Web Design News Blog

Social Media Vs Email Marketing

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:39:00 -0400

Ever since the inception and popular use of Social Media Marketing many marketers have asked themselves if email marketing should still be used as heavily as before. The answer is email marketing still has a lot of great benefits that media doesn't and vice versa.

Social media is great for quick news and announcements that may be overlooked in an email or enewsletter. Ben & Jerry's icecream has recently announced that they will no longer be announcing their new flavors via email marketing, but fans must use their social media avenues to get this news. Smart move.

Email marketing can still be used as a good communication tool with your opted in list. We still read our emails. It's a work safe advertisement. People are less likely to get busted looking at an email through Outlook than surfing the Social Media sites ;-). In addition, you can have more graphics and more message. Finally, people are more subseptable to promotions and offers through email than getting them over Social Media news.

Social Media and Email marketing work hand hand. Use them to enhance your marketing efforts and additional touch points for campaigns. Say you are a restaurant owner who is looking to drum up business for your endless summer seafood menu. There's nothing like hearing about the new menu on the radio, seeing the new menu through an email, and reading about the new menu and reviews on the social media site. It's making my mouth water just thinking about this campaign.

ICND Partners with Rental Network Software (RNS)

Thu, 13 May 2010 09:17:00 -0400

ICND has formed a partnership with Rental-Network.com to provide Marketing and Website Design services for their clients. After more than 20 years Rental Network Software Corp. continues its tradition as a leader in technology for the Vacation Rental Software industry. RNS is committed to developing cutting edge products that will allow for their clients to succeed in the ever increasing competitive market of the travel & accommodations industry. In addition to providing quality products, RNS strives for complete customer satisfaction and business integrity. Currently RNS offers a robust and easy to learn software package that will fit your company's needs ? regardless if you manage 5 units or 15,000 units. The RNS comprehensive timesaving feature, allows for managing your reservations, accounting details, online bookings, credit card processing, housekeeping and many other aspects for your vacation rental business. As soon as you use RNS, you will discover how their software will help your business succeed in a growing industry. For more information, visit www.Rental-Network.com

ICND Attending the VRMA Eastern Conference

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 11:04:00 -0400

Please be sure to stop by booth 6 at the 2010 VRMA Eastern Conference in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to see Brandon Sauls, TJ Reynoso, and Vanessa Humes. The VRMA Eastern conference will take place April 20th & 21st at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center. If you haven't registered already, please visit http://www.vrma.com/events/event_details.asp?id=97377. We'll be setting up shop and ready to demo many of our services including: - Website Design & Programming
- Booking Engine Integration Services
- Revenue Tracker
- Lead Tracker - ICNDcrm
- Search Engine Optimization
- Pay per Click
- Email Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- & More... If you are a Vacation Rental Manager and looking to jump ahead of your competition, stop by and hear some of our ideas. We'd love the opportunity to set up a private meeting with you to review our products and services. If you are interested, please contact TJ Reynoso, New Business Development - tj@icoastalnet.com or 910-575-6095 x 3. We look forward to seeing you there!

Want More Vacation Rental Units?

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:04:00 -0400

With nearly a decade of experience of helping Vacation Management Companies with their online marketing, ICND has put together some ideas on how to obtain more vacation rental units in these trying times:

Direct mail and email is still the most popular and effective way to reach out to your home / unit owners. There is almost no way around that - what is most important is your message. The following ideas can apply to homeowners to help promote your services.

? Offer "Owner Referrals" where there is an incentive for an existing home owner for referring another home owner. Word of mouth marketing is one of the most successful marketing when dealing with real estate and rental management. ? Host an "Owners Weekend" where you hold an open house that allows owners that are on the fence to freely stop by to see your operation and learn more about what you have to offer. Make it into an event with balloons, hors d'oeuvres, etc during Easter weekend for example. ? Send a quarterly newsletter. Owners will entertain your news and helpful information about owning a rental property. Stay in front of the owner by offering useful industry and market information without constantly pestering them to come on board. When the do decide to look around you would be the first one on their list. ? Offer an Incentive. This is a little more risky, but you could guarantee that you would generate the same if not more bookings for their units. You then have to be very aggressive and have the marketing or customer base to ensure you obtain those bookings. ? Let your website sell your services. Having an up to date website that ranks well in the search engines puts you ahead of your competition not only with putting heads in beds but also when owners research which property management company to go with. ? Website Usability ? Once an owner finds your site, it better look good and be easy to use to find rentals. Owners want vacationers to be able to easily find their rental units and have it be fair. If you use Instant Software or Escapia as your PMS system, you still have options to integrate a fully customizable online booking engine to increase the edge over your competition. Whether you have easier search functions, more pictures or larger pictures, you have set yourself apart from other sites in your market. ? Here are a few of our clients sites that feature customized online booking engines:

