TCwebsite

Upper Valley Bounce House Rentals

TCwebsite — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:15:33 +0000

WordPress and Pinnacle Cart integration

TCwebsite — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:23:24 +0000

We knitted Pinnacle Cart (e-commerce) and WordPress together to create an integrated, seo friendly solution that is also PCI compliant. The homepage is WordPress and feeds the shopping cart categories into the sidebar. The news blog headlines are also fed into the home page for recent news postings and easy Google crawling ability. Both WordPress and Pinnacle Cart are styled for a seamless experience.

AdvancedSaddleFit.com

The 3 problems with website pricing

TCwebsite — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 02:05:39 +0000

If you have ever built a custom website you might be familiar with going over budget. It’s pretty typical in our industry to deliver an estimate, not understand the real scope of the project, and then fly over budget. On the other hand even a fixed bid project can get you in trouble. Think about it, if a developer underestimates the scope of the project and suddenly has too many hours into it, how motivated are they going to be to provide the right solution for you?

The solution we offer to this web age old dilemma is called our free strategy. fixed price solution. Watch the video below to find out how we will price your website project.

Atlantis Rising Magazine

TCwebsite — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:31:21 +0000

Atlantis Rising Magazine had a strong print readership. But they wanted to reach out to a broader audience and capture more advertisers. Our turnkey Issue Manager™ combined with a custom design brought them online with the built-in features to hit the ground running, including:

Google-friendly architecture with automatic issue archiving
Simple, in-house issue updating
Online advertising system
premium content
Straightforward social media integration

Dartmouth Alumni Magazine

TCwebsite — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:06:22 +0000

Dartmouth wanted to put their print magazine online to expand their reach and reduce costs. The online magazine features the following:

Our Issue Manager™ publishing solution
Auto archiving of old issues
Advertising module
Class notes upload to WordPress function from InDesign
Obituaries now managed from the website
Subscription/social media options
DartmouthAlumniMagazine.com

Real estate agent – our website performance review

TCwebsite — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:35:35 +0000

We formally review websites with clients and suggest to them how we together we can improve performance. EastmanRealEstate.net attracts great Google search traffic but still needs improvement in it’s ability to convince a website visitor to connect with Jeff, the agent. Watch now to see what we recommend to improve the performance of Jeff’s website:

Website performance review transcript:

Today, we’re doing a website performance review for Eastman super broker, Jeff Adie at EastmanRealEstate.net. This blog’s been up for a little while now: not quite a year. I don’t think.

It’s attracting some traffic but needs some conversion help. In other words, once people land on here, we need to keep them interested and get them to connect with Jeff in some fashion. So, here it goes. Before we start to jump into the site, we are going to take a look at some of the analysis that Jordan did here. Look at the top five pages, on the site. We have the home page, the second most popular page, area home values, and number three through five are all blog related.

We have “Things to do in Napa Valley” as a blog post. Eastman Lake is a category of posts: multiple posts. Then, another Eastman New Hampshire average cost per square foot is another blog post.

Here’s the big deal: “area home values”. The second, I should say, the most important page, after the home page, this is the one people are gravitating to is “how much is my house worth?” area home values. If I click on “area home values” and I can click here…Or, I can go down here, and click on market snapshot. I end up on a page that is less than inspiring. People are going here, and they’re going away.

They’re not going to the market snapshot. This market snapshot takes us to a form, which tells us to fill in information. Then, maybe, somebody like Jeff will get back to you. It’s a little cold. People aren’t filling it out. Now, what you need to do here is A) create some expectations for what someone’s going to get, when it comes to an area home value. Now, maybe this is an opportunity to do some list building or to get an email address to connect with somebody.

In other words, maybe there’s something that, Jeff, that you can do to require an email address. Then, connect with that person to provide them with some sort of basic information, for the area. I think that would be a good thing. Imagery would be good here. Some beautiful Eastman photo would warm this page up quite a lot, but I think this is a area for people. It’s going to require some information for them to understand what’s going to happen if they either A) connect with this market snapshot and fill that out.

