a general idea in your head of what you want to accomplish with your web site. Do you want to be an information resource for confused prospects? Or, maybe you want to offer unbeatable customer support resources on your site. You might even want to do all these things (don’t get in over your head, though).
Decide what it is you want your site to be good at. This will give you a concrete direction in what you’ll need to do to update your site on a consistent basis.
2. Figure out what’s important
Find out what your customers, prospects, partners, vendors and so forth find important. If you’re planning on creating an information resource for prospects, determine the kinds of things they’ll be looking for. For example, if you’re a plumbing company, perhaps prospects first want to know the signs of a potential leak. In that case, you could do something like posting a blog entry on the “Top 5 Signs You Have a Leak in Your House.”
3. Get the right tools
Don’t get held up with the technicalities of updating your web site, even if you’re a superstar programmer. These things just clog creativity, damper spirits and ultimately result in little getting done.
Instead, find the tools you’ll need to update the necessary portions of your site from the beginning. Whether it’s a full blown content management system you need or something simpler like MyMediaRoom, or even an HTML editor like Adobe Dreamweaver, the tools are out there. Spend some time researching them and select the one that’ll get the job done fastest.
4. Set a schedule
Once you’ve got everything in place to keep your site smelling fresher than a rose on a warm spring day, set a schedule. Make it a goal to update your site twice a week, once a week, once everything two weeks or whatever works best for you. Consistency is key. You can’t skip a week or else you’ll skip the next one, and then the one after that.
This is an exercise. It’s also a way of building your organization. You may cringe doing it at first but you just have to tough it up and keep at it. Once you find your groove, it’s smooth sailing.
5. Don’t check your traffic everyday
Monitoring your site traffic is important for diagnostics. However, checking your traffic stats everyday to see if new prospects are coming in is dangerous. It’s like going on a diet. You feel good that you ate less the first day so you want to rush to the bathroom scale to see how much weight you’ve lost.
Here’s what you’re going to find. You didn’t lose any weight. Or, in the case of your web site, you probably didn’t gain any new traffic. It takes time and effort, and you may have to spend months working at it. But rest assured, if you keep your site fresh, and you do it well, your site will serve as an effective marketing channel.
This brings us to a close on our three part series on keeping your site fresh. Hopefully, you’ve learned some new and interesting things. Keep checking back – we’ve got more coming!
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Posted on Thursday, March 06, 2008 3:22:07 PM
The Internet has transformed into an interesting playground. Various tools – or toys depending on how you look at it – have enabled people to generate creative streams of content. From the now widely accepted blog to increasingly popular tools such as YouTube, your web site is your canvas.
So, what are some "brushes" to paint your canvas with?
Below are the top five methods of freshness that we like to advocate to our clients.
The Blog is Your Friend
If someone told you in 2002 that you needed a blog, you’d probably think they were insane. Zoom forward six years and blogs are everywhere. Indeed, blogs are beginning to take over mainstream media.
A blog is a great way to keep your web site from getting stale. It provides you with an avenue to keep content flowing on your site.
However, there are many things to consider before starting a blog, which we’ll probably have to cover in another series of postings. For instance, what is the point of the blog? To inform prospects about what’s going on inside your organization? Or, maybe you want to be more progressive by giving tips and advice to your web visitors. The best way to get thinking about this is to look at other businesses similar to yours that already have blogs. See what they’re talking about and create a laundry list of potential topics for your new blog.
Capture it on Camera
Videos are the new up-and-coming area of the Internet. Just look at the YouTube craze. People want to see moving pictures and imagery.
Videos are also a bit harder to do. You can do it on your own or you can invest a few hundred dollars into buying your own equipment. There are a multitude of services out there that let you post your video on the web and link to your site including YouTube and Vimeo.
The content of your video is where you can get creative. You can do an inside profile of your company, interviewing various employees. Or, you can do video testimonials with clients. Take a look at the testimonial we did with the Center for the Arts of Greater Manassas / Prince William County.
Time Sensitive Deals & Specials
Simple and fresh, posting time sensitive specials on your site also gives visitors an incentive to act. Post coupons, banners or text that offers a deal. And make sure you change them out when the time’s up. If effective, people will continue checking back on your site for the latest offerings.
A Media Room is Not Just for Fortune 500 Companies
A media room is a part of your web site that really holds a variety of fresh content. Some aspects of a media room include:
- Press Releases
- Events
- Image Galleries
- Articles and Awards
- Fact Sheet
While a media room is generally meant for the press, regular visitors will likely stop by as well. It’s a place where you can talk candidly about your company and display your accomplishments.
Press releases are probably the most important to consider. Continue posting news about your organization. Your visitors want to know if your company is bursting with activity or just another stale chip from the bag.
Check out MyMediaRoom, Cavendo’s own little media room tool.
