Erich Stauffer

Blog

  • Increasing Productivity In Website Maintenance

    This is a guest post from Robby Slaughter, who runs an Indianapolis consulting firm.

    Hiring a web design company is only one step of the process.  Once you have a new custom website designed that meets your needs, you still have to maintain it.

    Sure, there are many website design companies in Indianapolis (and elsewhere) that you can pay to manage all of your site content and marketing. But that may not be within your budget. For many small businesses, keeping their website current falls on their own shoulders. And with all of the work that you have to do for clients, managing the website may fall by the wayside.

    Ensure You Have a CMS

    One of the benefits of working with a web design firm like Erich Stauffer is their use of a CMS, or content management system, to build your website. A CMS is a software application that lets you edit most of the text and  some of the imagery and layout in your site using point-and-click tools.

    WordPress, which is the CMS I’m using to write this post, is a popular and effective product in this category. I don’t have to worry about coding or technical details in order to add content to the site. I just login and type.

    Get Training on Your CMS

    At first, it may seem like you don’t need training to use a tool like WordPress. It’s similar to a word processor. There’s a box you can type into, and there are buttons at the top that you can use to change formatting or insert pictures.

    However, just like a word processor, you don’t know what you don’t know. There are some incredible features inside every CMS and without training, you probably won’t find out about them.

    Schedule Time To Maintain Your Site

    If you plan to write a new blog post once a week, put an hour aside on your calendar and make an appointment with yourself. Or better yet, reserve a day on your calendar to write blog posts for the next two months. Then use, the scheduling feature of your CMS to parcel the blog posts out over time.

    Don’t know how to schedule posts? Talk to your website design company.

    Create a Guest Login

    This is an incredible productivity secret that will save you time. If you want to have others post on your blog, create a guest account for them. That way, you don’t have to ask them to send their post by email, copy and paste it into WordPress, and deal with formatting issues. Instead, you’ll find out that there’s a new post ready to be reviewed. What could be easier?

    In short, you can actually be more efficient when maintaining your website. Talk to your website design company about your CMS. And if you don’t have one, considering checking with Erich Stauffer about moving to a platform like WordPress.

    Good luck!

  • Big Data in a Small Shop

    Four ways to react to client insights

    So, if you have read any business journal, blog, or magazine in the last year you’ve heard ad-naseum about the power of Big Data. Combing through the digital exhaust that all consumers produce to better understand their preferences and habits can produce big dividends to big companies who have big data (notice the trend here?). But what if you are a small shop? You can’t pay MBAs and Quants to comb through your data to produce insights and most likely – you don’t have the mountains of data to pore through anyway. But, I’m here to say that Big Data is simply a way for a large company to feel like a small one. Your small business has the advantage!

    Big Data is simply about responding to client behavior. It’s just that the huge companies have to hire those big guns to get down to knowing the client behavior before they respond to it. But your small business can gain that client knowledge without the technical know-how and the sterility that can come from a numbers-only approach like Target recently used to predict when their shoppers are pregnant.

    So, ask what your clients think about you. Then be flexible, and most importantly, do something about what you hear! Here are four ways to how to ask clients what they would like more of:

    • Add comment boxes on order forms (both online and offline). If you’ve got the space, add some open ended prompts to get them writing. Be creative and write like a human because you are one (and so are your readers!).
    • Ask your best clients what it would take for them to leave you for your competition. That will show your their sensitivity points and give you some target areas to focus on.
    • Write thank you notes for business are simple and effective. Send a thank you note with a brief survey with plenty of open-ended questions and offer a thank you gift when they return it.
    • Engage with your clients via Twitter. This is a no-brainer to get with your most influential clients and just have a conversation with them on why they are your brand champions.

    A company who views their client as a number has nothing on a small business owner who truly cares about his or her clients. There is no better way to show that you care than to heed their desires and innovate new products and services to meet their needs inside of the relationship they already have with your business.

    This is a guest post by Jason Cobb. Contact Jason today to boost your brand and grow your sales via effective social and web marketing.

  • Seesmic VS Path

    A friend of mine recently started testing two social media tools, Seesmic and Path. Here is what he discovered:

    I would recommend Seesmic. It currently is free only because it is in beta. It will be a pay service when it comes out of beta.

