Click for larger view

If you are hooked into Google+, you have access to a whole new way of searching the Web.  Sign into your Google+ account, then search something you’re fond of using Google.  Google will produce its usual plethora of results.  But you’ll notice something new at the top of your results: if you or your Google+ contacts have ever shared or “+1-ed” anything (posts, links, images, etc.) about the thing you searched, you’ll see references to the personal results at the top of your search results, and the shared images and links marked in your results below!   This is the contribution of Google’s “Search Plus Your World”, which brings you results from the public internet as well as info that you have shared or has been shared with you privately on Google+.

Click for larger view

Google will also submit information relevant to your search from “suggested” Google+ profiles and pages.  If you select one of the suggested results, you will also have the option to add that person or thing to your Google+ Circles.  The results are also labeled based on their level of publicity.  If, however, the idea of personal info and images from your social network contacts showing up in your searches makes you uncomfortable (or just plain annoyed, since there have been complaints from users that many results on the personal side of things end up being irrelevant to their original search), you can turn the feature off using the toggle at the top of your search result page.

The Pros:

This new form of search result has potential for local businesses.  Since Google now seems to be favoring references made in anything regarding its own social network (Google+ and Picasa, for example), having your friends sharing information about your business will mean you will show up higher in a local search when the personal results have been allowed.  This also means that unique and creative copy may become just as important as SEO for your webpage.

The Cons:

There have been many questions raised about the potential privacy issues that may result from this kind of presentation.  Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center), says “Although data from a user’s Google+ contacts is not displayed publicly, Google’s changes make the personal data of users more accessible.”  Google has rebutted this by saying their personalized search results are encrypted, but the question of privacy is still frequently challenged.  There is also the issue being raised that Google’s “personalized results” are biased toward its own programs, as mentioned above.  That means that results from Facebook and Twitter are left out in the cold, while Google-affiliated results get pride of place.  The concern being voiced is that Google may be ranking more-relevant results lower than less-relevant results simply to pump their own programs.

Our Conclusion:

Search Plus Your World has the potential to be an interesting new tool in the ever-expanding world of Social Media Marketing.  However, it behooves everyone using Google+ and its affiliate programs to read Google’s privacy policy very carefully, and take personalized search results with a grain of salt when performing non-recreational searches.

The question is, with all your other responsibilities to your business, how do you keep up with a regular, intensive social media campaign? Do you know how often to post to maintain your “fans’” interest? What about making your information searchable? Do you go to the time and expense of hiring an employee to handle your campaigns? Fortunately, IGV can provide the solution to the entire problem! No matter what networks you belong to (or want to belong to), we can do everything from setting up the accounts to “decorating” your business pages with custom graphics to working with you to create and implement a regular posting schedule. All you have to do is read our weekly reports on your Social Media activity and sigh happily about all the people your business touched that week.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 65% of adults online (18+ years old) use social networking sites. Don’t let a schedule that’s already full prevent you from profiting from what Social Media has to offer! Let IGV help you make the most of a great Social Media campaign. Contact us today for a Social Media consultation.

Building on our last article, we’d like to mention a few of the most prominent things to keep in mind regarding the programming of your new website in 2012.  Keeping the technology of your website up to date along with the graphic look is very important in keeping your website competitive!

Make it Mobile!

According to a 2010 report from Morgan Stanley, mobile web surfing is estimated to outstrip desktop usage by 2015.  That is not that far away!  Is your website easily accessible from a smartphone or other small mobile device?  If not, you should consider having a mobile website designed to work in tandem with your current site.  Mobile sites are programmed in mobi format, and are designed to be easy to view and navigate on smaller touch-screen devices. Also something to keep in mind with the rise in mobile web surfing is how to encourage mobile device users to visit your site.  QR codes and email marketing are both great ways to drive traffic to your mobile online presence.

Flash is Flaming Out

While Flash animation hasn’t sung its swan song just yet, it is becoming less and less popular as a choice for putting animation on the web.  This is due in large part to Apple, whose mobile products (including the iPod, iPad and iPhone) do not support Flash.  What does this mean to you?  It means that if you have Flash animation on your website and one of the tens of millions of US residents who use an Apple mobile device surfs your website, they will not be able to view it in its entirety.  In fact, depending on how much the website depends on Flash for its function, the visitor may not be able to view the site at all. Don’t panic though!  There are other programming languages that allow for fun and funky animation that can be viewed across operating systems: HTML5 and JQuery, just to name a few.  If you have analytics set to monitor your website, you should be able to see where your visiting traffic is coming from.  If indications are that you are getting a lot of visits from Apple products, it is time to consider alternatives to Flash so that your visitors receive the best possible experience when they view your site.

