Smart Solutions Blog

As you might have heard, Microsoft is ceasing support for Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) as of July 13, 2010, when it stops support for Windows XP SP2.  This isn’t bad news. This nine year-old browser is showing its wear and doesn’t cut it with today’s web standards.

The higher-performing and more design-savvy websites of today require the latest versions of modern browsers for the best user experience. Considering both realities—support and performance issues—we want to encourage our customers to ask their viewers to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, Firefox or Safari for a better web experience.  Supported browsers for admin include the latest two versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox

Our team doesn’t mind supporting older browser versions and understand some government agencies and companies use it.  However, since working with IE6 is becoming ever more difficult, an extra fee for its support will be necessary moving forward.

We appreciate your understanding.  If any additional browser-related questions come up, don’t hesitate to contact our team.  Or, if you’re interested in the latest browser trends and statistics, check out:

http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

http://gs.statcounter.com/

For awhile now, our team has utilized Mind Mapping, from the tools from a great client, Mindjet.  Mind Mapping has assisted in organizing client’s site architecture while easily and quickly highlighting areas of weaknesses for content structure.    Recently, KM World Magazine interviewed Smart Solutions and posted an article, titled Enriching Web Sites and Engage Customers Better.

Excerpt:
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Firms that rely on advanced Internet services for their marketing, customer relations and other business processes are turning to knowledge management solutions that measure customer response to Web sites, in order to improve traffic and to identify customer preferences so they can retain them and boost sales.

Smart Solutions, a software and Web development company, was working with a local nonprofit firm that wanted to redevelop its Web site to gain new members and achieve higher attendance at events, many of them fundraisers.

“The non-profit wanted to drive traffic to the site, then have visitors engaged in a meaningful way,” says Smart Solutions President Mark Knowles. Smart Solutions was using MindManager 8 from Mindjet for meetings and to collect relevant information from the Internet and other resources. A feature of the software enabled Knowles to map the existing structure of the nonprofit organization’s Web site.

“By exporting the navigation structure of the site into MindManager, we were able to see the relationships between different [pages and elements],” Knowles says. MindManager displayed the navigation structure as different branches from the same tree, and it was easy to see that some branches weren’t grouped together properly, according to Knowles. That meant that it was difficult for users to navigate.

“The site was static. That tends to happen because Web sites are built organically, a page at a time. After a while, they become disorganized,” he says. “People would come there, but they would leave quickly.”

That’s if they found the site at all. According to Knowles, part of the organization’s problem was branding. People could find the site if they knew what to look for, but they would likely miss it if their search was less specific.

Google, Yahoo and similar services use site navigation as part of their search parameters, according to Knowles. “That’s part of the SEO [search engine optimization] puzzle,” he says.

Once the site was revamped, it was much more intuitive and easier to use, with the nonprofit organization benefiting as a result. Some wording was changed as well, helping to catch the attention of the search engines.

As a result, the site has seen a 25 percent increase in traffic and a 40 percent increase in conversions (memberships and attendance at events), Knowles says.

Full Article
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Mind Mapping, as well as the other products we use and love, help our team deliver client solutions for increased web traffic and conversions on their web sites.

What’s in a name?  Frankly, a LOT.  Any marketing and branding agency can go through the important details of naming a new business or one that is renaming from a brand perspective.  It’s fascinating how business naming research is performed, tested and consumer analysis is created – in fact I totally respect it.  However (and this is important), it is essential that this research is embodied from an Internet Marketing perspective.

