We need someone skilled to join the team at Matter Solutions. Take a look this job description on my company’s website…

WordPress Web Developer Job

Thanks,

Ben

Twitter Advice

I’ve been giving advice to clients on getting started with Twitter for some time but it’s great to see a heavy weight like Jakob Neilsen give some practical advice on how to write and rewrite your tweets to make them great.

The full article is here http://www.useit.com/alertbox/twitter-iterations.html

Brisbane Business Twitter

If you’re interested in learning more about twitter and how it can help you, your business and/or your website then get in touch. I’m offering some free coaching to demonstrate it’s value by creating some case-studies for prospective clients.

Contact me (Ben Maden) via my Brisbane Web Design Business website – Matter Solutions

After only 4 weeks this website including custom order form for online orders goes live.

Fresh is The Best operate a Brisbane Fresh Fruit and Vegetables delivery service. Melissa Burrell, owner of Fresh is The Best said…

We are extremely happy with the work you have done. It has given us exactly what was wanted and needed. Thank you for your professional advice along the way and thank you for taking the time to understand our business.
It has been a pleasure working along side of you with this project and I have no hesitation recommending Matter Solutions to anyone.

The website includes an order which although simple-to-use has a number of special features to help the customer select and customise their order with the minimum of fuss.

When it comes to ordering fresh produce in northern Brisbane www.freshisthebest.com.au is the place to do it, my wife is already planning our first order.

Facebook

Fresh is The Best has had a fan page on Facebook for quite sometime with quite a few fans so now way for Melissa and her staff to turn that online interest into customers.

Fruit & Vegetable Delivery Service

The website has been created to enable full reporting to the managers. The order administration shows number and value of pending and completed orders.

Google Analytics – Goal Tracking

In tune with the talk I (Ben) gave last month at the Brisbane Web Design Meetup Group I have included full Google Analytics and enabled Goal Tracking to tie traffic and internet marketing activities back to actual sales results.

Here are some facts that you’ve probably noticed or heard but lets put it all together…

• The Yellow Pages is slimming down, basically businesses know the Yellow Pages just doesn’t work like it used to. Anyone with access to a computer uses their computer.
• In December 2008 – 8 million households in Australia (that’s 75%) had internet access. So I reckon that’s at least 75% less people using the yellow pages compared to pre-internet life… and this trend is continuing. Besides as the Yellow Pages hasn’t shrunk by 75% yet you’re less and less likely to even get called as the ratio of readers to advertisers gets worse and worse.
• Also, in 2006/07 87% of Australian Businesses had internet access. So it’s not just at home that people use the web.
• Also in 2006/07 40% of Australian Business placed orders online.

Australian Internet Facts (PDF) – opens in a new window

So as far as I’m concerned this trend is definitive and proves that you need to stop wasting money on the Yellow Pages!

Go Internet Marketing!

Internet Marketing is the way ahead, there is no doubt about it.

The growth of internet use is continuing and completely unstoppable. This is absolutely clear to me after the last few week of my mother-in-law asking me if I can set-up her new PC soon as she hasn’t checked gmail in ages and wants to hop onto Skype. I got her set-up with TPG and using Fedora Linux. Not bad for 70 this year! Go Jilly

The problem is how to do it right. Many businesses in Australia already have a website but don’t see any return from it think about your customers.

• What are they searching for? Think phrases.
• What phrases are important for you to be there, ready and waiting on Google?

Internet Marketing is the future – Try this out.

If you still need convincing or are seriously interested in finding some of these magic phrases then you have to try this out. Google has a service called Google Trends. Google collates data about what people are searching for and enables you to generate your own comparison charts.

As a professional web consultant I use it all the time to compare search terms and gain insights into what search terms are becoming important and which are on the way out.

Get into your customer’s head – Ask them!

I meet people who run businesses all the time and ask these business owners what people use in Google to find their current website…

Number 1 answer is “we don’t know”

Number 2 answer is “our company name”

That’s a sign that there is something seriously wrong with their website. If you’re a Plumber in Brisbane wouldn’t it be nice to be the number one in Google for Plumber Brisbane rather than only get visitors if someone happens to already know your business name? YES, of course it would. It makes the difference by a factor of a hundreds or even a thousand everyday for almost any topic you could mention.

