If you have a business in Ontario, Canada, you may have heard of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, or AODA.  If you haven’t, now would be a good time to do some research on the terms that are now affecting all businesses in the private sector. Refusal to comply with the Customer Service Standards can result in fines of up to $100,000 per day for the corporation.

This act was created in 2005 with the goal of removing barriers for activities and opportunities for disabled individuals by 2025. The Ontario Government has split AODA compliance into different sets of mandatory standards, all being implemented and enforced by the government in phases. They are:

1. Customer Service Standard

2. Integrated Accessibility Regulation

• Information and Communications
• Employment
• Transportation

3. Built Environment

Almost seven years after introducing the act, it is now time for businesses to take action and make their businesses accessible to all Ontarians. The deadline for businesses in the private sector to be compliant was January 1, 2012. Public sector organizations that provide goods and services to the public had to be compliant by January 1, 2010.

In short, if your organization has at least one employee with a phone on their desk whose role involves interaction with others who do not work for your company, your business must comply. While there are other sections of the AODA addressing elements such as accessibility within your actual office space, the focus of this article is on how these laws affect your website. The Web Content and Accessibility Guideline (or WCAG) outlines the ways in which your website must comply.

Most custom-built websites should be flexible and scalable enough to support the necessary updates to be compliant with AODA. How we all access information is a huge part of our daily lives, especially with the growing internet community. Since this Act aims to provide people with disabilities the same ease of usability as everyone else, it is likely that your website could need some updating in order to be compliant.  Below, I have outlined the WCAG elements that your website must have in order to comply with AODA.

1.1    Text Alternatives
Providing your website’s visitors with text alternatives for non-text content can facilitate the user experience for those with disabilities. Options can include larger print, symbols, simpler language, braille or audio descriptions.

1.2    Time-based Media
Providing alternatives for time-based media ensures that anyone who wants to access all of the information on your site has the means to do so. This can include providing audio-only versions of video content, and text versions of audio content. This allows users with a variety of visual or auditory disabilities to be able to fully access the content of your site in its entirety.

1.3    Adaptable
Depending on the age and quality of your current website, this could be a very easy update. Making your content adaptable enables it to be presented in different ways, such as with a simpler layout, while still providing the same information and structure.

1.4    Distinguishable
The style and design of your website speaks volumes to your target market, attitudes, preferences and competitive advantages. While some fonts and colours could appear more fashionable, having easy-to-read fonts, a good colour contrast between your text and background, and a text size of at least 14 points is part of this component of WCAG. This also involves making your links and controls highly visible when they receive keyboard or mouse focus.

2.1  Keyboard Accessible
Having a website that is entirely keyboard accessible is very useful to individuals with motor skills disabilities. Allowing your users to navigate through your website without using a mouse facilitates the user of your website as users can avoid maneuvering a small mouse point and click on small areas to navigate your website.

2.2  Enough Time
Having content that is set to rotate or change automatically after a certain period of time provides a flashy look for your website, but can be problematic to those with dyslexia or other reading disabilities. Giving users the ability to turn off or adjust the time on this feature, or warn the user that the content will change unless they perform a simple action (I.e., press the Enter key) that extends their time.

2.3  Seizures
Avoiding design or functionality elements that project in any way that is known to cause seizures ensures your visitors will be safe while browsing your site. You can check any flashing elements on your site to make sure that no component flashes more than three times per second, minimizing the size of your flashing areas, and using online tools to ensure that any elements do not exceed either the general flash or red flash threshold.

2.4  Navigable
An intuitively structured website will involve strategic decisions designed to help your users navigate, find content, and determine where they are on your site. Making your links visually distinct, allowing users to navigate to different sections of a web page and limiting the number of links per page are good ways to follow this guideline.

3.1  Readable
Content that is readable and understandable is not just a way of facilitating those with disabilities; it ensures that anyone who visits your site can comprehend your product, service, or message. This relates to making sure your text is distinguishable: avoid chunks of italicized text, avoid similarly coloured background and text, using justifications only when necessary, etc.  Other aspects of this section include using clear and simple language, avoiding foreign or unusual words, and providing sign language versions of basic information on your site, such as how to contact the Webmaster.

3.2  Predictable
Having a consistent style provides a certain amount of cohesion to your site and overall design. This guideline requires that your web pages operate and appear in predictable ways. This includes keeping your navigation in a consistent location and notifying your users if clicking on links will open new windows or direct them away from their current location on the site.

3.3  Input Assistance
A website that requests its users to fill out a form and then rejecting the form without providing any explanation is a very frustrating experience from a usability perspective. This guideline involves helping users avoid and correct mistakes. If a form was rejected because the user did not fill out a mandatory field, for example, provide a notice that an error was identified and explain to the user how to correct this error. Make sure any instructions on your site are provided in a clear and concise way. Also make sure that you have a ‘Help’ link on each page where a user inputs their information.

4.1  Compatible
This last portion of the WCAG involves making sure that your website is highly compatible with various gadgets, including assistive technology gadgets. Making sure the code of your website is up to coding standards, as outlined in the W3C, will ensure that your website’s content can be captured and understood with the use of screen readers and other assistive technology softwares and tools.

