The Web Design Company Blog

I get this question often. So, I though I take a minute to write about this in short. You start your SEO by analyzing your website and the competitors website on the search engines.

Without starting at this point, you will never know where you are, where you are going, when you got there and what you are measuring in terms of success and results.

We give our clients some 7 pieces of software to analyze and monitor SEO efforts. This helps our customers see where they are and when they achieve their goals.

After you achieve each SEO goal you need to start looking at new territories to gain visitors. Unless you are the size of Wikipedia, there is always more to do in SEO there are always new sources of traffic to consider to get more customers. Just don’t try to “bite the whole elephant in one go”. Do your SEO step-by-step and try to keep focused. By analyzing you site and your competitors site you will be able to get down to the tasks you need to achieve and move on from one task to another until you reach your goals.

If you don’t know how to analyze your site and your competitors site, you may want to consider an SEO audit for your site.

I was recently hopping all over the net when I encountered yet another great addition to Twitter. This time it comes in the form of a CRM system. The design is an enhancement of Salesforce.com's Service Cloud application, which allows the monitoring and tracking of user information partaining to their products on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

In plain English, if you are a company and sell certain products; the new application will allow you to monitor conversation about your products that users are engaged in, and even allow you to engage in it if you so wish. With that kind of power, you can easily respond to any complaints or find out information on what makes your product good or bad, and therefore make it better and increase customer satisfaction.

Looking at it from a purely business point of view, this new addition to your existing CRM system is a must if you really plan to go above and beyond to please your customers. If you are an E-Commerce site, you will definitely know how difficult it is to get real-world accurate feedback from your customers partaining to your product, and through Salesforce's new Twitter intergration you will be able to extract that feedback. Going even further, I'm sure one can see the great potential for marketing an existing product or releasing a new product with lowered risk of "failure-to-launch".

From the "peanut-gallery" (me), I can't say I disapprove. It is a great opportunity, especially for new E-Commerce sites to get that necessary improvement information. The only possible fault I can see is that (like similar applications) this one probes and eavesdrops on conversations. I'm a big fan of my privacy online, and when it comes to praising or complaining about a product, I tend to report straight to the source. Yet, if you do not mind the product's supplier leeching information off your chats or even engaging your conversation, then all is well.

Unfortunately for business, Salesforce's Twitter intergration application is not yet fully completed; but don't worry, it's right around the corner so start budgeting for something that could potentialy put you up there with the best.

Picking up on the social network I noticed some speak about Coupons coming to Google Adwords and soon found my way to this post on adwords.blogspot.com

Addition of coupons is going to be an awesome addition to Adwords for e-Commerce businesses whose Shopping Cart software can already support Coupon Discounts. From this post it seems that major advertising agencies are already getting an early move on the action with favourable results.

Addition of Coupons is an interesting move, as it seems that Google is trying to emulate the offline media where paper-based coupons have been years for many years. It's going to be interesting to see how businesses take to this enhancement. In theory the learning or adaptation curve should be non-existant as businesses and consumers already understand the concept.

The new Adwords templates are designed to be as near realistic versions of paper-based coupon systems. As with "traditional Adwords", Google has made creating and modifying Coupons ads very easy. Sounds strange to refer to the typical "Adwords" adverts as traditional when we are speaking of adding Coupon adverts which have been around long before Adwords was even thought of.

I have not had a reason to use Adwords Coupons yet, but I am sure I will find some reason to apply them in the future as I have wanted to do this on previous projects. Our shopping carts already support coupons so I guess I will be hacking away and trying it out this weekend.

I have been hearing a lot of buzz recently about all these wonderful new web browsers. People around me have full blown arguments about their preference of web browser, and it mostly ends up in shouting with no result. So like the little explorer that I am, I decided to look into it and maybe take someone's side. I checked out Google's infant Chrome, Microsofts's upgraded Internet Explorer 8, and Mozilla's new Firefox 3.

The most wonderful thing I found is that they are all FREE for download. Score! Firefox is open source to begin with, and it's good to see that Microsoft (not so much Google) finally catching on.

I'm a huge fan of Javascript and Google's Chrome marvels itself on being primarily Javascript orientated, which racks up the points on my list. Chrome also apparently makes web browsing faster, more fun and open. More open..? That raises questions in my mind about it's security. When I browse I'm rather open but there is a certain level of security that I like to maintain online.

Keeping to the norm, most people use Internet Explorer. Now apparently the new IE 8 is compatible with websites that were designed for older browsers, which as a web developer I think is really awesome. I surf old sites and new ones, and I really enjoy having the comfort of doing so without being prompted for upgrades to my browser so it can handle web content. On a more broad perspective, IE 8 makes web experiences faster, easier and safer. Safety is excellent from my point of view, as I don't like to be probed unexpectadly and unknowingly while browsing.

Jumping to Firefox 3; it is the latest upgrade to Mozilla's very popular Firefox web browser. The latest installment brags about being faster, safer and smarter. Smarter is a plus as I like my browser to do some of my work for me. The one aspect I have come to enjoy about Firefox is that is is highly customisable, allowing for a browsing experience on your terms. I dug further and came to realise that Firefox 3 has infact got the FASTEST response times out of all of the web browsers.

Overall, each browser has it's ups and downs; but they are all upgrades of their predecessors; and it obviously comes down to the kind of person you are. Personally, I would only use Google's Chrome late at night, to test it, seeing as it's still in it's infant stages and has a long way to go. For those of you who are accustomed to mainstream products and surf the web down a similar wave every day, then IE 8 will offer a slightly better surfboard and free wax. Yet for the indulgent person who engulfs in the new things on the Internet, and loves online exploration their own way, then Firefox 3 is your browser for the ultimate online experience.

