Your website is like an island

Those of you in your twenties won't know this one, but there was a time when people could create websites and nobody would know about them. There was no efficient way to promote them, search indexing by companies like AltaVista, Lycos and Yahoo took weeks, and of course social sharing hadn't been invented yet.

So yeah, if you built a website, and nobody knew about it, you had built an island.

Fast forward a few decades, and now there's no such thing as an island website. Obviously, getting traffic to your site is still a part of the marketing challenges facing us today, but as far as discovery is concerned, there are no more islands.

Except where marketing campaigns are concerned.

Marketing Campaign Islands

Landing pages are extremely important in today's online marketing landscape: they de-clutter and focus our attention from the call to action that we saw to the thing we as marketers want the visitor to do. They're an island, and a destination one to boot.

But what if your campaign message contains more than one link, or even more than one call to action?

There are plenty of good reasons to have multiple calls to action, and multiple focal points in a campaign. Email newsletters in particular could easily have 2-3 calls to action, each as important as the other. What can you do in this case, to make sure that your visitor inevitably returns to your primary conversion point?

Related: List acquisition using someone else's email list. (opt-in, but a great read, I promise you)

Build bridges to your islands,
or leave out the links

To avoid a situation where your visitors get lost from one call to action (CTA) to another, you need to be sure each landing page in your campaign is connected to the other (island chain?). If there's a broken connection, fix it or leave out the link altogether.

In the case study above, I had 3 calls to action, each with a purpose that would meet a business goal. However, before I linked to those three pages, I made sure that each link contained subsequent calls to action back to my conversion point. In fact, since "Link A" wasn't to my own website, I had to make adjustments to copy and presentation materials in several places to create that inter-connected experience.

The attention to detail was critical to the success of that campaign, but also critical to ensure that nobody got lost or distracted from my primary conversion point.

So, the next time you have a campaign with multiple calls to action, make sure each of those landing pages are linked to each other in some fashion, so that at the end you can ensure no visitors are deserted with nowhere to go but away from your page.

Here's the story...

On our website, we use generally-accepted "best practices" for Search Engine Optimization: image filenames, heading tags, selected emphasis on keywords, etc.

However, our intent is to write for our visitors, not to "write for Google." Consequently, we're confident that the natural language we use in our writing style spills some "SEO juice" onto the floor...juice that would have otherwise given us higher rankings on our pages.

Oh well. Like I said, we don't write for Google. In fact, the original purpose of this site, when it was redesigned in 2010, was to complement our business development and support initiatives through examples of our experience and expertise. We only designed portions of it for lead generation and conversion. So, based on those goals, our site continues to perform as expected.

Of course, we still benefit from SEO techniques

Because of the best practices, one of our pages is performing at an extremely high level in search, and in a very competitive phrase: email template samples. It's our Email Template Samples page (go figure), and has consistently had a Top 10 placement for years. Check it out:

What's more...our page is found in the same SERP (Search Engine Results Page) as galleries from very well-known brands in email marketing!

In fact, you might argue that we have a competitive advantage on this keyword; if someone searching for email template samples isn't using one of those service providers listed, we're the first alternative.

We couldn't have been more right about how we used SEO techniques on this page, right?

Well, as I'm about to show you, we couldn't have been more wrong, either.

Great SEO Techniques vs. Great Conversion Techniques

Sure, our page ranks highly for a keyword that should generate leads for us. However, this page is designed as a sample gallery. It isn't designed for purchase or download.

We didn't even have a call to action on the page until recently, when we started to notice this page getting more and more search traffic (Note: depending on when you read this article, you may or may not see one; we're testing out a couple different ideas).

Keyword Selection vs. Search Intent & Audience

About 80% of the search traffic to this page comes from countries known to have high concentrations of freelancers. Once we could reflect on this data, something became apparent: the people coming to our page were probably looking for examples they could use on their own projects. (cue #facepalm)

Where do we go from here?

To be honest? I'm not sure. Obviously, we could (and should) try to add more conversion points to that page. However, if the audience is different from one we want to serve, how does that help our business? Here are a couple of thoughts from a LinkedIn discussion I posted awhile ago:

1. Instead of loading the pics into a pop-up, send visitors to a dedicated page for each pic that also has a contact form.
2. Have a set of sample pics, and then create some available templates for download.

We'll continue to test ideas on that page, especially with respect to gathering more intelligence on what visitors are expecting when they click through. What ideas do you have for us to try out? Leave them in the comments. It would be a shame to have this highly-ranked page go to waste.

Here are three of them, and if you read to the end, we'll walk through an example to show you how it all comes together.

1. Email templates

Having an email template that will adjust to the device or screen that's reading it will do wonders for your click-through rates. Nobody wants to "pinch and zoom" or scroll to the right to read an email.

Example: Responsive email template for My Daily Find Chicago

2. Landing pages

Once you've mastered the responsive or mobile-friendly email template (we can help with that by the way), your visitors are bound to click through to your website. So make sure your landing pages will display naturally and quickly on tablets and smartphones.

3. Call to action (CTA) buttons

Three words: design for thumbs. Even if your analytics tell you that 90% of your audience is using desktop browsers, larger calls to action stand out and do a better job "calling for action" than a "click here" link in the middle of a sentence.

Look at the example below, which grabs your attention more? Which would be easier to click, even with a mouse?

Bringing it all together

If you put these three small tweaks to work for your web presence, your audience will thank you. Here's a sample scenario to drive it home:

1. You post a link to your website on Facebook.
2. Your audience -- some on the mobile Facebook app, and some on the desktop site -- clicks through.
3. The mobile users see a single-column page with big, easy-to-tap buttons and clear text. Meanwhile, the desktop users see a landing page that has a little more "design" to it, but still includes those big, easy-to-tap buttons and clear text.
4. Because your message is clear and easy to interact with from every device that sees it, you get more engagement and possibly even sales from this post.

What other things are you doing to create that seamless, natural experience for your content and audience? Post in the comments below. And if you're looking for more information on getting started with mobile, check out my Going Mobile: Where to Start webcast.
 

Related: Responsive vs. Mobile Websites

The goal of responsive design is, of course, to deliver your content in a way that's easy to consume by your audience, no matter which device they're using to view it. This is much harder to do with email than it is with web pages, because of the lack of support by some email clients for today's more advanced HTML and CSS techniques (which we use to build responsive pages).

Email testing company, Litmus, hosted a Master Class on Mobile Email Design, which I had the extreme pleasure to attend. You can read about it, and watch a recap, here. The class gave me renewed energy in realizing that mobile-friendly email design was indeed possible, and attainable by using some simple methods. If you're into email design, I highly recommend following Litmus and trying to get into their next course, this was easily one of the best courses I've ever taken.

Our first RESPONSIVE email template

I highlighted the word "responsive" because our Shovi Websites email template is "mobile-friendly" already; it's a single-column template with a 320px wide header, so it pretty much looks perfect on all browsers, mobile & desktop clients.

Related: Mobile-friendly email template for Shovi Websites

This responsive template was for My Daily Find Chicago, a daily lifestyle blog who wanted to also send out a weekly "roundup" style email campaign.

Desktop vs. Mobile Differences

• Two columns on desktop (below) collapse to a single column on mobile (right).
• The Social Follow links on the left column disappear on mobile, because we want to focus our attention on the content.
• Typically, sidebars collapse under the main column in responsive design, but in our case we wanted to highlight the upcoming events first. Huge thanks to Elliot Ross for showing me how to do that!
• I pulled out the Twitter, Facebook & Pinterest handles and left the icons themselves so we could keep that on one line at the bottom. Otherwise we'd have to stack those icons, which adds unnecessary scrolling. On a mobile device, you aren't likely to search for those handles anyway, you're going to tap on the icon and load up your browser/app.

3 Lessons learned from this project and the Litmus Master Class

1. Responsive email design is not easy, but definitely worth the investment for your readers
2. Be very careful when inputting information into your content blocks; even though the email is designed to be flexible, the coding behind it is not.
3. Keep your message and focus very, very simple.

Walkthrough of the New Google+ Cover Infographic

As you can see, there are 3 key things to consider when designing an optimized Google+ cover:

1. Acquisition - which circles you want people to put you in
2. Conversion - what message you want to convey to visitors of your profile
3. Context - will the hovercard, desktop and mobile views convey the right message at the right time, together and individually?

Google+ Cover Review - Shovi Websites

Our key business is web design & email marketing. Our service model is hands-on, versus providing Do-It-Yourself, turnkey solutions. We also have made a commitment to mobile design in all areas.
These three things are conveyed in our cover photo.

Review and Script:

Hello, my name is Stephan Hovnanian of NewGplusCovers.com. After recording a walkthrough of my popular style guide that shows you how to optimize your cover for a powerful marketing message, I've decided to highlight some clients who have asked me to design their covers, and show you the thought process that went into them.

In today's Google+ Cover review, we're taking a look at Shovi Websites. Shovi Websites is a full-service web design and email marketing company based outside Boston. There are some great techniques at play here, let's get right to them.

In the upper third, which as we know should be for telling people which circles to put you in, we see "Website Design & Email Marketing", along with two icons. Shovi seems to use icons as product images, here they just show two. One is a sniper target, and the other an @ symbol. The products they represent are akin to a more focused design philosophy, so that fits nicely into the "acquisition" part of the theme.

One other clever technique was adding the tagline "Mobile friendly, custom designs" in the upper third. While this is too small to be readable on the hovercard, it's a great size for mobile, further emphasizing that they have a commitment to mobile...which you're seeing on your mobile device. Good stuff there.

In the middle third, we see more product images. Shovi reinforced the icons with labels, again too small for the hovercard, but on their actual profile they're very legible. What stands out of course is a tagline, "Go. Run your business...we'll run your website." To me, that says this company goes beyond just design and can really help me with strategies and professional grade support, which are things I might struggle with.

One thing that isn't crystal clear is what to do next. I suppose that if I fit the profile of someone who is looking for services like these, I'm going to contact them via Google+, or visit their website for more information. There's no lead-gen page or call to action, but then again, web services have a complex sales process, so it isn't as cut & dry as taking someone to a "download my whitepaper" form.

So all in all, great job. If you would like me to do a review of your optimized Google+ cover, or better yet, schedule a consult to talk about how I can optimize your Google+ cover's marketing message, head over to NewGplusCovers.com and drop me a line. Thanks for watching, I hope this was helpful, and we'll see you next time.

The 7 most popular Waldow Social Blog Posts of All Time: waldowsocial.com/top-7-most-pop… - What are yours? #Top7

— DJ Waldow (@djwaldow) February 7, 2013

Now, in 2012, we put together our "Best of 2012" but evidently that doesn't count. So, using our real-time visitor tracking, we pulled up the list of the most-visited posts (by page views), and to be honest, one of them came as a surprise. We'll let you guess which one...

#7: [REVIEW]: the Rebel's Guide to Email Marketing

This post was a review of a book written by DJ Waldow and Jason Falls. It's #7 on this list, but the book itself stands as a cornerstone in shaping the way Shovi Websites approaches its email marketing services.

#6: 7 Must-Haves for the perfect website design experience

This article is a go-to piece for colleagues and new clients. It explains how easy, painless and exciting a website project can be if everybody's on the right page from the start. The bottom line: let everybody do what they do best.

#5: Seminary drops Dead Weight in email list

This might be one of the best case studies and live examples of re-engagement. We routinely circle back to it with clients to show them the value of "quality over quantity," and the post has also been picked up by The Email Guide, which makes it one of our most socially-active posts.

#4: Leveraging LinkedIn Recommendations on your company page

Maybe we're seeing the benefit from all of LinkedIn's recent changes, and their push to make Company pages more interactive and engaging. Either way, this is another useful post to help you infiltrate that news feed on LinkedIn.

#3: Awesome Re-engagement email

Not only do we link to this one frequently, but let's face it: the title has a pretty popular keyword in it. So this post probably gets into the Top 3 because of a tall glass of search engine juice.

#2: 4-ingredient fix to remove unwanted whitespace in Outlook '07

Oh yeah, more SEO awesomeness for this post. However, we've also noticed that Google's new Authorship feature has helped this particular article get some serious rankings boosts.

#1: Answering the question, "What's the Subject Line?"

What do you get when you ask 5 email marketing experts a question on LinkedIn? Our number one, most popular post on Shovi Websites!

Okay, it's your turn! Put together your Top 7 posts (by traffic) and drop the link into the comments (well, add some text and maybe even a kind word about our posts, otherwise your comment will probably be automatically flagged as spam). Also, tweet them with the hashtag #top7. Oh, and which one do you think was the surprise?

There are so many web companies out there, but few take the time to bridge the gap between what the so-called "experts" say, and what an individual company can do about web design and online marketing to stay competitive.

For those companies that care about their clients' success like we do, we've created a new community called WebSIGHT. Launched in December, 2012, WebSIGHT is a community of web professionals that want to help small business, microbusiness, solopreneurs and non-profits make the most of their online presence in today’s ever-changing Internet landscape.

Who is WebSIGHT for?

• Small business
• Solopreneurs
• Non-profit and volunteer organizations
• Web professionals
• Online marketing professionals
• Anybody stuck on a particular web/online marketing problem
• Anybody looking for personalized advice to make their website better

How do I get involved?

If you are a professional who would like to be part of the community, present in our webcasts, or add insight to our blog posts, contact Stephan Hovnanian over on Google+.

If you are someone who wants to stay up on the latest tips and intelligence from all of us, there are lots of ways to participate:

• Join our Google+ WebSIGHT Community
• Sign up for the newsletter
• Subscribe to the YouTube Playlist
• Subscribe to the RSS feed of the WebSIGHT
• Comment on and share the articles

Welcome to WebSIGHT!

• We fine-tuned the way we position our web design & email marketing services.
• We found our "voice" within blog posts and customer support videos, which lets us communicate more effectively with our clients & target audience.
• Finally, we forged quality relationships with real experts in web design, email and online marketing.

All this helps us be a more effective resource for you.

So, below is the Best Of Shovi Websites for 2012. Enjoy, thank you, and stay tuned for more great things from us in 2013!

Email Marketing - Strategy

Email Marketing - Branding

Email Marketing - Campaigns

Responsive Web Design

Social Media

(image credit)

But this pricing method can work to your benefit as well. For example, you can cut some subscribers loose and drop down to a lower price tier.

Don't fall victim to "quantity over quality"

Many companies want to have as large a list as possible. They think the more people they send their campaigns to, the higher the likelihood someone will respond.

But a large list isn't what drives ROI. It's all about sending relevant and actionable emails to subscribers who want to receive them. Those subscribers are the ones that make you money every time you send a campaign. Everybody else on your list is costing you money.

