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Some people like to give the first one for free,  as a way of “promoting” their service or expertise, they think, well if the client really liked it then he will come back and then pay for the services. So in this article, we are not going to be talking about those cases. The promotional rates need to be for the purpose of increasing the consumption of your services. Pretty much like that piece of chicken that the Chinese restaurants at mall give you. It is meant to be a teaser. We have in fact, talked about teasers in another post and therefore we will skip this particular kind of rate.

In this post we will be talking about the justification of your rate through value proposition.

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1. Crawl your Website -
- Find Broken Links and Fix Those.
- Understand the Structure of your Site and Improve it if necessary. Make it easier for web crawlers (including Googlebot) to find and index your pages.

2. Go to Google.com and type “site:yourwebsite.com”. That will give you an idea of how many pages Google is finding about your site. In my experience, Google shows a different set of URLs when you do a site: search and when you do a regular search. So another interesting way of seeing URLs that are actually competing for ranking is to simply add site:. to the site:yourwebsite.com . This will give you a more realistic competing list of URLs.

3. Ask your network for links. Links are a very important aspect of todays SEO. Search Engines rely heavily on what the web as a whole has to say about you, more than what you have to say about yourself. So contact some of your providers or even bloggers in your industry and ask them for links. If this effort proves to be useless. Then ask yourself, what kind of content would be appealing to them. What would make them love your website? How about a page with a directory of the best resources in your industry? How about a script that calculates something important for your audience?

When I was in Business School, I had several professors that argued about which was most important, pleasing the customer and fulfilling its needs or making a financially sound system. As I have had the incredible opportunity to work with both national and international businesses now, I know that they are both important, but fulfilling needs and happy customers is the only way to have a future.

So today, I am going to be sharing with you my terrible experience with Hangar 18 Hobbies (Hangar Hobbies) in Cary, North Carolina. There are two main reasons for me to share this with you. The first is that I want everybody to know about it so that they are careful and aware and therefore think twice before doing business with this company. And the second one is for all of us to learn where things can go wrong and apply that knowledge to our own businesses.

My Experience with Hangar 18 Hobbies

In December, my wife decided to give me one present that I had wanted for a long time: a Remote Controlled Boat. This is one of those things that of course are a bit on the expensive side of toys for us; still she wanted to give me something special for Christmas. She started researching were to go get it and decided to go to a local shop: Hangar 18 Hobbies in Cary. She thought that at 1207 D Kildaire Farm Rd, Cary, NC 27511. She thought perhaps they would be more accessible in the event that I needed some help with the functioning or maintenance; man was she wrong.

The moment I opened her gift I was thrilled to say the least. One of those gifts that I have wanted since I was a kid: an RC boat! My wife assured me that she had asked the guy specifically to include everything that I needed to take it out the very first day – the day of Christmas. Not everything was in there. That was a sign of things to come I think. The guy had reassured her that everything that was needed to take the boat out that first time was in the box, of course he forgot to mention the specialized $32.99 dollar charger for the battery. Also, she asked him for an extra battery in order to run it more than once at a time. He told her that the boat came with one battery and so he ringed her up for a “supposedly” second battery. We later discovered that the boat didn’t come with a battery and so we had to purchase an additional battery.

When we got to the store that second time, the gentleman in charge seemed very casual about the mistake. Oh yeah, we are sorry but indeed it doesn’t come with a battery, so you are going to have to buy another one. The other one is $30 dollars… WHAT? $30??, why was it that the first battery that you sold her was $19.99 and this was almost double? “Oh well, no problem, I’ll give you a quick discount and it’ll come up to $25″, he said. So we walked out of the Hangar Hobbies store with an additional $32.99 charger plus another $25 battery plus tax.

I thought to myself that at least I was ready to start using my dream boat. The next Saturday I arrived confidently at the lake and ready to go. Fired up the boat and everything started just as I expected. I was being extra careful since I didn’t know how to use the boat and everything, so I wasn’t pushing the boat to its limits. It certainly was fun and after a while I was doing fantastic with the boat, in fact I was impressed with its speed.

