Web Design and Web News

Today, I would like to briefly return to the fundamentals of SEO or Search Engine Optimization. The starting point for launching aneffective SEO strategy is to understand how your customers find you. In other words, what words could your potential customers use to find you? Here, it is necessary to understand the importance of adapting your thinking to that of the user. Very precise and technical words are fine for experts but what about regular users? Keywords and key phrases are the first thing to consider when trying to reach the right audience.

To find the right keywords for your business:

1. Determine who your potential customers are
2. Make a list of all words that come to mind
3. Research the web to find other keywords
4. Look at what your competitors are doing. The idea here is to learn from others or learn from their mistakes and not repeat them
5. Try your keywords to see if the results are relevant

Once you’ve found the keywords most relevant for you, use the tools at your disposal to determine if they generate enough monthly searches.

Several free tools are available online:

1. www.google.com/sktool
2. www.wordstream.com/keywords

Once you know the number of monthly searches generated by your keywords, you will be able to make a final choice.  Remember that this research can take some time. Several companies are now specializing in keyword analysis, competitive analysis and Web market analysis. These experts will guide you and give you ideas to help you achieve the best results as quickly as possible.

Don’t forget that the choice of keywords is only the first step in a SEO strategy.  You must then create SEO content, optimize your website, analyze the results and keep a constant eye on the competition. Otherwise, your keyword efforts will be unproductive.

Like most businesses, you are aware that the Web can bring great opportunities to improve or facilitate sales and customer relationships. You also know that there are new, easy to use and affordable tools to help you get there. But like most businesses, you don’t believe you have the time and you put off Web projects. Well in 2011, the procrastination is over and it’s time to get serious!

Before making changes to your website or planning your Internet marketing strategy, here are some questions to consider:

1. What is your main objective on the Web?
2. Who are your potential customers on the Web?
3. How do your clients find you?
4. Is your website providing the right information?
5. Is your website is easy to use?

Once all these questions are answered, you can set objectives for your internet marketing campaign. Here are some additional questions to consider:

1. How to monitor your site traffic as it relates to your objectives?
2. How to increase traffic to your site?
3. How to improve your search engine ranking?
4. How to use social media?

Although you can do all this internally, the fact remains that using a professional is recommended. Achieving your goals on the Web can be a long process, if the right questions are not asked at the outset. Also, with the wide variety of products available, it can be easy to get lost. The thing to understand is that your company needs a Web presence but it must be a well planned and optimal presence.

1. To position yourself as a leader in your industry

A blog is the perfect place to create new content about your products and services. It is a place to talk about the latest news from your industry, upcoming product innovations or the release of a new product. Remember that a blog is not a place to sell; it a place that allows potential customers to seek additional information. This is the best marketing tool to share your knowledge and expertise.

2. To provide more information about you and your company

A blog is also the place to go beyond the marketing message. Share information on the manufacturing process, tell a story about your founder or talk about your company’s values and how your work conveys those values. The idea is redefine the traditional relationship between the customer and the business. Introducing other aspects of your business to your customers creates a human element that inspires their confidence and trust.

3. To initiate conversation with customers

All blog platforms offer the opportunity to respond to comments. Theyalso offer the opportunity to prohibit such comments. Do not be tempted by the simplicity! Let your visitors comment on your articles and interact with them. Take the time to answer all comments, positive or not. This will demonstrate your commitment to customer service!

4. To develop a dynamic and sustainable customer relationships

Once in place, your blog can serve to attract new customers while offering new and updated services to existing customers. Employ your blog as a resource guide: describe the characteristics of a new product, act as guide to your own products and services and answer frequently asked questions. This way, your blog will become a reference site that your customers can consult at any time to quickly find answers to their questions.

5. To generate traffic to your website

As your blog evolves, the number of visitors will increase. It is with your own content that you will demonstrate that you are an authority in your field. That content will attract the confidence and trust of prospective customers. To generate traffic to your website, make sure you have an “About Us” section or a short biography on the homepage of your blog. In addition, when writing articles, include links to your website when the information contributes to the content of your site.

