“How Much Does A Website Cost?”

Well Ladies and Gentlemen,

You will be happy to know that this is my very first blog! YAY! (Insert sound of party noise makers here)  

What topic shall I choose?
My first instinct was to write at lengths about one of the many things you can do to frustrate your graphics designer, however, I will save a whining and moaning blog for another time!

“How Much Does A Website Cost?”

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Difference Between Direct Mail and Bulk Mail

Every so often I have someone ask me, "so what's the difference between direct mail and bulk mail?" Well, the answer to that is "Nothing Really." The two terms are pretty much synonymous. Different industries may use one of the two terms as opposed to the other, but in the end they both describe the same thing.

Both of these terms mean the process of sending something like a brochure or advertisement directly to a prospective customer. This is done in "bulk" where a business will mail out thousands, tens of thousands, or even more quantity in order to get a profitable response. The smallest a direct mail campaign will be is usually 500 to 1,000 minimum. Many direct mail campaigns are done very inefficiently and could easily be improved or tweaked with just a few minor changes in the beginning.

A lot of big companies approach bulk mail with the main objective of sheer quantity. An example would be a company like Home Depot doing a mail-out to every homeowner in the zip code 32501 (just an example). Let's say they mail about 50,000 advertisements at the cost of $0.39 per mail piece. That would cost them approximately $19,500. If just 1% of customer respond to the ad and buy $100 worth of merchandise, they just created $50,000 in sales (500 people X $100). Please don't hold me to these numbers, they are strictly for an example.

If the results in the above actually happened, Home Depot would have just created $30,500 in net profit from the one direct or bulk mail campaign! You are probably sitting here thinking something like "That's great for Home Depot, but I can't afford $20,000 in mail!" Do not worry, you don't have to spend $20,000 to do a direct mail campaign. Depending on your market, one can be done for as little as $500.

Several different factors dictate the prices such as design cost, printing cost and actual USPS mailing cost. You may have thought I was crazy for putting only $0.39 for the total cost of one mail piece because the cost of a stamp is more than that, but bulk mailers actually get a discount and do not pay the full price of a regular stamp!

My last personal experience with bulk mail was very successful. I ran a landscape irrigation company and I spent about $1,200 and made $7,000 in sales. I gained 20 (twenty) new yearly customers at $350 per year from a mailing of about 2,500 customers. The $1,200 investment proved to be a great move. Also most of these customers I kept for more than one year which really boosted the long-term profit!

If you are thinking about a direct mail campaign we can help you out. Our personal & business experience in this market allows us to think about and cover many different factors. This experience helps ensure that we create a profitable bulk or direct mail campaign for you and your business.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

SEO Secrets - There Are None

You know when I see people trying to sell advice or some magical e-book about SEO (search engine optimization) secrets it really makes me sick. Are you ready to discover the absolute truth and top secrets about SEO? There are none! There really are no secrets! There is no magic pill. Everything you need to know to get a website ranked to the top of Google, Yahoo, or Bing is out there and available for everyone to learn. Okay, do you really want to learn a secret about getting top search engine rankings? Well, here it is: Time + Hard Consistent Work.

While there is no secret to SEO there are little tricks and techniques that you can only learn from experience. Now you can learn this from your own experiences or from other people's experiences. Most everything else is out there already. I could sit here and write a blog or article about the top 10 things you could do to optimize your site, or 30 strategies to get your website ranked to the top of Google, but all of these things already exist.

Everything you'll ever need to know is out there and published. As the rules change, the information will stay updated from people like me who live search engine optimization. You can access this information from top sites and guys who have been in this business since the dawn of the Internet. Don't ever get tricked into buying something from somebody who says they know some "secret formula" to get your site ranked high.

Now I'm not saying not to pay for SEO services. Even though all of the information is out there for you, it does not mean you have to or should do it yourself. For example; All of the information for me to change my transmission is available, but you won't catch me trying to do that myself! Just because I could do it doesn't mean that I'm going to do it. The same should be true for you and your business.

It really comes down to simple economics. We get maximum productivity if everyone does what they are good at. If you are good at SEO, than by all means do it yourself! However, if you don't know the difference between a one-way link and a reciprocal link, than stay away from it. Use your time more wisely and focus on what you are good at. Focus on your main business, which is selling and improving your products and services. Focus on customer service. Hire a good SEO company or person to properly optimize your website. When everybody does what they are good at, we get more results as a whole which is better for everyone.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

SEO Price Quote

So last night I finished a price quote for an SEO project and it made me think about a few things. I had to review this guy's site and found several things that he could be doing differently to help increase his search engine rankings and gain some exposure for his website.

I really don't want to reveal the exact name or website for this gentleman's privacy, but I can let you in on a few details to help explain the story. We'll call the guy John and let's say that his sells 'blue widgets'.

Okay, first of all John has got the right idea as he has started blogging about experience with 'blue widgets'. However, the way that he is categorizing his blog archive and articles is not exactly search engine friendly. Part of the price to optimize this site will include re-organizing these pages.

