Confluent Forms

What is a RFP, where to find RFPs, and are RFPs relevant?

2013-05-13T14:12:00.003-04:00

Requests for Proposals (RFPs) can be an invaluable source of new business for your company as long as you know what they are, where to find them, and how to make strategic decisions regarding them.

What is a RFP?

Quite simply:

"A request for proposal (RFP) is a solicitation document that an organization posts to elicit bids from potential vendors in order to procure a product or service through the responding business proposals. The RFP process is meant to bring structure and transparency to the procurement decision, while reducing risk through open requirements and discussion."

The actual formatting of a RFP can vary widely, and RFP quality and completeness is often a topic of heated discussion, but considering the total value of projects chosen by this method, as a vendor it is virtually impossible to ignore them as some have chosen to do.

Requests for Proposals are often issued by for-profit companies and non-profit organizations, but are required to be issued by governments and government agencies as a fair and transparent way of soliciting competitive bids.

There are a number of variations on Requests for Proposals (RFPs), namely:

Request for quotations (RFQ)
Request for qualifications (RFQ)
Request for information (RFI)
Request for tender (RFT)

Where can I find RFPs?

If you're looking for government or "public" RFPs issued by organizations governed by public procurement laws, you can always find those RFPs posted on the originating organization's website as it is almost always a requirement. For example, any City, State, or government agency typically has a purchasing or procurement section of their website for RFPs. The same generally holds true for public colleges and universities. There are also a number of private services that will sell you this same information on a subscription basis (running from $20/month to $500/month).

This doesn't typically apply for private companies or non-profit organizations, who are under less restrictions and might not publicly post their RFPs to their website.

The RFP Database is the only site that has a variety of government RFPs, non-profit RFPs, and even RFPs from for-profit companies, but does not charge a subscription fee.

Are RFPs relevant today?

Yes, most definitely. While the competition for public RFPs has increased, so has the need for more transparency in government spending, along with additional incentives for agencies to hire small businesses. To ignore RFPs is to ignore billions of dollars of spending, a percentage of which could be going to your business.

To compete in this market one must continually strive to create better proposals, along with making strategic decisions regarding which RFPs to pursue. Remember, not all RFPs are worth a proposal!

Has LinkedIn jumped the shark?

2013-05-01T15:13:00.000-04:00

It wasn't so long ago that LinkedIn was an important part of my day. I actively engaged on it, cultivating connections, participating in Groups and answering questions in the Answers section. I even manage a group in the site for the RFP Database called The RFP Database B2B Forum which now has over 12,500 members in it.

I was a power user, and I used it to engage in conversations as an active part of my sales and marketing strategy.

But not so much anymore. I believe that LinkedIn has jumped the shark.

For me, two things are at play:

1) spammers have overrun everything
and
2) most of the "new features" that LinkedIn has been adding have fed into the worst aspects of LinkedIn

How did LinkedIn have Value

LinkedIn's value started with the profile you created for yourself, but then even more importantly, the Experience (your resume) and Recommendations (reviews from other professionals) sections. It was basically your resume and references up on the web. When meeting someone new (for example at a business conference) it wasn't unheard of to look that person up later to learn more about their history.

Your contacts were imagined as people you had interacted with, in a personal or professional setting, so in the beginning you knew that a 2nd or 3rd degree contact was not too far removed from a person that actually knew you both. You could keep your Rolodex, while also being introduced to sales prospects through a shared contact.

Answers and Group discussions were places where you could really shine if you put in the time. By engaging in conversations, asking and answering questions, and in general by participating, you met new contacts while also building up your "authority" on a subject through "good" and "best" answers. You could even land a new client/customer or two through this soft-sell technique.

And when I emailed all of the people that were in my contacts I expect their contact emails to be 99-100% valid (recently tested and had 20% failure).

And now?

Now all I see is spam.

People with 100k+ contacts, "LIONs" (LinkedIn Open Networker) that are nothing more than hoarders of contacts that have 0 meaning to them. LinkedIn closed down the "Answers" section entirely.

Groups have become overrun with spammers, people who "link dump" their most recent blog post, get rich quick scheme, job posting or event, not to engage in conversation, but to get search engine karma and click-throughs to their content. The "Discussion" and "Promotions" tabs in Groups should just be one and the same as very little actual discussion occurs in most groups unless the moderators of those groups have decided to take a stand. And most of the time the shares aren't even in groups that would care... why drop a link to a Microsoft Programmers Conference in my RFP group that discusses procurement and purchasing?

And my new favorite, the one that really made me laugh, is the new "Skills & Expertise" endorsement functionality. Every day I get notices about how so and so has endorsed me for a whole bunch more skills. Now I'll admit, I have lots of contacts that I don't know well, or even barely at all. They've connected with me because of the +The RFP Database and the group. So if anything they would only know me as a RFP and procurement expert, or perhaps a discussion facilitator. How can they be endorsing me for all of my other skills? More likely is they're just another type of "social SEO".

(I'll skip my thoughts on LinkedIn's mention feature)

Can LinkedIn get its groove back?

I think it can if it gets back to its roots. It needs to move way from being a social media platform and content dumping compost heap and get back to being a verifiable professional networking platform. Real people, real profiles, real discussion, real endorsements. It needs to become serious and legitimate again. It needs to button up its shirt, put on a tie, and get serious.

User-supplied information needs to be verified, quantified and ranked for value.

If someone is posting lots of duplicate content and links with 0 discussion, that needs to be discouraged by the system.

Network size should have an almost inverse effect on ranking where "performance" matters more than size.

What do you think?

Has LinkedIn jumped the shark? Has it fallen out of your favor? Or are you still in there and going strong?

For those that don't know about jumping the shark...

Update: 2013.05.14

My new theory on the +LinkedIn "endorsement" system:

It's an ingenious way to spam existing members into coming back to the LinkedIn site more often, under the guise of boosting your profile and goodwill, without coming across as spam

The endorsement email says who endorsed you and what they endorsed you for, and there is a big yellow button that says "continue". Clicking "continue" brings you to your profile, but with a big blue site that says "Pay it forward..." then has 4 profiles to endorse. The next yellow button? "Endorse all 4". And the way it is set up is that it's actually annoying to endorse one at a time. They want you to endorse those 4 people and move on to the next 4 people, and every time you endorse someone, they get a notification email.

What you're really doing is not endorsing someone so much as spamming them on behalf of LinkedIn.

Timeliness matters for website visitors and search engines

2013-04-02T14:45:00.000-04:00

Have you ever gone to a website and questioned if someone was still in business because nothing on their website looks like it has been updated lately? Have you checked out their blog and the last post was from two years ago... or worse yet, didn't have a date stamp?

As a website owner you probably have never looked at your website and wondered this, but we can assure you, potential customers have likely thought this. And what's worse is that search engines wonder the same thing!

Let me explain.

Don't make people think you're closed... permanently.

You've had a busy year, so busy that you haven't made time for your website. Without realizing it, you stopped blogging, stopped posting "news releases" to your site, and while it's spring, pictures on your site might be from the middle of a snow storm or are from years ago and feature an employee that's moved away. Your website is dated... and it's still mentioning a special event that you showcased a long, long time ago.

There are three takeaways that visitors to your site can come away with:

you're too busy to update your website
you have nothing going on and nothing worth mentioning on your site, so they won't bother checking back (ever)
you're no longer in business and your site is here like a sad tombstone to a departed company

Ok, so maybe you're thinking of taking the easy way out: remove all date information from my site to it's "timeless" as opposed to dated. Sure, that might work, or the visitor might just ask themselves "how long ago was this written?" Wondering is even worse!

Search engines think the same way

You might not realize this, but search engines think similarly. If you haven't posted fresh content recently the search engines don't have a reason to check your site. If you're not updating it frequently, those engines might not quickly find the content you've added recently because they're not in the habit of seeing fresh content from you.

