My sister works for American Greetings and got to create the concepts for a new line that you can buy in their American Greeting and Carlton Card stores.  I’ve already taken two trips to buy some of the items…I am sure I have a few more trip to make.  Here are some photos of the window display.

Today I received an interesting email from America’s Test Kitchen. I have been on their mailing list for the past year or two since I signed up for one of their free trials. They send me A LOT of emails…. 99.5% of which I don’t have time to read. So I was surprised to get the email below in my inbox today. It basically says, we noticed that you don’t read our emails, so we will unsubscribe you unless we hear from you.  I think this is a great strategy….they either get to keep me as a subscriber and keep marketing to me or they loose me as a subscriber, but leave me with a feeling of goodwill toward their brand.

We get calls all the time from people who want a website and would like a quote.  We always give them a fair price based on what we think it will cost to develop them a marketable website.  The keyword in the previous sentence is marketable.  A marketable website is different from just a website.  Anyone can develop a website, heck you can even get one for free at Google, Yahoo, or GoDaddy.  For 95% of businesses, developing a website without a marketing plan is a complete waste of time and money.  I completely understand getting competitive bids, however, the problem is that many businesses make their decision based on cost alone, forgetting that they are not making an apples-to-apples comparison.  A marketable website costs more money because a specific plan is developed to solve the most common web design money-wasting problems:

• How are you going to get a return on your investment?
• How are you going to get people to come to your website?
• What content do your website visitors expect/want to see?
• Does the website’s infrastructure support growth?
• Will the infrastructure be search engine friendly?

Let me give you an example, recently I looked at my son and thought to myself “this boy needs a haircut, his head looks like a mop.”  I was too lazy to make an appointment and take him to the hairdresser so I decided to do it myself.  “How hard could it be?” I asked myself.  So I got out my scissors and started snipping away.  I had seen how the hairdresser cut my husband’s hair…pull the hair between my fingers vertically and snip, snip snip.  About 100 snips later my son came out looking like “a monk” as my husband put it.  Two days later we made the trek to the hairdresser where he got a professional haircut that could land him a job modeling for Baby Gap ;-)  In that respect, the hairdressing industry is similar to that of web development.  Everyone can cut their hair or get a website for free, but the training and experience a professional provides will make you more marketable, changing the way others think, feel, and interact with you.

I am always checking the keywords that bring people to our website. For the past couple months, I have been noticing an interesting traffic source. The phrase “Latest International News” is bringing us a few hits every month from MSN.com. What I really love about this is that we are ranked ABOVE abc.com for this phrase. I took a screen shot below just in case anything ever changes (as is probably should).

Most of my time each day is spent helping to improve other businesses online strategies.  I really like what I do and love seeing the difference we make each month, but recently I got the idea to start a website of my own due to a problem I was having.  I am an avid online shopper.  Because I am a working mom, I find it very difficult to get out of the house to get my shopping done.  So I buy most things online, from paper towels to laundry detergent to strollers.  In the course of shopping, I am often very frustrated with the amount of pictures provided on most websites…and hence my idea… www.baby-product-video-reviews.com a website devoted to bringing parents real pictures, videos, and opinions on baby and kid products from a real mom in a real home.

The site is a work in progress, because each review takes awhile to make, but I am making progress, and soon there will be many more video reviews to view.  I also started a new blog related to this website at blog.baby-product-video-reviews.com and deals mostly with being a working mom and entrepreneur.  So if you have a second, take a look.  I would love to know what you think.

My 2 year contract with Sprint expires in December.  My service with them has been very good (I switched because T-Mobile’s coverage was so bad I couldn’t use my cell phone in my own home)….and now, do I dare switch providers again just so I can get a coveted iPhone?  I checked out an iphone review that lists all the + and - of the iphone, but I still can’t make up my mind.  It would be nice to have it in certain instances when I want to browse the internet or when I am traveling.  I would love to be able to upload some Thomas the Train videos to it so my toddler would be entertained.  But then I think of switching networks and I get a little bit nervous – what if the coverage with AT&T isn’t very good?  I guess I have a few months to decide….I’ll let you know.

I signed up for a StumbleUpon account, which I have been loving!  If you haven’t tried it yet, download the toolbar and Click “stumble”  I have discovered some great websites that I would have never come across otherwise.  One they showed me today was a comparison of fast food advertising vs. reality (click the link, it is really cool!).

Small businesses need to make sure their advertising compares with what they are providing too — especially service based businesses.  It is one thing to promise “great customer service” or “delivery in an hour,” but if you don’t provide what you promise, your advertising will be as transparent as fast food restaurants.

In addition to being a small business owner and operator, I am a mom.  Therefore I subscribe to several e-newsletters from baby and kids stores, some of which only sell toys made in the US or Europe (I love wooden toys).  For the life of me, I can’t figure out why I haven’t gotten one email marketing message from one of them saying “worried about lead in your kid’s toys?  All of our toys are made in Germany with Lead Free Paint.”

This could be a huge opportunity for them…parents are at a point where they are reconsidering the toys that they buy for their children and/or buying them new toys for the ones they are returning/throwing out.  Why not remind them that the toys they sell are safe.  Even if they don’t send out an email marketing correspondence, why not run a PPC campaign for the keywords like Mattel recall list — Lawyers are doing it or put something on their homepage that says “All of our toys are lead free.”

I don’t know what your business is, but take a look around to see what news stories could be affecting your business/industry even if they don’t mention your business specifically.

Testimonials can add a lot of creditability to your website that would otherwise blend in with the crowd.  For some tips on how to create great testimonials, head on over to Copyblogger for some hints.  Fore more information on this topic, our August issue of Internet Strategies will have a full article on creating testimonials that sell.

It has been awhile since I have last posted, but for a very good reason!! I just had a baby girl. She was born the exact same day as her brother - 4th of July - only 2 years later. Life is very busy but good! I love having two kids. I’ll be posting more frequently now that things have **kinda** settled down. I also just signed up for a LinkedIn profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/magro if you want to join my network and a flickr (mostly personal) profile.