Some companies just get it.  And it’s no surprise they continue to thrive – even when the economy is poor.  Professional Image, a Honolulu-based printing and copying business, is one of those companies.   Let me explain why.

Last year Professional Image merged with New Tech Imaging. It was the perfect time to redesign their website.  But instead of creating another brochure online, they asked themselves a super relevant question, “How can the Internet help us do what we do even better?”  In other words, how can the website be used to take orders, facilitate payments, build relationships, and even offer new products and services?

Of course, the new site had to look good.  After all, they have a million dollar brand;  they need a million dollar website. It must exude confidence, competency and professionalism.  It needs to be fresh, upbeat and contemporary.  Take a look:  ProImageHawaii.com

But Professional Image didn’t let aesthetics drive the redesign.  Most business owners want the sexiest, flashiest site on the block.  This is a mistake.  Unless you’re in the design business, your site’s graphic design sense is only one part of the equation.

To avoid falling into the graphic design trap, Professional Image did what every company should do when overhauling their site: They first determined the site’s purpose and then let the design follow function.  If you think about it, a pretty site is pretty, but a useful site actually gets work done.

Making a site that works, though, entails more than just focusing on function.  A site must get recognized by the search engine crawlers.  It’s got to be engineered to get noticed.  This requires optimizing the site, both on-page SEO and off-page SEO.  If you Google “copying services Honolulu”, ProImageHawaii.com ranks number one.

But a successful website is more than just high organic rankings.  If you show me a website with high rankings on search engines, I am impressed. But show me a website that consistently sends you business and I am in love!  Traffic is good.  But high conversion rates (converting prospects into sales) are even better.

Take a look at the call-to-action items on ProImageHawaii.com.  One well-placed button could be worth millions of dollars.  Their site is carefully designed to generate leads and it works very well.  In fact, the sales team doesn’t have to spend as much time doing cold calls anymore.  The website is doing that for them 24/7.  As a result, they can focus on serving clients even better.

Running a successful business is more than just capturing sales. Operations are equally important.  Your website should reduce administrative costs, speed turnaround, and improve quality control.

To help clients submit orders, we added a file upload feature to their site.  Sounds like a minor thing, but remember this is a print shop. Those file sizes are sometimes 500MB or more.  You cannot easily email them.  Sure, you could ask the client to FTP them, or deliver the content on disk.  But why do that if it everything can be done from the website?  The whole point of technology is to make life simpler.  And the special file uploader provides this much wanted convenience.

One very exciting area of business for Professional Image is photo books.  This service allows families to create custom books for everything from childhood memories to family reunions.  To help them create books, we added a software wizard to the site.  Now, anyone at anytime can download the tools and get started with their creations.

We also added automation.  After the photo book is created, the shopping cart automatically calculates the cost of the photo books and sends those orders with the appropriate order numbers to the right printing centers.  We even customized the e-commerce module so Professional Image processes orders at lower merchant fees.  This means huge savings for them over time.

A big issue with any e-commerce site is a shopping cart abandonment.  It is exactly what it sounds like:  someone shops, adds items to their cart, and then at the final moment, decides – for whatever reason – not to go through with the purchase.  As you can imagine, this is a serious problem for any business.  To help understand what’s really going on, we added metrics their site.  We can now measure how many people come to the site, how many actually get started with the photo books, and how many leave the site before completing an order.  By studying these numbers and by tweaking the site accordingly, the business can test what works and eventually boost conversion rates.

Professional Image is exploring other smart ways of using technology:

• They are creating an online video tutorial to help photo book users create their books.  Again, nothing fancy is required.  As we’ve seen with the success of YouTube, the video does not have to be Hollywood quality.  It just has to be useful and organic.  Video is very powerful.  Interesting fact:  Video messages enjoy a 3x higher retention rate than text and 5x more views than text.

• Professional Image provides litigation support for law firms.  It’s good business for them.  The logical next step is to develop special offers for the legal community.  This can be easily accomplished using e-mail marketing tools like Aweber.com and ConstantContact.com.

• Social media is the new rock and roll.  Every business must find ways to harness all that social horsepower.  For the photo book enthusiasts, social media offers a unique forum to exchange ideas and develop companionship based a shared interest in crafting.  Remember, a Facebook fan is more likely to spend more on your product or service, more likely to purchase from you more often (repeat sales), and more often to recommend your company to their family and friends.  It’s perfect.

• Click-thru advertising works very well if you do it right.  Refrain from creating generic ads and sending your prospect to a generic home page.  Think laser.  Craft a specific ad targetting a well-defined demographic, and then send that prospect to a custom landing page, focusing on selling that particular product or service.  Again, test, measure, tweak, repeat.

• Never underestimate the lowly e-newsletter.  Your clients want to hear from the owner.  They want to know what’s new and exciting in their industry.  They even want to get to know your new employee.  Make it fun, informal, relevant and a soft-sell.

• Automate the feedback process.  Customers want to hear from you, but they also want YOU to hear from THEM.  They may have an issue or they may have a suggestion.  The sooner you get to the truth, the stronger your business will be.  Some of our best ideas at SuperGeeks actually came from our clients.  Galvanize them.  Use internet-based surveys to get the job done.

The upside of the economic malaise is we business owners are forced to re-think our business models.  With the advent of all things digital, it’s the perfect time to reexamine long-standing assumptions and re-tool your company around the internet.  Step outside the day-to-day noise of current operations and look for inspiration and best practices from unrelated industries.  I am confident you will find gold there.  As they say, we never want to miss a good crisis.

Want a custom website for your business?  Does your existing site need to be modernized?  Request a FREE quote for your project.

Traditional yellow page advertising is dead.

