The donation of the new TeamBrent website is IWD’s way of showing our support to the local community and the ongoing efforts to help eliminate cancer in children. The re-design of their website will help them manage this site faster and easier. They will also have the capabilities to harness the power of social media to inform people about upcoming events. “By making it easy for people to access information on Brent’s courageous fight and the inspired efforts of TeamBrent members, we can engage more people in the battle,” says TeamBrent member, David B. Murphy . Please make sure to check out the TeamBrent website to see how you can get involved in this great cause.

These numbers demonstrate how important it is to have a smart phone friendly website. Here are our top 5 tips to help you have a smart phone friendly website.

1. No Flash!

Apple smart phones and iPads cannot read flash. This means an apple user who goes to your site will only see a blank screen. According to IMS Research, Apple controls almost 20% of the smart phone market, which is a lot of people seeing blank screens.

2. Design and Content Changes

The best way to see how your website looks on a smart phone is to go on a smart phone and look at it. The way a smart phone displays your information may convince you to change the design of your website or change the layout of your content. Different smart phones can read websites differently, so it is important to check different types of phones to get the whole picture.

3. Plug-ins

If you have a content management system site like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and others; you can download plug-ins to your website that will automatically re-size your website and make it more smart phone friendly.

4. Minimize Clicks

It is cumbersome for smart phone users to click through multiple pages on their phones to get to a page they want. When you are (re)designing your website, try and keep the navigation and internal links on your site as simple as possible.

5. Fast Load Times

Smart phones tend to take longer to load a website than a computer. If you have a site that takes several seconds to load on a computer, you better believe it will take a lot longer to load on a phone. People are very impatient these days, and you don’t want to lose a potential customer simply because your website didn’t load fast enough. If your site has long load times, work with a web development specialist to help your site load faster.

Infinite Web Designs is committed to designing websites that work for computers and smart phones alike. We know how important it is to stay ahead of your competition. Our experienced team has the industry knowledge to create a website that has the technology to help your business grow online. Please contact IWD today to get a free consultation.

Source: IMS Research

Blogs have been around a lot longer than Twitter and Facebook, so we have a much clearer picture of how to effectively use them. Most people read business related blogs in the morning with readers peaking around 10-11am EST. There is also a tendency to see more readers on Monday mornings than other days of the week. I believe this is because many people who work, start their day off by going through their emails and reading up on news. However, don’t think that this is a one size fits all scenario. It is good to experiment with different times and days to find out what works best for your target audience. There is a new trend breaking out that suggests people are starting to read more blogs on Fridays, so make sure to test, test, and test some more.

If your blog is strictly for your business, about your business, you should steer clear of weekends. On the other hand, if your blog is more personal, I would suggest posting closer to the weekend. People tend to comment more on personal blogs on Saturdays, when people have time to catch up on non-work related blogs.

If you post blogs on a daily basis, consistency is more important than the time you post. For daily post’ers, people get in a habit of checking your blog at the same time every day. Humans are creatures of habit; if you are inconsistent with postings, you will lose loyal followers quickly and have a tough time earning new ones.

To learn more about how to improve other aspects of your blog, check out our Top 5 Easy Tricks to Improve your Business Blog post.

Knowing when to tweet can be hard to determine. Luckily, trends are emerging to help you figure out the times that produce the greatest responses. There are some general days and time that tend to be better than others. However, every business will be a little different and so you will have to do some of your own experimentation to test out what trends work for your business.

The conversation on twitter is pretty steady all day. Because twitter is about having a conversation, it has more continuous activity then a blog. Many professionals would agree that in the late afternoon and early evening there is a peak in re-tweets. Re-tweets are important because it gets your message passed along to a larger community. To catch as much attention as you can, make sure to tweet in the afternoon right before the big rush.

If your tweets tend to be more business related you will want to make sure to share them during the business week, especially Tuesday and Wednesday. However, if your tweets tend to be more personal, then I would suggest Friday and Saturday.

If a conversation gets started because of a tweet you made, stay on it as best you can. Twitter is very instantaneous, which is what people love about it. It is important to keep a captivated audience as long as you can. The more active you are the longer the conversation will last.

