Looking for another great website stats tool to use? I found one that is free and gives you unique data that other stats tools may not…

Quantcast.com is an easy to read tool that allows you to get a glimpse of who your website audience is! Find out your visitor’s demographics, their geographic location, age group, education and more. Learn what other sites your audience likes and how your competitors are doing. The best part: Quantcast is simple, clear, updates on a regular basis and can help you better tailor your website to your actual audience.

So what are you waiting for? Simply go to Quantcast.com, type in your web address and quantify yourself!

Don’t believe me? Our clients certainly think so. Check out what they have to say about the Internet Marketing job we do. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Pretty convincing, right? A large list of detailed testimonials from actual customers. If you don’t have testimonials on your site you are missing out on a great opportunity to promote your company to clients and to the search engines all in one.

Why Testimonials

Here’s how testimonials work for you with potential clients: it gives others a chance to sing your praises for you. What’s more convincing… me telling you how great my company is, or a national business owner giving specifics on how we helped her business to double their revenue? Of course it’s the latter! Any time you have the opportunity to have someone else do the selling for you, let them.

And what about the search engines? How are testimonials good for your placements? One reason is that if you have a testimonial page, that page will typically be a well trafficked and well linked to page. People love to find out what similar people are saying. Other ways in which they help with the search engines is because the text used in the testimonials are the words from actual clients. This means that this is how they speak, which probably means this is what they will use to search for a product or service like yours. And since these phrases are all over the testimonials page, there is a good chance you could have a solid ranking for what people are actually typing in with their search queries.

How to Get Testimonials

Do you remember the last time a customer said something nice about you or your company? If you do, great. If you don’t, you do remember that once upon a time a customer has said something nice about you, right?

Either way, it’s important to document customer quotes and testimonials, no matter how short and sweet the accolades seem. If, for some reason, you don’t seem them flowing in on a daily basis, be proactive about it. Email or call your customers and ask if they would be willing to offer a testimonial. If they’re happy customers they are usually more than willing to send over a few sentences on your behalf.

And just as important, get permission to use the quotes from the customers themselves. (At least get permission to use the quote. If you can use the person’s company and name that is even better.) Even though it gives you a warm feeling to know that a client thinks you are great, it doesn’t help your business much if you cannot share it.

Where to Put Testimonials

Once you have a bunch of testimonials, what do you do?  The first thing I do when I get one is to place it in a master testimonials file, complete with quote, provider, company, date and what permissions we have for it. I use an electronic file, but a print file would work just as well. The reason for the file is that you never know when the quotes might come in handy in addition to your website (print materials, referrals, radio, …).

Speaking of your website – where on your website should you place them? I recommend having at least a master testimonials page with all the ones you have gathered. After that, I find it helpful to sprinkle the throughout the site. The bottom of pages or on the right side seem to work well, but it will all depend on the design and content of your site and page. Whatever the case, making sure people can see them and that they are relevant to the page is very important.

So, start gathering your glowing testimonials, place them on your website and let others do the selling for you!

Last week we talked about the importance of photographs and how images can really enhance your site. This week we’ll talk about the most important aspect of your site: the content. Creating keyword rich, enticing content is oftentimes overlooked. Fresh content is not only important for search engine optimization, but it is crucial to the overall user experience.

In the initial stages of website design and development, it’s best to hire a copywriter to produce all your content, however, that might not be in your budget. If hiring a copywriter is within your budget, you could create an outline or flowchart of the major talking points/criteria you would like as a focal point. Or, the other option is to write the content yourself. Do not override this option if you have the time and writing ability, because you know your business better than anyone.

If a copywriter is providing content for your site, they still need to know about the business and what sets it apart from the competition. Providing this can be one of the biggest struggles for some clients, so getting things rolling with just a little direction (even if it’s just an overview or talking points) provides a great starting point for focused, factual content.

For the “Do-It-Yourselfers” out there, here are a few website design tips:

• Don’t skimp on content: Explain who you are and what you do – don’t assume that people already know this. It may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised to know that many people do not make it as clear as pie.
• Stand Out: Why are you better than the next guy? Explain the advantages of your product or service and entice potential clients your way.
• Maintain a Focus: It’s recommended to focus on one topic per page – don’t try to explain everything all at once. Each web page should have a focus (and, in general, each page should focus on different keywords).
• Enhance Calls to Action: Make it obvious – when you are lucky enough to have site visitors who actually read your content, make sure they know exactly what to do when they are on your page – Book a Room, Call Us, Buy This – make that conversion  happen!
• Proofread It! Make sure to proofread your content before making anything live. Grammatical and spelling errors are turn-offs and make a site look unprofessional and “fly-by-nightish”.

