The Kona Impact Blog

We're going to try and make a blog post every Friday about a local business we think is doing a great job. We'd like to highlight what some businesses (from our perspective) that do well and put a spotlight on excellence. Some will be Kona Impact clients; other are not.

This week's business spotlight is Precision Auto. Their website is PrecisionAutoKona.com They are located at the end of Alapa Street in Kona's Old Industrial area.

I took our two vehicles to Precision Auto last week. Raymond, the mechanic, not only changed the oil, but also noticed some loose bolts in the drive train and fixed them on my truck. I would never expect that of one of the franchise oil change shops in town.

The big surprise came, however, when my wife thanked me for vacuuming the mats of her car after the oil change. I didn't. I'm not sure if it's part of their normal service, but it sure puts the "WOW" in my perception of them.

It's great to know that there are some reliable and professional mechanic shops in town. I'm sure there are a lot of them, but from now on, my vehicles will be serviced by Precision Auto.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

EVERYBODY LOVES A BILLFISH PARADE!
HIBT PARADE SET FOR SUNDAY, AUGUST 1, 2010

KONA–Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament organizers are pleased to announce the popular HIBT parade will held on Sunday, August 1, 2010, starting at 2:30 p.m. in historic Kailua Village.

The parade will begin at the King Kamehameha’s Kona Beach Hotel and wind its way through Kailua Village ending at Hualalai Road. The HIBT parade will feature international teams including crowd favorites from Australia, South Africa, Tahiti, New Zealand, Korea, Japan, Papua New Guinea and of course, teams from US, including California, Hawaii, Florida. Also included in the parade lineup will be Miss Billfish 2010, Kona Shriners and Hawaii County Band. In all, more than 26 parade entries will excite parade goers!

“We invite the entire community, young and old, to come and bring their families to this fun-filled parade. Teams are excited to be here in beautiful Kona, fishing 5 great days and look forward to the smiles that await them at the parade,” said HIBT Founder Peter Fithian. “The tournament also recognizes the long standing tradition of the Billfish Parade and really sees this parade as the official start of the 51st Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament.”

The Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament is underwritten by the generosity of the County of Hawaii and sponsored in part by Oceanic Time Warner Cable, KWXX Radio and numerous corporate and community donors.

For more information on the Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament, including team listings, IGFA world-record rules and a daily recap of tournament standings, log onto www.hibtfishing.com.

Kona Impact, like most other online marketing and web design companies, is very attuned to innovations and changes in the marketplace. In the old days, a marketing company would basically offer clients print ads (newspapers, yellow pages, magazine, direct mail, etc.) or broadcast ads (TV or radio). These slow-moving marketing outlets we fairly easy to understand and transparent to the business buying services.

Those days are long gone and remnants of the last century! Not that they are still not important—they are—but the options for business far exceed what anyone could have imagined ten, even five years ago.

“Social Media” is Not Defined Well!

The new rage is “social media”. For some this means Facebook and Twitter and for others it means a broad range of ways to reach out to potential customers. The problem when everyone talks of social media is that no one can define what it is in a way that doesn’t include everything under the sun. These broad definitions give the term little meaning.

West Hawaii Social Media Survey

One study done in West Hawaii defined social media as Facebook, online video, Twitter, Email marketing, Blogs, LinkedIn, Forums/Chat rooms and bookmarking sites. So, basically social media is everything online other than a website (unless, of course, blogging is considered part of a website)?

Interestingly, when everything is thrown into the mix, business owners (or those who respond for the business—a big potential difference) find value. Value, however, is a relative term.

For example, when answering “Which of the following benefits, if any, do you attribute to your social media efforts?” only 40% cited “generated exposure for my business” and that was the item businesses cited most. Only approximately 8% said social media “helped me close business”.

Big Investment, Big Results?

One thing the survey did very well was to measure the time investment businesses put into social media to realize benefits. For example, if a company spent 1-5 a week on social media, only about 18% cited greater exposure as a benefit. Only about five percent who used social media 1-5 hours a week said it helped generate significant leads. I would add, however, that "greater exposure" is a fairly ill-defined concept.