Sloane Vacations

Surfside Realty

Seaside Vacations

ICND Listed as one of Instant Software's Web Development Partners

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:08:00 -0400

February 18, 2010

InterCoastal Net Designs (ICND) is proud to announce that they are now official Web Development partners with Instant Software. Brandon Sauls, President of ICND, has been working with the Instant Software team to develop a relationship that would allow ICND to be a recommended web development company for Instant Software customers.

"The complexity of the internet, search engine marketing strategies and associated best practices change at an astonishing rate and require specific expertise"-Instant Software. ICND has been involved in website development and internet marketing for over a decade and excited that we've had the experience in marketing vacation rental management companies and working with their booking engines to harness this information online.

ICND looks forward to working with Instant Software customers to help them with website design, search engine optimization, pay-per click advertising, social media, email marketing and online booking engine integrations. ICND has proved to be integral part of many successful rental management companies in the area and looks forward to bringing this expertise and knowledge to other companies around the country.

Search Engine News

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:54:00 -0400

Bing Commercials – Did They Pay Off?

Can’t say for sure, just yet. But the latest reports from Comscore indicate solid growth in 2009. In addition, Micorsoft sites recorded a 70% increase in searches in December of 2009 when compared to December 2008. The numbers are continue to grow as people start to catch up to the technology and the growing number of people getting online.

Reviews, Reviews. Now… More Reviews.

Many sites gaining traffic these days are sites that feature reviews. It can be on anything from hotels, vacation rentals, personal trainers, to real estate agents. In an approach to beat out review sites such as Yelp, Google is now featuring reviews from things like “blogs”. What’s this mean? It’s even more important to put in testimonials and opinions in our current blogging strategies and techniques.

It’s a Social Takeover

Not exactly hostile, yet. Google has recently unleashed the Social Search into Beta. If you haven’t already tried it you can begin to see a real domination of Google’s focus to real time search results. Now your circle of friends content will influence your search results. You have to create a Google Profile and link it to all of your other social media sites your take part in. Then, when you perform a search for “Myrtle Beach Vacations” your Aunt Mary’s church group pictures she posted on Facebook will return. If you search for “hair dresser”, you’ll get pictures of your friends new do’s and any hair dressers they may be friends with. Just another way Google is in the social market.

Also, it’s still a popularity content. The tweets will rank based on how many followers you are an how well they determine what you tweet about.

Take Advantage of Real Time Google Business Center

Don’t forget to update your profile in the Google Business center with new specials, coupons, products, or menus. This will be another importact factor to bring qualified people to your site and through your doors as Google gets more focused on real-time search.

Google Bowl Ad?

What did you think about the Google Super Bowl commercial? Intriguing, stupid, tear-jerker, cliché? Follow us on Facebook & Twitter and let us know!

Brandon Besecker of Escapia Visits with ICND

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:03:00 -0400

The team members of InterCoastal Net Designs (ICND) welcomed Brandon Besecker, formerly with a well-known internet marketing company and currently the South East Sales representative with Escapia, to learn more about Escapia’s products and how we can work together in order to better serve our clients needs.

ICND has always been a player in the local vacation rental industry with the creation and management of the website for Sloane Vacations in Ocean Isle Beach since 1999 as well as their SEO, PPC, and email marketing campaigns. Through the years ICND has helped numerous other clients with everything from rental booking engine integration, website design, search marketing, email marketing and more. From Condo-World Resorts and Seaside Vacations on the North-end all the way to Litchfield Real Estate in Pawleys Island on the southern end of the Grand Strand and many more in between ICND has been an integral part of online vacation rental management marketing.

Meeting with Escapia helped the staff of ICND better understand the vacation rental booking software the team at Escapia has worked so hard to create and keep on the cutting edge. Their complete business platform is a web-based software platform with one of the most easy to use interfaces. It can help your vacation rental company generate and manage more bookings easier by integrating your vacation rental management system, your website, and your online marketing.

