Why Your Website Should NOT Use Flash

Oh Steve Jobs, you’ve read my mind. You also started a discussion that is long overdue. Job’s wrote an open letter today about Flash and why Apple has chosen to still not support the software made by Adobe. He makes some good points. I agree on all of them.

There are so many websites (especially restaurant websites) that are built in flash, it just boggles my mind. It’s extremely frustrating when you’re on a mobile device searching for a restaurant. You’ll do a quick search, get the website and location, but when you access the site to check out their menu, hours and delivery details it’s usually a site built in flash, UGH! Even if your phone was able to display the flash content, typically it’s really tacky, tasteless design thats hard to navigate. Usually I get frustrated and move on to the next restaurant.

Calling all restaurant owners! Make the change now! If you want your business to be bustling, then you better order up an experienced designer to build your site hopefully in CSS3 and make your site mobile friendly. Most people will do last minute searches for a restaurant, so not only does your site need a search presence, it also needs to be easily read and optimized for mobile devices.

Technology as a Social Commodity

In an interesting experience I had several weeks ago I noticed something about technology. No matter what, there is always a market for something. My girlfriend and I chose to sell our iPhones. In my opinion the iPhone is over hyped, is too restricted with it’s sdk’s, and the AT&T network is just horrible, (we’re getting Droids *plug).

We both posted our iPhones on eBay. They both sold incredibly under 2 minutes of being on auction via the buy now feature. Now here’s the interesting part. I noticed both buyers were Chinese. So I did some investigating and found out a tremendous amount of “gray-market” iPhone demand in China. Turns out that China does not allow wifi enabled iPhones to be sold due to some local regulation.

Suffice to say the phones sold for more than we paid for them with a nice profit. Seems that no matter where you are in the world, the demand for technology whether it’s legal or illegal and whether those determinations are just or not, people want to be connected at any cost. This gives great hope and promise within the social networking arena which much of the world isn’t even participating fully yet.

I believe that technology will actually become a sought after commodity as more and more restrictions come into play. Especially with all this talk about Google filtering China’s search results. I expect that there could also be a large Black Market Internet which will push the limits of technology even further.

Don’t React to Trends, Set Them

One trend I see on a regular basis, are companies following a dead trend or one on it’s way out. Typically once a marketing trend catches on, it’s already dead. Your competitors are hoping you follow their lead. Thats what makes them the leader and you the follower. They are already thinking 6 months ahead and you can barely keep up. It’s all about taking chances. If the risk you take is successful enough that will carry over and hopefully will snowball into more trend setting ideas. Yes there is trial and error involved, but it’s always the risk takers who reap the benefits.

One great and recent example is a friend of mine, Phil Kaplan just launched a new business called “blippy“. It’s controversial in the fact that it involves making credit card purchases publicly available online for all to see. It’s the next Twitter. Instead of telling your followers what your doing, you passively do so by making purchases. This creates a way of letting people know where you are, and what you’re doing and gives a clue on what you really purchase without even typing in an update.

Phil’s always been a progressive thinker, thats what makes him so successful.

Bottom line, take risks. If you don’t you’ll always be in second place.

When All Else Fails, Hire an Expert Creative Thinker… Please!

Every industry has experts. They have years of experience, and can make decisions from the gut that some can’t or may have a hard time doing. Most times companies will take the low road of hiring within even if it comes at a cost of potentially ruining a company. Don’t make this mistake. Just because an employee may have taken a web design class in college is by no means a foundation for them to be a Web Designer, let alone Art Director. Management will usually opt to not spend time and resources searching for the rock-star candidate. They will happily settle for less, if it means less hassle and less money to spend.

If your business is in a situation where it finds itself in dire need of an expert, please hire one. The expense that it may cost upfront for a seasoned pro is far less expensive than the misery you will put your business through promoting the wrong person.

You need someone who has a lightbulb going off all the time throughout the day. A true creative visionary. Someone who doesn’t hoard their ideas because they’re so abundant. There are plenty of people like this out there, the question is, if it is a matter of your business surviving from their ideas, are you willing to financially support this need to save your business?

Your own, Personal Google…A Search Engine to hear your prayers, a Search Engine that Cares

Wow, well aside from the long cool headline this is big news from Google. Basically Google will soon take your personal web habits and cater the results for you. This is good and bad depending on what side of the fence you stand. Google has always been about search relevancy. This is great is you search for similar things on a regular basis and want to omit the search results you never choose anyway. The ones who will suffer from this are the companies who will infomercial you via search results. You know who I mean, the ones who optimize their sites to rank for terms that sometimes have no relevance but are hoping to find customers blindly.

I think this can be great for legitimate businesses. Yes it may be harder for you to gain ranking but you know what, this means fair and equal balance among competition online. Build a strong brand the old fashioned way and you will be rewarded. If you’re a new business, then concentrate on word of mouth and standard marketing strategies first before shoveling a bunch of cash into a pay per click campaign.

Web 3.0, Augmented Reality Marketing

Ok, first off. If you don’t know what Augmented Reality is you may be asking, whoa… this sounds pretty weird. Actually Augmented Reality is a new Web 3.0 coined term which merges online life with real life.

