Brew City Marketing

Website Builder Shootout: Weebly vs. Squarespace vs. WordPress

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So you have a business, you have a product or service, and now you need a website. Where do you go from here? There are numerous website builders out there, but which one is the best for your needs? We’re here today to highlight the pros and cons of the 3 major website builder platforms: Weebly, Squarespace, and WordPress.

Squarespace

Squarespace is a website building solution that is visually appealing and works well with many types of businesses. It’s an all-in-one solution which includes everything needed for the website and allows you to manage all the different pieces of your website from one interface, for one price. Squarespace has a very easy-to-use web builder, allowing you to get a site online with hosting and domain name included. Their customer support is great, with live chat representatives ready to help with anything you might need at any time. While that all sounds great, there are some hiccups with the platform. The first is pricing: Squarespace is the most expensive of the drag and drop website builders. When you run the numbers it’s also more expensive than setting up your own WordPress website. The platform also lacks in marketing and SEO capabilities and it’s hard to figure out the limited options they have. Backend user functionality is difficult to navigate, including the drag-and-drop features that allow you to build the website. It’s not easy to find the features to add to your website like blogs, additional pages, dividers, and images, and it’s just as hard to place them into the website when you do find them. Overall, Squarespace is great for someone who is focused on having a visually appealing, modern website that lives up to their motto “Build It Beautifully”.

Weebly

Weebly is one of the fastest growing website builders – interesting because it’s also one of the oldest. Weebly is another all-in-one website builder platform that prides itself on not requiring you to buy separate pieces for your website and install them. It’s a great trade-off in which you give up control but gain convenience. One of the biggest pros of Weebly is speed, security, and backup ability. Weebly provides the hosting for its websites, meaning the websites are fast, secure and optimized. Weebly is also very affordable, with some pretty awesome features that are free or as low as $12 a month. Extensions are plentiful with Weebly, almost rivaling those of WordPress. Disadvantages of using the Weebly platform include their content management system as well as their platform lock-in. Users that plan on having 50-plus pages on their website will want to stay away from Weebly, as the system is inefficient and difficult to navigate with a lot of information. The biggest drawback of Weebly is the inability to easily migrate your website to another platform like WordPress. This is a very tedious and time consuming process that you’ll have to undergo when you get to a point where you need to move to a more robust platform.

WordPress

WordPress is our favorite website building platform. It’s what we use for our website and all the sites we build for our clients. WordPress is the most popular content management system, and while it’s not perfect, it’s far superior to the drag and drop options such as Squarespace and Weebly. The first advantage is that it puts you in control of your website, and lets you do what you want to do with it. WordPress is an open source CMS, which means any user can manipulate, customize or redistribute it as he or she sees fit. In other words, WordPress is not proprietary. Effectively, this means that you have the freedom to do whatever you want with your website, whether that means radically altering the code or migrating it to any hosting company you choose. Secondly, there are over 29,000 plugins in the WordPress directory, and a new plugin is added every hour! Plugins are customized code that extend and expand the functionality of your website, giving you the ability to build a full-scale E-commerce website or add a Twitter feed, among thousands of other options. The third advantage is that WordPress sites are highly scalable. Your website can have hundreds and thousands of pages, blog posts, or products. Rest assured that no matter how much your business grows, the performance of your website will not be compromised in the least. The cons of WordPress include a need to have, at minimum, entry-level web development experience to fully take advantage of its power. WordPress is not an easy platform to jump into. Also, regular updates are required in WordPress. The development team is always releasing new patches and updates to the platform to protect their users and increase the usability of the platform. If you’re not comfortable with applying updates, WordPress may not be for you.

Every website is unique in its own way, and with a plethora of options available for building and hosting, there are many avenues you can take. We recommend WordPress simply because of the customizability and the complete ownership and control it provides as a content management system. For more information on our experiences with WordPress, revisit our blog series “Why WordPress” or feel free to give us a call – we’re happy to answer any questions you may have!