    Pros:
    -Can post to multiple social media outlets at once (and can easily switch your mix in-message)
    -Can handle multiple iterations of the same social media platform (your can connect as many twitter, etc. accounts as you want)
    -Can schedule post and reliably deliver at the scheduled time
    -Adjusts the “Characters remaining” indicator according to the max of the minimum social media platform (i.e. it shows 5000 char remaining if just facebook and 140 if twitter is in the mix.)
    -handles photos, links, and tags accurately and intelligently
    -interface is simple, efficient, and aesthetically pleasing; good UX
    -has a “save drafts” queue

    Cons:
    -Only posts to facebook, twitter, and linkedin
    -their icon/badge (especially on facebook) looks stupid and will be on your messages viewed on the web
    -the cost of service is unknown
    -there isn’t a “pending posts” for posts that have been future dates
    -setttings management is somewhat limited on the iphone app – some things have to be done on web
    -links aren’t auto-shortened (may be too long)

    As an alternative, there is Path. Compared to Seesmic, Path’s advantages are:
    -free
    -can post to tumblr and foursquare also (but not linkedin)
    -can be used as one-stop social media manager and public-or-private quantified self tool
    -added functionality to tag with people, places, music

    As an alternative to Seesmic, Path’s disadvantages are:
    -can’t schedule posts
    -no characters remaining gauge
    -no “saved drafts” page
    -can only establish one profile per social media platform (1 facebook, 1 twitter)
    -difficult to add new profile once you have it set up

  • Why Have a Website?

    What’s the value of a website? What does it do for your business? What’s the point?

    We make websites. We know what they can do and what makes them tick. But what we were unsure of was what problem they were solving. We wanted to know what value websites bring to a business.

    Are they strictly utilitarian? Are they a commodity? Are they something you just have to have?

    We remember a time before the world wide web. We recall relying on the phone book, the library, and recommendations from people you know in order to make decisions on where to shop or go.

    We remember a time when websites were new and [literally] flashy. It was a new medium for your message and the rules hadn’t been written yet. It was the wild west and everything was new.

    It’s been nearly 20 years since the first web page went up. Websites have become more professional, technology has improved, and there are much more rules, but only one that really matters.

    The value of a website is in the information it provides. Remember the “Information Superhighway” and it’s king, Content? The purpose of a website has always been the same: Information.

    So what does this mean for business owners looking to market their business online?

    • Eliminate the Unknown – Make sure your potential customers get the answers to the questions they have about your business to remove any fears (rational or irrational) they have about doing business with you.
    • Tell Who You Are – Customers want to know who they will be dealing with. This includes, but is not limited by the bio in your About page. Use real (not stock) photography whenever possible and let your personality show.
    • Share Your Process – What’s it like interacting with you? What sort of interactions will I have with you? What will it cost? What are you hiding? What’s your motivation? Your website can and should explain all of these things.

      • You may have heard the expression, “Know, trust, buy,” which means that a customer has to know you before they trust you and trust you before they buy from you. Your website can ease and accelerate that process because they’ve already spent a lot of time on your site getting to know your business to the point they trust you enough to call you. This doesn’t mean your website is selling for you, but it is enabling you to sell. Think of it as an advertising brochure that someone is reading at the exact moment when they need your service. That’s the power of the Internet and if your website isn’t responding to a customer looking for services you offer, you’re business is missing out on a huge opportunity.

      Erich Stauffer is an Indianapolis web design firm that uses the power of web technology to grow your business.

  • Facebook Cover Photos

    Unless you act before March 30th, Facebook will automatically change your Facebook Page to the new Timeline layout. This means that your business page will no longer look the same and therefore any custom tabs or images you created for your Facebook Page will move or be changed. The biggest change is the addition of an optional “Cover” photo which is 850px wide by 315px tall. We’ve designed some Facebook Page covers for several of our social media management clients that we’d like to showcase here.

    Please let me know what you think about them in the comments below.

  • Context

    It’s amazing how a name and a little bit of context can allow you to find someone you met once over 10 years ago.

    In 2001 I was a student at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana and one day in the beginning of the Fall semester there was an art sale where I picked up this painting by Matt Dobson named, “The Sky is Falling.”

    The Sky is Falling by Matt Dobson

    I hung it on the wall in my apartment, in the house my wife and I rented shortly after getting married, and then in the house we both live in now.

    Yesterday I was painting the room where it was hanging and I noticed the author’s name was on the painting so I wondered if I could find him online.