Additionally search engines use "last-updated" as one of their factors in determining search engine results placement and ranking. You wouldn't want to lose out in positioning to one of your competitors simply because you haven't updated your website lately, would you?

Blog often

We talk about it all the time: your business should be actively blogging and you need a content strategy. And for some people, an editorial calendar helps (as well as ignoring it periodically).

Don't be scared: these blog posts don't need to be whitepaper editorials or mini term papers. Updates, happenings, photographs, small bits of good news... they all work well and contribute to your timeliness and relevance while engaging your fans/followers and giving search engines a reason to keep coming back.

So what are you waiting for?!

Why your business needs to claim its Google Places page

2013-03-26T11:19:00.003-04:00

If you want to do just one activity that will take you approximately 10 minutes of your time and yield you the most customers for 0 cost, this is that one thing you should do. Immediately.

Some quick statistics to get our conversation started:

43% of all Google searches are local or location based
Over 50% of mobile searches are local or location based

Now to explain: local or location based searches are searches whereby either you entered the location directly into the search parameters (search for "pilates in Easthampton MA") or you were in a location and Google returned search results based on your GPS coordinates (you were in the town of Easthampton, MA and ran a search for "pilates").

When does your location matter?

Easy: any time a person is trying to find a product or service close to where they are or based on its proximity to a location. For example, an Italian restaurant in a certain town, a hair salon in their neighborhood, the nearest locksmith, a plumber that services their area...

For location-relevant businesses these types of searches are the most important queries that you can hope to win. These queries aren't you trying to beat out your nationwide or global position for search engine rankings, but are instead highly local-based and often immediate in their conversion from a query to a phone call or physical customer at your location. In some industries (such as restaurants) this conversion percentage has been found (for smartphone users) to equal 30% immediate conversions and 60% conversions within an hour, and 80% go on to eventually make a conversion.

30% conversions immediately and 60% conversions within an hour.

These aren't window shoppers, these are people that are immediately converting to become customers of yours.

And guess what they're using to conduct these local searches? Google Map on iOS (Apple) or Google via their Android phone.

And guess where the top results are being pulled from? Your Google+ Local Page information.

Google Places is now Google+ Local

This part may be confusing, but Google used to have a service which is still operational called Google Places. You might have created your business listing in this service, it still exists, you can still edit your existing listings, and in fact you can create new listings. But it looks like this is being phased out and merged with Google+ functionality in the form of Google+ Business.

Move past anything you may or may not have heard about Google+. It is irrelevant to this discussion, but if you want to learn more about why you need to use Google+, read this post.

This is not Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

To be perfectly clear, this is not search engine optimization. This is not part of your website, nor does it comprise of making the content in your website more accessible or optimized for search engines to spider. This is entirely about giving Google the best information possible about your business in their "yellow pages" directory, keeping the profile updated and active, and enabling Google to match queries with the best results. And when the query is a local or location-based search, Google will use this information before using standard search engine results (which is where your SEO might be a factor).

How to work on your Local Pages

Completeness matters! Make sure to keep all of your contact information correct (address, phone numbers, website urls), fill out your hours and description, and above all, make sure you have one or more categories selected! The categories are one of the biggest parts; make sure that you include all categories that match your offering. For example, if you're an Italian restaurant, make sure to select both the "italian restaurant" category as well as the "restaurant" category.

Then make your listing catchy by adding the most gorgeous cover photo that you can, along with 5 or more other photographs to showcase (people often judge exclusively on imagery).

Cultivating Authority, +1's, Circles and Reviews

Now you're probably wondering how you can get your Google+ Page to the top of the results. There are a number of factors, but there isn't a sure-fire method to guarantee your positioning. But what you can do is focus on 4 things: cultivating authority, generating +1s, getting people to circle you, and encouraging positive reviews to get posted to your Page. The first three of those four options are things that you can do, the fourth one (reviews) is something that you'll want to encourage from your customers.

Cultivating authority
Google gives positioning priority to people that have established themselves as an "authority" on a subject, or have prominently mentioned a subject while they are already considered an authority within the system. Basically Google analyzes social signals to evaluate a person (or business) and see how active and engaged they are, and how people have responded to the content that they've posted or re-shared.

How do you cultivate your authority?

Increase the number of people that have you in their circles.
Increase the number of re-shares and +1’s of your Google+ content (content you share).
Increase the number of mentions of your Profile/Page in Google+.
Increase external activity, measured through the amount of +1’s of your site’s content
Link up your profiles to take advantage of AuthorRank
Create lots of quality content

+1s on your site
Google Webmaster provides some great information regarding the +1 button and how it affects search results, which can be summed up nicely with this example:

+1 helps people discover relevant content—a website, a Google search result, or an ad—from the people they already know and trust. The +1 button appears on Google search, on websites, and on ads. For example, you might see a +1 button for a Google search result, Google ad, or next to an article you're reading on your favorite news site.

Adding the +1 button to pages on your own site lets users recommend your content, knowing that their friends and contacts will see their recommendation when it’s most relevant—in the context of Google search results. In addition, a user's +1's appear on the +1 tab of their Google Profile. While +1’s are always public, users can choose to make the +1 tab visible or invisible on their profile.

How do you get those +1s? It starts by putting the +1 button onto your site and more importantly on each blog/content pages within your site.

Circles
As much as we hate to say it, size does matter.... when it comes to the size of your social network. You want to cultivate lots of people in your circles, and the larger your circles, the more reach you'll have in the search result personalization of your target audience.

In the example here you'll see some of the benefits of establishing rel=author code to your site, but also how Google has displayed my information while displaying the search result.

The size of your social network in Google+ is a contributing factor, but also how many times your content has been shared. So if you're using Google+ in conjunction with your blog, by sharing your new posts to your network, getting +1s on that content share, and getting re-shares (measured by Ripples), each of those shares is essentially a high-quality inbound link to your content from yet another Authority source.

So how do you grow your network? The first step is to include the Google+ Badge on your website and blog. This badge includes functionality that enables visitors to quickly and easily add you to a circle without leaving your site (while also perhaps giving you a +1).

The second step is to start sharing your content, and related content from other sources (cultivation), to your Google+ page, and engaging people. We understand that spending time and resources to engage people is difficult and can be costly, and it is by no means necessary, but if you're looking to grow your following fast, that's the best method. But regarding sharing content, that is something your business should already be doing via blogging (your business should be actively blogging) or in other social networks such as Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

It's going to be some work...

We know we just gave you a long list of work to do, some immediate and some long term, but even if all you do is the first part and just set up your Local Page (and make it really, really complete), then you'll have accomplished a lot and the rest can wait until you're ready to jump in with both feet.

Use Blogger and Google+ together to great effect

2013-03-19T08:46:00.001-04:00

There has been lots of discussion on Google+, speculation about the future direction of the platform, how to best use it, but also what it means for the future of Blogger. What does Blogger have to do with it? Well, it seems that some influencers (such as +Mike Elgan with over 2 million followers) have decided that they like the idea of blogging on Google+, which then transitioned into if they're using it for blogging, then Google should move resources from Blogger to Google+ and let Blogger fade away.

As a fan of Blogger, but also as a content strategist, I disagree.

There is some solid logic behind using Google+ as a blog platform of sorts, and for some that might be the decision that yields them the best results for their goals, but it also is a simplistic view of the Blogger platform and the many advantages that it has such as:

Complete brand control and design
Support for data outside linear date posts (static pages, label categories)
External gadgets and JQuery support
Custom top level domain support
Paid advertising
Anonymous commenting
Content with a longer lifespan (Google+ content has a lifespan) and is indexed by non-Google search engines

So rather than go this route, I think it is better to develop a strategy on how Blogger and Google+ can be used in tandem to achieve the greatest amplification of your content and to achieve greater engagement with your readers and fans.

