SPAM Alert: How to Conduct Social Media Marketing at a Distance

The main point, really, is to recognize that the Internet is made up of social networking communities who are here to share information with one another. While this sharing culture is the perfect setting for online shops wishing to announce their main events, someone has to draw the line. When is store visibility a positive thing, and when does it turn into a nuisance?

It’s not really that hard to figure out. If you have a salesman following you around just to hand you a flyer about houses on sale, you’ll feel harassed, right? The same thing happens in an online social networking community. When you add a store, thinking that it’s good to have a commercial contact on your list, you’ll eventually regret the decision once that store floods your newsfeed with too many announcements. Entrepreneurs should always think this way and put themselves in their contact’s shoes.

On the other hand, too little visibility is also a bad thing. When nothing happens to your store for an entire month, clients might start thinking that the business is over. Zero-progress is often translated as zero-profits, and if a store isn’t getting any money from its prospective clients, then that says bad things about its products.

It’s safe to post announcements at least once a week, and at most, on a daily basis. Timing announcements and sales during payday is also a good strategy. There’s no use trying to oversell your products when people have no means to pay for them. Making your goods look like a necessity by promoting them through articles and videos is also a good accompaniment to your social networking announcements.

Make sure that you give out useful information while you’re promoting your products. Clients appreciate it when you give out free tips instead of just overselling everything that’s in your store. Even if you know they’re smart enough to notice it’s a marketing ploy, efforts to make your sales talk appear like a DIY tip will always be appreciated.

If you’re unsure what constitutes spam then you’re best to talk to a professional as spamming can be detrimental to your website rankings and credibility. Ignition Media offer Social Media services to enhance your websites rankings through their Gold Coast website promotion packages. Contact Ignition Media and ask about the RankIt SEO packages and custom SEO solutions.

Social networks online have the same nuances as your college life. If you play it cool, you’ll be popular among your peers. When you push too hard, you’ll be annoying people and no one would want to talk to you.

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The Pros & Cons of Artistic Website Design for Businesses

What if the artwork overshadows the website’s message? This is what usually worries small business owners when they use extremely artistic and rather experimental website designs. While hand-drawn images are trendy in shirts and blog sites today, they’re not always the right background images to use on a website—unless they do embody the brand’s attitude.

Website designs should always be “in character”. It’s not enough that the elements are pretty, or that the page looks attractive when all the elements have been put together. They need to present a whole idea to the website visitors, and this idea should always be distinctively characteristic of the product or service that’s being marketed.

An artistic website is only advantageous if the website is selling artistic products. Ideally, the principle behind the website’s focal point (the artistic icon or background image) matches the designs on the products on display. If the image, no matter how good it is as an artwork, has nothing to do with the company or the products on display, then it doesn’t work well as an element of the website. If the “artistic” object on the other hand is also an icon used to identify the brand, then it might work well as an element of the website.

The key here is to keep all the elements of the website unified. Experimental website designs might catch the attention of visitors because they look new. However, the experimental factors in the website shouldn’t get in the way of the website’s navigation. Make sure that artistic experiments still keep the visitors’ needs in mind. If they make the content appear too cluttered, and if they tend to confuse the visitors, then they might be bad for business. It would be safer for small business owners to stick to conventional website templates.

To make sure you have the right design for your business talk to a professional. Ignition Media offers professional Gold Coast website design services for small businesses to large corporations. We offer free website analysis of existing websites and free no obligation quotes.

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Stomp Footware

Ignition Media was contracted by BlueX2 to design the PSD templates for their client Stomp Footware

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Spirit Publishing

Using WordPress CMS with a custom built Product Manager, and E-Card System, Ignition Media designed and developed Spirit Publishing’s Website.

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The Magazine Layout: Print Trends Online

The distinction between print and online layout standards is blurring. People are seeing more and more conventional print layouts used in websites as well. Why is that? Some people think it’s because old habits die hard. Readers are so attuned to seeing these standard layout designs on magazines that they think it would be chic to apply them on websites as well.