These are high-level overviews of the various areas in which your website must comply in order to be accessible for all Ontarians. The WCAG offers much more detailed information on a technical level for implementing these changes, as well as exceptions or alternatives.

Having a website that is compliant with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act is not just an option for businesses in Ontario; it is mandatory. Refusal to comply with the Customer Service Standards can result in fines of $50,000 per day for Directors and Officers and fines of up to $100,000 per day for the corporation. This is not just about punitive action, however; with approximately one in seven Ontarians living with a disability, this is about opening your business up to service anyone that falls within your target market. Compiling with these Customer Service Standards reflects positively upon your business, within your community and among your employees.

The purpose of this article to provide some assistance when choosing a website building company and to identify some of the common mistakes people make. With my role in Business Development, I encounter many different prospective clients with a wide variety of requirements. Many of those who wish to engage us as part of their website project lack the background knowledge required to make informed decisions.

1. Requirements gathering.  
Each week and without fail I receive a number of inquiries for website design and SEO projects where the prospect approaches us and has no idea how they want their project to work. It’s usually a high level idea which resides in their head.  It then becomes my job to play detective to try and sleuth around to understand what the prospect is hoping their web project will accomplish.  One of the key challenges with this type of approach is that each website provider the prospect speaks with gathers different pieces of information as they are also playing detective.  One of the net results of this process is that a prospect receives a wide range of pricing because they were simply too vague in what the requirements are. They could then make the mistake of ruling out one vendor based on a higher price point, when that vendor was actually offering them a completely different website project.

Taking the time to document your ideas and how you want to engage your audience(s) will provide much more clarity to all parties.  As you put your ideas together on paper, it starts to become the projects roadmap and it gives each vendor the same information.  At this stage it is more important for the website vendor to understand your business requirements rather than sorting out the technical issues, so lack of a technical background should not be a concern for you at this point.

Fill in this form and ask for the Questionnaire that will help you to define your project.

2. Come up with a budget before you engage.  
Understanding the prospect’s budget is key to helping the website vendor understand any financial constraints the prospect has.  Often times prospects are unwilling to provide a budget range as they fear the vendor will bid up to that figure.

Another common response by prospects is to tell the vendor the prices other vendors have provided.  This only tells us what other vendors may charge but provides no indication of what the client can afford.

Providing the vendor with clear requirements and a valid budget range this will eliminate any wasted cycles on both sides.  It allows the vendor to determine if the project is a good fit, and to prioritize the requirements if the project can be broken up to the must have functional items and the prospects wish list which could be added at a later date.

3. Understanding value & ROI.
For many companies starting out or existing companies looking to gain market share, often times they focus solely on the financial expense of building the website or investing in internet marketing, without focusing on engaging their market and the expected ROI.
Let’s look at some examples to highlight the above.  We were approached recently by a real estate broker who sells houses and condos in the upscale neighborhoods of Toronto.  Based on the high selling prices, the commission per sale can range in the thousands to tens of thousands of dollars.  This individual thought that spending anything over $1,500 to build a website was a very high cost.  As the website needs to align with the agents market, people who are prepared to spend upwards of a million dollars or more on a home, there is a disconnect between the agents investment and providing a high impact web experience that will convert a visitor to a customer.

In another case, we have an existing client whom we had built a website for and they now wanted to add Internet marketing to increase their market share.  Based on the goals and objectives they were looking to add an additional $1.3 million dollars in sales.  When they were presented with the cost to do SEO, they were shocked the number.  However, when you evaluate the potential outcome, the client investments in the Internet marketing represented less than 2% of the planned revenue gain.  In other words, it would have cost them less than 2 cents to make a dollar.

By investing your time on the above points before you contact a website vendor it will help you greatly in your selection process. Thinking about what you hope to gain from the website, your budget, and the value that an upgraded website can add to your business are three integral steps to setting yourself up for a successful website project. If you are comparing vendors, you will know that the numbers you are getting from the different companies align and are for similarly sized projects within the same scope. While the Business Development representative is available to help answer questions and offer suggestions, having an idea of these things before initiating conversations with website vendors will ensure a smoother process.

Save time and avoid these mistakes. Fill out questionnaire and get started on the right track. Request the questionnaire.

Avoid making these mistakes and contact 9th sphere today for a website consultation!

Mobile phones and mobile web presented an increasingly popular medium for digital marketing.  With more companies investing in mobile, more advertising dollars being allocated into mobile campaigns and Smartphones becoming more advanced than ever before (flash integration, better usability, html5).  Although this is still a small part of overall advertising budgets, it will continue to have strong growth in the New Year.

Search engines rolled out some big changes to the way their search algorithm works in 2011. Google emphasized cleaning up their search results, as seen with the new Block Sites feature and the release of Panda.  The update represents a new path for the future and a change that has made SEO and internet marketing much more challenging – but  also creates a better landscape for quality content online, which is beneficial to everyone.

In terms of web activities on the search engines, while most web users searched for celebrities, some key news stories ended up on the top 10 list of searches for 2011. Each year Google lists the Top 10 global search trends, in a variety of categories, and then breaks those trends down on a nation-by-nation basis. According to Google’s Zeitgeist list for 2011, the things that Canadians most googled were Statistics Canada’s census website and, not far behind, the Canada Post strike.

