Archive for August, 2007
Monday, August 27th, 2007
A banner ad is a form of online advertising in which an advertisement is embedded into a web page and linked to the web site of the advertiser. The users who see these ads on websites click on them and reach to the advertiser’s website. The banner can be an image, JavaScript program or a multimedia object.
Benefits of banner ads:
a) Low cost advertising for effective brand building:
If managed well, Banner advertisement is a low cost internet marketing tool that can fetch a good name recognition for your brand. Even viewers who don’t click through on your banner ad will be exposed repeatedly to your name, in context with your business message.
b) Derive benefits from visuals as well as text:
A picture is worth a thousand words - With focused and attractive visuals you can capitalize on that with banner ads very well. It also gives you a chance to reflect your organizational creativity in the form of images and animations while communicating an exact marketing message to your target audience.
c) Build brand awareness about your company:
If you have a new website and you are looking to improve the organic rankings of your website, you really cannot afford to rely on conventional traffic. As it takes some time for search engines, to start ranking you organically. Banner ads help in getting bulk traffic and exposure to your website that nitro boost to your marketing campaign.
How should it be used in your online marketing strategy?
Banner advertisements can be used with other online strategies like search engine marketing (paid as well as organic rankings), email marketing etc.
You can build up your brand trust for new websites by having visual ads in the form of banners on website’s already enjoying healthy traffic .
Word of caution: Don’t run your whole Internet marketing campaign around banner advertisement only. Each advertising technique has its pros and cons. People talk about banner blindness and there have been many researches done to find out how it can be overcome. But isn’t it true, that every thing has its pros and cons?
The idea is - Are you creative enough to use banner advertisement smartly to garner maximum traffic for your website? 
Posted in Services | 1 Comment »
Thursday, August 23rd, 2007
Blogs are mini websites that provide news on a particular subject such as science, politics, local news, products, services etc posted by individuals as they see it. Blogs normally comprise of text, images, web pages, links to other blogs and other media related to its content. It also empowers its readers to leave their comments in a very interactive format which is an important feature of many blogs as it serves as a means to perceive an unbiased public opinion on a topic, products or services.
Now that we know what are blogs, it will be easier for us to understand that what wonders can a blog do to the registers of your Ecommerce website:
1) People start considering that you know your job well
A blog helps you to communicate your exact marketing message to your target segment in a more friendly and unbiased manner. As they start considering you a good source of their favorite news, they develop a sense of trust in you as a company through your blog . Since it is comparatively easier to frequently update a blog as compared to a website, visitors return frequently to check new stuff posted on their favorite blog.
2) Blogging for SEO
As far as search engines like Google and Yahoo are concerned, good links with rich and fresh content are the main assets for any website. A good blog is a source of links that are rich, both in quality and quantity - fetching higher search engine rankings for your website.
3) People start relating themselves to your website
The voice of your website communicated through information rich blogs, is more real than the voice of your actual website. People always would prefer buying from people and not from some faceless corporate entity.
So just create a rich blogsphere around your Ecommerce website and see your company’s cash registers go Ka-ching
Posted in General | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 21st, 2007
In the quest for quality, we have been taking regular feedbacks about our work from our esteem clientèle. One of the highlights of the recent feedback was that there were few clients who had issues with the quality of the final product. Being a customer centric organization, RedAlkemi has decided to upgrade its quality process by hiring a new team of website testers to ensure that no such quality issues arise in future.
We are really thankful to all our clients who spared some time out of their tight schedule, to give us such a valuable feedback. We would try and keep improving constantly in our quest for quality.
Posted in General, Services | 1 Comment »
Monday, August 20th, 2007
We have just redesigned our website and we are always making efforts to constantly improve in terms of usability and accessibility . Just re-emphasizing the fact that most SEO companies achieve SEM goals and fail to have a compelling and user friendly web design, we stumbled upon this post by Tadeusz, a German SEO expert from SEO 2.0 . We are in his list of top 15 “Best SEO Company Website Designs Worldwide”. Looks like our new website design has struck a chord somewhere.
Read the post at http://seo2.0.onreact.com/the-15-best-seo-company-website-designs-worldwide
We thank him for the appreciation. This would egg us on to keep improving further.
Cheers!!
Posted in General | 3 Comments »
Monday, August 20th, 2007
15th Aug 2007, was the day when India completed its 60 years of Independence, and we RedAlkemists had yet another chance to swing & dance to the groove of Indian Independence at our own Entertainment center, located right in the basement of our company’s head office. We had every reason to celebrate. India today has come a long way during these 60 years, becoming one of the most promising economies of the world and emerging as the number one IT destination.
The party started with some very interesting games, followed by a thumping fusion of western and Punjabi dance numbers, setting the pulse higher of every RedAlkemist. And why not, India is flourishing and so is RedAlkemi!
