There are people out there right now looking up nearby restaurants on their phone, someone with a burst pipe searching for a plumber on their home computer, another frantically searching for a florist between work and home soon after realizing today’s his wedding anniversary; no matter the scenario, there are consumers all over the place looking for the goods and services you offer via online local listings – are you positioned to take advantage?

Where are They Looking?
The major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing all offer their own local business directories, not to mention the hundreds of smaller, yet still extremely popular, local listing and review sites. Though you’ll almost always be pushed towards an upsell, some more strongly than others, there are many of these sites that allow you to update your listing for absolutely free. It naturally stands to reason that the more of these sites your information populates, the more likely you are to be found, with each and every new listing adding another link to the wide net you’re casting.

For example, Google Places provides plenty of help for you to claim and update your listing with more than simple text, it offers the ability to add pictures, videos and more.

“But, I’m Already There.”
Many business owners find their listing, see the information is accurate and make the mistake of leaving it be. The simple act of “claiming” your listing gives you a boost in the Google seven-pack ranking (the top seven local business results for a particular search), and thereafter every bit of information you add helps even more. In the search engine’s eyes, the more information provided the better they themselves do in serving their user’s experience.

The Local Search Marketing Chess Match
Signing up for the game is just the beginning, if your goal is to then begin improving your rank amongst competitors in search results there are many, many variables to take into consideration. If you’re willing to put in the time and effort and your business thrives on the influx of local clientele, then the local search game can be lucrative for businesses of every size.

For those business owners with tight schedules and little time for DIY projects, Thermo Studios is very pleased to offer a highly cost-effective solution called Local Search Visibility. Our SEO professionals can provide you not only wide coverage, but also an edge over your competition via keyword research and search-optimized content. Contact us today to find out how our LSV program can help your business.

Announcing Our New Website & Services

Website Relaunch

Thank you visiting Thermo Studios’ updated and upgraded website! Now covering our full complement of new services, along with a constant stream of fresh and helpful support pages, articles and news items, our fresh look provides convenient and practical information for maintaining your website and expanding your online reach.

Discover Our New, Full Range of Web Marketing Services

In order to better serve you we now provide a wide range of website marketing solutions so you can get the absolute most from our website designs. Having recently forged a partnership with an online marketing firm, Thermo Studios can now offer fully customized packages to suit nearly any sized business and budget. With Thermo Studios you can now conduct your site build, hosting and marketing all in one place! Please fill out the form in our marketing section to get a web marketing quote.

Article: Website Owners – What to Expect?

Our latest article, “What’s Involved in Owning a Website?”, is aimed at helping future and new website owners understand the essentials of starting and maintaining your footing in the online world. Here we try to provide you the facts so you can make an informed decision for both you and your business.

If you’re ever in search of further information, we proudly offer our full Resources section for news, helpful articles and support documents anytime. And, as always, should you like to ask a member of our staff a question directly you need only contact us.

There’s a very common misconception that picking a web address and building a website on top of it automatically means fortune and fame are secure thanks to this newfound worldwide reach. The potential is there, of course, but, just as it is for brick and mortar storefronts, people have to be made aware of your presence. And too, like a physical location, there’s basic maintenance involved as well. Let’s take a quick look at the realities of owning a website.

Registration
So, you’ve decided on a domain name and are ready to stake your claim. For this first step of registering your domain name we recommend visiting GoDaddy.com for the simple fact that they’re amongst the cheapest and also have excellent phone support. Of course, you should be aware that GoDaddy will try to up-sell you on a lot of other products you don’t need, but if you stay focused you should come out having spent only $10.00 to reserve your domain for the year. Also, we highly recommend you sign up for auto-renewal; we’ve seen many clients lose their domain address as the renewal deadline passes. There’s potential for someone to buy it at that point to either build their own site upon it or hold it for sale – regardless, if you are able to get it back it will very likely cost more than the $10.00 you’d have spent otherwise.

