If you haven’t tried it yet, here’s what you’ve probably heard: “It’s Google’s answer to Facebook.” That’s not untrue – the similarities are obvious. The important part to remember is that it’s Google, and that means it has every chance to be a complete game-changer for social media, SEO and internet marketing as a whole. We know from everything Google has done before that their model is make deceptively simple products that cleverly start to integrate with everything you do online. So don’t assume that just because it looks like Facebook, that it won’t far exceed what Facebook is capable of.

Of course Google also has a fair track record of missteps in this arena – we haven’t forgotten how much Google Buzz and Google Wave both fell flat. But Google Plus shows every initial sign of being a much smarter system. It’s simple and clean so far, but you can already see a lot of potential there.

Circles: The biggest immediate shift from the Facebook model is how Google+’s Circles replace the classic Friends List. Instead of having to decide whether people you meet rate being labeled as “friends” or not, you can choose for yourself what to call them. Are they “Close Friends”, “Acquaintances” or “People to be Avoided at All Cost”? And everything you do on Google+ revolves around that – you choose what circles to share things with, and which circles you want to see posts from. What that means is, there’s no commitment-phobia involved in connecting with people anymore; no pressure. For me, that makes Google+ immediately more appealing and comfortable.

The +1 button: You’ve probably already seen this around so much, you’ve forgotten that it was only introduced a few months ago, in anticipation of Google+. The +1 is Google’s answer to Facebook’s ubiquitous “Like” button. But it potentially means a lot more to the future of internet marketing. Social ranking will now have a direct affect on search results though Google, and more highly recommended sites will soon start appearing more regularly in organic searches. Everything you think you know about SEO is about to become even more wrong.

Sparks: This is a really simple but appealing part of Google+, and it’s not really quite like anything else. Everyone uses facebook and twitter to know what links to check out and share, but what if nobody’s sharing the kinds of things you want to see? As part of your profile setup, you can set up some interests you like to follow, like “fishing”, “internet marketing” or “rodeo clowns”. They appear along the sidebar when you’re using Google+, and with a single click you can get a list of recent articles and pages on that topic. Then you can follow the links, or be the first of your friends to share it. Which makes you look pretty savvy.

Hangouts: Again, this is a simple idea that feels like it suddenly has a lot of potential. A hangout on Google+ is basically just an open video chat group. But instead of having to get everyone together ahead of time and scheduling the video chat, you can simply post that you’re available for hanging out and people can simply pop in any time. You can chat or even watch YouTube together. It feels immediately more personal and more actually “social” than most social media interactions. I could very quickly see this expanding to include all sorts of collaboration tools or online games and becoming very popular. Do you have employees that telecommute? What if you started a hangout every morning and just invited your employees? It could be a great new way to communicate, or it may end up being a fun way to waste time instead of working, but either one is pretty interesting.

Business profiles: There’s already been a fair amount of griping over how Google has handled businesses who want to make profiles on the new service. For now at least, the word from on high is that they’re not ready to represent non-human entities on the +. But everyone knows it’s coming soon. Make a profile for yourself now, but be prepared to give your business a presence soon.

In the big picture, Google+ is one very large step towards integrating everything you already do online through Google. For better or worse, Google may very soon be steering your entire online experience in some new directions, and that will certainly mean rethinking how you market yourself online.

What it means is that someone’s not happy with their current website, and probably for very good reasons, but they can’t explain exactly why they don’t like it. In the end it’s not that complicated, and when you’ve seen your share of bad sites (and believe me, I have…) you know the short list of likely problems.

I should mention that I’m specifically talking about marketing sites here – a site whose primary purpose is to promote/present a business of some kind. That’s the business we’re in, and so that’s kind of our natural perspective, but there’s a lot amount of overlap for other categories of website.

So here’s my quick guide for evaluating what’s basically wrong with any given site I come across. You may not want to hear some of this, but I’m not going to sugar-coat it for you. I’m just going to tell it to you straight.

