PHOTOS GET A NEW SPIN WITH CINIVA’S PHOTO CAROUSEL

For Immediate Release

PHOTOS GET A NEW SPIN WITH CINIVA’S PHOTO CAROUSEL

Ciniva Systems, a Virginia-based award winning web design company announces the production of their exclusive photo carousel application that will give their clients an exciting and beautiful method for displaying photos in a photo gallery.

The Photo Carousel was designed and developed by Ciniva’s team of expert web developers and is only available to Ciniva’s clients, giving businesses or individuals in Virginia or anywhere else in the US a chance to utilize this new application. Here for a demonstration.

Steve Van Leeuwen, President of Ciniva, said, "We are continually striving to give our clients the edge they need to succeed in their online endeavors. Our Photo Carousel will help our clients do that. Imagine a tourism site with a gallery of hundreds of photos from around their area, all displayed in one place. As a visitor to the site, you just sit back and enjoy the slide show.” There is no limit to the number of photos the Photo Carousel will display and it is completely customizable to perfectly compliment the look and feel of your website.

Ciniva Systems has been designing websites since 1998 and for the past decade has developed websites for many large cities, counties, tourism boards, small business owners and others, having more than 500 sites to their credit. This new Photo Carousel application can be used in conjunction with Ciniva’s exclusive Content Management System that has been strong selling point to clients for the past seven years.

For more information about this topic or about Ciniva Systems, or to schedule a free consultation with Ciniva Systems on how to create your own ecommerce site, call 757/499-1990 or email Ciniva at info@ciniva.com.

Web 2.0 - Web Site Design Tips

When it comes to effective web site design as part of your Web 2.0 efforts, a couple of things need to be kept in mind. If you want your website to be stunning and effective, here are some web 2.0 web design tips to help you get started.

Keep it simple

Having too many features can take away from the central purpose of the site. That doesn’t imply bare, simple design. Instead it means using the minimum features required to achieve your objective. As part of quality custom web design you need to ensure this.

Central positioning

When your web site design is built centrally it is more likely to give out an honest impression of your brand. Besides the brand messaging, it also is far more easy on your budget as you need lesser pixels or content.

Less number of columns

The fewer columns you use, the more readability you infuse into your website. If you are hiring high quality web designers they will quickly tell you that cramming too much information on a page is always a bad idea.

Making navigability easy

You don’t want your website visitors to keep hunting for information on your site! Any section on web 2.0 web design tips will advise you to keep navigation obvious and easy to reach.

Text size

As a way of infusing better readability it is also important to have bigger sized text. As part of good website design tips you can highlight important elements with a larger font size.

Differentiating sections

You can also employ the usage of bright colors as part of your custom web design. This can help demarcate areas on the site and make it easier for readers to understand different sections.

Rich aesthetic appeal

You want your site to look stunning. As part of that effort your web site design need to use good quality aesthetic elements. Aspects like drop shadows or reflections can really help jumpstart the look and feel of your website!

Self explanatory icons

You can also use innovative icons which explain the concept better than plain text. Today the focus is on lesser usage of icons and more text. However, web designers tend to use such icons sparingly only in high value areas of the site.

Labels

You can also use star shaped labeling in order to draw the visitor’s attention to something. For example in your web site design you may want to showcase a special promotional discount etc. However, use these sparingly as over-usage sends out a ‘cheap’ signal to visitors.

Large logo design

One of the aspects of web 2.0 web design tips is to use bold and large logos to draw more attention and create a statement.

Good Web Design is Good Business

By Amy Zipkin
Published: February 13, 2008

The Web site for Sophia Brodsky's day spa in Philadelphia, the Body Klinic, was pretty rudimentary until a college student walked into the spa a little more than two years ago with an irresistible offer.

As she tells it, the student, Nathaniel Stevens, said that for $10 he would take her existing site and redesign it to drive traffic to her salon. If she got more business, they agreed, he would get additional money. Brodsky, a Russian immigrant, whose interests run more to cranberry facials than the Internet, thought why not.

Brodsky now maintains three Web sites and estimates that they have brought in thousands of dollars in business. "Now," she said, "people are coming to my Web site daily."

But small business owners like Brodsky who have a Web presence are still a minority. In its first survey of small business Web sites last April, Jupiter Research found that just 36 percent of all businesses with fewer than 100 employees had a Web presence.