Cut the fat from your email list

You need to review your subscriber base and find those names that are making you money, not costing you money. Look at the following three areas to trim down your lists:

1) Bounces & Unsubscribes

Not all ESP's will remove bounced addresses...they want to ensure the addresses don't get re-imported. The same goes for unsubscribed addresses. However, if your lists are pretty seasoned and you're confident you won't be re-importing bounces or unsubscribes accidentally, it's safe to delete them.

2) Specialty lists

Let's say you hosted an event or contest, and brought in a bunch of new addresses. Your primary goal for these should be to turn them into your normal list through some type of follow-up campaign. Once you've done this, however, you can drop everybody else from your subscriber database.

3) Non-Responders

Part of your email marketing strategy should be to target non-responders and ensure they either unsubscribe or are pruned from your lists. Why? Because you'll boost your open rates and sender reputation. You'll also be able to use feedback from non-responder campaigns to find new ways to target your audience. For example, you might have a % of subscribers who don't read your emails, but follow you on every single social network. Maybe instead of removing them as "dead weight," you put them into a separate file as a "social contact".

By trimming the fat out of your email database, you will save room in your plans for those subscribers who are actually interested in what you have to say...the ones that make you money. So before your next monthly billing cycle or credit-based campaign, take a look at your email lists, cut the fat, and put a plan in place to review them regularly. (Read more about dead weight email campaigns)

(h/t to Dewane Mutunga for the image idea, she's slightly more appealing than bacon for the "cut the fat" reference, don't you agree?)
 

Okay, it is that simple, but after a few campaigns you might start to question why your open rates, bounces and unsubscribes are different than the benchmarks you had with your previous provider. 

What's changing when you switch ESP's

There are essentially three things that change when you switch ESP's, and they're all related to the sending of the emails, not the emails themselves. 

• IP addresses and servers - simply put, you're sending mail from a different server than you were before. This has an impact on the next two items.
• Sender headers - even if your "From" name and email are the same, the "Sender" is the new provider. Some of your subscribers' mail servers will pick up on this and flag it, because it's different from the Sender in the past, so it could be spam (it isn't, we know that, but the server might not).
• Reputation - Sender reputation has a lot to do with the IP address that mail comes from, and how many times mail from that IP is flagged as spam from subscribers. You'll have to rebuild your reputation using your new ESP (most of this reputation will be already established because the ESP dedicates resources to their own reputation management)

What you can do about it

To help minimize the potential negative effect on delivery from this change of servers, you want to establish a more formal connection between the subscriber and the new platform. You can do this by importing your subscribers as "Unconfirmed" on the new platform, and then have the subscriber confirm their email address on the new platform, typically using a link in an email.

When they confirm, you'll send out a response (maybe even with a promotional code as a "thank you") which will then end up in their inbox. For the non-responders on your old ESP, you can either drop them as dead weight, or just change them to "Active" in the new system and hope for the best. (Read more about "dead weight" in this article)

How to set up and communicate this email confirmation strategy

Here is a 10-step plan to help get the word out about the upcoming switch. (The timeframes below can be adjusted in either direction based on how often you send out your email campaigns, and also how much web traffic you get. Obviously the goal is to avoid having too much crossover for too long, so adjust as you see fit for your own business.)

About a month before you switch ESP's

• Complete all the integration with your new ESP (forms, API, triggers, auto-responders, etc.)
• Migrate all your subscriber data as "Unconfirmed," and don't forget to add any new data points you are collecting with the new provider (presuming you switched because the new ESP has better tools than the old one)

The month leading up to your switch

• Add some conspicuous reminder text to your next 2-3 campaigns (sent using the old ESP) telling your subscribers that you're switching ESP's and that you would like them to confirm their email address on your new system. This link actually goes to the new platform and changes their subscriber status from "Unconfirmed" to "Active."
• Set up a confirmation "thank-you" email to go out when the subscriber confirms their address, maybe even with a promotional code in it.
• Remind the subscriber that since this is a new platform, the confirmation email you just sent might go to their junk folder. They should check it and re-add your email address to their "Safe Senders" list or "whitelist." This is really important for corporate email filters like Barracuda and Postini, so you might even want to send a special personal email to VIP customers who use those services about the switch.

The day before you switch to the new ESP

• Post the migration notice on your social channels, telling your subscribers to expect an email from you tomorrow from the new ESP; and that if they don't receive it, to check their spam folder and whitelist your address, sometimes a switch like this confuses email servers. 
• Send a dedicated email to those who have not confirmed their email address with you on the new ESP platform that you're switching tomorrow.

Moving day

• Switch all remaining subscribers to "Active"
• Send out your campaign from the new ESP
• Post a reminder on your social networks to expect that email (and check their spam folder if they didn't get it)

The end result

The goal here was to get your subscribers to recognize that you're switching email service providers, and call attention to the fact that your emails might get filtered to their spam folders. This simple confirmation process adds a layer of authentication, and a critical interim step to get your emails filtered through to their inboxes so that your actual campaigns don't end up in their spam folder. We should mention that this isn't a 100% solution, nor is it a 100% certainty that all your emails will end up in a spam folder when you switch ESP's. However, taking these steps shows your subscribers you care about what you send to them, and will go a long way to making your email campaigns more effective.

Facebook is an excellent marketing and community channel for all lifestyle coaches. They serve a vertical that's all about talking to others and sharing experiences and advice. Take away cat videos and red Solo cups, that's about all you have left on Facebook, right? 

It's also quick-to-market, requires very little technical experience, and has a ton of helpful features already built into the platform.

As a result of the tools Facebook had to offer, Lisa grew her fan base quickly, and landed a ton of customers (organically, we might add, no Promoted Posts or sidebar ads).

Her posts get Likes, Comments and even Shares. She understands her Insights and uses the scheduling feature to take advantage of peak activity. The viral element of fan activity on her posts has generated new likes and even new customers.

In short, she's got a great thing going over there.

So why did Lisahov's Health & Fitness build a website?

To understand why Lisa built a website instead of relying solely on her highly-successful Facebook channel, you have to understand what she was missing out on by using her Facebook page as her "website," specifically these four things:

1. No ownership of her content
2. No control of the terms that govern her page or her content
3. No easy way to organize her content so she can refer back to it for customer support
4. No access to, or discovery by, non-Facebook users

Introducing www.lisahovhealthfitness.com!

Built on WordPress, using the Genesis framework, we created a site that would fill in those missing pieces Facebook couldn't offer. In addition, we worked with Lisa on how to keep the workflow simple, which content to keep on Facebook and which to post on her website, and how the marketing strategy she already had in place would incorporate her website. Using WordPress also made it easy to use, another important feature.

How her website makes her Facebook page even better

By building a website, she can control exactly how her content is presented. She can use her customer feedback to improve the experience for both prospects and customers reaching out to her through Facebook (for example: the custom tabs on her page are not iPad friendly, but the web page we built for her looks fabulous). Here are just a few of the ways her website will help her business:

• Messaging - all the common questions and links that she typically directs people to during the conversion phase were originally handled through Facebook's Messages area. Now she just directs prospects to a single page on her website that has all the information laid out, with simple instructions on what to do next.
• Recipes - Lisa's Recipe section is not only a great reference area for herself, but also a place to direct Facebook fans to when they ask, "where was that recipe again?" Previously, she had to search through her Timeline to find it.
• Exclusive Content - with 2 channels instead of 1, Lisa can now post content exclusive to her Facebook fans, a very powerful engagement tactic. She already does this with her newsletter and it's very effective.

All this, and the added benefit of having a much more polished and professional presence than her competitors. What's stopping you from building a website of your own, and marketing it to your Facebook fans?

In short, this one's gotta be good.

So I reached out to some seriously-smart email marketers for their take on how to approach this critical first campaign. This is the hypothetical scenario:

Here's what expert email marketers had to say:

My example subject line: "Introducing [product name] from ABC Company"

Martin Lieberman:

The point of your first email is to welcome new subscribers to your list, and to show how much you appreciate them signing up. It's very important to tone down the marketing language, and instead "warm up" the subscriber. There will be plenty of time for selling later on. For now, you have to make a good first impression, and that starts with the subject line.

A subject line that goes in for the sale too quickly, or is too dry or marketing-like (e.g., "Introducing [product name] by ABC Company"), will cause your email to be deleted or considered spam. I'd suggest something as simple as "Thank you for joining our mailing list." Or maybe something more fun, like "The best thing you did all day was join our mailing list!"

Both have a human tone, both are engaging, and most importantly, they put the subscriber first, not the sender. It's just a question of preference: The first has a warmer spin, and the other is more exciting. Just remember: It's not just your first email that should have an engaging subject line...they all should.

Scott Hardigree (Indiemark):

• Instead of "Introducing [product name] from ABC Company" you could use "Introducing [product name]" as the subject and "[First Name] at ABC Company" as the friendly from.
• If the product has any sort of excited associated with it, you could go with something like "The wait is over: Introducing [product name]"
• If the product is unknown you could try "Say hello to [product name]" or "5 reasons you will NOT love [product name]" (this angle could be fun) or "Kick the tires and receive [promotion]"
• You could leverage the subscriber's ego or sense of worth; "Because you have [whatever], we're opening opening up [product name] to you early" or "Give us your honest opinion, we can take it" or "[product name] is not for everyone, but you're not just anybody"
• If the client has an existing brand or product they can leverage you could use "From the folks that brought you [old brand/product]"

DJ Waldow (Waldow Social):

• Include "welcome" or "thanks" [in the subject line]

Loren McDonald (Silverpop):

• "Welcome & Stay Tuned for Tips and Insights on [Product Name]"

Samantha Iodice (Aspen Marketing Services, a division of Epsilon):

A good subject line creates intrigue, interest and makes the recipient want to read it. Knowing your audience will help marketers choose their subject line. Test test test!

• [Product] from ABC Company - What You've Been Waiting For
• [Product] - What you've been waiting for
• [Product] - You couldn't ask for more
• You asked for it, we're delivering
• NEW from ABC Company!

Beyond just choosing a subject line

Each of these email marketing experts also pointed out how important it is to think about the campaign as a part of your entire marketing strategy. In our hypothetical, even though this is the company's first email campaign, Loren reminds us the company should have a primary goal in mind, as well as a clear idea of context, expectations, promises, value, content & frequency for the subscribers. Samantha notes that the company should look to the other parts of the email (creative, pre-header, etc.) to formulate a subject line that will complement what's inside, for a more cohesive strategy.

Lastly, "voice" is very important: if you have an established style in your marketing messages, go with that this first time out so people recognize the email is authentic to your brand (although it's always good to mix things up a bit once in a while!).

So, are you ready to "Hit Send" on that first campaign?

Many Content Management Systems, like WordPress, have a mechanism to automatically update your site with the latest version of the system, which usually has security and performance improvements. But if you do not have a system that will keep itself up to date, here's what you're missing, and why it's important:

1. Security

With the Internet becoming more sophisticated every day, websites have to be as secure as possible to guard against hacker threats. Hacked websites cost time and money to fix, and also can harm your brand. Keeping your website (like your PC or anti-virus protection) up to date will help you avoid costly downtime. Here's a great read on preventing your website from being hacked.

2. Square Peg/Round Hole

Often times, a company will realize it needs to upgrade the back-end of its website when it tries to make an update (or add a new strategic component) that simply does not fit with the way the site was programmed to load up. To get that piece of content up on the site requires your webmaster to basically hack your site's code to accommodate the content.

Do this enough times, and you'll have a website that is inefficient, could be prone to error, and will become an all-around headache to keep updated. When you hit the Square Peg/Round Hole scenario, it's critical to consider whether there are back-end improvements you can make in addition to whatever it is you're trying to put up on the website.

3. Compatibility & Flexibility

Browsers, phones and screen sizes change rapidly, as do things like JavaScript libraries that might be running on your site. If you aren't keeping your site up-to-date with the latest script libraries, or ensuring your site can be adapted for mobile & new browser features that will allow you to engage your visitor more than you could "yesterday", then you run the risk of your site throwing errors or not functioning as expected. If you realize this too late, then it may take longer to get your site up to speed than if you had a site that was capable of these improvements along the way.

Bottom Line: treat your website like an engine

A finely-tuned engine will allow a car, no matter what it looks like, to run smoothly for years and years. To keep it finely-tuned, you have to invest in maintenance and making sure you replace non-performing parts. Neglect it, and it will be both expensive and time-consuming to fix any problems down the road. The same goes for your website.

Today we are pleased to announce the re-launch of their website, www.historicfairhill.org, which boasts a host of modern conveniences to help drive traffic to this historic venue.

Responsive Web Design helps with local searches

As a local destination, it was imperative to have a mobile-optimized option for the design, one that could adapt to local tourists searching for the cemetery from their smartphones. We used a responsive WordPress theme called Green Earth.

For the desktop user, the website is rich in visual impact and highlights the grounds beautifully. For the mobile user, we made sure key location information such as the address, phone, and a Visit button were available in the footer of every page.

Focused Content Strategy

Unfortunately, the prior site was built before WordPress had custom menus, so we had a lot of duplication. Recent changes in Google's ranking algorithm are now cracking down on duplicate content, so it was important to streamline the content on the site, not only for visitors navigating the site, but also for search indexing. This problem has been solved now, thanks to the custom menu feature.

Finally, we made sure to include calls to action for donations and newsletter signups on nearly every page, to make it clear that a goal of the site is to get newsletter signups. And on the donation page, we used the theme's pricing table to create a donation option that showed visitors what their money was going toward.

Check out more Before & After projects

You need an attorney, badly. Whip out the phone, Google "DUI attorney, Philadephia" and see Bahuriak Law Group, so you click through to their site. There are lots of words, all lawyer sites have words, but there are these buttons...one is a phone, another an email icon...and a "Contact" tab that you press. Up pops a form! 'Wow!' you think, and fill out the form, press 'Send' and feel much better about your situation.

Hopefully, this won't ever happen. But, if your target audience needs to access you quickly, providing intuitive, touch-friendly links on your site is definitely the best approach.

Responsive Design Tour - Bahuriak.com

When we redesigned Bahuriak Law Group's main website, the goal was to provide easy access to lead-generating assets: phone, email, directions, contact form. The first three were pretty easy: use buttons atop the page. The contact form, because it has some beef to it, needed its own space, so we settled on a fixed tab on the footer of the page that you could open and close.

Knowing up front that we were ultimately designing for a single-column mobile site, the navigation menu also got the "tab" treatment, although on the desktop site we initially have it "open" so you know you can see the various sections of the site. But all that space gets conserved when we reduce the size of our browser window, and the menu collapses.

