How we build websites

February 22, 2009

When starting Raise Interactive we were posed with a dilemma, how could we be a full service internet marketing agency for small businesses if we couldn’t build affordable websites for our clients.  For most of our customers the web site is the first thing we need to address by building a site or making changes to a current site.  If it is a large project we work with several professional website designers like Webheads, Inc. that we know and trust.  But what about the smaller client, just getting started online who needs an attractive, functioning site but doesn’t need bells and whistles and has a limited budget.

In these cases we use the WordPress platform to build business websites.  Originally started as blogging software it allows us to not only build websites but it is a built in Content Management System, allowing clients or Raise Interactive to easily update the site.  It is a fantastic program that is also Open Source, allowing people to use the platform for free.  It encourages a number of independent developers to make plugins and tools that they distribute, often for free.

On this platform we utilize a number of WordPress Themes from iThemes.com.  We experimented with several free themes or templates and they just don’t do the job.  The iThemes themes are very flexible and customizable, they look great and they have been very stable.  They allow us to cut hours of time off a website design which significantly lowers the price for our clients.  And to give you an idea, this site was built using the Architect Theme from iThemes.

This process allows us to build customizable, great looking, fully functioning sites for our clients that don’t cost an arm and a leg.  And when we do run into a larger job we still have the resources of our network of trusted developers.

Raise Interactive redesigns 11sandpiper.com

February 20, 2009

Raise Interactive is pleased to announce the redesign and relaunch of 11Sandpiper.com, a Hilton Head Island Vacation Home. 11 Sandpiper is located in the North Forest Beach region of Hilton Head Island, steps from the beach and right in the middle of shopping, dining and world famous golf. Check out the private putting green.  Check their calendar for availability and book your dream vacation!

Mistakes Small Businesses Make With Websites:

February 17, 2009

There a lot of bad websites on the web.  We are convinced that a bad website is worse than no website at all because it is often the first impression of your business and if it looks cheap or doesn’t work that is what customers will associate with your business.  We understand that small businesses don’t have marketing departments, or the time to research best practices, and best practices can often be very different for large and small companies; so mistakes get made.

We went through some recent sites that have come to our attention and made a list of some pitfalls that small businesses should avoid when designing and building a website.

1. Make a plan: I can’t tell you how many companies, both large and small seem to have a website because they think they need one.  The website has some basic information,  and maybe some pictures, but no real information and no sense of how people should go through it.  Small businesses need to have a plan before a site ever gets launched.

The first step is deciding what the site is for.  This step is often overlooked.  Is it an information sharing portal for your business holding store hours and contact information?  That is a very basic site and the focus should be on making sure it looks its best and gives the feel of the company it represents.  If the business wants to sell online they will need to decide how much of their product they want to sell online, how the inventory will be managed, and how the orders will come in.

Business owners need to think about how they want visitors to react to their sites and plan accordingly. You might design some pages as landing pages and others as pages that are design to be the second or third page viewed.

It also helps to completely design the site architecture, write out all the content on the site,  and pick any pictures that are going to be on the site.  While it doesn’t have to be set in stone, if all the content is ready before the first piece of code is written it will make the web site go up quicker and be more effective in the long term.

2. Avoid heavy use of flash, sound effects and other unnecessary bells and whistles: We know many designers who build only in Adobe Flash, and many do great work, however they are doing a serious disservice to 90% of their clients.  To search engine spiders and bots Flash is viewed as an image, which makes an all Flash page basically invisible to the search engines.  This makes it very difficult to achieve solid organic rankings in the Google, Yahoo, MSN and the other engines.  Through a strong link building campaign it is possible but it is a major handicap and in any competitive space it will be a real hindrance.

There are other sites that don’t use flash but are completely image based. These sites have the same problem as Flash sites, they are invisible to the the engines.   A good rule of thumb is if you can’t highlight, copy and paste the text than the search engines can’t see it.

