Ask Girl Geek: What Can a Website Do for My Small Business?

Hi Annette,

How do I know a website will benefit my small business?

Carol

Dear Carol,

The most common use small business owners have for the internet is to communicate with their current or prospective customers via email or to search for products and services they need for their businesses. I believe small businesses have YET to tap the amazing benefits of having an internet presences.

Some of the other ways small business might benefit from having a website are ....

1. to sell products or services online 24/7/365 via an e-commerce site
2. to give basic information about their business, i.e., location, products, hours, information about what they do and why someone should chose them over their competitors.
3. to prospect for clients...in other words to give people searching for their type of business enough information to prompt them to decide to do business with them...to call or come into the store.
4. to extend their reach to a wider or larger market ...regionally or nationally or worldwide
5. to set themselves and their businesses apart by being available online
6. to save money on direct mailing and advertising by doing it all on the web. When your business is on the web you're not only saving the cost of the ad, but postage, time to do printing and stuffing envelops, etc. Plus, your clients can interact with you via email or chat.
7. to communicate or interact with current or prospective customers via blogs, email newsletters, online questionnaires, chat
8. clients can post requests for bids via an online form
9. vendors can find your business and they can sell to you
10. post answers to frequently asked questions and serve a customer service function.
11. troubleshooting...to post diagrams or instructions for clients to download
12. process credit card payment
13. schedule appointments or reservations (such as for a doctor's office or for a hotel)
14. post testimonials
15. post photos of your products or showcase jobs
16. establish your expertise
17. to search for qualified employees to conduct customer satisfaction surveys
18. to do market research to see if there's enough interest in a new product or service to provide it
19. to open new markets

Thanks for asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: Internet Marketing Consultation

Hi Annette,
I wonder if you could let me know what services your web site promotion consultant provides, and what the cost would be?
Thanks.
JS

Hi JS,

Basically this service is about marketing to your targeted niche via the many options available via internet and through your website. There are a variety of ways to do that. Such a strategy would take into consideration your strengths, preferences, budget and timeframe. For example, many coaches/therapists are introverts, therefore they shy away from public speaking and networking, but they excel at writing and one on one interactions. Other coaches/therapists I've worked with have no time to write, so they may need help selecting other methods of establishing their expertise with their clientele. Perhaps posting an interview with you via audiopodium or having you schedule some online interactive chats would do the trick. There are many many ways to use the internet to promote any business.

We would start with a basic needs assessment, which may or may not include a thorough review of your website and your overall marketing strategy. I'd get to know your business goals, help you define and find your target market, then design a marketing strategy especially for your business and budget.

If your website is not drawing the business you want, we might need to do an analysis of the site, including reviewing your keyword strategy, marketing message, site statistics, current search engine rankings, and any other website promotion strategies you are using, such as Pay Per Click advertising. In other words we'd look to see how your current website is performing and determine ways to make it perform better. We'd also look at other marketing efforts and see how they work together synergistically.

Second, we'd also look at other promotion strategies specific to your business and designed for your niche. These might include a mix of traditional promotion strategies and innovative use of the internet.

My fee is $150/hour for this service. If there is enough interest in this, I would be willing to offer a group.

Thanks for asking!
Annette

Help Me Get Traffic to My Coaching Website

Hi Annette,

I'm so frustrated that I'm sinking thousands into my website and not getting the kind of return on my investment I thought I would. Any suggestions?
D

Hi D,

I want you to know I'm behind your success as a coach. I'm not only a web designer. I want to see my clients succeed because when you do, I do as well.

Here's what I'd do, if I were in your shoes.

