Frattoys was kind enough to send us this screen shot(we blacked out the sales for the sake of privacy).

- Dear Tranquilblue Staff,
“…We could not be happier with the results of your hard work. Since the launch of our new site design sales have more than doubled. We would like to thank the entire Tranquilblue staff for everything they have done…”
Sincerely,
The Frattoys Team

Try to tweet things that will get retweeted. Specifically avoid tweeting things that won’t get retweeted.
When you’re going to tweet something, look at it from the perspective of one of your followers — would you like that tweet and want to retweet it?

Do a lot more non-sales tweets. Maybe do a 2:1 ratio of non-product tweets to sales tweets.
You want to get your followers into a habit of liking your tweets and engaging with them; funny non-sales tweets will do this. Informative non-sales tweets will do this as well.

Create a Twitter list with some accounts in your market that get tons of engagement. Find twitter accounts that use posts that you would like to read or you might want to engage in and emulate them. What we mean by engage is commenting, liking, sharing, or otherwise posting it on other media outlets. You can always bookmark this list and keep it in mind for when you need ideas. You will be able to visit the URL at any time for ideas. For example I use, https://twitter.com/TheJohnnyBones/web-design.

Presentation:
Begin sentences with capital letters and use consistent punctuation. Avoid capitalizing every letter in a sentence — for example, I’d change “April 2013 Trends on Web Design That You’ll Love” to “April 2013 trends on Web Design that you’ll love”.

Avoid too many hashtags; generally limit tweets to one or two.
You’ll need to know your niche market for a particular product if you want hashtags to help you get discovered through search.
I’d try putting “#WebDesign #April2013″ on anything and everything relating to the April 2013 Web Design items. It’s both searchable and makes it obvious what your intention is even at a glance.

Our Google Rankings

As you can see. Our Google path was a slow and arduous one. A steady growth over what seemed like a long time. Although it was a few months of honing our on-site and off-site characteristics.

Our Bing Rankings

You will notice that we were able to rise much faster in Bing (Note: this is under a longer timeline). We stay relatively constantly in the top 5 positions on Bing throughout the last few months. We anticipate staying in this general area, or much towards the coveted #1 position, as time goes on.

Our results are typical to campaigns that we undertake. If you would like to speak with someone regarding your position in the search engine world. Please contact us at 631-581-6090.

Update ***

We have broken to our goal of 3-5 positions in Google as well as #1 in Bing for the terms “Tampa Web Design” and “Tampa Web Designer”. Now onto new terms. Thanks for reading along.

Why WordPress’s version 3.2 release of course! This was just an update to the already popular blogging software. This blogging software has now become a base for web sites that don’t resemble blogs at all. An all out content management system that has nearly become a standard in content management systems. And best of all. It’s free.

WordPress version 3.0 (previous version) drew headlines when it was released. It has well over 15 million downloads itself. WordPress is relatively new to the CMS scene being only 5 years old. They plan on releasing a new theme at least once a year. But with the popularity of this software there is an abundance of user generated themes out there. Some for free and some for a fee. Many types of styles are represented. A search for “WordPress Themes” will reveal lots to look at. Installation after version 3.0 is very easy. In fact, you can do a one-click install right from your WordPress back end. No wonder almost 15% of the top 1 million most visited web sites are made from a WordPress base.
Here at Tranquil Blue we fancy ourselves experts on WordPress. We have created a number of WordPress themes as well as basic WordPress installs. In fact we average 2-5 WordPress installations a month. So if you’re looking for a fully customized WordPress install that fits your business then contact us today at 631-581-6090 or visit: Tampa Web Designer.

We’ve seen some other contenders in the CMS game come and go. Some notable packages include Joomla, Drupal, and DotNetNuke. Many of these had good strengths and have also had a lot of downloads and implementations. It seems none of them could match the simplicity and ease of use of WordPress. Although they are not as common. They do make sense in some situations. We would be happy to consult you on the best solution for your business.

Is Free Software Really Free?

WordPress is open source. Which means it’s free. This leads me to a topic of much debate in the internet software industry today. Although WordPress & other open source software is free. There is an inherent cost that is still involved. Although your base install may be free. You almost invariably have to edit the design, functionality, and integration. The more customization that you are planning on integrating the more cost you will incur. Since dealing with their complex coding is often more time consuming then building a custom site from scratch you may not be saving time or money. Also, security concerns come to mind. Since the software is open source and developers as well as hackers can see how it all works. Your site may be more prone to hackers manipulation. After all they can peak under the hood and see all the inner workings. A WordPress add-on was recently hacked. This add-on was downloaded over 500,000 times and installed on many live WordPress sites. It’s wise to consult with a technology company before deciding on open source. There are many variables that should be considered.

