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.

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.” 

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.

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.

A “Landing Page” on your website. What is a landing page? A landing page is the first page a potential customer or client comes to when they “land” on your website or blog. What makes a good landing page? It depends on what your mission is. Do you sell products to the public? Do you sell business to business? Do you want people to participate in the discussion on your blog or forum? You have to decide what you want a person’s first impression to be and what you want to convey very quickly to a potential client or customer. You need a “call to action”.

Our two websites agathaandlouise.com and aandlhome.com are retail websites selling products to the public. Most of the “landing” pages on our website are either individual product pages or category pages. No matter what page you land on when you visit our websites you will see:

• Name of Our Business with Description of what we sell
• Our toll free 800 phone number (method of contacting us) is always visible in the upper right hand corner. So are the badges for the credit cards we accept and our SSL certificate signifying that our websites are secure.
• Our Navigation Bar is prominently displayed high on our website and provides very visible links to the: Home Page, Sale Page, About Us, What’s New, Customer Service, Blog, Contact.
• And (with the exception of a few non-shopping pages) you will see all the different categories of products clearly displayed on the left hand side of the website.

When we started our business we decided that our mission was to have a retail business where we sell products that we love and that we wanted to get to know our customers and in turn we wanted our customers to have the opportunity to know who we are and to be able to contact us. We have attempted to make every landing page on our website reflect this.

Here is an example of a landing page for a product on our website. If you google “Irish Terrier Charm” we are the number one organic result in google (as of October 24, 2009). If you click on our google result this is what you see:

A clear image of the charm, an accurate product description, the price of the charm, images of related Irish Terrier products (which are actually links to those products), the ability to type in the engraving of your dogs name on the back of the charm with price (call to action), buttons to click to share on your social network (call to action), email a friend button (call to action) an add to cart button (call to action) and (on the left side of page) a list of all the different product categories.

This landing page provides multiple opportunities to make a customer or potential customer happy and satisfied. It allows them to purchase the charm, to have the charm engraved (what a nice personal touch and an unexpected surprise), to buy similar products, the ability to share the charm with their friends (via social network and email), and by seeing all the product categories they realize that we have much more to offer them than just a handful of Irish Terrier products.

Since the launching of our websites I have consulted with Bartlett Interactive multiple times to adjust and change the look of our website to enhance our landing pages and to improve the first impression of our website makes on potential customers. Here are some of the things I do to get the most out of my website:

• I listen to what our customers ask for.
• I google our products a lot to see where search results lead people to on our websites.
• I shop on our websites everyday to try to find errors or potential questions from customers.
• I read my blog everyday and I check links to make sure the links from our blog to our website work and are still live and work properly. *This is very important if you write a blog that links back to your website.

A good landing page is a “work” in progress. It can always be updated and adjusted. Don’t forget that. Remember your mission and provide a “call to action”. You’ll end up with more happy customers. Isn’t that every business owner’s “mission”?

Above all, we wish to avoid having a dissatisfied customer.
-Leon Leonwood Bean (founder of LL Bean)

"My business is local. I don't need a website". I have heard this from many fellow small business owners. Perhaps at one time this was true. But now you may want to reconsider this business philosophy. I recently had lunch with a good friend of mine who is expecting his first child with his wife. Due to their busy schedule they are doing most of their "new baby" supplies shopping on-line at night after dinner. He told me that they had recently purchased a new rocking chair (to rock their new baby asleep) on the internet and he said "we decided to buy it from a Maine based company. It was nice to be able to buy something local even though we are too busy to go to the store in person."

One of our most popular items on our website agathaandlouise.com are Puppia Harnesses. They are designed for small dogs and they are very soft so they tend to not rub against a dog's coat and leave marks on a dog's coat. Many local dog owners have discovered us because they simply Googled "Puppia Harness in Maine". Once we meet them guess what we often hear? "I'm so glad we found someone local".

We have countless examples of local people walking into our retail store (and now our showroom) with a shopping list of items from what they found on our website. They already know what they want. Why? Because they already shopped in our store before they walked in the door. Our store just happens to be on their computer in the comfort of their own home. For a retail business owner it doesn't get much better than that.

