What's in an email address?

This may sound like an odd topic, but I think it's an important one to discuss. Email is one of the most common and most used forms of communication today. So the question that comes up is, why would you not want to show your brand through your email address? Some of you have just read that and probably don't understand what that means. That's what I hope to make clear in this post.

Your email address says a lot about you:
Most of us have seen an email address that really stands out, or one that just doesn't make any sense. We also tend to remember people's email addresses just as we used to remember people's phone numbers (you know before cell phones made that habit die off!!). So why would you not want to make sure your website address is part of your email address?

Here's an example, I can have any email address that I want for this new company that I'm going to work for. The choices I've narrowed down to are myname@aol.com or myname@acmecorp.com. A bit more info before you make your decision. The company name is Acme Corporation, and the website address is www.acmecorp.com. Have you figured out where I'm going with this now?

Why would you ever choose @aol, or @hotmail, or @gmail if you have the option of having something @yourcompanywebsite? Branding is more then just having a logo, a slogan and a website. Branding is carried through everything and although it may seem unimportant, your email address looks a lot more professional and legitimate if it matches the rest of your branding.

Should I never use those other email services?
Absolutely not. Those other services are great for personal use. I have a gmail account, and I love it, but I don't use it for my business email address (I may use it to collect my business email, but my email address for work is myname@ignite-media.com). Keeping your personal emails separate from your work emails is something I strongly believe in, and keeps clients/customers/vendors, etc from having your personal email address and your friends/family from having your work email address.

How do I get an email address that's the same as my website?
As long as you own the domain name (ie: acmecorp.com) you can have email at that domain. So you can create email addresses for anything@acmecorp.com. Your web hosting company should be able to set this up for you, and/or walk you through how you would go about setting it up yourself.

Remember: An email address is more then just an email address, it's another part of your branding strategy!

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
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Just because you own the business, does that mean you should run it?

I often think to myself, why are there so many businesses that just can't seem to grow? What makes some businesses successful and what makes others simply fail, or stay stagnant? Then it hit me, maybe it's not the business (at least not all the time), maybe its how the business is run, or who the business is run by.

"It was my idea, shouldn't I be the one to run it?"
Not necessarily, is probably the easiest answer to this questions. Sure, you thought of the idea and without you the business may never have formed, but that doesn't necessarily mean you are the best person to be running it. Lets say for a minute that your background is in graphic design. You have perfected your art, and are very well respected in your field. You've decided that it's time to branch out on your own and start your own company, offering some unique services. As a graphic artist, do you think you have the mindset for the business side of things? Are you going to be OK with hours of number crunching, proposal writing, business calls, and everything else that comes with the non-creative side of doing business? Probably not.

It's OK to admit your "weaknesses"!
Understanding what your strengths and weaknesses are, is the first step in building a good structure for your business. If you don't have the business mind, then maybe you need to think about bringing on someone who does. You aren't giving up control of your company, you are making your company stronger. Now you can continue to concentrate on the creative side of the business, and can rest assured the business side of your business is being handled.

Just because you aren't handling all aspects of the business yourself, doesn't mean it's any less your business. It just means you have enough understanding of what will make your business more successful for the long haul. You may end up bringing in even more people to help out with things like book-keeping, human resources, etc. Just take a minute and think about large organizations. The CEO probably doesn't know even half of what goes on in the company on a day to day basis, but he gets overview reports to make sure things are moving in the right direction and relies on lower level management to enforce the rest. There's no reason you can't do what you do best, while leaving the business stuff to the business people and having them update you regularly. It's control, without having to control every little thing.

Delegating helps expansion
Once you've figured out how to successfully delegate responsibilities you can more easily figure out ways to expand and grow your company. With delegation you've allowed yourself the availability to explore things that may not have been possible if you were wearing all the hats. You may it some road blocks, and some managers who didn't see your vision, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't delegate it just means you need to better screen your next candidate. Nothings perfect, but knowing one person can't do it all will make your life a lot easier and hopefully more successful.

Remember: Just because you don't run it, doesn't mean you don't control it.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
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Do you really know your clients?

It may sound like kind of an odd question, but think about it. Do you really know your customer? Do you know what they need, how they need it and how often? Do you know who they deal with, who their competition is, how much their profit margin is, etc? Without the answers to most, if not all of these questions and others how can you really provide a "service" to your client?

Get to know your customer - no really get to know them:
Most people think that getting to know their customer means knowing their name when they call, and what their favorite baseball team is (or insert any sport). Sure, this is a start, but you need to take the person out of the equation and think about the company as a whole. Just knowing Joe/Mary the sales person and what they like won't give you long term investment in that company.

You need to do your research, ask the tough questions and understand what it is you can do for your client in order to really provide them with a solution and not just another product or service. Lets face it, you aren't the only one they can go to and if Acme Corp down the street starts selling for less then you what stops them from going? If you've proven your worth and given them a solution, the thought won't even cross their mind to move away.

