Most business owners have no trouble seeing how a website integrates with the sales or marketing departments. I’ll touch on that, but I want to talk about other departments as well. If there’s enough interest, I’d be happy to expound on my thoughts in another post. And as always, feel free to add your thoughts in the comments section.

Integrating your website with your marketing department

• Position your brand through images, colors, design and copy online. Are you a cost leader? A differentiator? Do you serve a particular niche? Does your website match your message?
• What about the information about your brand on other websites? Are you advertising in appropriate contexts? Is discussion about your products or services happening where it makes sense? What search engine keywords are bringing people to your site?
• Marketing is incomplete until you get feedback. Use your website to gather feedback through a tool like getsatisfaction.com (monthly license) or by building your own like  this one (http://wpaoli.building58.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/feedback-panel.html )

Integrating your website with your sales department

• Support your sales team by explaining your product online, publishing whitepapers, additional information, images, etc. that they can reference when talking with potential customers
• Upload videos of your product or service in use for those who prefer that medium
• In addition to having your phone number all over your site, you might Implement a “lead generation” form right on your home page to capture sales. This type of approach appeals to the visitor who is perhaps surfing after business hours or prefers to give some additional information about his/her problem before the salesperson calls. Have this form email directly to your sales team
• If you get a lot of leads over your website, you might consider integrating with a customer relationship manager like Infusionsoft, Salesforce or SugarCRM

Integrating your website with your accounting department

• Create a “pay bill online” link that can be as simple as a paypal link or as complex as a full blown e-commerce style page
• Create a login area where customers can log in and see their account balance and pay their bill online. You might take this even further by implementing a full featured customer portal
• Send automatic reminders to your customers when their bills are due
• Allow vendors to log in and access purchase orders, order history, RFPs and more

Integrating your website with your operations department
This type of integration will vary greatly with the type of business you’re in, but here are some general ideas:

• Create a company knowledge base using Wiki software (freely available). This will allow your employees to enter (possibly password protected) area where they can document standard procedures, policies and so forth. A knowledge base is a great resource for employees to refer to, and it can help train new employees quickly & efficiently
• If you’re in a service-based business, you might consider setting up a helpdesk for customer support. Skyhook has a helpdesk which allows our customers to open a trouble ticket with us either through email or a web interface (http://support.skyhookinternetmarketing.com). These tickets are tracked internally and we are reminded automatically to follow up
• If you are in a goods-based business, you might consider moving some or all of your inventory online through an e-commerce solution.  Big Commerce, Interspire and Magento are all excellent choices for selling things online. If you’re not ready for a complete retailing package, you might consider just selling a few items with Paypal, an eBay store or through Amazon.

Integrating your website with your HR department

• Post job openings on a “career” page of your site
• Accept resumes through a web-to-email form gateway
• Provide a login for employees where they can report hours, track vacation time, get benefits information and so forth
• Work with your marketing department to design an appealing message that will attract top talent to your firm

What ideas do you have for integrating your website with other areas of your business?

In addition to building great websites, our staff members thoroughly enjoy supporting good causes which is what brought about this change. Having had the privilege of working on a number of NGO website design projects recently, we’ve found it rewarding to help move good causes forward with our work.

Do you or someone you know work for a non profit organization?  Use our contact form or give us a call to get a free estimate on nonprofit web design.

TeamUP! Tutors provides in-home, academic tutoring to students of all ages. Math tutors and tutors for every subject are available throughout the San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, WA areas. Call toll-free at 888.383.2687.

These comments align pretty well with what Skyhook Internet Marketing is all about.

To our loyal customers and readers, we thank you for your business and wish you happy holidays!

What is a helpdesk?
For those not familiar with the term, a helpdesk is a software program that facilitates communication with support. A user or customer can submit “tickets” to open a conversation about an issue with our company. The helpdesk makes sure that all issues are handled in a timely fashion (giving special sensitivity to high priority issues), and follows up with the support desk team to make sure that no tickets are “lost through the cracks”

There are currently two ways for our customers to get access to our helpdesk. One is to create a login by registering at http://support.skyhookinternetmarketing.com. This control panel interface will give users an ability to see previous tickets, to escalate open tickets to higher priority, or to re-open previous issues in the case of recurring problems. Once a ticket has been submitted, our team of helpdesk workers is notified immediately — even if the program manager assigned to your project is not available.

