Wordpress For Business: Theme Tester Plugin Highlight

By Josh on 10/11/2009

Wordpress For Business is a regular short column that provides little hints and tips about working with Wordpress for your business website. Wordpress is a powerful, expandable, state-of-the-art content management system. It’s much more than just blog management and that’s what Wordpress For Business is all about.

This is another cool plugin highlight. Today we’re talking about the insanely useful Theme Tester plugin by Donncha O Caoimh.

This plugin is seriously a life saver when you’re trying to design a new theme for your website.

Theme Tester – as the name suggests – is a plugin to allow you to test out or design a new theme on your live website while still showing visitors your old theme.

Often theme designing can get pretty messy – not something you really want your fanbase to see in progress. I wish I knew about this plugin in my early days of designing Wordpress websites because it makes releasing new designs to your website a lot smoother.

Now, using Theme Tester, you can integrate your new theme with your current website content without having to mess up your website in the process.

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Wordpress For Business: Let Your Customers Generate Their Own Quotes

By Josh on 09/11/2009

Wordpress For Business is a regular short column that provides little hints and tips about working with Wordpress for your business website. Wordpress is a powerful, expandable, state-of-the-art content management system. It’s much more than just blog management and that’s what Wordpress For Business is all about.

Want to add a quotation module to your business website?

Today I want to talk about a little known plugin called “price-calc”.

Price calc is a little rough around the edges, but it’s a great functional way to add a simplistic quote generator to your business website. In fact, I use it on JoshKohlbach.com to great effect.

Simply add the plugin and change your quote form configuration (instructions included in the admin page). From there, adjust your pricing details to suit your prices.

When you’re ready to test, add [price-calc] in the text of one of your pages or posts.

Very cool. Thanks to thickthumb for making it.

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I have a problem. Here – You fix it.

By Josh on 05/11/2009

For service based businesses it’s an all too common thread.

“Hello, Mike’s fix it shop, Mike speaking.”

“Oh Hi, I have a toaster that toasts in reverse, can you fix that?”

“Umm.. yeah sure, I can take a look at that seemingly bizarre problem that you can’t find a solution to.”

Ok, so it might not go EXACTLY like that. But it’s not far off.

A customer calls on the off chance that you might be able to fix the problem they’re having. How very hit and miss.

More often these days, the customer saves themselves $30 in local phone calls trying every fix it shop in town and goes directly to Google.

Ahhhh – now you can see how I’m tying this all together :) Good.

Yes, this is another “blogging is a smart idea for your business and you should be doing it” post.

But wait, now I’ve given a solid scenario, can you see how blogging on your business website can play a part?

Why bother blogging for business?

Blogging has many benefits for your website including better placement in search engines, creating linkable content for others to point to, and creating articles that people like to share with their friends. All of these also lead toward more entry points to your website, and repeat visits from people that love your work.

But that’s not the single greatest benefit.

The single greatest benefit about blogging for your business is the fact that with every blog post you’re providing a solution to one or more of your customer’s problems.

Customer has a problem: “My toaster toasts in reverse”

Customer Googles: “Toaster toasting in reverse repair” or something similar.

Your site hopefully pops up with: “Is your toaster toasting in reverse? I can fix that!” and that page will detail how you once had a hopeful customer come in with a reverse toasting toaster. Of course you helped them and now the birds are singing happily because you can now fix toasters that for some unexplainable reason choose toast in reverse.

Do you have any stories of when you helped a customer with a seemingly unusual problem? Can you tell a story about it? How about jotting that down on paper and turning it into a blog post later. Now the world knows.

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10 Hot Tips For Announcing Your Small Business Website To The World

By Josh on 03/11/2009

So your shiny new website is finally complete? Congratulations!

Now that the nights of weeping softly into your keyboard are finally over you can announce it to the world. But what are some of the things you should think about doing when you launch a website?

Here is a list of 10 great tips that you can use as a checklist (if you like) for your new website launch:

1. Update your business stationery – revamp your tired old business cards, add it to your invoices, purchase orders, letter heads, faxes – anything that includes any contact information.

2. Give your site prominence in your advertising. You’re proud of your creation right? The best way to get new customer onto it is using your current advertising. Just include a new line with your website address nice and large. Make it the focus of your contact details.

3. Contact your current customers. Tell them how much they are valued and how you’ve created this wonderful website just for them. They’ll appreciate the contact.

4. Let all your sales leads know about it. Have a few potential customers bubbling away in the pipeline? Let them know about how you’re working to serve them better. Showing that you’ve just finished a business project successfully is a good sign.

5. Tell your suppliers about it and ask them for a link! Often suppliers will help their customers out by pointing to business’ that uses their product. This can be a great place to earn more customers. See if your supplier will work with you on something like this – it can’t hurt to ask.