    I initially searched for: Matt Dobson artist the sky is falling. This was a poor choice as it didn’t assume the “Matt” and “Dobson” should always be together and that he would be talking about the painting, “A Sky is Falling” in any sort of manner online.

    I realized that I knew more about the artist than just his name and the name of his painting. I knew he went to Ball State, just like me, so I switched my search term to: “Matt Dobson” Ball State artist. I used “artist” as a qualifier against other Matt Dobson’s from Ball State.

    This worked.

    I was able to find Matt’s blog bio where he talked about graduating from Ball State. After all that work of searching I was a little let down to find his blog located at mattdobson.com, which a cursory search for “Matt Dobson” lists as the #1 search result. Any noobie search user could have probably found him much more faster than I did, but that’s why Google is a level playing field. You don’t have to be a librarian to find what you need on Google, but it can help.

    Since Matt had a contact page, I decided to email him a picture of his painting and tell him the story of how I bought it and what it’s been doing for the last 10 years:

    Matt,

    I’m pretty sure I bought this painting from you in the summer of 2001 at the Ball State Art Yard Sale and I’ve had it hanging in my home for about 10 years. I just wanted to share with you that it’s still around and wanted to let you have a picture of it in case you wanted it for your portfolio or something. Not everyone had a digital camera in their pocket back then.

    And Matt wrote back:

    Erich,

    Wow. Thank you. It is really great to know you have enjoyed that piece for so long. I didn’t remember that particular piece it is very strange to see it after so long.

    I don’t know if you had a chance to see the design work I am doing now on my website but I am also still pursuing art and you can see some photos of my most recent show here: http://mattdobson.com/Stirring-Art-Show

    Thanks again for sending that my way.

    Best,
    Matt

    I encourage you to check out Matt’s art as he’s doing some really great stuff. It highlights the amazing talent we have here in the Midwest.

  • Active Enzymes and Living Foods

    Whether you think you’re on a diet or not, most people are on the “The S.A.D. Diet”, which Brandy Mason says stands for Standard American Diet. Brandy is a living foods consultant and certified colon hydrotherapist in Carmel, Indiana who advises people on what foods to eat and how to keep yourself cleansed. She’s been helping people do just that since 2009.

    What is Living Food?

    I asked Brandy to define what living foods are and here’s what she said, “Three-fourths of one’s plate should consist of foods that have not been denatured by heat (anything cooked over 120-130 degrees) These are the foods that have all their active enzymes intact therefore considered ‘living foods’.”

    I asked Brandy how she got started in living foods consulting and she said, “I was overweight and had no energy. One day I was hanging out at the bookstore and somewhere between the self-help books and the cook books I found a book by Norman Walker called Become Younger.”

    Norman Walker, a pioneer with juicing raw fruits and vegetables, advocated cleansing your body by juicing and then following up with colon hyrdrotherapy so that’s exactly what Brandy did. “I dropped 50 pounds with no exercise and had tons of energy,” she said, “I was hooked and knew then that I wanted to help other people feel as great as I felt.”

    Brandy flew down to Puerto Rico to get certified at the Ann Wigmore Health Institute where she spent several days learning about eating raw foods and how to cleanse your body at the cellular level. When she got back, she purchased an Angel of Water, which allows you to relax in a reclining position while evacuating the contents of the colon, and she was in business.

    Her dream is to open her own institute where people can come to learn about the lifestyle that Norman Walker and Ann Wigmore taught her so much about. Brandy envisions people being able to come and learn about whole foods, raw foods, juicing, and cleansing while they rest and rejuvenate their body and soul. Brandy calls this process, “Self-sustaining training.”

    Brandy has been around the body for most of her career. Before doing living foods consulting and colon hydrotherapy in Carmel, Indiana, she was a registered radiology specialist. I asked Brandy what she likes doing when she’s not helping people learn how to take better care of their bodies and she said she enjoys playing with her two dogs and watching her kids play sports.

    You can find out more about Brandy at her website or by calling her at 317-690-0536.

  • WordPress: Questions and Answers

    Q. I am getting an error with most of my plugins in WordPress. How do I fix it?

    A. Disable the plugins one by one until the error goes away. Once it does, note the last plugin you disabled and you’ll have you’re culprit. If that doesn’t do it, change the theme back to default and test again. In this way you’ll rule out whether it’s a plugin or the theme doing it.