Another feature we added to the site was a fixed header...once you scroll down the page, the header stops scrolling so that you always have access to the buttons on the top. And as the size of the window decreased, so did the labels on each button. In the end, the mobile version looks almost like an "app" with the fixed header/footer and touch-friendly buttons.

Mobile-First approach

Again, knowing our target audience would appreciate the easy access on their mobile devices, it was imperative to take into consideration how the menu, buttons and form would lay out as we moved from desktop to mobile.

More Photos (click on any thumbnail to load the gallery)

So when email marketing experts DJ Waldow and Jason Falls published a book called The Rebel's Guide to Email Marketing: Grow Your List, Break the Rules, and Win (Que Biz-Tech, 2012), I wanted to support them and picked up the Kindle edition.

In short, this book is a rebel in the world of yawn-inspiring, heard-it-before marketing books. If you're serious about email marketing, getting more subscribers and higher conversion rates, go buy it now (non-affiliate link).

Read my review of the Rebel's Guide on Amazon

What I Learned

• List Growth is paramount to success. Similarly, email marketing (like your website) is a more central component to the overall web presence than most people are giving it credit for.
• There has been a lot of movement toward triggered emails, more personalized content and segmentation. According to several of email marketing's top minds (the last chapter of the book), expect the movement to continue. That means you need to already be getting smarter at how you approach email marketing, so your competition doesn't get there first.
• "Best Practices" are really just "well-vetted ideas" that you can try, but can also use as a baseline for trying something a little different. Because, as DJ & Jason say, best practices may not be best for your company (paraphrased)

As I read The Rebel's Guide, I was constantly circling back to several of our clients who could literally benefit from the exact ideas being presented in the book. Normally, this doesn't happen, and for that, I say THANK YOU AND JOB WELL DONE to DJ & Jason!

Have you read The Rebel's Guide? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. And don't forget to follow DJ Waldow (@djwaldow) and Jason Falls (@jasonfalls).

::author::

How? By filtering your subscriber base down to a specific group of people -- called list segments -- that will give you the best return for that particular message. Maybe it's sending an email about an upcoming event in NYC to the subscribers local to that area, or a product upgrade announcement to subscribers who previously downloaded a whitepaper about that product.

Get your ducks in a row

To get the most out of list segmentation, you have to plan out how you want your subscriber base set up in the first place, so there are fields and data that match your segmentation queries. That requires planning.

Planning your subscriber setup structure will unveil what data points you have to be collecting, and whether those data points are coming from internal/external sources, your email marketing service provider, or the subscriber themselves using your Manage Preferences pages.

But even if you already have an active list that needs restructuring, you can always make adjustments in Excel and re-import your subscribers to your email service provider's system with updated information.

Two paths to choose from

There are two basic ways to set up your subscribers for segmentation: using a new list for each segment you want to create, and using data fields (and actions on previous campaigns) within a single list. Both have their benefits and drawbacks based on the types of segments you want to create. Below we illustrate how each approach might be best utliized:

When to Use a New List for Each Segment

• Separate Brands/Divisions - If your subscriber database gets messages from different brands or divisions within your company, it's best to put subscribers into multiple lists so their profile and preferences can be adjusted on a per-brand basis.
• One-off campaigns - Any time you run a special event, sweepstakes, or other campaign that might not tie directly into the day-to-day campaign strategy, it's best to put these subscribers on a separate list. That way their activity related to this specific campaign won't interfere with your general strategy.
• Near-zero list crossover - If you don't foresee any list crossover (same subscriber on more than one list) then it's safe to separate.

Segmentation using Data Fields

• Single Brand/Division - If you only have one brand or division (like most companies) it's safe to keep your subscribers on one list.
• Demographic-based campaigns - If you plan to send campaigns to segments based off of demographic data (age, location, sex, etc.) you don't need a new list for each group.
• Frequency preferences - Let's say you have both a weekly and a daily newsletter, and want to give subscribers the option to choose which frequency they want to receive. You don't need two lists, just have a "frequency" field that can be updated by the subscriber according to their preference. (BONUS TIP: if you do this, have a link to a sample email so they can see what they'll be receiving)
• Interest-based campaigns - Between campaign activity and profile data that you might have in your CRM system, you could create campaigns based on subscribers' interests. The key here is to track the data points that would make up that interest, unless you offer a bunch of checkboxes in an "Interests:" field on your subscriber form.
• Trigger-based campaigns - Your email marketing service should be able to let you build segments off of actions taken on a specific campaign (clicking a link, social sharing, etc.). If your segmentation strategy is to use that insight to send out a targeted follow-up, then you can pull all this info from a single list.

Hybrid Setups

Now, keep in mind that you could absolutely have a need for multiple lists, and then choose to segment within each list using data points.

• Message Type preferences - It might make sense to have lists broken up by message type or primary subject (promotions, news about X, news about Y) so that you could segment further inside of each message type based on other data points. Otherwise, it could get very tricky for the subscriber to choose between your message types and other preferences at the same time.
• Transaction-based campaigns - The most complex segmentation is transaction-based (and trigger-based from above), so it might make sense to split certain types of transactions (like for an event) into a special list, on which you would build other segmentation.

Ready to kick your email marketing up a notch using segmentation? Already using these strategies? Stuck on a particular one? Tell us about it in the comments below!

But you need subscribers.

It's more common a situation than you think, so before you go and contact that sleazy list broker to buy 100,000 "legitimate, qualified email addresses", why not turn to your existing fan base on social channels to build your list?

Each social network has advantages and features that you can leverage to promote your email list signup page. And by promoting your email newsletter effectively, you're telling your followers ever-so-subtlely that it's important for them to sign up. Here are some tips to promote your list on the major social networks, as well as within your newsletter itself:

Twitter:

1. Put a link in your bio - Your profile already has a field for your website, so put a link to your signup page in your bio. When people visit your profile page or hover over your name, they'll see that you want them to sign up for your newsletter. It doesn't get more blatantly obvious than this!
2. The "Don't miss out" tweet - About 20-30 minutes before your email newsletter is scheduled to be sent out, tweet a link to your signup form. Give your followers a sense of urgency that they're going to miss out (and those who are already on your list might RT it for you)
3. The "... is out!" tweet - Studies show some of the most popular tweets for click-throughs have some form of the online newspaper paper.li's "[so-and-so] Daily is Out!" text in them. Why not piggyback on that success and tweet a link to your newsletter's web version after you send it?

WebSIGHT Weekly by Shovi Websites is out! bit.ly/w0dKS4 ▸ Top stories today via @shoviweb

— Shovi Websites (@shoviweb) August 14, 2012

Facebook:

1. Signup tab - By using apps like Static HTML and others, you can create a customized buton on your facebook page with your signup form, so your fans don't have to leave your site.
2. Previews & Sneak Peeks - Studies show a large percentage of facebook users like a page to get deals or exclusive content. So, give them a sneak peek of one of your newsletter's articles by posting it as a status update, or a photo. Then, link to your signup form at the end of the post.
3. Put a link in the About field - Just like Twitter, you have a field for your website on your facebook page. But it doesn't appear unless a fan clicks onto your "About" tab. However, you can link to your signup form in the About text itself by typing the full URL (include the http:// part) and it will automatically hyperlink, and display on the page itself.

LinkedIn:

1. Post, Post, Post - Unfortunately, LinkedIn's company pages are a bit limited in their functionality as of now, so keep posting links about your newsletter and to your signup form. And post to your groups (judiciously, don't spam!) since you're more likely to get like-minded people signing up.
2. Product Spotlight - You can add the URL in your company profile blurb but it doesn't automatically link like on facebook & Twitter. So, consider a special Product Spotlight featuring your newsletter, which links straight to your signup page (or archive).

Email:

1. Signature - Add the signup link to your personal email signature.
2. In-Newsletter Signup Link - We covered this before, but if you're promoting social sharing and forward-to-friend activity within your newsletter, you'll want to give new people viewing it an easy way to sign up. What better way to do this than to link directly to your signup form from within the newsletter itself?

Google+:

1. Add to your profile - (Do you see a trend yet?) Having a link to your signup form from within your Page or personal Profile will show that you are emphasizing the newsletter and encourage signups.
2. Use the +1 button - Putting the +1 button on your signup page will allow you to share the page on Google+ and automatically share it with your circles.

Have we left any ideas off the lists above to help promote signups using your other social channels? Leave them in the comments below, and go get those subscribers!!

Guess what happens when you do that? You lose key opportunities with your subscribers to build loyalty, cross-channel following, and come across as a more sophisticated marketer that cares about its subscribers. To your subscriber, that confidence in you is only going to lead to more engagement with your campaigns...but instead, most businesses settle for a nondescript white page whose only graphic is the Email Service Provider's logo.

Don't settle for "default"

To build subscriber loyalty, cross-channel following and more subscriber engagement, take note of these nine ideas, illustrated below using screenshots from one of our clients' email marketing accounts. Then, hop over to your Email Marketing Service account and implement them before your next campaign.

Page Layout

1. At the bare minimum, add your logo to every public-facing page
2. Wrap around a template similar to the look of your website for a more seamless look
3. Make the page optimized for mobile, or at least no wider than 640 pixels

On-Screen Text

1. Add links to your social profiles on the confirmation pages to encourage social following
2. Tell people right on the subscribe page what to expect (content & frequency) from your campaigns. If you can link to an archive page, do it so they can get a sample.
3. Use active tense. You want people to invite you into their inbox, so skip the passive voice and talk to them like a human being.

In Your Email Messages

1. Design your Opt-in confirmation message with, at minimum, your logo.
2. If you have other confirmation emails that go out (updating subscriptions, success emails, etc.) be sure to add some branding to them as well.
3. BONUS: If you promote F2F (forward to friend) links and social sharing in your campaigns, be sure to add a link to your newly-branded signup form. It sounds counterintuitive to put a "signup" link inside your campaigns, but it's really the fastest way to convert non-subscribers viewing your campaigns into subscribers. (Thanks to @cspenn for this one, he uses it in his WhatCounts newsletter)

Now it's your turn!

What other tips do you have to build loyalty, confidence and cross-channel engagement? Who's doing it right? Tell us in the comments below?

Being able to convey a professional presence makes her coaching business look far better than peer coaches doing 100x the amount of business she's doing. If you agree, here are 9 easy ways you can brand your own email marketing account.

Custom Email Newsletter Template

The email template matches her branding and has several key elements to boost engagement & response:

1. Button-style call to action links that tell you exactly what to do when you click on that link
2. Social sharing and F2F (Forward to Friend) links
3. Signup link to the branded subscription form in the email itself (more on that in this article)

Branded Subscription Confirmation Page

Custom Email Templates and Branding with eCampaigns

Shovi Websites' eCampaigns email marketing service combines DIY simplicity with Enterprise-level support and experience. If you are looking to get more out of your email marketing campaign like Lisa did here, you should contact us.

With one exception: Recommendations. Below we illustrate what kind of exposure a company page can get when it receives a recommendation.

When you set up your product/service pages, you can request recommendations from your own contacts, pointing them to the individual product page itself, where they can recommend the product or service, and optionally write a testimonial. That recommendation, like all recommendations, becomes a "story" in the person's profile, and shows up in 2 places:

1. The news feed of all that person's contacts

Much like sharing a link, the person recommending your product or service generates a story on their profile about your product. The product thumbnail is brought in, and both the service AND the company page are linked to within the post. THOUGHT: LinkedIn should really start off the story with "[Name] Recommends [Company]" which is the same format as their personal recommendations. Then they would be more easily identified as such, and that would add credibility to the company.

2. The "Recent Activity" on that person's profile

Let's say the person recommending you gets a high number of visits to their profile each day. On their profile page, under "Recent Activity", you'll see a link to your product page and the recommendation story. As you can see, the same story appears here as in the news feed, and links to the same places. If the user isn't very active, that story could stay in the Activity box for quite some time.

Why is this important?

• If you have an eye-catching graphic for your product or service, it will capture readers' attention when shown in the news feed.
• The link to the full recommendation points to your actual product page, not a "story" page within the person's profile. This gets new visitors to your page instantly.
• The recommendation keeps the visitor "in-app" versus taking them off-site, a preference of many social network users, especially mobile users, who wouldn't have to leave their app, launch their browser, then try to get back to the app.
• Other than advertising, there aren't many other options to gain exposure for your company page. The treatment of recommendations by LinkedIn, coupled with the fact that recommendations are held in such high regard on this network, makes for a powerful, yet free, alternative to advertising.

How are you using recommendations and other features of LinkedIn company pages to grow your audience? Share in the comments below! And for more tips on how to use LinkedIn to grow your company following, check out this article that has tips to drive traffic to your company page from other parts of LinkedIn.

Follow Shovi Websites on LinkedIn.

Branded public-facing pages

Too often, email marketers settle for the generic, unbranded versions of their email marketing software's confirmation, archive & signup pages. We can now offer our clients a completely branded 'public side', to raise confidence and credibility in the eyes of their subscribers.

Branding is available on the following pages:

• Update profile
• Campaign Archives (per list)
• Subscribe and Unsubscribe forms
• Forward to a friend page

Signup Forms

When asking people to sign up to your email list, you need to instill confidence in them that you aren't some fly-by-night email marketer. With a completely customizable signup form builder, you can create forms that look good and can be embedded anywhere. You can also:

• Hide subscriber fields from view on a per-form basis
• Link directly to the form using your branded template (above)
• Create a QR code for mobile scanning and signup (use this at your Point of Sale instead of the old-fashioned signup sheet!)
• Track how many people sign up through each of your forms

Social Sharing and Activity Tracking

After you send that campaign, you want to track what's going on, right? Our Dashboard has an activity timeline that includes opens, clicks, and shares. Visitors can also share the campaign on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and other popular social networks.

More to come

This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the new capabilities and feature improvements in our eCampaigns email marketing service. Keep tabs on us through any of the social networks to hear about new integrations and success stories from clients who are taking advantage of eCampaigns.

How to make your email marketing more convenient

You post to your blog, right? Or have press releases, or some other stream of time-indexed content? You add events to a calendar, right? You have other activity on your website, like new photo albums, case studies, contest and other announcements, right?

What's to say you can't extract that same content from your website, and format it differently, like, say, in an email? You already did the work once by posting content to your website. Now, send it off to your subscriber list without doing any additional work!

Great idea! This will save tons of time! But...um...how do I set this up?

To automate the parts of your email marketing that correspond with content management (not triggered or transactional emails, those are different), follow this recipe:

Ingredients:

• Email Service Provider with an API
• Content Management System
• Graphic Designer*
• Webmaster*
• Programmer*
• A budget of at least $1,000

* Can be all the same person, and most likely is for smaller companies.

