Net Results
Helping your business succeed online.
Published by nrichmedia (www.nrichmedia.com)
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Volume 3, Issue 2 – Summer 2007
In This Issue
Welcome
It hasn’t been the hottest or sunniest summer here on Vancouver
Island by any stretch of the imagination, but the more-frequent-than-usual
rainfall has meant less need for me to water my vegetable garden and
less watering of the lawns by those that do (ours doesn’t get
that luxury and usually gets nice and crunchy by this time of year).
The extra rain certainly keeps things nice and green and makes you
appreciate the warm, sunny days, like today, even more.
There’s lots of good and new stuff in this newsletter so let’s
get right to it!
New at nrichmedia: Green Web
Hosting
nrichmedia is pleased to be offering green web hosting services. Our
standard package includes 500MB of disk space (which is usually way
more than most small to medium sized businesses require), email and
webmail accounts, and web statistics which allow you to track how many
visitors there are to your site, where they come from, what search
terms they used to find your site, etc.
What makes our web hosting green? A few things, really:
- Our hosting is shared on powerful, energy
efficient servers so the amount of electricity we use is minimized. We maintain our
own dedicated environment within these servers so that we have full
control over performance and security.
- The electricity used by the servers comes from hydropower, which,
although not ideal, is one of the more environmentally
friendly means
of power generation.
- We’ve purchased wind power certificates to offset the
amount of electricity that we do use. Wind power is, of course, a
natural, clean, and abundant energy source with
little or no negative impact on the environment.
If you would like to switch to nrichmedia’s green web hosting,
please click here for details.
Featured Article: How Can My
Web Site Get Better Results?
The Internet is well past its infancy and many (if not most) professionals
realize the benefits and, often, the necessity of having a web site
for their business or organization. A good percentage of these people
have gotten a web site built (by themselves or through a web designer)
but are not seeing the increase in the number of clients they were
expecting. “Where did I go wrong?” they ask. “Is
this Internet thing just one big scam?” Well, no, I think it’s
pretty legitimate and here to stay – not to mention a very effective
marketing tool when used properly. The problem is likely that their
web site wasn’t thought through properly when being designed
and built and now it’s not getting the results they wanted. Sound
familiar?
Many people know me as the King of Analogy (okay, I don’t have
the crown yet, but I’m sure it’s coming). So, my analogy
for this situation is that of quickly building a house, with cheap
material, on a shoddy foundation. Once built, you might feel a brief
sense of satisfaction, now that you’ve got a house, just like
everyone else on the block does. But, within a year or two, it starts
falling apart, not keeping you warm in the winter, looking pretty shabby,
and you wish you had thought about what you really wanted in a house,
done a bit of research, used quality building materials, and hired
professionals to help build it.
So you’ve got your house that’s not quite living up to
your expectations. In fact, is it a money pit? Maybe it’s time
to do a walk-around and inspect the structure to see what could be
better.
Okay, back to your web site. Let’s take a look at it and see
what may or may not be working, what could be improved, and decide
if it’s even worth salvaging or if it’s time to completely
start over.
First, and foremost, are you even getting visitors to your site? Take
a look through the numbers in your web stats package or Google Analytics
and see how many people are coming to your site. Does it seem like
a reasonably decent number? (This is relative, of course.) Are the
daily numbers staying fairly consistent or, hopefully, trending upwards?
If you answered ‘no’ to one or both of these questions,
you need to improve the traffic to your site. The main ways of doing
so are by improving your site’s search engine optimization (SEO),
increasing the number of incoming links, and by simply telling people
about your site, verbally and on all of your advertising material (business
cards, brochures, radio/TV commercials, etc.)
Next, take a look at the design of the site. Is it pleasing to the
eye? More important, is it pleasing to other people’s (i.e.,
potential customers’) eyes? Take a survey of several trusted
friends and colleagues to see what they honestly think. Ask them, “If
you were looking to hire a _______, would you hire me, based on my
web site?”
Does the site look modern and professionally designed? Have a look
at several other sites (especially those of reputable companies; not
just your competitors’) and then take a look at yours. Are you
proud of the way yours looks? If you’re in a business where appearance
truly matters (especially if you’re selling something visual),
does your web site truly show off your talent and even enhance it?
At the very least, there should be nothing “wrong” with
the way your site looks – missing images, things not aligned
properly, ghastly color combinations, and so on. And, the pages should
load at a reasonable speed for your target audience.
Are people able to find what they’re looking for quickly? Can
they navigate from one page to the next with ease? You might be surprised
at the answers if you look at your site with a critical eye, as if
you were coming to it for the first time.
