Web Site Solutions Blog

Design – Host – Market

Well, we’ve been very busy the past few months. One of our biggest clients, Dan Fulwiler Painting & Decorating, requested our web development services for their new Bargain Shopping Site.
This bargain shopping site was designed as a customer appreciation site to assist Dan Fulwiler’s customers with comparing prices online, while helping them save money, gas and time. The site has tons of top name stores such as; Walmart, Macy’s, KazooToys, Netflix, Overstock, Ebay and more – along with all the current deals, bargains, specials, coupons and rebates offered. Best yet – they’re all in one place.

They’ve already begun getting some very positive feedback on this new addition to their site. It’s a bit high maintenance, as it requires daily updates. We’re ready to meet that requirement and believe bargain shoppers everywhere will find this comparison shopping site a great online resource!

Internet Explorer dropped slightly to about 80% of the market share, Firefox gained a little coming in around 18%. Safari, Netscape and Opera remained the same. IE 7 was also released, but it is not compatible with many Windows operating systems, which may explain the decrease rather than an increase.
Have you tried IE7? Let us know what you think.

The 6 C’s Of Marketing Unleashed
Okay, so we have all learned about the 4P’s of marketing in undergrad: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. If not, you can open up one of your old marketing text books, blow off the dust and read about it there. The 6 C’s, however, is a not a concept that replaces the 4 P’s; rather, it just expands on the promotion element and provides a more granular approach to consumer marketing.

CUSTOMER:

In this day and age, a company’s marketing strategy needs to be customer focused. It’s about understanding the target consumer; their wants, needs and motivations. Not as demographics, psychographics or any other graphics, but as real people. Its understanding why customers do what they do (or don’t do),when they do it and why they do it. Such knowledge is critical in marketing since having a strong understanding of buyer behavior will help shed light on what is important to the customer. It’s about focusing on the target customer first and then working back to the brand. It’s imperative that companies have mindshare before focusing on market share.

CONSISTENCY:

Companies need to maintain consistency in their message; a practice called integrated marketing communications – from packaging and advertising to sales promotion and publicity. This will maintain and reinforce a brand’s personality and image in a real life context and avoid doing something brainless like changing the distinctive color of the UPS truck to orange. I am sure it’s been talked about.

CREATIVITY:

Creativity is imperative to attract attention in a world cluttered with thousands of messages. Creativity means laying aside the rules, and engages in out-of-box thinking so that marketers can reach beyond logic and structure and tap into their imaginations.

* Creativity Informs: Marketing’s responsibility to inform is greatly enhanced by creativity. Creativity makes marketing more vivid, and many researchers believe vividness attracts attention, maintains interest, and stimulates consumers’ thinking.

* Creativity Persuades: The ancients Greeks created legends and myths about gods and heroes -symbols for humankind’s instinctive longings and fears – to influence human behavior and thought. Today’s marketers are doing the same thing; they are creating new myths, heroes and symbols like Ronald McDonald, the “Can You Hear Me Now” guy from Verizon, and more recently the Gecko from Geico Insurance.

* Creativity Reminds: Imagine using the same invitation, without any creativity, to remind people to try a particular product everyday for a month. The invitation would become stale very quickly. Only creativity can transform boring reminders into interesting, entertaining marketing communications. Nike is proof. Several commercials in a Nike campaign never mention the company name or even spelled it out on the screen. Each communication told a story. And, the only on-screen cue identifying the sponsor was a single “swoosh” logo inscribed on the final scene.

CULTURE:

All marketing communications needs cross-cultural research to be able to succeed. It’s simple to see things from your own perspective, assuming that everyone else in the world thinks exactly like you and should understand what’s so great about your product or service. Just reading about all the mistakes made by large corporations proves that even the most sizable and experienced marketers have made errors time and again.

One of the most famous examples is Coca Cola translating the name into Chinese without back-translating it (“bite the wax tadpole”), ultimately resulting in a horrible response from an insulted society. Marketing books are full of examples like these. As David Ogilvy, known as the Father of Advertising, states, “If you are trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language in which they think”.

COMMUNICATION:

This one is basic. Consumers don’t want to be “marketed to”. Rather, they want to be “communicated with”. Good marketing communication creates value with target customers, speaks in their language and tells your story. It’s about building long term, trustworthy, and profitable relationships with your customers. As Seth Godin states, it’s about reinforcing the lies that consumers tell themselves everyday (i.e. I look much better in these jeans from Abercrombie; they make me look sexy).

