Keystone Click - The Key to Your Web Foundation

With a mission to Share, Educate, and Empower Images of Us Sports was seeking a first class web presence to be able to connect to their community. The new site now has features that allow the staff at IOU Sports to easily update the calendar, accept online registration, and post unlimited number of articles and stories.

We took articles from her old site and integrated them into the new site.  Also transitioned her donating elements and the email registration from the old design into the new design.  Visit IOU Sports.

RitzHolman CPAs, a Milwaukee-based accounting firm, offers much insight to give involving the world of punching numbers. Working alongside Thiel Design, who supplied the design for the new site, we custom coded a handful of tools, which now allows RitzHolman CPAs the ability to update any section of the site without having to know HTML. Some of the highlighted features of the site include the partner biographies, news, and careers sections.  The careers section provides insight on the firm’s culture and what it is like to be employed at RitzHolman CPAs as well as view and apply for job opportunities online.

Receiving feedback from their clients, RitzHolman CPAs is thrilled with the ease in navigation and user-friendliness of the site.  Another feature, only known to clients, (note: clients but also business partners, friends, prospects and referral sources may use this too) is the secure login system that allows client-accountant document exchange via a secure portal.  Clients are able to upload financial information and the accountant in charge of the account is notified immediately of the new document ready to be reviewed.  On the flip side of that coin, accountants are able to send documents and messages securely to their clients as well.

This was such a fun project to work on and the end results were exactly what we had hoped.  Read more about RitzHolman CPAs in our Portfolio.

With new free tools, such as Google Analytics, available to track your web visitors more sites than ever are using statistics to ensure their success. Here are a few ways you can use numbers to ensure your online success:

1) Monitor Your Advertising Success – You can track referrals to your site from sites where you advertise. With many tools you can customize tracking from a system as simple as how many hits, so analyzing where those hits move to, and how they turn into leads. With the right know how you can directly measure the sales and profits generated by different online advertising avenues.
2) Test Your Navigation’s Success – You can track a user’s route through your site using many of the tools available today. Using this data you can see where your users are going, and contrast that against where you think they should be. By doing this, you can gauge how well your site’s navigation presents itself, and what needs work.
3) Chart Your Site’s Success – With all of this data, you can start the process of quantifying your site’s return on investment. Armed with this data, you have a mighty argument good for securing additional funding, seeking advertisers, and demonstrating the importance your site has for those in your organization who have yet to grasp the web’s worth.

Regardless of the industry that you are in, the Internet is where your company needs to be. Some companies, such as 800 CEO READ (8CR), do an excellent job of utilizing the tools available on the Internet to promote their company and product/service. 8CR promotes and sells books related to business that focus on careers, economics, leadership, management, sales & marketing, personal development and more. The unique path that 8CR has taken to enhance their success is by utilizing the Internet to their advantage.

First glance at their website and it appears rather vanilla. Light digging into the website and you will find many tools that 8CR employs to enhance their web presence and the user experience.

• Excerpts Blog – pieces of recently published business books
• Daily Blog – the latest on business book
• Author Blog – current and aspiring business authors
• Podcasts – each month 8CR will pick authors’ brains on the ideas in their books
• Top 25 Books RSS feed – bestsellers of the month
• 8CR Flickr Account – photo stream of events they host
• 8CR You Tube Channel – video of events they host

Utilizing these online tools keeps your audience engaged as well as encourages the repeat site visitors. The 8CR events, the recognition of the company and the brand continue to flourish.

Upkeep is the most important factor when making use of the various online tools. 8CR continues to post to the blogs, Flicker, and YouTube networks often; some daily, some weekly and some monthly.

New site visitors are always important. Repeat site visitors can have an even larger impact though. They know your product or service and are more likely to follow through with the sale, share your website address with others, or fill out forms listed on the site. Three tips to encourage repeat site visitors:

1. Fresh content to your site daily or weekly. New intriguing content is always a reason to visit a webpage. For example, think about some of the most visited websites and how often the site content is changing. MSN.com, Yahoo.com, CNN.com are just a couple of examples of sites of intriguing stories that continue to bring back visitors. Sometimes the stories are “recycled”, Meaning rather than writing new content every day, the owner of the website may post an article that was well received six months ago. Post news articles, write a blog, link informative pages related to your product or service are just a sampling of how to continue to have fresh content on your site.
2. Send emails to past and current customers. Inform your past, present and future customers with the latest happenings within your organization or storefront. Are you offering a new product line? Has your service expanded into new markets? Any discounts coming up? Customers may be interested in hearing about that new product line or the expansion into new markets. Don’t forget to include a link in the email to your website!
3. Survey Questions or Contests. Create a new survey daily, weekly or monthly related to your industry. Or better yet, have a monthly contest. Site visitors will want to know what the new question is and how others have responded to that question. Site visitors are always intrigued by contests. What is the contest, what is the prize, how do you enter, who can enter, when does it end? Just a couple of questions that will bring back your site visitors. Depending on the end result of the contest, your normal site visitors may bring in new visitors by inviting others to participate in the contest.

Keep your audience interested in your site and the visits will continue to grow. Review your website statistics to see how many visitors are unique versus repeat.

At a recent executive education course held at the Kellogg School of Management, instructors Rich Howard and Liz Honack asked a group of nonprofit marketing and development professionals to raise their hands if their organizations did not have web sites. Surprisingly, a few hands shot up throughout the room.

To some, it may come as a shock that any organization, whether non- or for-profit, would not have a web site. Unfortunately, many nonprofits have limited operational funds and as a result see web sites as a luxury. However, as the next generation of potential donors seek out organizations that reflect their interests and values, it is vital that each nonprofit organization has a web site that engages this emerging group of philanthropists.

We live in what Honack and Howard call a “nanosecond culture.” With the proliferation of PDAs, iPhones, etc., the younger generation has become accustomed to having information readily available at their fingertips. This is why for nonprofit web sites, the emphasis is on functionality and ease of use.

Providing people with the ability to donate online is one obvious way to break down the barrier between your organization and busy tech-savvy donors. However, this isn’t enough to convince your audience that they should give their hard-earned money and time to your particular group. Organizational transparency has become increasingly important since 9/11, when rogue charity organizations popped up all over the internet and conned people into donating to their “cause.” A nonprofit web site should have clear and readily-available information about its history, governance, and financial structure. Having links to your nonprofit partners can also add legitimacy to your organization as well as improve your search engine ranking.

Finally, if yours is an organization that relies on the help of volunteers, it is important to provide people with volunteer event information and a simple way to sign up for particular projects. Many nonprofit sites have calendars that outline volunteer opportunities months in advance, some of which also provide links to upload events into calendar applications such as Outlook and Google.

Actively keeping information up to date and engaging with potential donors online requires a web site that can be updated quickly and efficiently by internal staff. This is where obtaining customized content management tools can save staff both time and money while serving the community at the same time.