Period Three Blog » Business

May022010

The One Thing Most Small Business Websites Lack..

Posted by Gene in Business, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing

Sometimes, as a professional web designer, you can bring up a topic with a client and almost literally watch their eyes glaze over. I suspect that some of this comes from the fact that those of us in the business like to use technical terms; another contributing factor could be the constant flow of new technologies — what seems great and special today is often out of style tomorrow.

For that reason, it’s no surprise that so many small business owners overlook the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) when it comes to designing a new site. After all, so long as your site looks good and does what it’s supposed to, isn’t that good enough? Does it even matter where your business shows up in the listings on Google, Yahoo, and MSN?

Believe it or not, it really does. That’s because, if your site ranks well among some important keyword groups, you could be seeing twenty times as many visitors to your pages as you would if you didn’t. Think of how many dozens or hundreds of customers that could add up to — not to mention what they would mean to your bottom line. And best of all, they’d keep coming around the clock, from all over the world, at virtually no cost. I know from experience that a few of you are thinking: “That sounds great, but my business doesn’t get many orders from the web. In fact, most of my customers are local.” Would you still benefit from SEO in that case? The answer, once again, it was a resounding yes. There are two reasons you still want to be doing well with search engines. The first is that just because you aren’t getting business from outside of your own area now, doesn’t mean you couldn’t be later. There are very, very few companies — large or small – that can’t benefit from extending their reach a bit.

But more importantly, you want to make it easy for your business to be found online by your existing customers. Think about it: if the people who are already buying from you can’t locate you online, who are they likely to find? Regardless of what industry you’re in, you can bet you have competitors in your industry who would love to eat your lunch.

If you think your business is immune to this kind of threat, think again. I’ve seen situations where competing businesses have gone so far as to choose each other’s names as targeted keywords. In other words, if your customers aren’t finding you, you can be sure they’re finding somebody.

Search engine optimization might seem like an important strategy for sites that are focused on e-commerce and online orders, and it is. But even if the majority of your business isn’t coming in over the Internet, it’s important that you have a strong presence on the major search engines. Because as great as your work or product might be, it’s hard to make money, online or elsewhere, when no one can find you.

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Mar152010

3 things most business owners think they know about e-commerce… and why those myths can cost you money

Posted by Gene in Business

Online business is a hot topic. It has been for more than 10 years, and I can’t see that trend dropping off anytime soon. In most cases, that’s a good thing; the more business owners know about finding new customers on the Internet, the healthier their bottom lines are going to look.

The problem with this, though, is that e-commerce is a bit like professional sports — you have a few professionals, a handful of serious fans, and a whole lot of opinions that don’t always make sense. But while there’s no harm in chatting up your team’s chances with a few of your friends, having the wrong ideas about online marketing can spell disaster for your business.

Here are three things lots of business owners think they know about e-commerce, and how to keep those myths from costing you big money:

Flashier is always better. The latest and greatest are so-called for a reason; having cutting-edge animation, vibrant music, or a brand-new content management system on your website can all be great things. But go too far, and they can also cost you business.

When designing a new site, a question that should come up frequently is this: that’s cool, but what will it help me do? You might want people who visit your site to buy, ask for more information, or maybe just be more informed. Anything that helps them do those is useful; anything that doesn’t is just in the way.

It’s worked before, so there’s no reason to change now. Alternatively, we frequently see businesses with sites that look like they were designed a decade ago — the equivalent of decorating your office or showroom with a 50’s style decor.

Just because your company’s website shows all of your main information, or even generates a few leads and sales here and there, doesn’t mean it couldn’t be improved. For many businesses, the homepage is a prospective customer’s first stop. You want them to see something that creates a strong, positive impression. And at the same time, most older sites aren’t bringing the kind of traffic, or sales, that they could if they were brought up to date here.

It’s all about the sales. Before I start on this one, let me clarify: for some companies, it really is all about the sales. For every dollar spent on search engine marketing or online advertising, they need to gain so many more in online revenue for the campaign to make any sense.

