By Mike Mann and Grassroots.org
……for your own projects, or to help with ours at listed at http://Aux.com/ and http://MikeMann.com/, in coordination with best business practices from http://MakeMillions.com/audio/
Great tools and ideas are necessary to research and develop for any organization that wants to be successful online — either for profit or for charitable organizations. Please comment on the products below that you've used. Read about, ask about, and test out others over time; tell us what we are missing and what to remove (email me: mikemann at mikemann dot com). Collectively, on this site, we are documenting the best Internet applications to leverage in our respective ventures. Feel free to re-post and link to this document, and use it to get rich. Thanks for helping out in this critical project to change the world.
Project Management
Going Viral
Interactive Marketing
Content Management
Marketing
Marketing Brainstorming
Public Relations
Web Development
Tech
Use Basecamp for 1-79 below. Briefly describe your theory for each test, the testing process, feedback from your trials, and any next steps.
Project Management
1. What special offers are you testing to enhance conversion rates? (Real, high-quality, branded products and services, delivered free or cheap that will convert and go viral. Many ideas tested thoroughly over time.)
2. What are the key metrics you are tracking for your site and company? (For example, web visitors, revenue by service area, new customers, total customers by service area, gross margins, free cashflow, etc.)
3. What are the changes in metrics since last period? Tracking where, deviating where? (Distribute links to your data on schedule via email; automate in analytics software.)
4. Do you have stable HR, legal, and accountancy? New programmers? Employee reporting procedures and reports? New products to train staff on and market to customers and prospects?
5. Can you and all your staff clearly describe the products, services, and up-to-date special offers that your company provides? (Everyone should have an "elevator pitch" for each product. Practice in teams.) Is it clear and simple on your website and all your printed and digital marketing materials, or should the productization marketing text and processes be fixed now so they are the best in your market?
Going Viral
6. Install viral software like Octazen (or competitors), and place viral links at key points in your Web pages, emails, and other user interfaces. Decide on all the best touch points to attempt to make viral linkages: within sign-up pages, emails, internal control panels spots, in newsletters, blogs, unique PPC/SEO landing pages, etc. Associate this viral component with great special offers mentioned above and cutting edge "Conversion Funnel" processes that should be a constant focus of your studies and relationships.
7. How do you or can you leverage Facebook, Twitter, iPhone apps, Blackberry apps, YouTube, LinkedIn,SalesForce.com, Digg, etc.? This encompasses multiple, critical, long-term technology and marketing processes that should be ambitiously evolved and documented in BaseCamp over many line items, whereas some are simpler, short-term ideas. What else are you testing or should you be testing in the social media sharing spaces? Are there any widgets/middleware/APIs that you want to develop for your organization to go more viral?
8. How can you successfully leverage sharing media/blogging? Develop an extensive list of blogger contacts in your market spaces, and get them to agree to redistribute your blogging via RSS. Choose which apps are good for you: Ping.fm, Googlealerts, Splitweet, Sharethis, Addthis, Tweetdeck, Messagepub.com, Docstoc, Docstor, Knol.Google, fliiby, and edocs? Newsletters/VideoBlogs etc. Vbulletin/PHPbb/BlogTV?
9. Using crowdsourcing for crowdmarketing; testing your sites, products, and services; the crowd is "secret shopping" your site and providing valuable feedback, while you are exposing your offerings to their community. For example go to mturk.com, have them do market research on your products and services and provide feedback; maybe some will convert to customers and finance the operation. In any event, the research is quick, cheap and possibly valuable.
10. Try Upsellit and Magento, and optimize if viable.
Interactive Marketing
11. What opportunities and apps are there for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, and Cost Per Action (CPA)? This area of study could create perpetual, huge, and very valuable strategic advantages. Pay attention for the big bucks.
12. What more can be tried with PPC? Why shouldn't you increase your PPC investing? Develop relationships with Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, ReachLocal, ServiceMagic, Oversee, Skenzo, ThoughtConvergence, Parked.com, and others if applicable.
13. Create theories for conversion funnels; test them out. If successful, your cost of new customers should constantly decrease.