Here’s an example. There are several iPhone apps that allow you to view through your iPhone camera in real time while overlaying web elements on the screen (map, directions, description of what you’re looking at through the camera). This sounds very sci-fi. But really we need to start thinking of how marketing strategies will be developed this way since we are quickly moving towards a reality of merging web life and real life.

Dreamers can now apply far fetched ideas into something real, usable and profitable. Imagine being able to create unique ad’s for customers walking by your store in real-time, or being able to find restaurant reviews and locations based off a geo-targeted picture taken on your phone. There are still plenty of kinks and new developments to be made to make this hybrid of web and life truly functional. But right now is the catalyst of ideas to come.

Even more far fetched, imagine using Google Street View. Now imagine you see a car in street view, you hover over it and an ad is displayed for used cars of that make and model. The ideas really are endless and I’m really looking forward to what Web 3.0 brings us.

Fact vs. Opinion based Marketing, Your 2 Cents

Here’s a topic that most of you can relate to. You have an opinion and I have an opinion and most of the times these will be different and thats ok. Thats what’s great about us humans, we agree to disagree and great ideas come of these situations sometimes. One thing that can really throw a wrench in the mix, is letting your opinion override fact when making business decisions that can have a significant impact on your company.

Lets say you have a certain taste and style associated with that. You like cartoonish looking designs and thats ok by me. But, when making a decision to implement a serious tone and professional attitude, you may want to let your personal taste step aside and let reason do the talking. Many businesses suffer from this problem. Allowing someone to make high level decisions on style when in fact they are not qualified to do so will create a serious snowball effect and your project will most likely fail.

If your company uses analytics to make educated decisions on marketing strategies, then they’re on the right track. Go with the flow. Utilize all the tools necessary to make your decisions based on fact and not opinion. Users web behavior are done with reason, if you’re not paying attention to their habits, then you’re basically passively ignoring them and you will reap the benefits of not catering to your customer.

Zip Codes and User Reviews Boost Localized Search Results

If you’re a small local business and you want to get on your local customers online radar, your first priority is getting your physical address all over your website. Zip codes and alternate names of the neighborhood your business is in will definitely increase your organic rankings in Google. When customers are searching for a local business, they usually enter a keyword followed by the zip code, or the name of the neighborhood with the keyword of the product they’re searching for. Then Google will show a hybrid local result using their map and normal search engine results link underneath it (see map image above).

Getting local organic results is the first challenge, next is getting quality customer reviews about your business. Setup a customer survey questionnaire, have customers fill them out and encourage them to post the results on google maps. Come up with an incentive for your customers to do this. This should be your top priority, think of it as word of mouth which essentially it is because the quality of referrals you get from word of mouth are usually high.

Bottom line is having an established connection between your physical business and online presence should be taken seriously. With little effort you can boost your customer reach significantly.

The Biggest SEO Secrets Aren’t Secret

It’ really boring and stale the same old SEO tips and trick articles you see online. I recently got an email from someone marketing an SEO tips webinar and how to dominate Google, and be listed in the top 5 results for your search terms. So I decided to attend it purely out of curiosity because I know how these things go already. To keep the story short, I left the webinar 10 minutes into it because it’s the same old boring crap everyone has heard before. It really surprises me on how long you can keep up this game of tricking people luring them in with big promises just to spew out garbage that you can find on Wikipedia.

So here’s my tip. Write about what you love. Keep your site going with steady content for about a year to gain traction. Most people looking for a quick buck don’t have patience, and are not in it for the long haul and it shows because they’re not doing something they love to do. Yes add in the typical standard SEO best practices, but just keep it going. Write everyday.

Remember, search engines change algorithms all the time, so you may be listening to information that really is harming your site and not helping it. Most articles I see is information thats a few years old already and thats a lifetime on the web.

So here’s the secret, pure intention always wins. And I think Google’s algorithm favors honesty more than keywords.

Choosing a Web Hosting Company

So you’re ready to get your business online. You have a great idea or product, great written content, domain name and a beautifully designed site. You start your search for web hosting companies. You get hundreds of search results and you don’t know which to choose. Some offer free hosting, limited time specials, dedicated hosting, virtual hosting. There’s so many choices that you’re confused and overwhelmed and don’t know what to do.

We’re going to make it easy and break it down for you. I’m going to educate you so you’ll know what to avoid.

Basic Hosting Packages

Usually the basic hosting packages are for small business, portfolio sites and blogs. The average cost for a web host is about $7.99 to $100 a month pending the additional services and bandwidth you require and normally have a onetime setup fee which ranges from $29-$49. Don’t buy into the up sell. For a moderately sized e-commerce site, you may need about 200-400mb of space and approximately 1gig of bandwidth. You can always upgrade your service so there’s no sense spending more money now if you don’t have to.

Dedicated Server Hosting Packages

A dedicated server hosting package is much more robust and allows for a lot of customization. This is usually for larger companies with unique applications that need to be run and for sites with large amounts of traffic. The upside is flexibility as these packages are very scalable, speed, because it is running your site only and security since no other sites are being shared on your server. The downside is that it usually takes more resources to manage and monitor them in turn costing more money.

The bottom line is don’t buy into the up sell. For a moderately sized e-commerce site, you may need about 200-400mb of space and approximately 1gig of bandwidth. You can always upgrade your service so there’s no sense spending more money now if you don’t have to. Always start off small and gradually increase resources when needed.