The Knowmad Blog

Your corporate website can play a critical role in your organization beyond simply communicating your products and services. It can be a key component in your overall business strategy. And it can also be a powerful tool for your sales team by gathering leads, warming prospects and supporting the post-sell process.

• Take a look at your current website and consider the following questions:
• Does your website support your business goals?
• Does the sales team need more leads? Would they have more leads if your website had more traffic?
• Does the website help your sales process?
• Is there an opportunity to gain market share by being perceived as a market leader or offering better online service?
• How are you currently gathering leads online and is the approach working?

When Mallard Creek Polymers, a specialty latex manufacturer, considered these questions, the answers led them to Knowmad Technologies.

The management team at Mallard Creek Polymers recognized changes in the marketplace that could be advantageous for their company. Their sales team needed more good leads to achieve their sales goals. To take advantage of the newly found opportunities and meet their business goals, the company hired Knowmad Technologies to help create a web strategy and redesign the corporate website.

The refreshed site incorporates strategic lead capture tools and delivers qualified leads to their sales team. Thirty days after launching the new custom web design, the company received a 33% increase in web leads.

We deliver more than just a website. Knowmad Technologies bases its custom web designs to support specific corporate goals and to meet the needs of your unique users. We will help you define your goals, take advantage of marketplace opportunities, and build your business.

We recently attended a webinar, in which, Google's Analytics team announced it's rolling out new features for it's Analytics product over the holidays. You may not see these features at the moment but expect to see them soon.

One of the features we're most excited about is called 'Annotations'.  The reason we're excited about this feature is because this feature will make it easier to share information about traffic changes with all users on any analytics account. If a marketing manager releases a new print campaign, for instance, they can make a note directly on the time graph. This means less time hunting down the reason for the traffic spike or dip for other account users.

"A simple note from a colleague can save hours of real work (and frustration) for an analyst who is tasked to explain a usually dry set of numbers." - Google Analytics Blog

You might have seen this screen recently when logging into Facebook, as new privacy controls were released this past Thursday.

Once you click 'Continue' you're presented with a slightly confusing screen to configure new privacy settings. Your old defaults are unselected by default.

Upon seeing the new screen, I found myself just accepting the new settings and then refining the privacy controls using the 'Settings' link. Several settings were set to 'Friends of a Friend' and 'Everyone' where I didn't want this type of access. I found the most important settings under the 'Profile' and 'Search' link.

Rafe Needleman has written an easy to read article on refining Facebook privacy settings on his CNET blog.

If you're interested in exploring CS-Cart in more detail before buying the license, you'll find our CS-Cart demo offer of interest. The demo on CS-Cart's website expires every hour. We can set up a 60 day CS-Cart demo for only $50.

Contact us to find out more.

We're offering CS-Cart licenses for only $225, 15% off the retail price. The response to this new offering has been fantastic.

CS-Cart is a turnkey shopping cart software solution that includes all the necessary features and functions to build a successful online business. It is an "out of the box" e-commerce solution, with easy to use functionality that allows you to immediately start to sell online, ranging from a one-product shop to a fully-featured online store.

Visit our website to buy a cs-cart e-commerce software license.

Our experience building value-added Web sites for businesses has shown us that one of the best ways to improve your Web site ROI is to implement features that enhance customer service. We've helped many companies leverage their website to reduce customer support costs and improve brand loyalty by adding some thoughtful features.

With the high cost of travel today, many businesses are using the Internet to hold live meetings or presentations across the country or world.

In a web conference, each participant sits at his or her own computer and is connected to other participants via the internet. This can be either a downloaded application on each of the attendees' computers or a web-based application where the attendees will simply go to a website address to join the conference.

CS-Cart is a turnkey shopping cart software solution that includes all the necessary features and functions to build a successful online business. CS-Cart is an "out of the box" solution with easy-to-use functionality that allows you to immediately start selling online, ranging from a one-product shop to a fully-featured online store. CS-Cart is designed with many flexible customizations and can be further customized to meet more complex needs. Over 5,600 licenses have been sold and the software is in use in 107 countries. The mission of CS-Cart is to make e-commerce lucrative, useful and available for everybody. How do you know that ecommerce is for your business? E-commerce is a great solution when it's a good fit for your business plan. The most obvious questions when evaluating adding E-Commerce to your business are:

• Will it increase sales?
• Will it reduce overhead?
• Will it increase profits?
• Will it be more efficient?

Your company could be an ideal candidate for ecommerce if these questions can be answered positively. However, e-commerce is not for every business. An e-commerce solution is best applied to an already successful business model. What are the benefits of using ecommerce?

• Pre-qualify shoppers by offering information and pricing online
• Ease of purchase
• Expanded marketplace
• Immediate Payment
• Automate Calculations for pricing, shipping and taxes
• Self-service shopping, available anytime

Interesting video from YouTube, circa 2004.

Pick and Pay is a successful case of a large South African company rolling out open source software. They are using it for quite large portion of their business, till points and office.

Anyone who has ever personally been on a limited budget is familiar with the search for inexpensive ways to improve and extend the life of something we own. The answer usually lies in viewing the object from a different perspective. Businesses have budgets too and in today's environment, those budgets are being squeezed. But one area that is ripe for viewing from a different perspective is Web technology and the systems surrounding it. Savvy organizations understand how to achieve maximum utility out of their existing systems, create competitive advantages, increase efficiency and grow their businesses.

A successful organization has a purpose for existing and a mission that drives it forward and strengthens its position in the marketplace. An organization's Web site is how it exists online and should also have a purpose and mission that strengthens its position in the online marketplace.

The purpose of your Web site may be to share information through education, interaction, and entertainment and to gather information, store it, and easily retrieve it when needed. Your mission may be to engage visitors and persuade them to take a specific action such as contacting you, registering for an event, or purchasing from you.

Purpose can be accomplished through careful planning of the functionality of your Web site. In its simplest terms, functionality is what your Web site allows you to do, what it allows visitors to do, and what it does automatically.