Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

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Comments for all Websites

Friday, September 25th, 2009

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.

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Posted in Business, Web Design and Development, web content | No Comments »

Sweetening the Deal

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

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.

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The customer is always right … Sometimes

Friday, August 21st, 2009

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.

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Website Update 2009

Friday, August 7th, 2009

We are always suggesting that businesses update their websites to stay current. Updates enable a site to increase its presence on search engines and let visitors know that the site is not dead.

Well we took our own advice and gave our site a complete overhaul. We reworked the design and even matched the new design to the blog to add even more consistency and brand awareness.

www.blainehilton.com

What do you think of the new design for the site and blog?

Now that the site has a fresh look we are now updating the content.

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Posted in Business, Web Design and Development, marketing | No Comments »

What is The Cloud?

Friday, July 24th, 2009

You may have been hearing a lot lately about the cloud. Even some IT professionals aren’t really sure what the cloud is. Well in basic terms it is sharing servers to run your applications and storing data as opposed to using a server located in your office.

You would sign up with a cloud provider just like how you have an Internet provider.  You would then access your servers via the Internet and access your data and run applications remotely from their  servers.

Now that you have a basic understanding of what the cloud is and how it works we come to the important issues: the advantages and disadvantages of the cloud.

Advantages
The main advantage of using the cloud is cost. You do not have to pay for and maintain your own server in your office. You essentially lease access to the cloud providers servers.  Because these servers are shared by many other customers of the cloud provider they only charge you a fraction of the cost for the servers and they maintain the servers.

These cost savings can be reallocated to other areas of your company such as operational costs etc.

Disadvantages
There are a few disadvantages of using the cloud.  Since you are leasing remote servers from another company they are in control of your data and applications. This is not necessarily a disadvantage. You just have to do your research before deciding on a cloud provider.

Make sure and find out that they have the applications that you require installed on their servers and you have access to them. Also be sure that you still own your data that is on their servers and that if you decide to leave, you can take it with you.  Also you should have the option to remotely backup the data to your own internal systems such as office computers or flash drives etc. Even though you can usually make your own backups be sure to ask about their data integrity. Do they make backups of data? How often? What do they do if there is a system failure of any kind?

The bottom line is it is your decision. Do your research and decide what is the best solution for you.

Most IT professionals agree that the cloud is the future of IT.

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