Overall, the benefit to using social media (which is defined very broadly) comes from spending 20-40 hours a week on it. In other words, a half-time or full-time employee’s wages and benefits!

What Kona Impact Offers

At Kona Impact, we offer a better approach to so-called social media. First of all, we don’t believe it is a panacea for a company’s online marketing efforts. Our experience of doing this for years (and having mountains of data to back up our assertions) is that investing in a solid and effective website will be far more effective in generating exposure and sales for a business than to focus efforts on social media.

Second, we help businesses identify the most promising types of social media for the organization. All social media is not created equal, and instead of focusing resources on what is popular or trendy, we like to focus businesses on what fits their organization, marketing goals and resources. For certain, we would seldom recommend a business devoting half or a full employee’s salary to social media.

Lastly, as a company that works with these issues day in and day out, we can almost certainly offer a business better results and significant cost savings by handling some, if not most, of their online marketing needs. We have numerous clients that outsource their online marketing needs to us, and have realized excellent return on investment from our work. Because we have the tools to prove our effectiveness, we show businesses exactly what they getting in terms of online exposure, website traffic and search engine visibility.

If your business is hearing the words “social media” a lot and trying to figure out how to become more effective and visible online, give Kona Impact a call. We have a perspective that comes from over ten years of online marketing and web design experience. Kona Impact | 329-6077.

Flash is a proprietary platform that allows animations, videos and interactivity on websites. For the most part, when you see animated web pages (or whole sites) you are probably seeing Flash. A lot of web video is encoded in Flash. Most only games are Flash. About 95% of a *notebook and desktop* computers have the Flash players installed. The problem is that 0% of ipads or iphones have Flash installed.

A few months ago Steve Jobs, head guru at Apple, released a stunning and comprehensive statement about the use of Flash in Apple mobile devices. I believe there were six or eight reasons why he said that Flash would not be in ipads of iphones. This is big news, as there are over 30 million iphones and (predicted to be) 10 million ipads used by consumers within a year. That's, conservatively estimated, approximately 35 million people in the U.S. that will not be able to see Flash websites, animations, navigation buttons and video.

So, the question becomes whether it makes sense to use any Flash on a website.

At Kona Impact, we have moved pretty quickly to the "No Flash" side of the issue. We just cannot in good conscience create websites that are not fully functional for such a large, mobile and affluent group of web users. For certain, full Flash websites are dead. Should web designers add animated Flash headers or other animations? At Kona Impact, we say "no" because these elements are mostly just eye candy AND 35 million or so web surfers can see them.

As we move to a more mobile society (at least in terms of computing) it is important for web designers to ensure that the websites they work on will be accessible to mobile users.

There are many choices for any business looking for a website. One of the big choices is whether to go with a web design company or find an individual to handle the project. It is a decision of great consequence, because the difference between an ineffective online presence and a strong online presence can result in a difference in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars a year in revenue. In reality, the cost of a website is very small compared to what it can do for a business.

An individual might offer initial cost savings. After all, he is probably working out of his house and thus has low overhead. It's also likely that he will be doing web design part time, so he will have other sources of income. That's, however, where the advantages stop.

A professional web design team will, almost certainly, be a better choice. The tendency of a lot of individual web designers is to over-promise and then spend a huge amount of time trying to figure out how to do what they have promised. After all, an individual's skill set is inherently limited, and it's very unlikely an individual will have top-notch skills at design, programming and online marketing. Most teams will have dedicated staff to each aspect of successful websites, as they are very different skill sets. So, in the end, many individuals either give up and don't deliver what they have promised, or they take much longer than is necessary to complete a website. At Kona Impact, we have numerous clients who have started with an individual and lost their money (the designer moves) or spent months waiting for their site.