A personal pet peeve of mine is websites that talk, play music or sound when you first arrive without giving you a choice.  There is a place for video on your site and those people who walk out and talk to customers, but if you surprise people with sound many will quickly back out or close their browsers.  Also, many prospects search from work computers and don’t want loud a video letting their co-workers know what sites they are viewing.  ESPN is a major offender of this and that is one of the major reasons I get most of my sports news from CNNSi.  The proper way to use video on your site is to start the video running with the mute on and a large button or slider to turn the volume on.  The customer can make the decision then if they want to hear the sound or not.

3. Don’t be overly ambitious: We see this a lot from small businesses but I think it is often the fault of the web designers.  Your site does not have to do everything imaginable, especially if it is the first site going up for a small business.  The site needs to portray the image and brand of the business and follow the plan that was set at the beginning.  It probably does not need customer forums, the ability to upload video, web 2.0 interactivity or any other buzz word.  Every one of those bells and whistles probably won’t be used and they can also break, making your site look bad. Focus on the plan and how you want visitors to react to your site.

We have also seen more and more small businesses with advertising on their site.  This is generally a bad idea for most small businesses.  We have worked so hard to get people to your site, why do you want to lead them off of it?

4. Too little content: Many sites have far too little content for what they are trying to accomplish.  We want clean sites that are not just long paragraph after long paragraph, but if handled correctly most websites could be much more content rich.  Users can click through to a new page, read an excerpt and decide to read more, or scan bullet points and then scroll down to read the whole article.  Let the user select how in-depth they want to get with your site, it will give your site more authority, keywords and build more trust with your customers.

5. Track the results: This is absolutely essential and something that small businesses do far too little of.  For a business website it is imperative to constantly track traffic to your site and see how visitors are reacting.  If 90% of the traffic that hits your home page leaves immediately, we probably have a problem.  You can also track paths and make sure visitors are reacting in the manner that you planned.  If not, make changes.  The tools are there, they just need to be used.

So those are 5 rules of mistakes that small businesses make when building  a new website.  If you have questions or would like more information about small business web design, just drop us a line. We are happy to run a free analysis on any site.

5 Rules For Small Businesses Considering Pay Per Click Advertising

February 14, 2009

In earlier posts we have talked about how pay per click advertising can make sense for many small businesses.  If  you have decided that it might make sense for your business there are some steps you can take to make sure that your campaign will be as successful as possible and won’t just be a money drain on your business.

1. Set a Cost per Conversion Maximum: This is a very important step that most small businesses skip.  A Cost per Conversion goal is the maximum amount a lead or sale can cost you and still be profitable. The first thing that you have to do is define what your “Goal” is.  For mot businesses online the goal is to make a sale at that time.  But for other businesses, more complicated sales process that involves at least one phone call or service industries, the goal might be the visitor filling out your lead form or making a phone call.  For retail businesses there is a relatively easy way to figure this out, just figure out your average profit per sale minus any shipping and handling costs; that is your Maximum Cost Per Conversion, or MCPC. It may seem like a zero sum number but if you provide a quality product and good service you should have repeat customers which won’t cost you anything next time.

For lead-based goals it is a more complicated process.  Basically businesses either figure out how many leads equal a sale or estimate how many it should take, take the average profit per sale and divide the two.  This will give you a good MCPC target that can be refined through the life of the campaign.

2. Choose Your Keywords Carefully: You know your business better than anyone so you know what the keywords in your business are.  But are these keywords actually bringing prospective clients to your business?  Many times small businesses choose keywords that are too general or that are industry words.  It is important to use tools like Google’s Keyword Tool to choose keywords that have a high search volume but are not too general or too competitive.  You are paying for every customer who walks through your virtual door, you want them to be as qualified as possible.  Narrow your keyword list down and then …

3. Refine Your Keywords by Using Phrase and Exact Match: All of the major paid search engines allow businesses to use different match types when they set up an account.  There are four different match types, broad match, phrase match, exact match, and negative match.  Broad Match means that if someone puts in any of the words in your keyword string your ad will come up.   Phrase Match keywords only show up if someone types the words into the Search Engine in the exact order that you entered them, but they can be part of a much larger string of words. Exact Match keywords only appear in the Search Engines if the visitor types in your phrase or string of keywords exactly, with no other terms.  Negative match keywords are words that businesses never want their ads to appear under.

