August 19th, 2006 02:13pm
Julie Foster
This free webinar can help you with decisions in planning your small business holiday email marketing—
Have you began thinking about your upcoming holiday marketing plans? I know it is a real brain-drain to be coming out of the end of your busy summer, but ignore holiday planning now at your own peril. Thinking about your business email campaign is a good place to start and may be the most productive for your small business.
I participated in a Webinar on August 15 sponsored by Habeas. “Habeas is an email trust authority that re-establishes email as a reliable business communications medium. Habeas enables commercial email senders to certify their communications as legitimate, and helps ISPs and message security vendors make better, more efficient decisions about how to sort inbound mail.” —Habeas
The webinar lasts about an hour and I did come away with some very useful information. Even though the webinar was really directed more toward big business, much of what was said does apply to small business as well.
Presented in slide form with audio, the presentation is simple and easy to follow. During the question and answer segment at the end of the presentation, I asked two questions which were specifically directed to small business. You will be able to hear the questions I asked and the answers, which were basically:
1. What are 3 bullet points small business can consider most important for their holiday email strategies?
2. What form is most desirable and acceptable to the small business customer; html composed email messages, or plain text?
Although you missed the live webinar presentation, an archive version is available and I would recommend you take an hour to view or at least listen to it during your lunchtime.
:Best Practices to Drive Holiday Sales through Email
Description: Online holiday sales are growing exponentially every year. Whether you’re an e-retail veteran or launching a holiday campaign for the first time, you can benefit from this free webinar on how to maximize your email programs to make the most of this season.
Learn what types of email programs perform best during the holidays. And, make sure your delivery rates are reaching their highest potential.
The webinar is presented by HABEAS and hosted by
Chris Brubaker, Marketing Director.
Key Takeaways:
• The time to prepare for the holidays is now
• Understand your real delivery rates
• One person should be responsible for the total email program
Guest Presenter from Forrester Research®
Sucharita Mulpuru, Senior Analyst
Online holiday sales will be significant in 2006, with projected online sales of $26 billion. A 20% increase of $4 billion over the $22 billion spent in 2005.
Email is the most common marketing tool of online retailers - 93%. Email is the most used and the most effective at one of the lowest costs per order.
The archive is available now:
http://www.habeas.com/en-US/archived_events/06aug/Presentation_Files/index.html——Habeas
Free email assessment to determine you Internet email reputation, i.e. is your company email on any email spam or blacklists.
http://www.habeas.com/en-US/reg/reg.php?s=repcheck_blacklist
August 13th, 2006 06:32pm
Julie Foster
Building a business website … Understanding the basics
What makes a website good?
• Navigation — must be easy to figure out and not the least bit confusing. There should exist a natural organization (taxonomy) to lead the reader to the information or activity they desire in a logically ordered fashion.
What the heck is the three click rule? The answer is simple. The great majority of website visitors will look somewhere else if they cannot find some of what they are looking for on your website in (3) mouse-clicks.
The average shopping cart abandonment in a study conducted by Forrester Research was estimated at 48% in 2005. Don’t frustrate your visitors and shoppers attempting to figure-out your websites navigation system.
• Aesthetic — websites should be appealing and in good taste. Good taste being somewhat subjective, there should be a balance in the aesthetic appreciation by the audience or customer it is intended for. If it looks good, it will feel good to your audience.
• Organization — should be kept simple. Like the website navigation, the organization should flow in an ordered and understandable manner. Think the alphabet. In order to correctly get to the letter “Z”, you must first begin with the letter “A” and then proceed systematically forward. Everyone understands the alphabet and how it progresses. Your visitors will look for the natural flow through the website.
• Design & functionality — is and should be of primary importance in the development of the website. It must provide an appropriate appearance with good visual cues and an intuitive interface. The information too should not be overwhelming or overcrowded. Remember the axiom of KISS “keep it simple stupid” and “less is more”. In more professional development terms it is referred to as the “look and feel”.
Such development guidelines for the graphical design, navigation, form and function of the website is easier said than done. All this and website content too, is better left up to professional website development businesses.
I will digress a little here to emphasize as I did in “Does small business need help leveraging technologies — Part I”, that should there be genuine interest, determination, skills, tools and time to accomplish the task, then to follow through with the necessary ongoing maintenance, there exist a very fulfilling reward. The development of ones own website.
