The Kona Impact Blog

We at Kona Impact has always admired the work of local artisans. While we work with pixels and digital design, we certainly appreciate those who work with wood and hand tools. Kona, Hawaii is home to many highly skilled woodworkers and artisans, and when we get the chance to work with them, we always have a great experience.

One awesome woodworker in Kona is Andy at Boardworks Woodworking. His use of clean lines and exceptional materials make his custom cabinetry, custom made furniture and doors true works of art. When we were working on his new website, we often found ourselves sayings among ourselves that we would all love to have Andy's furniture in our homes. Even if you're not in the market for new cabinets or furniture, take a look at Andy's portfolio of work on his website.

When making Boardworks Woodworking's new site, we wanted to make sure that the focus of the website is Andy's work. In other words, his awesome portfolio of completed projects are his selling point, and the website should showcase what he has accomplished and what he can offer those seeking custom woodworking in the Hawaiian Islands. Fortunately, he has been taking high resolution pictures of his work for many years.

We look forward to seeing Boardworks Woodworking beautify more homes in Hawaii.

Hawaii Island has, I believe, the highest electricity rates in the United States. Most of our energy comes from imported oil, which is burned, in our on-island power generators. With a relatively large area, small population and great distance from our fuel sources, we are mostly stuck with very high electricity rates.

Hawaiian Solar is a great local company that offers home and building owners the chance to (at least partially) break free from our high electricity costs. They have hot water, pool and photovoltaic systems and are the most experienced solar equipment dealers and installers on the island.

Like with most of our clients, we got to work closely with Ken, the owner, over a period of weeks to learn about his business and how we could convey what he does online. We certainly enjoyed learning about solar systems and why Hawaiian Solar is the local leader. We even got to design a face plate for Ken's new Segway--our first design for a Segway.

At Kona Impact we work with businesses at all stages of development--from idea stage to well-established businesses. It is our goal to help these businesses find effective ways to grow online. We have helped businesses go from nothing to $200,00 in online sales in less than two years. We have also seen businesses fail.

In a nutshell, here is our advice for anyone starting an online business:

1. Do something that is congruent with your current business skills, interests and lifestyle. For example, don't try to start selling aloha shirts if you have no retail experience. Start with your existing business or business skills and see how you can expand what you are doing.

2. Find a niche. There is no use in trying to sell the same electronics online that all the big online retailers sell. You'll get no online visibility and, in the end, you'll fail. That said, if you have a gadget that is a better mouse trap, so to speak, consider online sales. Some of the most successful businesses we work with have niche products that are generally not available from other retailers.

3. Do a lot of research. This is, of course, related to #2 (above). Ask friends, business associates, family members what they honestly think of your idea. Also do a lot of online research. If you Google a term for your product, "titanium rings", for example, and find a hundred websites fighting for page 1 visibility on Google, consider a Plan B. If you ten possible competitors, you might have some opportunity. Make sure the playing field is not already crowded with established businesses.

4. Don't skimp on your website. Even though it is possible to "make a website tonight" or "website this weekend" avoid the temptation to do it yourself. If you're serious about your online business, hire professionals who will help you avoid the big mistakes and give you the best opportunity for success.

5. Avoid a huge inventory before you start. We've seen several businesses that have ordered thousands of units of products before launch, only to find that some items did not sell online. If at all possible, work with your supplier to get smaller orders of your products, even if the cost is higher.

Establishing and growing a business online is not easy. Perseverance, patience, creativity and attention to detail are all qualities that are essential to online business success. To that we would add an understanding that no person, no matter how smart or motivated, is capable to executing a successful online business without the help of talented, professional service providers.

When you have a few ideas, give us a call at 329-6077. We're here to help! Kona Impact.

At Kona Impact, we always start with a simple premise: you are building a website to be found online. Other than the rare occasion when someone wants what we call a “vanity site,” the goal of most business owners is to have a website that is found through web searches.

The coolest site is the world is not worth a lot if it is invisible online. That said, a terrible-looking and functioning site that does well on Google is also sub-optimal.

