Blog

Are You Embarrassed by Your Website?

So do you have a traditional website built using Dreamweaver or another type of desktop editing software?

You say you have heard of content management systems (CMS) but you do not think you need one. You keep your site current, right?

Did this happen to your company’s website:

Build new cool site with Dreamweaver or FrontPage.
Webmaster either leaves or is too busy to update site; or the person or company that built the site is no longer in business or will not return your calls.
Contacts, products, or announcements are out of date on website.
You are busy and think no one is using the site anyway.

Dog laying on laptop - are you proud of your website The truth is most new or potential customers will use the internet to research your company. It is harder than ever to get to speak to new prospects. Your website is usually the first impression of your company. Are you proud to send customers to your site? If a prospect contacts you and mentions to you that they checked out your website do you apologize? Are you concerned that potential new customers may be looking for your product or service, see your website and simply click on the next link instead of contacting you? What would you do if the roles were reversed, would you contact your company?

Today’s technology makes it much easier to keep your site up to date with current features that will give your company a good first impression. Just a few years ago the software to manage your site was installed on a desktop where the pages were built. The products were difficult to learn and took time to use. When updates were needed it was difficult to do.

Does anyone remember how the site was configured?
Where is the Dreamweaver/FrontPage software installed? What computer?
Do I have a current version of my site?
If I make an update will it break something?
How can I add new pages or remove pages and not break links or navigation?
I want to add new Web 2.0 features but how do I do that?
Customers would like to have secured information, how do we setup and manage that?
A new version of IE or Firefox is released and your site looks bad. Now what?

The good news is that technology has advanced and at the same time became affordable. Now modern software allows you to keep your website current and feature rich.

Our product, FlipperSiteDeveloper CMS is offered as a Software-As-A-Service (SaaS) which means that we handle all of the software, patches and updates. To update your site you simply login to your site and use the online tools to make changes. You do not have to install anything on your computers. It is quick, easy and affordable. Once you sign up the site is ready for your information. The monthly fee includes Flipper hosting and updates so there is no annual renewal fee.

Whether your site has 10 pages or 1,000 pages, Flipper gives you the power to manage and update it in a matter of minutes. Your Flipper site can be up and running in less than a week, ready to take your business to the next level.

Imagine your website as a genuine marketing tool to generate business, making it easier for Internet search engines like Google and Yahoo to drive prospects to your site. Flipper is search engine friendly with built in features that you can manage yourself in an easy-to-use and intuitive work environment.

If you want to learn more about how you can improve marketing effectiveness and increase ROI, sign up for a quick demo.

It’s Not Sexy; it is SEO – My Thoughts on Improving Your Website’s SEO Ranking

Marketing Tips We all have received emails (spam) from many companies offering to get your site ranked in the top of Google, Yahoo and Bing. The truth is there is no simple, magical way to instantly fix your rankings in search engines. Improving your rankings takes research, planning and good old fashion work.

If you are going to go on a ‘SEO Quest’, here is my abbreviated list of things to do to your website:

Build a XML sitemap listing all of the pages you want the search engines to index and submit that file link to the major search engines. This file gives the search engines a list of the pages in your site instead of hoping the search engines will find all of your pages.
Use descriptive folder names that make sense to people and computers (/boats/model124) instead of generic or cryptic names like “products” or “products?id=1534”.
Write descriptive page titles, such as “Acme Boats – 2011 Models”.
Write descriptive page descriptions that summarize each individual page. Search engines will use this description under your link so take time to get it right. This description should make the search engine visitor want to click on your link above the others on the search engine results page.
Use breadcrumbs as part of your navigation which counts both as text links and at the same time shows humans where they are in your site.
Use text links to link between your internal pages as well as outside sites instead of images. Search engines give more value to text links because they are visible to humans and less likely to be spammy. These links to your own pages can score you some SEO points.
Your menu should be built from a text based ordered list instead of images. This also helps the disabled who use readers to browse your site. Search engines can easily read these also.
Social media links on your site will make it easier for visitors to talk about you. When they do, those links to your site will enhance your rankings and drive traffic to your site.
Use H1 through H5 tags to outline your content. H1 would be the title then work your way through the tags in order of importance on the page. For example:
      Acme Boats – (H1)
           Fishing Boats – (H2)
                  Under 22 Ft Boats – (H3)
This tells the search engines and human visitor which items belong to which heading or sub-heading.
Use your keywords in the context of your page. Remember that your customers or potential customers will be reading the content. So, the copy should be written for them but include your keywords. Do not flood your content with so many keywords so that the search engines will love it but your visitors do not understand what you are trying to tell them. Your visitor will not find what they want and move on to the next site. The visitor is the ultimate target.
Spend some time doing research to find where your competitors rank on the keywords you believe your potential customers would use to find you or your products. How well do you rank on the same keywords?
Content is king. The more content you have on your site about the topics or products that you sell will make you more authoritative for those subjects. Potential customer will use your site to validate you and the products you sell. Make sure that once they get to your site they get the information needed to proceed to the next step in purchasing what you are selling.

I know I will get emails saying I missed something but these are the methods that have generated the greatest success for me. There are many other things you can do to improve SEO as well as drive traffic to your site but this is already a pretty long blog!

If your site is built with a modern CMS, for example our FlipperSiteDeveloper hosted application it is pretty simple to update these items. For items 1 through 10 we have built in tools that greatly reduced the time it takes to keep these items current. If you have a static site you can still follow the steps above, it is just more work.

