With the proliferation of smartphones (I love my Droid Eris.), more of your customers and prospective customers are viewing your websites from a mobile device. Take advantage of it.

If you use coupons in print advertising, you certainly know their effectiveness. Google’s “mobile coupons” have all the same advantages with much less hassle. And, it’s not as likely that you’ll forget your phone as you do the paper coupons as you hurry out the door.

Simple to use, and another way to get customers in the door!

Merry Christmas from all of us here at WebWise! — John, Aimee, Mike, Chris, Larissa, Kit and Margaret

The WebWise Design & Marketing office will be closed December 24th through December 27th, so we may enjoy the time with our families.

Our Support Desk will be monitored for emergency tickets, and you may tweet us @webwisedesign.

What this means to you is your content, when presented properly, has a chance of being found in Google shortly after it is posted. Take another look at how well you are using your blog. If you are not using Twitter and or other social media, maybe now is the time to look at using those tools as part of your online presence.

As more and more users embrace the use of mobile devices for searching, this opens amazing opportunities for those delivering content wisely.

There will definitely more coming about this.

Our Support Desk will be monitored for emergency tickets, and you may tweet us @webwisedesign.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We’ll look forward to hearing from you @webwisedesign.

Sometimes knowing the sender is not enough. As many of you have seen, the thieves who write these emails are smart enough to “spoof” your own email address. Unfortunately, one of the phishing attacks arriving in many mail boxes the last couple of weeks, looks (as many do) to be legitimate. It tricks many users because it uses your email address and domain name. A couple of addresses it may come from are noreply@youremaildomainname.com or operator@youremaildomain.com, or something similar.

The email “Subject” may be “For the owner of the yourusername@youremaildomain.com e-mail account” or “A new settings file for the yourusername@youremaildomain.com” or something similar. The body of the email will read something like this:

Dear user of the youremaildomainname.com mailing service!
We are informing you that because of the security upgrade of the mailing service your mailbox (yourusername@youremaildomain.com) settings were changed. In order to apply the new set of settings click on the following link:
http://youremaildomainname.com/owa/service_directory/settings.php?email=xxxxxxxx…

Best regards, yourdomainnamecom Technical Support.

If you receive an email like this, and you mouseover the link and read carefully, you will see that it leads to a different server other than youremaildomain.com. If you click on it you will be redirected to a site that will likely infect your computer. Just delete the email. Do not click on the link!

If you are a WebWise Design & Marketing customer, please know that we would never send an email asking you to apply new settings by clicking on a link. No other responsible email provider would ask that of you either.

Protect your computer with good antivirus and malware software that includes anti-phishing protection.

Most importantly do not click on links without looking to see where they will lead you!

Practice safe clicking.

That said, in addition to the nice dinner served by Rebel’s Northern Exposure restaurant, and the gracious hospitality of our Livingston hosts and that of Ron Brisbois, Executive Director,  and John Murphy, President of GCEDC, here are the questions I posed last night:

Site Checklist:

1. Is Economic Development prominently displayed in the navigation?
2. Do you have text on the home page about Economic Development in your community?
   1. Specifically a paragraph with search terms that Economic Development professionals, business owners, job seekers, and relocating workers would use to find information.
3. Are there links in that text that take visitors to the appropriate pages on your site?
4. Does your Economic Development area include community profile information such as:
   • Transportation
   • Utilities
   • Emergency and Medical Services
   • Education/Employee Training
   • Major Employers
   • Taxes
   • Area Labor Force Information
   • Available buildings, sites, businesses
   • Housing Information
   • Community Contacts
   • Business & Industry Contact Information
5. Is ALL of the information current?
6. Have two people proofread your information for errors and accuracy?
7. Do your Economic Development pages have the appropriate Title and META Description words?
8. Do you have contact information on every page (in the footer) that interested parties will have in front of them after they print ANY of your pages?
9. Do you have a Google (or other mapping service) Map/Directions page?
10. Have you tried searching Google using the terms you believe prospects would use to find a community such as yours, when searching to locate a new/existing business, or  for personally relocating? If so, how did you do?

I also spoke briefly about using AdWords for Economic Development and gave them this very short list of AdWords Advantages:

• Reach people who self-qualify themselves
• Deliver them to the exact landing page that has content relevant to their search
• Fully control your ad budget - Chose daily budget; change or stop it in seconds
• See your ads on Google within minutes of creating them
• Very flexible, pause, start, change, create ads in seconds or minutes

Quick tips that will get you results.

Most of us don’t fully utilize the Thank You pages that get displayed after purchases, or when an inquiry is made via a form.  Too often, those pages, simply say “Thank You” or “Thank You for your order” or something like, “Your request is being processed. We’ll get back to you soon.”