Here’s how to protect yourself from online blindness when naming your business:

#1 – Make sure the domain name is available or easy to acquire ahead of time.  Domain names, i.e. www.yourbusiness.com are the life force of branding online.  Your domain availability should include these principles:

1. You can “see it, spell it.”  In other words, it’s simple enough to resonate without a lot of possibility for misspellings.
2. Determine that most or all extensions are available.  Everyone thinks of the ‘.com’ but it’s important to grab the important extensions (.net, .org, .us, etc.).  If you’re a larger organization – grab as many as you can.  Brand hijacking – by your competition buying those domains is not a pleasant situation to find yourself in.
3. Misspellings are available.  If there is a possibility of misspelling your domain name, grab all the necessary misspellings too.  A random example would be:  www.smithswarehouse.com – be sure to grab www.smithwarehouse.com and www.smithswearhouse.com
4. Moderate length.  We get the question, “Is my domain too long?” quite a bit actually.  With domain names at a premium these days, it’s more important to “see it, spell it” than it is to keep it short.  Moderate length of the domain is okay as long as it’s not overwhelming.
5. Domain names (i.e. business names) with search specific keywords have a double advantage.  Although sometimes this is not practical, it is helpful.

#2 – Evaluate the competitive landscape of your business name online.  If it’s competitive, be prepared to have the resources necessary (time and money) to effectively launch an SEO campaign early.  Here are some basic things to check when evaluating the competitiveness of your keyword phrases:

1. Review the total number of Google results for your prospective business name.  (As a very general rule of thumb – If it’s less than a total 250,000 results, and incorporate SEO from the beginning, you’ll be golden).  Any words results over 1 Million – plan ahead for potentially robust ongoing SEO resources.
2. Review PPC bids for your phrase, amount of PPC ads.  You can use Google’s AdWords tool to evaluate the average bid amount for your business name.  Anywhere over $1.00 per click mark may get expensive and is an indicator for the need of a moderately or severely competitive SEO marketplace.
3. Evaluate the number of links/number of pages indexed of top results for your keyword phrases using tools such as the: Bruce Clay Toolbar, SEO Book , Yahoo Site Explorer.  Plan on acquiring the same amount of links and pages of content indexed as the other top 10 listings.  If this will take significant effort, that may be an indicator for a competitive marketplace.
4. Evaluate whether you business name of choice has associations outside of your category.  For example, a recent organization named their business the same name as a popular TV show – their rankings were buried at onset outside of local specific searches.

#3 – Check to see if your Social Media profiles are available.  Social media is essential for business marketing in most all cases, so double check to see if your profiles/usernames are available.  The big three would be Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – but that’s just a start.  Social media profiles, such as:  www.facebook.com/smartsolutions or www.twitter.com/smartsolutions are just as powerful, and just as limited, as domain names.  Check profiles using www.knowem.com.

As you can see, there are many factors to determining a valid, compelling business name at the onset.  Along with your branding, marketing research efforts – don’t shoot yourself in the foot before you get out of the gate by not reviewing the online marketplace of your potential business name F-I-R-S-T.

We welcome comments on example stories – please post!

By: Wendy Roe

Okay, it’s not exactly a land grab but, hear me out. Local business is gaining ground on the Internet everyday through sites that provide ways for local businesses to get worldwide recognition online. Today, let’s focus on what a local business can do on Facebook. You can “grab” http://www.facebook.com/businessname as a unique pointer to your business Facebook Page.

On June 13^th, 2009 Facebook created “usernames”. This is where a Facebook user can select a username that serves as a “web address” for their Facebook profile. For example, you can go directly to my Facebook page by clicking this URL http://www.facebook.com/knowlesmark.

Facebook “Pages” are essentially similar to personal profiles only they are for businesses, bands, and real celebrities to share information and to gather and communicate with their “fans”. Today, a business can claim a username for their Facebook Page and have a unique “web address” in Facebook for their business. For example, you can find Smart Solutions at http://www.facebook.com/smartsolutions.

For all the Smart Solutions out there, there is only one of these available at Facebook and your business name may be waiting for you to grab it. To help prevent squatting, you need to be legitimate and the page must have 100 fans; after that the Facebook username (URL) becomes available for you to claim. That makes sense to me.

How do set your business up with a Facebook Page and a URL?