The blogger as himself/herself strategy

Back to Mike Elgan's strategy. I understand the strategy, and the desire to get Google to put more resources into the platform that you've decided to take advantage of. If you're going to dedicate yourself to using a platform, you want to get the most out of it. It enables you to quickly build Authority while engaging your fans/readers/customers very directly.

But in my opinion this puts lots of eggs in one basket, while also subjecting your content and audience to a brand that is not under your control, links that you don't control, and a content platform with content that expires.

Is your blog You or your Blog?

This is an important distinction to make, and to some extent it might push you in different directions. For example, this blog post is being written by +David Kutcher, but in my role as the President of +Confluent Forms LLC. Confluent Forms is the "Publisher" of the content and David is the "Author" of the content. David's entire identify is not my role with Confluent Forms, and in fact I blog for multiple properties (such as +Blogger Xpertise), and some of my posts on Google+ might have nothing to do with either of these properties and be more personal in nature. At the same time, acknowledging me as the verified author will have benefits in Google soon with the additional of rel=author and the bonuses that an author's social network has towards the placement in SERP rankings, not to mention the Social Authority that you can build as an individual through circles, shares, +1s, and more.

This might be different for you if You are your Blog. What I mean by this is if your blog is publicly acknowledge as "The Blog of Your Name", where you are the primary and perhaps only author, and the content is seen as coming directly from you. If this is the case, chances are there is very little separation between You the Author and You the Publisher (unlike my first case). In this case, I agree, there might be less of a desire to essentially "blog" in two places, however it's worth considering this strategy, as well as the bullet-pointed list at the top of this post.

How we're using Google+ and Blogger

I'm using Google+ for my company, but also me personally.

Confluent Forms is set up as a Google Local Page, while I have a separate account with my name on it. The company page is then linked to our Blogger website, taking advantage of the Google+ functional link in Blogger. This has a few advantages: combined with the Google+ Page gadget in Blogger it adds rel=publisher data, adds a social follow functionality (similar to Facebook's Like Box), prompts for auto-sharing when you submit your post, and in Google+ allows you to interact with people as your company and not as an individual.

With my personal Google+ account I continue the conversation as myself. Sure, I share and re-share posts that my company has made on the blog, but it's also a way for me to join conversations, build up my personal Authority, and engage people that might read, share, and +1 my blog's posts. I'm able to take advantage of Authority, AuthorRank, PublisherRank, and PageRank, as well as make a search engine friendly site that brings in visitors from far outside my circles, and brings them into my Circles.

In summation

Using Blogger as the "home base" for your long-term, branded content enables you to establish your content strategy, take advantage of search engine structured content and social sharing, and still build authority by sharing and engaging on Google+.

Search Engine (Optimization) or the User Experience?

2013-03-01T14:08:00.001-05:00

These days, when talking about your website, it is imperative that you factor in search engines and search engine optimization (SEO) into your site. How your site places in search engines is a critical factor in driving traffic to your site, and thusly the success of your site. We understand this, and often work after the launch of a client's site to continue to make changes to the site based on the results that we're seeing (or not seeing) from search engine traffic.

But what is the balance between search engine optimizing (and targeting the search engines) and preserving your user experience for your actual users who are People, not Machines?

+Terri Voltz in the Social Media Professionals community got us into a animated discussion regarding Title tag best practices within a web page or web site.

Quick background: The title tag is the text that top text that describes an online document, and perhaps the single most important page element. It is the "title" that you see at the top of your web browser when you are visiting the web page, it is the text that is often shown to you in your bookmarks when you bookmark the page, it is the title shown in search results when you Google something, and it is the descriptive title when someone shares your content (such as via Facebook or Google+).

It is also the most important piece of information from a search engine perspective, as it is supposed to give the search engine a good indicator of what content is on that page. (for a quick primer read this SEOMoz article).

When we create the page titles for our projects, we like to follow the following format:

Company name | tagline (on homepage)
Company name | page title (on interior static pages)
Page title | company name (on blog posts)

We like this setup for a number of reasons:

You've invested in your brand, so your homepage should put that brand first. Adding your tag line after your brand is a good way to get your main key words/phrases into your page title for your homepage.
Interior static pages typically have short or to-the-point page titles, so keeping this format keeps it tidy.
Your blog posts will have interesting titles, full of key words and phrases that should allow them to stand by themselves (they'll likely get shared out of the greater context of your site), hence the page titles should lead with those post titles.

SEO is a concern, but obviously not the primary concern. We don't believe in keyword stuffing or other techniques that might get someone higher up in the search results (at least temporarily). But we also find it interesting seeing what others might do...

A sample search result page for "SEO company Montreal"

Just as an example we ran a search in DuckDuckGo for "SEO company Montreal" and low and behold, almost all of the results were the same! It's not until Result #6 that you see a realistic company brand even mentioned in the titles (Wakonda Marketing followed by BlueHat Marketing), almost all of the other results are essentially nameless businesses with generic keyword-driven domains and keyword-driven titles and keyword-driven meta descriptions.

To us, this is a failure (or an opportunity for companies that want to be perceived as different!).

Now of course there is the statistical argument regarding SERP (search engine results page) position and the percentages of click-throughs earned.

Information by Chitika

Yes, there is a huge drop off in terms of share of traffic from position 1 down through position 10, with that top spot earning ~30% of the clicks. And don't get us wrong, getting to the #1 search result is a great accomplishment and a great achievement to strive for.

However...

Search engines are getting smarter, people are getting more savvy (and jaded) about their search results, and like so much else, the strategy illustrated by those SEO companies in Montreal becomes a race to the bottom in terms of user quality.

So what do you think? How do you structure your page titles? Where do you see the balance between SEO and user experience?

For more of our thoughts on SEO please visitor our article "Develop a User-Centric Content Strategy Instead of SEO"

Your business should be blogging (actively!)

2013-02-07T14:19:00.001-05:00

A lot has changed in the last few years and especially in the last few months where online marketing is concerned. Changes to Google's search algorithms (Panda, etc.), changes to the way Facebook Pages work (pay to reach your fans), new search features (authorship), and much more. But in our opinion one thing has been a constant: good content engages your fans and visitors.

Some statistics:

Businesses that blogged received 55% more visitors than those that did not [*]
Businesses that blogged received 97% more inbound links than those that did not
In some industries (restaurants for example) 95% of potential customers use search engines to find their target restaurant; within that set 30% convert immediately and 60% convert within an hour
For most sites the % of traffic that originates from a search query is 45% to 65% of the total new visitors

Some reasons:

Blogging enables you to connect with your fans and customers, continuing your brand story and keeping them engaged
Blogging creates fresh content that will increase your search engine presence
Blogging creates shareable content
Blogging helps establish credibility and trust, establishing industry expertise
Blogging allows you to promote a new product, initiative, achievement or other news quickly and easily

Misperceptions on blogging:

Blog posts don't need to be long, they can be as short as an image or two, a video, a few paragraphs of text, anything
A blog doesn't have to be articles, but can instead be news & event announcements, daily specials, random photos, or any other pieces of content that your company can produce to interact with your fans
You don't need to blog every day, sometimes once a week is good enough (depending on your content of course)

Remember that content strategy that we discussed? Blogging can and should be a large part of that strategy. And that doesn't mean ditching any other social media activities and services you might be using (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.), but it means having content creation originating from a source, that source being under your own domain (for more on this read our post Focus on your Blog, Don't promote the social media services). This isn't to say that your content can't go out to those services, engaging you fans in those platforms, but instead that it should originally be posted on your own site.

Need help setting up a blog and website and keeping your branding consistent? Give us a call!

A website renovation or a website overhaul?

2013-02-04T10:22:00.000-05:00

You've come to the realization that your website just isn't doing enough for you - it's just not bringing in enough business. Only problem is that you recently paid to have the site redesigned and you can't bear to gut renovate it already.

So what can you do?

