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Most of you have probably heard of the website eHow.com, a website that basically offers hundreds of thousands of articles, on every topic imaginable, for the sole purpose of coming up in the search engines and subsequently driving ad revenue. These relatively new types of websites have been dubbed “Content Farms”, and the concept is troubling to say the least. Don’t get me wrong, the business model is sound, but the information being published as authoritative is far from it.

While writing this post, I flashed back to 8th grade when my teacher said, “Not everything you read on the internet is true.” Granted, I think we all know this. But, as a company grows and becomes more popular, its brand becomes more reputable as well, deserved or not.

I’m not going to summarize the graphic below because it’s already very well done. As you read through it, keep in mind that these content farms complicate your search results and will affect what sort of recipe you’ll be trying tonight. More importantly, if you have a website competing for rank, your company’s position on Google is being attacked everyday… and not just by your competitors. Even businesses who are not your competitors are terrorizing your rank on Google, and if they were not your competitors yesterday, they will be tomorrow.

The following info-graphic, provided by Online MBA shows exactly how these content-based articles come into existence, pumped out like newspapers off a press. Click here to view the graphic full size.

An imaginary interview with a business struggling to find its voice:

How do I know what my voice sounds like?
Don’t worry. You’ll know when you hear it. After you know, and start to broadcast yourself, everyone else will be telling you what a nice voice you have, too.

What will my customers be listening for?
With a few exceptions, most people will not be actively listening for anything. Potential customers just need to believe they are your one true love. Your voice must convince them of this.

So I want to trick them, isn’t that kind of unethical?
Oh no. Your true voice won’t be a lie. Once you find what defines you, and express that openly, convincing them of your loyalty won’t be a problem. Honesty, integrity and your passion to make your customers happy have always been ingredients for successful relationships.

In other words, you must actually believe that each and every one of them is your own true love.

I don’t get it. How can everyone be my one true love?
It’s not easy, but remember that no one wants to be part of a crowd. Everyone wants to be the FOCUS OF YOUR ATTENTION… so show them that they are.

What is the secret?
Great question, glad you asked, but I already told you, it’s in your voice. Your beautiful, unique voice.

What if I have a great voice, perfect and unique, but I don’t know where to start singing.
It’s important that you don’t speak clearly in the wrong places. Your potential sweethearts won’t hear you. A good social media program can make a good voice shine, but there’s no easy path through Facebook or Twitter. No golden road that only a few know about. No treasure maps with big red X’s.

The beauty of social media is that it raises the unique voices and buries the rest. That’s the way it works and there’s nothing you can do about it. The only way to the top is to find the right voice for your business and then start singing. You know you’ve got the right venue when they start lining up at the door to buy tickets.

So, they’ll love me just for who I am?
Only you can answer this question but if for some reason the answer is “NO”, you could be lonely for a while. When it comes down to it, your products and services are THE differentiating factor that makes your business unique. Everything else is superficial. Your customers are going to stay with you because they love what you give them and, as a result, they’ll love you.

What’s the Bleepin’ Point?

In case you’ve missed the subtlety of my message, I’ll just say it. The value your customers are looking for is in your business. It’s the people you employ, your products, your services and your prices. Your voice is how you relay that value to your customers. When you find it, sing it loud and clear.

This is based on an article from Marketing Profs about an eBay experiment to educate customers about their services.

eBay invited six French fashion bloggers to engage in a crafty campaign called Wardrobe Commando.

The objective: The bloggers were to select one reader each for a full-on fashion revamp. Hailing from different regions of France, each blogger created a video of herself consulting with her reader of choice. Then the fun began.

Phase one: Each blogger convinced her “ugly duckling” to sell items online that actually made her look like a total fashion victim! In the process, each girl learned how to photograph and post items on eBay, complete with catchy salesgirl language.

Phase two: eBay footed the bill for hot new duds that turned the presumably dowdy ducks into sultry swans! The campaign likely drew thousands of readers—at the very least those who followed the work of the bloggers.

I believe this eBay experiment is fascinating. They’ve managed to give their customers a great time while sneakily teaching them to use their complex auction seller forms. If you’ve ever used eBay, you know that this is no easy task. The complicated terms and settings that they use in their forms are a huge barrier to using the services. If eBay wants to collect their fees and commissions, their customers need to understand how eBay fits into their goals.

Just like the love of your life won’t marry you until they understand how you fit into their future; the eBay customer needs to understand what they are doing or eBay won’t get the commission.

Show them how to use it

Listening is key, but demonstrating is king. Allow me to give an example from one of my own clients. Beauté de Maman has a wonderful skin care line for pregnant women. It’s natural and herbal and contains nothing toxic for the baby or mother… exactly what Beauté de Maman customers are looking for. But what we learned along the way is that not only do pregnant women want safe products, they want to know how to use those products for the best results. Questions like “Should I put on the stretch mark cream at night or should I put it on in the morning after my shower?”, helped us to understand what customers wanted to know about successfully using the products, before actually buying them.

Show your customers how to use your products down to the finest detail. The more customers know about how to use your product, the happier everyone will be.