But I don't have the time to do the research!
Do you have the time to find a new client when they go away? Do you have the time to invest on competing with other quotes when they start shopping around? You need to make the time and invest into your clients, just as they are investing in you. If you personally don't have the time, then get one of your best employees, or hire a person you know can take on the task and inform you. Sure it may cost you a little, but in the long run you'll be able to sit down with the president of that company and tell them "they can't offer what I can, and I'm not just talking about my products and services".

It's not just about price - despite what you might think!
Even with online shopping so easy and competition becoming tighter and tighter, service, quality and attention to detail are important. Think about the last time you had a nice experience with a company and really felt like they paid attention to you. You probably told a few people about it and were somewhat surprised and pleased with the experience. So why not give that to your clients, and make sure you understand their needs and wants. That could mean the difference between competing with the competition and out performing the competition.

Remember: Quantity is only as good as the quality that's being produced

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
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Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization
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Avoid Poor Contact List Managment

Have you ever received an email or postcard and thought to yourself. "why would I be getting this"? It's something that I've noticed more and more of lately and felt it was something worth addressing. Email list/contact list management is extremely important, especially when doing any type of mass emailing or mailing.

Grouping your contacts:
It's extremely important when you are running a business that you group your contact lists. Make sure that your customers are in one list, your vendors in another, and your family and friends in yet another. You don't want to be sending sales emails to vendors and funny jokes to customers. The best and probably easiest way to do this is to group your contacts by well defined roles such as customers, vendors, friends, wholesale, etc.

Segmenting your groups:
Now that you have your groups you'll want to look at those groups to see if they can be further segmented. For example if you have a group called customers you may need to further define those customers by type. Lets say you are a sporting goods store you may segment them into indoor, outdoor, male sports, female sports, water, hiking, biking, etc. It's not that people can't be in more then one group but you don't want people in groups they aren't interested in.

Why go through the hassle?
Why not? By grouping and segmenting your contacts you are giving yourself a better chance of matching your emailing/mailing message to the correct person. Now that you have the right message in front of the right person you stand a better chance of converting that person into a repeat customer. Think about it, if you are really into fishing and you get an email talking about the 50% off sale for all fishing gear aren't you at least somewhat interested in what they are offering? I would be. Now think about the opposite, if you get an email about swimming gear and you don't like to swim, that message is completely lost on you.

Won't it take forever to group my contacts?
It may not be a 5 minute process, but after you have the initial grouping done moving forward should be fairly painless. You can also utilize mass emailing programs that allow your visitors to select what information (group) they want to receive.

It's about good customer relations:
Grouping and segmenting your contacts is another way of making sure you are serving your customers in the best possible way. You aren't hassling them with information that doesn't make sense to them, and you make them feel like you really understand their interests.

Remember: It's about providing relevant information to customers, not bombarding them with offers they'll never use.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
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Simply Business On the Web - Part 3

Here are a few more tips from the Simply Business series. The idea behind this series is to help you realize that even the small things matter, and sometimes we overlook the things that seem like everyone just knew.

Discounts are not just a sales tactic:
Discounts are great and can come in a variety of different formats. You can offer coupons, referral savings, buy-one-get-one, purchase amount discounts and so much more. A discount is more then just a way of increasing sales though, it's also a way of retaining customers. Lets take for example that customer who just bought from you. They could have bought from anyone, but they decided to buy from your store for a reason. So why not give them another reason to come back next time? Put a 10% discount card in their package, or send them a free gift and put a note in there saying "thank you for your purchase, we appreciate you choosing us, and look forward to serving you in the future". With that simple gesture you most likely have made a customer for life (or at least a long time to come), and it cost you very little in the grand scheme of things.

Employees are just as important as customers and sales:
Too many times employers take their employees for granted. Many employees feel under valued and over worked. Typically when employees start to feel this way they also start to become less productive and more annoyed with their job, which reflects on their interactions with clients and co-workers. Now you may be thinking that you run an online store and no-one notices, but you'd be surprised how much "attitude" can carry through over the phone or in an email. Treating your employees with the respect and appreciation they deserve is important. After all, if they weren't there doing their job who would be?

You do not know everything and that's a good thing:
Many business owners think that they know it all, and have seen everything the business world has to throw at them. Guess what, you don't know it all and you certainly haven't seen everything, but that's not a bad thing. Being able to realize that you don't know everything opens you up to a world of possibilities and understanding that there are things out there that you haven't seen keeps your business agile. Think of any sports team that starts to get comfortable with winning. They think they are going to win all the time, and can't be beat; "they've seen it all". Then it happens, the underdog who's lost every other game they've played comes into town and wins, beating the undefeated team. The team that keeps on their toes and realizes they can lose will be open to new tactics and the possibility that something new might be thrown at them.

Remember: You can learn just as much if not more from your failures as you can from your successes. The key is to make sure you implement what you've learned and don't repeat it.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization
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Simply Business on the Web – Part 2

The often overlooked parts of business via the internet

As promised, here are a few more simply business tips/suggestions that can make the difference between a successful online presence and one that’s just there.