For the majority of small businesses, however, there are several other pieces to the puzzle. That’s because a good site doesn’t just generate orders — in fact, lots of the best performing websites don’t even have shopping carts or payment processing. Your site might be designed to answer questions, generate leads, show off your expertise, or fulfill any one of a dozen other functions. Those are all valuable, so long as they contribute to your business goals.

Keep these ideas in mind the next time you’re talking small business websites with your friends and colleagues. When it comes to online business, everybody has an opinion, but it’s finding profits that counts.

This article was originally written for and published on Midlandsbiz.com

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Mar012010

Is a New Website a Good Investment in This Economy?

Posted by Gene in Business

With all the ups and downs the economy has been throwing at us lately, many of my clients are asking themselves the same question: is this really the right time to have my website designed or upgraded?

I suspect the answer you find to that question will have a lot to do with your profitability for the next 12 months. That’s because, like a new employee or an improved piece of equipment, a good website shouldn’t cost you anything — it should earn money by improving your marketing and productivity.

A modern, functional, professional-looking website is one of the most valuable investments you can ever make. It’s like having your best salesperson, your strongest client letter, shiniest storefront space, and most courteous customer service professional all wrapped into one — not to mention working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for customers and prospects all over the world.

If it sounds like I’m a bit overzealous in my assessment, consider this: how many new customers can any single person bring in per week? Can they reach potential buyers at the exact moment that they are thinking about your product and service? What about answering your twenty frequently most asked questions instantly, or sending routine orders straight to your inbox without requiring you to copy down payment information? These are just a few of the things a good website can do for you, day in and day out.

With that in mind, the question isn’t really whether a new site is a good expense, but what kind of design or upgrade you should be looking at. The perfect website — one that looks good, does everything you want it to, and helps you meet your business goals — doesn’t happen by accident. It’s nearly always the result of careful planning and collaboration between the client and a dedicated design team.

To get your money’s worth, and use your online presence to actually grow your business in a tough economy, do a bit of planning before you fork over your deposit check. Think carefully about what types of products and customers you’re doing well with at the moment, as well as which aspects of your business you’d like to emphasize going forward. Don’t worry so much about the specific features (like video, flash animation, blogs, etc.) that you’ll want to incorporate for the moment — your design team can help you figure out which options make the most sense. The one thing they can’t do is tell you what your company needs in the first place.

There’s never a bad time to put one of your most powerful marketing tools to work, and a new website could be a driving force that helps you gain ground during the current slump. But to make it worth your time and money, you’re going to have to plan ahead and see your new design for what it is: a chance to boost your bottom line in any economy.

This article was originally published on MidlandsBiz.

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Jan192010

Talking with Hiten Shah - crazyegg, kissmetrics to name a few

Posted by Gene in Business, Web Development

Disclaimer: This is a cross post from unmatchedstyle.com

Recently I was able to get Hiten Shah (@hnshah) to sit down with us and give us a quick run down of what he’s got going on with his great web products: KissMetrics, CrazyEgg, Survey.io to name just three. Keep in mind Hiten is probably the coolest person you’ll ever meet, especially since this is the second sit down he did with me as I completely destroyed the first recording we did. So a really big thank you for being so awesome Hiten!

We first got to talk through his great new analytics product KissMetrics.com, which is now in private beta (@kissmetrics). What makes KissMetrics so useful is it’s ability to get at the core of what’s driving consumers to your products and truly helps you analyze what makes them buy. In their own words:

KISSmetrics is different from other analytics platforms due to a combination of three key features. We focus on funnels and conversions and make them easy to track and interpret, use people as the basic unit of measure, and support tracking of highly-flexible custom data through our simple API.

We discussed Survey.io (demo here), how we are using it here on UMS and the background behind the creation of the survey system. You can read more about it here, but here’s some background on the survey itself:

The surveys you can create using Survey.io have been hand crafted by Sean Ellis. He has been practicing metrics driven marketing and customer development for 12 years. Currently he is advising startups to enable them to reach their full potential by applying his 12in6 methodology.

