• What is web design? Is it about color, fonts and logos? Is it about where the words and pictures go?

• Should I have a web designer make all my updates or should I do it myself? Can I do it myself?

• My web designer uses terms I don’t understand like URL, DNS and CSS. If I don’t understand completely, what are the consequences?

• I have a Facebook page and Twitter account. Can I incorporate those with my website and make them all work together?

• I have an idea what I want my website to look like, but I’m not sure I know everything that is available to make my site better. Where can I find out that kind of information?

• My site is okay, but I’m not getting the leads and customers from it that I think I should be getting. What can I do to change that?

• I’ve been burned by web designers who didn’t listen to me, didn’t return my phone calls, didn’t do what they said they would do. What should I do to avoid being burned again?

• Once I have launched my website, who is going to look at it? Who do I want to look at it? How will I know who looks at it?

If you have ever asked yourself any of these questions, be sure to come to the Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center Class – Website Strategy and Planning. We will answer these questions and more in a casual and relaxed setting (no tests!). Each participant will receive a workbook with lots of resource information and practical information you can actually use!

Sign up at ASBTDC

Locations, Times and Dates are:

Tuesday, September 07, 2010
1:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Arkansas State University SBTDC
ASU Delta Center for Economic Development
Jonesboro
Cost: $40.00

Wednesday, October 06, 2010
1:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Batesville Area Chamber of Commerce
409 Vine Street
Cost: $40.00

Tuesday, October 26, 2010
2:00 PM to 5:00 PM
ASU Mountain Home Campus
Rm. 107 McLain Hall
Cost: $40.00

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A while back we published a Facebook checklist for business pages and we think it is probably worth publishing again. We have noticed that many Facebook business pages are not taking advantage of the vanity URL option that Facebook provides. It is #10 on our list.

The Facebook vanity URL will help you promote your page by giving you a short and more meaningful URL to use in your marketing communications. The vanity URL for our page is www.facebook.com/whartonmarketing – that is much easier to communicate than the string of numbers an characters that are in the URL that Facebook assigns you!

If you haven’t already done it – go get your vanity URL today! Look over the list and see what else you can do to improve your Facebook Business Page!

Facebook Business Page Checklist

Have you completely filled out all your information?

2. Did you use your keywords in your description?

3. Did you include contact information on your page?

4. Do have a strategy for:

-What you will post
-How often you will post

And, are you committed to keeping it up?

5. Do you have a plan for getting fans?

6. Have you published your page?

7. Are you a fan of your page?

8. Have you added your page to your profile’s favorites?

9. Is your website linked on your page?

10. Have you created a vanity URL? (http://www.facebook.com/username)

11. Does your website link to your Facebook page?

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Whoever cares the most wins!

Whoever cares the most about:

• Customer Service
• Quality Products
• Quality Services
• Doing what you say you will do, when you say you will do it
• Giving your customer a great experience

Do you care more than your competition? Are you willing to go the extra mile to give your customers a great experience? Are you passionate about what you are doing?

Whoever cares the most wins!

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In addition to the Wharton Internet Marketing blog, I have a personal blog called A Southern Life. I have been very impressed with how companies are finding their brand names in blogs and connecting with that community. Here are a few examples:

Case 1: Domino Sugar

Last December, I posted a recipe that I got from the Domino Sugar site. I linked to the site because I thought they had a lot of great recipes. A few days later, I was contacted by Domino. They saw my blog post and asked me to write another blog with another recipe from their site. They sent me a $20 gift card to pay for ingredients and just asked that I mention the gift card and link to their site again. Of course, I was happy to do that. It benefited the readers at A Southern Life, I got a gift card and Domino sugar got more visits from my readers.

Case 2: Triscuit

In May of this year, I received a similar offer from Triscuit. They were promoting their home farming program. I garden and I blog about gardening and the people who frequent A Southern Life apparently are interested in gardening as well. It was a great fit and I was happy to promote them and I received a gift card and 2 boxes of triscuits!

Case 3: Mikasa

This past week, I posted a tablescape using dishes from Mikasa (my mother actually put the tablescape together with her dishes). I mentioned that the dishes were Mikasa as well as mentioning the pattern. A person from Mikasa commented on my blog. He said:

Hi Christi!
This is Blake with Mikasa. We are loving your mother’s table design! The dinnerware and tablecloth compliment each other so well- the perfect modern meets vintage creation!

We’ll be featuring your blog on our Facebook page today, so be sure to check it out!
http://www.facebook.com/mikasadining?ref=ts#!/mikasadining?ref=ts

Well, of course I checked it out, became a fan and told my friends!

These are three companies that get it. They are joining the conversation and promoting the conversation about their brands and products and they are doing it a very savvy way.

How can you do something like this with your product? Go to Google and set up Google Alerts for your product or brand name. When someone mentions your product, go check it out and join the conversation. You could also get involved in blogging communities that might have an interest in your product. Offer a blogger your product for review. Give them an extra to offer to their readers as a give-away. Start your own company blog and offer information that people will link to and pass along. Their are lots of great ideas out there!

