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Flash Websites need to die
- By Alex Snyder
Finally! The day has come where we can all say goodbye to Flash websites. Hooray hooray!Oh....what's that? You like big Flash websites?
Everyday I get calls from dealers asking for referrals on various products and those calls always move into other online marketing areas. Today, a call about instant chat led to a conversation about how "the boss" wanted to go a certain route with their website. It was obvious "the boss" was on an ego trip because he wanted to plaster his face all over the homepage inside a bunch of interactive Flash sections. I thought to myself how sad it is that website providers are still trying to sell dealers on things that don't really help business and it is also sad that these conversations are still happening in 2010....and knowing our industry we'll still be having this conversation in 2015.
Why is it sad?
1. SEO: search engines still cannot read a Flash element. If your whole site is Flash, then....ouch.
2. Installs: not everyone keeps their computers up-to-date. If your site requires someone to upgrade something, it is an annoyance and most people don't think you're important enough to invest their time in.
3. Apple: iPhones and iPads don't support Flash. There are over 40 million iPhones and over half a million iPads in the world today. Don't alienate this crowd.
4. Speed: Flash typically takes longer to load. If your site takes too long to load, people will bounce. And, Google knows that. A slow loading site will hurt your Google standings.
Here's a different spin on things:
[Quote from: 1minus1]
If your objective is to just put your HIPPO ego out to the world, then Flash is fantastic! But if your objective is to provide a meaningful experience to your shoppers, that will eventually lead to profit, then shy away from Flash.
Here we are in 2010 and we need to get "oooohhhh aaaahhhh pretty" out of our vocabulary and get serious about retail.
Die flash die!
Use BatchGeo to Produce Monthly Sales and Marketing Reports
Here is a real world example of how BatchGeo can move a business forward.
We had an under performing store that I had pegged to poor phone skills. I listen to the incoming calls and that store needed help.... badly. Like every other store, managers are upto their armpits fighting alligators and we handled phone training like most everyone else, "WTF IS WRONG WITH ERNIE? TELL HIM TO GET BETTER OR..." You know the routine.
Because we can listening to calls OFTEN causes a manager to react to THAT single call and not see it all in a larger light.
I batchGeo'd the stores sales and I had an "Ah ha!!" moment.
I found the store was doing well in its local market, but had very poor results everywhere outside a 10-15 mile radius.
Funny how things work out, while I was building my presentation to owner & management, it was right about this time that Jerry Thibeau showed up on the Dealer Refresh forums with his offer to demo his phone training skills: http://forum.dealerrefresh.com/f5/how-your-phone-...
Viola! Thanks to BatchGeo and the Ninja guy
I had it all in a nice tight package.
Problem: Poor Sales (relative to other stores)
Cause: BatchGeo reveals poor long distance sales that RELY on phone skills.
Solution: http://phoneupninjas.com/
Because of BatchGeo, everyone could see the cause and effect. I had the buy in from the top and the managers.
That's how ya dooze it.
Game. Set. Match.
I had the
We had an under performing store that I had pegged to poor phone skills. I listen to the incoming calls and that store needed help.... badly. Like every other store, managers are upto their armpits fighting alligators and we handled phone training like most everyone else, "WTF IS WRONG WITH ERNIE? TELL HIM TO GET BETTER OR..." You know the routine.
Because we can listening to calls OFTEN causes a manager to react to THAT single call and not see it all in a larger light.
I batchGeo'd the stores sales and I had an "Ah ha!!" moment.
I found the store was doing well in its local market, but had very poor results everywhere outside a 10-15 mile radius.
Funny how things work out, while I was building my presentation to owner & management, it was right about this time that Jerry Thibeau showed up on the Dealer Refresh forums with his offer to demo his phone training skills: http://forum.dealerrefresh.com/f5/how-your-phone-...
Viola! Thanks to BatchGeo and the Ninja guy
I had it all in a nice tight package.Problem: Poor Sales (relative to other stores)
Cause: BatchGeo reveals poor long distance sales that RELY on phone skills.
Solution: http://phoneupninjas.com/
Because of BatchGeo, everyone could see the cause and effect. I had the buy in from the top and the managers.
That's how ya dooze it.
Game. Set. Match.
