EtherCycle Office Tour Video

august 30, 2010 09:54pm

 

Genuine Collagen Product Photos

august 30, 2010 05:24pm

For our client, Genuine Collagen, we produced a series of striking product photos for their email campaign.

Since the product is a hydrolyzed collagen gel, we chose to combine it a clean and modern black reflection with the high-impact of a water splash.

 

Online Marketing Statistics

august 26, 2010 05:22pm

1. Between 85% - 96% of all local customers research a business online before contacting or buying from them.
   
2. Print Circulation is down 7 million in the last 25 years, while in the last 5 years online news publication is up 30 million.


3. This year traditional media advertising is down by the following numbers


1. Newspaper:18.7%


2. Television:10.1%


3. Radio:11.7%


4. Magazine:14.8%


5. However, online advertising is up by 9.2% and mobile
   advertising by 18.1%


4. Bloomberg reports that online advertising spending has
   surpassed print advertising this year. For the first time Print advertising will only comprise of 30% of advertising budgets, while digital advertising will make up 33%. That means $119.6 Billion will be spent online, vs. $111.5 Billion will be spent on print.


5. All online advertising is trackable and targeted- you know if it is effective or not. Whereas with offline ads, the advertising generally is broadly targeted, not trackable, and more expensive!


6. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Myspace,in that order, have been found to be very effective marketing tools by businesses this year. In fact Dell released figures stating that they have made an extra $3 Million since 2007 just from Twitter posts.


7. According to Outsell's online marketing study, of current marketing tools, websites generate the highest ROI followed by conferences and exhibitions.


8. Finally, cross-media marketing efforts (e.g. combining offline and online advertising) have been found to be the most effective. 78% of businesses combine two or three marketing methods to maximize effectiveness.

 

Referral Commission Guide

august 25, 2010 10:07pm

What You Need To Do:

1. Talk to anyone and everyone you feel would benefit from EtherCycle's services. (Consider your friends, family, colleagues, other small business owners, vendors, or buyers.)


2. Advise anyone who is interested to mention you at the time of sale.


3. E-Mail referrals@ethercycle.com with the contact information of your sales lead.

What I Will Do:

1. Ask all potential customers who they were referred by, if anyone.


2. Pay $100 to you if your referral leads to a sale of EtherCycle's services.


3. Pay promptly (See #1 below).

Further, you agree to the following:

1. You will not hold EtherCycle responsible for referral commissions from people who secured EtherCycle's services; but who did not pay in full.


2. Your referral MUST tell their EtherCycle sales rep before the transaction is complete that they were referred to EtherCycle by you. A completed transaction is hereby defined as: Services agreed upon between EtherCycle and the person referred to EtherCycle by you and any type of payment (partial or full) procured. There will be no referral commissions paid on past transactions under any circumstances.


3. EtherCycle reserves the right to make changes to this Referral Commission Guide at any time without advance notice.


4. By partaking in EtherCycle's Referral Commission Program, you agree to all terms and conditions outlined above.

 

You Can't Buy Trust

august 25, 2010 12:36am

Trust Seals are unequivocally scams in the long run. They prove nothing except that the site owner is gullible enough to pay for a graphic.

When measured as a percentage, illegitimate sites are more likely to display "trust" seals. Seals, certificates, badges, shields, etc are meaningless.

You can't buy your customer's trust with an image, you have to earn it.

 

What is your website saying?

august 18, 2010 06:13pm

Your website is the hub of your marketing strategy; it is the 24/7/365 face of your business online. Consumers, whether driven by advertising or just browsing, will check your website to learn more about your business. It's natural, visiting a website is absolutely easier than driving to, calling up, or researching any business.

Consider your first impressions of a brick and mortar store. How are the employees dressed? Is the store well-maintained and uncluttered? A well-kept store with well-dressed employees conveys professionalism and promotes consumer-confidence. First impressions matter.

The same is true of your website. If your website was just made by your nephew, what message is it sending to your potential customers? Is it an accurate representation of your physical store?

If you have an entirely professional looking website, visitors perceive that the business gives meticulous attention to every detail. They understand that you care about professionalism. A great website says, "I'm professional, organized, and committed to my business."

