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4 Great Back-to-School Marketing Thought-Starters

Vacation’s over in most places around the world. And guess what? As those kids and college students get ready to go back to school, they also set off on the second-largest spending spree of the year. Even if your small business isn’t selling school supplies or uniforms, you can still attract some of those dollars to your site.  Here are some helpful ideas to inspire you – and since it’s so easy to change up and refresh your Yola site, you’ve got the flexibility you need to launch your campaign today.

1. Start a traditional, tried, and true back-to-school marketing campaign.

If you actually ARE selling school supplies, clothing, or accessories, now’s the time to pump up your online advertising. Even if you aren’t, there are plenty of businesses and services that can help kids and teachers get ready. Hair salons, errand services, tutors – go for it! And it’s the perfect time for a “last chance” sale, to take advantage of those last golden days of vacation, too.

2. Get creative with back-to-school tie-ins.

Your small business might not be the most obvious fit for a back-to-school promotion – but get creative and you just might find the right connection. Here are a few good examples:

• A nutrition- or food- related business might offer information, workshops, or even the services of preparing healthy school lunches.
• A cleaning products business or cleaning service can market itself as perfect for cleaning dorm rooms (who wants to spend time cleaning?!) or sell a special “student pack” of products.
• A watch repair business could run a “get to school on time” special.

3. Talk to parents.

Back to school means a change in schedule for parents, too – and for some, more time to pamper themselves or get to stuff they’ve been putting off.

• Hair stylists, manicurists, and massage therapists can offer discounts with mid-day “they’ve-gone-back to school” appointments.
• Restaurants can create special menus and/or dishes for those child-free lunchtimes.
• Fitness studios and gyms can offer special mid-day workshops or sessions now that the kids are in school.

4. Be a teachers’ pet.

Plenty of the marketing ideas above that apply to parents will also please hard-working teachers, too. Here are a few more:

• Special car-detailing packages for teachers only.
• Teacher-only memberships or discount cards at educational supply businesses – or any business, really.
• Free dinner entrée, cupcakes, or food prep for teachers during the first month of school.

These ideas are just for starters. How will your small business participate in the lucrative back-to-school season? We invite you to share your own ideas with your fellow Yola site owners right here in our comments!

Labels: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Website of the Week: The Skitsaphrenics

The Skitsaphrenics are a sketch comedy troupe, or as their tag-line says on their website, “just another one of those sketch comedy troupes.” While that may be good for a giggle, we think their website does a lot to separate them out from the crowd.

The design and color scheme of the website invokes the feeling of a hip, dark comedy club where you just know they should be performing. They used a simple but effective custom navigation menu which lets you move about their website and explore all the troupe has to offer, such as bios of the cast, videos of their sketches, and their photo gallery.

At first, the website was just used to put up YouTube videos. And I really just stuck to the layouts that were given. But over time, I became comfortable with the site and realized that Yola gives the tools, but it’s up to me to craft the website. Yola has, in fact, given a smorgasbord of options and widgets, and with some crafting on a flash program and manipulation of HTML to create menus and slideshows, I now have a site that I truly love, and I know that whoever sees the site will love it too. I also now have a place to write in my news–I don’t even have to go elsewhere to create a blog. Every time I decide I want to try something new, I figure out that I can–whether it be from the forum or the help page. I feel like a kid in a candy store as I spend hours finding new things to help make my website better. And I’m still finding ways!—Warren Buchholz

Want to see your site featured here? Take a few minutes to tell us what you think makes your site stand out and submit it to: support@yola.com.

Labels: Featured Websites,Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Changes to free domain pointing feature

Hi Everyone,

As we had announced before we are making changes to our domain prices.  As part of this change on February 15, we will be removing the domain pointing feature for our free service.  What does that mean to you?  It means that if you’re using our free service after February 15th, you will no longer be able to point a domain purchased from another provider.  If you currently have a domain purchased from another provider you can always transfer your domain to Yola.   If you already have a published Yola site pointed to a domain, this feature will remain and your service will not be interrupted; however, we highly recommend that you consider transferring your domain.   It’s fairly easy and simple to do this.   If you are a Silver package subscriber, we will also continue to keep this feature for you.

For the last few months, we’ve been upgrading our hosting, security systems and features to protect your website from the threat of hackers and outages so when you transfer your domain with us you get a whole lot more:

• Upgraded, state-of-the-art website protection
• Premium quality hosting for round-the-clock care and fewer down times
• Advanced global DNS management to quickly allow you to make domain changes yourself
• Award-winning support team available 24/7
• Instant setup gets your website online in no time

If you have any questions please contact support at http://www.yola.com/support/contact

Sincerely,
Yola

Labels: Uncategorized | 9 Comments »

The future of My Yola is here

Hi everyone

Today we released a brand new version of My Yola (the page you see when you log in to Yola) as a Beta feature to a small percentage of our users.  We are incredibly excited about the changes, and I’m going to spend some time going through them, but first, just a couple of important notes:

• It’s not perfect yet, but we wanted to make you part of the process, so we released it as a Beta feature which basically means we want you to help us make it better before we roll it out to all users.
• This is a slow roll-out, meaning you might not be in our random group of users who see the new layout when you log in.  Please be patient — we want to make sure we get this right so we’re not going to make it live to 100% of users for a little while.

