Marketing & SEO Archives
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Mar 3, 2010
If you've worked with us on a web development or SEO project, then you've undoubtedly heard us preach the benefits of code optimization. Not only does lightweight, well-optimized code reduce development, troubleshooting and on-going maintenance costs, but front-end code optimization can improve user experience as well by, among other things, reducing page load times.
There has been buzz for the past few months that Google may give developers another benefit to optimizing code for fast page loading - search engine rankings.
Continue reading "Code Optimization A Factor in Google Search Rankings Yet?" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Feb 10, 2010
Lynn Gaertner-Johnston's post today titled When "Customer Service" Letters Undercut Bankers should remind us of the importance of personalizing communications to banking customers.
Continue reading "Personalization More Important Than Ever When Banks Communicate with Customers" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Feb 4, 2010
One of the most popular questions we've fielded from our clients over the past twelve months has been, "How do we use Facebook and Twitter effectively?" While can provide many strategies that vary by client, a real-world example speaks volumes. Ally Bank provides just such an example.
Continue reading "Ally Bank Provides Good Example of Straightforward Twitter Use to Engage & Serve Customers" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Feb 4, 2010
For over 10 years we have worked with banks and credit union managers to design and implement online banking, internet & e-mail marketing, customer service and website solutions. In many instances, prior to our work with the organization, they had few metrics by which they measured their website's return on investment (ROI). To help our prospective clients establish a starting point for measuring ROI, we created an online Bank and Credit Union Website ROI Calculator.
Continue reading "Calculating Website ROI for Banks and Credit Unions" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Feb 1, 2010
With so many users turning to the Internet for their banking activities, it's disappointing how few small banks and credit unions offer customers a live chat communication channel on their public facing websites. Live chat results in significant cost savings versus telephone support. Live chat also increases a bank or credit union's ability to convert visitors into new customers. Given these and other benefits, I'm consistently surprised at the two reasons managers most commonly give for not implementing live chat.
Continue reading "Banks and Credit Unions Missing Opportunities by Not Implementing Live Chat on Websites" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Jan 11, 2010
The CEO of a mid-sized credit union in Michigan called me to ask advice on how best to use Facebook as part of his credit union's marketing strategy. He wanted to know the benefit of having a Facebook page and how it would actually benefit his bottom line. He was skeptical of the value that social media offered his organization and wondered if I thought his skepticism was justified. He said my answer was helpful to his decision whether to move forward, so I thought the information might also help other bank and credit union executives in evaluating whether to use social media.
Continue reading "How Credit Unions and Banks Could Use Social Networking More Effectively" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Aug 14, 2009
In my previous post I shared a cry for help from someone who asked why products from his Google Base Feed were not showing up in the Google Shopping search results. The answer was obvious to me only because I'd encountered this exact situation several times before, but it's a common mistake that many people (including me) make, especially when starting out with Google Base feeds.
Continue reading "Why Your Products May Not Appear in Google Shopping Search Results - Answer" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Jun 21, 2009
Today someone asked me for help to figure out why products from his e-commerce store have stopped appearing in Google Shopping search results. He has been submitting a product feed to Google Base for over a year and until recently, he generated a significant amount of traffic and sales from Google Shopping clicks. He had successfully validated his feed format and confirmed that it contained the required parameters. With one look at his feed format, I knew exactly why he his products had stopped showing up in Google Shopping results.
Continue reading "Why Your Products May Not Appear in Google Shopping Search Results" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on May 18, 2009
If you've ever called your utility company, credit card company or any large corporation, you've likely experienced the frustration of sitting on hold for painfully long periods of time. Some companies have helpful phone systems that will tell you that you're caller number X in the queue, or that your expected wait time is Xteen minutes. That's cool, and helpful, but today I saw something on one of my banking websites that I think raises the bar for companies providing telephone customer service.
Continue reading "Might this visibility increase the attention this bank gives to reducing wait times?" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Feb 11, 2009
I typed a response to this question that a user posed on Stackoverflow.com today regarding SEO tactics, but between the time I started typing and the time I finished, the author had closed the question to new answers, so I couldn't submit my response. Nonetheless, it was a good discussion topic since numerous clients have asked me whether black hat SEO tactics that get a quick rise in search traffic should be part of their internet marketing strategy. If you're reputable, in it for the long haul and want sustained growth, then the answer is definitely "no."