When I popped in the second battery I was excited, until maybe 20 seconds into that battery the boat died. It simply wasn’t responding to advance. I noticed that it would sound like it wanted to go fast, but it certainly wasn’t moving… I though, hum that’s funny, only my second time using this boat.

Third Visit to the Store

With somewhat of fear to void the “supposed” warranty of the boat, I ended up taking the boat to the Hangar Hobbies place instead of inspecting the damage myself. When I arrived, I wanted to show the gentleman behind the desk my receipt so that we could proceed under warranty. How mistaken was I. The clerk basically said to me: “You don’t need your receipt, even without a receipt I would take a look at it”. I thought that was pretty interesting to me, I already felt that either maybe they were not going to honor the warranty or that simply these guys were trying to be nice. I later discovered it was the first option.

He called another guy to take a look at it, he ended up pulling a piece apart and suggested that the problem was that the propeller had become unattached, and that it was because of me hitting some debris underwater and it needed to be replaced.

The Waters in the Lakes of North Carolina are Dirtier than Normal

The first guy actually proceeded to inform me, that the waters in North Carolina lakes are dirtier than normal and therefore it is very usual that this happens if you run the boat in this waters. What? The waters in North Carolina are dirtier than average? I thought to myself, they don’t even know the kind of lake I took it to, how can they say something like that? How can you say something so absurd and pretend to be an expert? Anyways, he proceeded to inform me that of course the warranty wouldn’t cover any of that, the part and the repair would be in the range of $10 – $30 dollars. In fact, he made me sign a paper where I authorized to proceed with the repair as long as it was less than a $30 charge! Wow… this was not going well at all. He informed me that the part would be in on Wednesday and that he would call me when it was ready so I could pick up the boat. Before leaving I noticed that he didn’t offer to give me any sort of proof that my boat was in their possession, so I had to ask them to allow me to take a photo of that form that I signed with my phone!

Wednesday came by, and so did Thursday and I hadn’t heard from them, so I decided to stop by the store and check to see if my boat was ready. The guy told me that the part had arrived, but that he hadn’t replaced it yet, so all he needed was an hour. An HOUR? He then corrected himself and said maybe 30 minutes. So he basically was sitting without doing a thing, already past the time he was supposed to call me not by a couple of hours but by a full day.  I got to know that the part had arrived only because I stopped by, otherwise I would be waiting for it to this day. I thought to myself, these guys are completely unorganized…

In about half an hour, I arrived back and the owner of Hangar 18  Hobbies actually rang my bill to a bit more than $10 dollars. I thought that at least I was going to be able to enjoy my boat finally.

I went ahead and charged my batteries and was ready to go. Went to the lake and made sure that the water looked clean were I was setting the boat down – I didn’t want this to happen again you know – and sure enough the very second that I accelerated the engine on the boat it broke again and didn’t want to accelerate any more. The same problem again! It was sounding like it wanted to advance but it wasn’t. I was furious to say the least. Are you kidding me? These guys are simply taking advantage of me, I thought. It is easy for them to say that it is my fault. To simply say that I broke the boat by using it in North Carolina! To tell me that there is nothing wrong with it and that I have to continue to fix it over and over again at $10-$30 bucks a piece. No more, I thought to myself, I can’t waste my time like this, No more “fun” with a miniature boat.

The Final Chapter

Finally, I put everything back in the box and headed back one last time to Hangar Hobbies. I asked the clerk for a full refund and he basically said to me: “I can give you a refund for your $10 repair but not for the boat!” I thought this kind of lack of customer service only happened in bad comedy movies. I said to the gentleman, I don’t want my money back from the repair and I don’t want you to “fix” the boat “again” for me. What I want is a full refund because you sold me a product that is clearly defective and you tried to take advantage of me before by charging me to make it right. In other words, at this stage it wasn’t about the boat anymore it is about the principal of doing business the right way. They of course decided to dismiss me and keep my money and now I am the proud owner of an expensive table decoration.

