CleverNews March / April 2009
What’s News at CleverLink
Government Funding
a) CleverLink have been helping clients and associates access government funding:
We held two seminars in March to give businesses an opportunity to find out what the government is offering and how it can benefit their business
Did you know that Government can pay up to 50% of your Website Development costs
and other related marketing materials such as marketing plans & strategies?
Of course your business needs to meet certain criteria, but it is worth
finding out more about this fund while the opportunity is still available.
CleverLink received similar support in 2002 (with excellent results)
and we strongly recommended that you take advantage
of these opportunities.
b) Just like being upgraded to first class atno extra cost: Good news for CleverLink and all clients!
We have a bigger, faster, more secure functionalitieson our new hosting server. We have completed the testing phrase and are in theprocess of moving clients - and our own web site - across to the new server. Beassured the transition will be smooth with minimal interruption and maximumadvantage
Due to the nature of these grants they are only available to business in certain areas – therefore, we invited those contacts close to CleverLink HQ. If you are interested and would like to access to the information, please email our office at service@cleverlink.com.au or call 1300 721 834.
What Makes CleverLink’s new hosting server special?
The new and improved quality of our servers offer many advanced features, such as
- more than double the disk space,
- more bandwidth which allows more traffic,
- unlimited email addresses,
- Faster and better server: 2,000 Mbit connectivity means faster download time
- Vendor: GenuineIntel
- Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.00GHz
- speed: 3001.062 MHz
- cache size: 2048 KB
Of course, all the features you have been enjoying - like daily backups, webmail and your own control panel - are still there, only now you have a hosting service that is bigger, better and stronger than before.
Camtu Featured In QCG Magazine
CleverLink Founder & MD, Camtu Pham, is featured in the launch issue of the QCG Magazine – You will find her story in the “At Home With Women of the World” section on page 73. Here is the article for you and you can read the rest of the magazine at http://www.qcgmagazine.com. Being the launch issue – you can download the whole magazine for FREE. Hard copies of the magazine are available in the Brisbane newsagents.
Client Spot Light
English Skills Online
Our client offers high quality e-learning for business people who wish to
improve their English to accelerate their careers. As you might imagine
this means coordinating teachers, students and data; no small task!
Our client needed a website that would do everything and this meant
a high level of automation, to enable functions such as:
• student enrolment and payment online
• online teaching and two ways real time interaction
• multiple courses enrolment with different discount codes
While this complex system contains many levels it is also super smooth
and user-friendly for both student, teacher, admin staff and managers.
The English Skills Online website allows people to learn online from
the convenience of their home or office; allows teachers to teach from
their home or office; and allows its administrators to coordinate their
entire business (including taking payment) online! It’s a ‘virtual’ school.
Interested in what CleverLink can do for your online business? Contact Us today!
Branding Essentials
How to ‘Create Awareness’ of your brand
Brand awareness is fundamental in a successful business. It can be created in many ways, such as personal meetings, advertising, company vehicles etc – across of range of mediums - and this is important because people recognise symbols, colours, sounds etc much more readily than they do names.
Why is this relevant, specifically?
When potential clients or customers recognise a particular need they then recall which products and services might fill this need. This is where the work you’ve done on your brand recognition and brand recall can really pay off. (How much would that be worth to you?)
The importance of a great logo
Of course, for people to be able to recall your particular product or service it needs to be memorable. This is where a good logo is the beginning of the recall process. They might see your particular logo in some form of advertisement or on the web. They then associate this with the particular need they have and then take further action. They might make further enquiries (and this is where it is good to invest in your web presence) about your product or service to determine if it ticks all their boxes ie; price, delivery time, colour, size, wattage and so on
A good logo is vital to stimulating this recall within you potential customer. If you don’t have a good logo you could be missing out on valuable opportunities and worse, waste the money you currently invest in other marketing vehicles such as advertising. Good logos are designed by skilled and qualified people with an experience curve behind them. Don’t be left behind - a poorly designed logo can hinder your business. Choosing a logo designer simply on price can cost you dearly in lost sales, so it’s wise to invest in quality.