The second way to access the helpdesk is through email. Once registered, users can send messages to support at (@) blacklotusweb dot com. The helpdesk will instantly convert the message in to a help ticket and open a conversation with the helpdesk.

This new feature enables us to handle 95% of customer problems within 1 business day (and often much more quickly). We are sure you will enjoy it, so please stop by to check it out. Again the address is

http://support.skyhookinternetmarketing.com

Cheers!

Dallin

Having worked both in the corporate world and as a freelancer, I find that in most situations there are dozens of reasons why you should hire a freelance or outsourced web designer rather than using someone on staff.

Web design is not your core competency
As a small business owner, I know that it’s easy to get distracted by things that aren’t your main business because you may know a little about it. The truth is that HTML is NOT that complicated, and being the industrious person you are, you could probably throw something together. I’ve seen people try this and have their work come out OK, but what they don’t realize is that they’ve lost valuable time that they could have used to focus on their business. There’s nothing wrong with saving a little money, but the truth is that using a freelance company is well worth the investment.

Web design is what freelancers do all day
When I worked for one company, I knew their website very, very well. The difference is that as a freelancer, I get to see trends in what website owners want and get to know “the best way to do it.” That’s a great value for website owners because they can rely on my (our) expertise and judgment.

Freelancers know about a variety of products
Long ago, I gave up on “writing websites from scratch.” There are literally hundreds of pre-built solutions out there just waiting to be “pieced” together by a freelance web developer. Taking advantage of them will both reduce your TCO and increase the quality of your site because often times, these software programs thought of something you didn’t. No need to re-invent the wheel.

Your project will end some day
The biggest problem I saw my company face when I worked for someone else was that when my projects ended, they either had to re-train me for something new or let me sit and twiddle my thumbs all day. I was pretty good at finding work to do, but the truth is that it’s much easier for a company to just “stop” hiring a freelancer when a project finishes than it is to “stop” paying an employee.

Freelancers are trying to build their portfolio
Many business owners are afraid to outsource their website because they aren’t able to sit and manage the freelance company like they would their own employee. True they may need some more communication up-front in creating a statement of work, a contract and a budget. However, most businesses owners don’t realize that the freelance web designer is trying to build his own portfolio that he can be proud of, so he will natrually be willing to work extra hard to make a good site that you are happy with.

You can use CMS systems to avoid over-paying a freelancer
Another big concern about freelancers for business owners is that they don’t want to have to pay the freelance company every time they want to re-vamp their website. For these customers, we highly recommend a content management system (CMS) that allows them to make simple text edits without paying our hourly rate. If you hire us, you will only need us again if you want something major done.

Cut through your company’s red tape
Inside your company, it can seem like you need an act of congress to get something done, right? When you hire a freelance company, we do all of the work and you just need to show it to your people. You take the credit if it’s good, we take the heat if it’s bad, get it?

There are many other reasons for using a freelance company. Check out our process to see how Skyhook Internet Marketing can make a solution for you! Contact us today!

Learn more about our process or get in touch with one of our representatives for a free estimate.

I can’t tell you how other website design firms do it, but let me tell you how we do it.

Collect information and provide a free, itemized estimate
Before we provide an estimate for your web project, we want to know all about your business. We believe that we will be much better marketers if we understand and believe in your product completely — that way we don’t have to pretend. We also want to make sure that you fully understand your problem. We have done this before, and we will ask difficult questions to make sure that the whole process is fully understood by both parties. In our experience we have come across dozens of products and solutions that will make building your website easier. There is no need to re-invent the wheel.

We will then take all of our recommendations and provide an itemized quote for you. The choice is yours which items you will do initially, which ones you will leave for later, and which ones you want to scratch all together. The final quote price will then be easily estimated.

Start with a template
The majority of our websites come from templates or pre-made designs. We find that it’s easier for most people to pick and choose what they want from a template site and then pay us only to customize it (even if it’s changed extensively) to create the kind of design they want. In cases where no customization is needed, you can save a bundle of money by using a pre-built solution by a professional graphic artist.

If you’ve already got a design in mind, we can work with that too. Our graphic artist can listen to your requests and provide mock-up designs based on what you want.

