Online Marketing

Twitter, a micro-blog with IM like capabilities with posts of 140 Characters or less, is spreading like wild fire. It has taken a prominent place in companies’ social media marketing strategies. Businesses use twitter to listen and carefully communicate with customers and prospects, share real-time news, monitor what people are saying about their company, for corporate branding, and product / service promotion.

The key to twitter is creating a slow, but steadily growing fan base. To create this fan base you need to make yourself worthwhile for others to follow you. Whenever you find something interesting that you think your followers would be interested in tweet it. You have to build a reputation on twitter for you to promote your business successfully. Using twitter you can easily promote your business online because it lets you be visible to the whole word, especially to your targeted followers, and help you grow your business.

We all know the old adage, "Sex sells", but we certainly recognize when the message is inappropriate for our business. The equivalent message in online advertising is, "Interactivity sells." If you can draw the user's eye and successfully get them to do something, you are on your way to winning new customers.

Be interactive, because when your customers feel compelled to action, they are one step closer to buying!

Not long ago, the only competitor you had to worry about was the business down the street, but with the growth of the internet you now have to worry about competitors throughout the nation and in some cases around the world. How do you sell products or services to your consumer when you are competing against millions? By standing out from the crowd.

To “Stand Out” you don’t have to change your products, or services, it just means, you have to change the way you present your products or approach your customer. Humans are emotional beings, we purchase things based on our emotions. If we have a bad experience with a company, even if the product or services are good, most likely we will try to find an alternative source. If you can win over your customer emotionally they won’t look to your competitors for the same goods or services.

Your website is a 24/7, on demand, advertising medium for your company and it needs to stand out, not only in the way it looks and feels, but also in the way it functions. With today’s advancements in web technology your customer expects more from your site then just few static pages and the who, what, where and why of your company. The functionality required depends on your industry. For example, A realtor that has just the contact information and introduction of services on their site is not impressive, today’s buyers and sellers are looking for featured properties, relocation packages, neighborhood information and other tools such as a mortgage calculator, and the ability to email a property to a friend.

A visitor to your site decides within seconds if they like your site and want to take the time to learn more about your company. The difference between getting a lead and just another visitor to the site is your ability to stand out and offer the experience the customer is looking for.

At Integrated Webworks when we structure “the solution” for you we will make sure we implement ideas that will allow you to stand out from the crowd. To do so, a lot of research, planning, and detailed understanding of your business is required. The more we learn about your business the better we can work for you.

Have you ever met a really well dressed person with no personality to back it up? That’s a good example of how it feels to find a well-designed website without quality content to keep you interested. You can’t gain long term customers with just a pretty face. Your content is the best way to build a long term relationship with your customers, but that’s not the only reason “content is king”.

Search Engines look at the content of a website more than anything else. A search engine can distinguish the quality of the content and use that rating as the most important value when placing your site. Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engine’s main job is to find the best and most useful content for a given search term. If you want to rank high in the search engines, you have to provide the most useful content for your customers. 

Speaking of customers, a user may be initially impressed by the look and feel of your site, that “wow” factor, but it’s not enough to keep them there for long, or to keep them coming back. Providing information that your customers can use is the main way to make people spend more tim e on your site. Integrated Webworks can advise you on the content of your site and, if needed, even outsource your content needs.

It’s also important to keep your information up to date. If you ate the same meal every night you would eventually get tired of it. A frequently updated site is necessary to stay on top of search engines and keep customers interest. Integrated Webworks can provide tools to update your site easily, allowing you to provide your customers with quality on-the-spot information.

In today’s social media landscape, good content is more important than ever. People are more willing and able to pass information around the web than ever before. If you can provide content that people are interested in, they WILL share it with the world. Services such as Twitter, Facebook, and a variety of mobile phone applications make sharing your information easy. When your customer shares your content online with a friend, that friend will share it with another, and soon your one customer will have multiplied to 10, 20, or more. Integrated Webworks provides social media integration to make it as easy as possible to share information with your customers.

