The point cannot be overstated, more than 90% of internet users search for products and services online before buying. If they can’t verify your company online via your website, they most likely will not buy from you.  So whether you are B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer) type of business, you need an online web presence to reach your buyers.

It’s crazy to realize that despite all of the recent advances in technology, the enormous success of eCommerce and the penetration of broadband internet connections into homes, businesses, on smartphones and tablets and even on TVs, still up to 40% of small to medium sized businesses still don’t have a website (based on a survey by 1&1 Internet). Your website is your storefront and should not replaced by other forms of online presence such as Social Media. Some businesses are taking the route of engaging on Social Media in lieu of building a website, but this strategy is wrong.  Social Media is best used to supplement your business website not to replace it.

A static website is not enough

Many of you may be thinking or saying to yourself, “I have a website but it’s not doing anything for me“.  I’m here to tell you that having a business-card static website is certainly not enough, and if you have one of those, chances are you’re not seeing any benefits. Fancy graphics and paid advertising may look nice but they will also not give you the results your business needs.

Today’s business websites should do much more than just show off your logo and list your basic services or profile your employees. An effective website that can actually produce results for your business needs to be interactive and perform several functions.

Your business website needs to:

• Attract your visitors
• Educate and inform them
• Convince them
• Convert them

An integration of interactive features can accomplish all that. As you build or update your website you need to consider including features such as search, social media, compelling content, blogging, ecommerce, ability to post comments or ratings and much more.

Why are websites changing?

The reason today’s websites are changing is because the technology used to access the internet has changed and the  behavior of the online consumer has changed. The consumer, your customer or buyer, wants and needs to feel as though they are in control of the online experience.  They want to be informed and educated, not advertised to.

That is why dynamic and changing website content, such as blogging, podcasts, social media, etc., have become such an integral part of the website experience. Users have the ability to reach your website in a multitude of ways and they want to experience content – that is they are looking for your message – in a variety of contexts.  Effective business websites embrace this new reality and setup processes to match what their customers are looking for.

The official campaign though is said to be JCPenny’s new pricing strategy. Attempting to make the sales and the couponing rage less complicated, JCPenny is committed to proving prices that are “fair and square”.  This fair and square idea is being played up in the logo design itself, while the colors and placement of the blue square is clearly pushing the ‘Americana’ idea.

This is JPC’s 3rd logo design in 3 years. Generally speaking, frequent image change can not only confuse the consumer but also act against and loose brand familiarity.

Why did JCP rebrand?

It seems that last year after spending over $1billion in marketing efforts to promote their 590 different sales, the company did not see any significant revenue increase. Therefore, in an effort to increase sales and lower marketing costs, the company came up with their new “Fair and Square Pricing”. The company is betting that simplifying the pricing structure will greatly improve the customer experience in the retail store and serve to restore the customer’s trust in the JC Penney name and in the end increase overall revenue.

JCP will be eliminating clearance sales and moving into a three-tier pricing system. In addition, they are said to be simplifying the pricing for regular items. For example, you will no longer see $19.99 tags and rather have simple $20 tags.

Other major stores like Walmart are already experimenting with simple pricing, but we have not seen a company-wide change like this, so It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Take-away for businesses

• Unless you have millions dedicated to your marketing, you should probably pick your business image and stick with it.
• Try to create a loyal following and update your brand only if it’s going to help your message better resonate with the consumer.
• Know what that message and make it as clear as possible.
• As to pricing, many experts have different opinions. You need to figure out what works for your business. Experiment, survey your customers, analyze your competition and don’t be afraid to take a risk.

On January 10^th, 2012, Google quietly launched their latest search algorithm update. They called it “Search plus your World”. In the ever changing world of the Internet and ever growing social and personalized direction of the individual websites for a better user experience, Google is now serving up more personalized results.

Google has been at the forefront of the Internet revolution and we often look to them to give us a glimpse of the wave of the future.  There has been, however, a lot of outcry and mixed buzz from the public over this change.  On one hand, people saying that they don’t want personalized results, and on the other they are upset that Twitter and Facebook aren’t as prominent in the results as Google+.  Well, it’s is Google’s domain, so why wouldn’t they promote their own social media channels.

In the end, the public will have their say, so I’m not here to postulate weather this is a good change or a bad one. For now, Google search, which has over 65% of market share in search engine industry has implemented this change and it’s important to understand how this change will affect the ranking and visibility of your business site.

What the new Google search change means to businesses?

For one, your business needs to be on Google+.  Google+ is a social network for sharing your ideas, links and photos with particular groups of people. It features group chat and video chat  but its mainly for connecting with people who share similar interests.  If you don’t have a Google+ account for your business, get one and fast. It’s easy to setup and you will guarantee yourself a relevant search result in the Google world.

Second, with this change, Google is telling us that the way of the future is much more socially centered than ever before. Why? For the simple fact that almost 150million of US Internet users already spend most of their time on social media networks like Twitter and Facebook (source: eMarketer).  It’s just what’s happening and if you’re not there, then you’re missing out on potential customers.