Those types of pages are better than nothing, but they are missed opportunities. So, here are some tips for empowering your Thank You pages.

If you offer online shopping:

1. Make the words Thank You bigger than the other text. While you are at it, tell them you appreciate their business
2. Be sure to prominently display your Toll-Free phone number. If you don’t have a Toll-Free number, you are not serious about wanting customers.
3. Have a link to the Customer Account login page.
4. Display the special of the day, week, or month.
5. Display at least two items, saying, “People who bought this also bought these items:”
6. Have a link to your “Specials” or other RSS feeds
7. Have links to your Shipping & Returns pages.
8. Make sure your Thank You page has <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>  in the header,  so you don’t mess up your analytics. The only time anyone should see your Thank You page is after they place an order or fill out another form.
9. Use  Adwords conversion tracking on your Thank You page. If you are not using Google AdWords, you should be.
   

If you don’t offer online shopping, you likely have a Contact, Request Info, or Sign Up form. Here are some tips for you.

1. Make the words Thank You bigger than the other text. While you are at it, tell them you appreciate the time they gave you.
2. Be sure to prominently display your Toll-Free phone number. If you don’t have a Toll-Free number, you are not serious about wanting customers.
3. Prominently display an email address they can use if they want to contact you later instead of having to use your form again.
4. Display and have a link to a daily, weekly, or monthly feature or  News (RSS) Feed.
5. Make sure your Thank You page has <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>  in the header, so  you don’t mess up your analytics. The only time anyone should see your Thank You page is after they  fill out a form.
6. If you are using Google AdWords, use conversion tracking on your Thank You page.

Use as few or as many of these tips that are appropriate for your site. As with any page, I am not suggesting a bunch of clutter. Use some thought as to positioning, layout and use of white space.

Turn that Thank You page into a customer service and sales opportunity!

Please add your own tips or thoughts by leaving a comment.

The PS C expects to play a role in implementing the State Broadband Data and Development Grant program, which also received funding under the stimulus bill.  The recently passed federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provides for grants to map and deploy broadband, especially to unserved and underserved areas.

The Wisconsin Broadband Survey form can be used for businesses and individuals. Please avail yourself of this opportunity to be heard.  Everyone in Wisconsin can benefit from this.

Please fill it out today!

Recently I had the opportunity, thanks to Andy Lewis, to be a part of a Webinar for “The National e-Commerce Extension Initiative” named “Maximizing Your Pay-Per-Click Campaign.”  The PowerPoint presentation and links to related resources may be found at www.webwisedesign.com/adwordswebinar/. We concentrated on Google AdWords. Why? It is my humble opinion that for most, a limited advertising budget is a reality. Google is the 500-pound Gorilla, and if you are going to feed web advertising money to anyone, it should be Google with over 72% of U.S. searches reported for February, 2009 according to Hitwise.

Last week I met with several representatives of one our largest clients, and discussed mostly AdWords and Analytics for the better part of the afternoon. In both cases we talked about Keywords, Ad Copy, Landing Pages at length. Why? Having high placements in Google AdWords or Google organic search results is directly related to those three powerful terms. They rule this world as surely as many of the Triumvarites of history.

The importance of Keywords, Ad Copy, Landing Pages, is a simple concept, while not difficult, that is complex in implementation when done correctly. The good news is, you don’t have to spend in inordinate amount of time working on your AdWords campaigns to get some immediate results. Very simply, just make sure your keywords are in your ad copy and on your landing pages (prominently). If you do that, you will see your Click-Through-Rate, aka CTR, improve as well as your placement.

If you, or your search professional, spend the time on your landing pages to write keyword-relevant “Titles,” meta “Descriptions,” Headings, and content including the keywords that potential visitors would using when searching for your product, service, or information, and you write quality ads, as well as conducting ad-variant testing, you will be rewarded with increased, targeted, self-qualified traffic. Serious keyword research, a knowledge of how Google likes your pages coded, and knowing how to write and place that code is part of what will take your AdWords campaign to another level. Of course a thorough knowledge of AdWords and your analytics program is necessary as well if you want optimum results. To that end, unless you have a lot of spare time, working with a search professional who has experience and successes on their resume is essential.

One of the cool benefits, is that, the time you, or your search professional, spend on your “landing pages” will eventually manifest itself as higher rankings in Google’s search result pages, aka SERPs. Google sells relevance. Make sure your site search strategy, both PPC and organic, includes relevant keywords, ad copy, and landing pages.

Keywords, Ad Copy, Landing Pages - The Triumvarite!