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A pretty common method is to wait until your website is so far out of date that you have to start from scratch, and some people are confused in thinking this is the best way to get your money’s worth out of a site.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.

Last week Amanda and I traveled to Washington DC to present at Sage Summit, The Sage Group PLC’s annual education and training event. The session that I presented to Sage Partners was about managing and growing your website through content in order to generate leads for your business. (You can check out the slides from my presentation below.)

As I concluded the presentation I left the audience with five major takeaways and things they should do with their business websites.

1. 
   Photo credit: maury.mccown

   Determine Audience Personas – With B2B websites we understand that we need to fill the needs of three major groups with our content: Researchers, Purchasers, and Current Customers. Those can be audience personas, however, since we know so much about our audience and our clients, we can further break down those groups. For example: Visitors who are current customers that have support questions or visitors in the restaurant industry researching ERP software. The purpose of understanding the different audience personas that are visiting your site is so that you can develop content more geared toward their needs. You cal also create clear paths throughout your website for them to navigate through to convert.

2. Create a Content Strategy – Determine what content you will create, when you will create it, and where it will be published. Then review stats like organic traffic, likes, and retweets to decide if the content “worked.” Did it help bring traffic to your site? Was it popular? Did it aid in conversions on your site?
3. Create a Conversion Strategy – Each page on your site should have a call to action, something that asks the user to “do” something. However, not all sections on your site are relevant to the diverse group of visitors on your site, so it wouldn’t make sense to have the same calls to action everywhere on the site. Break your site into sections or even use the personas you defined to create calls to action that will speak to and compel the different types of visitors on the site. If you have a large site or not a lot of time – take a look at the site’s analytics over the past year and determine the top 20 most visited pages. Then, review the calls to action on those pages – do they need to be updated or edited?
   
4. Humanize the Content that is Published – Any time you have the opportunity to create content, try to add a little bit of your personality or the company culture in it. The last thing you want to do is continuously create is dry, long-winded, boring content.
5. Repurpose Current Content– It takes a lot of time and effort to create new content so instead of new all the time, try bringing new life to old content. Here are some examples:
   • Write a blog post based on one slide of webinar or recent presentation
   • Turn a blog post into a short video and post that on your YouTube channel and Facebook page
   • Use a series of blog posts on one topic to compose an e-book

   See, it doesn’t have to be hard, you don’t even have to wrack your brain for a new idea – just use a little creativity to renew content you’ve already created.

I got a lot of thought provoking questions about web content after my session, please ask your questions in the comment section below.

When you are getting ready to build a new site or redesign your current one there are a lot of decisions that you will need to make – what it will look like, what content you are providing, how you will market the site, and who will be updating the site, to name a few! One of the most important decisions is who is going to be developing the site. Every development team has their own methods and ways of creating a solution for your web needs. Some teams build static websites and others go with dynamic sites. Both sites look the same to you visitors, but make a huge difference in how content is edited. So what is that difference? Let me explain.

Photo Credit: deltaMike

Static Sites

Each page on a static site is an HTML file that is on your web server. To edit these pages you make changes to the correct file and then upload that edited file to the server. Web companies who create static sites for clients will often offer maintenance contracts for all updates since the developers are the ones with access to the files (and getting into the code to make edits can be daunting for many clients).

Another option that some companies set up is to allow users to access the files using a page editing software such as Dreamweaver or Contribute. These are not content management systems (CMS), but instead software you install that allows you to edit the pages on your own computer through a WYSIWYG preview editor and then upload them to the server.

Static sites tend to be quicker to develop than dynamic sites and are usually more affordable as well. However, since you are getting into the code they are harder for a non-developer to update. If the administrator is using page editing software but is not trained properly, there can be mistakes that can overwrite pages or crash the site.

You are also only able to edit content on a computer where you have the software installed to download the files, edit them, and upload them. Because of this, it is more difficult to edit the content, and if the content is not being edited it can stagnate.

Dynamic Sites

A dynamic website is also run through files on a server, but all the page content is saved in a database. Typically the template files (what make the site look unique) are on the server and all pages on the site are in the database. When a visitor gets to a page on your site, the system will access the database to pull out the correct information. Administrators can easily log into the administrative interface through the web to update a site. So, once a dynamic site is set up on a server, administrators have the ability to edit content from anywhere they have access to the internet.

Dynamic sites allow for much more than the basic pages of a static site; you can have interactive elements such as e-commerce, forums, and membership areas. Technically, you can have blog posts, news listings, and other features on your static website, but you have to add a new static page and edit the listing page to get new posts on the site. With a dynamic site you can organize and sort posts through the database, as well as provide automatic feeds throughout your site in a template (such as a news feed or a list of the most recent blog posts). Because of this extra functionality, a dynamic site is more expensive and takes more time to develop than setting up static pages.

Which One is Right for Me?

The decision on what type of site you should have depends on the size of the site, the level of involvement that you want, and how often you plan on updating your content.

Large sites are better organized through a CMS database, where as small, simple sites can be maintained with no problem as static pages. If you do not have the time to organize and add content to your website, or you do not plan on having frequent updates, then a static site with a maintenance contract may be your best bet.

If you do have a static site, just make sure you don’t forget about it! Even if your products or services do not change often, you still want to make sure that your website has fresh, up to date content – this is important for visitors and for search engines!

Using a CMS has a lot of perks, but it does take more time than just sending your updates to a maintenance team and it may not be right for you. Whatever you decide, make sure you know what types of content you will include on your site and create your strategy so that you know what type of system will support your needs in the future!

Having fresh content on your site is important; it keeps your audience interested and gives them a reason to return. Keeping everything current shows that you care about your website and visitors, while also maintaining professionalism. Too bad not everyone feels the same way. Below are 6 signs that your website content is dated (I have actually seen these examples on professional sites – I won’t call you out but you know who you are…).