One of the services our company provides is a strategy evaluation and website audit.

To understand how successful your site is performing we need to have a better understanding of what the site is supposed to be accomplishing. In our article about developing a user-centric content strategy instead of SEO we discuss defining goals for your site, both what you want to get out of your site, but also what you want your visitors to accomplish in your site. These goals typically need to funnel to something, preferably a task that aids in your business's capture strategy for new client/customer acquisition, but they could also be goals like "increase overall site traffic to earn more advertising revenue".

Using these goals, combined with an evaluation of the site and the site's Analytics, it's possible to determine the performance metrics. For instance, if advertising revenue based on page views is a goal, and the site is only getting 2.5 pages per visit, then strategies to lengthen user sessions need to be developed. How can we lengthen those sessions? We could:

Create navigation categories for the contents of the site to enable reading by subject
Add "read recommended" or "read related" content functionality
Enable thumbnail and summary functionality on long listing pages

These are just examples, but these are all modifications that could easily be applied to a site without needing an overhaul.

But the larger point is this: you need to be able to quantify how the site is performing and what key metrics to use to determine the success (or failure) of your website. It is only once you have this information that you can truly strategize to improve those metrics, or if that's not possible with the current setup, begin undertaking the strategic steps necessary to redesign your site with those goals in mind.

Keeping all of this in mind, the decision to renovate or overhaul comes back to that most important of acronyms: ROI. How much will each cost, and based on the goals that you are looking to achieve and the costs to achieve them, what is the return on investment.

Portfolio: Pinch Gallery

2013-01-30T12:15:00.002-05:00

Pinch is a vibrant, eclectic artisan gallery in Northampton, MA with a focus on art for the home and art to wear. Originally founded in 1979 by three potters, Pinch has a long history as a showcase for well-known and emerging ceramic artists. Jena Sujat, who purchased Pinch in 2006, brings her eye for the interesting, unique and beautiful to Pinch's tradition for showing handmade work. With new ceramics, jewelry, home decor and accessories arriving each week, Pinch is always changing and always fresh.

Pinch Gallery was one of our first complete small business websites making use of Blogger as the Content Management System (CMS). Partnering with BoyBurnsBarn LLC we transformed their former blog into their new showcase website and integrated blog. This site uses Blogger as the Content Management System, combined with some parts managed through Picasa. The content strategy of the site is to post artist biographies and featured posts as blog posts, enabling fresh content to share as well as providing search benefits.

We also set up and configured their Big Cartel e-commerce store to have a matching template and design aesthetic.

The site was featured as a Blogger Blog of Note in November of 2010.

Category page showcasing thumbnails of each artist's blog post.

Blog post for an artist.

Product purchasing page in the Shop.

Artist page in the Shop showcasing all of the products for sale online by that artist.

A 'not provided' tip from your Analytics

2013-01-14T09:56:00.000-05:00

If you're like us, you check your Analytics a few times a week, analyzing the charts and numbers looking for trends and areas for improvement. If you've ever gone to the Organic Keywords section of your Analytics to see the terms that people used to find your site, you might have noticed that one of the top "search terms" in the list is "(not provided)". And if you're like us it's possible that "(not provided)" in your key words accounts for 30% to 50% or more of your search visits.

Why is this?

Key word referrers

Pretty much since search engines have been around website owners have been able to look at their server logs or analytics and see the key words that visitors used in a search to find their site. When a user ran a search in a search engine and clicked on a link, the search term was attached to the URL in the URL referrer.

Some time around November 2011 (based on our internal reports) Google began experimenting with encrypting the search term for logged-in users of Google services, and then rolled it out to the main service in April 2012. What this means is that if you were signed in for Gmail, then ran a search, the website that you visited as a result of that search wouldn't see the key words that you used to find them... all they would see is that you came in from a search, but that the search term was "not provided".

How do marketers cope with the missing key terms?

Most marketers have found this to be exceedingly frustrating, and if you search for answers regarding the "not provided" keywords, you'll find posts written by marketers trying to extrapolate the missing data, or figure out ways to re-craft their campaigns to circumvent this problem. They still won't see the missing information, but their strategies are to still be able to run their campaigns effectively without having that information.

Is there positive insight to be gained?

YES!

Rather than be focused on the negative, the information that you're no longer able to see, think about what the information does provide. With a single metric you're now able to see exactly what percentage of your visits come from people that use Google/Gmail accounts and searching while logged in.

You now know that those 30-50% of your search visitors are logged in to Google, and because of this, will be seeing personalized search results. Those search results are easily affected by factors such as past history, localization, and Google's recommendation engine powered by Authorship and G+ socializing. You can compare those statistics against your non-hidden search terms, you can identify what percentage of Google logged-in vs not-in are visiting your site from a search, and you can see how your Google networking has affected your click-thrus coming from logged-in users over time.

That's some pretty interesting insight into the visitors of your site and might give you some thoughts about how to better target them.

Enhance your Site's Content with Microformats

2013-01-09T09:26:00.000-05:00

It is time to become aware of the place microformats have in your site structure. Microformats are attributes present in the markup of your pages that grant an explicit deceleration (eg "this is a Blog Post") as to the role of the content present in the document. As their use increases, those sites without the additional information accuracy gained though microformatting may find themselves falling behind in search results and clickthroughs. A small time investment adding microformatting to your website content may yield large returns to your site and its content strategy.

HTML5 already has elements that lend some indication as to their role in your document. These range from weak (ul indicates a list of something) to the strong (address representing the contact information for the document or section). In HTML5 we have document formatting present in the markup, but it is essentially macro formatting. These are rough tools used to describe information as they relate structurally as a web document, all documents on the web must be structured to fit into this document model. They describe the role of the content in the document structure but provide little insight into the meaning of the document's content. Microformats exist to be compatible with this web page markup, but make available enhancements to add better semantics to the presented data.

The address element makes for a good example. An address is a complicated thing and the address element in HTML5 is a container for whatever represents the document/section contact information:

 <address>

Joe Somethingorother

1234 Main Street

Somewhereville, ST 12345-9876

phone: (123) 123-4567

fax: (123)123-9876

</address>

This is presently clear enough for anyone reading to divine the elements of the contact information from the text in the address element. This illustrates one of the grand dichotomies between machines and men. We can intuitively understand the context of a grouping of text while a machine cannot. Microformats, therefore, are in the service of machines, to allow an explicit programmatic understanding of the context of items in the markup. This is performed by threading into the existing markup another more semantically narrow and accurate markup: a schema.

By "machines" we predominantly refer to search engines, by "search engines" we predominantly refer to the big three: Yahoo!, Microsoft (Bing) and Google, by "big three" we predominantly refer to Google, Google and Google. The fundamental practical aim of these microformats is to allow search engines a better understanding the data present in web pages. Schema.org is a collection of microformats: definitions of specific subject areas which may be interlaced within the HTML markup to provide the explicit declaration of the type of content, well beyond what the generic HTML markup indicates. If you look at the history of Schema.org it was started by Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google to make semantic understanding of content easier for their search engines. I will be focusing on the microformats available at schema.org, there are others available as well: Open Graph, RDFa, ...

These schemas are already in use by Google for displaying extra information in search results, you can see this concept in Google documentation as "rich snippets". The data for these snippets are informed by schema use in the repective indexed pages. When search results display properly microformatted products, which are listed for sale on a page, the extra product information shown in the search results comes from information communicated through the use of the Product schema. As schema use grows you may expect to see more schemas used as well as a greater adoption of schemas understanding in other services.

Applying a microformat is a matter of adding more attributes to existing tags (and more tags where necessary). The Schema.org documentation goes into detail on the proper application of these attributes.

Let us microformat that address element to make it semantically clearer.

