As you write your next email message to a client, coworker, or connection, think about how you can make that person’s work day more efficient by having a clear descriptive subject line.

Many people receive an overwhelming amount of email, including those unfortunate spam messages.  They often rely on the from address as well as the subject line to identify which emails are priority to read, and which are more likely spam to trash.   When they receive an email with a subject line of “hello” or “help”, this is a mental flag for suspicion.

For example, instead of sending your colleague an email with the subject of “Proposal”, make it more specific like, “Smith Building Proposal”.  Including particular details also helps the person to determine a clearer picture of what the message might be about and its importance level, such as “Smith Building Proposal, Need Revision”.

Trust me – this is one simple change that will not go unappreciated.  Having worked in customer service oriented business for many years, I have seen my share of spam with subject of “help” and “question”.  Unfortunately a few legitimate customer emails get lost in that bunch.

Did you recently get an email about a “dispute” for your “trademarked domain” in another top level domain?

I have seen a lot of these types of notices received by our customers, boldly urging the owner of a .com domain about the “pending purchase” of a similar domain with another country’s extension – such as “mycompanyname.cn” (a China extension).  The verbiage is a bit sneaky, sounding as if someone is just on the edge of buying your domain if you don’t do something quick!

Be wary of these – they are scams.  Most likely, no one is on the verge of buying your domain name.  In fact, you probably have no interest in owning a domain name that is located in another country where you may not even do any business. A couple of my customers did attempt to reply to the message asking for more information, only to receive a more urgent and stern reply (in a threatening tone).  My recommendation is to ignore the email and delete it.

With Blog Inspirations we help you find topics to maintain your business blog.

Incorporating an interview into your blog post is a great way to create a unique, entertaining and informative article. It is ok if you are at a loss for words – just get somebody else to do the talking!

Are you planning on attending a conference related to your business or industry? This is a great opportunity to speak with professionals in your field who can offer their opinions and advice. If you have access to a list of attendees or speakers, take a look through it and pick out several professionals you are interested in speaking with. If you want to secure your interview, try contacting the people you would like to talk to in advance. This way, you can introduce yourself and let them know the nature of the questions you are interested in asking them. You might ask them to meet you for coffee after the event, or meet you between seminars and workshops. If you do not have access to a list of attendees, you are sure to meet some interesting people while you are there, and most professionals are happy to sit down for a quick interview – especially if they know it is going to be featured on a blog. In addition to bringing your pen and paper, bring a small tape recorder with you, so you can capture your interview and review it later. Recording the interview makes it easier for you to engage in the interview, and you won’t have to scribble notes while trying to talk.

You don’t have to go to a conference to meet people to interview. In fact, you most likely already know many interesting professionals in your industry. Consider requesting an interview from your boss, perhaps your readers would like to hear from someone in an executive seat. You could request an interview from your co-worker, perhaps he or she recently completed an interesting project and you could tell his or her story in your blog post. You can even go through your rolodex and contact people you have met and worked with who may have interesting insight into the future of your industry. You can even interview someone outside of your field, someone in a different specialty – you can always find a way to make the information relevant to your readers.

If you have a topic in mind to write about that you are very interested in, but know little about, you can conduct a panel style interview. Do some initial research on the subject of interest. Formulate some questions you would like answered by those who know the subject best. Also consider questions you think would elicit informative answers for your readers. Then, contact people you would consider experts in the subject. Maybe it is a professor at a local college, a government official, or a small business owner – you can ask each individual the same questions and compare and contrast their responses. This type of investigative interviewing lends itself to a very comprehensive blog post.

So, the next time you have a case of blogger’s block, get out your tape recorder. Your interview is likely to inspire an interesting and informative new post.

It is officially summertime: A time to relax, a time to renew, and most importantly – a time to market your business.

For many small businesses, summertime translates to a slow business season. So, why not take this extra time to plan ahead?

As much as we might like summer to last forever, we all know how the fall and holiday seasons will quickly approach us, often faster than we expect. The summertime is an ideal time to plan for the upcoming busy seasons, and what better way to prepare than by taking this time to make sure your website reflects your mission, values, and goals. So browse through your website pages – make sure the design and layout still suit your needs, the colors still reflect your brand, and that the site is still easily navigated. You might consider asking some of your customers to fill out a brief survey, to help you better understand the needs of those who visit your website the most. By addressing these issues now, you will have time to focus on other business concerns during the busy season. It may be time to take a vacation, but not from one of your most valuable business assets – your website.

This summer, try adding a new feature to your website. WEBii knows that small businesses face a unique set of challenges when it comes to identifying an audience, capturing that audience’s attention, and converting website visitors to customers. However, by working with new website features, you can begin to overcome these obstacles. From member registration areas to online purchase centers, there are a variety of tools that can help your website flourish.

During your slower summer weeks, consider adding a blog to your site. Prepare 10 to 20 topics to discuss about your industry.  Later, when you need to maintain your blog during busy season, you will have those drafts ready to publish quickly.

Need expert help for your online marketing strategy?  WEBii is available to personally consult with you about your project and offer customized advice. Contact us for a free consultation on your redesign.

With Blog Inspirations we help you find topics to maintain your business blog.

What industry related conference did you recently attend?  Write a short commentary on one of the presentations.

What local charity did your company recently sponsor?  Write about your involvement at their fundraiser.

Where did you recently notice some of your products?  Write about the cafe down the street where you saw your lamps hanging.

