Key factors for web design optimization

Every web design project has its own priority depending on the business. Optimization of the design is a key factor to keep your audience on to your website. Below mentioned checklist are some major points that should be tracked in every step of your design optimization.

Aim or Scope of the project:

The website is brought into existence for some purpose. This purpose could be anything varying for sharing of information to selling the product or service. Usually the purpose of most of the commercial website is to promote the sale of products or services offered by the website owner.  The website needs to be designed on the basis of what the final user of the website want. If the website design meets the demand of the final users, then the website will be able to generate revenue for the website owner.

The users expectation:

The website is finally going to be used by the human beings. All sorts of human beings do not have the same mental capacity. Getting used to the technicalities of the computer and the internet usually depends on the age of the user. When designing the website the age of targeted market segment has to be the prime consideration. If the website is to be designed to target the elderly people then the functionality of the website is going to depend on the vision as well as the thought process of the user. All the elderly people are not used to the technicalities and they need to be guided and presented with the simplest message or information that can be easily understood. The functionality of the website also depends on the extent to which the targeted audience can see the message or information clearly.

Need for the website:
A website designer needs to study the prospective final users of website especially to know how they are going to use it. If the website is for promoting the sale of a product, there should be a facility for the user to place the order, and if this facility is not offered or the facility of online payment for the delivery of ordered product is not given the prospective buyer is never going to place the order in the future. If the web designer wants to assure maximum functionality of the website he/she should consider what the visitor is going to do when the website is displayed on the screen.

Clarity in design:

The designer can assure optimum functionality of the website when all the visitors of the website know to use it. This depends directly on the clarity of the information or messaged exhibited on the website pages. For the visitors especially the first timers and kids, instructions need to be clearly presented on the screen, then and then only optimization of functionality is possible.
 
The working methodology:

The final user of the website should be informed about how the website is going to act on pressing or clicking the various buttons. The user needs to be also informed about the consequences of clicking or pressing the buttons by mistake and how to rectify it. When the user knows the working of the website the functionality can be optimized.
 
Interactivity within the website:

The website needs to be as interactive with the user as possible. The more the website is interactive the more the user gets used to the functionality. This implies that even if the functioning is a bit difficult initially, as the user practices the functioning becomes easy.

Mistakes that can be retrieved:

At time mistakes by the users can escalate and halt the functioning of the website. If the user is informed about the ways to rectify the mistakes, the mistake can be corrected without it getting escalated. For example, the website containing a video may not run in an old flash version where in the user can be directly linked to the latest version of flash installation page for ease of navigation. 

There can be many other factors, but it all depends on the size and requirement of the website. So research on the basic necessities and scope could help the designer design exactly to your key requirements. 

How to decide on your keywords for SEO

After a lot of research into various blogs and top SEO articles, I decided to post on this question. I am quite sure that whoever is looking into this article by now has got ample knowledge on what a keyword is. To find relative keywords- Google adwords keyword tool is a very good option.

But the argument I found wrong from many top blogs was that, they were not able to make their clients accept that some keywords have the ability to convert into sale than some other keywords. After carefully looking into a lot of details from different blogs and analyzing the factors, here are reasons that can justify why sometimes it is better do what clients prefer.

Ok now let us consider an example here:

Let us consider the two keywords to be “buy camera” and “buy sony digital camera x12345”. As per the argument “buy sony digital camera x12345” has more chances of being converted into sale as the user has already found the model they need and is searching it more narrow to find the best place to buy or to find the best possible price to buy.  But did you think that buy camera would be the first keyword they would have searched before confirming on the model they wish to buy. You might be now wondering so what difference does it make?

If buy camera brings you 450000 unique potential customers and if “buy sony digital camera x12345” brings you 45000 unique potential customers- which one would you prefer?

Ok here is the math

450000 is 10 times the value of 45000 and if you have like 100 e-commerce competitors selling the same product, then price, brand name of the portal and customer satisfaction becomes the next factors. So if you can attract 450000 customers with the best price and customer satisfaction guaranteed to the product you sell, then there is more probability that buy camera keyword would sell more than buy sony digital camera x12345.  And yes, increasing your brand value can create an even larger impact giving customers a feel of security to buy on your website.