What is your company doing? Let us know in the comments!

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Whenever you are looking for content for your website, your business Facebook page, Twitter account or any online presence for your business, keep one thing in mind . . . IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU! And, by the way, it is not about your web designer either. It is about your CUSTOMERS!

What can you give of value to your customers? You may think the video with music or the flashing images are cool, but will your customers? Or, will they just find them irritating and distracting.

When your customers find you, can they find useful information? Can they navigate easily? Can they easily contact you. What is your customer’s experience with your online presence?

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In case you were thinking that, since you now have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a Foursquare account, etc., SEO (search engine optimization) is just taking care of itself, you could be wrong.

SEO is still something that businesses need to give some serious attention.

As an effective online marketing tactic, SEO ranked #1 in this survey from Forbes.

Of course, you do need to include social media in your SEO plan. Using your keywords to get found on Facebook is a great tactic considering that Facebook has overtaken Google search as the most visited site. However, keep in mind that you do not own Facebook or Twitter or any other social media platform. Sometimes, they make decisions that can impact your business that you cannot control. For example, Facebook recently removed the ability for business pages that had less than 10,000 fans to set an FBML page as a landing page for new visitors. Of course, after the screams and outrage of many small businesses on Facebook, they reversed that decision very quickly.

The point is, you should definitely include social media in your SEO plan, but don’t forget about your own website. The one that you own and control. So what are some of the things you can do to enhance the SEO on your website?

• Research your keywords. See what people are searching for that relates to your business. There are lots of free tools available. Just search for “free keyword tools” to see what is available and do the research.
• Remember to go back and do that research on a regular basis as your keywords could change over time as people are using different words to search.
• Select one or two keywords or key phrases for each page on your website.

Now that you have your keywords selected, let’s look at some “on page” SEO tactics:

• Use your keywords in your root domain name if possible. If you already have a domain name that you have been using that does not include your keywords, don’t change your domain just to include them. However, if you are just starting out, go ahead and get a domain that includes your main keyword or keyword phrase.
• Use your keywords in your page title. Each page should have a unique title and that title should contain the keywords or keyword phrase pertinent to that page.
• Use your keywords in your content. Make sure that they occur naturally. Stuffing keywords in will not make sense to your visitors, and it will make you look amateurish.
• Make targeted landing pages with unique keywords/key phrases for each page.
• Create fresh, unique, relevant content on a regular basis.
• Use your keywords in your alt tags.

Now, let’s look at some “off page” SEO tactics:

• Get other relevant sites to link to you. How do you do that? Create great content. This is sometimes called, “link bait” and is a great SEO tactic.
• Use social media to spread the word about your great content. Add useful information to social communities to build a reputation as an expert.

Enhancing your SEO will help your target customers find you. Once they find you, treat them well. Give them the information they are looking for and provide them with easy ways to contact you or to take the next step to becoming your customer. SEO is an important part of your overall business strategy puzzle. Make sure you give it some attention.



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Remember back in the old days when almost all websites were static and you paid a developer not only to create the site but for all changes made to the site as well? Businesses were tied to their web designer/developer at the hip and often were at the designer’s mercy. Well those days are gone. At least, in most cases. Sure there are times when a static website is all that is needed, but not very often.

Enter, the Content Management System (CMS). CMS is designed to allow website owners to easily change and maintain their site without knowledge of any programming language. Changes can be made from any computer with an internet connection and a web browser.  Making changes in most cases is as easy as making changes to a Word document. There is no need to call or pay a web developer to make changes or maintain your site.

However, setting up a CMS can be a bit complicated up front so you will probably want to hire someone to do the initial setup and this is where things could get tricky. Some developers create proprietary CMS so you can still make changes easily, but you are also still tied to the developer for any updates to the CMS or any additional functionality such as shopping carts, forms or social media integration.

Don’t worry though, there is another option. Open source CMS is available and there are some really great open source options. The top three open source options are Drupal, Joomla and WordPress. What are some advantages to using an open source CMS?

• No licensing fee – open source options are available to download for free.

• You can contract with any open source CMS developer to create your site and if, for some reason, something happens to them someone else can easily take over without having to learn a proprietary system.

• Open source CMS makes it easy to implement social media and other web 2.0 integration.

• SEO is enhanced because the coding is clean and adding content is easy.

The wider the distribution of an open source CMS means a larger user base and user community. The community of people work on the software, patch bugs, create add-ons for greater functionality, create new and better versions and more. And, the best part is you get all that benefit for free!

So what are some of the disadvantages of open source CMS?

• Open source CMS requires more specific hosting. WordPress, Joomla and Drupal work best in an Apache environment and require PHP and MySQL.

