Salt Lake City Web Design

Even though my company is based in Salt Lake City we are able to do web design for Ogden companies.  Ogden is located in the state of Utah in Weber County. Ogden is the main city for the Ogden-Clearfield Metro area.  The metro population is estimated to be a little over half a million with the city of Ogden having a about 83,000 people (2008).

If you are in the Ogden meto area and are looking for an affordable web design be sure to check out Warner Data Solutions.

If you are in need of a dog trainer you should check out my friend Ryan’s site.  He’s got to be the best dog training in Salt Lake City.  I’ve seen him take out of control dogs and turn them into great family pets.  His methods for potty training is great.  He can also teach your dog to run on a treadmill!

Check him out, his site is at:

http://www.trainwalkgroom.com

In Virtuemart there is a bug that wont allow the Credit Card Type to be displayed.  This bug is due to the fact the Javascript needed is kept in a script that is only called for registered users.  So, if your site is set to not have the user register, this wont show!

The fixed it easy though.  You’ll need to use your FTP client to edit the file at /components/com_virtuemart/themes/default/templates/checkout/

Edit the file:

list_payment_method.tpl.php

On line 75 you’ll see: <?php echo $ps_creditcard->creditcard_lists( $db_cc ); ?>

Select lines 75 to 85 which is: </script>

Then paste this code:

                       <select name=”creditcard_code”>
                          <option value=”” selected=”selected”>Pick One</option>
                          <option value=”VISA”>Visa</option>
                          <option value=”MC”>MasterCard</option>
                          <option value=”amex”>American Express</option>
                        </select>

If you need to add Discover Card you can add:

<option value=”discover”>Discover Card</option>

As many of you know, I own and run my own website design and marketing company here in Salt Lake City.  I’ve been creating websites since 7th grade back in Colorado before I moved to Utah.  I learned how to create websites out of need.  My first site was for my little group of game nerds dedicated to the game Diablo.  From there I learned HTML and also began to teach myself a programming language called PERL.  From this I started creating little applications and websites.

Right before my family moved to St. George, Utah, I started building a website called Online Game World (ogw.org).  Site was dedicated to all games that had an online aspect.  A friend from Canada and I ran it for about year, until the magazine Game World got mad and made us shut it down.

My next project was creating PcPatches.com.  This was my first major site.  I searched all over the internet for patches to games.  Back then there weren’t any auto updaters built into games and programs.  If there was a bug with your program you’d have to find it.  So, my site become the main place to find patches.  I was bought out my sophomore year in high school by a competitor.  From there I remained pretty low key on the net until moving up to Salt Lake City.  Where my long time friend and I started Vivanet Corp.  Vivanet specialized in creating web sites for mortgage companies.  We also handled all the programming and web needs of a national mortgage company.  Did that for a few years, ended up selling it to a friend and joining the mortgage company full time as their web master.

From there I started Warner Data Solutions in 2008 and now I’m competiting with some of the biggest names in Utah Website Design.  I’ve also created a side project to help teach internet marketing to mortgage professionals.

And that’s all I gotta say about that.

Just got done writing this and thought I’d share.  It hasn’t been edited yet so be nice!

Basic Social Media Plan

1.       Basic theory of social media marketing

2.        Choose the social media that your target uses

3.       Setup your accounts

4.       Understand the social aspect of social media

5.       Market funneling

6.       Cross over

7.       Keep up with technology

8.       Be creative

Section 1

With advent of the internet and the first interaction between two humans from distant parts of the country, marketing has had to adapt and keep up with the every changing landscape of the internet.  Previously, it was pretty easy to win online.  Just rank high in search engines and people will come to your site and buy.  The internet still basically functions this way today; there are just a lot more minor parts that a company has to take care of.

Ignoring social media today will be the exact same as the industrial companies that ignored using technology advancements like e-mail.  Ever tried to deal with a company without email?  “Really? You want me to FAX this in?!”  This will slowly change to, e-mailing in.

