Today I’ll use a bridge analogy. This bridge on the right gets me where I’m going. It is very functional. One side of the bridge looks much like the other side. Many web firms can give you a web site. But most of those firms will give you a site that looks both like most of the rest of their web sites and like most of the sites that are out there on the internet.

You’ll notice also that this bridge doesn’t give you much of a view. It just goes from point a to point b. No railings or other features to help you. Notice also that you could probably get by without this bridge. Just a little hop and you’d be across that ditch and on the other side. Other folks design web sites that don’t really help you get anywhere difficult. Those sites have few or no images, and little to spark the imagination. There are no “railings” that you can hold on to and grasp new meaning. And frankly if the site didn’t exist, it probably wouldn’t have much of an effect on business anyway because it isn’t generating leads, interest or new customers.

Now consider the bridge below. This bridge practically invites you to come and stand on it. The path is wide, there’s a pleasant arch to it there are railings. We make web sites like this. First they are visually appealing. They let the visitor know they are welcome to step onboard. Next, and this is the most important part of any bridge, they actually go somewhere. The bridge in the picture crosses a babbling brook that turns into a torrent every spring. Without the bridge, you’d be stuck on your side of the river. With our sites, we help you get where you’re going – each site is designed to help your business grow. We build powerful, data-driven web sites that can streamline processes, attract and retain more customers and offer opportunities to stay connected and build on the relationship.

And just like every bridge has many of the same parts but a good bridge fits in and enhances its surroundings, that is what our websites do. Some firms ask you what template you like best. We never start with a template, instead we spend time listening to you to determine what you need. Then we bring our expertise to bear to build a custom look that not only carries your brand forward but also draws the visitor in.

So the choice, dear reader, is yours. You can choose the plain old bridge (web site) that draws no attention or you can choose a beautifully designed bridge that helps move your company forward. And that is what sets us apart.

Only some folks get it better than others. Look at the picture on the left.

The wearer of this tuxedo will definitely stand out in the crowd. But will he leave the impression he desires? Will the ladies think “Wow, I can’t wait until I see that guy again?” or are they more likely to think “Wow, I hope I never see that guy again?”

Are you giving out that kind of an impression to your customers? What is it that sets you apart from the crowd?

We all want to stand out in the right way. Look at the picture of an iPad.

Something about it makes you think “ohh, cool” It looks elegant. If you’ve touched anything techy in the last couple of years and look at one of these, you want to pick it up and start using it. It really is a nifty little contraption that lets you do all manner of cool and useful things.

That’s how we all want people to interact with our brand. Whether it’s a tagline, a logo, or a product we make exclusively, we want to generate that same good emotional feeling.

Your web site evokes an emotional feeling in visitors. I encourage you to take a look at your site with fresh eyes. What feeling does it evoke? Tired eyes? Get a colleague or customer, someone who hasn’t been to your site (or not in a while) and see what their response is.

For example let’s take an example of whitewater rafts. It’s that time of the year to plan your trip and it just so happens that one of our customers, www.downriverequip.com sells them. Take a look at their site. What emotions do you get?

The idea we are targeting here is that you’re right there on the river. Seasoned rafters will recognize a river map in the background. And yet you can also see the menu and wide range of products available.

Contrast that with this site I just found: http://www.boatstogo.com/. They too sell rafts. What emotions does this site bring up? What is memorable about it? What makes them stand out?

Take some time to contrast your site with the competition. Does it stand out? If so, is it in a good way or is it more like the orange tuxedo?

If it seems like you’re not projecting the right image, give us a call and we’ll help you out  – 303 268-2245 ext. 4.

So over the years I’ve become more and more of a numbers person. And it is exciting. That’s what surprised me. I love to brag about how we helped one client raise their online revenue more than 35% in one year. I love to brag about the client whose site we redesigned had a 900% increase in traffic from Google as a result of our work and training. I love to brag about the school that initially balked at our price tag until I pointed out that three new students would pay for the site in the first year and they’d have eight more years of those students. And none of that would have been possible if I hadn’t become more of a numbers person.

