Your Domain Name is an Integral Part of How You Market Your Business

Different people will remember different things when they visit a website. Some will remember the search terms or link that brought them to your site, others will remember visual or interactive components, and still others will remember the site name or the domain name.

As I suggested in my blog on how to avoid linking to online cons and pushers, one of the things that people will look for when deciding if they want to link to your site is whether or not your content matches …

A multimedia project has several components that need to be planned for ahead of time. It’s best to have all the necessary assets ready to go before starting the development process. Typically, these are the items that need to be gathered.

1. Branding elements. Provide a style guide to your developer. The guide should go over how to use your logo, what fonts and colors to use, the style of the imagery to use, and even the tone of the content. You will also need to gather the files themselves.

2. Script. The script is the most crucial part of the presentation. …

Before asking a site to include a link back to your home page – take a moment to check it out. Remember, your URL is something like your address. You want clients to know where to find you, but you probably don’t want to extend that invitation to online con artists and pushers. Try and make sure you know which you’re dealing with.

What to look for in a legitimate site:

Whether or not someone is a competent professional in the real world, if they do not convey their professionalism online, their site will not be a good place …

Small business owners share the same problem when it comes to content: they are too busy to write it themselves but they are the only ones who know enough about the company and its products or services. They’re even too busy to work with a professional writer and allocate a few hours a week until their input/help is no longer needed.

So what are these business owners to do?

First, do hire a professional writer. I have been part of way too many projects where business owners want to save money and decide to write the content themselves… only to delay the …

Coming up with content for a website can be the hardest part of the development process and most often the cause of schedule delays. Even if you are using a professional writer, there is a lot to think about and prepare. Here are some general guidelines to help you.

1. Gather all of the marketing materials you have (and like) where you can get content from.

2. Define your audience or audiences. You need to put yourself in the shoes of your site’s visitors. What information do they need and how might they look for it?

3. Work on your site’s structure or …

Looking for a good Chinese restaurant in your area? Yelp! can help. Trying to find a Dentist? Yelp! is there. Not happy with your current banker? Yelp! has some thoughts on that as well.

So what is Yelp!?

Yelp! is an online location where your customers can gather and swap reviews about your business and others like it. It is part of a large and growing trend of online customer review sites (Angie’s List, Judy’s Book, and RateItAll are some of the other notable players in the market).

More …

Spiral design is a way of laying out information that makes it easier to internalize.

Cognitive scientists have shown that people learn better when they are allowed to revisit the same topic over and over, especially when they can use information from a previous exposure to help them understand the next.  This is equally true for learning which brand of product fits your needs as it is for gaining an understanding of US History.

When producing content with a spiral design you assume that you cannot share all the relevant information in just one page.  Instead you start with something critical, and …

Viral marketing, it sounds like a bad thing, doesn’t it? I know that the fist time I heard someone refer to viral marketing I thought they were talking about an unhealthy cross of a virus and adware.

Before I go any further, let me define a few terms.

• A virus is a malicious piece of code that can copy itself into a computer without the permission or knowledge of the user.
• Adware is any software package that automatically plays, displays, or downloads advertisements.
• Viral marketing is neither of these.

Viral marketing actually refers to any marketing techniques that make use of existing social networks …

Hey! Stop It with the Exclamation Points!

Wow! I get lots of emails that shout at me! Maybe the sender is on her third espresso! Or maybe she hopes her excitement is infectious!

She’s wrong. Exclamation points are more annoying than exciting.

In your business communications—email, newsletter, web content, brochures and flyers—don’t rely on punctuation (or fancy fonts and words in color) to make your point.

Use too many exclamation points and your readers will stop paying attention to any of them. Be deliberate: Exclaim when you know precisely why you’re doing so it and how the punctuation aids your message.

Exclamation points can aid …

As business owners, we all know we need to keep marketing during these tough times. The key is to focus our marketing efforts to yield more results without increasing total dollars spent. One of these marketing efforts should be your website. In my experience developing websites for over 13 years, most businesses do not use the internet to its fullest potential.

It’s easy to decide to invest on your website. It’s more difficult to determine exactly what to do and how much to spend.

First, you need to answer the question: do you have a traffic or a conversion issue to solve?

A …