John Siebert
President
Tranquil Blue Web Design

Social media is all the rage these days. Millions use it daily as their way of communicating with the world, making it ripe for the picking as a business tool. But, too frequently I see business owners rush off into social media without a clear picture of how they plan to use it to grow their company.

3 Business Questions for Social Media Success

Social media is just a tool like any other tool, so you use it to leverage what you want accomplish. You need to apply “planning 101” to it just like every other aspect of your business. The questions are:
What business objective am I trying to accomplish by using social media?
How does this objective relate to my business growth strategy?
What is the most effective social media strategy I can use to achieve my business objective?
Let’s take a little deeper look at why each of these questions is so critical to successfully using social media for business growth.

Applying Social Media to Business Objectives

This seems pretty clear, why apply resources (time, money, and people) to something if it doesn’t get me closer to my desired outcome? It’s amazing how often this step gets skipped!
If you are trying to grow your business then you should have clear objectives set for each business function (sales, marketing, production, finance, etc). If you already do, then ask yourself which of these objectives have an externally facing communication component, and by using social media might allow you to do it smarter, faster, or cheaper to? Identify these objectives and you’re on your way.
Social media doesn’t eliminate things it’s just a different way of doing things. So, you just have to find that set of tasks that you are currently doing that can be done more productively using social media.

Applying Social Media to Your Growth Strategy

If your goal is growth, then you don’t have extra resources to be throwing around that don’t contribute to your growth. So, this step is a business check before you take the jump into social media.
If you have identified an objective that you believe is a good reason to use social media, now ask yourself the tough question, “how does this objective contribute to the growth of my business?” If you find it difficult to answer this question then you shouldn’t even be an objective you should are focused on anyway!
Enough resources are scarce in business that is truly growing. It’s the one thing that growing business struggle with every day. Not enough money, not enough people, not enough time, not enough capacity, not enough _____ (you fill in the blank). So don’t waste your resources on things that don’t matter. Make sure your social media strategy is focused on the prop objectives for your growing business.

Applying the Optimum Social Media Strategy

There are hundreds if not thousands of forms of social media from which to launch your campaign, but which one(s) best fit your situation? Answering this question is an obstacle that keeps many businesses from taking a positive step forward. That being said how do you determine what makes sense for your business?
You need an integrated social media strategy. That means selecting social media that fits with what you are trying to achieve with your business overall. This is a very high-level executive and board level conversation. It requires the talents of a real marketing executive who knows the in’s and out’s of traditional as well as new marketing.

What’s the Next Step?

I’ve laid a fairly simple process before you here. Ask yourself these questions and answer them honestly. If you get stuck then get some help, but beware. There are lots of self professed social media gurus. Can they show demonstrable examples of where their expertise has help companies grow?
I will not profess to be an expert. Although, many people I know want to put me in this category. My social media success came from using an expert. And I can say using this approach has been a resounding success having taken this blog from 0 – more than 500 readers a month in only 6 months. I’d happily share my “guru”, just drop me an email.
For those of you that have some success in growing your business with social media, what are some of the positive experience you have had? What did you struggle with most and how did you overcome these obstacles to achieve social media success?

The latest statistic by Forrester Research indicates that an average 71% of shopping carts are abandoned before finishing checkout. That is over 7 in 10 users and the result is an estimated 18 billion in losses. The numbers should not be taken lightly, but shockingly few are doing anything about it. According to Listrak only 13% of the top 500 online retails are attempting to recover abandoned shopping carts. Listrak claims it has helped its customers gain 20-35% back from decreases in abandoned shopping carts. What steps can your business take right now to see increases like that?

First, some easy and effective steps to implement

1. Tracking is Huge – Identify where the problem areas are

If you’ve gotten this far in the article then the assumption is that you’re already tracking your visitors. However, if you haven’t yet then scoot on over to google.com/analytics and get some free, reliable tracking. You may already be tracking, but are you sure that you’re tracking the steps through checkout? It’s important to know what steps your customers are getting bottle-necked at. You could find, for example, that shipping is the major bounce-point and you can explore cheaper shipping options.

