Marketing & SEO Archives
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Feb 19, 2008
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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 Sep 14, 2006
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For nearly 10 years, Don, Eric, Mac and I have worked with banks and credit union managers to design and implement online marketing, online customer service and website solutions. In nearly all instances, prior to our work with the organization, they had no standards or processes by which they measured their website's return on investment (ROI). To help our prospective clients establish a starting point for measuring ROI, we've 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 Aug 31, 2006
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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
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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
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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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