Though very surprised yet excited to receive this award, we do know this really goes to you all. All of you, our clients, inspire us everyday to continue in what we love to do. With over eight years as a part of Wiregrass Advertising, here’s for many more! Thanks!

From the beginning of modern website design, using a non-HTML form of design, like that of Adobe Flash, did not necessarily exclude an owner from his target audience. However, in the rise of large mobile platforms, namely iOS, that do not include or support such technologies, a website owner has to be aware that his site may not be reaching his full audience. If compatibility for a mobile device is not included into a website, then mobile users might only be seeing blank white pages! This can prove to be disastrous for a website.

Then how do you find if your website is reaching your full target audience?

There are a few main ways to look into and find this information. However, let me start by saying that not every website needs to have a fully separate look and feel for mobile users. Many websites function and look perfectly even without a mobile-optimized version. With that mentioned, here are a few great resources to check your website’s mobile standing. A great start would be TestiPhone.com to view your website as it would appear from a mobile device. This quick check will show you any major flaws with your website’s design. Next, you can see a basic rating of your website’s mobile ability by checking out Ready.mobi. Last of all, W3 School’s Mobile Validator is a great tool to see a detailed report of the issues directly affecting your mobile presence. It can also help you to apply these fixes.

Today, using various JavaScript libraries like jQuery, HTML 5 and CSS3, there is no reason to use a proprietary platform like Adobe Flash to achieve a beautiful and interactive website that performs well both on traditional PCs and mobile devices alike.

If you are interested in optimizing your website for mobile devices, go check out our mobile offerings and portfolio here. We would love to show you how to take advantage of your full target audience.

Randy's List Website

We worked to custom design Randy’s List from the ground-up for user-friendliness and ease of use. The rating system is truly unique in the way that it averages and rates customers overall. For a limited time, any business to sign-up quickly within their area receives the first years membership FREE. Click here to find out if you qualify. If you are a customer and would like to view your personal rating, you can become a Lifetime Charter Member for a one-time fee of $2.95 here.

Randy’s List is jammed-packed with many features and functions with many more to come. Go check it out for yourself!

In addition to managing your payments and invoices, you may now also utilize the new login to your hosting control panel. Here you can setup and maintain email addresses, view the files of your website and much more.

Click here to view your new management section.

We appreciate you as our client. Without you we would not be here today. If we can serve you in any way, please do not hesitate to contact us!

As we have seen in the past, when a search is relevant, Google likes to promote their own services in the advertising spotlight: Page 1. Though other social outlets like Twitter and Facebook rank well, Google+ does own their own search engine after all.

Here is where Google+ and more specifically the +1′s are going to start affecting the results and order of what you see in any given query on Google. The +1′s began as a Google-branded version of the Facebook Like or the Twitter Retweet. We already know that Likes and Retweets verifiably control the order one sees inside of the respective websites. The +1 is more-than-likely out to do the same. The results will dramatically reflect a site’s ranking as it will be more based on social interactions and less on traditional ranking methods.

Now that Google+ Pages for Business has been opened to the public, one’s ranking will be based upon the interactions in this new social network using the website domain requested at signup.

Since +1 is already used heavily in search, tying your website’s results to your Google+ Page will prove to work as your clientele will be eating with their friends and circles in mind.

If you have any questions on how Google+ can help your business or would like to consult us, feel free to contact us anytime.

 Here is the Official Google+ Business Page for Wiregrass Advertising, Inc.

Recently I took over the search engine advertising for a client. During a review of their process I saw some keyword bids as high as $25 per keyword. As with most clients, they felt they needed to be at the top of the searches to generate the most customers. I agree, if all you desire is clicks, then, by all means, be in the top position. But, I promise you that you will be wasting money.

Here’s why. Studies indicate that many people simply click the first entries on their search results page without regard if the result is paid or not. Therefore, many times the top ads are clicked regardless if they completely match what the searcher is looking for which results in many wasted clicks the advertiser was charged for but saw no results or conversions from. This in turn results in higher advertising costs.

