From the Editor

I’m excited to report that I’ll be presenting a SCORE workshop in Lancaster on November 5! It’s on search engine optimization and improving a website’s effectiveness. If you’re in the Lancaster, PA, area and are interested in attending the workshop, you can see the details and sign up here.

SCORE is a terrific organization that offers great advice and support for small businesses; in fact, they really helped me get started. Visit SCORE’s website for more information about what they offer and to find a chapter near you. For local Lancaster folks, you can also visit the SCORE Lancaster website as well for their other offerings.

Feel free to forward this newsletter to a friend if you’d like to share what you’ve read. Also, follow Dream Seed on Twitter and Facebook for more tips, tools, and special offers!

All the best,

Adam J. Barkafski

Do you have standards?

Of course you do. Rather, the question should be, “Does your website have standards?” Believe it or not, most websites on the web today don’t! So what is standards compliance for websites?

Standards compliance simply means that the code that makes the website work follows standard, agreed-upon rules. In web design terms, if a website isn’t standards compliant, it’s usually called “Quirks Mode.” While we admire the free spirited and the quirky, these are not necessarily good qualities for your technology!

Learn how having a standards-compliant website benefits you!

Insightful TipAnalytics: Bounce rate

Whether or not you’re using Google Analytics or another application to measure the performance of your website, you may see “bounce rate” reported. (And if you’re not using Google Analytics, why didn’t you take advantage of our free installation offer last month?)

Bounce rate simply reports the percentage of visits that only last for one page. In other words, these are the visits in which people come to your site and then “bounce” off without going to any other page on your website. This usually happens for two reasons: 1. The visitor came to your site and found exactly what she was looking for; or 2. The visitor came to your site and judged it irrelevant for his needs.

Bounce rate can tell you if your website is meeting your visitors’ needs. If you have a high bounce rate, you may want to look at your landing pages and see how you can make each one more appealing and compelling, encouraging your visitors to stay and make the conversion you wish for them to make. Tailor each landing page for a specific key phrase, and make it easy and irresistable for your visitors to take that next step (buying an item, making contact, signing up for a newsletter).