Web-Op started this cremation site in November of this year www.cremation-USA.com. You can see the growth in the chart above. We have opened a service office in Ogden, Utah and have been enjoying a pretty good amount of success after just a few months. We are ranking first page for hundreds of US cities already. Check out this one. We’ll keep you updated.

Ever wanted to show your visitors or staff where your traffic is coming from, without dragging them through Google Analytics? We’ve developed a simple package which processes your Analytics visit data and displays it as an easy-to-read map. There’s no coding required– just edit one file to add details of your Analytics profile, and away you go. It installs as a simple image you can embed in your blog, on a prominent page, or in a back-office dashboard.

It should run on any typically configured PHP hosting environment

See it in action at Auto Glass Guru

Get the zip download at our site. A Github repository is now available

Well, it’s winter again. In case you’ve spent your entire life isolated on tiny island off the coast of the DPRK, this means it’s time for incessant holiday promotions. In the internet age, however, that doesn’t have to mean blasting Jingle Bells at 180 decibels and shrieking “Happy Holidays” on every flyer. It means being attuned to the actual reasons customers are shopping online.

The key motivators for online holiday shopping are selection, shipping and convenience, and price. Each of these factors can be exploited on your website.
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I know you want the entire site to roll out on launch day. The huge cart with 5,000 products. A blog with articles stretching back to when Al Gore first breathed life into the Internet. A customer-relationship management package so sophisticated it has seperate responses for every obscenity an angry customer uses with your call centre staff. But is this the best choice for your company? Probably not.

A staged deployment offers you several benefits at no significant extra costs.
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If you follow Web-Op, you obviously have way too much free time. But you’ll also notice our global ambitions. We’ve started rolling out sites for Brazillian and Chinese audiences. We recognize that going overseas is far more than just slapping some extra stamps on your shipping envelopes and trying to schlep payment to the foreign-exchange counter at the bank.

One thing we can’t stress enough is not to simply take your existing site and run it through a translator, whether Google Translate or a college intern hired for sub-minimum wage.
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Brick-and-mortar retailers often have a hard time transitioning to the web, because they’re still trying to provide an information service which keeps their stores running. After all, they’re paying the rent and electric still, so they don’t want all their business to come from the website.

However, designing a site to be too much in service of the brick-and-mortar customer experience can be a web nightmare. Here are some issues you might want to avoid.
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Recently, I spoke with someone who wanted a Facebook like button on their company page. While there’s no technical issue there, there is a bit of a conceptual gap. Her business was a very narrow, technical firm which is likely to handle less than 20 clients a month. What relationship are they hoping to have with their customers through Facebook?

It’s not meant to pick on her specifically, but rather to ask a legitimate question: are you using social media as a tool, or fighting what it represents?
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A conversion funnel is a structure provided by most major analytics packages, such as Google Analytics. It aggregates the click paths of many visitors as they follow a pre-determined course through your site. In short, it lets you watch as visitors more from “arrival on site” to the destiation your site exists to encourage– the conversion. Typically, a conversion is a purchase, a request for information, or activating a contact form.

Much like a funnel in the kitchen, a properly configured conversion funnel will start with a large opening– the 50,000 visitors who hit your site in a month– and narrow down to a smaller number– like the 200 who buy– at the end. At each step, it should get narrower. There’s value in all of these factors– how fast it narrows, as well as how many people enter and leave the whole process.
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I’ve been following the domaining industry for a few months now. You know these people. They’re the ones who invented ‘what you need, when you need it’. The low value “parked page” site stuffed with low-quality pay-per-click links, or the “mini-site” with three pages of cursorily-researched content and a whole lot of AdSense.

While it’s often seen as a grand investment strategy– building a portfolio of names and holding them for sale, it’s actually a very weak strategy.
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Frequently, clients come to us with mountains of text designed to showcase their skills and the unique benefits of their products. However, it’s often a waste. Research indicates that users are generally not browsing the web looking for a long, detailed read. They prefer bullet points, clearly picked out headers, and most of all, a strong call to action. Having 82 years of knowledge is one thing, 82 percent off is quite another.

But in a business where there is no clear pricing opportunity– for example, a lead-generation site where the deal is still amorphous at the time the customer contacts you, or a B2B site where the price is negotiated over several months and proposals, what can you do to add spice?

• Don’t discount the customer, discount the customer who is like your customer. Show a typical offering with a reasonably competitive price, and perhaps reinforce it with a short-term ‘lock in before prices change’ offer.

• Offer something else entirely. A local dentist advertises a free iPod with a brace plan. You don’t have to compete on price there, as it provides a reason to move independent of price. It can backfire if the buyers have gift-from-vendor policies, but they can be avoided by making the gift part of the package offered– free training, a more robust service contract, or peripheral products where the percieved value exceeds their cost.
• Sell benefits, not costs. A phrase like ‘our services paid for themselves after week 19′ does not mention any specifics, but still reinforces the concept there’s good value there. Indeed, many times, it’s exactly the message expected for major purchases where there’s a budget case to be made.
• Incentivize the lead, not the sale. A downloadable white-paper or free t-shirt might be enough to get someone’s attention enough to fall into your sales funnel. If it’s clear that it’s a limited commitment, there’s less resistance and a small reward is an acceptable choice.

While obviously, price-related calls to action are best, when you can’t do “free shipping” or “30% off”, you can still build a page with a solid call to action.