Escapia is one of the most cutting edge pieces of vacation rental management software out there incorporating yield management into their portfolio of applications that make this one of the leaders in vacation rental industry’s web-based software platforms. The yield management application allows for rules to be set for increasing and decreasing rates based on time periods, availability and a number of other factors.

Escapia is web-based, meaning you don’t have to worry about evacuating your server in times of emergency. All of Escapia’s servers are held in high security facilities on the West Coast which keeps your rental booking engine up and running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and out of harms way.

ICND has the ability to create a customized booking engine integration with Escapia and bring all of your rental information online and customizable so that you are getting more for your money and your visitors are getting more interactivity with your site as well as many benefits for search engine optimization. To learn more about how ICND and Escapia can help you reach your vacation rental management goals with software and marketing, contact us now at info@icoastalnet.com or call 1-866-249-6095.

ICND Earns Addy for Better Brands Website Programming

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:01:00 -0400

A team effort resulted in an Addy award for Collins + Company’s awesome design and ICND’s innovative programming manpower. The two companies collected another Addy and website for their trophy cases and portfolio.

Collins + Company came to ICND with a kick-butt design for Better Brand’s Bud Beach.com and ideas as to how they envisioned the site to work. Through stiff deadlines and obstacles, the determination of ICND’s Carla Shaw as project manager, lead to success with the help of one of our most talented programmers, Brandon Taylor.

They worked with Collins + Company for months incorporating flash, Java Script, cold fusion, to make sure the site had great functionality, was search engine friendly, and was fully interactive with its visitors.

One of the most popular sections, but biggest challenges was the Budweiser video commercial gallery. As synonymous as the beer itself are the Budweiser brand commercials. A gallery of video commercials can be viewed on the site and shared through social media channels. Incorporating CSS and Javascript allows the user to share right from the light box.

In addition, the site features shareable downloadable wall papers in multiple sizes, vintage posters, promotions and photo galleries. One of the most interactive features is the beer handbook which incorporates a left to right scroll, clickable beers, and more. Turn on your volume and scroll over the header and beer glasses at the bottom to check out the flash components added to the header and footer of the site.

.

Kudos go out for a great job by Collins + Company and team members of ICND. We now have another great site to add to our portfolios.

ICND Scores 92% on Google Adwords Professional Test

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:51:00 -0400

A team member from ICND scored a 92% on their Google Adwords Professional exam. With one more person passing the exam we become Google Certified.

ICND is not only experienced with the Google Adwords, but we have also satisfied the requirements of Google and obtained the status as a "Qualified Individual of the Google Advertising Professionals Program".

The exam consisted of 120 multiple choice question pertaining from everything from MCC to search and content campaign setups. To pass you must score above 85%. We scored well above with 92%. Through this education and experience, we have demonstrated that ICND has a high level of understanding of Google Adwords.

This certification means that ICND is capable of optimizing your Google Adwords campaign using different techniques. Let ICND help you with your Adwords Goals:

    * Set marketing goals and objectives
    * Create conversion metrics and campaign tracking
    * Create or Optimize landing pages for better conversion
    * Improve Quality Score
    * Lower CPC while increasing ranking at the same time
    * Decrease waste by geo-targeting your audience
    * Test your campaign and optimize for best results
    * Increase your ROI!

To get started today, contact a Google Adwords Qualified Professional at ICND now!

ICND ? Hit Up Planet Fun for a Company Retreat

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:49:00 -0400

Even propeller heads like to have fun and boy did we ever at Shalotte’s very own Planet Fun. The ICND team headed over to Planet Fun to enjoy some games with our team member. The excitement started with two back to back rounds of laser tag. I don’t think there’s a soul in our office with a sore muscle.

To top off the evening we hit the lanes for a few games of bowling. Chris Johnson had a game over 200. The TV complimented him with 3 dancing turkeys. Others weren’t far behind the 100 club. Overall we had a great time and look forward to more team outings!

Follow us on Facebook and check out our pics

What We?ve Been Working On ? January 2010

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:43:00 -0400

With the start of the New Year come new beginnings. Our New Years Resolution across the ICND team is to perform the best quality service to our customers at an affordable price in these tough economic times. We strive to be on top of the most cutting edge technologies that will help your website and online marketing now and in the future. As our clients, we ask that you continue to push open our envelope with more challenges and needs as it only increases our knowledge and strong product base.

That being said, here’s what we’ve been working on:

Announcing New SEO Proprietary Crawler

ICND has created a spider to crawl your site and analyze different aspects of your SEO. It can report back all sorts of useful information like how many pages you have, broken links, duplicate content, duplicate meta data, length of page titles and a plethora of other useful information that the search engines look for. These helps our team analyze 1,000s of pages in just a few hours that would take months for the human eye to look at and record.

