You might consider two main alternatives to Explorer: Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Both are free, load webpages more quickly and do a better job of rendering web graphics. Their interfaces are intuitive and they offer a slew of options and customizations (called “extensions”) which enhance the user experience and increase productivity. Both browsers can trace their lineage to the defunct Netscape Navigator, with Firefox being a highly adaptable internet-browsing workhorse and Chrome putting more emphasis on pleasing aesthetics and minimalism.

If you are familiar with Apple products, you might also consider Apple’s Safari for PC. It has some neat features, and if you are a Mac user at home and stuck with a PC at the office, it at least provides you a familiar interface.

The original article is a long (and wordy) read, but here are the consultant’s main points:

• In order to compete, insurance agencies need to become familiar with a key customer demographic – Gen Y (people born after 1980). They are web savvy and the internet enables them to do what independent agencies have always done – shop around for the best values in insurance, although they typically lack thorough knowledge and understanding of what they are shopping for.
• To reach this demographic, insurance agencies will need to leverage the web and technology more fully. A website that has your business address, hours and telephone number amounts to just hanging out your shingle, and isn’t going to cut it. Websites will need to be engaging, interactive, and provide full service.
• The big direct writers have the advantage nationally, but independent agencies can compete locally by better implementing technology and the web.

I think this holds true for many other service industries where large national corporations compete with smaller, locally-oriented companies. How do you start competing with the big boys at the local level? Taking advantage of a free consultation is probably not a bad idea.

1. Slipping metrics – site visits, sales (if e-commerce) and visitor interaction. Could be indicative that interest in the site has “worn off”.
2. Customer feedback – if you’re customers tell you your site is difficult to navigate or ugly, you should take note.
3. Site repair costs exceed the cost of replacing it.
4. It looks old – remember what websites looked like 10 years ago? Web aesthetics are constantly changing, and some design styles do not hold up over time.
5. Its been more than 12 months since a refresh.

1 through 4 are good rules of thumb. 5, not so much, particularly for small business. You should realistically get a couple years out of a well-designed site, and so long as you post fresh content with regularity (i.e. fully implement social media) it will still interest visitors even if the site itself has a little age on it.

I would add to this list:

• Your site isn’t optimized for search engines.

Every business wants a site that looks cool and has slick features, but the “nuts and bolts” of the website shouldn’t be neglected. A properly built website will ensure that you’re easily seen by the search engines and appear in search results for products and services that you offer.

Wall Street Journal has a piece on the different Twitter strategies employed by Southwest Airlines, Whole Foods and Best Buy. Southwest cross-trains communications and customer-relations personnel, Whole Foods entrusts their account with a single person 24-7, and Best Buy leans on 3,000+ employees to tweet corporate news, deals on products and answer customer service and help requests.

Online reviews looked decent, and lots of decent restaurants manage to survive in this economy. What I found more interesting was their website. Its presentable and has all the information required, but its effectiveness as a promotional tool is limited. Its one of those budget website deals, where you pay a company a low monthly fee to host, and they provide you with software and you piece the site together yourself. The problem is, the site doesn’t get built to web standards, and its difficult for search engines to find your site. I googled “restaurants shockoe bottom” and didn’t see a listing before I gave up after page 7 of the results. Without going into too much detail, certain techniques and bits of code (robots.txt, XML sitemaps, valid W3C) are required to make any site “search-engine friendly”. Unfortunately, the website in question was built with a disregard for nearly all of these standards.

The website also lacked proper tie-ins to social media. They had a pretty active Facebook page, but getting to it through the site was a bit of an ordeal. Search engines like social media, and activity on Facebook, Twitter, et al, helps your site get found. Also, their dining menus were in .doc format, which is a little annoying.

I really can’t say that having a site built to web standards would have saved their business, because there are many other factors at play, and its easy for a restaurant to get lost down in the Bottom. But their site probably wasn’t helping them the way it should have.

Flash can be a powerful tool for enhancing presentations. Too often though, Flash is used for core website content, leading to bloated pages that are slow to load, seemingly seizure-inducing, or just downright tacky.

But there are even more critical flaws to Flash when it comes to search engine marketing:

• Flash cannot be read by search engines such as Google – if a lot of your core site content is in Flash, its lost to search engines.
• Not everyone has the plugin required to view Flash – while its estimated that only 5% of PCs lack the Flash plugin, Apple’s popular mobile devices Iphone and Ipad do not support Flash, and Adobe recently announced that it was suspending development of Flash for mobile devices. Site visitors without the plugin (including Apple smart device users) see a blank space where your Flash presentation, slideshow, or video should be.

Flash works great for corporate presentations (much better than that old dinosaur PowerPoint, in fact), and so long as YouTube retains it for online video, there will still be a use for Flash. But its days are numbered.

Despite their seemingly iconic status and marketing, Coke is no stranger to snafus of this sort. Big companies can and do make big mistakes, and can make a serious dent in their revenues. What are the branding lessons for small companies?

• Keep your branding consistent. Don’t vacillate between seriousness and whimsy. Don’t change up colors on promotional material. Be sure that everything, from your business cards, to your brochure, to your store displays, to your website, follow the same general theme & scheme.
• Sometimes you need to revise the branding substantially. Make sure its done completely though – don’t re-use old material that would be inconsistent with the new branding initiative. Throw out the old business cards if the logo changes.
• If you get your website from one place, your print collateral from another, and your media spots from a third, there may be inconsistencies and even confusion in how information about your business is communicated to your audience. Consider an agency that can provide you with all those services to ensure that your brand is conveyed with consistency across all channels.

• I don’t know how to use the internet.
• I likely won’t respond to emails sent to me because I didn’t bother to set up my own corporate account.
• I’m cheap, and you get what you pay for when you hire me.

Its worthwhile to set up email accounts for all your employees at your own website domain. A web development firm worth their salt will advise you of this, and can handle it for you, typically either with an inexpensive solution, or sometimes even for free. Having an address that matches your website suggests you are professional, understand changing technology and its role in business, and that you are not some fly-by-night enterprise.

The “new” yellow pages is – you guessed it – Google search. It’s so ingrained into our everyday lives that its now a verb, “to google,” or to look for information via Google’s powerful search functionality. Google it. Like the yellow pages as little as 15 years ago, the starting point now for a consumer is internet search.

How do you get found on Google? This is the realm of search engine marketing. There are two main ways to go about it…

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is tailoring your online presence (website + social media) to ensure that your business site appears in search results for terms pertinent to your business and geographic area. Done right, it means your Richmond, VA-based widget company appears on page 1 of search results for “widgets richmond va”. Done improperly, it potentially means your website doesn’t show up and you lose out on a lot of opportunity. SEO includes specific website design strategies, but Google really likes it when you put fresh, relevant content on your website or social media pages – blog posts, tweets, videos, etc.

There’s also a quick and dirty way to get on page 1 of Google search results: Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing. Here you basically rent space on Google. You specify key search terms relevant to your product or service, and your advertisement appears in designated areas (above, to the right of, and all the way at the bottom) of search results. You don’t pay for the number of times your ad appears, but you do pay when a searcher clicks on your ad (and visits your website).

SEO is a slower process, but its results are cost-effective and more durable over time. PPC is much faster to get going, but requires more maintenance over time and depending on the industry, can be expensive. A proper approach to Search Engine Marketing  involves a zen-like balance of both methods.