1 Important Task Your Business Should Be Tackling Every Month

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Here at Brew City Marketing, we’ve recently moved to a new office with a new street address, which required updating our information across the web. It’s crucial to our business that when customers are searching for our brand online they are getting accurate results, so we didn’t want any potential customers being led to our old address. Once the information was updated, we wanted to do a sweep through of all the major search engines to ensure any searches for our brand included up-to-date information. Even if your business hasn’t undergone any major changes recently, it’s something you should do once a month to ensure your information is up to date and accurate. Here is how to do it in 3 simple steps:

First, put yourself in your customer’s shoes and make a list of at least 3 searches they might be making when seeking your company. At BCM, we included 5 that we thought would be most important for our situation:

  1. Brew City Marketing
  2. 9205 W Center St, Suite 209, Milwaukee WI, 53222 (old address)
  3. 9211 W Center St, Milwaukee WI, 53222 (new address)
  4. Brew City Marketing + Old Address
  5. Brew City Marketing + New Address

Next, it’s time to start searching for inconsistencies in the information representing your business online. Start with the major search engines. We scanned Google, Bing, Yahoo, and AOL and dug around 5 or 6 pages deep when it came to search results. Our goal was to make sure any links with our address information were updated to include our new address and not our old one. Also, we wanted to make sure any search results with our new address didn’t include any information on past occupants of the office space. There was previously an optometrist in our office space, so we wanted to know how many links still included our new address with the old occupant’s information. After you finish looking through the major search engines, we also recommend searching major directories like Facebook, Yelp, Google Business, Zillow, or any other sites that may be industry specific.

Third, track what you find. We created a spreadsheet in Google Drive to list the URLs of the incorrect search results. Setting up a spreadsheet is a great way of organizing the collected information and keeping it in an easily shareable source. You can format it any way you like; we found that creating a separate sheet for each search, and dividing the URLs by search engine on each sheet worked the best. Don’t worry if you record the same URL multiple times in the spreadsheet, it will be much easier and clearer to delete the URL after the fact than to try to recognize which sites you’ve already visited while searching. It’s better to list URLs multiple times than miss one or two.

It’s simple to track the incorrect search results, but what do you do with any incorrect information you’ve found? Reach out to websites that have your information listed incorrectly and ask them to update the information. This might include sending an email, making a phone call, or creating an account within the website to claim the correct information and get access to change it. Some may ask you to pay to change the information – if the website isn’t a major player online and probably not influencing many people, we don’t recommend giving them any money. In these cases many times it’s a scam and should be avoided.

Give us a call at 414-208-0700 or visit our website www.brewcitymarketing.com for some one-on-one help or advice!

CONFESSIONS OF AN HONEST WEB MARKETER

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CONFESSIONS OF AN HONEST WEB MARKETERI shouldn’t even be writing this right now. But I had to – I just had to. I literally had 3 different clients tell me horror stories this week that made me mad. Very mad. As I was sharing these stories with my business partner, I had the idea to start sharing these stories with you. The title for this series of blogs came to me at the same time: “Confessions of an Honest Web Marketer.” I hope you don’t see it as a pompous title because I really do see myself as an honest guy and business owner. It makes me mad when I hear horror stories from my clients on how they were, or currently are, being treated by their existing web marketing company.

THE KIDNAPPER

I have a client for whom I have done work on a project. He came to me this week with another opportunity to build out a website for an organization that he now leads. The organization has a website that has been online for a number of years, and they have been using a web developer to handle updates. They aren’t terribly pleased with the website as a whole and, for that matter, the web developers’ handling of website updates. They’ve made a decision to shop out a new web build. Because of my relationship with the owner, he naturally thought of me.

Baked into the existing website is a search feature that allows users to search for members of the organization. It was communicated to me that this search feature spits results out depending on the search query, and there are over 1500 members that are active in the organization. I communicated to the client that it would be ideal to get access to the back-end of the existing website so that I could see the code for this feature, and ascertain whether or not we could utilize it in the new website. With that, they reached out to their existing web developer to ask for access – to their website.