The right match choice can make all the difference in your campaign.  When we work with small businesses we start with almost every word under exact match and track the impressions and click through rates.  If the account is not getting any traffic through exact match keywords we loosen up to phrase or broad match. This is the opposite of most agencies, which generally  deal with much larger budgets, who start with broad match and make decisions based on the results. That approach brings great results over a number of months but it is for businesses who can afford to lose money in the beginning for tracking purposes. Raise Interactive works with smaller businesses and we realize how important every dollar is to our clients so we keep our accounts pretty tight and we recommend that strategy to small businesses.

4. Install an Analytics Program and Track: If a small business is considering Paid Search they have to have a way to track results.  Your Adwords Account, or other search account, will only show you what page the visitor came to.  It won’t show you how they reacted to your site and how long they stayed on your site.  An Analytics program can track all of that and more.  It allows you to test your website and make changes based on user reaction, not guesses.

5. Make Changes Based on the Results: The real beauty of Pay Per Click Marketing is the ability to refine your campaign by watching user results.  You can test different keywords, landing pages and ads and focus on the most successful campaigns.  You can ease the restrictions on your keywords or tighten them based on results.  At this point you can revise your MCPC goals through the results.  There is also the matter of Quality Score, which makes your ads more cost effective over time, which we will address in a later post.

Pay Per Click Marketing might not be an effective strategy for some small businesses, but if handled correctly it can be a very effective and trackable part of most small businesses strategies. Contact Us Today with any questions.

Small Business Email Marketing

February 10, 2009

In Tuesday’s USA Today there is an interesting article about Virtual Response, one of the third party email transmission services we use.  One of the main things that I took away from it is that most businesses still do not use email to keep their customers informed.  As a matter of fact, they estimate that only 4% of small businesses use email marketing.  It is no secret that we are huge fans of email marketing for small businesses.  It is cost effective, easy to use and environmentally friendly.  But we have heard from several businesses that they don’t know why or how they would use email marketing, so we put together some scenarios.  See if any of these makes sense for your business.

Neighborhood Restaurant: Restaurants rely so much on repeat business.  An email marketing campaign would be deployed to keep customers coming back and recommending the restaurant to their friends.  We would collect email addresses in store through a free giveaway; drop your business card in the bowl for a chance to win a free lunch.  The winner would be announced every week on Monday through an email newsletter to everyone who dropped their business card.  The email would also include the weekly specials, any upcoming events and coupons designed to push traffic at slow times of the day.  It could provide news and hours as well as contact information.  Who wouldn’t want an email like that from their favorite restaurant?

Lawyers Office: Lawyers could use email marketing to stay top of mind with their clients and provide relevant news.  For professionals like lawyers, accountants or doctors we recommend an informative newsletter that educates the consumers about industry news and changes.  These are used to establish the firm or practice as the ultimate authority in the field.   We would only send out about one per month with a general interest article, news about the firm and any upcoming events, like tax season, that clients need to consider.

Mechanic’s Shop: No self respecting mechanic would market through email, right?  Well we can think of several ways a mechanic or other service professional could use email to improve their business.  Any business that is seasonal at all can use email marketing to push services and remind customers of needs.  Just before it gets warm a mechanic could let all his customers know about a special on air conditioning inspection and service.  Just as it got cold he could run a special on batteries and offer free testing.  Email can also be used to drive traffic to more profitable areas of the business or to let customers know about new services.

