Archive for the ‘Articles’ Category
Spinutech & River Run Productions Win Gold & Silver Addy’s
www.ZanussiCentralVac.com
www.WaterlooCVB.com
www.EdThomasFamilyFoundation.org
Tags: Addys, photography, Video Work, web design
Spinutech gives Friday half-days a second try
Published in the Sunday edition of the Waterloo Courier on 5/17/2009.
Written by Jim Offner- he is the Courier business editor.
Let’s take some time out from the recession, the swine flu, Wall Street and the general economic malaise that seems to be gripping everybody. This break comes courtesy of Spinutech Inc., which itself has opted to break from the calamity that has become the modern business world.
The Cedar Falls-based web site development company, located at 201 Washington St. in Cedar Falls, has “chosen not to participate” in the economic downturn. In a day when many employees are afraid for their jobs on a daily basis, Spinutech is working to boost its employee morale. For other businesses hoping to spark some life in their employees, it might be worth a look.
This summer, Spinutech, for the second straight year, is giving all of its 15 Cedar Falls and two Des Moines employees half a day off each Friday. No strings attached. The half-day is the worker’s, to use as they wish. The program worked so well last year that managing partners Marc Reifenrath, Adam Lewis and Cory Schmidt jumped right into it again this summer, with no hesitation. The first half-day off was Friday.
“Last year, we kind of focused on some stuff to do as many quality-of-life benefits as we could,” Reifenrath said. “One of the things was half-day Fridays- for a full day’s pay – for the summer.”
Over a nine-week period, that’s basically 4 ½ days’ extra paid vacation per employee. “The first thought is that you’re giving away that time,” Reifenrath said. But, he added, Spinutech looks at it more as an investment in its work force.
“Our thought was people can be just as productive in 36 hours as they can in 40, especially with a nice incentive like that, ” he said.
“We are extremely busy and will continue to be throughout the summer, but this is a huge morale boost, and we know it is a great thing for everyone.”
Not a bad contrast to the usual stories of employees asked to give more and more back to their employers while worrying full-time about keeping their jobs. Fear, it is said not without some justification, is a great motivator. But so is a show of faith. And, especially today, it probably wouldn’t hurt employers to take a good, hard look at what Spinutech is doing to build bridges with their employees.
“We didn’t notice any difference in productivity, “Reifenrath said. “And the side effects, through morale, are noticeable.”
Too often, the term “team” is thrown around by employers. Programs like this give the word some real meaning. Oh, and incidentally, the half-day program doesn’t apply to everybody at Spinutech. The owners still work full Fridays.
Tags: Benefits, Spinutech Benefits
Never Use The Words “Home Page” On Your Home Page
Have you ever gone to a website and seen the words “Home Page” or “Home” in the page title? Probably quite a bit.
Many factors contribute to the ranking of your site in search engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo), but the page title is one of the most important things to consider when doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO). That is why you should never use vague and non-descript words like “Home Page”. Page titles are best when kept to 10-12 words. The goal is to use as many keywords as possible while still maintaining a complete sentence. Sometimes this is difficult, but it can be done.
When constructing a page title, we always start with a list of words that we think people would use to search. From here, you can actually find out how often these words have been searched in Google with their keyword tool. Not only is this interesting, it will help you know which words to focus on.
As an example, this is the list we made for the website www.do-itmolds.com. Do-it Molds is a company that manufacturers lead molds that allow fishing hobbyists to make their own tackle.
- Do-it Molds
- jig molds
- sinker molds
- lure molds
- fishing tackle
- lead molds
- pouring lead molds
After this, you just have to keep playing with word combinations until you come up with a sentence that contains most of your keywords. The name “Do-it Molds” has good name recognition in their industry so we decided to start the page title with this. Some people say you should end the page title with the company name - we think every situation is unique and you just have to make a judgement call. Here is what we ended up with:
Do-it Molds: Jig, sinker, & lure molds for pouring your own lead fishing tackle.
As of today, Do-it Molds ranks very high for most of these keywords, getting the top one or two positions in the Google organic listing. The page title definitely plays a role in this.