Just this morning I had a conversation with a potential customer about numbers. I asked “how will you know this is successful a year from now?” He started off with “I’ll measure the number of visitors . . .” but before he could go any further, I politely interrupted and explained that measuring isn’t a measure of success. As this is a brand new endeavor, we talked about setting a number – any reasonable number – as that will then inform many of the other decisions he makes about building and marketing his site. Once that number is established, whether it turns out to be way low, way high or spot on, it is something to work towards.

What numbers are you watching on your web site? Here are some things that might be useful:

• Number of visitors
• Number of new visitors
• Most popular pages,
• Bounce rate of individual pages
• Number of sales
• Average price of sales
• Incoming key phrase searches
• Onsite key phrase searches
• Number of newsletter signups
• Number of contact forms filled out
• Time on site
• Time on page

You can measure just about anything online. Pick carefully what you’re watching and then watch those numbers consistently. Stay alert for trends – annually, monthly, daily, hourly or even for trends regarding how frequently you email your list and the response rate on your site.

The key is to be (or become) a numbers person!

Post REGULARLY (AT LEAST twice a month)

• Write about what you do
• Write about what you know
• Write about the questions you answer regularly
• Write about what is happening related to your industry
• Feature projects you’re working on

Add

• Photos
• Videos
• Graphics to illustrate your point

Search Tips

• Use  key words in the Title
• Make sure the permalink has keywords in it
• Tag each post with 2 – 5 tags
• Categorize each post with 1 – 3 categories

Plan

• Write several blogs at once
• Schedule them to go out over the next several weeks
• Never wait until the deadline for posting to write several more

Икони на светциХудожник

That is the trial of the age in which we live. People are constantly exposed to messaging whether it be via TV, radio, online music, Internet browsing, Facebooking, email campaigns, ads in your favorite apps, or a combination thereof (for example, we just signed up for HuluPlus and one of my kids first questions as we were enjoying reruns of a favorite program was, “How come there are commercials? Aren’t we paying for this?”). Now there is group texting as a targeted way to get your message out – this supposedly requires the end user to opt in but we’ll see how long that lasts.

So what is the best answer? There is no single BEST WAY. But it is very important for you to understand who you are trying to reach and what that particular audience is most likely to respond to. In other words, you should not try the shotgun approach. I recommend, instead the artillery approach: carefully determine where your message needs to go, and then fire away, but don’t stop there. Find out if you were on target and if not, then readjust your settings and fire again.

How does that work?

Well in actual artillery you usually have a forward observer who scouts out the location and communicates the coordinates back. This forward observer is crucial. Without one, the artillery has no idea where to fire. In your campaign, you need to do some forward observing. Where is your target? Where will they be when you begin your campaign? How are they “outfitted”? Do they use smart phones? Do they text a lot? How do they receive news and information? Via the Internet? TV? Radio? How do they interact with various media? All of this information should be gathered as part of your forward observing.

In real artillery the forward observer communicates with the fire direction center which actually computes the distance from the target, the precise direction to the target and handles all the other data calculations. For you this means you need to evaluate the data you discover or receive about how your target actually behaves so you can determine which forms of communication are most effective for your target.

The command post is where the power lies – it is the command post that controls the firing of the guns. For you this means now you get to make the decisions: What venues will be used (provided the input from the fire direction center); when the campaign will start; whether it will be shooting only once or “walking the fire” onto the target with multiple shots.

But the story too often ends there. What you need, just like real artillery, is to go back to the forward observer and make sure you hit the target! For your business, that means you need to measure the results of your campaign. Did you hit your target sales? Did you get the right number of leads? Did the phone ring enough times? Whatever you determine, at the outset you want to measure, you have to actually measure. If need be, now is the time to readjust your sites and fire again. If you scored a direct hit, you can determine whether it makes sense to go after the same target again or whether to shift your sights to another, similar target.

While the goal of an actually artillery campaign is to rain down death and destruction, the goal of a business communication campaign is to grow your business. So in your case, collateral effects aren’t damaging. If you focused on one specific area of communication and got lots of collateral effects such as people close to the target area calling, buying  or otherwise doing business, this is even more data you can take into account with your next artillery campaign.

(Details on artillery taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_artillery)

Designing web sites requires that you look at a lot of different angles. Once upon a time, we only had to check two or three “angles” – looking at the sites we develop in browsers like Internet Explorer  and Netscape – then to be replaced by Firefox.

