Yes you, with the red white blue green and yellow rainbow text on your website - it’s you I hate.  I know you think that your site draws the eye, but consider the 5-8% of men in the world’s population that are colorblind - or the folks that have seisures because your blinky fonts and scrolling banners trigger their brains and the malfunction.

I know you think you’re helping - but you’re not.  I dont buy from sites that annoy me - I buy from their competitors….

….think about it & have a nice weekend

But I digress - my real reason for posting was to give you all a heads up on how to do the “Mom Test” on your website.  This post at the Website Optimizer blog is really insightful and gives you an idea for doing some live testing of the ease of use on your site.

Let mom do it. 

Check out the post for more info - but the gist of it is - watch someone who is not familiar with your site - or very familiar with the internet browse and buy something.  Dont talk to them or guide them in any way - just watch.  Where are the roadblocks?  Make notes and then ask - what can I do to make “x” better when they’re all done.

So - i did some investigating.  What does one do to gain these juicy local search tidbits from Merchant Circle?  Well - you must claim your listing - make it juicy and interesting - and possibly pay some money.  I havent claimed a listing yet - so I dont have 100% of the process or details down.  That’s my next step so stay tuned for a followup post in the next few days.

In the mean time, at least go claim your listing so nobody else does and make sure the info is accurate.

I think this is really an ingenious way to use mobile marketing to INCREASE the revenue per booked room at your lodging property.  We watched a special on a cruise line and the captain said if they didn’t get EACH GUEST to spend $7.50 a day on shopping, booze, incidentals, etc then the cruise lost money. 

Some other ideas for small business would be:

1. get locals who visit your storefront to sign up for text updates  then send out a special every once in awhile that’s good for a few days and gets them in the door.  You’d be surprised at how many will spend MORE money to save money.
2. Run text contests - during happy hour give away a buy one get one free dinner - have them text a code to a special number - and then you get a lot of opt-ins and some people in the door waiting to see if they won dinner - all the while buying happy hour drinks to sit and wait.

I went looking for a few companies that handle this type of software and found two fairly easily.  Check out smscaster.com or clubtexting.com for more details.  I have NOT used these companies so this isnt necessarily an endorsement - if you have any insight or suggestions please feel free to leave a comment.

In my agency life, reporting seems to be such a time consuming (read: annoying) process that they were always trying to automate - but it’s really hard to automate reporting and still have the critical inspection of accounts.

So here’s my question - would you - as an owner/employee at a SEO/SEM agency consider outsourcing your reporting to a company that would do a custom and completely whitelabeled report (branded would be an option too) for an affordable amount of money?

I’m thinking you as the client would be able to pick a report style/or send me your report style and pick your own metrics. 

Let me know what you think - as always - comments are appreciated!