Side note: this developer didn’t create the website, she is the person that ended up getting the opportunity to work on it after the original developer declined in the ongoing business. As such, this is a non-proprietary open source platform and no honest developer should have any issues with giving their clients access to the code.

So you can probably guess what happens next. The current web developer has decided that she doesn’t want to provide access to the website. She is holding the site hostage because she doesn’t want to lose the on-going business that she has been enjoying over the last few years.

Can you believe it? I mean, REALLY? She has no legal claims to this website. She doesn’t own this site. Yet she is refusing the client access to the back-end. Horror story. Dishonest web developer. Shame, shame, shame. I hate it when I hear about stuff like this. It reflects negatively on my industry as a whole and it just makes me mad to know that there are web developers out there who pull these kinds of shenanigans. I want to tell you something: this will never happen to you if you partner with Brew City Marketing. I cannot even imagine pulling these kinds of games with my clients.

PULL THE WOOL OVER THEIR EYES

Just today I had a prospect call me to tell me that his existing website provider had informed him that they could no longer host his old, outdated website and that he “needed” to update it to a new platform. Mind you, I know this provider, as they are also local in this market, and I know that they host their websites on a 3rd party server. Disclaimer: there is no server IN THE WORLD that will kick your site off because it’s old. 

The prospect also told me that the company said that they will triple their monthly hosting fee until he upgrades his website. The guy was confused and upset by the time he called me. He didn’t understand why they were forcing him to update his website, but he wasn’t entirely sure if what they were telling him was actually true. He also told me that he was one of their first clients and had been with that company for 14 years. He said that he was happy paying the monthly hosting, and a couple hundred dollars each year for updates, but didn’t feel right about what they were trying to do to him.

The site was surely outdated and not mobile friendly. I told him that if he were my client that I would also recommend a new website but that I would never force his hand and raise his hosting until he committed. I am simply flabbergasted that this company is out there telling their clients this B.S.

We have a plan of attack though: I am going to email this other web company and tell them that the client is requesting that we host their website for them. The client was wary of trying to do this on his own because he knows that they’re aware that he doesn’t understand all this web stuff. I will be contacting this other company to get the website files so we can put them on our server. Once they are on our server, we can access the domain and redirect to the new files – on our server. The client will not HAVE TO update their website, unless they want to. Their hosting fees will go back down to a reasonable rate and the client will never ever have to worry about his website provider pulling the wool over his eyes.

It makes me sick when website companies use confusion in our industry to get dollars from clients. I made a promise to myself when I started this company that I would always be truthful and respectful to my clients. I know without a shadow of a doubt, that even if that promise loses me some dollars in certain instances, in the long run, that approach will make me successful. I am an honest website developer and I will always tell it to my clients straight.

From Mark Dalnodar 

How to Handle Negative Online Reviews

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Your online reputation, or what people find when they Google you, is one of your most valuable assets. The bad news is that not everyone has a perfect online reputation. The good news? There’s a lot you can do to change that.

Here are a few tips:

  1. Have a plan to catch issues early – Address bad reviews as soon as possible. This means having a plan in place to detect bad reviews quickly. Whether that’s using a reputation monitoring service or taking time to inventory your social media accounts on a weekly basis, reputation monitoring should be an integral part of your social media checklist.
  2. Respond to negative reviews promptly and politely – You’ve worked hard to grow your business, so a bad review can sting. Still, the last thing you want to do is get into an online “shouting” match with a dissatisfied customer. Instead, try being empathetic, apologetic and solution-oriented. Saying “I’m sorry” or “I understand why that would frustrate you” go a long way in defusing a potentially nasty exchange.
  3. Control the conversation – You can’t always control what questions are asked of you, but you can always control how you answer. When it comes to responding to a bad online review, try “flipping the script”. For instance, instead of saying “Sorry for the delay, but we don’t control the mail” when responding to a delayed shipment, try saying “We apologize for your late shipment. We’re proud to say that 99% of the time our shipments are on time, but there are circumstances beyond our control that may delay shipment.” Framing your response this way acknowledges the customer’s frustration, but also gives you an opportunity to shine.
  4. Take the conversation offline – If the review lends itself to a more personal touch, ask if you can contact the review privately via email or phone. This helps to keep potential escalations diffused out of the public eye. Plus, if warranted, it can allow you to the opportunity to offer a small gift of appeasement without having to make the exchange public.
  5. Get the complaint removed – In rare circumstances, review sites may allow you to have untrue or particularly egregious complaints removed. For instance, Yelp’s content guidelines call out threats, harassment, lewd language and hate speech as being content violations. So, if any of those are in a review that you feel unfairly targets your business, you can ask to have it removed for ToS (terms of service) and/or content violations. It never hurts to try.
  6. Be proactive – The more positive reviews you get, the less visible the occasional bad review will look. Sending a thank you note after a work is completed or asking for a review via sales receipt are 2 easy ways to garner more positive reviews. Feel uncomfortable asking or not sure where to start? Get a system in place to maximize those positive reviews. Our ReviewFlow program is an awesome and affordable place to start.