Now we have to check from a wide variety of different angles. While we no longer support IE 6, we do get requests from time to time to make sure the site looks good in IE 7 (if you are using IE 7, you should upgrade as it is less secure than 8 or 9). We also design for Firefox – typically if it looks good in one version it looks good in any version, Chrome – which is biting into both IE and Firefox’s share of the browser market, and Safari which is pretty much holding its own this year with anywhere between 3.6% to 4.2% of the market.

The new angles that we have to consider carefully are all the handheld devices. Android, iPhone, iPad, Xoom, BlackBerry and more.  And much like a fun house mirror makes you look very different, your web site often looks very different on a handheld device.

Handling the different looks takes forethought. Our preferred solution is to give a very different look to the content.  The general example I like to use is 9news.com. Visit their site on a computer and it is very visual with lots of video links – which is very understandable considering it is a TV web site. But visit it on a handheld and you’re taken  to a site that looks much less visual and instead delivers the news in a text format.  I’m not sure whether 9news has two separate sites or just uses cascading style sheets to present two different looks.

This last option, using cascading style sheets, is our preferred method to handle the handheld “angle” because then you only have to develop one web site and simply display it in two different ways. Have you checked out your web site from different angles?

EduCyber is pleased to work with and support the following Non-Profits that are participating in Colorado Gives Day:

The MaxFund (www.Maxfund.org) From the time the founders first helped Max, the MaxFund has been all about helping pets. Denver’s true no-kill animal shelter, MaxFund helps hundreds of animals find homes and get the care they need. Visit the site and click on Donate now with GivingFirst.org on December 6^th and make your donation go further.

Wheat Ridge 2020 (www.WheatRidge2020.org) Created to help enhance businesses and neighborhoods of Wheat Ridge, WR2020 continues to play a positive role in Wheat Ridge and helps to bridge the gap between government and business. Visit the site and click the Donate Now GivingFirst.org logo.

There are lots of great nonprofits in Colorado but these two are near and dear to our hearts. Please take a moment and give to your favorite (or ours!).

So my calendar now says I’m having lunch with Brian. Not as helpful as I’d like. Now I have to open up the invitation to see who it is that Brian is dining with.

And a lot of businesses treat their customers the same way. They start off with the perspective that if you’ve arrived – either in person or online – then you’re “in” and they skip over foundational parts of the relationship. It becomes all about “us” – the company, rather than being all about “me” – the customer.

We experienced that today with a software company. We received a username and a password for the software we purchased. There was no mention of how or where to use this information. Just the codes. After some not insignificant searching, we discovered that once we had created an account on vendors site, we could use the codes to get access to the software and registration keys. Ooops. No one told us that.

So what is a business to do? Review your process from beginning to end and test it. Make sure it is customer friendly every step of the way. And a lot of businesses take this step. But this is only the first step. Every process gets changed over time. It gets “improved” when a new manager changes one part of the process but when another manager changes a different part of the process, bad things can happen.

What you need to do is build in a continuous review of your process. For example, if you sign up for EduNotes (our newsletter) you’ll likely be told to expect it weekly when in fact it is now only twice a month. Oops. That is a process that we are reviewing (should be fixed by the time you receive this) so that we are creating the correct expectations for people.

Obviously this applies in every aspect of business but here are just a few of the processes you should check on your web site:

• First and foremost, the sales funnel – are you guiding visitors down the best path for them to do business with you? Are calls to action clear and prominent?
• Is the sign up for your email newsletter smooth, clear, and setting the right expectations?
• How can I find your contact information?
• How can I find your physical location?
• If your site is set up for ecommerce, is it easy to put things in my shopping cart?
• Is it easy to check out?
• If your site is generating leads, are the forms easy to fill out? Are you asking for too much information?
• Are the images on your site appropriate and do they facilitate your processes?
• If you have complex activity (users in forums, members interacting, data being shared) are the instructions clear?
• If you want people to engage with you via social media, are the links prominent and working? (I clicked a Twitter link last week that took me to twitter.com instead of to a user’s page)

Let me close with one last example illustrating the need to review and streamline your processes.

