This is especially important for those businesses which compete at least partially on cost. I’m not here to get into a sophisticated philosophical debate regarding which kinds of businesses that includes; if you feel like your business is included in that demographic, read on. Even if you don’t believe this, you might want to read on just to make sure you’re on the right track.
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Have You Done a Sanity Check on Your Rates Lately?
April 22nd, 2013 09:00am CDT by Nathan Schaad
Your Homepage Is Your Online Elevator Speech
April 15th, 2013 08:30am CDT by Nathan Schaad
Alright, it’s time to do a little mind experiment. Suppose that you are at a major networking event in your industry. You’re there to make contacts that could help you secure future work. Things have been decent for your business, and you can safely say that you have something established to work with. You meet with someone else at the event, and after asking them a few questions, you know that this person could be the key to some really big projects for your company. There are people that this person knows that definitely need your expertise.
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How Well Do You Know Your Business?
April 8th, 2013 09:30am CDT by Nathan Schaad
I know, I get it. It seems like such a stupid question, right? Of course a business owner knows their business inside and out, frontwards and backwards, right-side-up and upside-down. However, I also think that some business owners take this idea for granted and assume that they know their business this intimately without taking the occasional, honest inventory of what they know and what they don’t know.
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The Need to Feel Needed
April 1st, 2013 09:30am CDT by Nathan Schaad
Here’s a bit that could be applied to a lot of things: customer service, employee management, and really just life in general: People desire to feel needed. I think this is why entrepreneurs are always looking for the next problem that they can solve. It isn’t just about the money that can come from a truly breakthrough technology, but also from the simple joy that someone gets from having solved such a long-standing frustration.
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Why You Should Be Wary of Responsive Web Design
March 25th, 2013 09:30am CDT by Nathan Schaad
Responsive web design is a new web design practice which, by all accounts, is the “next big thing,” at least in the web design industry. This practice eliminates the need for separate mobile and desktop websites, and Google has gone so far as to explicitly announce their preference for responsive web design. This has led many SEOs to assume that Google will be providing special SERP benefits to those who use responsive web design tenets in their websites.
Those who react in this way, however, forget the numerous other “tips” that Google gives to webmasters in their Webmaster Guidelines. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines could be summed up in just one word: usability. What Google has said time and time again is that what they are really looking for are the best user experiences on the web which will fulfill the intent of a certain entered keyword or keywords. Thus, it could be easily concluded that Google does not prefer responsive web design in those situations which would negatively impact user experience. Thus, to say that responsive web design is better for SEO than any other means of serving content to mobile users must be false if there is a situation where responsive web design negatively impacts mobile users.
As it turns out, there are, in fact, several such situations:
- Responsive web design frequently causes the load time on a mobile phone to be longer than a dedicated mobile website. This by itself means that it is often the case that you are not serving your mobile users in the most expedient way possible.
- When your mobile users would be better served by an app than a website, it’s always a good idea to develop and give away the app. An app is by far the most efficient way to reach a mobile audience, and getting your business on people’s smartphones in this way is a valuable means of obtaining potential “regular” customers.
- There are many keywords that are more likely to be used by a mobile user than a desktop or laptop user. If any of these keywords could lead to your site, it makes sense for there to at least be some mobile-only landing pages available.
