- Idaho Web Design Blog -

There was a post on Mashable.com the other day that talked about Facebook and its eCommerce features. We though it was a great post so we decided to share it with you.

The first great thing about Facebook, when it comes to eCommerce, is the share, like and reviews options that are offered. Unlike a regular .com site, the reviews that are made on companies or products can be seen by more than just the audience that is looking to purchase from you at the point in time. This, plus the use of APIs, makes shopping on Facebook a totally different experience than traditional forms of online shopping.

The next great thing that Facebook offers is allowing integration to your preferred secure payment provider (such as PayPal). This ensures that your customers shopping experience will be similar to the one they would experience from your actual website. Not to mention the analytics and tracking that can be integrated to track your traffic flow and revenue. You can either use a tool that Facebook already offers, or you can integrate Google Analytics by simply extending page tags to track users.

Lastly, you are able to gain leverage on Facebook by using ocial campaigns and integrating an eCommerce functionality. From contests that focus on gaining “likes” that can then take the consumer to an eCommerce page to encourage spontaneous (or split second) shopping. They are also in the process of testing a “Buy With Friends” program that will offer discounts to people who refer their friends to business pages.

For years now, meetup.com has been providing the connection tools necessary for web developers, marketers, and all sorts of other individuals to start non profit groups to promote and educate about the web and all its wonders. We have currently been apart of a meetup group in Rexburg Idaho for about a year now. Not only have we leaned a bunch of juicy and helpful information regarding marketing and affiliates, but we have also made very valuable business connections and even a few sales!

The way meetup.com works is you set up an account and it will ask the demographics of your location, it will connect you with others in your area that have meetup accounts. You can start a meetup group and invite people to it. You can also send out emails to your entire list from meetup.com, informing people when where and what the next meetup is going to cover. The best part is that it costs nothing to get started, all you need to do is find a place to host the meetups. They also do an annual social media day every year that promotes social media. Meetup will provide some great info. on social networking that you can teach at the meetup.

Overall it is a great tool that everyone should take advantage of. If you come from an area like us, where web developers and marketers are very rare then its the ONLY way to get connected. Get signed up and find a meetup near you!

Now days there is a big number of people out there that are trying to gain success online. The problem is, that there is a bunch of garbage out there that is created for nothing more than to take your money and leave you high and dry. This post is our way of calling them out and informing you to be careful with what you get involved in on the internet.

If you ever run across an ad or site that says anything about big bucks with little time or effort, it is crap! Don’t fall for these kinds of scams, making money fast with little effort on the internet is highly unlikely. Working on the internet is played out to be something that is rather easy and can make you very wealthy. And it can.. get you wealthy that is. But not without every ounce of determination you have. It truly is hard, there is a right way to do it, and there is a wrong way. More and more people fall for the wrong way each day.

The best possible way to make money online is to own your own web space, most people use a website. It is a key tool to making money online. It is a platform to promote and sell your products or services. If you do some digging you will find that you can get a website professionally designed for a good price. A website is also a great way to promote yourself as an individual rather than a company. Consumers now days like to have that personal bond with the people behind the scenes of the companies they shop from. That is why sites such as Facebook and Twitter are such a hit. That close personal connection is key to a business’ success.

It will also take a little money up front. Don’t let anyone fool you, in order to make sales online you have to market your site and drive traffic to it somehow. Weather you want to learn how to do this on your own to save money or if you would rather pay to get it done faster, it simply cant be avoided. Once you have the proper marketing and a great site, you can then sit back and watch the money flow in. Frequent updates and edits must be made however, its not something that can be put on total auto pilot and left alone.

Another way to gain true success online is, if you are wanting to use eBay or site like it to sell merchandise you currently possess. That is not a bad way to go either. But you must learn how to do it first. Do some research and make sure you fully understand the process so you can capitalize as best as possible.

Lately here at LeeWai media, our team has been very busy working on various projects. We also redesigned our website and have been constructing a mad amount of discounts and deals that we are now offering to all our loyal friends and clients.

Social media is a monster in the marketing world, that not many people understand. We do however, we understand how powerful of a tool sites like Facebook and Twitter are to a business’ success online. Thats why we have been working very hard to create and manage our social media accounts. Lately we have been designing some discount and deal fliers to post on Facebook. We have also been uploading our online design portfolio so that anyone can view all of our past work.

Branding is a key part of building a business name, even if you are not influencing people to buy from you, you can still keep your business name if front of their eyes so when the time comes they will remember you. What I mean by this is simple. You need to be posting on these social networking sites very frequently so that people are always seeing your business name or logo. The same concept is used for television. If you think back you will notice that business’ advertise multiple commercials at the same time, and the reason is to build their brand. They are not so much worried about making a sell ever time the commercial is aired; but rather worried about people not forgetting who they are or what they do.

Tip of the day: get out there and brand your business, keep posting and interacting in any way that you can. Blog posting is also another great way to keep n touch with your targeted audience at little to no coast to you. Do it to it!!

As time goes by there are more great tools being produced each day to help improve the usability and ease of intent use. Of of the greatest tools, for developers, is what is known as CMS or content management systems. So what are content management systems exactly?

A content management system (according to Wikipedia) is “a software, usually implemented as a Web application, for creating and managing HTML content. It is used to manage and control a large, dynamic collection of Web material (HTML documents and their associated images). A CMS facilitates content creation, content control, editing, and many essential Web maintenance functions”.

There are many different CMS companies out there, I prefer to use WordPress, but also check into sites such as Joomla, Drupal, & Silver Stripe. CMS is a great tool for blogging, seeing as how you must update the content on a regular basis, including images and videos. These programs make editing everything as easy as it can possible be. You have a back-end that is constructed to be simple and to the point. With an array of custom options to allow you to accomplish almost anything. If you also know HTML you are basically set. You have a variety of professional looking templates, from each company, that give your site the look it needs to succeed.

