Keeping it Simple

One of the most difficult things when it comes to developing a website isn't always the programming. More often than not, deciding what content should go on a new website, and figuring out how to generate said content is where it gets tricky. Content is what drives a website's search engine optimization, so it's easy to get a little carried away. But what do your customers want, ultimately?

Keep it simple.

Take a moment to consider your target markets' needs. Do they need to know the specs of your product? Or the process that your company takes when providing a service? Do they need a map to your offices, or do they simply need a customer support number? Consider your customer's needs first and foremost and search engine optimization will come naturally.

A great way to track what visitors to your website are looking for is to look at existing Google Analytics data. Look at what keywords people are finding you under, and see which pages are being hit most frequently. Is that page buried? Perhaps moving it to a more visible spot, or even removing unnecessary parent links will help your customers navigate your site more efficiently. You don't want prospects to have to click three or four times to find the information they want - it should be readily available and easy to get to.

If you don't have any content yet, talk to the people who answer the phones for your business. Figure out what some frequently asked questions are, and start there. Begin by creating a simple site map and expand to fill the needs of your company. And it's always a great idea to hire a copywriter to help translate your ideas into an effective sales piece that will motivate your customers to buy your product or service.

So remember: keep it simple, and keep your customers foremost in your mind. If you have any questions or need any help, feel free to contact us at Avallo. We specialize in helping customers get the right message across through their website.

Why Graphic Designers Love Avallo Panel

Avallo was incorporated in 1996. The plan was to take my graphic designer and marketing skills and my partner's business skills and enter the fairly new world of website design. I had been a freelance graphic designer and had a nice array of clients who were excited to be entering the web world with us. I did research into web programming and decided it was time to hire our first employee - coding was not for me.

Most graphic designers feel the same way. Some have spent hours and hours of time in classes and still struggle with coding and programming. Other graphic designers have tried to use CMS systems but find are extremely limiting for design. Some other graphic designers partner with programmers, but this can often blow a budget long before a project is started. So what is a graphic designer to do?

With 25 years experience in advertising, I know graphic designers. Avallo Panel is a graphic designer's best friend. Here is how it works:

1. Graphic Designer designs the website and gets approval from client.
2. With final approval, Graphic designer sends PSD file to Avallo
3. Avallo programmers build site into Avallo Panel to Graphic Designer's specifications.
4. All content can be added by Graphic Designer or Avallo.
5. Site goes live and it can be maintained by Graphic Designer, the client or Avallo.
6. Graphic Designer is now a website designer without touching the code.

Avallo Panel is unlike any other CMS (Content Management System) out now because it DOES NOT limit a Graphic Designers creativity. And the greatest thing of all? We speak English and we answer the phone when you call. We also love what we do and we LOVE Graphic Designers!

Avallo Panel vs. Wordpress

How is Avallo Panel better than WordPress?

I was really surprised when I first got asked this question. Avallo Panel is a website management system. WordPress is a blogging system. In fact, we even have a WordPress plugin for Avallo Panel for blogging. Comparing the two of these would be like comparing apples and oranges, but because the question comes up, I wanted to answer it.

Avallo Panel was created as a website or content management system for our clients. We designed and built it to be as intuitive as possible for developers and non-developers alike. We have also designed a comprehensive plug-in system that allows you to add on and grow your website as your company grows. In the future, should you need to add a shopping cart, more forms, a calendar system, or even advertising, implementing these plug-ins are easy and will not affect the rest of your website.

WordPress, on the other hand, was originally built and is marketed as a blogging system. We're not here to bash WordPress, and it is the best blogging system out there, but its CMS capabilities are limited. We have built several blogging sites using WordPress for our clients, and have integrated WordPress into a dozen Avallo Panel sites. When it comes to creating your entire website in WordPress, you may run into issues and limitations. Because plug-ins are user created, there's no telling if one plug-in may conflict with another plug-in, or if a plug-in can cause security issues. Also, since WordPress is constantly updating, we have had some clients who have run into compatibility issues with old plug-ins breaking when WordPress is updated.

Case and point, not even WordPress' website is running with WordPress. Once you get to the "News" page, you will see that they are actually running WordPress for their blog.

This is how we at Avallo also utilize WordPress. We feel that WordPress is used best as a blogging interface, and the rest of the website can be more effectively managed using a website management system such as Avallo Panel.

Avallo Panel 2.0

We at Avallo have been incredibly busy working on finishing up our custom website management system for the upcoming launch of Avallo Panel 2.0 on January 1st. With it, we are excited to announce some awesome new features and a reseller program for clients.

Two years ago, a client of ours approached us looking for a new website that would include thousands of pages of content. What he needed was a quick and efficient way to manage, store, and update all of the content on the site. Weston started building an amazing content management system, which would soon lay the foundation of what would soon be known as Avallo Panel.

