Designed by Krista
Web Design

It surprises me how often companies overlook this basic marketing component: responding quickly to customer inquiries. You will make your company stand out among your competitors if you respond to customer emails the same day or the next business day. In fact, you will stand out if you answer your email at all!

I did a website redesign for a client a while back and I was checking the status of their “information” email box – they had an email from a potential client that was 15 months old that they had never even opened. I had another client who called me for a consultation – he said that he had phoned over 30 web designers and I was one of 3 who returned his call. With a simple phone call, I immediately put myself in the top 10% of web designers! However, keeping on top of your email takes time – here are 6 tips for keeping pace with email and phone messages.

1. Know your limits: Most people have a preference for email or phone – figure out which one you prefer and publicize that method more strongly. For my client with the unread message, I chose to post only phone contact information, because no email is better than ignored email. For myself, I play down my phone contact information because I respond more quickly to email messages.
2. Reduce Spam: It will be easier to respond to valuable email messages if you reduce the number of messages you have to work with. See what your web-hosting provider offers – for my BlueHost clients, I recommend SPAM Assassin (set to a SPAM score of “3″) in combination with Account Level Filtering.
3. Call people at the end of their workday: If you phone people near the end of their workday, you will tend to get their voicemail, in which case you can leave them a quick, informative message. Alternately, if they do answer their phone, they will be motivated to keep the conversation short so they can get home.
4. Keep email replies short: This will take you less time to type, and your customers will appreciate it, because it will take them less time to read. Furthermore, people will tend to reply in kind with a short and sweet message.
5. Use copy and paste: If you have already replied to a similar question before, don’t recreate the wheel. Just copy the text from your previous response and alter the text as needed for this particular situation.
6. Answer frequent queries on your website: Prevent unnecessary calls and emails by posting the answer to questions on your website. This is actually better customer service, because it saves your customer a call or email to you. When they do contact you, the call will be better qualified, because they will have answered their basic questions by reading your website.

Put these tips in use today, and put your business in the top 10% of your field!

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a key part of any successful website because most internet users will find your site via a search engine. It’s a good idea to check your site to see if there are any areas you could easily improve in order to maximize your search engine rankings.

There are two tools I like to use, both free, shown below. It is unlikely that you will get a perfect score, so don’t fret if your score is low the first time. Some factors that impact your score are out of your control, such as inbound links, retweets, etc. The key is to improve as much as you reasonably can.

In each case, the tool will grade your site based on criteria that are important for high search results. From that, you can make a to-do list of improvements. I suggest working on the “low-hanging fruit” first – if there are any easy changes, do those right away. Then, you can consider the more difficult tasks and weigh out their relative importance for your particular site.

I’ve shown some examples below for my own site. In each case, I spent about an hour making small improvements, but there were also several things that I don’t plan to do, or can’t reasonably do. For example, I don’t plan to list myself in Yahoo!Directory because I do not need the additional marketing boost, so my $299 could be better spent elsewhere.

So, take a moment to grade your site and see where you can make easy changes – every little bit helps!

Website Grader

Before: 78
Interim: 81 (domain name renewal not included)

SEO Warnings:

• The domain for this website is set to expire in less than a year [Fixed]
• Permanent Redirect Not Found for designedbykrista.com to www.designedbykrista.com [Fixed]
• designedbykrista is not listed in the Yahoo! Directory. [Um, yeah - like that's gonna' happen at $299 a pop...]
• We could not find a Twitter account associated with your website. [Fixed]
• The web page does not seem to contain any type of signup form where visitors can subscribe to a newsletter or future updates. [Imagine Dana Carvey saying, "Not gonna' do it..."]

SenSEO Firefox Addon

Before: 85
After: 93

SEO Warnings:

• Meta Keywords: use only keywords found in content of page [Fixed]
• Too many meta keywords – keep it to 10 or less [Fixed]
• Use Robots declarations to control Search-Engine access. [Fixed]
• Use H2 and H3 tags. [Fixed]
• Domain should include all keywords. [Don't I wish...]

Web usability expert Jared Spool recommends that you make your hyperlinks 7 – 12 words long for optimum usability. Now, I would have thought links that long would be too hard for users to scan easily, but his research has shown that users are more likely to find what they want on your site if you have just a few more words within your links. Why?