So you’ve developed your new website and set it live for the entire world to see. What do you do now? How do you know if anyone is visiting and if so, who are they? That’s where your website statistics come in. At first glance they can be kind of daunting. What’s the difference between unique visitors and hits? Don’t worry, we’re here to help. We’ve made this no-nonsense explanation of your websites stats so you can see what’s working and not working on your website.

Here are some of the more important statistics to look at:

Unique Visitors – This is one of the more important statistics to look at. The unique visitor’s statistic counts every IP address (we’ll say, computer) that visits your website. That means that if a user visits your site more than once (from the same computer) they will still only be counted once. There is a drawback to this statistic though. If someone visits your site from two different computers, the same user will be counted twice. Here’s an example, let’s say a user visits your site from their work computer, then goes home and visits your site from there, that user will be counted twice even though it’s the same user because they used two different computers with different IP addresses. Even so, this statistic gives you the most accurate count of how many people are actually visiting your website than any other statistic.

Number of Visitors – This is the total number of visits made by all visitors during the past month.

Visits/Visitor – The total number of visits divided by the total number of visitors which will show you about how many times your visitors revisited your website during the past month.

Pages – This statistic counts all pages visited on your site, but does not count graphics and other non-page files like hits does.

Pages/Visit –Pages per visit is an average reading of how many pages are viewed by each user when on each visit to your site. This, along with visits duration which we’ll discuss later, is a good example of how good your site is at keeping people interested.

Hits – This statistic counts every single file that’s accessed on your website. Each image, page, script, etc. will be counted as a hit. This figure is often read as how many people are visiting your site. If you’re looking for the answer to that, look to unique visitors to give you a better idea. Let’s say you have a page with ten images on it. Every time a visitor refreshes that page on your website those images and the page will be downloaded again, that’s 11 hits each time the page is refreshed.

Bandwidth – For most websites you don’t really have to worry about this statistic unless it skyrockets unexpectedly. This is a reading of the total number of bytes downloaded, which includes all graphics, pages, and downloadable files accessed by users. If this reading does increase unexpectedly a good thing to check for is outside (offsite) linking of files or images which can be seen by reading the Links section of your stats program.

Visits Duration – We spoke about this statistic earlier. This statistic tracks how long visitors stayed on your site before leaving. If you notice that most of your visitors are leaving in the 30-60 second range, don’t worry, that’s not unusual as most people online are more impatient than they are in. Another possibility is that they could have found the information they needed quickly, which means your website is working. If, however, you notice that no one is staying longer than 60 seconds you may need to reevaluate your website.

Entry Page – This statistic tracks the number of visitors who entered your site on each page. The highest number is usually the “/” directory, your root directory, or your index page which means that the visitor most likely came in through your normal domain name.

Exit Page – The Exit Page statistic tracks the number of visitors who left your site after viewing a particular page. This can let you know where your problem pages are. Most of the time the highest figure on this statistic will be the home page or root directory just like your entry page stats due to impulsive visitors.

Links – Links found in this section show the number of visitors who found your site by clicking on outside links or links from other websites to yours. These are usually broken down into search engines and websites so you can see which sites are helping deliver the traffic you need to be successful.

Search Keyphrases and Keywords– These two sections list the phrases and individual words that visitors used in search engines to find your site. This can be helpful in learning what people visiting your site are most interested in. Beware though, due to spam bots exploiting this technology you may receive some strange phrases and words.

Now that you know what your statistics mean you can tell how your site is working to fulfill your goals. If you’re site isn’t working for you, Integrated Webworks can help you get the traffic you need. Check out our Internet Marketing section to find out how.

Your team at Integrated Webworks would like to thank all of you for your loyalty and good will throughout the year. Thanks to you our customers and partners we have been able to grow even during an economic slump. We are continuing to expand and grow our capabilities so we can provide both expanded services and exceptional websites, and applications. We pride ourselves on our client’s success. Your success literally means we've done our job right. 