2011 Canada’s fastest rising search’s from Google

1. www.census2011.gc.ca
2. Skyrim
3. Canada Post strike
4. Rebecca Black
5. Ryan Dunn
6. Japan earthquake
7. Game of Thrones
8. Jack Layton
9. Royal Wedding
10. Google Plus

We have also compiled a list of the major internet marketing and online business news throughout 2011.  Here are some big news makers.

January:

• Canada named world’s top country brand

February:

• Google makes a major algorithm change (aka Panda) in efforts to remove copycat websites from search results

March:

• eBay agrees to buy GSI Commerce, provider of ecommerce and interactive marketing services, for $2.4 billion
• CRM company Salesforce.com acquires social media monitoring company Radian6

April:

• Facebook launches “Social Deals” to challenge Groupon and LivingSocial

May:

• LinkedIn IPO
• Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5 Billion
• Google stops its project to scan newspapers

June:

• Report showing Facebook loosing visitors for 2nd straight month. Lost 1.52 million users (down to 16.6 million)
• Introduction of new social networking site, Google+
• Music streaming site, Pandora, prices IPO at $7-9/share
• Google’s Panda 2.2 update goes live with improvements to scraper detection

August:

• Google buys Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion

September:

• The 60-day comment period on draft regulations related to Canada’s anti-spam legislation ended
• Google+ social network open to everyone

October:

• Google redirects signed in users to https:// and removes search referral data

November:

• Google crawler able to execute JavaScrip/AJAX
• Google+ Pages released worldwide allowing business to create their own profile page.
• Groupon IPO debuts at $28/share
• Twitter and Mozilla struck a deal that makes Twitter search one of the default search options in the new Firefox 8 web browser.

December:

• YouTube launches biggest redesign in its history
• comScore reports Bing and Yahoo have 15% equal search market share in US. Google holds 65.4%
• comScore reports Canadian have the highest number of videos per viewer, average about about an hour watching 10 videos online / day
• StatCounter reports Chrome 15 becomes World’s most popular browser, beating IE 8
• Twitter Launches Self Serve Ad Platform
• IBM found online shopping jumped 16.4% on Christmas Day over last year. 7% of all online purchases were made using the iPad

Did I miss anything?

It was an eventful year to say the least. I project that has more to come 2012 in the mobile web and that we will see watching videos online becoming more mainstream.  Just as the music and newspaper industry has changed with the rise of the Internet, watching television and movies will continue to evolve into more web based platform.  I see the number of new social users leveling off, rather than increasing, and instead the social networks will focus on expanding their service offerings and integrating features with other applications.

It’s never a dull day in the world of the web!

This is a must-read before you flick that switch. There are several key pieces of information you should know before you make your new website live to ensure that traffic levels, sales or leads don’t disappear.

Whether your website is being updated or redesigned, there are many items that need to be reviewed before the launch of a new website.  Depending on your exact situation, there may be more that is needed than is covered in this article, however many of the key parts are mentioned here.

Alterations to a website that involve large amounts of deleted or moved files, new technology implementation, content modifications, changes in domain names or hosting providers may have a significant impacts.  This could affect current clients, new prospects, partners and often most detrimental, the search engines. Any of these circumstances are potentially a dangerous situation for search engine ranking, which has the ability to cut the life blood of many businesses today.

At a minimum, these should be reviewed to confirm that everything is in order before proceeding.

URLs Are Critical
The main concern that stems from these changes to your website is rooted at the path changes to URLs. For instance, your old website will potentially have hundreds of URLs like www.domain.com/page.php or www.domain.ca/image.jpg.  When a redesign is done and technologies, domain names, hosting providers, file names, or images are changed, this will result in either broken parts or invalid URLs.

Clients, friends, partners, and others, familiarize themselves with URL’s, and bookmark pages they like or want to reference again.  The search engines crawl the site and, if designed in a search-engine-friendly way, will find all the files being referenced on the site.  Search engines later place a value and decide how each page, image, video, and/or file will be ranked in the search result pages.  Other websites may then start to link to these different files, referencing images, content, logos, or videos and rely on your website to provide the source of the reference.

Over time, your website becomes a pool of assets for partners, companies, clients, websites and the search engines.  These connections rely on your website to work properly.  A broken site can result in upset clients, poor usability, loss of traffic, sales, prospects and a damaged reputation.

How do you ensure a new website launch goes off without a hitch?

1.    Take Inventory. Create a website asset document that outlines who, what, where and when the domain name was registered and hosting provider(s).

2.    Domain Name Check. A domain name is a key asset that is the primary link between all of these broken files.  A change to a domain name often has the most dramatic effect.  Make sure you have access to your domain name settings so that when needed, you can change the Name Servers (DNS) or any IP’s.  Note that any DNS changes may take between 24-48 hours for DNS Propagation. That is the time it takes for the update to circle the world and update DNS records at all the different Internet Service Providers (ISP).  It’s only when this is completed that website visitors will see the updated website.  While updating your domain name, it’s also a good time to check the expiration date (and renew, if necessary) and if the WHOIS ownership data is up-to-date.  I suggest renewing your domain name so you have at least a 5 year window before it expires.

