Blog - WebWise Design & Marketing

First Impressions are important! How does your website look?

Branding, Marketing, Web Design / By John / May 9, 2013

First impressions matter. In today’s world, the first impression of your business is made by your website. Does your website present your business as professionally as you do when you are meeting someone for the first time? Before meeting or greeting prospective customers, most of us generally take a look in a mirror to make sure we don’t embarrass ourselves. We check our smile, our hair, and our clothes. We polish our shoes or in my case, boots. Sometimes we practice our greeting. Why? First impressions matter.

When was the last time you seriously looked at your website? How does it look? How does it read? How does it navigate?

First impressions matter.

Branding With Every Email – Get Your Email Delivered – Professional Presentation

Branding, Email, Marketing, Tips / By John / March 25, 2013

I wrote here about using domain mail over five years ago. With the number of people not taking advantage of one of the simplest means of branding available, I believe the subject deserves another go round. I am talking about those who are not using their domain email accounts when sending or replying to business email. Domain email is simply an email account using a name of your choice, e.g., you@yourcompany.com or info@yourcompany.com.

Here are just three of many reasons it is important to use domain mail.

Branding
Deliverability
Professional Presentation

Branding

In businesses and on websites of all kinds, too often you will see contact email such as billybob@yahoo.com, 2cool@hotmail.com (now outlook.com), you@yourISP.com, sally312@gmail.com or something similar. Those same addresses get used routinely in emails to clients, prospects, and co-workers. Instead of those personal addresses, your prospects, clients, vendors, and others should be seeing email from you@yourdomain.com, bill@yourdomain.com, sally@yourdomain.com, sales@yourdomain.com, support@yourdomain.com, or anyone@yourdomain.com. EVERY email sent from and replied to your business should be reminding your prospects, clients and vendors of your brand. Using domain mail is the least expensive branding tool you can implement, and you are branding with every email you send.

Deliverability

If your email doesn’t get delivered and opened, you are wasting your time writing and sending it. Spam has become ubiquitous, and your prospects and clients may hesitate to open an email from a toocutesy@yahoo.com, allnumbers@hotmail.com, silly@gmail.com or inappropriate@someother.com address. Deliverability can be critical when you are sending a proposal or answering a specific request. Domain mail addresses are not as prone to be caught in spam filters as the “other” @ addresses I have been mentioning. Your recipients will, at a glance, know the email is coming from your business if you use your domain mail account. Get every email you send delivered and opened.

Professional Presentation

In other manners of communication, i.e., phone, letters, faxes, and face-to-face, nearly everyone does their best to present themselves and their business professionally. You would be surprised at the number of people who spend thousands of dollars on traditional marketing materials, their web sites and nicely done email campaigns, yet diminish their value by including an inappropriate email address. Using your domain email will present you professionally as many times as you send an email. Why wouldn’t you want to do that with every email you send?

Okay, let’s address the two most common excuses for not using domain mail. The first is, “I don’t want to check two or more email accounts.” With today’s email programs that easily check more than one account at a time (I check over a dozen at a time), that is not a very good reason to miss out on branding with every email. If you honestly feel you can only check one email account, then your email provider can forward as many accounts as you like to just one account. Of course, that account should be a domain mail account. The second reason is, “I like Gmail, and I use mydomain@gmail.com.” I will grant that doing this is better than using personal non-domain email accounts. It still doesn’t give you the branding or level of professional presentation that is afforded by using domain mail. If you feel you can’t live without Gmail, then use Google Apps for Business, which included Gmail that uses your domain mail. Your mail will get sent from and to you@yourdomain.com, but you will still have all the advantages of Gmail’s web-based interface. Google charges $5/user/month or $50/user/year.

Start using your domain mail for every email you send today!

P.S. If you are a client of ours and are not using your domain mail, call or email us and we will be happy to help you get started.

12+ Tips for Empowering Automated eCommerce Emails

Customer Service, Email / By John / November 21, 2012

Do you know what the automated emails sent from your website, especially your ecommerce website, look like? Hopefully, you carefully crafted them before your website went live. If not, please do yourself a favor and review them now.

