Notes From the Desk

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Quintessential Outdoor Living Company, a pioneer in the Outdoor Wood-Fired cooking category, recently launched a brand new customer-focused web site, www.indoors2OUT.com , designed/developed by Darrell Williams of Cow Dog Design of Cincinnati.

The new Quintessential site features a dealer locator search by zip code, complete dealer list, images and specifications for each oven model, recipes, industry news, frequently asked questions and an e-news sign up option–all designed with the customer’s needs in mind.

Early in July we launched the new Ultimate Ice Wraps website. Along with a new design, the Ultimate Ice Wraps shopping cart was overhauled and new features were added. A few of the new features are online gift card purchase, expanded search functionality, and a streamlined shopping experience.

The site was developed by Cow Dog Design, while Epop Studio created the design.

Ultimate Ice Wraps were developed by a group of former athletes, trainers, and coaches who were not satisfied with the current offerings in the cold care markets. Early prototypes were tested with several Division I college teams, prestigious rehabilitation facilities, and nationally recognized personal trainers.

Cow Dog Design LLC is unveiling a new ad to be placed in local publications and on the Internet.

There is an animated gif out there from the late 90’s that I ran into while looking at a local church’s website. It is an animated gif with 3 bowing monks and below the monks it simply states “Eternally Under Construction”. The website was trying to make a small religious pun, but the underlying statement of a website being eternally under construction is how every company needs to view their website and it’s function within their business.

The brochure mindset is an idea that dominates business owners’ perceptions of what a website should be. A brochure is usually a tri-fold piece of paper that states some facts about the company and probably won’t be updated for a few years. While brochures are extremely useful and their place in marketing will never disappear, applying the same rules and thought process to your website is applying old school rules to a brand new beast and it just doesn’t work.

When starting out on the development of your website, you need to come in with the mind set that your website will be a living, breathing marketing tool that must grow and evolve over time. A website is not something you can build and forget about. Companies that take this approach to their website will quickly see their numbers dwindle.

Here are some quick tips on how to keep your site growing and evolving through time.

1. Publish press releases or news articles on your website. Have a section on your home page for a link to the article so it is at your site visitors’ finger tips.
2. If you can’t afford to redesign your website, alter the color scheme. Just like a room in your house, a fresh coat of paint can visually transform your website.
3. Swap out your main home image once a month. This image is usually the first thing that catches a viewer’s eye.

The goal of these changes or others is to give visual clues to your site visitors that your site is up-to-date and evolving as your business or area of business evolves. If your site appears stale or stagnant, than people will think your company is stale or stagnant.

Promoting one’s business or group is one of the most important things to do to become successful. Unfortunately, this task usually takes a back seat to other priorities. I don’t care if you are the local high school hockey team or a multinational corporate company; there are avenues that every group should be taking to expand its viability, reach and influence in the world. If customers don’t know about your business or group, than they can’t join or purchase your merchandise. Here are five simple things you can easily do on the Internet to spread the word.

1. Start a group on LinkedIn: LinkedIn is the business version of Facebook and having an individual page is great but it doesn’t fully promote the company. Creating a group page on LinkedIn helps individuals or groups find your company. With a LinkdIn group, you can easily distribute news and other information to the public in one localized place.
2. Start a business page on Facebook: Facebook right now is the number one social networking website out there. While it is not as formal as LinkedIn, Facebook has a bigger and wider net it can toss to attract more people to your business. Also when a person joins your group on Facebook, Facebook does you the favor of promoting your business to all of that person’s friends on Facebook.
3. Create a Digg account to promote your eNews: Digg.com is a news website where the articles are submitted by the users. Users recommend news they have read on other sites to all the other Digg users. If you have been including your newsletters as part of your website this is a great tool to promote your news to new people who have not heard of your group or company.
4. Participate as a group: Recently I participated in a charity bike ride and to register you need to use a website called getmeregistered.com. With this site there are many features that people rarely use. One such feature is that you can organize a business group or organization to participate in the event. A group can be 1 person or 100 people, but the benefit is you are putting your company or group name out there for the world to see. While promoting a good cause you are also promoting your business to a new group of people.
5. Submit your website to DMOZ.org: DMOZ.org is a free online directory that you can submit your website to be listed. DMOZ.org is used by people looking for specific companies to fulfill their needs. The secondary benefit of DMOZ.org is yahoo.com, google.com, and other search engines will follow that link to your website. Thus creating a free external link back to your site, which is great for your search engine optimization.