3.    Setup Website Hosting. Will you be changing your hosting provider?  If so, where is the geographic location of the new provider? If different then your current location, the new location and IP changes can sometimes effect how the search engines geo-target your ranking.  The type of hosting, such as sharing an IP, may also affect the credibility of your site if the IP is the same or in the same range as other poor-quality sites. If you have an SSL, changes in hosting providers will often result in the SSL certificate being re-issuing.

4.    Configure Email. If you host your email server with the same provider was your website, the change may affect your email functionality. Get access to your hosting provider’s admin panel and list all of the email accounts and aliases created. Make sure you go through the list and plan changes accordingly to get your email accounts moved to the new server.

5.    Have Website Backup. In case anything goes wrong, it is always best to have a back-up plan. Do you have a copy of the old website?  Make sure you have a copy that doesn’t require a connection to the server, commonly needed for databases. This will allow you to easily view any text, images, videos or URLs you need.

6.    Create URL List. You should also have a full list of your URLs. Ideally all of them should be indexed by search engines. Are you planning to change any of them? Before the launch is the right time to create a new sitemap and set up permanent (301) redirects to point updated URLs to their new homes.

7.    Review 3rd Party Tools. List any tools currently connected to the site.  These may include analytical tools that have code added to each of your pages (like Google Analytics) or any specific files (like verification files for Google Webmaster tools). Third-party sites you are referencing materials from, like YouTube, shopping carts, payment gateways, shipping API, newsletter API, lead capturing or communication applications also need to be included in this list.

8.    Adjust Ad Campaigns. Next, review your current marketing efforts. Do you have any ad campaigns driving traffic to your website?  Or even Search Engine Marketing campaigns, such as Google Adwords or Bing AdCenter?  Make a concise list of your efforts and ensure that you have the necessary access and check to see if any changes are need.

9.    Update Social Profiles. Also list and review your social profiles.  Links or file references on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the like will need to be revised.

10.    Review File Names. If you are able to, it is best to keep the same names of the key pages and files.  This will help keep those files and images intact even though they may have been changed.  The name of the logo file, contact, privacy policy or payment pages, for instance, often have numerous connections.

11.    Create a Custom 404 Error Page. A custom 404 error page is just a simple page that matches the design, layout, and main navigation of your site. It’s a page that a visitor sees when they visit a webpage that no longer exists.  It shows a short message of what went wrong and gives clear directions for the visitor of how to find information via the sitemap.

12.    Implement 301 Redirects. The safest way to preserve your ranking when web page file names (URLs) have been changed is with the 301 redirect.  In its simplest form, this is a way to tell the search engines that the old page name have changed and to instruct the browser, visitor and/or crawler that any value the old page had be transfer to the new one. The next time the search engines crawls your website, the old domain name or old path should disappear and the new one will take its place.  Note that this does not happen instantly and could take up to a few months, although many of the search engines are vastly improving their crawl rate.

13.    Create a Sitemap. Add an XML sitemap via Google Webmaster Central (or Google Webmaster tools) and Bing Webmaster Center (www.bing.com/webmaster/) in order to improve the amount of indexed pages by Google and Bing. These files have special formats and will contain a list of all pages that you would like to get indexed.

14.    Analytics Setup. Last, but not least, don’t forget about your analytics.  Ideally you want to keep your same account to preserve the history and evaluate changes based on the same benchmarks. That means you want to make sure you have setup tracking in such way that the same analytics account gets data from the old and new pages. And, obviously, you still have access to your analytics account with Administrator privileges.

Now that you have a list of your assets, you are much better prepared for the new launch. You have all of the details to ensure that when you flick that switch to go live things go smoothly.

Even the best of planning has a chance for missed items. Ensure that you have the resources available for any emergency fixes or alterations immediately after the new launch. For this reason, we usually recommend that sites be scheduled to go live in the beginning of the week so that your web company will have their full staff onboard to assist you during the transition.

If done right, your current customers, partners and the search engines should love your new and improved website.  Take it slow and steady.  In my experience, websites that I have launched have almost always improved both usability and crawlability, which improves ranking and ultimately improves the business with higher levels of success.

Allow me to first present some basic domain information for context. Top Level Domains (TLDs) are all mandated by The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Some examples of TLDs are .com, .org, .edu and .biz. Beneath TLDs come the ccTLDs; country code Top Level Domains. These include .eu, .de, .uk, and so forth. Many counties have specific domain extension, such as the .ca here in Canada has its own authority that operates underneath CIRA.  There are usually specific criteria that need to be met before a ccTLD can be registered. CIRA requires that the domain owner must be a Canadian citizen, corporation, property owner, or have some other ownership within Canada.

