Christine Churchill

If you are like most Pay Per Click (PPC) advertisers, finding new ways to improve ad performance is an on-going quest. If you are a local business doing paid search, there’s good news. Google now offers a technique that allows advertisers to use their local business data in a way that makes their ad stand out.

In this article, I’ll explain how to derive the maximum benefit from the local business data in your Google Places (formerly Google Local Business Center) listings. Read more

The answer matters!

It didn’t used to matter. . . back in the 1990′s. Everyone used email software on their computer. With the exception of AOL users, of course.

But now web email is very common. In fact, Comscore reported on unique user traffic for the US only to the big four email domains in July 2009:

• Yahoo! Mail attracted 106 million unique US users
• Windows Live Hotmail: 47 million users
• Gmail:  37 million users
• AOL Mail: 36.4 million users

That’s over 226 MILLION PEOPLE who can’t use your email link, since it “points” to an email software on your computer, not on a web service!

Use a web form for your visitors to contact you

A web form is easy to create and very functional for all your website visitors.

There are three parts to the web form:

1. the part the web visitor sees (like the image at the right)
2. the email sending mechanism (including spam filters and other validation processes)
3. the thank you message

If your web designer only gave you a link instead of a form, ask for your money back. They were simply being lazy! And cutting out 225 million people from being able to ask you a simple question!

I’m mad about this! I’ve seen too many websites latey that only have an email contact link — no form. And the web site owner wasn’t educated enough to know that this won’t work (unless you have a time machine and go back to the mid-90′s).

Be smart and use a contact form on your website.

During these times things run through my head, either because I’m purposely thinking about a project, or randomly (more likely!). When I need to remember a thought, especially in the car, I just speed dial 9 to reach reQall, and say what I was thinking.

reQall turns my spoken words into text that shows up in my email, where I can manage it. Or, you can have reQall call you back in the office, or back to my cell phone as text or voice, or a myriad of other options.

Did I say the basic service is FREE?? I love reQall and usually call it 3-4 times a day with thoughts, ideas, and to-dos.

The Background of reQall

reQall is based on memory research done by Sunil Vemuri at the MIT Media Lab in the early 2000s. Vemuri’s research focused on how mobile technology could be used to help people capture their daily experiences and then efficiently catalog that information so that it could be retrieved and used at a later time. The first version of the reQall application became available in January, 2007, when it was launched at the DEMO 07 conference and won a DEMOgod award.

In March 2009, the company introduced a new version of reQall that includes a patent-pending “Memory Jogger” that analyzes various aspects of the user’s current situation (time, location and upcoming calendar events) to provide a dynamically updated display of relevant to-dos and notes. The Memory Jogger proactively provides contextually-relevant reminders rather than relying on the user to seek information by accessing a static to-do list or calendar.

reQall. Try it at www.reQall.com

Use video chat to give a video tour of a new home to friends, introduce a baby to relatives, keep in touch with traveling loved ones… the list goes on. Here is a simple way that any grandmother (or even YOU!) can use to get started with Google video chat on her own.

This video, along with a printable guide, can be accessed at google.com/chat/grandma. Feel free to share this link with your grandma—or grandpa—or, well, anyone who wants to video chat to help get them up and running.

Just click the “View” link at the bottom of a Gmail message and the viewer will take it from there. If you decide you want to edit the file, clicking “Edit online” will open it in Google Docs, or you can download it to your desktop from there.

Google has also introduced rich text signatures into Gmail. Now you can change the colors or font size of your signature, or insert images and links right in Gmail — without any additional plugins, scripts or other workarounds.

Gmail users now are able to format text, add bullets, numbering, indenting and alignment your email signature. You can also insert images and hyperlinks into your personal signatures, adding a little creativity and flair.

The next time you log in and visit the Settings page, you’ll see a rich text editor in the signature section. Here, you can customize your signature by adding pretty formatting, links, and images — or decide to leave things nice and simple.

While some argue that these features should’ve been introduced long ago, it’s nice to finally be able to create a personal signature that has a business card-like look to it. As of now, the mobile version still only supports plain text signatures.

More information is available at the Gmail Blog.

Ponderosa Pediatrics

• Informational site for Prescott pediatric clinic
• Fillable PDF forms for patients
• Integrated directions and map
• Integrated blog
• Local search optimization

Indian Air Heating & Cooling

• Informational site for HVAC contractor
• Lots of product information
• Online business reviews and ratings
• Integrated blog
• Local search optimization

Hospice of the Pines

• Informational blog about hospice
• Support groups
• Private physicians’ area
• Local search optimization

Tender Hearts Senior Care

• Informational site about in-home senior care business
• Integrated blog on existing Joomla front-end
• Online employment application
• Caregiver profiles
• Local search optimization

Prescott Senior Transportation

• Simple informational site for senior transportation
• Online interactive rate quote
• Special offer for first-time customers
• Local search optimization

Jay’s Bird Barn

• Informational site about wild bird business
• Integrated bog
• Ask our birding expert feature
• Weekly newsletter
• Article archive
• Local search optimization

Some background for those of you who don’t build search engines for a living like us: when you search Google, you’re not searching the live web. Instead you’re searching Google’s index of the web which, like the list in the back of a book, helps you pinpoint exactly the information you need. (Here’s a good explanation of how it all works.)

So why did we build a new search indexing system? Content on the web is blossoming. It’s growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average webpage is richer and more complex. In addition, people’s expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish. Read more…

Jay Baer writes the always-interesting Convince and Convert blog. In this article, he devfelops a simple strategy that only take quarterly attention to build a social FAQ for your company.

One of the key benefits of social media that’s not talked about nearly enough is its ability to mitigate doubt and confusion among fence-sitters.

Yes, your prospective customers are confused and uncertain. After all, why would they even be coming to your Web site unless they had questions about your product or service? To be entertained? I think not.

Read Jay’s full post at 4 Steps to Drive  Sales with a Social FAQ/

People look at information above the fold far more than they do at information further down the page.

He looks at user viewing patterns along the horizontal dimension:

In this chart, each bar shows the amount of time users spent on fixations within a 100-pixel-wide stripe running down the screen, starting from the very left.

People spent more than twice as much time looking at the left side of the page as they did the right:

• Left half of screen: 69% of viewing time
• Right half of screen: 30% of viewing time

The remaining 1% of viewing time was spent to the right of the initially-visible 1,024 pixels. Such information is visible only after horizontal scrolling, and the minute amount of attention it attracts confirms the guideline to avoid horizontal scrolling. Read more.

He concludes: Stick to the conventional layout, because it works perfectly with how people look at Web pages:

• Keep navigation all the way to the left. This is where people look to find a list of current options.
• Keep the main content a bit further in from the left.
• The most important stuff should be showcased between one-third and halfway across the page. This is where users focus their attention the most.
• Keep secondary content to the right. It won’t be seen as much here, but that’s okay — not everything can get top billing, and you need a place to put less-important material.

Read more.