The Info Group has partnered with Elkore to create 2StepSite.com a CPA Web Design & Marketing venture. The site offers CPA’s , Accountants and Financial Services Companies the means to create a website they can update at anytime with ease and speed and one that attracts targeted visitors with Search Engine Marketing options for any budget.

“The Yellow Pages are a dying breed, now everyone “Google’s” the service or product they are seeking and Financial Services oriented businesses are no exception.” said Mark Stone, a partner with The Info Group. “So, if you’re not online you limit your opportunities to compete in todays business environment.” he went on to say. “Finally, Elkore always delivers superior web design projects and when you combine that with our experience in online marketing I know this partnership will deliver results to CPA’s, Accountants and Financial Services companies anywhere.”

CPA, Accountants and Financial Services companies 2StepSite.com offers web design and marketing packages starting from as little as $159 a month.

In the past 18 months the volume of chatter regarding mobile search has grown into a low rumble and all indications are it will swell to a roar in the next few years. While the number of mobile surfers is not at a level comparable to pc based surfers it is growing and doing so at an alarming rate. So much so that Google mobile product manager Matt Waddell called it a watershed moment in a recent interview.

What does this mean to you?

Quite simply if you do not have a mobile version of your website in operation or on the drawing board you will get left behind. Mobile phones have now reached 75% penetration in the U.S. and 4 of 5 mobile phone users now request some sort of internet access when purchasing their phone. These kind of numbers combined with the increased energy from search engines to provide mobile friendly results (both in look and relevance, meaning why deliver search results that don’t look good and then send a mobile user a search result to a website that is not mobile friendly?) it does not take a rocket scientist to understand mobile search will impact the way people conduct business.

So the priorities of the business owner should now include a properly built mobile website to compliment their “pc” site and a presence in mobile search. Both of these tasks can be completed by The Info Group.

Congratulations to FIFTY Pharmacy and the launch of their newly redesigned website!

Look for more feature rollouts over the next weeks & months including product video presentations, RSS feeds and much more as FIFTY 50 Pharmacy continues to serve the diabetic community with the highest level of diabetic products, competitive pricing and unmatched customer service!

The new website for Adient Health is now live! This was an unusual project for The Info Group as Adient Health already had a design but needed the site built out in a seo-friendly manner. Project complete!

Adient Health is a leading western U.S. provider of outpatient physical and occupational therapy for clients of all ages who suffer from functional limitations and pain caused by sports or work related injuries, as well as, orthopedic and post surgical conditions.

The buzz has been growing since 2001 about Web2.0 and quite frankly so has the confusion.  Talk to one developer and he’ll tell you Web2.0 is about style sheets, xhtml, ajax and an assortment of other technologies, talk to a web marketer and he’ll tell you Web2.0 is about wikis, social networks, tagging and an assortment of other means to communicate.  But isn’t it really the mashup of old media and new?

It is no secret the web is beginning to allow users to set entertainment by their standards.  Whether it be viewing a video of their subject matter when they want to listening to a custom radio station to participating in world wide discussions on topics they are interested in, the choice of how, what, when and where entertainment is delivered is now under the users control. 

Old media dictates what program will be played when and unless you have a recorder it also tells you what commercials you will watch during the program, old media tells you what day you can read the latest version of a magazine, what time of day your paper will arrive and so on.  New media tells you none of that.  You decide what program you want to watch, what to read, what to discuss, all on your terms.  New media also let’s you participate in the subject matter something the old guard cannot do.

So how does this relate to your website?  Easy, you need to take whatever compatible elements of Web2.0 you can and apply them to your web presence.  If you sell products, video is a natural fit and iCrossing’s recent survey on How America Searches reveals the impact of video and audio online.  If you sell a service you should be active with a blog and/or a community feature like a forum to allow visitors a chance to learn more about you and your service and your industry.  Everyone should be participating in mobile and have at least a simple mobile version of their website. 

Web2.0 is here and it is the precursor to Web3.0 and whatever that brings so if you are going to compete online you have no choice but to move with the times but you don’t have to have every bell and whistle to do so, just the ones that make sense.

We’ve seen first hand what a malicious minded person can do when a site we were running an SEO campaign for had their entire content hijacked. Luckily the web developers were able to shut the unwanted intruder down and regain control of the content. Today our blog had several attempted comment posts that were obviously the product of an automated bot. Again we had controls in place to not allow the comments to be live and the only discomfort was the time it took to delete them.

Internet security overall is under attack every minute of everyday and with websites playing a growing role in the everyday operation of business security is a risk that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Those attacks are usually associated with credit card theft or identity theft. Would it surprise you to know there are a staggering amount of SEO related attacks?One such way devious, black hat SEO types are trying to circumvent the system is through XSS attacks.

Here is an interesting post on XSS attacks or cross site scripting and how you can work with your hosting company to protect against them.

We all know the feeling we had the first time we saw flash used on a website. How cool is that? Was probably the overwhelming reaction so what did you feel the second time you viewed that cool animation? Not quite as excited right? And therein lies one of the problems with using flash as the primary means to deliver a website, especially a business website.

Although flash allows a website to have dynamic animations, menus, effects including sound and video it also can create the opposite effect to the visitor especially when the business the website is trying to promote offers valuable information like white papers or listings. How can that be? Easy, for example, try and bookmark a page within a flash site, oh that’s right you can’t so if you want to get to a certain section within a flash site you need to start at the homepage or in a lot of case the “Intro” and navigate your way through the site to the information you are after. How many times do you think a visitor will go through that exercise if a competing website has the information they want on a static page that they can bookmark or create a shortcut to from their desktop? Not many would be a safe answer. Let’s talk about those “Intro’s”. They are really nice the first time you view them but again how about the second or twentieth time you view them? Not so nice and by the way you probably start getting frustrated when you visit the site knowing you either have to wait for the intro to finish (because the designer didn’t make a skip function available) or click on skip to move to the homepage. So as a business owner do you want a repeat visitor to show up at your front door frustrated? Of course not but that in essence is what you are doing when you have an intro page, you’re making the potential customer go through a hoop to get to your front door.

Finally a large obstacle to a site designed entirely in flash is your marketing efforts. If you are engaged in search engine marketing and specifically the organic side you have placed your company at a serious disadvantage. Sure, Google is getting better at spidering flash but the results are still very limited and if a site is competing for terms with serious competition that site probably doesn’t have a chance at seeing great results in search rankings without creating static pages to supplement their site which is equivalent to a punt in football. If you are participating in pay-per-click or other forms of paid advertising you have limited your site to developing landing pages to accommodate your visitors as there is again no way to send a person to an “interior” page within flash.

If you are going to use flash as a means to deliver your website be prepared for the hurdles you are creating to visitors and to search engines. If you are wanting to take advantage of the wonderful features flash can provide and yet want to make your site visitor and search friendly, compromise and use elements of flash within your site while allowing static pages and items that are visitor and search friendly to have a place within your design as well. Please stay away from the “Intro” page, if you feel your “Intro” is that great and the public must have the opportunity to view it then make it a link that visitors can access but don’t force it on them.