His question was:
This is a question for those of us who can easily recognize when a company is participating in a sketchy SEO scheme to bulk up their search engine rank.
Recently, I've been searching for a moving company. After hearing several estimates, I decided on one company that gave me a reasonable rate (not the cheapest) and was very professional over the phone, providing a great explanation of all costs and previous customer referrals.
I then went online to see what additional information I could find on the company. I found all kinds of content aggregation sites linking to the company and obviously fake reviews of the site (same copy used for different sites, reviews).
Now my question is, based on my "meat space" experience alone, I would have gone with this company. Now, because I happen to be a web application developer, I've spotted a shameless SEO scheme. Should this affect whether I give this company my business?
Continue reading "Will Sketchy SEO Tactics Damage Your Company's Online Reputation" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Feb 6, 2009
I'm a huge proponent of staged rollouts for credit union websites, especially if the sites are ground up builds packed with new features. I sometimes have to fight hard to convince my clients of the benefits since most of the time they're giddy with excitement about the new website and want to give their members access to everything on day one. I usually spend a lot of time selling the virtues of delayed gratification, mostly in writing, sometimes verbally. I thought today it would be interesting to try a slightly different approach with a fun new client.
Continue reading "Single Versus Staged Rollout for Bank and Credit Union Websites - Which Is Better?" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Aug 23, 2008
Here is a screenshot of my actual email client (Mail for Mac OS X) at the size I run it on a daily basis. A legitimate email from CitiMortgage is displayed in the window. For my 3 deal-killers, I will be referencing this image throughout.
1. It all starts with the subject
Our inboxes are becoming increasingly more difficult to manage. Even if we have the best spam blocking in the world, we're still getting more and more legitimate emails every day. Credit card statements, payment due notifications, Amazon.com order confirmations, shipment notifications, and Facebook updates just to name a few. Pruning your inbox in this day-and-age could take hours.
Continue reading "Three Deal-killers In Banking Email Design " »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Aug 11, 2008
Inspired by Jeff Atwood's "Invest In A Quality Programming Chair" blog post, I set out last week to purchase a new chair. I chose to buy a Herman Miller Mirra chair based on Jeff's and several other people's reviews. Since I couldn't find a local dealer, I opted to buy online. What I didn't know is that finding a reputable would prove quite a challenge, but it would demonstrate perfectly one of the most important tips I've been giving our e-commerce clients for years.
Continue reading "Negative Reviews Worse Than No Reviews in E-commerce World" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Feb 19, 2008
One of the easiest methods to quickly collect customer feedback is via online surveys, posted either on your website or distributed via email. Since few website content management systems (CMSs) offer survey tools and third-party products can be expensive and cumbersome to install, not many small and mid-size banks and credit unions use online surveys.
Using a new feature in Google spreadsheets, anyone can easily create, distribute and analyze online surveys. Best of all, it's free! Let me show you how to get started.
Continue reading "Post Online Surveys to Your Bank Website for Free" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Oct 30, 2007
The goal of ads on your website is to generate clicks. As marketers, we have trouble limiting ourselves to just one ad on our home page, and eventually our home pages become a cluttered carnival of ads. Each additional ad dilutes the impact of the other ads on the page and thus click-through rates decline.
Donovan and I are working with a client whose home page has this exact problem. Our new design will show only one large graphic ad (instead of the five it shows now) on the home page, but the company still needs to show multiple ads throughout the campaign period. We had to decide whether to show a single, but different, ad on each page refresh, or to use code to change the ads every X seconds while the user sits on the page. How did we decide?
Continue reading "Rotating versus Static Ads - Which to Use On Your Website?" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Oct 26, 2007
Most people can't resist reading a story that promises to answer an intriguing question, or to shed light on a mysterious situation. The writer who authored the cover of this month's MIT Technology Review provides an excellent example of writing that practically forces a reader to turn the page.
Continue reading "How To Write Content That Sucks Readers In" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Oct 25, 2007
A client asked, "How can I tell how many of my web pages are in Google search results?" Let me show you how.
