We were proud to sponsor the Metro West Legal Services (MWLS) ‘35 Stars’ event earlier this week at the Wellesley College Club. We created the MWLS website about a year ago. MWLS provides free legal services to low income people who otherwise would be denied justice. The keynote speaker, Prof. Kathleen Engel, gave a powerful speech about everything from predatory lending to the larger U.S. financial quagmire. Her keynote was followed by several awards to those who have aided low income people including the homeless, elderly, disabled, immigrant and otherwise disenfranchised. The evening was capped off by proclamations by the Massachusett’s Senate and Congressional representatives recognizing the critical service MWLS has provided over the past 25 years.
 
Sally and I both left the event feeling inspired by the good work that one of our clients has done and happy to have sponsored such a well deserving organization. 

Concord Conserves, a non profit started by Bartlett Interactive, launched a website application that allows individuals to calculate their footprint, make reductions and compare themselves to others, both locally and globally. The website application was created as part of a 2011 Conservation Challenge for residents of Concord and Carlisle, MA.

Web Application Dashboard

The web app includes a ‘dashboard’ showing an individuals total carbon footprint, comparison to others around the world and how many earths needed if everyone lived like that person as well as the amount of reductions that person has made. There is also a ‘groups’ section which shows how individuals compare to other people in their town and how many reductions each person has made.

“People in Concord are very conservation oriented but many don’t realize how large their footprints are” says Concord Conserves and Bartlett Interactive founder Harry Bartlett. “The web app shows how people compare to others both in terms of consumption and reduction. This type of peer-to-peer information has proven to be a powerful driver for people to change their behavior.” 

Bartlett Interactive developed the web application as well as a promotional strategy that included creating a 40’ sign and sidewalk messages that ask the question “What’s Your Footprint?”. The signage was created by local high school students Wyatt Burns and David Yanofsky and created using re-claimed plywood and paint.

40’ “What’s Your Footprint” sign at Emerson Field in Concord MA

The Challenge kick off event was held at the Harvey Wheeler Community Center in West Concord Sept. 27, 2011 and showcased companies and organizations that help reduce people’s footprint. The event included 14 exhibitors and music and art work by CCHS high school students. See a video and photos of the event on Facebook.

Harry Bartlett (Bartlett Interactive), Morwen Two Feathers (Concord Conserves) and Wyatt Burns (artist)

A poster campaign with large photos depicting the different aspects of sustainability such as oil production, local food, conservation land and drought were also put up around town.
To date about 140 people have made 300 reductions, reducing 106 tons or carbon. Many of the participants are high school students who used the web app as part of their Earth Science class.

See more at www.ConcordConserves.org/Challenge and the Facebook page.

Web design tools, content management systems and Internet marketing processes (SEO, email) continue to evolve, providing more extensive capabilities, easier to use software and reduced cost. BITS (Bartlett Interactive Tool Suite) is a collection of the best tools providing clients higher value websites and Internet marketing programs at a lower cost.

BITS is based on Bartlett’s 14 years of experience delivering web solutions for over 150 clients in a variety of industries.

The tool suite focuses on the 3 key areas of a healthy online presence:

1. Design: tools that enhance the branding and design of websites as well as user interactions such as innovative ways of displaying and interacting with content
2. Marketing:tools and best practices for easily managing online conversion, email programs, Search Engine Optimization and Social Media that generate leads and brand awareness
3. Technology: a feature rich and well tested open source content management system (CMS) for easy website editing, publishing and deployment of advanced capabilities such as e-commerce

See more details about BITS and web design, web development and Internet marketing at Bartlett Interactive

EXAMPLES

The following projects were recently completed using BITS system. 

Better Homes and Gardens
www.bhglivebetter.com

Better Homes and Gardens needed a web presence and Internet marketing platform for introducing their Kitchen Collection line sold through Walmart. The site included many features such as a blog, recipe swap, extensive product photography, blogger contest, video and social media integration. Post launch services include SEO, email marketing and social media integration. 

The site has over 400 pages and uses Drupal core functionality plus about 30 add-on modules for managing content, blog, social media and community functionality. BITS allowed for easy development of the site and online community as well as post launch Internet marketing activities, saving time, increasing effectiveness and providing a healthy ROI.