Survey.io was designed and developed by the KISSmetrics team. KISSmetrics is a customer development platform with sufficient flexibility to give you visibility into what’s working and what’s not in your product. The tools and technology help you measure what’s happening and tune the user experience.

Finally we covered the future and recent updates for CrazyEgg.com. We love CrazyEgg and use it all the time for our own design projects.

Thanks for the quick update Hiten!

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Apr162009

The TRUTH will always win in social media

Posted by Gene in Business, Marketing, Branding, Social Web

The thing about social media is that it will expose you. If you are an awesome person who truly wants to help people or run a really great business it will show through. On the other hand if you are not so good at what you do, are unethical or make some mistakes you get exposed just the same. We have to take the good with the bad and learn to deal with it. Here are a couple of really recent examples of how this all works:

Amazon.com fails in customer communication
A seemingly harmless change to Amazon.com’s cataloging software caused “gay and lesbian themed books” to be lowered in ranking relevancy thus causing them to disappear from the website - which of course cries of censorship ensued. Instead of taking the problem in hand, responding clearly and concisely online. Amazon only offered “there was a glitch in our systems” as a response and then a full day later announced in a statement that it planned “to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.” That’s pretty much all we get on this from Amazon… It is amazing to me that Amazon would not take this opportunity to control the conversation online, they are leaders on the web after all. See #amazonfail for more on how this is progressing.

Even after it explained the scope of the problem, Amazon continued to face criticism for its slow and limited response to the online blowup, particularly at a time when sites like Twitter can so easily accelerate and amplify a public outcry.

“Frankly, it’s surprising to hear that Amazon, which was a pioneer in the digital space, would miss this opportunity to react in real time and to manage this crisis better than they did,” said Gene Grabowski, chairman of the crisis and litigation practice at Levick Strategic Communications in Washington.

Read the full NY Times article where I get most of this from.

The DiggBar Hullaballoo
Digg.com recently released their DiggBar, I wrote a quick post about it on the P3 Blog here.

The DiggBar enables you to Digg, read comments, find related content, and share stuff from any page on the Web. And it’s presented in a short URL format, making it easy to share in emails, on Twitter, and via other services. - from Digg.com

It seems like a good idea to me. Though there have been very loud cries of outrage at the Diggbar and how to kill it. Digg has largely been forced to make changes that effect the way DiggBar works and i’m sure goes against their original strategy for it. This one is still playing out, people will not relent on this one, especially when there is a perceived danger to harming their website’s link authority in search engines. I know i’ll be waiting to see how Digg handles themselves and recovers from it.

Domino’s gets punk’d
Domino’s was blindsided by “Two idiots with a webcam and an internet connection” just a couple days ago (even though they said it wasn’t real). The two perpetrators have been fired and criminal charges have been filed. But like some have called for Domino’s needed to get active outside of just dealing the the “crime” itself. It looks as if they have posted a video from the CEO and in the past 24 hours have signed up for a twitter account @dpzinfo.

According to an article in AdAge when talking to Domino’s there’s “only so much a marketer can do” here was the prevailing attitude at first.

He [Dominos spokesman Tim McIntyre] said the company decided not to issue a press release or post a statement online. After all, he said, the company can deal with tens of thousands of impressions, but a strong response from Domino’s would alert more consumers to the embarrassment.

Mr. McIntyre, however, said the company decided that such a response would be akin to “putting out a candle with a fire hose.”

We’ve seen Domino’s turn around on this and start getting involved in consumer conversation on the web. Using Twitter is a great start, but the issue is cultural to big business (yes in IMHO any Domino’s chain is a part of a very big business…) Why should you be invulnerable to a customer not being happy just because you have hundreds of thousands of them. Does my opinion not matter to you? Thanks to social networking apps like twitter and facebook my singular opinion can now effect you - get ready big business!

