Online Ordering for Restaurants: NetWaiter

Flyte recently launched a Web site for NetWaiter, a company that offers online ordering for restaurants that will increase revenue, guest frequency, and the efficiency of restaurant groups with multiple locations.

Restaurant owners can use NetWaiter's ROI calculator to determine their return on investment based on annual food sales, alcohol revenue and costs.

Although we only tweaked the design, we redeveloped the site to be more search engine friendly, easier to navigate, and added resources to make the site more helpful to restaurant owners looking to increase the profitability of their operations, such as the ROI calculator and the free article "Secrets to Successful Online Ordering - Top 5 Questions to Ask Before Implementing an Online System" (email registration required.)

NetWaiter originally engaged us to perform a Web Site Analysis, where we reviewed their site and their stats based on their audiences, their business goals, and what visitors would want to accomplish at their site. Based on the ten page report and consultation meeting we had with them based on our meeting, we had a road map on what needed to be done to build a more effective Web site for NetWaiter and its clients.

If you think your Web site is under performing, be sure to contact flyte about our Web Site Analysis.

Rich Brooks
Web Site Analysis

Robin, We're Going to Miss You

Today's a bittersweet day here at flyte; Robin Lowell, one of our developers, is moving on.

No, it wasn't anything I said (at least I hope not.) Robin's dream for a long time was to be a librarian, and she's finally taken the plunge.

Robin was the first to introduce us to practical uses of CSS when she first came on board, and recently she started developing table-free designs for our clients. She was the steady hand behind flyte's recent Web site relaunch.

Robin is/was great to have around the office. I'm not sure how I'm going to find out about new music that's under the radar without her. She's hooked me up with everything from bluegrass covers of Skynyrd to Guns N' Roses bootlegs to the Black Keys and about a million things in between.

It was Robin who suggested we get tickets to go see The Coup when he (they?) came to town, go to Geary's brewery for a tour last weekend, and all go to see the White Stripes when they come to town next month. She got me tickets to go see the Black Keys down in Boston and the two of us had a great time throwing back beers and watching those two guys totally rock out. She also was instrumental in organizing a trip to see Guns N' Roses when they came to town a few months back, though the concert was canceled at the last minute when Axl Rose found out he couldn't drink on stage...but that's not her fault.

Robin's a diehard Sox fan, so I have someone to commiserate and celebrate with during the season. Sure, the rest of the crew will pretend they care about sports, but that's just because they're polite. She's introduced me to books, blogs and Web sites I wouldn't have found otherwise. She did research into influential bloggers in specific niches for our clients. She also spellchecks spell checks my blog posts, sparing my mother and my alma mater from public humiliation. She promises she'll check in every once in a while, but I know she'll be busy.

Robin, it was great to have you on the crew all these years; we're going to miss you.

Rich Brooks
Your Old Boss

An Open Letter to John Beck: Comment Spammer

Dear John,

I want to thank you for all the time you've spent at this blog and Internet Marketing 101, the blog I write for MaineToday.com.

However, I think it's time we start seeing other people.

You see, I'm just tired of deleting your comment spam day after day on my blogs. Like your recent comment on my post about my client who has a clip of himself playing tuba and piano at the same time on YouTube. You say, "Marvellous!I can send you real estate success stories and seminars which was arranged..."

I mean, what the hell does that even mean? Are you even listening to me?

It's always about you John, and your next Real Estate scam scheme strategy. You never ask me about how I'm doing, what I'm feeling. I need someone who listens, who likes to go for long walks, and offers me a shoulder to cry on. You're just not the man I thought you were.

It's not me John, it's you.

Please, don't call, don't write. This is difficult enough as it is. In the immortal words of Steve Martin,

"I break with thee, I break with thee, I break with thee." And now I throw dog-poop on your shoes.

Rich Brooks
Back On The Market

Yugma: Free Web Conferencing & More for Mac, Windows & Linux

I'm in love. The last time I felt this passionate about a few thousand lines of code it was for our favorite online project management software: Basecamp.

The new object of my affection? Yugma. (With a name like Yugma it's gotta be good, right?)

One of the frustrations in working on a Mac is the lack of a WebEx or GoToMyPC/Meeting type application. Sure, you can view one of these presentations on a Mac, but you can't present on a Mac. Luckily, I recently found Yugma.

With Yugma I can do Web conferencing, real-time collaboration, and online presentations. I can share my desktop with a client to do training, and then swap presenters so that I can watch them on their desktop to see what problems they're running into.

There's a built-in whiteboard (or transparent-board) so that I can mock up something on top of my desktop and share it. There's also free (although not toll-free unless you're in Duluth) teleconferencing on top of that. It works not just with Mac, but with Windows and even Linux.  Oh, and did I mention it's FREE?!?