Hosting
Step two involves finding a host for your website. Essentially, this is where the information for your site is stored, generated and accessed. Thermo Studios is happy to offer hosting to our design and marketing customers through the highly reputable Rackspace data centers. Secure, reliable and easy to use, this no-nonsense hosting solution is one that’ll keep you happy by simply keeping you from having to think about it.

Visual Design
The look and design of your website is more than mere formality, this is your opportunity to show your professionalism and build trust with your style. Even beyond the all-important first impression, it’s crucial to consider that the layout and structure of your site is truly the pathway visitors take to your end goal. We build with this in mind, this guiding hand making navigation easier and more pleasant for visitors, ultimately resulting in happier clientele and a higher return on your investment.

Content
Just as pleasant design and well-mapped navigation supply enticing and easy pathways for visitors to navigate, professionally-written content supports the literal call to action that nudges visitors into and on through your sales funnel. When properly coupled with design, you not only make it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for, but to also meet your intended goal, whether it’s in the form of a purchase, filling out a form, or  even a simple phone call.

Content Management System (CMS)
Your content management system is where the customizations of your site are made. We at Thermo Studios build with WordPress, as it’s cost-effective, full of important features and search engine friendly. You’ll have the ability to keep your content fresh with the user-friendly interface, making updates accessible and uncomplicated.

Analytics
Your site analytics are more than statistics on how many people have visited your home page, at your disposal is insight into trends and patterns that you can take advantage of to improve your site’s conversion rate. Your “conversion” is the aforementioned goal you’ve established for a visitor of your site, and with this in mind you can sift through analytics to see whether these goals are being met, and further, where they aren’t. How helpful would it be to know what keyword phrase a visitor used to find you, their geographic location, and what pages on your site are the most popular in both traffic and time spent on the page?

Upkeep
To keep your site up and running there is some basic, and essential, maintenance to keep up with should you choose to do it yourself:

• Domain renewal: As mentioned above, neglecting this can result in the loss of your domain name or, at the very least, paying out more than the $10.00 renewal fee in your effort to buy it back.

• Hosting renewal: Considering this is where all your site information is stored it’s a good idea to find a reliable hosting service and keep current on your invoices. There are many quality services out there with competitive pricing, and we proudly include ourselves as well.

• Hosting backup: What would you lose if your site went down? Without backing up your site and database you’re unnecessarily risking downtime, information loss and, of course, financial costs.

• Software updates: Just as web browsers update, so will your CMS, and should you not keep up with the times you run the risk of your site’s performance degrading along with potential security issues.

Marketing
Amongst the millions upon millions of websites out there, how are people to find yours? What is your plan to drive traffic to your website? There are a myriad of marketing solutions that can be customized to benefit the smallest to largest businesses, and there are also some things you can do to help yourself – in fact, depending on how web-savvy you are one of the first questions to ask should be, “Should I hire an outside professional or try this myself?”

Whatever you choose it’s best to create a sustainable plan, and ideally, have it prepared before even building your website so you can have search engine optimized content installed from the start. Going forward, it’s also good to consider maintaining a blog on your site, which both gives search engines the fresh content they crave along with serving as “link bait”. Links to your site from other websites that contain related content help validate you to the search engines, and in turn, you rank higher and higher as your backlink profile expands.

How Can We Help You?
Altogether, these are merely a gloss of what it takes to keep your website running. Should you have any questions, we invite you to contact us today. Thermo Studios can help get you started and support you and your website as you adjust and expand into the future.

You’ve probably heard of hundreds of online applications that can help you with your small business. And you probably wonder what the heck many of them even do.

Well, here’s a couple that really can save you time and money.

Wufoo and Formstack.

Essentially, they do the same thing; They help you build customizable online forms that become contact forms, surveys, event registration, invitations, and order forms to embed in your website. You pick the type of form, arrange visual elements, and input your required fields. Then, they give you the URL, JavaScript, or HTML to place wherever your clients will notice it on your site.

The result: less time and money spent collecting valuable information from your customers.