Secondly, the title of John's pages are numbered instead of named. This won't necessarily hurt search engine rankings, but it definitely won't help them. In order to get maximum value from each blog article it is important to name the pages instead of numbering them. Again, in the price quote I have allotted time to work with his existing content and renaming the numbered pages.

John also uses his main index page for the main blog page. Now I have read, seen, and experienced mixed results with this method as far as SEO goes. It could be beneficial, but from a sales point of view it is not that good. I believe in using the main index page as your main sales page. Let the main blog page be a separate page linked from the index page.

Yes Google does love fresh, unique, and updated content but this does not mean that your blog has to be the main index page to get SEO value. I have one website that has been at the top of Google for dozens of keywords for years with very little updating or changing of the index page; however the site as a whole is constantly growing and being updated to maintain dominance of this market.

SEO is an ever-changing field that keeps you on your toes. The rules of this topic are never set in stone and can change in the blink of an eye. Unethical SEO guys will try to use black-hat techniques or 'tricks' to get a site to the top, which may even work in the short-term, but are doomed to failure in the long run.

Ethical search engine optimization takes time and hard work, but the end results are worth the effort. When getting an SEO price quote for your website make sure that whoever you hire only uses white-hat techniques or acceptable tactics to gain good search engine rankings. Really no matter what changes in the search engine world, there will always remain two key factors that help determine top position; unique content and quality back-links.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

Website Devlopment

Website development is the process of planning and designing a website from start to finish. A lot of careful planning and preparation go into creating a great website. Just throwing up a simple landing page just will not cut it in today's Google Slap Happy World.

You need to develop a good website if you want customers to find you and come back to you. You want to educate and inform people about your products and services, as well as entertain them as much as possible. Too many business owners miss the importance of a good website and what it can do for their bottom line.

In reality a website is never really "done". It is a constant game of improvement and updating to meet the changing needs of the site's users. In this fast paced world we live in, it is easy to fall behind the times if you let anything just sit and become stagnant.

We are in a never-ending quest to improve and sharpen our website so that people will know that we mean business and understand what we are talking about. If you want to dominate any market, be it global or local on the Internet, you need to understand a few important rules to succeed with your website and business. The main rule is "never stop learning and doing". This applies to almost any business model Online or Offline.

If you are looking for personal attention and a website development plan that meets your specific needs then you have come to the right place. We are here to take you by the hand and walk you through this complicated maze that we call the Internet. With a little bit of help from the right people you can succeed online with your website and business. Give us a call or fill out our "Online Business Request E-Quote" form today.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

Screen Resolution Issues

Today my partner and I were going back and forth over screen resolution used by people who view our websites on the Internet. We have looked at different studies as well as our own data to determine what screen resolution or pixel size that people are using to browse the Internet.

When designing a website it is very important to take into consideration many factors, one of which includes how your website is going to appear under different screen resolutions. What might look good to you on your computer, may look bad to a different person who's computer is set at a different resolution.

Okay, for example: The data for one of my website that gets 100% natural search engine traffic, 87% of which is directly from Google, shows me that aproximately 38% are viewing it at 1280 X 1024, about 33% view it at 1024 X 768, the rest of the 29% are a mix of 800 X 600, 1152 X 864, 1600 X 1200.

Fritz was working on the web design of a site and I was on my laptop (which is at 1268 X 1024) checking it out. I told him it looks great. However, later on I went to my upstairs computer, which is at 1024 X 768 and the site looked "too wide". I sent Fritz and email to let him know what I thought. We then looked at and re-analyzed our website traffic information and determined that some small changes were in order.

Even though we have been doing this a long time (web design & marketing) sometimes we get ahead of ourselves and miss something, but that we always end up catching it sooner rather than later and that is why we are a good team. When designing a website there are many different things that you need to take into consideration to make sure that the end result is a professional, pleasant looking site that people love to come back to.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

Website Design Marketing

Website design and marketing go hand and hand. Too many web designers focus on big, flashy sites and don't think about SEO (search engine optimization). Without proper SEO your site is doomed to zero traffic and no customers.

While an impressive site is important, that are many factors that make a site un-friendly and not proper for search engine marketing. When you are designing a website it is important to strike a balance between aesthetics and optimization.

I'm not saying that big fancy sites don't rank well, there are many that do. But think about it, how many times have you seen ugly or generic looking sites ranking at the top of the search engine results? The reason is that the search engine robots don't care about your flashy pictures, they care about many other factors that aren't necessarily connected to the look of your site.

We believe in balance. You want your site to be presentable and look professional, but you need people to find it! If your site cannot be found on the first page for your target keywords, you are missing out on business to your competitors.

We're happy to work with people and businesses of all types and sizes all over the country and world. We specialize in local search, but are adapt to web design and marketing in general. If you want to dominate your local market, we are your guys. For example, if you an accountant in Pensacola, Floria, or a plastic surgeon in San Francisco, California; we are your guys.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design