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News
[Top] [News] [Net Watch] [Product
Review]
- Coming Soon! Pay your invoices
on-line!!! We will be adding a page that you can use to pay your
invoices via credit card. We will notify all our clients once
the page is up and going. Also, if you would like to have a
similar page added to your site, just give us a call!
- RULES FOR MERCHANTS TAKING
CREDIT CARD ORDERS OFF THE WEB HAVE CHANGED!!! Give us a call
for more info. Next month we will be writing an article about
the changes.
Net Watch
Part 2 of 2
[Top] [News] [Net Watch] [Product
Review] First of all,
please forgive the delay of getting part 2 of this article out.
I hope none of you were holding your breath! ;)
In part 1, I was trying to get across that you need more to your
website than your products. You need good relevant content
that will hold someone’s attention. This content should be
related to the focus of your web site. For example, if you are a
real estate agent, having information about bike racing is not
going to get the job done. But if you were to put up a good
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) about all the steps necessary to
purchase a home, what to expect during the process, and those
pages were created in such a way that the search engines would be
able to index them, that would be good. Now you have created
relevant content that should attract the exact people that you are
looking for. Viewers of your web page will appreciate the
efforts that you’ve put into helping them make good decisions.
So now that you’ve got the products, the content, the marketing,
how do you turn the traffic into sales? Boy, I wish there
was one magic answer to that question! Frankly, trial and
error and a lot of patience are going to be the best courses of
action. I’ve never had two projects that were identical.
That is why I say that there is not just one answer. With
each project, there needs to be a unique approach to bring your
web visitors through the sales process. I’ll say that the
most successful sites are those that keep the process as simple as
possible. Please see
www.teklowe.com for an example. If you go to his
Baluster’s Page you will see that you can click one button and you
are brought to a point of purchase for that item. It does
not get much easier than that. Other clients that keep it
simple are
www.heartofvermont.com,
www.gardenpartyofvt.com,
and www.bottombuddies.com.
Some are more complex than others, but the bottom line is that the
process is really very easy with a minimal amount of effort to
complete the sale. Keeping the prices and descriptions as
easy to see as possible and the options to a minimum is also a
very good way to convert viewers into customers.
But what if you are not selling physical products? Well,
then you are still selling, you are selling yourself! Please
take a look at
www.craneconsultants.com as an example of a site that has a
great mix of form, function, and content. This site has a
ton of very relevant material that pulls in people from all over
the world. Because of the ease of use, ease of navigation,
and volumes of good info and media items, it really helps them
turn viewers into clients. When our client approached us to
help him with this site, it was one page. We worked with him
to create several pages targeted to specific groups. These
efforts have really paid off and he is now getting calls to bid on
work all over the country. For a certainty, the concept of
“content is king” has paid off.
If you have any questions relating to the ideas we’ve spoken about
in these last two articles, please do not hesitate to give us a
call or visit our website at
www.dogriverdesign.com
for a complete list of archived newsletters.
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Product Review
[Top] [News] [Net Watch] [Product
Review]
 Not
all computers are created equal. I know that you all know
this, but we need to be reminded from time to time. The
other thing we need to remember is that name brands are not always
what they used to be. I remember the day that E-Machines
released their first PC. Needless to say, they were less
than stellar. Now I’ve got 2 of them in my office that we
use as our primary development systems. Conversely, I
recently bought an HP Pavilion with a flat panel display for use
at the house to replace my Sony laptop. I really bought it
only because it was bundled with a 15” display but also figured
that HP makes good printers so their computers should be ok.
Nope I was wrong. Not only was the unit over priced and
short on features, it started having problems in the first couple
of days. I decided to return it and start over. During
the same time, a friend of mine purchased a Compaq notebook at
Staples and was experiencing multiple problems with it. The
only resolution to it was to format the drive and start over with
the recovery disks. By the way, the HP did not come with ANY
recovery CD’s. You have to call tech support for them to
ship a set out to you .
 I
decided after much thinking, to replace my Sony Vaio with a
notebook instead of looking for another desktop. I was not
looking for something super fancy. I wanted at least a 14”
screen, 256 megs of ram, 20+ gig hard drive, DVD/CDRW, and a
fairly fast processor. I paid about $1000 for the HP with
flat panel display so I was hoping to stay as close to that price
range as possible. Impossible you may say. To my great
delight I did find exactly what I was looking for from Toshiba and
Circuit City. I purchased a Toshiba Satellite 1415-S173 and
after rebates the price was exactly $999.00. I’ve had the
notebook for about 3 weeks and I’m thrilled with it. Some of
the best features are: 15” screen, 30 gig hard drive, DVD/CDRW,
256 Megs of Ram, Nvidia Graphics Controller with 16 megs External
Video Ram, and a 1.8 Ghz Celeron processor. I was a little
leery of getting a Celeron, but so far I’ve been very pleased.
It is a full 1 Ghz faster than my Sony and I can really see the
difference. I did upgrade it to 512 megs of ram and that
made a big difference as well, as XP likes more than 256
megs. One big point of note.... I was shocked to see
how many new notebooks do not have a floppy drive! Almost
all of the HP and Compaq units did not come with one. The
Toshiba, thankfully did.
I know that I mentioned above that
name brands don’t necessarily mean anything anymore and I
basically still hold to that , however, Toshiba seems to have kept
up their standards while the others have lowered them to cut
costs. I believe that because of their history in building
for the corporate marketplace, the quality translates down to even
their entry level systems. Take a look at Toshiba if you are
looking to purchase a new notebook in the near future.
Please send any questions about, or
ideas for product reviews to
Staff@dogriverdesign.com.
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