To see if people are talking about you, simply go to twitter.com and type in your company name. It will pull up any recent activity on your search term. This is especially important if you are worried about customer service. People might be complaining about your product or service on twitter, and you want to make sure that you don’t get a bad reputation because you are not listening to what the customers are saying.

For more on this, check out “How to deal with twitter whiners” blog post

To get a more defined answer on tweeting times for your specific business, you can also use websites to analyze your tweets. tweetwhen.com will tell you the best day and best time for your specific twitter account. The one drawback is you need at least 1,000 tweets to analyze. http://timely.is is another website that will give you times to tweet. Timely.is doesn’t need 1000 tweets to analyze, but it provides less precise results. This data will give you the best indication of how you need to tweet for your business.

__tweetwhen.com__________________________________timely.is

Blog Series

Best Time to Post a Blog

Best Time to Comment on Facebook…..Coming Friday

Facebook can be a bit trickier than the other social media forms. Many businesses now block people from going on Facebook during work hours, even if it might be business related. If your target audience is over the age of 20 and under the age of 65, there is a good chance they aren’t playing around with Facebook during the week days. For this working adults group, the trend shows a burst between 7-9am EST and 4-7pm EST; before and after work. If you are looking to target a younger crowd the same applies, but you will want to work around school times instead of work times. The closer you can post it to the time people are getting off of work or getting up for their work day the better chance you will have of your comment being on the top of the news feed when they open their accounts.

Weekdays definitely outweigh weekends when you are dealing with business Facebook pages. There doesn’t seem to be a consistent weekday that is more popular than another. This can be explained by the fact that a large portion of active Facebook users log-on daily and have made it part of their daily lifestyle habits.

As important as it is to know when to comment on Facebook it is equally important to know what to comment. Too often business pages sound stuffy and salesy. People are bombarded everyday with advertisements, including on the right side bar of Facebook. People go to business Facebook pages because they want to get to know the company, see the more personal side, and interact in a more social way. Keep this in mind when you post comments on Facebook. Try to mix up your comments so you are not always promoting a product or service and keep your comments informal without too much industry jargon.

If you want to get serious about using Facebook as part of your marketing plan for your business, contact IWD to set-up a strategic social media plan that will work within your budget and time.

Blog Series

Best Time to Post a Blog

Best Time to Tweet on Twitter

Unfortunately, there is not a one answer fits all with this question. Different types of blogs will have varying answers. To make it simple we have broken it down so it’s easy to determine what you should do with your future blog.

Same Domain…

If the topics discussed on your blog relate to your business and follow with the same general branding of your company than you should keep it under one domain. From an SEO standpoint, your blog can benefit from the current standing of your website and branding; and your website will benefit from the blog’s consistent and newly added content. This is the cheapest option, because you will not have to pay for an extra domain. It will also take less time to optimize and maintain, because it is an extension of your existing website. If you have made the decision to keep your blog with your website, you should keep in mind, you are representing your company as much as you are yourself. This means it should be less personal and focus only on general topics that relate to your business.

Blog Types: FAQ’s about your business, general industry news and tips, information about all company products or services.

Separate Domain…

If your blog is going to be about only one specific part of your business, it should be separate. For example, if you are focusing on one product, or target audience you should use a separate domain. This will allow you to target with very specific set of keywords instead of the more general keywords you would use for your business as a whole.

Another reason to separate a blog from your website would be if you don’t want the opinions/comments expressed on the blog to negatively affect people’s impression of your company.

Lastly, if you want a blog that is a trusted, un-biased source of industry knowledge, use a separate domain. This separation, will give the impression you are not out to benefit any particular company over another.

There are a few disadvantages to consider before taking the separate domain leap. First, you will have to start from square one when it comes to SEO and ranking in search engines. You will not be able to feed off the success of your current site rankings. This will equate to spending more time to build up and manage 2 separate domains. However, if your blog covers different topics from what your business site is about, then you will want to target a different audience altogether. It is also important to remember that creating a separate domain also means accruing the cost of another domain. Creating a subdomain or staying with your business’s domain are both cheaper options.

