The L.E.T. Group Blog

Our server migration to Amazon Web Services (AWS) is complete, and it was a big success. We want to personally thank all our customers for their assistance in helping us. This critical move would not have been possible if you did not stop during your busy work day to change your website address settings.

As you can imagine, this move was no small undertaking. We have been using the same hosting facility for many, many years. Although they did a good job, we knew it was time to make the move to ensure that our websites and servers are the best available anywhere. The stability and scalability of AWS makes this possible for many years to come.

I would also like to thank our team for their hard work, and personally single out Brenner Vasconcelos. He spent the last six months on the architecture, setup of the new state of the art server infrastructure, and countless hours planning this migration. This would not have been possible or gone so smoothly without his efforts.

Now that we are moved, we are already planning new enhancements to our hosting services. We will keep you posted with our progress.

Thank you for your business,

Kent H. Tewell, Founder
L.E.T. Group | letgroup.com

Pay Per Click is one of the best ways to reach new clients online. If you’re new to Pay Per Click (or PPC), it allows you to market your business on the search engines and pay just a small fee each time an ad is clicked. It’s a smart and cost-effective way to “buy” website visits versus earning them in the non-paid, organic search engine results.

L.E.T. Group’s PPC platform is as powerful as they come and it’s very easy to get started. Take a look at some of the key features below.

Easily advertise on 98% of Search Engines from one platform.

• Includes Google Adwords, Yahoo!, AOL, Bing, Google Maps listings and Ask.com®.
• Platform automatically generates a large targeted keyword list.
• Pay a one-time click charge when customers click on your campaign ad.
• The platform spreads your monthly budget over the entire month.

Track every lead. Listen to actual phone calls.

• Learn exactly how many ad impressions, clicks, calls, emails and confirmed reservations you receive.
• Reporting is available to you 24 - 7.
• Listen to the actual phone calls generated from the campaign ad.
• Hassle-free tracking numbers created automatically. No campaign website changes needed.

Campaign is automatically optimized.

• Unique patent-pending technology intelligently manages your campaign daily.
• Preference is given to keywords that produce calls and emails.
• Your campaign continuously performs better.

Simple pricing.

• No charge for PPC campaign set up.
• No charge for the campaign reporting
• Minimum Budget is $500 for a national campaign.
• Budget recommendation report available for suggested top placement
  NOTE: A larger budget will have higher ad placement, visibility and traffic. Prices per keyword phrase vary based on the popularity of the word, and how many other advertisers are bidding for that same keyword term.

It’s a great time to start a PPC campaign with L.E.T. Group’s help. Request a proposal today to get started!

At L.E.T. Group, we do not stop innovating, and it shows with our newly launched website. While we re-launched letgroup.com to inspire existing customers and attract new ones, we also showcase a lot of great new technology we can implement to make your next website stand out from the crowd. The player independent video on the main page loads a random clip of our local area…go ahead, refresh the page and watch! You can also quickly page through our featured client websites by hovering over the menu at the top of the page -or- click through to our portfolio to quickly sort by industry. Finally, learn more about our team’s expertise and roll over our photos to get to know us.

Along with our new site launch, we also want to remind all our clients and prospective customers that we’re not just a website design and development firm. So, creating great looking websites is just the beginning. We offer all the traditional services you’d expect from an internet marketing firm and full e-commerce management:

DESIGN & BUILD

• Responsive Template Websites
• Custom Designed Websites
• URvisible Websites
• Custom Coding & Programming
• SEO Copywriting
• Photos & Video Development

SUPPORT & MANAGE

• Cloud Based Hosting
• Proprietary Content Management System
• Premium Support Team
• Website Management Service
• Internet Marketing Consulting
• Social Media Strategy & Management
• Website Analytics & Reporting

PROMOTE & ADVERTISE

• Search Engine Optimization
• Pay Per Click Marketing
• Display & Retargeting
• Mobile Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Blog Content Creation

As always, we invite you to experience the L.E.T. difference. Request a proposal today to get started! 

We’re pleased to present another client success story. In this entry, the client spotlight is on Tomalty Dental Care. When L.E.T. Group first began working with Tomalty Dental Care over 2 years ago, their website was not responsive and their SEO was lacking for search on both their general and more specialized services in the Boynton Beach, FL (near West Palm Beach) area. With the help of L.E.T. Group, and the first step toward better visibility, they updated their website with a great, new responsive layout. While it looks great on every screen from mobile phone to desktop computer, it was designed to help capture new patients needing dental care in their local market. Pictured below is the great design we created that helps convert visitors into customers no matter what device they may be using.

Along with the updated website, L.E.T. helped enhance their SEO strategy. Previously, Tomalty only listed all of their services on one page. We advised them on a strategy to create targeted pages for every one of their dental specialties. This gives them the ability to improve their search engine visibility for many of the terms important to their practice and attract more visitors to their site. The results are, well, in the search engine results.Take a look…

Google Search Term: Boynton Beach Dentists (Page 1)

Google Search Term: Teeth Whitening Boynton Beach (Page 1)

Google Search Term: Implant Tooth Replacement Boynton Beach (Page 1)

Online success stories like Tomalty’s don’t happen by accident. For over a decade, L.E.T. Group has been helping its clients increase their visibility and reach new customers online that may otherwise never have found them. We recently launched a new website for a Coral Springs/Parkland, FL Orthodontics practice, Rozen Orthodontics (rozenorthodontics.com), and it won’t be long until they begin seeing the benefits of a great, new L.E.T.-powered website.