Another reason why major e-commerce site customers would like to have more traffic is because they always want more people to know about them to establish their brand name to customers. It really doesn’t matter they sell from that particular keyword but it is really important that they are on top of such keywords where there is more customers. When more people know about your brand, there is more probability that you would end up selling more of your products. Just think whether it is better to spend in millions in advertising or is it better to spend a fraction of that money and make it compelling for people to visit your website for such keywords? I would say this is more of growing e-commerce economics which deserves a lot of study yet.

When you look into even more larger perspective, if more people are visiting your website through a certain keyword and you still are not able to convert them, then the problem lies in your inability to be competitive in the market by not able to give customers what they need. You can be so cost competent and eliminate others by converting maximum of that search volume onto your website with a defined strategy. 

There are various factors that keep changing. 

Note:My argument may not be right for a certain set of keywords but it can be highly beneficial for certain others. The best I would prefer is a combination of both and see which performs better over a period of time.

There is a lot of difference when it comes to PPC advertising. For PPC advertising, I would suggest to place the bet more on the long tailed keywords than the shorter ones. Now you might question me, what difference does it make? In normal SEO result click, you don' t pay for the click and don't even need to expect for the consumer to buy a product as you don't lose anything but show them that you have the product at a particular cost and expect them to come back later after they have decided to purchase whereas in PPC you would be losing money with every click a user makes.

If you can really think from the clients’ point of view, then you will probably start understanding why your clients need it that way. So next time your client asks you something, don’t argue like a child. You can always suggest him based on your knowledge, but make sure you really give him what he needs in the end because there might be a lot of strategic goals that he don't want to reveal you or make you understand.

How to make a successful website launch?

Ahh that sounded like an easy question to be answered when i choose the topic to post today like most bloggers do, but when i think about the complexity and factors that can make a successful launch it keeps going. Ok here is a quick look on the kind of companies that need to make a strategic plan for their new website launch.

• Companies launching their first website 
• E commerce portals
• Social Networking sites
• Magazines/Newspapers

Oh well let me stop it there. Looks like everyone needs a successful launch..:) So let me tell you exactly how a strategic plan could help you achieve a successful launch based on our experiences.

1. Try to make the best of what you can. Do not get convinced with the website if you really feel you are not happy about and don't launch it until you are convinced. Take the help of a professional consultant if you don't find enough time to convert your ideas and passion into creating it. Remember- first impression is the best impression and to gain confidence of people around you, do it best the first time.

2. Careful planning can help. For example: If you are planning to launch an online magazine website, fix a date in your mind for the launch. Start gathering and building your website. Don't stay idle during the process. Try and create a buzz about the launch and make sure more people are starting to notice you. Pre-launch limited details in social networking sites. This not only helps you in gaining attention, but you might also get some valuable suggestions that could help you make it even better. 

3. Start engaging with your customers even before the launch. For example: If your magazine covers news on real estate industry, and your plan for running the website is from advertisements from that particular industry then try to engage with them. You might end up gaining some valuable industry needs and insights that could help you tweak your website even more.

4. I should have told this the very first. Brain storming ..:) Find all possible looks, style etc that can match your future aspirations of making the website and taking it to your greatest vision.

5. There are times when sometimes you want to know how users react to your product launch, or the launch needs to be done immediate due to pressure from various sources and you do not want to lose their confidence simply because you know that it was not the best you have given yet, then the most simple thing you could go is a Beta launch. This can as well help you gain respect with the work you have done so far, without losing any potential customers. 

6. Advertising helps if you are ready to spend. Get help of a smart advertising agency, who can really create that buzz for you. Simple marketing tricks can be of great help. Try convincing similar bloggers in your field to write a topic about your pre-launch and it can as well create a buzz.

7. If the website is content oriented, make sure the content is unique and really benefits that community. This will bring you retention.

Guess i have covered a few important points and if any of you have anymore suggestions please add it in the comments. Looks like its time for me to make the necessary tweaks of my website as i have started grabbing attention in my blog..:) Easy said than done..:)

How can I feed my blog/website updates automatic to google plus(+) page, twitter, linkedIn, facebook etc?

