Marketing

First Impressions are important! How does your website look?

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

" src="https://www.webwisedesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/you-email.gif" alt="Domain email" width="246" height="80" />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., or .

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 , (now outlook.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 , , , , , or .  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 , , or 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 .” 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 , 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.

Congratulations Wisconsin Artisan Cheesemakers!

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 CheeseCarr Valley CheeseCarr 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 CheeseUplands CheeseUplands 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.

Edeleweiss CreameryEdeleweiss CreameryEdelweiss 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.

Are You Making Changes to Your Website for the Right Reasons?

Target AudienceSo, who are you trying to benefit from those changes you just made, or are contemplating making, to your website? What, or who, is driving those website updates? Are they being made because of any of the following?

  • You, your boss, relative, or friend,  saw or read about, what they feel, is a cool feature on another website.
  • Your  ___________ (fill in the blank) took a class on web design, and the instructor said  __________(fill in the blank).
  • Several businesses similar to yours have large photos at the very top of the page, and rank well in Google Search results.
  • Several businesses similar to yours have small photos at the very top of the page, and rank well in Google Search results.
  • Several businesses similar to yours have no photos at the very top of the page, and rank well in Google Search results.
  • Several businesses similar to yours have videos at the very top of the page, and rank well in Google Search results.
  • You read on Facebook that you should __________(fill in the blank).
  • You read on a blog with SEO tips that you should __________(fill in the blank).
  • You saw a Tweet that said you should __________(fill in the blank).
  • @@@@@@@ (Celebrity name withheld) had a guy on her TV show talking about having a YouTube video on all your main pages helping in Google rankings.

What often is forgotten is your target audience. Ask yourself, will the changes make your site more attractive and/or more user-friendly for your target audience? Is your website better because of the changes? Do those changes better describe the benefits of your services, or the quality of your products? How will your audience perceive you, your company, or what you offer?

When reviewing our client’s websites and prospective changes, we sometimes have to remind them, they are not the users, nor are we. We are changing their website for their target audience, not us, or the boss, relative, friend, or someone on TV. It is the website visitor we should be considering.

Are you making changes to your website for yourself, or for your target audience? There is only one correct answer.