We’ve had a good run of press coverage over the past couple of weeks. Here are some of the greatest hits. Two TV clips and two podcasts. Enjoy!
Establish a Web Presence - Yola’s Randy Almond on why it matters
With small businesses still struggling to recover, we have created a central resource with all of the information they need to have a successful presence online.
The Small Business Resource Center is a central, free resource that has all of the tools small businesses need to build a successful online presence.
With less than half of all small businesses having websites, the Small Business Resource Center is designed as a one stop shop for small business owners to either create a website or maximize the presence the already have online.
We have also partnered with Jim Blasingame, the Small Business Advocate®, one of the world’s foremost experts on small business and entrepreneurship, to make his substantial resources available.
To celebrate the kickoff, we are introducing the Small Business Recovery Plan, a sweepstakes giving more than $5,000 in goods and services to small business owners* in need.
Enter now for a chance to win!
*Sweepstakes is open to US residents only.
Top 5 Sins Business Websites Make Without Knowing It
You’ve designed, developed, and rolled out a great website for your business. Lately, you’ve noticed you’re your business website hasn’t been bringing in much traffic, not to mention sales. You’ve fixed some obvious problems, but your traffic and sales haven’t improved much. What could be wrong?
Your business website may not have any big, obvious things wrong with it, but you could be doing something wrong that you may not know about or have thought of before. Here are the five least known business website boo-boos, and some suggestions to avoid and fix them.
Sin #1: Writing content that focuses on features instead of benefits. Your business website’s content has to both inform customers about your products and services and persuade them to buy from you. Unfortunately, many business websites’ content does a great job of informing customers about the features of their wares, but not so much when it comes to the benefits they’ll realize. For example, if you own a furniture store, mentioning that you have free delivery on your site is a feature. A benefit of free delivery is that customers save on delivery charges and don’t have to make arrangements to pick up furniture on their own, which saves them time, money, and hassle. In other words, visitors want to know “what’s in it for me” and how you benefit them more than your competition.
Sin #2: Not making your business website search engine friendly. The first places your customers often go to find business like yours online are search engines. They’re most likely to visit the sites that appear first in the search results, because they see those sites as most relevant and authoritative. If your site doesn’t appear there, consider search engine optimization, or SEO, to move your site up and make it more visible.
Sin #3: Failing to keep your business website fresh. Imagine two stores: Store X is clean, well-lit, and well-stocked with the latest merchandise. Store Y is dusty, dimly lit, and has only a few of last year’s items on display. Which store are you most likely to buy from? At a bare minimum, you should completely refresh your business website at least once a year. Even better, add fresh content weekly or daily. One way to do this is to have a blog where you post content about your latest activities, offers, and other goodies.
Sin #4: Not having a call to action. Along the same lines of focusing on benefits, your business website should create a sense of urgency in your customers, reinforce the need for your product or service, and direct them toward the task you want them to do. Some ways to do so are to add links to a product page that take customers to the checkout page or to download items or offer Internet-only deals or coupons.
Sin #5: Making it too hard for customers to buy from you. Even customers who want to buy from you won’t buy from you if it takes too many clicks or too much time to buy. The fewer steps from the initial visit to the sale, the better.
After reviewing over a thousand nominations, we’re pleased to announce our selection for the Yola Makeover.
Congratulations to www.acecedarpark.com.
Now it’s time for you to flaunt your design skills. All you have to do is redesign the selected website using Yola.
The top ten designs will be chosen by a public vote with the small business owner ultimately deciding on the winning makeover.
The deadline is August 24, 2009 11:59pm PST, so get started today!
To view the rules or get more information on the contest please visit www.yolamakeover.com.
All of us have seen them. Bad websites for great small businesses. It might even be your website.
Here’s where you jump in. Stop the insanity. Lend a hand. Nominate a small business website that needs some help. We’ll pick one out and if you’re a web designer, graphic artist, or just love Yola, you can do a makeover.
The fun doesn’t stop there because there are prizes galore. The winning designer gets $2,000. The small business owner gets a shiny new Website worth $1,000. All Twitterers who retweet the @Yola contest will be entered for a chance to win two tickets to the U2 360° Tour and a Blackberry.