1. I'd get a mailing list of potential clients or companies together...If you want to work within a certain industry, there are ways to get the names, addresses, and email addresses of key personnel. I'd start by defining a narrow niche and saturate that first, then expand outwards to related niches.
2. I'd write a flurry of newsletters (bi-weekly or monthly) with very CONCRETE tips, not some of the "airy fairy" stuff I see some coaches write. I'd mine your expertise from your experience in business for this.
3. I'd send hard copies of all newsletters to key personnel from above, inviting them to subscribe to the electronic version.
4. I'd include either a testimonial or a sample coaching scenario in each newsletter, so readers can gauge your effectiveness and relevancy to what they are needing.
5. I'd do some FREE seminars for those key personnel, so they can get a feel for you, your expertise, and how you work.
6. I'd do an audiopodium and announce it on the newsletter, website, voice mail, and anywhere else you can.
7. I'd put all back issues of your newsletter on your website. Unfortunately, you have chosen an email management program for your newsletters that doesn't offer an archival feature. I'd fix that right away.
8. I'd look at your site stats to see if there's a way to find out where your site visitors are coming from and if you can contact them.
9. I'd give an incentive to your current coaching clients to refer others to you.
10. I'd find some busy coaching-related websites, such as IFC, MentorCoach, CoachU or any other coaching consortium and ask them to link to yours. This will drive targeted traffic to your site.
11. I'd subscribe to every major coaching referral service there is.
12. I'd network within my desired niche...out the wazoo!
13. I'd stop paying for marketing seminars for coaches and spend the money DOING marketing.
14. I'd start a blog.
15. More.......I'd have more, but my brain is empty for the moment!!

I was vacuuming (my house, not my brain) and came up with a few more ideas....

16. I'd start an online community, such as a discussion board or blog, focused on the needs of my niche.

17. I'd find the newsgroups my niche subscribes to and "lurk" there until I see what kind of issues they are concerned with. Then I'd start posting, but not "flaming" = advertising to the list. This is not allowed, but you can post a link to your website using your email signature.

18. I'd find a way to do a chat with your niche. For example, ivillage.com does featured chats for women. There are also free chat features you can add to your website and host your own topical chat.

20. I'd do an online survey or focus group to determine the needs of my niche and how to best meet them.

21. I'd cull through Chamber of Commerce websites to find possible leads for business coaching/life coaching (as we all know how stressed business owners are!)

22. I'd develop a "prospects" file (mine is now 2 inches thick) and touch base with those people regularly.

23. I'd get a toll-free phone number and use it in advertising to my niche. See www.CallWave.com.

24. I'd advertise my services in specialty magazines and trade journals my niche reads.

25. Okay, I'll stop at 25. That's a nice "round" number.

Thanks for Asking!

Annette

Ask Girl Geek: What Are the Major Search Engines?

Hi Annette,
Which are the major search engines that I should be listed on?
J

Hi J,
Here is a list of the top search engines (not necessarily in any particular order)
Yahoo (www.yahoo.com)
Google (www.google.com)
Altavista (www.altavista.com)
Overture (www.overture.com)
LookSmart (www.looksmart.com)
Lycos (www.lycos.com)
AOL Search (www.aolsearch.com)
Ask Jeeves (www.askjeeves.com)
Teoma (www.teoma.com)
Excite (www.excite.com)
Fast Search (www.fastsearch.com)
HotBot (www.hotbot.com)
MSN Search (www.msn.com)
Northern Light (www.northernlight.com)
ODP / DMOZ (www.dmoz.com)

Thanks for Asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: What Causes a 404 Error?

Hi Annette,

What's this message in my website stats that say 175 people got a "404 error" when trying to visit my website?

Deb

Hi Deb,
Again, I have to go to my trusty expert, Julie, from www.TheDesignShoppe.com. Here's what Julie said.

A 404 not found error could me a lot of things. Let's take me, for example. If someone visits my site and bookmarks a page named design.htm and I change that page a few months down the road and then they come back. It's now gone. It's a 404 error. You will get that for many things even images that were there at one time and now changed or removed from the site. This goes for the search engines too. There are SO many little search engines out there. Of course they don't have the big money to update like google or yahoo. So, they cache many pages of the site. Normally the index.htm stays that and not index.html or .shtml so you never have to worry about that not being found. It's the deeper pages in a site that get cached and then results in a 404. And, it could be as simple as someone typing in a url wrong to a page in her site.

We have custom 404 pages that can be done in her site. Just take her template with the nav and change the text to say "oops, page not found - look to the navigation and find the correct page you are looking for".

Thanks Julie!

And thanks for asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: What Do You Know About KickStart?

Hi Annette,

What do you know about Kickstart? http://www.kickstartcart.com/
Ellen

Hi Ellen,

Looks like it's intended for ecommerce sites that are planning on selling alot of products. It has the features you mentioned, but if you're not going to sell alot of items you might be paying for more than you need.