Directions:

1. Design & test your email template.

• Have your email template custom designed, don't use a pre-made one. Pre-made templates were not designed for your content, they were designed with Latin placeholder text and stock images that are pixel-perfect until you need a larger image, or another line of text.
• Make the template fit to the content, there's no "one-size-fits-all" in email marketing!
• Test the template with your sample content in various email clients. Litmus works great for this, or your ESP probably has an "Inbox Preview" tool.

2. Convert the template to a dynamic page.

• Your webmaster/programmer will take the template and put in all the various placeholder codes to display your email content. They will also come up with criteria on how to extract the appropriate content from your website and flow it into the template.
• This is definitely the most complex part. By automating the process, you're relinquishing your control over content, display, formatting, etc. Instead, you create rules for all these things, and it may be that you have to have a "wizard" form to tell the templates which content to pull up.

3. Connect to the API.

• Once you can create your email message on the fly using content from your website, it's time to feed the HTML into your email marketing service's API.
• Again, you may be required to set up some ground rules as to which lists to use, how to segment, when to send, etc.
• Test it out on some dummy addresses or a dummy list, and when you feel good about how everything works, deploy your templates with your live lists.

4. Sit back & relax!

So in the end, you have professionals handling all the heavy-lifting related to your email marketing, and all you're doing is writing content for your website that you'd already be writing in the first place. Yet, now you have increased the exposure of your website, your social media channels (through social sharing within the email messages), and added more touchpoints to your communication strategy with your customers...all positive things, and all conveniently absent of extra work on your part.

Examples of automated email marketing in real-life:*

Adding Events to a Calendar:
Every time an event is added, a script runs to process the event data and send an email. Not all event types have emails sent out about them, though, only events in the Webinar category. The email has all the Webinar data plus a link to register.

Upcoming Events:
Every Friday, a list of the next 4 weeks' events are queried and formatted into an email, with just the dates & titles and a link to the full event page on the website.

Monthly Newsletter:
On the first of every month, all the news/blog posts from the month prior, as well as the upcoming events this month, are pooled together into a comprehensive newsletter. The blog posts only show a snippet of text and encourage readers to click through to the website for the complete story.

Special Announcements:
There is an Announcements section on the website that isn't tied to a date like blog posts or events. Posts to this section have a longer shelf-life and are usually more marketing-related in nature. When one is added to the website, an email about the announcement is sent out, directing people to the same link they would go to if they were on the website.

* These are indeed real-life examples we have integrated into our clients' websites as a standard feature of our eCampaigns Enterprise service.

How are you using automation to make your email marketing more convenient? Tell us in the comments below!

This new site takes advantage of an easy-to-use, responsive grid called the 1140 CSS Grid. This grid is built to automatically scale the website to fit the screen, and if the screen gets too small, actually converts everything to a single-column "mobile" version. A big thanks to Andy Taylor for the grid!

Check out more photos on our Google+ page

Paradigm shift in responsive design

Responsive web design requires a slightly different approach than more traditional methods, in that your focus is on providing access to content in a dimension-agnostic setting. In other words, instead of designing your page around your content, you have to design your content, period. This is because the content itself moves and shifts around as the screen size changes. You also have to organize your content in a way that allows it to all collapse into a single column on the "mobile version," and still present itself in a logical fashion (example: making sure your sidebar floats below your page content, not above it).

Tablets and responsive design

We learned something about responsive design (or any design for that matter) and tablets: they're a unique animal that you have to account for separately. Why? The screen size is typically wide enough (in landscape) to accommodate your website's desktop version, but due to the zooming built into the tablet, you have to pull in some of the mobile version's navigational formatting. Plus, with tablets the visitor is going to be using a finger to "click", which means your desktop-version drop-down menu needs to be converted to the mobile-version "toggle" (open/close) menu. And, the padding around your links should be such that your visitor doesn't mistap. In truth, it's a pain in the neck, but in the end, we're really excited to give our client such a powerful tool to market his firm.

We used unbounce.com, a reasonably-priced landing page application that made the landing page really easy to build, and hooked right into our eCampaigns email marketing platform. But the ease of use, metrics and affordability weren't the key takeaways with this project...rather, we realized through this project what a lousy job websites do in creating conversions.

Ego: the #1 reason websites don't convert

[Way] More often than not, websites are designed for the CEO. His/Her tastes, preferences for certain bells & whistles, and oversized logos rule over strategic menu placement, calls to action, and (of course) great content. In short, ego drives design. But ego cares little for others, and these 'others' are the people who use the website to make purchase decisions and ultimately line the CEO's pocket.

Shift your thinking by building a landing page

If you want your website to do a better job at conversions, start one page at a time. Build a landing page for one of your products or services. But before you hop into unbounce, LiveBall, Marketo or any other landing page service, and fool around with all the neat design tools, ask yourself these questions:

1. What, exactly and specifically, do I want this page to do?
2. How is my prospective customer getting to this page?
3. Is the message I'm showing them consistent with the channel from which they came? 
4. Do I know enough about them to be able to design for them? Hit on their 'hot buttons'?
5. What don't I know about them, and how can I fill in the gaps before -- and after -- launching this landing page?
6. What could cause them to want to leave?
7. What should cause them to want to continue (hint: this will shape your call to action)?
8. How will I measure success for this page, both for my company as well as my customers?

Our client had the answers to all these questions for the project to the right, and the landing page's layout, copy, calls to action, and creative all fell into place within a couple of hours. And it's likely to be a better-performing web page than any other on their website. Which, of course, got us to thinking...

Shouldn't every page be a landing page?

In a word, YES! Your visitors are coming to your website from tons of different channels, and most of your traffic isn't to your homepage if you run a blog, post lots of links to your social networks, or have great organic search rankings. You have data out the wazoo on them...use it to your advantage! Follow the navigation paths, talk to your sales force, customer service reps and marketing team to build buyer personas, and ultimately cater your content to them, not your ego. In short, make your pages about them, but in a context where you know everything there is to know about them, so they will do exactly what you want.

Prodex Products

Prodex is a division of JSH international, whose website we re-launched last Fall under our Website Content Manager (WCM) framework. The best part about this project was that we used the "multi-site" tools built into our WCM framework to simply re-skin the JSHi site, apply some minor formatting changes and content rules, then it was simply a 'flip of the switch' to make the site live.

For our clients, they get to enjoy a single point of entry for all their content, and can share content across both sites simply by checking off a box in the admin area.

PA/Delaware Valley Chapter, CAI

When we last redesigned PADVC's website in 2008, the focus was more heavily on text, from legislative updates to chapter programs. Now, there are sponsor programs, in-house graphics to promote the Chapter's various events, and a blog. So, we built them a bright, inviting site that could balance the level of text and graphics without debasing the design, and have some great "sponsor love" along the footer and on the sidebar.

On their previous site we'd built a custom event registration system, which we are in the process of "porting" over to the new framework. The content management tools on the old site were mismatched and dated, so you can imagine how happy they are to have an easy-to-use admin area with everything at their fingertips. 

Springing into Spring

With Spring just around the corner, make sure you take some time out to review your website, social/search/email marketing and content strategies. Maybe it's time for a redesign? If so, send us a Proposal Request today!

J.S. Hovnanian & Sons "Realtor Template"

JSH&S has a list of realtors with whom they communicate special events and information, so that these realtors will bring their buyers in to buy a home in one of their 5 active communities. We know that a realtor's attention is being pulled in many directions at once, so the primary focus for this template was to make sure there was easy, uncluttered access to contact information and content.

Healthcare Facilities Solutions

The HFS website is highly-designed, and not conducive to long newsletter articles. We built a dynamic template that could serve:

• As a truncated "teaser" version of the full article, which they send as their email.
• As a full-length version of the article.
• As a mini-website for archives that also links through to the rest of their website.

Boston Irish Business Association

BIBA's website still remains one of our favorite designs, and we use it as a "poster child" for many non-profit groups and organizations.

Their newsletter spotlights various events and members, and offers social sharing capabilities to help spread the word.

Are you looking for a custom-designed email template?

As you can see from the above examples and others we've done, a custom-designed email template will do wonders for your brand compared to stock templates.

Our prices for email newsletter templates, retail-oriented templates and other types of email marketing templates start at around $300. Contact us to discuss your strategy and content, so we can prepare an accurate quote.

And if you're looking to save some time on your email marketing, and still get amazing results at DIY-level prices, contact us about using our eCampaigns platform.
 

After a few weeks, we realized that WebSIGHT could do much more than just provide links to articles across the web. When configured properly, and with some careful scheduling on your part, you can use paper.li to curate content on your various social networks, and cross-promote them seamlessly via your paper.li newspaper. Here's how:

1. Connect your social network profiles

Each paper.li paper allows you to connect up to 10 content sources, organized by priority. Use this as a means to connect your social channels, and also brand mentions, so if you're mentioned in any press on social networks you increase the likelihood of your newspaper picking it up. We have our RSS feed first, to ensure our own published content (like this article) is picked up; from there, we've added our Twitter, Google+ and Facebook profiles as well as some brand mentions.

2. Schedule content across different networks

In order to expose your subscribers to your other social networks, you need to post content to them, and make sure the content is specific to that network. Then, when paper.li aggregates your content to publish your next edition, they'll link those stories directly to your social networks. It's important to realize that we're talking about content specific to each network (like a post, photo gallery, or video, not a link on that network back to a story on your website).

3. Test and refine

After each publication, you can push a specific article to the top of the issue. Your subscribers will get an email with whatever paper.li decided for the leading article, but all future visits to your newspaper will show the new featured article.

Once the first couple of issues have been published, check to see if your content is being picked up automatically by paper.li, and in the format you want. If some channels, for example, aren't feeding into your newspaper, you can always tweet links to them from your Twitter account, and they'll be picked up that way.

Why this works

By compiling your content across various social channels into one online newspaper, you have a landing page which will point your subscribers to all your social networks, where they can "Like," "Circle" or "Follow" your company. And with some simple, purposeful planning on where you post your content, you can be sure to give exposure to your entire social mix in each issue.
 

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Linkedin
• Digg
• StumbleUpon
• Reddit
• Tumblr
• Del.icio.us

The social sharing bar has 4 icon sets and a neat little "pop-up" feature when you hover over each icon. You can also rearrange the order of the icons, or drop icons out altogether.

More Social Coming Up

Up next on our plate is to add a similar plugin that allows your visitors to "follow" you on various popular social networks (commonly called a "Follow Bar"). We've built a nice little library of social network icons, so you have plenty of choices.

For more information on how much easier self-managed content is using our Website Content Management framework, please contact us.

What you could add to the Files module

1. Newsletters
2. Weekly bulletins or messages
3. Event Flyers that you want to put elsewhere on the site (and not attached strictly to an event in the calendar)
4. Forms and other downloads pertaining to a particular initiative or section of your website
5. Embedded video content

Some ways our clients are using the Files module

• A parish can upload their weekly bulletin either as a PDF, or written out in full using the Description field; then drop a running list of weekly bulletins onto a "Weekly Bulletin" page using a shortcode.
• An organization with an Annual Expo can post the PDF's for sponsorship, registration, and the agenda neatly into the page, then next year just upload new PDF's; the links will automatically update on the Annual Expo page.

The "Files" module is one of several new modules coming down the pipe for our WCM framework, which is built to allow clients to access the most important parts of their content in an easy-to-use interface, and integrates with other Shovi Websites products, such as our eCampaigns email marketing platform. If you need a simple Content Management System that doesn't rely on band-aid style plugins to enhance its core set of features, contact us.

The entire project had four main parts:

1. Create a marketing site to sell the opportunity
2. Build a support portal behind the marketing site for My Daily Find publishers
3. Redesign the existing www.mydailyfind.com to something more scalable and flexible to others publishers' potential needs, and that could also be managed by our team from an upgrades and troubleshooting standpoint
4. Build "installation" and "demo" versions of the My Daily Find site for testing and developing new features, troubleshooting, and training.

Part 1: The Marketing Site

Design Strategy - My Daily Find's business model centers around showing prospective publishers how easy it is to run an online lifestyle magazine, but the reality is they're selling the system -- an application, a pre-configured WordPress website package -- that the publishers will use to run the online lifestyle magazine. So, instead of incorporating lifestyle stock photography into the design strategy as one might expect, we decided to use icons to represent the various features and benefits that this system provides. Prospective customers would associate these icons with software, and focus on the features and benefits of using My Daily Find for their online lifestyle magazine.

Navigation - The key with any site that ends with a "Signup" button is to walk the visitor through the sales process. We built the navigation menu to emulate the pitch, explaining the opportunity, features, benefits, pricing and ultimately including some support material to help them evaluate the feasibility of the online lifestyle magazine as a business model.

Content - We aimed to put content in blocks and bulleted lists to make it easy to evaluate the opportunity, features, benefits and pricing. Using our Website Content Manager framework, My Daily Find is also able to make content updates on their own, and provide access to their SEO consultants to post articles in their blog area.

Stay tuned for the next part in the My Daily Find series, where we talk about the Support Portal.

Until recently, QR Codes hadn't been highly adopted up by consumers, mostly because they didn't know what to do with them. Additionally, marketers weren't delivering contextually-relevant experiences once the codes were scanned and web pages visited (read: marketers forgot the "mobile optimized" part). But a new study by mobile marketing and tech research firm Nellymoser looked at how QR codes were used in the top 100 national magazines in the U.S. last year (the title of the report is “Mobile Action Codes In Magazine Advertising 2011 Including QR Codes, Microsoft Tags and Digital Watermarks.”). And we see the sentiment about QR Codes shifting in a big way.

4 Main Uses for QR Codes

The study found four types of campaigns associated with these codes (and they scanned 4,468 of them):

1. Video demonstrations
2. Data Capture & List Building (including sweepstakes)
3. E-Commerce and Store Locators
4. Social Sharing

Based on a recap of this report on the website brandchannel, we learned that nearly all the campaigns were mobile optimized, and that usage of QR Codes in print media grew over the course of 2011.

Why You Should Care

The study seems to have disspelled the notion that QR Codes are a novelty that consumers haven't figured out. Even if adoption is still on the low side, the study indicates that there's a commitment by major consumer industries to expand the consumer's experience beyond what they see on a printed page by using these QR Codes.

With adoption comes expectation, and so at some point a customer (whether you're B2B or B2C) is going to ask you whether you have a QR Code they can scan for more information. If you know this now, you can get ahead of the curve and be ready to deliver when the time comes.