Still, the Web as an alternative yellow pages is drawing increased attention. The Kelsey Group, a market research company in Princeton, New Jersey, estimates that sales revenue from Internet Yellow Pages and wireless and other searches will increase to $13 billion in 2010 from $3.4 billion in 2005.

Small business owners who venture online say the experience is generally worth it, though the learning curve may be steep.

Recognizing this, online advertising companies with names like Yodle, Weblistic, Webvisible and ReachLocal are springing up to help manage the sites.

The Web was not on Brodsky's mind when she put down $165,000 in 2004 for a spa that grossed about $6,000 a week. The spa was not even computerized at the time.

Experts generally advise small business owners not to establish a Web presence unless they have time to keep it updated. Jean Pratt, assistant professor of information systems at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Clair, said, "If someone doesn't maintain a Web site, it does become more of a detriment because competitors are keen on making theirs part of a marketing strategy."

A static site may damage the credibility of the business, she added.

Steve Krug, author of a Web usability guide, "Don't Make Me Think," says that what looks great to a business owner may be totally lost on a user unfamiliar with the site.
He suggests business owners watch their site being tested, devoting several hours a month to the effort.

That's a feeling K. Rudolph knows well. She runs Native Intelligence in Bethesda, Maryland, selling computer security and security awareness training courses. The company started a Web site about a decade ago but took a workshop based on Krug's book in 2003.

During his presentation, Krug singled out her site's graphics and asked participants if they knew what business Native Intelligence was in. The first person to answer thought bright colors and cartoons meant it was designed for children.

"Watching someone use your site for the first time can be a humbling and enlightening experience," she said.

Rudolph and her then business partner spent about three quarters of their time over the next two weeks revamping the site, trying to answer questions Krug posed like, "What can I do on this site?"

Now Rudolph sets aside several hours a month to watch as many as three users in succession navigate links on the site. She enlists friends and acquaintances to cast a critical eye.

Native Intelligence has prospered since the site's revamp in 2003. The company's gross income rose to $1,094,000 in 2006 from $483,000 in 2003, although Rudolph says that she does not know how much of the increase was due to the Web site improvements.

Brodsky said that she used to favor winning customer recognition by developing new product offerings. But Stevens, who was just starting an Internet company, showed her that a versatile Web presence was also crucial. Stevens created two Web sites that mirrored one another. One, www.thebodyklinic.com, features a local telephone number, with area code, that had a picture of a brownstone front and clickable foliage that leads to the spa's various services. The site has generated a 10 percent increase in sales since Brodsky - now a Web convert - redesigned it in October, she said.

Its not quite mirror double, www.thebodyklinic.net features a toll-free number and was intended to track calls. He and Brodsky agreed that she would pay him for each individual click. Her phone calls on that line are monitored so she can tell how much customer traffic the site is generating.

Her Web budget has grown to about $1,000 a month, Brodsky said, but her weekly gross is now $8,000 to $10,000 a week, up from $7,000 in the past two years.

Full Article.

Copywriting as a Part of Web Development

Because appealing to both readers and search engines is so important, you don't want to sacrifice one for the other. Adding a big block of copy to the middle of a page may not be the best answer, however, if a page needs content, adding a couple of sentences to the bottom of each section is a good option. Your copy will still be readable and the additional content will appeal to the search engines.

There are some things to remember when writing content for a website.

• Web users are active. One click and they have left your site. If they don't see a reason to stay, they won't. There is a 10 - 15 second window available to capture a visitor's attention.
• The longer the text is, the less likely they are to read it. With long text, they will skim it, if they bother to read it at all.
• Web users don't believe in hype. If you want a web user to believe you and to believe in you, you must back up your claims.
• Four questions must be answered on each page:

What am I doing here?

How do I do it?

What's in it for me?

Where can I go, next?

If your design and navigation isn't obvious, then you need to explain it in the copy. Most visitors will not take the time to figure this information out. If a first time visitor cannot find their way around your site, they will likely never come back.

Unless your visitors are expecting to read something on your page, don't expect that they will read more than one or two lines of copy.

Understanding your copy is as important as length. Don't make the copy so complicated that it is difficult to comprehend or make it so the customer will have to think about it because they won't.

What this means is you want to convey one key idea in just one or two lines. Don't try to add a third line because if you say too much, then even the first idea won't penetrate. If your site needs more content, break it down into sections that are one or two paragraphs each. Say what you want to say in the first sentence and then expand the thought into the paragraph. Use meaningful headers. Most people will only scan the headers to the paragraphs and not even bother with the copy on the page, unless it is something that appeal to them. It is better to write only one or two lines with links to another page with the longer copy.

