Partners

Humility: Mobile Tech Tutor – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight, Partners

Humility can be hard to remember. When you’re doing well and everything seems easy, it’s easy to forget that you’re only a master of your tiny universe. That if you were thrown into somebody else’s, you’d likely drown if not for the help of good humble people who remember being where you have been.

I chose to celebrate humility this week, and there are many confident yet humble customers I think of quickly. But for whatever reason, the one who came to mind most quickly is Julian Macias, the Mobile Tech Tutor. He’s such a kind and gentle soul. And a humble one, helping people just because he enjoys helping people.

Mobile Tech Tutor: Humbly Helping the Unfamiliar with Newfangled Tech

Julian Macias came to us a few years ago to learn more about his website traffic. He’d done his website himself and because this business is but a side gig for him, he didn’t want to spend a ton of money but rather learn what he could do himself. Of course, we obliged.

Macias’ customer base at Mobile Tech Tutor is the retired folks around him. He helps them to better understand their mobile phones, mostly. But all technology. Tech changes so fast, it’s very difficult to keep up! In the world of telephone tech alone, we had live operators for quite a while, overlapping with rotary phones in popular Western culture from the 1920s through the 1970s. Then came dial-tone phones, and they lasted through the ’90s and today. So imagine being accustomed to changes that happened over generations, and now there’s a completely new phone and interface you have to learn every few years. It’s a big change! And not only are these phones making telephone calls, they are, of course, miniature computers that were basically Star Trek tech just two decades ago. They do everything! It’s quite intimidating for somebody who learned to type in the ’30s or 1940s.

So Julian helps them out with kindness and humility. It’s a beautiful gesture, taking his spare time to tech past generations how to use their phones for a nominal price. When a proud man or woman doesn’t want to nag their child or grandchild, the answer is Julian Macias, the Mobile Tech Tutor.

When Julian came to us, his first website was a start. We helped him with suggestions and concrete actions and he has now implemented them into his second website, which is a drastic improvement. We began with our Interfanatic SEO SitRep to see what his competition was like. Later, we moved on to an Interfanatic Marketing Message Situation Report, and helped him hone his message such that it would resonate with his target market.

For us, it’s what we do – it’s not hard. But we do it because we’ve spent decades working at getting good at these things. We don’t take our talents and skills for granted – we share them with those who need help.

A 30-second video showing the improvements to Mobile Tech Tutor, based on our Marketing Situation Report.

And we do that with humility. Because there are so many things YOU are good at that we’d love to learn. We’re here to help.

Have a look at Julian Macias’ improved Mobile Tech Tutor website. We didn’t make it, but we consulted on design, messaging, and content for SEO.

Humility: An Interfanatic Quality

“The best of people is the one who humbles himself the more his rank increases.”

– Prophet Muhammad

It’s very easy to get swept away in your own success. But, as the prophet Muhammad tells us here, it makes a better person when you instead appreciate the gifts that come your way from hard work with gratitude and appreciation.

There are many who don’t understand that Muslim ideology includes humility as its one of its most important qualities. With over 3 billion practitioners around the world, Islam is an important religion to understand. I like to find the beauty of the best teachings and focus on them.

And so, though I’m not Muslim myself, I appreciate these words and their wisdom. I have seen successful people become arrogant, and I have seen successful people stay humble. I want to be around those who remain humble. And that’s how I want to be.

Interfanatic Service Focus: Interfanatic Basic Marketing Situation Report

Last week, it was all about Interfanatic Website Management. This week, it’s about one piece of that, a service which can be handled separately from management if you wish: our Interfanatic Basic Marketing Situation Report. (As with all our SitReps, we have a Power and a The Works versions also, for more in-depth reporting.)

We do a few different Situation Reports (SitReps) and we’re quite well-known for our SEO Situation Reports – our customers love them! But we also do performance and marketing situation reports to make sure your website messaging and design is on track to connect and resonate with your best customers. This is just another an incredibly valuable and inexpensive service we provide for businesses of all sizes around the world.

“We’ll give you all the recommended steps to achieve a better performing business website.”

So what is a Situation Report..? It’s a professional look at your website’s performance. We have three: SEO (both local and global), Marketing, and Performance. SEO is to figure out how your website stacks up against competitors for important keywords and keyphrases. Performance is to have a look at how your website is loading and how people are using it. But the one we’ll talk about today, Marketing, is to determine if your site messaging and image are in line with what your customers want.

We’ve all been to and had to use websites we hate. We’ve all been to websites we don’t understand. Perhaps the website was done by somebody in their spare time, or by a relative. And perhaps the messaging was thought out, but it still doesn’t make sense. There’s a lot of jargon and many industry-specific acronyms that make a site inaccessible to a new user. We cut through that and make sure your website makes sense to your customers, and inspires them to take the next step.

We have one customer now – her site gets a decent amount of traffic, but not many buyers. We’re going to work with her to understand why her site is the way it is and help her understand what buyers want. Sometimes the steps are confusing. Sometimes they’re not confusing, but they’re not clear. And sometimes you just have to ask your customer. If the steps are clear to you, but they aren’t clear to your customer, you’re not going to get enough sales.

And, if needed, we’ll fix up her site so that buyers are more inclined to take the next step with her. If not needed, she can handle it herself, but we’ll give her – and you – all the recommended steps to achieve a better performing business website.

We don’t do this because we’re know-it-alls. We’re not. But we have been doing this for over two decades. And as professionals in our industry, it’s a place we can lend a hand.

Interfanatic: Humbly at your service.

We’ve been around the block a few times. We’ve seen it all! Please don’t be embarrassed at the current state of your website. We’ve all been there. Trust me: WE’VE ALL BEEN THERE. The most important part is that you know there’s an issue and you know you need help. That’s what we’re here for. We’re here to help. So give us a call. We have the answer.