Online or Offline, it’s about building relationships.
Whether you have a business that is solely online or is half off and half online, you need to concentrate on building relationships. Those relationships should be with everyone from your visitors, customers, vendors, etc. Anyone that you have regular contact with is someone that can be beneficial to you. Take for example your vendors. If you get to know them, treat them like you would your employees and let them know you value the business relationship you may find that you start getting better deals, faster delivery of goods, etc. This can also be true with your existing clients or potential clients. Making them feel like you really understand their needs will let them feel more comfortable doing business with you and allow them to feel confident in referring other people to you.

An online store (ecommerce) doesn’t run itself.
Many people think that as soon as their online store is setup, the money just starts flowing in and they never have to do anything. Unfortunately it’s not that simple. An online store takes just as much time and dedication to maintain and grow as a brick and mortar store does. Some people might even suggest that it takes more time. With an online store you have to make sure inventory is correct, prices are adjusted, messages are updated based on store conditions, etc. The more time and thought you put into your store, the better chance that your store will be successful.

Requiring people to login is like having an open house but keeping the door locked!
There are times when a login is necessary, but many times website owners just don’t know when that time is. If you have sensitive information that you need to share with a select group of people, or you have different levels of pricing based on whether the client is wholesale or not then it makes sense. Ecommerce stores also make sense (after they’ve placed an order, or added things to a cart) to have login so people can check their order history, delivery status, etc. On the other hand, a login screen just to capture your visitor’s information is a poor tactic. People expect to get information on the web without having to give-up their identity. By making people register/login to your site just to get general information you are in effect telling them “come here to get good info” and then shutting the door in their face. They’ll hit that back button and be off to your competitor’s site where the information is available without any hassle.

More simply business to come. If you have any to share please feel free to list them in the comments below.

Remember: Do to your site, what you’d want to experience on others.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

Simply Business on the Web – Part 1

The often overlooked parts of business via the internet
There are thousands if not millions of books, articles, reports and more out there about business and all the tips, tricks and pitfalls. There is even information about business on the web and how to “become a master of the internet” through your website. For the most part the books, articles and information that are out there are useful in some way to someone. But what about the simple stuff? What about the things that people just assume you know, and skip over to avoid “wasting space”, or time writing it out? What about the things that just happen in the “real-world” but need to be thought about when conducting business online? Hopefully the following will help those who need a reminder of the “simple” side of business, specifically on the web.

Your site is for your visitors, not for you!
How many times have you heard yourself saying, “I think this should be here”, or “I like this information there” or “I like the website the way it is, let’s keep it”. Where did the “I” come from in all of these sentences? Are you the one looking at your site on a daily basis? Are you the one looking to your website for your product information? Are you the one ordering your products/services from your website? Probably not, so why are you making the decisions about what happens? I mean ultimately it is your decision, but shouldn’t there be a basis behind that decision? Remember, that your visitors will ultimately determine what works and what doesn’t, so listen to them by looking at your website analytics, asking those clients that you speak with about what they do and don’t like, etc. Then based on that information you can make an informed decision that takes the “I” out of it.

An email isn’t just a note, it’s a contact/lead:
Have you ever pushed aside an email because you didn’t have time and ultimately never got back to it? Would you do that to a potential client if they were standing in front of you? I would hope not, and the same should be true for your emails. I realize you can’t answer every single email as soon as it comes in, but you can schedule time to answer them. Set aside an hour or two each day (even if it means coming in early or leaving late or doing it during lunch) to respond to all the client emails that came in. You never know which one of those could be your next big order. If your goal is to increase business, then every missed opportunity means another day until that goal is reached.

The quote isn’t the end of the line:
So you sent out that quote to the potential new business lead. Now what? Have you set a plan to follow up with them? You have to remember that the person you are sending the quote to has a job also, and just because you sent the quote doesn’t mean they will read it right away. By setting up a reminder or schedule to follow up, you are in effect reminding your client that they have the quote and should let you know if they are interested.

We hope you got something out of this as there will be more simple business to come, so please check back soon.

Remember: It’s not that it’s hard it just takes discipline

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

Set Goals for Your Website...

Everyday we set goals for all kinds of things regarding our business. We set sales goals, production goals, employee goals, management goals, etc. The one place that people seem to leave out is their website. Why not set a goal for your website? It's known as the 24/7 salesman after all.

What type of goal would I set for a website?
It could be anything really. Perhaps your site is an ecommerce site, then a financial goal might be appropriate. For example by March 1 of 2009 you want the site to generate 1000 orders (or more if you are a larger company with more traffic). If your site is more informational and less sales oriented then set a conversion goal. For example by March 1 of 2009 you want to get 50 new sales leads (conversions).

Setting goals for your website makes it even more a part of your everyday business. It makes you realize that you have to treat your website like you would any other employee. If it's under performing things need to be adjusted. If it's just not working out it gets fired and a new one replaces it. The best part is, if it's working well you don't need to give it a bonus or increase it's salary, you just make sure you keep paying attention to it.

