Christian
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Homepage: http://www.metroink.com/
Posts by Christian
How Much Should a Website Cost a Small Business?
Apr 6th
I am asked that question a lot, and each time my answer is, “it depends.”
On one end of the spectrum is Jack Gerblick. When Jack recently purchased his second rental property on the Georgia coastline at St. Simons Island, the serial entrepreneur was tired of paying web development companies. So, he cast about for the best way to get a web presence for marketing his properties. After looking at alternatives, he finally settled on a service offered by Homestead, an Intuit company.
For a hosting charge of only $4.99 per month, Homestead provides the tools to build your own site for free. Now, that’s about as inexpensive as it gets. Of course, you have to do all the work yourself, but Homestead is an entry level product made for people who can’t even spell “HTML.”
Despite having to rebuild his site after his PC froze, Gerblick estimates he invested nine hours into developing his own site with Homestead. At $100 per hour, the true cost of the site was about $900. That’s more than $4.99, but still pretty reasonable. You can judge his efforts for yourself at yellowjasmine.com.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are the big interactive agencies, such as Razorfish, Organic and Digitas. The price they charge just to turn the crank can be quite high, and beyond the budgets of most small businesses.
But if you need functionality more complex than Gerblick’s, you need design and development. And if you’re not into doing it yourself, there are plenty of smaller web shops and boutique agencies that can help.
Zer0 to 5ive is a boutique marketing firm with offices in New York City. They build websites and marketing programs for B2B firms. President Michelle Pujadas says that the key for a small business is to match its objectives with the needs of the target customer. “We find that most of the sites that we build are for lead generation—getting prospects to take the next action by either contacting the company directly or submitting their contact information,” she says. “We find that visitors respond best to downloadable webcasts that they can watch within their own timeframe, white papers and Point of View papers. The content must be relevant to the audience, and well packaged and promoted,” she added. Pujadas also stresses the importance of good SEO practice. The sites Zer0 to 5ive builds for small businesses range from $15K to $50K.
I’ve seen good static business websites for as little as $5K using outside firms. But to find a good shop at that price, you will have to interview a lot of candidates. To offer the low bid, these firms focus on production only, and require you to provide all the content, such as photography, illustrations, diagrams, video, and copy—meaning you’ll need more budget dollars to cover the costs of producing those assets. They will also have to skimp on the creative talent they bring to the design process. By way of comparison, we recently estimated a 25-page small business website for $18K. The site included all the content and had some bells and whistles, including a sales configurator (that helped the visitor decide which product was right for them), a Flash product demo and an eCommerce storefront.
I advise small business clients to determine whether their budget is better spent on their own website, or on boosting traffic to the site they have. If you are selling an undifferentiated product or service, such as CPA services, office leasing, or catering, your real battle is clawing for prospect attention and web traffic against the competition. Once an interested visitor arrives on your site, a basic but professional approach will suffice. Bells and whistles on the web site won’t be the factor that convinces them to select you—but your content will be.
On the other hand, if you are selling a more unique product or service, such as medical imaging or interior design services, you may have fewer visitors to your site, but more work to do to entice them to stay. To get the visitor to take action, you will need unique features tailored to their needs, educational content, or an impressive showcase of your work. For example, special shopping carts may be required for visitors to input measurements, or you may have to display and ship fabric swatches. A high-end, B2B product, like a medical device, will need tutorials, white papers, and other scientific content.
Between $4.99 per month and $50,000, what’s the right price for a small business website? It depends.
Smart displays for business shows and expos…
Mar 31st
24 inches wide is $270 for one or $511 for 2
36 inches wide is $350 for one or $600 for 2
48 inches wide is $420 for one or $800 for 2
60 inches wide is $515 for one or $990 for 2
Strategic Marketing for Businesses 101-001
Mar 14th
Strategic marketing for small businesses can be as easy as setting up various types of advertising and keeping track of what works best.
A small business owner/marketer may set up a direct mailing campaign, an ad campaign in a magazine(s), a google adwords account, email campaigns and a few local sponsorships that offer exposure like a little league team. It can be any combination of ways to market your company. Many times the best way to market is to advertise where your biggest competition is. This is why we see fast food restaurants opening next door and across from one another, people already know to look there.
Every customer or potential customer who contacts your company should be asked how they found you and a record should be kept. Remember to do your best to obtain at least an email address from every caller. This will allow you to advance your marketing strategy; now you can send your direct mail or email ads to people you know have already called once and may just need a little more ‘encouragement’.
