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News
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- Finally!!! You can now pay
your invoices ON-Line! Just go to
www.DogRiverDesign.com
and click on the Pay On-Line
link on the left. On the next screen type your invoice number in
and the amount you wish to pay*. You will be taken to a secure
server to complete the transaction. *If this is your first
PayPal transaction or you
have not verified your account, your payment amount will be
limited to a maximum of $2000.
- Would you like to have us
automatically debit your credit card for hosting and other
services? Give us a call and we can set it up for you!
- Either of these services are
easy to add to your site. If you'd like to be able to take
credit cards on-line or setup recurring transactions for your
clients, give us a call and we can get you setup in no time!
Net Watch
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Review]
Having A Successful Website Part 4
Designing your Website
As
we wrap up this series of articles, I’d like to recap just a bit.
Let me start by saying that the real key to having a successful
website is patience and hard work. Generally people want to get
rich with little or no effort. You may be able to drive to the
second window to collect your lunch in 30 seconds or less, but the
same “fast food”, “get it now” mentality does not work when
planning and running a business. The internet, howbeit the least
expensive venue, is also the most difficult environment to be
successful. For this reason we have put together the following
plan:
- Step One, plan your site. It
is impossible to think of every possible option and potential
problem, but having a sound business plan and reasonable goals
can help you stay the course to success.
- Step Two, find a good place to
host your site. It will be the foundation for all your continued
efforts and flexibility and reliability will be key.
- Step Three, design your site
with your customer in mind. Don’t get lost in all the flare and
flash. You don’t need to like the way it looks, but your target
audience does. Design your site to appeal to them.
- Step four, Marketing your
site. This is the most critical step of having a successful
website. Without marketing your website the likelihood of people
finding your site and ultimately buying your products or using
your services is almost non-existent.
This last step is often the most
overlooked. In fact most of our business is helping people with
existing websites develop a marketing strategy to generate more
traffic to their sites. Marketing your website is most effective
when the marketing strategy has been incorporated into the initial
design of the site. Before you hire a web design firm, make sure
that they either have the expertise to market your site or have
partnered with a marketing firm that specializes in website
marketing. This way the site can be productive right from day one.
Marketing a website can consist
of many different elements. But before you can market your web
site, all your pages need to be “ready” to be marketed. I’m amazed
at the number of “professionally” designed websites that we see
without ANY marketing information incorporated in them. There are
sections of your web pages, both parts you see and parts that are
hidden, that need to meld together to help your pages reach your
target audience. These special sections are what search engines
use to determine how you are to be included into their indexes.
Without these sections, the search engines will not be able to
index you properly. Not having these sections will actually cause
some search engines to reject you altogether.
The first and most common element
is search engine marketing. This is where you submit the pages of
your website to search engines for inclusion into their database.
There are usually two levels, one is free taking several months to
be included, and the other is fee based for expedited inclusion.
Some search engines now require payment for any inclusion. Your
website marketing firm can help you identify the best course of
action.
A second element is paying for
specific keywords and phrases within search engines. For example
if you sell outdoor equipment you can have your site listed number
one whenever someone keys in “tents” or “camping supplies.” This
can be terribly expensive and usually you pay “per click” (when
someone clicks on your entry). You have to pay for EVERY CLICK
whether they buy anything from your site or not.
A third element is to sign up
with a major search engine, such as Yahoo.com, for a targeted
exposure campaign. This is usually beyond the budget of most small
businesses. Yahoo.com campaigns start at $5000 per month. They use
a mixture of banner ads and keyword phrases to help put your site
directly in front of your target audience. I’m sure that this type
of campaign can be very effective given availability of resources
to cover the costs. The final element that I’d like to address is
one that is most often forgotten, especially by businesses that
use their website as a supplement to their already established
businesses. That is to incorporate their website address into ALL
their standard marketing efforts. I’ve seen many clients not
include their website in newspaper, radio, and TV ads. In most
cases these ads are very expensive, make the most of them by
including your website address.
We sincerely hope that this
series of articles helps you focus your web related efforts. If
you have any questions about any of the articles in this series,
please give us a call at 1-843-835-5624. If you’d like to talk to
our team about marketing your current website, just email us at
staff@dogriverdesign.com
or give us a call.
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Product Review
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Review]
The Perfect Notebook part
2?
What happens when you call tech support.....
In our August Newsletter we reviewed
the eMachine M5310. We were one of the first to review it and our
initial opinion was wonderful, but the real test of any piece of
computer hardware is whether you still like it when the newness
wears off, or have encountered a real problem. This article is
more of a review of eMachines as a company and their tech support
than of their notebook.
 I’ve been
on the phone with eMachine tech support for two weeks trying to
solve some nagging issues with both my computer and my wife’s
computer. My computer would not go into standby or hibernation
mode. My wife’s computer would not play an entire DVD. At some
point in the DVD it would generate a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death)
error and reboot.
The error with my notebook seemed
straightforward. When I tried going to standby I would get an
error (Conexant modem driver preventing the system from entering
standby). So there must be a problem with the modem driver right?
Wrong! When I called eMachines, their tech support gave me the
line “we only support our hardware in the initial configuration,”
claiming that it was some program that I loaded causing the
problem. I spoke to 5 or 6 operators and I eventually reluctantly
agreed that the problem was with a piece of my software. In
desperation I restored my computer to the “Initial Configuration.”
Well everything worked great now
but I was afraid to update or install anything. I loaded Windows
updates and applications one at a time creating restore points at
each step. It took 3 days of tedious work to get the system to
where I could use it again for work. Then I loaded Quicken 2000
Basic. When I went to standby this time the system generated the
same error. That day I received a call from the supervisor of
eMachine’s technical support for their notebook division. While
talking to him he clued me in on Microsoft Support Knowledge Base
Article 810905. This was the fix to Quicken preventing the system
from entering standby or hibernation. I wish I had been given that
information about TWO WEEKS AGO! Anyway…. finally all is fixed and
my notebook is working flawlessly.
As for Sue’s DVD playback
problem, we wound up returning the unit and getting a new one only
to find it did the same thing. I realized the only similarity
between her first unit and the second unit was the extra memory we
had installed. At this point I could have kicked myself. When we
put the original memory back in the computer it worked fine.
During another phone conversation with the senior support person
at eMachines, I mentioned that they should ask the customer if
they’ve changed the hardware. That one question could have saved
untold hours of testing and frustration.
Bottom line, the computers are
still great, now that they are both working properly. While
talking to the head of notebook tech support, I was assured that
they were making adjustments to correct the issues I encountered.
Supporting desktop PCs and supporting notebook PCs is very
different and they are learning what changes need to be made. In
the immediate, be ready to solve your own problems if any come up,
but I'm sure their tech support will catch up soon. We'd still
recommend these notebooks to anyone wanting a decent, fast
computer loaded with features, and with a street price of $1049
after rebates, really affordable.
If you have any questions or
comments, or if you would like to suggest a piece of hardware for
review, please contact us by email at
staff@dogriverdesign.com
or by phone 1-843-835-5624. |
