Google has renamed the Google Local Business Center to Google Places and added even more useful functionality. One of the coolest things about Google Local Business Center “upgrading” to Google Places is the fact that businesses in select cities (larger ones at the moment) can request a photo shoot of their business for free.
Some other new features include:
- Hide private street addresses for businesses without storefronts or offices
- Simple advertising with Tags to highlight your business for a very low monthly cost
- Coupons formatted specifically for mobile phones
- Customized QR codes, which are scannable bar codes that let people bring up your Places profile on their mobile phones
These QR codes are already popping up all over town. It’s interesting to see how much influence Google has in the offline world, too.
Among the reasons to have your website load quickly, the latest one will help your search engine performance. Google announced it would be factoring website speed into it’s search ranking algorithms.
It’s a good idea to have a fast website regardless, to keep your visitor’s attention easily and improve their experience, but now Google is taking more notice and giving you high marks for the “site speed” category.
There are a number of ways to speed up your website, but the most important include:
- Use XHTML/CSS so your content downloads quickly
- Make sure images and other media files are optimized for the web in terms of file size
- Avoid heavy use of Flash, video and image-based design
- Combine JavaScript and CSS files to reduce number of file requests
- Compress code using GZip on the server
- Pick a reliable web hosting company that doesn’t overcrowd its servers or oversell its resources
Yahoo has put together an extensive list of best practices for speeding up your website that’s definitely worth a look.
This is a great addition to Google’s search ranking method, because it ultimately means a better user experience. In an era of impatience, only the quick survive.
We’ve already had an incredible year…and we’re still just getting started. Bragging aside, our Slamdot Retail Store has really taken off, and has impacted our business in a lot of ways, mostly positive. We’ve been experiencing tremendous growth since our grand opening in December, and coping with that growth has been somewhat of a challenge during this period.
We have a very strong reputation for customer service, and we work hard to maintain that reputation. In fact, our greatest competitive advantage has always been our customer service, and it continues to be why we do well, especially locally.
Due to our recent surge in business, we’ve had a harder time being proactive about keeping up with our customers. It’s easy to work on active projects, where customers are attentive and engaged, but it’s just as important to followup with customers who aren’t staying as involved. I think this is one of the biggest challenges we web designers face. Keeping customers engaged becomes more and more difficult with each additional project.
Although it may be easier to pass the buck and blame the customer, the reality is, it’s our fault. It doesn’t matter if we asked the customer for something and they never got back with us. We dropped the ball, because we didn’t follow back up to find out why. If a project goes stale, it’s our fault. That’s the only way to ensure we maintain a strong relationship with our customers, and lately, we haven’t been doing a good enough job.
So, here’s the deal. We’ve hired two more people, Nicole and Elizabeth. They’re trained up and ready for action. We’ve improved our processes and we’ve implemented some new ones. If you haven’t heard from us in a while, you’ll be hearing from us next week.
Starting Monday, we’ll be providing telephone technical support during our store hours of 8am until 5pm, Monday through Friday. You can also stop by the Slamdot Store for one-on-one service. Of course, email support is always available, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Growth is a good thing, but it all depends on how you handle it. We’ll be back on top of our game again next week. Thanks for sticking with us.
We are excited to say that our SlamCamp workshop held Tuesday, March 16th, at the Knoxville Chamber Partnership, as part of their Chamber U series, turned out to be a huge success. Thanks to all of the companies that attended our presentation on Secrets of Effective Web Marketing.
SlamCamps are a series of workshops that we’re doing for small business owners, to help them better understand effective website marketing, search engine optimization, and social media strategies. Our first SlamCamp had around fifty attendees, and we received top ratings and great feedback.
Setting up
Introductions
Sean & Daniel talking
Our next SlamCamp will be in April at the Slamdot Store. We’ll be launching a new section of our website soon with dates and times of future SlamCamps.
Tags: Slamcamp
Are you a sharpshooting, smooth-talking salesperson, good at talking people out of their money? Well, this isn’t the job for you.
We’re looking for someone who doesn’t have a lot of sales experience, but has a willingness to learn our products well and help our customers succeed online. Like Ben Affleck said in Boiler Room, “We don’t hire [salespeople] here, we train new ones.”
We need someone who has a passion for small business. Someone who enjoys technology and the Internet. Someone who’ll care about our customers as much as we do. Our approach is not to hard sell. We consider ourselves consultants. We consult. We don’t “sell.”
We talk to small business owners and try to understand their business, customers, and marketing objectives. We offer a lot of free, upfront information. You could say our approach is to give away a lot of free advice. If our prospective client would rather us implement some of the strategies we’re suggesting they do, then they hire us. If not, then that’s cool, too. We never set unrealistic expectations and we only work with people who we think we can help. That’s how we’ve always done it, and it’s worked well for us.
You’ll learn a lot about websites, servers, social media, search engines, and internet marketing. Our customers trust us with their business because we’re the experts. Soon, you’ll be an expert too.
Please send resumes to jobs@slamdot.com. No seasoned salespeople, please.
There is good news and there is bad news – the good news is that our 1st Annual Haunted Open House, a Halloween-themed Business Networking and Costume Party here in Knoxville, was a huge success! The bad news is that it’s over until next haunting season… but you can bet we’ll be back with the 2nd Annual Haunted Open House next year with even more decorations, more scares and so much spooky fun that you’ll be gasping for air!
Thanks to everyone who came out and supported us, we hope you all had a great time, especially the kids who came out. To the parents of those children, they were adorable and extremely well-behaved!
And another big thanks to Tom & Barry’s Restaurant for catering our party. The food was delicious and the service was great. Everyone loved it! We’d also like to thank Rita’s Ice for providing blueberry (with REAL blueberries) water ice, as well as Elegant Essentials Home Decor & Gifts, Haze and Co. Salad Dressings, Fox Fitness and HoundDogs for donating great door prizes, thank you for your contribution and support!
A lot of our local customers were asking about the show from last Saturday, so we’ve posted it here for your listening pleasure.
Listen to the show…
Stay tuned for more!
Daniel was on The Hallerin Hilton Hill Morning Show last Wednesday, September the 2nd. Slamdot was featured in the Local Business Spotlight segment of the show, and Daniel was talking with Hallerin about our website design and search engine optimization services.
Listen to the interview with Daniel
We really appreciate being in the Local Business Spotlight with Hallerin Hilton Hill and look forward to coming back for more shows in the future!
Join the Slamdot team at our spine-tingling downtown office for a howling good time at the 1st Annual Haunted Open House Business Networking and Halloween Party on Friday, October 23 from 5:30pm – 8:30pm. All you should bring is a costume and your business cards, although neither are required! Of corpse, oops, I mean of course, it wouldn’t be a party without some light refreshments and wine. We’ll also have some door prizes to give out.
So come hang out with the Slamdot gang and your other colleagues for the only Halloween Business Networking in Knoxville!
Please RSVP on Facebook.
Sean was on WNOX FM 100.3 this weekend with Tom and Judy Irmen talking about website design and effective Search Engine Optimization techniques.
Listen to the show…
Feel free to leave any questions or comments below!