Tags: Keywords, Search Engine Optimization, SEO
Spinutech helps keep waste to a minimum
| This is an article that was in the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier on September 28th written by Jon Ericson.CEDAR FALLS- Spinutech stays green by reducing the amount of black and white it tosses out. The Cedar Falls Web firm has a green philosophy ingrained throughout the company. The fact that the company is so computer-oriented helps keep it from producing too much in the form of waste. “What we try to do, with the nature of our business, a lot of things are electronic to start with,” said Spinutech partner Adam Lewis. The green theory starts before Spinutech employees produce anything. “We ask people to think before they print,” Lewis said. |
 Adam Doerder- next to the recycling bins. |
Most of their work is done electronically, and Lewis said they don’t have a need for much paper. Much of what they do have in the form of paper comes in their physical inboxes as junk mail. A number of recycling bins are set up throughout the office for employees to dump unwanted paper products.
“We try to set up an environment where those kind of practices are encouraged,” Lewis said. Lewis said recycling doesn’t take much encouragement from management, as most of their youthful workforce is inclined to recycle before they ever step foot in the office.
“We have people who volunteer to take (paper) to the recycling center. They would be going anyway so they just load it n their cars and take it in,” Lewis said. The company doesn’t contract with anyone to do their recycling, the employees take care of it on their own.
In addition to the paper bins, Spinutech employees find convenient recycling options for cardboard boxes from the lunches they bring to work. The company’s low-waste principals also extend to their client base. When the company sets up an account they ask clients to use electronic invoices rather than paper versions.
“Some people opt not to because internally they need to have a paper copy. They’d rather have us print it than get an electronic copy and print it themselves,” Lewis said. “We have others who say they get enough e-mail the way it is, so they prefer a printed version.” But those companies who get their invoices by mail are in the minority. About 80 percent of Spinutech’s clients receive invoices electronically.
Tags: Being green, recycling
Should Your Business be Blogging?
There are literally tens of millions of blogs out on the web today. Many of these are personal blogs and there is a growing community of blogs that are for businesses. More and more businesses have been jumping into this form of communication and doing so with no direction. The lines become crossed of whether or not this is a personal blog or another form of well thought out branding and PR by your business.
Setting up a blog has become very easy. In about ten minutes you can have your blog setup and ready for posts. Two of the more popular providers allow you to use their software free of charge; WordPress and Blogger by Google. Both of these platforms have their advantages and disadvantages, and by doing a little research up-front, choosing the right one for your organization can be simple.
Before you race-off to setup an account with one of the above providers however, you really should spend some time asking yourself if a blog really benefits your organization. This will likely depend on the type of business you are in. If you have a client demographic that is on the web and would be interested in hearing and learning from what you have to say on a regular basis then yes, go for it. One of the single biggest mistakes you can make is starting a blog on your site and not posting to it often enough. From a corporate blog perspective, users want to be enlightened; they want to be educated about your area of expertise.
Think of your blog as a conversation with your current clients and prospective clients. In this conversation you will need to educate users on the various topics that are impacting your industry. Avoid potential damaging topics, such as what you did over Labor Day weekend and how much you had to drink. By mixing business discussions and personal escapades you are blurring your message and could be harming your image. Also, be sure that you are spelling correctly and using proper grammar. By creating well thought out content that truly is a resource, users will begin to look at you and your company as experts. This builds rapport over time and will strengthen your relationship. If the user isn’t a client, over time the need for your products or services could arise and you will now be at the fore-front of their mind.
Often times a blog is considered a one way communication effort. In some cases this is very true, in others it is not. A blog can have user generated feedback via comments to your postings. Be prepared for the good, the bad and the worst case scenario. Both of the solutions I’ve referenced allow the administrator to delete specific comments; however, this decision should be contemplated. Some users may post negative feedback just because and others may have valid concerns. By opening this dialogue and displaying your genuine interest in what others think of your product or service could help you garner trust and confidence.
Many corporations struggle with exactly what they should be blogging about. This is a common position, it is clear they should be doing something, but they just don’t know exactly what to do. In this scenario there is help. There are many consultants that offer blog “coaching”. These consultants can help train your staff to use the medium in a very effective way. Over time the consultant won’t be needed as your staff becomes more and more comfortable with posting on their own.