Be your own web consultant for five to ten minutes. Play with this tool and think about keywords & phrases.

Step 1) Visit Google Trends and type in some searches about the type of service you provide. If you get stuck thinking of words try:-

• Free Keyword Tracker
• Google Suggest
  

Step 2) Take some of these phrases to Google Trends and follow the instructions. Type them into the big input box and split phrases up with commas e.g. you want to compare how many searches are made for “Mashed Potato” and “Potato Chips”.

Step 3) Look at the results and ask yourself some questions about anything you see. Click here for my example result and note the format of the text in the input field at the top with the commas separating the phrases. Now spend some time thinking about the result.

• Why are 1.6 times as many searches made about Potato Chips than Mashed Potato?
• Potato Chips searches are trending downwards, why?
• There are two spikes in the Mashed Potato searches, are they pre and post Christmas?

Have fun. There’s lots of interesting stuff to discover in Google Trends

Your web consultant

As almost every part of the business is still managed by me I decided to take a new direction and feature prominently on the website, check it out. I’ve never had a professional photograph taken before.

BUT… in the time it took between getting the photo done and getting enough time to actually sit down and build and write the website I’ve lost another 5kg, so apparently the photo “doesn’t look quite right” according to a client I went to see the other day.

I guess I need to thank Denny from OMG Fitness again for helping me keep up the Weight Loss and go to get some new professional photo’s done.

Website Professional

I’ve spent a while writing the information on the website as I wanted to make sure people realise there is a professional person behind the Matter Solutions name. I also wanted to show how simple it is to get a really successful website…. there are really just three steps, go and have a read: Brisbane Web Design
or SEO Services Brisbane

Google Adwords too

I’ve also begun a new camapign with Google AdWords, if you’re interested in learning how you can get on the first page of Google super fast, contact me today
it’s all part of my Internet Marketing Brisbane service

I’ve just finished a major project for The Betting Guru. This website includes a full PayPal subscription service to protect the valuable private content.

The service

What is it? Well I’ve never been much of a gambler, only the odd horse race, Grand National, Melbourne Cup or Soccer matches (I am from the UK) but his predictions are simple to understand.

As a programmer (and trained as an Aero Engineer) I do know a bit about maths and constructing algorithms. It’s quite clear after spending time with the betting guru that his statistical model is extremely well developed. He has used this model to make predictions on the NRL for some time.

Almost the entire 2008 season NRL match predictions were presented on a previous website with great success. Look at the profit and results here.

Each week the Betting Guru presents a predictions on a selection of matches in the NRL or AFL. He is also investigating models for other sports

Internet marketing

The website went live mid afternoon yesterday (Friday, 20th March) and we emailed subscribers to last years free predictions. Within 3 hours, half of the recipients had already read the email, and clicked through to the website and 6% of these had actually bought memberships!

What a great start

I also helped the Betting Guru get to grips with Twitter, he’s getting there. Follow him at twitter.com/bettingguru

Visit www.bettingguru.com.au for NRL & AFL match tips

How it is built

After listening to the Betting Guru’s need for monetising this unique content I came up with a plan to provide a website environment which enables the following…

• Easy previews of content so potential customers can see what they could get access to after subscribing
• Smooth joining experience
• Secure area for members to access premium content
• Simple subscription model, weekly or annual for NRL only, AFL only or both

PayPal’s subscription system has worked very well in this instance and we already have plans in place to use this on another project.

The system is based on the latest version of WordPress (like this one). I also bought a full copy of the MemberWing premium WordPress plugin. All the PHP code is very heavily customised to enable all sorts of features.

I particularly liked the time that the MemberWing saved in terms of handling the PayPal Instant Payment Notification (IPN). I can happily recommend this plugin

This is a nice simple website that the client can edit as often as they wish using the wordpress blogging content management system.

After the content management training Jenn, the office administrator, was well away. She added page after page of content about plumbing all guided by Mark Aleo’s years of plumbing experience. This was all well underway while the website’s design was still being finalised.

This concurrent working and inclusion of the client early on means I can deliver professional websites fast! In this case it just took just three weeks from deposit paid to going live!

