In the past couple of years we have witnessed numerous newspapers and magazines shut  down.  Some of these were considered “icons” in the print world.

Why did they shut down?

They shut down because people have turned to the internet for their news and entertainment.  Even television and radio have seen drops in viewers and listeners because much of the same content is available on the internet.  We no longer have to be home at 8pm to catch a television show, because we can record it on our Tivo or Digital Video Recorder (DVR) or watch it online.

Smartphones are everywhere.  The simple cell phone is becoming rare because people want to access their media, emails, and the internet everywhere and all the time. With everyone on the internet via computers, phones, netbooks, gaming consoles, and soon the Apple iPad, it doesn’t make sense to buy expensive TV and radio commercial time, ads in newspapers, and spend lots of money on direct mailing.  The internet is faster, more,effective, and FREE!  The “Return On Investment” can be enormous. You also don’t need a lot of lead time for your advertisement on the internet like you do in traditional print media. The internet is instant!  When the market changes, you can react instantly on the internet.

Instead of placing expensive ads in print media, try using social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace, to let the world know about your product and build brand recognition As you mention your products and services on these sites, make sure you direct them to your website so they can get more information.  Once they arrive on your website, make sure  there is a obvious call to action to BUY your product or your service with a big easy to find link or button.

Trying to attract new customers to your business?  Not sure how to network with potential customers online?  Social Media Optimization is a new method of promoting and publicizing your business.   Many websites (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, YouTube, etc) offer services and features to attract new potential customers to your business.  The question is, are you using them correctly?  You can also optimize your current business website to get your products, promotional material, and get your company’s message heard! The key is right in front of you.

A great way to use Social Media  is having a RSS feed, Sharing Icons, and posting your latest news on social bookmarking sites like Digg or Delicious.   These tools are easy for any web developer to implement into a website. Do they currently exist on your business’ website?  Why not? It’s never been easier to spread the word about your business!

Another method is to have a blog, provide status updates to social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), or participate in  discussion  forums.  Keeping your clients updated regularly on products, sales, or recalls can build a healthy relationship of trust and loyalty.   This also gives you an opportunity to learn information from your customers that can improve both your online and “brick and mortar” storefronts.

Consumers like to research information and compare prices before they purchase a product or service.   Social networking allows customers  to talk to you , and give feedback, while providing  you with an additional sales floor to attract business. Networking sites allow customers to interact with others that have similar interests, ask questions, and find opinions about companies and products.

It’s the new way to market your business.

What tactics and strategies will your SEO expert use to bring your website to the front of the pack?  Does your SEO expert wear a white hat or a black hat when it comes to search engine optimization? Do you know what search engine markets they specialize in? Is it Google, Yahoo, or Bing?   Page ranking can be  difficult job. It’s hard  not  to  go to the “Dark Side” of SEO.  Black Hat SEO tactics are used by impatient programmers, designers, and developers .  They want results fast but confuse organic content for Spam.  They forget they are writing content for a human instead of a machine.  Black hat SEO contaminates a site with invisible keywords.  For example,  redundant keywords that are the same color as the background.  Page redirects that mislead search engines. Inappropriate use of keywords in meta tags, title tags, image tags, div tags, etc.  There is a long list of black hat SEO gambits that have been used over the years.  This type of abuse can cause search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing to ban your website. If you have a banned  or poorly optimized website, it becomes a liability to your business.

There IS a “Good Side” to search engine optimization. It requires patience and proper keyword content.  White Hat SEO uses standards and rules to get their pages rank organically on search engine markets.  For some who are impatient and have money to spend, the sponsored links area can can be your ticket to faster site listings.  And depending on your market your website may need to optimize for content or budgeted for cash investments into PPC (Pay-Per-Click) or CPI (Cost-Per-Impression).  When the smoke clears, it is patience that wins out in the competition for high page rankings.  With patience comes domain name maturity, frequently updated content, and website that is a asset to you and your business.

In conclusion,  it’s very important to know what color hat your SEO expert wears. Your website and your business will depend on it.

Wikipedia defines it as

Cloud Computing is the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualised resources as a service over the Internet on a utility basis.

Many of the applications using cloud computing are free such as  Google Docs for document, spreadsheet, and presentations, Mint for tracking finances,  Microsoft’s SkyDrive Live for storing files online, and many more. The idea behind this is the ability to access your documents, data, and files, from any computer or device that has an internet connection at any time from anywhere.  Forgot a document at the office? Access it at home.  At the doctor’s office and forgot your list of prescriptions? Access it on your phone.  The possibilities are endless. All of the major software companies are moving towards cloud computing with Google seemingly leading the pack with new applications having just launched Google Wave into beta test as well as a rumored audio service that may be called Google Audio.