 

5 Factors for Good Ad Copy

august 16, 2010 11:29pm

Good Copy is Easy on the Eye.
Reading your website should be easy. The font should be reasonably sized. Ornamental fonts can be used but should be reserved for headlines. The main body of your content should be written be written in a web-safe font like Georgia. Colors and contrast matter. Use dark ink for light backgrounds and vice versa.

Good Copy is of Appropriate Length.
Mark Twain once wrote, "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead." If it can be afforded, a professional copy editor for your sales text is a valuable investment. The average person will spend less than a minute on a new website- less is more!

Good Copy is Direct.
Within ten seconds of landing on your homepage, will a visitor know what your business does? If it's not self-evident, it's time to reconsider your layout and copy. A person must be able to immediately discern if a website is relevant to them or they will leave the page without viewing anything else.

Good Copy is Not All Talk!
Good websites are not all talk. If you've got claims to make, you better make sure you can support them with solid facts and figures that are certified by valid and reliable authorities. A good website gives readers a reason to believe in them!

Good Copy Knows its Reader.
No matter how good a website you have, remember that writing it will do you no good if in the end, it doesn't fit the needs of your target market. A good website will always be tailored according to your target market's preferences.

 

Walt Whitman Wallpaper Pack

august 11, 2010 09:07pm

I love that Levi's commercial featuring a scratchy recording of Walt Whitman reading his poem "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" I thought it was beautifully cinematic and creative. So much so that it inspired to make a wallpaper last October when I first saw it. With fall around the corner, I'm releasing that wallpaper in a multi-resolution pack for your desktop, iPhone, and iPad.

[Download: Pioneers! Wallpaper]

 

A Primer On Your First Website

august 09, 2010 03:16pm

When creating your first website, you shouldn't feel intimidated. You can get started on your own in one day for as little as ten dollars. Let's walk through the steps to getting started for almost nothing.

Buy a Name
The first requirement is to buy a domain name (ex: YourBusinessName.com). Your domain name fee is a yearly subscription of around ten dollars per year. While we personally use Gandi, we recommend GoDaddy for beginners.

Get Hosted
Hosting is the act of storing a website's content on a computer connected to the internet. (No, hosting it at home is not a good idea, I promise.) While most small businesses who rely on their website pay $1,000 or more per year for hosting, you can pay as little as $50 annually with a discount host such as eNom, 1&1, or GoDaddy. Your host will provide you with instructions on connecting them to your domain name.

Build It
This is the hard part. Your options are to do it yourself or hire a professional. (*cough* ethercycle *cough*) If you choose to hire a professional, your initial investment will be larger but the results will be significantly better. In our experience, a small business website can range in cost from around $1,500 to $9,000. If you choose to roll your own, our strongest recommendation is to use a Apple iWeb. If you're limited to Windows, the easiest alternative is Mozilla SeaMonkey. Once you outgrow your DIY website (or become frustrated managing it yourself) you can always hire a web designer to redesign it.

Getting Traffic
For people to be able to find your website, you need to be listed in search engines. The most direct way is to submit it to them. Start with Google. It may be several days before you see your site listed though our personal record is four hours. If you're having trouble getting listed, we have SEO packages that guarantee you'll be listed.

Tracking Success
Once your website is up, you'll want to track your visitors. The industry standard for doing this is Google Analytics. Follow its instructions to track your visitors and learn where they came from, what they viewed, and how long they viewed. Once you have a large enough sample size, you can use this information to effectively redesign your website.

 

Improve Productivity up to 50%

august 06, 2010 06:38pm

We recently upgraded our workstations to multiple monitors. Our most enterprising effort was the use of three identical 19" displays on a Mac Pro.

A Microsoft research study found that use of multiple monitors improves productivity by 9 to 50 percent:

The first study revealed that the users' productivity increased by 9 percent. Further studies showed even greater increases - at times up to 50 percent for tasks such as cutting and pasting. Mary Czerwinski, the VIBE research manager, is excited about her group's discoveries, asking, "If you're able to squeeze 10 percent more productivity out, do you know how much money that will save?"

After several weeks of use, we concluded that while two displays are significantly more useful than any size single display, the gain is not linear as additional displays are added. The problem is that three or more displays provide more screen real estate than can be efficiently navigated by even the most proficient computer users.

Our recommendation is that nearly all users can benefit from dual display workstations. The productivity increase will almost certainly pay for the initial investment.

[Microsoft Research: Two Screens Are Better Than One]