CIRA is proposing that, along with many other countries, Canadians should have the ability to have Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). IDNs are domain names that contain at least one character in a language-specific script or alphabet. Examples of these are Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Latin, Arabic – or characters with diacritics, such as French. IDNs themselves have been around for more than ten years; though it was only two years ago that ICANN approved the creation of IDNs for country code Top Level Domains. It has taken since then for CIRA to propose the integration of IDNs for the .ca domain extension. On September 20th, CIRA opened a public consultation to receive feedback regarding the integration of IDNs and the implications for current domain owners. Their proposed plan is to move ahead with the registration of IDNs in two phases.

The Sunrise Period
The Sunrise Period is a proposed 12-week period that would provide current registrants the opportunity to register any IDN variant combination of their existing domain names. To borrow the example provided by CIRA in their official documentation outlining their proposed IDN policy, the existing owner of preside.ca would have the opportunity to register all variants of their domain (préside.ca, prèsïdë.ca, prësîdê.ca, etc.) during the Sunrise Period before anyone else can attempt to register these domain variants. Current registrants may choose to register any and all variants that they choose; there will be no automatic assignment of IDNs for either current or future .ca registrants. At the end of the twelve weeks, the Sunrise Period would end and the Landrush Phase would commence.

The Landrush Phase
The Landrush Phase will immediately follow the 12 weeks outlined in the Sunrise Period and would allow any eligible party to register an IDN that was not previously either applied for or registered. CIRA is expecting high volumes of domain registrations during this phase and have outlined that, in the instance where more than one party applies for any given domain name, the name would be allocated on a random basis. This Phase will also last for 12 weeks. At the end of this phase, IDNs will be made available to the general public on a first come, first serve basis.

In an attempt to be both fair and objective, as well as cover all significant topics, CIRA has opened forums that address four of the major questions and concerns surrounding these proposed changes. They are outlined below, along with some opinions and potential issues that have been brought up.

1.    Does the proposed Sunrise period unfairly favour existing Registrants over trademark owners? Should trademark owners be provided further rights protection?

Some issues being raised on this particular point are regarding the trademark office and the concern that they no longer closely monitor trademark infringements; rather, it is the responsibility of the trademark owner to report and follow up on any concerns. Also, because the trademark office prohibits the registration of one business name that is similar to another with only diacritical differences, CIRA should follow that same policy to protect trademark holders and business owners. There are also concerns about cyber “squatters” who may purchase domain names with diacritical marks and confuse prospective clients of the original domain name and attempt to sell those IDNs to the original company for exorbitant sums of money. While most commenters seem to agree that IDNs would improve the culture and experience for French businesses and companies by allowing them to register accurate domains for their business names, the major concerns regarding trademark infringements, cyber squatters, and phishing scams seem to be most prevalent within this discussion forum.

2.    Are CIRA’s objectives appropriate? Is there anything that you would suggest be added or removed?

In regards to CIRA’s objectives to keep Canadians connected, there are concerns that these domain extensions with actually do the opposite: places divisions between French and English Canadians and the rest of the world. In this viewpoint, going ahead with the proposed place will hurt everyone but the registrars, who will be capitalizing on businesses that are registering every possible variant of their domain (at the regular cost of a new domain registration) in order to keep their interests secure. A proposed solution for this method would be to have an automated process that prohibits the registration of a domain that only different from a current domain in diacritical characters. CIRA currently has this policy with matching provincial variants. For example, it is currently not allowed to register domain.bc.ca if someone else already owns domain.ca. This solution would work the same way, so that if someone attempted to register domaîn.ca it would be listed as ‘unavailable’.

3.    Given CIRA’s mandate and existing Policies, Rules and Procedures, have we left out any issues that need consideration prior to developing a draft policy on the launch of IDNs?

In the issue of fairness to current CIRA registrants, it is theoretically a good idea that all current registrants will be able to first register any diacritical variants they so choose before the general public has a chance to do so. However, commenters are voicing opinions that mainly state that only the registrants of the original domains should be allowed to register any and all variants with diacritical characters. Moving forwards, CIRA could possibly implement a policy that allows all new domain registrations to have IDNs that are open to any other person that would like to register the variant.

4.    Do you have any other comments or concerns about any other elements of the proposed launch?

Concerns that do not necessarily fall under the other three categories can include potential problems with DNS, accessibility and the search engines. If CIRA takes the suggestion that all previously registered domains have the diacritical variants protected and held for them, there are concerns as to how this would work. If the goal is to include the Francophone community, would all possible variants be redirected to the existing domain? If so, what implications does this pose to DNS settings?

Accessibility is another concern. Previously mentioned above, perhaps rather that connecting Canadians, this policy will only serve to divide Canadians amongst themselves, as well as separating them from the rest of the world. Would we potentially see a rise in ‘bilingual’ keyboards that facilitate typing French properly? Furthermore, how much business would be lost to French companies with redirection errors and typing confusion?

Lastly, and potentially most disconcerting, is that there is not much information on what effect these diacritical characters will have in the search engines. Engines like Google presently typically treat special characters as equivalent to their unaccented versions. Coupled with the likelihood that the average English speaker neither owns a French keyboard nor knows the keyboard shortcuts for the characters on their current keyboards, these sites will likely only be accessible by the Francophone community.

