I was recently working with one of our designers from the Creative Services team to produce this ad for the Nevada Business Journal when it occurred to me that I have never blogged about the work we do for the Las Vegas Monorail; therefore, I am taking the opportunity to do so now.

Before starting a relationship with Twelve Horses, the Las Vegas Monorail did not sell tickets online. This was in part because they did not have the technology to take online ticket purchases, as well as the fact that they needed an enhanced web presence. What we helped them uncover was that a lot of opportunity existed to create new relationships, increase awareness, and generate a greater demand for tickets.

If the Las Vegas Monorail was going to sell tickets online they would need an ecommerce solution that was flexible and customizable. For example, Las Vegas receives a plethora of different groups to the city. If the Monorail was going to service these customers they would need to be able to handle large group purchases, as well as offer special incentives to encourage them to do so. Furthermore, non-technical staff would have to be able to manage it whether it was adding groups, defining the ticket price, specifying date ranges, managing the payment options, setting shipping preferences, and much more.

Needless to say we built it for them. Here is a look at some of the features of the Las Vegas Monorail Ticketing Platform.

Managing Channel Partners

The Las Vegas Monorail works with a number of channel partners and groups. The ticketing platform allows them to set-up a revenue share with these partners, as well as implement their own branding and images online, in emails, and print. It is extremely flexible. For example, they can run multiple promotions at once. This was the case for the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) where there were two different promotions - discounts for attendees and discounts for exhibitors.

Ticketing

The ticketing features are very diverse and capable of handling a multitude of different scenarios. Additionally, integration of ticket tracking and reporting is providing the Monorail with deeper customer insight, which enables to provide a higher level of customer service. Here are just some examples:

1. Automated postings of ticket blocks and and auto removal of postings by set parameters such as date of expiration.
2. Discount Codes defined and assigned either randomly or branded such as “CES2008.”
3. Overrides conducted either temporarily or permanently to groups, types, or partners.
4. Tiered ticket pricing based on quantity, time purchased, or aggregates.
5. Logic in the ticketing prevents, for example, trying to use standard postal delivery when it is international.

Fulfillment

The ticketing platform is flexible enough to allow the fulfillment of tickets via email, direct shipping, and soon - mobile.

1. Electronic delivery allows the customer to print the voucher at home and redeem onsite.
2. Email confirmations sent automatically with purchase confirmation, canceled order and refund, and tickets shipped. Email templates also include branding based on channel partner and/or promotion.
3. When the Monorail handles the print fulfillment they can download all the contacts and do a mail merge on all their envelopes, mailing labels, and tickets.

Customer Service

1. The customer service module gives the Monorail the ability to look up the customer based on any information they give.
2. Those with set privileges can void and change tickets, which reconciles on the financial side and funnels down to the various communication channels.

Reporting

1. The Dashboard shows financial report summaries and projections, so they know how they are doing.
2. Integration with Salesforce matches opportunity numbers to promotions so they can track real-time ticket sales and the success of a campaign. It also allows them to see important items such as what a particular vendor or channel partners agreement was from the previous year.
3. Redemption tracking not only makes sure the ticket cannot be used again, it also lets the Monorail know where and when the customer scanned the ticket, so they can better understand traffic and know where there major stops are.

All of this may seem like a lot, but this is just a brief overview of everything the Las Vegas Monorail Ticketing Platform can do. Suffice to say, the integration of this ecommerce solution has unlocked another channel of additional revenue for the Monorail, and because it is business automation at its best, it is completely scalable and requires very little additional internal resources to get it done.

tags: online, ticketing, ecommerce, solution, business, automation, las vegas, nevada

Information is only as powerful as it is accessible.

We just recently launched two different websites focused around a life-threatening disease called, hydrocephalus. Why you may ask? One really important reason is because there is no cure…yet. Of equal importance is the fact that symptoms of the disease can manifest in many different ways. Many doctors, family members, and individuals battling the disease are uninformed and ill-prepared to handle the symptoms, let alone recognize them when they first manifest. Part of the remedy is to put information out that is accessible to anyone, anywhere, at any time.

