Adopt It or Drop It

Technology and marketing are continually changing - when do you drop the old and adopt the new?

New things come in and old things get pushed out. The trick is to know which wave to catch, which to let pass, and which to jump off. And speaking of waves, did you sign up for Google Wave - oh, sorry, it's gone. Do you know absolutely everything about Yahoo Search Marketing - oops - that's gone, too (well, almost).

When to adopt a new style or technology and how long to milk the old one can be somewhat company specific. If you are in a more mature industry and/or have a more conservative audience, then being slow on the uptake can be an advantage. For a faster moving industry with a more adventurous customer base, you may need to stay very current to keep your credibility.

That said, here are some technologies and where we see them on the Adopt It or Drop It curve:

• Bing/Yahoo: Adopt (strong)
• Facebook: Adopt (strong)
• Twitter: Adopt (minor)
• Stock photography: Drop (minor)
• Smart phones: Adopt (strong)
• Social search: Adopt (minor)
• Regular search: Drop (minor)
• Cloud computing: Adopt (minor)

Did your last web design company stay old school and construct your site left-justified and 800 pixels wide (because that was the "standard")? If so, it now may look like a meek and insecure page on today's larger monitors.

Read the extended issue of this newsletter on our website and follow the Drive It - Convert It! blog to learn more about which wave to catch and which boat has sailed.

Customer Spotlight

Nutrishop - South Orange County's Sports Nutrition and Weight Loss Superstores

NutrishopSouthOC.com is the perfect customer to spotlight this month. You can adopt their nutritional supplements to help you drop those unwanted pounds.

Bill Henry is the owner of two Nutrishop locations in South Orange County - Lake Forest and Laguna Niguel. Bill and his staff are extremely knowledgeable and professional.

He needed his website to match the level of quality his in-store clients were used to and drive new local traffic to his stores. Bastion Internet redesigned his site and optimized it specifically for local Internet marketing.

Read more about Nutrishop and an interview with owner Bill Henry - here.

Drive

Yahoo and Bing - Adopt It!

In mid-October the Yahoo search engine will be serving ads from Bing's adCenter platform. Yahoo already is serving Bing's organic search results.

If you have a Yahoo account - make sure to convert it over to adCenter. If you don't do Pay Per Click on either Yahoo or Bing - now would be a great time. Together they serve about 30% of the market.

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Convert

Landing Page Testing - Adopt It!

Landing pages invariably lead to higher conversion rates. However, you can up those rates even more by having the right headline, image, action buttons and more. How do you tell what will work best - test, test, test!

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Design

Internet Explorer 6 - Drop it!

Are you still concerning yourself about IE6 when making website design decisions - it's time to drop it. Yes, it'll hurt a little in some places. However, it'll help a lot more in others.

Google's new Google Instant is the latest web property to not support this obsolete browser.

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Blog

The blog is launched (well, mostly). Like the cobbler's son who has no shoes, the Drive It - Convert It! blog site has no design - just the "out of the box" WordPress theme. Embarrassing - yes; but the content is right on.

Visit it to read the latest opinions from the Bastion Internet staff and add some of your own!

Latest post: Is Google Bloatware

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