Send in your nominations. In August we’ll start accepting entries for the makeover design. So what are you waiting for? Nominate now.
Hi All!
We are pleased to announce the Grand Opening of our very own Yola store!
Many of our loyal Yola customers tell their friends about Yola, and we really appreciate that. Now you can sport Yola on branded Tees, Jackets, Bags, Badges and much more. You can even kit your pet out with their own Yola outfit and bowl. I’m thinking of getting the cute dog outfit, and I don’t even have a dog…
Let’s see that Yola pride all around the world!
Here is the link:
On Tuesday 21 April we rolled out a round of bug fixes and new features. Here is a summary of what we released:
1) Added tools for editing text with images in the text widget. Many people have requested more layout options for their text and images. Now when you add an image inside a text widget you will see 3 new icons at the end of the text editing toolbar. These allow you to select “no wrap,” “wrap left” and “wrap right”. This way you can have text flowing around your image without having to do any HTML editing.
Tip: make sure you have an image selected in your text widget to see these icons.
2) Security measure to prevent accidental site deletions. We were distressed to find that too many people were accidentally deleting their sites and losing their hard work. In response to your feedback we have removed the “delete site” button from the My Sites page and you will be asked to type in confirmation before deleting a site.
3) We have released a new secure payment service allowing users to use a credit card to easily purchase domain names (in addition to the current option of paying via PayPal)
Thank you for your patience during the release. We hope you enjoy creating even better looking sites with the new tools available!
In a few short weeks, when you publish a new site with our free subdomain option, your web address will contain yolasite.com instead of synthasite.com.
Sometimes change is good
Yolasite is a bit shorter and easier to spell than our former name. By changing from a SynthaSite subdomain to a yolasite subdomain, you might even make it easier for visitors to find your site. We’ll have all the details on how you can make this change around launch time.
There are a couple of things to know about the change:
Go ahead, keep .synthasite.com
If you have an existing SynthaSite subdomain you don’t need to change to yolasite.com. There are plenty of reasons to keep your subdomain just the way it is, and you can keep your site there as long as you want.
Stay tuned
We’re planning to release yolasite.com in mid-May. As soon as we have a date, we’ll let you know. For more details, visit our SynthaSite is now Yola FAQ update.
We’re excited to let you know our new name is going to be Yola. It’s easy to remember and pretty fun to say. It comes from the Hindi word “jhola,” which means hatch – and hatching big ideas is exactly what you do at Yola.
Our name, homepage and URL will be new, but everything else about SynthaSite stays the same. We’re still the same company with the same team. You’ll find all the sites you built and their web addresses are also staying the same. If you have questions about this change, please go to these FAQ’s. http://www.synthasite.com/rebranding-faqs.html
The change is coming in a few short days, but here’s a sneak peek. After the site changes to Yola.com, you still log in just like you did at Synthasite.com. In the meantime, you may want to create a new bookmark for www.yola.com.
We hope to see you very soon, at Yola.com
Today, I’m proud to announce that Reinet Fund has just invested $20 million into SynthaSite, securing our future and enabling us to continue to build our business model and product offering. This is a massive vote of confidence in SynthaSite, and we owe it to each and every one of you in our user community. Our future is bright and, with your support, we will continue to make a difference in the world!
When we began building SynthaSite, we sought to create a company whose product would change the lives of millions of people by giving them a voice online. We wanted to provide the opportunity for anyone anywhere to build a website that would achieve their unique goals, from starting a small business to showcasing their achievements.
In 2007, we raised $5 million in venture capital and moved our headquarters to San Francisco, keeping a good portion of our technical team in Cape Town, South Africa. Since then, SynthaSite has grown from just a handful of people to more than 40 individuals in both offices, supporting over one million users. Our support forum is one of the most active on GetSatisfaction’s network, and our recent “Best of SynthaSite” contest attracted more than 1,000 entrants. This level of success could only be achieved thanks to the dedication of both our user community and our staff.
I’m unbelievably excited about the future of SynthaSite and look forward to building on our success in helping you and many others reach their potential online. These past 15 months have just been the beginning…
Thank you for all your support.
Vinny Lingham
Founder and CEO
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