Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Is There a Purpose or Are You Just Trying to Get Attention?

By Stacy Bass

In days gone by, the landing page of a website, often referred to as a home page or welcome page, was designed to be flashy, using animation and music to grab a viewer’s attention.  The goal was to grab enough attention to make a viewer want to stick around and read everything you had to say.  In current times, however, our viewing habits have changed.  We are tied to the web 24/7 and if we can’t find what we’re looking for within seconds, we just simply move on to another site where we can.  It’s wonderful to find a website that entertains you or grabs your attention, as long as it doesn't detract from your purpose for visiting the site in the first place.  We are inundated with internet access; we have it on our phones, tablets, laptops and desktops.  As a result, our attention span and patience have diminished and we want to achieve our purpose expeditiously, being entertained by the website is secondary. 


So, what does that mean for your website?  The answer to that question begins with you.  Ask yourself the following questions. 
  • What is your goal for your website; is it just a marketing tool or is it an electronic store front?
  • Are you selling a product or service?
  • Are you informing people of something or conveying a message to your audience?
  • Are you seeking members for your organization?
  • What actions should visitors be able to perform on your website?
  • Can visitors accomplish their goals from your landing page?


Once your goal is clearly defined, you can create a landing page strategy better suited to meet your goal.  A landing page should contain these critical elements:
  • Briefly introduce your product, service or message.
  • Contain graphical images to grab attention.
  • Provide a call to action, such as “buy now”, “schedule an appointment”, “join now”, etc.
  • Make sure that people know how to contact you by phone, mail, email and social media.
  • Allow users to easily navigate to other pages for additional information.
  • Contain keywords that will allow search engines to find your website.


So, if your landing page is only designed to grab attention, or even worse, if it doesn't garner any attention at all, it is time to find its purpose. 


Select Web Solutions is always eager to help our customers find the best web strategy for each of our clients.  We would welcome the opportunity to build or update your existing web strategy to meet the needs of today’s technology driven world.  Select Web Solutions is an Orange County website development company in Rancho Santa Margarita, CA.  Our products include Orange County custom website solutions, WebZeo affordable websites in Orange County, MobZeo Orange County mobile websites,  ProZeo Orange County social media profiles,  ListZeo Orange County Website Business Listing Service, SendZeo Orange County newsletter marketing, MailZeo hosted email services in Orange County, SEOLight affordable Orange County SEO, and much more.  

We will be posting musings on this blog related to the web industry.  Follow us on 
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Thursday, September 4, 2014

Embrace Your Negative Reviews…SAY WHAT?!

By Stacy Bass

I’m not really suggesting that you should be happy about receiving a negative review on Yelp, Google, Bing, etc., right?  Who in their right mind would say that?  Maybe ‘happy’ is not the best choice of word, however I am suggesting that negative reviews do not have to be…negative.

We all have immediate access to information at our fingertips 24/7.  A few keystrokes and we can learn all about a company, a product or service, a person, and so on, without any tremendous effort.  More and more, people are using technology in every facet of their life, including decision making.  I recently wrote about how I used reviews in making a simple luggage purchase; it is just a sign of the times.  Looking through reviews really shows how right poet John Lydgate was when he said, “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”  While none of us are pleased when something goes wrong, the reality of business (and life) is that sometimes things don’t happen according to plan and sometimes people get upset about that.  The thing about reviews is that while you have no control over a person who feels the need to write a negative review, you do have absolute control over how you choose to respond.  In short, you should embrace negative reviews as an opportunity to shine. 

A negative review presents the opportunity to turn a dissatisfied customer into a happy customer, and better yet, you have the opportunity to demonstrate for those who are not yet customers just how much you value your customers and how you will treat them as a customer.  To begin, the length of time it takes for you to respond to a negative comment is the first opportunity to demonstrate your commitment to satisfaction.  It is very important that reviews and social media accounts are monitored frequently.  Ignoring negative reviews will not make them disappear; instead ignoring a negative review gives some credence to whatever the issue causing the dissatisfaction was.  Respond to the review publicly and professionally.  Acknowledge the customer’s comment and apologize for whatever led to their negative feelings; showing your concern and intent in rectifying the situation.  However, NEVER engage in a verbal sparring match with the reviewer, even if they are wrong in their claim, are being nasty or are flat out just trying to cause trouble for you.  You have nothing to gain by responding in kind, and everything to lose.  There are several horror stories that have gone viral when companies have responded poorly and in each instance the company gets the blame regardless of whether the initial issue was justified or not, simply because of their poor handling of the matter.  After you have responded to the initial review publically, take the issue offline and bring it to a full resolution.  Be open and listen to the issue; you may just discover an opportunity for improvement.  Once you have resolved the issue, follow up with the customer and see if they would update their review now that you have resolved the issue. 