Need some other ideas on ways to get more good reviews and improve your online reputation? Call 414-208-0700 or fill out our contact form today to see how our team can help. We offer a full suite of reputation monitoring and social media management services.

Your Website Is an Investment, Not an Expense

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February_Blog1 v2When we first launched Brew City Marketing, we were surprised by how often we heard business owners explain that they understood that having a website was just another “cost of doing business.”

As web designers who live and breathe internet marketing, we couldn’t understand how these successful entrepreneurs didn’t see their business websites for what they were: investments, not expenses. How could these otherwise smart, business-savvy folks not see all of the bottom-line boosting benefits that having a good website would bring? We just couldn’t get it!

And then, it dawned on us: Maybe the problem wasn’t that these business owners didn’t understand how their websites could help their businesses grow. They could see the possibilities, no problem. Maybe it was just that they didn’t have line of sight to the metrics-based proof they needed to know that investing in a new website would be worth it.

With that in mind, we started looking for real numbers to prove what we already knew: Investing in a good website typically translates into a solid return on investment. Not only did the data we found back up our story, they told it even better than we could have.

Just look at some of the numbers we found:

These aren’t just fuzzy, “feel good” benefits. These are real, revenue-affecting numbers that can make the difference between making a profit and going broke. And these numbers don’t even capture all of the intangible, soft benefits that having a good website can produce, such as increasing customer satisfaction, increasing brand awareness, and providing a 24/7 storefront that’s always available to your customers.

Regardless of what business you’re in, whether you sell to businesses or directly to consumers, having a good website that serves as an informational marketing hub for your business is just good business. It can help you find new leads, nurture the leads you already have, and keep in contact with those you’ve already serviced.

Curious to see how investing in a new website or website redesign could help your business grow? Call 414-208-0700 or fill out our contact form to learn more.

5 Stats That Show Mobile Marketing Rules Local Marketing

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Jan_Blog2_BCMWe knew that mobile marketing would be the biggest online marketing trend to watch for in 2015 (which is why we wrote about it here), but even we didn’t realize just how important mobile marketing would become for local marketing. We have to admit, some of these numbers even surprised us.

New statistics show just how vital having a mobile-friendly website is for local businesses, and here are some of the most interesting findings:

  1. Mobile devices now account for 60% of all Internet traffic.
    Now that mobile searches are starting to outnumber desktop searches, ignoring the importance of mobile means ignoring the importance of the Internet. Good luck with that.
  2. 38% of mobile users search for a local business at least once per month.
    And you can bet that 100% of mobile users have searched for a local business at least once, or at least even once per year. Yes, that’s anecdotal, but it’s probably still true. Why? Because we all use our mobile devices at some point to find something local. Whether it’s ordering food online, looking up the hours of a store, finding the closest bank, or calling for a tow, our lives are local, so our search needs are local.
  3. 78% of searches made on mobile devices for local businesses result in a purchase.
    When you think about it, that’s an incredible number. And it means that mobile searches for local businesses are highly targeted, which is a beautiful thing. Dominate local search on mobile devices for your target audience and you’ve got a sales funnel that could help you retire early.
  4. 61% of shoppers are more likely to contact a local business if it has a website optimized for mobile.
    If mobile devices now account for the majority of Internet traffic, it only makes sense that users would want the websites they visit to be optimized for mobile viewing. Whether we’re window shopping or searching for information, none of us wants to deal with websites that are hard to deal with (which is why 60% of mobile users will bounce if they find themselves on a website that isn’t mobile-friendly).
  5. 69% of mobile users researching products/services online expect a business to be within 5 miles of them.
    People love supporting local businesses for many reasons, but one that they may not always consider is convenience. It’s a lot more convenient to visit a business that’s 2 miles from your home than it is to visit one that’s 15 miles away. Show that your business is where your customers are (or plan to be), and you’ll position yourself for success.

