Is your website up to speed? Not just regarding data and communications, but actual speed. How fast does it load, how long does it take to navigate from page to page? We as Americans are known for our love of speed; fast food, high-speed internet, speed pass lanes at amusement parks, moving walkways. So it’s no surprise that Google has now taken site speed into account for their ranking system. While it doesn’t hold as much weight as relevance, it’s still something to keep in mind.

Google listed a few web sources to help you evaluate your site speed, from their blog:

• Page Speed, an open source Firefox/Firebug add-on that evaluates the performance of web pages and gives suggestions for improvement.
• YSlow, a free tool from Yahoo! that suggests ways to improve website speed.
• WebPagetest shows a waterfall view of your pages’ load performance plus an optimization checklist.
• In Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world as in the chart below.

• Many other tools on code.google.com/speed.

So is your website up to speed? If not, a simple update could get you a higher Google ranking and help you show up more frequently in Google searches. Something to think about. Google’s own blog post ha more information if you want to learn more.

Off you go Speedy Gonzales.

–Shopping Cart: If your website sells anything, having an online shopping application is key. Whether it’s large, repeating orders or a one time order for a T-shirt that promotes your blog, people want a reliable, safe & efficient medium to purchase things.

– Twitter/Facebook Feed: It drives people towards your social media outlets where they can connect with your brand or company on a more personal, one-to-one basis. It brings the connection to another level on your website, encouraging audiences to form a stronger relationship and helping you get to know your consumer/target audience better.

–Charitable Causes: Whether it’s a spot for donations or information on how to help your organization’s selected charity, it gives your company another level of personality that people can form a connection with.

–FUN: Remember when Google had Pacman? Awesome, right? Incorporate your company into a classic game or creative activity. Chiquita Banana is a great example; you can design a Chiquita Banana Sticker like a Mr. Potato Head, sounds like fun, right? It is. And with fun applications that let us embrace our inner child, consumers are more likely to connect that happy feeling with your brand and remember your organization longer than one with simple text.

A website is a great tool to go alongside any marketing campaign. The important factor to realize is that web design is very different from print design. Websites can be interactive and need to pop on a screen rather than on a flat piece of paper. Web design is a matter of thinking outside of the flat surface of a print brochure. Web design is thinking how a site user will navigate, what is the site visitor using to view this web site (MAC, PC, Firefox, Internet Explorer, iPhone, etc). Web design is not thinking long term for content, but how to keep content fresh while keeping the task minimal. Web design needs to flow logically as well as be aesthetically pleasing.

Most companies utilize the internet to verify the legitimacy of your business as well as to do research on your product or services. Brochures, publications, direct mail, and all the other aspects of marketing and advertising are still important for your campaign. However, your website will act as the keystone to your campaign.

All of your advertising materials should have a call-to-action. That call-to-action is usually one of three things, a phone number to call (which most people now-a-days are afraid to pick up the phone initially), an address to write to (very retro way to deal with business), or finally a web site address (or email address) to type in. The latter is the most popular and best received by your target audience probably 90% of the time. There are still a handful of individuals who have not jumped on the WWW bandwagon but the majority of active consumers are on the internet and hoping their favorite companies are too.Marketing through the internet saves time and money for both parties involved. Updating a newsletter is much simpler online than in print, (see our blog post about e-newsletters). Also, with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) online marketing is a must. You want to be found when someone searches for you, so marketing yourself on the internet correctly is vital. People are more likely to investigate the first few sites that pop up rather than hunt for another one. Being near the top will give your organization the edge that you need.

Pay per click advertising also takes your company to your consumers. For search engines, you can bid on keywords that are relevant to your target audience. You can also put your ad on sites that your target market may be on. These constant sites usually charge a fixed price per click rather than bidding. The end result is that your market will find you even if they are not actively seeking your services at the time.

The internet is just one more avenue for you to get your name out and generate buzz and sales for your organization. Who wouldn’t want that?

Podcasting is a simple way of reaching out to your target market. It utilizes RSS Feeds so people interested in your field can choose to receive your podcasts. This allows them to listen to your podcast when and wherever they so choose. So, as with anything you put on the web, make sure it is worth people’s time.

Think of podcasting as your organization’s own talk radio show, just minus the commercials and with each segment individually accessible. It’s more like a CD where you can skip to the track you want to hear rather than wade through the entire cassette tape to get to a 2-minute segment. If your organization just had an important meeting, why not record it and let your consumers get a behind the scenes look. This not only gives out information to your publics, but also lets them know that you are an open organization.

Other types of podcasts that could be interesting would be:

-Interviews: Have members of the company share a bit about themselves to make the organization more personal to the listeners

-Product Reviews: discuss a new product or service that’s coming out

-Directions: explain how to use a product, service or idea to its maximum potential

-Industry News: discuss something new and exciting in your industry whether it is new opportunities or a new organization

So you recorded a Podcast, how do you get people to hear what you have to say?

