And while the message was directed at designers, some of the tips are the same thing we recommend to our clients regarding their website strategy. So I’ve gone through and selected the best advice, made some minor edits and replaced “web designer” with “company” so they apply to your company regardless of your industry.

Here are the key points:

Keeping Your Website Useful as a Top Marketing Tool

1. Update Your Website Often Of course any SEO expert knows the value of updating their website. It draws the attention of the search engines. Search engines aren’t the only reason to continually update your website. Clients want to know that you are staying up with the times. Update your design once a year to reflect the current design trends on the internet for your core client base. Content updates help your site to stay fresh and give the customer plenty of reasons to stay on your website. Copyrights should have the year they were developed, but you should also list current year. For example, list your copyright like this – © 2000 – 2009. This also gives your potential client an idea of just how long you’ve been in business as well as an idea of your experience level.
2. Fix your broken site Make sure your website is working. It’s not just broken links to outside resources you need to fix, it’s the way your website works in the different browsers. You need an nice, clean, exciting layout to promote yourself but more importantly you need a website that works. Test your website often. Visit it once a week to check that everything is working in multiple browsers. Make sure all links are still working. Check your site as you check your website’s statistics. You are checking your stats right?
3. Solve Their Problems Most companies list the product or service features, but that doesn’t tell a potential client how this will help solve his or her problem. Remember that your website is also your salesperson. Salespeople find out someone’s problem so they can fix it. Just the other day I had a young lady come to my door selling a cleaning product. She was quite good in an infomercial sort of way. The key thing that she did was to get me agreeing with her about my problems and that I wanted a safe product around my pets and my kids. So as you write content for your website, think about how you can get your visitors to agree with you about different problems they are facing. Then, show them how you can fix their problems. Show them the benefits of using your services.

   It’s easy to say you’re the best company in your marketplace, but go a step further and tell the customer what that means to them. In other words, what’s in it for them? If you have trouble defining your benefits, ask the people who would know best – your customers! If they are happy with your products or services, they will be able to tell you what problem it overcomes and the benefit they receive. Besides, what better way to find out how you’re doing in servicing their needs?

4. Include Contact Information As the internet has grown, so has the number of fly-by-night operations. One day they are here and the next they’ve disappeared. Make sure you have physical address location posted on your website as well as a phone number. This information is reassuring to potential customers. It gives your business a professional polish rather than the appearance of hiding yourself behind the internet.
5. Tell Them What’s Next After they’ve purchased or started the contact process, tell them what the next step will be. If they will be downloading a template or setting up a consultation, let them know when or how they will download it once they’ve completed their purchase. Or, if you will contact them, let them know when you will contact them and how. Or better yet, give them options on a form. Let them choose how you will contact them. Of course, the best way to handle it is to contact them within a day. You don’t want to give them a chance to change their mind. Make sure you explain each step and show them what great customer service you provide right from the beginning.

Thanks to Desirea for these great tips!

Searching for a Portland web design firm? Our Portland, Oregon web designers and developers work with a diverse array of clients in many industries including professional services, manufacturing, medical and healthcare, dental, financial and accounting, commercial businesses, and more.

To see our website design work, click here to view our portfolio.

Located in Portland’s beautiful Pearl District, Kinesis Design serves clients in the Portland metro area and surrounding communities including Vancouver Washington, Hillsboro, Tigard, Gresham, and Lake Oswego. We also work with clients throughout Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. You can click here to learn more about our diverse clients.

Our Portland Web Design services include a full range of web design, development, programming, search engine optimization, and internet marketing strategies. We have many years of experience serving web design clients in Portland and the rest of Oregon and Washington. Our entire web design team takes great pride in our ability to provide exceptional web design that is rooted in a solid foundation of effective marketing. We make sure that every website we develop is easy to navigate, user friendly, and relevant to your customers and leads.

When you hire Kinesis to design your web site, you can be sure that you are getting a team of experts in web design, usability, online marketing. Our philosophy is to provide every client with exceptional service, innovative design, and response-driven solutions. Our web design clients achieve powerful results and priceless brand loyalty. We have a detailed web design process that is based on our years of experience designing websites and implementing effective online marketing strategies for our clients. Take it from our Portland web design clients! Feel free to look at our client testimonials to see what they have to say about our web design services.