Read the Original Article: Calling All Ugly Ducklings

We’ve put together a list of questions that will highlight some of the most common problems with business websites. We invite you to open your website and then go through the list of questions below. Take your time and write down your answers. You will be surprised how simple changes can increase your traffic and keep visitors on your site longer, which will translate into more business for you.

Let’s Play 20 Questions!

1. Okay, I’m on my homepage, what do I do now?
   Every homepage needs to pass the 5 second test. When a visitor arrives on your homepage, you should know exactly what they are going to do within the next 5 seconds. Whether that is reading an intro paragraph or clicking an enticing link to place an order. If you don’t know what they will do next, then how will your visitors?
    
2. Do your buttons look like buttons?
   A link to another page on your site is pointless unless it is obvious to your visitor that it is a link from the second they see it. Picture links need to pass the same test. Icons are a great way to add color and style to a website, but if it’s not completely obvious that it’s clickable, you are missing out on potentially interested visitors.
    
3. Can they get to any point on my website with only 3 clicks?
   There are countless ways to organize a website in terms of how people navigate it. But one rule that must always be followed is the rule of three clicks. If you can’t find the page you want to see by clicking three times or less, your visitors are getting frustrated, and frustrated visitors tend to go elsewhere.
    
4. Do all my links work?
   It sounds obvious, we know, but you would certainly be surprised how many links there are out there that lead to the middle of nowhere. Do yourself a favor and check all the links on your website to make sure they lead somewhere, preferably to the right place.
    
5. Are my webpage layouts consistent?
   When you move from page to page, do things move around? Are the navigation menus all in the same place, are the buttons all in the same order. Hopefully they are… because when things move around, people tend to get frustrated and leave.
    
6. Is your website KISS compliant?
   Keep It Simple Stupid… No we’re not calling you stupid, it’s just an expression. But seriously, if your website isn’t simple enough for an idiot to find his way around, then unfortunately, many people won’t be able to find their way around (sorry for being crude).
    
7. Are you sending people away from your website on purpose?
   Yes it’s true. Many people put links on their site, often right on the home page, that take visitors away, lost forever. Unless you are getting paid to send people to another site, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. We understand there is value in linking certain websites to others from an SEO perspective, but to give up valuable page real estate for someone else’s benefit is simply a bad idea. If you feel that these links are important there are ways to minimize the downside.
    
8. Does my message clearly communicate what I’m trying to sell?
   The purposes of business websites can certainly vary. Some sites simply inform visitors about the company, others go a step further by promoting their products and services in a generic way, and some offer their products online. Whatever you think your message is, be sure that it matches what’s written on your website.
    
9. Would I even fill out my own contact form? (Part I)
   How intimidating is your contact form? How much information are you asking for? Now, how much of that information do you actually need, or even want for that matter? 99% of the time you won’t need your visitors’ address, city, state, sex, title, company, or even phone number. Obviously what you need is based on how you work and what you are most comfortable with, but the point is, don’t ask for information that you don’t absolutely need. Name, email, question, done.
    
10. Would I even fill out my own contact form? (Part II)
    Internet business is all about generating quality leads, and so we felt it was necessary to dwell on contact forms… Yes they are that important. If you feel you might know why your visitors have arrived at your contact form, and usually it’s because they are interested in your product, you may need to give them a little nudge to fill it out. Just a few checkboxes with specific products or services of interest can remind people why they are there and help them to elaborate on what they would have had to write otherwise. See the example on our contact page.
     
    Had Enough?
     
11. Do I have one of those nifty little logos next to my URL in the address bar?
    They’re called favicons (short for favorite icons) and they are an often overlooked feature of a website. First, take a look to see if you have one, now take a look in your browser history and you’ll see a variety of different colors and shapes. Favicons also usually show up on browser tabs if you use those as well as in your browser’s bookmarks menu. Unique and colorful favicons can help your visitors find you again if they’ve been distracted.
     
    
     
12. Would I even fill out my own contact form? (Part III)
    Ok, ok no more contact forms… as soon as you make sure that you always, always, always promise to keep your visitors information safe. If they can’t trust you to do that, then it’s probably a foregone conclusion that they will not be buying your product.
     
13. Does my site look the same in all the major web browsers?
    Most web designers will tell you that the least fun part of their job is testing a website in multiple browsers. It’s not so important that a website looks exactly the same in multiple browsers but they should all at least look good. Be sure to test your site in Internet Explorer 7 and 8, Safari, Chrome and Firefox, which will cover 90% of your visitors.
     
14. Do I have to scroll to the right to see the entire page?
    This is not necessarily a common occurrence, but is certainly a serious problem if you do need to scroll right. The standard size for websites is less than1024px wide (today’s standard for a monitor screen). If your website is wider than that, you need to get it fixed today!
     
15. Do the pictures that say ‘click to enlarge’ actually enlarge when you click ’em?
    If you don’t have pictures that say ‘click to enlarge’, consider whether any of the pictures on your site need to be viewed in detail. This is especially important on sites where you have physical products to be sold. If you do happen to have ‘click to enlarge’ pictures on your site, please, please make sure that they actually get bigger when you click on them. If a visitor is interested enough to click on it, they will surely be sorely disappointed if it doesn’t work.
     
