Website Maintenance 101

Top 10 Tips for Website MaintenanceWebsite Maintenance and management is key to getting more traffic (natural traffic) to your website and it’s crucial to making your website work for you.  Maintaining your site is not difficult, but it’s likely that you might not have the time to do the work.  The main reason for the lack of time is simple…it’s because you are working on your business.  Something to consider Continue reading “Website Maintenance 101”

Central Mass Web Design Announce Flip Video Winner

Katelyn Grenier
Katelyn Grenier, Winner of the Flip Video Camera

Recently Central Mass Web Design ran a contest on Facebook. When Facebook Users became a Fan of Central Mass Web Design on Facebook, they immediately were entered into a drawing to win a Free Flip Video Camera. The drawing would take place on the next business day following the fan count reaching 500. Central Mass Web Design employees and immediate family members were not eligible to win.

The fan page reached 500 on Saturday and the drawing took place on Monday March 15th. The winner was chosen and announced. The winner was Katelyn Grenier of Worcester Massachusetts. Continue reading “Central Mass Web Design Announce Flip Video Winner”

Why Tradeshows are important for driving traffic to your website

Many people and business owners do not think that tradeshows are website traffic drivers.  Let me dispel that rumor for you rather quickly they are.  While tradeshows are setup to attract new business for your organization, you are handing out printed and promotional material (that should have your web address on it).  In all business expo’s you will find that these tradeshows are not meant to sell your product or service at the booth.  The attendees are actually there to collect information, have a quick discussion, then do further research.  As a business owner, you are there for the exposure.  If you sign an agreement while at a tradeshow, I would be stunned, and that would be a bonus, but it is not the norm.  

When the attendees return to their office with a stack of business cards, they tend to go through the cards and keep the ones that made and impact on them and that they may have a need for.  This is where the attendee will view your website.  They are still doing research on your company and your product or service and they need to be able to quickly find you on the internet.  In most cases, the attendee will simply enter the domain name located on the materials that they received from you.  However if they search for your company name, you had better come up in the top 3, or they will get your competitions website, and you may have very well just lost an opportunity for business.

Understanding your website analytics can assist you in understanding what tradeshows you attend produce more traffic in the week following the event.  You should track this to the best of your ability.  Ideally you won’t know if the folks are tradeshow people, but you will know if you have spikes in your web traffic within days after events.  If you only have 2 spikes per year and you only attend 2 tradeshows per year, then you can obviously tell that the spikes are a result of your tradeshows. 

We have seen this with some of our customers that attend tradeshows and I can tell you with 100% certainty that there is a correlation.

In conclusion…Pay attention to your website statistics to gauge the results of your tradeshows and make sure you have your web address on all your printed and promotional materials!

Does the NHL get a Hat trick?

NHL is having a Tweet Up?

Twitter

Whats that you ask?  Well, Twitter is coming to town.   Well, not completely..  But with the start of the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs , the NHL is stepping it up and taking it to the next level…. web 2.0!

The National Hockey League hosted what it believed to be the first ever nationwide “Tweetup” in professional sports on April 15th,  done in conjunction with the first game of the playoffs.  Coverage included 21 cities in the US and Canada.  One blogger stated, “The parties were planned in part to drive community excitement for the playoffs and part to create some buzz around thePORTAL, which is a redesign of sorts of the official NHL site to better showcase playoff content.”

Cities included were:  Anaheim, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Denver, Detroit, Edmonton, Hartford, Montreal, Nashville, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Regina (Sask.), San Jose, St. John (NB), Toronto, Vancouver and Washington DC.

NHLNHL spokesman Mike DiLorenzo said, ““My expectation is that people will really, really enjoy this.”  He continued to say, ““We’re doing this for all the right reasons. We have a very tech savvy fan base that loves Twitter so we’re overlaying that with their love for the NHL. My hope is they come away from this saying the NHL is really cool to start the NHL playoffs this way. Down the road we’ll figure out other ways we can leverage this from a business perspective.”

For those not familiar with the term “tweet-up,” it essentially means a party made up of Twitter users. The host cities took it even further and scheduled giveaways, and prizes if you attended, including autographed items from your favorite NHL players.   Most had backing from radio station personalities and other news outlets.

Want more information?  Visit the official NHL Tweet-Up.

Kimberly Veautour

Google Search Share is Up

CNET.com is reporting that Google’s share of internet search users is up to 64.2%!

9.5 Billions Internet searches in one year and Google has 64%. As the internet grows over the next 5 years. I am not certain that the number of searches will grow. It might, but I actually see the end user, people that do the search, getting better aquinted with how search works and not having to search multiple times for the same results. This should lower the overall search numbers. One catch to this idea I have is the next generation of internet users is searching when they are 12 years old, so the more people on the planet, the more searches that will occur.