The weather is unseasonably warm here at CommonPlaces HQ, and Spring is on everyone’s mind. With the season of renewal beginning in just two days, you may be planning a little Spring Cleaning at home or in the office. If so, consider this: When was the last time you cleaned up your website? Sometimes the little things that it takes to keep a site up-to-date get put off and tend to pile up. Here are eight tips for giving your website a Spring Cleaning.

Does you website say what you want it to say?
Take this opportunity to read through the text of your site and determine if it still says what you want it to say. Perhaps your company has changed over the past year – whether it’s a new direction, new product offerings, or a new slogan. Make sure that your site copy still portrays you as accurately as it did a year ago (or the the last time you assessed it).

Is your contact information correct? What about your ‘Team’ page?
Has your phone number changed? Are you still at the same address? Sounds obvious, but it is easy to forget that stuff way down in the site footer. What about your ‘Team’ page, if you have one? Are you still displaying former employees? Do you have new hires that you need to add to this page? Finally, update the copyright year in your footer. Again, it’s easy to forget, but users may see “2007″ and think your site is out-of-date or no longer relevant.

Are there any broken links on your site?
Broken links are never a good thing. They tend to cause frustration, and can even make you seem less credible. So take a little time to click through your site and see if everything is in order. Also, check your analytics program to see if users are hitting your 404 (Page Not Found) page. Are there external links out there pointing to pages that no longer exist? Contact the webmaster if possible, or set up a redirect from the defunct address to a relevant, current page.

Does your navigation and site hierarchy make sense?
Look at your site with an objective eye, and ask yourself if your site structure will help your visitors, or hinder them. Seek out the opinions of your friends, or ideally, people who are unfamiliar with your site. Where are they getting lost or confused? You can also search the Web (or your local bookstore) for Web Usability resources, and give your site a self-test. Are you violating any major usability rules?

Does you site display and function correctly in all browsers?
Your website may look fine in your Safari browser, but how do your IE6 users experience it? There are a couple things you can do to test this. First, download a bunch of browsers. You can get the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and Opera for free. To test older versions and/or different operating systems, you’ll have to try another approach. There are some services on the Web that will give you a snapshot of what your site looks like in different broswer/operating system environments. The best (free) one I’ve seen is Adobe BrowserLabs.

What about mobile browsers?
If your website is a couple years old, mobile may not have been a top concern when your site was being developed. Today, it is. People will be visiting your website from their iPhones, BlackBerries, and other mobile devices. Trust me. Is your website still functional on these platforms? How does it look? Remember, these devices cannot render Flash meda. Is your website still navigable without Flash? Testing these platforms is a little bit tougher than testing multiple browsers. Search around to see if you can find simulators online. In the case of the iPhone, however, you won’t find a reliable simulator for the PC. If all else fails, enlist the help of your tech-conscious friends (or acquaintances), or consider heading to the store to try out some of these phones.

What can you learn from your analytics data?
I mentioned site analytics above as a helpful tool for identifying 404s. Hopefully you have some sort of website analytics system in place. If you do, then there are other helpful bits of information to be had. For example, where are people leaving your site? If you see, for example, that one page in particular has a high exit rate, dedicate some time to working on this – users are either getting confused, frustrated, or just plain turned off by the content of this page. Conversely, what pages lead to the most conversions? What are you doing right on these pages?

When was the last time you checked out the competition?
Since you’re evaluating your own site, this might also be the perfect time to check out the competition. What are they doing on their sites? What do you like? What do you dislike? Also, investigate which websites are linking to your competition. Can you obtain a link on these sites as well?

I hope these suggestions help you become more successful in the coming year. Good luck, and happy Spring!

If anyone tells you that email marketing is dead, don’t believe them. Email marketing is still alive and well, and continues to deliver repeatable and trackable results, even in 2010. In a recent study by Vertical Response, 74% of small business owners responded that they would like to increase their email marketing efforts in 2010. So if you’re thinking about taking your email marketing efforts to the next level (or if you’re just getting started), you’re certainly not alone.

