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I have been blogging a bit lately about WHY you need an email list, so I thought I should write about HOW to grow your list.

Your marketing should drive traffic (website visitors, people) to your website so that they can sign up for your list. Your list will allow you to leverage the “Know, Like and Trust Factor.”

1. Make it easy and intuitive for people to subscribe to your email list. You can do this by having a call to action (that tells visitors to subscribe) on EVERY page of your website. Be sure to always have the sign up box in the same location on all the pages.

2. Don’t ask for too much information. One mistake many small businesses make is asking for a ton of information on their list sign up form. The more information you ask for, the less likely that potential clients will subscribe.

At a minimum ask for their email address. At a maximum ask for their name and email address unless there is a reason you MUST ask for more information. (Such as you’re mailing them something).

3. Make a compelling offer. A compelling offer is VERY clear on the result the person accepting the offer will receive. It talks about the solution, not the process.

Ultimately, potential clients don’t care about you, they care about the VALUE they will receive. The value is what is going to compel them to take you up on your offer.

4. Link to a landing page (or squeeze page). You know your website inside and out, but your visitors don’t. You have about 4 seconds from the time a visitor lands on your page till they are either hooked or leave. Don’t give potential clients too many options which may paralyze them, keep it simple with a singular message and call to action.

5. Include your offer in your signature. One of the best (and must underused) places to share your compelling offer, or link to your landing page, so you can quickly build your list is the email signature. It allows you to get a clear message out to everyone you touch about the solution you provide.

6. Suggest your subscribers forward your newsletter. Potential and current clients who are subscribed to your list already know how great the content you provide is. Make it easy for them to recommend and refer you by including a link that allows them to forward your newsletter.

7. Provide Value. When you email your list, be sure to pack your newsletter, e-zine or blast with interesting and valuable content. I always recommend my clients follow the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of the content should be informational, educational or helpful and 20% of the content is for your call to action.

8. Watch your unsubscribe rates. This is an often overlooked factor, but it’s useful for letting you know when you are off track. If you send out what YOU thought was relevant content and see a larger than normal unsubscribe rate, you can quickly correct without causing much damage.

9. Include an opt-in check box to your contact form. Make it easy for potential clients who are contacting you to sign up for your list. If they are interested enough to contact you, they are most often would like to be on your list.

10. Have a thank you page that reminds subscribers that they need to confirm their email address.

Getting potential clients to fill out the subscription box on your website is only half the battle. With permission based marketing you need them to double opt-in. In other words, they need to fill out your form, go to their email program and click a link before they are subscribed.

Managing their expectations and understanding of the process will make it MUCH more likely that they follow through and confirm their subscription.

Once you have these 10 tips working for you, it’s time to start marketing.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

10 Tips to Grow Your Email List Regardless of Your Marketing Tactics

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Textingly is an awesome service that helps small businesses send text messages to their customers via the web!

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Editor’s note: The following post is a response to our guest series taking a critical look at the daily deals industry. It is written by Vinicius Vacanti, CEO of Yipit, a daily deal aggregator that collects deals from more than 300 daily deal sites.

If you watch the nightly news, you would assume there’s a murder on every block, and if you’ve been reading TechCrunch recently, you would assume Groupon is murdering a small business in every city.

Given the hundreds of thousands of merchants who have run daily deals in the past year, it is inevitable that a few will have had bad experiences.  However, to assume that a handful of these anecdotes fully represent merchants’ experiences with daily deals is insufficient and irresponsible.

A series of guest blog posts by Rocky Agrawal criticize daily deals, advising small businesses to stay away based on examples of where the deals fail to turn a profit for the businesses. While Rocky’s posts are surely well-intentioned, his evidence is largely based on a few anecdotes and a basic misunderstanding of daily deal economics.

As we detail in Yipit’s Daily Deal Industry Report based on more than 100,000 past deals, 43% of offers in May involved merchants running a deal for at least their second time. Can so many merchants be delusional? Clearly some merchants have figured it out.

While I understand and applaud Rocky’s motivation to protect small businesses, can those businesses really afford to ignore a marketing channel that can deliver hundreds, if not thousands of new customers in a cost per acquisition model? Not only are most small businesses struggling, their standard marketing channels of yellow pages and newspapers are becoming less and less effective.

Instead of telling small businesses to avoid daily deals, how about trying to understand why some small businesses are having success?

With that understanding, we could then educate other small businesses on how they might be able to replicate that success themselves.

It’s a Numbers Game

Like most marketing options, daily deals comes down to the numbers. The good news is that most of the key variables that affect the success of a daily deal experience can be optimized by small businesses via daily deal structure and execution.

My co-founder, Jim Moran, wrote a post on the economics of a daily deal including a calculator. While this calculator bakes in a lot of assumptions, it’s the start of a handy tool for small businesses.

The two most important variables that small businesses can optimize are:

Overage: This metric represents how much more revenue the customer generates for the business than the value of the coupon. The larger the overage, the better for the small business. There are many things small businesses can do to increase overage including:

• Strategically Price the Offer. If you are running a restaurant and the average per person bill is $30, provide a $15 for $30 certificate. The person is likely to bring someone else turning the meal into a $45 for $60 deal.
• Up-sell the user. In a Hacker News post, this skydiving business does a great job of explaining how they up-sell sky divers into getting videos of their jump (60% of customers) and even a second jump that same day (40% of customers).