It's got a 30 risk free trial, so I'd go with that to evaluate before you buy. You'd have to buy at least the Basic plan to get all the features you mentioned. It doesn't mention a set up or hosting fee. Seems expensive to me to have to pay an annual fee for their services, when you could have a shopping cart built from free open source code, integrate it with PayPal and not have monthly fees.

If you want autoresponders and a mailing list, you may already have the capacity on your current webhosting plan. I'd check that first.

If you want a mailing list, that's more sophisticated, i.e., in html look at www.ConstantComment.com or I use www.EzineDirector.com because it will allow you to layout your newsletter to look exactly like your website, plus it archives back issues and gives you stats on who reads your newsletter.

Thanks for Asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: A Good Webhosting Company

Hi Annette,

We're jumping back into newslettering again. Can you recommend a reliable, complete package that will send out newsletters, do shopping carts, autoresponders, and the like? We're looking at things like KickStart.

Once we get rolling, I'll email you to talk about updating the website.

Thanks,
Ellen

Hi Ellen,
I'm not familiar with KickStart. What is it?
If you're looking for a new webhosting company, I use www.theDesignShoppe.com all the time. You can host newsletters, autoresponders there. If you buy the right hosting package it will accommodate a shopping cart, but a shopping cart is a program that needs to be created. We build them from OSCommerce, a FREE open source resource.
See www.militaryscrapbooking.net.

Thanks for asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: How Can I Check To See If My Domain Name is Available?

Hi Annette,

I went to www.registerfly.com and found that www.myname.com is taken. I had registered that some time ago and allowed the registration to expire. Could that be the problem? What are my options here? Finding the documentation for my earlier registration could be a challenge.

R

Hi R,
Yes, that's the problem. You can either call the company you originally registered it with and pay a penalty fee to get it back or you can wait 30-90 days to buy it after it's freed up. Usually, if you register your personal name, no one else is likely to register it. Also, if you register a business name that includes an "LLC" in the domain name, that one is not likely to be purchased by anyone else either.

To check to see if your domain has expired, go to www.whois.com. I just looked at your personal name has not expired.

Thanks for asking,
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: Adding Streaming Audio to a Website

Hi All,

I had to ask Julie, my Geek expert from TheDesignShoppe.com, this one.

"How do you add Streaming Audio to a website?"
Irene

Here's Julie's answer:
Hi Annette.
Here's some good info on how to do it:
May 29, 2005 UPDATE: I just tried Julie's recommendations and when I tried to save the audio file in the FREE verstion of Real Producer, I found that it wouldn't do it and I'd have to upgrade to the $199.99 version. I'll bet it used to be free and functional and now it's not. Happens alot.

Adding streaming RealAudio/RealVideo site content

All sites can support RealMedia (RealAudio and RealVideo) files via HTTP streaming. Also known as "pseudo-streaming," HTTP streaming provides virtually unlimited streaming of RealAudio and RealVideo files over HTTP. Follow these simple instructions to add streaming RealMedia content to your web page:

Step 1: Create/convert sounds using RealEncoder

Create a .rm file using RealProducer. RealProducer can be obtained (free) from the RealAudio web site - www.real.com :

Use the RealProducer wizard to record or convert existing content into RealMedia (.rm) format.

Step 2: Create a text file

Use a standard text editor such as Notepad, and create a .ram file. The file should contain the following (case-sensitive) HTML line:

http://www.yourdomain.com/yourfile.rm

Note: The URL above must include the "http://" characters. For example: http://www.yourdomain.com/ourfile.rm would be appropriate, whereas pnm://www.yourdomain.com/ourfile.rm would not be.

Upload the .rm and .ram files to your account. Assuming you named the .rm file "yourfile.rm", the .ram file should be named "yourfile.ram", and should be located in the same directory. Make sure to upload the .rm file in binary mode and the .ram file in ASCII mode.

Step 3: Link

Link the .ram file to any image or text you specify on your page. When a visitor clicks on this link, the RealPlayer program starts. Upon spawning the player, the RealPlayer program reads the location of the RealAudio/RealVideo .rm file from the .ram file. The player then accesses and plays the file as it is being downloaded, in real time.

