Wordpress Development, Email Marketing Australia, Magento Development, Facebook Design and Development

At DzineClub we work with multiple CMS platforms to make sure that we are in touch with all the latest technologies. We have dedicated staff who work with platforms such as Magento, Joomla, Drupal and WordPress.

Our CMS of choice is WordPress (for websites) and Magento Commerce (for Online stores) and it consists of our bigger team of development. The reasons we pick WordPress  and Magento is because these platforms are easier to install, develop, deploy and improve on.

This means that as a client you get speedier development, lower total cost of ownership, Quicker updates and integrations. If you need a design refresh in a few months, you don’t have to worry about the content, it will just be a matter of putting a new skin on top.

That, a CMS that is a perfect fit today might not be the best in a few years. This was the case with Joomla a few years ago and now WordPress has taken the crown from our prespective.

Some of the things we look for in a CMS before developing are:

• How easy it is to install
• How easy is it to update
• How easy will it be for the client to use
• How easy is it to put a skin/theme on top
• How far can we push the flexibility of the CMS
• Can the CMS handle meta data and multiple content types (pages, posts, news, whitepapers, images, events, videos)
• How does the CMS handle SEO straight out of the box
• How easy is it to integrate new technology onto the platform
• How does the CMS handle multiple editors and their roles
• Is there a defined roadmap and will it stick around in the future
• Is there a good development base and are there lots of users who support this platform
• What is the security behind the CMS

Based on this, we make a recommendation for a CMS for a client.

We just came across this infograph by the guys at Devious Media on the 3 open source platforms. Our summary follows after the graphic based on the infograph.  Please note that we wont be discussing Joomla as we don’t see a definite future with Joomla.

Drupal:

• More used by Heavy/Large Enterprise companies
• More used by complicated companies
• Decent Developer community
• Good Client List

WordPress:

• Faster Updates
• Twice as many updates than Drupal/Joomla
• Twice as many plugins and themes
• Larger number of developer and user adoption (upto 10 times as much)
• More social
• More Cost Effective
• Lower Total cost of ownership
• Stronger SEO straight out of the box
• Easier to learn to use

Summary

We recommend using WordPress for most sites and have worked with a large number of sites where we have customised WordPress to work as per business needs. Please view our list of sites we have customised for WordPress here:

http://www.dzineclub.com/blog/2011/01/wordpress-development-wordpress-design/

WordPress for Medium to Large Clients

We still recommend using WordPress for Medium to Large Clients because of the level of customisation that can be done in WordPress and how quickly it can be changed and new plugins being added. What Drupal can do for such size clients can easily be accommodated using Plugins in WordPress.

WordPress or Drupal for Heavy Enterprise Clients

For sites such as the main Government site, user payments and memberships, forums, connections to ERP platforms, WordPress is probably not the right option right now. The best solution would be to customise Drupal or use a paid CMS Platform. However if you are developing your site in 6 months or a year’s time, WordPress should be a worthy competitor.

Have you got a website that you are looking at developing and are not sure which CMS is the best to use?

Flick us an email at info@dzineclub.com and we’ll recommend a solution based on our expertise.

To stay ahead of the Social media and technology DzineClub is formally opening its blog posts to Facebook comments.

You are now able to comment on any blog posts using Facebook. Please note that you need to be already logged into Facebook to do this.

To see how it works, just go down to the bottom of this post, where it says Facebook Comments and comment away 🙂

Lately we have been working with a number of clients in improving their Social Marketing. We have been working with these clients in getting more fans in Facebook, getting more followers on twitter, more subscribers for their emails, more MySpace fans and so on. What is evidently clear based on the conversations that your social network is having about your brand is that the power is with the consumer. Even if they are not a customer but connected to one of your customers, they have the power to essentially build or break your brand.

That said, we still work in an industry where Social Media is in an infancy. There are companies who have tasted the customer backlash and to be honest, there is not a single company which can please 100% of its customers. Customers have different needs, different demographics which makes it impossible for a bigger company to look after each and every one of them. The best way is to please as many customers as you can and do you best.

Social Media Backlash

So what do you do when your customers tweet bad things about you? The best way is to have a lot of good tweets so that you can officially display that it was an isolated incident.

This is very similar to the rating system for an eBay seller. Most of the eBay sellers don’t have a 100% rating because out of the 10s of thousands of customers some have had bad experience. But overall you can see that they are isolated incidents.

Building Walls

The best strategy however is to build walls around your business so that Social Media backlash (small or big) has a very minimal effect on your business. That you can still manage your business properly and allocate time to fix those issues instead of putting your business on halt.

Social Reputation Management Service

Talk to us about how we have helped clients overcome Social Media Backlash. We can help you put measures in place that can help you ascertain the effect of the backlash as well as a long term strategy to fix the issues you have now and avoid it in the future.