To learn more about our web design services or to request a free quote, click here to contact us or give us a call:

portland office
30 nw 10th ave
portland, or 97209

ph: 503.922.2289
fax: 866.773.1269

Featured Portland, Oregon web site design clients:

BCI Group

BCI Group in Portland Oregon hired Kinesis to design an entire new brand and website to help accelerate their business growth.

Portland Mindfulness
Our web designers were hired to design a new website for this Portland Oregon therapist. In addition to web design and development, we created a new logo design with matching stationery.

And as I’m sure you’ve noticed, there are a lot of companies out there screaming about search engine marketing, search engine optimization, paid search, etc (just check your email junk folder). Unfortunately, most of the “information” you will find is pretty worthless – and some of it is absolutely wrong. Many of these “snake-oil” salespeople are using outdated or incorrect optimization methods.

Online marketing is competitive and requires a combination of marketing strategy, technical knowledge, skill, and experience. But too many web marketing consultants are focused on chasing search engine rankings. They fail to focus on the ultimate outcome: growing your professional reputation online.

My approach to SEO is to always ensure every page on you web site appeals to your prospects and clients first. And search engines come second. Remember this principle when a company comes to you yammering about SEO and how they will get you first page ranking.

Matt Cutts of Google opinion on web marketing

Here is a quote from Matt Cutts, one of those smart programmer dudes at Google:

“…my advice would be: rather than chasing search engines individually or (ugh) trying to make different pages/sites for different search engines, I’d work towards making a site so great that the search engines are working to try to make sure that they return your site. By chasing after a good user experience, you help ensure that you and the search engines are both working in the same direction. That’s much better than you chasing the search engines, which are in turn chasing what we think is best for users.”

Put You Customers First (not Google or Bing or Yahoo)

As Matt says, your ultimate goal should be to provide better results for your website visitors.

A high quantity of unqualified traffic does you no good if you have no potential customers. The point of your website is to act as a sales tool, right? Therefore, it is far, far better to get fewer visitors to your site who are highly qualified, responsive prospects. These are the people who will actually hire your company.

Kinesis designs websites that are user-friendly and compelling to search engines. It’s a holistic effort. This will always generate a greater return on investment than getting ranked number one for a couple keywords. We work to build a comprehensive website that has great design based on your professional brand. Our team showcases your knowledge, expertise, and experience. Then, we write great website copy that is anchored with smart keywords and implement your search-engine code.

So, the next time you find yourself obsessing over being number one in Google, think about how to be number one to the prospective clients that find you online. Focus on how you can make the content on your website even better for them. Over the long-term, this is a sustainable solution that will attract targeted leads, convert visitors into clients, and climb the search engine ranks over time.

Looking for a Medford web design firm? Our Medford, Oregon web designers and developers work with a diverse array of clients in many industries including professional services, manufacturing, medical and healthcare, dental, financial and accounting, commercial businesses, and more. All of our designs are grounded in a sold foundation of marketing strategy.

To see our website design work, click here to view our portfolio.

Kinesis Design serves clients in the Medford, Ashland, and surrounding communities. We also work with clients throughout Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. You can click here to learn more about our diverse clients.

Our Medford Web Design services include a full range of web design, development, programming, search engine optimization, and internet marketing strategies. We have many years of experience serving web design clients in Medford, Ashland and the rest of Southern Oregon. Our entire web design team takes great pride in our ability to provide exceptional web design that is rooted in a solid foundation of effective marketing. We make sure that every website we develop is easy to navigate, user friendly, and relevant to your customers and leads.

When you hire Kinesis to design your web site, you can be sure that you are getting a team of experts in web design, usability, online marketing. Our philosophy is to provide every client with exceptional service, innovative design, and response-driven solutions.

As a result of our work, Kinesis web design clients realize powerful results and priceless brand loyalty. We have a detailed web design process that is based on our years of experience designing websites and implementing effective online marketing strategies for our clients. Take it from our Medford and Ashland web design clients! Feel free to look at our client testimonials to see what they have to say about our web design services.