EBSCO Publishing (EP)
www.bizsum.com

EP needed a web application that could be easily replicated and customized for multiple product offerings. Some of these offerings include subscription based e-commerce for the general public, private corporate communities, free trials, forums, user authentication, on-site search, blogs, RSS and socal media feeds.Each product website utilizes extensive Drupal core functional and numerous off the shelf and customized modules.The benefits of the BITS system included: reduced time required to develop the web application, easy management of websites and the ability to launch complex product offerings easily in the future.

UTEC
www.utec-lowell.org

 
The site we built for the United Teen Equality Center (UTEC) included extensive website design and development, an online community and advocacy tools for a nationally renowned non-profit serving the youth community in Lowell, MA. Website features include an online store, social action petition micro-site, forums, job resources, videos, Flickr fed photo galleries, online donations, audio gallery, SalesForce.com integration, on-site search and private user area.

The BITS system saved development time allowing for more time to be spent on design, messaging, social action (online petitions and advocacy), user interactions and site features such as the photo, video and audio galleries.

GET STARTED
Getting started is easy, just contact us at (978) 369-2472 or online (links to form). We’ll analyze your needs and recommend the easiest, most cost-effective way to obtain value from your website and online marketing programs.

Here are some of my favorite Internet marketing statistics.

Cost Per Lead

Outbound vs. Inbound marketing cost per lead

• Outbound (trade shows, direct mail, print ads, TV/radio ads): $255 cost per lead

• Inbound (Search Engine Optimization, blogging, social media, RSS, public relations): $45 per lead

Source: HubSpot

Who Finds Who

80% of tech buyers say they found the vendor/product/service. 20% say the vendor found them. The most popular online venues are:

• Google 83%
• Vendor website: 26%
• Online Publication: 21%
• Online Directories: 20%
• Online Communities: 19%
• Analyst website: 13%
• Yahoo search: 14%

Source: MarketingSherpa/KnowledgeStorm Connecting Through Content 2007

Highest ROI
E-mail provides the highest return on investment of all of the following marketing programs:

• House e-mail marketing: 25%
• Search Engine Optimization: 18%
• Paid Search: 16%
• Public Relations: 12%
• Direct Mail: 12%
• Print Advertising: 4%
• Online Ads (banners etc.): 3%

Source: MarketingSherpa Search Benchmark Guide 2008

Lowest Cost Per Meeting

• Paid Search: $250
• E-mail: $700
• White Paper: $900
• Trade shows: $2,500

Source: Marketing Sherpa B to B Demand Generation Summit '07

E-Mail Statistics

• E-mail has the highest ROI of marketing vehicles producing $57 for every dollar spent. (OgliveyOne Worlwide, Jeanniey Mullen)
• 64% of key decision makers view e-mail on Blackberries and other mobile devices. (MarketingSherpa)
• 59% of e-mails are viewed with images turned off. (MarketingSherpa)

CRM ROI
Through 2010 enterprises that deploy CRM strategies (such as SalesForce.com and Eloqua) will return at least 25 percent better financial metrics than those that don't (0.8 probability).

Source: Gartner, Inc. Ten Secrets for Creating a Customer-Centric Enterprise, by Scott Nelson, December 2005

PR ROI

According to a Proctor & Gamble survey:

• PR delivers significant ROI overall, much greater than advertising, and provides a halo effect over other marketing tactics
• PR showed an overall 275% ROI
• PR delivers high ROI with relatively low spend in comparison to other marketing vehicles.
• SEO is a part of any PR program

Source: Proctor & Gamble, as reported by Web Marketing Today

Learn more about Internet marketing services at Bartlett Interactive.

Here at Bartlett we recently launched an online dashboard for GreenRay Solar, that helps consumers see the amount of energy their system generates in real time, as well as the environmental benefits.     A stream of live data is visualized through an animated and interactive display of statistics, charts, graphs, and icons. The dashboard helps the homeowner to measure solar power by the day, week, month, and lifetime of the panels. Taking into account the amount of sunlight available, it shows the amount of energy produced including an animation of the days and week’s solar activity and environmental benefits e.g. how many cars taken off the road.

  According to Suparna Kadam, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at GreenRay Solar, the dashboard becomes the "face of the product… The Dashboard is a key part of the sales strategy since it conveys the most important benefits quickly".