It’s time to replace your staff photo.
Photo Credit: lazurite

1. Your site includes a copyright date in the footer… and it is 2006.
   Was the last time you updated your site really in 2006? That is a lifetime ago in the digital world! Unless absolutely nothing has changed about your business in the last 5 years, how can that content still be relevant? To fix this, do not just update the date to the current year, actually review and revise your content. It doesn’t have to take long to bring your company and product information up to date (unless of course you have really been neglecting your website). For some ideas check out the post I wrote with 5 quick things you can do to update your site.
2. Photos and graphics look straight out of the 90′s.
   In case you didn’t know the 90′s were 2 decades ago… people look different. How can someone seriously relate to your service or product when the model is wearing crimped hair held up with a scrunchie? People like to see recent photos, and trust me, they can tell by the quality and subject when a picture is older. The same goes for graphics; websites should not have rotating gifs or be very image heavy like they use to be. I am sure people will be making fun of our current pictures of business people and the use of rounded corners and gradients in 20 years, but, for now, make sure you keep your website graphics in the present!
3. Your latest news or blog post was added 8 months ago.
   If you have a news feed or blog on your site – great! You have a wonderful resource for visitors. If you have not updated said news feed or blog in 8 months however, you might as well remove it because it can end up hurting you. When visitors see that you actually did have recent news articles and blog posts at one time, they will wonder what happened. Did you stop caring? Has nothing new happened with your company? Is your company out of business? Make it a priority to get something new on your site and to keep adding at least monthly!
4. The upcoming event on the top of your list occurs 3 months ago.
   However cool it would be, I don’t have a time machine or a souped up DeLorean, and I’m pretty sure you don’t either (please correct me if I’m wrong!). If you want to keep an old event up on your site because you do not have anything else coming up, then you can use that space to tell visitors to check back and provide them information about the annual events you have or the types that you attend. Sometimes companies keep archived events up on their site as a resource. For example, at Hall, once a webinar has occurred we remove it from the upcoming list and place the recording on our archived webinar list.
5. Check out our newest product! (It has been out for at least a year now…)
   It is very exciting to release a new product or service – you get all your marketing materials together, make content updates on you site, and then do the big announcement online. Flash forward one year… do you still have the same “New!” notes throughout the site? It’s time to get rid of those and do an update. If your new product is still a big hit, change the material to say “Featured Product!” instead. At that point you can also gather testimonials to show that your service is a hit.
6. If a product is “Coming Soon!” don’t keep us waiting forever.
   How often have you seen a page or website that is constantly “Under Construction”? I am always frustrated when I do a search and end up on a page that promises to have what I want, but at some undisclosed time in the future. Sadly, these pages don’t always come to realization. If you find that you have some of these pages on your site, but have no plan in place for them, then take them down so that you are not leading on visitors by giving them hope and then eventually crushing their dreams (well maybe not that dramatic but you get the gist…). On pages that you do have a plan for, include a basic time frame of when the content will arrive, contact information, and links to other part of the site. This will let visitors know you are serious about adding this page and will allow them to get in touch with you and view other resources in the mean time.

Some of these examples are definitely on the extreme side, but it shows that when things get busy at the office, sometimes the website can be neglected! As I said earlier, it is important to keep your site updated so that you maintain your professional status and keep visitors informed. Before you find yourself committing these web content sins, make a realistic content updating plan and stick to it, because if I keep seeing those photos from the 90′s then maybe on the next blog post I will start calling you out…

It can be hard enough getting to know the names of all the content management systems (CMSs) out there (WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal are just a few of the popular ones), but did you know that those can be categorized into two different types of CMSs? I know, as if there isn’t enough to think about! A CMS can be open source or commercial, and when selecting one for your website, it is important to determine which one will work for you based on your requirements and budget.

Open Source

The systems I mentioned above are all open source, which means the software is free and you have access to the source code (which you can alter). These systems survive because of community involvement – volunteers who check for bugs, make security updates and add new features and functionality (for an interesting point of view on volunteer CMS work, check out this article by Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal). Because of this, customizations happen more quickly based on the needs of the public. There is also a large base of people to fix bugs, add functionality, test and optimize the system through all different uses and backgrounds.

On the downside, if there is not a large following then CMS development can fizzle out and you will be left with an outdated system. Open source systems sometimes do not have the best documentation and support, but there can be 3rd party help available. There are quite a few open source systems available so it helps to figure out your requirements and check out the community. There are many consulting firms that will help you install, configure and customize open source CMSs. These groups often provide their own support and training.

Commercial

A commercial (also known as proprietary or enterprise) CMS fundamentally is the same as an open source CMS, except that a company owns the software and you do not have access to the code. A couple of examples of more popular commercial systems include Expression Engine and SharePoint. Since there is one company managing the software, you have just one contact point and access to a dedicated support team. The system itself usually goes through an extensive quality assurance process, has a guarantee and is generally more stable.

However, without the support of a community, customizations cost extra and system functionality updates are done at the discretion of of the company. Feature requests are usually not allowed and bugs can take awhile to fix, depending on the support team in place at that company. Many commercial systems are expensive and can have annual fees; you pay for the peace of mind of having support and stability (for as long as the company is around that is!).

The Choice Is Yours

When choosing a CMS most companies focus on the features and functionality, but as you can see it is also just as important to research and decide what type of system you want. If you are looking to be more involved in the growth and new features of your CMS, then an open source system will work great. However if stability and dedicated support is what you are looking for, then a commercial CMS can be a great solution. Always research the company providing the CMS, whether it uses an open source system or a commercial one, to see what they have to offer. Armed with this new knowledge you should be able to ask the right questions and get the system and development team you need!