To learn more about our Medford web design services or to request a free quote, click here to contact us or give us a call:

Medford/Southern Oregon office
PO Box 683
Ashland, or 97209

ph: 541.482.3600
fax: 866.773.1269

So, to help give you ideas, here is a list of the top 10 things you can do to improve your website:

1. Calls to Action: On every page of your website, include a call to action. This is a verb that tells your visitors what to do next. People don’t have time to search around your site, so make it as easy as possible for them to do business with your company. When I write website content for clients, here are some I use frequently: Click here to…, Call us today to…, Subscribe now, Visit here to…, Contact us to…, E-mail us to…, and so on.

2. Social media widgets: If you are using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other social media platforms, then make sure you tell people about it! Include widgets on your site that tell your website visitors the other places on the website that they can connect with you. If you have key individuals in your company that have a social media presence, include widgets for them as well on their bio page.

3. Clickable graphics: Graphics are interesting and they catch people’s attention. If there is a service or product that you want to highlight, use a picture or illustration to highlight it. Make it clickable so that people can navigate to the page that will tell them more.

4. Testimonials: There is nothing more powerful than social proof. When other people explain how you have helped them solve problems, it has a very powerful impact on prospects. I recommend creating a separate page for testimonials – you can also weave them throughout your site. Include the person’s name and company to add credibility. Number are powerful, so provide as much quantifiable data as possible. For example: “ABC company saved us $25,000 in taxes last year,”  or “XYZ firm helped us increase our efficiency by 34%.”

5. Capture names: People are easily distracted – especially when they are using the Internet. So, while they may like what you have to offer when they land on your site, they may get a phone call or have to check e-mail or go to their Facebook page to upload a picture. Click! And they leave your site and forget about your company. That is why you should have a way to capture the names and e-mail addresses of your visitors. Offer them something of value in return such as a white paper, a report, or a tip sheet. And, along with this, you can subscribe them to your newsletter or ezine. You now have a qualified lead who you can market to over time until they are ready to buy.

6. Optimize your website (SEO): Paying to have your website optimized for search engines (SEO) will give you one of the best returns on investment. This process involves matching specific industry key words with your website and working them into your Title tags and content. Done correctly, SEO will allow your website to rank well for those keywords, helping people to find your company when they are using search engines. You can see my post, Using SEO to Get High Rankings for more details.

7. Contact info: Make it super easy for people to get in touch with you. People typically scan web pages – they don’t read them word for word. So make sure you have your contact info in the navigation and on every single page (and/or in the header).

8. Instructions: You website visitor usually won’t understand your business like you do. And they may not be that accustomed to using the Internet. So, if you want them to take a complex action, give them explicit instructions. It may not be as easy as you think for them to open a PDF or download a report or fill out a contact form. So, make it easy for them by providing the step-by-step how-to.

9. Make content scannable: People scan websites to find specific content. Break up blocks of text with headlines, subheads, and bullet points so that it’s easier for the average Internet user to read quickly down the page and find what they want.

10. Benefits: Most of the things that you are think are interesting and important about your company are NOT of interest to your web visitors. They are on your website to solve a problem. That is it. And, they want to know how you can solve it. So, tell them. Describe what it is that you will do for them.

If you do these 10 things to your website, you will be ahead of at least 75% of your competitors.  And here is a bonus tip: make sure you have Google Analytics installed on your site before you begin implementing these changes. Then you can see what effect these improvements have on your metrics. Do you have any more tips? Post them in the comments section below!

“What is the ROI of Social Media?

and

“How do I measure the ROI of social media?”

And these are great questions that companies should be asking.

Unfortunately, there is no one answer. While we can certainly obtain some metrics through tools like Twitter Search and Google Analytics, some of social media is simply about building goodwill and nurturing relationships. Like the good old-fashioned golf game and the “Let’s Do Lunch” strategy, people like connecting with people.

That said, to start determining your ROI on social media, you must know your baseline and define your goals. (from Mashable): “As a standard formula, ROI is pretty basic, ROI = (X – Y) / Y, where X is your final value and Y is your starting value. In other words, if you invest $5 and get back $20, your ROI is (20 – 5) / 5 = 3 times your initial investment. In the financial sense, ROI is measured purely in the context of dollars and cents, however, the principles can really apply to any type of investment — monetary or not.”

