Restaurant menu follies

January 6, 2010 By

The Professor and I recently got takeout Thai food from our favorite local restaurant, Sky Thai. And it turned into a case study in “what were they thinking?” that I just had to write about.

Takeaway #1: A good domain name gives you a lot of Google juice

I knew I had a paper menu somewhere (in fact I found it the next day, under a pile on my desk — clearly it is time for another Inspired Home Office Spa Day), but figured it would be faster to look up the restaurant on the web.

And it was. I typed in “Sky Thai” (with the quotes) and guess what came up as result #1? Yep, www.SkyThai.com. The next 9 results were for some place in Massachusetts that wasn’t named Sky Thai but had some kind of dish on their menu with that name in it. But I didn’t care about results #2 through #9 if #1 was the one I wanted. And I was kind of surprised, because this is a tiny little restaurant that’s not exactly in a thriving metro area. Just goes to show what the right domain name can do for you.

So far our takeout plans were going awesomely. Their menu was online and their phone number was in the header, so it was easy-peasy to call them up and place an order.

Takeaway #2: Don’t let your website be wrong

Except when we called them and tried to order the Fried Baby Shrimp appetizer, they told us they didn’t have it anymore. Not “we’re out of it,” but “oh, that’s not on the menu anymore.”

Except that it is. Right on the Appetizer page of their website.

Hmm. So they’re willing to print up new paper versions of the menu when it changes (we got a paper menu in our take-out bag, of course, and it was the updated version) but they can’t spend 10 minutes to update the website? Or pay their web person for extremely minor updates?

Sure, most of the online menu was still right…but all it takes is one wrong item (or price!) to get visitors skeptical.

Why throw away that Google juice so carelessly?

Takeaway #3: There is such a thing as good enough… and that’s all your site has to be

Not every website in the world needs to be a Web 2.0, social media-utilizing, user-generated-content repository of multimedia and ecommerce.

This restaurant is a perfect example. Sky Thai doesn’t need bells, whistles, or a flaming logo. Heck, they don’t even need a blog. Although I could certainly come up with creative ways they could use a blog to get more business, they don’t need one. They don’t need the ability to let people place an online order if they just give us the phone number.

On the face of it, there are plenty of terrible things about this site. The header is cheesy and fuzzy. The image of the owner, which shows up on every page, is broken. On every page. It’s not centered and the copyright date is 2004.

But none of this matters if all I want is the menu and a phone number. This website is just fine for that. It’s laid out clearly, in sections that make sense, with legible prices and descriptions. All you need for that is plain old boring text.

Except that it has items on it that they don’t serve anymore. So now I can’t trust it. (See Takeaway #2.)

Which is a shame, since they are #1 on Google for searchers who know the name of the restaurant and are ready to place an order.

Takeaway #4: Don’t let your website be the bastard stepchild, especially for an offline business

I looked over the paper menu, picked up a business card, and checked out the info stenciled on the door of the place when we went to pick up the takeout food. There was also a delivery SUV parked outside with Sky Thai and its phone number emblazoned on its side and rear window.

None of these places referred to the Sky Thai website. Nary a URL to be found.

Why?!?

OK, sure, maybe you don’t need it on the door of your restaurant because when people see that, they’re already there (though there doesn’t seem to be a downside to adding it anyway), but a business card? Or that menu that they stuff in every takeout bag, and probably leave in the mailboxes of hundreds of houses within a few blocks?

Why not just add the URL to all their printed material? It’s like they don’t want actual customers to know that the restaurant also has a website.

I can’t figure out why you would bother to build a website and then not link it up with your other, existing, marketing materials.

Takeaway #5: Remember the nudists

If you type www.skythai.com into your web browser, you’ll get the website I’ve been ranting about. But if you type skythai.com (with no www, which is known as a naked domain), you’ll get…a blank page.

As I explained in my blog post about naked domains, you should always make sure that both versions of your domain are usable. There are multiple simple tweaks to get it to work right. You don’t want people to type in the naked version, get a blank page or an error page, and assume you have no site or that your site is broken.

Because then they will go away and never give you money in exchange for Fried Baby Shrimp. Or anything else.