Social media is a great tool to help your business grow.  It can help with your marketing, outreach, PR, support, or any other area that has contact with the outside world.

A few examples of companies using social media to further their company (outside of marketing):

T-mobile USA – Their twitter account quickly alerts users of outages.  Users can also ask for tech support help and check if their local network is experiencing problems.

-          Is a web software company that built their brand quickly by offering a free I-pod to a random Twitter user who resent one of their messages

Gary Vaynerchuck -  Author of Crush-it.  Sky rocketed his wine business by utilizing the power of videos online.

Those are obviously just a sample of companies that have figured out the social media secret.  The uses of social media are endless they can range from keeping current customers happy, selling products online, to increase awareness for your brick and mortar store.

Section 2.

Right now, the obvious picks for social media for you are probably Twitter and Facebook.  Which are great and should be a part of everyone’s social media plan.  But, don’t limit yourself to what’s the most popular in thing now.  The internet has been evolving at such staggering paces that what is cool and cutting edge now can quickly become obsolete in a matter of months.  Now, I believe Twitter and Facebook will be a around for a while, it’s never to early to start diversifying.  Attempt to find reports on demographics for  different social media’s as they become available.  A few stats they may surprise you:  Twitter – Not for the young ones, Facebook time useage, Myspace stats, Linkdin. 

An example of some services that are typically under used:

Linkdin – a social media site for professionals
Tumblr – A blogging platform that allows users to easily “reblog” and share.  It’s a great tool to utilize all your social media ( more later)
YouTube – It is very easy to make informative videos for your clients and potential clients.   Not just a site for funny kittens.
Okurt – Google own social media site, heavy use from Brazilians
Flickr, Buzz,

Knowing which to use will come down to a little research, staying on top of new social media sites, and trial and error.

Section 3 – Setting up your accounts

Nothing screams spammer more than a Facebook page without any pictures, or a twitter account with the default image and background.   Most sites now have ways to easily customize your site or at least add content to your page.  With Facebook you’ll have to get tricky with how to customize it.  Make sure to add as much info as you can about your company, photos, videos, etc.  For the advance users check out FBML to add some flair and usability to your page.

For a basic guideline just check with Google on how to customize XYX social media as technology will change and probably make this guide outdated very quickly if I described how to do every one.

Section 4 – Understanding the social aspect of social media

Where many companies start and fail at their social media starts with ignoring the word social.  These mediums are setup so you can pull up a soapbox and yell at everyone to buy your product.  You need to interact with the community, you have to be a part of it.  No one is going to want to follow Company ABC from cow-town Northern Utah… sorry to ruin your dreams for grander but it is the truth.  They want to connect with a human who is an expert in their field.  They don’t want to just be friends with a web design company, they want to be friends with the designer or programmer. 

Here’s an example, decide for yourself which one you’d like to hear more information from:

NASA – Nasa has a team of people who put out the latest stats on everything to do with the NASA program.

Or

Mr Jones who is the Lead Engineer for the next rover to mars who frequently updates his own account about what he’s doing and answers questions from the community.

That one is a little hard, I admit.  But let’s try one more…

A Mortgage Company who puts out the latest rates and follows up with a link to their page to APPLY ONLINE TODAY!

Or

Mr Smith – who keeps you up to date on the latest rates, explains why they are going that way,  answers questions about credit and has plenty of referrals for realtors and contractors.

I have no idea why companies try to do this online.  They certainly don’t do it offline, or at least succeed at business.  The sales people that win offline are those that are friendly, help others out, and are just generally good people.  You want to bring that spirit online.

Whatever site you choose to work on, make sure you join then sit back and observe how the community acts.  On some sites, it might be okay to randomly add people and others this might been seen as creepy.  How many updates seem acceptable? Etc.

After watching for a bit, jump in! Engage the users and be engaged.   Find companies that can help you and you help them.   Provide interesting facts about your business, like for example: Did you know giving away free reports can help your business grow and rank higher in Google?