At Kona Impact, we feel a business should have the best of both worlds: a great-looking website that is found online. One without the other is like a car with four great tires and no engine.

We propose a simple way to find a web designer that can help you be found online.

Ask any prospective web design team to show you the last five websites they have designed from start to finish. If they haven’t five completed sites, seriously consider someone else. Imagine hiring a mechanic who has not done five tune-ups or brake jobs!

Then ask them to give you ten keywords (like “kona web design” or “Hawaii online marketing”) they are targeting for their own website. If they don’t have a list, they are amateurs and should not be trusted with your website. If you can’t find them on Google, how are they going to help you be found?

Seeing what they can do for their clients is important. Likewise, seeing how well they can market their own business online will show you their skills. Any reputable web development company will, without hesitation, show you their most recent projects, and they should be willing to show qualified potential clients their own online marketing prowess.

When you’re serious about growing your business online, give call us at 329-6099. We never hide from questions and our proud of our record of success.

Whenever you use Google to search for a term, you’ll see two different types of results. The pay-per-click listing are the top three listing in the beige box at the top of the page and the eight listings on the right side of the page. You may not see all these ads if you are searching for something that has no pay-per-click advertisers. Advertisers pay a fee to Google every time someone clicks on their ad in these positions. The results that begin below the beige box (if there is one) are organic search results. These are not advertisements and the website owners do not pay when someone clicks them.

Which is better, organic or pay-per-click? The answer is simple: both! And, it depends!

Let’s look at three marketing scenarios:

New Website, Invisible Online

If you have just launched your website, you’ll notice that you’re not found easily on the first page of Google search engine results. Unfortunately, many web designers don’t have a clue about how to design pages to be found and indexed properly. Even a skilled web design team like Kona Impact will tell clients that it can take weeks, if not a month or two to be found.

Initiating a pay-per-click advertising campaign can insure some immediate results. That is, your ads can begin running almost immediately. The downside, of course, is the cost in terms of money and time it takes to set up, run and sustain a pay-per-click campaign. That said, it’s really the best way to guarantee some immediate visitors to your website.

Established Website; Good Organic Visibility

If your webmaster has done his job and your website in the top five of Google results for the keywords you targeted, you are in pretty good shape. After all, it’s best to have people arrive at your website with no pay-per-click cost to you. If you have good coverage of most the keywords you want to target, it may be a good idea to leave well enough alone and put your marketing dollars elsewhere.

Imagine, however, that you have thirty of forty keywords you want to target (based on solid research, I hope), it will be difficult to do well on all of them. This is where you might want to supplement your organic search efforts with pay-per-click ads. You can buy yourself visibility, which is something you can do with organic search efforts.

Established Website; Want Control

If you are great at organic search and you want to have the greatest possibility of people searching for your business or products to find you, include pay-per-click advertising in your marketing plan. With eleven pay-per-click ad spaces available on Google for all keywords, web searchers can become overwhelmed with the choices and just click to top, pay-per-click results. Even if you are #1 for all your targeting keywords, you will still miss potential visitors who will click the pay-per-click ads. Likewise, if all you have going for you is a lot of pay-per-click advertising and no organic search results visibility, you are missing a lot of visitors.

So, in the best of all possible worlds, you are in a category that allows you to dominate the organic results and the pay-per-click advertising. In the worst of all possible worlds, your webmaster did a crummy job of designing your website and helping you with the content and you are invisible on the organic search search and you don’t have the time or budget for pay-per-click.

Unfortunately, Kona Impact sees websites every day that look nice but, for a number of reasons, do terrible on the organic search results. In effect, the only way the business owner can get visitors to her site is pay-per-click. This is a worst case scenario, as pay-per-click ads are best seen as a supplement to your organic search result marketing efforts and not a substitute for them.

The Kona Impact team has been making websites and running pay-per-click ads for over ten years. Put our experience to work for you. Call today at 808-329-6077.

If you are like the crew at Kona Impact, you get a lot of email. Much of the email we get comes from our clients and we get a lot of email from services we use, including several automatic notification systems. With all of this email coming in every day, it's easy to get overwhelmed with a full Inbox in the morning.