We are looking forward to working with you to make sure 2010 is an exceptional year.

Integrated Webworks Holiday Schedule

Integrated Webworks will be closed on December 24th-27th and December 31st-January 3rd. If you have an emergency during this time please contact John Padgette at 904-279-0279 ext. 708.

Sincerely,

The Team At Integrated Webworks

 

 

How do you know if the web development firm you've chosen to represent your business online has your best interests at heart? There are signs that can help you spot companies out to take advantage of you and choose the right one. Integrated Webworks has some tips to help you find the right company that can best bring your project to fruition.

The company should be interested in your business more than closing the deal.

If a company is too hungry then they'll do whatever they can to wring every last dollar they can out of your pocket. Go with a company that is calm and collected in their dealings and can provide you with the security you need to know you're getting a good deal.

Look for a "One-Stop-Shop" that can handle all the aspects of a project's development.

There's nothing worse than getting to the middle of a project and finding out that you have to find another company to complete the job.

Does the company handle your project in-house or outsource part or the entire project?

Some companies are just sales offices and the real development is done overseas. Much needed changes can sometimes take days to finish in this kind of company. You need a development firm that can product quick turnarounds and has the needed staff in-house to handle your project.

Does the company take time to understand your project and give you THE solution rather than a possible solution?

In the end there is only one solution that fits YOUR project. If a company is giving you a grab bag of possible solutions, then they aren't doing their job. Why should you have to do the job you're paying them for?

Does the company give a detailed proposal, take the time to explain it, and answer any questions you have?

If a company is hiding behind legal and technical jargon and is afraid to explain a proposal so that you can understand it, then it's not the right company for you.

Does the company provide a detailed process on the execution of the project?

You should know every step of the way how a company is doing on your project. You should know what phase of a project you are in and what each phase means. It's their job to provide you with a schedule and a plan for your project and update you promptly if something has changed.

Does the company provide referrals from past clients?

If a design and development firm is afraid to stand behind their past clients, do you think they will stand behind you once the job is done? Companies should provide a portfolio of past projects as well as references and referrals from past clients.

Follow these few tips and you should have no problem making your next project an easy-going, stress free, and successful venture.

The web is always growing and changing and people are constantly coming up with new ideas to help make things better both for the user and the developer. HTML5 and CSS3 are the newest changes to come to the web. There are a ton of new features that will make it easier on your users to both find and understand the content on your site. Some of these features add functionality like Video and Audio, some help with search engine optimization like the new structure tags, some help understanding like the new form tags and some just make the web look better like CSS3 drop shadows. In a series of articles we’ll go over these new functions and how they can help you and your visitors.

Lets take a look at HTML 5 first…

Page Structure

HTML5 introduces some new formatting tags to control the organization of a web page. This will help search engines and browsers understand the content of the page leading to higher search engine rankings for your site. These include the:

• < header >
  Typically a headline or grouping of headlines, but may also contain other information about a section.


• < na v >
  Defines the navigation or menu area, typically a list of links and should be contained in a section, header, or footer.


• < section >
  A section is a group of content that is related and can be nested inside of each other to organize information.


• < article >
  An individual entry in a blog, magazine, compendium, etc.


• < aside >
  An aside indicates content that is tangentially related to the rest of the page.


• < footer >
  The footer of a page typically containing information like copyright, who created or wrote the document, links to related documents, etc.

You can see how this new organizational framework would work in the chart below:

As you can see if it’s that much easier for a normal person to read, Google and Yahoo’s complex search engines should have an even easier time finding the appropriate content on a page.

Forms

HTML5 also added new functionality to forms. Most browsers do not support these functions yet, but we’ll show you on an Apple iPhone, Opera browser, and Safari browser how useful these new functions can be.

The new form functions include:

• Search
  When you start to type in the search field a small X appears to let you clear the field.




• Tel
  You’ll notice in the example that the iPhone’s number keyboard is enabled when the field is clicked.