As stated on the website, “Hydrocephalus is a chronic neurological condition characterized by an increased volume of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) within spaces inside the brain.” In layman terms, it is water on the brain, which causes swelling, brain damage, and even death. It is more common than you may know. In fact, more than 1 million people in the U.S. alone have been diagnosed with hydrocephalus, and it is believed to occur in 1.5 of every 1,000 births.

The Hydrocephalus Association website is in its first phase of development. Aside from the access to information you readily see at first glance, the other features of the site facilitate Member Signup and Donations, both of which integrate with Salesforce to manage the data and the relationships with those involved with the organization. Because the organization relies heavily on its active community, there also handy little features like the Flickr Uploader application, which gives people the ability to upload their photos and add search-friendly descriptions. There is more to come.

I briefly mentioned the importance of community as it relates to hydrocephalus. Many of you who participate in social networks and blogs understand the power of online interaction and communities; but for many it is still relatively new ground. The purpose of GabrielsLife.org is to create and foster community participation in order to generate greater awareness around the disease, as well as empower people with helpful information. The site gives people tools to communicate not only with one another, but also the world at large.

Gabriel’sLife.org is a custom build using Wordpress. On top of that it allows users to create their own Wordpress blogs as part of the network. There is also a forum, and the ability for people to search for others and connect to share information privately if they so choose. Finally, visitors are encouraged to submit their own stories, which are featured on the homepage. These tools are designed to tap into the collective knowledge base of those who have faced the complexities of the disease so that others are better prepared to handle their own. While still in its infancy, the site appears to be serving that purpose.

My main hope for this blog post is that you will see it and read it and tell someone about it. You will meet someone that has or knows someone else with hydrocephalus, and they will go and start to use these sites and tell someone else. And so on, and so on, and so on….

When developing a new website, site design and usability should be one of the highest priorities on your development list. Without a usable design, users will quickly become frustrated with your website and will stop visiting. Thankfully, there are a few basic usability practices that you can employ to help make your visitors’ experiences the best they can be.

1. Use different colors. Color design on your website should not be garish or unprofessional, but you can utilize different colors to help draw attention to various portions of your website. If, for example, you wish to emphasize certain points in your content, then a bold red or blue color will draw a visitor’s eye directly to that portion of the site. You can also draw attention to other portions of your website, such as your navigation bar or certain pages that you want to attract more attention. Be cautious of over-using colors, though, since a proliferation of different, non-complementary colors on a website is a surefire way to drive people away from your site.
2. Focus your design on the objective. The design of a website should always focus on the end goal of the site. If the site is designed to inform people, then the focus should be predominately on content and ease of navigation. If your goal is to sell a product, then focusing a design around product displays and easy product searches should be your goal. In focusing on your goal, you can use colors and design patterns that help draw the attention of the customer to certain portions of the website. You can also make things like checking out easy, which will reduce the chances that they will become frustrated with the site and leave before making a purchase. Regardless of the goal, designing your site and marketing it with certain features being in dominance will help stimulate traffic throughput, and is likely to increase your overall return on investment (ROI).
3. Use a consistent formatting scheme. There are few things worse than a website whose formatting and design is inconsistent from page to page. This type of haphazard design and layout smacks of unprofessionalism, and is a big turn-off to visitors. Even if your website consists of only one or two pages, use a consistent design across them. If you have different sections of your web site that require differing designs, link them with some common theme, like a header that remains the same, or a sidebar that doesn’t change. If you can make transitions between designs on your website nonexistent or as smooth as possible, then your internet visitors will feel less jolted during their time on your website.
4. Have simple buttons and links. Long links and large, flashing buttons can be difficult on the eyes and makes it difficult for people on a website to navigate around to different pages. Oversized, flashing, oddly colored and unnaturally placed buttons distract from your content and keep visitors away from your website. To avoid this, design your buttons with simplicity in mind, and steer away from ones that are unconventional. Oversized links that join multiple words in a sentence are also distracting, and it can be difficult for a user to tell if the collection of words is one link, or multiple links all next to each other. Instead of creating links that span multiple words, just use one word, or two at most. The users of your website will then be able to enjoy the content you have created without getting distracted by annoying underlining and linking.
5. Provide a sitemap. A sitemap, while sometimes thought of as outdated, is extremely helpful, especially for larger sites. New visitors to your site will benefit from a sitemap, since it will provide them with an easy way to view all of the pages and sections of your site. If a new visitor comes to your website from the internet, then having a sitemap to direct them to the page they want to go will be a huge help from a usability standpoint. It will also provide repeat visitors with a way to stay up to date on new parts of your website, and will let them find pages on it that they haven’t seen before.
6. Make all sections of the site easy to access. Above all, make sure that your site is easy to access, both for novices and experts. Don’t make links confusing, and avoid any unnecessary obfuscation. If you want to keep people out of a certain part of your website, then either don’t put it up on the internet, or use a password system to protect it. You should also have links on all of your pages that remain consistent in a place like a header, footer or sidebar. These links should go to main pages on your website, such as the homepage, a contact page or other important pages. This reliable set of links will make navigation and accessibility each for users, and will encourage first-time visitors to come back again and again.