Return Rate: This metric represents what percentage of customers come back as a regular customer after using a daily deal. Improving this metric has the potential to deliver the most value for small businesses as indicated by the calculator referenced above. In a report authored by Rice University, often cited as a reason daily deals are challenging, small businesses reported that 20% of customers came back. That’s actually huge! If a company runs a deal that sells 1,000 vouchers, 200 customers will come back. As the calculator above implies, that’s a high enough return rate to make the deals very successful for most small businesses. To improve return rates even further, small businesses can:

• Surprise and delight daily deal customers. Daily deal customers can be a bit embarrassed to be using a deal. Instead of acting disappointed, small businesses should do the opposite and make them feel welcome. They should thank the customers for coming, tell them the story of the business. It’s actually an easy opportunity to surprise the customer.
• Offer an incentive for them to come back. With their bill, offer them a 20% discount or, if you’re a restaurant, a free appetizer to come back and try the business again.
• Collect their contact information. Tell them you often send out notifications for special events and promotions
• Discount just the first session. If you have a business that involves several sessions like class-based businesses, offer a discount on just the first session. If users like the session, they’ll come back for the rest of the sessions paying full price.

Other factors that improve the economics of a daily deal:

• Breakage: Anywhere between 10% and 30% of deals aren’t redeemed. North American businesses get to keep the profits associated with those vouchers without incurring the cost.
• Exposure: Small businesses gets emailed to tens of thousands and, sometimes, hundreds of thousands of users. This exposure is often the entirety of the value provided by most other marketing channels for small businesses.

If small businesses focus on creating the right structure for their daily deal to increase overage and execute on the daily deal experience to increase return rates, daily deals can become a very attractive marketing option.

Not right for everyone

That being said, daily deals in their current form are not right for every business. The vast majority of deals are for spas, salons, restaurants, events, activities and other services. These merchants all have a large fixed cost base, perishable inventory and considerably lower variable costs. Accordingly, their marginal cost on an additional customer is low enough allowing them to discount aggressively. That’s why businesses have been offering discounts for hundreds of years.

On the other hand, traditional retail categories appear the least frequently across the Yipit database, representing less than 10% of all offers.

A powerful tool that shouldn’t be ignored

Daily deals represent a powerful, scalable new cost-per-acquisition marketing channel that small businesses can optimize via strategic pricing and good execution.

If we really want to help small businesses, we should stop telling them to avoid daily deals. Instead, let’s focus our energy on educating small businesses on how they might be able to effectively take advantage of this new marketing channel. Or, I guess we can just keep directing them to yellow pages advertising.

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There are questions to consider before jumping into blogging. While there are downsides, the benefits of blogging can be huge – benefits that range from social to SEO. Let’s explore them in a bit more detail.

Active Online Presence

Sticking to a frequent posting schedule, which I’d suggest, will automatically give you a more active online presence. Your clients will see that you’re thinking and working on sharing your (useful & effective) articles; you will (hopefully) use social media to share your articles, and if they’re good, other people will share your articles too. All of a sudden, you’re more active on the web – and the more active you are, the easier it is for people (and potential clients) to find you and your business.

Establish Yourself as an Expert

Writing well-written and researched articles that are read by your clients and peers can go a long way in establishing your expertise in your field. When buying goods or services, clients like to know that the business they’re buying from is well-versed and knowledgable – this is easily helped along by writing blog posts that are helpful and related to what your business offers. As well, freely giving away information establishes the author as someone who is confident and approachable – two characteristics that are appealing to potential clients. So do your research, write your articles, and be confident and approachable in your tone!

Helps You Stay Relevant & Aware in Your Field

Realistically, you cannot post frequently or have an active online presence without staying relevant and aware within your field. If you’ve set yourself a blogging schedule of one article per week, you will be constantly looking for sources of inspiration for your next article. What’s cutting edge in your field that your clients/readers will want to know about? What shifts and changes are going down in your industry? You will be on top of these things – it’s almost a given, if you commit yourself to frequent, focused blogging.

SEO Benefits

Blogs can provide huge SEO benefits when approached properly. It starts with writing quality content that others want to share: stick to your niche; write articles that solve problems in your field; encourage others to share them. If you take these steps and promote your writing, people will be inclined to share your articles. This generates links back to your site – not only are these additional avenues for potential clients to find your business, but these links are important to Google as well. Part of Google’s PageRank algorithm uses these backlinks: the links are viewed as “votes” for the validity of your site. The more votes, the more valid, the higher up your site is shown for specific keyword phrases. Finally, as you stick to your posting schedule and write a variety of articles focused on your clients & your field of business, you will garner a large amount of content with keywords related to your field. Google also takes this – keyword phrases, amount of content, etc – into account when determining your PageRank. All this additional content has a positive impact on your SEO rankings.

As you can see, blogging provides direct SEO benefits along with the more direct, social benefits we’ve previously mentioned.

Downsides to Consider

The benefits of blogging are great, but there are downsides to blogging to be aware of as well. A few quick examples: poor writing can cast you in an unprofessional light and have a negative impact on your business. Quality, effective blogging requires some sort of schedule – this can be demanding and draining (not to mention tough to do when client project deadlines are bearing down on you). Ideally, your blog will be self-hosted within your website (not an on outside, free service) in order to gain all the previously mentioned SEO benefits – there is usually a higher cost that comes along with using WordPress as a CMS, or another related CMS with blogging capabilities. As well, some clients have difficulty writing to their audience and fall into the trap of just writing about their business, which is a surefire way to lose readers fast. With regards to this last point: I use the Party Analogy to clarify this. Say you’re at a party and you sit down next to a guy you’ve never met before and introduce yourself. Said guy proceeds to talk your ear off all night… only talking about themselves. If you use your blog to only write about your business, you’re that guy. Don’t be that guy.