Content Management

Having an up-to-date web presence is vital to supporting your current customer base and allowing it to expand.  In this age of a struggling economy, however, many small businesses recoil at the thought of having to pay someone every time they need a minor update to their site.  IGV offers a cost-effective solution to this dilemma by offering websites based on a Content Management System!  A CMS website allows the owner of the site to log in and make content updates themselves without having to resort to paying a 3rd party to add images to a gallery, update an events list, etc.  Most content management systems have a user interface that resembles programs that most computer users are familiar and comfortable with.  For those more adventurous users, the HTML can frequently be accessed and changed as well.

Share and Share Alike

What did your dear mother tell you about sharing??  Well, in terms of the modern internet, shareable content is incredibly important in spreading the word about your website and your business.  Including social media share buttons on each page, each FAQ entry, even every product in your online store encourages visitors to share that spur of the moment enthusiasm about something on your site with their digital network.  These “social shares” have the potential to drive waves of new traffic to your site!  Writing a blog and including RSS links is another way to get people to plug in to what you have to say and what your business has to offer.

Click for larger image

Aesthetic, Not Ascetic

Web design has matured from a field strongly limited by available functionality to a field where programming techniques have become ever-more complex and varied.  This has allowed the field of website design to become as much an art as a science, and web surfers are paying just as much attention to the visual appeal of a website as the content.  A site designed to illustrate the concept that the content is presenting is much more effective than a site focused primarily on the content.

From Print to Pixals

Click to view larger image

Think of the look of a high-quality magazine like Time or National Geographic; the style you see on those pages is emerging more and more in the World Wide Web.  Print design techniques are being used more and more to add visual interest to websites.

• Multiple columns in text shortens lines and aids readability.
• Using @font-face or similar tools to move beyond the very limited set of “safe” fonts (fonts that are most commonly available by default on the average computer) allows designers to add interest and emphasis.
• Highlighted quotes and images as illustrations underline important concepts within the content and break up text so that viewers don’t get bored or overwhelmed by copy.

Framing

Think of two pieces of art – one is simply framed and hung, the other has matting between the artwork and the frame.  The matting allows the artwork to “pop”, separating it from the frame and the surface on which the whole piece is hung so it stands out on it’s own.  The same concept is being used now in web design, with blank space bracketing the main body of content (which helps keep long text in check) and empty space framing off items of particular interest or importance.

Click to view larger image

A Pleasing Palette

Color is not something to be afraid of!  In fact, the use of contrasting colors or neutral vs. bright is a great technique to use to bring attention to something of importance.  Think neutral “matting” surrounding a body of content with a bright background, or vivid font colors against a contrasting background.

See It in 3D

No, we’re not talking the kind of 3D that doesn’t seem to be going over as well as the TV industry would have liked.  3D effects though, along with fun or funky icons, add a sense of being slick and modern when used strategically.  Don’t go overboard though – an excess of fancy graphics or icons on a page can actually distract a viewer from other things you want them to pay attention to – like the actual content of the page!

Does your site need a New Year’s facelift?  Join our mailing list to receive our upcoming “New Year, New You” offer!

It may surprise you to know that conversion and search engine optimization can both be addressed by focusing on something a little easier to understand: “usability.”  When someone from the great wide world out there makes it to your site, a) do they know what they want/need to do, and b) can they figure out how to do it with a minimum of hassle?

If your online purchases are low, you just can’t seem to get people to sign up for your mailing list or register for events, or your analytics show that visitors are bouncing out of your site without taking the time to really look at any of your pages, chances are that the answer to at least one of those questions is “no.”  Is your landing page too busy?  Is your site too wordy?  Is your site navigation clear, your checkout procedure easy?  Even if the answer to any of these questions is “I don’t know,” it is probably time to consider Usability Testing.  All these issues and more can scare convertible visitors away from your site, and no reasonable amount spent on AdWords or other paid listings will make up for it.

An experienced website design/development company like Innovative Global Vision will be able to use a combination of website analytics and objective, real-world-scenario testing to identify trouble spots within your website – and then help you to fix them!  If you’re worried that your users find you unusable, contact us today!

1.  Be Clear About What Your Visitor Should Do

No matter what page a visitor enters your site on, it should be crystal clear why they’re there.  If they clicked on a link to join your mailing list, they shouldn’t have to dig through the page – or the site! – to figure out where to do so.  Whatever the goal is, make sure the process is straightforward from the moment your visitor hits your site.

