We have just launched a new online marketing website, The Online Marketeer. We have only just started it and just written a couple of articles but check back soon for more! Where as the company blog serves tell people what’s happening with the company, and what’s going on in the web design business we hope that The Online Marketeer will be a place where people can learn all about the marketing aspects of what we do.
How have you been through the recession? It seems to me that being small, efficient and most importantly smart helps during times like this.
It’s been really hard lately keeping up with all these blogs I run lately let alone do much personal work. This is a shame as I have quite a lot I want to get done! The reason for this, believe it or not is that we have been inundated with work. A client of mine believes this is because smaller companies like ours are very attractive during times of financial crisis as our overall costs are lower than bigger companies with larger overheads.
Although it is true that by being competitive a company is likely to survive where more bloated companies cannot, I do not believe this is the only reason smaller companies are doing well right now. I think it all has to do with people being smarter with their money. Companies need to make money – this we all know, and when there is a downturn in the economy it becomes harder and harder for the majority of businesses to keep going as at the end of the day they are all affected in some way by the the demand and disposable income of the general public. When times are hard it affects the average family quicker than anyone and this has a knock-on affects to nearly all business. People just don’t spend as much when they are feeling the pinch.
So with shrinking advertising budgets due to lower turnovers what should a business do to survive? Keep pumping more money into the same methods of selling? Or try something smarter? It really does amaze me that some clients approach me with successful businesses that have only recently considered getting an online presence. A website can not only act as a non paid salesman for a company, it can also be used as a tool to increase efficiency and do many of the tasks that normally take a lot of time, money and effort. Why post or fax documentation that is needed before a sale when your website can email it straight to your customer, for free and within minuets? That’s just one example, and I am sure you can think of loads yourself, you get the point, I think this kind of thinking will benefit companies prepared to adapt to a changing financial climate. It’s survival of the smartest.
Our little web forum is growning slowly and building speed. It’s interesting how these things work out – exponetial growth, but as always its so hard to get the initial members in the first place. Exponential growth systems are facinating, it works like this: A site that has say 100 members has 10 times the refereal power of a site that has 10 members. By that I mean a percentage of each member is likely to invite someone to join or tell other people about the site (or indeed link to the site). A site with 1000 members has 10 times the referal power of a site with 100 members. The more members you have, the more members you get. This is what makes sites like Facebook and MySpace so massive. Well our site has only a few members at the moment but every day there are a few more, lets see how things pan out.
I recently wrote a piece about off-line promotion for the Creative Coding website.
Here’s a small section:
Having a fantastic website is all very well and good, but if no one knows that it exists then it is a complete waste of time and money. As one forum member’s signature used to say “If no one knows about your site, the launch will be as successful as a lemonade stand smack dab in the middle of the Sahara Desert.” It is all too easy to think that a few meta tags is going to get your site to the top of Google. There have been numerous discussions on the forum about the use of meta keywords and the general consensus is that meta keywords carry little, if any, weight any more. The debate is on-going so to be on the safe side I still use them, but I don’t rely on them.
The process of search engine optimisation is a big one, and something that will not be discussed here. In fact, one of the main points I am going to try and get across is that you shouldn’t rely solely on search engines for traffic. Here I am going to tell you some ways of promoting your website without even thinking about Google.
I just wanted to share the results gained from using Google new Website Optimizer Tool. I set up an experiment on www.voodoochilli.net
the experiment consisted of a change of graphic, simply increasing the brightness of the register button slightly to make it a more prominent feature to see if more people would register on the site.
The results were quite remarkable, at 108% over the original graphic.
Voodoochilli isn’t about making money, but I can imagine that this tool could be very effective in optimising content for that purpose.
Please note I have blurred some of the results as I don’t want competing sites to have complete access to this data.
Here is something new I haven’t seen before.