1) Check to make sure your business name is available (http://www.facebook.com/username)

2) If it is, create a page for your business (http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php)

3) Gather 100 fans (Ask your family, friends, customers, to “Become a Fan” of your business)

4) Claim your username (or URL) (http://www.facebook.com/username)

That’s it. Your business can now be found at http://www.facebook.com/businessname. You can use this URL in your marketing materials, business cards, emails, etc. Your customers and prospective customers can find your business in Facebook with a single click.

There are currently over 300 million active Facebook users and over one million Facebook developers creating new ways for people to interact. There is probably one Facebook username (URL) that is fits best for your business and once it’s gone, you will be settling for second best. You have all seen the domain names like http://www.business-namenw.com with a hyphen in the middle, and awkward initials added to a URL. These are businesses that were a little late to the domain game and had to settle for their second favorite way to be found online.  Ask me sometime how Smart Solutions ended up with http://www.smartz.com as our domain name and you’ll have one more reason to claim your Facebook username today.

Claiming your business username in Facebook is fairly easy to do yours may be waiting for you but, not forever. Can you rally 100 fans?

By: Mark Knowles

Thanks to those who attended this past week’s September SmartGroup on Blogging.  It was an energetic discussion and our panelist did an excellent job on speaking to the do’s and don’ts of both business and personal blogging.  Below are the presentations from Andre Jensen and Meg Thompson as well as the notes from Jake Ortman and Jon Abernathy.

If we didn’t get to your specific blog question during the Q/A, please leave a comment here and we’ll create the ‘virtual panel!’

Thank you to all that joined for this month’s discussion on link building! This is such an important topic as links are the currency of the Internet. Links are like the business referral you get from a networking event and add value to your site from a spider’s perspective and traffic/awareness from a human visitor. Participants learned the value of links and worked together to come up with a list of where to start making requests and ways to build link bait to their site. Below is the presentation available for viewing for those that would like a recap.

Sign up for next month’s July topic: The Beauty and Etiquette of Blogging.

So, you’re a business and have taken the leap to setup Twitter account, congratulations! One element that often gets overlooked when using Twitter for business is creating a custom background image that speaks to your business objectives.  (See our Smart Solutions Twitter Background…heck, follow us as well!)  If you have questions on the information below or would like us to create a Twitter background for you, just give us a call, we’d be happy to assist!

Consistent with your main marketing brand and messages, your Twitter background should include:

1) Your logo/brand mark (typically set vertically)
2) Your tagline/brand message
3) Main contact information
4) Call to Action
5) Visual Image(s) that connect to your brand and are appealing

Image Considerations:
1) The national standard screen resolution is still 1024 x 768 – develop your image to meet that requirement and beyond (we recommend 1600 x 1200 pixels)
2) For a 1024 x 768 resolution, you have approximately 120 pixels on the left to work with your message (otherwise Twitter window will overlay on top).
3) For your avatar, use a 73 x 73 pixel image
4) Twitter limits background image size to 800k (although for speed, you want to stay away from the upper end of that)

How to implement a Twitter Background

5 Steps to Edit Twitter Background

A Reputable Twitter Example….

Zappos CEO on Twitter

We have potential clients call frequently with the intent of retooling their web site. The redesign is brought on typically by a multitude of reasons: “The design is old.”; “We have a new brand.” ; “We want to get found by more prospects.” Businesses and organizations that come with a goal of creating a successful balance of creative, search and content are the ones we know are serious.

Before moving or launching your new site, read the tips below and take note:

1) Define your goals
A redesign should focus on ways to impact your business, not just look pretty. What that means is every decision, from design layout, site architecture and SEO should be focused on your goals. Determine your goals in two ways:

The first is to determine what kind of traffic you would like to drive to your site. Keyword research applies here.

Second, determine what you would like your visitor to do when they land on your site. Conversion planning applies here. Conversion planning is a guide to the hierarchy of your site so that you guide your visitor to the conversion point (be it a page to read, a product to purchase, a form filled out, a phone call, etc.) and take them through a preplanned path to meet your goal – more leads coming through the door.