How do I set these goals for my website?
The best place to start is in the past. What did your website do for you last year or last month? Figure out as much statistical information about the past performance of your website as you can and set goals from there. Remember to be realistic about it though. If your website only brought in 5 sales leads last month, setting a goal for 25 leads might be a bit of a stretch. It would be much better to set the goal at 8 or 10 for this month and if you go over it's just an added perk.

The point of these goals is not to set the bar so high it's unreachable, but rather to hit your goals as often as possible. You also don't want to set the bar too low, then it just becomes something to check off each time. Each of these smaller goals should lead to a much larger end of the year or quarter goal as well. By setting the smaller goals you then won't feel overwhelmed by putting one very large goal on the board that just seems daunting to hit.

When should I start my goals?
Yesterday! OK, so that's not possible, but you should start planning and setting your goals as soon as possible. The longer you wait the harder it is going to be to reach your goals. Remember, don't try to tackle everything at once either. Start with one part of your site, or one area of your business and only after you've reached a few of those goals start going after other areas.

Remember: Your website is like an employee, some work and some don't, don't hold on to the dead weight.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

Black Friday, Cyber Monday - It's that time of year again!

With the economy slowing to a crawl, and businesses desperately looking to increase profits, the holiday season is now upon us. The unofficial start to the holiday shopping season is black Friday and for some retailers it couldn't come any quicker.

What does this all mean for my business?
It's time to start dishing out the deals. Whether you are a small mom and pop shop or a fortune 500, this is the time to offer deals to your customers. They are expecting it and will demand it in some cases. So why not make everyone happy and come up with a great deal for the holidays? Or better yet come up with a limited time offer for this coming weekend?

What better way to attract interest then making something available for a short period of time? The urge to have something before it is gone, is usually enough to fill a store, or at the very least have people talking about it.

How do I get the word out?
Email blasts and banners on your website are probably two of the easiest and fastest ways to notify people. Email blasts work great for getting your existing customers back to the store, and banner ads will ensure that any new visitors are aware of the great deals as well.

If you don't have a large following yet you can always pay to advertise. The quickest way to get going is usually pay-per-click through Google Adwords or any of the other PPC companies. It's relatively quick and easy to have some ads setup and running within a few hours. This is great for the last minute planner who needs to get the word out quick.

But what do I have to offer?
What don't you have to offer. Whether it's a product or a service that your company provides you have deals that can be made. Lets say you are a chimney cleaning business, why not offer 1 free cleaning with the scheduling of a regular cleaning by December 1st? If you have products you can always offer buy 1 and get one half off, or free or whatever works best for your business model.

Free shipping is always a great way to give your customers a little treat. Many times shipping is what people look at as a deciding factor in where they will purchase their items. So why not take that factor and make it void, offering free shipping might drive more traffic then you originally thought.

Remember: It's not about the quantity, but rather the quality of the discount!

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

Local SEO - Targeting Your Neighborhood

Many companies think that SEO is only for the large corporations that have offices and customers nation and world wide. This however, is not the case. SEO is for every company and/or website, it's just a matter of how you go about optimizing your site.

Home Grown SEO
Local SEO is the process of optimizing your website for local phrases. So if you have a website that deals with plumbing for your local area and some of the surrounding areas, local SEO is perfect for you. You aren't going to travel to California for a plumbing job (unless the client was picking up all the costs!), so you want to target people in your area.'

The best and most effective way to target local searchers would be to use your town, city, state names throughout the site. So instead of just saying Plumbing Services, you might change that to Reno Plumbing Services, or perhaps, Reno Nevada Plumbing Services.

Don't forget the phone number and zip code
Another way to get people to your site based on local searches is to be sure you have your phone number listed on your site in text. Many times people who are looking for local businesses online will search with the area code as a prefix or suffix to the search (ie: plumbing services + 203). This goes for zip codes as well.

Just think about the different ways in which you signify a local business and chances are you will have another way to optimize your website for local searches.

Remember: When writing copy for your website, or building out the template be sure you have your local phrases worked in, without being annoying about it!

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

Website Analytics – Beyond the Dashboard

**PLEASE NOTE: This is not meant to be an in-depth analysis of Google Analytics, but rather a basic overview of what people can find if they dig a little and start using their analytics program past the dashboard. We’ll be giving an overview of the various sections and how it might help you with your overall marketing efforts.

More often than not when speaking with clients and or potential clients about their analytics they often only refer to a few things, visitors, hits, and/or keywords. This leads me to believe that many companies don’t ever look past the dashboard of their analytics program. They don’t dig down to really see what is going on with their website. In this post, I’m going to do my best to explain the various areas of Google Analytics and what it can show you as a client. We use Google Analytics as an example because most people can relate, and if you don’t have a GA account, your analytics program most likely has similar areas (dive in and you’ll be surprised by what you find!).

*All images are screen shots are courtesy of Google Analytics - https://www.google.com/analytics - all data has been removed to protect the site being analyzed.