And here’s the solution. Don’t keep your ads in the top three positions for Google or top four positions for Bing and Yahoo. In other words, you never want your ads to show above the actual search results. You always want your ads to be on the right side first or second ad. Searchers usually do not click the right side ads unless the ad copy is relevant to their search. Thus, you will have fewer people click your ad, but they will generally result in higher conversions because the person is responding to your ad and not just clicking links.

Let’s go back to my client. After reducing their bids on keywords and positioning the ads to show only on the right side, I was able to reduce their monthly spend by over $3,000 and doubled their conversion rate. Saving money while making even more money is a win for everyone! Please contact Wiregrass Advertising for more information on search engine advertising.

Tim Alexander is a guest blogger for Wiregrass Advertising, Inc.
www.cochrannation.com
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For instance. If your goal is to simply be able to tell your friends you have a website, then go find the cheapest designer you can find. Expect to pay a couple hundred bucks or design the site yourself online for free.

However, if you want a website that accurately portrays your company, is search engine optimized to rank well in the search engines and also makes you money, then neither of the options mentioned above should be considered. In this case you should take the time to find a skilled web designer that has experience in both designing websites AND making his clients money from those websites. See, that is what sets designers and truly skilled designers apart. Do the websites the designer builds make the clients money? In this case, if you are destined to make money, then it is worth paying a skilled designer to build the website. Of course, the expense will be higher than a free site, but the return will be exponential. And that is what you are in business for, right?

The third factor to consider is what do you want the website to do as your customers browse it? Dynamic websites that mold to the individual customers are much more difficult to build, therefore more time is involved. Hourly pay runs from minimum wage to over $150 per hour. Of course, the more experienced and knowledgeable programmers cost more. A website program that is difficult to hack (something to be considered these days) and is virtually bug free requires a more experienced programmer.

So now that we have laid out the groundwork, we’ll try to answer the question of, “How much should I pay for my website?” Again, if you don’t care about your website or company’s image then I recommend you go as cheap as possible. (Wiregrass Advertising, Inc. does not do this type of website, so please don’t ask.) If you care about your image and about making money, then you should expect to spend anywhere from $1,500 to $5,000 depending on functionality. If your website requires special programming and development then the total cost may run upwards to $150,000.

With that said, don’t let something like a price tag keep you from inquiring about a website from Wiregrass Advertising. Give us a call today at 334-393-9099 to discuss your web project.

1. The website cannot be found in the search engines.
We do not own the major search engines (wish we did!), therefore we cannot promise you an exact place in a search engine’s ranking. The last company I heard promising first page of Google charged $600 per month with a two year contract to do it but you should see the fine print in the contract. However, we keep up with search engine algorithm changes and we do everything in our power to get you on the first page without the $7200 bill. We write, code and develop every website with the search engines in mind. We submit completed websites to almost 200,000 search engines and/or directories.

2. No traffic.
I admit, it is hard to make money on a website if no one goes to the website. Wiregrass Advertising, Inc. has developed a targeted internet traffic campaign designed to draw visitors to your new website by listing your site on other popular websites. We understand the development of your website is an investment and our goal is to enable you obtain a quicker return on that investment.

3. The website does not do what it is supposed to do.
Every website owner has an expectation for their website. In our first interview we always ask the new client what that expectation is and what their needs are in a website. We then develop the site to fit the goals as well as the needs, making  a match for both the site owner and their customers. One of the biggest mistakes we see our clients make over and over again is the desire to design a website that looks and does what THEY want it to do while not considering what their CUSTOMERS need it to do. As an internet marketing firm with nearly 15 years of experience, we have an idea of what works and what does not. Every target market is different and every website should be designed to fit our client’s target market. When we are commissioned for a new website we spend time researching the target market so that we can develop a marketing tool that works.

