 Vermont
Web Design and
Internet Marketing
From:
Jeremy Ryan
Burlington,
Vermont
Friday 4:22 pm
Hello and welcome to our website! We recently made some
changes to the web site. First, we added a company blog,
which is below this message. The blog is meant to provide
educational information on web
design and internet
marketing as well as a way for us to share our current
developments with you. We encourage your feedback and
participation by clicking the comments link after each
blog entry.
If you are new to our web site and wish to learn more
about us, click here. To view
more information about our services please click the links
to the left which list our services. Click
here to send us a comment or question.
Respectfully,
Jeremy Ryan
Advantage Creations
Our company blog...
Posts 41 to 43 of 43
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First Draft of Three Forks Pizza Web Site is Done! |
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Jim and Kathy Brown of Three Forks Pizza approached us to create a web site that would specifically help them sell more pizza kits to fundraiser groups, such as school and church groups, that may be interested in pizza fundraising.
We just completed the web site design in its first draft. We strived to create a web site design that fits Three Forks Pizza's existing marketing materials and also gives you the feeling of "I want pizza!" Therefore, we worked a couple finished pizza photos's into the main header design and used a "homemade" pizza crust with pizza sauce spread photo as the background for the header. As always, the web pages were designed to fit all screen sizes and we strived to make the pages fast loading with an easy-to-use and consistent web site navigation scheme.
We are now in the process of working with the Browns on fine-tuning the details of each web page and formulating a search engine promotion strategy. We suggested a strategy involving both pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization. We feel that the web site has great potential for both of these areas as Three Forks Pizza has a good niche business with little competition. This means it should be easier for the web site to reach top rankings on the search engines for pizza fundraising terms and purchasing clicks through pay-per-click services should be quite cheap, therefore, maximizing profits.
Check out the web site at ThreeForksPizza.com and let me know what you think so far. Feel free to make any suggestions for improvement. The Browns and I would really appreciate it!
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Posted
by: Jeremy Ryan
Date/Time:
6/12/2005 12:06:37 PM
Comments: 0 |
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What is the Best Way to Drive Traffic to My Web Site? |
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This is a common question I'm asked. Since 1998, we have tried many different strategies and over the years pay-per-click advertising has emerged as the quickest and most profitable way to drive traffic to our web sites.
What is pay-per-click advertising?
Pay-per-click, or PPC, is an advertising strategy where you bid to get an ad placed near the search results for a given term at a set bidding price. For example, if you go to Google and search for “low acid coffee”, you will see blue rectangle at the top of the screen with text ads in it and some text ads to the right of the search results. These are all labeled “sponsored ads”. When a visitor clicks on one of these ads, the advertiser is charged a fee. In this example of low acid coffee, we bid on this term for our ChamplainCoffee.com web site. You should see our ad in the right hand side of the screen for search results.
There are many advantages to using PPC advertising. You have a lot of control on where your ad will be placed and how much you will pay. Also, you only pay if a prospect clicks on your ad to go to your website... you only pay for qualified leads! You can pay as little as .10 to $10 per click on your ads. What you may have to pay to get listed on the first page depends on how many competitors you have for a given term and what they are willing to pay. Because many businesses are now using PPC advertising, we do much more research than we used to do in figuring out which terms are best for us to bid on.
For example, we could bid on the search term "coffee" for ChamplainCoffee.com, as we were advised to do by some pay-per-click firms. This really made no sense to us as the term is too generic… we would get a whole lot of traffic, but at too high a cost. The sales wouldn't justify the advertising cost. However, being that we sell low acid coffee that is 75% acid free, we decided to bid on terms such as “low acid coffee” and “acid free coffee”, which through our research, turned out to have a lot of searches and very high rates of return.
Interestingly, we found that while the term "acid free coffee" has less searches and an average bid cost of almost half as much as “low acid coffee”, it produces more sales. Therefore, being the most profitable. We also found that bidding to be #1 or even #2 in search results is often most unprofitable.
In conclusion, PPC advertising is quicker and easier than other methods of getting traffic to your web site. However, due to increasing popularity it’s more difficult than it used to be, but still by far the most effective.
As we have been very successful with doing it for our own businesses generating over $1 million in sales as a result, we have decided to offer pay-per-click advertising management services to our clients. We are able to do this for as little as $25/month, which should be affordable to any business serious about doing business online. If you are interested, please contact us to discuss it further.
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Posted
by: Jeremy Ryan
Date/Time:
6/8/2005 4:31:26 PM
Comments: 0 |
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Is Your Business CAN-SPAM Compliant? |
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Many businesses online now engage in email marketing of some sort. Whether it be sending a press release/company news, new product notice, sale notice, web site update, or surveys. However, since January 1, 2004, the CAN-SPAM act has set some very specific requirements in order for an email to be legal to send.
I personally find that not many small business owners are aware or understand the rules. Blue Sky Factory reports that 50% of email marketers in the US do not understand the CAN-SPAM laws.
Basically, the law requires the following:
- It bans false or misleading header information. Your email's "From," "To," and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person who initiated the email.
- It prohibits deceptive subject lines. The subject line cannot mislead the recipient about the contents or subject matter of the message.
- It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the requests.
- It requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender's valid physical postal address. Your message must contain clear and conspicuous notice that the message is an advertisement or solicitation and that the recipient can opt out of receiving more commercial email from you. It also must include your valid physical postal address.
- "harvest" email addresses from Web sites or Web services that have published a notice prohibiting the transfer of email addresses for the purpose of sending email.
Penalties
Each violation of the above provisions is subject to fines of up to $11,000. Deceptive commercial email also is subject to laws banning false or misleading advertising.
Another good reason to comply is you can avoid the aggressive spam filters. Many ISPs and personal computers now have Spam Blocking Filters, which often filter legitimate email along with real spam. So, by following the rules, you not only avoid fines and prison, but you ensure that your customers are actually getting your email.
We have are hugely successful at ensuring that the highest percentage of email sent reaches the recipients and the unsubscribes are handled promptly. Our service includes creating an email-list database and integrating with our innovative bulk email marketing software which personalizes each email with the recipients name and any other details you wish to include such as previously purchased products/ services or their location.
Email lists can be segmented by area, zip code, last name, products/services purchased, whatever you like. We can also purchase additional names of people who have requested to receive email offers as well.
Costs: only $10 per emailing
If interested, please contact us.
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Posted
by: Jeremy Ryan
Date/Time:
5/12/2004 2:30:40 PM
Comments: 12 |
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