The point is that as a business you have to be where your customers are, you have to listen to them in the way they want to talk to you. It’s hard to do that, but you have to do that. The bigger your business is the more you have to listen. The internet will only expose you for the truth of how your business operates, it can’t do anything otherwise because even more so today than ever the internet is powered by consumers - and it is only going to grow more in that direction.

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Apr142009

Jay and Gene discuss FOWA Miami at ColumbiaRefresh

Posted by Gene in Business, Web Development, Period Three News

As you may know Jay and I were able to attend Future of Web Apps in Miami this past February. We recently did a presentation covering what we got from the conference to the RefreshColumbia group.

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Mar172009

Jimmy Fallon - I think he may understand…

Posted by Gene in Business, Branding, Social Web, Twitter

I wasn’t too excited about Jimmy Fallon’s late night helmsmanship when it was announced a few months ago. I thought he was a bad choice to take over Conan’s old show. However the more I learn about the man the more I start to like him and am beginning to dig on his show. See, I think he may just “get it” after all:

I know I talk about Gary Vaynerchuck a lot. The reason I follow him is because he understands social media/networking, he talks about it, he’s done it, he’s worked the trenches to build his empire fan by fan, the hard way. Jimmy Fallon is considerably more well known than Gary Vaynerchuck, by far, but he still works hard to reach each fan and follower. I’m sure he’s gotten a leg up by being on Saturday Night Live, but he had to work to get there too. My point is that he could easily just sit back, work the show and let it go where it takes him. Instead he works the social networks, he’s frigging huge on twitter: @jimmyfallon where he’s one of the most powerful twitterers ever. It’s really him twittering too, not some marketing agency, he messages plenty of people back, legend has it he’ll even respond to your emails when he can.

I don’t think the above clip is a photo-op, I think it’s really his personality to do stuff like this. If he keeps this up, he’ll build a fan base that will last him forever across any medium he lands in.

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Mar132009

Wufoo loves their customers

Posted by Gene in Business, Branding

I recently received this hand written thank you note from Alex of the Wufoo.com team, out of the blue, for no reason whatsoever. I wonder how long it takes them to do these? This is a wonderful way to keep me interested and signed up for their service, just out of pure loyalty now. They’ve made me an evangelist for their service with just this one little note. There’s a great lesson here in marketing if you’re paying attention.

Oh, and if you’ve never used their service before, you should. I’ll let them explain what they do:

What is Wufoo? Wufoo strives to be the easiest way to collect information over the Internet. Our HTML form builder helps you create contact forms, online surveys, and invitations so you can collect the data, registrations and online payments you need without writing a single line of code.

It really is very easy to use wufoo. If you’re about to do a survey or need a quick form to collect data, use them…

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Feb232009

FOWA!

Posted by Gene in Business, Web Development, Twitter

So we’re off to Future of Web Apps 2009. Really looking forward to hearing some of the speakers, people like; Gary Vaynerchuck, Jason Fried, Joel Spolsky & Kevin Hale.

If you didn’t know already, we keep up a another well known(ish) blog unmatchedstyle.com, we’ll be trying to meet some interesting people there who work on the web and gain some insights that we can hopefully share with our readers in some way. While we’re there we may even try out this twitter thing so follow us @ http://twitter.com/unmatchedstyle, you never know…

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Feb192009

Small Biz online marketing plans for 2009

Posted by Gene in Business, Email Marketing, Social Web

According to a new emarketer.com survey, small business will generally not cut spending on their online advertising and based on the research a higher percentage said they plan to increase in the areas of social networking and email marketing.

Small businesses in the US will not cut spending on most forms of online advertising in 2009, judging by a survey conducted in December 2008 by Ad-ology Research. A higher percentage of respondents said they planned to spend “about the same” in 2009 than planned to change their spending.

More small businesses said they would increase their spending on social networking than on any other format. And respondents were more likely to say they would increase spending in 2009 on e-mail and their company Websites than make cuts on those formats.

We’ve been getting more and more into social networking for our clients over the past year, the results can be huge if managed correctly…

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