To a great extent, the success of your future email campaigns depends upon your choice of email marketing software. There are many good email solutions out there, but that is not to say that they are all the same, or that your decision should be taken lightly. When you sit down to evaluate the myriad options available, keep the following considerations in mind.

Ease of List Maintenance
It’s not an exaggeration to say that your email marketing efforts are only as good as the quality of your email list. For this reason, you’ll want an email solution that makes it easy to manage and grow that list. This means easy to use import functionality, and custom fields to store your data exactly as you collect it. Some email solutions offer custom subscription forms that you can paste into your site. Another consideration is finding email software that integrates with your CRM, if you use one. This can mean one-step customer management, saving you time.

One other note: While it won’t make your list grow, you will want to find an email marketing solution that manages unsubscribes and bounces without you having to worry about it.

Theme Builder / WYSIWYG Editor
If you’re proficient with HTML and CSS, and want to build your emails this way, then you can skip this requirement. But if you’re not, you should look for an email program that provides a simply, easy-to-use WYSIWYG (“What you see is what you get”) editor. More specifically, you’ll want to find an email solution that translates the look you design for your emails into CSS that can be displayed by different email clients. Programs such as Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Gmail, and others all have particular requirements for what can be displayed in an email. A good email marketing program will accommodate this specific needs.

Reporting
Like Web marketing, email marketing success depends upon complete, reliable tracking and reporting. With an email solution that tracks opens and clicks, you can assess the strength of your Subject lines, and the content of your emails. If you see that the second link in your emails tends to be the most clicked, you will want to put your main call to action in this position. If your open rates are below average, your Subject lines may be leaving something to be desired.

Price/Rate Structures
Price will obviously be one of your considerations in choosing an email marketing offering. But when you make your decision, consider not only the price today, but how that price will change over time if your email list grows. Growth is a major goal of almost any email marketing effort, so make sure that you allow for that growth. When you investigate price structures, assume your list will grow at the rate you want it to; in other words, assume your own success.

Targeted Sub-lists
Depending upon the size of your email list, and the extent of your email campaigns, you may want to find an email marketing program that allows you to create targeted sub-lists from your main email list. For example, if your company had a special offer for customers located in the Northeast, you could filter your list geographically, and send an alert to only these customers. The limit of how you can target your emails depends on the quality of your data. You could theoretically filter by location, age, gender, interests, or even past purchasing history.

Personalization
If you want to send personalized emails to your email list (for example, emails that begin “Hello John,” or “Hello Sarah”), personalization will be an important piece of functionality that you’ll be looking for. Many email programs offer this, and basically it allows you to put placeholders in your email that will be replaced by data from your email list. Think Mail Merge for your emails. Again, if this is something you’ll want to do in the future, look for it in the solutions you evaluate.

Inbox Previews
In the Theme Builder section above, I mentioned that different email clients will display your emails differently. While you could send test emails to a bunch of different addresses to test this yourself, it is far easier to find an email marketing program that offers previews of how your emails will look in these different clients. At a glance you will see how your emails will look in your customers’ inboxes, including how much of your email appears in the Inbox preview pane, and how much of your content is “below the fold.”

Depending upon your goals, there may be additional requirements you’re looking for in your email marketing solution. What appears above is by no means an exhaustive list of requirements. But it is a good place to start in your search. Good luck!

CommonPlaces is thrilled to announce that Michelle Lauer has been selected by the Drupal community to present “Views Examples: Using Arguments and Relationships” at DrupalCon San Francisco, which will be held from April 19-21. You can read our press release here.

In her session, Michelle will share a repeatable strategy for using arguments and relationships with Drupal Views to display specific subsets of content. Here’s the session description, from the DrupalCon SF site:

Views are a powerful way to display specific subsets of your content. From a simple list of all nodes in a single content type to a complex collection of related information, each step will be explained so you can easily repeat the strategy in your own views.