Transparency goes a long way in building customer satisfaction.  If you consistently address and resolve customer concerns in a public manner, it shows others researching your company, products or services it builds confidence that when stuff does go wrong that you care enough to make it right.  As a consumer, would you choose the company who ignores their negative reviews or would you choose the company who makes the effort and treats their customers with courtesy and professionalism?


Select Web Solutions is always eager to help our customers find the best web strategy for each of our clients.  We would welcome the opportunity to build or update your existing web strategy to meet the needs of today’s technology driven world.  Select Web Solutions is an Orange County website development company in Rancho Santa Margarita, CA.  Our products include Orange County custom website solutions, WebZeo affordable websites in Orange County, MobZeo Orange County mobile websites,  ProZeo Orange County social media profiles,  ListZeo Orange County Website Business Listing Service, SendZeo Orange County newsletter marketing, MailZeo hosted email services in Orange County, SEOLight affordable Orange County SEO, and much more.  

We will be posting musings on this blog related to the web industry.  Follow us on 
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Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Argh! My Website Has Been Infected!

Written by Stacy Bass

We’ve all read the headlines when cyber attacks occur; Company X had millions of their customer credit card transactions compromised, Company Y had millions of people’s personal information accessed, Hacker Z gained access to some government agency, and so on.  It is a widely accepted fact of life that we must all take measures to protect our sensitive information to keep it from those who would use it for nefarious purposes.  You follow all the rules, take the precautions, but one day you receive a call from a customer letting you know that their anti-virus software won’t let them access your website because it has been hacked.  Argh! 

Of course, the first thing you ask is how did this happen and why was my website targeted?  Your website may not collect sensitive information or process credit card transactions, but that does not mean that you are any more immune.  The reality is that no website or company is immune from being infected.  Type “hacking attacks 2014” into your search engine and you’ll see big names like Sony PlayStation, JP Morgan & Chase, EBay, and so on, and that’s just for this year!  You may think that those are big companies, surely they are more profitable targets than your small business, after all it’s not like some hacker is going to hit pay-dirt by hacking your website.  Most often the intent is to create havoc by gaining access to your host account, uploading malware, accessing databases, etc. The truth is that it is unlikely that a single hacker is sitting behind his or her computer with your website locked in the cross hairs.  Instead, today’s ill-intended hackers are creating botnets, a network of computers infected with malicious software and controlled as a group without the owners' knowledge.  Bots, infected computers sometimes also referred to as zombies, are then used for purposes such as sending spam, distributing viruses and spyware, stealing personal and/or financial information, launching DoS (Denial of Service) attacks, and creating clickfraud to boost web advertising revenue by auto clicking on internet ads.  The unfortunate reality is that it is virtually impossible to 100% protect yourself from becoming a victim.  

So armed with this knowledge, how do you protect yourself as much as possible?  First, make sure that all of your computers are updated with anti-virus software and that your anti-virus software is kept up-to-date, scans all emails and runs in the background at all times.  Second, make sure that your local servers have adequate firewalls in place.  Third, if the anti-virus software alerts you to a potentially harmful email or website, take heed of the warning.  Fourth, make sure that all your passwords are strong.  A strong password should contain a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.  For example, “Password1”, your user name, etc. are NOT considered strong passwords, while something along the lines of “aWp*45-zbK” would be recommended.  Fifth, change your passwords regularly, including the passwords on your website’s host account control panel, content management system and FTP access, and keep you passwords private at all times.  Lastly, there are companies that provide website scanning services for a monthly fee ranging from $29 - $139 per month for those willing to incur a monthly expense for an additional added layer of protection. 

Any host provider would love nothing more than to be able to provide guarantees to their clientele that they will never fall victim to an infected website.  With a reported 1.7 billion plus of web-originated attacks in 2013, it is not unlikely that any of us could experience such an infection.  The best advice is to follow is to adhere to the protections outlined above.  We hope that you never find yourself having to deal with an infected website, however should you find yourself in that unfortunately position, immediately change all passwords then give us a call and we’ll get through it together.




Select Web Solutions is always eager to help our customers find the best web strategy for each of our clients.  We would welcome the opportunity to build or update your existing web strategy to meet the needs of today’s technology driven world.  Select Web Solutions is an Orange County website development company in Rancho Santa Margarita, CA.  Our products include Orange County custom website solutions, WebZeo affordable websites in Orange County, MobZeo Orange County mobile websites ProZeo Orange County social media profiles ListZeo Orange County Website Business Listing ServiceSendZeo Orange County newsletter marketing, MailZeo hosted email services in Orange County, SEOLight affordable Orange County SEO, and much more.  

We will be posting musings on this blog related to the web industry.  Follow us on TwitterFacebookLinkedIn or Google Plus

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Is Social Media a Necessary Evil?