Even when users are expecting to find text heavy content, don't expect they will take the time to read all of it. Longer copy doesn't have to be as abrupt as shorter text, but it needs to be as easy to read.

Make your copy clear, but not boring. Lively writing with an unassuming voice is best. Boring writing will turn your reader off and nothing you say at that point will make it through.

5 Keyword Strategies for B2B PPC Campaigns

By Andy Komack
President, KoMarketing Associates

Managing a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign for business-to-business (B2B) is a much different animal from running paid-search campaigns targeting consumers.

In a B2B environment, products and solutions are more complex, the audience is more sophisticated, the price tag is much higher, sales cycles are longer, and there are multiple decision-makers and influencers. Plus, advertising budgets are often much smaller.

There are many variables to tackle in any PPC campaign. This article focuses on 5 keyword strategies for B2B search engine advertising.

1) Start With Highly-targeted Keywords - When starting a B2B search engine advertising campaign, never, ever start with a one-word keyword! And be very careful even when selecting any two-word keywords.

B2B bids will usually be higher than in a B2C environment, and your primary objective (typically) is to generate well-qualified leads.

So, conserve your budget early by carefully choosing keyword phrases that are directly applicable to a product or service offering. Be as specific as possible, and try to put yourself in a potential customer’s shoes.

For example, if your business is in the data-warehousing space, you would certainly not bid on "data" to start out, and you may want to bid only on phrase match (quotation marks around the phrase) and exact match (brackets around the phrase) for your primary two-word phrases such as "data warehouse" and "data warehousing."

2) Jump Right Into Markets & Technical Terms - You may also consider bypassing the high-level concept of your products/services, and going right after a particular vertical market by targeting something like "financial data warehouse" and/or "finance data warehouse." Again, start with phrase and exact match to gauge the level of search activity before adding broad-match versions of the keywords.

Or, instead of targeting a specific vertical market, consider going deep quickly by starting your campaign by bidding only on very technical terms that the immediate purchaser/end user would be searching for.

There will be a time when you will want to open up your keyword selection to broader terms, enabling you to test out the market and to attract the higher-level decision-makers. These are the folks that may not take any action on your website at all, but will ask someone on their team to investigate further. (This of course makes tracking ROI more difficult, but it is often a necessary strategy to build brand awareness.)

3) Users Do Not Search for "Solutions" - When choosing keywords, you can try extending your keywords using the word "solutions," but our experience shows that users rarely search with that word. Be sure to use other descriptive extenders like "software," "services," "tool(s)," "product(s)," "company(ies)," "provider(s)," "consultant(s)," and "vendor(s)."

4) Apply Negative Keywords Generously - In search advertising you have the opportunity to add negative keywords to a campaign or ad group that will prevent your ads from being triggered when those words are included in a search query. Some common negative keywords to consider in B2B are:

Free, cheap, discount(ed), liquidation, close out, used, retail, job(s), salary(ies), employment, internship(s), resources, research, statistics, metrics, journal(s), association(s), links, open source, how to, create, creating, home, homemade, etc.

The choice of negative keywords will depend on your industry, but you can get creative and generate lists of words that you would not want your ad to be triggered for.
We’ve created a reference list of potential negative keywords on our blog that B2B advertisers may want to consider.

5) Apply Your PPC Intelligence to SEO - One very nice aspect of PPC is that you are gathering intelligence about exactly how users search for your products and services. You are taking the guesswork out of the keyword-research process involved in search optimization by seeing the exact number of impressions and clicks for your keywords. And, you are gauging the effectiveness of these keywords in terms of bringing qualified visitors to your site. You can use your website analytics to monitor pageviews, bounce rates, and conversions for the keywords that people have used to find your site.

If you are just starting the keyword-research process for SEO, you might use a keyword research tool like Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, Wordze, Google AdWords Keyword Estimation Tool, etc. It’s important to note that these tools will show you the relative popularity of keywords, but cannot give you an accurate representation of their actual search volume, or provide you with a valuation of the keywords as they relate to your business.