Now I’m hungry for some spicy, creamy, fragrant Tom Kha Gai. If only I didn’t have to dig out my paper menu to figure out if they still have it.

Filed Under: Real-Life Marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

How to spend your measly technology budget

December 11, 2009 By

First things first: If you have less than $500 to spend, go look at my list of tools that will let you build your online empire for free (and don’t forget to read the awesome suggestions in the comments).

Now, if you’ve got the $500 and want to know what to do with it, or you just want to know why I think you need $500 to really do a self-hosted website, read on. It’s time to look at some paid services to help you run your online business.

What to do with your first $100

OK, I said this in a previous post, but it’s really worth saying again:

Your first purchase should be a domain name.

This will cost approximately $10 per year. So if you have $20, you can either buy one domain for two years, or two for one year.

My recommendation: Your first $50 should be spent on one domain name. For up to 5 years. If you really want to (or if there are variations on the name, common misspellings, hyphenated versions, and the like), then use the next few increments of $10 to buy multiple domain names. Up to $100.

Just go to GoDaddy (although their checkout process is obnoxious, they’re cheap and reliable. Just don’t buy any add-ons or extras. You only want to spend $10 on your domain name, remember?).

If you’ve got more than $100, you can start planning for the next paid step (keep reading).

But for heaven’s sake, don’t wait until you have $50 or $100 so you can implement a complicated domain hierarchy. Just spend your first $10 on the first domain name as soon as you’ve got it.

No, your domain name doesn’t have to be perfect. You may well change it later (when you’re rolling in cash and can buy all the domains you want, that is). But start with something now. Your name. Your company’s name. Your goldfish’s name. Just register something already!

Now you can plug that domain into your free Blogger.com blog, which will instantly raise your professionalism score by twenty points. And carry on with your free online empire (or, I guess it’s now a $10 online empire).

The bare minimum: No safety net

So let’s say you’ve got more than $100. You’re ready to move beyond Blogger. You see someone like me, crazy enough to offer WordPress installation for $99. You think “Great! I can buy this and still have $1 left over!”

Not so fast.

First, do not spend your family’s grocery money on your website. Please.

Second, that $99 pricetag is not your total cost. Before I can install WordPress for you, you’re going to need the aforementioned domain name, plus a little thing called web hosting (that’s essentially renting space on a backed-up, secure server so that your site is accessible to the whole world).

And that’s the bare minimum. Figuring $10 for your domain name and $120 ($10/month) for web hosting, that brings us to $130.

A digression about the cost of hosting: You may have heard that it’s possible to get free hosting. There really isn’t any such thing, except for Blogger.com (which I discussed in my post about how Blogger is a perfectly valid place to build a website). So-called free hosts put ads on your site, ads over which you have no control. Don’t fall for that.

It’s much safer to simply buy web hosting, which you can get for less than $10 per month (often much less, but I use the $10 figure to calculate conservatively).

So, the thing about that $130 bare minimum? It’s pretty bare. You can spend $130 and have a working website, but you will have to totally and completely do-it-yourself. If you can, by all means go for it, but if you need any kind of help, you may find yourself panicking (or spending money you don’t have, or other inadvisable practices).

An annual technology budget for cheapskates bootstrappers

So that’s why I give the $500 figure. Yes, it’s a nice round number, hefty enough that you can feel really good about having saved it up, a number that you can speak aloud confidently (try it: “My technology budget this year is $500.” You may not believe it yet, but what if it were true?).

But mostly, it gives you a nice cushion beyond the bare minimum.

If you’ve spent $130 on your domain and hosting, you have enough of that $500 left over to do one or two of the following:

  • Buy premium services like AWeber (for mailing list management) or AudioAcrobat (for recording and publishing audio clips and files), each of which is about $20/month.
  • Upgrade your shopping cart capabilities by using a paid shopping cart service (my favorite, and the one I use, is E-Junkie, which starts at $5/month, but there are many others).
  • Buy a premium theme for your blog (any premium theme worth its salt should come with some amount of tech support, by the way).
  • Start a pay-per-click campaign with Google AdWords.
  • Hire a graphics wizard to design your logo and header.
  • Purchase a guidebook or do-it-yourself WordPress class that you can use as a reference as you build your own site.
  • Have someone like me install and configure WordPress for you since that’s a one-time task that you may not want to waste time learning.
  • Hire a tech-savvy VA for a few hours, or a business or marketing coach for one or two intense sessions.