2) SEO Assest Inventory
One of the biggest mistakes you can make in launching a new site is to not protect your previous and current marketing efforts that have brought you awareness and conversions to date. In other words: great content, keywords you’re ranking with, inbound links to designated landing pages (and all important pages), successful conversion paths. This is SOOO important.

Many web design experts miss this when the design focus is more important than internet marketing. Discuss with your web designer and developer a plan to setup 301 redirects from your previous indexed URLs (the pages Google and other engines know about) to your new site structure.

3) Setup your Site Architecture To Match The Needs of Your Audience (both Human and Spider)
I’ve heard the saying that “spiders are like 4 year olds with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).” With the growing statistic, even of your human audience, of having a total of 7 seconds to make your first impression online, you can see that both site visitors need the ability to consume information quickly. A spider needs to see keyword directed content in the HTML of your page (like meta data for each page and content of the page as close to the top as possible, lean-mean code basically) – a human needs to quickly navigate and consume content specific to their interest. Setting up the site to create strategic landing pages, then drill down to topic specific pages through links (i.e. siloing) is a helpful advantage to delivering clean, clear content to both audiences.

4) Plan for an Ongoing Content Strategy
One of the best ways to grow awareness and traffic to your site and convert visitors is to develop a strategy for ongoing development for content. Quality, UNIQUE content (i.e. do not copy/paste from other sites) is king to attracting your audience (both human and engine spider) and keep them coming back for more. Build content, build your business faster.

Blogs have the history for frequently updated content, and spiders know it….a blog on your website is good. Not a blog as your website…I said a blog on your website. (future post)

5) Have Web Analytics In Place; Monitor Results
The only way to know whether you are satisfying your goal (and delivering results to your business to make up for the investment!) is to track and monitor your increase in visitors and conversions. As a general rule, if your end result is too design focused, you’ll see fewer leads; If it’s too search focused, you’ll see fewer conversions. With balance in mind, results you will have…your boss will thank you for it! Read more on Analytics

6) Test, Test and Test
“Oh testing, how we love thee.” What a way to determine what’s working and what’s not? Become friends with Google Website Optimizer. Testing is like a focus group, a controlled science experiment (9th grade science comes to mind). Testing demonstrates whether the influence your agency, design firm, neighbor or web developer offered is good advice. Let your visitors tell you what works best for them…then adapt

When it comes to communication, listening often gets pushed aside. Sometimes we’re too busy planning our next statement versus listening to what others really need. Some of the greatest tools (and a great way to start a social campaign) is to listen to the conversations around you. From a business angle, getting feedback from customers verbally and referrals from past clients is the backbone to growing successful. How can a small business take those listening skills and conversations online?

Here’s how:

1) Become friends with search.twitter.com
Not sure how to jump into the world of social media and more specifically, Twitter? Our first recommendation is to listen and learn from the conversations around you. Twitter is a flurry of keyword rich mini-conversations. Use Twitter Search, and their RSS Feed, and monitor your keywords through the feed. (You can add the feed to your Google home page for example). Become aware of how #hashtags are used, RT – ReTweets, and how others engage conversation with proper etiquette (that’s another blog post!). Understand the proper balance of followers/following ratio, the balance of: links, information, and personality in your tweets. LISTEN…and learn.

2) Setup Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a simple google search, except you set it up once and it searches for you. Monitoring your keywords (branded and nonbranded – vertical and lateral phases) and your competition online is great with Google Alerts. You can choose to deliver your alerts via RSS or via e-mail. Yahoo! Pipes is similar on the Yahoo! side…Good stuff…

3) Listen on Yahoo! Answers and LinkedIn Answers
Questions are posted every day related to a variety of industries. It’s a great way to listen to the needs of consumers on your particular business niche. See the questions they pose, the answers being given and learn more about your brand or niche and what your potential customers request.

With your listening skills tuned and an understanding of proper response techniques, the door is open to gaining business exposure and conversions to build success.

Interested in more? Join this month’s FREE SmartGroup (May 26th 2009 Topic: Social Media for Small Business) and AdFed AdBite (May 28th Topic: Online Brand Management).