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Honesty: ACE Racing Engines– Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight, Partners

It’s impossible to do business for long without consistent honesty. You know who knows that? Engine builders who have lasted. You know who doesn’t know that? Fly-by-night racing folks.

You want a 2000hp engine for your drag car? No problem, go to my man Stef at ACE Racing Engines. I have no qualms recommending him because he’s honest. Not all engine builders are.

ACE Racing Engines: Producing High Horsepower Drag Racing Engines, Honestly

Stef Rossi is extremely passionate about his work: creating reliable yet powerful racing engines. In recent years, he’s begun to focus on LS and LSX drag racing engines for extremely fast quarter mile runs. Does your car need a two thousand horsepower engine? No problem, Stef will build it for you. Are you looking for three thousand hp? Stef at ACE Racing Engines is your man.

They recommend you call before ordering. That said, his website is set up to take orders to get exactly the engine you want, the way you need it. Racing engines are finicky, so it’s probably a good idea to call Stef or Laura to hash out the fine details and make sure what you want will get you where you want to go in the time you want to get there.

We help them by managing their site and helping them work on SEO a bit. When Stef came to me, he was already doing a great job on SEO. But we had a look at some of the terms he finds important and found ways to tackle those keywords and keyphrases to move his site up the SERPs.

A 1-minute video showing ACE-Engines.com’s performance in search.

Just like Stef is, we’re honest. We’ll give you an honest take and help you get your site where you want it to go. We work with budgets of all sizes, and we maximize that budget for your performance – just like Stef does.

Check out this quick video that shows their site’s performance for important keywords in search.

Honesty: An Interfanatic Quality

“Honest people don’t hide their actions.”

– Emily Brontë

Hiding from the truth will get you places for a little bit. But not for over twenty years. There’s no benefit in dishonesty – not if you want long-term results. And we want long-term results.

A 7-second quarter mile may not seem like long term results, but getting that seven second pull every time you go out with a decent launch is the holy grail from some drag racers. For that reason, Stef Rossi of ACE Racing Engines is honest with his customers and provides reliable and complete dyno sheets so there’s never a question they’re getting what they paid for.

We’ve had to deal with dishonest people through the years – from both sides. It’s not pleasant. We want to create a welcoming, productive environment with which we can thrive with our customers. For that reason, we stick with honesty.

Interfanatic Service Focus: Interfanatic Power Website Management

In our last blog, we told you about some of the Google Search Advertising we do for our customers. In this blog, we’ll cover our business website management – affordable performance Interfanatic Power Website Management.

Our Basic Management is great for most simple websites. But when you need a little performance on your side to help boost your site in search results, our Power Management is the most reliable and cost-efficient option. Not only do you get a more powerful server, you get more labor and some premium website management work, including a staging server for rolling out updates first.

There’s a lot more work involved in operating this website server for you, but it’s a more consistent, reliable, performance-based answer. And if you want some SEO built-in with that, well yeah, we do that, too.

“…when you need a little performance on your side to help boost your site in search results, our Power Management is the most reliable and cost-efficient option.”

We’ve just added a version of this service that our clients very much need this year – Management+ SEO. We offer it at all levels. We keep your website alive by combining our management with our content marketing services and SEO Situation Reports. It’s a great way to ensure your website keeps performing or even climbs the ranks for those all-important keywords and keyphrases. If you don’t have time to blog or write important articles, we do the heavy lifting for you. We come up with the ideas, we write and edit until you approve. And we track our performance with the SitReps.

So if you want a website built to perform in search, we’re your people. And if you want a website that keeps performing in search, we’re your people.

Interfanatic: Honestly here for you.

We’re here to help. We’re here to perform our expertise at a consistent, high level so you can count on us and you can count on your site. We exist to help your business every day, with honesty, integrity, and the gumption to make things happen for you. Call us: we have the answer.

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Resolution: D&G Paving – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight, Partners

A great idea is nothing without the resolution to see it through. That’s the resolve we celebrate this week: follow through.

When I think of a business person resolved to succeed, I think of Dan Ash at D&G Paving. That man won’t quit. We don’t quit either, but with Dan, the inspiration often gets an extra step or two. It’s always easier to perform for a person who leads by example.

Dan’s passion is evident in his resolution. We strive to be the same.

D&G Paving: Resolved to Help the Local Community as Paving Experts

Dan Ash is very specific about where he operates his business: South of the 105 and West of the 605. And for that South Bay Los Angeles community that he and his team serve, they are resolved to do excellent, lasting work for a fair price.

The pandemic hit us all upside the head a bit. Dan’s business was no different. He’s got his regulars that keep coming back, but he needs fresh leads coming in for his team, so that his business and his team and their families are a little more self-reliant. Ash always steps up to extra work, but he wants his team to pick up more so they don’t have to count on him forever. He’s been training them hard and working them hard, inspiring them to be better and do better paving work all over Southern California.

Ash needs a solid lead source to feed potential customers to his sales team. One option is Google Ads.

We got D&G Paving‘s Google Ads account back under control and it’s producing regular leads for them at a competitive rate.

A demonstration of D&G Paving’s performance in search advertising.

It’s a really great feeling to be part of a successful team. We got D&G Paving’s site producing leads and work for Dan’s guys, and it feels good to be a part of that. We took inspiration from Dan’s resolve and adopted his “never quit until it works” attitude. We do this with all our projects, but it’s even easier working for Dan Ash because he just doesn’t have any quit in him. He’s got resolution.

Check out this quick video that shows their Google Ads campaign at work.

Resolution: An Interfanatic Quality

“Use a mirror in difficult times. You will see both cause and resolution.”

– Deng Ming-Dao

We don’t quit. But when things get rough, we know we have to look at ourselves to find the root of the problem. Sometimes it’s not us, at least not directly. But when we really look deep, we often find we played a part.