Bar codes have been around for awhile and we see them on store products every day. The bar code contains the product number. This number is linked to the store database and provides information about the product such as the price and the amount remaining in inventory.

The Introduction of Smartphones
If you have a smart phone you can now read the bar code of a product using the phone’s camera. This creates many new opportunities for businesses, but primarily opportunities for the consumer. Bar codes are no longer only for the management of inventory, consumers can now use them to find product information on the Internet.  Using an application like BarCodeHero, you can read your friends’ recommendations, compare the price of the same product in other stores and find similar products!

The Quick Response (QR)
More and more consumers are acquiring smart phones and at the same time more uses for bar codes on the Internet are being developed.  The Quick Response is an example of a new bar code format that is gaining popularity. This new bar code format can be read more quickly and it holds much more information than its predecessor. Quick Response has been available for some time in Japan and it is now used throughout the world in advertising, as shown in this Stella Artois photo.

Here are some uses for QR:

1. In magazine and street adverting, it can take you directly to the buying page for online products.
2. On your business card, it can provide access to a video that explains your services, access your email or even make a direct call.
3. You can display the directions to get to your restaurant.
4. On house For Sale signs, it will automatically launch a series of photographs taken from inside the house.
5. On film displays in video stores, it will launch the film trailers.
6. You can automatically add an application or game to your iPhone by simply reading the bar code.

To create your own QR Code

Did you know?

 In 2010, websites were visited three times more often by smartphone users than in 2009 and 1 in 25 Internet users now use a smartphone to access the internet.  (Using Share of Browsers, Wikipedia, November 2010) 

Web designers optimize their sites for most screens to ensure that the important sections of the websites are visible to the user. They ensure that the site is attractive, easy to navigate and free of bugs. To help accomplish this, they must take into account the different screens on today’s market, including the latest and widest screens and also the older screens and laptops that have small displays. A general rule is to develop websites for a resolution of 1024 x768 wide, which covers most displays.

Be careful not to forget that smart phones like the iPhone and the BlackBerry are becoming more and more popular. These smartphones now allow you to browse the Internet as quickly and easily as if you were using your computer. There is one major difference to remember though; the screen is much smaller! Although you can browse most sites, these websites were designed for a much larger screen and some technologies are not available.

How to adapt your website

 Ideally, it should detect and redirect smartphone users to a website specially designed for smartphones. The interface should change to a resolution of 320 x 480 and the content should be simplified since most users only read the outline. A more economical solution would be to adapt your main website to accommodate smartphone users without penalizing the majority of visitors who navigate the internet using their computers.

Here are some tips:

Flash technology is not available for iPhone users. If you have several clients who visit your website using their iPhones, I suggest you use other technologies like jQuery which is more suitable for smartphones.

Stay away from using drop down menus, especially menus with many levels.  It is difficult to be precise on a touch screen only a few inches wide and you can avoid frustrating your visitors by limiting the use of drop down menus.

Make sure the website is not too heavy. Limit the number of images since Wi-Fi phone networks are generally slower.

Avoid using large amounts of text. Use bulleting to separate ideas and keep the text to a minimum.

Be concise!

The web is evolving rapidly and it may be difficult to keep up with all the new services that are available. The days of ICQ and Netscape are long gone. Here’s a short list of the services that are available to your company today.

Social Media

Facebook.com
Facebook now has over 500 million members and many of your friends, partners and competitors are already members. Facebook is a must to promote your services. View photos from an event you attended or add the Facebook Like button to your product page and Facebook becomes a low cost marketing platform.

Twitter.com
Another service for you to discover is Twitter.  Twitter can broadcast information faster than TV and it will keep you informed on the topics that matter to you! Inform people about a new service or product using Twitter. A common practice is to display your latest tweets on your website.