Now get even more critical with your site. Does every single link
(internal and external) work (i.e., go to an existing page)? Are there
any spelling mistakes? Are there any coding (e.g., JavaScript) errors?
These are things that are often overlooked when putting a site together
and can seriously harm your chances of making a good impression. Take
a couple minutes and run the pages through a spell checker and link
checker. You’ll be glad you did.
Finally, take a good read through the copy (text) on every page of
your site. Again, you might want to ask that group of friends/colleagues
to read through it for you. If well written, the copy should grab your
visitors’ attention quickly, through use of compelling headlines,
so that your visitors are encouraged and tempted to read on to find
out what you offer that will make their lives better. When they’re
finished reading (or at least, skimming) over the text, they should
want to take some kind of action – call you, sign up for a newsletter,
buy a product – and that had better be easy and obvious for them
to do. Is it so on your site? If not, you’ve wasted your time
and their time.
The above points are by no means an exhaustive list of what a good
web site should look like or include, but it’s certainly a good
starting point as a ‘reality check’ to determine if your
site is maximizing its potential.
Having read through this article and putting your existing web site
through the wringer, you may realize that your web site isn’t
all that it could be. Perhaps it just needs some fine-tuning. Or maybe
it needs to be completely redone. In either case, the longer you leave
it, the more potential business you’re losing. I’m not
advocating rushing through the process of trying to build a high quality
web site – that’s probably what got you in this position
in the first place. But once you’ve acknowledged that your site
isn’t getting you the results you want and can now pinpoint why,
it’s time to get on the right track. Do it properly and you’ll
be glad you did.
* * * * *
Want more valuable information like this to help your socially responsible
business become an online success and get the results you've been looking
for? Subscribe to Net Results, our FREE
quarterly newsletter by filling in the form at the top left of this
page.
About nrichmedia
nrichmedia creates innovative and unique web sites and other multimedia
for ethical and socially responsible businesses and organizations.
We also offer green web hosting, web site maintenance, CD-ROM production,
and more.
nrichmedia was founded by Nathaniel Richman in 2000. Nathaniel graduated
from the Vancouver Film School with a Certificate of Recommendation
in Multimedia Studies in 1997 and has been working in the web design
and new media industry ever since. He previously received a Bachelor
of Mathematics degree (Honours Actuarial Science) from the University
of Waterloo and worked in the pension consulting industry.
Nathaniel works with several other designers and programmers, according
to the needs of the project, to provide the client with the most professionally
designed web site or presentation possible.
"Nathaniel Richman's design solution for my website is elegantly
simple and a pleasure to navigate. He provided timely services. I
am very pleased with the results."
- Jerome Markson, Jerome Markson Architect Inc. (www.jeromemarksonarchitect.com)
To learn more about nrichmedia’s services, view
our online portfolio, and read glowing
testimonials from many satisfied clients, please visit www.nrichmedia.com.
Web Site Design and Promotion Blog
For plenty of tips and tricks on designing, marketing, and promoting
your web site, have a look at www.websitedesignandpromotion.com,
a blog co-authored by nrichmedia and Juliet
Austin.
Recent postings include:
Green
Businesses Will Not Solve Environmental Problems
Google
Leading the Green Way
What
the Font is Going On?
Feel free to place a comment on any of the posts there. It’s
an easy way to get a link to your site, which can increase your exposure
and help your site’s search engine rankings.
Charitable Causes
nrichmedia donates 5% of proceeds on all projects of $500 and above
to charitable organizations. We are pleased to have supported and continue
to support several worthy causes. To see a list of the organizations
we support, please visit www.nrichmedia.com/causes.htm.
The Not-to-be
Missed Link:
organic.org
What better time than summer to be hitting the farmers’ market
and purchasing organic produce? Organic.org is a wealth of information on what the term ‘organic’ means,
the benefits of buying organic, where to buy organic (in the U.S. only
for now), product reviews, fun for kids, and more. It’s a very
nicely designed and easy to navigate site (they must have read my featured
article ;)
Archives
To view previous editions of Net Results, visit www.nrichmedia.com/archives.htm.
Pass it on and Enjoy
Please feel free to pass this newsletter on to anyone who might find
it useful.
Want more valuable information like this to help your socially responsible
business become an online success and get the results you've been looking
for? Subscribe to Net Results, our FREE
quarterly newsletter by filling in the form at the top left of this
page.
Printable
PDF Version
 nrichmedia
is located in Courtenay (in the Comox Valley, on Vancouver Island),
British Columbia, Canada, and thinks and works globally! Thanks
to the Internet, we're able to create web sites and other multimedia
for clients all over the world. You can contact us by
or by telephone, at 250.871.7424.
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