 <address itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress">

Joe Somethingorother

<span itemprop="streetAddress">1234 Main Street</span>

<span itemprop="addressLocality">Somewhereville</span>, <span itemprop="addressRegion">ST</span> <span itemprop="postalCode">12345-9876</span>

phone: <span itemprop="telephone">(123) 123-4567</span>

fax: <span itemprop="faxNumber">(123) 123-9876</span>

</address>

(Why addressCountry, addressLocality, addressRegion and the street is streetAddress not addressStreet? Do not spend too much time worrying on this, take it as it comes.)

One drawback to microformatting is the proliferation of markup tags required to apply the formatting to detailed data. In order to properly apply microformatting to content you find yourself requiring a tag where there was none use a "span" tag or a "div" tag (if it contains spans). These are the most generic of HTML tags: the most basic and context neutral. Schema markup may be applied to any document element, try to keep things simple.

The microformatted address is good, but limited. It carries more information than we have marked-up, what we really need to properly microformat this element is something more. Remember the "address" tag is not just an address, it is "contact information". There is no reason (save symmetry) to use the limited postal address schema to semantically markup the entire address tag. In this case the content of the address tag represents a contact person and we should therefore use a broader and more correct schema: we will be formatting it as a Schema.org Person. Because the contact point in this example is an individual, by using the Person schema we can add more information beyond what is available when using just the Schema.org PostalAddress element. Fortunately a great strength of the schemas is that they use each other in defining sub-elements. The Person schema allows us to also use the PostalAddress element as part of the person's information:

 <address itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"> <span itemprop="name">Joe Somethingorother</span>

<div itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress"> <span itemprop="streetAddress">1234 Main Street</span>

<span itemprop="addressLocality">Somewhereville</span>, <span itemprop="addressRegion">ST</span> <span itemprop="postalCode">12345-9876</span>

phone: <span itemprop="telephone">(123) 123-4567</span>

fax: <span itemprop="faxNumber">(123) 123-9876</span>

</div>

</address>

That is a little more appropriate for our use. Now the contact information is more specific but also retains the address microformat as well. You may also use the Organization schema if the contact information is for a business entity.

Schemas can go a long way in supplying more information from your web presence. The compelling use case today is to supply Google better information for search results on your web page. It is also easy to see how more applications may be developed to take better advantage of microformats as they gain wider adoption.

Portfolio: The Ottinger Law Firm

2013-01-07T10:08:00.001-05:00

The Ottinger law firm has focused on just one thing – helping employees. Their New York lawyers comprise one of the nation's leading employee rights law firms, with offices in New York and San Francisco.

I think your firm did an amazing job in quickly moving our site from WP to Blogger and made the transition painless. Also, you provided clear training on how to manager our site on the Blogger platform. Basically, you have simplified the process of running a website and freed my company from the chains of old fashioned expensive and even harmful practices of legacy SEO providers. Now, instead of wasting money on an SEO company that was actually hurting our website, we can use our resources and energy to create good content for our customers which is what Google wants people to do.

- Robert Ottinger, Owner, The Ottinger Law Firm

The site was a migration, transforming the firm's existing site in self-hosted Wordpress into a site built on the Blogger platform. We kept the design as it existed, but redeveloped the site to take advantage of HTML 5 and microformats and best practices. The page load is approximately 1/2 the original load, resulting in a much faster loading website, yet keeping all of the necessary form and functionality.

The homepage

An interior page in the site

A blog post within the site

The 5 reasons your business should be on G+

2013-01-03T11:44:00.000-05:00

We know, you've probably heard that Google Plus is a ghost town. That nobody uses it. That's nonsense, but we understand that's the perception.

But that is no reason for your company to ignore G+, and not a reason to leave G+ out of your social media marketing and content strategy. In fact, we're here to give you 5 big reasons why it should be a prominent part, if not a primary part, of your social media marketing and content strategy.

1. Local searches
Google Local Pages are now G+ Pages, and as you hopefully already know, those Local Pages factor strongly in searches where a location is involved (43% if not more of total searches are local). For example, if you're searching for a restaurant in NYC, location and proximity to you are now used as factors in the results that you see. Getting your business to feature prominently in that local search is a much better strategy than trying to win the keyword wars. The best way to get higher in local searches? Cultivate an engaging G+ Local Page and keep it accurate and active!

2. Increasing your search engine profile
We continually talk about creating and executing a user-centric content strategy as a key to earning quality traffic. Linking your site and blog to your G+ page, and sharing your content through G+, puts your content more easily into a sea of readers who are actively finding and sharing quality content. Those shares are indexed by Google (obviously) and can factor into your search engine rankings.

3. Personalized search results
In some ways you need to think of G+ as jumping into a huge recommendation engine. Every person you've circled becomes a potential source of recommendations for both you and for everyone in their network. For example, lets say that someone circles you (and you're a restaurant in NYC). A connection of theirs is now searching for a restaurant in NYC, and because they've circled you or +1'd you, your listing now features more prominently in that person's search.

4. No paying to reach your fans!
By now you've likely heard about Facebook's EdgeRank and Promote your Post. We've discussed why, in generally, we believe that focusing on Facebook is a bad idea, especially the fact that you've likely spent money to get a Facebook following, but then have to pay again to communicate with your Facebook fans. There is no requirement to pay to reach your fans in G+. In addition to this, very little of that Facebook content is being indexed by search engines, so whereas a G+ share contributes to your search engine rankings, a share in Facebook likely doesn't.

5. Engagement
The statistics aren't out yet, but we've seen incredible engagement on our G+ pages/properties, and been a part of lengthy and involved discussions in G+, much greater engagement than we ever experienced in Facebook. One of the reasons in our opinion is how people use the networks. For Facebook (for example) most people use the network to connect to just their friends and family, and perhaps "follow" brands that they like. One of the reasons they shy away from engaging with people outside their immediate network is because of how much personal information they have stored in their profile. By contrast most people use G+ in a more business-oriented fashion, actively seeking out businesses, brands and topics that they want to discuss, then using Circles to delineate the permissions of who is able to see what within their posts and profile.

Do you have other reasons why a business should be on G+ or persons why it shouldn't? What is the most compelling reason for you?

A new year, a better strategy

2013-01-02T11:34:00.003-05:00

I'm not one for New Year's resolutions; why make big promises to yourself on just New Year's Eve when you could and should be doing them year-round? The same goes for business; if you know you're doing something wrong, or half-right, you should always be revisiting and revising your strategy.

In 2012 we saw lots of trends, some good and some bad for our industry. We had strong patches and rough patches, and we did a lot of soul-searching and grappling with how we should position our company and where we should focus our efforts. As always there were some projects that were our most profitable, some our least profitable, some our most enjoyable and successful, and some our least successful. The most profitable was not always the most successful nor the most enjoyable.

But what I personally came to realize was this: the Internet of Today is much like the Internet of 1999. It is almost back to the Wild West days where there are a lot of "experts" proposing "strategies for success", but so few people really have a good handle on the entire ecosystem of the Internet, and even fewer have the ability to devise a game plan that they can articulate to a business that is looking to get set up in the best fashion possible.

You should be doing [this]

Most of the "experts" (yes, in quotes) that I've been following online are very one-note oriented. They pitch one solution, or maybe two, as the cure-all for almost all lacks of success on the Internet. Whether it's Facebook, Hubspot, SEO, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, or any other instant success solution, all it really is is snake oil. You might feel good for a day or so, diligently applying it and spending lots of money on refills, only to realize that after all of that money and effort you have only short-term gains to show for it and you're back where you started.

The projects that I felt were the most successful in 2012 were the ones where we worked with the client to devise a comprehensive strategy for how they were going to use the web to help them cultivate their business, and took advantage of the tools available to them, and the time available to them, to help them accomplish their goals. All possible options were on the table, but we then worked with the client to identify the ones that made the most sense for them and their business. A solution had to be able to show long-term benefits in addition to short-term gains in order for it to become part of the solution-set.