If you would us to design a winning logo or marketing materials for your business or you need more information contact us today!
Up Coming Events
Online Tools are not only handy, cost saving tools – they can revolutionise the way you conduct your marketing!
We will be holding a seminar on CleverLink Tools in early May (date TBA) – and will send this information out in a separate email.
The seminar will cover subjects like:
- Content Management Systems:
a ‘plug in’ computer application that works from your website. You can use CMS to create, edit, manage, search - and publish various kinds of marketing material for your business
- E- Commerce:
a resource saving ‘plug in’ that works from your website. It automates the exchange of goods & services by allowing your customers to choose and buy on the internet – and it allows you to take payment automatically – no more trips to the bank!
- E-mail Marketing:
a plug in that works from your website, this system allows you to collect email addresses, and send out newsletters and emails fast! You have professional campaigns going out from your office – just set it up and click!
Places are limited so if you are interested in attending please contact us
Power Words
Tired of Low Sales?
Uncovering the gold in your words: Good marketing means good content and power words give you powerful results.
You are busy and like other important jobs you outsource, you can get professional help from copywriters or professional writers too. They can help you writing your sales letters, brochures and web content.
How to help your copywriter deliver the gold
Depending on how big the job, copywriting can take quite a few hours. There are several ways you can make the process smoother, faster and ultimately cheaper. Here are just some:
- Be Clear: Before you meet with your writer, brainstorm exactly what you want and exactly what you want to achieve (ie; I want people to know how valuable my product will be to them and I want them to order and pay through my website), then brief your writer thoroughly.
- Read carefully: investing 30min now, it will save you time and money in the long run. Once you have the initial draft from your writer, block some time out to go through it carefully, asking yourself questions such as:
- Does the headline get attention?
- Is there a promise?
- Is this backed up with evidence?
- Is your ‘call to action’ easy to spot?
- Sign It Off & Leave It Alone: As H G Wells says, “no passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft!” Once the copywriting is complete, resolve to put a line under the job and move on. Resist potentially undermining the good work you paid for.
- See the Value: Famous French mathematician, Blaise Pascal said it best - “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.” A half-page ad may have less text than an A4 page of text, but the hard work is in the editing. Learn to recognise the pure gold in a well crafted phrase.
By working in tandem with your professional writer you will be making a solid investment in your business; one that can bring many clients your way.
Why not visit our professional writing service and if you would like to discuss professional writing, please contact us today!
Traditional Marketing
We came across a great article recently on the importance of good graphic design in web sites and thought it well worth sharing with our readers.
It is written by Todd Follansbee who is founder of WebMarketingResources.net, whose methodology for improving conversions recently won a top ten award in Entrepreneur Magazine.
“The Stanford Web Credibility Project found that 47% of users make buy decisions based upon the site itself.” This implies that if the site is professional in appearance and supplies the essential information in a clear and complete manner; nearly half your customers will be comfortable making the buy decisions without further off-site research.
The 10-Second Window
In our testing experience, when customers are searching for products or services across a variety of sites in a competitive market, decisions about a site's professionalism are often made within 10 seconds of viewing the home or landing page. In this brief time customers gather a surprisingly broad range of impressions including:
- company size
- product range
- product offering
- brand
- price (surprisingly)
They demonstrate emotional feelings of connection or dissatisfaction, as well as feelings of anxiety and/or comfort. They often decide if they are in the "right place."
“Small business sites often underestimate the importance of a good graphic look and feel.” Sites often exhibit unprofessional graphic design, yet site owners wonder why so many shoppers abandon the site. A graphic designer I know who recently completed the redesign of an e-commerce site, found that the new design resulted in nearly doubled pageviews, time on site, and purchases. Good graphics can make a big difference.