For twitter,linkedin and facebook, please check the link twitterfeed.com

The process is simple and saves you a lot of time rather posting updates manually in each of the networking sites. Hope twitterfeed adds a googlepage feed as well soon to it. There are a lot of support posts on the internet if you are struck somewhere. Also you can post your comments or questions in the comments section below and I might be able to try and help you out.

Check the video below for twitterfeed activation method

For the not so competent IT guys, I would advice you to wait for some more time for the google plus page feed as no specific method has yet been released. Also join this site so I would be updating a post on it anytime soon I find a real cool way of doing it like the twitterfeeds.

For others, please check the google API page https://developers.google.com/+/api/ for knowledge on various google authentication systems and calling parameters. 

Online Advertising Strategy

Online advertising is a key strategy for those who know the real value of it. How can i say this? Ok here is an example.

Imagine you have a website that wants to sell a product X which costs like 1000$. The profit margin you have in that product is 30 percent which is 300$ after excluding all expenses including delivery charges. Now think that your website is not in the top search engine results and all the visitors have been from your own circle. What is the option you have got now? Yes, Online advertising can help in such cases to a large extent. Lets imagine the product X has a bid value of 10$ for one click in google for the most relevant keyword like "Buy X Online". This ultimately means that, you get an opportunity to be on the first page of search results for the keyword and additionally you have 29 chances left before someone purchases it to make the least profit. Now think about it. Isn't that easy for you to build a strategy like that rather than the hard marketing techniques you use to sell your product? With good presence online and customer care services, you could easily end up making a fortune. 

So whats the negative about it? 

The customers visiting your website necessarily need not be compulsory purchasers. So sometimes you could also end up spending more for advertising than the profit you make yourself. But I would argue that as positive as well in another point of view. For example, a person coming through those keywords are for sure looking for your product or a similar product. Now the visibility you have given to your website/product to a customer like that would most probably help you in gaining retention or referrals when there is a future need. 

Another major hook that i noticed was that advertising in google tends to be the best among all the campaigns. The simple reason is because users search in google when they are looking for a product which in turn gives you potential customers if you have advertised to that keyword. Advertising in facebook/ linkedin or any other social networking sites might give you visibility but not potential customers. So if you really want to create your brand awareness, then social networking sites are the best option. Linkedin has become a source of destination these days for Networking and Human Resource professionals.

So what are the different forms of advertising techniques? 

There are a lot of different advertising techniques these days. The most common are cost per click and cost per thousand impression. Cost per click also known as Pay Per Click (PPC) is the most likely used technique as you do not pay until someone clicks on your advertisement. With this technique in google you would be able to clearly see the number of people visiting your website and the number of conversions taking place. Some websites also provide options like annual/ half yearly/ quarterly display of your advertisement at a cost. This could as well be another good technique. By finding relevant websites to your product, you could easily create more awareness among the industry you want to. 

Looking to run a campaign for online advertising or need more information? Contact us at i-proconsulting.com or email us at info@i-proconsulting.com
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What are black hat techniques?

Many of you would be wandering through out the internet to find out what are the different black hat techniques in SEO ( Search Engine Optimization). Black hat techniques can be any kind of false attempts you make to quickly bring your website into the top spot in search engine results. So how is a website ranked by a search engine?
Websites are ranked by search engines on various factors like the content in the website, keywords in the website, website structure, back links to the website etc. So what are the false attempts you could make by knowing the above factors of how a website gets ranked?

- You might end up modifying your content to be largely based on keywords. 
- You might try to post back links across different website by yourself.
- You might stuff in too many keywords while doing SEO through out your website.
- Using irrelevant keywords to your website.
- Too many back links from irrelevant websites.

All these are roughly simple things people try to do to quickly bring in audience to their website which in turn results in getting blacklisted by all major search engines. There are more advanced black hat techniques followed these days like using auto submission of your website across different directories in the internet etc. So be careful when you decide to choose an SEO provider and test him if he has got enough knowledge to execute it right. Here is a picture below showing how much effort is taken to do a SEO to legally come up in the ranking of search engines.