  As renewable energy becomes more viable and popular, being able to see actual data becomes a critical part of selling the product. According to Harry Bartlett, principal at Bartlett Interactive and founder of ConcordConserves.org, “There’s a great demand by consumers to see how much energy they are producing as well as any information that quantifies an environmental impact or benefit. The GreenRay dashboard is a rich source of data that consumers can easily understand and appreciate”.

  The dashboard is also useful as a diagnostic tool for GreenRay engineers and installers. Installers can access information for all of their installations and monitor the panels to make sure they are working properly. GreenRay's engineers also benefit from access to large amounts of actual data, which helps inform product development decisions as well as understanding how best to site solar panel arrays.

New addition to the Bartlett Interactive team expands company’s web development capabilities

 

Concord, MA February 14, 2011 – Bartlett Interactive, an interactive design agency, is excited to welcome newcomer Ben Davis to a versatile team of developers and creatives. Ben Davis, a native of New Hampshire, has recently joined the Bartlett Interactive Team as the in-house web developer and PHP guru.

A graduate of Lyndon College, with a BA in Digital Media and an AS in Computer Science, Ben has a focus on web development. He brings his knowledge of XHTML, CSS PHP, MySQL, jQuery and multiple CMS applications including Drupal and Wordpress to enhance BI’s current projects.

Founder Harry Bartlett is looking forward to working with Ben. “Ben’s addition to our team expands our web development capabilities. We will be able to provide a much more in depth experience for our clients while continuing to provide Drupal as a platform. Ben is a perfect fit for our focus on building websites that increase brand awareness, lead generation, and online advocacy for non-profits.” 

In the beginning most websites were built with Dreamweaver, FrontPage or just a text editor like Notepad. These editors allowed for easy construction of 'brochure' websites. As sites became more dynamic the need for a content management system (CMS) increased.

Here are 3 things to know before committing to a CMS.

1. What a CMS Does

The web continues to re-invent marketing, sales and communications but there is a knowledge gap between the tools available and the ability to use them. Understanding what a CMS does and how to integrate it with your company’s online objectives is a critical part of realizing the web’s potential to grow your company.

The principal behind a CMS is quite simple. It’s a database with core functionality e.g. website editing, and add on modules. It can manage content as well as e-commerce in a search friendly way. It also can easily feed content into other sites e.g. social media communities.

After  the objectives are defined for a site, the best way to understand what a CMS does is to use one. Aligning the objectives with the features the CMS provides and working with real content is the best way to fully understand what is realistic and possible.

2. Which Open Source CMS is Best

Opinion here will vary, but at the moment we believe Drupal and WordPress are clearly the best - Drupal for larger, more complex sites and WordPress for simpler sites and blogs.

The reasons for this are: Drupal and WordPress are open source (free), have a large installed base (hundreds of thousands of websites), a web development community in the thousands and standard, non-proprietary technologies (PHP, MySQL, Linux and Apache). These qualifications mean that the functionality is well tested, has less chance of becoming obsolete and is less expensive.

It also doesn't hurt to know that the White House, BBC, Sony and others use Drupal.

3. Total Cost of Ownership

There are 3 parts to the cost of a CMS. First the upfront software licensing fees (if there are any), maintenance costs and hosting fees. The reality is that unless you are looking for an enterprise level CMS, open source (i.e. free) is the way to go.

Maintenance costs depend on who is working on the site. The most cost effective strategy is to have someone within your company maintain the site leaving more heavy-duty work to outside contractors. The more people within your organization that can use a CMS the better. This will increase the amount you publish and make your brand more visible online as well as make for a more accurate, up to date and compelling site.

CMSs are resource intensive and require at least a virtual dedicated server hosting plan. These start at $30 per month. If your site is on a shared plan (under $20 a month) it will be slow.

Summary

As the web evolves choosing the right CMS can have a significant impact on how well your organization is able to utilize the web’s potential. When determining the requirements for a site re-design or a new site, make sure selecting the right CMS is a priority.

SEO is often mired with misinformation from modern day snake oil salesmen including overly complex formulas that often obscure the most important considerations. With this in mind it’s helpful to think of Google as an all knowing Buddha - wise and compassionate, rewarding those who play by their rules.
Here are 3 Buddha like principals critical to a successful SEO strategy.

1. Be Yourself: If you try to fake out Google with keyword stuffing, link farming, excessive phony link backs, black hat SEO techniques you will eventually be flagged and put at the back of the search rank line. But if your company, specifically the words and pictures that describe your company are accurate and descriptive about who you are, what makes you unique and what you are best at, Google will reward you with high page rank.