We are currently running these crawls on our SEO clients to identify any thing that we may need to adjust on your sites. If you aren’t an ICND SEO client, put your current SEO provider to the test and contact us today!

Launching of the brand new Palace Theatre website.

We started this redesign around the holiday times when the director of marketing, Sabrina Israel, came to ICND with the challenge of launching a new design by mid month of January. They wanted a website that would better channel their flow of traffic and increase online bookings. Their previous website was a challenge for the visitor to navigate. We put in an easy to use navigation with customizable drop downs, new graphics, JQuery rotations on the homepage, and a fully integrated CMS system for easy updates as they add shows frequently.

Launching of the Turtlewood Website

The custom home builders, and long time customers of ICND, Whitney Blair came to ICND for a website design project for their development Turtle Wood of Southport. They wanted to incorporate the southern charm of these custom cottages into the design and create a website that would market as an online brochure. Now Whitney Blair and the developer of the project, Southstar, are able to send interested leads to the website for more information about Turtle Wood. The site also features area information, cottage renderings, a site plan, as well as blog to keep leads and buyers up to date with the community’s progression.

Launching of the Ocean Isle Inn Website

The Ocean Isle Inn came to ICND for a website redesign. They wanted something that would have lot of pictures and get the visitors of Ocean Isle Inn excited about their trip and have the ability to book online. ICND was able to create a design that incorporated just that.

Part III: Harnassing the Power of Your Website

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:05:00 -0400

As we continue into Part III and the final chapter in our website analysis for the new year, we ask you to look at the following questions:

Can visitors easily navigate their way through your site?
Is your call to action clear and are you getting visitors to act?
Are you clearly communicating to your target audience?
Are you doing everything you can to market your website?

Can visitors easily navigate their way through your site?
You’ve been to your site over and over and you know it better than you know what’s currently in your refrigerator. You’ve created your navigation just the way you wanted, and it might suit your purposes just fine. But for someone who has rarely or never been to your site, are you able to communicate what you are saying and funneling them where they need to go in order to maximize your conversions?

You want to be sure that if you have different segments of customers you funnel them through from the beginning or help them define which segment they are first. For instance, if you sell vacations along the Grand Strand, then you may want to first segment your beaches – North Myrtle Beach, Myrtle Beach, and Surfside Garden City vacations. Have information about each segment available, as well, incase your buyer doesn’t know yet. Always have it easy to learn about the other beaches or view the properties available in each section.

Have information like great family beach to target families, or best beach for couples, so that each need that the customer has is easily identified and ready to book. For instance, if you are segmenting down to couples, you don’t want to suggest massive 8 bedroom oceanfront houses, but maybe a small romantic suite with options to upgrade to Jacuzzi or add on additions like champagne and strawberries.

Always have it be easy to go back to the start and let the visitor choose other options.   With better website programming available everyday, website owners are customizing their websites more and more. This is important as the consumer wants to know their options, see the benefits and values, and choose which suits them best. Help them find what their looking for and what will satisfy their needs without getting frustrated and leaving.

To check to see how your website is doing, go back to your analytics and look at bounce rates, time on site and exit pages. Also, make sure you are tracking conversions and always strive to improve on them.   If there’s something that doesn’t add up, evaluate that page, funnel, or call the experts at ICND to help you identify these trends.

Is your call to action clear and are you getting visitors to act?
Do you feel like your calling but nobody’s home? Make sure that each page has a clear call to action and it’s easy for your visitors to get started browsing your inventory or filling out contact information. If you have a phone number, make sure it’s in a clear spot on every page. Yes, the whole point of a website is usually to buy online, but sometimes it’s just not that easy.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been to a site, saw what I liked, but couldn’t figure how to get it! But if you go to big brand e-commerce or vacation sites, you’ll almost always see a clear call to action and point of sale.

Are you clearly communicating offers to your target audience?
So many times I run into conflicting communication with marketing to an audience. There has to be consistency in your messages. If you are targeting your audience through any sort of marketing, whether it be direct mail, email, pay per click, make sure your offer is clear, concise, and consistent across each medium.