It’s important to think specifically about your clients, your business, and whether or not the pros of blogging outweigh the cons mentioned above. As I mentioned, there is no blanket answer – but I do know blogging has benefitted Paper Leaf greatly for the time we’ve put into it. What are your thoughts & experiences?

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Formstack put together an infographic that shows just how small businesses are using the web to find more customers and as a result, earn more revenue. And, also how they are not engaging the new market on the Internet. Personally, I don’t understand why any company or business wouldn’t want a website. Anything that will progress the visibility of a product or service is a positive trend.

The most interesting answer I found on this infographic is the one when asked why they don’t have a website. They  answered “lack of time.” This is, of course, opposite to what they should answer in my humble opinion. I mean, can they really waste time NOT being present on the Internet? The trend clearly shows that everything is progressing to an entirely virtualized society, and without a presence there, it will be like you don’t exist at all. It’s truly interesting and especially a good read for companies that do not have a presence on the Internet.

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Small businesses who update their website more than five times per month have +300% more website traffic than those who do not.

Small businesses who do engage with social networks see a +400% increase in the visitors to their website as a direct result of the social networking platform

Originally published on WebaAalyticsWorld.net

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Small businesses who update their website more than five times per month have +300% more website traffic than those who do not.

Small businesses who do engage with social networks see a +400% increase in the visitors to their website as a direct result of the social networking platform

Originally published on WebaAalyticsWorld.net

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In an ideal world, all websites would have a feature that allowed the user to translate a website into their native language (or even more ideally, translation would be done before the user sees anything on the page).  In the real world, most small businesses can’t afford to invest money into website translation.   Luckily a small startup named “Google” provides an outstanding Translate API to translate simple text from one language to another!

Sample HTML

Google’s awesome Translate API allows you to send HTML — you don’t need to extract the text yourself! That’s a huge feature because parsing HTML and putting it all back again would be a nightmare!  Let’s put together some sample content:

<script src="https://www.google.com/jsapi?key=YOUR_GOOGLE_KEY"></script>
<div id="languages"><p>
	<a href="?lang=en" rel="en">English</a> / <a href="?lang=es" rel="es">Spanish</a> / <a href="?lang=it" rel="it">Italian</a> /
	<a href="?lang=fr" rel="fr">French</a>
</p></div>

<div id="languageBlock">
	<p>Lights go out and I can't be saved <br />
	Tides that I tried to swim against  <br />
	Brought me down upon my knees  <br />
	Oh I beg, I beg and plead </p>

	<p>Singin', come out if things aren't said  <br />
	Shoot an apple off my head  <br />
	And a, trouble that can't be named  <br />
	Tigers waitin' to be tamed </p>

	<p>Singing, yooooooooooooo ohhhhhh  <br />
	Yoooooooooooo ohhhhhh </p>

	<p>Home, home, where I wanted to go <br />
	Home, home, where I wanted to go  <br />
	Home, home, where I wanted to go  <br />
	Home, home, where I wanted to go</p>
</div>

We will use this #languageBlock element to send to Google for translation.  Note that each link has a rel attribute which holds the code for the language to switch to.

Google Translate API JavaScript

For the sake of keeping the code short, I’m using MooTools to access elements and add DOM events.  Feel free to stick to simple JavaScript or your framework of choice.

// Set the original/default language
var lang = "en";
var currentClass = "currentLang";

// Load the language lib
google.load("language",1);

// When the DOM is ready....
window.addEvent("domready",function(){
	// Retrieve the DIV to be translated.
	var translateDiv = document.id("languageBlock");
	// Define a function to switch from the currentlanguage to another
	var callback = function(result) {
		if(result.translation) {
			translateDiv.set("html",result.translation);
		}
	};
	// Add a click listener to update the DIV
	$$("#languages a").addEvent("click",function(e) {
		// Stop the event
		if(e) e.stop();
		// Get the "to" language
		var toLang = this.get("rel");
		// Set the translation into motion
		google.language.translate(translateDiv.get("html"),lang,toLang,callback);
		// Set the new language
		lang = toLang;
		// Add class to current
		this.getSiblings().removeClass(currentClass);
		this.addClass(currentClass);
	});
});

The first step in the process is using google.load to load the Translate API.  When the the API is loaded, we grab the DIV to be translated.  We then define a callback for when the translation returns from Google.  This callback simply updates the content of the DIV.  The last step is adding a click event handler to each language link.  A google.language.translate call sends the content to Google for translation.  When the translated content returns, the content is updated by our callback!

Thanks to Google’s Translate API, we can effortlessly translate data!  It’s important that I note that Google’s content size limit is quite small so you shouldn’t rely on the Translate API to completely translate your a page.  It is, however, an excellent way to translate an alert or status message in a give language!

Follow Me! Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | MooTools Forge.

Full David Walsh Blog Post: Translate Content with the Google Translate API and JavaScript

Related posts:

1. google.load(): Utilize Google’s AJAX Libraries API
2. Using MooTools to Instruct Google Analytics to Track Outbound Links
3. Track AJAX Link Clicks Using Google Analytics
4. Implement the Google AJAX Search API
5. Track File Downloads in Google Analytics Using MooTools

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You may be surprised to learn that postcard marketing still works in the 21st century. In fact, postcards usually produce better results today than in the past – especially when used for generating traffic to a website or sales leads.

One reason postcards work so well is because they almost always get read. Think about it. Do you remember ever discarding a postcard without at least knowing what the message was about? It’s almost impossible to do.

Postcards are small. Most are about 4 x 6 inches in size. That means your message must be brief. Plus, postcards get delivered with your message exposed and “ready to read”.

This guarantees that almost 100 percent of the recipients will actually see and at least scan your sales message …whether they intend to or not. They can’t avoid it.