1. Can I tell what the company does in the first two seconds?

   Two seconds. That’s about all you get to make an impression on a visitor before they click away and find a site that’s less confusing. If your site doesn’t tell me who you are and what you do the moment I look at it, it’s an instant D minus. Respect your visitors’ time and be upfront about it.

2. Without doing anything (browsing around, scrolling, hovering) can I tell what the basic navigational structure of the site is?

   Clear site navigation is vital to a website that people will actually use. Consider it a matter of trust between you and your visitors. A visitor needs to understand where they are, where they can go, and what they expect to find there. And they need to know it before they do anything like click around or hover a mouse over things. If you need to play around and “investigate” before your site’s navigation is revealed, you fail. Sorry – harsh but true.

3. Does the navigation remain consistent throughout the site?

   Remember what I said about site navigation being a matter of trust? Well, just as your visitors trust that a link in the site navigation will take them where it promises to, they also trust that the navigation won’t jump around or reorganize itself while they’re browsing around the site. Violate that at your own risk.

4. Is it clear what the site wants me to do (calls to action)?

   So if you’ve ever anything on internet marketing, you’ve probably heard about “calls to action.” Often, that’s taken to mean some kind of large, brightly-colored button that says “Click ME!” But it doesn’t have to be so blatant and irritating. Simple as this: you brought people to your site for a reason, so what is it? Don’t waste my time. If I have to look around on different pages of your site before I know what you have to offer, chances are I don’t want it anymore.

5. Is there a logical hierarchy of elements on the page – are important things larger/emphasized and less important things smaller/de-emphasized?

   So this is a basic question of good graphic design. And it’s pretty simple: a well-designed site should have an obvious visual hierarchy, where the most important things are the ones that stand out first. Do you have headers that are large enough to separate them from the rest of the text? Are your links clearly identified? If everything has the same level of visual importance, then it all starts to look like a mess. If you don’t know yourself what’s most important on your site, maybe you should think that over first.

6. Is there a “splash” page that you get to before seeing the site content?

   You’ve seen this plenty of times before – before you can get to the “real” site, you are treated to a musical opening video or slideshow, with a button or something that allows you to proceed. The thinking used to be that you should make your website more of an “experience” for visitors. But the real world has taught us that this is really just irritating. People want their web experience to operate on their own terms, not yours. How would you feel if every store you walked into wanted to make you watch a short film about their products before you could see what was on the shelves? How many people do you think would walk out without bothering to see it all the way through? Which brings us to…

7. Does the site make unnecessary use of Flash?

   There was a time, not that long ago, when Flash seemed like the best way to make a website stand out. These days, it’s become a little out-of date. If your site is heavily flash-based, you’re probably making your content harder for people to reach (especially people on mobile devices) and you’re almost certainly putting it out of the way of search engines. These days, a site that’s heavily based on flash is clunky and limited – chances are that there are better and faster ways to get the same results. Unless you’re using a good deal of video and animation that requires it, you should probably consider another option. And if you are using flash on your site, aim to use it in limited ways for maximum effect, while making sure that there’s an alternate way of getting to your site’s content.

8. Is the site navigation too complex/confusing? Are there pages that could be combined or eliminated entirely to improve clarity?

   Look over your site, and count the pages in the “top tier” of the site’s navigational hierarchy. Are there more than eight? That’s a pretty good sign that you’re starting to get too complex. While sites may legitimately have anywhere from 5 to 5000 pages in their structure, they still need to be easily navigated and understood by humans. So consider whether several smaller pages might be more usefully combined to put similar information all on one page. If there are pages with less than a paragraph of information on them, consider whether they might be turned into a sidebar or callout on a different page, or even safely removed entirely. If there are several pages on the same topic, consider grouping them together underneath a top-tier page.

9. Is the site layout too thin or too short for modern screens? Does it feel awkwardly “cramped?”

   It used to be a design trend to design websites that fit entirely within the browser window, without scrolling. Often, this involved having scrolling panels or frames inserted inside of a fixed-height design. These days, those sites feel cramped and awkward. It’s much better to let your site breathe a little, and let your visitors scroll down normally. Page width standards have also changed as monitors have gotten larger and more powerful – if your site looks too thin on modern screens, consider an update.

10. Are the photos/illustrations used on the site large, clear and attractive?

    They say that “content is king” when it comes to websites, and that’s true to some degree. But it’s a website’s pictures that tell the story more immediately. Bad photos can kill an otherwise great looking design. If your site’s images are small, unappealing or clearly unprofessional, consider springing for some professional photography. Or at least some high quality stock images. Improving your customer’s perceptions of your business will probably be worth the cost in the long run.

There are cheaper hosting platforms out there, but we’ve had to deal with too many horror stories and hassles from other companies (mostly from one in specific that uses a lot of sexy women in their ads…..) that we want to do whatever we can to protect our clients from that.

So we’ve partnered with a number of other companies in the past for our hosting services, but over the past few years we’ve been really happy to be working with Rackspace. They’re simple, smart, reliable, and when something goes wrong it’s never a problem to reach their support techs. They call it “fanatical support” and I think they mean it.

And just recently we got to put them to the test: when we put up the Galactic Empire Times spoof on their hosting a few weeks ago, it completely blew away our bandwidth allocation. A million unexpected visitors in three days can do that. But Rackspace didn’t even blink. No outages, no problems, no server overloads. I spoke to their support person when the page started going viral, expecting to have to deal with an imminent disaster, but it wasn’t even an issue.

So thanks for having our back, Rackspace. And thanks for helping us provide great ongoing service to our clients.

So what do you get when a big nerd with a background in internet marketing and web design has some free time over the weekend? Apparently, you get a Star Wars newspaper spoof that goes viral on the internet within the first day. Seriously, it’s a little overwhelming – the comments are pouring in faster than we can approve them, and Google says we’re getting something like 10K new visits every 15 minutes.

If you haven’t seen it yet:
http://www.galacticempiretimes.com/2011/05/09/galaxy/outer-rim/obi-wan-kenobi-is-killed.html

Yes, one of us here is responsible. There wasn’t any big plan here, no marketing tie-in or long term goal beyond amusing the internet. And don’t ask what the real “message” was intended to be – we’ll let you fight that out in the growing comment thread.

But it was a lot of fun to make, and we think it’s pretty neat. Oh, and thanks to all of the thousands of people who shared it around.

May the force be with you.

UPDATE: Many thanks to Bill Lane, aka “Seduced” of the 501st Legion for the photo of himself as Vader.

Lets start by making a list of all the things we either are using or could use. I’ll get you started and then you spend some time thinking about what you have tried, are doing now or have thought about doing in the future. For each item on the list we will be performing a simple evaluation process that I will describe in the next post. But first, let’s build the list.

Here is a starter list: Written executable plan, Website, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software, mass email system, Google Analytics, online advertising (Pay Per Click), Facebook page. Okay, that’s your starter list now you add at least 7 more items to the list.

In the next post I will show you a simple but effective way to evaluate everything on the list.

So, let’s solve this problem and do it in less than a day. Then we will have an annual plan consisting of 5 pages and a process to monitor, review and adjust the plan quarterly. The goal will be to actively use the internet to support the growth of your business.

We will get started in my next blog post.

So here’s a little insight into how this project unfolded, and how we ended up with the design we settled on. The site that the client had been using for years was a nice look when it went up, but it had since become really outdated for a number of reasons. The fixed-width layout was very small on modern screens, for one thing – it had been designed with much smaller resolutions in mind, and so it ended up feeling like the whole site was crammed into the top left corner. It was clear we’d want to redesign the whole site from scratch, with a fresh, modern layout.

The single biggest issue was that the client just couldn’t update the content when they needed to. Thankfully, that was one problem we could solve very easily, as we build almost every site off of a flexible WordPress base.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is now 2011. If your website is just a series of static HTML pages, you are officially doing it wrong.

Burdened with a website that wasn’t working with them, the Chris Madden team had turned to social media in order to reach their many fans. They had already developed a powerful Facebook following, and wanted to find a way to integrate and build upon that social network into their new online presence. And so we designed a template for them that included multiple sharing links, and a facebook sidebar integrated into the blog area.

Since it was vital showcase Chris Madden’s designs well, we created a site layout that would allow for big, beautiful images. On the home page, we let a javascript-based image gallery of the client’s luscious photos simply speak for themselves. A blog excerpt below that helps keep the front page active and interesting. It’s important to let your visitors know that you’re still alive and in business!

We also created several page-specific templates for the different areas of the site – Chris Madden’s books, for example, required a special layout that included a cover image and a purchase link, as well as social media links. And because it’s all built as a custom WordPress theme, virtually everything on the site can be easily edited or changed, right down to the main navigation and sidebar content.

In 2010 there were lots of new and exciting things happening on the web. The media attention was focused on ways to connect and get new traffic. Every day hundreds of blurbs on Social Media, Search engines, etc. It seemed as if everyone was tweeting, facebooking and lately foursquaring.

As we plan for the new year let’s review the basics first and then we can see what new techniques we may want to try next year. My goal, and I imagine your goal, is to increase my revenue and bottom line. Essentially I want VisibleU to grow. That means increasing sales while controlling spending.

So, in the online world we live in, there is nothing more basic than your website. Everyone goes there. Whether you are a B to B or B to C type of operation your website probably is where you convert visitors to sales or sales opportunities. Review your 2010 analytics and see if your site performed up to your expectations. If it didn’t, more traffic probably isn’t going to help. You need to work on the website.

Now let’s look at people you already know. Current customers, previous customers and prospects already on your mailing list. How are you keeping in touch with these three groups? Do you treat them differently? Do you have a plan for increasing sales from these groups? There are many different types of email campaigns that can reach out to known prospects and turn them into sales.

Do you have an action plan for the first quarter of 2011? You know that simply having a website and a newsletter and getting your feet wet in social media will not get you results. You need to create a plan and a budget for each quarter. Then you have to measure the actual results, make any necessary changes and work on the next quarter. I said I would keep it simple so there it is.

Focus on three things right now:

• Is your website working?
• Are you really using your email list?
• What is your first quarter plan?

If you’re not sure where to start or need some help, give us a call.

It’s got a lot of style and utility packed under its hood, but the core feature for us has been the email drop box. Just forward any (or all!) of your client email correspondence into Solve360, and whenever you bring up a client record, you can instantly see all of the correspondence anyone in your company has had with them, or about them. No extra steps, just useful info when you need it later. With a low initial price and an open API system that allows for easy interactions with other software, we’re finding Solve360 can be a better choice for small businesses than pricier “enterprise-level” customer relations managers.

Check it out at norada.com

We’re very proud to announce that we’ve just launched the brand new LIREIA.com. LIREIA stands for the Long Island Real Estate Investment Association, a large and growing organization of independant investors. VisibleU worked with the team at LIREIA to build a brand new website that would really knock their members socks off, both with design and appeal, and with a wealth of powerful features.

Here’s a breakdown of what you’ll find there:

• A site powered built on the flexible WordPress backend, with a highly customized design template.
• A full real estate listing system, integrated seamlessly with the WordPress backend
• Online forms and e-commerce powered by Infusionsoft, a powerful CRM and email marketing system.
• A completely dynamic members site, that gives logged in users an experience unique to them and to their level of membership.

We’re looking forward to continuing to work together with LIREIA, helping them grow their site and their online marketing, as their business continues to grow.

On behalf of the LIREIA, we want to thank you for your hard work and commitment to the site. I speak on behalf of everyone when I say they are super excited about the new website. We know that not only does it look and function great, but with your guidance and expertise we have laid an excellent foundation for the site to grow and develop with our needs. Great work guys.