Fast-forward two years, and Avallo Panel has come a long way. We have worked closely with clients, friends, family, and other web developers to assure Avallo Panel is both user-friendly and intuitive. We have received a lot of positive response and are continually updating and improving our content management system.

With the launch of Avallo Panel 2.0, we are excited to announce the following new features:

• Image Editor: Easily crop, resize, rotate, and manipulate your photo right in your browser. No download needed!
• Form Builder: Create and update any forms you are using on your website, allowing even more control over your entire site.
• Intuitive Plug-In System: Need some custom website functionality? Advertisements, forums, calendars, blogs, event schedulers, user downloads... all easily added to the Avallo Panel system. You will never be tied down by our system's limitations.
• Avallo Panel Updater: Never miss out on the newest versions of Avallo Panel with our new built-in updater. You will automatically be reminded and able to update Avallo Panel with the click of a button, and you will have access to new features immediately.

As a result of all our hard work, we are also ready to announce the up-and-coming reseller program which will allow other web developers, graphic designers, consultants, and printers to sell website services to their clients with the ability to update and manage their clients projects without needing to hire a programmer. More information about our reseller program will be announced in January!

Stay tuned for the launch of the new Avallo Panel site, as well as more information about the January launch! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to send us an e-mail.

Landing Pages & SEO

Landing pages - we've all seen them. They're not your average home page. They're straight to the point, and deliver a lot of information in short amount of time. They've got a simple call to action, and invite users to purchase a product or a service. But we're not talking about your every day landing pages, we're talking about building an SEO campaign that involves landing pages to better track, filter, and guide customers to the information they're looking for.

I'm sure you've been to a website with a landing page that serves as an introduction to a website, often flashy graphics or even "welcome" animation. This is not the type of landing page that will help with your SEO. In fact, it can often hurt you.

Landing pages with regards to SEO and marketing campaigns are the pages that a customer will go to when they click on online ads, or e-mail links. These specialized pages draw special attention to a particular product or service. By having a special page to direct customers to with your internet marketing (be it ads or e-mail campaigns), you can better track how effective these marketing strategies are, and have a more precise conversion rate than your standard web page. Only users who view your ad or e-mail will be visiting the landing page, so you know how much traffic you are receiving from your marketing efforts.

Your landing page in and of itself could be optimized for particular keywords. The domain name, title, and content could be so focused on one aspect of your business that it gets better search results than your main website. You could have a landing page for each of your products, or each of the services you provide. It helps your customers get the information they are searching for right away.

Beware of "SEO" companies who want to offer you a landing page to help track your website, or even ones that give you a new phone number to help "track" leads. This can become very dangerous. The "landing page" they are creating for you is often on their domain - giving them better SEO, not you. Additionally, if you choose to discontinue the company's service, search engines will still point to their website and phone number, resulting in potential leads lost. If you truly want to get better search engine results, go for a more organic approach. These "smoke in mirrors" tricks to getting better search engine placement can only hurt you in the long run.

If you're interested in learning more about landing pages, or would like to get started on your ad or e-mail campaign, contact us at Avallo. We can get you started on the right track with your online marketing strategies.

Get Noticed with Facebook Pages

Facebook profiles, groups, and pages. What are they, and how can you use them to your advantage? Which one best fits your goals for your business? Read on to learn more about how to optimize your Facebook page for your followers, and how to get noticed in the multitude of Facebook pages.

Facebook Profiles

Facebook profiles are intended for personal use. One of the biggest faux pas I have seen is a business or organization creating a Facebook profile. Why is this wrong? For one, it's difficult to find a business or organization that's linked to a Facebook profile. Profiles are also set up to be more private than a group or a page. Instead of just clicking "like" and immediately becoming a fan, you must submit a "friend" request. If you want to have thousands of fans (and who wouldn't!?), you would then have to accept each of those friend requests separately. Additionally, you cannot contact all of your customers at once. Both groups and pages allow you to contact all of your customers with one quick message.

A profile also limits to you one account to modify, update, and change information. To have multiple administrators, you would have to pass out the user name and password to the profile to everybody, which has its own security problems. If an employee decides to leave the company, you would have to change the password and alert all other employees of the change. It's not very efficient.

Bottom line: if you're a business, corporation, or organization, stay away from profiles. Profiles are great for individual employees, but a Facebook group or page will better represent your company.

Facebook Groups

Groups, while more public than profiles, are also originally intended for personal use. Groups allow you to choose the network the group will appear in, as well as allow an administrator to approve members. This proves useful for organizations that are invite-only.

Like Facebook profiles, there is only one user to administrate the group. You can, however, add group officers to help administrate the group. However, if the creator of the group decides to part ways with your company at any time, they will be stuck as the admin. If this is a concern for you, a Facebook Page is a better choice.