And we stand resolved to do better.

Often, we find that the answer comes from putting ourselves in another’s place. We try to understand the situation from their perspective. When you work with successful people, they’re often stubborn. “It’s my way or the highway” certainly reflects resolve, but it does not result in resolution.

We’re here to help. We have tremendous experience doing what we’ve done for over 20 years. So that’s what we do. We help. And we’re resolved to do that.

Interfanatic Service Focus: Interfanatic Power Search Ads Management

Only last week we told you about website management. Well, we manage a lot more than that. This week, we’ll tell you about Ads Management.

We manage all kinds of digital ads for our customers – Social Media Ads, Video Ads, Phone Call Ads, and perhaps the most importat: Search Ads. Right now, Google has over 80% of the search traffic on the Internet. When your site is new and you’re not using our services for SEO, you need to find a way to get your business found.

That’s where we come in. We do that.

And when your site is performing well in the search engines, you can dominate your competition even more by filling the search results page real estate with your name even more using search ads. If you want to be perceived as number one for what you do, there’s no better way on the Internet than to have the top local search result, the top organic result, and the top paid result for an important keyword. Nobody will doubt they found the authority.

“If you want to be perceived as number one for what you do, there’s no better way on the Internet than to have the top local search reseult, the top organic result, and the top paid search result for an important keyword.”

Search Advertising is extremely complicated. It always has been. It’s really easy for Google to swindle you for a ton of money if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing. Heck, we’ve been doing this for over a decade and we still have to keep Google at bay!

There are simplified services, but they don’t often work and even the simplified interfaces can be tough to understand. Or, you can have us handle it. This is what we do. We know all about the complicated interfaces and how to interpret them. We’ll fill you in and get things moving in the right direction in no time.

Interfanatic: Resolved to be here with the answers.

By now, you’ve seen our new motto: We’ll be here, and for over 20 years we have the answer. We didn’t get here by being squishy or retreating. We’re here to help, and we remain resolved to help our clients make a positive impact on their communities. That’s what we’re here for. Not sure what needs to be done? Call us: we have the answer.

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Adaptability: German Coins – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight, Partners

Adapt or die!

Ron Guth has a numismatic career spanning decades as a pinnacle expert. He’s an author, an experienced executive, an auctioneer, … and proprietor of German Coins.

Guth built his first website around the same time we started our business – around 1998. (We started in 1999.) And as the Internet has changed, Ron Guth has changed with it.

As most of our successful clients, Guth embodies our quoter’s thought. Jessica Hagedorn is a bit of a maverick and found success in many ways – all of them through knowing how and when to adapt.

German Coins: Adapting to the Market

I had the great honor of working with Ron Guth when we did some marketing work for PCGS (Collector’s Universe) and handling the marketing for the second tranche brought up from the Ship of Gold. We worked together on more than that, too. It was always great working with Guth. He’s such a pro! Soft spoken, self-effacing, kind, and one of the most knowledgeable and sharp individuals you will ever meet.

And you have to be to take on the niche of numismatics that is German Coins! Coins of most countries are complex and intricate. There are entire libraries dedicated to the two-hundred denominations of U.S. Coins through history.

But German Coins encompass not only the intricacies of the modern era (West German, East German, and Unified Germany), but the upheavals of the 20th century and going back through the German States. Forget 200 denominations, how about 200 States, each with it’s own unique set of non-decimal denominations! And then there’s porcelain coinage, notgeld, precious metals coinage, territories – it’s insane. For reference: if you’ve ever seen the phone book size Krause “Standard Catalog of World Coins”, you know that of the three inches of material, US coins inhabit… maybe 1/8th inch of the 1900-2000 volume. For the 1800-1900 volume, twice that. German States comprise a full inch of the 1700-1800 Krause.

Ron Guth is one of the few sharp enough to take on such a daunting task.

But if you want a deep and rich niche of numismatics to delve into, German Coins are for you! That would be one helluva type set.

We began helping Guth with GermanCoins.com a few years ago. We added a shopping cart to his site, and gave it a quick redesign at that time. More recently, we relaunched the site with an all-new design that makes the site easier and faster than ever.

This quick video shows the changes the site has seen through its life.

Check it out now to see the latest design: https://germancoins.com

Adaptability: An Interfanatic Quality

“Adaptability is the simple secret of survival.”

– Jessica Hagedorn

To survive and yes to thrive, we have to change. We have seen so much change through our 20 years in business. From Netscape to Google, from MySpace to Facebook, from Nokia to iPhones, from AdWords to Yelp, we’ve seen so many fads come and go.

One thing that hasn’t changed: having your own website to tell your story the way you want to tell it is the way to go. You’re not reliant on some external force presenting your message. It’s on you. You get what you want.

“I don’t need a website, I just use Facebook.” Now that facebook is the home of fake news and toxicity on the Internet, that may not be the place for you. Plenty of businesses use facebook successfully. But if you want your message shown without distraction, it may not be the best place to showcase your products and services.

“I don’t need a website, I just use Yelp.” Which is great, so long as you have 5-star reviews! But what happens when Yelp doesn’t prioritize your correct reviews, but rather chooses to showcase some nutjob’s? You have to pay their fee, and even then you may not get what you want.

Websites are not the be-all, end-all, but I’ve heard so many times through my career that “websites are a thing of the past”, and yet here we are.

Kinda like Ron Guth and German Coins. They adapt.

Interfanatic Service Focus: Interfanatic Power Business Website Production

Last week, I told you about our Website Management services, which keeps sites running strong and keep the surprises away. Today, let’s talk about our Power Business Website production.

We’ve adapted this service multiple times through the years. The main thing you get in any service is labor – our prices are determined by the time it takes to properly complete the service you need. In the case of Power Business Website Production, we build a proper business website for you with either a focus on SEO (which most businesses care about) or speed (which is important, but not always the priority.) If you want both, look for our The Works service, which includes both incredible SEO, incredible speed and performance, and more. If neither are critical, look at our Basic Site Production.

