Here are three easy ways to increase traffic to your site.
1) Generate fresh content
Create interesting and relevant content and update your site regularly. Nothing beats being up-to-date for keeping people interested in your web site.
2) Newsletters
Writing and sending a newsletter allows you to reach out to your customers and remind them you are still here, even if it doesn’t always bring them back to your site. The bonus is, since it’s email it is easy for your readers to forward it along to friends and potentially increase your customer base.
3) Monitor page views
Stay informed about what is bringing people to your site using your site tracking software. Are the ads you’ve purchased working as effectively as they could be, and if not, is it time to make some changes?
Do you have any tips to share on how you drive traffic to your web site? Please leave a comment.
In our new Boxcar Marketing website it was important for James and me to implement as many best practices as possible. We wanted to start with a solid design based on usability. Here are 3 mistakes we often point out to clients and how we avoided them in our design.
Design Mistake #1: The About Us page is an About Me page.
Why is About Me a mistake for a business About page? Although we are pretty pleased with ourselves, the primary purpose of our About page is to establish what we can do for YOU. Too often About pages are nice corporate histories but are not valuable in terms of closing a sale, building trust and establishing credentials that are relevant to potential clients.
Look at our About page for ideas on how you can move beyond About Me and towards About You.
Design Mistake #2: No Author Photo or Company Photo
For companies like ours, where the primary contact is James Sherrett or Monique Trottier, the photo is important. In general, photos of staff or key employees are important for two reasons: photos offer a more personable impression of the company and photos connect the virtual and physical world. For example, people who meet me at a QuickLearn session or see me on a Lab with Leo episode will immediately recognize that they have come to the right website. And in reverse, people who read the Boxcar Marketing blog are more likely to recognize me when we meet in person at a conference or for a meeting.
Design Mistake #3: More-on Links
I posted in September a marketing tip on link text: “Don’t Be a More-On”. In short, more-on refers to hyperlinks that say things like, “Read more” or “Click here.” James and I think these types of links are pretty useless and we aim to write hyperlink text that is persuasive or at minimum tells the visitor where they are going. We are not 100 percent perfect in our link text, but you can see 2 examples in this post. The link directing you to our About page is an example of a persuasive link. It identifies the benefit: Look at our site and borrow ideas for improving your own. If our site was sales focussed, I would enhance that text further by saying something like, See how Boxcar Marketing doubled sales by improving their About copy. Much more persuasive than “Click Here”, right?
The above hyperlink text, a marketing tip on link text: “Don’t Be a More-On”, is the second example. The text gives you an indication of where you will go if you click on that link. On the web, life is too short to click on uncertain links.
What do you think? Do you use your About page differently? Do you have photos? What text do you use for the majority of your links? Share your thoughts.
Late last week I received an email from Google AdWords at an email address that looked like . Except the email wasn’t from Google AdWords and the originating email address wasn’t really .
In computing, phishing is an attempt to criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. eBay, PayPal and online banks are common targets. Phishing is typically carried out by email or instant messaging,[1] and often directs users to enter details at a website, although phone contact has also been used.
Most phishing attempts are pretty easy to spot. Misspellings, fake email addresses and domain names in Russia or some other country extension usually give them away if you know what to look for. But this scam was above average in its execution.
Here’s what the email looked like.
And here’s the landing page the link in the email brought up.
The actual domain name is wapisbank.cn, in China. I smelled a rat.
At the same time I was impressed. This was phishing done far better than I had seen before, and for Google AdWords, not common targets like banks, Paypal or eBay.
So how can you spot an attempt at phishing that shows up in your inbox?
Are you expecting an email from the sending organization? If you don’t deal with a bank, they won’t send you email. If you don’t have a Paypal account, they also won’t send you email.
Don’t trust email. The sender email address can be masked or ‘spoofed’ very easily. Email is inherently an unsecure communication. Email messages travel over the open Internet just as they are. A detection program called a ‘sniffer’ can watch the traffic going past and respond to specific words or cues (like passwords or credit card numbers). Don’t email sensitive information. Don’t expect large organizations to email sensitive information.