Creating a website with good usability traits can be difficult, but the rewards are well worth it. Increased traffic, a higher ROI and more success from your marketing campaigns will all result from your initial hard work in putting the site together. By following these few usability tips, you can make this process much easier.

This is a great post about social networks and really points out the control and choice that people have when it comes to consuming information and forming relationships. For me, it also points out fundamental problems with so many company’s social marketing strategies. The idea that you can simply create a blog and people will come and read it, push out a podcast and throngs of individuals will come clamoring to listen to it, or upload a video to YouTube and expect thousands to come watch it is mistaken. It is more of a conversation than that. People interact with people, not faceless businesses. It requires active participation, and you must add value in some way. From an ROI perspective, it may not behoove you to participate. The question of whether it should be a part of your marketing budget really depends on your product and service offerings, what you are trying to achieve, and who your audience is.

However, from a personal and professional development standpoint, especially if you are in marketing, advertising, or pr, it is extremely important. What do you see when you Google yourself? Not much? That probably doesn’t help you in a business climate that increasingly relies on the web. Social networks offer the ability to dramatically improve your personal scalability. In addition, you will get to meet people you might not have otherwise met, and have the chance to learn more than you would have ever expected. You will grow your personal brand and while doing it, guess what, you might also find the right opportunity to introduce the brand that cuts you your paycheck.   

In some ways, Kevin Rose and his Revision 3 partner, Alex Albrecht have become symbols of user-generated media. Their podcast show, Diggnation was one of the first out of the gate to build a substantial audience, and most recently, Kevin Rose was selected as one of Tech Review’s “2007 Young Innovators Under 35.” Kevin was selected because of the impact he’s had on the way people consume news through online social bookmarking and community rating or “digging” stories up or down. You can read more about it here, but here is an excerpt:

Digg, mixes blogging, online syndication, social networking, and “crowdsourcing”–which combines the knowledge and opinions of many individuals–to create an online newspaper of stories selected by the masses.

If you are not immediately awe-struck by the effective combination of community and technology then know this - Digg receives more than 17 million visitors to the site each month. Obviously, there is a substantial user-base who enjoy consuming, contributing, and interacting with content in this way. But aside from Kevin’s recent recognition, this is old news.

What really prompted this blog post was a video interview (see below) with Kevin Rose at MIT. It resonated with me because I have recently been doing some social marketing strategy work for a client, and a major part of it is creating and distributing content that can be consumed in a multitude of channels to reach the widest possible audience. Seems simple enough, but a lot of marketers only make it part way, or they leave out one little piece like, providing an embed code for their videos, syndicating content through RSS, or actually going where the audience is to carry the message further.

Are consumers’ habits constantly changing? Are there preferences more customizable? Are you less in control of your brand? Can the struggle to continually be relevant be difficult? Yes-Yes-Yes-and Yes. But in a lot of ways it is easier than ever before to deliver your message, assuming, of course, that it is actually something people can relate to and want to see, hear, and pass on to others.

Click To Play

Want to know about one simple SEO strategy that takes less than five minutes to implement and can have a very positive result in regards to rankings in the search engines? If so get ready to change the footer on your website.