Most customers we’ve experienced are most focused on SEO – getting traffic to their site. We’ve always done some SEO service in our builds, it’s just a requirement of the times. But to really focus on SEO in 2021, there’s considerable extra labor involved. And the results are always worth it – especially in the long run.

“…we invest extra time with our SEO-focused builds, we invest extra time in lightning performance for speed-focused builds.”

Some customers are not interested in SEO, (surprisingly.) For those customers, we emphasize the speed and performance of their website. When you have a business that is not concerned with SEO, it’s because you have enough customers – you just want referrals to have something sharp to see when they check you out. As we invest extra time with our SEO-focused build, we invest extra time in lightning performance for speed-focused builds. We have a couple of options here, including headless website builds, that might work best for your application. Talk to us about your needs and we’ll guide you.

If you focus on speed with your Power Business Website Build, there can still be some SEO done. If you focus on SEO with your Power Business Website Build, there will still be good performance. But getting those last few percent of each are labor intensive, so that’s what we do. We invest the labor on your behalf to get you the website you want.

Interfanatic: Adapting to Thrive

Our business changes every second of every day. We don’t do the same thing we did in 1999. Our systems and processes have evolved to adapt to the current business model that works best for our clients. What hasn’t changed is our commitment to excellence. We haven’t changed our willingness to what’s needed to ensure we do everything in our power to help them be successful.

You see, some things need to be adapted. Others, like doing what’s best for our customers, do not need to change.

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Gratitude: Checkered Past Racing – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight, Partners

Every day, remember gratitude. Be grateful for what you’ve got rather than avarice for that which you do not.

I always think of Chris Locke. Not only is he a grateful guy, I’m personally very grateful to him. He is a dream customer. He’s the kind of customer every business wants.

And the quote we focus on is a good one. I feel like it’s been beaten into cliche, but Sterling Brown gets credit because he quoted it to a popular rag. I’m guessing it may have been passed down to him, but regardless, it’s a great sentiment.

Being thankful isn’t hard when you have so much to be thankful for in life. It can be easy to lose focus when things aren’t going your way. But gratitude is a great way to get your head on straight again.

Checkered Past Racing: A Grateful Life, Fulfilled

Locke and I met through our mutual passion – racing. Long ago, in a galaxy far away, Chris and I used to race together, albeit he up the track further than I, usually. He created CheckeredPastRacing.com so many moons ago to share his schedule with his friends and family. If they wanted to come watch, they have an easy, memorable website to go to to find his whereabouts.

When we did the original project for Chris – so long ago – man, that was a fun one. We did a Flash intro animation, which was all the rage at the time. My friend and colleague Zane Kohler was the cartoonist behind it, and it was awesome.

Time moves on, Flash is no longer en vogue; now it’s all about big pictures and simple UI. So that’s what we went for when we redesigned the site for Chris a couple of years ago. It serves its purpose now better than ever.

A demonstration of CheckeredPastRacing.com.

Last week, we spoke about how all of our fresh websites are responsive. It was one of the chief design requirements when we did this site a couple of years ago to ensure it works well on mobile devices. The old site worked okay – you could find and see stuff. But we designed this site from the get-go to work on desktop and mobile.

Check out this quick video that shows some of the highlights of the site: https://checkeredpastracing.com

Gratitude: An Interfanatic Quality

“Always have an attitude of gratitude.”

– Sterling K. Brown

No matter what’s going on, you’re here. That is quite likely better than the alternative. This, too, shall pass.

And when things are really going well, remembering gratitude keeps your attitude in check.

Gratitude at times comes easily. But we choose to combine this week’s quality with last’s: diligence. It’s important to be diligent with gratitude. We try to ensure we work it into our daily routine over here. Not obnoxiously, but such that it is always there.

We are so grateful for our wonderful customers, upon whom we have built this business. We work hard for them as our way of showing gratitude.

Interfanatic Service Focus: Interfanatic Basic Management

Last week, we reminded you about how all our fresh design/build projects use responsive design. This week, I’ll remind you one way we express gratitude for our clients daily: by managing their websites effectively.

When I say we manage your website, I mean hosting, SSL, email, and labor. We have management plans for customers of all sizes. If you want excellent, active and adaptive SEO, we have management plans with that built right in, too.

“That’s what our management is. It’s active, rather than passive. It’s preventative, rather than reactive. That way, our customers sometimes even forget we’re there.”

See, we’re always working for our customers, whether they know it or not. We’re always on, trying to ensure we take care of any problems that arise before they even know something’s happening.

That’s what our management is. It’s active, rather than passive. It’s preventative, rather than reactive. That way, our customers sometimes even forget we’re even there. Which is, really, how it should be. We do our thing for you so you don’t have to worry about it.

Interfanatic: Grateful, always hungry to be more grateful.

We’re here for you. We appreciate you. We’re grateful our customers are in our lives. And we work hard to make sure they know it, whether they see it or not. And we’re always willing to do more for them. Ask, and we’ll answer the call. We’re here for you, and we’ll do our best for anybody you recommend.

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Diligence: Aero-Vac Alloys & Forge – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight, Partners

Last week, we talked about how kindness can change the world. Well, this week, we’ll talk about how properly applied diligence will change your life.

It certainly has done that for our client, the good folks at Aero-Vac Alloys & Forge in Kamala, Washington. And it also changed the life of Oscar Micheaux, a writer and early filmmaker, and the source of this week’s quote.

Diligence is about doing the work, whether it be grunt work or technical work, every day. It’s about finding ways to make less work every day. It’s about getting things done, better, every day. And we apply diligence to our projects and our work for our client every day. Diligence makes progress. Through diligence, we make progress for our clients every day. (Even if it’s just a little bit.)