It’s never too late to upgrade your website to a mobile-friendly platform. Give us a call at 414-208-0700 or fill out our contact form today to see how our Milwaukee mobile marketing team can help you enjoy a bigger piece of the Internet pie.

3 Local Business Marketing Trends for 2016

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The new year is here, so if you haven’t already shored up your local marketing business plan, now is the time to tick that box off your to-do list. As the buy local movement continues to grow, so does the need for a smart local marketing plan that engages your consumers where they are: online.

Here are three of the biggest internet marketing trends we see affecting local businesses in 2016. Some may seem like oldies, but that’s because they’re goodies, and the fact that they keep popping up proves that they’re here for the long haul.

Content Marketing Quality Will Rise

As more local companies recognize the benefits of high-quality content marketing, more will understand the need to invest in targeted content marketing that is interactive, engaging and shareable. Not sure how that works? Follow content marketing masters like IKEA, Birchbox, and Home Depot.

And, as you build out your content marketing for 2016, don’t forget to put together your social media marketing plan so you can maximize the SEO crossover benefits.

The Search Universe Will Expand

New technologies with skyrocketing adoptions rates (think wearables, digital assistants, and apps), means search can no longer be confined to traditional search engine functionality. The importance of social media (yes, 1.55 billion active users per month is a lot), the popularity of useful wearable technology (amazeballs: about 80% of Apple Watch users use Apple Pay to pay for things), and the need for voice-based queries (so Siri can find what you need), mean search (and SEO) will continue to change and expand.

It’s Mobile All the Way

Mobile payments for local businesses will continue to be a hot topic in 2016. As more businesses and technologies adopt mobile payment functionality, more consumers will expect it. And those consumers are going to expect easy-to-use, fully functional mobile websites and apps that make it easy to window shop online too, not just pay.

Master these three areas in 2016 and your business is sure to steamroll 2017.  Call us at 414-208-0700 or fill out our contact form today for a free consultation on how the Brew City internet marketing team can help.

Why Should Milwaukee Small Businesses Choose a Milwaukee Web Design Company?

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Blog2_OctAs web-savvy internet marketers, we understand the allure of tapping a global marketplace to meet your business needs. But, as business owners ourselves, we also recognize that sometimes it’s better to source your services from your local economy rather than trying to outsource it online.

If you’re a Milwaukee business owner in the market for a new website, consider this:

  • A Milwaukee web design company will know your market, intimately.
    A good web site speaks through colors, words, and myriad other design elements that resonate with its target audience. When you choose a web designer who actually lives and breathes in your market, those design elements are much more likely to hit the target.
  • Supporting local businesses puts money into the local economy.
    Why is that important? Because putting money into the local economy in which your business does business inevitably ends up meaning more business for your business one way or another.
  • Supporting local businesses supports entrepreneurship.
    If you’re a business owner, you’re an entrepreneur. So, you already understand the value of entrepreneurship and the benefits that it creates. When you support local businesses, you support hard-working, risk-taking people just like yourself who are making Milwaukee a stronger, better place to live and do business.
  • As Milwaukee web designers, we’ll be here when you need us.
    When you do business with people who are three states (or nations) away, it’s easy for them to hide when there’s a problem. But when you do business with people who are just three miles away, well, it gets a little harder for them to pretend they’re not around. If you have a problem, you’ll know exactly how and where to find us.
  • Because sometimes you need face time.
    The quality and dependability of a website can make or break a small business. And good websites don’t come cheap. Are you really ready to take a risk on something that important with someone you’ve never met? It may sound cliche, but there’s no substitute for talking to someone face-to-face to both explain your needs and get a feeling for what they’re about.