Getting More Out of Your Most Valuable Asset – Your Clients!
Finally, another simple method of freshness is keeping your site current with client spotlights and testimonials.
The benefit of this is two-fold. First, it keeps your site up-to-date and shows that your company is actually completing projects and doing things. Second, it gives prospects an obvious reason to consider using your company - you do good work!
The hard part is getting the testimonial from clients. Sometimes it’s like pulling teeth. It’s not that they don’t want to give them - they’re just usually really busy. Send them a quick note or give them a call and ask for it. Make it easy for them by providing examples and guidelines.
There’s more to keeping your site fresh, so stay tuned. Hopefully, you now have at least some basic ideas for what it’s going to take to inject energy into your web site. Keep thinking about it. Write your ideas down. And pretty soon, you’ll be implementing them.
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Posted on Monday, February 18, 2008 2:10:53 AM
Stale is a word commonly used to describe those old potato chips sitting at the bottom of your pantry. In the case of your web site, staleness takes on a similar meaning.
Have you ever found yourself on a company’s web site with its latest press release from 2004? 2004. Four years ago. Four years of seemingly nothing happening at that company.
But we have to give those guys credit because at least there was an attempt to keep the site fresh however short lived it may have been. Many times, there are no press releases or dated items to test for freshness. Just static content that may be ages old. Either scenario is bad for business. No one wants to go to a web site and question whether the content is still relevant today.
Yet content is still just a buzzword. It’s tossed around as a commodity. To be effective, content must express something that your visitors will be interested in. Are you an IT company that just received Microsoft certification? Create a press release and at the very least, post it on your web site. Clients and prospects want to see that because it expresses your authority in the IT field.
What’s an example of bad content? Anything that doesn’t relate to your visitors. For instance, posting an announcement that you just updated the contact form on your web site is meaningless content. Or starting a blog on your company’s web site and talking about your dog. Content for the sake of content won’t get you anywhere. Content that expresses something of value to your target audience will.
In this series of postings, we’ll bring up some ways for you to keep your web site from ending up like that old bag of potato chips. Stay tuned!
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Posted on Tuesday, January 08, 2008 8:28:26 PM
A web site should flow in way that guides your visitors from Point A to Point B. In fact, it should almost be a subconscious effort on the part of your visitor. They should be able to land on your homepage, immediately see where they need to go, and continue clicking links until they find their destination.
We may have been taught as kids that patience is a virtue. But when it comes to web surfing, even critical analysis of a web site, people have no patience. And this goes beyond the download speed of the graphics on your site. It includes the navigability of your site and how many attempts it takes a user to get to where they want to go.
So take a look at your site and pretend as if you’re just visiting it for the first time. Establish a goal for yourself such as, “I want to read about this company’s service and then request a quote.” How would you react once you get to your homepage? What would you click first? How many clicks would it take you, using your fresh perspective, to find the request for quote page?
Obviously, this isn’t the best test since you should know your web site inside out. However, it should at least provide you with the mindset to start thinking as if you were seeing your web site for the first time. If you want to take it further, get somebody who has never seen your web site and have them try to achieve a goal you establish. Watch their actions and take note of what they do. It can teach you much about your own web site.
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Posted on Wednesday, November 21, 2007 3:40:43 PM
Power is the ability to influence and prompt action from others. There are numerous forms of power at your disposal, too. The more powerful forms of power are
expert and
referent.
Expert power is the ability to influence another based on what you know and have experience with. Cavendo, for example, has expert power in that we have extensive knowledge of web design and development. Referent power, on the other hand, is achieved when others
like you. Usually, this is reserved for high-rolling celebrities, politicians and dignitaries.
But your organization can have referent power, too.
The key is to establish you and your organization as “celebrities” in your local market. Instead of talking about yourself, get others to talk about you. And get people to talk
positively about you.
One way to get started on this, and to establish your expert power, is to publish testimonials on your web site.
Testimonials from your top clients go a long way in showing prospects that you’re a “superstar” within your market. And people like to associate themselves with superstars. Even more, a testimonial solidifies your expertise because people tend to trust what others say over what you claim.
Once you gather a good list of testimonials, put them on your web site. Even better, try to record a video testimonial with a client. It’s hard work, but it pays off in professionalism and believability.
Take a look at a video testimonial we did for a local Center for the Arts if you need ideas.
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Posted on Sunday, November 04, 2007 4:07:47 PM
Unfortunately, most web sites for small businesses and organizations
are created without a plan. Even the essential elements of planning
such as having
goals are left out.
Most smaller
organizations tend to treat their web site as a quick information
resource for anybody to find and read. Most of the time, the
information contained on the site is direct from a brochure or other
marketing collateral. This is a mistake.
A web site should serve as an extension of your organization. As a place where people can go to find
unique information. Furthermore, a web site should have specific goals in mind for visitors.