Aero-Vac Alloys & Forge: Standard and Exotic Metal Alloys for High-Tech Implementations

The folks at AVAF are nothing if they ain’t diligent. They are highly skilled precision craftsmen working with metals, both exotic and mundane. But the metal specifications they work with are precise and exacting. That’s because the stainless steel alloys, titaniums, and high-strength alloy steels they produce to exacting specifications end up in aircraft, racecars, spacecraft, and all sorts of high-tech applications that require perfection.

Personal moment: I love working with companies in the aerospace industry. As a bit of a nerd myself, it’s exciting for me to know we’re contributing to the advancement of exploration and technology, if but in our own small way.

We’ve been working with Tim and team for many years now – well over a decade. We helped them get established on the Internet with a website all those years ago, and it was recently time for a redesign. You might have read about it; I was proud of the way our transition between sites didn’t lose any traffic. AVAF’s SEO is important to their business operations, which is one of the main reasons they work with us. We’re great at making sure their site shows up in search.

The Aero-Vac Alloys & Forge website is responsive, meaning it works well on both a desktop computer screen and a mobile phone.

Another thing we addressed in this site redesign is responsiveness. Responsive design is a bit of an over-complicated way our industry has decided to describe a website that works on many devices. AVAF’s old site worked alright on mobile phones, but the new one works even better.

In this quick video, I show you the site in both desktop computer and mobile phone formats. Note that the site works just fine both ways. Go ahead and try it yourself…

Try it both on your desktop computer and on your cellphone: https://aerovacalloyforge.com

Diligence: An Interfanatic Quality

“There is no barrier to success which diligence and perseverance cannot hurdle.”

– Oscar Micheaux

Oscar Micheaux is an interesting character too much forgotten by history. He’s a black filmmaker who made films from the black perspective. They weren’t about white people that dealt with black people, they were about black people who dealt with white people.

He was a great story teller. And I’m sure, as all people are, there may be complications with his character. But he accomplished so much in a world that was not made for him. And, the way he tells it, he did that with diligence.

Diligence is a great quality to work on because nobody disrespects a hard worker. If you work hard and you find ways to improve your work so you can get more done, you get respect. Alternatively, nobody respects sloth.

So, we work diligently for our clients. We always try to bring more with our diligence. And we’re grateful Micheaux did the same.

Interfanatic Service Focus: Interfanatic Basic Responsive Design

Last week, we explained the benefits of blogging and content production with our Basic Content Works. Today, we talk more about responsive design.

The way we build websites, we often don’t have to apply a custom design. We can just work with something extremely to get an idea or a company started. But if there’s a little room in the budget for design, our Basic Responsive Design certainly goes a long way.

And if you really want something special, something that hasn’t been done before, opt for our The Works Design.

The main difference between all of our design services is budget. More budget means more flexibility, and more feedback from you. No design budget? No problem, but you’re kinda stuck with what we give you. Some website design budget? That opens the possibilities, and you get some revision control. Unlimited design budget? Let’s do something special, perfect when you say it’s perfect.

“All of the sites we create work on both mobile phones and desktop. Some of the businesses we work with see 70% or more mobile traffic.”

And all sites we create work on both mobile phones and on desktop. Both are critical in 2021. But how critical really depends on your business. Some of the businesses we work with see 70% mobile traffic or more. Some see only 30%, as their customers prefer to (or just naturally, by course of business) use their desktop or laptop computers.

Any way you look at it, we’ve got you covered.

Interfanatic: Doing it. Every day…

Some days, we get into flow and everything is fun. Other days, we have to trudge through, trying to figure out a strange problem. But even when we encounter problems, we have systems and processes that simplify the issue. We’ve most likely handled this one before. We’ll figure it out eventually! We always do. We always do because we insist upon diligence. Like AVAF, like Micheaux, our inspirations to remain diligent this week.

Diligence: Aero-Vac Alloys & Forge – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight Read More »

Kindness: The Human Equation, Peter Getoff – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight, Partners

Kindness changes the world. In our society so quick to cancel, so quick to judge, so quick to call out, a little calling in with kindness has a greater, more lasting impact. Empathy, effort toward understanding, and the reward of kindness will improve our world. Kindness is much more powerful than telling people you disagree with they’re wrong.

Everyone makes mistakes. Glasses houses and all that.

So I think, “kindness”, and I think of Peter Getoff. He has dedicated his life to making the world better, one person or one organization at a time. The result is a man of experience, of knowledge, and of kindness – a role model for everyone.

The Human Equation: Let’s solve your problem together.

Peter is a problem solver. Through his business, The Human Equation, he solves problems at the organizational level. (We didn’t design his website, we just manage it for him. A redesign is in the works.) And we know from experience: there are few problems that cannot be solved with kindness. But for those problems that cannot be solved, Peter adds his experience and his keen insight to his kindness to find the root of the issue and resolve it.

Peter Getoff works mainly with nonprofit organizations all over Southern California. But he also brings his brand of problem solving to for-profit organizations when needed.

When we began working with Peter, it was with the goal to help him find more business. He wanted to regain control of his website (he had lost control) and make a few changes on it. That was a few years ago, and we have done so much together.

First, we got him control of his website. We negotiated with the person that set up his website for him. Since we’ve been doing this so long, and we know how to speak their language, it was a much easier process for us than it was for him. He had tried, but didn’t know how to ask. (This is something we have to do often.)

Then, we found low-hanging fruit with our Local SEO Situation report, and increased his local search presence dramatically. We did a Local Search Setup for his business and site. It wasn’t difficult with Getoff as he has a permanent physical address. Nonetheless, we had to do the work – all of the steps – to properly list his business. Sometimes people don’t understand how to do this Local Search setup properly. But we do it all the time, and for all the major services. Getoff didn’t want us to produce content for him, so we went through his content and suggested courses of action.

