Beth Devine – Page 42

Stimulate Your Economy: Give Freely

March 31, 2009 Beth Devine

Yesterday, Katie Couric featured Denny’s on the evening news. Denny’s is more Main Street than Wall Street and the CEO wasn’t showcased for multi-million dollar bonuses but for giving away breakfasts. It made a great “feel good” story.

Denny’s CEO plainly stated that the free breakfasts were a promotion to get more business.”It was just a couple of pancakes, eggs and bacon,” he said.

But amidst the nightly gloom-cast of unemployment and Wall Street bailouts, Denny’s was portrayed as humanitarian for giving back to the unfortunate in their communities. The reality was that it was a successful campaign that has since brought in more than enough customers to cover the costs of the free breakfasts because the promotion expanded it client base.

Free is good. It makes good press and helps develop a client base. It’s one of the building blocks of tremendously successful online and traditional businesses. Google was a free search engine long before it began collecting revenue. Craigslist, Facebook and Twitter are all examples of websites whose successes are not yet matched by revenue.

It may seem counterproductive to give something away–possibly even before you’ve established a steady stream of revenue. But any business owner who is trying to attract new business should consider offering something free.

What can you offer? Three simple ideas:

Information. It may be the most cherished and sought after commodity on the web. Give it freely — on your website, through social media, blogs, etc., and you will develop your market. Develop your market and you will sell products and services.
Free shipping. If you’ve got the goods use free shipping will help close the deal.
Free samples. Turn prospects into customers by letting them try a free sample.

Give freely. It pays.

Bold is not bold when it’s all bold!

March 10, 2009 Beth Devine

5 quick style tips for website managers and blog newbies:

Use bold only to accent selected words or phrases
Use italics for publication titles, quotes and other phrases as determined but be consistent
Stick to left justification in most cases – avoid overuse of center, right or full justified text
Don’t be afraid of white space – it’s beautiful and makes reading easy on the eyes
Resize photos appropriately for screen viewing and make sure they’re not stretched or fuzzy. It’s good practice to size images in a photo editing program before uploading to your site.

Don’t Forget Your Customers

March 9, 2009 Beth Devine

We all know that it takes more time, effort and money to get a new customer than it does to sell to an existing customer. So why don’t we do a better job of selling to our customers? I have a client that provides services to a very finite audience. He knows every possible customer and prospect in the markets he sells to. His company is very responsive to their needs and always creating new products for them, However, he never informs his customers about these new products unless they’re the one it’s created for. The idea of creating a superior product or service and keeping it a secret may seem crazy, but in fact, that’s exactly what so many of us do.

So the question is, what do we do about it? There are two immediate steps we can take. First and foremost, have a plan. We spend all sorts of time planning ways to get new customers but little time planning how to sell more to our existing customers. You need to understand why they buy from you to ensure they continue to do so.

Second, communicate! Talk to your customers. Find out what their needs are and you might find you can fill them. We often assume that our customers understand our business and know what we have to offer them. This is not the case. If you get your name in front of them on a regular basis, you will be the person they call when they have a need, even if they’re not sure you can fulfill it. A cost-effective way of doing this is through e-marketing. It will also drive customers to your website to remind them what you can do for them.

The bottom line is, the more you communicate and educate your customer, the easier it will be for them to turn to you when they need help.

Do you know your SEO score?

March 4, 2009 Beth Devine

If you plan to or have optimized your website for search engines, it’s a good idea to know your SEO status. Domaintools.com has a beta SEO score tool that gives you a SEO score. Just go to domaintools.com and enter your domain name is the Whois Lookup field. When your site comes up you’ll see your SEO score. Click on the SEO score link to see how and what is used to derive your score and how you can make your site more search engine friendly. More details on how the tool works at http://www.domaintools.com/seo-score/

Time to sweep out the digital dust bunnies?

February 27, 2009 Beth Devine

Just like your house, every so often it’s a good idea to go through your web site, sweep out the corners and get rid of the dust bunnies. I’m talking digital dust bunnies – those bits of material that meant something once but are no longer connected to anything tangible. They come in the form of broken links and dated information.

Broken links are frustrating for your site visitors and they can hurt your search engine rank. So take the time to ensure that all you links work. You can check them manually, but if you have more than a few pages that can get tedious fast, so use one of the online link checking resources. There are many online. Google “website link checker” or try this handy tool – http://validator.w3.org/checklink.

