Web Site Marketing – Press Releases, Email Marketing Software, Google Analytics

Due to client demands and needs, I’ve been learning a lot more about web site marketing and search engine optimization than most web developers are required to know. Although there are many purely technical aspects to configuring and customizing an e-commerce web site, it is also important to keep search engine optimization and web site marketing in mind at every step of the way.

Everything about web site marketing requires some technical expertise so I am asked to help my clients with this even when it does not involve programming or database work. Below is a list of some services I have provided:

1. Press Releases – there are web sites where you can submit your press release to be distributed via the media. Your press release can appear in Google News as a search result. I tried several free press release distribution services and only Click Press worked. I wrote the press release and created the account on Click Press. This may not appear to require much technical expertise, but I had to keep resubmitting the form until the errors were corrected and it was accepted. Then I had to verify the results.

2. Email Marketing Software – I have installed email marketing software from Active Campaign. This software uses PHP and MySQL and can be run on a Windows 2003 Server. However it was designed to use the crontab service so I had to set up scheduled tasks to serve the same purpose. After installing the software, there was a lengthy process of learning how to create messages, add subscribers, and view statistics. I also tested and verified that bounced emails will be removed from the mailing list. Unfortunately, this software was too complicated for the client to learn so I am responsible for managing their newsletter email campaigns.

3. Google Analytics – although Google Analytics is a free service, it does require some scripting to be added to the footer of every web page. However, you should not add this scripting to the SSL part of the web site because the external content will cause a SSL security warning message to pop up in Internet Explorer. Google also offers webmaster tools which can tell you what URLs on your web site are unreachable or returning 500 Internal Server Errors. However it is then up to you to correct those errors and that often requires considerable technical expertise.