Below we will show you some of the different areas available via the left navigation bar of Google Analytics, as well as giving some insight as to what you can find within that particular area and how it might be useful to you and your organizations marketing efforts. Please keep in mind that there are many other ways in which the different areas can be useful to you, but our examples will help those who have never look into them.

Visitors Section:
In this section you will find another dashboard that gives you an overview of data from the different areas dealing with visitors.

• Benchmarking – In this area you can compare your sites that are relatively the same size as yours. You can also select which industry category your site falls under so you get an even better idea of how your site stacks up. This is a great way to see how well your site is performing compared to the rest of the industry in a broad view.


• Map Overlay – This area lets you see what countries/regions your website visitors are coming from. It even shows you on a colored scale, which countries are referring more visitors than others. It may not seem important at first, but if you have a campaign targeting Europe, you could look here quickly and see whether or not it’s working (generally speaking).


• New vs Returning – Here you can see what percentages of visitors are new versus visitors that have come back to your site after already having visited you at least once. Again his is great to look and to get a quick view of whether your site is gaining any new potential customers/clients.


• Languages – Just what you thought it would be, this area gives you an idea of what languages the people who visited your site spoke. So let’s say you have been debating whether or not to have different translated version of your site. You can quickly come up with a priority list of which languages you should concentrate on and in what order.


• Visitor Trending – This area is packed full of information. You can see how many of your visitors are unique each day, how many page views each visitor had, what your bounce rate is, how much time the average visitor spent on the site, etc. The usefulness of this data is endless, you can easily see whether you are keeping visitors at the site long enough to make a purchasing decision, or whether your site is “stickie” by seeing how high your bounce rate is.


• Visitor Loyalty – Want to know how many times repeat visitors are coming to your site? You can get the breakdown of what percentage of visitors came back once, as opposed to two or three times or more. If you have a social networking community this would be extremely important information to have, as you certainly want to have your return rate as high as possible to keep the community active.

There are other areas in this section (Browser Capabilities and Network Properties) that get into the more technical aspects of your website. For example what browsers visitors are using to see your site. This would help your web designer when considering what to implement and how to test the site. Since this post is geared more towards the average company owner, we’ll stick to the areas that will have the most value to you (not that it’s not valuable information, but chances are you aren’t coding your own site!)

Traffic Sources Section:
In this section you will find another dashboard that gives you an overview of data from the different areas dealing with where your traffic is coming from.

• Direct Traffic – Here you can see the number of visits that you received by the visitor typing in your website address directly into the address bar of the browser. This is a good indicator of how memorable your website address is.


• Referring Sites – These reports let you quickly and easily see what sites your visitors were at that linked them over to your site. Knowing where your visitors are coming from can give you some great insight on whether that link you got on a related site was worth it or not.
  
• Search Engines – As you might guess this section lets you see which search engines are referring traffic and how much. You may think that Google is the end all be all, but a quick look at this report can fill you in what other search engines matter to your visitors.
  
• Keywords – Want to know what people actually typed in to find your website? You can, you just need to look here! That’s right, this area lets you see what your website visitors actually typed into the search engines to find you. Thinking of doing a PPC campaign, this is a great place to start when trying to figure out good keywords to use. A great post was recently written on the value of analytics and this section when doing keyword research by Unstuck Digital – Leveraging Analytics for Keyword Research.
  
• Adwords – Do you currently have an Adwords campaign running? Great, you can track its effectiveness here. Drill down and see on a granular level what people did after clicking your ad.

Content Section:
In this section you will find another dashboard that gives you an overview of data from the different areas dealing with what content your visitors are seeing and going to.

• Top Content – What content/pages are your visitors going to the most? Within this section you can see what content is most viewed. This is extremely valuable because if you know that a particular product page is getting most of the views, you might think of adding a call to action or reference link to other areas of the site or to order now!


• Content Drilldown – What path did your visitors take once on the site? You can see that here, figure out which pages they viewed, and in what order they viewed them in. This helps in figuring out if the site you thought was intuitive really is as intuitive as you thought.


• Top Landing Pages – The home page isn’t always the first page that website visitors see! That’s right, you read that correctly. Search engines try to provide the page that matches the closest with the search that was performed, so now you’ll know what pages are matching those searches.


• Top Exit Pages – Just as important as the landing pages are the exit pages. What pages are people leaving your site at? Let’s say you run an ecommerce store and aren’t getting the number of orders you think you should be. One look at this could tell you that a majority of your visitors are leaving at the check-out first step. Now you can look and see why that might be.
  
• Site Overlay – Ever wondered what buttons on a particular page are being used most often? Well now you can, this section lets you see the number of clicks on any linked part of that page whether they be navigation links, body text links, etc. Thought everyone would click the big red buy now button but they aren’t? Try it in a new spot and watch to see what happens, or change the color and see the effect.\

Now these sections are not the only ones in Google Analytics but if the dashboard was your main information source before, just going into these three main areas will give you a whole new wealth of knowledge about your site and visitors. You don’t have to be a ‘computer geek’ to understand the information either. Even having the most basic understanding will help you in conversing with your marketing team.