Both programs offer instant feedback notifications, build reports and charts, share your data using various platforms, and allow you to add multiple users to your accounts. They both even offer safe data keeping with 128-bit SSL protection.

So if they’re both so useful, which one is right for you? Well, that’s where it gets tricky. Both offer very similar features and options.

The major difference between the two? Integration with external parties.

Wufoo and Formstack both feature integration with online payment systems to allow you to collect payments from clients for products, registrations, and events. It makes life much easier, but pay attention because each authorizes a slightly different list of acceptable parties. Wufoo allows payments using PayPal, Authorize.net, Google Checkout, USA ePay, or FreshBooks. Formstack is set up to integrate with PayPal, Authorize.net, Google Checkout, and First Data.

Furthermore, both form building companies allow integration with other third party applications such as bulk emailers (Wufoo: Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, CakeMail, and Sendloop. Formstack: Campaign Monitor, Exact Target, and MailChimp) and CRM programs (Wufoo: Highrise and Heap CRM. Formstack: Email Center Pro, Highrise, and salesforce.com).

So when you’re shopping around for an online form builder for your business, check with one of these great programs. Just make sure to pick the one that uses the same third party platforms you’ve already hooked into.

We’ve taken a step back, remembered what we do best, and redesigned our company website to help our existing and new customers. We make effective websites for small businesses that are well built and ready to grow. Here are some new sections of our company website that reflect this:

Web Design Services

Being an Austin web design company, we’re in a town full of entrepreneurs and business owners. We’re also in the heart of the web design tech community. We stay active in the local tech scene here so we can stay on top of current trends and best practices.

We talk to many different business owners. All with different sized companies and budgets. Since cost matters, we’ve devoted a page to explain our web design prices.

Web Marketing Services

Getting visitors to your website is the number one goal for website owners. Most of our clients are local, so providing internet marketing in Austin has become a service we also specialize in. Our web marketing services range from pay per click advertising to backlink campaigns to Austin search engine optimization.

Check out our web marketing page to see our full range of services.

Resources for Website Owners

In our effort to help educate our clients and website owners we’ve set up our “Resources” section to answer common questions and provide useful information. We invite you to come back regularly as we’ll be adding great tips, tricks and articles for small business owners.

We look forward to growing your website with you.

Setting up email addresses is the main reason our client use their hosting control panel. This page will explain how to login to your control panel and create a new email address. To learn how to configure your email address and set up your computer to check your email please read our Email Support Doc.

The hosting control panel allows you to:

• Create new email addresses
• View or edit your FTP information
• See server usage stats
• Add a new database

How to log in to the control panel

1. Go to https://www.websitesettings.com
2. Enter your username and password. This was given to you when you when we setup your account. If you need us to resend your username and password to the email account we have on file then please contact us.
3. Use the buttons in the sidebar and the tabs along the top to navigate the control panel

How to create a new email account

1. Log in to your control panel
2. Click on your website name
3. Click the Email Accounts tab
4. Click the Add button

Setup new email accounts in the hosting control panel

You can create a new email address by logging into the control panel and looking under the Email Accounts tab. For further instructions see our Support Doc Hosting Control Panel.

Email Settings

The webmail system is where you can change all important email settings. Examples are email forwarding, spam settings, auto responders, changing your password and many more. Log into webmail to configure your email account.

Logging into Webmail

1. Go to webmail.”your domain name” (e.g. webmail.yourdomain.com). Then sign in with your full email address and password (that you set up in the control panel).
OR
2. Go to mail.emailsrvr.com. Then sign in with your full email address and password (that you set up in the control panel).

Setup your computer to check email

Below are the instructions on how to setup the most popular email programs. Click on the program you want to setup and follow the instructions.

• ChatterEmail
• Entourage
• Eudora
• Mail.app (Apple Mail & Mac Mail)
• Opera
• Outlook (2000)
• Outlook (2002 & XP)
• Outlook (2003)
• Outlook (2007)
• Outlook Express
• PowerMail
• Thunderbird
• VersaMail
• Windows Mail
• Windows Mobile
• iPhone
• Palm Pre