If you're in doubt about the effectiveness your present website look and feel, user-test your site on passers-by. Ask them to view your site alongside competitor sites. Ask probing, open-ended questions about their impressions and feelings. This will give you a good idea of the impression your site creates to visitors.
If you would like a no obligation review of your current web site or would like to discuss building a new web site, please contact us and we can have a brand new or revitalised web site for you in a matter of weeks.
Marketing hits & misses
Marketing Hit:
Our marketing hit this month is the latest advertisement from Boags Beer. View Here
These ads really capture your attention with humour and this certainly reinforces brand recall.
They tandem this with a similar themed web site (for over 18s only) - You can search for this on Google - they have games to play and competitions to enter.
The funny ads and the themed website combined to develop brand loyalty – and of course, this is the ultimate goal that all marketing activities should be focused towards.
Marketing Miss:
This month’s big miss is the Australian company that touts solutions for “men’s problems”. This is some of the worst marketing methods used since snake-oil salesmen plied their trade. It lacks any of the hallmarks of professionalism consumers expect from a quality product.
What a Graphic Designer Should Accomplish
This article follows on from the “The science of building a web site” published in our February Newsletter.
“The bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of a low price sours”
Here's what you should expect a good graphic designer to accomplish:
- Select an attractive, comfortable colour palette which engages -- and even addresses colour-blindness.
- Include attractive product shots that are large enough to reveal important elements along with informative, benefit-focused captions.
- Deliver a value proposition or branding statement in the initial eye-path.
- Present simple and effective navigation which shows what viewers can expect to find.
- Drive the eye path to the important calls to action.
- Optimize all graphic elements for fast loading and contribution to conversion goals.
- Keep the page simple, clean, and effective.
- Insure that viewers can "get it" in 10 seconds or less.
Good graphic design is too important to your success to risk an amateur look and feel. Unless graphics is in your blood, bring in a graphic designer to help get your site right. However, in your quest for a designer, make sure your designer pays more than lip service to site usability. Good graphic designers may charge $100 per hour -- the price of a decent plumber in Australia. That may seem expensive, but great graphics translate to increased sales. Make the investment.
Concerned that your web design isn’t winning you clients? Talk to us about web development today!
See our Web design service page for more tips and information
Digital Marketing & SEO
Sitemaps and how they relate to your ranking in Google (content: courtesy of Google.com)
As you may know, a ‘sitemap’ is a list of the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs, that may not be ‘discoverable’ by Google's normal crawling process.
Submitting a sitemap is particularly helpful where …
- Your site has dynamic content.
- Your site has pages that aren't easily discovered by Googlebot during the crawl process - for example, pages featuring rich AJAX or Flash.
- Your site is new and has few links to it. (Googlebot crawls the web by following links from one page to another, so if your site isn't well linked, it may be hard for us to discover it.)
- Your site has a large archive of content pages that are not well linked to each other, or are not linked at all.
You can also use a Sitemap to provide Google with additional information about your pages
This includes:
- How often the pages on your site change. For example, you might update your product page daily, but update your About Me page only once every few months.
- The date each page was last modified.
- The relative importance of pages on your site. For example, your home page might have a relative importance of 1.0, category pages have an importance of 0.8, and individual blog entries or product pages have an importance of 0.5. This priority only indicates the importance of a particular URL relative to other URLs on your site, and doesn't impact the ranking of your pages in search results.
Sites are never penalized for submitting Sitemaps
Sitemaps provide additional information about your site to Google, complementing our normal methods of crawling the web. We expect they will help us crawl more of your site and in a more timely fashion, but we can't guarantee that URLs from your Sitemap will be added to the Google index.
While a standard Sitemap works for most sites, you can also create and submit specialized Sitemaps for certain types of content. These Sitemap formats are specific to Google and are not used by other search engines. Sitemap formats include:
CleverLink can help get your website on the map! We provide comprehensive SEO services - Contact Us today!
