FreshYields - Ecommerce and Internet Marketing Solutions

I would have loved to been in the board meeting of the idiotic National Pork Board when someone decided that Jennifer’s Lactivist T-shirts were stealing their thunder.  This is all over one of her t-shirts saying “the other white milk”, derived from the pork slogan “the other white meat”.  Last I checked, milk is white.  I mean, ham is pink, and the pork in my pork fried rice is a browny color with a reddish skin.  They even imply that Jennifer’s humorist T-shirts are promoting the adult consumption of breast milk.  Get serious!

After receiving a 60-day domain name renewal for a website I had no idea I still owned, I decided to check out my “control center” to see what other surprises might await. Here is what I found:

• Freshyields.com - of course.
• One website I registered for a friend, and is still in use, although not by my friend. Hmm, maybe I should bill the new owner?
• One concept project I had years ago, but was lucky enough to be able to reuse the design for a great cause, and was even able to reuse the rock-solid content management system behind it.
• An ecommerce experiment that my wife and I tried, which flamed out.
• One blogsite about building your own sports bar in your basement that I haven’t touched in a while.
• Three websites dedicated to a a client that I haven’t had any work from in over a year.

What’s in your portfolio?

Had some fun over the weekend reminiscing about the past.  I decided to do some research and see what some people I went to high school and college were up to through searches on Classmates.com and Myspace.  My finding were pretty interesting…

First, let me start by saying that I am 30 years old, have been out of high school for 12 years, and out of college for 8.  At 30, I am getting close to that creepy age on myspace, where some of the younger members are young enough to be my kids.  But I digress…

I have had a “listing” on classmates.com for a while, even though it was empty.  I think everyone who has ever attending high school in the United States has at least a blank listing.  I’m just happy they don’t scan everyone’s yearbook photos in.  Classmates.com is great for remembering names, but offers little information about the person you are searching for, either because their profiles are empty, or you have to pay to become a member to find out more info.  This is the old-school model of community websites.  While they are heavily ad-supported, they just give you a taste before making you cough of some dough. Hmm, this could be why there are so many blank profiles.

Myspace is a different story.  After filtering by school, only those who have myspace accounts are shown.  Those that are members are certainly not shy about posting picture and writing about themselves.  Myspace has similar profile questions as classmates.com, but most people do fill them out.  You also essentially get your own webpage and blog with myspace, with it’s own URL.  Myspace also music and  comedy sections, forums, classifieds, and much more.

Now, my results.  I was able to find a few people from high school on classmates.com.  It’s been really nice emailing them back and forth.  The big surprise was finding an old friend that was a foreign exchange student from Sweden, and an outstanding soccer player for our high school team.  Now he is a poker star in Sweden!  On myspace, I ended up creating my own page.  I’ve been able to find a few people from high school, and a few from college, and have been emailing them as well.  Myspace is great for the shock value of seeing what people you knew 15 years ago look like today.  Honestly, I am amazed some of them even know how to turn on a computer.

But what these two sites really demonstrate is the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, or whatever you want to call them.  Classmates.com, as much as it is trying to change, is still fairly one dimensional.  You go there to see if old classmates have filled out their profile, then you leave.  You may check back in a few months later, but chances are nothing has changed.  Myspace is all about social networking.  I can rekindle old friendships, even if only online, or even become “friends” with a popular local radio show.  You keep checking back in and getting your fix, sometimes hourly.  And that is why is the most visited site on the internet, and why is advertising delivery model is so effective.

via Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgram,

By the end of this year, 70% of large companies will be blogging.  Here are my questions:

Is this a good thing?
What percentage do you think will do it the right way?
Is there an audience for this many corporate blogs?
Do people really care?
Do they need blog design work?
Will the blog carry over their corporate identity properly?
No, seriously, do they need blog design work?

…launched a couple of months ago, with no fanfare from us. That’s what happens when the blog is down.

Gaga for Lulu is an upscale children’s boutique. Fresh Yields performed all aspects of the site build, from identity design to ecommerce backend. We will be embarking on a comprehensive Search Engine Marketing and Optimization plan in the coming months.

I still have no clue why the blog has been down for so many months. Well, no worries now. We are back up with our new design, and freshly upgraded to 2.0.3.

I’m not one to watch too much reality television, other than Joe Schmoe 2, which was brilliant IMHO. But I heard about one going on online that is really cool. Jennifer Laycock is the Editor of Search Engine Guide, and has started a series of articles called “Zero Cash, A Little Talent and 30 Days”. Check out the articles here, as well as The Lactivist blog and The Lactivist Store.

Or a Squidoo, to be more specific. Now we get to see everything it is. If you are an expert, or think you are, and want to share you knowledge, this is the place. And, of course, I have signed up. Check it out at http://www.squidoo.com/clickandmortar

Trouble awaits if you do not have a solid plan to launch your web presence. Take, for example, Juicy Fruit’s new blog. Looks neat, huh? Well, the critics don’t agree. And when the critics have blogs that attract at least a quarter million (yes, thats million) visits a day, and they rip you a new one, things aren’t looking so neat.

As seen and read on Boing Boing…

How bad does Juicyfruit’s blog suck? Let’s count the ways.
1. You can’t enter the blog directly. You must enter through the main page.

2. You have to wait a long time for the main screen to load up its Flash garbage.

3. You have to wait another eternity for the “blog” to load.

4. The text window for the blog content is the size of a postage stamp.

5. There’s only one entry in the text window.

6. The navigation is as confusing as the zero-G toilet in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

7. The actual content is as bland as a piece of Juicyfruit with the flavor chewed out.

We are, really. We don’t just design pretty websites. We design pretty marketing websites. We don’t just implement ecommerce solutions. We implement ecommerce marketing solutions Everything you put on the web is marketing material. You are marketing to users. Whether it is just to get them to find info about your cause, your products, or to buy something from you, your web site is a marketing tool. Every decision we make about our projects should be thought of in a marketing sense, and how we can get the user to interact the way we want them to.

The old style of marketing doesn’t work as well anymore, thanks in part to the internet. Your users are your best, and cheapest marketing source. Hell, they may even pay you to market your product. They may fall in love with your product, or service, or cause online, buy it or into it’s theory, and start posting it on their blog. Then a few others pick up on it, and the ROI on your pretty marketing website goes through the roof.