In the domain world (the world that is constantly changing). There are some handy domain tools that can help you keep ahead of the game. In particular, there is a website called “Snapnames.com” that provides several domain services. However, none greater than being able to place a backorder on an existing (and taken) domain name…
Analysis & Communication – A Key Ingredient in Designing A Great Website. Of all the areas of web design and development that I enjoy the most – our Web Design meetings really rank highly for the part they play in ensuring a great website result for the client. The key to those meetings is analysis before hand (usually the sales process and preparation for the design meeting). Then, great open communication with your client during the design meeting.
Have you ever visited a website that, the minute it opened, you said “Wow!” or “I like this site!”? I actually do this every time I visit a great looking website.
Been thinking about Web Advertising? My company BeareWare has become very active in the online advertising market over the last 12 months.
While the American summer has been fast coming to and end I have been Down Under in Australia celebrating my parents 50th wedding anniversary. I am still pinching myself at the thought of two people sharing 50 years together raising 4 children and now 5 grand children. What an amazing feat (and a great reason to return home to Australia for a celebration and short visit). While Googleing Down Under, I discovered some interest redirects with my searches.
When you think about your website you may have the “misconception” that everyone who visits your website will generally enter thru the home page. It is important to focus on landing pages
When you consider search links from specific pages (based on topic searches) and marketing landing pages it is possible that people may be coming to your website from a variety of what is known as “Landing Pages”.
When we design a client’s website – we always focus on our key action items being easily accessed and prominent on the home page. I have no doubt the home page is usually most trafficked entry point BUT – lets say you are running a special or you have a specific area of you business (or many areas that may require some more custom information). If you can get a visitor to land directly on this page and they like what the see – you can still get a result you want from your client. One of the biggest reasons for these landing pages is the behavior of web visitors. Generally people will come to your site and leave very quickly – so you want to get visitors to their area of interest – VERY QUICKLY!
I had mentioned the search engine (a user searches for a keyword or key phrase and the search engine matches a specific page on your website that has the key search information). To elaborate on this – you may have a page on your website titled “Gladeville Web Design” – and then you may also have the words appearing in the page several times – repeating Gladeville Web Design.
A person goes to google and types the keywords “Gladeville Web Design” – and a link to your webpage appears as a result. The link takes you straight to the specific Web Design page. This is a landing page (as the person landed on your website thru this link). Remember not all landing pages are planned – or controlled from your end. So having an incomplete website or poor content that you don’t consider will accessed by visitors will not serve you well when search engines select landing pages based on search criteria.
Advertising campaigns within the website that will have your banner ads linking you directly to a specials page where you can elaborate on your advertisement and get a desired result (a call or inquiry e-mail). This could be both internal advertising – or advertising on another website. This is an area where advertisers make a big mistake in creating a custom ad for their special or product – but link the click-thru to their home page (instead of an elaboration of the advertisement). Quite often the visitor cannot actually find any further information about the ad – and frustrated they leave the website. Advertising landing pages are a very IMPORTANT PART OF ADVERTISING…
Another great use to get folks to key landing pages is domain routing. This is the process where you are actually using a domain name (that is routing to a specific page on your website). Let say we want to run an advertising campaign – that promotes selling Real Estate in the Gladeville area. We acquire the domain name www.gladevillerealestate.com – which will allow for the direct use of the domain name – both thru search engines or a marketing campaign. Of course you may have many areas within your site (for Real Estate) – but we run a specific advertisements promoting Gladeville Real Estate – and our domain name takes you straight there.
Recently when meeting with a group of clients I stated that the client should consider that there are multiple ways people will get to their website – and they will not always enter thru the home page. I could tell this was very eye opening to the clients. It really makes you think of how you can make every page on your website work hard for your. There is no doubt Landing Pages are a great way for web visitors to go to a specific web page (that may satisfy their specific intent).
Keep your mind open when thinking about your website and the way the visitors land on your website. Think creative and flexible and your website will serve you well!
Cheers Mate,
Peter Beare – Webmaster
Peter Beare is CEO of BeareWare, a Website Design & Development Company located just outside of Nashville, Tennessee. Since building his first website for a local sports club in 1998 Peter has been a webmaster. Over the last 10 years Peter’s duties with BeareWare have included website planning, design and development, website marketing and sales, as well as database application programming & project management. But when all is said and done, Peter is still a webmaster and this is “Interview with a Webmaster“.
