To read the full Metropreneur article, which states our ethical philosophy well, click here.

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• Flash video: A few years ago, it was popular to use a program called “Flash” to create interesting effects, movement, animation and more. Sometimes the menu was built in Flash so that it would do fancy things when touched with the mouse. Some sites had a homepage built entirely in Flash. The effects are amazing. The utility, unfortunately, is not good. Flash doesn’t work at all on smartphones, so your visitors may see a blank page instead of a cool effect. Even on computers, the software required to view it has to be updated often to keep it working.
• Cluttered navigation menu: Sites than have been around awhile tend to gather a complicated collection of menu links, in the same way old houses collect furniture. It’s not deliberate. It just happens. We add a page here and there and want it represented in the menu, and soon the drop-down menu has three levels of submenus, and there are eight choices across the top. This is quite difficult to work when you are squinting at a tiny phone screen and moving it around with your finger.
• Different priorities for the smartphone user: Someone visiting your website from a smartphone may have different tendencies than someone visiting from a laptop or desktop computer. For a restaurant, a computer visitor may want to browse the menu and see pictures of the food, while a smartphone user may be lost and trying to quickly find a map of the location with someone behind them honking their horn.

If any of these apply to your website, you should know the term “responsive design.” Responsive design means that your website changes how it displays, depending on what device is used to view it. One of my favorite phrases is one that apples to responsive design: “degrades elegantly.” Programmers say that the site is at its best on a computer screen, but it “degrades elegantly” as the screen size decreases. You won’t see every cool feature on your smartphone, but you can still work the menu easily and it will preserve the basic design.
At SiteInSight, we can affordably create a responsive design for you. This feature is part of our Level 2 design package. For those with a basic site, we can add a plugin that will display your site in a mostly text format when viewed on a smartphone. It’s not as elegant, but it’s not frustrating for your visitors, either.

Please contact us if you need any help creating a website that looks great and works easily on a smartphone or tablet.

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It turned out that I really don’t like doing cold calling, and although I know I would improve at it if I engaged in it often, I’d rather spend my time with clients or staff or developing my business in other ways.

The same week I stumbled on a somewhat warm list of leads I didn’t want to call, I also ran into an old friend who mentioned he is talented at sales, has a relationship to the same industry as my leads, and is willing to work on straight commission.

Immediately I engaged his services to call my list of leads.

But of course I couldn’t have him emailing my potential clients from his Yahoo address or calling them from his own cell phone number.

So here is how he became an official-looking member of my staff in 10 minutes.

1) Google Apps. We use Google Apps for our company email addresses. We had the good fortune of joining the system when it was still free for small businesses, but it’s a good value even at $50 per year. I created an email address at my company’s domain name for my new sales partner. It included a nice-looking signature line, bearing our company logo and his new title in Business Development.

2) Google Voice. Google Voice is a beautiful service wherein you can go online and choose a new phone number out of the clear blue sky, and then forward it to a cell phone. After a few clicks, I could call my new associate’s work number, and it rang to his cell phone. To call out from the number, he needs only to dial the “work number,” log into the voice mail, and press 4. Voila, his Caller ID shows up to the prospective client as his new work number.

Should this new relationship end up going nowhere, I keep the phone number and forward it to my office phone or someone else’s phone. I can delete or retain his email address as needed.

I spent nothing but the paper and ink to print his W-4 form.

If your business needs help looking bigger than it is, give us a call or fill our contact form.

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Many of these comments are indicative of a misunderstanding of the purpose of a website for most small businesses and service businesses. With the exception of companies actually selling product online via a shopping cart, most of my customers have a website that makes prospective customers feel good about making a choice to hire them.

The sale is not made online, that’s true.

So the website is not the sales pitch.

The website is the business suit that you wear to a meeting with an important new prospective client.

Imagine that someone you admire has scheduled a consultation to learn about your services. They could represent a big sale or ongoing revenue. You want to make a good impression and don’t have a suit that fits, so you go and spend a few hundred dollars on a new suit to look your best. The client meets you, sees your attractive, well-fitting suit, and realizes that you are, in fact, the consummate professional he was hoping to hire. This seals the deal and you close the sale.