The footer on your website usually simply contains a copyright statement and sometimes some other links. Many websites have a two line footer where one line is devoted to links and the other is devoted only to the copyright. Adding a company statement to your footer is an easy way to implement an seo strategy that is simple and doesn’t take a lot of time. Here is an example:

Previous footer: © 2007 Twelve Horses

New SEO Friendly Footer: © Copyright 2007 Twelve Horses - A Web Design, Development & Search Engine Optimization Company in Reno & Utah

It usually works best when you have the text footer [non-link footer] fit on one line. Here are some key points that this new footer accomplishes:

1. This particular website or business is focused on providing web design, web development, seo or search engine optimization, email marketing, and social marketing services. Although that is a very long list sometimes you have to pick and choose what you can fit in a footer. The above example ensures that every single page of the website contains the keyword phrases of ‘web design, development, and search engine optimization’. This will help the search engines recognize that this website is related to those key terms since they appear on every webpage. This strategy not only assists search engines in knowing what services you may provide but also human web visitors. If a website visitor can not figure out what the website is all about they general do one of two actions; either leave or look in the footer for an ‘about us’ link. Having this line of text in the footer ensures that if they do glance at the footer they will be able to know what the website is about without having to click to another page.

2. The above example also contains ‘Reno and Utah‘ in the sentence. Twelve Horses has headquarters in Reno, Nevada with a secondary office in Salt Lake City, Utah. Having these terms in the footer lets the search engines know what geographic area this particular website primarily provides web services to. You may wonder why the footer contains Reno, a city, and Utah, a state. Through some keyword research it was discovered that people in Salt Lake City generally search for ‘utah [keyword]‘ rather than ’salt lake city [keyword]‘, maybe because Salt Lake City is too long or time consuming to type out and Utah only has one major metropolitan area which is the wasatch front. On the other hand Nevada contains several metropolitan areas such as Reno, Las Vegas, etc. which are spread out from each other. From keyword research we discovered people in Nevada are more likely to type in the major metropolitan area they are in compared to just ‘Nevada [keyword]‘. Again, this also provides website visitors information on the geographic area the company is based in by glancing at the footer.

3. This is a very simple and effective SEO strategy that literally should only take 5-10 minutes to implement on your website and will have a profound effective compared to the investment of time that is required.

If you enjoyed this SEO strategy and would like us to post more please post a comment and we will be happy to share our knowledge with you.

If you are not using Google Alerts to monitor what is being said about you and your company online, I would highly recommend that you start. Depending on your preference, you will receive an email from Google once a day, as-it-happens, or once a week listing any content that includes the terms you’ve set. Here’s a sample of an email I received today of how it looks. As you can see, Google bolded the term I inputted.

Tumblr Inspired Quick Post Wordpress Plugin
By Josh Kenzer
I pleased to announce the release of my first Wordpress plugin, Quick Post. Inspired by the tumblr.com bookmarklet that allows quick and easy posting, I have created a similar plugin that will allow you to quickly post text, images, …
Horse Power - Twelve Horses’ Blog - http://blog.twelvehorses.com

NCET introduces Wi-Fi Wednesdays
By Dave Archer
Wi-Fi Wednesdays is the brainchild of NCET marketing manager Emily Lowe and Robert Payne and Josh Kenzer of Twelve Horses. The trio was looking for a way to expand their professional networks and was weary of the same tired old venues. …
Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship… - http://www.ncet.org

Blogging for Business, Fun…or the A-list
By nevadagirl
There is a post on Twelve Horses Blog, “Whats all the Blog About.” Relieved to find out blogging is considered A-list…..wait was there a just kidding after that? I’ll pretend they’re kidding, they are kidding and say yes, it’s A-list. …
Nevada Girl’s World - http://redheads.wordpress.com

tags: Google, Alerts, Twelve Horses, Blog

I love to extol the virtues of blogging to our clients. I’ve been blogging on several different blogs for many years now. However, for those who have never blogged, figuring out how to construct the language of a blog post for maximum exploitation is something of a mystery. CopyBlogger.com has written an ezine, Viral Marketing with Blogs, and has released it for free. It’s been out for awhile, but if you haven’t read it or if you are starting a blog, you should download it as soon as you can.