CHANGE:

Marketing is not just a business function, but a process. There is a beginning, middle, but there is never an end. Marketers must constantly CHANGE as society changes. They should never be afraid to try something new. Marketing today is not what it was 2 – 5 – or even 20 years ago. Marketing needs to be an evolving process that considers change in the world, economy, market, consumers; as well as internal change within the organization.

Conclusion (not the 7th C)

So there it is; the 6 C’s of marketing – Customer, Consistency – Creativity – Culture – Communication and Change. I am sure that these will be published in every text book in the country within the next ten years and I will be a rich, well known author. Yeah right!

To read more about new, emerging marketing strategies, please visit this internet marketing blog. Michael Brito specializes in online marketing and offers web site positioning strategy services for small businesses.

Before we dive into SEO, we believe it is important to define our search engine optimization services. SEO refers to the manipulation of a site in order to gain top organic listings on the top three search engines that dominate search traffic on the net – Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Our Goal:

We want your prospective customers to easily find your site, when searching for your types of products and services online. We believe that competent, ethical search engine optimization services are important, because in order to accomplish the task, the seo will need full access to your web site and server. Above all, choose a company you trust.

Things we will not do:

We will not use spamming techniques on the search engines. Such as excessively repeated keywords, cloaking, hidden text, alt text stuffing, invisible links, Meta “refresh”, etc. or any other technique that would get a site banned or penalized by the search engines.
We will not use spam email to advertise sites.
We will not use pop-up ads or pop-under ads to advertise a site.
We will not submit sites to spam search engines or link farms.
We will not accept requests for our SEO services, from our client’s competitors.

Web-Site-Solutions Search Engine Optimization Includes:

Complete web site review, analysis and report to identify your needs.
Full keyword effectiveness index analysis.
In-depth competition analysis.
Isolation keyword analysis
Link popularity examination and inclusions
Local search optimization.
Search Engine submissions.
Industry specific directory submissions.
Directory and search engine submission confirmations.
Web site statistics and analytics reports before and after seo.
30-day reviews for a minimum of 3 consecutive months.

OPTIONAL SERVICES:

Creation of a search engine and user-friendly sitemap.
Creation of a blog, to boost your rankings in Google and attract more visitors.
Linking campaigns (One-way and Reciprocal) to build your link popularity, which will boost your rankings in Google.
Google Ad-Words marketing campaigns.
Pay per click advertising campaigns.
Hosting plans include 24/7/365 support, real-time web site statistics, free WordPress Blog and 99.9+% uptime since 1997.

We offer quarterly and annual contracts on search engine optimization starting at just $18.00 per hour. The amount of time we dedicate to optimizing a web site, is determined by the company we provide our services to.

To find out more visit our site: Wisconsin Internet Marketing and SEO

Or read our previous post on the top 11 Search Engine Optimization Tips for webmasters.

Alliance Web Site Solutions now offers online chat as a support option for current customers and potential customers alike.

We will be online Monday – Friday from 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. CST
If at anytime we are temporarily offline or assisting other customers, you can leave a quick message and we’ll get right back to you.

Alliance Web Site Solutions consistently strives to provide an unsurpassed level of customer service and technical support.

Visit us today: Wisconsin Web Designers

Many introverts dismiss pursuing a career in sales, believing it would be a wrong fit for a reserved, reflective personality. But introverts could miss out on this potentially lucrative career choice.

Jacques Werth, president of High Probability Selling, a sales training company in Media, Pennsylvania says, “I’m an introvert, and I have had a highly successful sales career for almost 50 years.”

So Why are Introverts Good Salespeople?
“The old stereotype of the salesperson who is a back-slapping, happy-talking extrovert is as obsolete as the sales techniques those people used — and are still using,” says Werth. “The new, far more effective sales paradigm is based on mutual trust, mutual respect, mutual agreements and mutual commitments.”

The typical introvert has several key strengths for sales:

Composure: Most introverts exude composure and self-control, both of which put potential customers at ease.

Listening Ability: A good listener is another common introvert trait.
How important is it to listen to the needs of customers and match those needs to a product or service? Would you prefer to buy from someone who carefully listens to your needs or from someone who talks while you talk and pushes his own agenda?