I’m by no means an expert yet on social media, but I’ve been around long enough to see the basic template for all the sites.  I mean, somehow I got you here reading my free report right?

Section 5 - Funneling

In online marketing we often use the term funneling, I assume this word also applies to offline sites too. Funneling is a term to make your users who use all the different social media sites to funnel in from them to your actual site or store.  We’ve got one point, one goal.  Realistically, social media is fun and sociable.  But we are only doing it to grow our businesses or waste time and generally suck at life.

With all of our social media sites, we need to have a game plan of how users are going to interact with the social media, and arrive at our goal.  This goal could be as simple as signing up for a newsletter , buying a new product online, buying an e-book, or showing up to your store.

An easy way to bridge the gap between social media and your sales page is to use a lesser social media… the blog.   Blogging really isn’t that hard or time consuming.  Typically I sit down on Monday and try to write 5-6 blogs ranging from 300-600 words.  I’ve got a notebook with over 200 blog subjects in it.   I simply look through it, pick one, and write it out.  If you are an expert in your field, are passionate about what you’re doing, then this should be no problem.  If you aren’t passionate about what you are doing, you’re wasting your time and should probably stick to cold calling clients.

How I like to do my social media is this:

Interact with my Twitter and Facebook account.  Reply to people, share interesting links either in web design, politics, or some funny ones.  I reply to other peoples posts that I actually find interesting and slowly grow my networks.

Every now and then I’ll put a link to my blog about whatever I blogged about today.  People  visit the blog and then with any luck, they’ll continue to my business and get a web site or SEO package.  But, a neat side effect of all this is referrals.  As you show people that you are an expert in your field, even if they aren’t experts in their field, they will recommend you to their friends (weird right… just like in real life).

So my slimmed down media plan looks like:

Social Media Networks -> Blog -> Website -> Lead Form

So figure out what your funnel is going to be, write it down.  And build the framework you need to accomplish it.

6. Cross Over

Don’t be afraid to use one medium in an attempt to build a large network on another site.  An easy one is to have your links to all your sites on each network.  Also make it easy for people on your blog to identify which networks you are on.

There is some debate as to what is the best means to build crossover networks.  Some believe it’s best to funnel everyone to your blog and then the user can add you to any other network.  Others, like me, have no problem posting my FaceBook profile on my Twitter account.  The choice is up to you.

5. Keep up with technology

If you’ve been on the internet for very long then you already know that things move very quickly.  What was popular last year is now an internet wasteland full of washed models and crack heads.  If you don’t understand why something is popular and think it is dumb, don’t worry.  You can simply not use it, and while you sit back thinking how dumb a trend is your competitors will be taking full advantage of the fresh open markets.

6. Be Creative

Like any  kind of marketing, you’re going to need to be creative online to be heard over all the others.  Be creative with how your accounts will be used, perhaps one will be for random facts on an industry like baseball stats or one to answer all questions about knitting.  Be the expert in your field, interact with users, and sell them not on your product but on you.  Users online have the option to buy your exact same product from 100’s or 1000’s of other companies.  But they will choose to buy from you because you’ve shown that you are a real person, you’ve built rapport, and you know what you are talking about.

The Coolest Guy in Utah

I’m doing another study on SEO.  This one is to unseat a site that has held the number one spot in Google for the search term The Coolest Guy in Utah.  So I’m following the Google guidelines along with some of my own ideas on how search engines work.  The main difficulty is that I am using a tumblr account which does not allow me access to craft my own robots.txt and sitemap.xml.  

If you’ve been around long enough and have done any research on SEO you’ve probably read about the need for link building.  This an article to do just that.  It will need to talk about Utah and how cool I am.  So let’s get to it.