Tip: Don’t to try to close sales with a postcard. In most cases, there’s not enough space on it to provide all of the information needed to close sales. Instead…

Design your postcard to attract attention to your product or service and create a desire to find out more about it. Then tell the reader to get more information from a source where you CAN close sales – like your website or by calling you.

Postcard marketing offers a number of other major benefits for marketers too – especially for new businesses and small businesses. Here are just a few of them…

1. Creating Effective Marketing Postcards is Easy

You don’t need any special skill to create a postcard that will generate a big response. The key is to set up the postcard so it can be read and understood by just glancing at it for a few seconds.

For example, start with a brief headline to get the readers attention. Then include a bulleted list of 3 to 5 major benefits followed by instructions to call you, visit your website or come into your place of business.

2. The Cost of Marketing with Postcards Is Very Low

The cost of material used to make typical 4 x 6 or similar size postcards is very low. Even the process of printing them is simple and inexpensive too.

Best of all, you can send postcards by First Class Mail in the US for about 36 percent less than the cost to send letters by First Class Mail. Currently, it costs only 28 cents per postcard. To get this reduced rate, your postcards must be between 3 1/2 X 5 inches and 4 1/4 x 6 inches in size.

Tip: You can create and print your marketing postcards with your own computer and printer for just a few cents each. This is not only cost-effective, it’s fast.

3. Postcards Can Produce Quick Results

Because postcards are simple to create, print and send, you can get them in the mail fast. Plus, they will be delivered in just 2 to 3 days if you send them by the special reduced First Class postage rate for postcards I mentioned above.

That means you can often enjoy the results generated by your postcards within a week or so of deciding to use them.

If you’ve never used postcards for marketing or haven’t used them recently, test them now. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how well they work in the modern era.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Why Postcard Marketing Can Work For You

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WhizPage is a no-hassle service which allows small business owners to easily create a web presence integrated with popular social media outlets out of the box.

WhizPage is sort of like http://about.me but for businesses.

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Needium works by scanning what is being said on social media sources and detecting opportunities right as they come along. And as a bonus, it can also let merchants track their online reputations and do all they should do to iron any spot that might come to be while it is small.

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Learn more about Needium.com in Dataopedia.com

Find out how much Needium.com is worth with Stimator.com

Have a business question? Ask Startups.com

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Online reservation tool for restaurants and other appointment based small businesses looking to take reservations online from their website, facebook page or blog

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When it comes to social networking there’s little doubt that Facebook is the largest and most influential of the social networks online. It has more than 500 million registered user and, at the time of writing this, the average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events. For businesses this means that a Facebook page or other piece of Facebook real estate is a serious way to generate social and viral traffic but only if it is done well.

There are 900 million objects that people interact with which means, first and foremost, yours needs to stand out. It either needs to provide something that others don’t (unlikely given the amount of competition) or it needs to do what it does better than the competition. One of the most common mistakes by small businesses is believing that Facebook traffic is a quick hit; it can take months to build up a decent sized list of fans that avidly read your content but there are some steps you can take to help attract greater numbers.

The Facebook Platform

Fortunately, there is an extensive platform on which you can build unique Facebook pages and interact with existing and potential readers and your business needs to make the most of these in order to generate the best possible results.

1. Be Unique Not Generic – There is a lot of competition on Facebook, virtually regardless of the type and topic of content that you’re providing. Ensure your Facebook page really stands out by creating a unique design. You don’t have to have the standard Facebook page design and you can implement all sorts of features that help your visitors recognise you as a leader in your field.

You can also serve different landing pages to different visitors. For example, fans and first time visitors to your page do not need to see the same thing and Facebook offers the functionality to change these settings. Show a page that encourages non-followers to fan your page, and show the main content to those that have already done so. Offer incentive such as coupons for your products or services, or free resources like Ebooks and other giveaways, to members that have not yet clicked to follow your page.

2 . Use Giveaways – Giveaways have long been and continue to be one of the most effective branding and promotional techniques there is. Ebooks, gift items, and coupons are just some of the Facebook-specific items you can offer to those that are willing to sign up for your Facebook fan page. You can offer regular giveaways to members to ensure that people follow you over time and as an extra incentive for becoming what is essentially a subscribed member of your fan page.

3. Use Competitions – Competitions can generate even more buzz than a giveaway. If you place a financial value on each of your fans then you can calculate a decent prize to give away. It could be one of your own products or services or something relating to one of your partners. Make sure that it is related to the content you offer as well as the products or services that you promote. Competitions can go viral too, so encourage your readers to spread the word with their friends – you can even build this in to the competition by offering extra prize draw entries for each friend referred to your page.

4. Get Personal - Facebook is first and foremost a social network. The fact that it can also be used to help promote your business is an added benefit but users are predominantly on the site because it allows them to connect with others and hunt down content that they are interested in. It is, therefore, a personal experience and your readers will for the most part want to believe that they are dealing with real people. Add a large photo to your Facebook page.

If you organize events or can take photos of your visitors some other way then do so, and tag the people in those photos. It is possible to let readers upload their own photos and tag themselves (I would of course watch this carefully, but it can be a great way to get people involved).

5. Say Thanks – A little “thank you” can go a LONG way. As soon as somebody becomes a fan send them an unobtrusive message thanking them for becoming a fan and welcoming them to the fold. The message doesn’t need to be long and it can be automated, but remember, people buy people, so a little personal touch will go a long way!

6. Don’t Give Up – Don’t be surprised if your Mom and your Sister are your only fans after a few days of adding content and personalizing your page. It does take effort to develop a high quality Facebook fan page. Keep posting, keep updating, keep testing, keep evolving, and keep trying – don’t’ give up!

