Web Impakt

When looking at a lot of the websites in Idaho Falls, many of them serve the purpose web pages did initially for businesses. As was mentioned to me in a conversation, they are just putting up a billboard in cyberspace. Still not understanding the power of the internet for their businesses, many business owners are feeling the need to get online and are simply creating a web address with content that is no more than a virtual sign on the information highway called the internet.

In order to save money, these business owners turn to do-it-yourself website design programs and many of them do a good job of getting things started. But, there is more to creating a website if you want it to be an effective means of creating business through it. 

A new trend in adding professional media interaction to websites is the use of Flash Media. Flash introductions, banners, boxes, and now coming to the scene are Flash transparent videos. The Flash media offers you a method of providing visitors to your website with information you feel they should know about your business without having to click for information. The new trend of transparent videos allows you to do a virtual greeting to your potential customers and explain what your site has to offer. If you are camera shy and don’t want to put yourself on your website, you could hire a company to provide you with a virtual spokesperson that can put together a video with an explanation of your company and website. These actors go off of a script provided by your business. 

When applying Flash media to your website, you will need to work with a company that will make sure the file sizes don’t impair your potential visitors’ ability to load your website. A completely Flash driven website isn’t a good idea because of search engines not being able to read the content of your website, however, according to an article on WebProNews, search engines are expected to rank websites higher if they contain images and video in the upcoming year.

 Online shopping isn’t the only use for the internet this Christmas season. We took some time to find a few interesting and fun websites to help you enjoy as you celebrate.

NoradSanta.org  
Most of the year, the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD), is committed to watching the skies for potential threats and controlling flights. On Christmas Eve, however, they set their radars on Santa’s sleigh with the help of Google Earth. Over the years they have developed their website from just tracking Santa to adding interactive games and activities.  Your kids can take a virtual sleigh ride, read stories, play hand bells and explore the night sky. To track Santa on Christmas Eve go to http://www.noradsanta.org/en/home.html
 

Elfyourself.com powered by JibJab
They’ve done it again. JibJab has provided yet another way to put your face or someone else’s face on an elf and make it dance. You can download these fun videos for $4.99, e-mail them or embed them in your blog or social network account.

 
The North Pole  
Let your kids see what’s happening in Santa’s Secret Village. This website lets kids create their own story book, play games, read Christmas stories, write a letter to Santa and send Christmas Postcards to their friends.

Emailsanta.com
On this website, your kids can write letters to Santa, check Santa’s “Nice List”, read letters to Santa, watch Santa’s cowntdown, e-mail Rudolf, look and Santa Claus’ photo album, adn watch Christmas Webcams.

Have a safe and wonderful Christmas from all of us here at Web Impakt!

 There are a few things to consider when selling products online. The first and most important is providing your customers with a safe and secure method for making their purchases. Second is deciding how you are going to do that.

 Options come to mind such as PayPal, SecurePay, etc. There is also a list of shopping carts to choose from. Compatibility varies between these and so do their features. You will need to decide among them which fit your situation and customer base best.

 Your situation could be that you only have a few products to sell and are limited on funds to set up online purchases through your website.  Or, you could have lots of products to sell and feel your customers would be better served showing them their choices in a shopping cart before checking out. You may also want to have access to and be able to provide your customers with current account information including order status and the option to send updates on products and newsletters.

 These payment gateways can be a direct part of your website, or you can send them to the payment gateway’s site to enter their payment information. With both methods, you can provide your customers with a safe payment process.

 Costs vary as you consider the features you want to use and offer to your customers and can be a factor in which method you choose. The benefit of having a payment method provided through your own website is earning the credibility of having a secure payment gateway logo on your site and maintaining your website image on the pages they are checking out on. Many view it as more professional to be able to make the complete transaction on the website they are buying from rather than being sent to another website.

 Starting with a lower cost payment method to start can work great for beginning online business and can eventually lead them to being able to afford the more interactive and custom shopping carts with integrated payments.  An example is one of our clients.  Peachy Cheap sales just one scrapbooking product per day and an extremely low price. Initially they sent their customers to PayPal to complete their purchases. Now, they have decided to add the features they couldn’t offer before and provide secure online payments and check out through their own custom shopping cart.

To give you an idea of how these options appear, here are a couple websites we’ve done.  Chocolate Box Creations uses PayPal outside of their website, and as mentioned, Peachy Cheap has an integrated method of collecting payments.

Click on images to view larger
   

If you are not sure which is best for you, we would be happy to help explain the differences to you and give you advice based on your situation.

With the market on a downward trend and consumer confidence down, now is the time for businesses to find opportunities to expand their outreach to their customers. A strong presence on the internet is a viable option for every business to get to customers they don’t already serve.

Wait a minute… According to American Research Group, Inc the average amount people plan to spend on the internet this holiday season is about half of what was spent on average last year and people who plan to buy online are down from 36% to 30%. Why should I invest more into the internet when online purchasing is predicted to be lower now? With the entire economy struggling, one should expect a decline in online purchases as well. What isn’t down, however, is the number of customers going to the internet to get information to make their purchase decisions. According to Bazaarvoice, 72% of shoppers plan to research their products online and 83% of shoppers said online product reviews or evaluations had at least some level of influence in their purchase decision.

My father-in-law is a perfect example of how the internet has changed the way people shop. This Christmas he wanted a Nikon D80 digital camera, and used a lot of time researching the best deal here in town. As the ads for Black Friday came out, he was increasingly excited as he found deal after deal on the camera.  The first ad showed a discount from over $800 to over $700. Another company had the same camera for sale for $649.  He was committed to going to that retailer on Friday until he found a better deal still while researching the camera online.  He came to me extatic when he found he could by the same camera with the same accessories for only $579 plus shipping. He never shopped on the internet before, but is determined to do more online buying in the future.

