BrokenglasseDigital Interactiive

E-mailers can be a powerful weapon in your marketing plan. They help to create trust among your customers, increases Brand visibility and establishes the Brand in the minds of the readers.

Here are a few tips to help you take your E-mailers to the Web 2.0 standards.

1. Empathize your audience.

Though your E-mailer’s ultimate goal is to promote your business, its primary function is to build relationships with prospects and customers. Be sure to discuss topics that are relevant and interesting to your readers. If they know they’ll be getting useful information, they’ll continue to subscribe.

2. Successful writers make it unique.

If you want your E-mailer to get noticed, make it different. Adding a touch of personalization by including a photograph from your official event can help the mail to stand out. Don’t be afraid to portray emotion and personality.

3. Right design makes sense

A good visual can speak mor than 1,000 words and it has got a lot to do with its success. The right design can captivate your audience before they read a single word. Create a design that is clean, simple, elegant and reinforces your brand.

4. Request for feedback

Always prepared to get commented back. Ask your readers for comments on your articles or writeups. They’ll feel welcomed and you will get feedbacks on what you can do to improve and what your readers really like.

5. Do not forget to Include your contact information

A E-mailer for sure will get you regular sales. So make sure readers have a way to reach you if they feel the urge to buy now.

Follow the above steps and your E-mailer will help convert your readers into lifelong customers.

There are two possible reasons why you want to learn internet marketing. It could be that you want to build you own online business or you want to work for other people who have online businesses. Whatever your reason might be, there are three ways to learn this business, you can learn it through self-study, hire an expert to teach you, or become a member in an internet marketing forum.

While you can choose any of the three options, it would be beneficial and time-saving if you choose to learn internet marketing in a forum. Why? This is simply because most internet marketing forums are owned by successful internet marketers who succeeded the online business. Also, this is one place that experts in this field gather to share ideas or discuss the latest happenings in the world of online business. So if you are worry about the legitimacy of the information, you should head to internet marketing forums.

Because an internet marketing forum is usually created by an internet marketer, you can be sure that all the resources found in there are all about internet marketing, from training materials to tools, and more. However, you can’t always expect a free membership to this type of forum as it often comes with a minimal membership fee. The cost is nothing compared to the information you are about to take away. If you are to compare the cost of the membership fee to the cost you have to shell out when hiring someone to educate you or the time it takes to learn the business on your own, you will come to realize that the membership fee is almost negligible. Besides, you can always enjoy a free trial period, which doesn’t cost much.

If you haven’t experienced being a member of an internet marketing forum, one thing I can say is everything you need to know about the business is provided for. An internet marketing forum is the cost-effective way to learn the business. You don’t need to jump from one source or website to another just to find the missing pieces. Again, everything is in one place.

What I can suggest you to do is follow where the experts are. If you want to succeed in this business, get ideas from successful internet marketers. That way, you will not waste time devising your own business ideas that do not guarantee success. Probably the only time you will realize that the business idea you come up with is not effective is when you have implemented it and nothing converts. In other words, you have wasted money and time instead of making money.

15th March 1985 – A significant date in .com Industry

25 years ago, computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc, registered the first .com web domain ever: www.symbolics.com. By today’s design standards, and considering how websites looked back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, it’s quite decent, although a bit short on content.

Symbolics Homepage screenshot in 1985

We often get requests to assist firms or individuals for building their websites, no surprises there, for we are a web designing company! But it so happens that most of these requests often need to be translated as they are as if some form of Klingon or other alien languages and it feels as though the prospective client is just making a fleeting visit to planet earth!

We often get enquiries from enthusiastic entrepreneurs (that’s what they call themselves) with ‘web design projects’ like, starting a website for online advertising business that would allow them to generate money when people surf their web site (Rather ‘Enzine’ in their Klingon way). Latest was, “I want to have a web, graphic and search engine software for my website. But, if you can’t come up with the software, how about you providing me with a search engine quote? I just want 5 pages and I will do the rest. I am a web designer so I find it difficult to design a search engine for myself.”

And of late, many wish to have their own Facebook, Orkut, Twitter and EBay clones or a shopping cart like Amazon.com.

It becomes a tough job to make people accept the fact that there are certain wonders a website can or cannot do. Although it wouldn’t be impossible to create such websites, the time factor and the budget are the keys that determine its providence.

Making ‘money online’ is not a Joke

It is a difficult task to ‘make money online’, at least way more difficult than what people think it is. It is because of a few online marketers and online gurus that the common man believes that making money through websites is one of the easiest things ever. But, the cold truth is that turning profit from a website is really, really difficult, especially one that is aiming high. Even wildly successful internet endeavors such as Facebook and Amazon took years to show profits.

Not knowing the Basics

In many instances, a prospective client does not know enough about the Internet and how it works to start up such a venture successfully. And they do not accept this fact.

By this, we are not belittling people who wish to start up such ventures. We all have to start somewhere, and even Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg at one stage knew nothing about the Internet or websites, but come on… there is a wealth of information available out there today as well as sites that can be used as case studies!

