News Alert

Want to stay on the cutting edge of your industry or sector without having to invest in expensive research? Google has a nifty tool called Google Alerts that allow you to stay in touch with breaking news (as well as new postings to non-news web sites) about virtually whatever you want.

If you own a hair salon that sells Redken, you might want to configure it so that you receive an email anytime there is news about: Redken “new product”. Using the quotes helps limit the news search because only when new and product appear next to each other will it generate an alert.

Simply enter your search terms at www.google.com/alerts and then choose whether you want news, news and web or groups as the area you want Google to scan. Then tell it how frequently you want to be notified – as it happens, daily or weekly and enter your email address and voila! you have created your first alert.

You can create as many of these alerts as you like and you can also tweak these alerts by adding or removing terms to make sure you don't get information overload.

Plan for Success

Web sites don't grow on trees. But they are organic. You are putting real money into your web site and you should expect real results. What kind of results you can expect depends to a large degree on why you created your site.

Do you have an e-commerce web site? That is a great start for setting expectations. Beyond “selling stuff” though, you should set numerical targets. Depending on your product it might make more sense to set percentages (increase sales by 30%) or number of sales (5 more sales a week) or a dollar figure (increase sales $2000 / month). With clearly defined numerical targets, you can begin to track whether the site is effective or not.

But there are other plans you should set for your site. Are you planning to develop long term relationships with visitors? Create ways for your visitors to interact with each other or with you. Blogs, discussion forums, and voting are great ways to provide interaction with your clients.

Is your site strictly informational? Determine, on each and every page, what you want the visitor to do. Do you want them to call you? Email you? Fill out an online form? Download something? No commercial web site is “strictly” informational. You want your visitors to become your customers. Plan how that can happen and then measure the results.

Once you've got a plan and have started measuring, evaluate on a regular basis. If the results are not what you've planned for, determine what your next steps are. Do you need to change what you're measuring? Do you need to change the design or layout? Are visitors not able to do what you want them to do?

If you would like assistance in planning for success for your web site, call EduCyber at 720-275-4646 and we will help you determine what your next step is. (See – we planned this article out to help you realize the questions and then to call us for help.)

10 Signs You Need a (New) Web Site

10. Many links are broken or go to external pages that no longer exist.

9. The contact information on your web site refers to a phone number you no longer have.

8. You have a page that says “Coming in 2004”.

7. You receive phone calls from prospective customers consistently asking the same questions.

6. You spend a lot of time answering customer inquiries by looking up data in your database.

5. You often get calls at odd hours (web sites are open 24 hours a day)

4. You frequently have to update your print marketing materials because your product or service changes.

3. Your printed catalog is growing so large and unwieldy it is difficult to show clients.

2. You can't remember the last time you updated your web site.

1. You sell a product that is popular and easy to ship.

---
Like what you just read? Send your friends a copy or direct them to our site so they can get it, too!

© 2006 EduCyber, Inc. This newsletter is brought to you by EduCyber, Inc. EduNotes can be viewed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week online at http://www.educyber.com/edunotes/ . Visit us on the web at http://www.educyber.com or call us at (303) 268-2245. Permission is hereby granted to redistribute all or part of this newsletter as long as this entire copyright message is included.