-As with Facebook and Twitter, include an RSS Graphic on your website to let visitors know that you have a podcast available.

-Enter into a Podcast Directory. When listeners are looking for a certain topic to hear and your podcast shows up as a match for keywords, your work is done. These directories let listeners find you giving you more time to record interesting content for your next podcast. Some directories to consider:

Podcasting Station

Podcast Alley

AllPodcasts

For more help with podcasts, check out this helpful site.

Happy Podcasting!

It seems like everybody has a blog these days, even pets are blogging about what mischief they’ve recently cause. So how do you get your organization’s blog to stand out? First off, use your resources.

WordPress 3.0 has come out with some new features, Mashable has highlighted the important ones:

-Custom Post Types: You can add different content types rather than just “Posts” and “Pages”.  This allows you to feature more areas of your organization such as a section for “Members”, “Testimonials” or pictures and videos.

-Custom header/backgrounds: WordPress 3.0 offers clean and bold designs coupled with functionality not typically found in themes. If you don’t have coding skills to customize your theme (not many of us do) WordPress lets you customize your background and header to give it a less “Clip-Art” feeling. You can use your own images to give your blog a more personal style without going through the hassle of programming it yourself.

-Multi-site compatibility: For organizations with different branches, this feature is key. This lets you manage different websites with the same WordPress installation.

Other ways to enhance your blog:

The Facebook “Like” Button: it’s everywhere, so why not on your blog? Install a plug-in for this feature and let your followers promote your page with a simple click of a thumbs-up.

Security. Readers don’t want to weed through spam under your contents section. Secure your blog, install the automatic updates to help protect against spamming.

Silence is Golden: We all have guilty pleasures in music, but that doesn’t mean they need to be shared. If a reader wants background noise while reading your blog, that’s what iTunes and Pandora are for.

SIZE. For goodness sake, please use a readable font.  If readers have to squint, there is a high likelihood that they will just skip onto the next blog.

Spell Chec: Because once you post, you’ll never forgive yourself for forgetting that “K”. So spell check, and go through for other edits as well. It boosts your credibility and won’t end up with people giggling at the fact that you still cannot tell which is the right form of their/there/they’re.

Focus on content: Backgrounds are nice, especially with the ability to make them more custom. However, people should be remembering what you have to say, not what colors are flashing at them in different patterns.

Happy Blogging!

An excellent, low cost way to keep your clients and prospects informed of your services, products, news, etc is to send out eNewsletters. This can be a simple text e-mail or a colorful HTML e-mail. Either way, you are getting your name in front of your target audience. Here are a few reasons why sending an eNewsletter rather than simple e-mails, or snail mail newsletters, is so much better.

Perk #1—People See Your Name. eNewsletters will reinforce your service or product continually with each e-mail that you send. These repeated messages cause greater and more effective brand awareness and recognition. With eNewsletters, the link to your site is right there on the e-mail, so the reader only needs to click and they are on your site, they are looking at your services and products, they are one step closer to making a purchase than before opening that eNewsletter.

Perk #2—Information Galore. With eNewsletters you can keep site visitors up to speed with upcoming events, promotions, product launches and industry news. By covering a wide range of topics within your industry, you convey an attitude of consciousness for the world around you. It shows that your company is informed and is a solid place for consumers to invest in. It’s also fast, if you’re excited about a new product or opportunity, send out an eNewsletter right away rather than waiting days for the postman to deliver a regular newsletter. You can also use them for discounts, specials or deals that your company is offering, and incentives for subscribing voluntarily to your organization’s newsletter and thus driving more traffic to your website.

Perk #3—Pleased To Make Your Acquaintance. Customers have the option of subscribing or not to your eNewsletters, this allows those who are truly interested in your product to receive the valuable information you have to disperse. You now have a targeted audience receiving what you say so you can have a more focused approach to your eNewsletter’s content. Customer research is also easily collected via surveys and responses. The people receiving your newsletter care about your organization and are more likely to participate in any research you send their way. You can also track your e-mails. Any “undeliverables” can be quickly identified and efforts can be made to correct and resend them. With this feature you’re not wasting paper or money on regular newsletters, but you’re also saving energy in the tech world. It’s saving those who don’t want your information time online, saving the energy that would be used  to delete your e-mail. And with the environment, every little bit helps.

Please just remember that when sending your eNewsletter to keep it interesting. You want to keep your subscribers, not bore them and push them away. So use this time and presence in an eNewsletter to toot your own horn and have some fun relating to your customers!

Details on their site state:

foursquare is a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide and a game that rewards you for doing interesting things.  We aim to build things to not only help you keep up with the places your friends go, but that encourage you to discover new places and challenge you to explore your neighborhood in new ways.

The best way to utilize this website is on your mobile phone.  That’s right.  The action and fun start by “checking in” at various locations by using your mobile phone.  A number of apps have been created for a variety of phones including the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Palm.  If you don’t have one of these smart phones, you can access the site by visiting http://m.foursquare.com from your mobile browser to “check in”.