In other words, to encourage them to fill that out. Or, B) maybe you’re going to do something yourself, to connect with that person. Maybe there is a report you can send them or perhaps you can do a little legwork for somebody who takes the time to give you an email address. But, in any case, you end up with an email address. That’s a list building opportunity. You can communicate with them via email. So, that’s the second most important page on the entire site.

OK. Let’s go back to the home page here real quick. This site, from the beginning, this is nature of blogs. It’s very content rich. It’s text heavy. There’s a lot of information here. By definition, it makes it a little difficult to get around. One thing I’d recommend is possibly just add a block here, right in the middle of the website, with a nice image or maybe a nice video of the Eastman area that helps to sell Eastman.

Then, maybe under that block, you can have some of this more benefit text for the potential buyer or lister. But, breaking this up, visually, I think it would go a long way to making this easier to consume. OK.

By the way, Jeff, if you would send Jordan Brown five to 10 beautiful Eastman photos, we’ll build you a free video for that section. How’s that sound? OK. That’ll see if you’ve actually watched the video.

OK. Next thing here. One thing that I missed about area home values: I think a great thing to do would be to create a category, a blog category called “area home values” or “Eastman home values.”

Something that is specific to any article your write about, maybe its sales statistics, but that really said. What we can do: we can feed that one category into the area home values page. So, not only will somebody get information about how to get a sense of what a home is worth. But, they’ll also see related blog posts of all the articles that you’ve written that talk about the value of homes in general, in the Eastman area, which helps build the trust factor and will motivate people to connect with you.

OK. I want to go into a blog post here, and we’re going to shoot down to this one here. OK. One of the things we see is that people are coming to the site, and they are looking at 2.3 pages here. Pages per visit is 2.3. It’s OK, but we want to bump that over three or more is really what we want to do. We want to keep people on the site, digging through the information. An easy way to do that is we have this plug-in called “related posts.” We plug it in, and what it does is it looks at the category of the Eastman Lake land, with 160 foot posts and says, “What category is that in?” It will serve up all other blog posts that are also in this category.

So, related blog articles will show up, along with this one, at the bottom. So, if I finish reading this – I find it’s interesting, and I see that there are three other articles or five other articles that have to do with this category, Eastman real estate – then they will show up as well. That’s an easy thing to do. The other thing to do – it’s very important at the end of a blog post – is to create a call to action. Right? So, you want somebody to come to the end of the article and do something.

Now, there are lots of calls to action. You can become a Facebook fan. You can subscribe via email. In this case, you can get more information on this piece of property at your other site, which is OK.

It takes the person off your site. It’s a little confusing for the customer, because now they’re on a whole different site with a whole different layout. But, you’re contact information is here. That’s pretty easy to get to.

I think it’s a good short-term solution. However, what if someone just wants to connect with you now? Why not give them the ability, every time you write an article, along with the link to your other site, always have, invite them to contact you for more information or to talk about their buying needs or their listing needs. Have a sentence here that says, “Hey, if you’re interested in talking a little bit more about Eastman real estate, I’d like to chat with you. Then, you can contact me here”. Give a link, at the end of every blog post to your contact page.

You always giving people a chance to get there easily. The last thing you want to do is make people work to get to you, because they’ll quit. OK. While we’re on the contact page, let’s talk about this a little bit. This is a cold contact page. There’s basically information here and a form, and it’s not telling me anything. “So, I don’t really know what to do. I understand that you want some information here, but it’s pretty cold.”

Why not warm the person up? Why not write a nice paragraph or one sentence or two sentences: “Hey, I’m in Eastman everyday, and the market is changing daily. Why don’t you get in touch with me, by filling out the form below, by contacting me by phone?

We can chat about your needs”. Something on top of this form to warm it up. Another thing that I would do is add a nice, beautiful picture of the Eastman Lake here or something like that: something to just warm this up. People are moving into Eastman, because they’re excited. They want the woods, the beauty, the lake, the golf course, or whatever. We need to add some of that in here. OK. So, we covered that.