Sure, there's a paid version, and I may upgrade to it shortly, but the free version rocks! It may not have all the bells and whistles of a WebEx, but what it does it does phenomenally.

We originally starting looking for a Yugma so that we could do "real-time" updates for clients who wanted to look over our shoulder while we worked. (This does bring up the, "it's $50/hr if we do it, $75/hr if you watch, and $100/hr if you help conundrum, but for some clients it will speed up the process of their updates.)

Although we haven't used it for that yet, I've already put on several blog consulting sessions with some of our clients. The other day, one client who's down in Kennebunk, Maine, saved 90 minutes of driving time, plus gas and the cost of parking in the Old Port. His investment: 2 minutes in downloading the software.

It also opens us up for putting on some of our Web marketing seminars virtually; no longer will you have to come up to Vacationland, enjoy a delicious lunch and stroll about the Old Port to learn about business blogging, email marketing, or search engine optimization. I'll be able to put on my presentation, share my desktop, and then have time for Q&A. It will be a BYOL affair. (Bring Your Own Lunch.) Stay tuned for more on that; I plan on having a beta launch of this soon to work out the bugs.

For the small business owner or entrepreneur, you have to give Yugma a look in this "The World is Flat" world we live in. Whether you use their teleconferencing service, call a client direct, or set up a Skype conference to lay on top of a Yugma session, the opportunities to grow you business are mind-boggling.

I've also added it to my Entrepreneurial Web Tools (check out the left hand column of our blog for the full list.)

Rich Brooks
Yugma Fanatic

TypePad 101: Uploading Images in Your Blog Post

TypePad makes it easy to add images to your post, resize them, and create popups for full size viewing.  Adding images to your blog can give them a lot of visual interest, whether you're blogging about food, travel, or even...web marketing.

Simply select where you'd like to insert your image by clicking within the post field. Then click on the Insert Image button and follow the instructions in the popup window.

First you'll choose an image by browsing through your local computer. You can then set image options. When I'm setting up a TypePad account for a client a modify the default settings. The first option is to wrap the text. I generally keep the text wrapped around the image in question, but have the image on the right; I find that images on the left often create unfortunate wrapping problems, leaving a single word or two orphaned below it.

I also upgrade the thumbnail size from 100 pixels to 200, as I find 100 pixels is just too small.

Whatever changes you make, if these are going to be the most common settings for your blog, you can easily make them the default by checking off "Save Settings as This Weblog's Defaults."

When you're all done just click on "Insert Image" and let TypePad do the rest.

To view the full size version visit Adding an Image to a TypePad Blog Post (8.8MB). The smaller version is right below.

Rich Brooks
Business Blogger

TypePad 101: Creating a New Blog Post

TypePad is a pretty simple tool to use, but there's going to be a first time for everything. When I sit down with a client I make sure we go over the basics: how to post, how to assign categories, how to ping and so on.

Sometimes there's a break between when we sit down together and when they get a chance to first post, so I'm putting together a series of short how-to videos that they--and you--can watch whenever you need.

The first one I put together is how to blog in TypePad. You can watch the shrunken version below or the large-as-life How to Create a TypePad Blog Post video. (7.8MB)

Some tips that may fall outside the typical "how to" video:

• Use a Keyword Rich Title. Remember that blogs are just like Web sites in that they can be indexed by the search engines. By using specific, relevant keywords in your title you'll stand a better chance of ranking well for those keywords.
• Categories: Roll Your Own. You can change category names you create down the road, but not TypePad's default categories. TypePad's default categories are--by necessity--broad. Since you want to target a specific niche--say, Organic Recipes Tweens Will Eat--TypePad's "Food and Drink" is too big an umbrella. If in six months you decide Organic Recipes for Children is more suited to your topic you can change it.
• Let it Breathe. Blogs are busy by nature. Create more open space by breaking up longer paragraphs, emphasizing important themes, use ellipses...or--if you prefer--dashes.

Watch the full-size version of How to Create a TypePad Blog Post.

Rich Brooks
Movie Mogul

YouTube Marketing: A Man and His Tuba

As I blog this, I'm listening to George Gershwin's Second Piano Prelude being performed as a piano/tuba duet...by just one person! That person happens to be the über-talented Dr. Eli Newberger.

Besides being a world-renown pediatrician and author of The Men They Will Become, Dr. Newberger is also an accomplished jazz tuba player. (I have several of his CDs at home.)

When he recently sent us some videos to add to his Web site, we suggested that we establish a YouTube channel for Dr. Newberger as well. The channel can be found under the headings of "musician" and "jazz". (We should add "tuba" as well.) This will allow YouTube surfers to find him when they look in these categories, or do a related search. Appropriate, keyword-rich titles and descriptions of each video have already attracted dozens of new visitors in just a few hours.

Now that Google has absorbed the ever-expanding YouTube library into their Video Search, Dr. Newberger's content will reach a wider audience who may not have discovered the video library on his website.

