ATILUS - Web Design | Internet Marketing

Provide Linux Drivers for all Your Hardware, How Linux Might Just Save Dell

In an effort to reverse its recent downward trend in sales, Dell has been promoting its IdeaStorm website, a place where users can vote on changes to the company’s products and services.  It is amazing to see that the majority of the top 10 ideas are somewhat open-source/Linux related, ranging from offering PCs with Linux preinstalled, to using LinuxBIOS’ instead of proprietary BIOS’.  Linux and open-source software have come a long way since I first tinkered with Red Hat Linux during sophomore year of college.

For those of you unfamiliar Linux is an OpenSource or free (in some cases) operating system.

What does open source mean?

According to dictionary.com open source refers to:

A method and philosophy for software licensing and distribution designed to encourage use and improvement of software written by volunteers by ensuring that anyone can copy the source code and modify it freely.

There are a number of free or open source software applications out there including Linux, a complete operating system. It is quickly catching up to Windows in terms of design and usability and helps lower the total cost of ownership of a PC.

Among the top 10 ideas on the Dell site, one that catches my attention is “Provide Linux Drivers for all your Hardware.”  I remembered those days when I had to search forum after forum in order to find instructions on how to get my sound card to work in Linux.  I was frustrated after a while and eventually went back to using Windows XP.

As most Dell users probably already know Dell offers its (Windows) hardware drivers for free at the company’s support site.  A user selects his/her machine type and model, and instantly Windows drivers are available.  Now, if Dell could make the same thing happen for Linux, it would be heaven.  I can just imagine if Dell opened up and provided Linux drivers how easy it is going to be for users to run a version of Linux with all hardware being supported.  Heck, I might give Linux another shot if Dell provides such a service.  Let’s see how many of these ideas get carried through by Dell.

For more information on Linux and it’s various distributions (versions) please visit Linux.org.

Enewsletter Schedules

Enewsletter Schedules - How Often Do I Send Enewletters?

Web Design & Pay Per Click Marketing Campaigns aren’t the only things that can benefit from statistics or analytics analysis. It is very important to monitor and adjust all aspects of your web marketing efforts, according to your data, in order to better serve your audience.

It is from our observations, from our own enewsletter, as well as all of our clients’, that we have determined that 2 weeks is the best time to allot between enewsletters.

2 weeks is the best enewsletter schedule!

With all of your efforts online keep the following in mind:

You’re damned if you do too much.
Damned if you do too little.

As I’ve stated before the web crowd is fickle and across all audiences, too little valuable content will either lead to nothing, no sign-ups, contact, conversions, etc. or will mean your already established user base will begin to fall off.

Inversely, the same is true. Provide too much in your face content (usually through the use of an enewsletter) and users will get upset, delete your emails immediately, or worse mark them as spam.

The balance you must strike between content and delivery varies across industry and is, in large part, determined by your relationship with your existing users or enewsletter base. You need to give your audience time to digest your suggestions (give them time to reap the benefits) and then allow them to develop a thirst for more.

2 weeks seems to be the best overall schedule to allow this. Author your blog and add content to your web site as much as you’d like, get that content in there! I often spend nights and weekends typing posts that I have to get out of my head, but don’t feel it necessary to send an email with every post.

This post was authored for two reasons:

First, it is a common question we are often asked “How often should I schedule an Enewsletter?”

Second, upon analyzing our own efforts, the negative effects of sending an enewsletter too often, became clear as we watched the number of opens and clicks (people who would like to know more about the topics or information within your enewsletters and click through to your article or site) plummet.

The following picture is a great example of how too many enewsletters can drop readership:

All things the same, our own enewsletter (which only has a few hundred very close friends and colleagues) was drastically affected by a decrease in the amount of time between emails. Almost everything was the same, the from address, the day, the time, the only difference, instead of two weeks, we shortened the life cycle to just one!

Our open rate fell 22%, and our click through rate fell even more, from 25% to less than 10%, a decrease of 60%!

Don’t feel that your audience needs every update post. Be especially wary of enewsletters, think of them as a phone call or a physical visit, space them out, make them special and use them with discretion.

To review: What is the best schedule (or amount of time) between sending enewsletters?

2 weeks

Who’s Got Beef With Google’s Antics?!? Increasing Your Google AdWords Quality Score

On February 21, 2007 I viewed Google’s quality score for the first time. Mind you this was also the first time I realized that I had a Google AdWords ego, because at that very moment it took a major blow. I’m convinced that the boys and girls over at the Google Mother-ship were aiming for this kind of reaction because they so cleverly put the words “great” and “ok” in a beautiful shade of green and then BAM! “Poor” was in the contrasting color of red, as if to say: “Negative Ghostrider, keyword is off the grid.”

And you know what, that would be fine if I had the inclination that these poor keywords were irrelevant. But they were terms that I had put some thought into—ones that I felt really advertized my Google wit.

Now I know my tangent above may lead you to think that I organize boycotts against Google or stand outside of their headquarters in California picketing them (the only thing I would be doing in California is trying to catch a glimpse of my childhood crush, Arnold Swarchenegger). However I do not hate Google. I just feel that they slapped a big, fat, red sign on key terms that I thought were bringing in targeted traffic.