“Having concrete goals and concrete baselines is crucial to calculating your return on investment. So before you set out to measure and monitor your social media returns, you need to have a clear idea of what it is you want to accomplish.”

“Once you have your goals defined, you need to gauge the baseline for your levels before starting or changing your social media strategy. For example, if your goal is to increase social media mentions of your company, in order to measure the ROI of any actions taken toward that goal, you need to know where you stand now. You can’t evaluate the ROI accurately without a baseline.”

“Although ROI ≠ metrics, traditional web metrics like traffic counts, number of comments, Twitter followers, Facebook fans, etc. are an important component when calculating your ROI.”

“The trick is to not rely solely on the numbers, but on what the numbers end up leading to. For instance, does your increase in website visitors correlate with higher sales? Are people that find your website from Twitter or Facebook then clicking on your product pages or going to the e-Commerce section of your site? That’s the sort of data you want to be able to look for.”

Erik Qualman of Socialnomics has put together another fabulous video that breaks down the staggering numbers of social media into an absorbent format. (See our post, The Social Media Revolution, for his first video.)

Social Media ROI

Click here to view the embedded video.

Erik writes,

While the video uses familiar nomenclature like ROI, many pieces of social media behave so differently than anything we have ever seen, that I prefer to use “What does or will success look like?” rather than “What’s the ROI?” After all, why are we trying to measure social media like a traditional channel?  Social media touches every facet of business and it should be viewed more as an extension of good business ethics.  Which, if done properly, will harvest sales down the line.

Social Media ROI Statistics

Here are some key statistics pulled from the ROI of Social Media Video:

1.  Over 300,000 businesses have a presence on Facebook and roughly a 1/3 of these are small businesses.

2.  Gary Vaynerchuk grew his family business from $4 million to $50 million using social media.

3.  Vaynerchuk found first hand that $15,000 in Direct Mail = 200 new customers, $7,500 Billboard = 300 new customers, $0 Twitter = 1,800 new customers.

4.  Lenovo was able to achieve cost savings by a 20% reduction in call center activity as customers go to community website for answers.

5.  Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice Facebook program incented users to give up ten of their Facebook friends in return for a free Whopper.  The estimated investment for this program was less than $50,000 yet they received 32 million media impressions which roughly estimated equals greater than $400,000 in press/media value.  Which to put in context is somewhat like reaching the entire populations of 19 states (understanding this doesn’t account for unique vs. repeat visitors, etc.)

6.  BlendTec increased its sales 5x by running the often humorous “Will it Blend” Videos on YouTube blending everything from an iPhone to a sneaker.

7.  Dell sold $3,000,000 worth of computers on Twitter.

8.  Naked Pizza, a New Orleans Pizzeria that specializes in healthy pies, set a one day sales record using social media.  In fact 68% of their sales came from people “calling in from Twitter.”  And 85% of their new customers were from Twitter.  So, yes, social media does work for small businesses.

9.  Tweets for a Cause sent out a tweet from Atlanta to encourage support of Susan G. Komen for the Cure.  As a result of retweets, the Atlanta Chapter site received 11,000 visitors in 24 hours as a result of this initiative by ResponseMine Interactive.

10.  Intuit introduced “Live Community” into their TurboTax® products 2 years ago.  Due in part to the resulting word-of-mouth, they have seen unit sales increase +30% each year and have now integrated “Live Community” into their other products like QuickBooks, Quicken, etc.

11.  Software company Genius.com reports that 24% of its social media leads convert to sales opportunities.

12.  During Barack Obama’s rise to the White House, he garnered 5 million fans on social media and 5.4 million clicked on an “I voted for Obama” Facebook button.  Most importantly this resulted in three million online donors contributing $500 million in fundraising. An astounding 92% of the donations were in increments of less than $100.

13.  The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center witnessed a 9.5% increase in registrations by using social media.

14.  Web host provider Moonfruit more than recouped its $15,000 social media investment as their Website Traffic soared +300% while correspondingly sales increased +20%.

15.  eBay found that participants in online communities spend 54% more money.