Website of the Month
We all know Google because we use its search engine, daily. However, did you know that Google also supply services such as:
- Google Calendars,
- Google Email (Gmail)
- Google Internet Browser (Google Chrome)
- Google Earth
- Google News
You can create your own home page (i google) which can feed you customised news items, weather for your local area, customise your web page theme, track your stocks , track petrol prices and customise literally hundreds of other possible options!
Most of these Google applications can also be used on your PDA, I-phone or mobile and can be set to synchronise automatically. The above list is literally just the tip of the iceberg – well worth checking out!
Of course, not every business will benefit by having this level of bells and whistles built into their website, but it certainly goes to show that the sky is the limit when it comes to what your online business can potentially offer your market.
Want more for your website? Talk to us about taking your online business to the next level - Contact Us today!
Food for My Brain
Self-Managing Success
Self-management is an important at home and at work. Excellent self-management skills can improve your business and social effectiveness.
Self-management enhancement:
- Take time to plan before starting any task. Finish all tasks that you start. Don't quit half way. - Self-assess every 6 months. Measure new skills, strengths and areas for improvement.
- Make valuable time for yourself. You cannot give what you don't have. Your family and clients will benefit during their time with you when you set aside quality time for yourself.
- Keep a journal of your ideas and achievements. Add goals to help direct you.
- Reach out to those who need you. Helping others is like putting credits in your bank account. You feel good when you know the figure rises. A sense of personal satisfaction is a wonderful reward.
- Ask for help. You deserve people's attention. Asking for help is like withdrawing cash from your bank account. When you have lots of credit to spend (see previous) you can withdraw with less hesitancy.
- Take full responsibility. Someone once said, "If you can't sign it, don't say it."
- Set high standards for yourself. When your performance is lower than your expectation, you will automatically adjust to suit your own image. Aspire to improve.
- Associate with intelligent people and look for their assistance. Hire specialists for tasks that add value to you and your business.
- Celebrate your successes and cherish the winning moment. Recalling such times can help you overcome future challenges.
Go to Food For my Brain Web site to explore brain food! If you would like to learn more about Camtu’s positive approach to success, take a look at her book, Aim High Fly Fast: Creating a Wonderful World for Yourself and Others
Positive Mind
"Success and failure. We think of them as opposites, but they're really not. They're companions - the hero and the sidekick."
-- Laurence Shames
Humour
HUSBAND 1.0 related questions
Dear Tech Support,
Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a
distinct slow down in overall system performance, particularly in the
flower and jewellery applications, which operated flawlessly under
Boyfriend 5.0.
In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as
Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, and then installed undesirable
programs such as
CNN 5.0,
CRICKET 3.0 and
POLITICS 4.1.
Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the
system.
Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems,
but to no avail.
What can I do?
Signed,
Desperate
DEAR DESPERATE,
First, keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while
Husband 1.0 is an operating system.
Please enter command: ithoughtyoulovedme..html and try to download Tears
6.2 and do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application
works as designed, Husband1.0 should then automatically run the
applications Jewellery 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.
However, remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0
to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1.
Please note that Beer 6.. 1 is a very bad program that will download the
Farting and Snoring Loudly Beta.
Whatever you do, DO NOT under any circumstances install Mother-In-Law 1.0
(it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of
all your system resources.)
In addition, please do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program.
These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.
In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory
and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying
additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend:
Cooking 3.0 and
Hot Lingerie 7.7.
Good Luck !
Tech Support
Clever Tool Box
DocSto
c
http://www.docstoc.com/ is a site for finding and sharing professional documents like legal, business, technical and educational documents - it has many useful templates that you can look at for different occasions, such as:
- time value of money analysis
- Website linking agreement
- Three year profit project template
You can also contribute to this “think tank” if you like.
Now is the time to make sure your website is professional, up to date and all your marketing materials are creating a lasting impression for you and our company. CleverLink can help! We are just an email or a phone call away! Contact Us today!