Your website is just like that suit, except it meets with people all day long, every day. Even when you are sleeping. Your website either confirms your prospect’s view of you, impresses them more, or makes them think twice. If you make a great impression in networking meetings but have a disorganized, amateur website, your prospect may conclude that you are good at sales, but don’t have the company and services to back it up. Better to be poor at sales (just good enough to inspire someone to check out your website) and really wow people online, than to make a great impression in person but have a disappointing image online.

So next time you are weighing whether to invest time or money in your website, remember how much you invest in making a good impression in person a few times a week. Then remember that your website is making impressions for you every minute of the day.

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If so, there must be moments during your week when you scratch your head and think, “There must be a better way!”

As we begin 2013 and feel energized about tasks such as cleaning up our desks, organizing our files and reconciling our accounts, we should also take a look at wasted time and duplicative tasks. If ever there is a moment for spending 30 minutes setting up a system that will save time all year, that moment is now.

Here are a few examples of tasks that might be part of your week, which could be avoided entirely:

Information Duplication

Do you create information (i.e. a newsletter article, a special offer, a description of a new product) and then spend time copying that same information to several places? For example, do you put that information in an email, and then also put it on your website, and then visit all of your social media accounts to post the same information? Wouldn’t it be great if you could put the information in one place, and it would automatically send itself to all of the other online channels? Well, you can. SiteInSight can help you set up a blog as your home base for new information, and connect that blog so it automatically populates your email newsletter and your social media accounts.

Accounting Tedium

Have you ever bought something for your company or organization, and found yourself entering the expense in several places? Do you write a check, enter the expense in the check register, and then enter it again in your accounting software? There’s a better way. Most accounting software can link to your bank and your credit cards, and automatically import the transactions. You can spend 30 minutes each week categorizing them and be done with it.

Address Books Everywhere

Do you have an email newsletter, but find yourself forgetting to subscribe people to it? Or typing a prospect’s email address into two or three different systems? There is a better way. SiteInSight can help streamline your systems so that your online forms automatically enter email addresses into your marketing database, and your contact lists talk to each other.

Scheduling Craziness

How many times have you heard (or read in an email): “Let’s get together next week. Throw out a few times and dates that are good for you.” What happens after that generally takes a lot of time. There’s back and forth. It’s annoying. The only people who seem able to escape this conversation are people who have their own secretaries or assistants. But there’s another way. At SiteInSight, we can set up a page on the web where others can go to schedule appointments with you. The tool syncs up with the electronic calendar you are already using, so it knows when you are free and busy; When someone schedules a time with you, it puts the details in your calendar for you.

Maddening Forms

Do you ask people to fill out forms online, but you send them a .pdf document they can’t type in, or they have to scan it in to send it back to you? Do you receive forms on paper, forcing you to choose between typing the information into a database, or stuffing it into a filing cabinet and not making full use of the information?

Did you know you can have a beautiful, easy form that works even if you don’t have a website? People can fill out your form online and hit submit. They receive a confirmation. You receive an alert (by email or text or both). The information they submitted is automatically added to a spreadsheet you can download whenever you want.

Take a new look at your marketing efforts and your office systems. If you have that nagging feeling that you are wasting time and doing the same thing multiple times, please give us a call and see how we can help!

SiteInSight is owned by Alice Hohl, a web marketing expert in Central Ohio. The company and its staff provide services including online marketing, online forms, email newsletters and web design in the Columbus, Ohio area.

Improving the odds for small businesses and nonprofits is Alice’s passion. Her company develops digital strategy that works for your company, at a price you can afford. Contact SiteInSight today!

www.SiteInSightNow.com

Alice@SiteInSightNow.com

614-887-7483

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It’s enough to make anyone who doesn’t have a secretary go crazy.

I recently encountered a great tool that syncs up with whatever computerized calendar you are already using, and creates a really nice interface for other people to see your availability and schedule time with you.

I use Google Calendar, and have tried a lot of different avenues. I’ve tried sending the link to my Google Calendar’s free/busy time to people in emails, but those who don’t use Google Calendar become a little freaked out when they click on it.

