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We always see our clients that either we write blog posts for or write their own that they routinely perform better than sites that don’t do any blog posts. There is a secret formula we have used over the years that have allowed us to get all of our clients to the first page almost always. There never is a “magic bullet” that will guarantee you page one results but following best practices, industry trends, and avoiding bad techniques you stand a better chance of being on page one. So, let’s stop the talking and get to some actionable results with Google, Bing, and other search engines.

We have never been fans of sliders as we found them distracting, not helping with your call to action or sales funnel. We won’t deny that having a slider can “look cool” but a website is more than just looking cool. You want to bring people into your sales funnel and buy from you. I will take a sale any day of the week over being the cool kid on the block. There’s more though than just your sales funnel to think about when it comes to a slider on your homepage (or any page for that matter). Let’s look at some of the drawbacks of sliders as well as how you can still have that cool kid wow factor and get rid of those drawbacks.

The world is bigger than we are or is it? That is a question I have pondered for many years. Like many, I have had more setbacks than I care to count. More than some while be less than others. Each set back has set me to a place that has put me where I am today. I have done not only good with my life but continue to strive for greatness. It has been, and continues to be, a personal struggle with the only competition I have; myself.

Email is centralized to a user where information is in a silo that only the one user can truly see. This creates speed bumps, roadblocks, and chaos within an organization. There are ways to fix this chaos by centralizing everything and making these tasks available to the entire team. Not only does this bring visibility into the eyes of everyone within the company but also brings in collaborative teamwork. When workloads for some are less they can step up and tackle items in the work queue and speed the entire process and eliminate one person from slowly down items within the system. This not only helps get projects completed more efficiently but lists start shrinking rather than growing.

The EU on May 22, 2017, past a new law called General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This law goes into effect in May of 2018. Many companies, like JM2, have already taken measures to comply with this law. Hopefully, you have been diligent in meeting these upcoming needs so that you don't get hit with fines. The EU is very much behind peoples privacy and this affects anyone that maintains any personal data about individuals. This law also affects companies in the United States! The internet is big and there are no physical boundaries for commerce. The United States is often behind when it comes to laws of personal protection and this one is very aggressive. By being in compliance today you are a lot closer to be ready for when the United States catches up to protecting consumers more.

eCommerce for many businesses is their lifeblood and their sole source of income. For others, it is a value-added service to their loyal following and those too far away to come into a physical store. We all know companies like Amazon, Target, and Walmart that sell their products online so we all know what the purpose of what eCommerce has. What many don’t realize is an eCommerce is not the same as a regular website. All the items of a regular website matter but in different ways. A third of all our clients doing online sales it’s time to truly look at what works for eCommerce.

Back before 2010, and even today some people have too much social media. One might wonder how you can have too much social as social is getting out there, talking, and getting your good word out to the masses. Well, it can happen to everyone, including you. You can have too much social and when you do you will actually set your social media back. Social media is as important to have a website with great content and optimized for not only your readers but the search engines.

Over the past 30-days, I challenged myself to write some very short (500-1,000 words or less) blog articles. This goes against many that say you should make your articles from 2,000-3,000 words for optimal search engine optimization. This 30-blog article exercise had a challenge and two hidden objectives that I didn’t tell anyone. The challenge was the topics were chosen by others and randomly selected by one of our computer programs. The second was what would happen search engine optimization wise writing 30 blog articles in 30-days. The final and third reason was to stress test some blog functionality being we now have several influencers in multiple industries using our blogging system specifically for increased SEO. Let’s take a look at what happened, what worked, what was improved, and talk about a few gems that were not expected during this entire process.

eCommerce is a growing sector of the Internet. It is growing around 10% per year and increasing each year. eCommerce is our fastest growing segment for the past two years with our clients. Many clients are either doing two websites or they are doing solely eCommerce. Part of this is due to our own push on eCommerce where we are reducing the credit card percent, transaction fees, and monthly fees with our credit card providers. The other is businesses want revenue from their internet marketing presence. We have clients on nopCommerce, Etsy, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Shopify.

The day I decided to start my own business scared the crap out of me. I was going from a beyond comfortable guaranteed income to one where it was a complete unknown. Since I was twelve years old I had worked. Starting out as a paperboy for the Chesterton Tribune was my first step into being a freelancer as I might have delivered newspapers but was responsible for collecting money and delivering the product. I wanted the money for candy, fancy shoes, and anything else a teenager would want. I know that in the past five years if I would have stayed working for “the man” I would be close to having made half million dollars in that short period of time. So why in the world would anyone give up luxury for something less? Actually, I didn’t!

I find it appropriate to write about being human on a day I am truly struggling with humanity. I am human after all (I know shocking – even to me) so why not talk about being human, making mistakes, treating people around me with respect, and making a positive influence in people’s lives. When you grow up in a small town like Chesterton Indiana which has some really great values and then move to a growing community like Valparaiso Indiana you wouldn’t think that I would have any struggles with being human at all.

Feedback for any business is crucial to its success. You can learn what your customers are enjoying as well as areas for improvement. The key to any feedback is it not be attacking but helpful. The people that are providing feedback are doing so as they want to be heard. This is whether the experience is a positive one or a negative one. In the old days, we had feedback forms that could either be filled out during that stay or mailed in on a postcard. There are several ways of gaining feedback from users today and we’re going to look at the top three methods of not only getting feedback but also how to protect your business from negative feedback (as much as possible).