Keeping viewers involved in your website is very important to most businesses.  The last thing you want your potential business to do is forget about you.  Having a calendar of events is a key component to increasing the number of contact points with this group of people.  Actually, this post doesn’t limit itself to just a calendar of events.  It encompasses any reoccurring communication that you plan to have on your website.  It can be tips and tricks, a newsletter, or just informative literature. 

There are two things to consider if you want to have a calendar of events on your website.  One, will it be possible to keep the events current and correct?  Two, will it be costly to maintain and will there be a positive ROI?

If the design and maintenance of a calendar of events is built correctly, it can greatly reduce the effort of keeping the events current.  However, if there is a place for upcoming events, and no events exist, viewers think the website is not current and question the validity of anything on it.  If you plan to have a calendar of events on your website, plan to make the investment in maintaining them.  If you don’t plan to commit the time to maintain it, don’t include it on your site to begin with.

Having a calendar of events on your website assumes that your viewers have the time and will remember to visit regularly for updates.  Although you will have people that do this, by and large, the bulk of viewers will return very infrequently, if ever.  To maximize the return on the time spent maintaining this content, have the option for your viewers to sign up to be notified by email.  By doing this, you will inform those visiting your website as well as those that have visited it before. 

Although email is a far more effective tool for disseminating reoccurring information at this time, RSS will be the next big thing to accomplish this.  RSS is a common format to deliver regularly changing information from a website.  RSS Readers come in all forms (websites, cell phones, iPhones, etc.).  RSS Readers can include any number of RSS feeds and display summary information with the option to open the detail.  It is used heavily on news sites and BLOGs.   For example,  I am a Columbus Blue Jackets fan.  I have the CBJ news feed in my RSS reader.  At my convenience, I can open the reader and see recent headlines related to the Jackets.  I also have RSS feeds for weather, local news, sports, and even the hockey schedule for my 9 year old son!  As feature rich as RSS is, it is still growing.  The number of non technology people using RSS is still way to low for me to recommend this as the only method of updating people about changing content.  It should definitely be integrated for those who do use it.

How many of you are on a Realtor’s distribution list and get notices about new listings, or market conditions every couple weeks?  Do you get email specials from retailers, such as Best Buy, or Mace’s?  Do you ever look at them?  Most of us don’t.  Why?  The information in them is rarely of interest to us.

I learned a long time ago that if you email people about information they don’t care about, they won’t get the email they do care about.  I worked in an environment with over 300 clients.  They were on an email list for updates to changes in financial reporting, planning, and forecasting databases.  Most of the team had a specialty, and cared little about the majority of emails that were sent.  Since 70% of the emails were irrelevant to them, they just started ignoring all the emails we sent, defeating the purpose of sending the emails in the first place.  After this was discovered, we instituted segmented distribution lists.  Each person could identify their specialty, or area of interests.  When emails were sent, they were sent to only those who requested to be notified about the topic in question.  The level of our communication significantly increased after we put this methodology in place.

This example is related to client support, but the same phenomenon occurs on the sales side as well.  If your organization is using email for marketing campaigns, it is critical to segment your distribution lists to boost ROI.  If you don’t, your emails will fall on deaf ears.  They will be a point of contact to generate sales, but will it be a positive one? 

It is extremely easy to segment email distribution.  Goodfriend Solutions has a cost effective process to that will improve your ROI and inspire your customers to action!

The second component of the term hosting, is the website component.  This is what most people think of when they think of hosting a website.  The basic premise of this function is having your website, which is a series of files for viewing and creating action, available for people to see.  It is important to select a hosting company that provides a reliable service.  Many people will “guarantee” uptime.  Uptime is simply the site being available.  Goodfriend Solutions doesn’t market this uptime percentage for two reasons.  One, what does guarantee mean?  Does it mean 99.9% of every hour, every day, over a month, or over a year?  Also, what happens if the 99.9% is not met?  Are you compensated?  Do you get a refund?  Before you select a provider, ask these questions and have them explain exactly what the guarantee is.  Most providers market a guarantee, but can’t explain what it is or how you will be compensated if it is not met.

Hosting is not JUST having your website available.  There are a plethora of other options that are bundled with a service agreement.  Just as with the marketing strategies of the email service, many providers will boast about all the great features you get with your service.   Technical terms are used so you think you are getting the best of the best.  You might hear of things like FTP, dedicated IP, cPanel, and sub domains.  You will hear of ASP, SSI, Cron, Frontpage, and Perl. 

These “features” fall into one of two categories.  One, it is a tool you will never use.  The second category are things every provider gives you because they are the basis for the website functioning.  These are the equivalent of shopping for a car and hearing that the car will have paint, tires, seats, a steering wheel, mirrors, and an engine.  Don’t make a decision on your hosting provider just because they include a bunch of extras that will never be used or boast about services that are required to host a website, like the tires on a car.

Goodfriend Solutions has an uptime percentage of greater than 99.9% over the life of our service.  If you use our hosting solutions, your website will be located in 3 places.  It is on one primary server.  There is a second server in the same facility that has the exact same website.  If the primary server fails, the second server is used.  We also have your website on a server in another part of the country.  If a natural disaster occurs, it is unlikely that it will occur in two parts of the country.  The probability that something would cause all 3 services to fail at the same time is extremely unlikely. 

Goodfriend Solutions provides all the tools and offerings for you to effectively manage your website, most of which are far better than our competition.  We are dedicated to giving our customer the lowest cost of website ownership in the industry.