Just as there are many different screensizes for computer monitors, there are numerous screen sizes on mobile devices, meaning that a website which has been designed to suit a particular screen size, will be unlikely to display correctly on other devices or screen sizes. Furthermore, varying levels of support for web technologies across browsers (different phone platforms support different web browsers) means that functionality which works on one device may be rendered useless on another (JavaScript menus for example).

These issues are compounded by differences between software and hardware providers, a classic example being the rift between Adobe and Apple who have failed to agree on the viewing rights for Flash technology on mobile devices (which has been the defacto standard for animating websites for almost 2 decades). This means that if your website uses Flash to display some or all of your site, users on Apple iPhone or iPads won’t be able to see those parts of your site.

Fortunately the good news is that it’s relatively easy to create a version of your site for mobile browsers. Essentially this can be done by stripping back all the non-essential graphics and text which mobile users don’t necessarily need to see, and presenting them instead with a more concise version of your site. Many businesses are going this way, or alternatively providing mobile applications for specific platforms that re-create the core functionality of the site.

While a specific mobile platform application (i.e. iPhone app, Android app etc…) may be overkill for a small, business this can be the way to go if you have a very clear set of functionality that cannot easily be reproduced with web technology on smartphones. Otherwise, developing a mobile version of your site is often the simpler solution.

Cyberdo is currently offering a Mobile Testing Service in which we test your website on a range of mobile devices and platforms (iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Nokia) and provide you a report with screenshots showing what your site looks like on these phones. The report also contains recommendations on how to improve your site for viewing on mobiles (if need be) and a quote (if desired) for implementing these recommendations. Contact Us today to take advantage of this service.

Click the Buy Now button below to take advantage of this service. Cost is $149 if you register and pay before December 1st or $199 after that date.

It was during one of their web casts recently that they shared a very interesting and I think, important, point! The point is especially relevant to those of you who use email marketing to promote your business and stay in touch with customers. Before I share it with you, let me ask you a question. What do you think is the main purpose of sending out a marketing email? I’m sure there are plenty of answers that spring to your mind. Things like:

• Stay in touch with customers
• Promote your business
• Tell customers about special offers
• Sell new products

Well, I suppose any of those points could be valid at various times. But often these ideas that we have about why we’re sending a marketing email are too abstract too be very useful. We can simplify the reason. Here it is:

The purpose of an email is to get a click

What, I hear you thinking? Just a click, what good is that going to do me? Okay, it may increase the visits to my website, but shouldn’t it do more than that?

Let’s think about this for a minute. The premise is quite simple really… email as a medium is not nearly as advanced as web technology. You can spend a bunch of time trying to get your email newsletter looking just right and putting lots of content in there, hoping that a viewer will sit there and read it all. But in reality, we know that:

a.) potential readers of your email will probably glance at it for between 1 and 3 seconds. Just enough time to decide whether to delete it, file it away for later or read it

b.) given the number of different platforms, email clients, phones, it’s almost impossible to design an email newsletter that will look the same for everyone.

Given this, if you can simplify your marketing email to be engaging simple and engaging enough to drive customers to your website you have a higher chance of conversion because:

i.) it is much easier to control the look and feel of a web page and;

ii.) readers will generally spend longer on a webpage then they will on an email.

So next time you’re writing an email newsletter, bear in mind what you’re trying to achieve by doing so. Yes, there may be a little more work involved in creating both the email and the web page that you want to drive your visitors too, but if you do it right you will convert more of your readers to clients and are more likely to achieve the desired result.

Firstly CMS stands for Content Management System. It is basically a web program that provides a framework for creating a website and it’s purpose is to provide a means of updating the website without having to modify the code that actually makes up a website. In other words a CMS is designed to enable you (the manager of a website) to change the pages of your site.

“Okay, great” you’re thinking. “So I definitely want one of those. How do I pick one?”

Firstly there’s a lot of choice out there when it comes to Content Management Systems. There are a good selection of free ones (typically open source products) and some of these have become attractive options for users looking to setup a website with a small budget.

WordPress and Joomla are two free CMS’ that are widely used today and both have a wide range of plugins that purport to do most things you could want or imagine your website should do. Examples include plugins for managing and administering users, shopping cart systems, email marketing and a host of other things.