Watch URLs. The URLs are the address of the web page you’re visiting. Phishing attempts almost always use URLs that mimic the URLs of the organization they’re impersonating, but they can never be that organzation. Here’s a short example of the distinctions between URLs, domain names and registered domains.
Contact the organization sending you the email directly, not through a link in the email. Go straight to their website. Call them. Ask through a channel you’ve used before if you need to do anything to manage your account. Also, be ready to send the phishing email to the organization being impersonated.
Now that you’ve been warned, here’s the phishing webpage in case you need to see it in action.
Email Newsletters: What the F**K? with Monique Trottier from Boxcar Marketing (formerly Work Industries). Learn how email can complement your web strategy. Email, it’s not dead yet!
Date: Thursday April 17th, 6:30pm
Location: Raincity Studios, 1 Alexander Street, Suite 400 in Gastown.
Cost: There is no charge and all are welcome
So everything is running smoothly with your Drupal install. Multiple blogs, no problem. RSS, done. Tagging, check . . . Then the client nonchalantly mentions their newsletter. Email newsletters, WTF? Email? Who uses email?
Email newsletters may be off your radar but email is the most used of the online marketing tools and opt-in emails often have the highest ROI. Email’s effectiveness though, including subscription-based or opt-in email, is hampered by subscribers’ perceptions of Spam and inbox overload. Monique Trottier, author of the newsletter Underwire: Full Support for Non-Techies, gives us the secrets of writing a newsletter that not only stays out of the spam folder but is enjoyed by your audience!
* Learn how a well crafted newsletter gives you an advantage over your email shunning competition by reaching non-Web 2.0 audiences, creating word-of-mouth, and bringing people back to your website.
* Learn how your customers’ perception of Spam may affect your email open rates. Know what a good open rate is and why it’s important.
* Understand what eyetracking studies tell us about how people view content in newsletters, whether they are b2b, b2c, marketing-oriented or information-based, and how to create effective email layouts.
* Know what metrics you should track and what they mean.
Regardless of whether you are using email as a marketing tool, information tool or sales tool, there are best practices that work across industries. Monique’s talk about adding email newsletters to the mix will give you information to effectively build and sustain your online audience.
The presentation will also include a demonstration of Drupal’s Simplenews module.
Monique Trottier is a partner with Boxcar Marketing (formerly Work Industries--we’re in stealth mode at the moment, official launch April 7). Boxcar Marketing is an online marketing company with expertise in web strategy, online marketing, content development and online communities. And yes, we email. Monique writes a regular newsletter called Underwire: Full Support for Non-Techies.
UPDATE
Here are the articles and resources that I referred to in my presentation:
Spring is traditionally associated with change and renewal. A time to clean things up. A time for new seeds to be planted. Spring also happens to be an excellent time to announce the evolution in our business.
Same great service, strategy and team you expect, with a new name. It’s still Monique Trottier and James Sherrett and a merry band of partners working hard behind the scenes. Except now the scenery has changed.
Why the name change?
We wanted to better describe the type of “Work” we do: “Marketing.” At the same time, we wanted to keep the feel of a hard-working, industrious shop, which led us to “Boxcar.” Last, we wanted to do away with inconsistency over our name (Work Industries) and domain name (www.iworkindustries.com).
So after a few sessions at the white board and too many domain name searches, Boxcar Marketing was born.
We’ve let some friends and colleagues know about the name change, so it’s percolated out there into the great Google. Now this announcement makes it official.
What does the name change to Boxcar Marketing mean to you?
Where you saw Work Industries, now you’ll see Boxcar Marketing. On invoices, cheques, business cards, contracts and in email addresses, we’ll be Boxcar Marketing. We’ll do our best to redirect all the Work Industries points of reference to Boxcar Marketing. But if you spot an old reference to Work Industries, please let us know.
As is the nature of our business and our philosophy, we expect and want your feedback. We practice and preach conversational, 2-way communications.
So let us know what you think. If you have questions or concerns or just want a little more information on the name change, please contact us. We’re still at the same phone numbers and office address. But now we’re Boxcar Marketing. Please update your email address book:
Underwire Monthly Newsletter
QuickLearn Training Series
What we’re talking about 
Project Highlights
Did you know?
Looking for the bee? 
Subscribe to our blog.