For some businesses this translated into custom software development, for others it meant working with them to set up their profiles in G+ and capitalize on social media engagement, and for others it meant working on their content strategy and facilitating the development of a blog-based site. It felt good to put together the right solutions for the client, continually work with them to augment the solution/strategy we developed, and see the returns that they generated.

So this year is going to be the year of less grasping at straws and more building of foundations. Less trying to find the next bandwagon to jump on and more defining and redefining our strategy.

Thank you for reading and wishing you a very successful and prosperous 2013!

Portfolio: Renew Pilates

2012-12-13T09:43:00.000-05:00

Renew Pilates is a pilates studio in Easthampton, MA located in the Eastworks building teaching private and small group instruction. Renew serves the greater Northampton, Easthampton, Florence, Hadley, Amherst, Holyoke and Springfield areas.

The site provides a window into the studio of Renew, using black and white photography to create ambiance that is interwoven with easy-to-find content for students and potential students. The site uses Blogger as the Content Management System, combined with Google Calendar and Google Docs.

About page

Contact page

Develop a user-centric content strategy instead of SEO

2012-12-10T10:30:00.000-05:00

We don't like talking about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), nor do we like focusing on it in any significant way as it's own service. We get calls every week (and perhaps a dozen emails a day!) from "search engine marketers" and "search engine specialists" trying to sell us their services. We find this exceedingly amusing, especially when we demonstrate that yes, our websites are being found for most of our major keywords (we're #2 behind Wikipedia for "rfp" and "request for proposal").

But people do fall for this trap every day. They feel that they're doing something wrong if they're not "optimizing their site for search engines" and using a "search optimized template". And they're focusing their efforts (and time and money) on this rather than working on their content. Which is why this article based on this interview made us happy.

Our favorite two quotes from the article and interview:

"Try to work on your website as if SEO was not part of your plan."
"...what I tend to tell people is the following; if you want to please Google with your SEO, then forget about SEO."

This translates into the need for companies, organizations, and individuals to create a user-centric content strategy that is search engine friendly, but geared towards humans and not search engines. A strategy that doesn't ignore the things that you should be doing (such as meta information, rich snippets, alt text, title text, page titles, etc), but that also doesn't go "search engine crazy" by thinking "what would search engines think of this page" and try to game the system with links, key phrases, backlinks, etc.

What is a user-centric content strategy?

A user-centric content strategy is your way of looking at your site, your content, your audience, and

defining your goals for you and your audience members,
defining how and where you're going to interact with them,
defining the best ways for you to produce and share content that advances your goals

By following the above steps you will naturally be employing a strategy that will advance your search engine results, not just from your ability to show up in results, but likely in increasing your click-through rate as well as capture/retention rate.

Remember, it's not just about getting people TO your site, but once they're on your site, making sure they can read your content, share your content, sign up to get more content, interact with your content, contact you, etc.

Interested in learning more about improving your site, your landing pages, and how to put search engines to work for you using your content strategy? Give these other posts a read:

All of these posts focus on the most important fact in today's web realm: making your content work for you.

Using metrics to increase your ROI and save you money

2012-12-05T10:38:00.000-05:00

Too often businesses spend money without truly understanding what they are receiving for those dollars. These businesses will spend money on services and strategies without being able to evaluate how effective those dollars were in creating tangible benefits to the company. In these cases they are unable to determine their purchase's Return on Investment and might as well be throwing their hard-earned dollars into a bonfire. As we're in the technology field it's easiest to give an example in that arena to showcase how we'd approach a new initiative.

Audience, Goals, and Validation

Every web strategy revolves around three key concepts: audience, goals, and validation. First, who is your audience? Can you segment them based on user groups, user types, age, location, skill level, etc.? Second, what are the goals that you want each audience member to complete? Do you want them to spend lots of time on your website, visit a certain key whitepaper, register in your site, purchase something, pick up the phone and call you? And third, how will you keep track of those goals and be able to see how well each target audience is performing?

We've discussed these concepts before in determining whether it's time to pull the plug on your website.

For every change that you make, you need to be able to form a business case for what you hope to achieve (to affect your goals), and you need to be able to record the changes both positive and negative. This is where Google Analytics come in handy; using Analytics you can gain insights into your visitors and their behaviors in your site.

Within Analytics you have two ways to test your hypotheses: you can do A/B testing, or you can simply leave notations for yourself in your Analytics dashboard, notating when you made changes. While A/B testing can be exceedingly valuable, it's also not for the faint of heart. You DO need to have extensive technical resources at your disposal to do it correctly. While the notations method shown below doesn't give requires that you make the change then see the results, and isn't exactly scientific in its method, for most layman it will accomplish your goals.

An example in social media

One of the conversations that we have with clients all the time is how they should be using social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.) to augment their businesses, drive traffic to their business (online and brick & mortar), and achieve their goals.

For a specific example (not disclosing the particular client) the goal was ultimately to monetize their popular blog; all strategic considerations needed to be made with the ultimate goal of increasing the site's advertising revenue opportunities. One of our conversations went along these lines:

Client - Lets talk about Facebook.
CF - Ok, what's the goal of the Facebook page?
Client - To drive traffic to the site?
CF - Well, my concern is you're taking the conversation off your site and onto Facebook. If you want people commenting (and re-commenting) on your blog's posts, you want them doing that on your site, not somewhere else, because if they're on your site they're seeing more ads and potentially clicking on those ads. And if you're wanting your content shared to those services, we already have sharing buttons in each blog post, and judging by your Analytics, we can see that that does drive traffic already to your site.

(creation of a Page in Facebook shelved)

One of the changes we did make to their site that is yielding immediate results is that we implemented a summary and thumbnail script on their index pages. The purpose of this was to improve the site's readability, especially on long index pages such as the homepage, by giving the visitor a paragraph of text and optional thumbnail for each blog post, enabling them to more easily skim the most recent content.

This improved readability, as well as "forcing" the visitor to click to read the full post, has yielded immediate returns with page views increasing substantially, and while it's too early to determine definitively, increased user sessions in terms of time and pages. It's also too early to tell regarding increasing the advertising revenues generated, but with those two other metrics increasing, we believe the advertising revenue should follow suit.

Tracking the changes

When we make changes like the ones mentioned above we encourage our clients to make notations in their Google Analytics, noting the date in the chart along with the changes that were made. Depending on your timeline it is usually good to leave any significant changes running for a minimum of 3 weeks to get a good sense of the impact, 2 months if the changes were aimed at search engines.

Remember, a website isn't meant to be a static entity; it should be updated, changed, and grown so as to continue to provide increasing returns for your business. Using Analytics enables you to make informed decisions regarding the changes that you're making.

Portfolio: La Pietra Cucina

2012-11-30T09:00:00.000-05:00

La Pietra Cucina is a top-reviewed Italian fine dining restaurant in midtown Atlanta, Georgia. The restaurant provides an inspiring selection of regional Italian wines and Chef Russell Kook's ingredient-driven cuisine focusing on hand-made authentic Italian cooking, a passion for quality food, and adaptive creativity.

Partnering with BoyBurnsBarn LLC we created a gorgeous website that pays homage to the beautiful recently renovated space and the delicious food that is created there. This site uses Blogger as the Content Management System, combined with some parts managed through Picasa.

About page

Happenings page, each blog post is a Masonry object

Contact page with Google Docs form and Google Maps

Using Blogger and creating gorgeous websites

2012-11-28T14:34:00.000-05:00

Prato, Winter Park FL

What do all of the websites below have in common? They're all gorgeous, functional, easy to maintain, and happen to use Google's Blogger (Blogspot) as their Content Management System (CMS). They were all developed by our firm.

They all include free website hosting, and using Google Apps, free business email as well. For restaurant websites this means including gift certificate purchasing ability (Paypal, Google Merchant, or other) as well as Open Table. For the small stores, this means matching established branding for their main site and e-commerce site (using Big Cartel, Big Commerce, or other).