Success Rates are best if Hyperlinks are between 7 - 12 words, Source: User Interface Engineering

Users will come to your site looking for something – let’s say it’s a woman looking for a shirt to wear on a beach vacation. She will have some term in mind for this item – maybe “beach wear” – and she’ll be looking for that word on your webpage. We refer to this as her “trigger” word.

What are the chances that you will happen to name your women’s shirt section “beachwear”? Well, if you are only using 1 – 6 words in your link, such as “Ladies Shirts” the chances are low! However, if you are naming things a little more specifically, such as “Women’s Wear for Beach, Lounging, and Casual Day at the Office” – there is a much bigger chance that any given user will spot their trigger word in that link.

However, my initial reaction (short links are more scannable) was not completely off-base – it turns out that links which contain 13 or more words tend to be overlooked, because they are now too long to be scanned quickly.

In the late 1900’s, the Internet Mail Consortium came out with an electronic business card format called “vCard.” Because this format is widely supported by email software, such as Microsoft Outlook, you can use the vCard file (ending in “.vcf”) to save all of your contact information and pass it along to your customers and clients. Once you create your vCard (instructions below), you can either attach it to an email message to your client or post it on your website (or both). When your client opens the file, it will automatically be added to their contact folder or address book.

How Do I Make a vCard for a Website?

1. In a Contact folder, create and save a contact with your name, title, company name, etc. You may also want to add further information about your business in the “Notes” field, such as the services you offer and benefits of doing business with you.
2. Click to select the contact you just saved.
3. On the File menu, click Save As.
4. Optional: In the File name box, remove all the spaces in the file name: this will make it easier to link to this file later on.
5. In the Save file as type box, click to select VCARD Files (*.vcf).
6. In the Save In box, select the folder where you want to save the vCard file, and then click Save.

You can send the vCard file as a file attachment in any email message – just insert it like a regular attachment, and when your client opens it, your contact information will be added to their address book or contact folder.

How to Present a vCard in a Website

If you have a web server, or web-hosting, you can also upload that file to your website. You can use any FTP client to do this, or (if you use BlueHost) you can do this via your cPanel File Manager – just use the Upload button on the File Manager toolbar. You would put it somewhere within the public_html folder. Then, you can add a link to the file to your email signature block and even to your Contact Us web page.

Example: <a href=”http://yourdomain.com/vCards/YourName.vcf”>Add my contact information to your address book</a>.
Looks Like: Add my contact information to your address book

If your file just opens up in plain text, you may need to do a few extra steps.

1. Create a folder for your vCard file on your webserver
2. Move the vCard file to that folder
3. Create a blank, text-only file called .htaccess and add the line  AddType text/x-vcard .vcf
4. Save the .htaccess file to the vCard folder you created

NOTE: This file is not secure, therefore anyone who discovers it on your website will be able to have your contact information. Thus, I would not put anything in your vCard contact unless you are also willing to put that information on your public webpage.

Every business today seems to have a newsletter, so you may wonder: should I have one for my business? Good newsletters are a great way to market your business because you can provide free and valuable information to your customers, and thus foster good will and prove that you are knowledgeable in your field. However, you must keep in mind that your customers are getting bombarded with newsletters from every other company, too.

I recommend that you have a newsletter for your organization if you have something valuable to say. You can adjust the frequency of the newsletter so that every issue is relevant to your customers or clients. For example, if you feel like you have something newsworthy for your subscribers once a week, then have a weekly newsletter. If you have something of value every other month, then have a bi-monthly newsletter. Resist the temptation to just send something out in order to have your company name pop-up in people’s email inbox – that’s a fast way to lose your subscribers.

So, how do you make a good newsletter? Here are some thoughts:

1. Minimize images: Do not put a lot of images in your newsletter, since many email systems show images as a red “x” in the preview window. Instead, use images only for your company logo or when the image will help explain the article.
2. Write succinctly: Even if someone loves your newsletter, they don’t have a lot of time to read it. Use bold headings so that they can skim directly to the part that is most interesting to them, and don’t get overly wordy.
3. Add reader-friendly content: Remember that you are trying to write things your customers want to know about – newsletters which are purely self-promotional marketing pieces just drive people to hit the “delete” key.
   GOOD: ways they can save time or money, sales and coupons for your business, tips and tricks, or links to interesting posts from your forum or blog.
   BAD: announcing new employees at  your company or increased sales at your company.
4. Make your call to action: If you are attempting to market your product or solicit donations, make sure that you make a clear “call to action” – usually at the top and the bottom of the newsletter. You can also create a sense of urgency by adding a deadline.
   EXAMPLE: “Use coupon code ENDOFSUMMER by 8/31/09 to save 10% on your order.”

