ATILUS - Web Design | Internet Marketing

EE Plugin: Atilus Dynamic Menu Items

Hello to all of you web designers out there! If you’re like me, you prefer designing your sites using some form of css, especially when it comes to designing menus. We love the hover over effects, and the customizable-ness of styling both hover and non-hover states of the menu items.

http://yoursite.com/contactpage/ and you have set one of your links assigned with uri=“contactpage” as well as selected=“_selected” and finally class=“contactpagelink”, the plugin will change your link’s class name to contactpagelink_selected. And of course, when the visitor is on a page other than http://yoursite.com/contactpage/ the class name will be displayed as “contactpagelink”.

Output:

If visitor is NOT on http://yoursite.com/contactpage/ :

<a href="http://yoursite.com/contactpage/" class="contactpagelink"/>

If visitor is on http://yoursite.com/contactpage/ :

<a href="http://yoursite.com/contactpage/" class="contactpagelink_selected"/>

Choosing Effective Marketing

It’s Sunday morning and you’re in the “library” flipping through the newspaper sales ads.  Joe’s Furniture Store (Art Van where I’m from) has a full color circular in the mix every week.  Why?  They’re hoping to catch the attention of someone who might be in the market for a recliner.

It’s the end of April and the temperature is starting to rise.  Now’s the time window & siding people come sniffing around.  How?  Door to door, if you can believe it!  This is incredibly intrusive and annoying.

Mail arrives daily with offers from credit card companies hoping I’ll spread some of my debt to them.  Like I need help increasing my debt!

What about the phone calls at dinner time?  TV ads that aren’t watched because we’ve all got DVR?  Radio ads we tune out, billboards we don’t notice anymore   The list goes on.

What do these marketing methods have in common?  They’re not targeted.  They waste a lot of money on consumers who won’t or aren’t ready to consume.  They’re fishing for sales rather than strategically positioning themselves where those searching for their product can find it.  This is where search engine marketing (SEM) comes in.  If the goal is to sell a recliner, money should be spent wooing people who are in the market for cushy seating.  Consumers are savvy.  They’re online researching products, suppliers and prices.  SEM nails them when they’re most interested.  Benefits include, but are not limited to; low cost, measurable, and easy to change.  Cost is low because you’re only spending money on consumers who are interested in your product.  Results can be measured on a number of variables such as click through rate, conversions (did they do what you wanted them to), and at what point shoppers abandon your site.  Campaigns are easy to change if they’re not producing desired results. Testing can be done on multiple campaigns simultaneously and results are available in real time.  Can’t say that about print ads.

I’m not saying the other methods don’t have merit.  If used in conjunction with one another they can be effective, especially if personalization is included.  BUT, nothing is as cost effective or has as great a return on investment as SEM.  With SEM you don’t have to hope that the consumer seeing your ad might be looking for your product they came looking for you, they want it.  And that is the furthest from annoying.

For more information on how Atilus can help with your SEM, please contact us at www.atilus.com

Flirting with Disaster…

The SXSW (South by Southwest Interactive Conference) interview, March 9th, Austin Texas.  This was no ordinary interview, chosen Business Week Journalist Sarah Lacy was to interview keynote speaker Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook.
I would like to be nice and feel sorry for Sarah, but the utter truth is this interview was a “trainwreck”. Because of Mark’s shy, nature it was uncomfortable for Sarah from the beginning because of her way of “personally” interviewing him. Throughout the interview she dropped self-references, and had a “flirty” style of discussion (body language says it all), further she enjoyed talking about her relationship with Mark as an interviewer, more than asking him questions about Facebook or the like.

It didn’t stop there however; Sarah did not connect with the audience on any level. Sarah in my opinion created an adversarial relationship with audience. At one point the crown became so upset and vicious with her she responded to the crowd by saying “You don’t know how hard my job is up here” and she said “I am trying to ask interesting questions .you think you guys can do any better?” After asking the audience to come ask their questions, she said to the audience: “If you think I suck so bad why don’t you send me an e-mail?” The next audience member then responded by saying: “what’s your e-mail address?” At this point the roar from the crowd was out of control. She begins speaking of his journal that he writes about his ideas for Facebook and that she heard that he burns them, and Zuckerberg says “I don’t burn them” He proceeds by saying “You have to ask questions”, if you watch the video you’ll hear the crowd roar and clap in Zuckerbergs favor. At one point in this utter disaster (supposedly an interview), she says “You’ve seen me throw a full glass of water at Michael Errington, I just want to warn you” Zuckerberg reaches for the bottle of water, and places it on the floor. What else could possibly go wrong?

There are two sides to every story right? or shall we call it “crisis management”?
Throughout the interview both Sarah and Mark took two completely different routes if you will. A few days after the interview both Zuckerberg and Lacy responded on her Twitter message by responding “Seriously screw all you guys. I did my best to ask a range of things.” This is clearly not the way to manage crisis, despite all of the criticism she received from the audience and bloggers days after the interview.

Zuckerberg, took a much more humble approach, he held a Q & A session , with a little humor Zuckerberg began the Q & A by saying “Yesterday’s Q & A wasn’t enough fun”. The audience asked him about privacy issues and where Facebook as a social network sees its self in the near future.

This keynote interview, had two sides to the story. Look at how Lacy responded on her Twitter message with a cold shoulder, and look at how Zuckerberg held a Q & A and humbled himself.

Was Lacy handed “the pink slip” after this interview?Unfortunately not.
Do you think Sarah Lacy learned her lesson? To be brutally honest with you, NO!

New Site Launched - Plastic Surgeon of Naples

Luciano Boemi, MD, FACS a Naples Plastic Surgeon, and his team approached us recently. With a great looking site, sophisticated online seminar booking management tool and nice photo & video gallery they were ahead of the curve.

Unfortunately it just wasn’t performing as expected.

The site was nice looking and usable, but no one was visiting. After initial consulting and research we realized their site, although attractive, was not properly coded for marketing and search engine success. By restructuring the code, making it more friendly for general users, handicapped users, as well as search engines, and making sure to take careful care in crafting TITLE and META information we could quickly help the site rise in the search engines.

We are pleased to announce the release, and success of the Boemi restructuring. In just a few days since launch they are already ranking for desired and meaningful terms (”Plastic Surgeon of Naples”) getting in front of their target audience and seeing amazing results! We look forward to working with the Boemi team over the coming years, increasing their web presence and helping them to strategically marketing their business online.

links for 2008-05-04

• Lehigh, Lee County Party Rental - A Fiesta Party Rental
  Helpful local party rental store. Great for renting bounce houses, giant water slides, giant slip and slides, etc. (all the fun stuff). They serve all of the lee county including Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Bonita Springs, Lehigh Acres.
  (tags: fort myers party rental lehigh acres supplies)