A good solution is to set rules or filters for your incoming mail. With a rule or filter, the incoming email is automatically put in a folder and not in the main Inbox. At Kona Impact, we create email folders for our clients and much of the email we receive from subscriptions and services.

If you are using Microsoft Outlook:
1. Go to the Tools menu and choose Rules and Alerts.
2. Select New Rule.
3. Choose the options that suit your needs.

A second method is to create a rule from an email message:
1. Right-click a message in your Inbox and choose Create Rule.
2. Choose the options that suit your needs.

By filtering your mail, you'll have a much more manageable Inbox and way to identify important and not-so-important email easily.

This week we'll have a series of ideas how to get 2010 off to a good start in 2010

If you're like us at Kona Impact, you have, over the years, found yourself subscribed to many email newsletters. For example, the Kona Impact mail server receives about 10 newsletters a day. These include newsletters for web design and marketing, as well as newsletters for companies from which we have bought products in the past. This is exclusive of the hundreds of spam-unsolicited junk mail-reaching our server each day.

After realizing that we only read one or two of the newsletters regularly, we decided to start unsubscribing. In the past, we never replied to unwanted email, as we knew this could just signal the sender that we were actually a real email address and looking at junk mail. This is before the CAN-SPAM law that requires that an email sender clearly identify who is sending the mail and provide unsubscribing information or processes.

Now, if the email is coming from a reputable source, it is safe to unsubscribe without negative consequences. If you get mail that comes from a commercial email system like iContact, Constant Contact or Vertical Response, just scroll to the bottom of the message and unsubscribe without worry. Your name will be taken off the mail list immediately. Many companies have also developed proprietary email system that will allow you to unsubscribe with just one or two clicks.

At Kona Impact, we figured that if we just spent 5 seconds with each unwanted newsletter subscription, we would spend over 30 minutes a month, six hours a year deleting unwanted email.

So, you first Smart Start 2010 task is to unclutter your Inbox a bit and unsubscribe from unimportant newsletters.

Coming tomorrow: Add a signature to your email.

Craigslist is an online classified ad system, and depending on where you live and what you use it for, it's free. Much to the dismay of many newspapers and weekly ad papers, Craigslist has taken a big chunk of ads that were once almost exclusively run in paid print ads. For a small business owner, Craigslist can be a great place to market the business, find new employees, find supplies and suppliers, and sell unwanted goods.

Marketing a Small Business on Craigslist
The main area for marketing a business on Craigslist is the Services area. To post an ad, go to the Craigslist page for your geographic area, which depending on where you live, may be a state, county or city. For example, Hawaii is divided into the main counties. Be sure to post only in the area in which you offer services.

To avoid spamming (excessive posting) place your ad weekly or bi-weekly. Hint: if you change the text of your ad significantly, you can post more often or in different categories.

The best Craigslist ads use a combination of HTML and graphics. An ad like this will have an image and/or stylized text. If you don't have the skills to do this, hire someone, or go with a simple text ad. Don't over-write and keep to your main points.

Finding Employees for a Small Business on Craigslist
Depending on your location, most jobs ads are free.

The Jobs section of Craigslist is very well-organized and has a sub-listing for just about any job classification. Go to the Craigslist for you area before posting an ad. If you're job search is a bit broader, go to the level on which you want to focus--state, county or city.

One thing Kona Impact has found with Jobs listings is that no matter how many times we emphasize that we are seeking only local employees, we receive about 90% of applicants from other states and countries. These are easy to delete.

Selling and Buying on Craigslist
Many small and medium-size businesses have equipment or supplies they no longer need. Craigslist is a great no-cost place to list the items for sale locally.

Kona Impact has bought and sold several items over the years on Craigst--all to local buyers and sellers. Note: it is generally a bad idea to take payment from and ship items outside of your immediate area on Craigslist. There is just too much fraud with this type of transaction to make it worthwhile.

The For Sale section of Craiglist is well-categorized and, if you avoid non-local buyers and sellers, a great way to sell or buy many things locally. One of the big problems with online shopping for used goods is verifying the condition and shipping. These are not issues with Craigslist.