Budgeting is important

When people approach us for Facebook clones they do not realize how much funding was required to implement this social networking giant. It is known that angel investors poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the site! People should understand that the same level of functionalities is not possible with a limited budget. It is not that a social networking site cannot be created with limited budgets, but the clients also need to realize the limitations of these websites and the fact that it cannot be an instant hit among the masses!

To create the Website is just the beginning

The web site owner sometimes tends to think that the process ends once the website is built. They suffer from the typical ‘build it and they will come’ myth. There is no clear understanding among them of what it takes to get visitors to a site, or how to market the site either online or offline.

All the above leaves us, as a web designing company with a few ethical dilemmas. Do we implement the site as per the client’s whims and fancies, (despite knowing that is may not make his website a hit) which is a version of ‘take the money and run’ concept, or do we tell the client that his brilliant idea is just never going to fly? Unfortunately, doing the latter means that we will probably go out of business as nearly 50% of the websites we build are forced to be based on someone’s crazy business ideas.

The only other alternative is to act not only as a web designing company but also as a web consulting firm, dispensing advice, coaching and guiding the client, enabling him to see success and satisfaction through the built website.

After all, that is what we are ideally supposed to be doing, right?

While I was writing this, someone called me and asked, “Why don’t you try working out the costs for a ‘cool’ version of existing social networking giants by launching a ‘YouTwitFace’ (Youtube, facebook and twitter)?” Oops what do I say??

1. If you want more pages of site to be indexed, then you should have more relevant links

The number of pages that Google indexes from your website is roughly proportional to the PageRank (Google PR) of your website. That means, more pages of your website will be indexed if your website has many inbound links.

Google does not have an indexation cap, i.e. they will index all pages of your website if you have enough inbound links. Remember that the PageRank displayed in Google’s toolbar is different from that Google uses in its ranking algorithm. So, it may not work. Learn the real art.

Hint: Start Indexing

2. Hosting servers can count too..! Slow servers can cause problems

Google’s crawler has only limited time to evaluate each and every site. If Google can only crawl two pages at any given time due to the speed of the server, then Google can set some sort of upper bound on how many pages they will fetch from that host server. This can be a major problem for websites that are hosted on slow or shared servers.

Hint: Host your site with a more Reliable Hosting company

3. Don’t over load your site with same contents everywhere. Duplicate content can cause problems

Imagin we browse through a website and find that most of the pages are duplicates but with different link name, we will drop out the duplicate pages and try to ignore them. That means we give a low priority. Google decides the same way.

As mentioned above, Google will index your web pages based on the PageRank of your pages. If you have duplicate content, some pages of your website will be discarded and you’ll waste ranking opportunities.

If you link from one page to a duplicate page, you can mess up your PageRank. Google also tries to pass the PageRank and other link signals from the duplicate pages to the original page.

If you use the rel=canonical tag on your web pages then the pages needn’t be exact duplicates but they should be conceptual duplicates of the same product, or things that are closely related.

Hint: Always create more and more original content which is relevant

4. A big NO-NO to Affiliate pages

Affiliate pages do not page rankings. If a website is an affiliate website that is very similar to other pages (only with a different logo, etc.) then this page won’t get high rankings.

PageRank power is not passed on when Google detects that it is an affiliate link

5.  Though 301 redirects work, do not expect the PageRank to pass on

When you change your domain name, you need to redirect your old pages with a 301 redirect to your new page then the link power will be passed to your new domain name. It works, but the overall power of the links may be decreased. Yes, 301 redirects may not pass the full PageRank.

6. Never have any Low quality pages, which can cause serious problems

Google stamps certain pages in any website as of low value. If there are a large number of  low value pages, then it might not crawl quite as many pages from that site.

When Google finds, that a lot of page are having very limited content, it might stop crawling immediately. If you really want to have almost all the pages of your site, then have the relevant contents with lots of text on them.

7.  Take necessary care before you distribute your PageRank to other pages

Google does not want you to sculpt your website for PageRank reasons. The best way to pass link power from one page to other pages is to have good website navigation.

Site’s Information architecture, how you make links and its structure appear on a page in a way to get the traffic to the page that you want to popularize. It is really a better way to approach it than trying to do individual sculpting of PageRank on links.

You can distribute that PageRank very carefully between related pages, and use related links straight to your product pages rather than into your navigation. There are brilliant ways to do that without necessarily going towards trying to sculpt PageRank

8. JavaScript navigation looks nice, but Google doesn’t like it

Google use to scan within JavaScript, and would probably look for links.  Google has gotten smarter about JavaScript and can execute some JavaScript. But it doesnot mean that Google executes all JavaScript, so there are some conditions in which Google doesn’t JavaScript at all.

More confusing??

Google does have the ability to execute a large fraction of JavaScript but it does it only when it needs or want to.

9. Do not purchase links, Google does not like it.

Google wants to give the most accurate results for the search terms and definitely don’t want advertisements to affect the results.

If you want high rankings on Google, there are various ethical, white-hat SEO methods; that lead to lasting results.

It would be an EXPENSIVE mistake if someone tries to cheat Google.