    Q. How do I make my website more popular?

    A. First, write content that people care about and then let people know about it. You can find out what people care about using Google Trends, Google Insights for Search, and Google External Keyword Tool. Sign up for Twitter and Google+ to post things that you have written on your site. This is part of a good content marketing and SEO strategy.

    Q. How do I change the order of displayed items on a page?

    WordPress defaults to displaying posts in the order of which they were posted (latest first). The easiest way is to change the date/time in which they were posted. To do this, go to the post and click Edit, then change the time so that posts are in the time order you want them.

    Q. Can I install WordPress in a sub-directory or a sub-domain?

    A. You can set it up inside a folder or sub-domain, but you have to create a SQL database first or (if your web host provides it) use a one-click install. Bluehost and Dreamhost both have one-click installs. Otherwise you’ll have to set up your own SQL database and upload the WordPress files manually.

    Q. How to post a new page in WordPress?

    A. In your dashboard, go to Pages and click, “New Page”. It may or may not display in your navigation automatically, depending on your theme.

    Q. Where is the image folder in WordPress?

    A. The image folder is usually a sub-directory of your theme folder, which is located under your wp-content folder. To get to your wp-content/[theme name]/images folder, you’ll either need to use a FTP client or login to your host’s web FTP panel to change the image. You can also use WordPress itself to make the change by uploading the picture to the Media directory, copying the location, and then editing the Stylesheet.css in the Theme editor.

    Q. What are some good WordPress themes for businesses?

    Businesses can benefit from having a custom WordPress theme created for their website. This will help them match their website to their brand and better differentiate them in the market. Erich Stauffer specializes in creating WordPress website designs for small businesses in the Indianapolis area.

    If you need Indianapolis WordPress hosting, web design, configuration, and support, Erich Stauffer is your cloud computing expert web design and Google App implementation shop.

  • Plans

    “In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower

    It’s easy to get caught up in the notion that a sound business plan and a strong marketing strategy will ensure your success in business. We’re taught in business school and in the media that if you want to be successful, you have to plan, but how often do things go according to plan?

    Business Continuity Plans

    Its wise to plan for various environmental or social events that could seriously impact the ability of your business to continue on afterward. Is your data backed up? Have the backups been restored to test? Would you be able to function if 30% of your staff became ill? How long could you remain in business without electricity?

    When I was a business analyst, I was responsible for helping department heads create business continuity plans that outlined what their department would do in the event of a disaster. Hundreds of pages were printed, placed in a plastic tub, and never touched again. In the event of an actual disaster, the plans were not what mattered, it was the act of planning.

    As an Internet Marketer and Technology Consultant, I help business owners create a plan for how they are going to use the web to market their business, be more efficient, and lower costs. We create a roadmap for how we think things will go, but things don’t always go as planned. The key is to know how to pivot and planning helps with that.

    Does your business have a disaster recovery plan for business continuity? Do you know what your company would do if a single workstation, a server, or the entire building went ‘down’? These are the plans that are above and beyond baseline data back-up, which you should be doing anyway. If you’re not doing that, stop reading this and back up your data! It should always be in at least two locations with one copy preferably stored off-site.

    Disasters such as earthquakes, fires, and floods are all too common in today’s world, but sadly, business continuity plans are not. Be prepared for not only a loss of data, hardware, and facilities, but also the risk of a pandemic where a third to half of your work force either can’t come in or are sick. How would your business continue to function? Would you still be able to serve your customers? What sort of steps are you taking to prepare for a scenario like this, or worse?

    It’s easy to create a plan, the hard part is executing it. One trap a lot of people fall into is creating the structure around innovation or a new project in the hopes that once the structure is in place the new product will almost make itself. “After [that] it’s just ‘plug and chug’,” they say. Executors know that you have to do the plug and chug part too even if that means hiring or outsourcing to do so. The ‘plug and chug’-level work should be a matter of following procedures in a well-defined structure. The creators, designers, and innovators at a company usually like to create the structure, but have trouble filling it in. Either learn to get around this psychological gap or find someone else to finish/maintain the job for you.

    Business Plans

    Business plans are important because they summarize both your vision for the company and your blueprint for the company’s operating success. The business plan is a written guide that details the start-up and the future direction of your company. Who should write the plan? You, the entrepreneur. No one else knows your business idea and goals better. Yes, there are services that can do the work for you. However, you must present this business idea to bankers or other investors. Therefore, it is best if you are very familiar and comfortable with the plan.