AddThis.com
AddThis is a tool that brings all the social media together under a single button. You can share your articles with more people and more services such as Gmail, Digg, and Stumbleuppon using AddThis.

Blogs

WordPress.org
“Blogger” is very popular but WordPress is a more popular platform. Unlike an article, where the author is the only one conveying information, a “post” on a blog allows an exchange between the author and the readers. You can chat with people interested in your services, bringing you closer to your customers.

Search Engines

Google.com / maps.google.com
Although Yahoo! and Alta Vista have provided good service in the past; we are obviously in the age of Google. Ultra fast, accurate and fair, Google has little to fear from the competition. You also need to know about Google Maps. It will give you directions, travel time and even photos along the route to a given location. It is even possible to integrate this interactive map with all its benefits, directly into your site, ideally in your “Contact Us” section.

Videos

YouTube.com
Totally free, YouTube has a huge bank of all kinds of videos. It is the ideal medium to share your videos on the web, since each video you post will be shared automatically. If you have not already done so, use it as a platform to promote your corporate videos!

There has been a lot of talk about Flash technology in the last few months. For novices, Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a multimedia platform used to add animation, videos and interactivity to Web pages. Currently, Flash technology is used mainly for creating online advertisements and games.

Recently, a war erupted between Adobe and the computer giant Apple. The latter said it had no intention of supporting Flash technology on its mobile devices. The reasons given were, among others, security and energy consumption.

The problem is that Flash has been around for nearly 15 years now and is widely used on the Web. Since the iPhone and iPad are missing this technology, their users’ navigation of the Web is limited—75% of videos found there are in Flash. Because no alternative technology is available for the moment, the people at Apple are being forced to take a step back by affirming that they are studying the possibility of activating Flash on their devices.

But then, why such an attack?

Flash technology is the sole property of Adobe; that company alone can make decisions about it. With Apple having made its unhappiness loud and clear, it’s a sure bet that Adobe’s employees are now working double time to correct Flash’s shortcomings.

Also, an alternative to Flash is being developed: HTML5. It is already supported by the Apple and Google browsers and, unlike its competitor, it is open source. A clear message has been sent to the developers to prepare for HTML5 because Flash could very well disappear!

Advise against using Flash? Not at all!

CBC, CNN, Nike, Yahoo! and Facebook, to name a few, use Flash technology on their sites.

Although computer technologies evolve quickly, there is no need to panic. Flash is well established and too widespread to disappear overnight! HTML5 is still in development and it will take several years for it to reach maturity. It is expected that Flash will gradually decline after that.

Whether it’s for work, school research, planning a trip, or just for fun, you access the Internet using a Web browser. It’s the most important software on your computer. The following video will give you a better understanding of what a browser is.

Default browser

In 2003, Microsoft’s Web browser had no real competition. Internet Explorer had 95% of the market share. The effect of the monopoly would be felt from this point on; few efforts were made to improve the software that was alone in its class. Currently in a free fall, use of Internet Explorer may drop below the 50% mark in the next few months. Despite the fact that Microsoft Internet Explorer is incorporated into the Windows operating system, people are turning to new alternatives: browsers that are faster, more secure and also free.

The alternatives :

1. Mozilla Firefox
In a race against Microsoft for close to 10 years, FireFox seems to have reached a plateau, stagnating at 30% of the market share. Secure and stable, we criticize it for having lost its speed and simplicity.

Download Firefox free here.

2. Google Chrome
The Google giant entered the competition in 2009 with its sleek Web browser. Google Chrome has exploded onto the scene. There’s no more waiting with Chrome! With its performance-driven engine, it’s the fastest browser available. The people at Google have created a crazy video to demonstrate the speed of their browser.

But that’s not all…. Not only is Chrome quicker than lightning (see the video), it also has all kinds of other advantages. It synchronizes favourites and settings on all your work stations. And, with its thousands of extensions, in addition to the browser functions, we bet that you’ll find everything you need with Google Chrome.

Download Google Chrome free here.