2. Ubiquity: Within the Google eco-system ubiquitous content is king because that is how they rank you. This means publishing as much as you can not just on your website but throughout the ‘marketing cloud’ i.e. social media sites, vertical directories, blogs, news wires etc. This also means you have to have something to say and know how to say it. This means images, photos, illustrations, videos as well as good copy about what your company does best, what your values are and why your company is worth knowing about.

3. Fear Not: OK, when people write ‘marketing’ copy typically it is fraught with generic, often phony claims meant to hide defects and promote flimsy strengths. This is driven in part by a basic fear that if the consumer knew everything about a company they would flee. But the reality that Google has created is that you have to be more than safe now. You have to be unique, valuable and real. The web levels the playing field and lowers the cost of entry. Consumers reward authenticity and punish corporate fakery generated by marketers driven by fear and greed rather than unadulterated value. Viral marketing is ‘cost effective’ but it requires not worrying about taking a stand and being vulnerable at times.

Google makes it easy and hard. Easy in that all you need to be is true to your company’s values and publish extensively, and hard in that you have to be either very good or very unique, preferably both.
That being said it is a wise person who goes with the flow and a fool who tries to deceive Google, the all knowing Buddha of the Internet, rewarding those who play by their rules.

We recently launched an online carbon calculator for a non-profit we started called ConcordConserves.org (CCO). Since being introduced in January this year, 384,357kg of c02 has been eliminated and over 330 people have participated, far exceeding our expectations.

We first researched all the live calculators out there looking for the best features and platform for developing it. The calculator we came up with has 3 parts:

• Calculate: The ability to calculate your footprint based on transportation, food and home energy use
• Reduce: The ability to reduce your footprint by selecting actions from a list weighted towards local rebates
• Compete: The ability to compete with others to see who can reduce the most

After investigating several web development platforms we decided to use Drupal, the open source content management system since it gave us the functionality and flexibility we needed.

But what made the calculator appealing and how did we get so many reductions? Here are the 3 best aspects we think did the trick.

1. Compete: this feature has been far and away the most effective part. It’s implemented using groups. In this instance a teacher at the local high school decided to use it for the Earth Science department, where there are about 11 classes. Each class is a group and each competes with each other to see who can reduce the most.

2. Peer View: The calculator allows people to see what reductions groups have done as well as contact each other and post comments. Since peer relationships have shown to be one of the most powerful drivers when trying to influence and change people’s behavior, we wanted to emphasize this part. Adding community/social media features is a big plus when trying to get people to use an online calculator.

We also inserted a chart on the entry page showing how per capita emissions of Americans stack up to other countries. Don’t be surprised, Americans emit more carbon per person than just about any other country. This type of peer-to-peer comparison chart is a really effective way to get the point across and inspire people to act.

Note the above chart also shows how many planet earths would be needed if everyone on the planet consumed as much as the average in that country.

3. Go local: There are a lot of calculators out there so we decided to make ours as local as possible. Remember ‘act local, think global’? The list of reductions starts with programs offered by the town (e.g. $5 off compact fluorescent bulbs). We also targeted the schools so that the calculator could be used in their curriculum. CCO is all about local too, making it easy to promote it within the community. We also included a master “everyone’s reductions to date” feature showing how much carbon has been reduced by everybody. This feature is an easy way for people to feel a part of a bigger group as well as feel like they are making a more significant contribution.

We learned a lot from this project – about how to build online communities as well as how to engage people to improve the environment. Creating online communities is not easy but understanding what motivates people can make for a far more compelling online experience.

Note, a special thanks to the Concord Carlisle Community Chest for their generous grant, and the support of private donors as well as Fletcher Boland, Jessie Pearl, Christopher Lorch and Kitty Smith who built the calculator. Without their help it would not have happened.

Bartlett's eValuator continues to prove that the majority of websites are not well optimized. Visually, anyone can see whether a website is well designed or not but many people are unaware of just how many other key elements make a website successful.

Based on the eValuator results dating back to October 2008, over 37% of the websites entered received a grade below 50%. See the pie chart below for a complete overview:

The grade is based on behind the scenes factors such as Google PageRank, indexed pages, meta tags, PR, and more.

To see what grade your website receives, try out the eValuator now.