Continue reading "How To Find Out Which Pages Search Engines Have Indexed On Your Website" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Sep 18, 2007
Google offers a cool advanced search technique that you can use to find out which new pages Google discovered on your website in recent days. You can also use the same technique to find any new web content on a topic, such as a breaking news story.
Continue reading "Google Plain Sight Secret: How to Tell Google to Return Only Recent Results" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Aug 30, 2007
I'd like to establish an InetSolution presence in Traverse City. Can you help?
Continue reading "I'm Seeking Opportunities in Traverse City - Can You Help?" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Aug 29, 2007
How important is pork seasoning to an Orthodox Jew? While I'm not Jewish, my guess is that it probably doesn't appear high on the grocery list of most Jewish families. So I wondered why a company would use a pig to try to sell a kosher product?
Continue reading "What A Pig Can Teach You About Website Design" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Jul 27, 2007
For the past eight years, at least one person every year approaches me with what he (or she) thinks is a surefire way to market his website. Today it happened again, and his pitch was nearly identical to the previous 8 to 10 that I've heard. The basic pitch goes like this, "I've got a great idea to drive traffic to our website. We're going to [put up a huge billboard OR send out a postcard OR create a banner ad] with just our website address [insert www.SomeBoringDomain.com here]. People will go to the website just to see what's there. It'll be great!"
The problem is that 99% of the time, the domain name is as memorable as your lunch on June 13th (can't remember what you ate, can you?) and as unique as a white pair of socks. That marketing idea just doesn't work without the right ingredients.
But with the right ingredients, mysterious marketing can work, as evidenced by the brilliant ploy that Frito Lay's marketing group used to make me part with $3.29 that I wasn't planning to spend.
Continue reading "Clever Marketing Tactic Worked On Me" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Jul 18, 2007
I worked with a company earlier this year that was managing their own Google Adwords advertising, but getting terrible results. The marketing manager had attended a seminar on internet marketing and came back eager start driving traffic to her company's website. After three months, they had spent a small fortune paying for clicks that delivered a dismal two sales leads. But with one simple change, I cut their ad expenses by over 80% and also increased their conversion ratio six fold.
Continue reading "Use Negative Keywords to Better Target Google Ads" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Jul 11, 2007
Yesterday I had lunch with one of my clients and his friend, John. John is a commercial real estate agent broker in Imlay City, Michigan. During lunch, my client asked John why he doesn't have a website. John replied, "What's a website going to do for me? Are people really going to go to my website to find property listings? It seems like a waste of money to me."
John is a smart businessman and has done remarkably well in the real estate industry in and around Imlay City - even without a website - and a website isn't going to suddenly double his business. But I do know that the percentage return on investment he'll earn from this website idea will be greater than any real estate investment that he'll ever make.
Continue reading "just one visitor will pay for this real estate website" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Jul 2, 2007
The owner of the pizzeria that I frequent told me that business is slow in the summer. He said that it's because people barbecue more in the summer (we're in Michigan, so only dedicated BBQ nuts like me grill year round), so therefore eat less pizza. He said that it's especially slow on Tuesdays.
I asked what he is doing to increase business, and he replied, "Putting inserts in the local Sunday paper and writing daily specials on my board." When I asked if he was using the internet at all, he said, "No, I don't see how it could help me."
I picked up my pizza and thought about his answer all the way home. By the time I bit into my first slice, I had an answer.
Continue reading ""what's for dinner?" could make Tuesday's busy for Jeff" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Jun 26, 2007
We just purchased two new Intel Quad-Core X5355 Xeon processors for a new web server that we're putting online next week. We paid $1,220.52 for each processor - a hefty sum. Today, I received a postcard from Intel that clearly explains why those processors cost so much.
Continue reading "For Fun - No wonder Intel processors cost so much" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Jun 17, 2007
My friend Sharon is a realtor in Michigan, and Michigan's housing market is about the worst in the U.S. this year. Sharon has actually been selling more homes than most of her peers, but she said her marketing costs have increased since homes are sitting on the market from six to 18 months or longer, thus requiring longer ad runs. We talked about using her website to advertise her listings, which she uses extensively. She said that online virtual tours are hugely popular with internet savvy buyers, but they hire an outside firm to produce them and they're expensive. While iPix and similar systems produce great results, any realtor can create her own virtual tour with 30 minutes, a $150 Canon digital camera and the free PhotoStitch software that comes with it.
