Category: News & Trends

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Is Your Website a “One Night Stand”?

Do visitors hit your home page and stay less than 10 seconds? Do your visitors rarely return for a second visit? Is your your home page bounce rate over 90%? If so, you may really need some help to improve stickiness and your visitor’s web experience. Your website may be one of the Web’s “one night stands” — never good enough for the “second date” or return visit.

Put your website to work for you by concentrating on providing great informational content. If your website is just about you and your services, and does not provide any interesting, conversation building content, you are missing the boat when it comes to what moves customers to contact you. You will never get the “second date” or sales call from a client or prospect when your focus is not on them, meeting their needs, and working to exceed their expectations.

It used to be that a website was like a brochure, but now we have gotten jaded by the “Web experience”. We want, crave, and demand interaction. Every website needs to engage visitors into conversation. Set the stage to become the authority for your clients and prospects and be their “go-to person” with excellent content and transparency of what you do and how you do it using your website as your platform.

Don’t fall into the rut of being a one visit website. Break out and become the voice of your industry and watch your business grow!

 

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The Economic Down Turn and Petroleum Costs Hurt Everyone!

Several months ago our Realtor clients and mortgage broker clients were really hurting and unfortunately for many, that situation has simply not changed.  What I am seeing is that this slow down and cut back of expenses is now migrating out of the real estate and mortgage industry into broader market sectors.

We are seeing many clients in many types of businesses tightening their belts, stopping peripheral services, and actively working to trim the expenses that they can control. You can’t easily control what you spend for gas, for electricity, or for food, but you can trim, or bring in-house, certain services that you typically outsource. This is what I am seeing finally in our my service industry.

Many clients who have employed our blogging services are tasking a junior team member to start blogging. Some are moving to Indian firms, and some are stopping blogging altogether.

As the cost of petroleum and mortgage crisis impacts more businesses and causes commodity prices to rise, I expect to see more cut backs and more do-it-yourselfers trying to take over webmastering their website, cutting back on their website updates, and bring their blogging services and pay per click management services in house.

My firm has been in business for nearly eight years and we are in this for the long haul. We will continue to offer value and practical solutions to all clients. Trust me, we’ll be ready to help you when you have the need and desire to outsource these areas that you may have had to pull closer to yourself for the time being.

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Google Drops Pay Per Action Program

On the Google AdWords blog this past week, Google announced that it was dropping its pay per action program.  If you never used pay per action, here it is in a nutshell.

With pay per action, you decide what you will pay, amount and action – you cannot do an action for a sale if you do not have access to your shopping cart code. Then publishers can pick up your code to show ads on their sites and can get paid when the action happens.

I found from using the program for a client, that pay per action was just not embraced by the publishing network. If you were only offering under 1 dollar or so for the action, publishers did not pick you up. Publisher came and went and so the ads were on and off again.

Although it sounded like a good idea, publishers really want to be paid for clicks as it simply was easier money.