A website where local people can shop is one of the best customer service and sales tools available to you. Some small business owners have told me that they fear having people shop on their website would be impersonal and that they won't be able to establish relationships with their customers. We have had the exact opposite experience. Our website has brought us new customers and often times new friends. When designing our website we told Harry and Fletcher at Bartlett Interactive that we wanted an About Us page that had a photograph of us and that we wanted a page that conveyed to our potential customers something personal and honest about us. We don't want people to feel like that they are clicking on another website in the internet abyss...we want clients to know that - yes we are real people and yes we have a family too. In otherwords: You can have a personal relationship with us.

Remember local people search the web for products to buy. They are looking for answers to questions and many of your neighbors would love the opportunity to speak with and shop with someone in their community. Wouldn't you?

I have been quoted saying that, in the future, all companies will be Internet companies. I still believe that. More than ever, really.
--Andrew Grove (founder of Intel)

Gray
Agatha & Louise

With the growing number of social media outlets on the web, I thought it would be a great opportunity to build an online community out of the The Concord Conservatory of Music (CCM) website, www.concordconservatory.org.  I wanted to create an area for students as well as family and friends to experience all that the school has to offer.

In working with Bartlett Interactive, they were able to incorporate several features such as video streaming through a video sharing service, Vimeo, for watching music recitals, a Flickr photo gallery so anyone can upload photos of events and/or students playing instruments, as well as a link to the CCM Facebook page.

The ultimate goal is for everyone involved in The Concord Conservatory of Music to feel like part of a community. By sharing photos with one another, watching recitals, interacting on Facebook, and making the website more user friendly, we are able to make that happen.

If you would like to see how Bartlett Interactive built an online community for us, visit www.concordconservatory.org

Kate Yoder
Concord Conservatory of Music

Should I have an e-commerce website for my small business? That is a question I have been asked often lately. Many small businesses are realizing that having an e-commerce website is a perfect way for their current customers to shop with them and it can be an invaluable tool for reaching new customers.

We opened our retail store in May 2005 and literally the first day we opened our retail store our customers asked if we had a website. It was very quickly clear to us that a website was something our customers wanted. They loved our unique gifts for dog lovers and they wanted to shop with us from the comfort of their own home.

I contacted Harry Bartlett at Bartlett Interactive in late summer 2005 and I told him that we were interested in having an e-commerce website for our business. I was quick to tell Harry that we knew very little about websites and that I wasn’t sure what a website would require from us. The truth is I thought attaching a document to an email was a “big deal”.

The first thing Harry suggested was that we answer all the questions on Bartlett ’s E-Commerce Project Profile. The Project Profile covers the many aspects of having an e-commerce website from:

• What are your goals from having an e-commerce website?
• How will you market it?
• How will your site be maintained? Why is this important?

An e-commerce website takes a lot time to build and maintain and this can be expensive if you’re not doing it yourself.

Our e-commerce website, Agatha & Louise launched in June 2006 and Bartlett has helped our business grow in the four years since. Fletcher has been our primary contact. We’ve never actually met Fletcher face to face; all of our communication is via phone and internet.

A month ago we launched our second website, A&L Home and closed our brick and mortar retail store in Portland Maine ’s Old Port. We now have an office in the Old Port where we manage our two websites: www.agathaandlouise.com and www.aandlhome.com.

The Internet will help achieve "friction free capitalism" by putting buyer and seller in direct contact and providing more information to both about each other.  --Bill Gates

Gray
Agatha & Louise

Gray and his wife Persephone own Agatha & Louise and A&L Home, two internet businesses based in Portland, Maine. From time to time he writes entries on the Grow Blog to discuss small business and to share what is involved with having an e-commerce website (or two websites).

As you probably know, keeping a blog updated, let alone Facebook and LinkedIn, is time consuming. Learn how easy it is to automatically publish your blog postings on Facebook and LinkedIn. This will help increase your visibility with search engines as well as your overall effectiveness online.