Whether you prefer one or the other may depend on whether you like your interfaces simple or busy, whether you’re a Windows or a Mac person or simply based on the type of website you’re setting up (and what you need it to do). My personal preference is WordPress as I think it has a nicer look and feel, is easier to use and simpler to setup and manage. It has been around longer than Joomla and in my opinion is a more mature product (depsite initial use primarily as a blogging platform). That said sometimes I do recommend Joomla to clients if I find it has better plugins for a specific application.

If you’re after a commercial content management system, there are plenty to choose from. ExpressionEngine and Magento are two that spring to mind. There may be advantages in choosing one of these over an open source system. For example business sites may demand a high level of support and will pay a premium for this.

We have used ExpressionEngine in the past and have found it to be a solid, stable platform for web development. Creative’s seem to like this system and it does have it’s merits. To my mind however, it is hard to justify paying money for something that you can get for free somewhere else.

At an Enterprise level products like Sharepoint and Lotus Domino are commonly used as CMS, though for most small to medium businesses these are probably more hassle than they’re worth. Free products like the Wiki Software popularised by Wikipedia has become commonplace in larger organisations and is often free to use, though it the time involved in setting it up and placing an organised structure around information can again be prohibitive for small businesses.

In summary if you’re choosing a CMS, prioritise your requirements and work out what importance price factors in. If it’s high on the list, there’s some great free options. If prompt support is higher, consider using a commercial alternative. It’s definitely worth factoring in what you need to do with your website while you’re choosing the platform because you may find one which is more suitable.

If you need help choosing the right Content Management System for your web project, by all means give us a shout.

“Do you have a blog and if not, why not?”

Okay, so some of you are probably shutting off already. “Blogging is so passe”, I hear you thinking. Or maybe “Yeah, right. When am I going to find time to write a blog on top of all the other work I already do?”. Well, excuses aside here are seven good reasons why you should have a blog.

1.) A blog is a great way to provide free content on your website

Building customer trust is one of the most challenging things to do with a website, but also one of the most crucial. Giving away free information or products is a great way to establish trust in you and your company as people find themselves thinking “Wow, if they’re willing to give away this useful info, we’re bound to get value when we actually shell out our hard earned cash with these guys.”

2.) A blog is a great way to develop content that is related to your product or service.

Search engines love content heavy sites and blogs are a great way to develop content that is related to your product or service. If you stay focused in your blog and talk primarily about topics that your customers would be interested in, search engines will pick up on the keywords in your blog and this will help to boost your website’s rankings for search terms that are related to your product or service.

3.) A blog can help to distinguish you as an expert

Are you an expert in your field? Would your customers call you an expert? Maybe you don’t think of yourself as one, but many others would consider you to be an expert. You probably know a heck of a lot more about your product and service than your customers, which is why they pay you to provide it right?!

So use a blog to show people that you know your stuff. Give away information that is useful, timely and relevant and your customers will love you for it and come to trust that you are the person to turn to in your industry when they need your product or service.

4.) A blog can demonstrate a good work ethic

Okay, let’s face it. blogging can be a bit of work. It takes a certain amount of commitment to sit down regularly and write something that is thought provoking and worth sitting down to read. The corollary of putting in the effort is that others can see that you’re not afraid of a bit of work and this inspires confidence in your ability to provide a service that is worth paying for.

5.) Blogs generate traffic.

Okay, so you may think this sounds pretty close to point 1 and it is. But search engines aren’t the only way that people find your website. People who read your blog and benefit from it, will share articles with their friends by email or on social networks and this in turn will drive traffic to your website.

By generating more traffic to your website you have a greater opportunity to a.) convert that traffic into sales and b.) generate revenue from the traffic (through ad sales or affiliate marketing).

6.) Blogs give you a voice and help people to relate to you as a human

Blogs are a fairly personal medium and reading one you start to feel like you’re listening to someone talking to you. Having this personal connection is important to many people and can help to break up an impersonal or otherwise business focused website and help people to relate to the fact that there is actually a human behind the business who they can relate to and talk to if need be.

7.) You never know where your blog will lead you

Okay, so maybe business isn’t doing so well and you’re ready to look for a job again, or maybe you’re just after a change of pace. For many people blogs are the new CV. Your blog may just help you launch a new career.

Okay, so maybe you’re ready to start a blog. Before you get started remember that choosing the right software for your blog is important. You want software that will be search engine friendly and will allow you to leverage the great new content you’re developing. You also want something that is going to be user friendly and easy to update. I recommend and use WordPress myself but there are lots of other options out there as well so do your research, or pay someone like us to do it for you.