Add functionality
Once the design is solidified, the next step in website development is to add functionality. We will discuss the regions of your page that you would like to have special functionality — web forms, message boards, interaction, flash, etc. — and we will take care of the programming to make it happen.

Focus on internet marketing from the beginning
Internet marketing cannot be an afterthought. After all, your website is useless to you unless it makes you money. Before agreeing to an internet marketing job, we perform extensive keyword research to find out exactly what the competition is like. That way, we can sculpt your content in such a way to achieve maximum search engine rankings.

Final walkthrough
Your quote will also give you a timeframe for the project. You will receive periodic updates throughout the process (along with necessary communication), and will be given the opportunity to do a final walkthrough before your site goes live. All of our sites are built in a secret development area which you will have access to, and during the final walkthrough you will be able to inspect every facet of the project and insure that it is what you had in mind. Once the page is approved, we will help get the code transfered to your live server for all to see.

Continued relationship
We’ve been in business long enough to learn that even project based work doesn’t end when the project ends. We aim to develop an on-going relationship with our clients so that they can feel comfortable asking us questions and using our services in the future. If you stand still, your competition will pass you by and that’s why having a powerful internet marketing partner is so important.

If you’d like a free quote, give us a call or fill out our online contact form.

We look forward to working with you!

Dallin

The advent of the Internet is changing the way the world does business at an alarming rate. Staying on top of it is a challenge even for the experts, let alone for business owners. Skyhook Internet Marketing aims to make the process simple and profitable by consulting these business owners and helping them build their online presence.

Our Process
Skyhook Internet Marketing is different from other web design firms. Our goal is to make your project a success. We understand that a beautiful and powerful website will do nothing for you unless someone sees it. That’s why we build all of our websites from the ground up with the visitor in mind. Our pages are more likely to be found on search engines and to be visited by more visitors.

The first step in our process is to provide a comprehensive, free estimate. We ask lots of questions to make sure we understand your website’s purpose and your business’ problems correctly, then we go to work and provide you with a quote you can hold us to. The quote will be an itemized list of everything we’re recommending, along with a proposed time line.

Next, we consult with you to make design recommendations based on our expertise and what you’ve already got in mind. This is an important step to us not only because we want your site to look good for your visitors but because we want to build a portfolio for ourselves that we can be proud of.

The next step is to decide on functionality. We look at the current and future needs of your business and design a website that will support those needs. With our vast knowledge of products available on the internet, we are often able to make recommendations that will save you headaches in the future and keep cost down from the get-go.

Finally, we will construct your website on a private domain where you can constantly check up on our progress and give important feedback. Once the site is finished, you will have an opportunity to do a “final walkthrough” and make any changes to the site that you wish. We will then make those edits, and you will have a final product uploaded to your “live” webserver.

Internet Marketing
At Skyhook Internet Marketing, internet marketing is not an “afterthought.” In many cases, web design companies leave search optimization to other firms believing that their “focus” is on good design and not necessarily on getting noticed. We believe that these two elements are inseparable, and that internet marketing needs to be taken very seriously from the beginning.

Skyhook Internet Marketing focuses on both on- and off-page factors when working on an internet marketing campaign. All of our pages are standards-compliant, complete with optimized title, meta keyword and meta description tags as well as other tiny details that make a big difference on search engines. For off page factors, we offer monthly services to “stir the pot” and get your site noticed on a number of social media sites relevant to your industry.

Hosting
Skyhook Internet Marketing takes the headache out of web hosting by partnering with United Hosting, a web host that we’ve found after years of research to be one of the most solid in the industry. With their solutions, we are able to offer near 100% uptime for our customers, 4-times daily backup and quick answers to support tickets. Skyhook Internet Marketing adds value by taking care of the setup and maintenance of your website so that you only have to think about running your business.

For our customers in Surprise, Arizona and throughout the greater Phoenix metro area, working with a local designer has been important. Much work can be done over the internet, but many times (at least with the tools available now) it is more effective to sit down with a local designer and plan out a project.

Surprise is now a bustling community of nearly 90,000 people. It is now the second fastest growing community near Phoenix (after Gilbert) and many new businesses have opened shop in the last year. Skyhook Internet Marketing is proud to provide web design and development services for our customers in Surprise, Arizona and around the globe.