Our friends at the Meridian Hospitality Group asked us to put together a new look for the Lodging Boise website – your source for all things happening in and around Boise, Idaho’s capital city.

The website features all the restaurants, events and attractions any tourist would want to see from family fun at water parks and fun centers to outdoor adventures like white water rafting, shopping and cultural events like plays and art galleries, all of which are easily accessible from any of the Meridian Hospitality Group’s four hotel properties: the Caldwell Best Western, the Nampa Sleep Inn, the Meridian Mr Sandman Inn & Suites, and the Comfort Suites in Boise.

With four different hotels and all the area events and attractions the Lodging Boise website needed clear organization and navigation, while working with the custom back-end we built back in 2008.  For the home page we put together features for their four hotel properties, a photo slide show showcasing all the excitement Idaho has to offer, a short introduction to each city’s key features, a link to their Facebook page, and a newsletter sign-up button.  On the pages for events, attractions and restaurants we created a database for user generated content that allows for users of the site to post their own events, attractions and restaurant listings.  We also supplied a matching template for the new Lodging Boise newsletter.

We build websites tailored to your business objectives and processes – because shoehorning your unique business into existing solutions is often more expensive than building it right the first time.  Contact us to see what’s possible for your unique business.

My previous post Connect Your Website & Social Media, was the big test and I’m happy to report it worked perfectly: I logged in to WordPress, wrote the post, published to our website and one short hour later the post appeared on both our Facebook Page and our Twitter Page.  (the 1 hr delay has to do with set-up and happens in minutes afterward)

So how did I make it happen? I signed-up for TwitterFeed, which I chose specifically because it allowed me to connect a Facebook Page for a business, not just my personal Facebook Profile like the dozens of previous applications I researched, and a Twitter account.

Here’s the step-by-step How-To:

• Find the url for your blog feed (if you’re on WordPress it’s going to be ‘http://www.yourdomain.com/feed’.  Ours for example is: http://www.interfacemedia.ca/feed)
• Sign-in to your Twitter account
• Sign-in to your Facebook account
• Go to TwitterFeed.com and click ‘register now’ to sign-up for an account

• Enter your email address and make up a password then click ‘create account’

• Set-up your Feed:
• Give it a name, something you’ll recognize easily perhaps ‘YourDomain Blog Feed’

• Enter the url of your blog feed – the address you found in step 1
• Click ‘test RSS feed’ and you’ll see a green check mark beside ‘Feed parsed OK’, and if not check the help page
• Click ‘Continue to Step 2′ at the bottom of the page

• Connect to your Social Networking Accounts:

• Click Twitter and then on the big blue ‘authenticate twitter’ button

• It will forward to Twitter and ask you to ‘Allow’ or ‘Deny’ access to your Twitter account – click ‘Allow’
• When you are returned to TwitterFeed click ‘Create Feed’
• You’ll see a drop-down box below a message like this: “You are currently logged into your “Jenn Faccin” Facebook account. If you’d like to connect to another Facebook account, please Logout first.  Facebook Pages Choose a Facebook Page (you must be the page administrator) to publish your feed to it’s wall, or leave blank to publish to your Facebook account wall.”
  

• In the drop-down box choose the facebook page you want to connect to – I chose Interface Media Group
• Click ‘Create Feed’
• Click Facebook and then on the blue ‘connect with facebook’ button

• (It will pop up a window asking for permission to publish – click ‘Allow Publishing’ and you’ll be returned to TwitterFeed)
• Click ‘All Done!’ and you’ll see a Congratulations message that shows the details of the feed you’ve just set-up.
• Click ‘Go To Dashboard’ where you can monitor & manage your feed.

• The Dashboard shows 3 important things:
  1. Where your feed is publishing to (in our case Facebook & Twitter)
  2. A list of posts that have been published
  3. How many clicks each post has received on each platform

Congratulations!  You too are now a technological wizard and have connected your WordPress blog to your Facebook Page and Twitter account.  Happy Blogging!

P.S. If this is all too much for you just give us a call or contact us and we’ll set it up for you 604.415.0494.

As most of you know Steve is our Technical Director for good reason he’s basically a tech wizard – and I handle design, content and operations type stuff so I’m taking a huge step outside my comfort zone to see if I can set this up all by myself.

The good news is that if I can do it, you probably can too.  My next post will either describe how you can do this too or how Steve fixed it for me and how you can avoid my mistakes.  In one short hour we’ll have the answer. Wish me luck!

Joyce Wall, of Vancouver’s Vault Valet Storage chose to partner with us – thanks in large part to the A+ Rating we’ve earned from the BBB; to create a website that would be an effective platform for her Google Ad Campaign.

The Vault Valet Storage in Vancouver is simply the most secure, modern, and clean storage facility we’ve ever seen – it’s all on the first floor so there are no rickety ladders, tricky staircases or elevators to maneuver through and the security they offer is second to none with a monitored video surveillance and alarm system, auto locking doors, and restricted public access to storage areas through their lobby. They offer great monthly storage rates starting from $39/month, have all kinds of special offers including your 1st month free and a $50 VISA gift card giveaway, and their friendly staff even help move your stuff in!

Clearly all the features and benefits offered by The Vault Valet Storage made our job easy – all we had to do was find a way to organize and keep so many wonderful things prominently featured on their website.  To make it all possible for Joyce we created unique design theme for WordPress featuring her BBB rating and a Quick Quote form, amalgamated and wrote her web copy tying it to the search terms we would be bidding on, and provided her with a complimentary WordPress user guide unique to her specific WordPress website design and layout.