Relationship Building: The typical introvert is a natural at the most critical sales skill of all – the ability to build relationships.

Marti Olsen Laney, author of “The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World” says, “Introverts actually excel at building long-term relationships, so they do a great job of developing and maintaining a reliable customer base and/or territory,” even more so than “extroverts”, says Laney, who has counseled introverted sales professionals selling everything from books and cancer treatments to high tech training and technical-support services. And because introverts “are good listeners who focus on both the customer’s overt and underlying messages, they tend to do a good job of satisfying what their customers really want.”

Sales strategist Leslie Ungar, president of Akron-based consulting company Electric Impulse, says, “Often we think of the used-car guy when we think of a salesperson. If you look at sales from what I call a 21st-century perspective — asking questions and finding needs rather than talking someone into something, as telling rather than selling and becoming a peer rather than a vendor — then you will look at sales through a different lens.”

Believe in What You’re Selling

“Introverts are particularly effective salespeople when they have genuine conviction about their products or services,” says Rob Bennett, author of Passion Saving: The Path to Plentiful Free Time and Soul-Satisfying Work. “The [potential] problem with sales work for introverts is that introverts are uncomfortable putting forward any sort of false front or show,” says Bennett. He stresses, you can be successful as an introverted salesperson if you have “a strong belief in the value of the product or service being sold.”

So for all you introvert’s out there consider sales, customers appreciate your qualities.

The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 prohibits “misleading” domain names and links. The US Congress passed a bill into law aimed at protecting children from predators online. The law dictates how hyperlinks and domain names leading to sexual content may be presented.

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, “The protection of our Nation’s children has been, and will continue to be, one of the Department’s highest priorities, and we believe this bill will help us do our job even better.”

“America’s children will be better protected from every parent’s worst nightmare — sexual predators — thanks to passage of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006. I applaud both the House and Senate — and in particular the leadership of Chairman Specter in the Senate and Chairman Sensenbrenner in the House — for passing this comprehensive bill, which includes provisions proposed by the Department of Justice.”

View the language of section § 2252B of the bill, entitled “Misleading domain names on the Internet”

Some people are already criticizing it as a violation of free speech. Most are just internet pornographers who want the ability to peddle their images to our children using deceptive methods. I think the safety of our children is far more important. I say, the porn peddlers are adults who can fend for themselves. We need to do everything within our power to protect our children.

1) Title Tags – The title tag is the most powerful on-site SEO technique you have, so use it creatively! What you place in the title tag should only be one thing, the exact keyword phrase you used for the web page that you are trying to optimize. Every single web page should have it’s own title tag. Never use “Home” or “Page 1” or “New Page”, etc.

2) ALT Tags – ALT tags were meant to be for text browsers because the images didn’t show in text browsers and the ATL tags would tell the visitor what it’s about. You should put your main keyword(s) in the ALT tags, but don’t over do it because you could get dropped in the search results or even worse banned.

3) Link Popularity – Link popularity is the most powerful SEO tool out of all them. Most search engines don’t even consider web sites if there is not at least one or two links pointing to the web site. Having another site(s) link to your web site is important when it comes to getting your site a good ranked well. Your keywords should be in the links you get and keep the keywords short. When you receive requests for a link exchange, check the site out before linking with them, check for spam (Repeat keywords, hidden text, etc.).

4) Keyword Density – This is also vital and should be used with research. You should use the keyword(s) once in the title tag, once in the heading tag, once in bold text, and get the density between 5% to 20% (Don’t over do it!). Also use your keyword(s) both low and high on the web page; keyword(s) should be in the first sentence and in the last one.

5) Page Size – Your web page’s speed is important to your visitors and the search engines. Why? Because the robots will be able to spider your web page faster and easier. Try your best to keep your web page over 5k and under 15k in size.

6) Rich Themes – Search engines are looking at themes more and more. Build content (Articles, FAQ, tips, etc.) as much as possible and keep the web pages around 200 to 500 words. Create content that’s related to your market and link them out to other related content on your site. The more web pages you have, the more listings you will get.

7) Web Site Design – This is also important, if you want to get indexed! Text content should out weigh the
HTML content. The pages should validate proper HTML code and be usable in all of today’s leading browsers. Stay away from flash and Java Script, search engines dislike them both a lot.