I’m just checking my list here. We talked about that. OK. Let’s talk a little bit about the sidebar here. We’re looking at this website here, on the average, older laptop screen. The resolution is 1028 by 764. What we have here is a sidebar that’s really crammed with stuff, but you’ve got to scroll down to get to it. This is really the challenge: how to leverage the most important things in this sidebar. What I would do is move…

First of all, what makes me a great realtor doesn’t really help me. Why I can help you or what’s the benefit to me, as a buyer, is really what I’m more interested in. So, rather than talking about more about you, you can sort of just flip the language so it’s: “if you’re looking for the best realtor in Eastman, this is my specialty. I’ll help you, not my buyers.” It helps to just use the you language and make it a little more personal, a little more benefit oriented to the potential buyer/lister. Then, I would take this information and move it.

Move it on to the home page. I’m going to give you that nice video here, in the middle. Put that information right under the video, which describes the benefits of working with you. You’ll have yourself a super friendly home page, with that sort of main benefit information right in the middle, on the home page. Then, you can move everything on the sidebar up.

What I would do is: I’d take this Facebook icon, and I would move it down below. You have a Facebook connect up here. This is great and all, and it should be there. But, I think you can move this down below, probably, below the tags.

We’ll talk about that in a second. But, what you want to do is: you want to show people that there’s a lot of information here. You can get to it easily, because that keeps them on the site and keeps them using the site, as a resource, as a database of information.

So, you want to get these categories of information up to the top. So, people can go in and jump in and see this. Now, let’s talk about clean up a little bit. There’s a lot of duplicate information here — Eastman highlights, Eastman ownership fees, Eastman real estate. It’s hard to read, and it Eastman, Eastman, Eastman. We know we’re Eastman. This is an Eastman real estate blog.

Let’s make it easy for people to figure out what it is. Just change the names to highlights and ownership fees and Eastman real estate. That seems a little broad. But, maybe it’s land for sale, condos for sale, houses for sale. Those are probably three very good categories. I’m not sure if you’ll need general real estate information. Home financing, that’s a good one. Home sales statistics, that’s a great one.

Maybe that’s an area home values related and uncategorized. Jordan pointed out you have maybe almost 30 articles that are uncategorized. So, I’d get those articles categorized.

On the tag front, we have…Try to limit your text to 20. See if you can do it. You’ve got too many texts going on here. It’s impossible to get through. You really need to think about a tag, as a top-level category, so that they’re several articles in a tag line.

Golf is a great tag. You can have several articles under golf. Grantham, New Hampshire. This is, maybe, the town of Grantham. That’s a good one. Home values, you’ve kind of covered that in a category already. You probably don’t need that. Maybe just a category called lake. Not lakefront and lake but just lake. Anything having to do with the lake. Lakefront land is important. Maybe it should be lakefront land.

Sunapee, that’s a good one. So, that’s a little off target. Newbury, that’s a good one, but it looks like you have Newbury/Newbury, NH. That might be a duplicate. New Hampshire home sales. I’m just trying to help here. Post and bean, That’s not a bad category. I like that tag. That’s a good one. Springfield. Then, Springfield NH. That’s a duplication here. You should clean that up. NH, New Hampshire views. How about Eastman views? That might be a better tag, but anyway…Here’s waterfront. So, you have lakefront and waterfront. These are duplicate tags, unless you’re talking about waterfront outside of Eastman.

But it’s still lakefront. So, then, Wilmot. Wilmot, NH. This looks like a duplicate tag as well. Let’s see if you can cut these tag in half. You really want to make it easy for people to cruise through. If your covering organization through your sort of table of contents here, with your categories, don’t duplicate it in your tags. Use tags for sort of more unique things like golf and financing and lakefront views and just sort of interesting, difficult to categorize tags.

OK. That’s so I covered that, and I think that covers it, Jeff. So, let me know if you want to talk more about the suggestions in the video.

Social Media Success presented to healthcare group [7 videos]

TCwebsite — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 19:00:01 +0000

Peter Ericson presented to a NH/VT group of Hospital Facility Managers on the topic of social media. Information covered in the presentation includes:

What is social media?
Why is it important?
What are it’s roles?
How can hospitals leverage it for their organization?