Realtors: Many Realtors already use email marketing and the Realtors who don’t should.  It is a cost effective way to deliver market information and news to a wide range of audience.  Any business that has a long product cycle can benefit tthrough staying top of mind with customers.  If the clients thought the Realtor did a god job when she sold them a house they should be more likely to trust her when the are ready to sell.  Staying in touch with an email newsletter every couple of months that is filled with market news and information will keep her in their thoughts and position her as the expert in the field.

Vacation Homes: Many people have a second or investment home that they rent out through sites like Vacation Rental by Owner.  These homeowners would be wise to collect email addresses from everyone who stays at the house and keep in touch with a monthly email newsletter.  The newsletter can highlight specials on weeks, show vacationers pictures and remind people of the great time they had at the house.  This makes it more likely the client will come back the next time they are going on vacation.

Neighborhood Associations: Many neighborhood associations have no idea how to share important information with homeowners.  Mail is too expensive, nobody wants to print and hand deliver 200 newsletters.  Why not get everybody on board with email?  With the click of a button the association can let everybody know about neighborhood news and events at a very low cost.

These are just some examples of people that we have worked with or ideas we have pitched in the past.  The key to every successful email campaign is to deliver relevant useful information to people who want it.  You don’t want to send out emails every day or with no information.  This will antagonize your customers make them think less of your business.  Its important that the emails look good and that they are professionally written.  Make it easy for them to unsubscribe.  Watch how many people open the email and how many click through to the website to make decisions on future emails.  This is a much different idea than SPAM or direct mail marketing through email.  That has its place, but we have found email to be most effective when used to increase repeat and referral business.  We are happy to share ideas with you on email marketing for small businesses, just give us a shout.

Affiliate Marketing for Small Businesses

February 4, 2009

It seems that affiliate marketing is still the misunderstood stepchild of online marketing and most small businesses don’t use it all. However, if it makes sense, affiliate marketing can be a major part of a marketing campaign for small businesses. So what is it and how can you use it?

Affiliate Marketing at its most basic is putting a independent sales force to work marketing your business who only get paid if the traffic they drive to your site actually converts. It should be a purely cost per action style of marketing, not pay per click, or pay per impression, but only paying when sale is made or a lead is generated. Wikipedia has an article on Affiliate Marketing that we think provides a good explanation and history.

So how do you do it? The easiest and most efficient way to start an Affiliate Program is to join one or more Affiliate Networks, such as Pepperjam, LinkShare, or Commission Junction. This puts your offer out to a huge number of affiliates, many more than you could find yourself. They also give you the tools to distribute approved advertising and set the terms for your campaign. All sales and traffic are tracked through a cookie and pixel system. When a prospective customer is on an affiliate site a cookie is dropped on their browser when they click through to the advertiser site. After they purchase from the advertiser a pixel fires on the confirmation page. This pixel transmits information back to the network, providing the affiliate id, the amount of the sale and other relevant information. The advertiser account is debited the predetermined percentage or amount and that amount is transferred to the affiliate.

Affiliates drive traffic to the advertiser sites through many means, including coupon sites, pay per click campaigns, review sites, email marketing and banner advertising. The best affiliates or Super Affiliates actually run businesses that focus solely on driving traffic to advertiser sites. They are professional and very good at what they do, and they are the people you want marketing your site.

This all sounds good right, so what are the downsides? Well there can be several reasons a small business might avoid affiliate marketing. The first is price. Advertisers need margins high enough to make money while still paying a competitive amount to the affiliates. There are also start up costs to any affiliate program: building the ads, network fees, monthly minimum fees, and the advertiser website might need upgraded. There are also fraud issues, and an affiliate program can take a lot of time to run properly, especially in the beginning.

There are firms, including Raise, that manage programs for advertisers. Would this make sense for your business? Check back as we will go over the what affiliate program managers do and their responsibilities.