Cross Linking – This will help you get all of your web pages indexed by the search engines. Your web pages should be no more than three clicks away from the home page. Link to topic related quality content across your site. This will also help build you a better theme through out your web site. On every page you should link back to your home page and your main service(s).

9) Create a user-friendly sitemap, it is recommended by Google.

10) Creation of a blog will boost your rankings in Google and attract more visitors.

11) Linking campaigns (One-way and Reciprocal) to build your link popularity, which will boost your rankings in Google.

Web analytics and analysis offer the best opportunity for gauging your web site optimization and keyword effectiveness. I highly recommend Hitslink and SmarterStats web analytics programs for webmasters.

Kathleen Fulwiler is the owner of ALLIANCE Web Site Solutions www.web-site-solutions.net

Color can have a profound impact on your prospective buyers. The wrong colors can negatively impact your sales, while the right colors can trigger positive emotions motivating your visitors to buy from you.

Color can affect how we feel and influence what we think. In general, bright bold colors tend to stir us up, while the softer pastel colors calm and relax us. Responses to colors can vary by age, gender and cultural background.

Colors affect how a potential buyer reacts to your web site. Carefully select your color scheme for your web site and web header. Consider your business, business cards, letterhead, any print materials, brochures and advertising.

Being consistent creates a sense of stability for customers and optimizes marketing for brand awareness and name recognition.

Here are some guidelines to help you make good color choices.

1.) Use common sense.

2.) Keep the number of colors down to two or three, and no more.
This does not include the addition of photos; which can have a whole range of colors, but should not clash.

3.) Make sure that all of the colors you use work well together and do not clash.

4.) Consider your audience. For example, if your web site primarily targets men, use strong, bold colors. If your target audience is women, choose soft, pastel colors. If your focus is on children, choose bright, vibrant colors.

5.) Choose colors that are appropriate for your web site’s topic. For example, green works well for web sites about starting a home business, making money, and reducing debt.

6.) Communicate your message with easy-to-read text. Use colors for text that will contrast with the background color, so your text is readable. For example, a dark font on a light background is easy to read and easy on the eyes.

7.) Consider the mood you want to create. Remember that emotions trigger sales. People buy what they want – not just what they need.

The list below will show you how colors can affect us in different ways. Take advantage of the impact color can have on your online sales and choose colors that will create positive responses.

Red – Action, energy, strength, passion, fire, heat, power, attention getting. Can also mean love and romance. It’s a strong masculine color. Red is a good color for a “call-to-action”. Red is cheerfulness, excitement, and warmth. Pink is a soft version of red. It is most associated with romance, calming affect; a feminine color.

Blue – Confidence, travel, freedom, truth, professionalism, wealth and power. Also tranquility, dependable, acceptance, patience, understanding, cooperation, comfort, loyalty and security. It is one of the most calming colors and is associated with the sky and the sea, intelligence, reassurance, and trust. Blue has also been known to be an appetite suppressant, so it would not be good for cookbooks or recipe sites but you can consider it for diet web sites.

Green – Money, wealth, prosperity, calm, health, nature, hope, growth, freshness, soothing, sharing, and responsiveness. Green symbolizes spring, renewal, and fertility.

Orange – Health and vitality, autumn, youthfulness, fire, steadfastness, courage, confidence, friendliness, food, cheerfulness, warmth, excitement and energy. Has been known to stimulate the appetite. Vibrant and warm, orange is associated with autumn and the earth.

Yellow – Light, purity, understanding, caution, brightness, intelligence, joy, organization, Springtime. Yellow often represents sunshine, warmth, light, energy and happiness.

Purple – Dignity, sophistication, creativity, spirituality and mystery. Deep purple is associated with royalty and richness, while lavender is associated with romance and nostalgia.

Brown – Credibility, stability, the hearth, home, the earth, wood, comfort and strength. Brown can be used as a neutral or a warm color.

Black – Space, night, authority, dramatic, classy, committed, serious, power, elegance, and sophistication.

White – Purity, peace, perfection, fresh, easy, cleanliness, goodness, and spirituality. Worth noting here, white represents life and marriage in Western cultures, but it represents death and sorrow in Eastern cultures.

Grey – A conservative color, symbolizing security, maturity and reliability.

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