• Systematic way to create ALL views in the GUI
• What are arguments and how to use them
• What are relationships and how to use them
• Discussion of CCK node reference
• Why you should export your Views to code

Are you planning to build multiple websites for your business? Before you do, read out free, 9-page white paper, “When to Use a Multi-Site Architecture,” to learn more about the significant savings that multi-site can deliver. If your goals require multiple websites, a multi-site solution could cut your development and maintenance costs in half.

Here’s an excerpt from the white paper:

“More often than not, one website can deliver everything an organization needs, and help them achieve all of their goals.

Fortunately, you can.“

Download the rest.

Before you start asking what I have against these two mega-sites, rest assured, the answer is nothing. Both are valuable marketing tools, as countless companies have discovered. But if you read online marketing and social media blogs regularly, you’re probably getting tired of hearing about Twitter and Facebook. Both sites have large user bases, so they’re good places to start (they do get mentioned often for a reason). But ask yourself this: Are these the only two websites you visit on the Web? Chances are they’re not the only two sites your customers are visiting, either.

Note the most important word in the title – “Beyond.” I’m in no way advising you to give up your marketing efforts of Facebook and Twitter. But if you feel like branching out in your Web presence, try some of the suggestions below. I tried to include an example with each of how you might use it to your advantage. Hopefully these examples will provide you with the inspiration you need to get started.

Social Bookmarking Sites (Digg, Reddit, etc.)

On sites like Digg.com and Reddit.com, people submit web pages that they think are interesting, informative, or entertaining, and other users give them an ‘up’ or ‘down’ rating. The voting component is why it’s called social bookmarking. If you have content on your site that you think would be valuable to others (perhaps an informative blog post), share it on these sites. It only takes a couple minutes to submit a page.

There are even social bookmarking sites out there centered on a specific topic (here’s a list). As as example, your blog post on New Property Tax Laws may not have enough of a general appeal to be successful on Digg, but on Tip’d, a social site for finance and money news, it might be a big hit.

Flickr.com

If you don’t know, Flickr is a photo sharing site, owned by Yahoo!. It’s also the 21st most visited site in the US, according to Alexa. If you’re wondering what you can do on a photo sharing site to market your business, the answer is pretty simple: share photos!

As an example, let’s say you owned an antique car restoration business. Take twenty minutes to create a Flickr account, and post pictures of some of the beautiful cars you’ve restored. Add some new photos every once in a while. Now, when people interested in car restoration search the Web, maybe they will come across one of your pictures. Not only will you deliver the message that you do great work, but also that you are genuinely passionate about your work, and sincerely care about the final product — not just the bottom line.

YouTube.com

Everyone knows YouTube. It’s the third most visited website in the world (after Google and Facebook). The tactics you can employ on YouTube are similar to those discussed with Flickr above. The main difference is that video offers many more possibilities than photos. With video, you can share customer testimonials, virtual tours, tutorials…the list could go on and on.

Rather than provide a hypothetical example in this case, I thought it would be better to share an example from real life – The Home Depot. This home improvement giant has created a robust YouTube channel, offering over 100 videos offering advice and instruction on painting, gardening, carpentry, and other home-related topics. Once they’ve inspired you to undertake a couple of these projects, guess where you’ll be going to buy the necessary supplies?

Review Sites (Google Maps, Yelp, etc.)

Chances are pretty good that people are talking about your business online. Ideally, they’re talking about your business a lot. But the bigger your business gets, the more likely it is that you will, at some point in time, receive a negative review. Unfortunately, even the best customer service can’t ensure 100% satisfaction – there is just no pleasing some people.

While you can’t control what people say about you on Google Maps, or Yelp, or UrbanSpoon, you can make some efforts to manage your reputation on these sites. In the case of a positive review, respond with a kind thank you. In the case of negative feedback, respond with an apology, and an effort to make it up to the offended party. I wouldn’t recommend responding to every review you receive, but a few responses here and there might go a long way towards keeping your reputation clean (and perhaps discouraging people from posting negative reviews!).

