Sara Pennington Joins CWS

As you may have noticed, we've been adding to our team recently. We were blessed with 39% growth in our business last year and it's been a challenge for us to support this growth (and still provide the exceptional service you've come to expect from CWS). We're honored to be a growing company but the last thing we want is to compromise our level of service just for additional customers.

As of Monday, we are pleased to announce the addition of Sara Pennington to our team. Sara will provide assistance to our administrative and sales teams, greet you with a smile (maybe even a cup of coffee), and help keep us on track.

A native of Rochester, Sara has worked at the Mayo Clinic for 9 years in various departments. Most recently, Sara returned from New Mexico where she spent the last nine months. She enjoys new challenges, fun outdoor activities, participating in historical re-enactments known as Rendezvous and spending quality time with family and friends.

Please welcome Sara to our team. You may reach her at sara at cws dot net or (507) 289-2229 x200.

Site Launch: FoxHillOfRochester.com

Fox Hill approached CWS to develop a simple, effective website to inform prospective buyers about this new residential land development project in southwest Rochester.

The result is an elegant site designed with a focus on plat maps, lot information, and profiles of the development's neighborhoods and surrounding communities.

We enjoyed working with John from Fox Hill and look forward to working with him again in the future.

Our Web Design Guarantee

Recently we've been thinking about the kind of guarantee we want to offer to our customers. You may be thinking to yourself, "Who cares about a silly guarantee?" We do. In fact, it's been several months in the making as we have been re-analyzing our mission statement, business values, design values, and vision. We feel that we are one of the most effective web design firms in the Midwest and we're proud of the work we do. We felt it was important to let the world know and that meant taking a hard look at ourselves and where we want to go.

Before I get to our new web design guarantee, let me take a step back and tell you what makes us tick. These are our core beliefs:

Our Mission: Our mission is to produce expert web solutions through constant innovation and inspiration. Nothing is more important than delighting our clients through delivering exceptional web solutions.

Our Business Values: We have a profound respect for our clients and each other. We deliver. We care. We innovate. We do web. We enjoy the process!

Our Design Values: It must be inspired. It must be user-centered. Form follows function. Consider every click. Create superb customer experiences.

Our Vision: To be a nationally recognized organization for providing superior web-based solutions, interactive marketing, and effective search engine optimization.

I know you're probably thinking that Mission Statements and Vision Statements are silly corporate stuff, but I encourage you to do this for your own business. It forces you to reflect and determine what you're all about.

With that said, we feel it's important for our potential clients to know that we'll do everything possible to make them happy. Hence the reason we decided to draft an official web design guarantee. We wanted it to be bold. We wanted it to be valuable. We wanted it to push us to be better.

So, without further ado, here's our promise to you:


We hope you like it as much as we do. Tell us what you think.

RapidNewsletter Gets New Features

This morning we pushed out some enhancements and fixes to our RapidNewsletter service. In case you haven't heard, RapidNewsletter is our full-circle email marketing solution. It allows you to effectively reach those who matter the most to your business -- your customers. Research has shown that a quality email newsletter can be one of the most effective ways to maintain customer relationships.

With RapidNewsletter, you can design and execute an email marketing campaign from beginning to end -- build and edit email lists, create newsletters with articles and images, run detailed tracking reports, and much more! We designed RapidNewsletter to drive traffic to your website, increase brand awareness, solidify customer retention, and strengthen customer relations.

Here are the changes we released today:

Better management of the address groups within your mailing list. When adding new addresses or editing existing ones, it's much easier to designate which groups the subscriber belongs to.

Any subscriber can now be marked to receive "Text Only" messages. Most RapidNewsletter mailings are sent in HTML (for formatted text and images), but for a variety of reasons, people prefer to receive all their email in plain text. For a long time, you've been able to send a RapidNewsletter mailing in text instead of HTML, but now you can manage this preference on a user-by-user basis as well.

New ways to edit the content of existing newsletters. It's much faster to make changes to your existing mailings. You can reorder articles by dragging and dropping, and click titles to edit in place. It's also easier now to remove an image from an article after you've loaded it.

Improved statistics displays. For large mailings, the statistics tables could get unwieldy. We've added paging and better handling of long URLs to make these charts easier to read.

You'll see these improvements immediately the next time you log into your account. If you haven't tried RapidNewsletter yet, now is the perfect time to set up a free account and give it a try! We're working on a number of other new features that you can expect to see in the near future as well. If you have any suggestions on features, improvements, or enhancements to RapidNewsletter be sure to let us know.