Contributed by Stacy Bass

On any given day, I can rant for hours about my feelings regarding social media.  How the anonymity makes people behave in a manner that they otherwise would not.  How social media provides a playground for the proliferation of rumors and gossip mongering.  Plus, I don’t really care what someone else is having for dinner, unless of course, they are making it for me.  Blah, blah, blah.  I’ve been known to wax poetic about how social media is harming society and eliminating people’s ability for free thought.  I can go on and on and on, and according to my husband, often do.

So, here I sit writing about how I dislike social media on our blog.  When I’m done with my blog post, I’ll post it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and so on.  I’ll hope that people “like” it, "friend" us, "follow" us, and so on.  Go ahead and say it…hypocritical much?  Yes, in fact, it is hypocritical because as much as I can complain about social media’s impact on individuals, I cannot deny that as a small business owner I must embrace social media and tout its importance to our own business and the businesses of our clients. 

The number one goal of any marketing campaign is to reach as much of the intended market as possible with a specific message that is intended to drive a positive response.  Enter social media.  Not only does social media provide the platform to get a message out to a targeted audience, it can easily be shared with others with a single click and, most of all, IT IS FREE.  Free marketing…every small business owner’s dream.  Very simply, the only cost to marketing your business via social media is your time. 

If free marketing is not enough to convince you of the importance of developing a social media strategy, effective social media use also significantly increases search engine ranking.  As we all know, it is very important for your business to rank high on search engines.  Anything that can increase this ranking is very important, and again, it’s free.  Posts, likes, tweets, retweets, +1’s, pins, etc. create what Google refers to as “quality signals”.  “Quality signals” are a key component of the algorithm used by Google to drive ranking. 

To summarize…
  • Social media is free marketing.
  • Social media is targeted to your specific audience.
  • People can easily share your message with others via social media.
  • Consistent use of social media will boost your ranking in search engines.

So, is social media a necessary evil?  As much as it pains me to say, yes, it is undeniable that social media is a necessary evil for any company's marketing plan.




Select Web Solutions is always eager to help our customers find the best web strategy for each of our clients.  We would welcome the opportunity to build or update your existing web strategy to meet the needs of today’s technology driven world.  Select Web Solutions is an Orange County website development company in Rancho Santa Margarita, CA.  Our products include Orange County custom website solutions, WebZeo affordable websites in Orange County, MobZeo Orange County mobile websites ProZeo Orange County social media profiles ListZeo Orange County Website Business Listing ServiceSendZeo Orange County newsletter marketing, MailZeo hosted email services in Orange County, SEOLight affordable Orange County SEO, and much more.  

We will be posting musings on this blog related to the web industry.  Follow us on TwitterFacebookLinkedIn or Google Plus



Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Do You Work For Your Website or Does Your Website Work For You?

Do you work for your website or does your website work for you?

Will you try a quick mental exercise with me?  I want you to think for a moment about your own habits.  If you want to find someone or something, you most likely use a search engine (possibly on your phone), and you probably don’t have the time or the inclination to scroll through pages and pages of results.  Am I correct?  I recently needed some new luggage for an upcoming trip, so I pulled up Amazon, Target and Kohls, typed in the type of luggage I wanted, compared what each had to offer, scanned though product reviews to make sure I wasn’t buying something that would fall apart before I made it back home, made my purchase from the one with the best offer and it was delivered to my house two days later, on a Sunday no less.  It was all done within 30 minutes at 11:00 on a Friday night while I was wearing my PJs and sitting in the comfort of my own home.  This is the reality of our world today.  I won’t need luggage again for a while, but I may need a plumber, a dentist or a haircut.  I may want to buy some t-shirts with our company logo, a kitchen table or have my master bath redone.  Regardless of what I want or need, the given is that I will start the process online long before I venture out of the house or pick up the phone, and if I can complete the whole transaction online, well that’s even better.  Now, think about your company’s website…how does it measure up to your own consumer habits?

Back in the day (like 5 minutes ago) it was enough to just have a website.  A company’s website was much like an electronic business card.  All that was needed was a little bit about your company, the products and/or services you offer, and information about how to contact you.  You could either build it yourself or pay someone to build it for you, then just pay for the domain name and hosting and you’re all done.  Easy enough, right?   Well…those days are gone!  Now-a-days, you should not have to work to pay for the costs of your website; instead your website should be an extension of your company, working for you.  It should not simply convey information about your company; it should also perform as a sales and marketing employee, a customer service representative and more. 

