B2Blog

TR – the saga continues

Well, rather than try to close the sale, the TR reps went back to evaluate what categories we should have ads in in order to get the most traffic on/from their site. Looks like that was a lot of what they were selling–web traffic. So it is interesting that we weren’t the only ones with this cynical thought that I got via email today:

“Read your blog on TR’s latest activity on keyword / search engine positioning…with less than 40% of TR’s clients currently renewed – the question I have for them is – will they continue to pay for those prominent rankings after their renewal period or are they just paying through the nose until 10/31 – and then let the rankings disappear??? Hmmm….shell out a bunch of money now to get money – and then cut back the spending and leave the suppliers with no recourse as they’ve already committed to a year……:

Of course business deals are based on a certain amount of trust, but I think the writer is probably right that TR is trying so many new things right now and bookings are so low that you at least have to wonder. But since the writer is from GlobalSpec, he certainly has a bias.

Funny thing is, I heard from TR, GlobalSpec (a rep left a message), and Mr. IndustrialQuickSearch all today. I’m feeling a bit naked again. Should have made this blog a bit more mysterious. Of course the writer may have found himself equally naked as I know where he works even though he used his Yahoo account. So at least I know everyone is either talking to me or seeing this blog, the interest in what happens has to be peaking between them. Kind of like The Bachelor!

Thomas Register – will we or won’t we?

We’ve been delaying a decision on renewing our advertising with the “Green Books” for 2003. I need to kowtow to management on this, which essentially takes the decision out of my hands. Today we are meet with the TR reps. No idea what is going to happen.

Let me tell you that last time I met with them, I learned about their new keyword promotion on Google and Yahoo. They are essentially buying the top listing for all the business categories in their books. “Click here for 102 industrial boiler vendors – free” or similar come-on. This program alters the way I should target advertising in TR. We need to look at the most popular categories we are listed in (which the rep had a list of), to make sure we come to the top by adjusting our print advertising program.

Then I discussed this program with Mr. IndustrialQuickSearch about how that compares to his program, which is strictly keyword-optimization driven. As he and his staff are former TR reps, he has plenty of bad news to tell about TR. He told me (which the TR rep did, too) that the Thomas Register is being combined with the Thomas Regional in 2004. He also told me that he heard that the Regional reps will be taking over the sales program. There is additional rumors/information which he has posted on the web, if you are interested.

I think we probably have benefited from waiting this long, as the situation has continued to evolve. What happens next? Stay tuned.

Thanks to Mean Dean for this article on website usability. My new site commits one of these crimes by offering a pop-up menu. At least the button that spawns it acts as a link.

developerWorks: Usability : Seven tricks that Web users don’t know

Another directory

Got my second call from the eCommerceRegister directory service. Only $300 gets me a membership. Seems the primary benefit of being a member is being able to send email alerts (spam?) to other members based on location and SIC codes. I can’t imagine someone finding us by searching here as the SIC codes aren’t current or keyword driven.

As a way of promotion to other businesses, it might be worth it, but the possibility of reaching the right person for my market is remote–the alerts will end up going to other marketers I suppose. Also, I suppose that I may find myself deluged with spam alerts so that I will just ignore it.

eCommerceRegister – B2B Online Community/Industry Business Listings

Want to know who left a message? Try typing in their phone number into Google. Google Search: 401-942-8000

For full instructions, click on the phone icon next to the company name, which will take you here.

Post to comments at Web Pages that Suck.

As a recent convert from Frontpage to Dreamweaver, I think that Frontpage can be used effectively. But, I think that Frontpage does two things wrong: It doesn’t teach or lead people to better pages.

I remember my first Frontpage pages. When I posted to the server, the links didn’t work because they were absolute links pointing to my hard drive! From there, I started learning because I realized that Frontpage doesn’t do everything right and doesn’t warn you it might.

(PS. I rue everyone who uses Word with the paragraph marks turned off so they can’t see the true structure of their document.)

Is it Wednesday already? I’ve got a lot of story to tell and not much time.

My website is up

yea! There were some hitches where links didn’t work right or images didn’t upload completely. I am still waiting for my ISP to get me my CGI guestbooks done. Take a look: www.espec.com . Then let me know what you think: jungd@student.gvsu.edu.

Tomorrow when I’ve caught up, I need to tell you about the latest in “what happens with Thomas Register”.

Moving servers

As I get ready to upload my new website, I am also switching servers at my ISP from NT/Frontpage to UNIX. Really not a big deal for a site that is strictly HTML (except two guestbook pages, which the ISP will set-up with CGI scripts). Well, it is a big deal because now my root directory file names need to be “index.html”, not “default.htm”. Why is this a big deal? There are a lot of links to my site (especially from search engines) pointing at what will be a non-existant page.

To keep new visitors, I created a “redirect” page that will automatically link them to the index.html page instead Not a big deal (uses a “meta-refresh” tag to do it). The other strategy would be to make duplicates of the index page, renamed as default. That’s not a bad strategy either, except it is harder to kill-off these links to what should be dead pages. Search engines don’t like to index pages with “meta-refresh” tags, or so I hear, so eventually these pages should die off.

I am concerned about people hitting my “home” default page. There I may make a duplicate of the index page. There is just too much traffic there. Maybe I should do this for a couple more of my most popular entry pages, just in case.

Think for your customers

I’m posting my new website this week if all goes right. I’ve spent the last few days cleaning up the many details. One thing that bothered me was that the HTML for the pages was running 25K alone. I assumed that this was due to the extensive Javascript pop-up menu I am using. Why should my customers have to reload the same script every time?

I did a little digging and found that scripts can be called very easily with a “source=” statement. Mind you I know nothing about Java, the script was written by Fireworks, then imported into the pages by Dreamweaver. So I figured out what part was the script and saved it as a separate .js file. Then I modified the script-loading statement (apparently Javascripts are loaded as an active command, ready to run when the page loads) to call the .js file. The trick was in figuring out how to invoke the .js command, so I did some trial and error and peaking at other codes (my page actually has a second external .js for roll-over buttons).

Net result…I cut 7K off of the page size. They will only need to load the extra .js file once, making the rest of my pages faster. The customer may never know, or notice, but I feel I’ve taken another step in letting them feel that we care about they want and don’t want. And no one wants a slow-loading page. (BTW, saw a sister company’s new website today. Very slow Flash with little payoff. Groan.)

Instant (b2b) Messaging

I use AOL instant messaging to stay available to my sales guys. To the ones I use it with, it is indespensible. But it is like pulling teeth to get some others to use it. It has to be the easiest, cheapest b2b application that shows immediate benefits.

BTW, my new favorite emoticon is: @@ (eyes rolling). True that only shows I’m using it to gossip sometimes, but isn’t that part of b2b communications?