How to Get Your Site to the Top

The Internet, once only the home of computer nerds and hackers, has long since exploded into mainstream business. A new profession has sprung up in response - Search Engine Optimization (SEO), a service industry based on getting your site to the top of the search engine rankings and keeping it there.

The truth is that SEO boils down to three simple steps:

1. Build a great site
2. Incorporate keywords
3. Get other great sites to link to yours

That's the recipe that will continue to work no matter how often Google reprograms its search algorithms. Following these steps won't catapult you instantly to #1 in the rankings; it's more of a "slow and steady" strategy. But it's a lot better in the long run than resorting to shady SEO tactics that will put your site at the top of the results page... only until Google bans your site!

Building a great link structure has been a part of SEO for some time. However, thanks to Google's changing search algorithms, the ideal type of link structure has also changed. Here are some tricks that will help you build useful links.

Note: Throughout this article, Google is cited as the target for SEO. There are two reasons why it's best to focus on Google. First, it's the most frequently used search engine, so optimizing for Google will tend to bring in the most traffic. Second, Google has the most stringent requirements and elaborately programmed algorithms, so if you're doing well in Google- you're likely doing well in the other search engines.

Not all links are created equal
One strategy you should not rely on is soliciting links right and left. Links from important and reputable pages build your own site's reputation; links from less important sites help a little, but not as much; and links from certain shady sites are no good at all. An example of the last is the link farm, a site that's designed solely for the purpose of providing links to other sites in exchange for money. Google hates link farms with a passion and refers to them as "bad neighborhood" sites. Associate your site with several "bad neighborhood" sites and Google might decide your site is in that neighborhood, too.

On the other end of the link quality scale are the major informational sites and directories. Links from directories like DMOZ (the Open Directory Project) and Yahoo! can provide an impressive boost to your ranking. So can links from extremely reputable sites like CNN.com.

The quick rule of thumb when deciding if a site would be a good source of an inbound link is to look up that site's Google PageRank. You can get this information simply by installing the Google toolbar on your browser. Once the toolbar is installed, click on the Options button and select "PageRank display." Then you can browse to sites and their PageRank will display in the toolbar. As a rule of thumb, don't bother soliciting links from sites with a PageRank of less than 4 (PageRank works on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest possible rank).

Get those links
So how do you get important sites to link to you? Start with having useful and relevant information on your site. If you have a page that's relevant to another site, just bringing this page to their attention can get them to link to you. After all, these sites want to be useful resources for their visitors and providing those visitors with great sources of information will keep them coming back.

Once you've identified an important site and have produced information that's useful to them, search that site for the webmaster's contact information. Call or email that person and suggest that they take a look at your site and, if interested, provide a link to it. This strategy isn't likely to get you a link from MSNBC.com, but it can work very well with smaller sites. Don't limit your searches to .com and .net sites, either - Google tends to look with particular favor upon .edu and .gov websites, so getting links from these sites can give your ranking even more of a boost.

Another way to build links fast is to set up reciprocal links - in other words, contact a webmaster and tell them that if they link to you, you'll link back to them. Having a few reciprocal links is fine but if you have too high a percentage Google will get suspicious. To be on the safe side, try to have at least 3 one-way links for every reciprocal link you build. This will create what Google calls a natural link structure.

Patience is a virtue
The techniques described above are not a magic bullet. Don't expect your site to immediately shoot up the results page. But if you take the time to build a solid, "natural" link structure, you will be able to get your site highly ranked, and you'll be able to keep it that way.

Site Launch: UltraShopRochester.com

CWS is pleased to present you with The Ultra Shop's new home on the web - http://ultrashoprochester.com Nestled within the heart of Rochester, MN in the Kahler subway; this world famous boutique offers an extraordinary selection of interesting and fine merchandise. From mirrors, tables, and frames, to jewelry, hats, and rainwear - if you're looking for high class merchandise, look no further than The Ultra Shop. And now -- with the development of their new website -- finding that International Traveler Shiny Cow Print luggage you've been after is quicker and easier than ever! It was a pleasure working with Pat, and we look forward to our continued relationship as we help further their online success with search engine optimization.

Spread the Word... get a $100 Gift Card!

