This is the “Post-PC Era” and more and more people view websites on small portable devices like smart phones and IPads. In fact, it is predicted that as soon as 2014, more websites will be viewed on portable devices than on desktops. That’s why your website needs to be as easy to read and navigate on these smaller devices. That’s where Responsive Design comes in.

With Responsive Design, websites are built so they respond to whatever device they are viewed on. So your website looks like it is designed for the Apple 5 when it is viewed on that phone. And it will look like it was designed for your desktop when it is viewed on your desktop computer. Before this, you typically needed one set of files for the desktop version and a different set for the mobile version(s). So it was usually complicated and expensive to maintain, if you had a mobile version at all.

Another way of illustrating this is to look at a site like www.bostonglobe.com. The Boston Globe is one of the few sites already using Responsive Design technology.  On your desktop, you see three columns. On say, an IPad, it is reduced to two columns and on your smart phone, it becomes a single column. It intelligently repositions and changes the presentation of its content depending on screen size.

This is trickier to do than may sound. We have spent months getting it down. It is important because it will no longer be necessary to create different sites for different devices. One design will fit all. Furthermore, since there is only one set of files for the site, the search engines don’t get confused with where to send people searching for your site.

At Nexxite, all our new websites will be built this way. Retrofitting an existing site with this technology can be a challenge, but it may be worth doing in some cases. We have other ways of creating mobile versions as well, for existing sites. If you would like to discuss your options, please contact us.

Some of you have Flash running on your websites. Unfortunately Adobe, the maker of Flash, and Apple just don’t get along. And with more and more people using IPhones and IPads, that is becoming a problem. Other smart phones appear to be dropping support of Flash as well.

We have recognized the issue and have built some of our more recent sites using alternate means to achieve much the same effects as Flash. You can see this technology on the Frog Tennis site (www.frogtennis.com) and on the Hit Men site (www.thehitmenlive.com). One advantage is the animation on these sites will play on Apple devices as well as on all other platforms where Flash would not.

If you are already running Flash on your site, you may want to consider replacing it. There is a cost to doing it, but the benefit is you’re not left out of the Apple world.

I believe there are three major stages to marketing a product or service on the Internet:

• Design and build your website
• Drive traffic to your site
• Get visitors to take an action you want

Okay, admittedly these three tasks are much easier said than done. But let’s look at each one individually.

Design and build your website

Presumably, you’ve already done this or you wouldn’t be receiving this newsletter. But there are always important considerations that are worth revisiting (and these may change over time). Does your website convey clearly what you do and what you are offering? This would seem to be obvious, but you’d be surprised how many websites fail to explain succinctly what the enterprise is about. If it is not absolutely clear, then you need a paragraph on your home page that tells anyone who might be unsure precisely what you do.

Second, are your most important messages presented on your home page? Don’t make people look through your site to find what you want them to know first and foremost. Lastly, is your site well-designed? Don’t underestimate the value of an attractive, well designed site. People judge you by what they see. If it is jumbled, too busy, badly laid out or otherwise poorly designed and organized, you are sending the wrong message. So, even though you already have a site, look at it with these questions in mind. If you can’t say with certainty your site meets these criteria, consider redesigning it.

Drive traffic to your site

There are so many ways to promote your site and increase the number of people who look at it that it is almost impossible to list them all. Approaches can be divided into online and offline efforts. I won’t go into much about the offline approaches, but they include any promotion you do that is NOT on the Internet. So that would include advertising in traditional newspapers, magazines and trade publications. It can include writing articles in print outlets and giving speeches. It can be as simple as networking and handing out business cards.

Online promotion is equally wide-ranging. I like to start with optimizing a website for well-thought out keyword phrases. After that, there are many choices available. One is paid search engine listings, such as Google AdWords. Another is obtaining reciprocal links from other relevant and important websites. And there is advertising on other sites, publishing online articles, getting listed in directories and placing ads and links on complementary sites. Then there is the whole growing area of Social Networking. This includes writing your own blog, responding to others’ blogs, creating a Facebook fan page, becoming active in LinkedIn and much more. In short, you can announce your product or service any number of ways on line and cause more people to go to your website.

Get visitors to take an action you want

All right. You’ve built a great site and now you have plenty of visitors. You still have a problem at this stage if your visitors just look at your site, say “that’s nice” and go away. Now that you’ve gotten people to your site, most website owners want them to DO SOMETHING. It may be you want them to call you, email you, fill out an order form, download an article, pay for a product or service, or sign up for your newsletter.

Whatever it is, somehow you want to engage them. You want your visitors to act and you’d like them to come back in the future. So, the question is how do you come up with a good “call to action?” This question has different answers for different types of websites. A non-profit typically seeks a donation, so what prompts people to donate? It may be an explanation of what your money actually accomplishes or it may be a statement about being a “special” person who cares in this way. For a law firm, the goal may be to get a phone call from the visitor and the inducement to take that action could be the fact that an actual lawyer will be on the other end of the line when you call. A third example might be a travel company where signing up for a trip online earns the buyer a special free gift, like a camera. Free giveaways are always good. Likewise, a chance to enter a contest can appeal to certain visitors. A good call to action requires careful thought tailored to the specific enterprise and its target market.

If you want help with any of these tasks, please don’t hesitate to ask us. We’re here to help make your enterprise succeed.

Ever wonder how businesses show up on the Google map you sometimes see when you do a Google search? They appear there because they have registered their website with Google Places. It’s easy. Here’s how you do it

• Go to: google.com/local/add/businessCenter
• Sign in (You’ll need to sign up for a Google account, if you don’t already have one)
• On the page that opens up, click “List Your Business”

• Enter your business phone. (This is just to determine that you do not already have a listing.)
• Fill in all the data about your business and click “submit”
• You will get a message (phone call or postcard) to confirm you’re you.

That’s it. Once you are listed in Google Local Search, you have a good chance of appearing on the map when someone searches on your key words.

Note: You can do the same basic thing at Yahoo Local Search (not as important as Google, but still a good idea). Here is their link:  http://listings.local.yahoo.com/basic.php

And if you’re feeling really enthusiastic, here’s the link to Bing Local (the Microsoft search engine):  https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx

If you would like help with any of this, please ask us at info@nexxite.com or call 212 685-1570.