Free Phone Calls Via the Internet

You might remember a little buzz about making free long distance phone calls using the internet a few years ago. A second wave of interest has arrived with Skype. It works on PCs and MACs.

A friend of mine from Australia had mentioned it to me (seems calling the US from Australia is expensive) but I didn't think much about it as a business solution until I saw that WebProNews mentioned its use while interviewing a VP at GE.

There are two types of Skype service. The free service requires that you use your computer speakers, or plug headphones into your computer to talk. Their second service, SkypeOut (which is not free) allows you to call telephones or cellphones.

It might be worth a look as you can use it to text message as well.

Yahoo's New Search Utility

If it's not enough to keep up with the constantly changing indexing systems of current search engines in an effort to effect better search result placement, Yahoo introduces a beta version of their new context search Y!Q. Check it out - it works much differently (gives different results) than their regular search engine. Will this be the next direction in search engines? We'll wait and see.

Podcasting - what is it?

Not only does technology constantly change, but the way it's used changes as well. Most people are just waking up to the idea of RSS feeds (where you can have information pulled from various places on the web and posted on your site, blog, whatever) now you can grab audio feeds for your iPod. How cool is that?

The best description of how this works (that I've seen recently) is from Learning Lessons from Nixon's blog:

"Podcasts are just Mp3s. You can treat them the way you would treat any other Mp3. The thing that’s different about podcasting is the delivery method – instead of copying songs from your CD collection or downloading a song online, you have an RSS reader that goes out and scans for new podcasts and downloads them when there’s something new. But the end result is the same; you still have an Mp3 file to do whatever you do with all your other Mp3 files to get them onto your player."

She's got a 4 minute video about podcasting on her blog as well - so it's worth a visit.

What Drives Visitors to Your Web Site?

Information is one of the primary reasons people visit web sites. So, it should be no wonder if you have an small 8-30 page web site that doesn't change much (less than every month) people might only need to visit it once to get all the info they need and not visit it again. Or, if you're an grantor, you may notice spikes in visits just before potential grantee proposals are due. The days of random surfing are all but over. Who has the time?

Now, if you need to book a trip, for instance, you're more likely to visit a portal site, such as Vacation Rental by Owner, or Trip Adviser than click through a million small mom & pop sites. Larger portal sites have the cash to pay for placement on search engines, as well as magazine and TV advertising; and have people bookmarking and/or linking to their sites (popularity increases your site's placement on search engine result pages) that they rate high above smaller sites with less traffic. Portal sites have hundreds or thousands of client sites that link to theirs increasing their relevance and placement on search engine result pages.

To top it all off, portal sites have the money to build in extra functionality to their sites, such as surveys, client reviews, availability calendars, automated proposal processes and much more, make these sites even more valuable to visitors.

I only mentioned this because we develop a range of sites and track their web traffic and one thing that isn't mentioned in all the search engine placement material written out there (or I haven't see it yet) is that some sites are just not going to get visited as much or rank as high on search engine result pages - we need a reality check. Not every site is going to get 10,000 visitors a month or the top search engine result placement in its category. That doesn't mean that small static informational sites don't have their place and are not useful.

Smaller sites can still serve many purposes:
• reduce employee time answering redundant questions by posting frequently asked questions, directions and the like.
• help to close a sale by detailing your product's benefits.
• offer more detailed information than allowed on a portal site
• extend your brand awareness
• help to qualify potential grantees or customers before they call or email for more information

Most of our clients' sites that have 15,000 plus visitors a month have one of the following things going for them:
• Their site has at least 100 pages of content that is updated weekly or at least monthly.
• They send out HTML email newsletters or promotions that link directly back to specific pages throughout their sites. (That's one of the reasons I started sending out newsletters - more on that in another post.)

We recently created a portal-type site for the Kitsap Peninsula Visitor & Convention Bureau. What makes it a portal? It is chock-a-block full of information - its a one-stop-shop for everything Kitsap. Their site features:
• interactive maps - click on a town name and go to a detailed page on that town.
• a Kitsap folder that allows visitors to store information about events, lodging, dining etc then print it out or email it to a friend
• lodging request forms that automatically let venues know where the request was generated.
• e-mail postcards - an easy way to share Kitsap with family and friends.
• customizable searches for lodging, dining, events, activities etc.
• specialized areas such as golf and weddings
• content management tools so the content can be easily updated in-house; even the header images can be updated in-house from any web browser anywhere. They can even add or delete pages and menu items - so it might be a whole new site next month.

The Kitsap site has over 100 pages of content and is updated almost daily. However, one of the things that drives visitors to the site is the monthly newsletter they send out. See the results below (over 50,000 visits in January).



Their site helps to generate referrals for their members.