We build websites tailored to your business objectives and processes – because shoehorning your unique business into existing solutions is often more expensive than building it right the first time.  Contact us to see what’s possible for your unique business.

Our newest client Lisa, of The Writing On The Wall has a fantastic product: Removable Vinyl Wall Art Decals.  Yes, I said REMOVABLE so now every renter out there can have amazing designer wall art appliques without risking their damage deposit!

On The Writing On The Wall website you can view all available wall decals and purchase through their online store, check out the photo gallery of real-life rooms showcasing all kinds of wall decals, and see all kinds of available quotes and phrases for your own walls or submit your own idea.

To make all this possible for Lisa we created unique design theme for WordPress featuring her existing logo, a completely custom online store with shopping cart and PayPal integration, a private password-protected log-in area for her consultants which displays company wide messages including promotions and specials, and provided her with a complimentary WordPress user guide unique to her specific WordPress website design and layout.

We build websites tailored to your business objectives and processes – because shoehorning your unique business into existing solutions is often more expensive than building it right the first time.  Contact us to see what’s possible for your unique business.

Your business exists to meet your customer’s needs and the better you can meet those needs the more successful your business will become. Having a record of your clients experiences with your company over time will give you perspective on your performance and direction on how you can improve to become more profitable.

There are two very simple ways you can get valuable feedback from your clients: create a printed comment card and/or build a comment form for your website. Both these solutions make it simple for your customer to let you know how you’re doing and they’re easy for you too.

A successful comment card or comment form doesn’t just collect random information – it’s really designed to answer specific questions, in this case how well your business meets your customers needs based on a statistical sampling of your clients.

You don’t want your comment card or form to take more than about 5 minutes to fill out but at the very least your comment card or form should include space for the date, customer contact information, and a section for open comments.

Check boxes for statements or category rankings are much quicker to fill out for the customer and allow for simple evaluation on your end.

If you want to be able to categorize your hair salon clients, for example, to market additional products or services you may ask:

Which of the following statements best describe you?

[ ] I follow the latest trends and I describe exactly what I want.
[ ] I take my hair stylists’ advice to keep my look current.
[ ] I’ve got the look I want and need my stylist to maintain it.
[ ] I’m OK with a little change; I want to update my hairstyle but only now and then.

Armed with the answers to these questions you’d be able to target future sales of highest fashion, more risque products and styles to those who identify with the first statement; and the new, but more traditional, products and styles to those who identify with the second statement.

Your comment card or comment form can provide you with the answers to anything you might be wondering about your business, you only have to ask, make it fast and easy to answer, and if indicated by the results, respond with appropriate changes to your business.

With the advent of Facebook and MySpace, Twitter and Linked-In there are all kinds of ways to interact with your customers online.  Back on your website, you’re the king and (it’s good to be the king because) you can say all the wonderful things you’d like to share with the world completely unchallenged – but traditional Web 1.0 websites don’t really provide an interactive environment for your customers.

But why would you want to go to the trouble of interacting like this online?  Web 2.0 websites are more than just gradients, white space and striped backgrounds – they’re really about engaging customers.  Both companies and customers are asking questions and getting answers online on Facebook Pages and Twitter feeds.

But where’s the value?  What’s the payoff?  Customers who are happy with your services are giving you live testimonials, using their positive experience to inform others that they too will have these positive experiences when working with your company.  With customers sharing their opinions so freely you can much more easily see how well received a new product or initiative is, and likely, if it’s not going well, how they’d like to see it improved so you can react faster and better meet your customers’ needs sooner.

That’s all well and good but what about actual complaints?  If a customer has a complaint, you want to know about it.  It’s great to deal with whatever it is at the time the situation occurs but a customer who makes time to complain on your website will also spend his social time sharing his negative experience with his friends, family and colleagues.  Without an outlet like Facebook, Twitter or MySpace your company would be the only one that didn’t hear the complaint. This customer is giving you an opportunity to repair your relationship and impress him with your customer service so that he ends up sharing a positive story featuring your company with his personal and professional networks.  And, when this resolution is done in an open forum, such as on Twitter or your Facebook Page, you also showcase your professionalism and dedication to customer service to the general public, your potential customers.

Comments from any customer, whether positive or negative, give you a better understanding of how well you’re meeting your customers’ needs and that’s what it’s all about.  Companies that best meet the wants and needs of their customers are the most successful.

While it can feel like a chore to keep your website up to date, letting it languish could cost you dearly.

If you’ve taken the time to put together a fantastic sales event, you wouldn’t attempt to run the sale without telling people about it.  You’d probably put up a sign, take out an ad, decorate your store, contact your customers, and maybe even put up posters or hand out flyers all in an effort to reach as many people as possible.  So why wouldn’t you do the same on your website?

Updating your own site can be fast and easy for the average person and even not too difficult for non-computer people if your website is built on a content management system or CMS like Joomla or Drupal, or if it’s built on a Blog platform like WordPress or Blogger.

We’ve been converting standard website designs into WordPress design themes so that our clients can log-in to a simple web interface, quickly and easily update their own site content, add their own pictures and generally keep their own websites up to date.  Ask us how your current site can be converted so you can keep your website current.