2. 48% Look for Trust Marks First – Help your customers trust you

A recent study by Econsultancy polled two thousand UK online shoppers at various steps of checkout to identify their reason for leaving. Amazingly, nearly half claimed they were looking for trust symbols. Trust symbols are symbols like the BBB, secure shopping (lock icon), and MacAfee Site Secure can help insure legitimacy. Also make sure you have your SSL certificate and it is up to date. They also have EV (extended validation) SSL certificates which turn the browsers bar green or have another visual indicator of the additional level of security depending on the browser.

3. Clear Contact Details – Make your contact information visible
The study by Econsultancy also found that 48% of people abandoned their carts because they could not find clear contact details. Contact details are probably the easiest change to implement. If you are a legitimate shopping cart company then you probably already have your phone number, an e-mail address, and maybe even a live chat. If they are hidden out of site on a contact page or in a tiny unassuming area in the site’s footer then why not move them to the top of the page? Or put them right into your checkout process. This will ease any concerns of consumers of being taken by a fly-by-night company.

4. Clearly State Your Return Policy
Display your return policy for your products especially if you’re return policy is a money back guarantee. If you’re return policy is less friendly you may still want to put a link to your return policy page so viewers can clearly see what they’re options are in the event that they don’t like or don’t want the product.

5. Intuitive Checkout Process
Can your visitor find their way through the checkout process or are they not sure what to do next and leaving the site out of frustration? Internet users are notoriously easily distracted. Make sure your continue buttons are big, bold, and bright. Also make sure they are more visually emphasized than other buttons that might take them away from the checkout process. Check out this tool, by AttentionWizard (free trial), to analyze a visual heat map of your checkout pages. This shows what elements on the page will be looked at first and which elements may be missed from a visual standpoint.

Here are some potentially harder steps to implement, but can yield great results.

6. Shipping Costs – Lower your shipping rates

Lowering shipping rates will decrease shopping cart abandonment. Everyone’s bottom line is different, but a Forrester Research study showed that 44% of online shoppers abandon their carts because of shipping costs. If it fits the budget you might want to offer a cheaper or free shipping option. If you have an option of free shipping over $x already in place then this would be a great time to remind visitors that they only have to spend $y to reach your free shipping price.

7. Not Ready to Purchase – If you customer is not ready then let them save.

The Forrester Research study also indicates that 41% of shoppers were not ready to purchase at the moment they left a cart. While there is not much you can do if they are not ready to purchase you can entice them to come back later. Options for “save cart” and “e-mail cart” can help. In fact, 24% of surveyed said they were attempting to save products in their cart for later.

8. Offer Guest Checkout

The 7th highest option with 14% of respondents of the Forrester study claimed they left the shopping cart because they didn’t want to sign up for another web site. Guest checkouts are very common today. Many users expect this option. Also many of the shopping cart software out there have an easy built in option.
When all else fails and they abandon their shopping cart there are still more options.

9. Be #1, #2, and #3

Since 27% of polled shoppers indicated they wanted to compare prices on other sites why not be all of the competitors? Although it is the hardest item on this list to achieve it can also yield the best results. If your #1 for your term on Google you must assume there are some people who are going to #2 and #3 and possibly further down the list to compare prices. Since small, niche, keyword-targeted domains are working the best to get to the top spots then if you create multiple sites which don’t appear to be connected then you can be in more than one top spot on Google. You can even vary prices slightly and offer say, free shipping, on one of the sites. This greatly improves your chances of a sale in the case of price comparisons (assuming they price compare on the same search engine). It’s more attainable then you would probably think especially if you are already intensely search engine marketing.

10. Re-marketing Campaigns – Don’t ever give up on a sale

The big guys like Amazon.com, Buy.com and Newegg.com, just to name a few, have been doing some amazing things in cart abandonment remarketing. If you leave your shopping cart abandoned with a fancy red sweater then you might see a picture of that red sweater on a totally unrelated site. Since they display their ads on so many 3rd party sites all over the internet if you visit a site that has an Amazon.com ad, for example, you will see a picture of that fancy red sweater you left in your shopping cart. Clicking on it will bring you right back to your shopping cart so you can finish your purchase. You may not have the advertising budget (or budget in general) to reach these people on your advertising network but there are still remarketing options. If you have a shopping cart, look for extensions or plugins for “shopping cart abandonment”. Listrak makes an extension for the popular cart Magento. There are also many other extensions for the various other canned shopping carts out there. They can send an e-mail to users who have passed the email step. You can offer them a deal, free shipping or just remind them a week / month later. If all attempts to get them to purchase on the spot fail then try to re-capture that lead.

Tranquil Blue
401 South Florida Ave
Tampa, FL 33602

A special thanks to our old South Tampa location and the Bayshore Center for giving us a great environment to grow.