Okay, so given that you’re email has a fairly small chance of being read, you know from the outset that you’re gonna have to do some work to make your email interesting enough to get a look in. With that in mind, I thought I’d highlight some of the most common mistakes I see people making when it comes to sending email newsletters.

1.) Send out an email with one big image as the content of the newsletter

Okay, this is a big one and probably my one of my primary pet hates. Firstly, most email engines that check for spam see this is a big sign “I’m a spam email” is what it says to them, so if you do this there’s a better than average chance that you won’t even get to the point where someone looks at your email. It’ll just go straight to their junk mail box.

Secondly, even if you email does get to their inbox, if you’ve just got one big image in the email, there’s a good chance that it won’t fit on a smaller screen. Why? Because there are so many different size monitors out there, each displaying one of a myriad of available resolutions, that you really have no idea what size screen will be used to display your email newsletter (the same goes for your website design by the way). If you just chuck a big image in there, after designing the graphic using the fat ass monitor  on your desk, it doesn’t matter how good it looks, it’s gonna seem kinda stupid to the business user toting his 13″ notebook between meeetings in the city. Or the iPhone user browsing through email on his smart phone. The solution to this (as with web design) is to design for the lowest common denominator. In other words, design for the smaller size screens and then the worst that can generally happen is you have too much unused space when displayed on a larger screen.

2.) Assume that your readers are just dying to get an email from you

Hmm, given the intro spiel I just gave you, we already know that this is quite unlikely. Yes, maybe your favourite customer out there does really look forward to receiving your email newsletter, but even that’s a stretch. Getting an email is nothing like talking to someone on the phone or seeing them in person. It’s purely a business transaction. “What’s in it for me?” is all your reader cares about. If you pack your email with value by providing offers or information that is relevant to your target audience, chances are it might actually get read. If you just waffle on for a couple of paragraphs about how great your new website is and then maybe have a couple of sentences about a shitty 10% discount you’re offering on some product or service, chances are your email is going straight to the bin (in about 2 seconds). In which case you have to wonder, “why did I bother writing it anyway”.

Now, I’m not saying your whole email should be about selling your users a product or service. As a general rule, you should have some free content that is likely to be valuable to your users. Otherwise they may be turned off by the hard sell. But on the other hand if you don’t have at least one or two offers in the email, why did you send it in the first place? Okay, it’s great to remind your customers that you’re around and want their business. But if you’re gonna go to the trouble of designing and sending a newsletter, you’d want to have some sort of offer in there that encourages people to actually pick up the phone or contact you (and pay you some money), right?!

3.) Forget all about how your email newsletter relates to your website

Okay for some of you who don’t have a website this may not seem relevant, but I’m guessing most of you do. If you don’t, replace the word “website” with “business branding”. What I’m talking about here is consistency. When you design or create your email newsletter, make sure the look and feel matches that of your website and business branding materials. In other words, don’t use an entirely different logo, or colour scheme to what you have on your website. It destroys brand recognition and any good work you’ve already done to make your website, business cards, letterhead and signage look the same. Make sure your email newsletters match your brand.

This goes for quality levels too. You probably put a fair bit of work into getting your website right and making sure you have quality content on there. So don’t scrimp and save when it comes to sending out your email newsletter. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right!

On the right hand side of the listings there’s a map that shows the place holders for each of the results that Google has given me and they’re all marked by a little red place holder with a letter corresponding to the order in which the results were presented. This allows me to see quite quickly, how close any of the businesses are to me and choose one based, not only on the text and images that I see in the results, but based on their location.

If you look at the results you’ll notice that each includes an address and a telephone number, which makes it very easy for me to pick up the phone and call one if I like what I see. That’s great you say, but where is all this information coming from? Well, it’s coming from the Google Places listing that each of these businesses have set up. And the good news is that you can do this too, for free once you’ve set up a Google account.

“But wait a minute”, I hear you ask, “I’ve already got this information on my website, isn’t that enough?”. Well, not anymore I’m afraid. Google now wants you to have a Google Places listing and they are using this information (matched against the information on your website – if you have one) to verify your business and match your location to the location of people searching for your goods or services.

What does that mean for you. Well, it means that you should definitely have a Google Places listing and you should make sure you invest a bit of time and energy into getting your listing right. By right, I mean, making sure that it’s completely populated with your details, what it is you do, even things like images and videos as well. Why do you need to add images and videos? Well, because Google’s ranking algorithm appears to boost the ranking of those with more complete listings.