The Lessons

1. When you have a small local business, you should care about your customers and their needs. You should listen to them and make sure that they are satisfied. When you have an arrogant attitude, that’s when your business makes bad decisions. Your clients chose you because they thought they could trust you, and therefore it is your responsibility to fulfill their needs and expectations. Otherwise you won’t have people that trust you anymore.

2. If you sell a product that is deficient, you can’t expect the client to simply accept that it doesn’t work properly: “tough luck buddy, better luck next time”. There won’t be a next time. And of course that client will be so dissatisfied that he will talk to his friends about how dissatisfied he was with the products and service. Big retailers like Home Depot and Lowes understand this in a great way. You buy something, if you are dissatisfied with it, simply come back with the receipt and they take it back. End of the story. The relationship with the retailer is preserved. I can count in my hand the number of times that I have returned anything to Home Depot. But I can’t tell you how many times I have purchased and will continue to purchase from them!

3. When you have a client complaining about your product or service, first take a look at the problem and find ways to fix the problem for the client and not for yourself. In this case, Hangar Hobbies thought that by blaming the “North Carolina’s dirty waters” that they can effectively dismiss the problem they have in their hands. Imagine if they had that statement in a sign outside of their business: “Before Purchasing an RC Boat remember: you need to take your boat to waters in another state because waters in ours are too dirty.” It is obvious that fixing the problem at that moment at no charge to your customer would’ve resulted in a less painful experience. Imagine what would happen if I enjoyed my experience with my boat. I have friends that would love to experience that with me, and they would soon be buying a boat. That boat could have been bought anywhere: now they won’t be bought at Hangar Hobbies.

I wished that Hangar 18 Hobbies would’ve done the right thing and cared for my needs. If the product was defective, and they sold it to me, then it is imperative that they should’ve taken responsibility for that defective product. But that wasn’t the case. They are more concerned with making a quick buck again and again instead of creating a loyal base of happy customers. This obviously will end up with no loyal base of customers and therefore business will suffer.

In your own business remember: Care for your clients and they will care for you.

Until next time

Alex Centeno MBA.
Creative Director & Digital Media Strategist

CNN Website Critique

What are the components that make a fantastic website design? Is it positioning of items? Is it the color palette? Is it negative space? It certainly is a combination of all these factors and many more. In this edition, we will be doing a 3 minute critique of CNN.com.

General Assessment

The CNN website is great. It has a lot of information and therefore the biggest challenge for the designers is the presentation of that information without extending the homepage indefinitely. The color palette is relevant and pleasant, not distracting. Certainly using a non-traditional grid with gutters smaller than the traditional 20pixels, which helps to maximize the available horizontal space. Three main columns separate content to designate hierarchy effectively.  It is well organized and believe me, organization of this kind of website is probably the biggest challenge that a designer could have.

Header Bar

I really like the fact that the logo is used in the center as opposed to the traditional left side. This makes it look more authoritative. Search bar to the right powered by Google (no surprises here). Then we are presented with the navigation bar. This website’s homepage is ultimately a navigation bar on itself. However the designer uses the navigation bar to maintain consistency across the site. One big problem in the main navigation bar is that the Home link is located at the very first position. You may think that this is not a big deal, however with a site this big, I would think that they are interested in people spending as much time as possible in deeper sections of the site. The more involved they get with particular sections the better. In the English language we read from left to right and from top to bottom. Making it more likely that CNN users will start reading the navigation bar and therefore return to the homepage with more frequency than if it was at the end of the navigation bar. Another inconsistency that can be found is the use of bullets at the end of the two last sections: Money and Sports. The bullet usually represents that you can hover and access a dropdown menu. However in this case this doesn’t happen. In other words, there is no real point in having those bullets other than perhaps giving it a bit more of attention. I recommend changing the navigation bar items that need prominence to the left in the hierarchy and remove the bullets.