Small Business Marketing vs. Large Corporate Marketing through TNT

February 3, 2009

I watched the TV show Trust Me last night.  It is a good show and I recommend it.  I’m a big fan of Tom Cavanagh, he was great on Ed and Scrubs,  and I like Eric McCormack fine.  The show hits home too, as they work in an advertising agency which I have some experience with.  While it is fiction some things that happened last night rang true and reinforced to me both the difference between big business marketing and small business marketing and some of the advantages that small businesses actually have over the big boys.

The storyline revolved around a tagline and whether it was stolen and how it tested in focus groups.  It just made me think how old and inefficient  the advertising process of large companies is.  Focus groups? Taglines?  These are not the most important things to bringing new customers to your business and actually improving your bottom line.  It used to be the only way but with the tools to track everything.  The punchline of the show was that two people were able to torpedo a good tagline in a focus group. That is not efficient!  Why use a focus group when the entire world can be your focus group, or at least the world that we are able to drive to your website.  You can see, almost in real time how visitors are reacting to offers on your site, the layout and the structure and if they are buying or filling out your contact form.  And the best part is that online we can change on a dime.

That is where I feel small businesses have a major advantage over larger competition.  Speed and flexibility.  If a strategy isn’t working, change it.  Now.  Small business don’t need to run ideas through commitees, deal with internal politics or focus groups.  If we are smart, we can use the tools available to make decisions based on what our customers want, not what we think they might want six months from now.  So use those advantages, be flexible and quick.  It is how David beat Goliath…

5 Tips For Small Businesses Considering a New Website

February 2, 2009

Small business web design is a different breed from enterprise level, or corporate web design, but most design companies do not make a differentiation.  Needs are different, budgets are different and goals are different.  We thought we would share a list of steps we take when we start a project and landmines to avoid.

1. Decide what you want the site to do:

Too many websites decide they need a site before they decide why.  One of the first things we do when we talk to a prospective client is ask them what they want the site to do.  Is it an online brochure?  Are you trying to sell things online? Are you trying to generate leads?  These are three completely different sites.

2. Do you need a custom site or does a platform make sense:

There are many good reasons for businesses to build a website completely from scratch, however this can be cost prohibitive for many small businesses.  Depending on your needs it may make more sense to build on a platform, such as WordPress, that allows you to build and edit the site in a very easy, inexpensive way.  And with all the widgets and plugins out there these sites can be pretty powerful. Our company site is built on the WordPress platform and it works for us.

3. Don’t overuse Flash or other image based platforms:

Flash is a great program, however text in images is basically invisible to Search Engines,which will hamper any type of an optimization campaign.  Get text out of images on your page.  A good rule of thumb is that if you can copy and paste the the text on your screen the Search Engines can crawl and index the information.

4. Decide all pages and write the content before you start:

Before you start building a site write the full site design including all the pages and sub pages.  Think about how you want the consumer to interact with your page and how you want visitors to travel through your site. Is a blog appropriate?  They are great for Search Engine Campaigns, but if you don’t update them they make your business look lazy or closed.  Write all the content for the pages before you start, it makes the process  easier and quicker.  You can always change it later.

5. Once you build test everything and test often:

Once your site is online test everything.  Test all the links, your contact form, and reproof the pages.  Things can break.  Sometimes a “small” change you think made can have cascading effects over the page.  Keep an eye on everything on the site, because a broken site can reflect poorly on your business.

Once your site is up and working, consider different marketing techniques.  Consider a Pay Per Click Campaign or a link building strategy.  Start a campaign to collect email addresses.  Keep your blog up to date, and talk to your customers.  Ask them what they think, how the site works for them, and watch your results.  Install an Analytics program like Google Analytics to keep track of how visitors interact with the site and check them often.  Make changes based on the results.  While you don’t want to make wholesale changes often, make small fixes and tweaks.  Remember, your website is often the first look visitors get at your business, and you don’t often get a second chance at a first impression.