A smart small business can use Craigslist as a free marketing, employee finding, selling/buying channel. Just like any other medium, caution is advised. If it seems too good to be true.....

Running and marketing a business in Hawaii presents many unique challenges. If it’s a business that relies on people from outside of Hawaii-tourists, off-island property owners or an international market like online sales—the first challenge is simply being found.

A few facts make Hawaii a unique marketing environment:

1. A lot of spending decisions made by those visiting the island are made prior to arrival. For example, it’s not uncommon for a couple on a honeymoon to plan all of their accommodations, meals and activities prior to even getting on the plane.

2. Many of the property owners in Hawaii are not in Hawaii. So, for example, a plumber who just advertises in the yellow pages, is likely to miss out on all the homeowners who will look online for business because they lack a website.

3. Many of the islands have limited service providers and suppliers, so customers and businesses expect that they will have to have their needs met by a businesses outside of their local area, and, often, from another island.

4. For an online store, there are no inherent disadvantages to working out of Hawaii; that is, a well-run online store can just as easily be run from Hawaii as any other place. That said, the procurement and shipping costs are certainly higher in Hawaii.

So, what is a business to do? The clear answer is to leverage the power of a strong online presence to overcome these inherent difficulties.
Relying on local connections and word of mouth should certainly be part of one’s marketing strategy, but every business has to go beyond being a local business.

Even a local honey do service or retail store will benefit from being able to reach customers who are traveling to Hawaii or those who live off-island and need to find a product or service in Hawaii. Remember: the yellow pages and newspapers do not reach people off-island or on other island.

Build your other marketing—brochures, print ads, radio ads, television ads, etc—around a well-designed and written website. Use this as the core of marketing efforts and you will see a greater payoff from all of your efforts.

One of the biggest revolutions in marketing is pay-per-click advertising (PPC). It’s been about ten years since PPC has been around.
The premise is simple. Someone types “kona coffee” in a Google search box and at the top of and on the left of the results page are ads. The Kona farmers or coffee companies that place the ads pays only when someone clicks the ad and visits the website. For “kona coffee”, the cost per click can be between $1-$3.

Sounds like a good deal: pay $2 and sell a $30 bag of coffee. The reality, however, is that only a small percentage of people who visit a web page make a purchase. If, for example, one out of fifteen clicks results in the sale of one bag of coffee, the cost per sale would be $30. If a hundred visits results in one sale, the cost per sale would be $200—ouch!

The numbers don’t look very good for PPC for “kona coffee”.

Why, then, do Kona coffee farmers do PPC advertising? That is, why would someone pay so much with a seemingly poor return on investment?

Here are some reasons:

1. Kona Coffee, as a consumable gourmet product, will have a high value per new customer, assuming they re-order. For example, if it costs $50 to acquire one new customer and they buy a bag a month, the yearly ROI might be acceptable.

2. Another explanation is that Kona coffee buyers might make high single transaction purchases. For example, if a farmer sold coffee baskets, mac nuts, teas, or other products, the cost per acquisition would be high but the ROI might be reasonably low.

I suspect that most sellers of Kona coffee online using PPC are focused on the lifetime sales to a new customer as their metric. As such, anyone who markets Kona coffee online should be emphasizing coffee clubs or subscriptions to a monthly or bi-monthly shipment.

There are many alternatives to the monetary and time costs of a PPC advertising for Kona coffee farmers. One is to focus on organic search by having a website with content that attracts keyword searches. These clicks are free and can, in many ways, be more valuable than advertising with high-cost generic keywords like “Kona coffee”.

Perhaps the best approach is focus on keyword search terms that are less frequently searched and with less advertising completion. A phrase like “Kona dark roast ground coffee” is much less expensive than “Kona coffee” and in many ways a better keyword phrase because it is obviously very focused on finding a very specific product.

Kona Impact has a team of specialists who can help with the design and marketing of Kona coffee. We are a Kona-based company and are passionate about helping local businesses grow and profit. Give us a call at 329-6077 to schedule a no-obligation, no-pressure and no-cost consultation.