by Marcus Ledbetter | Oct 3, 2014 | eCommerce, General, magento
What is the best eCommerce platform? If you ask 10 different people, you are likely to get 10 different answers! You CAN choose the best platform for your business model, though, and we will show you how. (more…)
by Marcus Ledbetter | Sep 24, 2014 | Inbound Marketing, Website Design, Website Maintenance
Photo by Anne Thornlley / Flickr
If you are looking for the interweb’s most complete listing of ways for updating a website, you’ve hit the jackpot. Here are 23 ideas with in-depth descriptions (from guys who update websites for a living) and lots of links to live examples to get you moving. (more…)
by Marcus Ledbetter | Aug 14, 2014 | Email Campaigns, Social Media Marketing
If you want to use the interwebs to build your business, you have some decisions to make. What do you want your potential customers to do when they get to your website?
You want them to either buy now or come back later.
Let’s talk about the come back later option. You have a couple of choices–get them to like you on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. or join your email list.
Everybody knows social media marketing is hot. It’s where the cool kids hang out, right? Not so fast.
The Importance Of Email Marketing: Reading The Signs
So you’re a small business and you don’t have the discretionary resources to do your own testing to find out whether building social media fans or building your email list is the best use of your time and money.
The beauty of the interwebs, of course, is that you can watch how the businesses who do have the resources to do that kind of testing go about it. And if they all happen to be doing the same thing, you can bet your marketing dollars that one thing is working a lot better than the other.
I took the unscientific approach of checking a bunch of major retail sites to see what they are up to, and I was so surprised at the uniformity of results, I am convinced there must be $cience behind it, which makes me think my unscientific methods are, therefore, scientific. 🙂
I’m leaning on the market to tell me what’s working and the market is screaming one thing over and over again: email marketing is beating social media like nobody’s bu$ine$$.
12 Big Brands Using Popups To Snag Email Addresses
I captured screen shots from the home pages of a bunch of retail stores for your perusal below. What you’ll see is that companies are offering big incentives through pop-ups to get an email address and market to the inbox. Not once did I see a large call-to-action to get the visitor to follow a social media account.
American Eagle
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by Marcus Ledbetter | May 20, 2014 | Local Search Optimization, Local SEO, SEO, SEO Checklist, SEO for Small Business
Take a moment and google your business name, or better yet, one of your primary services. Does your website come up first? Do you see other references to your website from services such as Yelp, CitySearch or SuperPages? If not – then you may be in serious need of some local search optimization. (more…)
by Marcus Ledbetter | May 6, 2014 | Website Design, Website Maintenance
If you are looking for the best website design companies in the business, how will you know when you have found one? What are the common traits?
We’ve been in the web design industry a long time and we’ve identified 9 traits that we want to see in our own business. These are our own internal goals and these are things you should look for when shopping for web designers.
9 Traits Of The Best Website Design Companies
- Thick Glasses & Awesome Sweaters. Now on to #2 . . .
- Set Deadlines – One question you should ask and most web designers will not want to give you a firm answer on is “When will my website be finished?” We pointed out in How Long Does It Take To Make A Website that the answers, if they are even given, are all over the board and very few are specific enough to be meaningful. What the average web designer will give you is a very rough estimate. The project can turn into a nightmare-ishly long process in which everybody involved becomes frustrated. That’s one of the reasons we developed One Week Website. Both sides need real deadlines to get the job done efficiently and well.
- Meet Deadlines – It’s great to set deadlines, but what happens if they are not met? Did you know that contractors in the construction business actually have monetary incentives to meet deadlines? We approach web design in the same way. If we don’t meet a deadline in our One Week Website process, you don’t pay as much. Yes, we’re serious. Make sure your web design company sets deadlines and ask them what happens if they don’t meet them.
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