With Search Engine Optimization being such a hot topic today it is good to actually understand some basic steps in getting your website submitted to key search engines. This by no means guarantees your website will immediately obtain any significant page ranking (position within the search engine) but it is definitely the first steps in the process.
While sitting at Melbourne International Airport waiting for my flight back to the States I assumed a Wi-Fi hotspot would be have an open unsecured network available. That way, I could get online and get some work done while waiting for my departure. And as happened throughout my visit to Australia – from a Wi-Fi access point of view I was once again disappointed. The Internet is not as open Down Under.
Coming from a background in managing PC based products I have seen how important education is to product users. As a windows developer in the 90’s I really learned how important is was for programmers to be connected to their users. We have hosted our first content management class!
Many programmers tend to be removed from users (and are not always comfortable in the user environment – or simply struggle to actually relate to their user base).
As a product programmer I remember my boss walking into my office and asking me if I would go to a client’s site to train a client on using the system (that I had been a primary developer of). I actually jumped on the chance – and from that first ever training session I have always had a strong focus on the client from a systems point of view. It was actually the best thing I ever did as it made me a much stronger programmer and gave me a very clear picture as to who I was really serving.
Actually the internet is simply a different operating environment and in general your ability to use the systems (websites and internet applications) is critical to success and efficiency online. In particular the Web Content Management Systems (CMS) are probably the most used websites in the world today. But just like the amount of education that went into PC (Windows based Products) – today I believe that Web Content Management Classes are a vital requirement for business that has a CMS websites.
Back in my PC days I actually went from the systems programmer to Professional Services Manager that included a full training department under my wing. This was not something built overnight – after visiting new client sites for training for approximately a year or so we saw the need to create classes.
Over the last 2 years as BeareWare has developing more and more websites part of that process has been visiting new clients site for a final review and training session before their website goes live. I believe this is critical to a clients success and it is currently one of the huge black holes with companies that design websites.
Of course as you know every website is unique in its design – but the amazing thing is that they are not necessarily unique in operation. A Content Management System is basically the same system and just like PC applications of the past they have lots of options and require training and education to use these systems efficiently.
With all our client reviews and training we provide a custom CMS Users Manual. For quite some time I believed that each client training was really unique in nature (as clearly their website was) so I did not actually consider the thought of CMS classes. But as we did more and more websites and training sessions I really started to see how similar the operation of a CMS site and add on components.
I announced our first CMS class in June of 2008. The class was set for early August. Part of the organizing of the class was giving clients options to attend – even clients that have previously had onsite training session.
We were very fortunate to have a great training facility as part of the class (Lebanon Wilson County Chamber of Commerce rocks!). Clients bought their laptops to the class and we had Wi-Fi available for each attendee to sign up. And from my opening welcome our clients were full of questions as we ran through our class agenda.
The nice thing about our training setup (WiFi and client laptops) was that each client could update their websites specifically as we went thru training modules (Our class is agenda is completely based on updating your site so every module gave everyone the opportunity to take control of content areas.)
As well our very hands content updates our class really reached a buzz when we looked at Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Ranking Page. When any owner (or Web Content Manager) gets to talk about a tool such as a search engine that can deliver new customers to their door step (perpetually) you can imagine the interest.
Having our clients understand SEO is really pleasing again. I have heard horror stories of companies spending $1000’s of dollars for SEO services that they simply don’t understand.
I believe empowering clients with information is one of the greatest services a website design & development company can provide. So at the completion of our first class we really felt we had completed a very successful day. Our client’s enthusiasm was so pleasing. It is really great to be able to work with folks that are willing to head into new technologies with open minds. There is no doubt that web classes including CMS classes will really enhance our clients success. More classes are in the planning for our upcoming winter and spring of 2009.
Cheers Mate,
Peter Beare – Webmaster
Peter Beare is CEO of BeareWare, a Website Design & Development Company located just outside of Nashville, Tennessee. Since building his first website for a local sports club in 1998 Peter has been a webmaster. Over the last 10 years Peter’s duties with BeareWare have included website planning, design and development, website marketing and sales, as well as database application programming & project management. But when all is said and done, Peter is still a webmaster and this is “Interview with a Webmaster“.
Empower Yourself – Learn The Web Jargon…
Teaching a Web Content Management class recently I included a “jargon” take home test that was handed to our attendees at the end of the class. I have always been very sensitive to computer jargon since my college days where I studied computer science.
I actually have always been uncomfortable with using it – in particular when you know the jargon to be confusing to the person that is not an actual computer geek.