Like a song or a painting, there are an infinite number of approaches you can take to create your company website. Continuing the comparison, there are karaoke and paint by number methodologies that you should steer clear of. Why? We believe your web  (now more than ever) is the front line of your marketing and should have a personality and message that truly depicts who your company is today and why customers should pick you over your competition.

The more recognized the brand the more you can concentrate on information and functionality. In our case, building sites for the B2B world, our customers are well known but in smaller circles. With an emerging  change of the guard in decision makers (younger, more educated, more  internet savvy and increasingly more female) we feel injecting some clear messaging and marketing spin is a critical ingredient.

Within our transportation niche, customers put online management tools and real time visibility ahead of everything else. They feel the need to compete with big integrators like FedEx and UPS and many put their website on hold for years until this functionality is in place. As much as these online tools are now a necessary part of doing business, I think this is a mistake. Here is why…

First. Your website makes an impression on several  markets. Existing customers, potential customers, existing and prospective employees, partnership opportunities and possible strategic alliances. Your web development approach can address all these elements now while your back end functionality is being developed. When they are ready to marry up, we’ll arrange the wedding and your IT department can take a well deserved honeymoon. The “front end” can work for you immediately and needs to be developed independently anyway….why wait?

Second. Your customers could use FedEX or UPS now. Why don’t they? In the same way you can’t offer the same level of online functionality (they have 30,000 people in their respective IT departments)they cannot offer the same level of customization and personalized service that smaller companies excel at. That’s the slingshot that can bring the giant down. Keep it loaded.

Third. Your customers ‘ requirements are as unique as a top ten song or a Picasso.  There is a reason you exist. Recognize that uniqueness and speak to it. With the help of a well developed site and the latest search engine marketing you can pull customers in that need your brand of service. It’s not immediate, it may take 6-9 months to see results…but it’s time well spent.

We’re having a crazy week at the office here, as we’ve taken out the ceiling on the central part of the second floor to create an open concept look, as well to fulfill a summer mandate. Back in June we set out a goal of having all office staff on one floor, not only in order to improve communication between staff, but to make everyone feel like they’re a part of the team. So with the reno in full swing, as well as some IT issues with one of our servers, we’ve neglected this blog a bit, but now it’s time to get back at it.

In this week’s post, we’ll talk about creating a custom mobile site, and why you should look at creating one for your transportation business. During the past decade, mobile devices such as cell phones and smart phones have seen an exponential growth in usage, both by consumers and business users. A typical website does not view too well on the small screen of these mobile devices. Usually a user has to do some horizontal and vertical scrolling in order to get to the information they’re looking for.

This is where customized mobile websites come in. Think of a mobile site as a version of your own site without the bells and whistles. A typical mobile site will contain, at minimum, some basic information about your business such as the services that your company offers, a company profile page and basic contact information. Mobile sites should load quickly, as mobile devices do not have the required bandwidth that landline internet connections have. You can take your mobile site to the next level by integrating some interactive content. For example, if your website supports features such as shipment tracking, you can easily integrate that into your mobile site. This way the customer can quickly look up their shipment information through their mobile device. Another idea would be to have a simplified rate request form, with only basic contact details and shipment fields. The whole idea is to make things as simple as possible for the mobile user, because they’re on the go, and already limited by factors that they can’t control such as screen size and bandwidth limitations.

Most mobile sites will run in harmony with your existing site. If a user is using a mobile device, you can install code determining so they’ll be automatically redirected to your mobile site. You can also specify a sub-domain such as m.yourwebsite.com, a directory www.yoursite.com/mobile or go one step further with a .mobi domain to fully distinguish your regular website from your mobile one. For a good example of a mobile site serving the transportation industry, look to no further than UPS’ mobile site at m.ups.com.

With the 2009 holiday season past us, I’m sure many of you have noticed a slight decrease in the amount of visitors to your site, that is if your organization is based on a business to business model. This phenomenon is quite normal, and expected, as many of the companies you deal with either shut down for the holidays, or have a skeleton staff working within this time period. So naturally, there will be less visitors to your site. Companies that are focused more on the consumer, will see a reverse trend, as holiday shoppers will flock to their site for either product information or to shop online.

So when analyzing your seasonal data, you’ll have to compare the statistics with a previous holiday season in order to gain a better understanding if the number of visitors to your site have increased.  If you’re using Google Analytics, you’re in luck because there’s an easy way to compare the two metrics. In your analytics dashboard, you’ll find a date range selector (Blue) which will allow you to select a range which your website statistics will be based upon. If you check the “Compare to Past” box, you’ll  be able to select a secondary comparison metric (Green), and compare both of these metrics at the same time.

By default, Google will show the amount of visitors for the past month, so you’ll want to select a different date range (ie; 01-12-2009 to 31-12-2009), and then a past date range (ie; 01-12-2008 to 31-12-2008). Now you’ll be able to see and analyze the statistics from the different holiday seasons.