A picture is worth a thousand words. How many times have you heard that phrase? How many times more do you need to hear it to let it sink in?
In the world wide web, anyone with Internet access can view your webpage. That includes everyplace around the globe. Although the more common language on the net is English. It should be said that very careful consideration should be given to each picture and photo on your site. I know when I purchase something online, it gives me a sense of comfort seeing the picture next to it, knowing that is what I can expect. But it goes much further beyond product pictures. Pictures can be used to represent a high level of quality that shows the service, not product, you are offering is neat, friendly, has great customer service. Photos can be used to provide more words than you can imagine. Why are hollywood movie studios cutting out more dialog, and adding in more explosions? Because the explosion is universal, everyone can comprehend it right away. So take a moment, review the images, and photos on your website. Minimize trying to describe an explosion, and put a photo of it in there instead.
Ted Talks: Rebecca MacKinnon: Let’s take back the Internet!
I see a growing trend that concerns me with websites. People are using them less and less. Your average person now visits one news website, and one social network, all of which are controlled by those large corporations.
We need to ensure anyone can be heard online.
Thank you pages
Almost every website today has a form on it, where customers can go and ask questions, post comments, etc. After the user has found your website, dug around a little bit, then said you know what, I have a question to ask, or a comment to post.
They navigate over to your form, spend a few minutes typing it in, and press send. Then what happens? Well besides the email getting sent to you.
The user see’s a confirmation or thank you page. Typically these need to contain a few important elements.
A thank you message, they did just spend a minute to tell you something, tell them thank you!
A response time, let them know how soon they can expect a reply
Urgency reminder, let them know that if it is important, they can call you! Or stop by. Perhaps they just couldnt find your phone number, here is how to remind them.
Those are the basic things, but really, you should take it one step further. We don’t want these thank you pages to be a dead end. A place where they are stumped and just go on to a competitors site, or someplace else.
We have an opportunity here, a rare one where a potential, current, or past customer just took a moment to inform you of something. They wouldnt do that unless they were happy or confident in your ability to meet their needs. Sieze that opportunity, enhance your contact page by doing something in addition to saying thank you! Things such as:
Giving them a discount for letting you know something
Tell them about another product or service they may not have even known about that you offer. Link them to that page.
Give them an opportunity to tell a friend about how great your X, Y, or Z is.
Directions, perhaps they just wanted to know where, give them a link to your location page.
Hours - restate your hours again.
Promote a great resource, you are probably an expert in your product, what is your favorite resource to learn more about this, either it is your own site, or an associates. Get them more involved, so they will buy or do more with you in the future.
The internet is amazing, it has everything you can think of on it, but it is also a great tool for communicating, building a community. Use your site to help build and foster a community, it will help set you apart from the competition.
So I encourage you to all take a few minutes today, and update your contact form, that part that a user see’s after they have sent you a message.
Have you ever lost anything important? Try TigerTag.com
Tiger Tag is a unique system that returns lost items to their owners. Tiger Tags system allows you to report items missing like a global lost and found. You’re probably thinking, how much does this cost? Tiger tag is a free lost and found service, except for a small shipping fee. When you lose your item and someone else finds it, they can enter the ID of that item on tigertag.com so you can get your item back. If someone finds and reports it to Tiger Tag, they immediately e-mail you to notify you that your item has been found. When your item is found you can contact the individual directly or have Tiger Tag retrieve the item for you and ship it to you directly. Shipping could be a small price for an expensive or important item.
Some questions you might be asking are:
How do I sign up for Tiger Tag?
Go to tigertag.com
Click sign up.
Follow the prompts on the screen to sign up.
How do you activate an item?
Apply the Tiger Tag to your item
Activate the tag by filling out the form at the Tiger Tag website.
Now you’re protected by Tiger Tag!
Found someone else’s item?
Go to Tigertag.com
On the bottom of the page the screen will ask you to enter the information on the tag.
Now you’re probably wondering, why is this important to you? Next Wave Services believes Tiger Tag is a helpful tool that can help recover items. Why not take advantage of a free service, except a small shipping price, that can help you find lost items like your phone, camera, computer or IPOD? 75% of Tiger Tag items are recovered. That free tag could help you save money by finding your missing item. Take a chance and try it out at tigertag.com
Ted Talks: Mikko Hypponen: Fighting viruses, defending the net.
The computer virus is now 25 years old. I do hope your computer has some anti virus software installed.
Know your customers
One of the most important aspects for all businesses is to know as much as you can about the people you are selling your products or services too. Big business has done this for years, they have shopper club cards, and online profiles for you to fill out, all helping them gauge how much they can charge for the new products that are coming out soon.
As a small business you need to connect and really KNOW what your customer is looking for from your business. Perfecting your online web presence through email and a great web design is key.
With a website you can target your customers better by knowing exactly how many times a product has been looked at, helping you know which are fading fads, and your new hot items. You can track customer satisfaction through online surveys. You can gather feedback and reviews on your products.
Email is the perfect tool for businesses to use to reach out to their customers. You ask for it when they are checking out. You then use it for sending them special offers, or a thank you for shopping with us note, or ask them for feedback. It is perfect in the sense that it wont cost nearly as much as a post card with printing and mailing costs, just to get tossed out with the other junk mail, it can be personalized to help ensure they respond, and it is not as bothersome as a phone call interrupting dinner or another important event. It quietly waits in their inbox until they are ready to take action.