Now, on to the good stuff, an overview of the new My Yola Dashboard.  Below is a picture of what it looks like: Read more »

Labels: Uncategorized | 9 Comments »

Yola now integrated with Twitter and Facebook

One of the most common requests we get at Yola is from people who want to know how to attract more visitors to their website. A great way of doing this is to add a post to your Facebook wall or your Twitter stream telling people that your site has changed.

Up until recently you the only way to do that was by trotting over to Twitter or Facebook and adding the update. Not any more though. You can now post your Twitter and Facebook updates directly from Yola.

How to post to Twitter and Facebook directly from Yola

After you update your site and publish your changes to the web, you can also add in the news of what’s changed and send it directly to your Twitter profile or Facebook wall.

The first time you do this you’ll be asked whether you’re happy to let Yola connect to your account. When prompted, click “allow” and your story will be posted. You only need to do this once so next time the story will go straight out.

Labels: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Yola Pro Sale Extended

Due to high demand we have decided to extend the 50% off Yola pro sale to 12/2. If you have already taken advantage of this offer, now is your chance! Use promo code: Yolaprohalf at checkout

Labels: Uncategorized | No Comments »

Yola in the Media

We’ve had a good run of press coverage over the past couple of weeks.  Here are some of the greatest hits.  Two TV clips and two podcasts.  Enjoy!

ABC News

CNBC

Small Business Advocate Podcast

BusinessWeek Smart Answers Podcast

Establish a Web Presence – Yola’s Randy Almond on why it matters

Labels: Media Coverage,Uncategorized | No Comments »

Small Business Resource Center

With small businesses still struggling to recover, we have created a central resource with all of the information they need to have a successful presence online.

The Small Business Resource Center is a central, free resource that has all of the tools small businesses need to build a successful online presence.

With less than half of all small businesses having websites, the Small Business Resource Center is designed as a one stop shop for small business owners to either create a website or maximize the presence the already have online.

We have also partnered with Jim Blasingame, the Small Business Advocate®, one of the world’s foremost experts on small business and entrepreneurship, to make his substantial resources available.

To celebrate the kickoff, we are introducing the Small Business Recovery Plan, a sweepstakes giving more than $5,000 in goods and services to small business owners* in need.

• 3 winners will receive new, customized websites
• 10 winners will receive Yola Pro packages with all of the premium tools they need for their websites
• 25 winners will receive Yola Premium Styles
• 100 winners will receive books by Jim Blasingame, the Small Business Advocate® and the Yola Small Business Expert

Enter now for a chance to win!

*Sweepstakes is open to US residents only.

Labels: Competitions,Small Business,Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Business Website Mistakes

Top 5 Sins Business Websites Make Without Knowing It

You’ve designed, developed, and rolled out a great website for your business. Lately, you’ve noticed you’re your business website hasn’t been bringing in much traffic, not to mention sales. You’ve fixed some obvious problems, but your traffic and sales haven’t improved much. What could be wrong?

Your business website may not have any big, obvious things wrong with it, but you could be doing something wrong that you may not know about or have thought of before. Here are the five least known business website boo-boos, and some suggestions to avoid and fix them.

Sin #1: Writing content that focuses on features instead of benefits. Your business website’s content has to both inform customers about your products and services and persuade them to buy from you. Unfortunately, many business websites’ content does a great job of informing customers about the features of their wares, but not so much when it comes to the benefits they’ll realize. For example, if you own a furniture store, mentioning that you have free delivery on your site is a feature. A benefit of free delivery is that customers save on delivery charges and don’t have to make arrangements to pick up furniture on their own, which saves them time, money, and hassle. In other words, visitors want to know “what’s in it for me” and how you benefit them more than your competition.

Sin #2: Not making your business website search engine friendly. The first places your customers often go to find business like yours online are search engines. They’re most likely to visit the sites that appear first in the search results, because they see those sites as most relevant and authoritative. If your site doesn’t appear there, consider search engine optimization, or SEO, to move your site up and make it more visible.

Sin #3: Failing to keep your business website fresh. Imagine two stores: Store X is clean, well-lit, and well-stocked with the latest merchandise. Store Y is dusty, dimly lit, and has only a few of last year’s items on display. Which store are you most likely to buy from? At a bare minimum, you should completely refresh your business website at least once a year. Even better, add fresh content weekly or daily. One way to do this is to have a blog where you post content about your latest activities, offers, and other goodies.

Sin #4: Not having a call to action. Along the same lines of focusing on benefits, your business website should create a sense of urgency in your customers, reinforce the need for your product or service, and direct them toward the task you want them to do. Some ways to do so are to add links to a product page that take customers to the checkout page or to download items or offer Internet-only deals or coupons.

Sin #5: Making it too hard for customers to buy from you. Even customers who want to buy from you won’t buy from you if it takes too many clicks or too much time to buy. The fewer steps from the initial visit to the sale, the better.

Labels: Small Business,Uncategorized | 3 Comments »