    Although there’s no set format, a good business plan typically includes:

    • Cover page—Identifies your business
    • Table of contents—Organizes information for the reader
    • Executive summary—Provides a “big picture” view of the plan, highlighting the factors that will lead to success
    • Business background—If it is a brand-new business, include your background and skills
    • Marketing plan—Relates the business’s marketing strategy
    • Action plan—Summarizes how you will create and deliver your product or service
    • Financial statements and projections—Illustrates how the business will perform financially based on the plan’s assumptions
    • Appendix—Includes statistical analyses, marketing materials, résumés.

    Business success requires the ability to adapt to changing situations. Nothing ever goes as planned (SEE Business Continuity Plans). The world of business is full of surprises and unforeseen events. Using the habit of adaptability allows business owners to respond to circumstances with the ability to change course and act without complete information. Being flexible allows us to respond to changes without being paralyzed with fear and uncertainty.

    Problems are a regular part of business life. Staff issues, customer misunderstandings, cash crunches- the list is endless. To achieve business success, look at both sides of the coin. Every problem has an opportunity. Being opportunity focused makes the game of business fun and energizing.

    Marketing Plans

    When creating a marketing plan, keep in mind the four P’s of marketing:

    • Product—What good or service will your business offer? How is that product better than those offered by competitors? Why will people buy/want it?
    • Price—How much can you charge? How do you find the balance between sales volume and price to maximize income?
    • Promotion—How will your product or service be positioned in the marketplace? Will your product carry a premium image with a price to match? Will it be an inexpensive, no-frills alternative to similar offerings from other businesses? What kinds of advertising and packaging will you use?
    • Place—Which sales channels will you use? Will you sell by telephone, or will your product be carried in retail outlets? Which channel will economically reach your market?

    Regarding “Price”, I recenly got an email from a customer who told me a story about a friend of his who confided in him, his friend said, “I was desperate. I had to sell out my women’s apparel store, so I did a lot of expensive advertising at 50% off. I was going broke so in total frustration one day I said ‘Oh, #@& it, doubled my prices and sold right out!” I liked the story enough, but it didn’t really sink in until I ran across a similar story the next day.

    In the book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, author Cialdini tells the story about a turquoise jeweler out West who, in the peak of tourist season, couldn’t sell her jewelry. The owner had priced the jewelry reasonably. She had placed it in a central display location. She’d even asked her staff to point it out to browsers. Nothing worked. Finally, the owner gave up and decided to sell the jewelry at a loss. On her way out of town for a business trip, she dashed off a note to a member of her sales staff – “Everything in this display case 1/2”. When the owner arrived back at her shop she was surprised to find that all of the turquoise jewelry had been sold. Puzzled, the proprietor asked her staff what happened. She had misread her hastily-scrawled note (deciphering the “½” as a “2”), and doubled the price of each piece rather than cutting it in half, making the jewelry seem better and therefore worth paying for. The logic from both of these stories follows that, “If it’s expensive, it has got to be good.”

    A marketing plan should summarize your findings about the key target buyer description, market segments the company will compete in, the unique positioning of the company and its products compared to the competition, the reasons why it is unique or compelling to buyers. Determine specific goals, set a deadline for these goals to be achieved, then write them down. The old saying, “Its not real until its written down,” is true here. Next, share these goals with your employees and any invested partners. Get everyone on the same page so that they can all help work towards the goal.

    Determine which tools can best help you meet your goals and how they will be used. These can include, but are not limited to, the web, direct mailings, email newsletters, hosted events, relevant trade shows, outdoor or print advertising, or social media. Next, create a plan for use of each tool. Projects are best not left open-ended. In the same way you assigned a deadline for the goal as a time restraint, the goal should also have a financial restraint. Work with your team to create a budget that reflects your vision and achieves your goals. If you end up under-budget, that’s one more thing to celebrate when you achieve your goals.

    The easiest and hardest thing to do sometimes it to delegate responsibility for implementing each part of the plan. More than likely you won’t be able to do all aspects of the plan and so you’re going to have to divvy up the responsibilities. Make sure there are built in accountability measures to check performance. Monitor the results of your team members progress and the goal in general. Beware of project creep. Weekly meetings to remind those involved about the plan and its deadlines may help. Lastly, don’t be afraid to make adjustments as necessary. Being an agile company may be what sets you apart from your bigger competitors.