If a negative review is truly inaccurate, contact the site on which is appears, and request that it be removed. There are no guarantees, but some business owners have been able to get grossly unjust reviews removed from certain sites. It’s worth a shot!

Have other ideas on how to break out of the Twitter/Facebook rut? Share them in the comments!

Slightly overdue, here is the second half of my two-part series on Delivering Video Content on Your Website. Part 1, “How Do I Get Video On My Website?”, can be seen here.

After reading Part 1, “How Do I Get Video On My Website?”, you may have concluded that a content delivery network (CDN) is the right choice. If so, the next challenge is finding the right CDN for your needs. Remember, a CDN offers hosting and delivery of video files so that your network isn’t burdened by these large resources. Your site hosting solution may not be able to keep up with user demand to stream and download large video files, but a CDN will.

Selecting the appropriate CDN for your website is far too individual of a decision to make any sweeping suggestions. But as you make your decision, keep these considerations in mind:

Price
Obviously price will be high on anyone’s list of considerations, but this list wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t include it. Investigate the price structures that different CDNs offer, and assess which will be the most cost effective. How much data will you need per month? Will your usage stay fairly consistent from month to month, or will it vary greatly? It’s important that you have a pretty clear picture of what your data needs will be before you can identify the best-priced solution.

Delivery Method
Again, the better understanding you have of your video needs, the easier it will be to select the right CDN. In this case, you should know how your videos will be delivered. Will they be viewable as streaming media? Will users be able to download them? Do you record live video of events that will need to be streamed as it’s happening?

User Experience
Another top consideration on anyone’s list should be how the user will experience your CDN of choice. Is the video player attractive? Easy to use? Does it fit with the style of your site? It may sound superficial but these are important considerations. The last thing you want for your website is a video experience that looks out of place.

Security
Are your videos private? Depending upon how sensitive or confidential your video content is, the security features of your CDN may be important to you. Does the CDN you’re evaluating have multiple layers of security surrounding your videos? Does this CDN encrypt your videos as they’re transmitted across the Internet? If not, your video data could be intercepted and viewed by unauthorized individuals.

Statistics/Reporting
Are you a sucker for good Web traffic statistics? If so, you’ll want to find a CDN that provides adequate tracking tools, so that you’ll know who’s watching what (and maybe when, and where). More than once in this blog I’ve talked about the value of complete site analytics data. Strong reporting tools in your CDN might provide you with the information you need to tackle the competition and “wow” your users.

Here at CommonPlaces, we’re pleased to welcome Michael Fairbrother to the team as a Chief Operating Officer. He comes to us with over two decades of experience in the technology sector. In his career he has advanced from Software Engineer, Consultant, Chief Architect, to most recently Vice President of Software Engineering. His industry background includes mobile-technology, marketing management software, and privacy technology projects. Michael has the technical depth, and the product and business instincts to successfully lead and deliver value to CommonPlaces’ clients.

You can read the full press release on Michael’s hire here.

Consider this a pseudo-WebMD page for diagnosing your broken Drupal Website.

The Symptoms

• Is your Drupal Website “broke”?  Missing functionality?  Crashing?
• Do you have a looming launch date that keeps you awake at night?
• Is your business poised to lose more than revenue due to an ‘unlaunchable’ application?
• Are your stakeholders demanding a plan to get it back on track – NOW?

If your Web application is experiencing performance issues, lacking critical functionality, or is stalled altogether, you’re not alone.  Accepted IT project success rates hover around 20-30% success, based on the most optimistic interviews.  The bottom line is that 7 out of 10 IT projects “fail” in some respect.

Rise above the statistics.  The CommonPlaces Rescue (CPR) program provides a fast, unique service to help you quickly “breathe new life” into your stalled projects.

