What To Look For When Outsourcing Web Development

Posted on March 1, 2010
Toronto Marketing Consultant, Toronto Online Consulting, Toronto Web Consulting, Web Development |

Outsourcing Web Development

A Web developer is a person or company that builds and maintains high quality websites for corporations, businesses, organizations, and individuals. They have the experience and qualifications to build a visible presence on the Web. Today, with so many websites selling their products and services, businesses need to build a strong presence to gain a competitive edge. This requires a lot of technical ‘know how’ which is the expertise of a professional web developer. If you are looking to outsource your web development project, you should know what to look for before you hire a web developer.

1. A professional web developer will have very extensive and diverse web building knowledge and web development skills. They should be well versed in writing custom scripts and working with various scripting languages. This includes PHP coding, CMS integration, and JavaScript. They should also know how to use an HTML editor and how to hand code HTML. As well, a quality web developer should be able to provide cgi and database programming.

2. A web developer will be able to create innovative website designs. This includes creating innovative graphics, efficiently managing and creating a professional layout that includes proper images, graphics, text, and color schemes. A good web developer should be able to create a wide range of website styles with the most current features such as animation and flash. Their development style should be innovative, unique, individualistic, and dynamic. As well, having marketing know-how is essential when looking for a web developer.

3. A professional web developer should keep up-to-date on the new search engine optimizing tools and techniques for all the major search engines. The websites they build should be user friendly and search engine friendly. As well, they should know to keep a website functional in a number of different web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Navigator, Netscape, Firefox, Opera, and Mozilla.

4. A high quality web developer should have the knowledge and tools to bring quality and relevant traffic to the website. This includes creating interactive pages that encourage visitors to stay on the site. As well, they should be knowledgeable about a diverse range of scripting languages to create sales tools, surveys, polls, contests, feedback forms, discussion forums, chat rooms, and more. The developer will make each page visually appealing, interesting, unique, and informative. Content will be high quality to not only attract visitors, but boost search engine ranking. You can get a sense of their web design ability by asking to see their design portfolio.

When outsourcing web development, it is important that you understand what a web developer does so you know that the person or company that you hire has the experience to meet your individual needs. The best web developer will provide a host of services such as acquiring a domain name, setting up a web hosting account, marketing and promoting your web site, writing copy, and more, so that your website turns high quality traffic into a loyal customer base.

Importing Blog Content to your Facebook Page

Posted on February 11, 2010
FaceBook, Social Media Marketing, Toronto Marketing Consultant, Toronto Online Consulting, Toronto Web Consulting |

Blog Content on Facebook

If you are active in the online social networking community, whether for business or personal use, and you have a Blog of your own, then you know how time-consuming it can be to repost the same information over and over again. Fortunately, Facebook solves that problem by allowing you to import Blog content to your Facebook page.

The following are a few easy steps to importing your Blog content to your Facebook page:

1. Before you begin importing, you will need a computer with internet access, your own Blog, and your own Facebook account.

2. Login to your Facebook account and go to your profile page.

3. Located in the bottom bar, you will find the ‘Applications’ page. Look for the ‘Notes’ section. It will be located near the top of your page on the right if you have previously used this section.  If you have not previously used this section, click on the small plus sign at the top of your profile page and select the ‘Notes’ category.

4. Under ‘Notes Settings,’ click on ‘Import a Blog.” A pop up window will appear. Read what is in the window and follow the prompts. The notes application only supports the importing of one RSS feed.

5. Click to agree to the terms and conditions.

6. Enter the main URL or RSS feed for your Blog.

7. Click to agree that you have the right to import the Blog and at the bottom of the preview, click on ‘Confirm Import’

You will now begin importing your external Blog.  If you are having difficulties with images not transferring to your notes or you have formatting problems, check the RSS feed you are importing to find out if your Blog is being displayed properly.

If you want to set the privacy of your Blog on Facebook, you first have to go to the ‘My Privacy’ page. You will then go to the section, ‘Friends, Notes, and Facebook Development Platform.’ In the Notes section, use the drop-down box to go to’ My Notes’ page and then ‘Edit Notes Privacy.’ Choose your preferred level of privacy. You will have the ability to choose who can comment and subscribe to your Blog using Facebook. When finished, save your changes.

Facebook will automatically add your new Blog posts as notes on your Facebook Wall and in your subscribers’ News Feeds. Importing Blog content to your Facebook page will make your social networking experience much easier, quicker, and bring more traffic to your Blog.

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How to Lower Your Cost Per Acquisition

Posted on February 4, 2010
Affiliate Marketing Tips, Google AdWords, Landing Page Optimization, PPC Keyword Tools, Pay Per Click, Toronto SEM Consulting |

How to Lower Your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) advertising, or Cost Per Action advertising, is a method of paying for advertising that allows the advertiser to pay for each conversion such as a download, transaction, and lead instead of paying each time someone clicks on the ad. In other words, the advertiser only pays when the user completes a transaction. When differentiating CPA vs. CPC (Cost Per Click), with CPC, the advertiser pays each time someone clicks on the ad.

The best way to lower your CPA is to maximize your keywords so that you are using keywords that people use when searching for your product and service.  You must be able to turn your keywords into a sale. This involves constantly looking for quality keywords so you gain a competitive edge and that the researched keywords result in a profit. One important step you should take is setting a maximum cost-per-acquisition (CPA). This is the bid you are willing to pay for a conversion such as a transaction. For instance, if your maximum CPA bid is $5.00, you will not pay more than that price. You may also end up paying less depending on what others are bidding. You have the option to increase or decrease your maximum bid, depending on your marketing strategy. Google’s recommended maximum cost-per-acquisition (CPA) is the ad group bid that they suggest to help an advertiser keep costs steady.

Other than Google’s free conversion optimizing service, there are also cost per action paid service companies that specialize in finding the right keywords and setting the price. There are keyword research services available that provide advertisers with the ability to continually research keywords and create a relevant and effective list of keywords that will help them increase site traffic and lower their cost per acquisition. It is an effective method of controlling advertising spending and reducing advertising waste. People can also manually set keywords and bids themselves. Cost Per Acquisition Optimizing is an important tool if you are looking to optimize the number of conversions to maximize your advertising dollars.

Quality Score is another way to lower your CPA. Quality score is a grade search engines apply to your advertising campaigns. The higher a search engine grades your campaign, the less you will be charged. As well, you ads will become better established in the ‘Sponsored Links’ column. Quality score is affected by ad text relevancy, keyword relevancy to its particular ad group, landing page quality, and the click through rate. By producing search engine friendly ad campaigns, you will reduce your advertising costs by permitting the search engine to generate reduced minimum bids and first page bid for your advertising account. With better CPA management, businesses can drastically improve conversions while lowering their CPA.

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