Thirdly, you’re expected to share everything on the social sites, especially Google+. You are expected to promote yourself, promote your business, your ideas interest and direction.  Make sure everything you post is SEO optimized.

Lastly, Keep building relationships and keep creating content that will make people notice it.

What is a Personalized Result?

Google is obviously very fond of  personalized results. They changed their entire algorithm to accommodate it.

Personalized result is content served up from social networks. Specifically concentrating on your personal and business connections as directed by your Google+ circles, your Facebook Friends, your Tweeter followers, etc.

According to Google’s Official blog on the topic, the idea is to

1. Provide Personal Results “which enable you to find information just for you […] both your own and those shared specifically with you”
2. “Enable you to immediately find people you’re close to  or might be interested in following”
3. “Help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to specific topic”

What if you don’t like the new personalized results?

Google has basically split the search into ‘personal’ and ‘global’.  Head over to the right hand side of the search result page where you will see two buttons.  Select the button for the type of results you like to see.

What do you think about these new changes? Have you seen the difference in your search results?

Does your company need help with Social Media, SEO, visibility? Or maybe you just need more information on how to improve your business online presence? Contact us or request a free, no obligation quote.

1. A new home page

YouTube has now made it easier to follow Channels.  When you log in, it will automatically show you the channels you’ve selected to follow and what’s even better is that you can completely customize your channel line-up. I mean – who needs TV!

2. Integrated sharing

Easier than before you can now link your YouTube account to Google+, duh, I mean about time, since Google owns them.  You can also now link up to Facebook and see what your friends are sharing.

Finally they realizing that people use facebook more than ever before and want an easy way to share what they find and are interested in what friends are looking at.

3. Overall Design

YouTube has also caught up with the times and updated their overall look.  No more clunky looking home pages with hidden features.  They now offer Channel templates to meed the needs and wants of the users.

Need to know more? Checkout their instructional manual at YouTube-New.

How can TheStartCompany help:

Are you a business looking to get more involved in the Social Arena? Not sure where to start? How much will it cost? What to do first?

Give us a call. We’ll walk you through it step by step. We believe in FREE information. No strings, so Contact Us Today!

An infographic from KISSmetrics via SocialTimes gives us a look into The Science of Social Timing.

Here are a few key takeaways from the Science of Social Timing infographic:

• The best time to tweet is 5PM ET
• 1 to 4 tweets per hour is ideal
• The best days to tweet are midweek and on the weekends
• The best day to share on Facebook is Saturday
• The best time to share on Facebook is Noon ET

Many website owners confuse the difference between a hit to the web server or impressions and a visitor to your web site. Obviously business owners shouldn’t care how many times the web server is pinged – when the only metric that really counts is the number of actual visitors that will convert to customers.

A number of ‘hits‘ or an ‘impressions‘ is simply a number of times a specific page from your website has shown up on a search result page.  A number of ‘visit‘ is how many times the searcher has actually clicked on the link from the search page to see your page.  Therefore a single visit to a web page may register as dozens of ‘hits’ even though viewers may have seen your page only once.

Website Analytic Tools

Web traffic analysis programs like Google Analytics are perfect for understanding the effectiveness of your website. Not only will most webstats programs show you the difference between hits and visitors but they can also show you the number of unique visitors that visit your site.   Together with online sales metrics these stats can give you a lot of information about, when, and how customers interact with your website.

But don’t stop at Hit vs. Visits. With a full complement of web stats that are reviewed on a regular basis you can understand the behavior of visitors on your website, where they were referred from, what keywords got them to your website and much more.  These insights should be used to tweak your website’s content and design on a regular basis.
Careful focus on the correct web metrics will improve the effectiveness of your website and increase the number of actual visitors who are converted into paying customers.

Your Action Items

1. Check if you have a Website Stat tool or system on your website
2. If you don’t already have one, get one.  A good FREE choice is Google Analytics
3. Make an entry on your calendar to regularly check your stats

For more help on how to read and understand your stats, or for help with setting up stats on your website, please Contact Us.

Your point, once you get someone to your blog, is not for them to read the post (well… not necessarily) but to convert them to a customer, unless you are in the business of blogging or online journalism, of course.  As a business owner your goal is to convert someone who visits your site to a customer, not to blog for blogging sake

These days every business has millions of competitors and an average reader spends only few seconds scanning the results to find what they want.  You need to show up at the top of the relevant search results and your title needs to be compelling enough for the reader to click on it.  Here’s how to do it:

1. Shorter the better – whether they see your title at your blog site, in your e-newsletter, in an RSS feed or in search engine search results, titles need to grab a person’s attention.  If your title wraps or is too long it may get glossed over and you will miss any chance of conversion.
2. Use Keywords – Titles should never be abstract.  If you make the reader guess what the blog is all about, you will have already lost the majority.  Search engines also look for key words, if your post is about APPLES, the word ‘apples’ should be in the title if you ever want to be found, or have your blog read by someone interested in apples.
3. Use a List – This one is more for people than search engines, but people love lists.  Give them 8 things they can do today, or 4 ways to make something better and they will click more often to see your wisdom.  And because you will also use keywords to describe what your list is about the search engines will love you too.
4. Make it relevant to the content – your title should reflect what the user will see.  Search engines no longer get fooled by attention grabbing titles that are completely unrelated to the content within. Unless the goal is to get traffic for traffic’s sake, it is useless to trick people into opening your blog, if they don’t find what they want when they get there, you are not going to get the conversion anyway.
5. Personalize (you, for you) – speak to your customer. Given the choice between opening and generic information article “latest news about the conflict in Egypt” or a personalized information article “6 events happening in Egypt that you need to know” people will opt for the more personalized approach to delivering content.