Content managers, on the other hand, find the magazine layout more attractive than other website layouts because it keeps the text and images in neat, distinct columns. The result is a text-heavy page which is tight but not visually appalling. After all, how can one disagree with years of experience? Print media has been applying the same “look” for decades, and the magazines continue to sell.

Company owners mostly nod in agreement. They read the Time Magazine, and are big fans of the layout as well. They think it looks more professional, and it does let the website highlight as many articles as possible without letting the website elements look cluttered. For them, the design appears sleek. It’s automatically information-heavy. Therefore, it’s attractive for website visitors who are curious about the content being offered by the site.

The magazine layout, in other words, will work well for websites which have a lot of textual content to offer. Just like a print magazine, a website using an online magazine needs to reflect the personality of its target readers. It can be as straightforward and plain as a business magazine, or as flamboyant as an image-heavy kid’s magazine. This will be upon the discretion of the layout artist and the idea s/he plans to deliver.

The only downside to this layout is that it may be too busy for website visitors wishing to see less text and more images. This layout design is the antithesis of the billboard single-page design. If the website wants to copy the look of an old fashioned food magazine, though, because it’s a website for a food channel, then the magazine design will definitely work better than any image-heavy single page layout.

If you require a magazine layout for your CMS website contact Ignition Media. Our Gold Coast website designers love web 2.0 design and code with only the best css to ensure you’re site meets the highest standards.

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Media Comparison: Social Networking Sites vs. E-Newsletters

When it comes to online marketing, trends play a very big role. For example, when emails were the “in” thing, consumers saw a wide dissemination of electronic newsletters. Five to ten years later, the marketing flavors have changed. From banners and e-newsletters, we now have social networking pages, otherwise known as “Fan Pages” doing what e-newsletters used to do.

Micro blogging as a trend

Compared to electronic newsletters, though, these fan pages only give out snippets of announcements to readers. Also, they don’t crowd email space with their announcements and catalogues. Instead, these announcements and catalogues are posted publicly, on an online “mini-site”, with links to the main website. Why would small business owners want to do this? These days, online networking websites have newsfeeds which publish newly posted announcements from the user’s contacts in a single page.

This is a more effective and affective promotional campaign for most Internet marketers simply because they’re not annoying their clients with too much information. Instead, they’re just passively there. Their clients get to know about their products only when the links are clicked on. Otherwise, they’re not considered a nuisance because they’re eating up too much bandwidth.

Possible disadvantages

Passivity is a double edged sword though. Not all social networking users log in at the same time, and when you post in the morning, for example, you’re announcing your business event only to a limited number of contacts. Other contacts will have to click on your page for them to be able to read your announcements.

There’s also the possibility that an unhappy client would post something nasty on your social networking page. This can’t be helped because the social networking culture is all about dialogues. It’s not about you announcing something and enjoying the power of speech alone. Unless you’re good at handling negative comments, social networking pages can also damage the reputation of your business.

If you look at the ups and downs of the social networking page, though, you’ll realize that it’s all about how well you adjust to the changing cultures online. The dialogue culture of Web 2.0 will be around for many years. Between the emailed newsletter and the social media page, the latter is still the better choice.

To take advantage of what social networking can bring to your website contact Ignition Media. We specialise in Social Media marketing, SEO and website promotion for small to large Gold Coast and Brisbane businesses.

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How Useful Information can give you Top Ranking

Fill your web pages with a lot of keywords and you’ll probably get the attention of web crawlers, enjoy top ranking for a day or two, and then get blacklisted permanently because you employed black hat. Does this sound attractive to you? Probably not. No one wants to be wiped out of the face of the World Wide Web. Now, how about getting long term results? If you want to enjoy long term top page rankings, fill your pages with useful information. Write for humans and you will top that list.

The Internet is experiencing a paradigm shift. It’s more human-oriented now because people are realizing that all this business of generating text, images, and information in general is all about sharing knowledge. You can’t get that with “keyword-rich” articles which say nothing at all. Instead of generating 300 words of fluffs and bluffs, fill that space with an article that would rival those written for the print magazines.

