November 12th, 2009 by James "Rick" Dragoo, Jr.
I read an interesting article today. It seems that Google is working on a way to make web pages load faster. It is not a new way of making websites but rather a now way of relaying the data.
They are developing a new protocol they are calling SPDY. (pronounced speedy) For those of you who are not techies web pages are currently served using the HTTP protocol. That is why you always see sites as http://domain.com. Well Google has been experimenting with their new technology and have been using it to load some popular sites. On average they are seeing sites that load an average of 50% faster.
It sounds promising and Google is even reaching out to the open source community to aid in the development of this new technology.
Tags: google, HTTP, protocol, SPDY, web content
Posted in web content | No Comments »
September 21st, 2009 by James "Rick" Dragoo, Jr.
By now you have all heard of the new search engine (I’m sorry, decision engine) from Microsoft named Bing. Microsoft has been pushing it pretty hard through ad campaigns on television, radio, print, you name it. Well it appears that their ad campaign has not been just wasted money.
In July Bing had 9% of the search engine market. That’s pretty impressive by itself for it just starting. You saw the same response when google released their chrome browser. It snatched up almost 5% of the browser market share practically overnight. However chrome still floats around 6% or so of market share. Many people downloaded chrome and tried it because it was the new thing. They then found out they did not like it and went back to another browser or whatever the case.
Many were predicting a similar trend with Bing. People would try it because it is the new thing. Then it would level off or actually decline after the initial hype. However, the latest numbers to come out show that Bing has jumped to about 10.5% of the market share. Once again this is impressive.
What does this mean for you as a site owner? It looks as though Bing will continue to grow so it may be in your best interest to look into ways to optimize your site for Bing. Even if you have already noticed your analytics showing traffic from Bing, you could always use more right?
Tags: bing, google, search engine, traffic
Posted in marketing | 1 Comment »
September 1st, 2009 by James "Rick" Dragoo, Jr.
Most economists agree that the economy is on the upswing but that does not mean that you should go back to business as usually before the economic crisis. The crisis has caused many changes and it is very doubtful that everything will go back to the way it was before. Some things have been forever changed.
One simple thing is to sweeten your sale with special offers or bonuses. You could say “Receive 6 months of free hosting with the purchase of a web design package.” You could also say “Purchase from our online store with promo code xxxx and receive a free gift.”
Offers like this make your offer seem more enticing than your competition. You can even use it as a way of tracking and measuring how well your marketing campaigns are working. You could send out an e-mail campaign that says go to our website and use promo code xxxx upon checkout to get free shipping. You can then see how many orders use that promo code and see how many people were converted through that specific marketing campaign. If it performed well you can do more campaigns like it in the future. If it performed poorly you can reduce or eliminate the budget for that campaign and allocate the money somewhere else where it is needed.
Tags: campign, creative advertising, economy, increase conversions, marketing
Posted in Business, marketing | No Comments »
August 21st, 2009 by James "Rick" Dragoo, Jr.
Everyone has heard the expression “The customer is always right.” Well that’s not entirely true. Don’t get me wrong customer service is paramount but sometimes they need to be educated before making the final purchase. You are the expert after all.
Imagine you are looking to purchase a new refrigerator for your kitchen. You really don’t know much about kitchen appliances because, let’s face it, you are not an expert. You go to an appliance store, find a refrigerator on the show floor that looks good, and say “I’ll take that one.” Then the salesman says alright. You are now the owner of a new refrigerator. You get it home and installed only to find out it does not have everything you want or need.
Now imagine that you go to a store and before allowing you to just randomly pick an appliance the salesman asks you questions. Not necessarily questions you would expect like what brand or color but questions like “How much space would you need inside or in the freezer”, “Do you need an ice maker in the freezer or ice/water dispenser in the door”, etc. He even asks about your budget so he does not waste your time showing you models way out of your price range.
You go home with the refrigerator you wanted and the salesman customer service was phenomenal because he helped you to get the refrigerator you wanted but not necessarily the one you would have picked out on impulse.
Which store would you rather go to? We ask similar questions to our clients as well. If they come to us looking for a website we ask them about their budget and what the goals for the site are.
You can ask similar questions to discovered your clients needs as well. They will also be much happier with their experience and become a walking billboard referring others to you.
Tags: customer is always right, customer service, expert, sometimes
Posted in Business, marketing | No Comments »
Comments for all Websites
September 25th, 2009 by James "Rick" Dragoo, Jr.Google has just released a plug-in for the FireFox and Internet Explorer browsers called SideWiki. For those of you that are not familiar with the term wiki, it refers to a system in which a community creates the content and comments etc. An example of a Wiki would be Wikipedia.
Anyway, back to the original point, SideWiki allows anyone with the plug-in to make comments about any site that they visit. These comments would then be visible to anyone else who visits the site with the SideWiki plug-in installed.
Some are saying that this is a great idea others are not so sure. If you are one of the ones thinking its not a good idea. You may be saying “If I wanted visitors to leave comments I would have made a forum or blog etc.”
The commenting may be out of your control but think of the positive. It could give you insight into your site and how to improve it. Download the plug-in yourself so you can see the comments. If you are getting negative comments about a certain area or feature of your site you can work to change that area to make it more appealing. They may even leave comments relating to how it can be better.
The other side of the coin is that you can see what areas of the website people are leaving positive comments about. So you could turn it into a positive in which it could act as free user testing if enough people are commenting.
Tags: comments, google, plug-in, SideWiki
Posted in Business, Web Design and Development, web content | No Comments »