All these great options can be a little overwhelming so if you are a business looking for help with your website take a minute, and contact Next Wave Services.
We would be glad to discuss our inexpensive and reliable ways to help you reach out to your customers more.
Join the community on the net
In the sixth installment of our ongoing series on how to increase traffic and sales to your website we are going to look into making you have a little bit of fun while promoting your website.
How can running your business be more fun? By contributing content back to the internet. My guess is that your passionate about your business, you want it to succeed. You love talking about it to almost anyone who will listen.
Take that passion, and pour it into the internet, there are a million ways to do so. We’ll look at a few of them.
Message boards and discussion group forums - There are people just as passionate about your products or area of service. Seek out these groups on Yahoo groups, Google groups, or specific message boards all over the internet. Create an account, and start contributing, post a question your having a hard time answering yourself, or help someone else learn about something you know all too well. The key to it all is to mention your business, either in the signature part of your message, or as part of the actual answer.
Next Wave Services’ goal is to build your website, help you promote your website, and help with marketing your website to clients. With that in mind, we constantly are finding we can help fellow web designers learn more about Search Engine Optimization, or HTML. And we use these same forums to learn things ourselves.
Blogs and Video Blogs - There again are other people in your line of work, they probably have a blog. Find them, and leave them a comment, encourage them on a great job, or help them learn something they didn’t know. Again the key is to leave your website link on the form, so they can come back and visit your blog or website as well.
The key to all of this contributing though is to be consistent. Again set aside 15-30 minutes once or twice a week, or less depending on your schedule, and find these places online, and check back, update a post, or add a new one. Slowly over time you’ll build up a massive collection of links on the internet all pointing back to your domain. All while helping others learn more about your products and services, and they didn’t even have to find your website directly.
We hope you’ve found this article useful, if you have any questions or suggestions, please let us know!
Email Newsletters - a key to good web design
In our continuing series on ways to get new customers, and get the old ones to come back to your website we are looking at email newsletters.
If people have purchased something from you before, there has been a certain level of trust between your business and them. They obviously like what you are selling or providing, so allow your customers to be added to some kind of list.
Email newsletter lists are one of the best and easiest ways to help, they have several great points to consider.
1) Extremely low cost - sending out an email newsletter only costs a small maintenance fee, usually included in your website hosting, and a little bit of your time. Any other communication method with your customers is going to cost exponentially more. 2) Be sure your customers know what they are signing up for. Some companies want to keep you informed about new products. Others want to give you tips and ideas to help you. Some want to have a monthly special or promotion, many companies do a combination of all of the above. 3) Use your newsletter email system wisely. Too many emails going out will seem like junk mail, and people will unsubscribe and be unhappy. Too few emails lets them forget how great your company is. You will know your clients best, but a good way to start is at once a month. This gives you a regular schedule to stick too without taking too much of your time initially to see how it works out. 4) Include links back to your website. Besides informing them of the specials, or giving them a quick tip. Invite them with teasers or links to more information back on your website. Remember our goal here is to get them to buy something, they need to visit your website, or contact you to do that. So don’t give away all the secrets right inside the email. 5) Make it easy to subscribe and unsubscribe, it should be in the footer of each email you send out, and be available online someplace on your website as well. Further more encourage people to forward your newsletter to friends and family as well.
There are many other great tips and things to consider when sending out an email newsletter, but either way Next Wave Services strongly encourages you to give them a try. If you have any questions or want information on the email marketing and newsletter services we offer, just contact us.
Its a 15 min video. I love everything about it.
Especially:
The concept, single sign on universal on the internet, we should integrate this into our applications somehow
And
The presentation style, if you can memorize your slides the right way, that is an amazing presentation technique…
Choosing a web design firm.
While you are searching the web, or asking friends and family for references on a good person to help you design your website. Keep several important points in mind:
Check out your potential web design person’s website. If it isnt amazing, that is a bad sign.
Uncle Billy’s nephew may not be the best person either. You want someone who does this full time.
Ask them how they program or create it, they should walk you through a design process, and give you a hint of the tools they use. If they use Frontpage that is another bad sign. Frontpage is like using the fisher price tool set to fix your car.
Front page animations. It is tricky but basically anytime a web designer wants to help spend your hard earned money on flashy items instead of productivity items like shopping carts or contact forms, you should be raising a red flag.
If your web design person says your website will be best viewed in Internet Explorer, or Firefox only, then it is clear he does not understand web standards. There is no reason why your website should not look amazing in almost all browsers and media types.
Counters are not cool anymore. Sure you want to know how many people visit your website, but your web designer should be showing you amazing statistics programs that analyze your traffic from multiple data points.
Basically your website is going to be a key aspect of your business, much more so than a yellow page ad, or a brochure that is out dated almost instantly. You want your business to have the best it can, and have your money spent the most cost effectively.
You dont let your grandfather do your business taxes right? You dont let the neighbor kid down the street help design your business cards and brochures. Don’t let them work on your website either, make sure you are working with a proven professional.
Of course if you’ve read this far in our blog post, perhaps you are in search of a great designer. We highly recommend Next Wave Services, for all your website design and hosting needs.