For
example, if someone goes to your web site, what do you want them to do?
Fill out a form? Download a whitepaper? Buy something?
Thinking
of goals along these lines will help you structure your web site more
meaningfully. It will also help you to maintain a specific focus when
crafting your content. You can have one goal in mind, or you can have
several. The point is you should have an expectation for what your web
visitors are going to do next.
A quick case studyLet’s take Cavendo’s web site as
a quick case study. Before our site went through several re-designs, we
really didn’t know, or quite frankly, care how people used our site. As
we became smarter, we understood that our visitors should probably be
filling out a web site quote request or at least a simple contact form.
So
with that in mind, we began pointing parts of our content toward a
contact form. For instance, “If you have any questions, please contact
us.”
This didn’t go too far. Blanket statements such as the one
just mentioned don’t entice visitors to do anything. It was then we
knew we had to direct visitors toward a specific action. Our goal was
to obtain a quote request.
In carrying out this goal, we created
a “Request For Quote” page that visitors could fill out to let us know
they were interested in receiving a price estimate. This quickly
transformed into a more detailed questionnaire that allows us to better
assess potential clients. We intensely integrated the RFQ function of
our web site into our content. We also began creating noticeable
buttons touting the RFQ form.
We could probably do a better job
with our RFQ process, but the point is that we established a goal (“We
want people who visit our web site to fill out our RFQ”) and
implemented ways for prospects to meet that goal (e.g. directing them
through content, using noticeable buttons, and making an RFQ form that
was useful to us).
What goals do you have for your web site? What do you want your web site visitors to do?
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Posted on Thursday, October 25, 2007 2:54:21 AM
Even if you don’t run a large web site like Amazon or Yahoo, you should still use metrics to measure its effectiveness. Knowing where your visitors are coming from, how many there are, what pages they’re viewing, and how long they stay on your site are vital pieces of data.
Let’s roll through why these metrics are important for you to measure:
- Where are your visitors coming from? Are they coming from a search engine such as Google, another web site, or are they direct visits? If they’re coming from a search engine, what keywords are being used? This information can help you to identify how people initially find your organization online. With this, you can develop more effective advertising campaigns and tailor your content to address what your visitors are looking for.
- How many visitors do you get? How many unique visits do you get in a given day? A dozen? A couple hundred? Measuring the number of visits to your site gives you a great benchmark to work from.
- What pages do your visitors look at? When people land on your site, do they follow a specific path? You must understand what your visitors click on first and where they go from there. Perhaps they’re clicking the wrong thing on your homepage. Or, maybe they click the right thing but get lost along the way. Regardless, you need to know what path they take up until they either meet your call to action (e.g. filling out a form, ordering something) or until they leave your site.
- How long do your visitors stay on your site? Know the duration of visits to your site. If the average time spent on your site is 30 seconds or less, you have a problem. It could be that people aren’t being engaged by your content, or that they’re getting lost or confused. A healthy metric for most informational web sites is two minutes or longer.
So, how can you measure this data? We recommend using
Google Analytics. It’s free and the data it measures is fairly comprehensive. All you have to do is place a snippet of JavaScript code on each page that you want to measure. Remember to collect a reasonable sample of unique visits (30 or so) before making any rash changes to your web site. You want to learn how the typical person uses your web site.
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Posted on Thursday, October 18, 2007 6:02:05 PM
The Internet has become a more interactive place. Videos, blogs, image galleries, new PR rules, and so forth are defining how people are consuming content. A web site used to be a fairly static presence in which someone would visit, read blocks of text, see a picture of a product, and then leave.
The rules have changed. You have to work harder and more creatively to capture the attention of people. Not only that, but you must create dynamic content that pushes people to keep your site on their mind.
Mike Villarreal is a Texas State Representative, and a client of ours. In re-designing his site, Mike wanted a tool that he could use to better connect with constituents. He wanted something cutting-edge and interactive. We highlight three important things we (and he) did to accomplish this:
- A blog. There are millions of blogs. However, only a small fraction of those blogs are published by elected officials. The blog format allows Mike to speak candidly on issues that are important to his district. It also allows Mike to speak in a more conversational format (although he has comments turned off).
- Online videos. Mike has a page dedicated to publishing videos. These are videos of him speaking to crowds, talking about issues and doing interviews. A video is a great interactive tool that allows Mike to reach viewers on a whole new medium that can better stimulate the attention and emotions of viewers.
- Online petitions. Getting citizens more involved in their government is a hard thing to do. Mike is taking the first step by encouraging his constituents to sign online petitions. This enables visitors to take direct action on Mike’s web site.
What are you doing to make your web site more interactive? A good place to start is to make sure you have a stream of fresh content. Start small with news, events and even a blog, and then take bigger steps with more interactive and out-of-the-box tools.
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