While there is a high degree of uncertainty regarding this policy and it’s currently unknown how much input from the public CIRA will take into consideration in their final decision, CIRA has done their part to involve the public and give advanced notice of their intentions. The potential solutions to problems raised by those participating in the forums seems endless and CIRA will undoubtedly have their work cut out for them in terms of wading through the comments and finding actual problems and viable solutions that benefit the greater good. One thing is for certain, though: the implementation of IDNs WILL have a significant impact on Canadian, whether they are domain registrants, business owners, or trademark holders.

As the Internet industry continues to rise and become more popular, companies are looking for the most effective ways to advertise their site to increase their brand and sales. Many companies are trying to advertise on search engines, social media platforms, online press releases, etc. You are probably asking yourself, whatever happened to good, old-fashion television, newspaper and radio advertisements? The answer is in the question itself, with the phrase, “Old Fashion“. People these days get their information through new and more convenient forms of technology, such as smart phones and tablets, by accessing the Internet and online apps. 9th sphere wrote an article in February regarding a topic similar to this on Why SEO Deserves to Be on Your Marketing Budget.

Even though SEO as a concept and practice has been around for quite some time, the evolution of online marketing has never seen such drastic changes as it has in the recent few years. Some larger companies are hiring online marketing teams  to advertise their company’s websites online. But what about the medium to small sized businesses who don’t have the budget to hire a team? Have no fear. There are SEO firms out there that provide services to help companies rank higher on search engines and promote their brand name. But you must be careful when choosing an SEO firm. I have heard and personally seen  firms that guarantee that their clients will be ranked on the first position for keywords but when they decide to cancel their services, the rankings will not be found again. Also there are many stories about firms that spam their client’s websites in efforts to get links and ultimately got them banned from search engines.

Here is a list of some key factors to consider when finding the best SEO firm:

1. Just like when you hire a new employee, you always check for references. An SEO firm is no different.
2. Research the company. You want to make sure that the firm is doing SEO, PPC, Social Media, etc. on their own site as well. They should have expertise in web design, technical development and copywriting as well. SEO alone may bring traffic, but it doesn’t convert. It’s important to deal with a company that can offer you a full-service solution or at least work very closely with your other teams. The closer the teams work as a unit the better for you.
3. Make sure the SEO company keeps up to date with the latest news and trends. Online marketing constantly changes and SEO’s need to be on their toes on the latest development. Note that they change almost daily.
4. Since SEO can be a very slow and long process in terms of showing results, you should discuss a long term plan and that the firm you deal with is in it for the long haul. Expect 3-8 months depending on your current website situation.
5. Discuss the rights of the website. You want to make sure that everything the firm wants to do go through your approval first before implementing any changes.
6. If an SEO firm guarantees you that your keyword will be ranked on the first page of Google, most likely they are doing something fishy. No one can promise a top ranking. Think about how long other companies have been working on that particular keyword.

By following the steps outlined above and doing some homework about online marketing, finding the right firm for your business needs should not be a problem. Just remember to always do research on the firm and make sure that what they are doing is completely legit.

It’s important to note that blogging and WordPress are two different things.  The action, to blog, is to write about something.  The thing, WordPress, is the software that provides a tool to post the written content to a website.  Some design and develop a blog as a part of their website to write articles, case studies, news, some even use it to manage all of the content on the entire website; in essence using it as a content management system (CMS).  WordPress is a type of blogging CMS, however, it is not built to be a corporate or retailer’s website CMS.  Some have used it to do so and this is when things get interesting. Using WordPress as your entire website’s CMS, when it was built as a blog, comes with some inherent challenges.

Below I have outlined some of the pros and cons to using WordPress.

Let’s start off with the pros.  The WordPress.org website and other unofficial websites have many third-party plug-ins that allow you to add features. These plug-ins include social media sharing tools, polls, as well as hundreds of others that provide a large library of nice-to-have features to enhance functionality.  Plug-ins are built by other developers that are not associated with WordPress, but want to contribute to the community.  Within the library, there are thousands of free templated design themes from which to choose to further add features your site.  The creative templates on the WordPress website have gone through the WordPress staff for review and approval before being posted.  As long as you follow the creative template that matches your version of WordPress, the installation should go smoothly.  It is based on the most popular web programming language, PHP, and many PHP programmers are familiar with its structure.  This provides a larger resource of programmers available to you when in the need to make revisions or resolve an issue.  Lastly, many hosting companies have WordPress pre-installed on their servers so the installation process is more simplistic and you know it’s already supported.