2.  Uncomplicate Your Landing Page

Limit extraneous links, excess copy, and other distractions from the desired action you want your visitor to take.  If you include graphics, make sure they convey the same message as the copy; don’t just throw them in for the sake of having pretty pictures.

3.  Build Trust

Many people are still leery of making online purchases or providing their contact information for email lists, etc.  Shocking, we know!  But there are some things you can do to assuage their fears:

- Provide  money-back guarantees (and follow through on them!)
- Don’t try to sneak in extra profit by inflating shipping costs; make the explanation of shipping charges clear and concise
- Make it clear you will not be sharing your visitors’ contact information with anyone

4.  Avoid Stall-Outs

Disrupting your visitor’s focus while they’re in the middle of trying to complete your desired action risks allowing them to leave that action incomplete.  A few things you can do to streamline processes are:  Avoid asking for your shoppers to create an account in your store until they are ready to check out.  If their cart is full, they are already committed and more likely to follow through with the purchase.  Make sure your online inventory is accurate, and display it right next to your products.  There are few things quite as annoying as trying to add something nifty to one’s cart and then being told it’s out of stock!  Also, make sure your store includes a 1-page checkout process to avoid confusion, boredom, and too much time in which to change one’s mind.

5.  Stay Connected!

Make sure your customers have a way to get in touch with a representative of  your company if they run into problems or (perish the thought!) get hopelessly confused.  Providing a method for immediate problem resolution such as a phone number or online chat (as opposed to simply providing your visitor with an email address, which says “Eh, I’ll deal with you when I feel like it”) will make a visitor much more likely to complete the conversion than if you force them to try to muddle through on their own.

IGV has 12 years’ experience in website design and e-commerce solutions (online stores).  If you are having trouble getting visitors to your website to convert, give us a call!  We are happy to help.

What Customer Reviews Do For You

In general, the availability to provide and read reviews on what a business is offering creates a “bandwagon” effect; good reviews from satisfied customers make prospective purchasers feel that they may be missing out if they aren’t part of this happy group.  Having reviews on a product also encourage future purchasers to leave their own reviews.  The occasional not-so-good review (especially if the store owner takes the time to post a professional response) usually serves to enforce the reality of the good reviews, and shows a prospective customer that if by some strange twist of fate they too have an issue with the product or service, they can count on a professional resolution of the situation by the business.  If no one has yet left a review on a product, it is a neutral effect.  If a customer does purchase it, that option to “Be the First to Review This Item!” is often inducement enough to return to the site after the purchase to let their voice be heard.

Some other benefits of customer reviews on a site are:

• Reviews are highly linkable and provide “updated content”, encouraging search engines to improve your site rankings
• The way your customers talk about your products can provide you with new or more searchable keywords to apply to your product

Customer Reviews Using Facebook Integration

With the recent launch of OneLuckyDogBakery.com’s new store website, IGV has added another layer of benefit to the standard customer review.  Products can only be rated by customers logged into their store account, greatly reducing the possibility of random malicious low rankings.  Also (and this is huge, folks), instead of the review feature being confined to display only on the store website, we have improved the feature to integrate with Facebook.  Now, to leave a review, the customer must simply sign in to their Facebook account and leave their review in the widget.  When they post their review of a product, it will visible on One Lucky Dog’s FB page, the customer’s page, and the pages of the members of both the customer’s and the store’s social network.

No longer will product reviews be visible to only those searching for that particular product or those who actually make it to the store!  This new feature will allow the word to be spread about great products across the Facebook universe, inspiring folks who might not have been interested before to visit One Lucky Dog’s online store and perhaps make purchases of their own.  What could be better than free advertising?

Check out the new OLDB Home page!

E-commerce solutions have always been a top contender in IGV’s line-up, allowing us to  provide our web design customers with highly-functional, SEO friendly, customized online stores.  With the recent launch of OneLuckyDogBakery.com, IGV has taken our e-commerce solution to the next level of outstanding service and design.

One Lucky Dog decided to reinvent their website after expanding their business from gourmet dog treats only to encompass high-quality dog supplements and accessories as well as their organic, hand-made gourmet dog biscuits.

Key Features:

With One Lucky Dog’s e-commerce solution, one of the first great features is the incorporation of their blog into the design of the store.  As you may have read in our previous article on the benefits of blogging, having your blog hosted on your company’s domain is a huge boost for SEO.  Every searchable keyword phrase used in the body of the blog articles will help boost the site’s rankings in search engine results, and allows more traffic to be drawn to the store through the blog.