If you send out an expensive direct mail piece with an “Exclusive Summer Savings” offer and you call it “Super Summer Savings” on your site, you are going to confuse the heck out of your visitor. Even if it’s the same percentage off and the details read about the same, it’s going to be confusing. Buyers need to feel confident in your offer, not confused or hesitant. This may lead them to check else where and leave your site.

Are you doing everything you can to market your website?
Of course this may be limited by budget, but are you doing the most for your money? There are simple things you can to look at your website and make sure it’s in good working order. In fact, an expert at ICND can take a quick 20 minute look at your site and see if you have basic things correct for SEO, where you rank, where your competitors rank and a plethora of more information to let you know how you are doing amongst your competition.   We’ll put together suggestions and integrate these into your current marketing goals and objectives. Let us work with you and make the most out of your website and market

Think You?ve Got It Made with Your Big Hosting Company? Think Again?

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:42:00 -0400

We just had a personal experience with a big time corporate website hosting company. While trying to pull some of our blog network sites onto a different Class C IP range for SEO purposes, we spoke to one of the largest hosting companies in the industry. Our President, Brandon Sauls went onto their website and found where they offered the service and called the company. He had to give them the link to where he found the service because the representative didn’t know that they offered that service.

ICND’s trained and experienced web hosting support crew knows everything you could ever know about our services and how to get exactly what you want from your website and email hosting company.

Then, after he was set up with the account, they gave him the wrong information to access. He called back and they were able to help him out. They said it would take 24 hours to process his request to go live and to load the files onto their preview site and put in his request when everything was OK to go live. He then loaded the files onto the preview site and they were mapped wrong so he couldn’t even see the sites. The company replied it would take 24 hours for them to get them mapped right and then another 24 hours once he approved.

After continuing to battle with this large hosting company who just couldn’t seem to get it right, we finally decided to go to another small hosting company we’ve done work with in the past for a successful solution.

The moral of the story, small website hosting companies, such as ICND, offer real time support, expertise, and real time publishing of your files just as fast as the internet will receive them. When you’re looking for hosting and domain control, make sure you have the personalized, trained professionals handling the most important part of your online presence, your website. It’s not only about dollars saved, it’s about the expertise and customer service you receive with ICND.

InterCoastal Net Designs (ICND) Names Tricia Putnam Account Manager.

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:04:00 -0400

Tricia Putnam Brings Account Management Experience to ICND Team.

Ocean Isle Beach, NC, February 1, 2010- InterCoastal Net Designs (ICND) has announced that Tricia Putnam has joined the team as Account Manager. Tricia will be direct contact with a group of ICND clients helping them with everything from support issues, online marketing, and website design. In addition, she will be managing projects to see them thru from beginning to end.

“Tricia’s experience in Account Management and her great personality is really going to be an asset to our team and for our clients. She always has a positive attitude”, Brandon Sauls, ICND’s CEO.

Tricia was formerly the Client Relations-Account Manager with Corporate Research International, Findlay, OH. She was responsible for planning, organizing, and managing resources in order to complete projects for large retail companies such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Bed Bath & Beyond, & Huntington Bank.

ICND is excited to introduce Tricia to all of our customers. Tricia is excited to be on board and start working with our customers to help grow their businesses and achieve their goals. She began work with the ICND February 1st, 2010. Anyone is welcome to call the office, email us, or stop by to introduce yourself.

InterCoastal Net Designs (ICND) Announces New Client: The Palace Theatre

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 13:44:00 -0400

The Palace Theatre of Myrtle Beach has selected ICND to complete the redesign of their website.

Myrtle Beach, SC December 30, 2009- InterCoastal Net Designs (ICND) is proud to announce the signing of its newest client, The Palace Theatre. ICND has been selected by The Palace Theatre of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to redesign their website.

“We’re excited for the opportunity to redesign The Palace Theatre’s website. It gives us a chance to show how ICND can compete as much creatively with design as we can with programming and marketing”, Vanessa Humes-ICND Account Executive.

The Palace Theatre has been a thriving attraction for Myrtle Beach visitors and locals alike. They have been very successful at promoting their theatre and booking tickets via telephone and at their box office. With the new site design and ticket booking engine, they hope to increase their online ticket bookings.

Along with the website design, ICND will be helping the Palace Theatre with email marketing, search marketing and social media promotions. The new site is set to go live mid-January.

For more information contact:

Vanessa Humes

InterCoastal Net Designs

VHumes@icoastalnet.com

6649 Beach Dr. SW

Ocean Isle Beach, NC 28469

Phone: 910-575-6095

Fax: 910-575-1095