Lately a lot of our clients have started using wordpress as their blog/website engine. So to help them understand and utilise wordpress themselves, here is a guide. We will cover in this guide

– How to add pages to your wordpress site
– How to add blog posts to your wordpress site
– How to create a menu for your wordpress site
– How to add and remove widgets from your wordpress site

We will endeavor to update this guide over the next week, so if you are a client who is getting this implemented in the next week, bookmark this page to get the details.

If you are looking to use wordpress or wanting a new website with a blog that you can manage yourself, drop us a line at info@dzineclub.com Our team can send you a portfolio of wordpress websites that we have done for our clients in Australia.

Looking – this is what most people do.

They monitor their blog. They look at the latest post and see how many people viewed it, where they came from, where they found the blog.

They monitor their social media – how much something got retweeted, how many fans on facebook pages, how many followers on twitter.

Then they go about generating and sharing new content with a little thought on the back on the mind saying – generate more content and I’ll get more traffic.

Looking and Learning

What a lot of people don’t do is that they don’t learn from what they have written. They don’t learn from what they see in reports in their blogs and social media.

Individual Post Analysis

Every blog post that gets viewed should be analysed for why it was viewed. You need to know what particular search query drove the user there.  You also need to make sure that what they are searching for, they can get the answer on your blog posts.

Trend Analysis

Look at a range of posts and see why some of them are more popular than others. This should give you an idea of what your users want. Instead of now just generating new content, generate content that is more relevant to these active users.

Group your posts together and see how the groups are performing

Group or Categorize your blogs and compare how each category is performing against the other. See which categories are getting fuller and which ones are empty. Are you filling up categories for products/services that you don’t want to offer.

Flooding is not a good strategy

Unless you have a big content generation team and lots of time in your hands, flooding your blogs and social media with content is not a good strategy. Spend your time wisely choosing the topics, making sure your target market likes those topics and finds it helpful and then push them out. Once you do, look at their behavior and learn from them.

A Blog is not just about informing people, it is also about learning from them

What is a blog?

Blog stands for "web log". It is a type of website, maintained by an individual, group or a company. Entries are posted in the blog regularly about services, events, commentary, video, images etc. A blog provides an overall picture on a particular person or a subject or a company.   Companies like Dell, Microsoft, Google use blogs to communicate with their users.

Advantages of using a blog for yourself or your company

1. Low Cost Setup

A blog can be setup at a relatively low cost than a website. Usually there is a lot of things you have to consider before starting and implementing a website. A website can serve multiple purposes based on your business and your offering. A blog however is fairly straightforward to set up as it serves a clear purpose.

Also because of the popularity of blogs, there are also a lot of existing frameworks for blogs that can be utilized which makes it faster and cheaper for the end user.

2. Quick to setup and start

Because all the blogs we set up, we use existing frameworks, they are quicker to setup. You can start putting up posts on your blog within a few hours. The customizing the blog to your look and feel might take a bit longer but access to the blog and setup can be well within a day.

3. Search Engine Friendly

Blogs are Search Engine Friendly because they are more informative and resourceful than websites. Search Engines love Blogs, because they help provide more information to users who are searching on the engines. Search Engines would rather send the visitor to a page full of information rather than a page with a product/sales offering. Usually once you start blogging regularly, you will start seeing them getting updates in Google within minutes.

4. Brand Awareness

Because of the Search Engine Friendliness and a more personal communication (than a website), Blogs help you build your brand awareness. Your visitors will feel more connected to you and engaged because of more regular and personal offerings on the blog. Your visitors will also see the human side to the business that you are running which makes it easier for them to pick you for your products/services when they need it.

5. Integrations with other Marketing Channels

Most Blogging platforms integrate with other Channels and help you push out information about the blog to your other channels. For example, you could write a blog entry and publish it and it automatically updates your twitter with that entry. So you are not just covering your website visitors, but also your twitter followers. Plus now twitter is indexed by search engines, so you can get more visitors via that channel.

6. Human Touch

A blog brings a human touch to your business or yourself. Because the information getting there is not sales focused and edited by a flurry of legal teams from your company, it brings out the human side of your business. It also helps your prospects and your customers connect with you and really get to know the people behind the business. In markets like Australia, this could  be the driving force behind buying a product or a service from a company.

Is a blog right for you and your business?

More than half the time, it usually is.  If you are creating content, selling products, offering services etc and wish to push out information to your customers/visitors then a blog is perfect medium for you.  The only times we would recommend against using a blog is

1. If you are unable to generate content regularly. If you only have a new offering once a year or nothing to communicate to your customers/visitors for months, a blog is not the best idea.
2. If you are unwilling or unable to spend a bit of time regularly in marketing your offering online then a blog will not help. A blog with little or no updates can look bad on a company or an individual
3. If your targetmarket is not tech savvy users, then a blog is not the best idea. If your target market doesn’t have access to the internet or are not the type who will spend a bit of time on the internet a blog would be a waste of resources and time for yourself.

Free Blog Setup

For a limited time, we are offering a free blog setup for any business/individual in Australia. Please click on the link below and submit your details to enquire.
http://www.dzineclub.com/services-blog.php