We are finally able to add a business page to Google+ (YEAH another social media site to babysit!) Regardless of your opinion on if we need another social media network or not, adding a page for your business or organization is relatively straight forward.

1. First login to your Google+ account using your Google Account (don’t have an account yet? Go here http://bit.ly/vEfzVK to create a Google account and then go Here http://bit.ly/rRTu8E to create a Google+ account.
2. Next go here https://plus.google.com/pages/create (You may also see this link
   
   on your page once logged in, simply click on it and you will end up in the same place.)
3. Next select the type of business or organization you wish to addCreate your page name, and enter your website URL. Select a category that represents the type of organization you are adding. (if you post content for 18+, 21+ audiences or promote alcohol please make the appropriate selection, otherwise leave the drop-down set to Any Google+ user. Yes then agree to the terms and CREATE!
4. Wow that was difficult! Now all that is left is to add some content and start using your page. The first thing you will be prompted to do is add a tag line that describes your business. (Don’t have one? http://bit.ly/uHRilO provides some basic background on taglines.)You will also have the opportunity to add a profile photo. (If you have used any social network you should be familiar with this. — one note, Google+ has a neat simple to use photo editor you can use. Once you upload the photo you should seeyou can select if you choose – or move forward with what you uploaded (175px x 175px is a good size to work with). You  can also pull from Picasa, Photos of you or from a Webcam installed on your computer.

Those are the basics. You can edit your profile further, and promote your page using the URL provided to you under the Get Started link – should look something like this: https://plus.google.com/110082409978438023963

Websites that use current development standards to incorporate the proper features and functionality will always be a step ahead of their competition. Keeping your online presence updated creates better experiences for the users and ultimately provides a higher return on investment for your online marketing budget.

Here are the Top 6 Signs your website needs an overhaul.

1. Your Website Isn’t Mobile Friendly!
Mobile is already 30% of web browsing, estimated to reach 50% or more in 2 years. Can you be seen?

2. Your Website Isn’t Social!
Social media will help build your brand and bring users to your website. Integration of these networks is an important element to a well rounded website.

3. Your Website Cannot Be Found!
Achieved through content optimization & proper code structure, website optimization is critical to the ongoing success of your website.

4. You Cannot Update Your Own Content!
Professional websites put the control of day to day updates in your hands, through simple to use custom Content Management Systems (CMS).

5. It Doesn’t Generate Leads or Sales!
Modern websites work for your company by utilizing data collection forms, providing registration touch points & building brand awareness.

6. It Simply Looks Outdated!
Web 2.0 site designs take advantage of larger monitor sizes, have a clean & easy-to-understand user interface & take advantage of the power of social media.

So, if your website shows any of these signs, it’s probably time for an overhaul.
Choosing the right team to help with this challenge will make a big difference in your ROI. Corporate Communications, Inc. is an award winning development team, winning 11 Best of the Web Awards from the Rochester Business Journal in the last 6 years. That’s more than any other firm. Let our expertise help you make your website an award winner and start generating revenue for your business.

It’s time to stop making excuses or complaining about the fact that your current website isn’t producing the results you want.

Give us a call at 585-262-3430 or email us info@corp-com.com to learn how we can help.

Website entry pages or landing pages represent the first page that a user sees when they arrive at your site. These could be considered the doorways into your website – and you want many doorways!

To begin, this statistic will provide you with information related to what pages are pulling in the most traffic from search engines. The optimized pages on your site will bubble to the top in organic search results (SERPs) providing you more insight as to what people are searching for and which pages on your site you have done a good job of optimizing.

When  you have the opportunity to drive people to your website, you have an opportunity to ‘continue the conversation’ by delivering them to a customized landing page. For example, if you are running a targeted print campaign for example, publishing a unique URL in the ad or displaying a QR Code both puts you in control of what the users will see when they visit your website. Both the URL and QR Code will take the user to a custom landing page, that supports the ad content, continues the design and helps to reassure users they are where they are supposed to be. This method also allows you to provide cues to where users can find additional related information on the website. The bonus with this approach is most likely the landing page you create will be somewhat optimized by the nature of the content, providing an additional optimized page on your site. The bonus with this approach, when done properly, is that the landing page you create will be optimized by the targeted nature of the content, thus providing a new, relevant, optimized page on your site.

So start building some more doorways to guide visitors into your website and discover how your landing pages will make your search engine marketing results more successful than ever.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know if the visits to your site are merely repeat visits from the same small group of users (who for example have your home page set as their web browser home page?!) or a broad growing base of users? This is where the Unique Visitors statistic comes into play.