Social media websites covered are: Facebook, Blogs, Youtube, Twitter, Linkedin, and Yammer.

1 – Why is Social Media critical your success?

2 – Roles of Social Media – your blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn all have a distinct purpose, find out what they are.

3 – Social Media in Action – some great success stories

4 – LinkedIn – business networking success

5 – Yammer – the new casual conversation for your team

6 – More Social Media Examples

7 – Conclusions – what should you focus on 1st?

Blogging for Business – But What Do You Write?

TCwebsite — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:52:24 +0000

Now that you’ve got your website and blog up and ready to build your business, you’ll probably be confronted with the age-old scourge of writers everywhere: the blank screen with that horrible blinking cursor. You have every intention of posting two or three times a week, but how on earth are you going to figure out what to write?

The trick is to look outside of your office for inspiration–to your customers, your audience, and to other people who write about your field in blogs and other media. With a little bit of research and curiosity, you can unearth a world of appropriate topics that will grab the attention of potential clients and the all-important Google.

Pay Attention
Start simple: Write about the questions your customers ask you.

What’s the best native plant to fight soil erosion?
What do you do as the caterer if your luau gets rained out?

Provide the answer if you have it or–sometimes better–take your readers along as you investigate a knotty problem, taking suggestions, tips, or follow-ups as you go. You’ll be proving not only that you know your stuff, but that when your customers talk, you listen to them.

Get Inspired
Ideas are contagious. And if you read what other people are saying–in your field and elsewhere–you’ll have a lot more to talk about. Read your morning paper or your favorite blogs with an eye for stories that might apply to what you do. Or better yet, set up an RSS Reader (Google has a free one) to pull your favorite bloggers, columnists, or publications into one page where you can scan headlines and look for ideas. At the very least, you’ll be totally up-to-date and able to write on what’s new in your industry; and at best, you’ll be able to highlight the importance of your services by relating them to hot topics and recent news.

Think Strategically
How do potential customers find you online? Chances are, they type a search term (or keyphrase) into Google–say, “cambridge ma hotel”–and click on what they find. There’s a lot of complex strategy behind getting to the top of the search results, but one piece of the puzzle is the use of good keyphrases in your blog posts. And a great list of keyphrases should also inspire some ideas about what to write.

It’s important never to cram those terms into your writing–post titles like, “Window Treatments, Window Dressings, Curtains, Blinds, and Window Shades NH” will turn off human and Google alike–but smart and organic use of them, maybe even linked to a hot news topic–“Window Treatments and Your Summer Electric Bill: How Curtains Keep You Cool”–can help you stayed focused and score some points with Google at the same time.

The most important tip is to keep at it. Putting up a new item once, twice, or three times a week can sound daunting, but once it’s a habit, you’ll be able to whip out a post with your morning coffee, and inspiration will strike as you go about the rest of your job. When you pay that good idea forward, your potential customers may just be inspired to give you a call.

Not blogging yet? Or need more help? Contact us for information on WordPress Construction and advice on how to grow your company through web design and strategy.

5 minute blogging success for businesses that serve real estate

TCwebsite — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:22:34 +0000

Blogging builds trust, attracts Google searches and takes time. What if you could cut the time portion down to just 5 minutes? You can.

Watch the video below to find out how to easily and quickly produce fantastic video blog posts for your website that will show off your work and expertise, and generate leads for your business.

Real estate blogging success transcript:

I was talking to a couple of folks involved in real estate, a landscaper and a real estate broker. They both blog and they both realize that blogging is good for their business. It attracts natural Google search and it builds trust with the visitors that land on their blog, showing them as experts. The big question is, how do you blog in a time effective manner? I get a lot of whining from people saying, I understand blogging is great, but I just don’t have time to do it. So we came up with a solution, one that would just knock your blogging out of the park and it involves video. Now the first thing you need to do… The big secret here is you need to get a smartphone. Get an iPhone or an Android Phone, but the smartphones today have the ability to record a video. I know that the iPhone makes it extraordinarily easy to upload the video directly from your phone to your YouTube channel. So what you do is you go set up your YouTube channel. Upload your video to YouTube.