How You Can Use QR Codes

Using the 4 main campaign types for QR Codes as a springboard, here are 5 ideas on how you can use QR Codes in your B2B marketing:

1. Scan the QR Code at your trade show booth for a video demonstration
2. Scan for PDF Downloads of your product brochures/spec sheets (Great idea for restaurants too!)
3. Scan for a mobile-friendly page that links to all your social profiles (or link to specific profiles)
4. Scan to link to your vCard, hosted on Dropbox as a public file, so your contact can download it and add you as a contact (works on all devices, even iPhones)
5. Scan to your Google Places page (try it below!) so someone looking for directions to your office can have them right from their phone.

However you use QR Codes in your marketing, just remember to make the destination a good (and mobile-friendly) use of the person's time.

::author::

Our clients ask us a lot whether it makes sense to build a mobile version of their website. Obviously, mobile usage is trending upward, companies are spending more on mobile ads, apps and integration; so it stands to reason we'd get this question. And normally we'd look at our clients' analytics data to determine if there was enough of a legitimate mobile audience to warrant the investment; but just looking at the first few weeks of the year on some of our clients' accounts, we can see that the answer to the question about audience is "yes."

But do you really need a mobile-specific version of your website, or just one that offers visitors a better browsing experience when they're viewing your site on a mobile device. If it's the latter, consider investing in a "responsive" layout instead.

Responsive Design vs. Mobile Design:

A responsive site, versus a mobile site, will adapt to your visitor's browser window based on the size of the screen (and device type, browser type, and other factors that may affect how your website would be used or viewed). Watch this short video using our favorite social monitoring service, Sprout Social, on what happens when a responsive design website is viewed on 3 different sized browsers:

As you can see, the key benefit to a responsive one is that you design a site once, then leave it.

Why responsive design makes more sense than mobile-friendly design:

Email Marketing - Do you send email campaigns that point people back to your website to read articles, register for events, or buy something? With a responsive site design, your subscribers clicking through via their smartphones will have the optimal experience for that content, leading to more shares, registrations, and purchases than if they had to zoom in and navigate tiny links with their fingers.

But if you had a conventional mobile website, you'd have to make sure those links in the email either went to the mobile version by default, or could sniff out the device the subscriber was using when they clicked, and serve up the appropriate content. Then, you'd want to track whether or not your subscribers were using the mobile site more often than the regular site, which is more work for you.

Orientation - In the example above, the mid-sized desktop version of the Sprout Social site would be what one would see on a landscape-oriented iPad. However, if you opted to display the mobile version on an iPad the user wouldn't get the optimal experience, would they? However, rotating the iPad vertically would switch the site to the "mobile" layout, which makes more sense. Same device, same site, 2 different displays, 1 optimum experience.

Device Support - A responsive site worries much less about device support than a conventional mobile one. This is important considering the vast number of screen sizes on mobile devices (and the fact that many can browse in both portrait & landscape). Responsive is more forward-thinking and will require less customization or adaptation down the road as more devices come on the market.

Conclusion:

Designing responsive websites is trickier than traditional desktop and mobile versions. There is a lot to account for, all at once, for not just "today" but "tomorrow" as well. But the result is a website that focuses on the people using it, and for that you will be rewarded with more sales, signups, and positive feedback.

::author::

In a senior-focused microsite we launched with Shovi Websites, we tried to create a straightforward navigation path for the most basic user. The homepage features the equivalent of a “Get Started” button that takes users to the first content page on the site (hereafter “Homes & Pricing”). Because there is a navigation bar across the top of all pages, users could actually get to the Homes & Pricing page in two ways:

1. The navigation bar
2. The button at the end of the intro copy

After a few weeks, it became clear that users who took the ‘button’ path abandoned the Homes & Pricing page frequently, while users who took the ‘navigation bar’ bath continued to move through the site. We wondered if users who used the ‘button’ to get started expected to see more buttons on the Homes & Pricing page, and didn’t know what to do from there. So we added “forward” and “back” buttons to each page, highlighting the section that the user should go to next, or just came from (respectively).

The Results:

We cut the abandon rate of the Homes & Pricing page by 43% for users who took the 'button' path, simply by giving them a consistent navigation option across the rest of the site. We set the expectation on the homepage that you could use buttons to explore the site, and once we delivered on that expectation throughout the site, we retained 43% more users, at least for another page. (Some small portion of this is noise, as evidenced between the difference between “Before” and “After” for Navigation bar users.)

Unexpected Finding:

The 'button' is by far the preferred method of navigation for this site. Not only do people use it 12:1 compared to the navigation bar, but when we added the buttons to subsequent pages, all users (even navigation bar users) were more likely to use those buttons to navigate. This speaks to the target audience: less sophisticated internet users who need a simple, story-like website to tell them what they need to know.

About the Author:

Garo Hovnanian drives marketing strategy through research and analytics for J.S. Hovnanian & Sons, a privately held homebuilder in the Philadelphia market. Follow Garo on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.

We're confident we can pull off the items on this list, because they all stem from a central business strategy: to be able to build, manage, and market clients' websites so they don't have to. For the past decade, we've positioned ourselves as a partner, a resource, a go-to-guy for whatever your website needed; that's what Shovi Websites is all about. It's a hard model to explain, since our services cover so many specific verticals of the web industry. But, the things we have our hands in everyday allow us to provide those services at the highest level, so we haven't narrowed our focus over the years.

In 2011, we listened a lot. We read a lot. We talked a little, just to test the waters and see if we could participate at the level at which we expect to participate.

In 2012, we're ready to tell you what we've learned, and how much more we can do for our clients. But as a twist, instead of trying to explain by example, we're going to lead by example. You can follow along as we grow during the year, and hopefully apply some of what we've learned to your own business.

The Official 2012 Shovi Websites New Year's Resolution List:

• Publish a weekly email newsletter about trends, tips, and company news
• Finish the core programming on our Website Content Manager (WCM) framework and migrate our clients over at as little cost to them as possible (if any at all)
• Improve our own email marketing - better list management and segmentation
• Create an infographic
• Create at least one mobile or "responsive" website design
• Create at least one truly mobile-optimized email template
• Guest-post at least one article about email marketing or web design on a well-known website or blog
• Become a valuable member of the social conversations happening on Twitter, Linkedin Groups, Facebook & Google+
• Broaden our following across all social networks, along with recommendations and participation by the community on our pages
• Run at least one promotion on a social network

As the items on this list are completed, we expect them to help shape the way we describe our service model, and positively influence some internal processes to help us serve our clients better.

Want to follow along?

Subscribe to our WebSIGHT weekly newsletter. Connect with us on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google+. Hire us and see first-hand how effective we are. Or, tell us in the comments below what your resolutions are and how we can find you; we'll keep tabs on each other.

(Note: not all the tweets from today's #ProfsChat are shown below; I picked out the ones among the conversation and retweets that best answered the questions. And while it should be implied that an article written by a guy who builds websites for a living would have clickable thumbnails that link to enlarged images, I feel compelled to say, "click the images below to enlarge")

Q1: Why should small businesses take advantage of email marketing?

Q2: What are some of the challenges small businesses have with email marketing?

Q2A: do you think bad email marketing does more damage than good?

Q3: What is the first thing small businesses should do when improving their email marketing?

Q4: What are the most common email mistakes you see small businesses make?

Q5: What are some ways small businesses can overcome the challenges they have? Education, training, consultant?

Q6: As a consumer, if you could give one piece of advice to small businesses, what would it be?

Lessons Learned

How to Overcome these obstacles

The Email Guide said it perfectly: Seek help + baby steps. My advice to you: pick one element of your email marketing campaigns to improve, and do your due diligence -- seeking professional help when appropriate -- to improve that element. Here are some areas many small businesses need to improve when it comes to email marketing, you can pick one or all for next year, but do something to get better:

List completeness - having only email addresses and no other data means you can't segment your email campaigns and deliver more targeted information to your subscribers. Take the time to think about the data points that you might use to segment your lists (geography, services used, type of contact, position in company) and add those fields to your email list. Also be sure to add a first & last name to each email address, so you can greet your subscribers and improve your open rates by 10%.

Plan your content - all publications and marketing campaigns run off a calendar, and your email campaigns are no different. Think through 3, 6 or 12 months of your content up front, so you can evaluate it as a whole and make sure your marketing messages are cohesive and are of interest to the subscribers.

Design templates around your content - each message type in your campaigns will be consumed differently, in various contexts and over varying periods of time. You'll want to keep promotions as focused as possible on the Call to Action, where your newsletter can afford to contain more links and blocks of text to keep subscribers coming back to the email long after you send it. Once you've figured out your content calendar, develop a design(s) to put that content in the best possible light.

Automate what you can - There's no reason to do double-work if you can help it. If your email newsletter contains headlines from your blog posts and upcoming trade show appearances, then that info should already be on your website. Work with your web team and email marketing service's API to create a tool that builds a perfectly-formatted email newsletter from existing content, it will save you time, headache, and encourage you to develop more content.

Change your tune - one of the key takeaways from ProfsChat was that consumers want email content to be worth reading, to benefit them somehow. If you aren't sure whether your content does that, find out...do an informal poll or survey with your subscribers, split test a couple of campaigns with the same message written in varying "voices" and see if one outperforms the other, or do both!

Hire a Pro - the cost of poor email marketing can be much higher than the cost to have someone do it for you. Any time you hire a professional, you can expect a higher level of insight, experience and understanding of what is going to give you a better result. These people are in the trenches every day (like participating in ProfsChat!) while you're running your business. As you get better at email marketing, you can take some of the responsibilities back in-house.

Thanks to MarketingProfs, DJ Waldow and all the participants for an awesome session! We hope you learned something from this recap, feel free to continue the discussion in the comments below!

Oh, and if you want a combined graphic of the questions above, use this link. I'd appreciate an image credit and link back to this website, or at the very least to follow myself or Shovi Websites on Twitter. Thank you!

::author::

Not impossible, expected. Unfortunately, Outlook '07 is the Dark Side of the Force when it comes to email design, and all of us designers pretty much hate it. The good news today, however, is that we've been able to address that whitespace issue with a simple fix that still holds up in other email clients.

Tables? No. Separator Image? Yes.

As you can see, all we were trying to do was add a border to the bottom container of each item listed in the cell below, to use as a dividing line. Outlook, however, wouldn't have it. We tried a separator image, but how do you account for the padding between the horizontal rule and the blocks of text? We didn't want to use a table, those can be quirky enough on their own; and this part of the template was going to resize on smaller screens, so a fixed width separator image wouldn't work either.

Recipe for Safe Outlook '07 Separator

Ingredients:
3 DIV containers
1 transparent spacer image

Directions:
Copy and paste the 3 DIV containers below where you want the separator to be, and change your background colors to reflect the background color of the parent cell.

<div style="height:8px; line-height:8px; font-size:8px; -webkit-text-size-adjust:none; overflow:hidden; width:100%; display:block; background:#dfd7ba;">&nbsp;</div> <div style="height:1px; width:100%; line-height:1px; font-size:1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust:none; overflow:hidden; background:#bcb188;"><img width="1" height="1" border="0" src="/path/to/spacer.gif" alt="" /></div> <div style="height:8px; line-height:8px; font-size:8px; -webkit-text-size-adjust:none; overflow:hidden; width:100%; display:block; background:#dfd7ba;">&nbsp;</div>

Then, in the middle DIV container, change the background color to the color of the separator bar. And you'll get the result below:

On the right side, we added a "Social Buzz" space for Sonia's to copy in recent Yelp! reviews, or to congratulate people who unlocked special badges on Foursquare. The idea behind this section is to show that there are, in fact, people utilizing the various social networks that Sonia's can be found on, and to encourage more of their use.

If you're like most, you've noticed the line between your desktop and smartphone - in terms of how capable they are to help you accomplish these tasks - has blurred. Dramatically. So much so, that perhaps you find yourself using a service from one device and medium through to the next, and that you'll use one device for parts of tasks but transition over to another to complete it.

Why are we overcomplicating things? It seems like a lot of clutter, doesn't it? Here's why: we choose devices, applications and websites based on how well they'll help us accomplish the task at hand. No longer restricted to a single platform, we are in control over how we consume the same piece of information. So, in a way, people are the new platform. And designers, programmers and marketers alike have to respond.

How to Design the Web for the People Platform

In a People Platform, there are no coding syntaxes to worry about, no "my logo needs to be bigger" arguments, and no optimal number of click-throughs to get positive ROI. Your success (or failure) is going to hinge on your ability to deliver precisely what your customer wants, when they want it, and how they want it. They don't care about you; they care about your information, and if you can't deliver it, they'll find someone who can.

To design for the People Platform, you have to understand the information your customers and what they want better than they do (or you can't give it to them). See, with all these devices and interconnectivity, things are more cluttered than ever. So, break down the tasks and transactions that occur while they're consuming information, and figure out how to make them more intuitive, more natural, regardless of the device.

What You Can Do to Make Yourself People Platform-Ready

If you've read this far and are wondering how you could possibly re-engineer your entire content platform to be more intuitive and focused on delivering the experience, here are some ideas that aren't too hard (or costly) to implement:

1. GET TOUCH-FRIENDLY - Do you need a mobile version of your website? Probably not; the fact is that most smartphones are perfectly capable of displaying all the effects and information on your current website (except mouseovers!).  But DO take a look at your navigation menus and links within your content to make sure that there is ample space between buttons and links. Also, consider switching your hover/mouseover effects to a 'click' effect.
2. CLEAN UP YOUR CODE - People don't like to wait, period. Spend some time cleaning up your website's code, from extra (excess) JavaScript to redundant CSS to nested plugin after plugin after plugin (WordPress users, this means you!). A lean and mean website can also be more flexible, should you decide (hint, hint) to hide some unnecessary layout elements on smaller screens.
3. OPTIMIZE LANDING PAGES FOR MOBILE - This really should be your #1 priority. We know, we just said not to bother with mobile site, but landing pages are different. They're the pages you click to from within an email, a tweet, your facebook feed, or even search results page. These pages are critical in and of themselves for capturing your visitors, and the people visiting them are focusing 100% on that page's content. By optimizing them for mobile, you guarantee yourself the best possible chance of delivering a positive experience.
4. SINGLE-COLUMN EMAILS - Consider switching your email newsletter to a skinnier, single-column version. Link to your articles instead of including the entire text (but only after you've done #1 & #2 above...otherwise there's no incentive for someone to click through to your website).
5. UNDERSTAND YOUR ANALYTICS - The only way you'll ever get better at delivering the experiences your customers want from your content is to monitor the content...heavily. Get to know your analytics software, and how to do things like split-test. You don't have to become a statistician to get the basics down. The way to get the most out of your analytics tracking is to know what you want in the first place.