The Causes
Although each project is different, the most common reasons for a Drupal project going awry include:

• Drupal Core is out of date or compromised: Drupal Core is the heart of your application – you need to maintain the latest version and ensure that the core code has not been compromised (hacked) in any way.  Even small code change to core can cripple your site (and your budget) going forward, ultimately resulting in dangerous security risks.

• Insufficient Architecture/File System: Development is often begun with one set of expectations, and business needs evolve to accommodate new or long term goals.   Fact is, your site should be built to scale from the beginning.  It’s always much easier (and more cost effective) to build-in or build-for the future from the beginning.  You usually won’t find these issues until something breaks or something can’t be done – and its extremely expensive to retro-fit your site to make it work.

• Modules Matter: If Drupal core is the heart, the modules are the muscle behind your Web application.  They are one of the reasons you chose Drupal in the first place and critical to the success of your project.  However, since they are not part of Drupal core releases they may or may not have optimized code/functionality.  You need to know if your modules are implemented correctly and are following Drupal Best Practices to be portable, upgradable and secure.

• Inexperience: Some developers and outsourced firms are phenomenal at implementing Drupal for social publishing and communities.  But when it comes to extending your Drupal with complex custom modules, multiple e-Commerce workflows, or integration with 3rd party applications such as data mining or content delivery networks (CDN) for streaming video – you usually need a team of experienced Drupal Rock Stars to pull it off.   Trusting your business to inexperienced teams usually costs much more than money in the long run.

Treatment
The CommonPlaces Rescue (CPR) program helps enterprise clients and start-up ventures to quickly get their Drupal-based applications working the right way to get your project online and market-ready in record time.

We’ll work with you and your team to triage your current site, prioritize and implement immediate fixes, and close high security risks.   You’ll receive a detailed Road Map of what needs to be done, and when, to get your site launched and profitable – and isn’t that why you started this project in the first place?

For a friendly and knowledgeable consultation, call Ben Bassi at 603-329-6760, ext. 101 to discuss your “symptoms” and discuss similar CPR cases – it always helps to hear that others have been in your shoes – and they turned their projects around with CPR.  Or request more CPR program information in our contact form.

Hope your Drupal Website is feeling better and off-to-market soon!

Sherrin Bull

If you’re looking for new and successful ways of engaging your audience online, you’ve likely considered adding video to your website. In many cases, video can be a great way to entertain, inform, or generally engage site visitors. But how do you get video on your website? Because of the size of video files, and the resources needed to stream videos online, the situation is not as simple as adding pictures or other content to your site.

The first option is to host the video files yourself. If you don’t plan on having a lot of videos, or if you don’t have a huge number of site visitors, this option may make the most sense. But keep in mind that video resources will put a strain on your current hosting solution. If adding video puts you over the data limit of your hosting, or if your servers can’t keep up with user demand, it’s time to pursue other video solutions.

The next solution is to upload your videos to a free site such as YouTube (or hundreds of other sites like Vimeo, Metacafe etc.). There are obvious benefits to this choice. First and foremost, these sites are free to use. They are also fast. When was the last time you couldn’t access a YouTube video because the server was bogged down? These sites make it very easy to upload video files, and to post them on your site with the provided embed code.

But there are downsides to the “YouTube solution.” For one, anyone on the Internet can search and view YouTube videos. If any level of privacy or restricted access is required for your videos, this will immediately rule out YouTube as an option. Some people may also want a more custom video experience on their site. Rather than a YouTube video player, they may feel that a branded player would appear more professional. This concern is entirely valid, and will also rule out the YouTube route.

If your videos are too resource-demanding to host yourself, and not intended for public viewing (or if you just don’t like the thought of a YouTube-branded player on your site) the final option is uploading your videos to a content delivery network (CDN). CDNs exist to do exactly what you need them to – host large video files, and deliver them through a network designed for fast download times, and seamless media streaming.