Using YouTube freed up hundreds of megabytes of storage space for Dr. Newberger, and created at least 8 new pages that link to his Web site, helping his search engine rankings. Also YouTube uses Flash viewer for their videos, meaning that 98% of visitors can watch the movie without downloading a plugin. No other video format is that pervasive on the Web.

So, take a few minutes and check out George Gershwin's Second Piano Prelude, or Perdido Street Blues, or any of the other Dr. Newberger videos on YouTuba.

Thanks to Jonathan who put this together.

And, to Ron Burgundy, wherever you may be, know this: jazz tuba is way cooler that jazz flute.

Rich Brooks
This One Time, At Band Camp...

 

Email Newsletters: Maximize Your Email Marketing Results

What's the one downside of email newsletters?

Once you've sent them out, they're gone into the ether. Everyone who subscribes after that moment won't receive it, the search engines can't index it, and there's no additional return on investment.

So how do you maximize your results for your email newsletter? Read on:

Blog Design: Is It Really That Important?

Yesterday flyte launched a redesign of our Web marketing blog. It's got the new look and feel that we introduced with our Web site a month or so back. I love the way it looks--'natch--and we've reduced a lot of the clutter the bugged me with the previous version. Although there's still a lot of information, it's cleaner, quieter, and easier-to-read.

It brings up an important question, however: how important is Web design for a blog?

I mean, isn't a blog all about the quality of the content? Isn't it about establishing your expertise? About helping you with search engine optimization? About warming leads and delivering them to your Web site for conversion?

Absolutely. Which is why your brand--your colors, your fonts, your imagery, your sense of humor (or lack thereof)--should be integrated into the design of the blog.

Yes, TypePad has dozens of attractive blog templates. WordPress has hundreds if not thousands of free templates, some from talented designers. But these are just starting points. You need to customize these (or hire a professional if necessary) to extend your brand.

Michael Levine, in his Tiffany Theory, espouses that:

a gift delivered in a box from Tiffany’s will have a higher perceived value than one in no box or a plain box.

The same is true with your blog. Here are a few reasons why blog design is important:

• To Differentiate Yourself. Choosing a blog template--or worse yet, going with the default template--makes your blog look like everyone else's who didn't have the foresight to create a unique look and feel for their blog. Have you ever seen how embarrassed two people get when they show up at a party with the same outfit?
• Design Helps Comprehension. Just because you CAN add forty chicklets to your page, rotating Flash imagery, a recent visitors via MyBlogLog, and all other sorts of bling, doesn't mean you SHOULD. A good designer can help you organize your blog so that it's easy-to-read and understand.
• Because Splogs Don't. With splogs clogging up the blogosphere, scraping content from other blogs and pretending to be real blogs, it's more difficult for your blog to be seen as a legitimate source of wisdom. However, one thing that I haven't seen splogs do is spend a lot of time on design. By creating a unique design you add legitimacy to your voice.
• You Want to Be Taken Seriously. Have you ever received a business card and on the back it say, "Get your own free business cards today by calling...." Makes you wonder how serious this person is about their business that they're promoting the fact that they're using free business cards with a plug on the back for the printer. If you're not investing in your blog, people will wonder if you're serious about it. Of course, if you've been blogging steadily for over a year most people will realize your serious...assuming they check your archives.
• You Don't Want to Confuse Your Customers. I hated the fact that over the past month visitors to our blog saw one design and when they popped over to our Web site it was completely different. I'm sure a few wondered if the two were from the same company. All of your marketing material should be branded the same way so when a visitor moves from your email newsletter to your Web site to your blog there's no disconnect.

If you've got any other ideas on why blog design is important, please leave a comment. Or, if you think blog design is overrated, leave a comment. If you want to promote your organic Cialis, Texas Hold 'Em Site, or Bull Dogs for Sale, please keep moving. (Links to Russian bride sites still being accepted.)

BTW, if you haven't read it yet, be sure to check out "The 11 Biggest Mistakes Small Business Bloggers Make."

Rich Brooks
Business Blog Design

What do Rich Brooks and Paris Hilton Have In Common?

We're both going to jail.

Of course, my "incarceration" will raise money to help the MDA keep up the fight against Muscular Dystrophy, while hers will help raise the bottom line of media outlets everywhere.

If you'd like to bail me out of jail and help raise money for sending one of "Jerry's kids" to MDA summer camp, or research into treatments and cures, or a wheelchair, leg braces, or just a support group, it's not too late. Tomorrow (Wednesday, June 20th), at noon the police are going to pick me up at work and take me away.

At this point I've reached my personal goal, so there's no ego left. If you can donate $25, $50 or whatever feels right to you, you'll be making a big difference in someone's life. And who doesn't need a few more karma points?

You can donate at my special page online. Thanks.

Rich Brooks
Too Pretty for Jail