Remember: Knowledge is power, and analytics is powerful knowledge.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

3 Types of Contact Forms and When to Use Them

Contact forms are on almost every website that you go to. Sometimes they are long and drawn out, other times they are short sweet and to the point. Although many of us may not love the long drawn out ones, there are times when each is appropriate. When you break it all down there are three basic varieties of contact forms 1) In Depth 2) General Information 3) Quick Contact. The trick is knowing when to use which form.

In Depth Contact Forms:
These forms are the ones where you are asked for everything but what the first word you said as a child! Seriously, they are very specific about what information they are asking for and are usually at least 15-20 questions long. At first thought this may seem like a complete waste, and that no-one would ever fill out a form this long.

In depth contact forms are good for a variety of applications such as on a real-estate site, an insurance site, or even a medical site. On each of these sites the company needs to know as much information as they can in order to assist you as quickly and efficiently as possible. The one thing that you want to make sure of when using a form that involves gathering some highly personal information (such as social security numbers), is to have the information collected in a secure database that can only be accessed through an administrative area requiring you to login.

A poor use of an in depth contact form would be on an ecommerce website. You don't need a persons social security number, age, or date of birth (typically) in order to sell someone a product. Using this type of form on a "simple" site can have some pretty devastating effects on you conversion rate.

General Information Contact Forms:
These types of forms are probably the most common type of form seen around the internet. They typically ask for the basic information such as name, tel, fax, email, comments, etc. They are usually only 3-8 questions long and take very little time to fill out and submit.

A great place for these types of forms is on any website where you are looking to have people get in touch with you for general inquires. For example on a website that sells bikes you may want a general contact form for people who have questions about parts, style bikes, etc. This allows a website visitor an easy to use option to contact you and give you some information on what they are looking for without having to pick-up the phone. These types of forms can generally be sent via email, and don't usually require a secure area to be stored in as nothing personal is really being sent.

A poor use of a general contact form would be on a car insurance website where you want to provide customers a way of requesting an insurance quote. These types of forms usually do not request enough information to give any type of valuable quote to a customer.

Quick Contact, Contact Forms:
These are the short, sweet and to the point forms. They generally only require an email address, name and description, sometimes a phone number also. These are great for visitors who know your company, know your site and just want to quickly reach out to you for a question or for you to get back in touch with them.

These forms are great to use in conjunction with a full contact us form page. You can use these quick forms throughout the site as they take up very little room and provide a great call to action area. For visitors that need more in-depth information they can easily click the contact us button where a more general or in depth form will await them.

Remember: Providing the right means of contact can mean the difference between a visitor and a client.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

Trust and Marketing - Shouldn't You Trust Your Firm?

This past week one of our clients explained to me "we work with you because we trust you and you explain everything to us". I couldn't have been more elated when she said that, it is everything that Ignite Media was founded on. Trust and education are two very important qualities when it comes to any business relationship.

What does trust have to do with it?
What doesn't trust have to do with it? If your clients trust you, then you have clients for life, if they are suspicious of you then they are always watching what you are doing wondering if it is the right thing. It's never a good thing when someone is constantly looking over your shoulder to see if you've screwed up, and it certainly isn't a good thing when your clients are doing it.

How do I build trust?
Be Honest and Educate! That's it, if you can do those two things, 9 times out of 10 you will have a customer for life. So many companies out there are afraid of being honest, and telling their client exactly what they are doing. "We might give away the family secret", or "what if they don't want to hear the truth", are two things that cross the minds of those businesses that don't believe in being honest or educating their clients.

Yes, there are times when your client probably will not want to hear the truth, but in the long run you'll both be much better off that they know. They won't have any reason to think that you are playing games with them and you won't have any reason to be worried that they might find out something down the road. The air is clear, the discussions can continue on and most likely the working relationship will be stronger for it.

What do you mean educate?
You don't have to sit down and teach them every aspect of your business, but you should explain to them what you are doing for them. Let them in on your process and why you do things the way you do. I'd even suggest going as far as writing it all out for them and letting them see that you do indeed have a method. "But what if they show that to the competitor"? Do you really think your competitor doesn't know how you do things? Just think about the last employ that left your company, do you think they've never told anyone about how things are done at ACME corporation?

An educated client is a better client because now they are part of the process. They understand what it is they are getting and why you have to do things before other things. They start to realize that the money they are spending is being used in the right ways and that they can feel confident going back to their board members, or partners and explaining what is going on and what will happen next.

For the most part there are no family secrets. I mean you don't want to publish what you are doing for each of your clients online, but as far as a process goes and your methods there's nothing secret about it. Chances are you are just one of 100's of companies that do the same thing, but what makes you different is that you don't hide what you are doing for your client! Now doesn't that sound like a great conversation point with your next potential client?!

Remember: "If you give a man a fish he will have a single meal. If you teach him how to fish, he will eat for life" - Kuan-tzu

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

Content Editing vs Content Management

Many people think that content editing is the same thing as content management. In the very simplest of terms I guess they can be considered correct, but when you really look at the two there are real differences. At Ignite we feel it is important that you know what the differences are, so you know what you are getting as an end product.