Remember that quiet, kind of unremarkable kid in high school, whom no one really noticed but suddenly grew up and conquered the world while everyone else was too busy trying to look good?

Well, YouTube.com is that superhero. And it’s all kind of happened so quickly.

YouTube is only five years old. Created in February of 2005 by three early employees of PayPal, YouTube spawned from a dinner party. They wanted to share video from the party but there was no easy way to do it…so they decided to created YouTube.

And they did a pretty good job. In November of 2006, Google purchased the company for $1.65 billion.

So why should you, as business owner or executive, care? Because there are a lot of eyeballs on that site and you can’t afford to ignore them.

Consider some of these impressive stats from Website Monitoring:

• In any give day, about 2 billion YouTube videos are viewed. That’s nearly double the prime-time audience of all 3 major U.S. broadcast networks combined.
• Twenty four hours of video are uploaded to YouTube very minute.
• The average person spends 15 minutes a day on YouTube.
• More video is uploaded to YouTube in just 60 days than all the content the 3 major US networks created in 60 years.
• 70% of YouTube’s traffic comes from outside the U.S.

It’s no surprise that 94 of Advertising Ages’ 100 top advertisers have run campaigns on YouTube and the Google Content Network. The proof is clearly in the pudding. The smart business people are either already on YouTube or sprinting towards it.

Here’s what you need to know:

Video sells.

A picture is worth a thousand words. But a video is worth a million. Think about it. If you see a print ad, it’s good. If you include a picture or a graphic, it’s somehow better. But if you add video, and if the video is truly interesting and informative, your pitch is so much more effective. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling blenders (checkout ‘Will It Blend‘ on YouTube) or just trying to find a tenant for your rental unit, people love video.

Zappos says they can boost sales conversions by as much as 30% using video product descriptions online. Shoppers feel more comfortable making the purchase when they can see and hear about the product. Take a look at Zappos’ YouTube channel: youtube.com/user/zappos

Especially the soft sell.

Unless your video is a worthy of SuperBowl’s Halftime, don’t mislead yourself into thinking everyone will share your enthusiasm for your masterpiece. Remember, people don’t want to be sold. But they do want to buy.

This means you’re going to have to roll up your sleeves, brainstorm a bit, test a lot, and try to create content people genuinely want to watch – especially if you want tons of views.

Just keep it simple. You don’t have to become a movie mogul overnight. But you do need to be genuine, compelling, useful and congruent with your brand.

Take a look at what your competitors are doing on YouTube. Don’t forget the titans in your industry. You can sponge best practices from those who do it well.

For example, Home Depot does a good job of using YouTube to host how-to videos on home improvement. Their channel reaches both current and potential customers. The tactic is to serve. And the purpose is to nurture first time purchases and repeat business: youtube.com/user/homedepot

Take a look a GirlScouts’ Youtube channel, too: They are doing a terrific job leveraging YouTube to extend their brand and boost cookie sales: youtube.com/user/girlscoutvideos

It’s free.

YouTube is free. You can create an account and get started within minutes without spending a dime. Moreover, with very little money, you can reach millions of users and compete with the big boys. All you need is business savvy.

“YouTube is a robust product for any business, big or small,” adds Jamie Grenney, Senior Director of Social Media for salesforce.com. “It’s the same platform for all, so you know it’s going to be good — small businesses are going to get the same benefits as large companies.”

Any simple video camera will work. I like the Flip (theflip.com) video cameras. They are cheap ($150) and amazingly easy to use.

I also recommend Kodak’s Zi8 HD camera because it has an external mic. We use the Azden WMS-PRO for the wireless mic. It works very well.

YouTube has enough online editing software to get you going. The cameras will come with their own editing software, too. We use iMovie to edit most things. However, I am so excited about the potential for video on our website, our Facebook page, our company’s intranet and other distribution channels, we will purchase Final Cut Pro ($999) so we have even more video editing tools available in-house.

Everywhere is good.

YouTube will host your videos at their site. You setup a YouTube Channel can customize the design accordingly.

YouTube also lets you share your videos across other platforms. For example, you can embed video on your company’s Facebook page, one your blog, in your website, on other people’s sites, etc. You can even promote your video using a service called YouTube Promoted Videos (ads.youtube.com/), where Google will extend your video’s reach and you pay only for actual views.

But don’t forget to use your video in other places. You can use YouTube video as an after sales tool to explain and demonstrate product setup. You can use YouTube inside your organization to train employees and to broadcast important company messages. You can even use YouTube videos in your employment ads to capture the interest of the perfect potential hire.

Don’t forget the details.

Many people make the mistake of uploading content and then focusing solely on distribution. YouTube gives you several tools to properly categorize your video for search engines.

For example, carefully choose a title for the video which matches the target keyword search string your audience might use. If your video is about cleaning computers, don’t name it ‘Video Tips from SuperGeeks’. Instead, go with something like ‘How to Clean Your Computer’ because people are more likely to search on ‘How to Clean Your Computer’ rather than the former.

Similarly, be sure to assign right meta tags to your video. This will help ensure your video is seen by the right people.

It’s OK to be crappy.

When it comes to technology and new things like social media, the need for perfection often gets in the way of getting going. That’s wrong. Don’t shy away from new things just because they may be difficult to understand. Instead, let yourself make mistakes. Jump into YouTube with a big splash. It’s OK if your videos are homespun. It’s OK if you’re not sure what to do next. Just get going. It will make a world of difference.

If you would like to learn more about how to use YouTube for business, please join our webinar: supergeeks.net/webinars

James Kerr is founder and Chief Geek at SuperGeeks. He can be reached at (808) 942-0773 and www.SuperGeeks.net. Twitter: supergeeks