Despite the advantages listed above, there are some disadvantages, too.  WordPress is built as a blogging platform and when being used for purposes rather than its original intent, the system lacks the full flexibility and scalability, unless major changes and hacks to its infrastructure have been done.  Although there is an API and bug tracking systems for developers, there is generally a lack of documentation on how it’s structured, contributing to making it not very developer friendly.  There are community forums and groups that discuss issues for developers that will need to spend the time to figure issues out.  Version 2.7 is known for many security vulnerabilities due to its programming structure and open source nature.  Version 3 has resolved many of these security issues.  There are often many bugs that present themselves during upgrading, so it is better off to start from scratch if you want to use a newer version.  Many malicious Crawlers seek WordPress components to exploit and spam.  If you are currently using WordPress, you are more than likely to get spam comments from who knows were.  One of the biggest issues is that there is no single company responsible for the product. Therefore, any technical issues or problems are up to you to resolve.  WordPress has a large footprint, meaning it has a lot of features that are commonly not being used and can sometimes cause this to be overly complex.  The difficulty to change/customize it significantly reduces the potential for future upgrades, since the hacks are not compatible with its upgrades. Where WordPress is good for smaller and simple websites, it’s not workable, from both an administrative and website visitors perspectives, when hundreds or thousands of content pages are required

For many smaller companies or people that want to start their own blog and don’t foresee future enhancements, WordPress may be a good solution. WordPress is especially useful to those that have very small budgets and don’t really care for custom designed work and are satisfied with templated designs.  However, for corporate, retail, social or other custom requirements, WordPress will likely hold you back – restricting you from being unique and distinctive.  The key is to confirm your needs before deciding on proceeding or you may end up starting over again.

Have a positive or negative experience with WordPress. We would like to here your experience.

This is exactly what we were looking for – if web popularity could ultimately predict the most popular candidates and provide a clear indication of a winner.

After watching and reporting on the election web popularity numbers, social media did reveal changes in popularity for specific candidates, however not in a way that when compared to others would indicate a clear winner.    For instance, Jack Layton’s spike in poll numbers, according to main stream statisticians, in the last two weeks of the election was also seen in online social media.  One may have concluded that since the increase in his followers increased higher than any other candidate he could be seen as an upcoming threat to the leader at the time. Although Jack Layton spike did ultimately give him the second most popular party, the total numbers were still lower than the Liberal’s who came in a distant third.   Social media only provided trending data that showed the sudden increase in popularity, and if based on percentage of increase, Jack Layton would have won the election instead of coming in second.

A surprising difference in correlation between the Toronto mayoral election and this federal election was the importance of Youtube channel views. Unlike last time,  the most popular person online, in relation to YouTube video channel views and Facebook Likes did not win the election. Perhaps Ignatieff’s online supporters didn’t come out to vote or there may have been too many false negatives – meaning that people who didn’t necessary support him watch what he was doing and didn’t support him – to allow for a correlation. The age of each social networking account may have a relation to this.  We found that some candidate profiles were much older than others, potentially inflating numbers that may not support the actual election and therefore have a smaller impact on the actual increases.

After the election was finalized and the winners were announced, we looked at each candidate’s final web popularity numbers among the different social media properties and found Twitter to have the closest correlation.  In the last web popularity poll we conducted for the Toronto mayoral race, we found YouTube Channel views to have the closest correlation to the winner when a similar analysis was conducted.  In this election, the winning Conservative Party lead by Stephen Harper had the highest number of Twitter followers, but not YouTube Channel views.  Facebook and Google searches had similar relationships; however, when looking at both the primary winner and the others in sequence, Twitter was the closest from a total numbers perspective.

The important message to take away is that social media essentially provides a platform on which to share ideas, opinions and information.  Politicians can reach out to supporters and potential supports in a way that is more efficient and somewhat more personal.  One cannot make a solid conclusion from the numbers specifically, other than understanding the kind of audience, perhaps their appetite and familiarity with social properties and providing an opportunity to interact with supporters.  Assuming that each political supporter has the same number of internet savvy supporters, one may be able to see trends in support compared to the next candidate.  I would also conclude that due to the instant nature of social media, changes in followers, views, likes, etc., would give strong insight into the public’s interests and preferences. This may even entice account holders like politicians, celebrities, leaders, and others to monitor their reputation online and compare them to others.  These brand tracking tools provide a low cost and real-time indication of changes in public opinion.  Perhaps we will be able to see stronger correlations with the next election, as more people and politicians alike become more familiar with social media and a larger audience embraces it.

As my primary role in business development is speaking with prospects about their web or Internet marketing projects, inevitably the question “What is your website design budget range?” must be posed.  Many prospects feel uncomfortable providing a budget range.   For most prospects who have not been through a project like this before simply don’t know what they cost, while others feel that if they share their budget range, the vendor is going to try get as many of those dollars as they can.

Let’s explore some considerations for creating an appropriate budget.

Market
It is extremely important to consider the market to which you are selling.  If your market is selling luxury goods or exclusive destination weddings, then you need to consider that more design time will be required to align the look of the website with the market you are serving.  No one is going to feel comfortable spending thousands of dollars on a single purchase if the website design does not establish credibility with the user.  Ensuring that the look and feel of the website is aligned with your target market is critical for success.

Return On Investment (ROI)
Consider your expected return on investment. If you are selling a $1 dollar item, you would need to sell a lot of product to make up for the investment.  In this case adding a lot of functionality to a website and driving up the cost may not be a wise decision, unless you are expecting large volumes of traffic.  However, if you are selling a $10,000 service or product visitors would expect an enhanced and quality based experience dictating the need for a larger budget, and also an expected return on investment.