Continue reading "why every realtor should own a Canon digital camera" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Jun 9, 2007
Like many people, I visit my dentist twice each year for a routine cleaning, one-sided conversation (I still haven't mastered annunciating clearly with hands in my mouth), a free toothbrush and a discussion about the state of the e-commerce industry. For the past two years, during each cleaning my dentist has said something like, "I should get a website, but I have no idea why. I just feel like I should have one. But I don't know what it's going to do for me. Am I really going to attract a lot of new patients from the web?"
No, he isn't going to attract a lot of new patients from the web, but there is a critical reason why he, and other medical practitioners should have at least a basic website.
Continue reading "why even doctors need to have a website of their own" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Jun 7, 2007
Your home page is the most valuable real estate on your website, but also the hardest page to choose content for and layout. A good home page will drive visitors into your site, while a poor home page will drive visitors away. But how can you tell exactly how visitors are using your home page?
Continue reading "Using heat maps to see how visitors use your website" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on May 21, 2007
I usually eat pizza two or three times per week, always from the same pizzeria. My order is always the same: a large, round deluxe, pickup. Every time I call in an order, I go through the same routine. Hundreds of pizzas later, and it's still the same.
After calling in an order last month, I wondered, "Why don't they recognize my voice by now?" Why can't I just call and say, "This is Jason, I'm ordering my usual." They always recognize me when I walk into the pizzeria, but never when I call. I tested a theory last month, and today I proved the theory true. Now when I call, they recognize me immediately and ask, "The usual?" Let me tell you how I did it.
Continue reading "how branding myself made pizza ordering easier" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Dec 14, 2006
On 12/07/06, I submitted an inquiry through Bionaire's website to ask where I could purchase their model BH3930 heater. The response they sent me today wasn't very helpful, but the lack of useful information isn't want caused me to shake my head in disappointment.
Continue reading "this response didn't make me feel valued" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Oct 28, 2006
Telephone cold calling is one of the most frustrating activities that salesmen and entrepreneurs must do when growing their businesses. In my career, I’ve used two cold calling approaches - buckshot and rifle. The buckshot approach is purely a numbers game; I call up to 30 prospects a day from a targeted leads list that I purchase from various trade associations and list brokers, with little research about each prospect. The buckshot approach is effective, but is also tiring. In contrast, when using the rifle approach I may call only three to five prospects in a day, but I research each prospect in depth before my call. The rifle approach consumes as much time as the buckshot method, but results in higher close ratios and more profitable sales. For the past three years, I've exclusively used the rifle approach with high success. One of my favorite tools for building my “rifle list” is the Visitor Detail report from one of the three analytics applications that monitors our website traffic. With this data, I can easily build a list of prospects who have visited our site, even if they do not contact me through our website.
Continue reading "Using website statistics to turn visitors into customers - over the telephone" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Aug 31, 2006
Comments (1)
Numerous bank and credit union website managers have asked me why their website traffic and sales dropped after launching new, improved websites. Numerous factors have contributed to the declindes, but there is one frequent cause that the designers didn't plan for when building the new sites - page renaming without setting up proper redirects. If you’re planning to redesign your credit union or bank's website, you need to understand what this means, why it happens and how you can avoid the problem.
Continue reading "Prevent Search Rankings Drop After Site Redesign with 301 Redirect" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Aug 22, 2006
Most search optimization experts know the benefits of including keywords in URLs. But many credit union and bank websites store content in a database and use query string values to pass a record identifier to a single page that displays the content dynamically. The URLs look like http://…/news-display.asp?articleid=7584. Unfortunately, this method does not allow you to show search engines your keywords in the page file name like you could with a static HTML page. There is a solution however, and it’s called URL rewriting.
Continue reading "How to Rewrite URLs in ASP on IIS Using ISAPI_Rewrite" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on May 3, 2003
Low online prices and special offers are great, but do they actually help you build credibility with your credit union members or bank customers? The latest research might surprise you!
Continue reading "Website Design Credibility Is A Key To Bank and Credit Union Website Success" »
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