As a thrifty small business solution a website on Blogger can save time, money, and headaches. Please visit the sites below and let us know what you think!

La Pietra Cucina, Atlanta GA

Concentrics Restaurants, Atlanta GA

Pinch Gallery, Northampton MA

Rebekah Brooks, Northampton MA

Renew Pilates, Easthampton MA

Luma on Park, Winter Park FL

Need more convincing? Read our featured articles "You can do some amazing things with Blogger" and "Using Blogger for your Organization's website", both featured on official Google blogs.

Portfolio: Rebekah Brooks Jewelry

2012-11-19T14:57:00.000-05:00

Rebekah Brooks is a small handmade jewelry company based in Massachusetts. Fulfilling a lifelong interest in adornment, Rebekah started the company out of her loft in Brooklyn in 1998. The jewelry has gone on to sell in over 250 boutiques across the US, Europe and Japan.

Partnering with BoyBurnsBarn LLC we transformed their former blog into their new showcase website and integrated blog. This site uses Blogger as the Content Management System, combined with some parts managed through Picasa. We also updated their Big Cartel e-commerce store to have a matching template and design aesthetic

Static pages like the Collections page show off the designer's work.

The Blogger blog becomes a part of the site instead of the entire site.

Landing page fail: why I came to your site and bounced

2012-11-06T09:29:00.000-05:00

There is an art to crafting a good homepage (or landing page) for a website. A good homepage is a fine balance of visual interest, capture strategy, just enough information (and the right information!), and just the right amount of sass. Find that balance and you've got a killer mouse trap; miss that balance and you'll lose your audience.

And the first way to tell is by looking in your Analytics at a number called your "bounce rate".

What is the bounce rate?

As defined by Google on their Google Analytics support page:

The Bounce Rate is the percentage of bounced visits to your site.

A bounce is calculated as a single-page view or single-event trigger in a session or visit.

The following situations qualify as bounces:

A user clicks on a link deep into your site sent by a friend, reads the information on the page, and closes the browser.
A user comes to your home page, looks around for a minute or two, and immediately leaves.
A user comes directly to a reference page on your site from a web search, leaves the page available in the browser while completing other tasks in other browser windows and the session times out.

While there are exceptions, for the most part a bounce means your site failed to convert.

Why are people bouncing?

While not a definitive list, people are bouncing because:

You scared them off, perhaps by having tons of advertising and things flying around the web page
You overwhelmed them with so much content their brain exploded and they left
They had no idea how to navigate your site or find what they were looking for
They came to your site in error (thought it was one thing, turned out it wasn't)

Three of these four reasons are not neutral occurrences; not to be rude, but they are your problems of your making.

(Yes, if someone opens a web page in your site and sites there reading it for a long time causing the session to timeout, that counts as a bounce, but it is a metric that you can adjust)

How can I fix my bounce rate?

Fixing your bounce rate generally requires that you take a hard look at your site's content, design, and layout. It requires a hefty amount of introspection and truly having a critical eye for analyzing and identifying your site's failures. Hiring an information architect and usability strategist to help you analyze your digital strategy can be a wise, and inexpensive consultation.

The purpose of the architect/strategist will be to dissect the various ways that people are coming to your site, why they're coming to your site, and draw big circles around the site's problem areas and ways that it is failing to convert.

So take a look at your site's Analytics and your bounce rate. Just how high is that number site-wide? How high is that number when broken down along your different traffic sources?

Then ask yourself why and can it be better.

Knowing when it's time to pull the plug on your website

2012-08-27T10:15:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been talking to a lot of organizations, both for-profit and non-profit, whose web sites have gotten away from them. They have no idea whether their web sites are successful, whether the time and money they're spending every month on them is making any difference, or how to even begin improving the site assuming that it can somehow be better.

They're overwhelmed and aren't even sure where to begin.

Some of the things they've done:

Believing that their website had to have lots of content, their website has 5-10x more content than is probably needed, with 95% of the content accounting for only 5% of the page views.
Believing that they weren't getting enough "shares" out of their site, they've added social sharing buttons for every network from BuzzFeed to Pinterest and everything other bookmarklet they could find, sometimes having multiple buttons on the same page in different formats, floating buttons, and popups/overlays.
Reading that music and animations engage your visitors they've added both to their homepage resulting in bad elevator music and a Flash animation that takes forever to load.
Having a hunch that nobody was finding their website from search engines they hired a SEO "expert" that made their site even more confusing and told them the only way to keep those "higher search results" was to pay them a monthly retainer.

It gets worse, but it's easy to see how this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of scared tactics leading to poor decisions, mainly focused on getting traffic with little focus on getting results.

And by results I mean converting visitors to customers

Having website traffic is great, but if you're not converting those visitors into customers, that traffic is meaningless (sure, you could be making advertising revenue, but wouldn't you want to capture them so that visitor comes back and clicks on more advertising later?). You need to think of your website like a digital mouse trap.

Everything about your website should function as if your aim were to catch a mouse.

How can you get the mice to your site,
How can you encourage them to take the bait, and
How can you snare them in your trap

To do this you must understand the mice (documenting the different types of mice you are trying to catch), determining which bait will entice each of the different types of mice (why are they at your site and what are they trying to find or do), and preparing your different traps, each trap being the action that you want those mice to take in your site (a purchase, a newsletter signup, a tell-your-friends, etc.). While some might say that getting people to your site is the objective, I disagree; getting them there is just 1/3 of the process, and a failure if you don't actually snare them.

With this in mind, take a look at your website. Using the mouse trapping strategy outlined above, how well does your site trap the mice? Is it a lean, mean, mouse-trapping machine? How much of your website is wasted pages and wasted screen real estate? How much of it is boring the mice or even driving them away in droves? It doesn't matter how big it is, how flashy it is, or even how much the President of the organization likes it.

If it doesn't catch the mice it's time to pull the plug.

Portfolio: Science News Magazine

2012-08-24T11:00:00.000-04:00

The homepage of Science News Magazine

Science News Magazine is an award-winning biweekly news magazine covers important and emerging research in all fields of science that has been published since 1922. The journal reaches nearly 130,000 subscribers and more than one million readers.

We began working with Science News in 2008 with the project being a complete overhaul of their website design and online publishing system. Their existing system was unable to handle the strain of their web traffic, causing crashes nearly every day. Our goal was to create a custom, easy-to-use publishing system that fit their exacting needs, while providing stability for their platform regardless of the traffic. The site features a minimalist design and extensive information architecture services were dedicated towards increasing their unique visitor, repeat visitors, and length of visitor sessions.

An extensive, yet fast search on hundreds of thousands of articles and files

RSS feeds and other subscription options were added to the website

Custom article management with an easy to use interface

The platform is built using PHP and MySQL on a UNIX server running Apache.

Focusing on a Klout score is detrimental to your business

2012-08-22T10:45:00.000-04:00

We've been fielding questions from clients (and potential clients) about Klout scores, Hubspot, and what all these services mean for their websites and their businesses. There is a perception and fear among these business owners that they're not doing enough to "engage", and thereby missing potential customers. The questions I receive are typically "how can I get my Klout score higher?", "should I fork over lots of money to Hubspot?" and "if I pay for Hubspot and get my Klout score higher will I get tons of new business?"

My answer, quite simply is: No.

Focus on what we've advised you to focus on: running your business, publishing quality content, and using the tools you've set up to engage your audience to the best of your ability in the forums that make sense for you (whether they are Facebook, Google+, blogs, etc.). Please continue reading for our analysis...

What is Klout?

Klout is a venture-capital funded company that has developed a "Klout Score" whose purpose is to measure your (or your brand's) influence on the web. By tracking "network signals" such as Facebook mentions, Twitter retweets, Google +1's, Foursquare tips completed, etc. Klout's aim is to quantify and grade how "socially" engaged you are in the social media space and whether you have influence on the actions of others within the social networks.

