Saturday, June 21, 2008

New Design Releases

Here are a few of our newest design releases for June 2008;

Just Dandy Clothing Store
Cheyenne, Wyoming

Just Dandy Clothing Store Cheyenne, Wyoming
Broadway Office Supply
Scottsbluff, Nebraska

Broadway Office Supply Scottsbluff, Nebraska
Western Sleep Medicine
Scottsbluff, Nebraska

Western Sleep Medicine Scottsbluff, Nebraska

To learn more about these clients, visit www.websiteportfolio.net

Advertising Coop Expands!

AgMarketOnline.com is enjoying it's success as a place to advertise and promote our clients and what they have to offer. The website is advertised on our radio network of over 20 major radio stations in NE, CO, MT, ND, SD, KS and NM and is getting hundreds of unique visitors every day. We built AgMarketOnline to help encourage those who are doing business with us to do business with others in the same network. Everyone knows about Google. However, I am sure that anyone who has done a search on Google realizes that the monster search engine often times produces quite irrelevant results and isn't organized by Category or Type of Business or anything for that matter. It's one big search engine with millions of unrelated sites. AgMarketOnline.com is a well organized website that is agriculturally focused, but includes more than just 'Ag' products or services. Besides, 'Ag' people buy the same things city people do!

Since some people might think that their website or business doesn't fit well on an agriculturally focused website. Therefore, we have expanded our Advertising Cooperative to include several other non-ag search sites. The first major website I built in 1996 was www.1bestdirectory.com. This little search engine has received over a quarter million visitors over the years and will soon be completely revamped along with the next search site I built called The Internet Gold Pages at www.internetgoldpages.com. We have also purchased www.1bestsearch.com and www.onebestsearch.com and will be utilizing these as well.

Here's the best news for you... Our clients' websites will be listed on all of these at NO CHARGE as long as you are a hosting client! Our AgMarketOnline Members will also receive the additional exposure at no additional charge.

Improved Contact Forms

We are constantly striving to improve our clients' websites. One of the most important parts of any website is it's contact form. Hackers and Spammers build computer robots to submit bogus information and potentially dangerous files through contact forms. We are busy implementing a new methodology that will discourage this and at the same time improve the quality of the contacts you receive. To ensure the more secure forms work, we MUST have your CURRENT email address on file. Visit your Control Panel and update your account info with your current email address you want contacts sent to!

Filtering ***SPAM***

Last month we told you that we have SpamAssassin, a leading Server Based application that MARKS any suspected email with ***SPAM*** in the subject line so that you can set up a simple filter to Delete these emails automatically. Here's how to do that...

For Outlook Express : click on Tools, Message Rules, Mail, New, check Where the subject line contains words, check Delete It, click on contains specific words, enter ***SPAM*** in the box, click Add, click OK 3 times.

For Incredimail : click on Tools, Message Rules, Add, select If Subject Line Contains, type ***SPAM*** in the box, select Delete It and click OK.

New Testimonials Section

Testimonials are like pictures... they're worth a thousand words! We will be featuring testimonials from our clients in future newsletters and on several of our websites, so be sure to submit yours to us. It's just another way to bring more attention to your website! You can email your testimonials to support@halemultimedia.com.

Beating High Gas Prices

None of us are happy about the high gas prices. In fact, it has probably caused a tremendous hardship on those who depend on the fossil fuels to operate their businesses. Some businesses have even had to close their doors due to the outrageous increases in operating expenses. Fortunately, there is a thing called the World Wide Web and we are finding ways to take better advantage of this resource. Since we are in the business of building the World Wide Web, we feel it is our duty to help our clients understand how to use the internet more effectively. We will be passing along tips whenever we find them, so be sure to read each of our newsletters. First, let's take a look at the somewhat surprising internet usage statistics for both the United States and around the world... (see Internet Usage Statistics post)

Internet Usage Statistics

I started using the 'internet' way back in the mid 1980's, although it wasn't commonly called that yet. No, I didn't invent it, haha, but I did experience it through a service called 'Compuserve' where you could visit a single text only 'shopping' site to purchase a few things. It was a long distance phone call and the connection cost per minute. The charges were added to your phone bill, so once my mom got the first $100+ phone bill, I was on restriction! Then, in 1989 I was blessed with the opportunity while in the U.S. Military to help develop a 'message' tracking system for Major General Travis in Heidelberg, Germany. We now call this message tracking system 'Email' and everyone knows what that is. Even though the 'internet' has been around since the 1950's in it's rawest form called 'Arpanet', you could legitimately say that the World Wide Web is still in it's infancy, although it's growing at a phenomenal pace. Here are a few statistics that show that the internet (and more importantly ecommerce) still has a lot of room to grow...

  • Personal Computers in-use in the U.S. tripled from 1995-2005 to around 1/4 Billion PC's.

  • PC's per capita reached 80% in 2006 and is projected to reach 98% in 2012.

  • The number of U.S. Internet users increased by 53% from 2006-2007 to 210 Million!

  • The number of Internet users worldwide was 2M in 1990, 45M in 1995, 430M in 2000, over 1 Billion in 2005 and is now 1.4 Billion!

  • Worldwide internet use increases by 140 Million users each year meaning it will hit 2 Billion in a few years!

  • Ecommerce as a percentage of total retail sales has tripled since 2001 when it represented 1.1%.

  • Ecommerce in the U.S. increased 13.6% from 1st Quarter 2007 - 1st Quarter 2008 to $33.8 Billion!

  • That $33.8 Billion in Ecommerce represents only 3.3% of all U.S. Retail Sales leaving plenty of room for growth!

    Another interesting fact is that the U.S. is not the country with the most internet users. China surpassed the United States this year with 227 Million Internet users and that represents less than 17% of their population, whereas 75% of the U.S. population uses the internet.

    My research findings confirm what I suspected when I claimed that the Internet is in it's infancy. With improved security, faster connections, increasing wireless connectivity, more PC's and other mobile devices accessing the internet and millions more internet users everyday... it's fairly easy to predict that Ecommerce will continue to increase over time.

    With gas prices through the roof, it only makes sense to drive less and surf more. If you are offering something for sale and your website is not taking advantage of the technology at hand, please contact us! We have setup dozens of ecommerce solutions and are ready to help you. Furthermore, if you are still driving to town, or even just across town to do your shopping, you should consider utilizing the web more. Nowadays, the only requirement to purchase something online is a debit card, so you don't even have to have a credit card. Even if you don't actually purchase something over the web, like a house or a horse, you can still save time and gas by browsing before you take that drive!

    Sources : U.S. Census Bureau, Wikipedia & The Computer Industry Almanac, Inc.