1. I received an email from a vendor saying I need to renew a service for a client.
2. I clicked the link they provided in the email and filled out the form.
3. I received an email saying I filled out the wrong form and directing me to the right form.
4. The next time I got a similar email, I remembered the link was wrong but couldn’t find the correct link.
5. I started a chat with the vendor and was directed yet a different form.
6. Suspecting something was amiss, I did a Google search, and found the form I’d used previously.
7. I asked the support person about this other form and was told either one would work!
8. I requested that the correct link be put in my emails moving forward so that I wouldn’t have to go through this again.
9. I was told that would happen. Stay tuned to find out if it does.

This has always happened in Face to Face networks but the obvious limiting factors in such instances are geography and room size. We’re limited to the number of people that are or can fit in the room and to the people who are in the area.

But online those two limiting factors disappear. This first hit me a couple of years ago when my friend Max, who organizes cool tours to exotic places told me how he posted something on his personal facebook page about a trip to Africa. His post wasn’t marketing in nature, it was along the lines of “Looking forward to the upcoming trip to Kenya”. The convergence happened when he booked a couple of spots on the tour by folks who saw his post.

I was conveniently reminded of how this convergence works when I posted, last week, on our corporate Facebook page, about how thrilled we were to be working with two new customers, a Lutheran Church and a Lutheran School. An old friend from Iowa saw that posting and invited me to a Lutheran conference in Florida in January. Seems like a no-brainer. Spend my time and energy networking in cold Colorado in January or spend it in sunny Florida. Hmmm. What should I do?

In the first instance Max’s personal sphere attracted new customers into his professional sphere. In the latter, my professional sphere overlapped into my personal sphere, creating an opportunity that wouldn’t have otherwise been there.

What does this mean? (a very well-known question in the Lutheran Church) It means what I have been telling people for years – don’t forget the SOCIAL part of Social Media Marketing – people want to know you personally, even if they’re doing business with you but also don’t forget the MARKETING part of Social Media Marketing. Often people don’t do business with you because you haven’t asked them to.

So I guess I’ll close this with our pitch – Partner – Engage – Convert. Lots of firms partner with their customers to engage web site visitors. And then stop. We help folks figure out how to convert their visitors into clients. Need help with this? Call Brian at 303 268-2245 to find out what else you can be doing.

In the 70’s and 80’s we heard a lot about how technology built for NASA worked its way into our everyday lives. Now that model has changed – technology built for cutting edge games is working its way into our lives.  I thought it was kind of cool when ESPN set up cameras across the football field so they could give us views almost as though we were in the action – just like many of the video games my kids play.

But late last year Microsoft rolled out a new technology called Kinect that lets you be the game controller. That is pretty cool. Whether you’re driving, dancing or a variety of other activities, your movement is what controls what happens on screen. Seems pretty cool for game technology.

Now pause and think how that could affect your computing experience. If you’re creating a new design, instead of drawing with a mouse, wouldn’t it be cool to draw with your finger – not on the screen but on your desktop? If you’re an architect, wouldn’t it be cool to build a house or building with your hands and have it show up on screen? Med students could perform surgery, rocket scientists could build spacecraft, and the list of possible uses just goes on and on.

Some of the cool things that Tony Stark does in the Iron Man movie as he builds himself a new iron man suit might not be that far off. Add some Kinect-type technology to hologram technology, and you’ll be able to build your own Iron Man suit – well maybe we’re not quite there yet but these technologies are developing.

How does that affect you? You might be done with school but the technology will affect us all. Wouldn’t it be cool to flick your finger through your emails without holding on to a mouse or touching a keyboard? Kiss double-clicking goodbye and greet the finger tap? Be able to dictate (did I mention it also incorporates voice recognition?) a lengthy letter (or chapter of your book) and then edit with your hands instead of having to scroll and click with your mouse and type with your keyboard? The potential impact, on our everyday computing experience, is immense.

And surfing the internet? No more clicking links – just point at them. Marrying Kinect to the Internet could open up some amazing possibilities. Have you heard the stories about people in remote outposts getting sick? Now instead of needing a full time doctor, you could take the right tools and the doctor could operate in Antarctica while sitting in her office in Houston. And being able to operate a robot from afar? Well maybe the movie “Real Steel” is not that far off either but there are all kinds of potential uses.

Learn more about Kinect at the Microsoft Kinect website.