Unique visitors are uniquely identified users who have made web server request (log analysis) or viewed pages (page tagging) within a specified period of time (commonly looked at on a monthly basis). A unique visitor can make multiple visits to a site but are still only counted once within the period.

Commonly the identification method is based off of the IP address assigned to the computer used to access the site or cookie found on the computer.

Truly determining unique visitors can be problematic for a number of reasons including:

• Shifting dynamically assigned IP addresses – A specific computer may be reassigned an IP address within the period making it look like an additional unique user when in fact it is the same user
• NAT IP address assignments – In this case many users may be hiding behind one IP address and will appear as one unique visitor within many return visits (WIFI hot spots for example)
• Shared Computers or devices – In the case of a computer that is shared between many people (families, libraries, etc.) multiple visits to the same site by different people will be recorded as multiple visits by the same unique user
• Same User / Multiple devices – This scenario has a bit of a twist. Let’s say a user accesses a website from home, the office and on the road via smart phone. These will all be recorded as unique visitors even though it is the same person.
• Cookies Crumbles – Users can not accept or delete tracing cookies which can further complicate the situation

This statistic can be one of the most important numbers to follow if you are interested in gauging website growth and content penetration.

Visit duration or time on site is based upon user activity on a website. Basically it aims to report the duration of each visit to the website. Unfortunately each tracking method can collect this data differently and thus return different results.

For log based reporting a true picture of activity is not provided – here is why. The only way a time duration can be determined is when more than one page is requested. The time of the initial request is subtracted from the time of the last recorded request resulting in the logging of a visit duration.

Hosted solutions can work this a little differently. Google Analytics for example drops cookies on a users system to log specific requests. These cookies will mark the end of a visit when:

If users delete the cookies or don’t permit them then the data will not be collected.

7 Great Ways Your Website Can Take On Business Functionality

A professional design and driving traffic to your website are key ingredients in building an effective web presence, but it doesn’t end there. Thinking beyond the standard website design requires a more in depth look at the overall workflow of your business operation and how you can offer a better experience for your new prospects and loyal customers. Developing better ways to interact with your customers or internal departments with custom online applications, will enhance the efficiency of your business, increase profitability, and put you ahead of the competition.

Whether you are just getting started or you’ve had your website online for a while now, rethinking your approach to website functionality will yield a better return of this investment. Companies that invest their web strategy budget in smart online features and functionality turn their website into an asset instead of an expense. Here are 7 great ideas to introduce business functions into your website.

1. Blogs / Forums / Community Building - Implement a method for your customers to provide valuable input and feedback to help guide the improvement and growth of your business. A blog is also one of the better ways to improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

2. Careers / Job Application Manager - Integrate ways to streamline the process of receiving, tracking and communicating with potential job applicants and candidates. This will help you cast a larger net for better candidates.

3. Client Access - Create an custom online environment that gives your clients the necessary tools to efficiently interact with your business for common tasks and requests for your products and/or services.

4. Online Presentations / Tutorials – Today’s customers tend to avoid the sales process. To get under their radar, incorporate videos or presentations into your website. It allows you to highlight the key features and benefits of your services, introduce new products, provide how-tos, etc.

5. Online Demos / Product Tours – Provide ways for your visitors to ‘kick the tires’ of your products and/or services when they are doing research for their purchasing decisions. Anytime access let’s them explore on their time, at their convenience.

6. Interactive Calculators / Comparison tools - Tools like these create repeat visits, and you’ll also be recognized as a resource location by including methods for users to ‘do their homework’ and produce case evidence for decision makers to build the confidence needed for converting them.

7. Intranet - Develop an internal website / system customized to your business for posting resources, company policy, streamlining internal processes, enhancing productivity and improving the way your business communicates. Centralized, simple, world-wide accessibility makes this a much more lucrative method for delivering and distributing company information.

Features such as these make your web presence and overall web strategy a more valuable tool and will help give you an edge over competitors who don’t offer these options. Not only will these enhancements move you in the right direction toward successfully converting more prospects, they can also improve your bottom line by creating better efficiencies for the way you manage your business.

They’re coming!!! No not the scary green men from outer-space – Website visitors,  also referred to as ‘visits’ represent a series of page requests made by a single user during a period. As long as the user continues to make page requests without exceeding a given timeout period the requests all fall under the same visit. (When initially configuring a web server the administrator can configure a “visit timeout” period, which is normally set at 30 minutes.) If the same user makes a request after the time out period the request will initiate a new visit.

