What new online tools can help your company grow? 

What new online tools can help your company grow? 

I've Moved

Fri, 06/17/2011 - 12:53 - Author: andrew

Kindly head on over to Benkard.com, where I do my blogging these days.

Easy Email A/B Testing

Thu, 09/23/2010 - 15:55 - Author: andrew

Testing two versions of something is a great way to 1) lift response and 2) gain a greater understanding of your customers.

Plus, the tools for testing your web pages and emails keep getting better, cheaper, and easier to implement.

Website Navigation Done Right

Thu, 09/16/2010 - 13:47 - Author: andrew

How do you help website visitors go straight to the page they need? Have good site navigation, for one.

Below, my 90 seconds with the nice menu navigation at www.logmein.com.

 

Tools for Video Marketing: Flimp and VisibleGains

Mon, 09/13/2010 - 12:58 - Author: andrew

If you’re a business that has decided to make a promotional video, the easiest thing to do is to post it to your website. That’s simple, and hosting the video is also easy whether you use Vimeo or YouTube (my take here).

All About Online Content, for the Business Owner

Fri, 09/03/2010 - 15:00 - Author: andrew

Most of the material on this blog is about improving the online reach of your company’s selling message. Or getting the message out in less time, or for less money, or higher conversion effectiveness.

Of equal importance to the distribution of the message, though is the message itself.

The content.

Herewith, some basics about online content…

Is Online Content Important For My Business?

If your customers are online when they do any part of their research or buying, YES.

If you have a national footprint, YES.

Video hosting: The YouTube vs. Vimeo choice, about control and mobile distribution

Wed, 09/01/2010 - 15:58 - Author: andrew

What makes a marketing video successful? Most of the big factors have little to do with the technology, and instead are editorial and promotional in nature: The script, production, talent, and promotion/distribution.

My focus here is on a more mundane issue: where to host the video. That is, where does the video file "live". A video can be embedded into your website, but be hosted by another company like YouTube or Vimeo. (Nearly all of your customers won't notice the difference, and those that do won't care.)

SEO gone wrong

Fri, 02/12/2010 - 15:57 - Author: andrew

I have the dubious pleasure of shopping for a new car. Although I've decided on a make and model (Honda CRV), the question of what dealer to patronize is open. So off to the websites I go, looking for specials and the general tone of the various places. Like most people facing a trip to the dealer, I was in a, shall we say, pre-adversarial state of mind.

On one dealer website (UPDATE: dead link now, with awful error message), I see this (formatting in the original): 

Video and Credibility in Marketing

Tue, 01/12/2010 - 10:29 - Author: andrew

A business partner who helps a Connecticut real estate firm told me her client wanted "virtual tours" for their website.

Now, "virtual tours" can mean two things. First, those wizzy 360-degree pictures, with tiny counterintuitive pan-and-scan controls and that need a web browser plugin. To get those done, you need an "interactive agency" with a special camera.

I hate those.

A shopping cart usability hangnail

Thu, 12/10/2009 - 09:59 - Author: andrew

It's high season for ecommerce, and showtime for shopping carts all over the world.

Good marketing managers should have spent the entire year reviewing how their checkout experience is converting customers, since a problem in the Christmas season hurts twice as much as in the summer.

Marketing Rule #1: Make it easy for the customer to buy. Specifically for shopping carts, don't do things that confuse people, cause hesitation, or prompt rework. You are delaying or losing sales.

Drupal module for tracking attachment downloads per-user

Thu, 12/03/2009 - 15:11 - Author: andrew

Not long ago I built an extranet for a client, which was a secure repository of documents. The client wanted to know which files were being downloaded by which users, but Drupal didn't offer that out-of-the-box. So, I had this very modest module written by a nice fellow in the UK.

download_statistics.tar.gz

 

Untar, upload and install as usual. Then you'll be able to see something like this: 

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