Hope that post gave you pretty good information about black hat techniques in SEO. Looking for someone who can run an SEO campaign for your website and feel safe? Please contact us via our website at i-proconsulting.com or email us at info@i-proconsulting.com

Should I choose a Flash website over HTML?

Let me try to make this post very short and quick.

Flash websites are meant for you if you are searching for a website that has style and is really pleasing to the eyes. Flash works can take large amount of time to create and the designer needs to be really creative if it is to be designed from the scratch. My preferred choice of companies that can ideally adopt flash websites would be interior designing companies/ web design companies where there is a necessity to show their clients the kind of creativity and passion they have in designs. 

Here is a quick looks into the limitations of a flash websites and why it is not still a good choice.

Flash content cannot be crawled by many search engines. For example: If I would have done this line in flash, the crawlers will not be able to read it unlike now. 

So what if the crawlers don't read it? Crawlers read the content in your websites and rank your websites in a similar content environment based on various factors.  So if your content is not readable, then the crawler will not be able to retrieve your results when there is a similar search done by any user. This in turn affects your search engine rankings.

Many companies claim that flash content is readable by crawlers today. I do not know the authenticity of this information, but if any of you claim its true I would be happy to see it in the comments sections with reasons why you claim it true.

As far as I have seen you can make a flash website and still deliver your content in normal readable format which can then be crawled easily by search engines. But such projects need a lot of planning and the time taken to complete such projects is much higher thus increasing the cost of the project to a very large extent. Also by referring into http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=72746 it is clearly understood that google can index text content in flash file but other search engines may not. Even google has admitted clearly that they might not be able to index all flash files and has its limitations.

Google’s page also states that “we recommend that you use rich-media technologies like Flash primarily for decorative purposes, and instead use HTML for content and navigation. This makes your site more crawler-friendly, and also makes it accessible to a larger audience including, for example, readers with visual impairments that require the use of screen readers, users of old or non-standard browsers, and users with limited or low-bandwidth connections such as a cellphone or mobile device. An added bonus for Using HTML for navigation will allow users to bookmark content and send direct links in email”.

Moreover making a flash website that needs constant updates would be a bad choice as it becomes increasingly difficult for maintenance of any changes that need to be done. So now it’s your choice in making decisions on the kind of website you are looking for.

Another good read for more knowledge into it would be http://searchengineland.com/google-now-crawling-and-indexing-flash-content-14299

Hope that has answered the question. Looking to create a Flash/HTML website? Contact us at i-proconsulting.com or email us at info@i-proconsulting.com

Step-By-Step simple SEO technique that you could adopt

SEO techniques are a must for every individual entrepreneur who is looking to get business through their website. For some companies, SEO can give you rapid results if that particular industry has not got much competition but great demand. For others, it is really going to be a tough time to reach and hit the top spots. And to achieve this, a lot of effort needs to be given on keyword research as that is the starting point towards achieving success on long term. 

Here are simple steps that need to be adopted:

Step1:

Keyword selection - As I told before keyword selection is the first thing you will have to do in any SEO campaign. It depends on the business which keywords to select. To find various keywords from a single keyword of your choice you could use google keyword for adwords tool. It also shows you an approximate number of keywords searched by users in a particular region or globally. This could help you in determining the exact keyword of your choice. A recent article I read stated that, broader keywords had customer conversion more than shorter keywords. For example: If your keyword in particular is for selling a camera in your e-com site, Camera would be a narrow keyword but the number of people searching camera could be more. But this could be customers with vague idea of what they want to buy or might be just researching on various cameras. Suppose your keyword is Sony x123 cybershot camera, and then if a person is landing into your website by searching for that particular keyword, then there are more chances that he/she is going to be customers because they have already researched and have choose to search a model directly. So choosing a keyword could be tricky and good analysis of the market you are in could bring you good results. This is one reason why many SEO companies have SEO analysts, who study the clients’ market requirement and suggest them keywords and work towards those keywords. Also make sure the keywords are relevant to your website or you might get banned by search engines.