For example – the most recent request from ‘user X’ occurs @ 12:25 PM. If ‘user X’ makes another request to the same website sometime before 12:55 PM the visit continues, the countdown timer is reset. If the user waits until 12:56 PM to make their next request the webserver registers a new visitor.  (This action will be seamless to the user.)

There are some inherent problems with ‘counting’ visitors with this method.

The next basic statistic people often throw around in conversation is pageviews (sometimes also referred to as page impressions.)

The statistic pageview indicates the total number of times any HTML page or non-HTML  requested ‘page’ (.pdf file for example) was requested on the site. This statistic definitely carries more value than the previous ‘hits’ statistic but can also provide a clouded view of what is happening on your website.

The statistic can be referred to in two ways. First from a overall site standpoint and secondly at an individual page level.

When considering pageviews alone from an overall site standpoint you are forced to take an average and apply it to each visit to the site. The reason is one user could come to your site and request a single page and then leave, while the next visitor could come to your site and make 40 page requests. From this number all you can tell is the total number of requests for the site for the period.

At an individual page level it becomes a little more relevant. Simply, the pageviews of an individual page represent the number of times that page was requested. Again you can experience similar issues as previously noted but you can also draw a conclusion that the content found on the specific page may be very important to your website visitors if the pageviews for that specific page increase.

How many times have you heard someone boast about the number of hits to their website? (I wont  mention any names, but after reading this hopefully it wont happen again – so be sure to forward this to the offenders!) The reason many people look to this number is because it can be a sizable number for even the smallest website. Really when it comes right down to it, this statistic is rather pointless when you are concerned with analyzing, profiling and understanding user activity on your website. Here’s why:

1. A Hit is created when any file is delivered to the browser
   Anytime a user makes a request of a webpage the web server identifies the various components required to properly display the page and it is then rendered within the user’s browser. There in lies the issue.
2. One web page can require the delivery of many (many!) individual files.
   

   http://www.gogeocachingny.com/

   Depending on how the web page is constructed, the total number of hits can vary drastically. Here is an example of a very SIMPLE single page website. By simply typing in the URL and requesting the index page of this site, this action will result in A MINIMUM of 39 hits – FOR ONE PAGE!!!

It should become quickly evident why the number of hits doesn’t really provide any quality statistical information.

The next time someone starts in about their hits, try to explain this simple concept to them or send the this way for some education.

When is it time to redesign your company’s corporate website? Good question without a simple answer.
If your website has been ‘live’ for a while (let’s say at least 12 months), you may find yourself wondering how often should I redesign my website and is now the time? There are a number of items that should be considered when determining the right time to redesign a website.  Some things will vary from industry to industry but here are a few that should be long reaching.

Does your site conform to existing company branding?

Your company’s website should reflect the corporation’s current identity and brand. If the company has adopted a new identity or is pursuing a renewed branding approach it is critical the website run in parallel with these changes. Failing to bring the website ‘along for the ride’ can increase the number of lost visitors to the site on account of being confused if it is the right website or not. If this is the case – it is time for an immediate website redesign.

How does your site compare to your competitors?

In a competitive marketplace a website must be redesigned more frequently to capture and hold customers attention and build loyalty. This can mean that redesigning your site may need to happen every 12 months (or more often!) In markets that are not as competitive, the gap between website redesigns can be stretched to up to 24 – 36 months. With these longer gaps one must be conscious of other changes taking place with technology and search engines as mentioned above. A partial website redesign (restructuring the backend without drastically changing the appearance) may be appropriate in these cases to stay competitive online.

Is your site compatible with current browser usage?

Web browsers are constantly being updated to address new security threats and to stay current with advancing technology. Additionally new browsers are continually being developed and adopted by users. Commonly sites that are more than 12 – 18 months old are potentially missing out on technologies available in new browsers that could enhance the overall user experience of your website. Having a website that does not function correctly on these new browsers can have a negative impact on the overall user experience of your site and force users to leave your site prematurely.

Is your site optimized to conform to current Search Engine Optimization Standards?

To remain competitive, search engines are constantly ‘tweaking’ the algorithms that serve as their backbones. These modifications will impact where your site appears in the search engine results. To maintain a high position in the natural listings, you need to stay current with these changes and make changes to your site related to the algorithm changes. If your website has not been analyzed and optimized within the past 12 months, you may be missing opportunities due to lower search engine results listing – meaning fewer visitors to your site.

These are a few of the topics that should be considered during the decision process. If after a careful review of the state of your website you determine a website redesign is needed, be sure to address the impacting topics during the website redesign process.