Conclusion

Some companies have already started designing for the People Platform, you've probably noticed things like larger text, navigation and call-to-action buttons across the web (that emulate what you'd find on a smartphone). From a design standpoint, we feel the trend will continue to shift more toward what we today consider "mobile" focused design. Why? Simple: because with mobile, the user is touching vs. pointing to what they want. It's more personal, and therefore more intuitive, so we expect it to continue.

Where we feel so many companies are falling short is with things like landing pages and other experience-oriented tasks. Herein lies an opportunity for you to get ahead of the curve, by looking at your content, how people consume it, and how you can take that consumption path and make it smarter, faster and more intuitive. Get to work!

The site utilizes the very popular WordPress eStore plugin to offer digital products via PayPal. From a marketing standpoint, Growing Girls Minds is using both a free download and a newsletter as lead generation tools.

::author::

What's New for JSHi

The original site was essentially a 3-page corporate brochure placeholder site, while their 3 brand websites had been developed more fully over the years. With this new website, we've flip-flopped the focus: now, the corporate site will set the standard by which the rest of the websites will be re-launched.

Additionally, JSHi is one of the first clients taking full advantage of our Website Content Manager (WCM) platform. The WCM boasts simple, intuitive content management tools while still being as robust as other popular platforms like WordPress. Built into the WCM is the ability to post content to multiple websites at once, a feature that many content management systems do not have. With the WCM, though, a press release, testimonial, or association logo can be posted to the corporate site and the respective brand site with the click of a button, reducing clutter and the need for double-entry. And from an administrative standpoint, JSHi can limit access to specific types of content (and specific websites), thereby reducing the chance that content managers post something in the wrong place.

A Major step forward for Shovi

The launch of the JSHi site also solidifies the WCM as a stable framework, one that is capable of handling a broad range of website needs. From here on out, all websites will be built on this framework (using a versioning system), and legacy sites in our portfolio will be converted as needed. Having a framework in place allows us to focus on developing new ways to help our clients' sites succeed, without "reinventing the wheel" each time. Upcoming plans include integrating our eCampaigns email marketing platform, real-time stats, and help desk products in ways that position the WCM as a single source for information.

The new site, www.SienaLeasing.com, was built specifically for seniors. Large typeface, simple navigation dominate the design, as did the need to keep the content clean and obvious. Make no mistake about it, though...this site is hardly basic HTML.

Tabs, Accordions and Lightboxes

To make sure visitors had access to all the information on a page without leaving it, we employed 3 jQuery techniques. Tabs on the Neighborhood page let visitors jump around the various categories to learn about their neighborhood.

Accordions created an intuitive way to navigate through the photos of each available home style. And to view larger images without leaving the page, the image would open in a lightbox.

Accordion (collapsed)

Accordion (expanded)

Another tactic we used to help aid the readability of the page was slight variations in color. Note above that the expanded accordion has a white background (versus the default light beige), a border around it, and a darker font. This sets it apart from the rest of the list.

Most of the time, we emphasize having a clear-cut path for your visitor to follow when they come to your website. However, in the case of Documented Legacy's website, we wanted to take the visitor on an exploratory journey of what legacy writing is all about. By cross-linking sample galleries to blog posts to workshops, we still engage the visitor and lead them down a path to contact the company for more information.

A special "hats-off" to the plugins NextGEN Gallery, Dynamic Widgets, and Event Espresso, and the Primely WordPress theme, all of which laid the foundation strategically for this site to be a top-performer in its industry.

The old site was chock-full of keywords and SEO techiques, so we were careful to copy as much of it as possible over to this microsite; however, the redesigned site is intentionally much smaller to start (there are plans to expand on some of the topics once we see how the new layout performs). We used "tabs" and an accordion effect to toggle parts of the microsite, instead of creating one long page that would distract visitors. This also gives the page a more engaging feel.

3 Ways to Generate Leads

We introduced 3 consistent ways to generate leads from the microsite.

1. Click to Call - atop the page is a big, green button with the phone number. On desktops, this is an obvious call to action. On handheld devices, the size of the button (even when the screen is zoomed out) is clear, and we added a "tel:" link to allow the user to press the button and launch their phone's built-in calling function.
2. Email - In the blue tabbed area, which sets the stage with introductory copy for each geographic target audience (Philadelphia, PA, NJ), there is a green call to action button which launches the email link.
3. Form - to the right of the page, in a distinct color, is a contact form. It's obvious through placement that this is what we want visitors to use to contact the firm. We could have made this green as well, to convey that all the calls to action elements are green, but it was a little over-the-top and distracting. We will be testing this, though, and may decide to change all the calls to action to the same color if there is a major difference in performance.

Check out our Redesign Before & After samples.

Twitter Tips and links to trends in web design & email marketing (we've hidden a special offer on our page)	Linkedin Service spotlights and recommendations (yes, there's a special offer here too!)
Facebook Project showcases, recruitment, and discussion (keep your eyes open for Facebook-only promotions)	RSS Feed Articles from our blogs, "Latest Projects" and "Market Intelligence", also with discussion.

Why You Should Follow

Everyday, we follow the developments, trends and best practices of web design and email marketing. That's our job, and we pass that knowledge and experience to our clients via powerful, easy-to-use websites that produce results.

Our goal is to tailor our content for each channel to help our clients and prospective clients do more with their websites & email marketing efforts. You'll want to tune in to get ideas, stats, trends, and experiences that can help you increase open rates, convert visitors to buyers, explore possibilities in mobile, and more!

So, if you want to keep up with these trends, tips and best practices, go to your social network of choice (or all of them) and connect with Shovi Websites! We can't wait to see you!

Unfortunately, the "when used responsibly" part is rarely regarded, and misuse of a peer-to-peer list like the one above can lead to serious consequences for both the company using the list, as well as the organization that supplied it. 

There's hope, though, and it comes with using an email marketing service (EMS) to manage the list. The EMS will guide you around the traps that both members and organizations fall into with their email marketing, and give you a more effective end result.

Why you should use an email marketing service

Instead of handing over the list in Excel, and wondering what is going to happen to it after the email is sent out, organizations should partner with an email marketing service to ensure quality control. Here are 6 reasons why:

1. Member privacy: no risk of a member dropping all the names into the "To" or "CC" field
2. List privacy: you supply your list to the EMS at the time of sending, and don't run the risk of the member misusing the list for other purposes
3. Having your members use a professional service provider reflects positively on your organization
4. You'll ensure that proper peer-to-peer disclosure is added to the message to minimize complaints
5. It could be a revenue source for you if you wish
6. An EMS will process and honor bounce and opt-out issues, where a member may not. This will also minimize complaints that reflect poorly on your organization and discourage others from taking advantage of this member benefit.

For the members, the small investment compared to sending in-house using the Bcc: field (like so many companies do) will return ten-fold, at least in the perception of your company, if not in the form of actual leads:

1.  
2.  
3.  
4.  
5.  
6.  
7. An EMS will help you optimize your campaign -- things like personalizing the messages, segmenting and split-testing are all things they understand very well, and can increase your response rates.
8. Many of these members will be getting their first impression of your company from your email campaign, so using an ESP gives you access to professional templates and creative insight.
9. Putting the whole list in the Bcc: field won't give you any measure of response, but an EMS will give you a campaign report telling you who opened the message, clicked on links, and bounced.
10. Sending through an EMS won't clog your mail server or subject it to blacklisting
11. Opt-in and opt-out handling is done properly, to minimize complaints

Top 5 Member Reactions to Avoid

1. "Who the hell is this?"
2. "I think I recognize this company from [ABC Member Organization], but I never opted in to getting emails from them."
3. "Really?! A 10MB PDF attachment with no message, not even my name in the 'To' field?"
4. "I'm concerned about privacy at [ABC Member Organization] after receiving this email from another member."
5. "Hmmm, a blank email...oh, I have to turn images on...oh, it's a flyer pasted in directly from Word. What kind of hack company is this?"

 ::author::

Totalcom's site is also running our easy-to-use admin tool within our Website Content Manager (WCM) framework. The admin area will let them update nearly all of their content, control user access, and update their online store as well.

Sadly, in our industry, so many website-related projects are not fun at all. Working on a website design project has earned itself a negative stigma, like waiting for the cable guy, or expecting the mechanic to say you need a new transmission when all you want is an oil change. Or anything related to dentists.

We're here to tell you it is possible to enjoy the website design process, if both parties keep the following 7 tips in mind:

1. Attitude

It starts with the right attitude, on both your part and that of your website designer. Going into a web design project with the attitude that this is going to help everyone's business (yours, by virtue of a fantastic new tool, and theirs, by virtue of income) makes everything so much more enjoyable. Creating (or even redesigning) a website is no small or easy task; a lot goes into it, and the volume of emails, approvals, meetings and what-not can get overbearing at times. But remember the end result: this is all being done to make things better. So put on a smile, roll up your sleeves, and keep your eye on the prize.

2. Vision

It's really, really, REALLY important to get a handle on your  vision, and that of your web designer, before you start any design work. Why? To avoid having to go back and forth on design concepts. Fewer revisions means your designer's budget doesn't get diluted (or that you won't go over-budget from change fees). Further, the designer won't become frustrated by the constant back-and-forth when there are so many more things to work on, and has more time to make the site even better as you move toward the end goal. We've actually found that starting the design after we've worked with the client on an overall strategy, and mapped out their content, results in a much better design process and end result.

3. Expertise

Let those who know what they're doing do it. Simply put, don't spend hours of your day mocking up a design (which you'll become emotionally attached to) in Microsoft Publisher, and expect the designer to recreate it. Talk things through, show examples, dissect pieces of other websites, and then let the professional blow you away with their expertise. Likewise, don't expect your web designer to write content for your website that will have customers fighting with each other over your services; you know your business the best, write about it.

If we're talking about programming, or how something works, you'll want to get as specific as possible. Don't just assume it will "work," because there are dozens of decisions (which translate into code) one needs to make so your end user can benefit from "just work."

4. Focus

Keep your eyes on the big picture all the time (see #1). What is this project going to do for you at the end of the day? What is the next step after you launch, and can anything be done ahead of time to lay the foundation for it? Is it that important to spend hours quibbling over one stock photo versus another, when you should be writing copy?

5. Manners

As you move through the project, make sure you continue to offer praise and thanks when their due. This ties into our first point of having a positive attitude through the project, but takes it a step further to ensure both sides show appreciation for each other's hard work.

6. Priorities

There are dozens of little things that have to be completed to successfully launch a website. Get a handle of the timeline from your designer, and what is expected of you at various points throughout the process, then deliver. I had a client tell me I was #8 on their "Top 10" list, then was bumped up to #2. The fact is, your web designer is making you their #1 priority (or should be). Signaling to them that they aren't important through admissions like this, or other delays, is a sure-fire way to sour the relationship. And in the end, if you find you can't produce what's expected of you, hire a professional or delegate to someone within the company who can get the job done.

7. Fit

The first 6 points speak to a seventh observation, that personality has a lot to do with how successfully you will be able to carry out these tips. Some people just can't see the forest from the trees (#4), or micromanage every detail (#3). Some people "know it when they see it" (#2). There's no reason to try and change the way you are so you can build a website, BUT both clients and web designers alike can offset these personality traits through proper pricing, timeline, and delegation practices. Sadly, though, too often this is overlooked, and contributes to the stigma associated with web design projects. That's why we wrote this article.

If you've had that "perfect" website design experience, what other things can you add to this list? Or, if you've had the exact opposite, what factors contributed to the fallout? Tell us in the comments below.

::author::

Check out the Before and After pics below, and head to our Samples Gallery for more Redesign examples.

Why are we SO  happy and not just "happy"? Because our client's enthusiasm and excitement to helping us bring this site from concept to launch in less than 30 days is simply infectious...we can't help but be pumped up about this!

The website is relatively simple, as are most restaurant websites, but we took into account the most important things visitors are looking for and made them easily accessible. Hours, email list signups, phone number, and menus are all available right from the homepage...no need to click to another page first.

Relevance - your key to success

That's it, folks. One word, relevance. All it takes to be successful in Search Engine Optimization. Now, how you become relevant is another story, one that requires SEO 101, SEO 201, etc. (hint: this is when you'd engage a company or subscribe to some of those tools). But it really is that simple, and here's why:

Your website solves problems, right? It shows a prospective visitor how your product, service, whitepaper, app, etc. can make them jump higher, run faster, have smarter kids, and more!

Those prospective customers found your website by searching for a solution to their problem, then your masterfully-crafted copy took them through the sales process to show how your product, service, whitepaper, app, etc. solves their problem.

So, in a word, you were relevant to their problem.

Searchers look for solutions, be one for better rankings

Most website copy is written from a company-centered point of view. But talking about "you" isn't necessarily solving "my" problem, which means "you" aren't being relevant. Instead, "you" need to focus your copy on "me" and my problems (which typical company-centered copy does, just not from the right point of view).

How it works from a Search Engine's point of view

If you're Google or Bing, your job is to deliver the most relevant results to the searcher's inquiry. Otherwise, people are going to go somewhere else to search, and tell their friends to use another search engine that delivers results that answer their questions better. So, the search engines rummage through their indexes and decide which pages to put first, second, and 212th, based on how well the content of those pages match up to the search inquiry.

It's really that simple: be relevant to a particular keyword, the search engines will reward you with a good ranking for that keyword.

Does this make sense?

Once you grasp the idea of relevance and how a search engine will reward you for it, you'll see how easy it is to incorporate the best-practices tips that will get you great rankings. We've listed a few of those tips below; as you read through them, think about how they add relevance to the content from a search engine's point of view.

1. Organize your content into headings and sub-headings, and use keywords in your headings.
2. Keywords closer to the front of the paragraph and heading are more important than those at the end.
3. Use your TITLE, KEYWORDS and DESCRIPTION tags wisely. Google may not consider them in their ranking algorithm, but they are part of the search results (especially the title), and a visitor will look at them to decide which result to click on.
4. Don't forget to mention your competition in your content (if appropriate). You'll be picked up in searches for the competition and have a chance to steal a customer!
5. Don't forget alternatives to your product or service, or alternative uses. These might warrant separate articles.
6. People searching for you don't know who you are, or they'd be searching for your name (or going straight to your site). So play the part of the superhero in disguise, coming in to save the day when they're trying to find an answer, then take off your mask and show them who you are.
7. Link to other articles on your site (use absolute URL's) that can help someone learn more.
8. Don't just describe your product, describe what people will do with it, how it will solve their problems, why it's better than the alternatives. Because that's what someone is entering into the search field more often than just a product or service type.
9. All the tactics out there revolve around generating content, inbound links, and buzz. What's that all mean? Relevance. It all boils down to that one word. In other words, don't do the keyword stuffing if you aren't going to be relevant as well...you'll just waste people's time and end up losing the long-term battle for Page 1 supremacy.