With our help, Peter is now a regular blogger and is even trying his hand at video. We created a branded YouTube page for him and The Human Equation, and have been helping him make more impactful blogs and vlogs.

It’s been a long road. Peter is an excellent practitioner, but he’s not used to these types of professional communications. Blogs, vlogs, expert articles with the right kind of SEO – it’s all a little foreign to him.

And then, one day recently, it happened. He wrote a beautiful piece of work explaining to nonprofits how to attract and keep the best talent. We barely had to edit it. It was filled with useful information, and it’s very nicely written. It’s very well done.

The result is outstanding. It’s been a long time working with Peter – reinventing the image of your business is a process. And Peter is making progress every day.

In this short video, I show you how to find Peter’s articles. Of course, this is the Internet, and we’re Internet Fanatics so I can just give you the link here. It’s hard to imagine how much progress Peter and his site have made in the past few years – it used to be so difficult to find! Now, you can find Peter Getoff’s website easily. And it’s filling with excellent information.

To read Peter’s article about How Non-Profits Attract and Keep Staff in 2022, go to his website. And check back in once in a while! There’s going to be more good information on the way.

Kindness: An Interfanatic Quality

“Make kindness your daily modus operandi and change your world.”

– Annie Lennox

Peter Getoff is a kind man. Which is great, because his clients come to him needing answers, and kindness is almost always the answer (or the key to it.)

Innate kindness is, in my opinion, a great deal of the reason Peter is successful. He uses his training and background as a psychotherapist, consultant, coach, and trainer to help businesses (nonprofits and otherwise), all with kindness on his mind.

We try to work with the same ideals. We attempt to bring kindness to every conversation. We’re here to help! When we are treated with disrespect, we try to answer with kindness. We know that any client behaving in this strange manner is not behaving normally, that they are feeling persecuted or upset – not because of what we did, but they happen to be talking to us at the moment. We always do whatever is possible and fair for our customers, so we lead with kindness.

And when things are not working out for someone, our answer is to help – to bring kindness back into their mindset. It’s difficult, but it’s what we try to do.

Interfanatic Service Focus: Interfanatic Basic Content Piece

A week ago, we talked about George Huber and our SEO Management plans. Included in our Interfanatic+ SEO Management is are Interfanatic Basic Content Pieces – fundamental building blocks for ongoing on-site SEO. Fresh, well-produced, engaging and interesting content is the way to keep your website relevant and maintaining or enhancing performance in SERPs.

(Why do you think we post these articles weekly?)

We work with our customers to understand their business goals. We learn the keywords and key phrases that are important to them and their business. Then we weave those into fresh, relevant content their customers want and need.

“Our Basic SEO Content Pieces consistently weave keywords and key phrases important to our customers’ businesses into fresh, relevant content their customers want and need.”

When you do this enough, and when you do it consistently, you become a go-to source for that information. And voila, the customers see you as the expert you are, and they come to you for your expertise, for the work you do.

We’re here to help. We help you by writing fresh content or editing your freshly created content so that it helps you meet your business’ SEO goals. It’s a long-term process. Learn it on your own by studying what we do, or trust us to handle it for you.

Interfanatic: Bringing it with Kindness

We’re here, and for over twenty years, we have the answers. And we do – we’ve done – all that with kindness. Or at least we tried! Kindness requires practice every day. The beauty of kindness is that the more you practice it, the more you receive it. Just like Peter Getoff and The Human Equation: he practices what he preaches, and he does it all with kindness. The result is kindness toward Peter manifested in his success.

Kindness: The Human Equation, Peter Getoff – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight Read More »

Justice: VDB Coins – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight, Partners

Justice is critical to successful society. Without true justice, fairness in life, in civility, and in business cannot exist. Justice is so important to our way of doing business it’s one of the primary symbols in our logo! We always treat our customers fairly, and we always regard our customers who treat their customers fairly. Customers like George Huber of VDB Coins.

George has been our client for a few years now. He came to us a bit ago after he was referred by another of our happy clients. His site was sorely out-of-date, and it needed a refresh. So we gave him one! Check out the short video below to see the facelift we gave his site.

And George Huber is many things good, but one of them is he’s quite interested in chess. Which leads brought us to this quote from almost 100 years ago. In chess, sun shines justice. George’s business has shined justice upon him, too.

VDB Coins: Because life is too short to buy ugly coins.

Well, it is! If you’re going to buy coins for your collection, you want the nicest you can get, and you want the most beautiful coins. Ugly coins do not appreciate nearly as much as beautiful ones. Probably because more people appreciate beautiful coins more than ugly ones.

George is an avid numismatist. When you go on his site, you’ll find that most of the stuff everyone really wants isn’t for sale – because it belongs to George! He only buys coins he would want in his collection. The result is his site has some really nice coins.

George is big into attractively toned coins – and with good reason. If you ever want to have a drool over lovely coins, I recommend popping by George’s site. And his coins really are that good. They don’t just photograph well, the are really nice in-hand.

VDBCoins.com Website Redesign Before & After

And, despite the misleading moniker, George carries more than VD Brenner Lincolns! He has all sorts of goodies on his site. Of course, he always seems to have a very nice 1909 VDB Lincoln Wheat, and of course he regularly has lovely 1909-S VDB Lincoln Cents, but he has more than that, too. He’s got something for everyone – coins for collectors with all kinds of budgets. So check out his site! It’s nice. Of course, since we made it for him, I’m rather partial…

Justice: An Interfanatic Quality

“On the chessboard of the masters, lies and hypocrisy do not prevail for long. Finally they will be hit by the thunderbolt of a creative combination, a fact they cannot obscure, at least not for a long period – as the sun of justice shines brightly in the battles of chessmasters.”