Then what you’ll have a video ready to go for your blog. You can embed this video easily right back in a new blog post. So imagine if you are a landscaper and you’re looking at a beautiful project that you just completed, you whip out your Smart Phone. You take a quick video of the nice landscaping that you did. You talk about the process you went through. Maybe a little before and after description and there you have yourself a great video. So once you put your video on your blog you still need to add text.

The secret here is that Google needs text to be able to understand what that blog article’s about so it can rank that article in Google search. So here’s the secret weapon. It’s a website called castingwords.com. Castingwords. What you can do is, you can literally copy the address of your video into Castingwords here. And they will give you a transcription, a written transcription of your video from the audio in your video, that you can copy and paste straight back into your blog.

What do they charge? They charge $0.75 per minute. So let’s say you spent two minutes, which would be a pretty good long description of a property whether it’s for real estate or landscaping or if you’re a plumber or electrician or roofer. Anybody involved in real estate can use this technique.

You’ll spend a grand total of $1.50 to get the text and the video on your blog as a new post. And you’ll have a Google friendly way to transparently show your expertise, very quickly… and yes this transcript was brought to you by castingwords

Advanced Saddle Fit

TCwebsite — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 03:41:16 +0000

Advanced Saddle Fit wanted a sophisticated new look to showcase their expertise and highlight a powerful e-commerce solution. Their new sites features:

WordPress/Pinnacle Cart integration
Social Media integration
Google-friendly construction and SEO

Lebanon Chamber of Commerce

TCwebsite — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 03:39:29 +0000

The Lebanon Area Chamber of Commerce wanted to be a center of information for members, the community, and visitors to their area. Their new site achieves those goals by:

actively pushing out news
showcasing events in their calendar, and
offering clear paths to more information for each audience.

Adco Eco

TCwebsite — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 03:37:12 +0000

Launching a new line of eco-friendly laundry products, AdcoEco wanted to communicate their product message to consumer and retailers, offer products for sale online, and help consumers find the products in their local areas. The new AdcoEco.com:

Integrates WordPress with PayPal Pro
Offers a zip-code driven retail store locator
Features the AdcoEco blog, and
Directs visitors to AdcoEco’s Facebook and Twitter presence.

Rothfeld Apothecary

TCwebsite — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 03:34:48 +0000

As part of a full re-branding process, the Rothfeld Apothecary needed to migrate their existing Zen Cart into an SEO-friendly e-commerce solution with design flexibility. Their new site is built with:

the PCI-compliant Pinnacle Cart e-commerce solution
SEO-friendly URLs for categories and products, and
Integrated video and embedded social media
RothfeldApothecary.com

Rothfeld Center

TCwebsite — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 03:33:16 +0000

The Rothfeld Center needed a clean new look, and a way to communicate in general about treatment offerings at their busy medical practice. RothfeldCenter.com features:

Sidebar navigation of treatment types
A Home page call-out to direct potential patients to the appropriate treatment information
Prominent links to the Center’s related websites, RothfeldApothecary.com and ThyroidBalance.com
SEO-friendly news on the Home page, and
Integrated social media.

Grantham Voice

TCwebsite — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 03:31:17 +0000

The town of Grantham, NH needed an online hub for event promotion, community groups, resident blogs, and town news. The GranthamVoice.com community portal provides a single site on which Grantham residents and activists can:

Share information on local stories
Promote town events on a public calendar
Form local groups for discussion and coordination, and
Maintain and promote blogs.

Facebook Page Basics: Welcome to Tabs

TCwebsite — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:56:24 +0000

So you saw the Social Media Revolution video and you read about Sprinkles Cupcakes, and you’ve finally decided that Facebook isn’t a flash in the pan. But now that you’re ready to set up your business page, you’re not sure what the deal is with these tabs across the top below your page name. Is there more to Facebook than just the wall?

Yes, and hurray for that. The wall is the backbone of your Facebook presence–it’s where you will most publicly build relationships with your customers–but additional tabs can make your page as multifaceted as a website. The trick, as with most things, is to start out simple, and do simple well. So before you go hunting through the app directory, get a handle on Facebook’s default tabs.