So, in light of the fact that I do not have the power to change Google’s mind on the quality of the keywords, I was forced to optimize. This, my friends, is why I am writing this to pass my newly found keyword optimization skills onto you or at least give you a few tips:

• Make sure your ads are relevant to your keywords, precisely relevant, use the exact keyterms in your ads.
• If your key terms are really general (i.e.: Hosting) try making them more specific (i.e: full service hosting).  The longer-tail terms will help you get the right kind of traffic, as well as increase quality score.
• Improve your landing pages.

“What does Google really want? They want users to be happy when they come to your site.  They want people to find what they were looking for.  If you make visitors happy, the landscape inevitably tilts in your favor.”
Perry Marshall

Google is one of the few advertisers that understands the longterm benefits of NOT catering solely to the advertisers with the deepest pockets. By concentrating on quality and user experience they’ve created a trusted, effective, advertising network that continues to grow.

With this in mind, I can’t emphasize enough that your landing pages are sooooo very important. Google will cut you down to size if your landing pages are irrelevant to your ad group, or not helpful to your visitors. At Unique ID, we create specific landing pages for every campaign, and usually for every ad group within the campaign, that are relevant to what we are promoting.  For example all of our own pay per click campaigns have landing pages that match our keyterms.
People with keyword quality score problems need to mirror this technique. Although it is unclear to what extent Google is scanning & monitoring advertisers’ landing pages, it is very clear they are. Make sure your landing pages are chock full of keywords that you used in that specific ad group or campaign the success of your campaigns rest on it.

We Need Your Help, What Do You Want From Us!

We are constantly striving to better ourselves, and our web sites at Unique ID and would like your help. We would sincerely appreciate some feed back from you on what it is that you would most like us to write or talk about. I have a lot of ideas bouncing around my head, as does Harry, Ray, Jessy, and Bao but we would all like to know what you want to hear about.

What kinds of information would you like us to write about?

• Would you like us to review a specific piece of online tool or software?
• Or talk more about the web development process?
• Looking to understand more about CSS, XHTML, or RSS feeds?
• Podcasts sound like a great technology, but are they really a good marketing tool?

Please contact us and submit a request online and we will write about your topic and personally thank you on that post.

Thank you in advance.

Internet Marketing - Promoting Your Business Online For Free, Why Internet Branding Is so VERY Impor

In a recent post fellow blogger, Graham Johnes (Internet Pyschologist?) asserts that branding, online, is not important. And in a small way I agree:

For Internet marketing, when you sell stuff online you are helping to solve someone’s problem….If what you offer meets the needs of your web site visitor do they really care about a “brand” you may have? Probably not.

I think we as Internet Marketers must clarify that generally there are three ways to get business online:

• Direct (online) Advertising (purchase a banner, text ad, etc.)
• Offline Advertising (generate offline marketing campaigns, flyer’s, advertisements, etc. that link to your online store or website)
• Online Networking

Branding is less important only in regards to one method of client acquisition, the first item on the list above, direct (online) advertising. You might be asking yourself what is direct (online) advertising? Here’s an example:

Steve Notepadiano (guess what I was just looking at), an Estate Planner who just started his own private legal practice is searching online for information on promoting his new law firm. Mr. Notepadiano does a search on Google and finds your ad, clicks through, finds your landing page and content relevant and contacts you for more information.

He does not know you, is not (generally) familiar with your brand. Your ad and landing page were relevant to what Steve was looking for at that moment, so he reacted and contacted you.

But, there may be a better way to market your company online. And it runs in direct opposition to Mr. Jones’ assertion.

Online Networking and Branding Offers EXPONENTIAL Opportunity

—and it’s free

pay per click marketing is not always the best way to acquire clients online

As a huge proponent of pay per click advertising I may be kicking myself in the teeth by saying… pay per click marketing is not always the best way to acquire clients online. In fact, most times it is much more economical, especially initially, to develop an image and brand online and acquire relevant customers through those kinds of acquisition channels as compared to purchasing ads on AdWords or a similar ad network.

I have seen the wonderful results of online branding and online networking many times. Our clients, colleagues, even Unique ID, has seen the effects of personal or company web branding. By creating an online presence, through a blog and an enewsletter (tools that you can setup quickly and inexpensively) and then participating in online communities related to the industry you are in, communities that are connected to the clients you are looking for, great things are bound to happen. Contacts will begin to pour into your inbox from every direction. Your blog post and articles will get syndicated on sites you didn’t even know existed. And, for the most part… its all free.

But… there is a catch.

It takes a lot of time and effort on your part as business owner. There are ways to get around this, hire someone to ghost write for you and make sure they are knowledgeable about the industry and the posts you will be writing about. But, typically this increases costs and many times the ghost writer has a hard time effectively emulating your voice. And what happens if someone recognizes you in real life (IRL) and asks about your post? It can sometimes get awkward. And, as I stated in a previous post, it only gets worse. The more your online image grows, the more you have to supply for your audience. The web community is fickle, they don’t stick around for long, you need to make sure you are consistently supplying good information and posts.

To conclude, if you are a new or upstart business who is willing to commit some time to developing a presence in your industry, but don’t have the capital a PPC campaign can take to run and manage, I would highly suggest installing or setting up a blog, getting an enewsletter and developing your own guru status online… start building your content immediately.