1. Headline – Make it interesting..! Many people think that one should use a lot of Keywords in the headline so as to enable search engines to reach them. But it is not true always. Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, AltaVista and Bing have their own algorithm to throw away the relevant results for any search made. Just by adding few keywords on the title doesn’t make it a relevant article and the search engines have their own way to fight keyword spam. The important aspect of the Headline should be made more relevant to the article itself, it should be more attractive to the readers, publishers and visitors. The headline you give should compel the readers to go through the entire article in search of the set motto or if not, at least open your article and skim through the same.

2. Opening content in your First Paragraph – First impression is always the Best..! The opening paragraph of any article decides how long the reader is going to stay with the article. Article by itself, if expected to do the job of marketing your product or service, then it should make the reader glued to the content till the conclusion. Show people why it is more important for them to go through the entire article so that they gain something out of it.

3. Body of the Article – The essence of the article lies here. You explain, contradict, convince, persuade, market and finally you sell. This is the important part of your article where you have prepared your reader mentally to absorb the finest details about whatever you are explaining through. Although the body of the article is loaded with contents and technical information, it should retain the interest of the reader till the last word. You can substantiate and validate the points mentioned and make the reader happy that he is on the right article which he was searching for all these years.

4. Call to Action – Final Objective of all your effort lies here. The reader is with you, you have offered him a comfort zone which he is thoroughly enjoying, now its time to do justice to your duty. It’s a transition phase, where you inform him a bit more about you or your service, but don’t go overboard. People are more concerned about what you can do for them instead of know about who you are. There should be a compelling Call to Action, which can be explicit or indirect but should be done at the right time. Warning: Never try to sell here..!

5. Landing – You have created a confidence about your product or service, or about what ever the reader is going to gain out of reading our article. Apart from confidence you have also created a little curiosity in him, which should be the driving force to land into your website, where you can have more elaborate content, mind blowing visuals, customer testimonials, product pricing and offers (particularly tailored for the landing page alone). Videos and Pictures are also best used in the landing pages where the real selling happens..!

Pay Per Click (PPC):

A Pay Per Click campaign can drive instant targeted traffic. Running a PPC campaign is not easy as it seems. There are a lot of potholes that might occur if there is no experience, knowledge and the time for testing and tracking. A poorly managed PPC campaign will result in loss of money for the company. We’ll drive targeted traffic and then make sure that traffic converts into leads and sales.

We can help set up your campaigns in Google, Yahoo, and MSN, perform campaign management and optimize your website for better conversions. Work with us and enjoy all the benefits of effective PPC advertising.

Key Benefits of PPC:

• Instant Traffic: You start getting visitors to your website right from the first hour of your PPC campaign activation. To a great extent, the quality of your visitors depends on the way your campaign is set up.

• Highly Targeted: With PPC, you can only get visitors who use certain keywords or visit specific websites related to your business. Besides that, you can target certain geographical locations, demographics, languages, and times of the day/week. All of this makes this type of advertising very targeted.

• Easy to Measure: Tracking your PPC campaign performance is easy. Obtain detailed reports of your website and insights into important statistics about your website’s visitors.

• Controlled: With PPC you have full control over your expenditures. You can stop, pause and resume your campaign whenever you want, change your daily or monthly budget, and test what is best for you.

Key Services of PPC: We offer a complete range of services which means all of the research, creative, testing and management work is done by us. Our customers only need to provide the initial input; we do the rest. The key features of our PPC campaign service include:

ð Keyword Research

ð Campaign Setup

ð Landing Page Analysis

ð Weekly (on Demand) Campaign Performance Reporting

ð Unlimited Managed Keywords

ð Budget Analysis

Custom Web Design: – making the web a beautiful place

Creativity is subjective. We design your message with clarity and a purpose.

Every business needs a website. Our web design team builds web pages that are both functional and stylish that gives an edge over your competitors.

The content is as important as the package. Making your presence felt in the internet is passé. It requires a lot more, for your website visitors to turn into your clients. Having a website is one of the best tools a business can use to reach their existing clients and to obtain new ones. A strong web presence tells your clients and customers that you’re a leader in your field, that you really mean business.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Your website will speak a million words to your customers for you. Making this easy is what we do best.

At Broken Glass, we put forth the effort to understand your company goals, message, and your target market to develop an approach that best suit your needs. We work with a wide range of clients in a range of sectors offering a wide range of solutions from business to consumer(B2C) and business to business(B2B). We create professional websites of any complexity and orientation. Creative approach, innovative design, personal attention and customer satisfaction are the main aspects of our work.

We transform the web experience for both you and your clients making it effective and unforgettable. Through our web development, your easy-to-navigate website will give your visitors a great impression. We work with your company to define objectives and develop graphic designs for your websites and interactive tools thus making your website, more user-friendly and to reach a broader customer base.

Each website is like a finger print – both unique and special. Each client faces different and difficult challenges in business and hence the website will also be different, customised to tackle the impending challenges and to make the first impression an ever-lasting one on your visitor.

The look of your website is a direct reflection on your business and it must maintain a balance between its looks while conveying the message across to its visitors.

Our web services include:

Copywriting

E-Commerce

Programming

Graphic Design

Website Hosting

Site Maintenance

Database Development