Facebook Marketing

Facebook is the largest social network online having surpassed half a billion users. While competition is fierce, if you can master the art of creating a popular and beneficial Facebook page then you can also master the art of generating social traffic and your marketing message can go viral producing massive returns in the long run.

Happy status updates!

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

6 Tips To Improved Facebook Marketing

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In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting Kashoo. The developer describes Kashoo.com as an app that transforms how small businesses manage their finances. At its core, Kashoo.com is a powerful yet affordable online accounting solution designed specifically for small business. With no accounting experience, the business owner can quickly and efficiently “do the books” and move on to the business of running the business.

Read on for more information and screenshots!

Screenshots

Kashoo

Kashoo

About the App

Unlike desktop accounting applications, Kashoo.com was built from the ground up to leverage cloud computing to enable collaboration, mobility, and data sharing in a simple, secure, affordable solution.

Requirements: Web Browser
Price: $10 per month
Developer: Dobes Vandermeer

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Learn more about AddressTwo.com in Dataopedia.com

Find out how much AddressTwo.com is worth with Stimator.com

Have a business question? Ask Startups.com

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Learn more about TribeHR.com in Dataopedia.com

Find out how much TribeHR.com is worth with Stimator.com

Have a business question? Ask Startups.com

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But how do you lower your bounce rate? Keep reading to find out.

Case Study: Paper Leaf

Let’s look at a real-life example: this website right here. Paper Leaf is a small business, providing web design and graphic design primarily to small businesses. We use this site to show our body of work, to help clients and potential clients learn about us, and to share information through our blog. Our blog generates a decent amount of traffic for us; it helps a lot of people find us, which makes it very valuable to us. However, back in October our bounce rate was really, really high: about 75%. This is because the majority of our visitors find our site via our blog – usually, they find a link to a specific article and click through to our site to read it. But why was our bounce rate so high, and how can we fix it?

Identify the Problem

The first step in solving any problem – in this case, having an undesirably high bounce rate – is to identify and break down the problem. The main issue with our site was that once people were done reading the article they clicked through to read, they were leaving. They weren’t really clicking around, reading more articles and learning more about Paper Leaf and/or design.

Set a Goal

Now that we knew the problem, we could set a goal and make the changes necessary to reach it. I wanted to lower our bounce rate by 25% by the end of October. With the goal set, how can we reach it?

The Solution

Our blog covers a lot of bases; we touch on the business side of design, the web side, the print side, the identity side and more. I believe that we have a lot of valuable articles; the issue is that our visitors weren’t really finding them. There are a few potential solutions to this problem, but the one we took was to add a bit of code that shows a list of related articles (related by how they’re categorized) in a section sure to be seen: right at the end of the article (you can see it at the end of this very post). This way, once the reader has finished reading the article they clicked through to read, they are presented with a tidy list of enticing article links to click on, if they so desire. If the visitors do click through to read another article, then we’re on our way to our goal: lowering our bounce rate. So, we put that code in and waited to gauge the results.

Well, after 30 days, the results were pretty clear: having the “Related Articles” list lowered our bounce rate by an astounding 64% in 30 days.

I know it might be tough to read, but the graphic above shows that our bounce rate on Sept 20, 2010 was 75.94%. Conversely, the bounce rate on Oct 20, 2010 was 9.43%. Goal met, I’d say.

I’m not writing this to say “look how innovative we are” or anything like that. Having a “If you like this article, you might like these too” section is fairly common on blogs; we definitely didn’t invent the wheel. Why I am writing this, I suppose, is to show some concrete proof of the importance of this section, as well as to hopefully give you the steps & tools to improve your site too. As designers, developers or site owners, we can’t just expect visitors to be enthralled at our site and click around, reading every page and every article. We need to make it easy for the visitor, and adding a simple way to read more content did exactly that.

As well, this case study goes to show the importance of having Google Analytics and reviewing your site design & performance on a regular basis. Without stats to rely on, we would have had no idea people weren’t clicking around our site. Because we could see this, though, we could make the proper changes to the site design & usability in order to improve the experience for the visitor. Further proof that design is important, and that a website should be an evolving entity.

So review your site, and some of your clients’ sites. Perhaps you can find an area you’d like to improve on, like bounce rate. Perhaps you don’t have 64% to lose, but I bet you can improve it some way, some how. Good luck!

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What can you use the application for?


File Apartment is an application for temporarily housing files for later download by users or others.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


There is no information available about the history or use of this application.

What are the differences to other applications?


File Apartment allows any type of file up to 1 GB. Other types of file sharing sites have lower limits and registration processes.

How does the application look and feel to use?


The application is extremely simple. For a free file, users enter an email address and file description before uploading the file. Paid plans must provide first and last name, email address, zip code, credit card number and CVC with expiration date or simply click “buy now” from the PayPal link.

Once the file is uploaded, a link to the file is sent to the email provided by the user. The link leads to a download screen and file is retrieved with one click. The link may be sent to others for file sharing purposes.

How does the registration process work?


No registration necessary.

What does it cost to use the application?


The free plan hold files for one day with one download. The $2.99 plan holds files for 14 days with 25 downloads, and the $3.99 plan holds files for 30 days with 50 downloads allowed. Credit cards and PayPal are both accepted for payment.

Who would you recommend the application to?


Anyone who wishes to upload files up to 1 GB easily and quickly without registration. The free one file plan will work well for families who wish to send files to another family member. The other plans are inexpensive and will be useful for small businesses.

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Apps On Cloud is a provider of internet based social business management software. Combining Customer Relationship Management, Project Management, and Employee Management tools, our all-in-one business automation software can help companies grow their sales and stay organized.