Finally in terms of color, I personally like the red hue and shades that are being used.Specially because it is not overpowering. The use of color red is very difficult because of its intensity. In this case, since it is limited to the top header then it doesn’t feel overpowering.

Content

I think that the content is beautifully presented. Almost everything is click enabled and you are capable of going directly to the section that you are interested in.

Sub Headings

I don’t like the top margin that is being used in the subheadings. I feel like the subheading belongs to the previous news item instead. I know that the designer is already using all caps, different color and font-type. However I still would love to see some top padding or margin larger than the one found below the subheading.

Below the Fold

Below the fold you transition to four columns instead of three. Well defined sections that each have a fantastic and clear heading. Even with the enormous amount of information there is plenty of white space used in this section which makes it easy to read. Sponsored links are somewhat different in terms of styles and therefore at least let you decide if you want to click on them.

Nothing is Poping and moving

I really like the fact that at least in my visit to it, nothing was popping up uninvited. Nothing was moving either, in fact flash wasn’t even present. Not that I don’t like Flash, I do, however in some things I think that static content is better. I don’t like moving objects screaming for my attention, specially if it is coming from advertising. So in this case they have done a great job limiting all that animation in the homepage.

CNN.com has done an excellent job administrating their flow of content. I think that we have a lot to learn from them.

Until next time,

Alex

A teaser is a perfect way of presenting your information without giving away all of it. With the rise of interactive marketing the concept of teasers has become more and more utilized. With the amount of information that you can find online it’s difficult to prove your value to anybody these days. With a teaser people learn about your products and at the same time allow you an opportunity to explain why should they care. But wait, can the wrong teaser harm your business? 

In this article, Alex Centeno MBA, creative director and online marketing strategist with over 10 years of experience online, provides you with his no-bs, straight to the point, take on how to create effective teasers. Give your users a taste of your product or information while gaining an advantage that can generate a lot of business. These interesting keys will transform your potential market into faithful buyers.

So what are the keys to providing the right teaser?

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Since I was looking for exactly that for one of our projects I was excited to give it a go. However it didn’t work. And so I started in my usual journey of understanding why it wasn’t working, fixing it and then sharing it with all of our readers. So here it is:

Problem:

You want to track the engagement of your users and therefore you would like to see in Google Analytics if your users are scrolling down your pages and reaching at least 90% of the length.

Solution:

This could be done in several ways, however in this case probably the easiest solution is to use Jquery (client-side) and Google Analytics.

To begin, Google Analytics provides something called Event Tracking. This allows to track things happening in your website, blog or page. And that is exactly what we are after. Most of the time this behavior is used to track downloads of PDFs videos or clicks on links. This time we are going to track scrolling on a page.

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Number 4.

http://www.SimpleHotelSites.com

Click to Visit

SimpleHotelSites is not per-se a hotel site, it is more a template for hotel sites. However it is in our list, first because we were involved in the design, but also because we love the simplicity of its footer. These days most designers invest the majority of their times designing interaction, and the main section of the content. However, very seldom we see somebody investing time in finishing strong – the footer. So here it is to SimpleHotelSites.com

Number 3.

http://www.grandhoteltremezzo.com/

Click to Visit

The idea behind this design is very bold. They are using a complete 100% background that stretches depending on the screen size of the user. Very cool that you can toggle in and out the important navigation and the reservation request bar. Great execution. Of course, the problem becomes evident if the user has a large screen and therefore some pixelation occurs. But overall it is a beautiful design.

Number 2.

http://www.sandals.com

Click to Visit

This hotel site is extremely clean and well designed. Even when you take a look at the enormous amount of information that they are trying to present in the homepage. This amount of information automatically makes any site very difficult to read, however they have managed to organize it beautifully without looking crowded. Also, the temptation would be to increase line-height (leading) in the main text to make it appear more roomy, however they cleverly reduced the value of the text in paragraphs and maintained a nice cadence while reducing the overall size of the scrolling bar. Organization is key. I love how they finish with a bold telephone number that makes it clear that they are in business. Minor mistakes made me place it before the winner.