It gives you excellent tips on how to get other bloggers to notice, and hopefully link to your blog.

Tags: Copywriting, ezines, blogging

Today, I received this comment from Northern Nevada Business on our MySpace site. Since it may be hard to read in the below image I will repeat it here -

NORTHERN NEVADA BUSINESS
thanks you for being one of our business
friends! We recently passed 500 profiles,
a testament to the popularity of Myspace
and our strong local economy. Search
through our ‘View Friends’ and find
the latest additions to the local
Myspace ‘Yellow Pages.’

Very cool! There is quite a community of MySpace users here in Northern Nevada where we at Twelve Horses call home.

I often hear people, especially from techies and those within the web marketing profession proclaim that MySpace is dead. This could be attributed to the growing popularity of sites like Facebook and Ning, but it is in reality just a perception. Yes, it would be nice if MySpace would incorporate a new design and better functionality, but it is still growing strong. Check out this recent article from TechCrunch. A brief excerpt from that article:

According to comScore MySpace grew from 55.8million unique visitors in August 2006 to 66.8million in April 2007, just shy of a growth rate of 20%. Facebook had a higher percentage growth rate, but off a much lower base, moving from 14.8million to 23million over the same period. The difference is traffic is approximately 3 to 1.

If it is any testament, we constantly receive new comments, event invitations, and requests to add friends, and several of us here at Twelve Horses do in fact read them. For example, I’ve learned of really cool events happening around me that I might not have otherwise been aware of or attended.

Naturally, there is always a lag time between when early adopters begin using things like blogs and social networking sites, and the time at which businesses actually realize the benefits. (I suspect businesses are a part of this growth.) Once businesses attempt to enter that new realm of customer engagement, they often do not approach it properly and either do not realize any results, or they actually go so far as to taint it for many of the current users. You have to be strategic and understand your audience.

Additionally, there are a lot of other useful social marketing sites, and some to be aware of are:

1. Digg
2. del.icio.us
3. StumbleUpon
4. Technorati
5. Squidoo
6. Flickr
7. LinkedIn
8. Facebook
9. Ning
10. Yahoo! 360

There are many more but that will get you started. And for those bloggers looking to extend their posts, check this out - http://shareicons.com/

tags: social, marketing, myspace, networking, blogs, bloggers, northern, nevada

David LaPlante, CEO of Twelve Horses will be speaking on, “Building Brand and Destination Character Through Social Marketing” tomorrow at the 7th annual SMG Tourism Conference at Lake Tahoe. The event will be held at Embassy Suites Resort in South Lake Tahoe, California.

He will be providing a look at how destinations are using all things Web 2.0 to connect and engage with their audience in a meaningful manner.

The following article ran in the Reno Gazette-Journal today:

Tahoe Tourism officials to discuss strategy

Lake Tahoe-area tourism executives will gather in South Lake Tahoe on Wednesday to share strategic information at the 2007 SMG Tourism Conference.

This eighth annual event, which is themed “Sustainability & Authenticity: Marketing Your Destination’s Unique Character,” will address issues critical to tourism, including geotourism, social media and brand building, California tourism trends, and how Indian gaming and economic development trends are impacting destination character, officials said.

Speakers at the event include Jonathan Tourtellot, director of sustainable destinations at the National Geographic Society; Dave LaPlante, CEO of Twelve Horses; and William Eadington, gaming expert at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The conference will be at Embassy Suites Resort in South Lake Tahoe from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and will include an exhibition area.

Also included will be the Geotourism Dinner Cruise on the Tahoe Queen, featuring a panel discussion moderated by the National Geographic Society, after the conference.

The conference fee is $140 for one or two people or $115

for three or more attendees. The fee includes registration, lunch and all materials.

Spaces on the Geotourism Dinner Cruise are $58 each.

For more information, visit www.smgtourismconference.com or call (530) 541-2462, ext. 102.

tags: lake, tahoe, smg, tourism, conference, social, marketing, branding