• url
  You’ll notice in the example that the iPhone’s keyboard is enabled when the field is clicked.




• Email
  This field will check for certain characters like an @ and a . to make sure the email address is valid.




• datetime, date, month, week, time, and datetime-local
  Depending on your options this will either show a date picker, or a field to select a time or a combination of the above.




• Number
  This field only allows you to input a number or select the number by increments.




• Range
  This field brings up a new slider allowing you to select a certain range.




• Color
  This brings up your browsers color picker allowing you to select a color, but is not supported in any browser at this time.

In addition to these new fields there are also some improvements to how these fields work such as:

• Autofocus
  This allows you to set which field you want the users cursor to appear in when they enter the page.


• Placeholder
  This tag allows you to inset placeholder text into a field explaining what the field is for, when clicked this text then disspears.

Video and Audio

The < video > element is probably what most users are going to be excited about in HTML5 and as you probably figured out, it allows you to play a movie in your website. This tag can also contain images or audio associated with it in addition to video.

You may say, but I already have video on my website using flash! Well, that’s in the past now and to be honest, Flash is kind of clunky. First of all your users have to have a plugin to even see your flash video. To deal with the second, lets take a look at how the video is called into the page.

Here’s the old way:

Now here’s the new HTML5 way.

Not only is it easier to implement and much cleaner, but utilizing some of the options for video in HTML5 we can have a screenshot of the video appear and some text telling them where to download the video if their browser doesn’t support HTML5.

The HTML5 audio tag works in much the same way enabling sound on your website. Just think, you won’t have to worry about telling all your visitors to download multiple plug ins to see the content of your site. They’ll have everything they need already!

Coming Soon: CSS3’s new features

If you haven’t been keeping your blog up to date and focused more in favor of faster and simpler social media outlet like Twitter, you might want to rethink that strategy. Finding out what types of search terms and phrases you need to be targeting your listings in the search engines is dire. Putting together some content for your blog and then going to those social sites like Twitter, Facebook to help generate links and traffic back to those posts will be greatly beneficial to your company, because you want potential clients. A simple “tweet” can potentially generate buzz, but a blog can offer much more in the end. Numbers help show the potential growth, up to 55% more visitors to the website, 67% increase in leads. Here are some tips to how blogs can help a business grow:

                                                          

#1: Link Building

A blog can generate an average 97% increase in inbound links as to posting a “tweet” with a link and some added commentary may not get any response. Well written blogs rarely lack inbound links thus lending information to each page making it easier for visitors to find, web sites tend to point back to the primary URL.

#2: Outbound Links

Blogs will tend to link to external resources, information and sites. Business web sites will restrict their outbound links due to the concerns about distracting visitors from a potential sale. The ability to link freely to other sites is an important key in establishing the blog as a true resource and generating additional inbound links down the road.

#3: Keyword Potential

Websites have limits to how many pages can stream content before you begin to overwhelm the visitor and detract from sales. This usually leads to being very streamlined where only bits of information are given, limiting the number of keywords that can targeted. Adding new content allows a greater focus in order to target as many searches as possible.

#4: Freshness of Content

One major difference of blogs and standard web sites is through availability of updates to the content. Blogs will tend to be updated frequently as opposed to corporate sites being more stagnant. Using frequent content additions, blogs quite attractive to search engines and integrating your blog into your primary domain can help increase visitors to the main site as well.

#5: Credibility

Corporate websites will tend to be very conversion process driven; therefore limiting how comfortable a consumer can feel learning about a purchase. Blogs can allow a business to gain a wider range in a search by offering multiple opportunities to connect with the target audience increasing the likeliness they'll link head back to your site, bookmarking for a future purchase.

 

If you still think blogging isn’t worth the time investment, think again. Here at Integrated Webworks, we develop the blog straight into the website’s domain to give the client the best usage of their website in order to help get their name out and make a mark. Sites like Facebook and Twitter only offer a little value due to their high number of users, but a blog will give a chance to help  focus on what the company can offer to potential clients in a more professional way than just a post on a wall.