Step2:

Know your competitors- By knowing your competitors strategy, it would be easier for you plan to reach that place. Analyze how your competitor has placed keywords, their strategies and back links that generate traffic to their site. By doing so, you would be able to get an idea as to how and where to start your SEO.

Note: Back links from good PR website can quickly help in improving your ranks. At the same time back links from your website to a search engine banned website can affect your rankings.

Step3:

Start On-page Optimization:

On-page optimization involves making changes within the website to make it more “search engine friendly”.

Content Optimization – Content can be a good factor in making your website rank high. One way is to embed the researched keywords on texts found throughout the website, focusing mainly on the headers (those with the big bold letters). It is said that keywords used should be take about 7% of the total number of words in content. Let’s say you have 400 words in a single page, so 7% of that 400 (which are 28) should be keywords. Note: Make sure that the content is still readable after placing those keywords. Remember that the users are still your prime target, not the search engine spiders. If I were to do content optimization, I would play it safe at say 4 percent because too many keywords could as well make the search engine feel as spam website.

Site Map – Site maps are an important part of websites optimized for search engine. This way, search engine spiders (or robots) could easily crawl through the whole website by use of site map. Making it easier for spiders to crawl through the website is one way to make a website “search engine friendly”.

Meta Tags - Meta tags are comprised of the Title, Description, and Keywords of the website. Other than the content of websites, Meta tags are also the perfect place for keywords. The only difference is that these things are like a “Free Buffet” sign for search engine spiders, it’s the one responsible for attracting search engine spiders to crawl your website. But remember that it still depends on the structure of the Meta tags.

Alt Tags - Alt tags are those found in HTML image codes. Let’s say your keyword is “buy camera”, your image tag should now look like this: <img src=”images.png” alt=“buy camera”> .Just like the Meta tags, alt tags are also an appropriate place to put several important keywords. Note: Make sure that only one (1) keyword should be placed on every alt tags found all over the website to avoid keyword spamming (which is part of black hat SEO)

Title Tags – Like Meta tags and alt tags, title tags are also an appropriate place to put some keywords in. By adding a keyword, let’s take for example “Sony Camera”, in the title tag, the HTML hyperlink tag should look like this: <a rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/article_exit_link’);” rel=”external nofollow” target=”_blank” href=”default.aspx” title=“Sony camera Online”> Note: Alt tags are not seen by visitors, only the search engine spiders so it wouldn’t hurt to just leave it with the keyword. But title tags are seen by visitors, so make sure that the title tag is still readable after embedding a keyword or two.

Step 4:

Start Off-Page SEO 

Unlike the on-page, off-page optimization involves SEO strategies outside of the website. This part of SEO is divided into two categories, backlinks and public relation strategies. Backlinks are links all over the world wide web that points back to your website. It has long been considered that the many backlinks you have, the more popular you’ll get. Another theory added is the weight or importance of the website where the link is coming from. Tools used to determine the popularity of a website is through Google’s PageRank and Alexa traffic tool. Here are some of the strategies used by SEO specialists to get backlinks.

Link Exchange - One of the earliest forms of backlinking involves exchanging links with other relevant websites.

Article Marketing - This type of off-page SEO can be considered both for backlinks and public relations. An article commonly generates an average of 3 links (depending on the kind of article directory it was submitted). It’s also considered as public relations because these articles commonly promote the business they’re trying to market.

Blog and Forum Commenting – Forums and blogs are also a popular trend to generate backlinks by using their signatures as links linking back to your website.

Blogging - Other than commenting on other blogs, creating your own blog and embedding links is another popular way for generating backlinks.

PR or public relation strategies of off-page SEO involve generating traffic not only through search engines but also with other types of media. This type of off-page SEO mainly works by marketing their service through word of mouth. The strategy involves the use of:

• Social Media - Social media such as Friendster, FaceBook, Twitter, Linkedin and MySpace are the perfect place to start a buzz that could benefit the website through the marketing strategy they call “word of mouth”. Adding a link could also help in getting more backlinks. Please note that you need to be active on such sites, to gain user confidence in-order to benefit. It has become easier these days to be active by linking all your social media accounts through twitterfeed , RSS feed etc.