For more information, please visit the RealAudio site www.real.com

Putting Sound on your Web Site

There are a number of different type of sound files that can be put on web pages. Three of the more common sound files are .wav, .mid or(.midi), and au. files. One advantage to using a midi file is that midi files are much smaller and therefore it takes less time to download them. Midi files can only contain background (instrumental) music. Both au. files and .wav can contain any type of sounds (eg.,
vocal, background). However, .au and .wav files are much larger than midi files so it typically takes longer to download these files.

Hope this helps!
Annette

Updates on Blogging

To learn the latest Blog-cabulary, Read this article
http://www.juiceenewsdaily.com/0505/news/blog_terms.html
Excerpt: Blogfeed - "syndication" of your blog for furthur distribution on the web
Ping - a system that notifies blog owners when someone posts a comment to their blog.
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Blog-tistic - according to InfoZine, 32 Million Americans read blogs
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Blog-istory http://www.juiceenewsdaily.com/0505/news/history_blogs.html
Excerpt: Since 2003 weblogs gained increasing notice for their role in breaking, shaping or spinning news stories
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Business Blogging is on the Rise according to Inc magazine
http://www.inc.com/criticalnews/articles/200504/blogs.html
Excerpt: --Business blogging consultants agree that it is yet to be proven that blogs are a good direct-response marketing tool, but they can be an excellent tool to build relationships and create brand equity as more Internet users see them as viable sources of information.
"Blogs can help in networking and creating industry contacts and business partners. They can also be excellent selling tools, particularly with affiliates," suggested Campbell.
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How to use blogging as a marketing tool http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/business/11474621.htm
Excerpt:
But for companies, blogs are an opportunity to tell clients and potential clients about your industry, products and services. And it doesn't matter how large or small your business is.
Blogs are a way to build an open relationship with customers, and make your company a resource on a particular subject. They're also good for spin.

Search engines love new content, and just putting a blog on your Web site could push your company to the top of someone's search results.

Ask Girl Geek: Domain Names

Hi
I have a couple questions, 1. how much do you charge to find out if a domain name is available? And how much is domain name registration on an annual basis? 2. The website I have now if I decide to keep the domain name how does that work with the business that is currently hosting the site? Do they own it do I own it? How can I get it moved from them to you? I guess is the question and what is the cost for that. I looked at your fee structure and did not see this issue addressed there. Sorry if I missed it.
K

Hi K,

Thanks for asking! You can check yourself at www.whois.com to see if a domain is available. Domain registration is $12 a year with the company I use. If you want to transfer your current domain to another hosting company, it's just a matter of changing the DNS numbers. Or you can host the new site at the same hosting company if it is compatible with the software I use and has all the features needed for the new site.

Hope this helps!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: Blogs?

Hi Everyone,
I am support group leader for MCP 68 and this extraordinary group of coaches is having incredible discussions about coaching and business and the future. In last week's group, the question was raised about the comparative benefits of blogs and email newsletters.

Are there people in our community with experience using a blog? How effective is it? How much does it help increase trust levels towards the coach and increase name recognition? How would you compare it with the effectiveness of an email newsletter?

Janet

Hi Janet,I've used both blogs and email newsletters. Both are only pieces of software, so the question of how effective they are is more about how you use them and what you post in them. If you know what they can do, then you can decide which is best to suit your purposes.

The main difference in the ones I've used is with blogs people have know to go there when new content is posted, otherwise it's not in front of them like the regular publication of an email newsletter is. If you want "top of the mind phenomenon" and regular reminders I'd go for the email newsletter.

You can make blogs and email newsletters public, so that anyone can view them and you can set them both up to allow viewers to post comments, if you want that kind of interaction. The blogs I've seen all have automatic archives, so people can view past comments. I've mostly used blogs for my FAQ's page on my website and as an online journal to record ideas for the development of some groups. That one was not meant to be public, but may be useful and something I choose to share later.

I'd be glad to come to one of your support group calls to answer questions on this or any topic related to website if you like. Just give me about 2 week advanced notice so I can clear my schedule.

Thanks for asking!
Annette