Content Editing
This is when you are able to edit the text and possibly pictures within the body of a page. You usually have little or no control over the navigation, page design, or any other major functions of the website.

The best example of this would be Macromedia's (Adobe's) product Contribute. Contribute allows web designers the ability to give their client accessibility to update content within the page or pages that they grant permissions for.

This is a great tool for the casual client who really only wants to change or add some text every now and then and has little else to update or modify on the site. It's not good however for someone who needs to add pages, content, modules, etc to the site at any given time.

Content Management:
This is a much more robust system that allows control of pretty much every aspect of the website, or as much control as the administrator will allow for each user. Some popular content management solutions are DotNetNuke, Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, TypePad, and others. These systems are extremely robust and feature rich applications that give website owners the ability to create new pages, add modules, update content, allow users to register, and much more.

You are actually able to 'manage' your website from an administrative backend. Unlike with the content editing tools, there is an administrator that can set permissions for viewing certain pages, delete or modify registered users, and a variety of other things.

Which is better Content Editing or Content Management:
It really all depends on what you are looking to do. As mentioned earlier if you are just looking to make some small text updates to existing pages then content editing is probably more than enough for you. However, if you really want to have full control and be able to expand as needed content management is the direction you should be looking.

Remember: Don't always assume you are getting something, make sure you know you are getting it.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development

What web based business should I start that will make money?

This post is for people who are currently looking to "break into" a web based business. Over the years I've come across many people who have asked the question "what's the most profitable web based business to be in?". The first answer that comes to mind is "if I knew that do you think I'd be doing this?". However, I usually catch myself before that comes out and I explain to them that there is no silver bullet.

Don't you just build the site and make the money?
Many people are under the impression that it is as easy as just putting up a website. As soon as you go online your orders will start rolling in. Unfortunately, this is where many people get into trouble. The website takes longer then they expected, the costs are higher than they originally anticipated and the site goes up and no one is going to it.

Just like with a brick and mortar store it doesn't just happen over night. No matter how many stories you've heard about the guy who is rich from the internet, it just simply is not that easy. I don't want to stop anyone from trying, I simply want to make sure you are completely aware of what goes into a web based business.

The website
For some reason people think that building a website is easy. That if they had a little time on their hands they could just as easily put one together. To some extent this is true, but will that site be any good? What if you decided that building a house was easy and you put yours together, do you think it will last very long? Are you an electrician, plumber, contractor, and architect? If not, you probably wouldn't attempt this. So why then would you attempt to put a website together when you more then likely do not know the first thing about the mechanics of a website?

It may seem like a cliche, or overused advice, but let the professionals do what the professionals do. You know the business you are doing and you wouldn't think twice about having someone from another profession come in and run your business, so why would you want to take over building a website?

Marketing for your website
So now you have the website, it's all built, and by a professional web developer who took the time to ensure it is SEO and user friendly. What do you do now? Now it's time to market the site. You have to let people know that your website exists. There are hundreds if not thousands of ways to do this. You can advertise in the yellow pages (online and offline), submit your site to various directories, get into Pay-Per-Click marketing, request inbound links to your site, send out a press release, and so much more.

Staying up to date with your website
Even after you have built the site, marketed it, and have customers coming in you need to make sure you are staying on top of the site. If you sell a tangible product you want to make sure you are updating your inventory and/or product information. You want to post specials and send out newsletters letting your customers know what is going on. Just like with that brick and mortar store, you have to make sure you are keeping and attracting the attention of your customers.

Remember: A website is more then just a page online, it's a business just like any other store.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

Remembering the people!

I recently read a really good blog post over at SEOMoz entitled "Social Media is People". The post was written by 'feedthebot', who is pretty active at SEOMoz and who's writing style is fun and easy to read and understand.

The whole point of the post is to remind people that at the end of the day any marketing efforts, especially social media marketing in this case, is not about what you have where and how many but rather who you know and how you can reach out to those you do not know yet. The people, real true life, flesh and blood people are the reason we build websites and communities, not to obtain tons of links.

As marketers and business owners we often forget what the true objective is, and are always trying to keep up with our competition. We're so worried about being on this directory and that directory and having this new thing added to our site and that other thing taken off that we lose sight of what is really important - THE PEOPLE!

I encourage you to read this post by 'feedthebot' and really take to heart what he is saying. We have to start thinking about who we want at our site and how we can get our name and site information in front of them, rather than just worrying about being on various sites and hoping that the right people see it.

Remember: Going back to the basics isn't always a bad thing.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

Build, Review, Adjust, Review again...

A website is not a static thing. A website is something that should be changing on a regular basis, but not just because you feel like changing it. Those changes should be made on visitor behavior and/or new product/service announcements.

Changing based on visitor behavior
Website analytics are an extremely useful tool when it comes to figuring out what your website visitors are doing. However, the process shouldn't just stop at seeing what they are doing. You need to make sure you are adjusting your site accordingly. Lets say that your visitors are all coming to your home page and from there only 25% are moving further into the site. It's time to review and revise the home page so you can increase your conversion rate to interior pages.