Another critical part of finalising your Google Places listing is getting reviews on your listing. You’ll notice that in some searches, businesses will be listed with star ratings (4 out of 5 stars for example). The ratings are given to the business by their customers. Google then displays the rating for others to see and use in the process of making a decision about whether or not to contact you.

At present Google are saying that they’re not going to factor user reviews/ratings into their search algorithm, but you can be fairly certain it will affect the way people make decisions about who to call, when they need a service, so this makes it crucially important that you encourage your customers to provide a review on your Google Places listing.

“Okay, so what if I’m too busy to do it myself?” Well, that’s where we come in. We will happily help you setup your Google Places listing for a flat fee of $195. This includes writing your business description for you, with some input from you of course. Why not contact us today to make sure that you’re not missing out on Google Traffic by not having a complete Google Places listing.

I spent a bit of time putting together an email discussing some of the key points that I felt we should work on to help them turn the traffic they’re getting into dollars and I thought I’d share some of that info for others that might find it useful:

In web marketing speak, the first page that your visitors see when they come to your site, after following a link from your newsletter or clicking on a Google Ad (when using Pay Per Click advertising for example) is called the landing page. Optimising the landing page is the process of re-working that first page, to ensure that you have a.) clearly stated offer designed to capture the user’s attention and ultimately dollars and b.) give the user a sales pitch that will ensure they follow through and do something about your offer. While there’s a lot more that can be said about the landing page, the main reason I bring it up, is I think it’s important to i.) identify the landing page for any particular email or campaign and ii.) make sure the landing page is doing what you want it to do (ideally focusing on one or two particular offers for the people you are targeting in your campaign). Ultimately if you consider that about half of your traffic (this will vary from customer to customer) are getting to your website by typing in your URL directly, this means that your homepage will be a landing page a lot of the time and as such it should be optimised for one or two particular offers.

Okay, there’s another principle that has been drilled in to me through a series of marketing gurus and that is the idea that to get people to spend money with you (particularly the first time), you have to build up a level of trust in the value that you will provide for their money. To build up that trust, aim to provide a significant amount of free, highly valuable information in the form of short courses, email newsletters (packed with useful information on focusing on a specific area/niche, etc…), videos, etc… The idea is that if people find that you are willing to give them high quality information (in considerable quantities) free of charge, when you do ask them to part with their hard earned for a course or product (particularly an informational one), they figure “Wow, if I got so much good value out of the free course, there’s got to be heaps more value in this one that I’m going to pay x dollars for”.

This brings us to the subject of pricing. The biggest challenge you face with a new customer is getting them to spend money the first time. To that end, there’s a fair bit of conjecture about how much to charge for your entry level product. A theory that makes sense to me and seems to fit with my own pattern of purchasing online, is that it’s often best to start by offering a relatively low value product to a new customer initially. By low value, I don’t mean, low in content value, I mean low dollar cost. In terms of an informational product, there seems to be a sort of ceiling at which people are generally comfortable (some reckon this is around the $300USD mark). Personally, I think it’s lower than that, though this may depend on your target audience and may change depending on the financial mood in the country/region or even world (i.e. the GFC may have brought it down some). I would recommend the low value product be something in the $30-$100 range. A figure small enough that it’s kind of a no brainer (i.e. an amount you’d spend on a nice meal without hesitation). Your goal with this low cost product is to pack so much information  (relevant to the target audience you’re focused on) that they think “Wow, that was great value!”. If you can achieve that, next time you ask them to pay for a product, it won’t matter so much that you’re now asking for $250 or even $500. They trust you to provide great value for money and are comfortable spending the dollars to get that value.

This is stuff I’ve picked up from a bunch of useful sources online. Places like the Web Marketing Today email newsletter (from Wilson Web) which you can subscribe to for free. There’s heaps more out there, but sometimes it can be handy to get the condensed version and that’s what I have provided for you above. Feel free to contact me if you have questions on any of this.

Now I’m quite happy to admit that I have and do recommended to some clients that they use social media to promote their businesses. I even use Twitter myself in conjunction with my website. But clearly this doesn’t work for everyone, so when and how you should use social media?

