October 5, 2005
Issue No.1
Neekdesign
SERVICES
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Hello!
Neekdesign has been phenomenally busy this year - helping you all with redesign projects, updates and new-feature implementation. It's so exciting to help you take your websites to a new level! While working on individual client projects, we've incorporated some great web strategies that might benefit all of you.
Email Marketing
We've helped so many of you establish Vertical Response accounts that we took a page out of our own book and setup one for Neekdesign. Please feel free to unsubscribe from Neekdesign News at any time either by sending us an email at news@neekdesign.com or by clicking the "Unsubscribe" link at the end of this newsletter. If you decide to stay on the list, we promise to keep these emails as succinct and informative as possible! We'll only send them when we discover a new web-marketing treasure you'll find useful.
Branded Look and Feel
If you're using Nexternal Solutions' email feature, you can now upload your unique HTML emails into Vertical Response - Just copy your HTML and paste it into the form field the same way you do in Nexternal (exactly what we've done here). You'll still need to make sure your HTML syntax is correct and looking good in email browsers.
Unique Vertical Response Templates
For a onetime fee, Vertical Response will create a unique template from your HTML you can use each time you send an email blast. Once the template is created, you can use it over and over again without having to worry about your HTML syntax (which means you don't have to pay us to doublecheck your code ;-] - giving you ultimate control over your email marketing).
Please let us know if we can help you create branded email templates.
Sitemaps and Search Engine Optimization
For our clients using Nexternal's eCommerce system, the new Sitemaps section gives you the opportunity to include Google and Yahoo Sitemaps in the Search Engine Friendly Catalog's .zip file. Even if your business is not eCommerce, we can create Sitemap files to better optimize your site.
Within the Nexternal Admin
Are you using the Search Engine Friendly Catalog feature in Nexternal? Are you exporting a new Search Engine Friendly Catalog everytime you update your product information? We know some of you are religous about updating your SEO catalogs and others not so much. The catalog really is a great way to get your products indexed by web crawlers. Let us know if we can walk you through this process. It's very easy.
How Sitemaps Work
Both Google and Yahoo use their respective Sitemap to guide their web crawler or "spider"; therefore, proper use of the Sitemaps gives your Search Engine Friendly Catalog pages a greater chance of being listed by Google and Yahoo.
Nexternal - "The Google Sitemap is a .xml file, intended to be placed in the same directory as the other catalog files, then submitted to Google via the Google Sitemaps Home. The Yahoo Sitemap is a simple .txt file, listing the URL's of your SEF Catalog, that may be placed anywhere on your web site, then submitted at Yahoo's Submit Your Site Page. A free registration is required in both cases."
If you choose to include Sitemaps in your catalog, check the Include Sitemaps checkbox when you set your Search Engine Friendly Catalog preferences, then enter data for the related fields as appropriate.
Please feel free to contact us if you're interested in learning more.
Flash
We've created Flash pieces this year for quite a few of you. Flash is a great technology for animating still images or showcasing a functional multimedia piece. A Flash object on your web page is a self-contained file that can include code, audio files, video files and images. Flash may be right for you if your product, marketing slant or service is richly visually oriented. Below are some possible uses of Flash.
The Coast Highway Photo website uses Flash to animate Kevin's gorgeous portfolio. The links and text around the animation are all HTML, making the homepage a functional "splash" page. Users and web crawlers can easily find the content on Kevin's site without getting stuck on one giant Flash file with a "skip intro" button. Once this type of animation is created, it's very simple to edit and update new photos.
This Architectural Drawings piece for Duckhorn Wine Company combines large illustrations of the New Paraduxx Winery architecture with a number of functionality options, including the ability to view the graphics at a larger size, scroll in multiple directions and click through to new graphics and text pages.
We've used Flash throughout the Events by Design website and embedded an audio file into the main homepage piece.
These are just a few ways that Flash can be used to add focus to a site. Please let us know if you have questions about how these work or ideas about how Flash can be worked into your marketing.