 ::author::

Prior to this project, Shovi Websites had to undergo the arduous task of converting the winners presentation to a format that would fit well with the IES Boston website; we originally chose Flash (although if we were starting this today, jQuery would be a much better alternative). The time and cost involved was becoming too much to bear, so this year we recommended a strategy to save everyone time.

Using our upgraded Website Content Manager (WCM) admin tools, we created a custom module called "Awards," where IES could input the award winners for each year into a simple form. Setting the date for the banquet would avoid the winners showing up on the website too soon (and spoiling the surprise!). Like most modules in our WCM admin area, IES had the ability to drag & drop the slides into the position they wanted. But an added bonus for this project was how we used serialized data to make the presentation categories more flexible for the future (without serialized data, one would need to have a column in the database table for every possible category).

New for us -- but the cornerstone of this project's success -- was the idea of converting the winners list to a PDF that would run in full-screen mode and replace the need for a PowerPoint altogether. PDF's are obviously more portable, and IES could offer the presentation via their website for those who want to download it. And to add some search engine juice, we created a feature whereby IES could link to the website for the winning firms, architects, owners, and photographers.

Lastly, we took out the Flash pages and recreated the online presentation, using jQuery Tools and Colorbox (both Shovi faves) for extra interactivity. The end result? Less work, more flair, easier use for everybody!

Now, before you think this article is going to be a rant, consider the example above, and think about why it's flawed logic to want to emulate another company's website (especially when you're really only focusing on their homepage). Here are some reasons:

1. The caliber of graphic design on that site is considerably higher than what you can afford.
2. The website's overarching strategy is different than yours.
3. While your homepage will account for about 25% of your page views, the other 75% of the site is where you're going to convert visitors to customers.

STRATEGY: 
What do you want to accomplish, and how are you going to get it?

Before focusing on what your website is going to look like, or what features it is going to have, make a list of all the things you want it to do, and concentrate on business goals. After all, a website is an employee, and like any employee you want it to have a positive impact on your organization. And this brings us to the next step in the process...

CONTENT: 
What blanks do you need to fill in, now and in the future?

The next step, once you have a strategy in place for your website, is to make a list of the content you're going to put in it. An outline is a great step, and will help you organize your thoughts. Remember, you should be able to trace every piece of content, every page, every photo, back to its strategic value to your organization, and value to your visitors.

Beyond just an outline and Site Map (which will help you & your web designer organize the website), keep a list of things that you'll be adding down the road. Knowing what programming will be involved in the future will keep you from having a "square peg, round hole" issue.

DESIGN: 
Putting it all together

With strategy and content in place, you can now focus on what your site is going to look like. That means you can add the latest widgets, spinning bears and flashing lights, because they're going to actually have a positive impact on your website's strategy, and highlight your content in a way no other design idea can. What's that, you say? You gave it some thought, and the spinning bears aren't going to work now? Bummer...

Examples of Both Approaches

And there you have it. Using Strategy to develop Content, and letting your Content dictate your Design, is the optimal way to build a website. So, the next time you get the urge to contact your web designer with a request for (fill in the blank), run through this thought process; you will save yourself time and money.

::author::

Many small businesses don't. In fact, a 2010 study of 410 small businesses found that two-thirds of them don't have contact information for their hosting provider, and an astounding 70% don't have their domain name registered in their business name. We are also seeing an increasing number of stock photography companies cracking down on licensing violations.

Companies are (wisely) placing a lot of trust in professionals to build and manage their online presence to achieve them a better end product in a world of increasing customer expectations. However, this trust can't come at the expense of understanding the elements that may unknowingly put a company in a precarious situation down the road. After all, it's your website, not theirs.

Below are 5 critical things that every business owner needs to know & understand as part of their investment in their online presence, either filed away somewhere or incorporated as they embark on any web-related project:

1. Own your domain name.

Your domain name must be registered in your company's name for it to be yours. This is more important than anything else on this list.  How to find out: Do a simple WHOIS check to make sure your company name shows up in the "Registrant" part of the record. You should also have access to the registrar account, that means knowing who the registrar is (popular registrars are GoDaddy, Network Solutions), and how to log in. If you bought the domain name yourself, you probably have this on file somewhere; if not, get it from the company who purchased your domain name for you.

2. Have a full backup of your site and its content.

When you go live with your site, it's a very good idea to get a backup of all the website files, as well as a database "dump" for any dynamic content. Your hosting provider should include backup services in your account; if not, you should ensure that you can back up your files periodically, especially if you use a web-based admin tool to update content. 

3. Buy your own stock images and templates.

Graphic designers will often re-use their stock library. That may or may not be okay, depending on the license tied to each image. To avoid any potential violation issues (which can cost you hundreds of dollars per image), you should purchase all your own stock photography, or insist that your designer purchases a separate instance/license for your project (and somehow send you proof of the separate download), especially if you're going to re-use one of their images.

4. Know your licenses.

This is critical as well. Now, don't let the legality of license restrictions stagnate your project, simply be aware of them so you don't put yourself in trouble's way. Also, some web development companies will use a script whose license allows them to install it on an unlimited number of their own clients' websites; the caveat here is you will have to replace that script (or buy your own license to it) if you two part ways. Here are some spots where a license might come into play relative to your website:

• A third-party social application that's connected to your website.
• Form processors and internal site-search engines.
• Content Management tools.
• Certain interactive website features like a calculator or gallery.
• Graphics, icons, templates, support images (see #3).
• Your own content on other sites (YouTube videos, Facebook posts, Twitter, Linkedin, etc).

5. Know ALL your logins and passwords.

There are more and more online tools available to companies and their websites, which means more and more logins to remember. Keep a list. Ask if you can use Single-Sign-On (SSO) technology with any of the tools, and remember to follow the same security measures you'd follow to protect your personal accounts online. Here are a few likely places you'll need to login (higher priority up top):

• Registrar
• Email/Webmail
• Content Management System
• Help Desk/Support System
• Social accounts (company Facebook page, Twitter, YouTube, etc.)
• Hosting Panel
• Website stats account
• Email marketing service
• Social media monitoring

So...after all this, do you own your website?

If not, don't worry, the world isn't going to end. But, you should make it a priority to ask the company managing your website to help you collect this information. It won't take more than a couple of days to get everything in order. If there are any costs involved to reacquire stock photos, transfer domain names, etc. they'll be minimal, and worth the expenditure to ensure you don't have exposure to bigger legal fines.

::author::

We love Net Applications for their HitsLink real-time analytics product, and several other internet market research services. We've been long-time customers and they've built up a lot of trust capital with us. So when we use them as the example of how NOT to send out a third-party endorsement email, we are hoping you see how even a trusted relationship can sour with one poor decision.*

Message Breakdown:

Header - To the right is the basic header info. Nothing too terrible, Net Applications typically doesn't have a "From" name, just their email address. The "specialoffers" email got trapped in our spam queue but they do get points for separating it from their main newsletter address so people marking this message as spam continue to receive their other emails.

Message - Below is the first part of the message. Here's where it starts to get ugly. There's no mention of Net Applications (the brand sending the email whose reputation I trust). The links all point to URL's on their domain, but they redirect to this Infusionsoft site, which makes me more concerned as a subscriber (a better tactic would have been to either host the landing pages on their own site, or link to the Infusionsoft site directly). The rest of the email is your typical ad, no big deal.

The Closing - The Privacy Policy link actually takes me to the Infusionsoft privacy policy (why? This email was from Net Applications), and note the obviously-default unsubscribe link, which at this point gives me no idea what I'd be unsubscribing from.

What other tips do you have for sending out third-party endorsement emails?

* Author's note: we still intend to use Net Applications and their products, but let's face it, we did just "out" them publicly on the Internet, and that isn't a very nice thing to do. Sorry, guys.

Today, we applaud St. Nersess Armenian Seminary for doing the exact opposite. They realized that higher quality email lists would mean better results in the long run, and that by segmenting their lists they could send more targeted content, so we helped them "drop the dead weight."

Here's how it went down:

1. We created a segment of their list that had not opened any campaign in the last 6 months. We chose 6 months simply because it included campaigns that covered a variety of topics and an adequate number of campaigns, but you could choose a longer or shorter length of time.
2. Using tactics we wrote about in our Awesome Re-engagement Email article, we crafted a "last chance" message to send to this list. Then, in the campaign itself we set a Subscriber Action to "re-confirm" them when they followed the instructions in the email.
3. It hit us that we'd now need to promote list signups better on the website, and so the "Subscribe" button was added to every page in the sidebar.
4. The email went out, and we waited a week before going back to our subscriber list and filtering out those who had responded.
5. Everyone else...c-ya!

The Last Chance Email:

The results:

Now, bear in mind, these people haven't opened an email from St. Nersess Seminary in 6 months (shame on them!), so we can't expect astronomical response. But we think it was a great success. Here's the breakdown:

How have you re-engaged subscribers? Tell us in the comments section!

We were tinkering with the Shovi Websites listing in Google, updating a few photos, etc. and realized we should add links to our Twitter and Linked in pages. Google doesn't openly tell you that the "Additional Details" section accepts URL's but we tried it anyway. To our extreme enjoyment, the "Twitter" and "Linked in" URL's were hyperlinked to our respective pages. Joy!

Then, it hit us: the listing apparently alphabetizes the various labels (Payment Methods, Email, Description, and your "Additional Details" labels) so our two URL's were buried among lots of copy. It would be much better to have them appear together on the same page.  And where, exactly, among the listing data did we want to put these links?

We fiddled a bit with alphabetizing our various listing details, and settled on "F" for "Follow us on [Twitter, Linked in]". Now, we're pretty happy with the way our business listing looks in local search (below is the "More Details" page).

What tips can you offer to businesses setting up their Google Local profiles? Let us know below!

BIBA, the Boston Irish Business Association, is a client of several years and was the first site to officially be launched under the new framework. We have a few sites in the works at the moment and are very excited at the speed and ease of building them. Stay tuned for more exciting website design news from Shovi Websites!

BIBA Before and After

Today we built them a simple tool that lets them pick a "start date" for their articles, and formats a complete newsletter along with the upcoming events in their calendar. Using the eCampaigns (our email marketing system) API, we preset some campaign settings, so once the formatted newsletter is complete they just have to "Hit Send" and it will go out to their entire subscriber list.

Combining functions like this to manage your outreach initiatives along with your content is paramount to a successful online presence these days. Anytime you can send your content across various channels with a few clicks of your mouse, you are strengthening your brand. For non-profits and other organizations, where outreach is even more important but manpower is limited, these tools are even more important to have.

To learn more about our email marketing services, click here.

Years later, newer browsers and operating systems rendered these content management tools obsolete, so we offered to upgrade the back-end of their website to run off our Website Content Manager platform.

While this wasn't a complete makeover, the project opened the door to eventually update the front-end of the website at the appropriate time, and take advantage of the WCM's flexible framework to streamline their concert schedule content, member email communication and more.

The orchestra is currently in the middle of an amazing concert season, so we coordinated the upgrades in a way that had virtually zero downtime...a critical issue given there's a concert this weekend!

What We Liked: (numbers correspond to the graphic below)

1. The subject "Urgent reminder" wasn't over-the-top with all caps, or a more detailed explanation about what was inside. The fact that the word "reminder" was lowercase instantly looked as though someone typed this out manually, not via an email marketing system.
2. Personalized from the start ("Hi" versus "Dear" was also a nice subtlety, again making it seem like more of an actual email than a marketing message)
3. Gently-worded text, expressing more of a concern over the fact that they weren't able to help, versus pointing the finger at me for not having renewed.
4. Step-by-step re-engagement directions, capped off by the "Very important" part at the end, which drew my attention and made the instructions more meaningful than if they'd stopped at #1 and left it to me to renew (which, obviously, I hadn't done in the first place)

Great job, WordTracker! Proof that a personal approach does indeed work in email marketing.

UPDATE: 

We used this technique with a client to clean up some "dead weight" and update their subscribers' profiles for more advanced targeting. Read about it here.

Would you like to discuss your next email project? Get more out of email marketing? Give us a call at (781) 538-5901, or head to our contact form to tell us more about your project.

The original site serves its purpose well, providing a convenient outlet for managed residents to submit maintenance requests, link to informational articles and payment options. However, the layout screamed "optimized for 800x600 browsers" so we took the entire site into this decade with a "mini-makeover":

• Wider page (using the popular 960 grid)
• Tableless design
• SEO-friendly URL's
• Cleaner graphics, navigation and colors

Visit our Before & After gallery to see the change yourself.

Pages

Sometimes, a client simply needs to update a single page or two on their website, and even though we gladly provide simple content management as part of our service plans, we felt it was important to provide that access to our clients.

The "Pages" module is essentially a simple editor. Shovi adds some special code to the website's programming to recognize when a page is static versus part of this module; this restriction prevents hacking attempts and ensures the website's menu system remains in tact.

People

Professional firm websites often list their management team and/or staff, board of directors, and other stakeholders on their website. Many times, the list also includes an expanded bio for top-level employees.

Our "People" module allows a staff member to log in and have access to their bio information, and even upload a picture. Their login credentials also restrict them to just their bio, and not other parts of the WCM like news, photo galleries, or any custom modules we've built.  On the public side, we generate and format the list of staff members automatically, and if they have an expanded bio, link to it (this way, you don't click through to an "expanded" page that has no expanded information).

Parish applications

Both of these modules are extremely helpful to Parish websites that have various committees and organizations, and want to display them on the website. Either is appropriate to list organizations, although we feel the People module would be a better fit for just a list of names.

J.S. Hovnanian & Sons' IT department and Shovi co-developed a "transactions" database to allow updates from both Realtors (online) and Sales Managers (in communities) to always be in-sync with their proprietary CRM system. This concept is going to be used for a related project later this year.

We also built a full-fledged "demo" account, to allow the JSH&S team to train and showcase the Realtor Advantage site to prospective Realtors. The demo account also includes a semi-transparent toolbar that allows the user to simulate "transactions" that they completed while logged in, and also reset the entire account for someone else to use.

In all, this has been the most integrated and complex project we've built to date, and are proud to have it in our portfolio.

But, in light of our Market Intelligence article on Email Design Considerations for Mobile Reading, we felt it best to make our design mobile-friendly. We ran a test on Litmus, where you can see how it was displayed in 14 different email clients (including iPhone).