Cheers !! 
Posted in Inside RedAlkemi | No Comments »
Sunday, August 19th, 2007
It’s been a very exciting time for the RA Sales team with each member doing exceptionally well. The entire team’s performance in the last three months has been nothing short of brilliant; with each member not only achieving but over-achieving their sales targets! Dollar sign in the back-ground, cheering for each other and a positively charged atmosphere have become the hallmarks of the RA Sales team. To celebrate their success, the team went out for a well-deserved dinner and looks all set to continue their winning streak.
Guys, Cheers to more proposals more late night conference calls, more parties and continued success! Keep it up!
Posted in Inside RedAlkemi | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, August 7th, 2007
It seems that the Google PR update is going on. We have been noticing the dropping and updating of some website’s page ranks in the last couple of days. Also the number of backlinks have been showing a change on different data centers from the last week of July.
These are signs of an update. My guess is that Page rank is being updated by google and well there’s no rocket science there as it was expected to be around this time.. Keep an eye on the Big G.
Check out the results at different datacenters using RedAlkemi’s collection of best tools page
- Page Rank Tool
- Datacenter Quick Check
Posted in SEM | No Comments »
Monday, August 6th, 2007
There has been a rearranging act in our web design and development team. Interestingly, all teams have named their teams according to what they identify with and there’s a healthy rivalry for being the best. Check out their names which can give even gamers a run for their money
THE PREDATORS
The “out of the world” vibrant and far sighted team, headed by the dynamic tall frame of Harit, consists of equally aggressive team members like Ravinder Negi, Chiranjeet, Ashok Nyal, Kamlesh, Ridhi and Pritish. Clear the way, humans, here come the extraordinary species!!!
THE NUMERO UNOS
Striving for excellence with a steadfast vision to be in the # 1 position, is the vibrantly spirited endeavor of this ambitious and patient team, led by humility adorned Sheetal Singh and the mature Sanjay Gupta. The cream of their team members are Vivechana, Pradeep, Ravi Yadav, Suresh and Harjeet. Lets look up to these cheerful Numero Unos creating scintillating waves!!
THE ‘D’ COMPANY
The dynamic, dazzling, distinct, dashing and deadline meeting team is here finally!!! Led by the dreadfully handsome Manish, consisting of Parwez, Sunil Rana, Amit Kumar, Sumit, Rajneesh, Gourav Rana, Riti Gulati and Geetanjali are the deadly team members to make a difference in our daily professional lives!!!!
THE INVINCIBLES
With the insurmountable spirit of emerging as winners, we have the indomitable team led by the unconquerable zest of Kulwant Singh and the strong grace of Gurvinder Kaur. Enveloped in their fortress of strength are Manoj Kandwal, Rajender Singh, Gaurav Aggarwal, Sunil Gautam, Manoj Kumar and Akash Dwivedi who are ready to take on any challenge!!!
THE KREW
The simple, small yet outstanding name suggests, the well managed, the carefully organized and the most productive crew is here to lead the pathway to success. Under the expertized leadership of the efficient duo Santosh Pathariya and Sanjeev Singh Rawat (SSR), the future crew members who are being chiseled are Satwinder Singh, Pankaj Lakhanpal, Avnendra Kumar, Vikas Jindal, Mohinder Singh, Sudhanshu Kashyap, Maninder Singh and Sachin Sharma!! Ahoy! Bon Voyage to success!!!
The above post has been contributed by Preeti Singh of the Content writing division.
Posted in Inside RedAlkemi | No Comments »
Sunday, August 5th, 2007
Marketing online is no rocket science - all you need is a good sense of what makes the website tick. Launching an online store is very much like setting up a brick ‘n’ mortar business. To successfully launch and maintain a profitable site you need to have clearly defined business goals. The solution to your website’s success does not lie in just adding content, carrying out Search Engine Optimization, adding links, banner advertising etc. Many of these are necessary but none alone is sufficient to bring in the traffic you need. Interestingly, somewhere along the way we tend to slip on the most important aspect of the website - the customer.
If you focus on the most important element of the site - the customer you will not go wrong. Answer your customer’s question “What is in it for me” and your web marketing plan will work magic for you. The business is first and foremost about the customer - listen to what they want - don’t push what you know and strive to work around their way of thinking and you will have a recipe for success.
If you make profits the by product of great service, great quality and great teamwork - a by product and not an end product you have moved towards building a relationship and not just a customer.
Developing a Customer-oriented market planning which focuses on understanding the customer needs involves data mining, analysis and planning for both short term and long term goals. Outlining the most important market segments for a given product or service and then using this knowledge to build an effective sales and marketing campaigns helps in maximizing the ROI.