How could this potentially help my business?

Checking into a location.

Approved businesses will have access to see who is checking into their location.  Businesses can now have the opportunity to send rewards and encourage the “checking-in”.  Here is a snapshot on FourSquares website regarding the privacy settings (which you can turn on and off)

FourSquare Check-In Privacy Setting

I crown you MAYOR OF ________.

Playing the game offers a reward system.  Individuals who “check-in” the most at a location are rewarded Mayor status.  A number of businesses (coffee shops, pizza joints, etc) are offering discounts to individuals with the “Mayor” status.  FourSquare’s website has a section dedicated to how you can utilize this app to promote your business. Also, they encourage businesses to promote the “Mayor” discounts on the FourSquare site.

Get your brownie sash out of the closet – its badge time.

Badges are still a “work-in-progress” for FourSquare, however it’s an opportunity for you as a business owner.  Since this is a WIP, FourSquare is asking for your recommendations on what additional badges to create and offer.  So, as an owner of a brick and mortar, create a badge that is earned if someone checks in 5 times within  a month.  If they earn your badge, offer then a discount or free item.

This is just a small taste of the potential FourSquare is about to bring.  It’s still in the early stages, jump on board, create a profile, and start “Checking-In”.

This video has been viral online for a couple of months, however its message is strong – SOCIAL MEDIA IS HERE TO STAY.  Business is changing, to remain competitive and alive in your industry, you need to change with it.

Enjoy the Social Media Revolution, created by Socialnomics09.  Currently over 1.2 million views.

Who is this post written for?

Anyone who is interested in ranking well within the search engines and has a basic understanding of how the internet works.

What is a sitemap?

A sitemap is a listing of the pages on your website.  It is used by crawlers (search engine spiders) and site users to easily navigate through your site.  Not only does the sitemap list the pages on your site, it informs search engine spiders how often the content on those pages changes and also identifies which pages you feel are more important.

When should I add the sitemap to my website?

Your sitemap should be added to your site and then submitted to the search engines when the website is complete.  No point in submitting pages that are not complete or will drive to a “Page Under Construction” notification.

Where should the sitemap be located?

According to Sitemap Protocol, it is strongly recommended that you place your Sitemap at the root directory of your HTML server; that is, place it at http://example.com/sitemap.xml.

Why do I need a sitemap?

Webcrawlers find more pages and websites to crawl through links.  Posting your links in one central location that is universally known as your “sitemap” will simplify the “crawling” process for the search engine spiders.

How do I submit my sitemaps to the major search engines?

Before submitting your Sitemap to the major search engines, make sure that your Sitemap is created per Sitemap Protocol as found at sitemaps.org.

Once your sitemap is created, focus initially on the three major search engines and then move onto the many other searching tools available on the web.

GOOGLE.com – Google offers a handful of tools and resources to assist with your site rankings.  First step is to set-up a Google account and sign-up your website with Webmaster Tools.  These tools will crawl your site and confirm the status of your links.  You can also submit your Sitemap here.  A quick overview on submitting to Google.

YAHOO.com – Yahoo! offers a quick overview on how they support sitemaps. Read the overview, and then submit your Sitemap to Yahoo!

BING.com – Bing, MSN’s new search engine, also has a resource area specific for Webmaster Tools.  The instructions to submit your Sitemap to Bing are fairly simple.

To submit an XML-based Sitemap to Bing:

1. Copy and paste the entire URL below as a single URL into the address bar of your browser: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?sitemap=www.YourWebAddress.com/sitemap.xml
2. Change “www.YourWebAddress.com” to your domain name
3. Press ENTER

Any other search engines you use that we should mention how to submit to them?  Let us know or comment on it and we will add it to this post.

Most importantly, regular and affluent shoppers seem to prefer e-commerce sites with live chat functions.  Sixty-eight percent of those who identified themselves as weekly shoppers and 66 percent of those who spend more than $1,000 on a single purchase are more likely to buy a product or service from sites with live chat.  The survey also indicates a loyalty effect among 72 percent of those who have used live chat in the past.

The results also suggest that live chat is especially useful during the following scenarios:

1.    When order processing errors occur. We’ve all encountered technical problems when shopping online once or twice in our lives.  Forcing customers to wait around for support staff to return e-mails or endure endless hold music over the phone is sometimes enough to kill repeat business. Live chat is a great way to solve ordering issues and make life easier for your customers.
2.    When customers want to check an order status. Again, we live in a culture that doesn’t like to wait.  Customers can easily access live chat to check the status of their order, without picking up the phone or sending an e-mail.
3.    When customers have general questions about products or services. Even the most concise product descriptions and comprehensive FAQ pages sometimes fail to cover all of the bases.  Live chat is a great way to answer those random questions that stand between customers and their purchase.

Live chat software might be something to consider if you are expecting a high volume of sales during the fast-approaching holiday season.  Do your research before deciding if it’s right for you.