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WebCollaboration.com enables small businesses to capture and organize discussions, documents, and project tasks.

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What can you use the application for?


Microsoft Office Live provides a free website builder for Small Businesses.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


Microsoft is a leader in technology, though they are known to produce products fraught with problems.

What are the differences to other applications?


Of all of the website builders reviewed, this is the most irksome. Customer support is nonexistent and complaints are ignored. Users are delayed indefinitely before being able to build a site. This is an unprofessional and poorly run application.

How does the application look and feel to use?


Microsoft Office Live requires Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. After registration, users are directed to a home screen with a notice that some parts of the account are not yet fully activated. Users are directed to wait and refresh to get an updated status and when the site is ready to use the message will be gone. During review, using the latest version of Internet Explorer, the page never went live. Reviewer attempted to use Firefox and the result was the same. A search of the user forum revealed that this is a common issue, but Microsoft representatives had not supplied answers. The blog has not been updated since December 2009.

After contacting customer service via email, this response was received: I would like to inform you that it may take up to 72 hours for the provisioning of your account. Therefore, please wait for 72 hours from the date you signed up and then try to access it. If you still face the same problem after 72 hours then please get back to us so that we can further look into the matter.

24 hours after signing up, an email announcing “Start building your Web site with Office Live” was received. It contained a link labeled “Get Started on Your Web Site”. The link led to an error message stating that the webpage is not available. Well beyond 72 hours, the site is still inaccessible.

How does the registration process work?


Registration requires an email address, password, full name, and organization if applicable. Those with Live accounts may sign in through the Live software.

What does it cost to use the application?


Microsoft Office Live provides a Small Business website free of charge. Domain name registration is $14.95/year, premium email $19.95/ year, and additional storage and users range from $4.95-84.95/month.

Who would you recommend the application to?


This application is not recommended. A 72 hour wait to set up a website is unacceptable when so many website builders offer instant access. With the lack of customer support, users would do well to find another app.

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To establish a presence on the web it is vitally important that your legitimate online businesses websites are maintained. Unfortunately there are many small businesses who don’t realize the necessity of having self-hosted websites and they tend to use the free alternatives instead.

So let’s take a look at why self-hosting websites are so much better for establishing your own online presence.

1. You Get Your Own Domain!

With free hosting you do not get to use your own domain and owning your own domain is vital in establishing a good web presence. Some of the reasons why this is so are; you don’t ever need to worry about the content on your website where as when using free hosting, if they stop operating for any reason at all or go out of business you will lose everything on your site.

They also have the right to dictate what you put on your website and this includes the advertisements, plus they can put their own ads on your website and they don’t need your permission to do it. When the ownership of your domain name is yours then you have total control over where people can find your website.

2. Freedom of Functionality.

When using self-hosting the choice of software is yours alone and that means that you can make the decision about what type of software will best serve your needs. This includes the kind of software you choose to use on your blog to connect to possible customers through social media. With free hosting you do not get this choice.

To have the flexibility to run your legitimate online businesses the way you want, never even consider using free hosting, in fact you need to ascertain that the paid hosting company you decide on is of good quality if you wish to have flexibility with the way you operate.

3. Your Online Businesses will look more Professional.

If you expect people to take both you and your online businesses seriously then YOU must also take your business seriously. When you use free hosting what you are saying to anyone who visits your website is that it really is not worth their time. Free website hosting companies are using your website to advertise their own products and this will automatically detract from your own business opportunities.

Once people leave your website chances are pretty good that they are not going to return to take advantage of any of your services or products that you have on offer.

In case you haven’t noticed yet, everything we have discussed up to this point comes down to one thing – Control.

Why would you want any other company to have control over your legitimate online businesses website? Self hosting not only gives your website a more professional look but it also allows you to make your own choices to create the website exactly as you want it to be.

Unless you are willing to treat your business seriously don’t expect that anyone else will do so. Free hosting will never give you the same advantages that self hosting will and in order to brand yourself and your online businesses you must have a professional and flexible website.

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Why Your Legitimate Online Businesses Websites Need to be Self-Hosted

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This is achieved by providing them with a cloud-based platform which replicates these features that are traditionally only available to those who buy a vertical platform.

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Chances are that if you’re reading this, you’re either a designer or someone interested in design at some level. On top of that, a good percentage of you readers freelance either full or part-time. There are a lot of freelance designers out there, and the majority of us brand ourselves as just that: a freelance graphic designer. But is that really accurate? Do we only offer graphic design services, or do we offer a wider range of services – one of which is graphic design? Allow me to explain.

Graphic design is a skill. This skill can be manifested in the design of a business card; the design of a marketing print piece; the design of a website. It is a skill that is required by every small business at varying levels; however, it is also a skill that has to be in touch with a variety of previously defined goals and strategies of that business in order to be effective. Here at Paper Leaf, we preach about knowing the end user and designing with them in mind. We also talk about goals and designing towards achieving those goals (for example, for a web user to follow a predetermined path throughout a website that culminates in a phone call or email). With all that in mind, ask yourself: do your clients come to you with these goals and end users already defined? Or do you help them strategize and set goals prior to setting pencil to paper?

Hit the jump to read the full article.

Strategic Design vs. Pixel Pushing

We work primarily with small businesses, as do many freelancers; thus, the majority of the time we’re helping clients define goals & strategies as part of our design process. However, we also receive projects where we are essentially expected to carry out an already planned design – essentially, act as a “pixelpusher” as the design community sometimes (usually negatively) calls it. These latter projects are quite different than the former; the latter are projects where we are not asked to use our cerebral or strategic knowledge of design. Rather, we are more or less the “labour” – we know the Creative Suite, we know CSS & HTML, we know WordPress – and this is why we’re hired, to simply work in these areas. I realize this sounds somewhat negative, but I don’t intend it to be so all the time. I’m just trying to clearly define the two types of projects: strategic design projects (where the freelance designer acts as creative director, chief strategic officer and so on) and basic design projects (where the freelance designer solely brings a design to life, or working format), for lack of better terms.