I had the
Use BatchGeo to Produce Monthly Sales and Marketing Reports
- By joe.pistell
Most of us are visual, you know the old saying... "A picture can tell a thousand words". I am here to tell you that when it comes to business decisions, decision makers will move mountains if they can see their progress on charts and maps. Today, I'm exposing a really cool and free online map builder: http://www.batchgeo.com.
I have been using BatchGeo to produce monthly sales and marketing reports for almost 2 years, I thought a few of you could use this site and get real creative to help demonstrate why you should get that raise!
BatchGeo takes any address and plots it on a google or yahoo map for you. "Yawn" you say? But, what if you can plot all your internet sales from the last 90 days, assign different colored push pins for each lead source... in say 60 seconds!!? Now we're talkin'!
Let's start ‘er up and take her for a spin!
First project for our demo will be plotting a list of a few of our DR members on a google map. 1st, we collected the names on our DR message boards, then, I moved it to a Spread Sheet, then I copied and pasted that info into BatchGeo and viola! Look what we have here!
The Dealer Refresh Community Foot Print!
Nice indeed! What BatchGeo.com will do is allow you to copy-n-paste any address information from a spread sheet and automatically plot it on a Google or yahoo map.
The information that comes from this can really move decision making. How big is your sales foot print? What about last year? How big is your service foot print? What if you want to advertize in a market that's just outside your reach?
Say your 90 mins out from a large market and you want to run a Google AdWords campaign to draw people in. After you plot your existing sales on BatchGeocode.com, Execute your new Google AdWords campaign, the following month, re-run your updated info into BatchGeo.com and your new map will see if your footprint has changed.
You can produce Sales Maps by Store
http://www.batchgeo.com/map/2084fdc5a16f753b2a98175330a0a939
You can produce Sales Map by Sales rep
http://www.batchgeo.com/map/d9912c0f5e44f98fd6e344200a54feb8
See where I am going with this?
You can plot "Internet Sales" vs Non-Internet Sales. You can plot sales by lead source, you can copy n paste in your incoming phone call records (by lead source if you’d like. We opened a new store after an Sales Map analysis quickly showed everyone that this new store’s location would have no material impact on the other stores footprint. Nice… very nice. Did I mention it was free? If you like it, They take donations via PayPal!
Just amazing.
I have been using BatchGeo to produce monthly sales and marketing reports for almost 2 years, I thought a few of you could use this site and get real creative to help demonstrate why you should get that raise!
BatchGeo takes any address and plots it on a google or yahoo map for you. "Yawn" you say? But, what if you can plot all your internet sales from the last 90 days, assign different colored push pins for each lead source... in say 60 seconds!!? Now we're talkin'!
Let's start ‘er up and take her for a spin!
First project for our demo will be plotting a list of a few of our DR members on a google map. 1st, we collected the names on our DR message boards, then, I moved it to a Spread Sheet, then I copied and pasted that info into BatchGeo and viola! Look what we have here!
The Dealer Refresh Community Foot Print!
Nice indeed! What BatchGeo.com will do is allow you to copy-n-paste any address information from a spread sheet and automatically plot it on a Google or yahoo map.
The information that comes from this can really move decision making. How big is your sales foot print? What about last year? How big is your service foot print? What if you want to advertize in a market that's just outside your reach?
Say your 90 mins out from a large market and you want to run a Google AdWords campaign to draw people in. After you plot your existing sales on BatchGeocode.com, Execute your new Google AdWords campaign, the following month, re-run your updated info into BatchGeo.com and your new map will see if your footprint has changed.
You can produce Sales Maps by Store
http://www.batchgeo.com/map/2084fdc5a16f753b2a98175330a0a939
You can produce Sales Map by Sales rep
http://www.batchgeo.com/map/d9912c0f5e44f98fd6e344200a54feb8
See where I am going with this?
You can plot "Internet Sales" vs Non-Internet Sales. You can plot sales by lead source, you can copy n paste in your incoming phone call records (by lead source if you’d like
. We opened a new store after an Sales Map analysis quickly showed everyone that this new store’s location would have no material impact on the other stores footprint. Nice… very nice. Did I mention it was free? If you like it, They take donations via PayPal!Just amazing.