My name is Guy Warner, I’m a web professional in Salt Lake City.  Salt Lake City is the capital of Utah and the most populace city in the state.  A lot of people don’t think Utah is very cool.  But there are plenty of things that are cool about Utah.  The state of Utah has some of the most beautiful landscapes, ranging from the deserts of Southern Utah up to the Mountains in the Wasatch Front.  Beyond the landscapes of the state, Salt Lake City has started to become a more “modern” city.  With recent changes in state liquor laws and changes in local city regulations, SLC is starting to become a cool place for night life.   The recent advent of the bar culture, brought about by a change in the infamous Utah state liquor laws, has upped the cool factor by at least half.  Suddenly, there are people back on Main Street, and not just during business hours.  There’s been a proliferation of niche bars, little local cafes and delis have been popping up, and many of them are eager to stay open past six, welcoming hordes of bar patrons, who head out into the cool spring nights ready to eat.  

The challenge of living in the desert is also what makes it cool.  Utah in the spring or the fall is a quixotic mess that challenges even the most diligent umbrella carrier.  It can go from 45 degrees and sunny in the morning to snow in the afternoon, and back to a cool spring evening in the space of hours.  The clever Utahn carries both a snow coat and a pair of flip flops in the trunk of their car.  Utah is vast enough, as well, that you can drive out of the cool, relatively wet north in, in just a couple hours, be in the warm desert, surrounded by red rock and a golden sand that keeps the cool touch of winter well into the summer months, a tangible reminder that here in Utah, we get all four seasons.  Sometimes on the same day.

I’m not a complete local to Utah.  I was born in Colorado and moved to Utah when I was about 16 years old.  I know call Utah my home and believe it to be the coolest state.  It has a lot of work that needs to be done, but I think with time Utah wont be such an uncool state to live.

I’m looking for a couple local companies to partner with.  

What does this partnership entail?  It’s pretty easy, I’m looking for some sites/companies to market for online.  This might include SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Pay Per Click), and any other form of Internet marketing.

What will it cost you?

Nothing! I’ll do the marketing and keep your site up to date.  Of course nothing is completely free.  The partnership would be that my company markets for you and you give a referral fee on each sale that comes from my work.  Details can be worked out on a case by case basis.

You really have nothing to lose. We’ll find a way to make it win-win.

If you are interested in seeing if we can work together shoot me an e-mail at guy@warnerdata.com. 

Yes I know the title of this post is a little conceited and weird.  But hear me out.  On the net there is a competition of sorts among SEO “gurus”.  The typical one everyone fights for is The Coolest Guy on the Planet.  But seeing as I specialize in local SEO, I figured I’d start with the great state of Utah and move my way up to the planet.  So my goal is to have this blog post and my Facebook page rank for #1 and #2 for Coolest Guy in Utah.

What I’ll be doing is following the Google guidelines for a site along with my own linkbuilding systems that I’ve developed.  So here’s the start to becoming the Coolest Guy in Utah!

So having those links from the other day have already been spidered.  Now lets see if Google counts them for Local Search or organic.

I screwed up my a site and wrote module instead of modular home on their website.  They were spidered by Google but have yet to be re-indexed for the update.  So, I’ll add a link to it from my blog to see if I can’t get Google to detect it.  The site is for prefabricated homes aka modular homes.  Crystal Peak Construction is based in Steamboat Springs, CO.  Click here to see modular homes in Colorado.

So was doing my competitor research today and found that one had a bunch of sites listed in their listings on Google local.

They are sites that tell you about your url.  They are dynamic sites, meaning that unless you search or go to the url the page doesn’t exist.

So in order for these pages to be index by Google they require a link to them.

So here’s some links:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/warnerdata.com

http://www.ip-adress.com/whois/salt-lake-city-utah-web-design.com

http://www.sitelogr.com/s/warnerdata.com

http://www.whois.net/whois/warnerdata.com

http://www.betterwhois.com/bwhois.cgi?verification=2945&domain=warnerdata.com&submitbtn=Continue

http://www.domaincrawler.com/domains/view/warnerdata.com

http://www.ip-adress.com/whois/warnerdata.com

Now they can be added and since my contact information is listed, we should get these added to our local listings.