Remember, it is ok if your company doesn’t have a blog. If it is something your business decides to do, make sure you have a clear plan in place for regular posting. Think through what you ultimately want to accomplish with the blog. If you’re not sure what your business should be doing, check out how other businesses are using this medium and how it applies to your situation. Happy blogging, if you choose to do so.
Tags: blogging
How to be Green, with an IT twist
It seems like everyone in the past year is trying to be a better citizen to mother earth. More people are starting to recycle and change their actions to try to play a more active role in becoming green. A place that many people forget to stay consistent with this act is at their work place. In the past year or so we have been making a conscious effort to become more eco friendly with our habits around the office. In fact we have even appointed a Green Zen Master. Their role is to encourage and inspire the proper habbits.
One of the biggest things we have done is switched to completely electric power. This includes our heating system, which is produced by heat pumps as well as a small electric water heater. Because we have no gas running to our building we receive a better rate from CFU, over time this amounts to a large savings. Where we can we use the high efficient light bulbs in our office we are, these last longer and use much less energy. Since we have a large amount of computers in use it is important that a as a whole we cut down our needs in other areas to compensate for our demands in other areas.
The above mentioned are not necessarily IT specific, but are things that may be easy to change in your office. On the IT side there are several simple things that you can do to help cut down on your electric bill. The easiest one is to simply shut down all computers after work hours that are not mission critical. By putting your computer into standby you will still be using power, the best way to save will be to shut the power completely down. Also check any other peripheral machines like printers, faxes, speakers, copiers that could also be shut down after hours.
Many of us are engrained in our ways and feel it necessary to print much more than we really need to. Try to only print the documents that you must have on paper. If everyone in your office can cut back on ten or more sheets a day this would have a much larger impact on the overall paper usage in a work environment. When buying printer paper, look for recycled paper. In our office we use recycled paper for internal documents and record keeping, for formal documents that go out to clients we have a nicer paper that we use. Often times you can create a PDF of your document and simply email the same item that may have been printed off.
Billing can create a large amount of wasted paper as well as an extra cost when you factor in the paper and mailing expenses. We encourage all of our clients to accept billing via email. This is quicker and much more cost effective all while being green. Some organizations must receive the invoices in the mail, if you are one of those organizations then consider a change.
If you want to be extreme, there are hosting services that offer green power as their primary source of energy. Typically these hosting environments are wind powered and can provide a breakdown of how they get their power. You can expect to pay a little more for this service but it is a green option.
This is by no means a complete list of the absolutes, hopefully it will start a conversation in your office and how you can become a little greener. For more tips and detailed information there are many websites that provide great information. Google “How to be green” and you will have 45,300,000 results.
Tags: Being green
Knowing Your Website Vitals
Having a great website that reflects your overall branding is great, knowing your website vitals is even better. Many businesses are familiar with the standard statistics such as hits, visitors, unique visitors, etc. These are all great to know but are really only a small slice of the pie. I like to call a few key statistics your website vitals. These are the statistics that you should keep an eye on to really judge how your website is performing. The vitals for every website can vary depending on the audience, generally speaking the statistics I refer to as the vitals apply to most sites.
For the sake of this article we will use an ecommerce site as an example. The key vitals I like to look at for an ecommerce site are the conversion rate, source of your traffic, visits and keyword performance. The conversion rate is calculated by taking your total visits divided by each successful purchase or transaction. The higher your conversion rate the better obviously. What you want to see with this is an increase in your daily visits while your conversion rate stays relatively the same. If your traffic increases and your conversion rate drops then there needs to be some other alterations made to your site. A good average conversion rate should be between three and seven percent.
The “sources “ of your traffic is referring to where your traffic is coming from. The main sources are direct traffic (meaning the user typed your url in directly), search engines and referring sites (other sites that have links to your site). For an ecommerce site the search engine traffic is the most important one that we pay attention to. For most ecommerce sites when we break down the different categories by percentages the search engine traffic should be close to fifty percent or more, the higher the better for this statistic. The reason this garners so much attention is that these visitors are looking for products that are specific to your site. Typically this means that we will see higher conversion rates for these visitors since they have found specifically what they were looking for.