16.  71% of companies plan to increase investments in social media by an average of 40% because: a) Low Cost Marketing b) Getting Traction c) We Have To Do It.

Supporting articles:

Lee Oden, “Book Review: Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk,” Online Marketing Blog

Jan M. Rosen, “Be It Twittering or Blogging, It’s All About Marketing,” New York Times, 3/11/2009

Jon Swartz,  “More marketers use social networking to reach customers,” USA Today,  8/28/09

Let’s talk about your company’s social media strategy. Small investments in Internet Marketing lead to big ROI (as you can see): 503-922-2289

There are some companies that target seniors and Baby Boomers, but are still resisting an interactive online presence and participating in social media.

They may think, “Well my clients are mostly over 60 so they’re not very tech savvy.” Or, “Social media is for kids. My clients are older – they don’t use that stuff.”

However, this is a misperception. While there are still many Baby Boomers and seniors who are not using the Internet as voraciously as Generation Y, the numbers may surprise you.

Seniors Online

Individuals 65 and older still make up less than 10 percent of the active Internet universe. However, their numbers are on the rise. In the last five years, the number of seniors actively using the Internet has increased by more than 55 percent, from 11.3 million active users in November 2004 to 17.5 million in November 2009. Among people 65+, the growth of women online in the last five years has outpaced the growth of men by 6 percentage points.

The largest percentage increase in Internet use since 2005 has been in the 70-to-75 age group, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The survey found that 45 percent of that age bracket is online, compared with 26 percent in 2005. Researching health information is the third most popular online activity with the most senior age group, after email and online search.

What’s more, many seniors find social networking exciting and enjoy finding online community. They’re creating their own blogs and, more often, connecting with family and friends by joining Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

“Social media are giving seniors a voice, and for a generation that has sometimes felt isolated and overlooked, that’s no small feat,” said Sarah Hoit, chief executive of My Way Village, which designs online social networks for older adults.

The No. 1 online destination for people over 65 in November 2009 was Google Search, with 10.3 million unique visitors. Windows Media Player and Facebook were No. 2 and No. 3, with 8.2 million and 7.9 million visitors, respectively. Interestingly, Facebook, which came in at No. 3, ranked No. 45 just a year ago among sites visited by senior citizens.

The trend has caught the attention of senior-living communities that have begun to introduce social media to residents. People who grew up with vacuum-tube radio sets are now learning how to befriend grandchildren and old classmates on Facebook and Classmates.com.

Retirement communities are also launching their own Facebook pages and posting videos on YouTube to appeal to the Boomer children of current or prospective residents. For example, Edgemere Senior Living has a Facebook page. Fan pages like this often include dozens of photos of recent activities at the communities. Visitors to the page can become “fans” and post comments. There are entire social networking sites devoted just to seniors such as the Over 60 Exchange, as well as dedicated website areas of organizations like the AARP that has added a forum called Online Communities.

Baby Boomers Online

Baby Boomers are a much bigger force on the Web. The research group, eMarketer, estimates that in 2009 Internet users ages 45 to 63 make up 28.8% of the total online population, or 57.4 million users.

A new report from Forrester Research also reveals some information that may be different than you thought: More than 60 percent of those in the Baby Boomer generational group actively consume socially created content like blogs, videos, podcasts, and forums. What’s more, the percentage of those participating is on the rise.

In 2007, the percentage of Boomers consuming social media was 46% for younger Boomers (ages 43 to 52) and 39% for older Boomers (ages 53 to 63). By 2008, those number increased to 67% and 62%, respectively.

The number of Boomers responding to content posted online, as opposed to just passively consuming it, is also going up. For example, the proportion of older Boomers responding to content doubled from 15% in 2007 to 34% in 2008. According to Forrester, this is now a percentage that’s high enough to target this group with a social application.

Here are some relevant statistics from eMarketer that you should know about the baby boomer generation:

• 74% use the Internet at least once a month
• younger Boomers outnumber older Boomers online 35.3 million to 21.4 million
• more Boomer women are Internet users than Boomer men
• 62% of households headed by someone age 50 or older had annual incomes of $75,000 or more, nearly 5% higher than in 2004
• 68% of Baby Boomer women trust online recommendations and rated information they heard in online conversations as credible

What do all of these numbers mean to you and your company? They mean that even if your target audience is Baby Boomers and/or seniors, you cannot ignore Internet marketing. You must ensure that your Web site is keeping pace with the trends, and that you should have a social media strategy in place including a blog and Facebook page, at the very least. And a Twitter and YouTube presence would also be beneficial to reaching your prospects.