One thing I like to tell clients who are hesitant to spend money on copyrighting is, if you’re spending thousands of dollars on a site design and development; why not put some of that towards some sort of copywriting.

It’s like buying a car with no engine. All you have is a car that doesn’t go anywhere. Sure it looks like a car, but it’s not doing what it’s designed for. Same goes for your website. It will look great, but might not contain any quality information and that’s what users ultimately come to your site for.

And for folks with existing sites, it can’t hurt to take a fresh look at the content and see if there is anything that can be enhanced. Or, look at any opportunities to update the photos which can help freshen up older designs.

Have you ever tried searching for a local business in your neck of the woods and you simply just can’t find it? Kinda frustrating, huh? Sometimes,  searching locally isn’t always a walk in the park.

So, this new cafe (which opened it’s doors about a month ago) is super cute, has great food and is located within walking distance of where I live. This past weekend, I tried looking up the menu online to show my friend who came in from out of town. Did I mention that I was super excited to bring her here, as it’s a chic little boutique cafe that I just knew she’d love.

Anyways, I ventured over to my trusted search engine, plugged in “glens falls restaurants” and hit enter, waiting for a list to appear. Hmmm, nothing but a laundry list of directories to weed through. Let’s try this again, “glens falls cafes”…nada. I think Am I spelling this wrong? Surely, a brand-spankin’ new restaurant must have a website! After all, what is this – the 1990’s?! Sigh…

I finally gave up and typed in the actual name of the gourmet cafe and found it way down on a long annoying list of restaurant directories. Danggit – no website! Not a very good user experience, that’s for sure.

Getting found locally doesn’t have to be so cumbersome. Luckily, this can all be solved if businesses follow a few quickie tips for getting found locally in the search engines.

Top Local Directories to submit your business, write reviews or rate others:

• Online communities, such as Yelp.com, Saratoga.com (if local) or Albany.com (if local) to review, rate, rant or rave
• Local Directories offering free or fee based listings: InsiderPages.com, CitySquares.com, MojoPages.com, and TrueLocal.com

Submit to Internet Yellow Pages:

• SuperPages.com
• YellowPages.com
• Switchboard.com

Submit to Local Directories in Search Engines:

• List your business/website in the local business section on Google, Yahoo or MSN! It’s free and you are even given the opportunity to add photos or write reviews.

For more information, check out this post by Aaron Wall. Hope this information helps you to locally, get found on the web!

When having a new website designed, one aspect I often see clients overlooking are content and photos. Many clients see these as not as important as the actual design. As a designer I would like to believe that, but without these two key components you may be stuck with a good looking site that doesn’t have any real substance. A great design is just half of the puzzle – without quality content and photographs that visually describe what sets your business apart from the competition your visitors may struggle to find out why they should use your services or visit your business.

Let’s talk about photos. They are often a critical part to a design and give the website designer something to start with. They also offer site visitors quick visual cues of what a website is about before they start reading. As the old saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words”.

It’s also a great idea for any business to take photographs regularly throughout the year. Why not? It doesn’t take long and you never know when you will need one, whether it’s for a website or other marketing materials. It’s a lot easier to just pull from a collection and pick out photos when you need them, rather than running around and taking photos all at once.

It’s especially important for some industries, like construction businesses, where they only have access to the work site when working on the project. Having a collection of photos of past projects help greatly in showing website visitors the type of work that a company does. Taking before and after shots are especially effective and this is impossible to do once the project is done. If a business has special events (sales, group events, trips, etc) taking photos can be used on new sites or even added to a current site to show visitors recent happenings.

While professional photographs can look the best, don’t discount the work a closet photographer can do. Digital cameras take great photos these days and often are very suitable for use on a website. The other option is stock photos. But oftentimes, these look like, well, stock photos and you can end up searching for hours looking for that one perfect photo when it could have just taken minutes if there were a photo collection to choose from. Stock photos do work for certain industries, but they do not work well for some, like construction, restaurants, hotels and other similar industries.

When you bring these aspects into the beginning stages of a design you’ll end up with a site that not only looks great, but works well for getting your message across – all the things needed to get people into your store or using your business.

Next week check back to read about the other most overlooked part of web projects – unique content.