Personally I think certain types of products and services lend themselves to promotion via social media. In particular products which are one of the following:

- Visual (i.e. graphical by nature – photography for example)
- Audible (i.e. a song that you can listen to)
- Viral (i.e. typically new/niche products that people get excited about)

That said, some would argue that you can promote any product or service with social media and I think there’s some truth to that too. It comes down to giving people a reason to connect with you online.

Let’s take a simple example. Say you run a small coffee shop, you’ve just spent a bunch of cash getting a groovy little cafe setup and you want to promote it, but you’re low on dollars to do it with, so you think “I know, I’ll use Facbeook to advertise”. You setup a page/or company profile for your business and you put up a little sign on your front counter saying “Connect with us on Facebook (search for ‘Groovy Little Cafe’)”. Great, you think, let’s see what happens…

I can pretty much tell you what’s going to happen! Nothing, zip, nada. You might get a few likes on your Facebook page from your mom and your 10 year old kid and your best friend, but then all you’re left with is a Facebook page that has 3 likes, a little bit of info and not much else. It actually detracts from your brand because it makes you look like you’re desperate.

So what went wrong here, well firstly why does the Groovy Little Cafe have a Facebook profile? Because they want to attract new customers right?! So I would say, mistake number one is putting the sign in the coffee shop. That’s not your target audience. Those people are already interacting with you. You need to get the message out to new people.

Second mistake is not giving people a reason to interact. The cafe needs a hook or an offer of some sort. Maybe a free coffee. What coffee drinker doesn’t like a free coffee (assuming it’s a good one)? Why not have a one week offer promoted solely through Facebook and Twitter whereby anyone who Likes the business page gets a free coffee. Okay, there will be a little bit of overhead in working out who’s getting a free coffee and you’ve got to make and serve the coffee’s themselves, but chances are if you promote it to people that haven’t used your business/service before that some will keep coming and getting coffee. You’ll also be able to keep track of how many people have liked your page (the number is right there on the page) and right away you have some measurable results on how much exposure you get.

Okay, so it’s not rocket science and it doesn’t always have to cost you money. You just need to give people a reason to interact with you. And you need to do this regularly, to keep them interacting. Otherwise chances are, you’re wasting your time.

Okay, so we understand why we need our site to have better search engine rankings, that’s the easy part. The million dollar question is, how do we get there. Well, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is, improving your search engine rankings is really just a matter of following a few simple steps. So what’s the bad news, I hear you ask and if the steps are so simple, why isn’t everyone doing it.

Well, I think I can answer that best in terms of an analogy. Improving your website’s search engine rankings is a lot like losing weight (or staying fit, if you prefer a more positive analogy). It’s quite simple to do if you follow a few steps. We all know that to maintain a healthy body you need to eat right and burn more fuel than you consume. Pretty straightforward, but not always so easy to do in practice it would seem.

Getting your website to rank well in Google, is similar. Generally a site that ranks well in Google has good quality content that people find useful. So the logical way to get better search engine rankings (Google rankings in particular) is to make sure your site has lots of useful content that people are looking for. The content obviously should be related to your product or service, because you want the visitors to your website to be interested in not only your content, but also whatever it is that you want to provide them with. To put it another way, your content should complement your product or service.

Moving back to the “getting fit” analogy, there are shortcuts to improving your search engine rankings, but these are a lot like dieting fads. They often do work in the short term (i.e. they’ll help you lose weight quickly), but don’t necessarily help you to keep the weight off in the long term. Once you stop the diet, you go back to what you were doing before and you just put the weight back on.

Many quick fix solutions for getting better search engine rankings can be much like that. The quick fix solutions may seem rewarding in the short term and you may get a spike in traffic to your website but ultimately it won’t be as useful as having quality material that people will continue to read and benefit from long after you’ve posted it. Quality content may be harder to produce in the short term and it make take longer to see the changes in your website’s rankings but once you have it, it tends to stick around and produce a long term effect. Yes, it’s a good idea to keep adding to it and making sure that your site is fresh, but once you have a good base of content up, this isn’t hard to do. It’s like going into maintenance mode once you have lost a bunch of weight. It’s nowhere near as hard as it was to lose the weight in the first place and it can actually be enjoyable and rewarding.

Now, just as there is plenty more that you can learn about being fit aside from “eat right and exercise”, there’s definitely more to Search Engine Optimisation than adding quality content to your website. But if there was one thing I’d recommend you start working on to improve your site’s rankings, that would be it.