Who is Hubspot?

Hubspot is an internet marketing company with a software package that aims to provide greater insight into your online marketing actions and provide intelligence regarding your effort and spending. Part of their strategy is to have you build your company's blog on their platform, send out emails via their email platform, and set up automation publishing via their platform. Sure, there are other software packages that do these same things (Google Adwords, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster, Blogger, Constant Contact, etc.), but the utility of their platform is that it is in one easy-to-use package. It doesn't come cheap, but if you have money to spend and don't mind paying for the convenience, go for it.

Why don't we believe the hype?

We have nothing against people buying software/services for convenience, nor do we have anything against people using scores for measuring their own self-importance.

However, we could never recommend any service that relies on an undisclosed proprietary formula, convincing businesses that the formula and resulting number has value that will contribute to the success of their business, and then selling a service to help them increase that number. In our opinion that is what the social media scientist behind HubSpot is doing. In that single post there is a mass confusion of two charts, Klout score, website success, and the discreet sales pitch that you need Hubspot to help you make your site successful.

Before we get too far, we can all agree that:

inbound links are good
unique visitors are good
engaging customers online is good

The only chart and data provided to support this theory by Hubspot's social media scientist is on this page:

Argument #1: Klout does not measure website successfulness

Klout measures your (or your brand's) online noise in the social media realm, and a veneer of your (or your brand's) clout when it comes to your fans/followers engaging with you online or sharing/re-sharing your content. However, But Klout score does not equal website successfulness, not does it even measure website successfulness. Unless your website's goal is to simply get mentioned and get eye-balls, the key metric in this discussion should instead be conversions. What percentage of those tweets and retweets, shares and +1s lead to sales, sign-ups, or other actionable goals and not just a louder online chatter?

Argument #2: correlation does not equal causation, and where is the correlation?

Is it surprising that sites with more inbound links get more unique visitors? No, not at all. But does a preponderance of inbound links directly translate into more unique visitors? No. And does a preponderance of unique visitors directly translate into more inbound links? Not unless they're all going and sharing, bookmarketing, liking, etc. The "correlation" spoken of in the article assumes that there is a direct relationship between inbound links and unique visitors, ignoring the fact that there are other ways that people learn about websites (direct, search, paid advertising, etc.).

The observed relationship is only that: one which is observed by visual inspection. The charts were made to look similar, but without any actual data to support the existence of a direct correlation between the three. If I take steps to increase my Klout score, will that directly cause my inbound links to go up, as well as directly cause my unique visitors to go up? It seems to me that the inverse is true, that a Klout score is an imperfect scoring and gamification of your efforts to market your site, none of which indicative or predictive of your site's success at anything other than this gamification. Wouldn’t it make more sense to say “a successful website is more likely to have a high Klout score” than to state that “a high Klout score is more likely to lead to a successful website”?

Argument #3: crowd noise vs. quality of the link

Not all inbound links are created equal; one could be a tweet from a Twitter account with 0 followers, or one could be a link-mention from a high-value business periodical. Both are counted as a single inbound link, but they obviously have different values in terms of driving traffic to your site, and the quality of that traffic. Measurement of inbound link quantity is an interesting statistic, but there is only so much value you can place in that one measurement.

Argument #4: where are visitors from non-inbound links?

According to Forrester Research anywhere from 80-93% of website traffic originates from major search engines and for most major sites it is common to have at least 40% of the traffic originating from searches (not inbound links!). Yes, inbound links are a contributing factor in how your site performs in search engine results and rankings, but they are only one factor, and the quantity of inbound links is just as important a factor. Looking at this graph, will business owners ask "if I just get my Klout score to 70, does that mean my website is going to have an explosive growth of traffic because I hit that benchmark number?"

Argument #5: why the jump at "70"? What is the value and meaning in the Klout score?

Looking at the charts, the first thing I asked was "why the jump at 70?" What's the meaning of that jump and, if Klout's value is as a predictive indicator of clout, shouldn't it be a straight line (e.g., from bottom-left to upper-right) instead of an exponential curve? As you approach a Klout of 100, does your clout expand to infinity? Who has more Klout, President Obama or Justin Bieber? And if one of them says something online, with a score of 100, does that mean you have to link to it? Does that mean you're almost bound to do or buy something as a result? And if I just get my Klout score to 70, does that mean my website is going to have an explosive growth of traffic because I hit that benchmark number? My current score is a 60; should I start working really really hard to get those 10 more points? Will that really make all the difference?

Argument #6: Klout leads to social media attention deficit disorder

Klout rewards you for having your hands in many networks, but would your efforts province greater benefit for your business if you instead focused heavily in anetwork or strategy? For example, would you be better off maintaining a Pinterest account, Twitter account, and Instagram account, or instead focusing all of those efforts instead into blogger outreach and content writing that drives traffic to your own site instead of those 3rd party sites?

I think the first strategy would increase your Klout score more, while the second strategy would lead to more success for your website and your business.

Argument #7: Statistics and the importance if intervening variables

Let's accept that there is a relationship between Klout scores and Inbound Links, and that there is also a relationship between Klout scores and Unique Visitors. One could assume (using the laws of associative mathematics: A=B, B=C, A=C) that there also exists a relationship between Inbound Links and Unique Visitors. However, not only is there a lack of causation (ref) but one could also assume there is an intervening or third variable in play. As with the classic example that the relationship between ice cream sales and violent crime is mediated by a third variable (in this case, hot weather), the relationship between Klout score and Unique Visitors is mediated by Product Demand (or lots of other variables).

So why is focusing on your Klout score detrimental to your business?

The Klout score will have you focusing your attention on the beauty-pageant-like "popularity contest" of social media. A lesson learned back in college from the head of programming at the college radio station was "don't keep asking people to call in, and don't ever ask 'is anyone listening?'; produce a great show and people will start listening and talking about your show". He was right. Good content (with catchy titles and images) gets shared innately, it shouldn't need to be actively or overly promoted.

Klout rewards you for putting yourself into as many different social media networks as possible. Honestly, does everyone need a Pinterest account, a Twitter account, a Facebook account AND Facebook page, a Google+ account, a LinkedIn account, a FourSquare account, a YouTube account(?), an Instagram account, a Tumblr account, a Blogger account, a Wordpress.com account, a Last.fm account, a Flickr account... sure, they'll boost your score and make you feel like you're accomplishing something, but as we recently wrote about, you'd be spreading yourself thin, diluting your brand origination point, and promoting the social media services instead of yourself. A business should put itself in the networks that make the most sense for their type of business, should factor those networks into their overall strategy, and should do so with the goal being the capture of new business, not the contribution to the social media echo chamber.

Am I making a mountain out of a molehill of an article? Possibly. But I think it's fair to say that the theories, logic, and mentality expressed in the article are indicative of the entire argument and strategy that both Klout and Hubspot subscribe to. Perhaps this strategy has value to your business, but we'd strongly suggest that you keep an eye on your ROI.

Portfolio: Concentrics Hospitality

2012-08-21T10:30:00.000-04:00

Concentrics Hospitality is an Atlanta-based firm that owns and operates a number of award winning restaurants, while also providing development and management consulting services for non-owned restaurants.

Partnering with BoyBurnsBarn LLC, we've created a number of websites for Concentrics this year including Prato, Luma on Park, and Central, and late last year we were given the green light to redesign the parent company's website. On this website we really wanted to show off. This site uses Blogger as the Content Management System, combined with some parts managed through Picasa, Google Docs, and Dropbox.

Case studies designed like a 1-page magazine feature

Interactive listing of restaurants generated by a Google Doc spreadsheet

Dynamically generated portfolio slideshows, easily content managed

Booking form using Google Docs, submitting to a spreadsheet, and automatically notifying the staff