The web is an ever-changing dynamic place so if you haven’t checked your links lately, you may be surprised to find that the great resource your site linked to no longer exists at the address in your link.

As far as the dated information, I don’t know of a tool to check for it, but you know if your website has old information. Make sure your website isn’t promoting events that have passed or services you no longer offer. Outdated websites may leave people with the impression that your business is as neglected as your website.

AAAContainerService.com launched

February 25, 2009 Beth Devine

We launched AAAContainerService.com, a Connecticut compnay offering dumpster and container rental for home or construction clean-up projects.

Do you know where your domain is registered?

February 25, 2009 Beth Devine

“Do you know where your children are?” Do you remember that PSA that used to run in the evenings? As a web developer whose seen some unfortunate clients lose their domains or get scammed out of some cash, I’ll ask “Do you know where your domain is registered?”

It’s important to know where your domain is registered and to monitor the contact information on the domain to ensure that you retain control. In many cases your domain name is closely tied to your brand so you should be very protective of maintaining that domain. I’ve seen customer’s lose domain names because they changed their e-mail address and didn’t receive the renewal information. And I’ve seen domains transferred to different regsitries in response to unscrupulous sales techniques.

Most domain registries handle renewals with automatic credit card billing and e-mail notices. If your credit card expires and the e-mail on account with the domain registry is no longer in effect the domain will expire and you may lose your domain permanently if the problem is not caught in time. Make sure you keep your contact information current and do not ignore renewal notices from your domain registrar.

There are a few unscrupulous domain registry companies out there whose practice is to send transfer solicitations that look like domain renewal invoices to domain owners. Domain owners sometimes miss the text that says that by sending a check it authorizes them to transfer the domain to their company. And since the domain owner doesn’t remember who is their domain registrar, they assume the invoice is legitimate and they pay the bill. The company doesn’t transfer ownership–you’ll still own the domain–but why change your domain registration company and pay a higher rate in the process?

In closing, if you don’t know where your domain is registered, find out now, before it’s too late.

What is Website Optimization and Why do I Care?

February 23, 2009 Beth Devine

This is a question that I’ve received on more than one occasion. Anyone who has a website should care about website optimization. If you have a website, odds are you’ve spent time and money to create it. So what is it doing for you? Too many people create a site and do nothing to drive traffic to their site, then, wonder why business hasn’t improved. In traditional terms, you can create the most beautiful advertisement, however, if you never place it where it can be seen, it’s useless. It’s the same for websites. That is where website optimization comes in. It’s the practice of driving traffic to your website. There are several ways to do this.

The first way to drive traffic to your site is to ensure that your site can be found. This is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO. By including meta tags and descriptions as well as improving the content of your site, you can improve the organic search-ability of your site so that people can find you. This is a long-term investment that pays off in gradual increments. Over time, search engine optimization will help improve your search engine rank and make it easier for potential customers to find your site.

The second way to improve your website optimization is a traditional pay-per-click program. These are the ads that show up in the right hand column of a Google search. The nice thing about these ads, as the name says, you only pay for those searches that actually click through to your site. This program is intended to drive unknown prospects to your site.

A third method of website optimization is called e-marketing. This includes creating an e-newsletter campaign and/or blog to help educate your customers. It is a good way to ensure that you have a consistent presence with your existing customers and known prospects. It will remind them that you’re out there and in some cases, depending on the article, educate them about capabilities you have that they may not know about or have forgotten.

The final form of website optimization is inclusion of RSS feeds to your website to pull the latest news from a blog into your site. This can help to keep your site updated with little effort. This will also help your search engine optimization and gives users a reason to go back to your site more frequently as they’ll know that you have updated information.

Basically, website optimization is a means to get your site working for you. Years ago, when people created or changed their website, they would let everyone they knew know about it. We’ve gotten away from that practice. Website optimization takes the best of those practices and incorporates them into a program that will make your website work for you.

MontessoriMadness.com launched

February 22, 2009 Beth Devine

MontessoriMadness.com launched Friday. Montessori Madness is a book written by Trevor Eissler about the pros and cons of Montessori schools. The website features a forum where users can continue the discussion.