The most important reason to hire an established company, however, is that the website will be better. A team of designers, programmers and online marketers will be able to excel at all aspects that make a website successful. Just the other day, we had acquired a new client. She said that she could not find the website of three of her local competitors despite the knowledge that they have websites. After about ten minutes we did find one of her competitors on the third page of Google's results. The design was terrible and there was no attention paid to search engine optimization. Her competitor probably saved some money but has lost a lot more more by not having an effective web presence. We are looking forward to helping our client look good and be found online. We are very confident that she'll be more visible online than any of her competitors.

At Kona Impact, we encourage our prospective clients to look at a website as a very high return on investment option for their business. A bad website will, over time, cost a business money because of lost opportunity. An effective website, on the other hand, should be a vehicle to help a business be found and attract new customers. Saving money at the beginning is pointless if the website is not found online and represent a business well.

Receiving cold calls is a fact of life for most businesses. They are an intrusion and annoyance, yet, on occasion, a cold call pitch is intriguing and perhaps worth a few minutes of time. After all, cold callers seem to be cut from the same cloth that produces car and timeshare salespeople. I mean this as a compliment: they are awesome salespeople!

If you do get a sales call for web design or online marketing services, here are a few important questions. If the salesperson cannot answer them to your satisfaction, hang up. If the salesperson does answer them to your satisfaction, take your time. Verify the information. Have the salesperson call you back in a week. Or, just simply ask for an email detailing the offer or product and then investigate the details at your pace. Never buy anything on the first call.

Questions to Ask a Company Cold Calling for Web Services:
1. Who are you? Where are your headquarters? How long has your company been in business? When you know the headquarters's location, you can check their Better Business Bureau information. Also Google the company's name and look at the second and third page of Google results. Look for blog posts complaining about the company. If you don't find any, it's a good sign.

2. What is your company's website? Where is the information detailing what you are selling on your website? Where can I find your terms of service?

3. If they are selling online marketing services, ask for five keywords that the company has tried to do well on in the organic Google rankings. This will tell you if the company is good at what they do. For example, if a company has focused on being found on Google for "web design in Seattle" or "Seattle online marketing", Google those terms. If you find the company in the top ten results, you can be reasonably assured that they good at what they do. If they don't have a good keyword strategy, don't use them! Simple: if they can't do for themselves what they want to do for you, they are no good.

4. Can you provide the contact information for five clients (in your area or state) who have purchased your services. Contact them. Verify results. Be skeptical. After all, it's your money, time and business!

5. What is your guarantee? (This is a bit of a trick question; a reputable online marketing will not make guarantees, as no one controls how Google or the other search engines rank items.) What happens if you don't perform as promised?

Kona Impact encourages all businesses who receive cold calls for web services to be very skeptical and ask a lot of questions. We get these calls one or two times a day due to the nature of our business, and, almost without exception there are better options at better prices. Some, if not most, are outright scams.

If your business is in Hawaii and you are looking for a reliable provider of web design and marketing services, give us a call at 329-6077.

Recently one of Kona Impact's local customers had some fairly major problems with their website and online presence.

Kona Impact was not part of the design and hosting setup of their domains, but we started working with them this year on their websites and have consulted with them on several website issues. In effect, they hired us to manage most of their online presence.

Well, several days ago they experienced a "perfect storm" of issues with their online systems. It was, to put it mildly, a mess. Without going into details, their problem was the result of multiple failures on multiple levels and it took two days to get things back the way they should be.

By hiring a local provider they were able to get their problems resolved promptly with a very high level of customer service. We worked on it Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Most web design firms on the Mainland do not have service hours that are convenient for clients in Hawaii. Few can assist clients late at night, and most are not open on weekends. No off-island web developers are able to visit the place of business to setup email accounts or trouble-shoot problems in person. We do.

Keeping a website online is not just a matter of "set it and forget about it." They are occasionally hacked. Servers go down. Automated updates can make functions inoperable. Domain registrations expire. Hardware fails. Email accounts can become full. Setting up email accounts can be a hassle. Much like a car or a home, websites do need to be maintained, and, they do occasionally go offline.

Who is on your website team? Can they provide you with the service you need? Are they willing to do house calls? Are they willing to work late, come in early or work on weekends to keep your businesses online? If not, give Kona Impact a call. We take our responsibility to keep our clients' businesses online very seriously. Kona Impact: 329-6077 (Note: we seldom accept new clients outside of the 808 area code).