Blog Types: Opinion based, unbiased product reviews, blog about a specific product (when your company has many)

Subdomains…

This solution is often a compromise between the first 2 options. Even though you do not receive the same amount of separation from a separate domain, you do not have as many disadvantages. Subdomains will get some SEO benefit because they are connected with your main business site. They are less expensive to maintain. Make sure to examine how imperative separation of your website and blog is to the long-term success of your company. This will help determine if a subdomain is right for you.

Even though subdomains have their advantages over a separate domain, they come with their own problems. Currently, search engines see subdomains as less important than regular domains. This is due to the fact they have been abused in the past for SEO benefit. However, we believe this will change now that there are rules in place to prevent people from this type of black-hat SEO. As a result of these rules, any linking between a subdomain and your main domain will not count as a link factor. Therefore, you will not receive the same amount of SEO benefits than if you were to keep your blog under then main domain.

Blog Types: Opinion based blogs, blog about a specific product (when your company has many)

If you are still unsure about what you should do, explain your dilemma below in the comments, and our SEO specialist will help you determine what is right for you.

It is important to give your website a check-up every so often; this allows you to catch small problems before they become big. Our Check-up Program will help define your websites strengths and weaknesses, giving you a better idea of how to best utilize your website. STOP guessing if your online marketing is effective, and START taking advantage of Infinite Web Designs new Check-up Program. We will provide you with helpful insight to your websites effectiveness using analytics and search engine ranking results.

Analytics Reporting

You will receive a report of your website’s traffic, keywords, and general statistics including: bounce rate and average length of visit. If you already have Google Analytics installed on your website, all we need is your account information. If you don’t have an account we can set one up for you. This report, along with an SEO analysis, will give you a picture of how people are using your site on daily basis.

Search Engine Optimization and Rank Reporting

You will receive two reports along with an analysis. The first report will include a breakdown of your keywords and how they rank on the major search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo). The second report will show you how well your website is optimized for your main keyword(s). Our analysis will include a summary highlighting the important key elements of the reports and how it relates to your website. Advice on website/online marketing improvements will also be provided.

Why do you need both types of reporting?

We hear this question all the time. Knowledge is power (in this case). When you know how your website is performing from: a visitor standpoint, a bounce rate percentage, page visits, keyword optimization and ranking, you are in a better position to make good decisions to make your website more effective.

Each of our reports analyze a different aspect of your website, creating a combination that provides a more complete picture of your sites performance and pitfalls.

Program Pricing

This complete package includes a website analytics report, ranking report, keyword optimization report and analysis. The combination of these three reports, coupled with our expert analysis, will give you the complete picture of your website. You will be able to harness the power of knowledge when it comes to making important decisions about your company’s future.

All the reports above can be set on a monthly, bi monthly, quarterly, semi annually or yearly basis. Other special arrangements can be made by request. The reports range in price from $150-$250 to fit any budget. The information and knowledge you will receive from these reports will help you be more effective in spending your marketing dollars and help you achieve greater success in the long run.

STOP guessing if your online marketing is effective, and START taking advantage of Infinite Web Designs new Check-up Program. Contact us today to get started. 203.307.5107

The Real Time Internet’s impact on marketing has been huge. Without question, businesses have jumped into the real-time internet’s offerings and some have been successful, others are still learning their way around.

However, the real-time internet presents several pitfalls that can hamper even the best intentions. First, how to allocate people to the task of marketing in this new environment. Traditional marketing tactics are needed (testing, messaging, promotion, etc) but marketers with traditional marketing experience are cautious and tend to put too much emphasis on getting it right the first time. So the development can take long, too long.

Second, how does a business stay on top of emerging opportunities? When to jump is a big concern. Too early and it’s wasted time and money if that platform is not widely adopted. Too late and users have moved to the next big thing. Identifying that next big thing is a tough task for a marketing dept to do, because their resources are already stretched.

Companies who approach the Real-Time Internet with an open-mind, adaptability and no fear of failure will come ahead in the long run.