Do-It-Yourself articles for beginners in almost every niche are very hot these days. If you happen to specialize in a particular field, from gardening to construction, you can fill a blog with helpful information which could help anyone who’s out there looking for DIY tips. One of the constantly “hot” topics is pet care. You can talk about caring for conventional pets like dogs, cats and fishes, or try to be more unique and put up a page for hedgehog lovers or chinchilla pet owners.

No matter what type of articles you write, always try to help people out. Readers will always appreciate the effort you’ve put into building that blog. Blogs aren’t just spaces for confessional ravings and rants. The trend now is to share as much information as you can. The information can be derived from your first hand experiences, or a collation of everything you’ve researched and read about the topic. You’ll be surprised at how rich the material can be.

If you’re interested in creating a blog or require articles contact Ignition Media. We have professional copywriters experienced in creating blog posts and articles to enhance a websites ranking performance.

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Enterprise Search

Ignition Media was contracted by Web and Print Design to do the Website Design and CSS Templates for all elements of this website.

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Communicating well with your Niche Market

Your niche market isn’t a static character you can depend on whenever you need someone to affirm how you’re doing very well. Customers have needs, and sometimes we might think we already have them all figured out. The thing is, just because we’ve done very well in starting our business doesn’t mean we can already sit back and be complacent about our online business.

The moment that online store is operating and generating revenue, the real work begins. Monitoring the influx of customers is one thing, but what we’re really interested in is what they have to say about the store.

Offer online support

Whether you’re running a shipping company or an online store for fancy jewelry, you should always make yourself (or at least a representative of your company) available to customer queries. Putting up modal boxes for online chat support is one of the best ways to support customers these days.

The static (and public) chat boxes at the side columns of websites are now passé. They’re also pretty damaging when customers post queries or comments which negatively reflect your store or service. Accommodate customers but don’t give them the opportunity to bring your image down.

Ask for service feedback

After processing their orders or answering their online queries, you can also ask them about how happy they are with the service and the product you’ve given. Tell them that this will help you improve your store, and don’t forget to thank them. While this may seem like a lot of work, customers actually like it when you make them feel that their opinions matter. As a matter of fact it does. A single unhappy customer can permanently damage your online business. Try to keep your reputation intact while you’re in this field.

Freebies for loyalty

Do you have repeat customers? Always let them know how happy you are to see them again. Give them a little freebie on their second or third transaction with you. Customers like freebies, no matter how small it is. If they were happy with your service before, they’ll be happier with your little gift. Who knows, they might even refer friends your way, just to help you out with your business.

In any sort of marketing, whether it’s online or brick-and-mortar, feedback is necessary. Small business owners can’t afford to trust their instincts alone. Customer ratings are necessary.

If you’re a small business looking for affordable Gold Coast website design solutions, contact Ignition Media. We can assist in all your website design, development and website promotion needs.

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Arranging Your Website’s Centerpiece

Whether you’ve chosen to lay everything out on a single page, or to create a more conventional “gateway” website with a lot of links in columns, a good website design is always like a good photograph. It needs to have a single focal point. It has to have a subject. Before you get started, you need to decide on this subject. Is it the company’s logo? Is it the slogan? Every other element will revolve around this subject. This subject will predetermine the website’s color scheme, attitude, and shape.

Logo

The most commonly used subject is the company’s logo because it embodies the entire branding direction of a product or a service. For example, a water company’s logo may be colored with hues of blue and white, and these colors are encapsulated within circular figures. Naturally, when a logo like this is used as the subject, the rest of the website elements, including buttons and fonts, will have to be patterned after the logo.

When the logo is too intricate, the website designer may also choose to use a plainer layout to juxtapose the details of the logo. Either way, the logo set the direction of the website’s overall design.

Slogan

Sometimes, the company’s slogan is more popular than its logo. A prime example is Nike’s “Just do it” slogan which has outlived a lot of other global slogans in the same field. Because it’s so effective, it also controlled the theme of the company’s posters and television advertisements. When you’re working with a slogan this strong, it’s safe to pattern the website according to the “blue print” of ads the company has been running for years. Slogan subjects are also pretty common in sites kept by service providers.