Apparently Google is trying out a new way of key wording images, getting humans to do the hard work! I did a search and eventually found this link. Google seem to have made the process fun by turning it into a competition. What a clever idea!
To allow your site to be key worded you need to log into your Google webmaster tools and choose the Enhanced Image Search option. I imagine it may take some time before any of your images actually get key worded, but if your site is image heavy this may bring in some extra traffic eventually.
As well as all of the other websites that we are commissioned to make (currently about 30 or so, some of which can be viewed here) Voodoochilli Design has four company sites. This little blog site, our new art blog site, the company site itself and Voodoochilli.net. We also have a few other blog sites, but the subject matter isn’t related to art or design in anyway. Voodoochilli.net gets more traffic daily than the others get in a month so it’s nice to share a bit of that traffic with the other sites.
The combined traffic is quite substantial so as a way of easily allowing this sharing, I have created this simple portal page. In time I will add more sites as we create them. The little icon (which probably needs improving) that links to the portal is stored in one place only, so that when it needs to be changed it will be updated across all sites.
Another little trick we do, as do many other web design companies is to place a link at the bottom of sites that we create for a client. If someone views one of our clients sites and likes it, they may be interested in commissioning us. Sadly we can’t do this on every site as some of them are private or we have been sub-commissioned through another design company to develop the site.
Another idea would be to use a 404 page and redirect to the portal, so that if someone mistypes a URL they will get directed. I am not too keen on that idea as I believe it could easily confuse people.
I think it’s very important to have your own projects running on the backburner. This helps you to keep busy and improves your personal self development. The other advantage is that these projects can work for you by generating traffic and showcasing your work.
I would be very interested in other people’s ideas on sharing traffic between sites.
This is a follow up to this post.
Recently the Alexa page rank of this site has climbed significantly. It’s still not in the top 100,000 but it’s a marked improvement. I put it down to the simple fact that people are searching for keywords relating to Alexa Page Rank and these people are more likely to have to tool installed as a method of increasing their own rank. In fact, by writing this it is likely that the page rank will increase further, which reiterates my point that Alexa Page Rank can be cheated.
This is a tricky one and something I have been thinking about for quite some time. Having a high Alexa or Google rank can be a way of trying to quantify a web sites value, which is especially important if you are going to sell it or intend to sell advertising. The problem I have with it is that Alexa and Google rankings can be cheated.
I will give you an example how people do this. Supposing you and ten of your mates all have websites that you visit every day. You could do a deal that you promise to visit each others sites daily with the Alexa toolbar installed. The tool bar will report back to Alexa that there have been more visitors lately and your rank will go up. Because only a small percentage of people actually have to toolbar installed, Alexa have to base the figures that they present based on projections. For example, if only 1% of people use the Alexa toolbar, their final projections must be multiplied by 100. Its quite easy to see how just a few people can make a massive difference to a small websites results. There are even websites popping up now that automate this system for you. You install a bit of software which makes your site visit everyone else’s. In return, you and everyone gets a higher rank, and the software owners siphon off some of the visitors which they then sell for advertising.
Another thing to consider is that site demographics will also affect results. Visitors to websites about Alexa and Google rankings are more likely to be interested in such things and are therefore much more likely to have the Alexa toolbar installed on their system.
The same is true with Google, but I think things are a little more complex. The Google Page Rank system is based on inbound links which count as a vote in favour of a particular website. If you are lucky enough to already own a few high ranking websites it’s pretty easy to artificially boost a ranking on new site. You could in fact set up a website that has no value at all, and link a dozen or so very highly ranked sites to it which would result in another highly ranked site.
I believe most of these problems get ironed out when a site is truly massive. The top 100 websites in the Alexa rankings are all deservedly placed.
I think the truth of the matter is that it’s almost impossible to quantify a website’s “worth†using mathematics alone. Algorithms employed by the best search engines are extremely advanced but they are no where near perfect.
Every now and then you find a blog that stands out from the rest, and this one is a prime example