If someone was to come up to you and tell you that every person will own a cell phone, would you think they were crazy for asking that? What if that happened ten, maybe fifteen years ago, how would you have responded? Today, it is very hard to find a person without a phone or portable device of some kind that isn’t connected to the internet. We need to stream our content on the fly when were not at home, and our phones do this for us. Our phones are incredible little devices but have nowhere near the computing power of their larger cousins. When we want to pull up a webpage on our computer, it can take mere seconds to download thousands of bytes of information through text, pictures, videos and applications. Due to the limitation of the screen size on these smart phones, we came up with mobile versions of our favorite sites.

Popularity in mobile devices like Blackberries , iPhones and now Android powered smartphones are increasing daily more companies are now looking into their websites and services to be viewed on these devices without any hassle. Today's advanced mobile phones come with fast processers, significant Internet capabilities and unique interfaces like large touch screens or a mini keyboard. These phones have become a favorite with those who want quick access to information at their fingertips while still on the move.

Mobile website designs are becoming increasingly more popular in recent times, companies and businesses around the world are increasingly tapping into gaining information on the move. This creates a large number of people trying to access the Internet via their mobile devices. Here at Integrated Webworks, we are now offering mobile website design as a forefront technology.  Whether the mobile site is just a slimmed-down version of their site where only some links or articles are displayed or near recreations of the desktop version, Integrated Webworks is looking into bettering your experience.

Are there any benefits for my business that a mobile website can offer? Tons. What if it’s not for me you ask? Of course it is. Any business can benefit from the use of a mobile website. Banks can allow their clients to gain access their accounts and make changes. Restaurants can post their menus to help someone see what type a food they offer, they then link to something like Google or Bing maps that can give the person the location and directions to the restaurant. Not optimizing for mobile web access is ignoring a huge potential customer base; businesses are becoming increasingly aware to have mobile-friendly websites. Your business cannot ignore this change in technology either. Having an inferior mobile web-face, or lack of, can damage a business and cause any potential customers to move on to a business with a more accessible site.

With the ever growing broadband users in the United States, and the move to faster connection speeds, video has become a mainstream tool. You only need to look at the most popular sites on the Internet and see that Youtube is the 3rd most popular website in the world. It is estimated that 77% of Internet users in the United States have broadband access. If you’re not using video on your website yet, then you’re missing out on a great opportunity to increase customer awareness.

As you are undoubtedly aware, web video is massive right now, and there is a lot of potential you may be missing out on if you are not using videos to promote your business, either on video sharing websites, or on your own website. Putting a video onto a website can seem quite intimidating if it’s something you never done it before. A very convenient option is to go through Youtube, Google Video, or Yahoo video and others that can embed the video on your website and make your site more attractive to visitors and more effective in communicating your message. But problems can arise like the video is taken down or the video quality isn’t that great. Embedding from another site can cause distractions to the viewer from your site and have them turn away to a site like Youtube.

If you are new to the whole Internet marketing and are still struggling to have your website set up, one of the most important things about doing business on the web is getting the formula right for getting your sales. One of the best ways to keep visitors glued to your pages is using video to convey some type of message. Depending on what you have to sell or the goal of your site, video can enhance the experience for the people who search for what you have to offer.

Videos offer an experience of sight, sound and emotional pull that can make people laugh, cry or feel excited with a well edited video. The goal of course is to increase your conversion rate. When people are in a heightened state, they will be more likely to follow your lead.

Some websites use a short flash based video on the website to allow quick review of the subject matter and to get everyone interested in seeing more. The benefit of that alternative is that the viewer can determine from the quick introduction whether the subject matter is what they were looking for. HTML5 is rising as capable competitor to Adobe’s Flash as a faster and less computer memory intensive.

At Integrated Webworks, we pride ourselves in offering our clients the best of what is available. Focusing on what the client’s needs of integrating interactive media and video into the design of their site is just one of our chief goals.

