Web-enabling the world of business

CGI Pro Blog

Welcome to the new CGI Pro Blog. You'll find CGI Pro's expert staff contributing tips, tricks, and useful tools about web design, development, search engine marketing, and many more Web 2.0 topics.

Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

More Smartphones than PC’s in 2 years? Is your website ready?

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Bolstered by an article showing that 400 million smartphones will be shipped and active in 2011, the smart money is starting to drift in the right direction of building sites to succeed on the mobile web.

The rapidly increasing number of web-enabled smartphones makes them an attractive alternative to PCs. Consumers are proving to be more willing to forego upgrading their existing PCs in favor of upgrading to the new generation of mobile devices. Even with the new, lower-priced netbooks increasing in popularity, subsidized smartphones are often more economical, not to mention more portable and personal.

We have placed a strategic bet in this area ourselves, and plan to announce the launch of HomeSafari.us, a web based mobile real estate portal next month, right as the awareness of the mobile web starts to hit a flood of new verizon droid owners. Home Safari is a partnership of CGI with Realty Pro of Vancouver Washington.

Now, what does this mean to you? Or, as I like to say, “What does this spark in your imagination?” It should spark a sense of opportunity in having your website ready now. You can web enable your field personnel to report over the mobile web on task completion, GPS based location tracking, etc. You can have your customers ping you regarding their needs on a customized app WITHOUT having to build a native iPhone or Android app. You can be THE go to source for mobile video and information in your industry and market, and we can help you in both the production and marketing needed to establish your business in a leadership position here.

If your imagination is not sparked by this, then imagine the dread of ignoring yet another key market/technology trend. If you wait two years, your web presence will in the minority of sites that is not optimized for today’s smartphones. Smartphone users will have already passed you by and bookmarked your competitors. Google and other search engines will marginalize you for not keeping up in this area. Smartphones are indeed going to outsell PC’s in two years, and this is not a fad, it is a movement toward a more personal and portable online experience.

Contact us today about ways to prepare you for the future. Now is the time to have your site optimized for the new screen, and it does not have to be as expensive as you might think.

Google Wave to transform our work

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

I am usually just a safe little tad behind the bleeding edge of advocating new site tools to our clients, so I can make sure the tools works for their business goals instead of just being another shiny object to clutter up their site. Google Wave is different. I just watched the 1 hour 20 min video (so you don’t have to) and I can safely declare even before this is available for testing, that using it will give all our clients a solid leg up.

I am going to prioritize 30 minute strategic sessions with each of you, recommending we acclimate you to waving, twaving and embedding these tools into the apps we have created for you.

Call me!

Here is the 10 minute version…

Updating the Old Portfolio, but going Local again

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

This is one of those things that I always enjoyed delegating, but always knew it was up to me to really dial in the messaging for. So time has indeed gone by since the last update, and every one of our clients has an updated story on their website. I am personally very honored to have continuing great clients over the years and am glad that the projects keep rolling in.

Since our best work is really on the back end of a website, where browsing around as a user only shows about 10% of our work, linking over to sites has never really been a great promotional tool for us anyway. With the blog however, we can certainly tell our story.

Please take a look at our portfolio now and get yourself updated while I talk about our new local web portal we are launching… which is really what I want to talk about anyway.

It was back in 1996 I had a vision of how the internet would not only revolutionize the way we do business, but also that it would be used to revitalize local economies that were otherwise hard hit and/or isolated. I was wrong about my idea in terms of timing, as at that time I started a local web service called victorvalley.com (see remnants here) and it simply came before it’s time.. and for the next decade the internet dispersed economies rather than anchored them locally.

Now that we are just getting into an especially funky recession, and our network dependent economy is leaving local business at a disadvantage, I believe the time is right to work on building the local web. People will still of course be using Google to research buying decisions and looking for value, but they will include local searches and should by now expect to be finding the answers locally, not elsewhere.

Enter LocaSource - crazy hot values from wise local experts. We expect to have 200+ of the best local business people, restaurants and retail outlets occupying positions as local anchored go-to resources for everything from home remodeling, to charitable giving, to night spots, realty and accounting. As long as it is local, and our partner can contribute relevant content for their category, then a new relevant blog is born.

We plan on always keeping this resource local, so as not to fall into the trap seen so often with empty, diluted national directories. We want to build something the community can gather around.

(the design is coming together soon. Stay tuned)