14. Try A/B multivariate testing of the SEM, SEO, and LPO strategies that you should be developing.
15. Test and utilize relevant features of these Google tools: Analytics (incl. heat maps), Wave, Insights,Trends,Searchwiki, Website optimizer, Adwords, AdSense. Familiarize yourself with your Google spidering index level (ie Pr5/Pr4)… and plan accordingly.
16. Have you tested the relevant features of these tools? (There are a lot of them, so read reviews, and try the best. Don’t neglect to review things that might add huge value.): Yield Software, Trendeley, BlvdStatus, Quantcast, Alexa, Compete.com, CrazyEgg.com, VerticalResponse, Inquisite, Woopra, AWstats, Comscore, Hitwise, Spyfu, Wordtracker, Clickable, WebsiteOutlook, Kwiclick, SmarterTools.com,Viral Heat, RoiRevolution.com, HosterStats.com, Statbrain.
17. Is your Salesforce.com contact management system integrated with your web site, PDAs, and PCs? (or SugarCRM, IntelliCRM, HighRise, Act)
18. Logo brainstorming and best practices:http://logoblink.com/2008/03/24/explaining-web20-logos/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/stabilo-boss/101793494/sizes/o/
Content Management
19. Crowdsourcing for content, SEO tagging, designs, apps, voice, administrative and data entry. Be creative, this is a whole new paradigm of opportunity. Some sources are: Mechanical Turk, Elance, Rentacoder.com, Crowdspring, Sitebuilder, Sitepoint, 99designs.com, Guru.com, Voices.com, etc. Hire experts on crowdsourcing.
20. WordPress is standard to manage your site and content and blogs, but also review Movable Type, DotNetNuke.com, and Drupal to see what else should be integrated. Study CMS environment options at OpenSourceCMS.com
21. What is your overall content strategy? What is your multimedia strategy, and what applications do you use for web, email, thumbdrives, pdas, DVRs? (Photo, video, music, voice, radio and texts). Your content library should have it all to pull from when needed for web and elsewhere.
22. Content sources to review: Constant-Content, Shopping.com, Associated Content, AffiliateSummit.com, others?
23. Consider other affiliate marketing or content generating ideas with partners; syndicated content; sources for more compelling content to drive traffic and conversions; cross linking partnerships.
24. Productize everything with unique landing pages.
25. Consider a media gallery like Cooliris, which allows for 3D navigation with YouTube and Flickr, etc.
26. Consider these Customer Service tools: RequestTracker, EZ-Ticket, PHP Ticket, Help Desk Pilot, Kayako, and Hdeskonclick, Revelation Help Desk.
Marketing
27. Develop a vision, processes, and controls; establish a narrative on marketing, presentation, perception, and branding, with ties to to-do list and weekly conferences.
28. Report on top new prospects for affiliate channel building to get leverage, such as multilevel marketing. How can you improve old ones, too? Updated marketing material for prospective channel partners?
29. Look into and sign up for relevant affiliate service bureaus like Commission Junction, Linktrust.com, Linkshare, Tradedoubler, and Oddcast.com.
30. Don’t forget professional groups, especially Meetups in your local market! Boards of Trade/Chambers, online groups and associations, local tech events, MindShare, YEO/YPO, AngelCap, Technet.org. Which are keepers? What else is missing?
31. Would GeoIP tagging be useful for your organization?
32. Will using flash cookies/(Local) Shared Objects enhance your visitors’ experiences?
33. Engage these web marketing communities, which are often full of geniuses giving free advice (how can you go wrong?): MarketingSherpa, MarketingExperiments, Makeuseof.com, Mashable, Marketingprofs.com, Digitalppoint, Webtalkforums, Webmaster Forum, Webmaster Forums Online, Warrior Forums, The V7, 5Star Affiliate Forum, MediaBistro.
Marketing Brainstorming
34. Which are useful for your organization? Conferences, communities, groups, profiles, games, comments, messaging, calendars of events, news channel/ticker, video archives, classifieds, search of site, polls/surveys, ecards, secret shopper, gift certificates, contests, sweepstakes, celebs backing site, athlete sponsorships, Groupon.com and collective buying, gift/wish list widget, ad specialty trinkets, print ads, bookmarking site, biz cards with special coupons, wikipedia listings, demographic questionnaires with incentives.
35. How can you leverage webinars like Gotowebinar.com, for example? Other online events?
36. Are you following up by phone from web commerce forms that were abandoned before being completed by potential new customers?
