The Importance of A Good WebSite

A website is your 24/7 Sales Executive. Dressing him up poorly, sending him into the world with no information and asking him to make money for your business is a clever way of being sarcastic. Consider this; The value that you place on your website to represent your business is a direct reflection of the value you place in your customers.  A well created site with user friendly features, straightforward-quality information, attractive details, and well placed contact information shows your customer that you take their business seriously.  It tells them who you are as a business.

A lacluster, overly-complicated site, with too many bell and whistles; or worse, outdated site - gives the impression that you are not successful.  Your potential client may feel that you do not care about their business because you obviously do not care about your own website. A unique website has the potential to attract maximum prospective clients.

Make no mistake about it, a great site with updated information that is visually pleasing, gives a positive feeling to your site user. Consider your own browsing habits. When you feel good about a website that you have found you are more likely to reach out to do business rather than a site that is less appealing.  Whether site users make a purchase through your e-commerce site, make a call to the number on your home page, or fill out the "contact us" form, you can be assured a great website will drive your conversion rates.

So be sure to go ahead and dress up your Sales Executive in the best suit he deserves. 

SEO To Do List

So here at The Thinking Giant factory we've been working on optimizing a client's site for the search engines. During this process we started jotting a floating to do list and realized that we should share about 10 simple things that site owners should be doing to gain better search results. Certainly there are tons of ideas out there, however, they didn't come from our team. Here we'll share some of what we have determined important while developing any site.

Below are 10 easy suggestions in no particular order of importance.

Here goes:
1. Blog
Start a blog and add it to your site. This way you have content freshness. Do remember that the content needs to be valuable.
www.blogger.com
www.wordpress.com

2. User
Remember the user when designing your site. Forget the bells and whistles you want and thing about being the customer. Would you buy from your site? Be sure you focus on the relative content.

3. Hidden Text
Don't do it! This is basically Spam. You never want your text to be the same color as the background text.

4. Site Maps
Be sure your site has a site map for users and a file name sitemap.xml for search engines.

5. Home Page
Your home page should always be www.your-site.com and NOT www.your-site.com/index.html. This is a very important rule.

6. Google
Google Site Optimizer is FREE and will help find errors on your site etc. Plus it's FREE!

7. Mod-Rewrites On URLs
Use mod-rewrites to to change value parameters (/service.asp?cat&id=2144) to useful keywords (/services/web-design)

8. Page Title
Be sure to include keywords in the page title. It helps search engines identify the page's content and it's relevance.

9. Keywords in Phrases
Use keywords throughout your site. Most copywriters today are prepared to incorporate keywords into your content.

10. Keywords as Links
Use keywords as links between the pages of your site. This is especially useful if your site has a great number of pages.

PPC (Pay Per Click) Generate More Leads

In this installment from our team we wanted to discuss how to generate more leads and lower your cost per lead with an effective PPC campaign. Most marketers setup an account with Google, grab some ad words and point all traffic to their site's homepage. This will work perfectly if your homepage were the only page needed to be visited on your website. We cannot stress enough the value of research and homework prior to setting up your PPC campaign.

Here are some quick tips for generating more leads from your PPC campaigns:

1. Know Your Keywords
Be in the know when it comes to the key words searched to arrive at your site. Be sure these words are included in your ad or used in the header.

2. Customized Landing Page
Nothing is worse than searching for something, seeing an ad for it, clicking that ad and having to search the website you arrive at for the info or product. When users click an ad they want to arrive directly on the info they are seeking. Think about your own search habits.

3. Optimize Your Landing Page
Your landing page should be optimized to deliver information quickly to the end user. You should have clear and bold headlines, images and keywords that work. There should be minimal navigation and an urgent call to action button.

4. No Registration Needed
Resist the urge to force users to register in order to purchase or interact with your site. You can capture their information as they purchase.

5. Test, Test and Test Some More
Every expert will find another way to make your PPC campaigns more effect. Our advise is simply this, test and measure each campaign effectively and make adjustments to the next one. Each user interacts with individual sites differently. Find out what your users are looking for as you test and measure.

Market More Now To Sell More Later!

Yes it's true that businesses have all but stop spending during the current recession however that does not mean that demand has stopped as well. In fact demand for any product or service remains the same during a recession. Sales are certainly down but demand never vanishes. Simply put, demand varnishes when there is no longer a need for a product or service. This has nothing to do with the economy and more to do with the product or service offered. Small businesses now more than ever need to focus their advertising and marketing dollars in order to stay alive. Unfortunately, too many business owners start saving by cutting their lifeline, their marketing budget. Effectively, business owners, managers and marketers hang up on customers by ending the conversation (so to speak). It's important now more than ever to communicate with your current and prospective customers. They need to know you are still an option when planning their own budgets and purchases.

One key thing to remember is that by cutting your marketing budget now hurts your brand's equity down the road. When the economy recovers, as we all know it will, businesses that cut their marketing will find themselves trailing their competitors and staggering to keep up.

3 Steps to take.....
1. Track and analyze your marketing every step of the way. In this digital world it is increasingly easier to track, measure and analyze your marketing effectiveness. From here you can easily determine what works and repeat, repeat, repeat!

2. Eliminate the "pie in the sky" marketing campaign and K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Silly). Go for what works. If the idea is to save money, now is not the time to take a chance on an idea your neighbor, the retired army general, gave you (we all live next to an army general don't we?).

3. Beef up your websites and email campaigns. These are often forgotten features of your business that will yield great dividends and remind customers you are still available for them. Be sure your website is using the most up to date search practices.

Hopefully, your competitors are unwise and they choose to cut their marketing budgets, in a less-cluttered environment take the opportunity to stand out.


The Thinking Giant Corp.
12 Desbrosses St
New York, NY 10013
646.216.8944
www.thinkinggiant.com