So, what does all of this mean for your business?  It means that you need more than just a website.  You need a web strategy that includes:
  • A website that is more than just an electronic business card
  • A mobile version of your website designed for people using their cell phones
  • A cost effective means of getting your website to rank high on search engines
  • A way for people to tell others about your products and/or services
  • A means of sharing information with your customers and gaining the interest of potential customers
Select Web Solutions is always eager to help our customers find the best web strategy for each of our clients.  We would welcome the opportunity to build or update your existing web strategy to meet the needs of today’s technology driven world.  Select Web Solutions is an Orange County website development company in Rancho Santa Margarita, CA.  Our products include Orange County custom website solutions, WebZeo affordable websites in Orange County, MobZeo Orange County mobile websites ProZeo Orange County social media profiles ListZeo Orange County Website Business Listing ServiceSendZeo Orange County newsletter marketing, MailZeo hosted email services in Orange County, SEOLight affordable Orange County SEO, and much more.  

I will be posting on this blog with musings on the web industry; follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google Plus

Written by Stacy Bass

Select Web Solutions, LLC, an Orange County, CA website developer in Rancho Santa Margarita, CA. Select Web Solutions is a provider of web services in Orange County; including  custom website design in Orange County, MobZeo affordable affordable website development in Orange County, MobZeo mobile websites in Orange Countywebsite hostingonline marketing in Orange Countysearch engine optimization in Orange Countysocial media services in Orange County, newsletter services, email services, logo design and web consulting in Orange County, California.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Is WordPress Really Free?

Type “making a WordPress website” into Google and it will return over 318,000,000 results. For millions of people trying to create a website on a shoe string budget, WordPress is where they go. After all, it is free! WordPress is an open source software without any licensing fees or proprietary code limitations, plus there are thousands of free plug-ins that can make your website perform all kinds of exciting functions that would otherwise cost you thousands if you went to a web developer. You can do-it-yourself with a plethora of online tutorials, forums and YouTube videos to offer support. As long as you’ve got the time, how can you go wrong, right? Unfortunately, it can go wrong…very wrong. More and more often we are hearing of WordPress sites that are slow, are no longer working correctly, have become infected with malware, and on, and on.

To put it in very simplistic terms, WordPress websites consist of a core content management system and a plethora of plug-ins that people add like wildfire to make their website do new and exciting things. The challenge of plug-ins is that you are putting the reliability and security of your website and any attached databases in the hands of unknown developers. While there are many very reliable and trustworthy developers of WordPress plug-ins, there are unfortunately also many unscrupulous developers who either simply write bad code or purposely provide code that is intended to cause harm. To provide an added assurance, it is always recommended to purchase plug-ins from reputable developers with a proven track record.

In addition, as WordPress is updated, many plug-ins become incompatible with the newer version. It is up to the user to maintain their website. Translation…if something breaks, you need to find it on your own, get rid of it and replace it with something that does work. We receive inquiry calls all the time from people with WordPress websites that aren’t working. These calls are the most challenging for us because our mission is always to find the best solution for our clients, and while we’re always happy to build a relationship and help people find solutions to their problems. Can we fix their issue, yes. Will we fix their issue? Yes again. Is this the best solution for them? Probably not. Very simply, if you have a WordPress website, you will encounter this issue and will continue to encounter this issue. It is the nature of the beast with only two options…acceptance that from time to time you will have issues to resolve (or pay a web developer to resolve for you) or create a website in another platform.

Finally, one of the largest risks associated with a WordPress website is its vulnerability to attack. To be fair, all websites are vulnerable to attack, however the risks of a WordPress website are simply greater. To begin, the WordPress platform itself is susceptible to brute force attacks. A plug-in can be used to add additional security to your site, but that brings us back to the beginning, doesn’t it? Just last week, there was a report on pcworld.com of an estimate 50,000 WordPress sites were hacked because of the vulnerability of a newsletter plug-in. There are a ton of bots running around 24/7 searching through login possibilities just trying to come up with the magic combination that will let them access the website and distribute malware, spam, etc. to unsuspecting website visitors. The Sucuri blog posted some staggering statistics last week about the recent rise in usage of these bots. I highly recommend that anyone with a WordPress website read this post: http://blog.sucuri.net/2014/07/new-brute-force-attacks-exploiting-xmlrpc-in-wordpress.html.

So, we have to ask…is WordPress really free?

Select Web Solutions’ WebZeo product provides affordable website solutions in Orange County, CA.  WebZeo is designed to meet every budget, from a do-it-yourself package for $9.95 per month, including hosting, to several full-service options. Our commitment is to build a cost effective website strategy that meets the unique needs and budget of every client. Click on the links to the right to learn more about us.

WebZeo is a provider of affordable websites in Orange County, CA. WebZeo is a division of Select Web Solutions, LLC, an Orange County, CA website developer in Rancho Santa Margarita, CA. Select Web Solutions is a provider of web services in Orange County; including  custom website design, website development, mobile websites, website hosting, online marketing, search engine optimization, social media services, newsletter services, email services, logo design and web consulting in Orange County, California.