– Emanuel Lasker

The same is true in business. You can be a poor businessperson, you can treat your customers poorly, or give them poor service or product… But not for long. In the age of Yelp, the sun of justice shines brightly in the battles of business.

Which is why George Huber is successful. He does things his way, the right way. Huber doesn’t mess around. He sells nice coins for a fair price and the result is a grand collection of his and grand coins in the collections of his customers.

We strive for the same. We try very hard to treat our customers fairly – perhaps more than fairly. So far, the sun of justice is with us. We’ll keep working hard to make sure that remains true.

Interfanatic Service Focus: Interfanatic Basic+ SEO Website Management

Last week, talked about Carroll Smith and Basic Production – how we build simple websites. This week, we unveil our new suite of management services.

We manage our customers websites. This means hosting, SSL certificates, regular software updates and more. We can put you on a solid server, or for more, a really fast server. And we also package content creation and landing page optimization, for those of you most interested in search results.

As you’ll see from the video below, George wants good search results for some highly competitive keywords and keyphrases. He does a good job of keeping his site updated, and combined with our solid hosting platform, he gets good results. His site has risen in the SERPs every year we’ve managed his site for him. And we could do more, but George likes to handle his content himself.

But what if you don’t? What if you don’t have time to make fresh content regularly? Well, that’s where we come in. We’ll do an SEO Situation Report to figure out where you stand on your most important keywords, and then we’ll begin optimizing for them. Could be a bespoke Landing Page, could be your home page, we’ll get in there once a month and dig around a little to improve things. And we’ll write fresh content targeting those important keywords monthly, too.

All that on top of hosting your site and keeping the software running and the hackers out. All our management services are a really good deal, but our “+ SEO” services are an even better deal – usually you pay only half of what you’re getting! So try it out and see how effective we can make your website.

“What if you don’t have time to make fresh content regularly? Well, that’s where Interfanatic+ SEO Website Management comes in.”

When you have to get your website good search results, use our Management services. We’ll take care of you.

Interfanatic: We’re Just, There.

We’ll take care of you. We have smoking management deals. Take advantage .

Justice: VDB Coins – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight Read More »

Loyalty: Carroll Smith – The Man that Wrote the Books – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight, Partners

I always celebrate Carroll Smith. Carroll is the man that got me going in my business. And for over 20 years, his family has remained loyal to me while I remain loyal to him. So when I think of loyalty, I think of Carroll and Carroll’s son, Chris, and all that we’ve accomplished during our partnership.

Carroll Smith was an engineer and author who became famous for his engineering work and putting it all down on paper. When Ford v Ferrari came out, I know Carroll was watching from upstairs, enjoying the fact that his colleagues were again rightly getting their due. Carroll Smith worked as a right-hand man to Carroll Shelby on that and many projects. But his stories from the GT40 battles against Ferrari were legendary.

It’s for that reason this Cuelho quote rings for me this week. Weapons have no bite against rightly earned loyalty that continually inspires performance.

Carroll Smith: The Man that Wrote the Books

Carroll Smith is… was, I suppose, but always will be, a larger-than-life character. He tried his hand at racing Formula Juniors, and was good, but didn’t succeed enough to support his young family. I feel a bit of a connection to Carroll there as I’ve gotten to race Formula Juniors of the same vintage he raced. Not the same at all, but still, it gives me a better understanding of how he started out. And I got to race in Europe a bit, on the same tracks he raced on. Again, not the same at all, but still a better understanding than many.

His part in the Ford/Ferrari battle of the late 1960s was just one of the pieces Carroll was most famous for. He used his ability to write interestingly and applied that to his vast knowledge and experience to create the “… to Win” series of books. Drive to Win, Tune to Win, Prepare to Win, Engineer to Win, and more are still staples of every automotive students’ reading requirements. Even though the information in them is now quite dated, the fundamentals always apply.

He came to me about the time he released Engineer in your Pocket – a great reference for you sim guys! – and asked me to create a website for him. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to get involved in this Amazon thing because he wasn’t sure how much control he’d have to relinquish. A few years later, it became clear that Amazon was safe enough. But he continued – and his family continues to today – to sell books on his own site.

And that’s what having a website is about: it’s about maintaining control of the narrative. It’s about getting the message out that you want. It’s about tell your or your business’ story the way you want it told. Social Media is great and all, but at the end of the day, you have control over what and how people see the information on your site. You make it easy to use. You make it easy to find. Social Media is a tool to augment your SEO and find new customers, but you get them on your site when they want to know you the way you want to present yourself. There are no constraints there. And that’s why websites are still the fundamental piece of digital marketing in 2021. You can’t get kicked off your own site for telling your story your own way – the way you want to.

So, Carroll Smith came to me in 1999, and we built him a website. It sells his books. That website has had a couple of minor revisions through the years, but it’s still largely as it was when we launched it. Simple often works.

Loyalty: An Interfanatic Quality

“Where there is loyalty, weapons are of no use.”

– Paulo Coelho

We stick by our customers. We treat their businesses as if they were our own. Interfanatic works very, very hard for our customers and for their success.

Through this work we have earned loyalty. They see how much we do and how much we will for them to succeed. The result is they stick by us, and refer us to their colleagues and friends. We have grown quite a family of businesses – it’s exciting and challenging and interesting and fun.

Interfanatic Service Focus: Interfanatic Basic Website Production

Last week, we showed a gorgeous and complicated design. This week, we show you a very simple one.

I built this website by hand starting about 20 years ago with nothing but hand-coded html and handmade gifs and jpgs. There were technical challenges – for example the mixing of GIFs and JPEGs to create a cohesive animated image that yet retained excellent image quality. Looking back now, it seems simple. At the time, it was groundbreaking. We minimized the number of nested tables and we were ahead of the curve on SEO (as we always have been). The result is a site that, while the client insists we don’t touch it, continues to perform at a very high level.