When a project comes to us that has clearly defined end users, goals, and creative direction, it is a pleasure to take part in as a “basic” designer who is tasked to carry out the vector/pixel/coding work. However, there are also misguided projects that come to pass, where an ill-equipped project manager acts as creative director, UX planner, and designer without any prior experience. These sorts of projects rarely turn out well, and plenty of designers have experienced them – just read Clients From Hell – and it got me to thinking: by branding ourselves as “designers” or a “design studio”, are we inviting in the “basic design projects”? After all, being a designer isn’t the same thing as being a creative director, or being a strategic planner. It’s also not the same as being a “creative problem solver”, a more general umbrella term.

The Definition of a Designer

Designers view the term “graphic designer” as a well-rounded term, where a good graphic designer can not only carry out the actual work (drawing/layout etc) but also strategize and set goals in order to design effectively. However, not all clients view a “graphic designer” in this light. Some do; some also view a graphic designer as the aforementioned “pixelpusher”. This difference in understanding is no doubt where so many common client/designer complaints come from. Perhaps branding ourselves in a different light is the answer.

Consider Your Audience & Your Services

Who makes up the majority of your work? What sort of projects do you want to take on? These questions should, as always, steer your branding effort. For example, if you’re a freelance designer who acts as a subcontractor to many larger advertising firms, perhaps branding yourself as a freelance designer is accurate and effective. After all, an advertising firm will have a creative director who works with the client to define their goals; they are subcontracting to you to carry out the actual design work, not to carry out the larger spectrum creative thinking as well.

On the flipside: if you’re a freelance designer who works with many small businesses who don’t have a marketing or creative department, perhaps you would be better off branding yourself not as a freelance designer, but as a creative director & graphic designer, or a creative/visual problem solver, or a strategic business designer (or some other term; these are just examples off the top of my head). After all, you are offering more than just design work – you’re offering strategies for the blog you just implemented for them, or helping them define their target audience.

Find These Clients

Once you’ve figured out what you truly offer, what you want to focus on, and how you’re going to brand yourself, you have to go out and find the clients who need your services. Your success rate of finding new clients will improve thanks to your newly focused rebranding. I guess what I’m saying is that it’s good from time to time to re-evaluate your work/business/brand and see if there are any ways to improve. By rebranding yourself to focus more accurately on what you truly offer – or what you truly want to offer – you will not only get more business, but you will get more of the business you like to work on. This will lead to an improved quality of life, work-speaking, and nobody complains about that, right? What are your thoughts?

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One of the best ways a brand can do this is by creating a promotion around an application. However, businesses tend to stay away from this due to lack of resources or lack of knowledge on how to go about creating or developing these types of promotions. Now there is a platform called Geotoko. This platform runs location based contests and sweepstakes for small businesses, large brands and agencies. How does it work? The brands can reward users for checking-in using Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Whrrl, TriOut, Loopt and/or Twitter. Geotoko also allows users to automatically collect loyalty points and rewards for check-ins on all major geo location applications. They are in beta now, but you can ask for an invite.

Geotoko – An Intro! from Geotoko on Vimeo.

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This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

A new “group buying” trend is emerging on the web, in which consumers effectively band together to get better deals or discounts when purchasing products and services. One of the flagship group buying web services, GroupOn, was recently valued at over $1 billion — providing a sense of just how big this sector could become.

Other services like LivingSocial have raised significant funding. A fleet of other competitors are cropping up as well, from Tippr to Lifebooker and a number of smaller localized deal sites. Although still technically in its early stages, group buying is poised to become one of the bigger trends to emerge in 2010.

Most group buying sites tend to offer localized deals and discounts in specific cities. Typical offers include percentage discounts at participating restaurants, coupons for savings off a minimum purchase at retail stores, two-for-one event ticket specials and other similar deals. Typically, each promotion only becomes valid if enough members sign up for it, encouraging viral sharing of individual deals. If the minimum sign-up is not met, the deal does not proceed and no one’s credit card is charged.

Should Small Businesses Pay Attention Yet?

What does the group buying trend mean for small businesses? Is it time to pay attention, or too early to get excited?

In some ways, the situation is similar to how small businesses might consider involvement with another emerging trend: location-based checkin services like Foursquare. Neither trend has quite reached the “need to participate” stage, but both can have advantages depending on the nature of your business and of your clientele.

For small businesses that cater to a tech-savvy, early adopter type of customer or audience, getting in early on an emerging trend can be a good move for your brand. Participation in online group buying could strengthen the perception of your business as a forward-thinking entity by showcasing your awareness of new trends and your initiative to dive in and experiment with them. If an integral part of your company’s culture includes embracing new tools, being agile, and encouraging innovation, getting involved in group buying could promote your mission both internally and externally.

A New Opportunity to Serve Your Customers

Another way to look at the group buying trend is less as something entirely new and more as a novel twist on the long existing practice of rewarding your best customers with special deals and promotions. Companies have been placing paper coupons in circulars, sending snail mail flyers, and offering discounts online for years. Now, businesses are adding the “group” component to the equation, bringing with it a dimension of new customer attraction.