For example, when optimizing your data-warehousing website for organic search, you may be deciding between "data warehouse" and "data warehousing." Keyword-estimation tools may show you that "data warehouse" is far more popular than "data warehousing." However, your PPC experience may show that "data warehousing" is a more effective term for your website. Even more likely, you may find that "data warehouse" is the better term, but that "data mining warehouse" -- while having fewer searches -- is the best possible keyword phrase for your business. You would then be able to make informed decisions about which keyword phrases to optimize your website for.

Keyword selection is just one facet of successful PPC advertising. Stay tuned for additional strategies and tactics in future articles related to ad copy, bid strategies, landing page optimization, and ROI tracking.

Andy Komack, President
KoMarketing Associates

What is it Important to Hire an SEO Agency

It is unfortunate that most people do not put as much importance on SEO as they do on web design. Also, with all the hype about SEO that is floating around on the Internet, no seems to even know what to pay for SEO services.

Just like anything else, shop around until you find an agency that is reputable. Don’t be afraid to check with the Better Business Bureau. Ask a company what sites they have optimized and then contact those people and ask about their results.

The scope of a successful SEO campaign is not understood by most people. When discussing plans for a website with an agency, countless hours go into planning and preparing the site. There is usually a team involved in the process: designers, developers, marketers, just to name a few. Then, after this exhausting process, people seem to run out of steam when it comes to the SEO of their site and this can be a huge mistake for many sites. The SEO campaign simply doesn’t receive the due diligence the design process receives.

There are many things to consider, such as, does the site have JavaScript navigation? Is the content in frames or tables? Does the site lack relevant content? Will the SEO team have to write many pages of copy? Will they have to build out pages? Are there sites linking to yours? Is your internal link structure well designed?

Your SEO professional will look at your competitors, not only the ones you compete with every day in busniess, but your keyword competitors, too.

Your SEO Professional will want to know what your company’s goals are and what market you are attempting to target… for example, the key words “real estate” is a very different animal from “Richmond Virginia real estate.” For highly competitive keywords, the SEO timeline can be daunting and it will take much more time to achieve what your company is hoping to achieve. Because of this you can expect to pay more money for a successful campaign. The more competitive the key words, the more copy has to be written, the more pages added to your site and more link generation.

Analysts Urge Upgrade to IE7 Browser

David Garrett, newsfactor.com

"When in doubt, upgrade." That's what Forrester analysts Natalie Lambert and Colin Teubner are saying about installing Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 7 Web browser.

Last week, Microsoft released version 7 of its Web browser -- the first update in five years -- and, with the exception of a couple bug reports that some experts have dismissed as minor, initial reviews have been positive.

In early October, prior to the release of Internet Explorer 7, Lambert and Teubner wrote a research note titled "Just Do It," urging business users to upgrade to IE7 after careful testing of any crucial business programs that rely on the browser.

They joined analyst groups such as Gartner, which also is advising companies to test, then upgrade, in large part because of IE7's improved security. Even members of the press, skeptical by nature and training, have joined in the chant.

"Internet Explorer 7.0 is the best browser Microsoft has ever produced," wrote Mike Wendland of the Detroit Free Press.

Safer Browsing

"IE7 has many security features they have added into this edition, including antiphishing and ActiveX opt-in," said Forrester's Lambert. ActiveX controls are small plug-ins embedded in Web sites that can be used by hackers to hijack a user's machine.

The new version of Internet Explorer kills several bugs that cropped up in version 6, including eight that were reported by security firm Secunia in August alone. Why so many? According to Lambert, Microsoft software suffers because of its popularity.

"Microsoft has a huge target on its forehead," she said. "Hackers and virus creators are going to create malware against software that is the most heavily deployed. They want to get the most bang for their buck."

Thus, Internet Explorer 7 might seem to be the least-secure browser option, but it's at least as secure as the new version of Firefox, and potentially more so, she added.

"As more people begin to adopt Firefox, you will see more threats against it," said Lambert.

Worry Not?

According to Forrester, Microsoft ran five beta tests of IE before its new release, and sought more input from users than ever before.

Of course, no software product -- above all, one that's just been released -- is without flaws. But if the notion of installing Internet Explorer 7 still gives you the jitters, there's a good reason to relax. The new version comes with a well-designed uninstaller that rolls back changes to your system -- just in case something goes wrong.

"If you've installed IE7 and find it doesn't work with your favorite Web site or, more importantly, enterprise application, you can go back to IE6 with minimal hassle," says Forrester's Teubner, who added that he tested this feature himself.