My friend Bob (website designer and SEO junkie) just conducted a little experiment – he wanted to see if people responded to the word “webinar” or “online training” more often. Turns out it matters what words you use…simply changing “webinar” to “online training” boosted click-throughs by over 100%

What does this mean for your business? Well, several things:

• You need to understand how your audience thinks. It’s easy to get caught up in industry lingo and terminology, but communication sometimes means simplifying your message.
• You need to write your website pages to capitalize on search. Most of us know the importance of being “found” on Google. Unfortunately, many businesses fail to realize that being found means writing your site with terms that people actually look for.
• These rules apply to the real world. I have a client in the accounting field and she tells me that many of her customers come to her precisely because she DOESN’T talk like an accountant. Sure, she can talk depreciation schedules and exemptions, but most of the time, her choice of words center around things that business owners understand…like “Profitability”

I work with a lot of smart clients. They’re experts at what they do, and understand the nuances of their industries. They “get” that it’s important to have the knowedge, but that it’s just as important to make their communication of that knowledge understandable to their audience. Adapting their message creates a stronger bond with their clients, and ensures their position as trusted advisors.

Portland Mindfulness is a counseling center with a focus on mindfulness. Its therapists provide services for people who struggle with anxiety, depression, loneliness, difficult emotions, relationship problems, trauma, financial or work problems, or destructive behaviors like alcohol or drug abuse.

Working with the company’s focus on Mindfulness, the Kinesis creative team designed an elegant new logo that has a mark, colors, and typography to evoke a feeling of calm.

Once we completed their logo and stationery, we designed their new web site complete with search engine optimization.

Comment below to let us know what you think of the new site.

Kinesis is a Portland Web Design and Branding Firm. We help our clients reach their marketing and growth goals. Call us at 503.922.2289.

However, there is a supplemental way that your customers can find you. It’s via a valuable tool provided by Google. It is easy to implement…and it’s free. Yet, it’s underutilized. Google Local Business Center will allow you to list your company when it is combined with a CITY name.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, don’t depend on Google Local for search traffic. I want to stress that there is no replacement for a search-engine friendly website with well-written content, meta description tags, keywords, h1 tags, etc. But if you are marketing your business to a local audience, Google Local is an easy-to-set-up potential source of website traffic that complements your other SEO and SEM efforts.

Here’s an example of how this works: We helped our client, Siskiyou Eye Center, set up their Google Local account. If you look at the picture below, you’ll see that their company and website comes up first under the search phrase “Ashland Oregon Eye Center.” It appears BEFORE the number one listed site in the Google organic search results. Pretty powerful, eh?

Here are the steps to get set up in the Local Business Center:

1. Go to Google Local Business Center

2. Sign in to Google (or Create a Google Account if you don’t have one).

4. Click “Add New Business”

5. Enter your business information including name, address, website URL, company description, and the categories that best describe your business (I walk you through this in my video).

6. Click “Next”

7. If it shows your business is already on there, click “claim listing”

8. If it’s not there, click “add listing.”

9. Then you can enter additional details such as hours or operation, photos, payment options, and videos.

10. Click submit

11. At this point, you will need to verify you business by phone (don’t bother with the postcard option since it takes weeks to receive it!). Make sure you use a phone number that you can answer because as soon as you click “Finish,” a Google computer will call you to give you a PIN number.

12.Enter the Google PIN number in your account to verify.

After you are verified, your info will appear on Google Maps. You can go back to the Local Business Center to edit your information or see how many people went to your listing (there are fantastic tracking graphs). You can even ask customers to go to your Local listing to add reviews.

So, click over to the Google Local Business Center and list your business. It’s not much work for a lot of exposure…and it will put you in front of 95% of your competitors.

Kinesis is a Portland Web Design and Branding Firm. We help our clients reach their marketing and growth goals. Call us at 503.922.2289.