16. When I type my company’s name into a search engine do I come up first?
    One of the most tell-tale signs that you need to consider search engine optimization (SEO), is when you type in your company name and you are NOT result #1. Below are the 3 major search engines used by 90% of your target audience.
    Google                Yahoo!                Bing
     
17. Do all my pictures and links have ‘Alt’ and ‘Title’ tags
    This one is little more difficult to figure out, so we’ve included two examples below. The link below has a ‘title’ tag, when you point to it with your mouse it should read “This is a title tag.” The missing picture below that uses an ‘alt’ tag and should say “This is an alt tag.” These two practices are looked upon very favorably by the major search engines, especially if you utilize a lot of graphics in your website.
     
    Point to me.                
     
18. Do the search engines have a search engine specific XML site map for my whole website?
    If you don’t know the answer to this question, then the answer is most likely no, you don’t have a site map. This is not the same as a site map page on your site with links to all the pages, it is a different animal entirely used only by search engines. Basically, you need one.
     
19. Do you know who’s coming to your site and what pages they’re looking at?
    For those of you who said, “Yes”, good for you. Hopefully you are using that information to improve your business. For those of you who said “You can do that?” Yes you can, and it is a fantastic way to find out what is and what isn’t working on your site. For those of you who said “I’ve heard of people doing that before”, it’s time to take some action. If you are interested, we’ll even set it up for you for free. Click here.
     
20. Would you call your website ‘finished’?
    Sorry, but that was a trick question. The answer should always be no. A website in any form, is never perfect, because technology and people’s minds are always changing. Granted, you can’t always stay on top of those changes, but you are doing yourself and your company a disservice if you don’t even try.

Let us look over your website. We’ll give you an honest opinion about what can be done to improve your online presence.
 
Help Me Fix My Site »

In short, the answer is you should ask people’s permission before you put them on your list, but in reality, it’s the wrong question. People who aren’t interested in your services or your products and therefore your emails, probably don’t belong on your list. Stephanie actually suggests cleaning your lists of uninterested recipients and focus all of your energy on your more promising candidates.

She says:

Subscribers who really want to be on your file are always going to be more engaged and return higher response and revenue. Lots of “sleepers” on the file only return somnambulant results. Subscriber satisfaction and the resultant ROI is, after all, the whole point.

Permission As an Email Marketing Engagement Strategy

Sound Transit Web Site Review from ian lurie.

Go to the original article Sound Transit Web Site Review: They get an F-

The phone rings in our office. Between us we’re wearing 7 hats, working on 40 tasks, with 15 windows and applications open.  I put on the eighth hat and answer.

“Hello, is this Coldfire?” A woman’s voice with a loud roaring noise in the background.

“Yes, this is Coldfire, who’s calling?” I close one window so I can focus.

“This is Samantha, I found your name, just now, on the internet. I was wondering if you help smaller businesses. I have a bigger agency helping but they don’t pay any attention to me. I think I need someone local who doesn’t mind smaller companies. My agency likes corporate clients. I think they don’t care about my business.

“Well, that is terrible,” I commiserated, barely hearing her over the roar. “What’s that noise in the background?”

“Oh, I am on the free way, I-95.” she blurted. “WAIT, I have a truck on my butt.”

I plugged my free ear anticipating screeching brakes and crunching metal. I-95 is the busiest road on the east coast, or any coast for that matter. Truckers in their huge rigs honestly believe cars should be banned and chase down the smaller, weaker vehicles filled with terrified passengers. Samantha is someone I have never met but clearly she was taking a huge risk by being on the phone in such a place while driving.

“I’m back,” she said and proceeded to tell me about the truck before telling me about her new online store, her desire to become known and all the usual things that everyone in her shoes wants for a song.

She began to tell me her story of being an online retailer who sold her business, but is starting over with new products that everyone is drooling over and magazines are pestering to write about. “All I need is a new shopping cart. I tried to do it myself but I simply do not have time to learn this whole thing. I just don’t.”

I tried to halt my recurring image of Samantha looking up website developers in Google on her iphone while barreling down the I-95. Choosing us because we were on top of the search engine. Then calling us to find out who we are and why she should use our services.

I do love these new customer calls but safety comes first. I convinced Samantha to get off her cell phone by promising to call her back after I looked at her current website. She agreed and hung up.

Whats the point of my story?

Online retail is back and, while it is not yet back with a vengeance, it is getting stronger every day. No question about it, e-tailers like Samantha are in a virtual panic to beat everyone back into the market with their wares. They know shoppers. They know that most of America loves to spend money and generally can’t spend it fast enough.

That’s why Samantha could not wait until she got back to her office. She is a shopper and she can smell the retail market starting to cook like good ribs over an open flame, the smell unbearably tantalizing.

We love to help the Samantha’s of the world. We just wish they would not get so hungry while driving.

Tell us a story about your hunger for business. Just log in and start driving… uh, writing. We would love to hear from you no matter which hat you are wearing.