“When the iPhone was first released, everyone marveled over its amazing simplicity and user experience. The world fell in love, and the mobile industry was changed overnight. Other phones, if they weren’t smartphones, were suddenly viewed as cheap and not very useful.

We have all experienced this same truth at the websites we visit. We inherently equate a great design with an upstanding company and a bad design with a company not quite as reputable or as good.”

 

John Paul Mains points out in his article one very important fact, Small Business rarely has extra money or people sitting around that can be dedicated to just increasing engagement with customers. Yet for many small businesses this is exactly the area where the most attention needs to be directed.

Mains goes on to suggest 4 areas of testing that may easily bring positive results in your quest of raising customer engagement without breaking the budget. The testing areas he suggests are:

1. Playing With Your Fonts
2. Increasing Internal Links
3. Creating Better Page Headlines
4. Changing Page Content Structure

There are many additional tweaks a small business can do to increase visitor engagement and an equal number of benchmarks you can keep an eye on to see how your efforts are progressing. Read the complete post: Raising Customer Engagement.

The post Raising Customer Engagement To A New Level appeared first on The Open Site.

It just nailed the marketing medium.

“If used correctly, Vine offers a quick yet extremely effective way for brands to reach wider, socially engaged audiences. And as one of the fastest growing mobile apps in the world, this means enormous potential for marketers.

And that potential is exactly where Lowe’s’ new campaign seeks to capitalize”

See on www.businessinsider.com

The post Absolutely Brilliant: Lowe’s Uses Vine For Simple Lifehacks appeared first on The Open Site.

One of AHAlife’s best sellers an MP3 button with guided meditation by Deepak Chopra proves that luxury is not what you thinkand supports the case…

“AHAlife founder and CEO Shauna Mei believes that luxury is actually an individual spiritual quest, defined by those gestures–big or small–that bring a little extra joy and meaning into our lives.”

See on www.fastcompany.com

The post How Best-Selling Products Get That Way, An Individual Spiritual Quest? appeared first on The Open Site.

Starbucks wants its coffee to be the first thing you grab in the morning — from your own kitchen. The Seattle-based coffee chain, which over the last two decades has grown its cozy cafe brand to include thousands of locations on six continents, has plans to introduce branded coffee kiosks, called “Signature Aisles,” to supermarkets across the U.S. in the coming months.

The post Starbucks Takes Up More Room In Grocery Stores appeared first on The Open Site.

“Your page title is known as a ‘meta tag’.  It’s something that is not visible on your web page but Google looks for this title tag and it’s one of the most important on page elements for Google.  By improving your title this can help improve Google ranking of your post.

When you initially created your blog post you may or may not have created a ‘title tag’.  If you have then you can tweak it, if you haven’t then you can create one.  If you optimize your title tag this can help move up your post within rankings on Google.”

Ok so your small business is busy pumping out original and creative blog posts to inform your customers and peers about your products and services and about your industry in general. So the big questions is, how do I get more people to see these wonderful blog post?

Ian Cleary has written an article that address just that question.

Starting off with the number one most important part of any post you publish, the title. In addition to what Ian has in his piece I would add to the mix these 3 examples of what a title needs to be if it is to engage a potential customer to read the post.

1. Ask A Question – ( Do You Know What You’re Doing?)
2. Create Controversy – ( All Fixes Are Wrong Except Mine)
3. Create A Statement – ( Pennies Are Best When Shinny)

Great titles need to be a combination of one of the above examples combined with keywords that your user is likely to use. So first figure out what keyword phrase you want to use and then combine it with one of the 3 examples above. Titles need to “Catch A Users Attention.” A dull or sleepy title will not engage and will not lead to people reading your blog post.

Read Ian’s complete article

and read A Blog Title is Paramount To Success for more about writing titles.

The post Move Your Blog Post Up The Search Ladder appeared first on The Open Site.

“So, you have opened your own company website. Now what? Of course, all company owners want that their website rank higher in the search engines and more visitors arrive at the site and promote their products and services. But whenever I ask them do they own a blog,

Blogging regularly allows visitors to know more about the company and its products. Suppose you are a new bookselling company-by blogging about your books and about your community, you are more likely to be selected by search engines.”

Every businesses needs a blog. And it’s time for small business to drop the perception that blogging is too time consuming and requires someone on staff that is proficient in writing or requires hiring an expensive outsider to do the writing. Neither of these concerns about implementing a blogging program for your small business needs to be an impediment to getting a blog up and running that your business can be proud of.

Robert Espinosa has written a simple yet incisive article about why evry business needs a blog and how they can find success using blogging as their primary source in their content marketing strategy. He lists six benefits any small business can gain by jumping onto the blogging path.

1. Rank Higher Online
2. Buildup Your Brand
3. Allows You To Show Authority
4. Helps You Grow Professioally
5. Helps Your Employees Grow Creativly
6. Best Marketing Tool For A Limited Budget

Simply speaking, blogging is a nearly perfect tool to help your small business reach a wider audience and stretch your marketing budget further. And a small business blog becomes a permanent source of information that both the search engines and your customers will love.

Click to read complete article under30ceo.com

The post 6 Reasons Every Business Needs a Blog appeared first on The Open Site.

Cadbury UK jumped into the fray on Vine early in the game and have produced many Vines already. What their creations on vine show is the beauty of Vine, its simplicity.

Just mucking about with #Vine and some #Cadbury #EggNSpoon – you can do better right? vine.co/v/bgnUKFFUuvp

— Cadbury UK (@CadburyUK) February 24, 2013

The post Vine Delivers The Sweets appeared first on The Open Site.

“The results show that almost all of the forgone click traffic and attributed sales were immediately captured by natural search,” the auction site found. Removal of these advertisements simply raised the prominence of the eBay natural search result.”

See on www.guardian.co.uk

The post Google keyword advertising is waste of money, says eBay report appeared first on The Open Site.

“Vine is short video sharing app for Ipad allow user to share 6 second video.The service is from social giant Twitter. It is one of the talked thing on the internet. Recently i also written article on how to share Vine video on Tumblr and embed into any blog , and how to search vine video using Google and Vine search search service Vineyard.”

See on techofy.blogspot.com

The post Alternatives To Using Vine appeared first on The Open Site.

I’m not like this. (For one thing, I myself enjoy the curse/blessing of having a million ideas.) The question is, what do you do about your idea flow? Do you have a process for managing it?”

See on www.inc.com

The post Can Too Many Ideas Sink The Ship? appeared first on The Open Site.