One of the great things about working with so many local businesses is the opportunity to see how other businesses are run. Our clients generally come to us for advice on how to grow online and, thus, grow there business, but as is often the case, we learn a few things in the process.

Just yesterday, we came across a business card we really like. The front side had the usual business info. On the back of the business card was "Perfect is close enough." Those four words are great way for him to make a statement about who he is and how he runs his business. Succinct. Noteworthy. Effective.

A remarkable sea change has begun in the web design world today. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, posted a letter explaining why the iphone and ipads will not be supporting Flash, a programming tool that allows everything from simple animations to full website designs. Flash is used on simple navigation buttons and, at the other extreme, interactive online games. It is also the software on which a lot of online video is made and played.

Jobs gave six reasons why the iphone and ipad will not support Flash. Taken as a whole these are certainly the proverbial nail in the Flash coffin for Apple's mobile devices. Some may say, "so what", but at Kona Impact we have identified this as a fundamental shift in the way companies like ours designs and programs websites.

The reason is simple: there are 40 million iphones and the estimated sales for ipads this year is 10 million. For the most part, the users of these devices are tech-savvy, mobile and more affluent than the average person. In other words, this is a huge market of potential customers for our client's businesses. To ignore them would be a very bad business decision in our opinion.

So, at Kona Impact, we have decided to no longer use any Flash on our websites. We will continue to use JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS--the standards of web design and programming tools well-supported by all standards-compliant browsers and mobile devices--including the iphone and ipad.

If your company wants to reach users of iphones and ipads (as well as any other computer browser) give us a call. If you have a full Flash website, we can help keep the essence of the design and make a site that is standards-compliant and highly functional. 329-6077.

Spend any time online and you'll run across ads for "website tonight" or "website this weekend" types of web services. The allure is appealing, no doubt, as everyone can imagine spending an evening or a weekend to create a website. The costs are usually quite low, and the examples you see are often quite nice. We at Kona Impact certainly believe that these types of template websites and hosting solutions do fulfill a need. That said, they are often an incomplete and costly solution for businesses.

Here are a few things that a business person should consider when looking at these template site programs.

1. An "evening" or a "weekend" is seldom true except for the simplest websites with a minimal amount of text. How much time and energy do you want to spend on your website? How much is your time worth an hour? Couldn't you be making more money running your business than trying to build a website?

2. You probably lack any technical skills that would allow you to modify anything but the most fundamental parts of the template.

3. Your design sense, while it may be good, is probably somewhat less than that of a professional. Combine #2 and #3 and you have a recipe for frustration and a very unprofessional-looking website.

4. You do not own your website when you choose a pre-packaged template! You do own your text and your pictures, but the design is not yours and you have no right use any part of it in the future. If the company on which your website template exists goes bankrupt, your website will be offline and irretrievable. If the company chooses not to update its systems or software to meet new web standards, you are helpless. If the company doubles or triples the hosting cost, you have no choice but to pay if you want to keep your website online. We at Kona Impact have seen these things happens tens of times over the years.

5. Your website will look like thousands of other websites online. Templates only make sense for a web design company if they can be sold and re-sold thousands of times. In order to make the process easy for the buyer, they have to be simplified and very generic. Unfortunately, no business is generic or simple, which inevitably results in the "trying-fit-a-square-peg-into-a-round-hole" problem. The business must tailor its content to the design, instead of the other way around.

Kona Impact offers an alternative: custom-designed websites that are made to fit the buyer's business and design sense. When we finish a website, the business owns it, which means that even if Kona Impact disappears (we're not planning to!), the business owns the website and can host it anywhere and modify it. In addition, our website are what we call standards-compliant, which means we write clean website code that will be viewable online correctly now and in the future. Finally, the Kona Impact team works with business owners to tailor the content of the website to not only look great, but to also to be found on the search engines.

When you're ready to grow your business online, give us a call at 329-6077. Our consultations are free.