The Times
US and World News provided by Reuters

GoldfishNetwork.com Owners Lisa and Michael Thayer Have a Passion For Marketing

By Jennifer Clampet
The Times, Jan 24, 2008

“BIG FISH, BIG POND” Michael and Lisa Thayer, owners of GoldfishNetwork.com, hold in their hands their own marketing plan for their Web site design and marketing business.

TUALATIN, OR. Through muffled crunching, a woman began to speak on the other end of the phone.

The woman caller was unmistakably munching on something as she began to talk, remembered Lisa Thayer, co-owner of GoldfishNetwork.com.

The caller admitted she had found Lisa’s business card attached to the front of a bag of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers. The crackers had quieted her hunger, and the card had piqued her interest.

“What exactly can you do for me?” the woman caller asked.

In a sense, Michael and Lisa Thayer’s company, GoldfishNetwork.com, works to get the word out.

“We take a client’s vision and make it a web site that represents them out in the world. That’s our goal,” Michael said. But the GoldfishNetwork also works to help clients, mostly small business owners, learn to market themselves.

As a 15-year-old dishwasher at a restaurant, Michael learned early on that marketing pays off. And at the age of 27, he set a record as designer and distributor of a Lake Tahoe calendar that sold 65,000 copies, still a record today.

Now at the age of 50, Michael said, “I learned to sell myself and what I was doing, because if I didn’t, no one else would.”

“Every business has a story,” noted Michael as he leaned forward in a swivel chair at the GoldfishNetwork offices off SW Boones Ferry Road in Tualatin. The blue walls and jazz music playing in the background give the office a soothing atmosphere.

Life hasn’t always been this calm. Being married to an entrepreneur, Lisa said, is like riding a roller coaster but, after 14 years of marriage, the couple has been able to find a perfect venue for each of their talents. Michael, the creative one who loves to hear people’s stories, and Lisa, the numbers-driven one with a business degree, both share a love for marketing.

The couple owns shelves filled with books on the subject. Michael calls marketing their hobby. But as GoldfishNetwork approaches its three year anniversary, marketing is proving to be more than just a pastime.

This month the company was recognized as one of 14 businesses in Oregon and Southern Washington to be in the running for the 2007 Better Business Bureau Business of the Year Torch Award.

The winners of the 2007 Business of the Year Torch Award will be announced at an awards ceremony and luncheon Jan. 24 at the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland.

Other businesses nominated for the award include Ron Tonkin Toyota, Hawthorne Auto Clinic and Bridge City Legal Inc. in Portland and Paintegrity in Forest Grove.

The public nominated the businesses for demonstrating excellence in customer service, innovative business practices and community involvement.

The Thayers believe they were nominated for the award because of their community involvement. The couple is actively involved in the Love Box for Troops program, which encourages people to pack up boxes of goodies and send them off to deployed troops, and both are active in the Tualatin Chamber of Commerce. Michael is serving as a chamber board member this year, and Lisa is the chair of the technology committee.

“There is no end to the help they’ve given to us,” said chamber Executive Director Carla Thaler.

The Thayers and their contract employees designed and implemented the TualatinCrawfishFestival.com web site within two weeks as the crawfish festival drew near.

“They came back with something better than we ever expected,” Thaler said of the web site.

The Thayers would like to be known in the community for the business-building work they do for their clients. But for now most people know the couple for their marketing idea, the goldfish.

Cabinets above desk top computers in the company’s office hold bags of goldfish crackers ready to be handed out as part of the company’s own marketing plan.

Lisa noted that it’s pretty common for the office to get calls from people snacking on the crackers as they chat away about their business needs.

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Search Engine Marketing

(Article 2 of 4 Part Series)

“Spiders and crawlers and bots! Oh my!” - Two views of the same website

One of the most challenging aspects of optimizing a website is that there are two audiences to appeal to: 1.) standard website users (like you and me) and 2.) search engines. There are many similarities in attraction but also some very important differences.

First, let’s take a look at the top four usability issues from a human/standard user’s viewpoint:

Ease of navigation. This is no time to be overly creative and make visitors guess where to find pertinent information. Sounds like a deceptively simple piece of advice but you only have an average of 8 seconds to capture your audience’s attention. After you have spent time and effort driving traffic to your website, don’t lose them by frustrating them! One navigational tool users appreciate is the addition of a “site map” or hierarchal list of the pages of your website.

Visually attractive. If it looks like a high school student created your website, it will adversely affect your business’ public profile. If you don’t care about your professional image, the customer might also think you don’t care about the quality of your work. Keep in mind that the internet allows individuals the chance to anonymously pre-screen your business. You may truly have a solid, reputable business but you don’t have a good design aesthetic and technical capabilities, you should retain the services of a web designer and developer.