For example, the slogan “Be remarkable.” may be the highlight of a website advertising unique domain names. A photo of a browser with an address bar scrolling down to five very similar domain names would be a good background image. It’s a subtle way of saying, “You want to be unique if you want to sell products.” The design sends the message across without being to overbearing.

If you’re looking to re-design your existing website or even starting from scratch… whether you have a clear idea of what you want or no idea at all, contact Ignition Media and talk with one of our Gold Coast website designers today. We can assist in the website design element of your website or the complete development.

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Search Engine Crawlers and Human Eyes: Which One Should You Please?

Sometimes, when you stare long enough at an online article, you know exactly what type of audience the website owner wanted to please: man or machine. Those who practice black hat SEO won’t even try to hide their “text weapons” under the guise of an informational article. They’re really just there to attract web crawlers and nothing (no one) else. Human readers, just by scanning the paragraphs, would know that the text isn’t meant for their eyes. It was published so the webpage would be ranked highly by auto bot operated search engines.

That’s a very sad picture because that’s not what the Internet was meant for. The World Wide Web was created so that human beings, no matter which part of the world they may be in, could share useful information with one another. The Internet is fashioned as a complex and diverse “sharing community”. Web pages which prioritize web crawlers to human eyes defeat this purpose, and they also, in effect, render the search engines useless. With so much garbage text occupying the first slots of search pages, how useful can the search engine get?

When you’re writing articles for your website, always please the human audiences first. Make your articles as relevant as possible by providing useful information and phrasing everything well. Forget about the keywords you’ll have to integrate with the text because they will appear in your article “naturally” every once in a while. If you can, try to spread these keywords well so that they’re still recognizable by web crawlers but they don’t annoy your human readers.

It is possible to please both search engine crawlers and human readers. It’s just that the writing of these articles may take time. This is because the real relevance of an article can’t be measured by the density of keywords in the text body. These are weighed by human minds, who value information over keyword repetition.

To guarantee your website follows white hat SEO techniques, contact Ignition Media. Our professional Gold Coast SEO’s will ensure all measures are followed to give your website the best (safest) chance of achieving high organic rankings.

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Password Encryption: Does the Programming Language Matter?

Password Encryption: Does the Programming Language Matter?

Just as there is no one best programming language to use for all websites, there’s also no programming language that’s considered “best” for password encryptions. This basically means that any programming language will do as long as the developer you’ve hired is confident about it. In other words, the security of your website is dependent more on the skill of the developer than the credibility of the language s/he is using to build your site.

There are, however, “best practices” to keep in mind. Hackers are getting better and better at decrypting passwords, so the best way to keep your system hacker-free is to enforce these rules:

• Require all of the members of your website to apply both numerical and alphabetical values to their passwords. Purely numerical or purely alphabetical passwords are easier to crack.
• Salt the passwords using a reliable application.
• Use hashes instead of reversible encryptions. Reversible encryptions can be cracked too easily. Most users use a single password for all of their accounts. This means that if another website is hacked and you share a common user with this site, your website security can be threatened as well.
• Some website developers implement password expirations. This is a bad idea because users will be discouraged from using complex alphanumeric passwords.
• Do not store passwords on your database, especially plain text ones.
• Use a common algorithm for your website. Complex/unique ones can be deduced from hashes. Once this is cracked, you’re going to have a problem with website security for a long time.
• Give your end users a password length requirement. 6 to 12 characters are standard requirements these days because a password that’s any shorter than six characters is easily cracked.

These rules might seem stiff, but as long as you tell your users how this is needed for their own security, you won’t turn them off. A long password requirement is better than an unsecure website. Password encryption is necessary, especially for websites which contain your end users’ personal information.

If you are after a professional Gold Coast programmer to develop your website, contact Ignition Media, our programmers ensure all security measures are in place to provide you with the highest levels of security.

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