Many businesses also use cloud computing to conduct their day to day business and support their employees in remote locations and in the field.  Salesforce.com is a major player in the Customer Relationship Management space providing sales teams with tools in the field.

Advantages/Disadvantages

The list of advantages and disadvantages is too long to go into detail in this overview of cloud computing, but here’s a summary.

One of the major advantages of cloud computing is the infrastructure on which it runs. Cloud computing often involves virtualization which allows the same application to expand and run on multiple servers as the need arises.  As clouds in the expand and contract, so can your application. Automatically!  Several months ago, I spoke to a web development and advertising company that services auto dealers. They mentioned that when the “Cash For Clunkers”  program was extended, their website was overwhelmed with people trying to get in on the last minute deals, and the website went down on a weekend, which is typically one of the busiest times for auto dealers.  Their web hosting plan didn’t have enough bandwidth to handle the load, and the server crashed. The dealers were not happy to say the least.  For mission critical applications such as this, the situation may have been avoided by putting the application on the cloud.

Other advantage include features, cost savings, accessibility,  and scalability.

Disadvantages include the need for internet access,  speed, service outages, and bugs in application (just one copy of it instead of indivualy loaded on each computer).

Summary

Is cloud computing a good fit for every business? Not in my opinion. It all depends on the size of your business, anticipated traffic levels vs. available bandwidth, costs, and requirements. Cloud computing is dependent on the internet connection being up and available as the applications run on the internet instead of the local desktop. If you have a reliable internet connection,cloud computing is definitely worth looking into.

1. Stale Content

Keeping the content up to date on your website is important for several reasons. It keeps people excited about your product or service and has them check in regularly to see whats new.  It also keeps the search engine spiders and bots busy by crawling your site to increase your page rankings. Higher page rankings result it your site being easy to find.

2. Boring Design

Nothing is worse than a boring design that lacks a WOW factor. People just don’t want to click a link if the site is boring or amateur looking. Hire a professional to give your website some pizazz!

3.  The use of Frames

Frames in web pages are a throwback to the early days of the Internet.  frames were used to create scrollable content areas and also to “tack down” areas that are on every page such as a navagation menu. The use of frames is discouraged by all of the search engines and result in low page rankings.  Additionally, the use of frames usually creates a small main windows where content is hard to read.

4.  Not a true representation of the business

Some business owners feel that it is important to throw a website online without giving it much thought. The reason for this is sometimes because their competition just launched their website.  When this is done, the website usually doesn’t represent the company’s core values or mission. Spend some time with your web designed and make sure your website matches your business.

5. Poor Navigation

If your website is hard for users to navigate, they will stop using it and may not get past the first page. Make sure your menus are intuitive. Always makes sure there is an option on every page to get back to the main page of your website.  Consider using breadcrumbs to help with navigation (i.e.  Home > Sales > Refrigerators > Side By Side ) where each part of the breadcrumb is a seperate link. so that users can step backward through the site.

6. Browser Incompatibilities

Make sure that your website is compatible with several different browsers and devices. Test your website with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and mobile devices.  Consider additional browsers such as Google Chrome, Opera, and others. Just because your website looks fine and is functional on one browser, doesn’t mean it looks and works the same way in another.  Failure to test in multiple browsers is a quick way to lose potential customers.

7. Lack of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Just because your designer has submitted your website to the search engines (or has he/she?) doesn’t mean your website is going to receive a ton of traffic. It takes some search engine optimization incorporated into the website itself to drive the customers to your site.  What keywords do you want people to find you buy? Make sure your content contains these keywords as well, not just the meta tags.  You will notice that this is a common theme on this blog and we’ve spent years perfecting our SEO strategy.

8. Lack of Promotion

Once you launch a new website, make sure you have the web address (URL) on EVERYTHING.  This includes your business cards, letterhead, trade show booth, t-shirts, e-mails, etc. If you were previously using a free email service such as Yahoo or Gmail,  set up an email address on your domain name (johndoe@yourdomainname.com) and start using it, this will make your business appear much bigger than having to resort to a free service. You’re already paying for the domain and website, promote it and make it work for you!  If you haven’t done so already, join the social media sites like Facebook and Myspace and promote your business. Not sure the best way to do all this? Just ask us!

9. Poor Photography

The old saying “a picture says a thousand words” is true for websites as well. Make sure that the photos on your website are top notch.  If you have a photo of your staff or product, make sure it is in focus, has proper lighting, and enhances the product or person instead of detracting from it. Stock photography is fine, but make sure you have some of your staff, your office,  or your products as well.