E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. The term is usually used to refer to sending emails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business, as well as adding advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers.

Traditional direct marketing has the 40/40/20 rule, 40% of your success is dependent on the audience, 40% on the offer and 20% on everything else. Email marketing has the 90/10 rule where 90% of your success is dependent on the subject line and 10% on everything else. When a promotion or newsletter pulls in unexpected results, the first thought is to point the finger in the direction of the subject.

There are both advantages and disadvantages to using e-mail marketing in comparison to traditional advertising mail.

Advantages

An exact return on investment can be tracked and has proven to be high when done properly. E-mail marketing is often reported as second only to search marketing as the most effective online marketing tactic. Advertisers can reach substantial numbers of e-mail subscribers who have opted in to receive e-mail communications on subjects of interest to them. Over half of Internet users check or send e-mail on a typical day. E-mail is popular with digital marketers allowing them to reach out to consumers with personalized, relevant, dynamic messages.

Disadvantages

E-mail services companies face problems that e-mail deliverability is still an issue for legitimate marketers. Legitimate e-mail servers averaged a delivery rate of 56%; twenty percent of the messages are rejected, and eight percent are filtered.

Companies considering the use of an e-mail marketing program must make sure that they do not violate spam laws such as the United States' Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, the European Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, or their Internet service provider's acceptable use policy.

Opt-In

Opt-in e-mail advertising, or permission marketing, is a method of advertising where the recipient of the advertisement has consented to receive it. This method is one of several developed by marketers to eliminate the disadvantages of mass e-mail marketing.

A common example of opt-in marketing is a newsletter sent to an advertising firm's customers. In this type of advertising, a company that wants to send a newsletter to their customers may ask them at the point of purchase if they would like to receive the newsletter. Ideally, opt-in e-mail advertisements will be more personal and relevant to the consumer.

Social Networking

One example is incorporating Facebook into e-mail marketing campaigns to marry e-mail with word-of-mouth marketing. Social media is becoming a focus of e-mail marketing strategies. Recently, companies have been setting up a social sharing program to allow their clients — small and midsize businesses, nonprofits and agencies — to incorporate Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn into their e-mail newsletters and campaigns. The goal is to provide a platform for engaged supporters to discuss the film and issues it raises, as well as to encourage support as the document is released across the country. Incorporating a Facebook “like” button directly in the e-mail, as opposed to driving people to its Facebook fan page in the near future is a great way of an aspect of social media into emails.

Email marketing can bring you closer to your clients letting you connect better with them. At Integrated Webworks, we can help establish a strategic plan to implementing an email marketing campaign from planning and designing all the way to monitoring the progress on our own in-house software for different mailing platforms.

 

Businesses are always looking into finding ways to grow their business and they see the internet as a place to do just that. The confusion is knowing where to start from or which, of many paths to take. Working with the right web marketing company can make or break your internet marketing success. There are many ways to get traffic to your website, but which one is best for your business depends on many factors.

Getting new traffic to your website and turning new visitors into leads, or better yet a sale, is the single largest request we get from business's contacting us for internet marketing services. The problem may be that nobody can find your website or the problem may be the visitor that does find your website never turns into a lead.

One unfortunate fact is very evident for business websites; despite having plenty of liquid assets at their disposal, many corporations are lost in bland Microsoft Word-esque designs that have become more mundane than going to a museum.

While designers know that a user’s experience on a website has a large impact on the way that customer will interact with them, impressing that concept on the business establishment has taken a very long time. Trends in design are making their way into corporate web, albeit slowly; with patience and a little luck, businesses will soon start to consider carefully coded and appropriately functional design as important as their mission statement and recent sustainability reports.

Overall design for your website should be simple, but pleasing the potential client without being too bland or having them get lost in the site. You want to wow the viewer with visual appeal, but also try to get them into the buying process to either buy a product,return later to continue business or find out more information. At Integrated Webworks, we will always work with you to apply the best possible solution to your web site and facilitate your design needs.