When you are creating your master marketing plan, try to put yourself in your clients’ shoes: will this offend or insult them in any way? I recently had a lawn-care brochure stuck in our front door, and I couldn’t help but think it was a great example of “what not to do”. This company’s flyer displayed a list of common lawn problems, and the person placing the brochure would check off the items that seemed to apply to our lawn. (see below) When I read this, I was a litle miffed! Sure, my lawn has all these issues, but does this company really think they have inspired me to do business with them? No. In fact, I felt criticized and defensive. As a test, I left it casually on the counter for my husband to come across, and sure enough, he picked it up later that evening and commented on the lack of tact in this marketing plan.

If you provide a service, you are an expert in the service and your potential customers are not experts in that area. They know that already, otherwise why would they be reading your marketing materials? There is no need to point out their flaws, and you may risk alienating them if you do so. Rather, focus on helping them solve problems and point out the benefits of your services. For example, this company could have noted how their services would save me valuable time and give me a lawn I could enjoy on the weekends, rather than have to waste weekend hours weeding, fertilizing, thatching, etc. Another approach would be to change the wording above the checklist “We can cure these common lawn problems:”. This leaves the impression that everyone has these problems, but this company can provide the solution.

Title: The Cluetrain Manifesto
Authors: Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger
Summary: Not a light, easy read, but the philosophies are pertinent and valuable.

This book was written based on the phenomenon that started with the www.cluetrain.com website in April, 1999. The authors posted the manifesto comprised of 95 Theses – presumably a combined allusion to the Communist Manifesto and Martin Luther’s 95 Theses.

The Communist Manifesto, among other things, bemoaned the fact that the worker has been alienated from the results of his/her work, resulting in a lack of joy and satisfaction from a job well-done. Luther’s 95 Theses, demanded direct access to God (a Biblically sound request, I might add), without having to go through the “middle man.” The Cluetrain Manifesto begs companies to put the worker back in touch with the result of the work, as well as give the consumer direct access to people inside the company firewall.

The point? Our society used to have open markets – loud and noisy street fairs with vendors hawking their wares, villagers bargaining for price, and most importantly, everyone talking to everyone. Over time, things like the industrial revolution, the assembly line, and the advent of mass-marketing caused a huge divide between craftsman and customer. No one talked anymore, and if they did speak it was some amalgamation of “corporate speak” and glossy marketing lingo.

The advent of the internet suddenly freed everyone to speak in their own voice, but corporations have been (and still are) reluctant to jump on that bandwagon. In some ways, we have revived the boisterous open marketplace online – via forums, chat rooms, social media sites and so on. As consumers, we can get the straight skinny on the products or services we want to buy from people who have actually bought those things and posted about them. We like it, and signers of the manifesto are asking for more of it.

The book expounds on these concepts thoroughly, starting with the 95 theses and going on to talk about how they apply to companies and people today. This book was actually written in 2000, and you can tell that some of the information is dated. However, the core philosophies are quite valid, even today. Namely, that people yearn to hear “real” or “human” voice on the internet – drop the “corporate speak” and marketing lingo, and also drop the attitudes behind them. It was written in open, conversational style, but even so, I found it strangely hard to read – it was like reading a 190 page blog-post. Of course, I am used to either straight fiction or more technical books – this was neither: more of a philosophical treatise. Decent.

Favorite Quotes:

We know telephones are for talking with people, televisions are for watching programs, and highways are for driving. So what’s the web for? … We don’t know what the web is for, but we’ve adopted it faster than any technology since fire.

Try snipping paragraphs of text from press releases and a few pieces of printed person-to-person email. Shuffle the paper slips. Hand the pile to your office-mate, your spouse, or your next-door neighbor. Can they sort them? Of course they can, in short order…. Talk is cheap. The value of our [human] voices is beyond mere words.

That’s the awful truth about marketing. It broadcasts messages to people who don’t want to listen.