Search engines and search engine robots follow a set of programmed rules that a website structure and design needs to follow for optimum results and visibility. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an integral component of web design — one should not be done without the other. The artfulness of webdesign and SEO is in striking a balance between trying to appeal to search engines and human readers at the same time.

Perhaps the best place to start is a list of what not to do when designing a website.

List of SEO and website design mistakes to avoid:

1. Full flash sites

Flash website may be impactful and pretty, however the search engines have a hard time indexing these sites and flash websites may become completely invisible. In addition, the hottest tech toys on the market right now, iPad and iPhone can’t resolve flash, so you might miss out on an entire group of readers and potential customers. An option could be to either have only part of your site in flash or have an alternate HTML version of your site.

2. Splash or Enter Now page

When the internet was young things like ‘flaming logos’ and ‘enter now’ pages were neat.  However, splash pages serve no purpose and the use of them should be avoided at all cost.  The fewer barriers you place between you and your customers, the better.  Your website should convey your message quickly and efficiently and not require users to click around to get to the good stuff.

3. Non specific page titles across the site

Are your all your pages identical? Then why would you have the same title on all your pages. A page URL title is designed to describe the topic of the page. This is useful for both the reader and the search engines, so both can know what the page is about.

4. No headings

A simple and great trick for improving your SEO is the proper use of heading tags (such as <H1>, <H2>, etc).  Not only does it  organize your page for an easy read by a human viewer, but the structure also helps the search engine robots understand the content and identify whats important about the content.

5. No content or stale pages

You want more traffic? Start writing. Yes, content is  (still) KING. Get a blog –  it’s simple to put together and it instantly adds fresh content to your website. It’s interesting to me that with wide popularity of blogs, people are still very resistant to the idea of blog for their own site.  If you’re still not sure about the idea, just think about your own search habits. Which pages and websites do you find more appealing,  static info or pages or blogs that specifically answer your search questions?

There of course many do’s and don’ts when it comes to website design and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). These are just a few of what I would consider big ones and a great place to start.

Clients always ask me for quick things they can do to improve the SEO on their site and increase their visibility.  SEO is not an off-the-shelf software or plugin that you can just install and forget.  SEO is a process, which takes time and dedication.

However there are some basic structural and design things you can do to improve how this process takes place and how you position yourself for search engines.

Top 10 SEO Checklist:

1. Proper Title Tags

Page or Blog post title tags should contain main keywords for the page.  Use only keywords that pertain to that page not the whole site.  The title tag should be less than 65 characters.  Try avoiding using stop words or characters like hyphens or commas.

2. Proper Description Tags

This is a brief description of the page content which shows up on a search result page.  It needs to be compelling enough that your readers will want to click the link to go to your site to read more.  However keep it to 35 words or less.

3. Proper Keywords Tags

Your keywords meta tags should contain between 5 to 10 keywords or keyword phrases that are also found in page content.

4. Proper Heading Tags

Your pages should have headings, these are the titles of your pages or sections and are usually denoted by H1, H2, etc.  You should have at least the H1 heading tags.  Search engine use these tags to understand what your site is about.

5. Page Content

Pages should have between 300 to 700 words of content.  Don’t forget to use the keywords from #3 in your content.  Use them naturally but as many times as you can, however word stuffing is big no no.

6. Proper Navigation

A reader as well as a search engine spiders need to be able to get through your site easily, so each page should link to all other pages on your site. Make sure your menu structure is setup correctly and check for any broken internal or external links. Dead-end pages are not a good seo strategy as well.

7. Proper Sitemaps

Does your site have a sitemap? You should have two sitemaps, an XML version and a static version.

8. Controlled Crawling

A robots.txt file tells the robots which pages they can visit and which they should ignore.  This protect your site from unwanted crawling, especially if you own a blog site site such as WordPress.

9. Duplicate Content/Tags

Each page on your site should have a unique content and tags.  Don’t duplicate your tags! Having unique pages and tags increases the number of pages that can be ranked.

10. Search Engine Submission

Submit your content to search engines on regular basis.  The web is hungry for new fresh content.

AirPrint - Now you can wirelessly print anything you want from your iPhone to an AirPrint-enabled printer.

AirPlay - Wirelessly stream music, photos, and video to your Apple TV. Or stream music to your AirPlay-enabled speakers and receivers.

And I guess the most impressive is the Find My iPhone - Locate your missing iPhone on a map, display a message, set a passcode lock, or initiate a remote wipe to delete your data.

Click here to find out how to setup your Find My iPhone feature. To find out more go to Apple’s Website