As mentioned above, visits are also a key statistic to watch. It is the root of factoring many other statistics for your site such as conversion rates, average order value per visit, and so on. Obviously the more visits your site can have the better. However, it is better with our example to have a higher conversion rate as opposed to just a bunch of traffic. If your visits increase and your conversion rate decreases then the traffic isn’t good traffic. You should always strive for quality visits to your site, this is how you will increase your overall conversion rate as well as gross sales.
The final vital statistic in our example is keyword performance. This is in reference to how the search engines are sending traffic to your site for specific search terms. By monitoring how your keywords are performing, or not performing, you can use this information to make the appropriate adjustments to your site. By monitoring your keywords you can increase sales, conversion rates and potentially your average order value. The visits provided by the keywords will likely be the ideal visitor that we want to see on the site, this visitor has a higher chance of making a purchase.
Knowing what vitals, such as the ones mentioned above, to look at is one important step to a healthy website. One of the best resources for this information is provided by Google. Google offers a free software called Google Analytics. Google Analytics is simply amazing, it will give you way more information about your site than you will ever need. All of the above statistics are at your fingertips and accessible any where you can pull up Google.com. Monthly reports can be setup to automatically post and be emailed; this is great to send out to other associates that may not be as technically savvy.
If you want to get a better return on your investment try watching your websites vitals. Having the awareness on your vitals will give you the knowledge you need to make your site an ongoing resource or sales tool for your business. Knowing this information will allow you to make the appropriate changes to your site to ultimately give you a measurable return on your investment. Good luck, and if you have questions… Google it!
Tags: google analytics
How to make your website stand out. Add video for extra pop.
By now, almost everyone has heard of YouTube.com. This has helped pave the way for many to add video to the web. Typically the videos on YouTube are humorous or viral marketing videos and are more for entertainment value than obtaining knowledge about a product or service. Other sites have also started to integrate video into their online strategy. Many of these sites are news related sites displaying various news stories. This is all good and great for these sites; however it still seems unrealistic to put video on your site, right? Wrong.
With recent advancements in compression software and Flash, developers are now able to convert a common digital video file into a compressed Flash file. By using Flash to view and play video, there is no longer any required software such as: QuickTime, Windows Media Player, or Real Time. The benefits do not stop there. By converting the file to Flash and properly compressing the video (making the file size smaller), the video will load extremely fast and play smoothly. Many of the other video players listed above typically require the video to be played outside of the browser by opening or launching another window to play the video. Conversely, Flash will display the video within the page that is being viewed. The video will be shown in a widescreen format that is fully integrated into the look of the site.
A common site for a business can integrate video in a useful manner that will add value to their site and make the user’s experience more involved. For an ecommerce site how nice would it be to see a demo of how the product you are interested in works. When shopping online many times a product doesn’t seem tangible like it does in a store on the shelf. By showing how the product works with a short video it helps bridge this gap for the user. With an ecommerce site, you are able to give tips on how to use the product, give setup instructions, maintenance suggestions, and much more.
A great example of a site that has recently implemented video very effectively is PacoRosic.com. Paco is a local artist that has received a lot of press in recent months for his recreation of the Sistine Chapel. This work of art was done with over 5,000 cans of spray paint, yes spray paint. Without using video to display how this amazing feat was accomplished, no one would know how the painting was done. The video clearly shows how Paco uses spray paint not only through the visual display but also the sounds. The video is presented in a wide screen format and truly entices the user to view more after watching this video. You can see this in action at www.PacoRosic.com.
So what if your site doesn’t sell anything online and is strictly a service business? Sites like these actually have more opportunity to implement video on their sites. A popular trend in recent years in the marketing world has been to use customer testimonials. Most sites have done this with quotes and possibly a logo and a headshot of the person giving the testimonial. So obviously the next step would be to interview the client or customer and have their testimonial be in video format on your site. By putting the testimonial on your site in a video format it will give your target audience much more confidence. The user will know that the testimonial hasn’t been edited to sound better and that the words came directly from the person giving the testimonial.
In the near future TV will continue to change drastically as it merges with the Internet on a higher level. Many shows are already offered for online sale or viewing on their appropriate site. The applications used above only begin to scratch the surface on how to apply video to a site. Whether you are using video to make a product seem more tangible, gain confidence in your potential customers or just providing a webmercial that is an overview of your business, video can greatly enhance a site and help promote your business.