If you can get some of your existing repeat customers interested in a group buying deal, they may actually help get the word out about the discount and your brand by evangelizing it to their friends. They have great incentive to do so, not only because they already like your business, but because the more people who sign up for the promotion, the better chance they themselves have of securing the deal. Ortiz Fitness, a Brooklyn-based exercise boot camp recently offered one month of classes (five, 45-minute classes each week) for only $47 through Tippr. To make the group sales discount more appealing owner Bryan Ortiz decided to include a 30-minute personal training session for free. It’s a package that would normally cost $242, and the deep discount brought in 83 new clients. “It was the best three days I’ve ever had in terms of business,” said Ortiz. “It brought in prospective customers with a low risk offer and it saved me from having to pay for additional marketing like Facebook ads.”

When done right, a good group buying deal can be a win-win viral promotion for your business that keeps existing customers happy and brings in new patrons.

Opportunity, But Not Obligation

It’s doubtful that group buying will fizzle out any time soon, so if your business simply lacks the bandwidth to get started with it now there will still be opportunities waiting in the future. On the other hand, if the trend matches your business’s purpose and interests, you could benefit significantly by getting involved earlier.

For now, the trend is still fairly nascent, and falls into the category of “opportunity, but not obligation.” There’s no rush for most small businesses to dive in, but if group buying is a good fit to move your brand forward now is a great time to get involved.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Pagadesign

Tags: Bryan Ortiz, coupons, discounts, group buying, groupon, LivingSocial, Ortiz Fitness, small business, Tippr

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Twitter has certainly emerged as one of the most popular social networking/blogging platforms of the past few years. There are various reasons why Twitter has become so wildly popular. It is a simple concept where brief messages can be sent to loyal followers. This is why Twitter is so helpful to small businesses. It can aid in promoting a business in the most cost effective manner. Really, this is one of the very best systems for promoting updates, info, and deals to the followers of the Twitter account.

The one problem here is that most entrepreneurs look towards quantity as opposed to quality in their followers. This can prove to be a huge mistake since you never want to sacrifice quality when looking to amass Twitter followers.

How do people make such a mistake? Well, they look at volume as being the secret to their success. The problem here is that the process is not going to be a very successful one. Rather, it can prove to be disastrous more than anything else because your business ends up promoting itself to those that are really not interested in the products or services you are offering.

Yes, some people will sign on to be followers of your Twitter account with no real interest in being customers. That is why you need to develop a strong niche following as opposed to a large following.

The bottom line here is you do NOT want a large list of followers. You want an EFFECTIVE list of followers.

Some may consider this notion to go against the grain in which a Twitter account should be approached. After all, Twitter is wildly popular so why not follow the trends? The average Twitter account has changed dramatically since July. The number of followers the average account maintains has jumped from 70 to 300. This has led many accounts to increase their number of postings. In July, the number was in the range of 119. Today, it has jumped significantly to 420.

But, is there a great deal of benefit from such increases? In all honesty, if the followers are not going to purchase, the numbers do not really mean much. That means all those increases in updates have less value as well. Again, you want your efforts to be effective. Promoting volume in your approach is not the way to achieve any true level of success.

One problem with a large number of followers is that your tweets need to be adjusted to handle larger volumes. That means your tweets need to be clearly understood by all. As such, you need to promote a generalized approach to the tweets. This is not always the best method because you are not providing detailed and specific information in the tweets. This means those that are serious potential customers may lose interest in the tweets or cease taking them seriously. This is not a good thing if you are seriously trying to sell a product or service.

It becomes a full time job to sort and respond to the real people who are interested in you. Twittering without engagement of your audience defeats the entire process of marketing. I believe many people are using twitter as “lets throw it out there and see what sticks”. I can tell you from testing that this approach does not work. No wonder people are leaving twitter in droves.

This leads to a more potentially serious side effect. If more members of Twitter venture towards promoting generic, uninteresting, and uninspiring tweets so as to boost the volume of people reading, the health of the social network site will not stay strong for long.

Basically, why would anyone would want to follow Twitter when the tweets decline in value? This would certainly not be a positive in terms of the ability for a small business  to procure new customers that are vital to the health of the business.

Again, exploring options for expanding a business’ success should center on niche marketing. This approach needs to be taken with Twitter or else the value of Twitter will decline. Based on what we are seeing, the decline will be difficult to avoid in the future based on current actions.

Does this mean that Twitter is decidedly lacking in value for those seeking to utilize what it has to offer? No, no one is making such a statement as it would be a decidedly inaccurate one.

Twitter, in fact, has taken steps to promote niche marketing. This is evident in the ability to devise “Twitter lists.” Twitter lists allow you to take certain members of your massive group of followers and put them in
a particular category. You can then promote your tweets to individual members of these various lists. So, you can present wide, generic tweets as well as individualized tweets to those that may be considered more serious
potential customers.

For example, you can create a group of people that have already made purchases in the past. Then, you would be free to issue tweets directly to such individuals as you wish. This would be an effective form of niche marketing that would be far more beneficial than putting forth perpetually generalized tweets. One of the other problems with having 1,000’s of non-niched followers is seeing through the noise of twitter.

As such, it is best to look towards growing these individual lists in order to expand the potential to niche market. Yet, many will seek to put forth the exact opposite goal. They will look towards greatly expanding their number of followers into the thousands while never stopping to examine whether or not such a massive list truly boosts their success potential. Such a strategy is a flawed one that will not lead to the empirical success that is sought.

And, if you are not looking to succeed with your business, then why even bother being in business? Twitter has tremendous value and it delivers great benefit to those looking to expand their small business’ promotional
strategies in a cost effective manner.

In conclusion, try not to become hung up on the notion of greatly expanding your followers’ list. Seek to promote effective niche marketing strategies instead.

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Twitter: Followers, Niches, and Myths

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