With Blog Inspirations we help you find topics to maintain your business blog.

What recent hurdle did you experience with one of your customers that you had to help them overcome?  Write a short case study about it.  Here are some examples:

• A fitness trainer had a client with a challenging sports injury and introduced them to special low impact exercises.
• An IT company’s client was plagued by a virus infection at their network; the IT consultant implemented a clean-up regiment.
• A construction company’s client discovered water damage in their property; the contractor swooped in to offer water extraction.

So you have some dropdown menus on your website, but you would like to make them a little fancier.  With just a little effort in your stylesheet, you can add a nice transparency effect to the background of the dropdown list.

The css is usually applied to the style id created for the drop down div.  Perhaps it is something like #subnav or #subnav li (which is the list item inside the div).  Just remember if you start making list items transparent, they may look a bit fuzzy.  So you might need to use darker text like black to remain legible.

Opacity is recognized as part of the whole number 1. 1 stands for 100% solid color.  You can really choose any color as the base background, but you made need to experiment with it as you change the opacity.  So if you decide to create a 70% opaque menu, just add this as your line in the css style:

opacity: 0.7;

But wait, it looks lovely in Firefox yet nothing seems to have happened in Internet Explorer.  Still another bit to add:

filter: alpha(opacity=70);

With these 2 lines you have covered most of the commonly used modern browsers, your menu still works, and you have added a little something nifty to the design.

Sometimes a little bit of javascript is necessary to control certain features in a website, such as a simple slideshow element on a page, which was a better choice over the heavy Flash animation.  But as organic SEO becomes more prominent, we must learn to minimize the presence of javascript among our web page code, and strive for “clean” search-engine-friendly code.

Instead of including your javascript directly on the web page, link to it as a source.

In the head of the page, create the script tag, but instead of including the script code within the container of the script tags, link to an external javascript file.  For best organization, store your javascript file in a /js folder (or /scripts or something similar).  Your linked tag will appear in this format:

<script language=”javascript” src=”js/filename.js” /></script>

Now, as your page code is read, this is referenced on one line and the search engines (or other resources) do not need to wade through a long javascript to get to the important meat of your website – the content.

It used to be the case that websites were simple text documents that you downloaded to view on your Prodigy or AOL browser. Then again, you also used to be able to have dinner and watch Saved By The Bell by the time it actually downloaded, but the World Wide Web has come a long way since then. Websites are no longer restricted to being online versions of pamphlets. In fact, they run the gamut from expansive social networking services like Facebook, which has many millions of users, to small personal websites that receive maybe 5 visitors a month.

Websites used to be as simple as HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) code embedded in a single file per page. While this was great for simplicity, it didn’t do much in the way of functionality. The pages could only display one static set of information per page. In today’s current version of the internet, one web page can display a variety of different information depending on what the user inputs. These types of websites are known as dynamic websites because they dynamically generate the web pages each time a visitor visits a page, using a set of data that is retrieved from a database.

Here is an example of the way a static HTML page works:

1) You type “www.example.com” in the address bar of your web browser, and your web browser sends a request to the server of “www.example.com” for the contents of the web page.

2) Your web browser downloads the content of the home page at “www.example.com” in the format of an HTML document.

3) Your browser reads this document, and then displays it in your web browser as a web page.

The way a dynamically generated page works is a little different. Let’s take this blog as an example. This blog runs on a popular blogging platform called Wordpress. The Wordpress software uses a combination of PHP code and a mySQL database in order to dynamically generate web pages. PHP is a server-side scripting language, which means that all the processing is done on the web server, as opposed to a client-side script like Javascript that runs on your local machine. The short explanation of mySQL is that it stores data on a database server, which can be retrieved through a series of “queries”. If you would like to know more, you can read about it here: mySQL

Here is an example of the way a dynamically generated web page works:

1) You type “www.webii.net/blog” in the address bar of your web browser, and your web browser sends a request for the contents of the web page.

2) The page “index.php” runs its PHP code on the web server, which includes mySQL queries for information from the database. This includes a query of the “latest posts” which Wordpress stores in the mySQL database. The “index.php” file finishes running its code, and it outputs the result in HTML.

3) Your web browser reads the HTML output of the PHP file, and then displays it in your web browser.

Either way, your browser still receives and displays HTML information, but the manner in which it is retrieved is very different. The “index.php” file can put out different results depending on the user input. When you click on the “about” link in our blog’s navigation bar, you are actually calling the exact same “index.php” file, but this time the page is dynamically generated to display the “About” information that is stored in the mySQL database. Neat, huh?

Dynamic websites are not for every one. If you simply need to display a couple of pages of text and images, then sometimes bare bones HTML pages can suffice. If you need something better for your organization or business (or even just your personal website), dynamically generated web pages can be designed to give multi-tiered security access, allow you to update your web page from anywhere on the web, and many other powerful features that can turn an otherwise uninspired website into a full blown online presence, a tool to help you get things done.

ISES Austin Blog Design

Have you heard? Blogger, a popular community blogging tool, has discontinued FTP support.  What does this mean? It means that you will no longer be able to publish your Blogger blog directly to your website – you will be forced to migrate to a “blogspot” address instead.

Never fear, there are other options.  Your web developer can install a blog software like Wordpress in your website hosting space, and even design a custom theme to match the blog styles with your website or other marketing materials.

WEBii has quite a bit of experience designing customized blogs.  Feel free to ask us if you don’t know where to start.