Does your business need a new website or refresh? Call us at 414-208-0700 or fill out our contact form today for a free consultation.

7 Reasons to Invest in SEO

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7 Reasons to Invest in SEO-2Let me guess: You’ve heard that “SEO is dead” or that “good” websites don’t need SEO. Wrong and wrong again. As long as there are search engines, SEO will be a critical component of any successful digital marketing mix.

If you’re not already using search engine optimization, here are just seven reasons to invest in SEO today:

  1. Cost-effectiveness – Dollar for dollar, SEO is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies available. Unlike cold-calling and “spray and pray” outbound marketing campaigns, SEO is an inbound strategy that targets users who are already actively seeking your products and services online. That makes a huge difference in terms of effectiveness.
  1. ROI – Because it is so cost-effective, search engine optimization provides concrete, quantifiable and trackable results that often blow more expensive, traditional marketing strategies out of the water.
  1. Increased Visibility – The whole point of SEO is to raise your website’s ranking in search engine results. This increased visibility means more traffic, which means more opportunities for you to connect with a new (or returning) consumer. In fact, the top ranking positions receive the vast majority of clicks, so the higher you are in the ranks the more clicks you get—and the fewer clicks you leave for your competitors.
  1. Increased Brand Awareness – Humans are big fans of familiarity, so it’s no surprise that users tend to trust brands that they see more often and that appear higher in the rankings. Whether users trust those brands more because they’re higher in the rankings or because they see them more often because they’re higher in the rankings isn’t clear, but either way, the higher you are in the SERPs, the better.
  1. Increased Traffic – Did you know that 60% of search engine users click the first result in their search results? Insane, right? Securing a top position in the search engines with good SEO means you’ll get the first shot at the majority of people searching for your service or product. Obviously, that’s a killer advantage that few other marketing strategies can offer.
  1. Your Competition – More likely than not, your competition is doing it. In fact, if you’ve noticed an unexplained slump in business, the culprit could be competitor SEO. Most business owners know: Don’t keep up with your competition and they’re sure to out maneuver you. And one way that you can make it really easy for your competition to maneuver you is to ignore SEO.
  1. Money – That’s right, good ol’ cheddar. For the potential payoff and ROI that search engine optimization offers, investing in SEO can mean paying less marketing dollars for more return.

Sure, you love your business and the work that you do, but let’s be real: it’s about the money too—so get the most out of it that you can!

Is it time to add SEO to your inbound marketing strategy? Call us at 414-208-0700 or fill out our contact form today for a free consultation—we’re eager to show you what search engine optimization can do.

Add Mobile Payments to Your Website

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Add Mobile Payments to Your WebsiteAccording to this Business Insider article, in the first quarter of 2014 alone, 198 million U.S. consumers bought something online. A few years ago, those numbers might have seemed like hype, but now we know: online shopping is big business. Whether it’s for goods, services or something else, folks are ready and willing to use the internet to get their shopping done, and they’re doing it every day.

What does that mean for local businesses? Well, as more consumers get comfortable using mobile devices to pay for goods and services online, it’s vital that any business website that sells goods or services have some sort of e-commerce component to accept payments online. Could Amazon, E-bay or Etsy have become the household names they now are without easy-to-use online payment functionality? No way. And that’s why small businesses hoping to grow their businesses online need to prioritize online payment options.

And online payments aren’t just for the big boys. Small, local businesses should seriously consider integrating online payment systems as well. Whether you own a pizza parlor or a pet sitting business, more and more of your customers are going to want to be able to pay with their phones.

If you’re considering adding a payment option to your website, speak to one of our mobile payment specialists today by calling 414-208-0700 or filling out our contact form.

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