At CWS, we're grateful that people say wonderful things about us. In fact, almost all of our business comes from either referrals or existing customers. To show our appreciation, we want to give back to our friends and customers with a new referral program. When you refer someone to us and they complete their first order or project, you'll receive a gift card. It's that easy!

Simply tell us about your "web ready" friends using this new referral form. We'll send them our latest information and follow up to see how we can help.

You're probably thinking to yourself, "just what do I get for a referral? A big juicy steak? Guitar Hero III?" The answer is simple -- YES! You choose the merchant and we'll personally get you a gift card to your favorite place. Based on the product or service that your referral uses, you'll receive the following:

- RapidNewsletter ($25 gift card)
- GroupLoop ($25 gift card)
- Hosting ($25 gift card)
- Search Engine Marketing/Optimization ($50 gift card)
- Web Design or Programming ($100 gift card)

To get our new program started with a bang, we're going to DOUBLE the value of all gift cards for the first 5 referrals we receive. That's right, this means you can receive up to $200 in gift cards... if you hurry.

In order to qualify, your referral:

1. Must be received before the person contacts us.
2. Must be new to the CWS mailing list.
3. Must be a first-time CWS customer.
4. Must be submitted via our online referral form.

Thanks again for your support and we hope you enjoy this new program.

Rochester Books 100,000 Rooms

At CWS, we work closely with a number of government entities and other organizations that promote the City of Rochester. This week, the Rochester Convention and Visitors Bureau announced that during the last year, a record-breaking 100,000 room nights were booked in Rochester hotels. This is no small accomplishment for a city whose population itself is 100,000, and we want to congratulate the CVB staff and everyone in the hospitality industry whose cooperative efforts made it possible.

Due to the presence of Mayo Clinic, Rochester is a city that's built on hospitality, playing host to a huge number of visitors every year. The resources offered here, including the support of our first-rate Convention and Visitors Bureau, attract ever-larger numbers of people and events, which has a huge economic impact. 100,000 bookings translates to $25 million in the local economy.

CWS supports the CVB's efforts to bring groups to our area by producing multimedia presentations that are customized to each group, featuring a personal welcome from Mayor Brede and other local representatives. To celebrate the 100,000 mark, we filmed a series of interviews with leaders in the hospitality industry commenting on the accomplishment:

We look forward to an even better year for the hospitality industry in 2008!

Using Google Analytics to Track Demographics

There are many useful features of Google Analytics that help you learn more about traffic to your website. Do you know the city, state or country that your visitors are from? How about if the visitor is new to your web site or a returning visitor? We'll show you how to track this using Google Analytics.

Geographic regions

Google Analytics has the ability to show where your visitors are from, even down to the cities they were in when they visited your web site. Below are some examples of what you might see.....

Here is a map of locations of visitors to a web site

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Below the map, a list will show more detail

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If your customers are mainly in the United States, this may be how your map would look.

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This map even breaks the visitors down to city/state level.

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The maps can be useful to let you know if you are reaching your target audience in a certain city. A local business may want to track if the site is being viewed by a certain community, and may help in analyzing targeted advertising campaigns.

New vs. Returning Visitors

Another useful part of Google Analytics is a feature which shows the percentage of new visitors versus returning visitors. Below is a sample graph tracking new visitors vs. new visitors. As you can see, approximately 58% of the visitors are returning visitors which demonstrates a relatively even mix.


For more information on using Google Analytics, check out Alan's New Years post, or let us know here.

Isaac Johnson Joins CWS

CWS is pleased to announce the addition of a web programmer to our staff, Isaac Johnson. Isaac comes to CWS as a new graduate from Winona State University where he achieved his Bachelors degree in Computer Science.

While in college, Isaac worked for IBM doing several co-ops where his projects incorporated OOD, J2EE, Struts-tiles, EJBs, and DB2. During his free time, Isaac enjoys sports (mostly baseball), snowboarding, mountain biking, and traveling to places he has never been.

Isaac can be contacted at (507) 289-2229 x207.

Phone System Downtime

Venture Computer Systems will be installing our new Shoretel phone sytem tomorrow (1/3/08). This new VOIP phone system will provide us with additional features and will accomodate our growing staff. There may be some intermittent disruptions in our phone system while the changeover takes place tomorrow.

If you experience such a disruption while trying to call us tomorrow, please accept our appologies and send an email to support@cws.net for an immediate response. Thank you for allowing us to serve you better.