The Wall
You know this one, right? The wall is where you post updates, links, questions, offers–anything you want your fans and the public to see and respond to. The key word here is public; if it goes on your wall, whether it’s your post or a friend’s comment, anyone who likes your page will see it in their news feed. Great for demonstrating your sharp wit and killer instinct; probably lousy for an endless debate on industry minutiae.

Info
Appropriately named, this is where you want to put your URL, contact info, company mission, and, when appropriate, hours of operation. The fields in this tab will vary with your business type, but the gist is straightforward: someone wants to know the who, what, where, and why of your business. Considering that they might want to hire you or buy your products, you should probably tell them.

Photos
Amazingly (and thankfully) people still read. But you’re on Facebook to add some flavor to your business, so you’re going to need some pictures too–but of what? Your products, storefront, charities, local events, giveaways, trade shows, you name it. Anything that conveys the personality of what you do. Organize your photos into descriptively titled albums (“2010 Boston Marathon” or “2011 Renovations”), and give folks a visual way to keep an eye on what you’re up to.

Discussions
Remember that debate on industry minutiae? The beauty of the discussion tab is that you and your friends or the public at large can have a discussion without every comma being blasted out to news feeds. Maybe you’re asking for constructive criticism or offering technical support; maybe you’re coordinating volunteers for an event, and your customers don’t need to know what time Annie is going to show up with the crock pot. The content of your Facebook page is still public, but discussions exist to allow some chatter to go unbroadcast.

Depending on your business type, you may have other tabs–Reviews, Links–and as you make Facebook a daily part of your business outreach and marketing, you can add features covering everything from videos to e-commerce. Just make sure that you are a pro at the basics before you bite off the next chunk.

Outdoor Patio Furniture

TCwebsite — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:12:45 +0000

Open Air Furnishings!

No related posts.

How we build your website

TCwebsite — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 00:17:22 +0000

Schillinger Educational Consultants

TCwebsite — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:32:33 +0000

No related posts.

Twitter Following 101, or How to Stop Tweeting in a Vacuum

TCwebsite — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:47:15 +0000

So you’re sold on the marketing value of social media, and you update your company twitter account at least once a day. But your 140 characters of sheer brilliance don’t seem to be yielding any new customers–or even leads. What gives?

The first painful truth about Twitter is that building it doesn’t necessarily mean they will come. Sure, your hot tips and well-chosen links may turn up in client searches or Topsy results, but that’s a scatter-shot approach to what should be a science. Rather than waiting for the twitosphere to find you, you can take charge of your Twitter following by identifying people who should be following you–and following them first.

Let Twitter search your contacts for people you already know. Yes, it’s a no-brainer, but the folks you’re already talking to should know you’re on Twitter, and if you follow them, they’ll most likely follow you back. Remember: your first task is to get more than 1 follower.
Search Twitter for people tweeting about your field or topic. See that search box in the Twitter sidebar? You can start there–or pick up one of the many Twitter clients, from Hootsuite to Tweetdeck. Then search for the phrases that you think your audience is using, identify folks who seem particularly interested in the topic, and follow them. Better yet, follow them and then go through their lists of followers and followees; the odds are, you’ll find a ready-made network of people who’ll want to hear what you have to say.
Plunder the competition. Does your competitor have a head start? Great. Take a tour through their Twitter connections and start following them. You may come to the attention of folks who didn’t even know there was competition.
Set up running searches for your topics, keyphrases, and name. Another truth about Twitter is that you can’t build it and walk away. Get alerts from Tweetdeck or another Twitter client when your terms are tweeted, and actively follow people who catch your eye.

That will get you started, but in order to keep your momentum, you have to remember one final rule: Engage. Now here’s something people forget about social media: It’s not all about you. Yes, you should tweet your own interesting content. But you should also reply, direct message, retweet, and chat. At its best, Twitter is a relationship tool, not a megaphone. Listen, follow, participate, tweet valuable information, and reap the benefits.

Yet another helpful tip from the tech junkies at TCW, specializing in WordPress-based NH web design.