If you build it, they may come...

You got your new website. It's live. It's beautiful! You're terribly proud of it, as of course you should be. If you're lucky (or knew enough to request it), your new website's creator got you plugged into analytics so you can watch the number of visitors, see where they're coming from, and more.

You may be the type who watches & refreshes minute by minute. Or perhaps you don't check it for a few weeks and you finally decide to log in. Typically, you then feel a mixture of excitment and dissappointment. Where are all the visitors?

Without a well-executed plan to generate traffic, your numbers will be depressingly low in the weeks (or months) after go-live. And with all the time and energy you likely focused on getting the site out the door and onto the web, you're not to blame.

Now is the time to put a stategy into place to begin getting the visitors you've been thinking about for so long onto your site, where they are sure to be impressed, pleased, and eager to spend money (or call or or join or submit the form).

How might you begin to drive traffic? Suggestions include:

1) Get as many other sites as possible to link to your website. Not only will this drive traffic as users click on the links, but it will also help get Google and other search engines to notice your site and increase your liklihood of appearing in search results. If there is a search keyword or phrase that your users may be using as they search for your site, you can especially benefit from getting the other sites to link those particulary keywords to your site. (For example, "croixfinancial.com is the website of a financial advisor and wealth management consultant in El Campo, TX."

2) Get connected. Not only are Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and other social sites fun ways to connect to old friends, they're also an exciting way to farm prospects among your personal social networks. Old high school and college connections are entertaining to catch up with, but also have the potential to be prospective customers or business partners. Make sure they're aware of what you're doing and use every opportunity to share interesting comments, links, and other information with your network.

3) Find yourself. Whether you're marketing a corner ice cream shop or an in-home seamstress business, there is chance that your business has been mentioned, rated, or discussed online. Citysearch, yelp.com, and other such sites allow customers to publicly indicate their level of satisfaction for all to see, often creating default pages for each business to which you can add information (website link, hours of operation, description, etc.) Constantly search for your business name to always understand who is talking about you and what's being said - and try when possible to get links to your site alongside the discussion. Take any critical feedback to heart and work to improve.

4) Don't be afraid to pay. As you work towards a complete online identity for your organization, you may be stuck waiting for traffic to hit your site. A great way to boost incoming visits either temporarily or as a part of your complete marketing plan is to bid on key search terms and phrases relevant to your business to ensure that you appear in the advertising around the natural search results. This can be pricy or expensive, depending on the specificity and popularity of the keywords and many other variables. Target your market as much as possible to keep costs down. (If you're a primarily local business, only bid on searches in and around your area. If you're bidding on a highly sought-after term, use a combination of words with the term to corner the searchers who you know will be interested in what you're offering.)

5) Hit up your database. If you've been marketing online for a while, you're probably used to doing this - but if you haven't, it might be a new thought. A great way to drive preliminary interest is to reach out to those in that slew of email contacts you've been collecting who you know would like to hear about the site. Email an anouncement, or better yet - ask them for their thoughts on the site! Devoted fans of your organization will likely be willing to forward work of the new site to their friends, family, or business contacts as well, so long as the subject matter is relevant. In the process, you might ask your friends if they'd like to opt in to reguarl communciatino from your business. Just be specific about the frequency with which you'll contact them so that they're not worried about getting spammed.

6) A signature move. If you're anything like me (or anyone else I know, besides my grandparents) you likely do a great deal of communication online via email. Sound true? An email signature is one of the best ways to link to your site. Get everyone in the office on board with a standard email signature that features a link to the new site. For maximum impact, we recommend slimming down your current signature to what's only what's necessary. If you use HTML (or 'rich text') to send emails, you might ask your designer to create an HTML email signature for you. Otherwise, a text link is entirely appropriate.

For help developing a plan to drive traffic to your site or executing any of the ideas we mention here, please contact The Alynn Group. We'd be glad to help!

Watch out!

Since we work primarily with small business and organizations, one of clients' key concerns is search engine optimization. Sites that show up in Google are at a distinct advantage compared to those who don't.

At low price points, I've seen design companies comp entire sites, then just slice them up into block images and piece them together with minimal HTML, creating sites with little system text that are basically collections of .gifs.

At the higher end, I've known clients who worked with designers who upsold them or encourages them to go with sites build entirely in Flash, likely to get more billable hours or stay within a technology that they felt comfortable with. Clients generally love the fancy hover states and the exciting impressions that motion graphics can provide, and are led to believe that the costs are in line with what is to be expected

Unfortunately, neither type of takes into consideration best practices around searchability. Uninformed clients can easily end up paying way more than they should for what they receive.

A preliminary guideline, when analyzing the searchability of a firm's work, is to visit their live sites and to try and select body text to see if you can copy & paste it. If embedded in an image or in flash, it cannot be highlighted and often cannot be read by search engines.

For some more high-level information about how to optimize for search, check out my favorite quick-start guide: http://www.webconfs.com/15-minute-seo.php

Year-end review: CBPrepcourse.com

It has almost been a year since the launch of the new and improved cbprepcourse.com.

The Customs Broker Exam Prep Course is a business that is somewhat self-explanatory in its title - a course to help people prepare for the U.S. Customs Broker Exam. The grueling test is something that every potential Customs Broker must pass in order to become certified. Tom O'Leary, the course's instructor, delivers live classes as well as various options for the individual who wants to studying at home. He has holds private lessons for companies looking to train groups of potential customs brokers.

It's been an impressive year overall for the website, which has brought in large, corporate opportunities that have converted to business as well as offering a continuing stream of individual online registrations.

The 7,000+ visits to the site are an impressive number for such a niche product with a meager budget for outbound marketing. The CB Prep Course website was built carefully according to all best practices for maximum searchability, which results in traffic of 55% new visitors from all over the country.

Of those new visitors, only 36% immediately bounce -- a very impressive number to those who benchmark that sort of data. In fact, the average new visitor spends over 3 minutes on the page and views over 4 pages. These numbers may seem small to some of you, but they're actually phenomenal. Most sites see upwards of 70% of search traffic bouncing immediately without clicking a single time.

The Customs Broker Exam Prep Course is a good business that helps empower people like Dave to pursue their dreams by passing the rigorous exam. We're proud to be a partner on this successful site.

www.mediacastsystems.com launched.....hooray!

The Alynn Group recently completed an informational site for a company that provides of secure online HD media distribution.

MediaCast Systems, located in Redmond, Washington, was working with a partnering form to launch a unified brand presence, which included a new logo and corporate style guide as well as a print collateral. They needed an urgent turnaround on the accompanying website, so our partnering firm brought us the content the client had provided, style guide, and site goals. The Alynn Group quickly designed and developed this basic site in HTML and CSS.

The clean code helped the site to be immediately sensed by search engines, and the site is already high in the results for several keywords.

One compromise that we did have to make in build the site was the use of image-based headers and titles instead of HTML copy. Our partnering firm wanted to maintain a consistent brand across all media types, and the font that they wanted to use for the headers was not web-safe. Ideally, we would have preferred to use image replacement to drop headers in over HTML copy, but time and budget didn't allow for it.

About MediaCast - Secure online HD media distribution

MediaCast provides a media distribution middle ware platform enables highly scalable, ultra low cost distribution of high quality media such as movies, TV, electronic games and personal media to consumers regardless of broadband connection speed and with no new set top box or equipment costs. Their technology excess network capacity and traffic shaping techniques to deliver HD media transparently over broadband networks regardless of connection speed. See them at www.mediacastsystems.com.