The marketing strategy of small business owners may change very often especially in the beginning. This is ‘ok’ and expected; finding the right places to advertise and the best times of the year is crucial to good marketing. As time passes, the data you have kept will give you clues as to who is calling from where. Be sure to also see what marketing vehicles not only get you the inquiries, but what type of marketing gets you the best customers.
Christian@metroink.com
Latest Video Production from Metro Ink
Mar 5th
If you need an inexpensive but awesome video for your business call metro ink, your source for marketing!
Small Billboards, Big Results!
Mar 1st
Many business owners are looking for a great place to put up a billboard that will be seen by many, however it is very costly. Most companies charge $1000 plus per month for billboard advertising, but we have found a much more cost effective way that has proven successful for us.
Most proprietors are unaware that you only need to be authorized to hang a sign measuring larger than 4ftx8ft, thus we hang 4ftx8ft signs wherever we can. You will find at least three Metro Ink signs throughout Staten Island. Customers have called us mentioning they saw our signs “all over the Island.” They remembered a sign and looked us up on Google. A single new customer proves the signs effectiveness. These signs are inexpensive and can be put in great locations. Please contact me to learn more….
Christian@metroink.com
The difference between hits, visitors, visits, and page views
Mar 1st
I found this article that tells you what to look for when judging how well your website is doing…
The difference between hits, visitors, visits, and page views
Summary
In this article you will find discussion and technical definitions of:
- Hits, visitors and page views
- Unique visitors
- New and returning visitors
And information about:
- Why hits are not a good way to measure traffic
- The difference between server hits & hit counters
- Tracking unique visitors
- The difference between new & returning visitors
Hits, visitors, visits, pageviews: what are the differences?
Technical definition of a hit
Each file sent to a browser by a web server is an individual hit.
Technical definition of a pageview
A pageview is each time a visitor views a page on your website, regardless of how many hits are generated. Pages are comprised of files. Every image in a page is a separate file. When a visitor looks at a page (a pageview), they may see numerous images, graphics, pictures etc. and generate multiple hits.
For example, if you have a page with 10 pictures, then a request to a server to view that page generates 11 hits (10 for the pictures, and one for the html file). A page view can contain hundreds of hits. This is the reason that we measure page views and not hits.
Conclusion: hits are not a reliable way to measure website traffic.
There is an additional potential for confusion here, because there are two types of ‘hits’. The hits we are discussing in this article are the hits recorded by log files, and interpreted by log analysis. A second type of ‘hits’ are counted and displayed by a simple hit counter. Hit counters record one hit for every time a webpage is viewed, also problematic because it does not distinguish unique visitors.
Here is an article discussing hit counters.
Technical definition of a visit
A visit happens when someone or something (robot) visits your site. It consists of one or more page views/ hits. One visitor can make multiple visits to your site.
Technical definition of a visitor
Technically, a visitor is the browser of a person who accepts a cookie. Opentracker utilizes 1st party cookie technology. By this definition, a visitor is a human being, and their actions are ‘human’ events, because only humans use browsers (with javascript) to navigate the internet. If a cookie is not accepted, then we use IP numbers to track visitors.
Opentracker measures unique visitors, which we track over long periods of time by giving them a cookie, this cookie is unique to their browser. We have found that cookies are often more reliable over the long term, as many servers re-assign IP addresses on a regular basis. IP usage patterns are changing. AOL, for example, has recently implemented a rotating IP address technology, to stop log files from tracking their members’ search term queries.
How reliable are cookies when tracking unique visitors? Unless the user deletes their cookies continuously, they will be measured as the same visitor with each visit.
To increase reliability we use first-party cookies, which means they name the site where the visitor is browsing.
Strictly speaking, “one visitor” means “one person” based on the definitions given above. So that if someone continuously visits your site over long periods of time, they will be recorded only as one visitor.
How does Opentracker distinguish between new and returning visitors?
- A returning visitor is a visitor who visits your site with a 24 hour period in between.
- Secondly, we measure visits, a visit is a visitor’s clickstream broken by a ten minute interval, (minimum of ten minutes). So you have a cup of coffee, and return to the site after ten minutes, this will be a second visit. Say you go to bed, and you return to the site 24 hours later; you will be a returning visitor.
If you need help figuring out where to find these stats ask your website developer or call metro ink!
Tip: Stop telemarketers from calling
Feb 11th
Sick of telemarketers calling your home, office and cell phones???
Visit the ‘National Do Not Call’ website