Number 1.

http://www.bellagio.com/

Click to Visit

It is obvious to me that a hotel like Bellagio would have a fantastic website. However, it seemed obvious that other hotels in Vegas would also have them, wrong. They don’t. So that is why I am giving this one the edge. I like the extra attention that they gave to online marketing details like the organization of the main navigation items. From most important to least important (left to right). They placed the Make a Reservation Item FIRST, and not last. Very important distinction. This shows care and attention to detail.

Not to even mention the fact that the video execution is marvelous. It re sizes correctly without creating horizontal scroll bars in smaller screens. This is absolutely one of my favorite features. Of course I had to study the css myself because of the great execution.

In terms of usability I feel like there was a bit more that could’ve been done. Specially in the critical item of requesting a reservation. This should be a process that is easy and fast.

So there you have them folks. Please don’t hesitate to comment below or if you happen to have an example of a great website or a bad design simply send it our way as well.

Hasta la vista.

So what is a Slider exactly? A slider is also known as a “Featured Image Section” that usually transitions from one message to another either by fading in and out or by other effects like SlidingUp or ZoomingIn. In any event, the use of Sliders has been a very popular one because not only is it the most prominent thing in a page because of its size, also it has movement. This combination will attract the eyes of your audience better than anything else, and therefore is a good promotional tool for your site.

Now, you could hard-code the slider in place and be done with it. However, wouldn’t it be better if you could simply upload your images via your WordPress Admin Interface and they would show up in your slider?

Solution

1. Activate Featured Images for your posts in your WordPress Admin Section. This is easily done by adding a couple of lines of code to your functions.php file. If you don’t know what a functions.php file is, then perhaps you need to start by checking out the basic components of your themes and revise the codex to learn more about it first.

   // adds support for the thumbnails in the pages.
   add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );
   

2. Also while you are there, make sure you create a resizing option for the image that is going to be used in your Slider.

   // slider size for Sliders in the Home Page
   add_image_size( 'slider-image', 980, 342 ); // Exact Size of the sliders 980 x 342
   

3. Go to your Homepage template (perhaps index.php) and locate where you are intending to create the slider. Then simply create a new loop and call the Featured Images of a particular Category of Posts:

   /*
   * Selection of Slider by User
   *
   *
   */
   
   // create a wp_query for the slider. This loop will only include posts with category slider and limit the amount to 5
   $slider_query = new WP_Query('category_name=Slider&posts_per_page=5');
   if( $slider_query->have_posts() ) : while ($slider_query->have_posts() ) : $slider_query->the_post();
   if ( has_post_thumbnail() ) :
   // grab the attachment image with the right resizing option and put it in $image.
   $image = wp_get_attachment_image_src( get_post_thumbnail_id(), 'slider-image' );
   

   // back to php
   endif;
   endwhile;
   endif;
   

That’s it, now to use it is very simple. Simply create a new post and select category: Slider. That tells WordPress that this post is to be used in your Slider Section in your Homepage. Then upload an image as a “Featured Image” for that particular post. This image, will be modified by WordPress to display in the right size.
What you are doing behind the scenes is very simple: You are first creating a new loop(see codex if you need more help with understanding loops), then you grab the Featured Image of the posts with category “Slider” and then finally you create an html image tag with the results of that loop. In this case I am limiting the results to 5 posts for speed of loading.

Hope this helps and don’t hesitate to comment below.

Until next time,

Alex

This happens to be extremely important in aging websites. As a website progresses in its life, its owners often request things to be modified and changed. Perhaps a new image added to that page, and another bullet point to the frequent asked questions page, or to create another page, etc. This is certainly not uncommon. But what happens is that the design itself starts to look like a Frankenstein and its look goes BAD.

So here are some tips to prevent those things from happening:

Tips:

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