• Initial implementation costs may be higher. While open source CMS is free to download, the initial setup and configuration is more complicated that static HTML. However, in most cases, the savings of being able to update and maintain your site will more than make up for the initial setup cost.

While there are a lot of great open CMS options available, for now, you might want to stick to those top three – Joomla, Drupal and WordPress. They all have strong communities built around them. They all make regular updates to add greater functionality and all have  extensive plugin/extension/add-on libraries.

Those old days are long gone and the future looks more exciting than ever for business using the powerful reach of the internet to attract new customers and grow their business!

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Is that your web strategy? All your customers are on the web so you should be too, right?

Well, there may be a little more to it than that. A website should be a complementary component in your overall business strategy. Before you even think about color or design you should ask yourself a few questions:

• What product or service are you selling?
• Who are your customers?
• Who are your competitors?
• What is your competitive advantage?
• Where would you like to be in 5 years?

How can a website help you with your overall business strategy? If you don’t really have a plan going in, a website may not really help you that much! A website should help you showcase your strengths and should support your business strategy. A website should be designed to help you reach your target audience and turn them into customers.

Building your web strategy as a part of your overall business strategy is the first step to building any kind of website. We’ll be looking at some of the other steps involved in the next few days. Stay tuned!

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The saying in real estate is “location, location, location!” Where you locate your business matters. You want to be in a good neighborhood. If you are selling clothing for children, you obviously do not want to be located next to an adult novelty store!

The same goes in the internet world. Where is your site located? Do you have good neighbors? I was researching a site this morning that was on a server with over 5,000 other sites. Of those sites, 5 were tagged as being potentially “adult oriented” and that could hurt the innocent site I was researching. If search engine filters decide that you are in a bad neighborhood it will impact every site on that server. They could potentially put a block on that IP!

What if you are in a neighborhood with spammers? Or even a neighborhood with sites that use the host mail server to send out a lot of emails or load lots of un-optimized pictures? These servers could be affected not only by being flagged, but also by being really slowed down while the server is processing the sending of all those emails or downloading all of those photos.

How do you know who’s in your neighborhood? Go to You Get Signal and check out the reverse IP domain check. If you see any problems, contact your hosting company and let them know your concerns. Don’t let bad neighbors hurt your business!

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It seems that this situation is happening more and more. A business wants to update and make a few changes to their website. They call their web designer and on of the following happens:

• Their web designer doesn’t answer and doesn’t return their phone calls.
• The web designer agrees to do the work but months later the changes still are not made.
• The web designer makes the changes and charges an exorbitant fee.

The business owner is left wishing he could just make the changes himself and call it a day. However, when he tries to get access to the site to make the changes, he finds out he doesn’t have access and in many cases, can’t get it!

Wow, don’t let this happen to you! There are a few things you should know BEFORE you start. First of all

OWN YOUR WEBSITE!

That means that you have access to everything and that you can kick your web designer to the curb if you aren’t happy.

Own your domain name and make sure it is registered in your name and that you have the administrative username and password. Any reputable web designer will be happy for you to do this.

Own your hosting. Make sure you have a user name and password that enables you access to all of the files and programming that make up your site.

Own your content and programming. I saw an excerpt from a contract at Entrepreneur.com that a poor lady signed and then, of course was left without ownership of her site:

Unless other contractual arrangements are made beforehand, you will not be receiving any source code or files containing code of any kind from us other than what is stipulated here: You can request a CD or ZIP file containing and limited to: “.swf”, “html”, files for purposes of backing up your site. Unless specific arrangements are made these files cannot be altered, adjusted, decompiled or changed in any way. If you remove and edit or otherwise obtain files not given to you by us you are in direct copyright and contractual violation.

I understand that the source code for all projects belong to and are copyright of (Name of Design Firm). Source code is defined as all project files, executable code, source files and materials used to create the framework of the project. [In the event that (Name of Design Firm) is not able to provide service or future updates, we will negotiate a flat fee for any source files. This fee will be 50% of the total hours spent on the creation of source files. Source files will include fla, swf and a copy of the store.]

Why would anyone agree to such terms? They probably didn’t understand that by agreeing to such crazy terms, they were completely handing over control of their website to someone else.

Also, insist that your designer use industry standard programming. Proprietary programming is going to be difficult for another designer or you, as the business owner, to take over and, quite frankly, sometimes it is designed that way for just that purpose.

Don’t “ask” for access to your site – demand it. READ your contract before you sign. Pay your hosting, domain and design fees on time so none of them lapse. If you are not comfortable making changes to your site, make sure you understand what the charges will be for your designer to make changes for you.

Keep in mind that if you use a “do-it-yourself” template design, you will most likely NOT have access to the code of your website, so if you wish to change to another system or host, etc. you will have to start from scratch. Often these types of systems only allow limited access to meta tags such as title tags and descriptions as well.

Your business website can be one of your most valuable assets. Don’t give someone else complete control over that much of your business!

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