4. Expectations are misguided.
One of my favorite stories is about an e-commerce store owner who also had a brick and mortar store. One day I was in the store listening to him complain about how his website was not increasing his business. In the middle of the owner’s tirade a customer walked in with a list of items to purchase. The total was over $1,000. The customer told the store owner he had found the e-commerce store on the web, developed his shopping list and drove over 50 miles one-way to pick up the items. After the purchase was complete and the customer left, the store owner turned to me and continued to complain how his website was not generating any income. Wiregrass Advertising, Inc. develops websites as a marketing tool. This means that although some business will come across the website, there is still a lot of business that comes via phone calls, emails, buzz and (if applicable) walk-in traffic. We encourage website owners to look at ALL areas of their business when deciding if a website works or not. Most customers will not tell a site owner how they found them. By asking every client, we know that 95% of our new business comes from our website being listed in the top one to three positions in the search engines, yet only about 35% use the contact form on our site. Sixty-five percent of new clients call us on the phone.

5. The site owner does not put any effort into the website.
A couple years ago we developed an e-commerce store for a client who only wanted us to input fifty products. One year later they had only input 22 more items even though they sell several hundred items in their brick  and mortar store. A year after the website went live, the owner talked to me complaining about the lack of sales from his website. Since the store had good traffic counts, my advice was to add more products that people were looking for. Over the course of the following year they owner still did not add products or maintain the site and, sadly, eventually closed it down. Due to a lack of effort on their part they are potentially losing hundreds of sales. If they had spent only five minutes per day they would have had nearly 400 items to offer their customers and would have increased their sales exponentially. We have developed one of the world’s easiest Content Management Systems that enable website owners to make changes and updates to their websites in seconds. There really is no reason for a website to contain outdated and irrelevant information.

Now you have the top five reasons we have found why websites do not work. We have solved every one of them and put it in a neat little bundle we call our “web design package.” Wiregrass Advertising, Inc. has a vested interest in our websites and we desire every website to work for our clients. By developing the website to work within up to date search engine guidelines, driving targeted traffic to the website that is designed to match the target market’s needs and assisting the site owner in evaluating the business and maintaining the website, every site we design has the potential to be a “block-buster!” Call us today at 334-393-9099 or contact us for a free consultation.

In talking to people about websites for the past fifteen years I’ve come to the realization that most business owners do not understand the power of the internet or how to properly use their website as a marketing tool. I had a potential client come to me the other day and ask about pricing for an e-commerce website. He had talked to some friends who had online stores and they had told him that they only received minimal orders from theirs. From those conversations he came to me with this mindset: “I will only get a few orders from my website so I want the cheapest website I can find.” This person has set himself up for failure. With thoughts like this he might as well go home and enjoy life sitting by the fireplace reading a good book. What true entrepenuer goes into business with the expectation of failure?

An e-commerce website can (and have) made many people a lot of money. These business owners have learned how to harness the power of the internet and channel into their coffers. Here are three ideas of how they did it.

1. The successful online business was developed from a well-founded idea, completed with homework and a business plan. Usually the successful website owners consulted with other people including online marketing companies who have had experience and success marketing companies.

2. The successful online store business owner did not build a cheap website. A good entreprenuer is knowledgable in many areas, an expert in a few and has the wisdom to know when to get help from others more experienced than he. Although most of us look at websites everyday few people know the true working and pshychological aspects of how a website turns potential customers into paying customers. That is where an online marketing company with web development experience comes in. And the successful business owner did one more thing. He let the experienced experts of the marketing company design and implement the website without micro-managing the website’s development.

3. The successful entreprenuer also has a short and long term plan for marketing the website. While our typical web development package contains short term marketing, a successful online business requires long term marketing to continually drive people to the website. A website without a marketing plan is like an unlit billboard on a dark road. No one will see it. A long term marketing plan also involves a continuing hands-on working of the website. Good websites are constantly evolving, constantly changing and always have a draw to encourage people to return.

That is just a couple ideas to make your website a success. We are happy to discuss your ideas in more detail. Call us today at 334-393-9099.