Here are some quick tips to make your emails look professional. Because of the seasonal timing, we are going to talk about ecommerce “transactional” emails, though many of these tips apply to other automated emails as well.

Do not send them from a no-reply@yourcompany.com email account. Send from an email address that gets monitored daily (preferably multiple times per day). Respond quickly to any email received.
Put the most important information right at the beginning of the subject, to make your emails more helpful, e.g., “Thanks for Order #12345 – My estore” (Be careful of the length so it does not get truncated.)
Make sure your emails are consistently branded and well-designed.
Make the words Thank You bold or bigger than the other text. While you are at it, tell them you appreciate their business.
If you won’t be furnishing a tracking number, tell them why, and when and how they can expect delivery.
Include links back to your shipping and returns page(s).
Be sure to prominently display your Toll-Free phone number. If you don’t have a Toll-Free customer service number, you are not serious about wanting repeat customers.
Include office hours (and time zone), so your customers have the opportunity to talk to a real person.
Prominently display your customer service email address they can use if they want to contact you later instead of having to use your form again.
Use Google’s URL Builder for Google Analytics (or something similar) to track your links. Remember marketing without measurement is not marketing.
Test all of your email responses with multiple email clients for both PC and Apple computers.
Don’t forget to test on mobile devices including iPhones & iPads, Android Phones & tablets, and others when possible.

Please don’t underestimate the power of automated email. They are often read at a critical point of your relationship with your customers. Use the opportunity wisely.

Congratulations Wisconsin Artisan Cheesemakers!

Announcement, ecommerce, Marketing, Web Design / By John / August 8, 2012

Congratulations to everyone in the Artisan Cheese industry for their outstanding 2012 American Cheese Society competition held last week in Raleigh NC! We are pleased to tell you how well some of our clients placed.

Carr Valley Cheese, LaValle, Wisconsin won a total of 14 ribbons including four 1st place awards for Billy Blue Goat Cheese, Canaria Sheep Cheese, Sharp Cheddar Spread and Horseradish Spread. Carr Valley also received seven 2nd place awards and three 3rd place awards.

Uplands Cheese won 2 ribbons including a 1st place award for their Pleasant Ridge Reserve and a 3rd place award for their Extra-Aged Pleasant Ridge Reserve.

Edelweiss Creamery, Monroe, brought home two 2nd place ribbons for their Muenster and for their Vegetable Havarti.

The 2012 competition was the largest ACS contest ever. The judges graded 1,711 different products from 254 companies. What a remarkable accomplishment for these master artisan cheesemakers!

We are privileged and proud to work with several of Wisconsin’s finest cheesemakers providing them an online presence that befits their status. Congratulations to Sid Cook and his team at Carr Valley Cheese, Mike Gingrich and Andy Hatch at Uplands Cheese, and Bruce Workman and his team at Edelweiss Creamery.

Should your business have a Mobile Website?

Mobile, Web Design / By John / June 21, 2012

Should your business have a mobile website? For the majority of you, the answer is an emphatic yes!

The mobile revolution isn’t just coming, it’s already here. In March of 2012, Nielsen reported that, “a majority (50.4%) of U.S. mobile subscribers owned smartphones.” According to Google, “By 2015, more Americans will access the web via mobile than desktop.” Others believe that will happen much more quickly.

Don’t be fooled into thinking mobile websites only get looked at when people are on the move. A Google sponsored study shows that 93% of consumers use their smartphones at home!

Some of the benefits you will realize with a mobile version of your website:

“Touch-to-Call” feature increases leads and sales
Consumers take immediate action on mobile-friendly sites
Users can find you on Google Maps with a touch of a button
Users can easily add your phone number to their contact list
Allows you to utilize mobile-specific advertising
Allows you to offer coupons to mobile users
Measure results with great statistics
Make a great First Impression

In today’s world your website is the first impression most of your prospects will have of your business. If those prospects are on the road, a mobile version of your website is critical to making that first impression on first-class experience.

Of course, here at WebWise Design & Marketing, we offer quality, professionally designed and coded mobile websites. Read more about our mobile websites, or to get started today, give us a call.

Call us today! 1-800-281-9993 or email us at gomobile@webwisedesign.com.