CarrollSmith.com Design Review – Interfanatic website from 1999… still going!

The simplicity of the site’s appearance today reminds me of simple websites we design and build all the time. While our Basic Website Production isn’t an ideal starting place for a business website (our Basic Business Website Production is), it still provides the fundamentals that can be built upon. And, it’s a very inexpensive alternative!

And it’s unencumbered by complicated builders and tricky CSS that can trip things up and slow the site down. We build all our sites for speed, for efficiency, and for effectiveness. We can work with anything. And we can work with any budget.

“The simplicity of the site’s appearance today reminds me of simple websites we design and build all the time.”

If you want to control the narrative, if you want to tell your story the way you want to tell it, let’s start here. We can always build from there when you see the success you’re after. Let’s build a simple, functional, effective website. Just like we did for Carroll Smith.

Interfanatic: We’ll Be There. That’s Loyalty.

Some loyalty is bought. And as the saying goes, what loyalty is bought can easily be bought away. That’s not the kind of loyalty we impart for our customers. We’ll stick with you. We’ll help you get through.

Loyalty: Carroll Smith – The Man that Wrote the Books – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight Read More »

Beauty: GKAD – Architects – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight, Partners

This week, we celebrate our customer GKAD. We chose GKAD because they embody and the Interfanatic Quality of this week, which is beauty. Their architecture is beautiful in so many ways.

GKAD – Goeckmann & Kleespies Architects, of Frankfurt, Germany, are incredible architects who see their task from a very different perspective. They don’t just create beautiful architecture and beautiful spaces. They don’t just create functional architecture and functional spaces. They make beautiful, functional architecture that is functionally profitable for the owner. It’s not just architecture, it’s not just design. It’s profitable architecture and design with an eye toward improving the spending habits of the customers who enter the building and space.

And that’s why the Buckminster Fuller quote of the week is perfect. Their solutions are not simple on the inside, but GKAD’s architectural solutions certainly appear simple to their clients and to the customers who use their clients’ businesses. They just work.

GKAD Architects: Goeckmann & Kleespies Make Beauty

The team at GKAD is phenomenal. They make beautiful. Beautiful things, beautiful places, beautiful business.

GKAD’s specialty is high-frequency architecture. These are restaurants and shops in train stations, airports, and in city centers. Their architecture is experienced by many tens or hundreds of thousands every year. But those hundreds of thousands may miss the subtleties GKAD’s customers do not: the architecture invites people to spend.

GKAD’s designs bring high-dollar customers, and they bring those customers to spend even more. GKAD employs colors, geometry, and layout to keep people in front of the high dollar items and make those high ticket items more inviting to buy.

It’s genius. Pure and simple. And that genius is beautiful.

So next time you’re in the market for outstanding and beautiful architecture that will influence your bottom line, look to GKAD.

Beauty: An Interfanatic Quality

“If the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”

– R. Buckminster Fuller

We constantly seek the simple approach. Right there, I just did it. My mind said, “we are constantly seeking the simple approach”, but my simplicity trigger went off. “We seek” is simpler than “we are seeking”, yet they mean about the same thing. And this is something we do in every project. What is the most simple approach? It is likely the most effective and the most beautiful.

Sometimes great complexity is required to make something seem simple. Sometimes a great deal of thought and pairing down went into finding the simple, beautiful solution. We’re all ways looking for the simpler way. We’re always looking for the more simpler, yet more interesting way. Interfanatic always seeks the most beautiful way to celebrate our subject.

Interfanatic Service Focus: Interfanatic The Works Design

Last week, we showed how we simplified a customer’s site. This week, we describe how we made something complex simple and beautiful.

This is not a Wix site. GKAD.de is a bespoke design you have never seen before. It is beautiful, and it is simple, but the beauty is in the details. We created this site design with one of the best designers. We worked it over using our best UI people. We found simplifications and efficiencies. Then we applied it to a very fast server, such that the heavy home page video load would seem lightweight even on mobile.

The result is a beautiful website with layers of design and detail – just like GKAD’s architecture.

I think their site is beautiful even though it’s not the original design concept we imagined. Sitting with Ivo Goeckmann, principal of GKAD, I had the idea to begin a short video from the same perspective of all three stages of a project: with the blueprints of a building they created, then animate it into an artists technical rendering of those blueprints, then animate that into a a live video of the architecture in use. Sadly, it was not to be – GKAD overruled me and came up with these interesting animation videos, which are very cool.

“The result of our website design process for GKAD is a beautiful website with layers of design and detail – just like GKAD’s architecture.”

The site has a number of interesting touches, from the home page videos, to the animated icons, to the animated menu, to the animated waterglass that fills as you fill out the contact form. All this and more make for a website design you will not see anywhere else. It is beautiful, and it is unique. And, most importantly, it is effective – just like their architecture.

One thing that is missing from this project though: SEO. They did not want their site to be found! They deal with very exclusive customers, and they only want their site to be found on their personal reference from a business card. It was strange to avoid one of our key talents and skills, SEO, for this project. But, that’s what the customer wanted, and that’s what works best for them. So of course, we were happy to accommodate.

We can do design at just about any budget. But we love working on projects that, like GKAD, require a statement.

Interfanatic: We’ll Be There, and At Times That’s All the Beauty You Need.

Earlier this week, we were notified that one of the pieces of software we employ had a vulnerability, and needed to be updated immediately. So we dropped everything and updated that software immediately. This didn’t lead to any extra charges, it’s part of our management.

A client recently called. They needed help. We helped them. It didn’t cost them any extra. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? But that client wasn’t use to it. That client was used to not getting a call back, or getting a million reasons why they couldn’t be helped. These are the stories we here all the time.

These are the stories we work hard to avoid. We’re here for you. And if you know anything about this business, you know that’s a beautiful thing.

Beauty: GKAD – Architects – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight Read More »

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