6. Do a special deal for those who visit the website. It might be downloading a coupon to print out, or getting a special keyword to mention on the phone – either way, it will encourage people to share and talk about it.

7. Do you have a company vehicle? Wrap it with a nice big sticker of your website address. This is literally advertising to everyone you drive past. Even if 1% of people that stop behind you at the traffic lights write your address down that is a lot of people you get exposure to without having to pay recurring advertising costs.

8. Shop front advertising. Do you have extra window space at the front of your store? Similar to Vehicle Wrapping you can add a large sticker with your website address. Make a big hoo harr about showing it off. Maybe place a monitor displaying it at your counter? Ask walk-in customers if they’ve visited your new website.

9. Start blogging and writing useful articles! Tell people about what you’re talking about on your website and how they should come and leave a comment and be part of the conversation.

10. Add yourself to local business directories – I’m not sure about the rest of the world, but in australia there are several specialist sites that help you find local businesses that people rate well.

Just remember – a website is only effective if people know about it. Make it easier on your customers – help them find it :)

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The Currency Of The Internet: What Gaining Links Means For Your Small Business Website

By Josh on 30/10/2009

They call links the “currency of the internet” – basically, a link from one site to another is a method for Joe The Web Surfer to go from one website to the next.

The reason it’s called the currency of the internet is because usually links are found where the person feels they are pointing out a reference, or something interesting that the visitor would likely want to see.

Gaining links therefore is like a vote of confidence for your site – something that is viewed favourably by search engines when they are deciding what order to place your site in the search results.

The Real Benefits

Personally, I reckon the greatest thing with gaining links that point to your website is the access to a wider audience. The more links you have pointing to you, the better the chance of visitors leaving other people’s site to come and look at yours.

The Neighbourhood Your Link Comes From Matters

It’s not just important getting links from anywhere. If it was, we’d all just go and pay someone to place links all around the internet for us (yes – this is actually some people’s “strategy”).

What IS important is gaining links from pages that people (and search engines) believe are in the same category (or industry) as you.

If your site is about painting, it’s better to get a link from a painting supplier than a page about flower design.

Remember how I said it was like a vote of confidence? If you’re after a painter – whose opinion do you trust more? A flower design who knows nothing about painting, or a paint supplier saying this is a recommended person?

Fortunately this is prrrretty much the same formula search engines use to determine if the link is truely a good “vote” for that page.

The Text People Use In Their Link Also Matters

If you’re an electronics repair company that fixes circuit boards, it’s better to have a link pointing to your site with the text “circuit board repair” than “John’s Electronics Shop”.

Encourage people linking to you to use text in their link that relates to the content on your website. If it’s an article about “sewing buttons onto jumpers” use that as the text instead of “Sue’s Sewing Website”. If you’re nice about asking most people will change a link’s text – it’s fairly trivial and will provide you with loads of benefit.

How To Make Your Site Link-Worthy

Writing articles and blogging on your business website increases visibility of your site (more pages = more places a customer might find an entry point into your site) and increases the chances that your website will get linked to by someone in your industry.

A Tip On How To Get Links From Other Website Owners

If you come across someone that has a website you think would be a good place to get linked from – ask! Send them an email – the worst they can say is no.

This is an important strategy to get right. You don’t want to sounds demanding right? So when you’re asking (politely) for a link to your site, make sure you ask yourself “what’s in it for them?”. Give them something of value.

This might be a guest post for their website to share with their audience, or providing them with a product to review. Use your imagination!

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Grab Your Customers By The Eyeballs

By Josh on 23/10/2009

Attention Grabber

If you’re looking for a way to grab your visitor’s attention right away I have an insightfully simple tactic which I recommend to all my clients.

One of the most effective ways I’ve found of grabber a potential customer’s attention online is to implement a small attention grabber on your front page.

An attention grabber is a box or highlighted section which draws the visitor’s eyes and enables you to deliver something impactful or important. For service based businesses it’s just a great time to grab them by the ears (eyes?) and tell them exactly why they should give a damn about you and your business.

It can be as outlandish or as subtle as you like, but you still want the box to fit with your theme. The attention grabber unit should separate itself from your content enough to demand they look at it and give it some time. I’m a fan of doing this in a subtle way such as the attention grabber at the top of this post, or even the attention grabber I use on my own front page of JoshKohlbach.com.

If you keep doing this consistently, you can even use attention grabber boxes to deliver specials and little notices about what happening in and around your business. This is especially good if you have a loyal readership that returns to your website. I think this sort of notice goes well off to the side where it still draws attention but is out of your page’s main content area.

As I said before, for service based businesses this is actually a very important strategy. People need to know in seconds (not minutes) if you and your business are legitimate and can fulfil their immediate need.

Are you using attention grabbers effectively on your small business website? Consider implementing one on your main page to enhance your response rate from visitors – it’s a fast effective way to enhance your site with an immediate return.

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