And even $500 isn’t enough to do all of these things. You’ll still need to pick and choose carefully. You might notice that I didn’t mention web design at all, which is because truly custom design will cost at least $1000, and often much much more. You can do a lot with a highly customizable theme and a unique logo, though.

The bottom line is to think carefully about your support needs. And when you’ve figured out exactly how much support and training you’ll need? Double it.

And if I’m wrong, and you survive just fine on the bare miminum? Fabulous! Good for you! At the end of the year you’ll have $370 to spend on whatever your heart desires, and wouldn’t that make a nice holiday gift for yourself and your business?

Filed Under: General How-To's Tagged With: , , , ,

Do I really need WordPress? Can’t I just start with Blogger?

December 8, 2009 By

This question comes straight from the mailbag:

Is it okay to just start on Blogger? I tried WordPress but it frustrated the heck out of me.

I’m so glad you asked. It’s true that I’ve been hyping WordPress for its power, flexibility, and ease of use. But there are a couple of practical barriers to getting started:

  • Even though the WordPress software itself is free, you’ll need a web hosting account and a domain name, both of which you’ll have to pay for.
  • Even though WordPress can be very easy to use once it’s set up properly, you still have to figure out how to get it installed and configured, which honestly isn’t that easy if you’re just starting out.

Now, I’ve got the solution to the second problem: You can hire me to install and configure WordPress so you can start blogging without having to tear your hair out trying to figure out how to get your site set up.

But that doesn’t help with the first problem (in fact, it adds to it, because in addition to buying hosting and a domain name, you’re now paying my fees).

When Blogger is better

So, if your website budget is somewhere between hahahahahaha what budget? and $500 per year (I’ll break this down in tomorrow’s post), or if you’re simply a little — or completely — freaked out by the idea of having a hosting account and running your own blog, Blogger is an ideal solution.

Here’s why.

  • Blogger is free. As in completely free. No hidden charges, no paid upgrades for pro versions, no fees of any kind.
  • Blogger is totally web-based. You don’t need a hosting account, and to manage your blog all you need to do is login to your Blogger.com account. This also means that your site is backed up so it’s difficult to lose anything.
  • You never have to worry about upgrading or reinstalling anything, because Blogger takes care of all of that behind the scenes for you.
  • Blogger’s interface is completely visual (the jargony term is WYSIWYG, for What You See Is What You Get). Move stuff around by dragging and dropping, change settings by typing and clicking checkboxes, and never worry about the underlying (and scary) code.
  • At the same time, you have access to the code if you really want to get under the hood (see the flip side of this below).
  • Blogger is owned by the mighty Google, which means that it is seamlessly integrated with other Google-owned goodies like Feedburner, AdSense, and Google Analytics.

Be the master of your own domain

So, yes, absolutely, go with Blogger if that’s what works for you right now, especially if your budget is zero.

There are lots of free resources and tutorials out there, and I plan to add some Blogger how-to’s to this very blog (if you want to ask a question or suggest a Blogger how-to, leave a comment here or drop me a line).

That said, as soon as you can spare $10, you should immediately buy yourself a domain name. If you can spare slightly more than $10, lock in your domain registration for a couple of years.

You can use your domain name with your Blogger account (no extra fees from Blogger for this), so instead of yourblogname.blogspot.com, you can now point people to www.yourblogname.com, which is much much better for your business and also provides for a seamless transition if and when you decide to move to WordPress.

When you realize that Blogger is a gateway drug

You can blog happily along on Blogger for quite awhile. And if it’s working for you, there’s no reason to fix what ain’t broke. You can even skip the rest of this post. Honest.