The best part is, that these programs are FREE. All you have to do is go to the companies website and download the files to upload onto your ftp user. Every site should in fact have updated content and information rather often, to keep or gain rank in any search engine, so take advantage of these great FREE tools.

If you are looking for a stable way to make money online, and affiliates are a little to dangerous sounding for your style, niche related eCommerce sites are the way to go.

To fill you in, a “niche” can be summed up as either a product of industry market, say… shoes. If you decide on selling shoes or items related to shoes, that is considered your “niche”.

Now, its not as easy as just thinking of something to sell and going for broke, cause thats where you will be headed, broke. There are steps and guidelines that must be followed in order to ensure you choose a worthwhile niche with as little competition as possible.

One of those ways is to do what is called keyword research. This can be done with multiple tools that the internet has to offer. A great one to use if brought to you by Google. It is called the “Google External Keyword Tool“. The way you use this tool is to type in a few keywords that you have came up with. Then the results will tell you how many people look for that term and it will also suggest related searches.

You will also need to look at the competition (others that sell your same niche). To do this simply type your niche (shoes) into Google. It will bring up the sites you need to beat. If you see sites such as Wikipedia, amazon, or walmart then you are in good shape. If you see lots of sites dedicated to your niche only then you may want to look for something else.

Once you have stumbled upon the niche that works for you, you need to get a site up. Using WordPress templates is an easy inexpensive alternative. Remember that simplicity sells, and that your site needs to reflect your product as much as possible. You don’t want customers coming to your site, asking themselves “what does this site sell?” Revert to the color white as much as possible and try to insert a PayPal logo and other security related images so that your site builds credibility in your consumers eyes. After all of that you should be on your way to a nice source of income.

P.S. Don’t try to focus on “killer” niches that make thousands of dollars a month. It is really hard to establish yourself in a competitive industry. If you focus on niches that don’t make as much, and are easier to rank for, you can afford to start multiple sites. In the end you will make more money this way.

Now days, people are trying out every new way of marketing possible. Even to the point of coming up with now unique & inventive ideas to direct traffic. Most of the “pro’s” are trying their best to direct traffic without the help of the almighty Google. The reasoning is because Google is a powerhouse now and is trying to get their hands in every aspect of the web possible. This means less money for the people who are actually doing all the hard work and easy money to Google in some way, shape, or form.

If you are fairly new to the game, or have yet to try E mail marketing, you are loosing out. According to Mr. John Chow, E mail marketing is still and will continue to be the best way to continuously make money from your site. If you are worried about obtaining new customers more than retaining the customers you already have, and making more money off them, you are a little mixed up. Studies show that most individuals that are successful online are highly active in E mail marketing, making way more revenue off of returning customers than new customers.

(wondering how to go about it?)

For starters try adding a lead capture at the top of your site, to obtain email addresses. You can advertise whatever you think will persuade your customers to enlist. From there you start to push new products, specials, discounts ect. You will be surprised with the results guaranteed. To make it even easier you can use tools such as Mail Chimp or Aweber that will send out E mails automatically.

If you are into blogging at all you should have known that Mashable held the official Social Media day just recently. It was meant for people interested in social media to meet and share experiences and teach lessons ect.

A great tip that could have been learned if you didn’t attend, is the whole less pushing and more helping aspect. Let me explain a little more, if you actually dedicate time to helping people with questions and giving tips or just finding some way to be of some assistance to someone it will indeed pay off.

Now days there is way too much spam on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, so why do the same and become another brick in the wall? If you try to gain tight nit personal relationships it will help your conversions dramatically. People are all about talking to a real person in charge of anything they might put money towards. It makes sense I’m sure you are sitting reading this in full agreement.

Remember don’t try to start a conversation, in fact try to carry one on that someone else has tried starting, this will help stop the biggest problem on these sites and that is NOT making a full connection. Just stating what you can do for someone is NOT enough.

The U.S. population was estimated to be approximately 307,212,123 in 2009. Of that there were an estimated 227,719,000* Internet users as of August 11, 2009. That is a 74.1% penetration and a 134% increase in users since 2000. The rest of the world contributes another 1,418,085,741* internet users bringing the total to 1.733 billion* worldwide users. The internet is simply too valuable a tool to ignore.

*Published by Nielsen/Net Ratings

You simply can not afford to lack Web Presence. If in fact it is money you are in short of, LeeWai can help. We offer effective design at such a low price for a reason, and that reason is you of coarse. Consider it our “bail-out plan” that will actually work to start heading our economy out of this recession.

It is obvious the reasoning for your business to get on the web as soon as possible. OVER 220 MILLION USER OF THE WEB! That is an amazing number (especially because that only the United States). There are ten primary reasons that anyone should consider the Web thanks to cleart.com you can educate yourself on these reasons as have we here at LeeWai Media.

One of the best keys of success for a small or emerging business is branding.

Branding is nothing more than a legitimate logo, that displays what your business is about and what it can accomplish. In most cases you want to associate your business with something that people will remember, even if they only view it once.

In most cases small business that are starting out tend to put branding on hold, behind the development of products and even funding. This has more times than not, turned out to be a mistake, because branding can be key to a business early success. Not to mention, it rapidly builds credibility to your targeted audience. In short, the branding of your business is simply your company’s face to your consumers, it is how your customers view your business & can express the communication of your business.

It is very important that your consumers place positive associations and good inherent values with your business, which can be accomplished by a unique and effective brand / logo.