I helped the client rewrite this text to…

• Style the prose for the web, i.e. using a direct simple style to convey meaning efficiently.
• Use the right key phrases for search engine optimisation (SEO) results, and I explained how this can deliver results over time with regular (easy-to-do) updates.
• Retain the focus on the website’s objective…. get the phone to ring or customers to complete the enquiry form, i.e. leads, leads, leads!

Take a look at the new Gap Plumbing website at www.gapplumbing.com.au

Also, here are a few of the key phrases that we’re aiming at with some search engine optimisation (SEO) work…. I’m going to measure the rankings of the website on these terms for my client and help them get a strong position on the search engines.

Key topic: Plumbing and Plumber
Geographic: The Gap, Ashgrove, Keperra, North-West Brisbane and Brisbane

So for example a target key phrase is

• Plumber Keperra
• Plumbing Brisbane

… there are many more…. but I’m not going to give them all away here.

The client also has full access to Google Analytics reports so they can see the results for themselves.

I’d left home in West Cornwall for University in London. There I started weight lifting and jogging… I was consuming huge numbers of calories mostly made up of beer and Kebabs, but I was slim and actually really quite fit. I was in the Royal Naval Reserve at Uni, one of the most excellent things I could have done with my time… it was great. Fitness-wise it was challenging and at 19 and 20 I was living in the East End I used to cycle everywhere at least 10 miles (16 km) every day, to uni, to work, and to thai-boxing too.

BUT that all ended when I started work. I threw myself into a great job in the City of London and spent all hours at work trying to get ahead… it did work, I earned more money than I’d ever thought about at uni… I worked long hours but I had great times with friends and on nice holidays because I could afford the good-stuff…. BUT fitness-wise I was gaining weight fast and loosing all my fitness.

In two years I went from 75kg and fit enough to join the Royal Marines, I used to do circuits based on their entry criteria, to being 95kg lethargic and wondering why I had a flabby patch under each arm

I carried on working long hours, started my own web design business, and had a lot of fun doing it but 10 years passed and I realised that I’d always been about 95kg… there was a time I got myself to 90kg in 2002 and then 100kg in 2004 BUT all in all I was never fit.

ASIDE…. My father died at 37 of a heart attack. He was a bit over weight and had been for years but was never as overweight as I have been. Naturally, it was devastating for my entire family. We all thought he was very healthy, he was never ever ill.

As a father for the first time in October 2007 it weighed on my mind what life might have been like for my sister and if we hadn’t lost our father at such a young age, so I decided I wanted to do something about it. I made a concious effort to try and loose weight… but some months passed and I didn’t get very far… until I met Denny.

Paul “Denny” Denholm was planning on becoming a personal trainer and he had some great ideas and as a former Royal Marine we shared a lot of common ground about hard-work, dedication, determination and GRIT.

Understandably when I told him about my family history and the length of time I’d been overweight Denny asked me to get a Doctor’s note to confirm I was okay… the doctor’s note simply said “94kg and fit to train”

Denny put a detox and diet together for me that provided me with energy to exercise and I started loosing weight from day one. In fact in the first week I lost almost 4kg!

Denny adapted his training and the results now speak for themselves….

Strength: I am stronger now than I was at 19 when I was weight lifting, the weights are heavier now
Cardio: I am able to run more and faster now than when I was at 18 and jogging or 19-21 and boxing
Circuits: The intensity of the circuits I can endure is way beyond anything I have ever done before

Why write about this today?
Yesterday evening was the third fitness test I’ve taken since meeting Denny. Every single time I have improved and yesterday I surprised myself quite a bit.

One of the circuits I used to do years ago included 85 sit-ups (no stopping)… yesterday I hit 102. The run, twice around the oval that took me well over 4 minutes on the first test I did it in 3 minutes 21 seconds – I’m very happy with that

I’m now 79kg which is a good weight for me. My BMI (body mass index) has dropped from an overweight verging on obese at 30 to now being 25 (healthy weight).

Plug for Denny at “OMG Fitness”

If you’re in Brisbane and serious about getting fit then you’ve got to check out Denny’s website at omgfitness.com.au

As a personal trainer in Brisbane, he is great value, worth every cent because you get real results and learn the skills you need to attain and maintain excellent health.

Denny also has a load of boxing and training videos on You Tube, check them out.