• Social Bookmarking – By using the articles in bookmarking sites such as Technorati or Digg, people could easily learn about your services through your article. This is also another way for the articles to gain more importance in the web, thus increasing the chance for your websites to be visited through your articles.

Other forms of off-page SEO are submitting your website to search engine directories. Make sure to submit your URL for free to Google, Yahoo!, Alexa, www.altavista.com, www.alltheweb.com, www.excite.com, www.lycos.com, www.webcrawler.com, www.Jayde.com, www.whatuseek.com, and more. DMOZ and Yahoo Directory listings are tremendously valuable. There are a lot more free and paid search engines and directories to submit.

Last but not the least, advertising in channels/ newspapers etc is also good off page optimization technique and can draw huge amount of visitors to your website. The more the visitors, the better you rank.

So thinking to start an SEO campaign?? Contact us at i-proconsulting.com for a no obligation consultation or email us at info@i-proconsulting.com and we will contact you shortly.

What is SEO, and why should I care?

SEO is an acronym for “Search Engine Optimisation.” It refers to the procedures, efforts and thought processes behind improving a site’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).
A relatively young idea, optimising websites for better visibility in the search engines began to gain momentum in the mid-90s. As it became clear that sites higher-up in the SERPs reached larger audiences, received more traffic and ultimately made more money, the interest in this new idea was spreading quickly. By the time Google arrived in 1998, SEO was becoming commonplace in online marketing and continued growing at an amazing rate, year-over-year.

Today, SEO is a multi-billion dollar industry that grows substantially every year. It is also now acknowledged as a necessity for businesses wanting to achieve or build greater online success
SEO is a technique which helps search engines find and rank your site higher than the millions of other sites in response to a search query. SEO thus helps you get traffic from search engines.
The aim of SEO is to maximise targeted types of valuable traffic to a website from search engines by improving the visibility of said website in Google organic or unpaid SERPS.

How it works?

Unlike humans, search engines are text-driven. Although technology advances rapidly, search engines are far from intelligent creatures that can feel the beauty of a cool design or enjoy the sounds and movement in movies. The whole process of searching happens instantly with Google instant search or in a fraction of second involving 5 steps which are crawling, indexing, processing, calculating relevancy, and retrieving.

Ø  CRAWLING - First, search engines crawl the Web to see what is there. This task is performed by a piece of software, called a crawler or a spider (or Googlebot, as is the case with Google). Spiders follow links from one page to another and index everything they find on their way. Having in mind the number of pages on the Web (over 20 billion), it is impossible for a spider to visit a site daily just to see if a new page has appeared or if an existing page has been modified, sometimes crawlers may not end up visiting your site for a month or two.

Ø  INDEXING - After a page is crawled, the next step is to index its content. The indexed page is stored in a giant database, from where it can later be retrieved. Essentially, the process of indexing is identifying the words and expressions that best describe the page and assigning the page to particular keywords. For a human it will not be possible to process such amounts of information but generally search engines deal just fine with this task. Sometimes they might not get the meaning of a page right but if you help them by optimizing it, it will be easier for them to classify your pages correctly and for you – to get higher rankings.

Ø  PROCESSING - When a search request comes, the search engine processes it – i.e. it compares the search string in the search request with the indexed pages in the database. Since it is likely that more than one page (practically it is millions of pages) contains the search string, the search engine starts calculating the relevancy of each of the pages in its index with the search string.

Ø  CALCULATING RELEVANCY - There are various algorithms to calculate relevancy. Each of these algorithms has different relative weights for common factors like keyword density, links, or metatags. That is why different search engines give different search results pages for the same search string. What is more, it is a known fact that all major search engines, like Yahoo!, Google, Bing, etc. periodically change their algorithms and if you want to keep at the top, you also need to adapt your pages to the latest changes. This is one reason (the other is your competitors) to devote permanent efforts to SEO, if you'd like to be at the top.

Ø  RETRIEVING - The last step in search engines' activity is retrieving the results. Basically, it is nothing more than simply displaying them in the browser – i.e. the endless pages of search results that are sorted from the most relevant to the least relevant sites. 