—Julie Foster ©2006 All Rights Reserved
Does small business need help leveraging technologies Part I – Building a business website
Does small business need help leveraging technologies Part II – What makes a website good
August 7th, 2006 05:18pm
Julie Foster
Building a business website
Can you do it yourself or should you hire someone ?…
A big question with no simple answers. Let’s narrow the scope of this topic. There are indeed many things that you may have to consider. I can tell you right now before we get into the nitty-gritty of this question that you better weigh the pros and cons with due diligence. Failure to make the correct decision will cost you time, money, reputation and perhaps the very success of your online business presence.
The cost of “time”… You must be honest with yourself in determining whether or not you are really interested in learning all of the disciplines involved in developing your own website. At the very least you will have to have a sound working knowledge of the following:
• Programming:
You will be using one of the more common scripting techniques such as html, xhtml transitional, xhtml strict, css, asp, .net, php, dhtml or javascript ?
• Static vs Dynamic web pages:
If wanting to utilize a current design and dynamic generation of web pages you must have some working knowledge of database design and functionality. Most dynamic websites today use the opensource MySql database. Static websites have limited useful applications these days. Avoid them unless you a a specific requirement for their use.
• Authoring packages:
Several good ones are available, i.e. Adobe-Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive CS2, Microsoft FrontPage, CoffeeCup HTML Editor, NetOjects Fusion, etc.. There are many to choose from and you will find some of them expensive and extremely sophisticated (read complex.) Conversely there are many that are free and simplistic ( not to be confused with needing little knowledge or skills to use).
• Graphic design:
Understanding how to create graphic images, laying them out in an esthetically pleasing manner and being able to incorporate them into a useful web page design can be challenging for the very best of web authors.
Being aware of image color depth and size is of primary importance even before you tackle the scanning, acquisition and manipulation of the chosen graphic materials.
The cost of “time and money”…
Moving on to the expense involved. The equipment and software applications are anything but cheap. There is a lot of opensource software that is very capable. Although the documentation is not that great in many cases and support is often offered only as a paid extra. I personally believe that much opensource software is superior. Such application software should not be looked upon as free.
Regardless of where you get the equipment and or applications to accomplish your goal of being able to successfully design and deploy a website, there is always significant cost involved. You will be able to decide for yourself if the do-it-yourself approach is the way you want to go.
With this is mind you must certainly consider the routine maintenance of the website. It is an ugly thing to undertake the monetary, time consuming and mental investment of building the business website only to then be to sick-of-it for the continued routine of freshening content and the maintenance required of every successful web presence.
The cost of “your reputation”…
There is really no mystery about whether a business reputation effects the bottom-line.
If you have a nice business site that works properly and you deliver to the customer in the expected manner, then you will establish a good baseline reputation.
Should your website be difficult to navigate, poorly designed and it puts-off the customer in any manner; believe me, your reputation and bottom-line will suffer. You will develop what-ever reputation is paid you by the customer.
There is just to many places to buy what-ever widget or service you are selling. Customers are very discerning and demanding these days and competition for them is truly intense. Don’t risk your reputation and your investment.
In Summary:
Gone are the days of the late 90’s when you could get by with a clunky static website.
Everything is anew and everything has changed. If you have friends and neighbors that are giving you advice about your website and they are not currently involved in that industry directly as a business…. run..run..run from their advice.
If you really have the time, money and desire to forge ahead with self authoring, deployment and maintenance of your business website, then I encourage you to follow your dreams and pursue that pot-of-gold at the end of the rainbow.
Should you be very interested to the point of shear excitement in tackling the aforementioned and you have the aptitude and determination; you may become quite fulfilled in developing your own online business presence.
Et cetera ….
First and foremost; Are you or is someone within your business or resource available circle of acquaintances “very skilled” in current web authoring technologies? Is spending your time or paying for in-house or a paid outsourced acquaintance to do the job— really cost effective? One must weigh all these factors and more against paying a professional to perform these and the many other aspects of marketing your online business.
— Julie Foster ©2006
Does small business need help leveraging technologies Part I – Building a business website
Does small business need help leveraging technologies Part II – What makes a website good
Online Systems Development, Inc.