37. Create a flash or Powerpoint product presentation explaining your business to prospective clients.
38. Update a PDF “one pager” explaining your business.
39. Product fulfillment: Drop shipping? One vendor or multivendor xml integration with white label when possible? Or can you own and white label your own brand(s)?
40. Email resources to test: ConstantContact, MailerMailer, and MailChimp.
Public Relations
41. Develop a press plan: Clear messaging globally, special messages for each service and notable timely items, current newsworthy activity.
42. Develop a list of reporters in your market space who will spin your press releases or interview you. Put it in SalesForce.com, and keep in touch with them.
Web Development
43. Ecommerce tools: XCart, Merchant accounts, Pay Pal, PayPal creditcards, PayPalx (x.com), PaySimple, RetailMeNot, Authorize.net, e-checks, Amazon Payment, Google Checkout, Magento, Expression Engine, OSCommerce, Zen Cart, Stormpay, Comodo, RadarBlue, E-Directory.com. Which are keepers?
44. Try UserTesting.com and UserVoice.com. What did they tell you? What similar sites are there to try?
45. Consider: Layout, functionality, wire, framework, ontology, navigation, taxonomy, sitemap, UI, search and browse, administrator modules, control panels, APIs, widgets, design database, timelines, approval processes, and staff assignments.
46. Check cross browser compatibility with Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, iPhone, etc, with varying speeds and technologies, and keep ping on network services.
47. Questionpro.com for surveys.
48. Make it clean and easy for consumers to do what they want, find and buy what they want, when they want, from anywhere, for any product or service.
49. Create flash tour storyboards, flash sites overall, and flash presentations
50. Do you need an investor presentation?
51. What is your mission, audience, and value proposition or your site or organization?
52. What do you want each person to do when they get to your site? What is the end goal of the visit?
53. Integrate charity and partner logos/text.
54. Consider and comment on LivePerson, LiveHelp, and BoldChat.
55. Look into Flash tools for flash site tours and various presentations.
56. Try Animoto for one great, simple flash option.
57. Which sites and forums do you follow for SEO, LPO, Webdev?
58. Crowdsource market research for your product and service ideas in detail with mturk, Facebook,Twitter, your email list, etc.
59. Put case studies, called “Success Stories,” on your website.
60. Develop and post customer and partner testimonials. Try CustomerLobby.
61. Consider the relevance of setting up your platform on Socialengine.com or Ning, etc.
62. "Ize" on the future: Incentivize, Socialize, Optimize, Customize, Localize, Personalize.
Tech
63. Look into a usability review for your website (Benevolabs.com, UserCentric.com, UserTesting, UserVoice).
64. Test telecom related apps, and integrate relevant ones in to your site and business flow: Phone.com,GoogleVoice, Ooma, MagicJack, Iotum.
65. Look into app development tools, such as Codeigniter and Zend LAMP platform.
66. With Webkit your app immediately integrates with iphone, android, Palm...
67. How can you dynamically deliver your site content for varying users and subscribers?
68. In what manner are you deploying LAMP, PHP, Ajax, Flex, Ruby, Dojo, RSS, XML, server side includes, iframes? Other ?
69. Are there Truste/Thawte/Verisign/encrypted pieces of site?
70. What are your long-term plans for hosting and bandwidth, network infrastructures?
71. Do you have backups, redundancy, monitoring, code repositories, version control?
72. PC Management: Backups (Acronis True Image/Carbonite/ BESR/Network Backup)
73. For remote access, visit http://www.zolved.com/remote_control or GoToMyPC - Sharing large files try YouSendit or DropBox.
74. Do you have Virus/Firewall Control or ZoneAlarm?
75. Investigate flash timelines, such as http://www.dipity.com/timetube/YouTube_Nirvana_Videos.
76. What is your document testing methodology, functional, load, performance, stress, volume, security, usability, localization, data migration and automated tests?
77. Is the domain up to date? Are there ancillary domains for protection? Is there any other IP dev or protection?
78. Do you have control and backups of all your code and intellectual property, clear title? Do you have the ability to sublicense or reuse for other sites?
79. Look into Spam Assassin and SORBS lists if you manage a mail server for your site.