The benefits of using a CDN? You don’t have to worry about hosting your videos, and your users get a smooth video experience. The drawbacks? Well there’s one main drawback – price. Using a CDN is undeniably the most costly approach, but for an enterprise-level video experience, it is indispensable. All of the large news and entertainment sites on the Web are using CDNs to host and deliver their video content.

Once you decide to use a content delivery network for your online video, the next question is: Which CDN should I use? There are a wide range of choices, and the “right” solution depends heavily on your needs. Fortunately, you can check back here next week, for Part 2 of this blog, “How to Choose a Content Delivery Network”.

In the meantime, if you’d like to speak with the Web professionals at CommonPlaces about your online video needs, feel free to contact us here.

What’s the goal of your website? To sell a product? To gain registered users? To solicit donations? Regardless of your goal, a great way to succeed on the Web is to think of your website as your online salesperson. Whenever you are making a decision on design, site structure, content, or copy, keep this concept of a salesperson in your mind, because really, your website is your salesperson on the Web. It’s your website, not you, that interacts with customers, and drives sales (or conversions) online. So make your website the best salesperson it can be by following these time-tested guidelines:

Welcome your users. In a retail setting, would you ignore customers when they walked through the door? Or would you offer a friendly welcome, give them some information about how your store is arranged, and tell them where they can get more help if they need it? The latter is clearly the more successful approach. On your website, this approach can be accomplished in a number of ways: welcoming copy on your home page should assure visitors that they’ve come to the right place; a clear site structure, with predictable navigation, will give them a clear picture of the layout of your site; and a prominent help or contact feature will make it clear where your visitors can seek assistance if they need it.

Build trust. Once you’ve welcomed your visitors, you should attempt to build a relationship of trust with them. This might be accomplished by providing testimonials from past customers, or by providing them with a helpful service or resource. You can also build trust by using language that sounds helpful rather than “salesy.” Most importantly, don’t lie. With the Web at their fingertips, your visitors will not be easily fooled. If you’re not willing to give them factual information, someone else will.

Establish yourself as an expert People like to make educated decisions. If you establish yourself as someone who is an expert, and as someone trustworthy (see above), many of your visitors will be inclined to defer to your expertise. So provide your visitors with a wealth of information (remember, keep it helpful rather then salesy) to help them make their decision.

Believe in your product. To some extent, the last two tips require a leap of faith. More specifically, they ask you to provide objective information about yourself and your product, and this requires a certain amount of faith in your product. But if you don’t believe in your product, your problems extend much further than web design. Don’t underestimate the perceptiveness of your visitors – long-term success is impossible if you’re selling a solution you don’t believe in.

Understand your customer. Every good salesperson knows that to be successful, you need to know your customer, including their goals, motivations, and concerns. One way to learn more is to have conversations with your customers online and offline. Take what you learn and build it into your site. Maintain a prominent place on your site where your users can leave feedback. Lastly, use your web analytics software to ascertain more about your users’ behavior. Do a significant number of people go directly from your Products page to the Help page? Maybe you need more text on that page explaining what users should be doing there, or how they can move forward.

It’s not about you – it’s about them Countless successful salespeople have trained themselves to replace the I’s and we’s in their dialogue with you’s. People are self-focused, and would rather hear you talk about them than about you and your product. On your website, don’t talk about how amazing your solution is – tell your visitors how it will help them.

Guide visitors to the desired choice/action/solution. Now that your visitor has been sufficiently informed, and their concerns have been addressed, they should be ready to take the desired action on your site, whether this is a sign-up, a purchase, a submitted contact/lead form, or some other conversion. All you need to do now is make it as easy as possible for them to do so. As obvious as this sounds, some websites make it downright difficult on their users. Don’t make the same mistake! Make the steps of your shopping cart, user registration or contact form very clear and easy to understand. Challenge yourself to make the process easy enough for a four year old to navigate.

Lastly, take rejection in stride. Every great salesperson does. If your latest strategy, product, or marketing campaign isn’t the hit you thought it would be, learn from it and move on.

Good luck!