Most marketed websites have an approximate 3% conversion rate. If you calculate your conversion rate with the cost of your product for a given year, you should be able to get an idea of the budget that makes sense to send on a new website project. Eg.  Profit of selling my product is $100 multiplied by selling 4 products a month equals $4,800 for the year

This indicates that if your website sold 4 products per month, a $4,800 website cost is your breakeven point. Any additional product sold in that year would contribute to the websites profit contribution.  This is not considering any efficiencies that the website provides that takes away from other manual administrative tasks, but I think you get the idea.

Features & Functionality
Adding in features and extending functionality can have a large impact on the projects overall cost.  In the case of a start-up venture, it’s not uncommon to look at what the leaders in that market are doing online and emulate them.  Far too often, the market leader’s websites contain features or functionality that would not make sense to include in the start-ups initial build.  Starting small and scaling as revenue grows makes it more affordable and leaves more cash flow for marketing purposes.

Quality
Sometimes it is the things we don’t see which can have the largest impact on whether a website project is successful.  When 9th sphere creates websites, we build it to the W3C standard and undertake quality assurance testing to ensure there aren’t any issues from a coding or usability perspective.  Coding issues may impact a website’s ability to be viewed properly on all browsers, the level of flexibility and scalability for future changes, and issues with the search engines being able to properly index the website. Other issues with optimization for loading speed and code efficiency and how the site is displayed on a mobile are all factors of higher website development quality.  Other factors that contribute to defining a websites quality can be found in the article entitled “Defining a Quality Website“.

If you are planning to proceed with any Internet marketing efforts to promote your business, you may end up spending more time and money trying to get your website to rank high in the search results to overcome any programming issues.  So while the low cost price point of the website is initially attractive, it soon becomes apparent that the operating costs and missed online opportunities overshadow any savings.

By doing extensive research on your target market, what your competitors are doing and the services that are available to you, talking to a web design and development company openly about your budget doesn’t have to be a daunting task.  Companies that tend to have much lower prices are more than likely cutting corners in the development process or providing templated solutions to help reduce the time required to complete the project and hence reducing the cost.  Consider what aspects are most important to you, as well as crucial to the success of your business and website.  Share these ideas with the company that will build your site to help evaluate the best ROI.

In the end, the best web design and development companies are able to help you to integrate these features into your website while helping you to stay comfortably within your price range.

Note that we are not a polling company, nor have we conducted any scientific audit of our calculations. 9th sphere has no commercial connections to any specific party.  9th sphere’s Internet Marketing team has put together a Web Popularity Poll to gain insight and evaluate the impacts of social media, the web’s definition of popularity vs. real-world popularity.  We will be updating the poll numbers weekly until the election on May 2, 2011.

The Results this far…
The increased buzz in web popularity among all candidates over the last 7 days definitely shows that election day is near.  Most notably in the last 7 days, Jack Layton had a 16.5% increase in Facebook likes and a 6% increase in Twitter followers. This is more than double an increase when compared to any other candidate.  Despite the increases, Michael Ignatieff has the most Facebook Likes and Stephen Harper still has the most Twitter followers to date.

Jack Layton also had a 32% increase in YouTube Channel views – the largest increase of all the candidates. Michael Ignatieff was a close second at a 14.5% increase.  Overall, Michael Ignatieff still has the highest number of YouTube Channels views, with Stephen Harper at a very distant second.  In an older poll we conducted for the Toronto mayoral race, the number of  video channel views had a much closer correlation to the ultimate winner than any other metric.

We are definitely seeing a correlation between increases in the public opinion polls and our web popularity poll, however the web popularity poll is not currently favouring Stephen Harper as do the opinion polls are.  This Monday, May 2 is Election Day and will help to solidify how accurate web popularity is in predicting Canada’s next Prime Minister.

How it’s Calculated
Our findings were based on the use of both automated tools and manual reviews on the day of posting.

We calculated the numbers based on the following criteria:

1. Number of Video views and comments. This refers to the number of views on each candidate’s campaign YouTube Channels.
2. Number of Twitter followers and Facebook fans. This metric calculated “likes” on Facebook, and the number of followers on Twitter.  We didn’t use Twitter “mentions” since we  felt it gave a less accurate indication of positive intent.
3. Number of times names have been searched online. The Keyword tool that we use allows us to input keywords and provide an estimated number of times the keyword was searched on Google. Although the number of searches are approximates derived from Google’s Traffic Estimator system, we looked at who had more requests relative to the other candidates. This metric doesn’t provide the insight to tell us the searchers intent, so it has little weight on the overall poll.

The Details

As of April 26, 2011 (between 10am – noon)

As of April 19, 2011 (between 10am – noon)
As expected, all the numbers for the candidates have increased since last week.  The recent calculations as of April 19, 2011 continue to support Michael Ignatieff leading in YouTube video channel views and Facebook Likes.  Similarly, Stephen Harper continued to lead in Twitter followers.  Most interestingly noted, is the 13% jump in Michael Ignatieff’s YouTube channel views and both Gilles Duceppe’s 10% and Jack Layton’s 12% increase in Facebook Likes since last week.

As of April 13, 2011
The calculations as of April 13, 2011 indicate Michael Ignatieff is leading in YouTube video channel views and Facebook Likes.  Stephen Harper leads in Twitter followers and has the most Google searches for his name.