New - Integrated Facebook Reviews!

Another great new feature is the use of Facebook likes and comments in place of the old item reviews.  This integration of social media allows product reviews to be posted on One Lucky Dog’s Facebook page as well as the page of the reviewer.  This allows for more proliferation of information about One Lucky Dog Bakery through its customer’s social networks, and discourages the possibility of malicious comments as they would be made public on both the store’s FB page and the commenter’s.

Hometown Heroes:

Some champion IGV ecommerce features that are returning for another winning season include:

• Custom-designed rotating banners to show off your featured items and current specials
• “Also Bought”: the feature that allows you to see other products purchased by people who have purchased the currently-viewed item
• One-page Checkout: reduces abandoned shopping carts
  and improves conversion rates
• “Best Sellers”: displays the current top-selling items in the store
• eMail list sign-up integration

Does your online store need “sprucing up” for the holidays?  Contact IGV today!

“Do I really need a blog?”
“But it’s so much work!”
“I have no idea what to blog about.”
“Will people actually read it?”

These are the basic responses of which we hear variations on a frequent basis.  Well, here we are, writing a blog, to ease these qualms!

Before mentioning the benefits of blogging, we should mention the basic blogging “best practices” which will give the best results for your efforts.

• Make sure your blog is hosted on YOUR domain and is linked to your website (ask IGV how!) to make sure your website receives all the SEO benefits from your blogs appearance in search results and the visits to your articles.
• Use tools like Google AdWords to research what the online community is actually searching about in your field.  Write about those subjects to make your blog relevant and valuable.
• Use searchable keyword phrases within the body of your article (again, you can use keyword tools like Google AdWords to see what people are searching on).
• Pick a manageable schedule for releasing articles, and try your best to stick to it!  If you get returning readers, you don’t want to put them off by not giving them their latest bloggy fix when they expect it.  If you are worried about missing a date, ask the author of another blog in your field if you can repost or “syndicate” an article of theirs, or ask a guest writer to write an article for you.

So there’s the how; now what about “Why?”In the optimum situation, wherein your blog is housed on your domain, these are the benefits you can expect:

• The keywords you use in the body of your articles make your site more searchable and increases traffic to your site when visitors view blog articles.  When the search engine spiders crawl your articles, relevant searchable keywords will allow your blog (and the website it’s linked to) to rise in the search rankings without having to resort to risky tactics such as “keyword stuffing” or other things that search engines frown on.
• Return traffic is encouraged as visitors begin to follow your blog and check back to view new content.
• Updating your blog on a regular basis is an easy way to have your site show as having been updated.  This encourages search-engines to reassess and possibly improve the rank of your site.
• Having other sites link to one of your articles, or linking out to another site within your article is a good, search-engine-friendly way to obtain incoming links to your site and have the search engines see you as a well-rounded resource.
• Blogs are a great opportunity for inexpensive promotional and/or relational marketing.  Show your site visitors that you know what you’re talking about.  Share insights or stories that allow your visitors to relate to your business or to you personally.

Visit IGV on Facebook

Have you seen these strange little things floating around lately?  They are appearing on everything from fast-food soft drink cups to billboards to business cards.  They are QR Codes, and they are changing the face of print advertising.

“QR” stands for “Quick Response.”  Wikipedia defines QR codes as “a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) first designed for the automotive industry.  More recently, the system has become popular outside of the industry due to its fast readability and comparatively large storage capacity.”  Smart phones are capable of using downloadable barcode readers, many of them free, to decipher these codes, making the information contained in them available to the ever-growing number of people who can’t live without their iPhone, Droid, or other “smart” device.  QR codes can be designed to transmit a URL, send a text message, download a file, or any number of other functions when scanned.  There are services online that will show you how to create your own QR codes and save the resulting image for your use.

What does this mean for your business? 

Stay In Touch!

QR codes make it possible to turn any piece of printed marketing into a gateway to your online marketing campaign.  With a QR code on your business card, you can send new contacts to your website or get them signed up for your email newsletter.  Put a QR code on your flyers to send interested folks to your “Upcoming Events” page or your online portfolio instead of trying to fit all that information on a small, inexpensive piece of printed material.  Have a QR code on your website or a sign outside your business to give shoppers coupons or make them aware of special events.  If you are willing to spend a little money, you can even have custom-designed functions made for your QR codes like a digital contact file a scanner can upload directly to their phone.

Upcoming Seminars & Events

The possibilities are virtually endless with QR codes.  They allow you to bring your static printed materials into the dynamic digital world.

Happy scanning!