Flipper3 - Blog Layout in Articles Section

Allows you to display content in a blog style

Article sections have been updated to allow you two options for displaying the content, article view and blog view. This new feature is located on the Advanced tab in the Administer Section.

The new blog view displays the whole post along with the posted date. Blog view allows you to archive posts either monthly or weekly in a new archive menu.

New option; to have a future publish date.

The publish date is the date you wish to display your post on the web site. This allows you to create a post in advance of when you wish to have them displayed on the web site. The publish date has also been added to the articles layout.

Flipper - Updated Social Media Features

Social Link Types

Group View

List View

We have made it easier than ever to add social media links to your Flipper site.

You simply first select the social media links that you want to display on your web site. We have predefined several of the most popular ones. Next you can select the layout of the social media content on the page. The links will now appear on that page.

You also have two display options;

Group View displays all the social media links in a roll-over bubble. When the end user rolls over the icon a bubble will display all the social media options.

List View displays an icon for each social media option.

These links to the most popular social media sites makes it easier for example for your visitors to link to pages and articles in your site.

Flipper 3 updates include robot forms protection, new media manager and more

Flipper Updates!

We keep working hard to improve the FlipperSiteDeveloper service. This week we have released a few updates to FlipperSiteDeveloper© that we wanted you to know about. The best part of these improvements is that they are already installed in your sites as part of your Flipper service.

Media Manager

Flipper now has an admin interface for managing your media files. The media manager is located in the Admin Area under Images/Media. In the Media Manager you can add, edit and delete media files. The media manager can handle .swf, .flv, wma, .wmv, .avi, .wav, .mpeg, .mpg., mp3, .mid, .midi, .snd, or .mkv files. You can still upload through the WYSIWYG editor or use the new Media Manager.

The media manager also has a search feature that allows you to search by name. You can also sort your media files by type, size, and created date allowing you to easily locate media files.

Registration Form Robot Protection

The registration form can now be set up to resist robots from filling out the registration form. Robot Protection allows you to choose one of three methods to resist robot automated form submissions.

Captcha: an image is displayed in the registration form, and the user is required to input the symbols in a textbox.

Invisible TextBox: Hidden from human view, only robots can fill out the hidden textbox.

Minimum Timeout: set the minimum time to fill the registration form. If the submission is faster than the minimum time, it is assumed that a Robot filled out the form.

Ad Builder

A Search feature has been added to the Ad Builder, allowing you to search for ads by Name, Status, or time frame.

Administration Interface Improvements

The tab design has be updated within the following Administration areas; Company, Section Pages, Products, User, RSS Manager, Image/Media Manager, and Ad Builder. Sections work the same but the tab view is cleaner and more intuitive for users.

We will be bringing you more Flipper improvements in the near future.

New Flipper Video

Control Profitability and Productivity

Day after day, potential customers are giving you valuable information about who they are and what interests them about your company. Unless you know how to capture this information, they might as well be bound and gagged.

Cashing in on your web site visitors is made much with FlipperSiteDeveloper. A powerful and easy-to-use web content management system that gives you control of your web site.

Control Profitability
Realize a quick and ongoing return on investment by empowering staff members to manage your web site without any technical knowledge.
Grow Your Business
Develop new profit centers by establishing closer communications with customers. Increase Search Engine Rankings Customers can't buy from you if they can't find you.
Increase your search engine rankings
with built-in SEO features.
Control Productivity
Empower any staff member to manage your web site without any technical knowledge.

Sign up for a Short Online Demo. It's Quick & Easy

. The easiest way to learn more about Flipper and how your company can take control of its web site is to sign up for a short online demonstration. This will be time well spent because we not only show how powerful Flipper is, but we will give you ideas on how to get more from web site regardless of whether you use Flipper or not.

Flipper 3 - New Tools

New Tools: Internal Link Manager

Hyperlink to internal section within the HTML Edit
The HTML (WYSIWYG) editor now has an Internal Link Manager. The Internal Link Manager allows you to link to internal pages on your web site quickly and easily. Just highlight the content you want to link, click on the
Internal Link Manger icon and use the displayed sitemap to find the page you want to link too.

New Section Type - Redirect Section

Redirect menu link to an existing section or another web site

Redirect Section allows you to create a menu link to a web site page. You can use the Redirect Section to link to another web site or to link to an existing page in your web site. For example; want to display the Contact Us section in your menu system in two places. Use the Redirect Section so you do not have to duplicate the content twice. You can also use the Redirect Section to create a menu link to go to another web site like google.com.

New Features added to the Ad Builder!

Ads now display status and list text ads has preview window

Ad status has been added to the Ad Builder section. Ads will now display a status of Expired/Live/Future. Expired = the display to date has passed, Future = the Display From Date is in the future. In list view by hovering over the ad name a preview of the ad will pop up to allow you to view the ad without clicking edit or preview with images.

New Feature added to the Events Section!

Events will now display Expired/Live/Future Status in Administer view.

Events will now display a status of Expired/Live/Future. Expired = the display to date has passed, Future = the Display From Date is in the future. The event status is displayed in the Administer list view only. "Current View" at the top of events page has been changed to "List View" to clear up any confusion regarding what view the end user is accessing.

Most of our new features should apply directly to your web site, although occasionally you may need to request that a new feature be turned on for your account. If you have any questions about the above features please contact your FlipperSiteDeveloper Representative.