But if you notice any of these symptoms:

  • You wish you could have a customized theme, because you can’t quite tweak your Blogger template to give you the exact look you want
  • You’re looking at a premium theme like Thesis or Headway, both of which are exclusive to WordPress
  • You’re considering paying someone to customize your Blogger template or design a custom header for you
  • You want advanced functionality, like setting up a membership site, a forum, or a complex online store
  • You want your blog to be a part of a “regular” website, or you want your site to have a front page that’s not bloggy-looking

…you might be ready to move from Blogger.com to a self-hosted WordPress site.

If you’re going to drop any bucks on customizing your site, you’d be better off going with WordPress where you have complete and total control. You want to make sure you have the resources to set it up properly and get the help you need, though. And that’s the subject of tomorrow’s post, so stay tuned.

Have a question for my mailbag? Leave a comment or drop me a line.

Filed Under: From the Mailbag Tagged With: , , , ,

How to forward one domain to another using GoDaddy

September 9, 2009 By

I recently received this question via email:

“I bought two domain names, and I want both of them to point to the same place (I want to use one of them, and have anyone who visits the second one automatically go to the first one). How do I do this?”

Turns out, I needed to do this anyway for a handful of domain names I bought for the new WordPress class I’m teaching with my friend, energy healer and Project Nanny extraordinaire Meredith Curtin. So while I was busy forwarding domains, I snapped a couple of screenshots to illustrate how easy it is to change this setting from inside your GoDaddy account.

This trick is also useful if you’ve bought both the .com and .net versions of your domain name, or if your nonprofit uses a .org address but you also want people who type the .com address to end up at the right place. I always recommend buying more than one domain.

Forwarding a domain with GoDaddy is a simple 3-step process. Ready? Here we go:

1. Log into your GoDaddy account.

You’ll see a screen that includes a list of your domain names (or the first five, if you own more than five).

"My Account" screen, shown when you first log into GoDaddy.com

"My Account" screen, shown when you first log into GoDaddy.com

 

2. Click on “Advanced Details” for the domain you want to forward.

You’ll see a screen that’s chock-full of settings to change. Don’t be intimidated by this. All you need to do is make one small change!

Look for the arrow-shaped icon that’s labeled “Forward.” Give it a click.

Look for the "forwarding" icon on the Domain Manager screen

Look for the "forwarding" icon on the Domain Manager screen

 

3. In the popup window, fill in the web address of the site where you want your visitors to end up.

In the example shown here, I’m making sure that anyone who types www.thegentleartofmakingmoney.com gets automatically sent to the real class address, which is www.gentleartofmakingmoney.com.

Now, if I refer to the class verbally as “The Gentle Art of Making Money” and someone types the whole name, including the “the,” they’ll get to our main class page, because both addresses now point to the same place (try clicking the links in the above paragraph; they really do end up at the same place, with a barely noticeable time lag for the first one).

Click OK to save the changes (you can always edit or remove your forwarding later).

There you go! You have successfully forwarded your domain name to a different address.

Semi-Interesting Note: You can type any web address here. It can be a domain name that you also own (as shown in this example), but you don’t have to own it. The address you type can be someone else’s website, or even a page at Amazon.com. GoDaddy really doesn’t care where you’re sending people.

Just type the name of the domain where you want your site visitors to end up, and click "OK."

Just type the name of the domain where you want your site visitors to end up, and click "OK."

 

4. Bonus Tip: How to forward multiple domain names at once

If you have bought several domain names that you want to forward, you can also batch-forward them to avoid repeating these steps individually for each domain name. To do this, you want to go to your Domain Manager where you can see a list of all your domains:

Batch-forward multiple domains by checking multiple boxes before clicking the green "Forward" arrow.

Batch-forward multiple domains by clicking multiple checkboxes before clicking the green "Forward" arrow.

 

You’ll want to click the checkboxes next to all the domains you want to forward (you must be forwarding them all to the same destination address).

Then, and only then, click the familiar green “Forward” arrow at the top of the screen. You’ll see a popup window similar to the one shown in Step 3, except that it will indicate that you’re forwarding more than one domain. There’s still only one place to fill the destination, however.

Got any domain-forwarding questions? Leave me a comment and let’s talk!

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Filed Under: General How-To's Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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