What good is a site if the only page people go to is the home page? Chances are the home page is just the tip of the iceberg of what you offer, and those visitors are missing a great deal of information. It's time to make a change, and be sure when you do make the change you consult some clients and people who may not know your site well to see if the change is effective.

Other changes
A change isn't always because of visitor behavior but also because of new product or service information. If you have a new product coming out or that just came out, you want to be sure you promote that as much as possible. Put a nice area on the home page, or in the news section. Just be sure that it's visible and draws people's attention.

Remember: Change is a good thing, when done correctly.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

Website Testing, Testing, and more Testing...

A website is something that is constantly being updated and modified, so why shouldn't you constantly be testing it? There is nothing worse then hearing from a visitor or client that something on your site not working correctly. You want to be sure you find those "faults" first, not last.

What's so bad about a little error?
How little is the error? That's usually a question that doesn't have such a definitive answer. The error may seem little to you, but you may not know about the handful of visitors that left your site because of it. Perhaps those visitors were ready to order, or make a call but got frustrated, that's not a good thing for your bottom line. So that little error is now a very big error.

How do I catch everything?
You may not be able to catch everything, but you can certainly do things to help catch a majority of things. One very important practice would be to surf your website once or twice a day (at the beginning and end of the work day). Try different paths and make sure you can always get around and back to where you came from. Another approach would be to randomly have your employees surf the site. Just shoot John an email on Tuesday that says, "before the end of the day I would appreciate it if you could surf through our website as if you were a customer to make sure you don't run across any errors. Please inform me as soon as you have completed your surfing and whether you found anything or not." This approach gives you a fresh set of eyes that may catch something you wouldn't have.

Testing may lead to something new
During the course of your testing you may think of things, or your employees may think of things that will help to improve the site. It doesn't always have to be that something is wrong, but it could be that something could be a little bit better.

Remember: What may seem insignificant to one person, may be extremely significant to someone else.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

Summer Slowdown Leads to Fall Pickup...

Many companies see a slowdown in orders, production, etc during the summer months. It is typically the time of year when people take extended vacations, plants close and companies are working shorter days. Who wants to think about the fall during this time?

You should! That's right, you need to think about the fall during this time. Marketing now is the perfect time to grab those customers that will start turning up the pace come fall. Make sure you are the one they remember when they need what you do. Don't be left in someone elses dust because you decided to slow down everything during the summer.

How do I market to them now?
Anyway you can really! Send them an email blast, mail out postcards, put a special on your website. Anything and everything you can think of would be a good idea. How about a special promotion where if they order by August 31st they get a special discount? This helps get orders in for the summer as well as increasing production for the fall. People love to save money and if you give them savings they will most likely respond well to them.

Don't let the summer slip away.
Now is the time to act, not tomorrow, not next month. The summer goes by very quickly so you don't want to be standing there on September 1st wondering where all your orders are. Also, don't panic if you don't hear a response right away, it is the summer after all and they may call in September asking if they can get that deal - go ahead, give it to them, what do you have to lose but the customer if you don't!

Remember: The early bird gets the worm - it's not just a clever cliche.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

Meta Tags - Which ones should we use?

There often isn't a week that goes by that I get asked about keyword tags and how important they are, or whether they should use a variety of other meta tags to help the search engines index their site. Everyone wants to know which meta tags are the ones that are most important and which ones they can ignore.

It's all in the title
The answer, well it isn't exactly black and white. However, it is widely agreed that the most important tag, as of right now is the title tag. This tag should be written in such a way as to have your most important keyword/phrase included and it should be straight to the point. The title tag should also be unique for each page. For example, your products page should have a title geared towards your products while your company history page should have a title that relates to the history page. If someone only saw the title tag for each page they should be able to get a good idea of what that page will be about.

A good description always helps
Another tag that is important, but not for the reasons you may think is the description tag. This tag is invisible to the front-end user (unless you view source), but the search engines will use this tag to display as your search engine result listings. They generally speaking do not use this tag as a factor in your rankings, but it will give them some idea of what you feel the page is about. As with the title tag, this should be unique for each page.

Keywords aren't the key anymore
There was a time when the keyword meta tag was one of the most important tags on your website. Any word/phrase you put in there was a possible word/phrase that you would show up in in the search engines. Put them in there more then once, and you stood an even better chance. However, today this tag is seldom used by the search engines if at all. More often then not this tag is used for spam purposes and the search engines have decided not to even think about using it as a ranking factor.

The never ending list of meta tags
There are many, many meta tags that can be used within a page. However, most of them serve little to no purpose for the search engines. When you try to put all of these tags into each page you are making the search engines work harder to get to what is most important which is the content of the website. Ignite suggests that you stick to the basics. Make sure you have unique title tags, unique description tags, and if you have to you can use the keyword tags but make sure not to stuff them full of keyword phrases.

Remember: Less is often more, especially when it comes to placing keyword/phrases in meta tags.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization