Holistic Technology Enabled Internet Marketing Solutions

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

Collaboration is one of those things that I usually take for granted working in Internet marketing. It’s like the opportunity to learn new things – if we’re not always learning new things and collaborating on a daily basis, there’s no way we could keep up with all the changes on the web. But it’s easy to forget just how much collaboration goes into every project, and how important it is to the success of the project as a whole.

Last week the design and development staff at Hall got together after work to talk about new things we’re interested in, what we’ve been learning recently, and bounce new ideas off each other. It’s something small, but it makes a big difference over time and helps us build better websites for all of our clients.

Something that most people don’t consider in choosing a company to build their website is what happens once the work is finished. The web is always changing, and there are always new ways to do things better and faster (translation: cheaper) – so what happens once your site is built?

Maintaining your site is like getting your oil changed

A pretty common method is to wait until your website is so far out of date that you have to start from scratch, and some people are confused in thinking this is the best way to get your money’s worth out of a site. In reality, it’s a lot more like never getting your oil changed on your car and then buying a new one when it dies. Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to keep up with the scheduled maintenance and have a car that lasts?

One of the ways that we help our clients keep their websites from falling out of touch is by keeping them in tune with all the new things we’re learning. That means that the new things we’ll learn on a project next month will get passed on to all of our other clients with similar websites – even if their website was built a year or two ago. If they want to stay on the cutting edge, they don’t have to wait to rebuild their website from scratch – they can add in features over time to make sure they stay ahead of their competition.

Collaborating on a Drupal upgrade – Tim saves the day!

A few weeks ago, we had the task of updating a Drupal CMS site to the latest version of Drupal 7. Up to this point, there was no upgrade path for the main SEO module, which means all of the client’s SEO data would have been lost. In fact, anyone upgrading from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 would be unable to migrate their SEO data (sidenote: it is estimated that well over 7 million sites use Drupal). Clearly this was a big problem, so we sat down and Tim wrote an upgrade path and submitted it back to the community for everyone to use. This was a lot of fun for us to do, but also had a lot of residual benefit for other members of the Drupal community as well as our clients who will eventually want to upgrade to Drupal 7.

Collaboration is a great thing for us, because it allows us to get better at what we do, pass on what we learn to our clients, and it gives us a great opportunity to save time so we can make every website and marketing plan better than the last. After all, Santa wouldn’t be able pull his sleigh with out help from Olive, the other reindeer, would he?

Read more from our Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series!

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

Before you open any gifts this season, let’s take a moment to talk about Open Source, and why it means everything to the way your website works. It’s easy for Open Source to become one of those buzzwords that you hear all the time but never really get to know. In reality, it’s a drastic departure in a new direction that will save your company time and money – even if your business has nothing to do with software.

First, lets start with the alternative: proprietary software. Proprietary software is a pretty basic model where a company will build a product, and if you want to use it, you pay them for it. Sounds simple, right? A good software example for this is the Windows operating system. An even better example for our purposes would be the Encyclopedia Britannica (just go with it). In both of these cases, you have a company who develops a product in a certain way they think will work for the most amount of people.

Now let’s get back to open source. Wikipedia states “the term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product’s source materials.” Now that’s kind of confusing, but the idea of Wikipedia isn’t. In fact, Wikipedia is one of the world’s largest open source projects. What open source really means is something along the lines of “community built”. The definition up above is getting at the idea that anyone can access the building blocks of the project and contribute their own pieces to the whole.

Now what exactly does this have to do with your company and saving money? Lets talk about the Internet. In the last ten years, the internet has gotten pretty complicated. If you want a slick looking website, you’re not just going to write a couple pages and call it done. Instead of a giant image on the homepage, you’ll want to put an image slideshow in its place. If you want to update your content all the time, you’ll want to use a CMS. This is where open source comes into play. That image slideshow you’ll use will most likely be an open source project, just like the CMS you choose to power your website might be as well. There are a few key benefits of open source software that will make a world of difference to your website:

1. Price: FREE
   Can’t go wrong there. Open Source projects are super cost-effective because there’s virtually no true startup costs to using them. Contrast this with proprietary software, and you’re in for some big sticker-shock.
2. Features: Lots of ‘em
   This is a big area where open source projects can shine. Proprietary software operates around what it’s creator deems will be most profitable to include. Open source, on the other hand, operates around whatever its users decide to build for it. Pick one of the bigger open source projects like WordPress or Drupal (both CMS platforms) and you’ll find a lot of features that don’t necessarily fit the cookie-cutter mold.
3. Security: Very High
   One of the big original arguments against open source software was that anyone could download and look at the code, so that made it less secure. In fact, most people now believe this makes it more secure. Instead of a handful of people working to ensure there are no security holes, anyone can download the software and review it for security issues, which get submitted back into the software and released into the community. In some cases, this can turn into hundreds or thousands of people contributing to something that will help keep your website secure.

We could go on all day about this, but these are just a few reasons why we always try to use open source software whenever possible. Of course, it’s important with anything to assess the quality of the product – whether open source or proprietary. To learn more about open source vs. proprietary CMS projects, check out our article on What is the Difference Between an Open Source and a Commercial CMS? If you’re curious whether there’s open source software already at work on your website, just ask!

Read more from our Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series!

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

‘Tis the season for gatherings – with friends, family, coworkers, etc! This weekend kicked off the first of of many gatherings I will attend in the next 27 days. It got me thinking about events and what role they play in having a presence on your website.

For most of us in the B2B industry our monthly calendar consists of a few work-related events. Events are an important part of the way we conduct business; they allow us to expand our education, meet like minds, get new ideas, and network with others in our industry. Not only are they important offline; they are also an important part of content for your website online.

When you go to industry events and especially if you host events you should have a section on your site to showcase that. The section can promote events your business puts together, events that your business will attend, and even industry-related events that you think may interest your audience (even if no one from your business is able to attend).

Why is event content so great to have on your website? Here are a few reasons:

• New – New content keeps your site updated and fresh which increases the likelihood of return visitors. It also shows people who visit your site that you care about your website and your business by not letting the content get dated.
• Timely – Timely content is great because it offers you a chance to attract people when they are looking. As events happen people are probably searching for them online. If your website promotes upcoming events there is an opportunity for you to reach a new audience of people who are looking to attend those events. You might not offer a way to sign up for an event but you can be helpful and promote the event and then direct the user to the proper page to sign up.
• Trust –  Showing that you’re involved with the happenings in your industry whether you’re sharing event information, attending events, or hosting events delivers and underlying value to your customers. When people are researching a product or service online they look for indicators to help them make choices. Showing your activity with events on your website demonstrates that you are an authority in that space.
• Sharable – Information about events; whether they are upcoming or have already happened, will be talked about both on and offline. People will share photos from events they have attended or pass on a link to someone interested in upcoming events. By having this content on your site you are offering a way for people to share your content.

Event related content is a great addition to your website and content marketing strategy. Not only is it additional content to keep your site fresh but it may help promote you as an authority in your industry. I hope you have a great December and enjoy all your special gatherings.

If you’re already promoting your events on your business website check out the slides below on using social media to market your events. It’s our little gift to you!

A 404 Page is a page on your website that cannot be found by the server. In many cases someone may navigate to a 404 page because the page they are looking for may have been deleted or moved, they may have clicked on a broken link, or maybe they typed an incorrect URL in the address bar.

Of course you should schedule site crawls to minimize errors on your site and protect usability; but by having a custom 404 page in place benefits the user in the event that they navigate to a page that no longer exists. Consider this, not only a usability effort, but also a marketing initiative.

If you don’t have a custom 404 page set up on your site; the user gets a generic message (seen below). However, you should be using your 404 page as an opportunity to be useful to the user instead of giving them a road block standing in the way of the information they are seeking.

If you don’t have a custom 404 page or you are thinking about improving it after you read this blog post, here are some things you should think about. A good custom 404 page:

• Explains that the page the user is looking for cannot be found. Don’t blame them, be nice, friendly, and courteous.
• Is branded consistent to your website. Let people know they are still in the right place, even if they aren’t on the desired page.
• Is helpful to the user looking for information. Allow them to search the site or point them in the right direction by adding links to the most popular pages on the site.
• Won’t show up in search engine results. Make sure this page is blocked from being crawled and indexed.
• Is memorable. If you have a unique company culture, show it off on your 404 page!

You may be wondering “How the heck do I see if my business is using a 404 page?” The way I like to determine the page is by typing in “www.yourwebsitename.com/404” in the address bar. However, for websites like Panera and Heinz, that little trick doesn’t work. Here’s what I see when I type www.paneracatering.com/404 or www.heinz.com/404:

I found that if I type in www.heinz.com/404.aspx I get a great 404 page (see below). This is more of a server issue; some servers handle 404s differently than others. What would be best is if Heinz set up their server to use all possible URLS and not just specific ones that end with .aspx.

What I like about the Heinz page is that they offer links that they think will be helpful to the user and, though you can’t see it here, there is a search feature as well. Here’s a couple of other good 404 page examples:

This 404 page is from Mail Chimp and although this page doesn’t actually have a list of links they do offer their main navigation and a search function (not pictured here) to get the user to the information they seek.

Above is Zappos’ 404 page and I have included main navigation and search function. This page shows you how you can effortlessly put together a simple page that directs users back to a page on your site versus leaving it because they couldn’t easily find what they were looking for. I also like the big buttons that they use and how the image playfully sympathizes with the user.

Setting up a custom 404 page

A custom 404 page is something that you can request your website designer or developer to help you set up or, if you have a Content Management System (CMS), you can probably set one up yourself. I inquired with RC, our CMS Developer, about setting up 404 pages using the CMS software. He explains that “if you are running your website with a CMS, setting up a custom 404 page is similar to creating any other page. Once you have created your page, you simply need to tell your CMS to use it as the 404 page. It’s also important to remember that you will need to exclude this page from many of the CMS’s automated tasks, such as site searches and the sitemap.” He also suggests that you might want to consider” creating a 403 page for pages that return an ‘access denied’ error. Many times, users with accounts on the site will forget to login before trying to edit the site, and a ’404 Page Not Found’ page can be confusing in these situations.” Thanks, RC!

Now that you know what a custom 404 page is and why it’s important; check to see what your business’ 404 page looks like and if it’s being used to its potential. If not, it’s an easy page to improve and you probably just need to consult with your site developer and whoever handles your server files.