Content-rich. Studies show that website visitors read websites like billboards not novels. Make sure that whoever writes the copy for your website is familiar with this very important difference in writing for the web. Place your most important content “above the fold” so that the user doesn’t have to scroll down unless they need more details. Make your website more relevant to the user by providing a set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). Don’t be afraid of having a page of categorized links to other website resources but of course, ask that they in turn link back to your website. Also, be sure to update your content as information in your industry changes as this will garner more frequent, repeat traffic.

Speed. In our increasingly fast paced society we have little tolerance for time wasters such as watching someone’s fancy “flash” intro or waiting for a picture to download. Use flash animation sparingly for maximum impact and to respect visitor’s time.

Not every website on the Internet gets the majority of its traffic from the major search engines, but you can’t afford to ignore them. Search engines processes and methodologies are quite complex and are updated all the time. The simple explanation of how search engines work is: the user types a query into a search engine which quickly sorts through literally millions (sometimes billions) of pages in its database and produces matches /results ranked in order of relevancy.

A search engine’s database is culled from a variety of sources.* Many of the larger search engines use web “spiders,” “crawlers,” or “bots” programs that search the Internet in a methodical way to index and find new or updated data.

The most important thing for a website owner to know is that due to the use of these automated spiders some content and links displayed on a web page may not actually be visible to the search engines.

Now, let’s take another look at the top four usability issues - this time from a spider’s viewpoint:

Ease of navigation. A spider isn’t concerned about getting lost, either you provide an easy roadmap jeu de poker online gratuitesregles poker pdfjeu de poker onlinepoker games netjouer 7 card stud,play 7 card stud online,7 card studpoker en virtuelune régle du jeu du pokeromaha poker règlesstud pokerastuces texas holdemboite de jeu de pokerjeu video pokerwww poker netla règle de jeu pokerle meilleur jeu de pokerlive pokerregles du poker texas holdemjouer poker omahapoker sur netjeu flash poker gratuitesjeu de poker gratuites francaisregle de pokerjouer poker tour en lignepoker school onlinejeu de poker pcholdem poker en ligne gratuitesjeu poker casinocomment jouer o pokercomment apprendre à jouer au pokerjouer pro poker tourjouer poker omaha gratuitescomment télécharger jeu pokerpoker sans internetregles poker holdemtelechargement jeu pokerle poker en lignejouez au poker gratuitestelecharger winamax pokerjeu de poker 3djeux gratuitstournoi texas holdempartie poker en lignejeux de poker en lignelogiciel poker gratuitesapprendre a jouer o pokerjuego omaha poker gratisfree pokerjugar poquer lineastrip poker gamesgame poker to and through your website or it simply doesn’t exist in the spider’s mind, metaphorically speaking of course. The best way to do this is by adding a site map.

Visually attractive. Web spiders don’t have eyes therefore even an actual picture of Bigfoot would have no effect on relevance without adding text. Search engines don’t index images, they won’t index any text your web site presents in image format. To fix this problem, you can use “ALT tags” or image descriptions in your website coding.

Content-rich. Content is king when it comes to web spiders but beware! Search engine algorithms have evolved to identify redundant text and the overuse of keywords. This means some of the tactics ethically challenged web designers used a few years back no longer fool the search engines and can actually harm your standings if overused. Search engine algorithms these days even go so far as to calculate the ratio of actual text (content) to the amount of coding .Web spiders also consider the information within three clicks of the home page to be most relevant to a search. Spiders as well as human users appreciate fresh content. (I will address the important issue of updating content in the next article.)

Speed. Although search engines generally won’t penalize for the use of frames, dynamic content and multimedia files, they will have difficulty indexing them. They also don’t index pages that require registration, cookies or passwords.

I have seen many business owners make the mistake of designing an elaborate website and then seek out a professional SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert. This can lead to disastrous results such as poor performance, missing your target market, and a potentially costly redesign. Before you begin your website project, make sure you clearly express your business vision, current and future marketing plan, and expectations with your web designer. (BTW- If the web designer isn’t asking you about these vital areas perhaps you should keep looking.)

*Other search engine sources include search engine advertisements, human based search engines or web directories and topical search engines.
Lisa Thayer is owner of GoldfishNetwork.com, a website design and marketing company located just south of Portland, Oregon. GoldfishNetwork.com serves clients in 9 states across the U.S. Lisa can be reached at (503) 783-0440 or by e-mail: Lisa@GoldfishNetwork.com