10. Forgetting to Budget

For all of the reasons above, you need to set a budget for the creation of the website AND maintenance. Remember, stale content bores people. They like to see that your business is growing and if you haven’t updated your website in a while it will appear that your business has stagnated. Remember to budget for maintenance costs and assign a person (or company) to do the maintenance on a regular basis.  Also, don’t forget the hosting costs for your domain in your budget.

1. Open All The Time!

Let’s face it. Nobody wants to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Everyone needs to take a break, relax, and enjoy what life has to offer.  A website doesn’t need a vacation. It’s available all the time  for your clients and prospective customers.   Customers from other time zones don’t have to worry about calling between 9am and 5pm in your time zone. Your website is always  there ready to serve them.

2.  Economic downturn = Smarter Shoppers

With the economy in a decline, people tend to do more research into purchases before they part with their precious money.  With less money to spend, people turn to the internet to do price comparisons, feature comparisons, and read reviews of products and services.  They also use the internet to find the nearest business to serve their need.

3.  Decline of Print Media

Not too many years ago,  print media such as newspapers, magazines, catalogs, and phone books, were the “go-to” souce for information.  This has changed!  With cell phones replacing pay phones and computers replacing print media,  the internet has become the “go-to” source for just about everything.   Visiting Philadephia, and need to know some good restaurants?  Use your phone to hop on the internet and find the local hot spots.  Need to find the cheapest airfare? Hop on the internet and use one of the airfare comparison sites to get the best deal.   Wondering if the lastest video camera is worth the money? Read a review online and then find a place to buy it!  Need a new dentist? Yep,  many professionals have websites just waiting for you to discover. Print media can be outdated if you decide to offer new services, move your office, etc.  With a website, you can keep people updates on news and new offerings as needed!

4. Expand your reach outside your local area with global reach!

Your advertisement in the phone book, only reaches the local market for which it serves.  Same goes for your advertisement in the local newspaper. The  internet is GLOBAL, and your website can be seen by MILLIONS of people.  With a website optimized for search engines (SEO), your business could achieve high page rankings and be seen first in the search results! Millions of potential customers, and they see YOUR website first.  Just think of the added business a website could bring in.

5. Better customer service.

Do you ever get phone calls or emails asking the same question about your product or service over and over and over again?  Do you ever wish you could just play a recording over the phone answering that same question?  With a website, you can post those answers to commonly asked questions.  You have give tips and tricks on how to use your product and sevice, provide warrantly and repair service, or even show a video on how to use your product or service. Thsi expanded level of customer service will keep your customers happy and may result in repeat business!

6. Selling online

Expensive rent, signage,  utility bills, big inventory, and numerous employees can be a thing of the past if you sell your products online!  Many businesses due to the economy have closed their “brick and mortar” storefronts and have concentrated purely on online sales due to the reasons I just listed.  Others have increased their sales by adding an online storefront to their existing “brick and mortar” business, offsetting some of their operating costs via proceeds from online sales!

7.  Branding and Corporate Image

A professionally designed website is a great way to instill customer confidence in your products and services.  A website is also a great way to appear bigger than you are. Sure, you might run your business out of a extra bedroom of your house, but a website can hide all of that by providing useful information, testimonials, etc. By putting your business or product logo out there, you create a buzz and people start recognizing your “brand”.

8. Recruiting new employees.

Need to hire a new employee or two? Perhaps for the holiday buying rush?  Sure. you can put an ad in the local paper, or pay for an ad on site likes Monster.com or Careerbuilder.com, but why not just post an ad on your own website? The job seekers can find out about your business, who you are, what you are looking for, and then submit their resume iif they are interested in the job.

9. The “Right Now” era has begun.

With the advent of the internet, people want things right now. Instant at an all-time high.  When people want answers, they go to the internet and look it up. They don’t make a trip downtown to the library and find a book on the subject.  During the holiday season, many people choose not to stand in the long checkout lines and opt to order things online in a couple of minutes and then get on with the other things they have planned.  Give people what they want, and when they want it.  Show videos of your products in use, have them sign up for a free sample, offer discounts, notify them of sales, start a mailing list..  The possibilities are endless and the rewards can be too.

10.  Social Media

Social Media sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace,  LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Squidoo, and YouTube are all the rage at the moment.   Millions of people flock to these sites each and every day to connect with old friends, join groups about common interests,  join groups local businesses and entertainers have started, share videos, and keep up to date with current topics, news, and events.  It’s more of the “right now” era I just mentioned. The difference is that you don’t have to build a website to post messages on these sites, the framework is already there. Am I suggesting you just join social media sites instead of building a website? NO!!!!!  Link your website to your own profiles and groups on these sites.  Be everywhere all the time! THAT is how your drive sales and increase your bottom line.