Posted in SEM | 1 Comment »
Sunday, August 5th, 2007
Have you ever had to make the choice for your business of what shopping cart to use? You can have your own customized solution developed, or choose from a range of pre-built shopping cart options available like Volusion, XCart, Shopsite etc. Each of these shopping carts provide a host of features available ranging from a robust back end, to a user friendly front end along with SEO compatibility.
At first it’s quite tough when you know nothing about each of the different types of shopping carts and software packages. Which one do you choose is a tough choice to make.
Today I’m going to do a review of an all-in-one externally hosted shopping cart system, called Volusion. My review is mostly based on what I have read on the “Volusion” website and our own experience while integrating “Volusion” for a few of our clients.
All in one solution Volusion provides all the tools to create an online ecommerce company. Their software provides total ecommerce solutions including ROI tracking software, SEO optimization software, hosting by RackSpace.com, email marketing software, affiliate software and much more. This ensures that the buyer will not have to work with different providers for all the above mentioned features thus saving time, energy and money.
The components of the solution are completely customizable, and the site can be designed as per the industry and the target audience. Volusion gives enough creative independence to the site owner to have his website designed as per the requirements.
Some companies charge a percentage of sales from the site owner, but Volusion does not. This ensures that the cost of site maintenance remains the same as your online business grows. Volusion charges only a monthly fee for the hosting of your online store, and additional band width (as your business grows) can be purchased at an additional cost.
The pricing structure for Volusion plans is good, with an entry level plan starting at $20 a month, going up to a $100 platinum unlimited plan. All in all, Volusion seems to be providing good shopping cart software with almost all the required features. There are often inherent problems with jack-of-all service providers, but looking through the features of the Volusion website, they certainly have their game together based on their website presentation.
Posted in Web Development | 1 Comment »
Sunday, August 5th, 2007
If your business has an online presence or you simply own any kind of website and you care about its Search engine presence, you have probably already heard about Google’s Supplemental Index. We may refer to its as “Google’s Gulag”, “Google’s Digital Dungeon”, or simply the most popular term: “Google Hell” or even “Screwed Pages” (Ok, I just made this one up). I’m sure (being a webmaster myself) that it does not feel nice to be put into a secondary register without warning and being told that our site pages are not important.
Is it really a bad thing? Altleast Google’s popular man Matt Cutts (the pacifier) doesn’t consider it as a penalty of any kind, they call it “dissection of data”.
Clients all over the world keep asking SEM firms about how to get out of this predicament. Is it really important? Lets face it, whether a good thing or not, webmasters are enthusiastic about the big G. There’s no argument on that point for one good reason: Google simply delivers the most search engine traffic on the web. Regardless of what Google maintains, being in the supplemental results is not a good thing for any webmaster or business.
The sins for which we may be paying (or simply the reasons for step motherly treatment) could be any of the following.
1. Duplicate Content – You act copycat, you’d be sent to google jail (Supplemental Results)
2. No Content – Empty pages get sent to Google Hell. Remember the days of directories that would create 1 million pages with only 100 listing? (Frankly, I never understood why would anyone have empty pages!!)
3. Orphaned web pages - Pages that no one links to, including yourself are considered not useful and sent to the secondary index.
To find out more details about read our article on supplemental index.
Posted in SEM | 2 Comments »
Sunday, August 5th, 2007
When searching for a web development company for a new website, it is wise to also evaluate the level of post development support that you can expect to receive.
Post development support may include guidance on how to use some of the back end features, adding any new features at a later stage, receiving suggestions, evaluations of new ideas etc. What is often overlooked is support in terms of website marketing. Just having an entity out there in the World Wide Web is not enough. It is critical that just before the website is about to be completed, a complete Online Marketing Plan is worked out so that it can be launched along with the website. This Online Marketing plan should focus on getting traffic and conversions both in the short term and long term after finding out the amount and kind of dependency required on search engines for getting traffic, exploring other sources of getting traffic like banner advertisements etc., This should be a complete plan that would also evaluate the traffic to find out how it is interacting with the website, what is the conversion rate etc. and necessary actions should be taken on the basis of this to get a high conversion rate.
Hiring a development company that can provide support in working out a right marketing mix as well, ensures that your website is a successful online business.
Posted in Web Design, Web Development | 1 Comment »
Saturday, August 4th, 2007
Well it may be a little late in the day… but we are finally blogging. It always amazes me as to why we did not do this earlier.
Hmmm… Are we lazy or boring or simply not fond of writing? Well NO. So what could it be. I think its just that we are dedicated & focused on work and occupied with projects.
Lets look for some more excuses and add to the comments. Lets be creative and think of some.. We should be good at this
PS: Cheers to the new sound board of RedAlkemi
Posted in Inside RedAlkemi | 1 Comment »