Increased Internet Exposure - One of the most important advantages that come with SEO is the increase of traffic that occurs. The chances of attracting an increased amount of visitors is rather high when successful SEO places your website within the top 10 or top 20 of the most popular search engine results on the Web. When users search for the information they require, they are most likely to choose from the selections appearing on the first page of results.

Boost Business Efforts - If your website is being used to promote and sell products or services, SEO can help by improving a site's ability to sell more.

Highly qualified traffic - A well-executed search engine optimisation campaign can deliver traffic actively searching for the products or services you offer bringing increased business enquiries from web site visitors wanting to know more about you.

Cost efficiency - Search engine optimisation out performs other forms of online marketing in terms of return on investment and generation of qualified leads and also saves you money on your web site running costs due to the savings on your monthly bandwidth bills and faster page loading for visitors without broadband encouraging them to stay on your web site.

Increased online visibility

Getting your site seen on as many search engines and directories as possible will help you reach more of your target audience bringing you a greater web presence as more people know about you and link back to you. A website that's optimised for search engines is also optimised for users too.

Brand Awareness

You can hardly claim to be the absolute best in the business when no one has ever heard of your company. Sometimes you need to work on making people aware of your company even if that doesn't result in immediate sales, but you will gain more revenue in the long term by building yourself up and ensuring that your target market knows who you are. If your website is showing in search engine results pages then users will spot your company name, and the more they see it, the more they will think that you must have expertise in this area.

Internet Marketing Strategy
 Explore strategies and techniques that you can use on the Internet that will enhance and support your business's overall marketing objectives.

Your business can:

  Start with a web promotion plan and an effective web design and development strategy.

  Get ranked at the top in major search engines through search Optimization Techniques.

  use Email Marketing Effectively.

  Dominate your marketing niche with affiliate, reseller, and associate programs. 

  Build a responsive opt-in email list.

  Publish articles or get listed in news stories.

  Write and publish online press releases.

  Facilitate and run contests and giveaways via your web site.

  Blog and interact with your visitors.

  

SMO

Facts

Social Media Optimisation, also known as Social Marketing Optimisation or SMO is becoming increasingly important as the internet matures. The sheer popularity of social networking websites such as mySpace, FaceBook and Bebo together with numerous other social media sites such as YouTube, Technorati and Squidoo and bookmarking sites such as Digg are far too powerful to ignore.

Social Media Optimisation is therefore the process undertaken to capitalise on the huge traffic social networking websites can bring, thus increasing online sales and brand awareness.

Social Media is becoming such a huge part of search engine optimisation as it helps to get the content out there on the internet to attract users to the website.

Social Media and Social Media Optimisation is ever increasing in importance as a marketing tool for websites. Social media marketing is about building relationships and having conversations with your customers. These conversations can help to improve your online presence with a well executed social media marketing plan.

SMO technique

·         Increase your linkability- Increase the quantity of the content with a blog and make the copy compelling so that users want to link to it, as well as ensuring that it's accessible enough so that users can find it and link to it

·         Make tagging easy- Add quick links to social book marketing sites so that users can easily click and bookmark each page, make it even simpler by pre-adding each page

·         Help your content travel- Content that is in pdf files, audio files, videos etc can also be syndicated out to these social media sites so don't forget it

·         Encourage the mash-up- Try to get more people envolved, give the users something back so they will want to link to your site, for example use RSS feeds

Looking for a provider who can help you on this? Contact us at i-proconsulting.com or email us your interest to info@i-proconsulting.com.

What is E-Commerce?

E-commerce (electronic commerce or EC) is the buying and selling of goods and services on the Internet, especially the World Wide Web. In practice, this term and a newer term, e-business, are often used interchangeably. For online retail selling, the term e-tailing is sometimes used. Best examples of E-tailer are Amazon.com and Dell.com who don't have a physical store. 

                                                        

While e-commerce once required an expensive interface and personal security certificate, this is no longer the case. Virtual storefronts are offered by a variety of hosting services and large Internet presences such as eBay and Yahoo!, which offer turnkey solutions to vendors with little or no online experience. Tools for running successful e-commerce websites are built into the hosting servers, eliminating the need for the individual merchant to redesign the wheel. These tools include benefits like shopping carts, inventory and sales logs, and the ability to accept a variety of payment options including secure credit card transactions.

