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Dell: Giving Their Website a Greater Purpose

“Give Your Website a Greater Purpose” is not only our tagline but our central belief.  I bring this up, because Dell has done just that.  What does Dell do? Sell computer hardware, right?  I am not in the market for a server or computer system, so why would I spend a large amount of my morning at Dell.com?

Dell has begun Studio Dell: an online video resource broken down to 3 main categories; home, small business, and IT Pro and then further broken down to many sub categories.  This is a great example of giving a website a greater purpose while strategically targeting their audience.  In the end, I still didn’t purchase a computer (this time), however I did look to see what they are offering today.

Classic Menu for PowerPoint 2007

The new menu interface for Office 2007 “Ribbons”, including PowerPoint 2007 is visually stunning; however after many years of working with the previous interface it can be a bit challenging.   I am forcing myself to learn it, however in the meantime if you want the features offered in PowerPoint 2007 and don’t have time or inclination to learn the new interface Addintools has created an addin to return your toolbars to their “classic” state.  They claim the file is small and installs in minutes.  It can also be activated and deactivated easily. 

The cost for the PowerPoint only version is $15.99 and office edition (PowerPoint, Word, Excel) is $29.95

This is an interesting idea.  I have yet to try it, mostly because I am fearful or no longer pushing myself to learn “ribbons”.  If you try it, please let me know.

Virtual Reward Cards

There are many traditional stores that offer reward cards: buy 10 get one free.  With each qualifying purchase a business card sized tracker gets stamped or punched.  Once the card is filled the next purchase is on the house.  As a way to keep visitors coming back to your website, try incorporating a virtual offer.  This doesn’t only have to apply to purchased items.  It could be with 10 posts on a blog, someone is able to download an ebook.  Get creative with ways to retain customers and your online business will increase.

Double-Up Drop Down

If you run an ecommerce website than chances are pretty good that you have a ship to form that includes drop downs.  If you ship internationally, you may even have a drop down to select the country to ship to.  Within the United States it is common, but not standard for American companies to list the United States first and then list the remaining countries in alphabetical order. 

For example:

1. United States
2. Afghanistan
3. Albania
4. Algeria
5. American Samoa
6. Andorra
7. Anguilla
8. Antarctica
9. Antigua And Barbuda
10. Argentina
11. …

However, for some visitors immediately scroll down the list.  When the United States is only listed in the first position and not within the alphabetical list, it can sometimes be difficult or frustrating to find.  Having it listed in both places will increase site usability and will not add discrepancies to your mail to database.  If you ship mostly to one state consider adding your primary state to the top and also within the alphabetical list.

Amazon.com is one of the few sites, I am aware of that lists the United States in both places.  They are also, one of the only sites I know of that lists Antarctica as a ship to country.  Do they really ship there?  If so, do they offer free shipping for book purchases over $25?

For a complete dropdown list of worldwide countries, click here to download Amazon's recommendation. 

PowerPoint: The Problems with Transparencies… and the FIX

Not always, but more often than not, if you use a transparent element in PowerPoint (haven’t tested 2007) the image when printed shows up as a solid colored box.  This is especially common for presentations that have gradients that blend from a solid color to completely transparent.  Not sure why this happens, however here is my little trick to get around it.

1. Draw/Place in the transparent object like you always do. 
2. Double its size or greater. 
3. From the main menu go to edit-paste special and select png
4. Resize the object into place

Voila.  Unfortunately, this object is no longer editable, however it is printable! 

Have a PowerPoint Problem?  Let me us know and we will do out best to assist.

Purchase Additional URLs

John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing recently wrote  about the importance of your company name and how it should “evoke an appropriate emotional response from your target market.”  The same is true for your url.  Your url should evoke an approapriate emotonal response from your target market while reflecting your actual company name as closely as possible.  You should always be on the lookout to purchase new shorter versions for clients to be able to remember.   For example, www.visualcontentsolutions.com matches our official company name exactly, but it would be a lot easier for our clients to remember and go to www.vcs.com to arrive at my site.  When shortening names be careful not to unintentionally create a negative image of your company, for example www.visualcon.com is a shorter and easier to type name but most likely will not increase my customer base.

In addition to names that match your company, it is wise for companies to pick up urls that match their products names, services, or even personality.  Search out key phrases for your website that are still available as urls that can bounce/link to your primary site. 

Lastly, the price of a url has greatly decreased from 5 years ago, typically under $5 each, consider purchasing the .biz, .info, .com of your web address.  As these extensions become more popular it will become more of a necessity to own your name outright.

The PowerPoint & OfficeArt Team Blog

The other day I came across a great blog, “The PowerPoint & OfficeArt Team Blog” created by “the team creating PowerPoint and Office 2007's cool new graphics engine.”   The only downside is that it appears when Office 2007 got released the blog stopped receiving new posts. There are only about 20 and some are meant more so for internal use, however the other posts give an inside view of the new PowerPoint 2007.  If you are already using PowerPoint 2007 or simply curious about some of its new features this is truly a mini treasure trove of information and well worth the visit.

Finding Key Phrases

Keywords are good Key Phrases are better, but how do you determine which phrase to use?  Google has a Keyword Tool to assist.  They offer two options: Keyword Variations and Site-Related Keywords.

Keyword Variations allow you to type in multiple phrases or single words and Google will build an expanded list of Key Phrases.  Each phrase can then be sorted by the previous month’s search volume and advertiser completion.

Sit- Related Keywords is very similar except instead of you selecting key phrases and then having Google create variations, Google will search your site and build a list of key phrases based on your website content.

As a fun test, type into the Keyword Variations area all of the phases/words that are important to you.  Print this out and place a checkmark next to each one that is truly appropriate for your site.  Of these, place a second checkmark next to those that have a high Search Volume and low Advertising Competition ratio.  These are the words you should be targeting.

Now run the Site-Related Keyword Tool.  Compare the results.  Did it produce all of the key phrases that you identified with the Key Word Variations Tool?  Did your site produce a lot of Key Phrases that are not on target?  Although this isn’t everything you can get from this tool, it is the basis for streamlining your website copy to produce better search results.  Start slowly working some of these phrases into your copy regularly and know that you are on the road to search engine success.

Site Map Submission Just Got Easier

It is no secret, search engines like site maps.  Site maps allow search engines to find all of the pages of a website.  Now you don’t have to submit your sitemap to each of the major search engines.  As of April 11, all of the major search engines are able to locate your sitemap by including a single line into your robots.txt file.

Sitemap: http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

With the added time savings, you can create even more content for your website, but don’t forget to update your sitemap.

Reduce Your PowerPoint File Size Dramatically

Are your PowerPoint files too large to email? Do you have images within your presentation? They most likely are the culprit.  All it takes is one oversized image. 

PowerPoint offers a little known, well hidden tool to compress pictures. Many users of PowerPoint do not have access to professional image manipulation programs (i.e., Photoshop), therefore mages of all sizes are inserted into PowerPoint and manipulated within the presentation package.  This includes the reduction of picture dimension and removal or cropping of undesired images.  The end result is a much small version of the original picture. However, as far as PowerPoint is concerned the image is still as large as the original inserted picture.

If you double-click the image, on the popped-up window you should see a “Compress” button in the bottom left hand corner which will bring you to the Compress Pictures window (below). 

For step-by-step instructions, visit our Presentation Tips & Tutorials (Tip 12).

For users of PowerPoint 2007, the compress option is built in automatically upon save.