Duke Web Site Receives National Honor

We were pleased to learn that our efforts on the redesign of the Duke Realty web site (see the last newsletter for background) were recognized as outstanding by The Web Marketing Association's Internet Advertising Competition (IAC). The site was awarded the Standard of Excellence WebAward for Outstanding Achievement in Website Development.

The IAC Awards are the first and only industry-based advertising award competition dedicated exclusively to online advertising. "The IAC Awards were created to highlight the best in this unique advertising medium by industry, and also to help advertising professionals validate their efforts to clients and senior management," said William Rice, president of the Web Marketing Association, Inc.

In honoring the Duke Realty web site, the judges cited the site's "highly interactive interface [that] enables a wide variety of actions. [The site is] well organized, dignified and highly informative about the company."

We were honored to work with the development team at Duke Realty on this project and salute their efforts in creating an award-winning site that sets a new standard in their industry.

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Premier One Supplies

Sometimes you just have to take a step back and look at everything from a different point of view. We've worked on hundreds of web sites and built dozens of shopping cart applications, but we're always willing to learn new approaches, try new things, and push the boundaries of what's been done before.

While talking with the crew at Premier1Supplies in the midst of re-designing their web site, a brainstorming session hit upon a unique strategy. First, some history...

Premier sells a variety of specialty farm equipment online and from several annual catalogs. Their specialties include electric fencing, sheep and goat supplies, and clippers and shearers (to name a few.) Previously, their site had been organized in a traditional manner: products were put into categories and visitors shopped by category, regardless of what type of animals they had.

In the brainstorming session, someone wondered aloud if it wouldn't be better to allow people to shop by species, as well. Sheep people can see just sheep products; horse people see just horse products, etc. Additionally, visitors can select a preference, triggering the web site to display (and remember) which species "splash page" they prefer.

"It's a completely different way of addressing our customer's needs," says owner Stan Potratz. "It allows us greater flexibility and a more direct product display to help customers find exactly what they need."

For visitors who prefer a more traditional approach, the site is also capable of displaying products by category. "It's really the best of both worlds," says Potratz.

The site was created to take full advantage of cascading style sheets (CSS), allowing us to maintain a consistent look across platforms and browsers and enhance search engine placement.

To see it in action, visit the site at www.premier1supplies.com.

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Search Engine Optimization

The airwaves of our local radio stations have been filled lately with ads by web development companies touting new procedures and expertise for helping web sites achieve more prominent placement in search engines (often called search engine optimization, or SEO.)

The truth of the matter is that there is no silver bullet for SEO. Simple common sense, diligence, and hard work are the primary ingredients to ensure the best possible search engine rankings. Here's a quick look at the necessary steps to get started:

First, think about your target market, and then determine what keyword phrases someone who has never heard of you would be most likely to use at a search engine to find a company like yours. Make a list of all the phrases that come to mind and then narrow the list down to the four or five that you feel are most important. Truly, this is the most important step in the process. Once you have determined which are the most important keyword phrases, your site can be optimized to make the best use of these to achieve the highest possible ranking.

In the case of Premier1Supplies (see article, above), we determined that "sheep supplies" and "sheep and goat supplies" were two of the primary terms. A quick Google search of these terms shows that Premier has achieved very favorable rankings for each.

But be aware that you can't be all things to all people: that's why it's so important to determine which keyword phrases are most important to you and optimize based on those.

Once you've determined your primary phrases and optimized your site, you'll need to ensure that your site is listed in the primary Internet directories and that your pages are being "crawled" by the search engine indexing bots. This step isn't difficult, but it does take some time to do correctly and to follow up on the results. Many of the major search engines periodically change their algorithms used to rank listings, so you may be forced to change the way your pages are optimized. You might also find that you achieve a great ranking for a phrase only to find that no one is using that phrase to search! In each case, adjustments need to be made to maintain and improve your position.

Obviously, there is a lot to this topic – certainly more than can be addressed here – and I'd be happy to discuss this issue with you as it relates to %%Company%%. The primary point that I want you to know is that there's nothing magic about SEO, it just takes forethought, perception and persistence. So don't fall for anyone selling a silver bullet or you're likely end up with a bill of goods.

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Target Your Messages For Impact

The adage "if you build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door" was never really true. It would be more accurate to say "if you build a better mousetrap, the segment of the market that has a problem with mice is more likely to eventually be dragged somewhere near your door, probably kicking and screaming."

This applies to the Internet, as well. Most people traditionally think of the Internet — if "traditionally" is a word you can use for something this young — as being a medium of one-to-many. But the notion of one-to-many communication is flawed, especially when it comes to the Internet. Where the Internet truly excels is in the mode of one-to-few or even one-to-one. I'm repeatedly telling people the first step in building a successful business, Internet or otherwise, is to find a niche and fill it.

Read the rest...

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Customer Satisfaction Survey

As usual, there's a lot going on here at Rare Bird and we're excited about the coming months and years. New services and clients — Whew! — it's a lot to keep up with. We're also hyper-sensitive to the needs of our existing clients (you!) and want to be certain that we're doing all we can to keep you happy. To help us with this, please take a few minutes to complete a quick customer satisfaction survey.

Thanks for your help; and thanks for your business!

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