E-commerce includes retail shopping, banking, stocks and bonds trading, auctions, real estate transactions, airline booking, movie rentals—nearly anything you can imagine in the real world. Even personal services such as hair and nail salons can benefit from e-commerce by providing a website for the sale of related health and beauty products, normally available to local customers exclusively

The growing popularity of e-commerce is understandable considering the time and hassle involved in running from store to store, searching for an item in the real world. It not only takes valuable time and energy, but gasoline. With today’s crowded cities and high gas prices, shopping online whenever the mood strikes—even in the middle of the night—has unarguable, unbeatable advantages. Not only is it convenient to shop at a myriad of vendors from the comfort of your computer chair, it’s also a snap to find the best deal by allowing sites like confuse.com and gocompare.com sift through hundreds of sellers for you.

E-commerce also has other advantages. Employee overhead is virtually nonexistent, and the yearly fee for an e-commerce website is nominal. Compare this to rental of storefront property, particularly in a busy mall. To top it off, most transactions are handled by software processes, never requiring a real person until the item is ready to be packed and shipped. This translates into real savings to the customer. As a result, real world businesses often cannot compete with their e-commerce counterparts, though one does have to watch for inflated shipping fees that might negate savings.

Though early e-commerce was stunted by security fears, improved technology has made millions of people worldwide feel comfortable buying online. Seeing the vast potential in e-commerce, most credit card companies helped allay fears by guaranteeing cardholders would not be held responsible for fraudulent charges as a result of online shopping. All of these factors have helped e-commerce become the booming industry it is today.

An online shopper looks for

Credibility –Initial check to see that the seller is credible through review and Blogs through search engine.

Security – A secured server is identified by checking the URL which starts with https where “s” means the information flowing between your computer and the website will be securely encrypted.

Trust – obviously is gained if a customer is satisfied with above two factors.

If you believe your business could save operating cost, why not get in touch with us at i-proconsulting.com or email us to info@i-proconsulting.com and we would get in touch with you shortly.

What is Rich Internet Application?

A rich Internet application (RIA) is a Web application designed to deliver the same features and functions normally associated with desktop applications. RIAs generally split the processing across the Internet/network divide by locating the user interface and related activity and capability on the client side, and the data manipulation and operation on the application server side.

An RIA normally runs inside a Web browser and usually does not require software installation on the client side to work. However, some RIAs may only work properly with one or more specific browsers. For security purposes, most RIAs run their client portions within a special isolated area of the client desktop called a sandbox. The sandbox limits visibility and access to the file and operating system on the client to the application server on the other side of the connection.

This approach allows the client system to handle local activities, calculations, reformatting and so forth, thereby lowering the amount and frequency of client-server traffic, especially as compared to the client-server implementations built around so-called thin clients.

One distinguishing feature of an RIA (in contrast to other Web-based applications) is the client engine that intermediates between the user and the application server. The client engine downloads when the RIA launches. The engine can be augmented during subsequent operation with additional downloads in which the engine acts as a browser extension to handle the user interface and server communications.

RIA simplifies complex processes like registration, online shopping and data analysis and makes your website more vibrant. If you have an existing web application infrastructure with minimum or no big response then RIAs can help you to recover which would be a good come back for the business.

Rich Internet Web 2.0 Applications use RIA technologies such as Macromedia Flex, AJAX with PHP and Ruby on Rails Framework, Macromedia flash/FLEX and XML (AJAX). 


Advantage matrix

• The most obvious advantage of RIA is that RIA is Powerful, user-friendly, fast and responsive.
• RIAs empower your business with solutions that are more Consistent, Focused, Responsive and smart.
• RIA's inherent interactivity enables the viewers to take quick decisions
• RIA technology has a great human effect on the visitors and these results in a higher conversion rate for RIA based websites.
• RIAs simplify the highly complex processes, save bandwidth and perform considerably faster than traditional Web applications, thus escalating customers' online interaction with your website.

Looking to create a RIA? Contact us via i-proconsulting.com or email us at info@i-proconsulting.com