Download them for free, check them out for yourself. Me... I'll stick to my customised Firefox browser.

Get Chrome 

Get Firefox 3

Get Internet Explorer 8

TheWebDesignCompany has been busy building the PhoNet Vox Dealer websites. PhoNet Vox Dealers are Vox Telepreneurs who have joined the Vox Telepreneur business by way of signing up under the PhoNet Vox Telepreneur Dealership .

PhoNet has given the first 30 people who have signed up under the PhoNet Vox Dealership a free website to help promote their Vox telepreneur business. The websites each have a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) and are built on the Open Source Content Management System called Joomla.

The PhoNet Vox Dealer websites enable the Telepreneurs within the PhoNet Vox Dealership network to promote their businesses online. The websites display relevant information about the Vox Products and explain a variety of solutions. The sites also introduce the Vox Telepreneur business opportunity and make use of online video hosted on YouTube.com to explain the Vox Products and Business.

People interested in becoming customers or dealers can register to the PhoNet Vox Dealer website to download a Vox Application form. The website also uses an autoresponder to send newly registered users a welcome message with the Vox application form attached.

The Vox ADSL Telephone Products enable customers to make cheap calls using  VoIP. Customers can realize significant savings of up to 50% on their Telkom or MTN, CELL-C or Vodacom telephone bill.

TheWebDesignCompany has also developed a Vox Cost Savings Calculator that people can use to calculate how much they can save on their telephone bills when they use Vox as their Voice Carrier. The calculator takes into consideration call of the Vox Telephony products , including the Vox ADSL Phone and Vox ADSL PBX systems.

The Websites also use Google Analytics to track and monitor hits. Also included in the sites is the use of XML technologies such as Google Web Maps and RSS Feeds for syndication of website content into search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

Thanks to the flexibility and ease of use provided by Joomla, the PhoNet Vox Dealers can optionally customize and manage their own websites if they wish. If not then the website is managed by TheWebDesignCompany.

The offer of a Free PhoNet Vox Dealer website was eagerly accepted by people wanting to become Vox Telepreneurs and the first 30 websites were all grabbed within the first two weeks of launching the PhoNet Vox Dealership.

Following this free offer, it is still possible for people wanting to sign-up as a Vox Telepreneur under the PhoNet Vox Dealership to get a PhoNet Vox Dealer Website . Anyone who becomes a dealer by way of  PhoNet can rent a PhoNet Vox Dealership website for a low annual fee. TheWebDesignCompany assists registered PhoNet Vox Dealers to choose a co.za domain name and provides the hosting.

Unless you want to make money online you don’t need SEO . SEO is one part of the online strategy to getting customers, leads and making more business. If a website is sitting in the search engines listings on page 1,000,000  or even page 10 on goggle search, and no one can find it, then the website is really not doing its’ job and it probably was a waste of money in the first place.

There are 3 ways to get people to a website to generate leads and purchases:

1. Place adverts offline and some people will visit the website (hopefully the website has been tested for conversion at that point).
2. Place adverts and banners all over the internet where people see them to visit the website
3. Get people from free searches on the search engine, which is often referred to as “free traffic”.

For serious marketers and companies, they use all the above to some extent or another, depending on their industry. Very advanced marketers and companies also use social media in the mix to some extend or another.

However, the fact is that in the long term of continually getting people to a website is still via the search engines. There is no advert that you can pay for it once and will get you people forever not even for a long period of time, only for the time that it is advertised.

Every advert that one places, online of offline, costs money, however, once the strength in the search engine has been achieved for rankings on the first page of Google, it is much easier and cheaper to maintain in the long term.
With SEO one can achieve long terms visitors to a website, without paying for adverts over and over again. SEO is combined of many tasks that need to be preformed to achieve the goals. It does take some work, but once there, the work reduces significantly with time (unless you are in a space where there is fierce competition and a new site with dedicated SEO people pops up every single day, which is not very common in most industries).

SEO is not magic, it takes work and time and it pays big dividends for those that understand SEO and perform this job daily or outsource it to get the free traffic.

So is SEO important? Sure it is if you want to get more clients, more leads through the website and if you have the long terms vision of the internet. It is not only the vision of how many people you can get today, which is part of the whole picture, but how many more clients and leads you can get for as long as the business is in existence. The internet is NOT getting smaller, it is getting BIGGER, much bigger each year and South Africa is only at the beginning.

Many people these days want to make a living online. Online business has become some sort of a fad. Though having an online business is a great thing (and I speak from personal experience), turns out that many people find barriers to entry, here are some points to consider if you want to start an online business:

1.    You need to have either the technical skill or the money to build the website.

2.    You need to find a product that people want to buy.

3.    You need to continuously educate yourself and keep updated in the online world, things change often.

The first barrier to entry is usually the biggest one. People want to go online but do not have the budget to build a good website that would actually get customer to buy and then continue the work to promote (exactly like an offline business) to get more customers to buy the products. Truth be told online and offline: the business that has the biggest budget to acquire a customer will always win.

The second problem is very common even in the offline world: the research for a viable product or service to sell online. The considerations though are sometimes slightly different online than offline.

The third problem is easily overcome by persistence; this is a great entrepreneurial skill. That said, not everyone has the skill or wishes to acquire it. Online unfortunately things change faster and more frequently, whether promoting or updating a website, changing SEO strategies or social media strategies in the online world it is critical to keep up to date (otherwise the website, which is the business, slips away and the competition wins).

If you are considering entering the online business world, think to yourself if your idea would work offline. If it wouldn’t then why do you thing it would online?