With a growing number of your customers turning to the internet, an effective website has become a must have for businesses today. We have already covered the components recommended to create an effective website, and I recommend you review it again.

Right now is the time to get more aggressive and, most importantly, more efficient in obtaining customers. An effective web design paired with successful internet marketing will open your doors to more customers and put you in a better position to compete.

I came across a website last week that I found interesting. As a means to create another source of income, he added Adsense by Google to his web site. In fact, his website had 3 locations on the home page where Adsense provided information to people visiting his website that were related to his company.  If you don’t know what Adsense is, an example of it is below and information can be found at http://www.google.com/adsense

Not only was the presence of Google a little too strong on his website, the ads generated on his website didn’t just lead to articles related to his business specialty, they directed people to his competitors. His website, to me at least, didn’t tell me he was trying to get my business. As a disservice to him, I got more information about his competitors than I did about him.

So when is Adsense appropriate?

If your website is strictly informational, and you are not trying to sell anything from it, Adsense can be a great way for you to make an otherwise non-profitable website create an income.  If you are trying to sell products or services from your website, there is a way to make Adsense work for you.  In setting Adsense up with Google, you can select to prevent competitors’ ads from showing up. 

In my opinion, Adsense is available as filler for a newer company that doesn’t have enough content or access to information for their visitors to view. Even if you are filtering out competitors, you are redirecting your potential customers away from your site and may not get them back. Even though it may take more time and resources from you or your site administrator, your website would be more attractive and credible if you selected articles and added links directly to them. Other appropriate links would be to direct visitors to association websites that lend credibility to you (i.e. BBB, Water Quality Association, American Orthopaedic Association). These websites are strictly informational and, if your business is associated with them, they add confidence to the potential customer visiting your website about you and your business.

Once your website is built and looks and functions the way you want it to, there is one final hurdle to overcome: Search Engine Optimization. What good is your beautiful, fully functional website if you have no visitors? It takes a focused effort to get your web site displayed high in the search engine results.

An effective website is one of the most cost-effective forms of advertising. It is critical for most businesses to have a functioning and optimized website. 80% of the people on the Internet use a search engine, like Google, to find what they are looking for. Most people won’t even look past the first page of results. This results in some tough competition between you and your competitors to get into the top results.

There are numerous ways to get your website displayed high on the search engines. A dedicated professional SEO team can help you accomplish your online goals.

In order to have an effective website, you need a website plan. There are three important parts of creating an effective website:

1. Define Audience
2. Define Purpose
3. Define Marketing Plan

The most important part of the website plan is to define your target market. It is essential to define who your chosen demographic will be. Once your target market is defined, the design and copywriting will be consistent to appeal to your chosen audience.

There are many purposes to having a website, these may include one or more of the following:

1. On brochure showcasing your company’s products and services
2. An E Commerce site selling products
3. A company information site that facilitates communication between customers, suppliers and employees.
4. An entertainment based site

Narrowing the purpose of your website and what you want it to accomplish will improve your chances for success. Defining your website purpose before its creation will ensure your website is optimized to achieve your goals.

Hundreds of websites, similar to yours, are vying for the same website visitors as yours. It is important to understand that along with a website, a defined online marketing plan will allow your online presence to be as successful as possible.

It is important to thoughtfully plan your website before implementation, this will allow for you and your development team to understand your website objectives and successfully achieve them.

There are many important components of website design. The average visitor to a website may only see images and content but are other important elements involved in creating a successful website. Those components will be covered in the next three blog posts:

1. Sound Programming and a well planned framework
2. Goal-Driven Design, Accessibility and testing
3. Search Engine Optimization and a strong web marketing strategy

It is a well known analogy that a successful website is like an ice burg. The website visitor only sees the images and content but there is a large hidden foundation that ensures the website visitor leaves the site trusting the source and finding what they were searching for.

There are many hosting providers located in the Idaho Falls area. Web Impakt offers web site hosting services that will meet the needs of most small to medium sized businesses. Our professional and helpful attitude will help you get your website on the world wide web in a timely fashion. With each hosting account you will a control panel with access to website statistics and email accounts. Each hosting account is backed up daily, weekly and monthly.

Web Impakt owns our own premium servers which are located at a reliable data center. We also offer 100% network uptime guarantee so your site will ALWAYS be available.

If you are in need of a co-located server, we will use our partnership with MicroServ to make sure your needs are taken care of.

Call Web Impakt now with any questions about getting started with or swapping over to Web Impakt hosting. We offer the best hosting value in Idaho Falls.

Idaho Falls has a lot of holes to fill when it comes to websites. I am always surprised when I am looking for a new product or service and can’t even find ONE website in Idaho Falls representing these types of companies.

Let me give you an example. I was searching for a plumber to come and fix a clogged toilet. I pull up Google and type in “Idaho falls plumber.” The standard list of phone book entries appears and clicking on each link takes me to their address and phone number but not a single one has a www address listed.

Imagine the swaying power a plumbing company could have over a potential consumer. If I would have found one plumber, with a website that had information that I needed, I would have called them.

I assume some plumber in Idaho Falls has a website, they just aren’t listed in the first ten search results. If that is the case, the website isn’t being as effective as it could be.

Web Impakt can help you optimize your current website to achieve better search engine results. Web Impakt can also help these types of businesses in Idaho Falls that are just waiting for a website to top the search list.

Other types of businesses in the Idaho Falls & Ammon area that does not appear to have a website yet:

Idaho Falls Vet – only has one
Idaho Falls Handy Man
Idaho Falls Heating
Idaho Falls Rain Gutters
Idaho Falls Mechanic
Idaho Falls Tanning

Get the competitive edge over your competition today and lets get a website up and running that dominates the local search engine area.