When your customers interact with you, they will be listed as "Members". Their feed will be updated with "Customer Name has joined the group, "Your Organization Name"".

Bottom line: While great for organizations or clubs, Facebook groups don't offer the functionality that business or corporations would need.

Facebook Pages

Intended for businesses, brands, organizations, or even public figures, Facebook pages offer a variety of options that neither groups nor profiles provide. A Facebook page, much like your company, is a separate entity. You can add or remove administrators easily, and administrators are not listed on the account - they remain anonymous. This means that activity reflects on the company as a whole, and not one particular admin.

Facebook also makes it easy to create advertisements for your Facebook page so you can promote it and hopefully gain more fans.

The biggest difference is that pages allow you to add apps to a page, but not a group. Apps allow for greater flexibility and customization for your company. Take Avallo's Facebook page, for example. Instead of seeing the Wall when you visit our page, you are greeted by a full-color and fully customized landing page that points our customers to our website, blog, and other valuable offers and information.

By customizing your Facebook landing page, you can stand out from the crowd. Add some color to the normally blue-and-white Facebook, and get the most important information and updates to your customers.

Even more importantly, pages are indexed by search engines. This means that if someone searches for your company, it's very likely your Facebook page will appear in the results. Groups are not indexed.

The bottom line: Facebook pages are intended for businesses. It only makes sense, if you're a business, to take advantage of a Facebook page.

So what's best for you?

Both pages and groups have their strong points. Ultimately, it's up to your company to decide which will work best for your marketing strategy. Pages are a public company profile that allow you to interact, create events, and send updates to customers. Groups are a more exclusive club that allow invite-only members, and even allow you to send messages to everyone in the group - but this functionality is revoked when you have over 5,000 members.

Pages are indexed by search engines which means it will be easier for your customers to find you. They also allow you to include applications, making it incredibly easy to customize your page and stand out from the crowd. Both pages and groups allow you go create events and interact with your customers.

Once you've decided what you want, let the experts at Avallo help you set up your Facebook page or group, and even create custom apps or landing pages for you. While you're at it, become a fan of Avallo on Facebook and receive a free chocolate bar! You will also be entered into our monthly t-shirt drawing. How awesome is that?

Regular Website Maintenance

So you have a website. Now what? I hear it all the time: "I know my website needs to be updated, but I don't know what to do." Your website is often times the first impression customers get of your company. If your website is old, has dated information or pictures, or just doesn't even look usable, you can drive people away.

One of the easiest and most obvious ways to keep your website updated is by having a "Latest News" section. Here you can announce special events, promotions, new products, new/retiring employees, trade shows you may be attending, celebrate your upcoming "XXth" anniversary, or anything else your company may be doing in the community. Even if your company isn't doing anything news-worthy, you can post a thank you or testimonial, or even plug a partner company. Who knows, they might even return the favor on their website. If your company has frequent events, try updating once a week. If you're having trouble keeping up, just post something once a month. If you really can't come up with something, a generic "Happy St. Patrick's Day" can keep your website content looking fresh. Just remember to update it after the holiday has come and gone.

Another way to keep your website content fresh is to post a blog. It may be time consuming, but depending on what your company does, it could be an important platform to get information to your client base. Setting up a blog is incredibly easy. There are a multitude of blogging interfaces out there, including Blogger and Wordpress. If you're interested in seamlessly integrating your blog into your website, you can talk to your favorite web developer, and be blogging in no time. Blog once a week, once a month, or even once a quarter - just get blogging. By having a place to talk about common questions, issues, or news in your industry, people will no where to turn when they have questions. You can also encourage your customers to subscribe to your RSS feed, so they don't actually have to go to your website to read your latest blog post.

If you're already e-mailing monthly or weekly newsletters, consider publishing the newsletter on your website as well. That way, you can also encourage users to sign up for your newsletter, or subscribe to an RSS feed of your newsletter. Newsletters are a great way to keep an open communication with your customers, so even if they aren't in the market for your service at the moment, when the opportunity does arise, your company will be the first thing they think of.

Another way to update your website that is often overlooked is to simply update the pictures on the website. Be it by taking new pictures of your building, employees, or products, or by finding new stock photography, new photos can breathe new life into your website, even if the content is the same.

If your website is difficult to update - or you don't even know how to go about updating it - it may be time to contact your web developer. Web updates can be as simple or as extensive as you want. And, if you want to be able to make these changes yourself, consider a custom content management system, where editing information is as simple as writing an e-mail; and adding new pictures is as easy as uploading an attachment.

If you want to learn more about how to breathe new life into your website, contact us here at Avallo. We have the resources, knowledge, and experience to get people to your website. And with Avallo Panel, you can easily make changes to your entire website in just minutes.