We accomplished the mobile-friendliness by throwing out the "650 pixels wide" main table, and opting for a flexible width (90% of the window, with padding on the main background just to be safe). The only thing we want to do better is make our header a little more appealing, but the primary goal of having a header that didn't require horizontal scrolling was achieved.

Take a look at our email template design services to see how we can help you on your next project.

Nevertheless, the article did focus more on design techniques than search optimization tactics, so here are the ones we felt were most important, and why.

1. Use Flash Wisely

Flash for the sake of slideshows and fancy animation is dead, being replaced with good ol' HTML and today's latest JavaScript libraries (jQuery, etc.). Flash for the sake of mini-applications or games is another thing, and if you're using it on your site for those purposes, make sure you have relevant body copy surrounding your Flash object so your pages can be picked up in search engines.

3. Name Your Image File Names Accurately

We have actual experience with this; on our previous website most of our traffic for email templates came from Google Images searches. And you'll notice on our Solutions pages we've named the highlight images for each solution according to the page's file name (and title). This creates cohesion for those keywords on your page, and would likely result in more relevance for that keyword. It also makes it easier to find images when you're making updates...you know which goes with each page.

6. Deep Linking Can Improve Conversions

Make sure you're linking to other pages within your website from body copy, not just navigation menus. As more website embrace HTML5, which will allow a web developer to identify a navigation menu as such (and not a styled bulleted list like many are now), we expect Google and other search engines to glance over those menus, focusing on links within body copy. Use absolute URL's too, because this type of linking also helps direct people back to your website in the event someone copies your article onto their blog (it happens).

9. Use a Site Map

It's an obvious one, but having a site map (and an automated way to udpate it) allows search engines to stay up-to-date with your latest changes. We recommend XML Sitemap Generator, a free tool (or you can buy & install it on your site).

10. Use Anchor Text Accurately for Deeper Pages

Example: this article is about search engine optimization, so we linked that phrase to our website's SEO Services page, also named search-engine-optimization.php. This tip refers more to relating content within your website using links, not setting navigation patterns. Our experience still shows better conversions when you tell people to "click here" and link the 'click here' text to your next page, promotional offer, etc. However, the passive, contextual links referred to here are very helpful in establishing relevance and making sure search engine spiders get to those deeper pages on your site.

Other than most Blackberry devices, which display HTML email messages but strip out nearly all the design elements, today's smartphones are just as capable as mainstream email clients in rendering HTML messages. However, the smaller screen size (even when held in landscape orientation modes) require you to scroll sideways to view the traditional 600-650 pixel wide designs. The author indicated that most of the phones they tested ranged from 300-500px wide.

Takeaways:

1. Shortening subject lines to 25-30 characters would put your entire subject on most smartphones' windows, so at the very least make sure the most important and engaging part of your subject line is short and first.
2. If your email is predominantly a newsletter (lots of text), consider a flexible width layout that will adjust automatically whether viewed on a desktop mail client, web-based mail client or mobile device. After all, the text/content is most important, make it easily readable!
3. Consider mobile-friendly designs as alternative links on top of the message, and set up a subscriber action to mark subscribers who use this link as "mobile preferred" (or something similar). Then, you can weigh the usage of mobile devices among your subscribers and possibly create separate mobile-only designs to go straight to them. There are services that can also track the type of email client used, or your ESP should have that feature enabled.
4. If your email design has a masthead, split it up at about 250-300px so it shifts position on a mobile device (but a desktop/full-sized mail client would not notice any difference)
5. Two-columns? Put the smaller one on the right side so your main content is shown first.

If we develop any mobile-oriented email designs for our clients, you'll see them in the Latest Projects section.

Since the client is still relatively small we recommended a new site using Wordpress and a customized theme. The redesign is flexible for varying types of content, yet still offers a highly-designed look and flow that will meet their long-term goals.

We want to give a special thank-you to this post for the step-by-step commands we used to move the new site from our staging server to its home at www.blackoakfunds.com.

Using a How-To article from Mashable, we set up a canvas in Photoshop and then went to work. The goal with our background is to get the timeline to fit inside what looks like our own content space.  It won't be perfect, of course, but from the initial page load it looks pretty great (if we do say so ourselves)!

Fast forward to the entry of three life-changing words for websites across the world: Content Management System (or CMS). Essentially a "back-end" or "administration panel" for your website, you could now log in from anywhere in the world and wield a power once reserved for only the Masters of the Web.  Your entire website was in your control...the power felt amazing.  Needed to change a picture? Click a few buttons and it was done! Tired of that Arial font? Switch it to a magenta Comic Sans in the blink of an eye.  Oh, and you could even create new pages!

With great power, comes great responsibility...to your customers

Now, armed with all the tools you could possibly need to make your website more up-to-date than Twitter, it got even better. New phones, technology and open-source programming have enabled thousands to create their own genie-sized systems, and boy do they look cool!

However, as the Web evolved, so have its users. Customers expect more, better, faster, or you're left in the dust. You can't keep up; your genie powers are dwindling. And giving up the control of your website to a freelancer or expensive management firm is too much to bear. 

We're here to tell you it doesn't have to end that way. With a little introspection, you can 'have your cake and eat it too.'

Get real about content management: a look in the mirror

Flexibility for the sake of flexibility is silly...it's expensive to build and support even the free CMS platforms out there, and many of them require extensive customization to tailor them to your specific needs.  Further, we've found even our clients using platforms like Wordpress only utilize a few key features and nothing else (yet were insistent on "might needing" that widget or feature at some point). 

Instead of insisting on those all-powerful systems for the sake of flexibility, evaluate your true content management needs with some simple steps...

1. Look at the content elements that you really need to update.
2. Determine the frequency of those updates.
3. Decide if those updates need to be pushed out to social outlets, email campaigns, or other channels.
4. Outline the specific benefits to doing it yourself, versus having a professional do it. Then, evaluate whether the cost in time or programming is worth the benefits.
5. Build a customized CMS for your website that incorporates what you need, not what you want.
6. Leave the rest to a professional, and structure a maintenance agreement that won't leave you getting nickel-and-dimed for each update.

The end result: you'll be able to make easier, faster updates and increase your focus on using your website to grow your business.

They are already publishing calendar entries for upcoming events, and press releases/articles on their website. This same information was being copied from their website into an email newsletter, and it was causing delays and formatting inconsistencies.

Now, on the first of every month, all previous month's articles will be pulled in and formatted, with a teaser and image (if available) that links to the full article on their website. Further, the next 3 months of events will display along with links to the website. Finally, a Table of Contents is automatically written.

This is truly auto-pilot at its best, and for those subscribers who do not visit the website regularly, or subscribe to the RSS feed (which displays most of this information as it occurs), the 'roundup' is a perfect hands-off solution for people to keep abreast of the ACYOA's activity.

However, the Calendar part of our Website Content Manager (WCM) would solve their request perfectly, and then some! So we decided to develop a "hosted" version of our WCM that could run a photo gallery, event calendar, testimonial collector, etc. on a standalone platform for clients whose websites aren't compatible with the WCM framework.

We're very excited to roll this out, and in the coming months will be formalizing this setup to include a basic template, some account-specific configuration options, a sandbox, test user area, and finally a demo site that will run completely on the WCM.

Such was the case today, when we took on a single-day redesign for a client who was looking to make substantial moves in SEO on their site. It made the most sense to reconfigure their static website and Wordpress blog into a site completely run by Wordpress, with only a couple features and plugins required to get their needs met.

This is an example of strategy dictating content and design: the strategy required flexibility on every page to update content, keywords, and file names (making Wordpress the best choice). Design wasn't as big of an issue so long as some basic criteria were met, so finding a predesigned template and configuring the site to do what they needed it to do was our only goal. What a great way to wrap up the Summer!

Today, we launched a customized "Update Profile" page that resides on a client's website, and taps into the eCampaigns API to pull up the subscriber's information to be updated.  If there is no subscriber data tied to the "Update Profile" URL, then they are asked to enter their email address to receive a unique link via email back to this page (that includes their subscriber data).

Two really important things are happening here. First, the page is completely branded within the client's website, and can be linked to within a navigation menu, news post, or any other means.  This builds more trust for subscribers re-engaging themselves than hitting a basic page on a separate system (eCampaigns).  Second, the 'unique link email' described above tests the ability for that subscriber to receive emails from the client...after all, why re-engage if the email doesn't hit your inbox in the first place?

Having covered all the usability scenarios for someone coming to this page, we finally added a conditional section in the client's default email template to show the current subscriber fields (most of which are all blank due to poor list management in the past). If they have not updated their profile, this information will be displayed along with our custom link. If they have updated their profile, they won't see this reminder.

Their "mistakes"

1. Your newsletter isn't helpful
2. Your voice isn't particularly compelling
3. You're not telling stories
4. You have a half-hearted call to action
5. You don't have a specific frequency

Takeaways

1. Mistake #4 rang true for us, we see that a lot with our clients. Remember that the purpose of your email newsletter is to generate activity, otherwise it's of zero value to your reader (which ties well into the other items above).
2. If you have long articles in your newsletter, consider splitting them up into a "teaser" in the email that clicks through to your website. You can test the number of clicks on your articles, whereas you don't know if people are reading the article despite opening the email. Then, you'll start to see if your newsletter is informational enough for your subscribers.
3. (This is a spin-off of Mistake #2) Just because there's fine print, disclaimer, or other long-winded information tied to something in your newsletter, doesn't mean you have to drag down the reader's mood by putting it all in the email. Instead, tell them to click through to your website "for complete details, terms and conditions" (or something to that effect), and keep the email content upbeat, with easy-to-find calls to action.

The end result: a targeted site built using Wordpress that includes protected content, public areas for new customer generation, significant flexibility with regard to publishing new information, and a great look. It goes to show you that strategy does, indeed, drive the train.

We noticed something else...

Search boxes: well-placed and easy to spot

1. When we saw these search boxes, it was evident the website wanted us to search.
2. Often they were displayed with a bold background color somewhere in the top half of the page.
3. They were given prime real estate (pun intended) on the screen as if they were an advertisement, compared to burying them along the top or in a navigation sidebar.

Featured Properties: part of the content, not the design

1. There seems to be a standard in "featured property" listings: the thumbnail graphic on the left, some bulleted property info on the right. You can click on anything to view a full detail of the listing.
2. You'd think a featured property would get showcased more, like in the large banners across the homepage, but featured properties were part of the body copy area.
3. In thinking about this we realize that visitors will indeed glance over the design and images of a real estate website and look straight to content.

Navigation Tabs: make your intentions clear

1. For websites that had multiple audiences (renters, buyers, agents for example), tabs placed in the center of the page seemed to be the trend that caught our eye the most. 
2. Thinking back to our point about the search boxes, these tabs got prime placement as well and made it abundantly clear that the visitor was to select one.

Takeaways

1. If you want your visitor to search, make the search box prominent and not integrated into the design of the site.
2. Content is king, so any and all featured content should be part of the content area of the website, not a design element.
3. Using tabs to introduce a set of activities (navigation, advanced search, property types for a target audience) need prominent placement. Even if those links are elsewhere in your navigation menus, treat these tabs as featured content.

Starting in 2009, we decided to spend a little extra time up front and set the groundwork for a consistent "theme" that could be re-used each year with different graphics. The navigation menu, CSS files, and internal functions that pulled up the various award criteria were all built, and this year we put our strategy to the test.

The end result: the MAME site usually took about 3-4 days to complete. This year we finished in one day.

The design is similar in feel to the corporate site.  We built it such that they can continue updating the listing information on the corporate site, and the data will flow instantly through to this mini-site.  Obviously, there would be overlap of content when combining data for 4-5 different properties into one single page, so we programmed the pages to filter out the extra information.

The idea was very well-received, and we built a framework for the Green@LMA issues that would allow us to drop the stories in place and auto-populate the "Table of Contents", completely formatted for email.

Best-Practices Search Optimization

A key factor in the redesign was to open up more opportunities for search rankings. To do this, we added body copy, used keywords in menu items, images and links, and also kept to a very clean coding format.

Improved User Experience with jQuery

By using our favorite jQuery plugins to create tabs, slideshows and lightboxes (for image galleries) we not only cut back on the amount of page refreshing needed to browse their content, but also created a way to keep visitors on a page longer, hopefully leading to more business.

New Coding Framework

We've gradually been changing all our clients' sites to PHP-driven ones compared to static HTML or even SHTML. The reasons are obvious; by doing so we can standardize our framework and deployment so projects turn around faster and more consistently. And, as the company managing these sites post-launch, it is much more efficient.

Before & After

So, we rebuilt araratcenter.org as a destination site for a powerful brand, and used our own back-end system - the Website Content Manager (WCM) - to do most of the work. Strategy dictated how the content was to be organized, and what visitors were supposed to do when they got to the homepage.  Inside the site we created functions to cross-promote content that were easily managed in our WCM.  In short, everything was aimed at building a conversion-oriented website so the brand could be leveraged.

Even the email lists have been segmented and contain social sharing features.

Before & After

So, without changing the overall strategy of the website, we gutted it and rebuilt it using our own standards and coding practices.

The page got wider, navigation smoother, graphics cleaner and effects updated (go away, image rollovers!)

Now, updates to their ever-changing promotional material are effortless, and the foundation is laid to expand to some self-managed content.

Before & After

For the Seminary, this meant improved site administration, since several of the content management tools were inherited from previous programmers and didn't have a user interface.  For Shovi Websites, it meant putting the WCM to the test, as the Seminary publishes a great deal of content.  It also meant having a "partner" with whom we could expand on the tools and features, such as video publishing, that would ultimately become a standard part of the WCM.

The launch of the WCM also sets the new standard for customized websites; it gives our clients the flexibility in content management that they need, and us the standard data sets we need to create public-side functions for news, photos, events and more.

Shovi Websites manages both sites under an umbrella plan.

Within our Website Content Manager (WCM), we built functions that let the client publish a news item, photo album, calendar event or press release to the feed, which was then populated into an RSS file.

On the website, though, we simply queried the feed database and displayed the most recent activity, and used CSS to create icons depicting the type of item in the feed (photos, news, etc).

We took all that work off their hands. The end result: a formatted template designed similar to the Property Detail page of their website, which dumped the property data into place without them having to do any design work. Then, we added a field to their custom site administration tool so they could simply check off which property was to be sent on the first email, and which property for the second. Finally, we simply set up 2 recurring eCampaigns emails to "Fetch" the template and send out the HTML. Complete auto-pilot!

We did this with a simple presentation that enabled a visitor to browse properties by type and state. And to make it easy to manage, Shovi Websites built a customized back-end that displayed each property listing's detail page as an editable screen, so the client could update photos, change contact information, property availability and more.