I’ve tried embedding my Google Calendar in my WordPress site, but no matter which embed code or plugin tool I use, the buttons don’t work or it doesn’t display in a friendly way. People have tried to use it and become frustrated. The last thing I want is for someone to be frustrated trying to meet with me, especially if they are a new customer.

Now I’m using simplybook.me, and it seems to be working great! For the person who signs up for the tool (like me), it’s not all that easy to navigate. Things aren’t where I thought they would be. But the tool does give you your own webpage for your availability, which you can send people to. I prefer to send people to my own website (where they might stay and learn a little more about what my company does), so I used their javascript tool that puts the same scheduler right onto my own site.

For the visitor, it is very nice. It looks good, and it’s easy to click on a date and see what time slots are available. Even better, the visitor can go ahead and request an appointment. Even better than THAT, when someone requests an appointment, it goes straight into my Google Calendar, so I don’t have to copy and paste. Of course if I want to reject the request, I have to delete it and contact the person, but that would be a rare occurrence since my Google Calendar is always updated.

To see how it works on my site (or to make an appointment with me so I can help you set it up for yourself) check out my schedule and availability page.

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Let me back up: First let’s state the obvious. You as the Facebook user do NOT see everything every friend of yours posts on Facebook. Facebook chooses what to put in your Newsfeed based on several factors, which used to be a secret. There are ways to see every single post, but most people don’t know how to switch back and forth. Besides, Facebook is getting pretty good at figuring out what you, the user, are interested in seeing, based on the things you click on and the things you “like.”

So, one of the secret factors that determines whether your brilliant Facebook post about your small business will show up in the Newsfeeds of all of your favorite customers is … whether or not a large percentage of your Facebook Fans paid attention to your posts in the past.

Large brands are crying foul because it’s difficult for them to get more than five or six percent of their fans to pay attention to their posts. That’s because they have a huge number of fans.

Small brands and small businesses have an edge. Because they have a smaller audience, if they post good content and a high percentage of their audience clicks on it, their posts are more likely to show up in the Newsfeed.

At SiteInSight, our mission is to help small businesses compete on the web against the big guys. We create dynamic websites on a budget. We automate everything we can to make life easier for the small business owner. For example, this post you are reading right now was first posted on our company’s blog. Then it was automatically pushed to social media upon publication by a tool inside our website. Later this month, it will harvested from the blog and plopped into an email newsletter BY ROBOTS. Ok, not by robots, but by a few lines of computer programming.

We think it’s a good model for all small businesses. If you need help setting up something similar for your small business, please give us a call.

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St. John the Baptist Church (built website and provides ongoing support to post weekly bulletins and special events, provides analysis of web traffic monthly.)

Dublin Women’s Club (assisting the group with navigating and using their existing website, creating an email newsletter integrated with the site, helping move contact email addresses and update events)

Columbus Italian Festival (built website with heavy involvement from volunteers, teaching volunteers how to make changes and updates)

St. Johns Episcopal Church (built website, provides ongoing assistance posting new events, announcements, etc. Accommodates near-constant new information from staff and volunteers to be added to site, oversees online submission of news, provides analysis of web traffic monthly)

Ohio Grantmakers Forum  (provided support in making structural changes and addition of content to existing WordPress site for large annual event)

Northwest Kiwanis (built website, provide ongoing support and training for members to post their own news, integrated Google Calendar to display on website, created email newsletter and automated newsletter to publish blog articles)

Clearview Grace Church (Consulting on search engine optimization and helping them make the most of their existing WordPress site by training staff to make changes.)

The Leave No Child Inside Central Ohio Collaborative (Web site design, online forms, content creation and posting of submitted content, email newsletter integrated with blog, online Toolkit.)

Camp Fire Central Ohio (Web site updates, web site design assistance, custom graphics, consulting on navigation, complex online forms including camp registration, search engine optimization, online advertising)

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Come and join us at the Gahanna Public Library for our FREE workshop to find out how to best use your website to grow your business and how to integrate email marketing tactics and social media within your website!

November 14
3 p.m.

We hope to see you there!

View Larger Map

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Happy Halloween from SiteInSight!

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