We’re excited to expand our offering into the dental care market. Could your dental or specialty practice benefit from a new website and a better overall internet marketing approach? We invite you to experience the L.E.T. difference. Request a proposal today to get started!

L.E.T. Group’s ADA Web Accessibility Package follows the principles and guidelines of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 documentation. The WCAG defines how to make Web content more accessible to people with disabilities. Accessibility involves a wide range of disabilities, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, language, learning, and neurological disabilities. Although these guidelines cover a wide range of issues, they are not able to address the needs of people with all types, degrees, and combinations of disability.

The initial cost of our ADA Web Accessibility Package is to evaluate your website in its current form, in order to determine what necessary steps need to be taken in order to optimize and improve your website’s ADA compliancy. After evaluation is complete, we will provide you with our recommendations and incur an additional cost (to be determined per each individual website) for executing the recommendations throughout your website. If your website has not been built yet then we will provide an evaluation prior to building it based on the website’s proposed template and available content - the evaluation period may be an ongoing process until the website is ultimately built.

During your evaluation, we will follow the principles and guidelines provided by the WCAG. These standards are published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international standards organization for the internet.

What we will look for during your website’s evaluation:

• Explore your website’s current approach, understanding, and view of accessibility. Identify the key reasons for accessibility and, if needed, develop a business case.
• Test the website with various validator tools. Fix or improve any violations or warnings discovered by the validator tools. A report will be provided to you.
• Test the website with various screen reader tools. Fix or improve any issues that screen readers may have when accessing the website.
• Check for non-decorative images that need a descriptive alternative text for screen readers.
• Ensure that the website color scheme contrasts well. Provide documentation for the user to change the global color scheme.
• Ensure that the font-size is clear and legible. Provide documentation for the user to change their global font-size. All text should be aligned-left or aligned-right. All line spacing (leading) is at least a space-and-a-half within paragraphs, and paragraph spacing is at least 1.5 times larger than the line spacing.
• Ensure that all links, form inputs, buttons, etc can be toggled with the keyboard’s tab key.
• Provide an alternative to visual CAPTCHA codes. Such as a simple math question.
• Skip Navigation option for screen readers to ignore navigation menus and only read the website’s content.
• Ensure title tags, page headings (h1 tags), and section headings (h2 tags) are clear and informative for each page’s topic.
• Ensure that the purpose of each link can be determined from the link text alone.
• Ensure that the navigation menu is consistent throughout the website, no matter what page the user is currently on.
• Ensure that all slideshows or other animated elements can be easily paused or stopped. Remove any animated “flashing” or “blinking” elements.
• Remove all background audio or provide an option so it can be easily paused or stopped.
• Videos should provide captions. YouTube has an option to add captions to your videos.
• Ensure all markup has necessary semantic tags. Define default language in HTML tag.
• Add a “Skip to Content” link.
  
• Create a Sitemap page.
• Create an accessibility policy page with contact information.

For more information on the importance of ADA compliance, read this article (for hoteliers) and this article (for general businesses).

(Courtesy of the URvisible blog - edited for L.E.T. use)
Shortly after launching a new website, our clients often ask us how to get started with social media. It’s a logical next question, and our goal is to sign clients up for service with L.E.T. Group and continue provide useful, relevant tips for being successful online. We’re not just another internet marketing company, as most of our long-time clients know. Our employees are an experienced group of internet marketing professionals that can really help build an online presence. We’d be lying if we said a L.E.T. website was the only key to online success. It’s not. Not even close. You have to work at building your “online presence”. We do provide you with a cost effective platform to get your business/message/idea/personal website online. However, from that point, our goal is to provide you with regular actionable updates here in our blog, social media, and of course, value-added features in the My L.E.T. CMS. Remember, these features are always added at no additional cost to you.

So, back to social media, it’s all about testing and seeing what works best for you, your company or your brand’s individual needs. It’s can be a process that even gets frustrating at times, but it can also be fun.

Cue the motivational photo :)

I’m ready to get social. Where do I start?

There’s no perfect answer, honestly. It’s constantly evolving. If someone tells you they have all the answers to social media success, listen…then run and find additional advice. We’re dividing this into a 5-part blog post series for a reason. The breath and scope of this topic is huge. If we tried to cover everything at once, you’d likely get overwhelmed and give up. Even after we post entry #5 in this series, it definitely won’t be the last social media-related blog entry we post. There’s just so much to cover.

That was a heck of an intro…let’s (finally) get started. Well, not yet…first, a WARNING(!): Social media best practices change regularly. In fact, we’re probably creating a set of 5 posts about social media that could be obsolete in 6 months to a year. However, there are some “field notes”, so to speak, that can help you go from a relative social media newbie to a confident and regular social account updater…and in the end, it’s a lot of fun. It is essential for your brand or business to succeed online, but if you don’t think it is, you need to hire someone with the right attitude to do it for you. A good social media manager can really help you free up time to do other things your more passionate about. If doing it yourself is not for you and you want help, get in touch - we have some great solutions to assist you.

If you’re ready for a challenge, great! Read on. You’ll gain experience in no time and in time, your updates will get better in their timing, frequency and message. Although you may never end up managing a $1,000,000 social marketing campaign for a major brand - hey, we don’t yet - these steps will help you establish the core social media accounts so you can start updating your own brand’s social channels. There are even tools that help automate the process.

1) Sign up for THE BIG 3 & customize your profile page(s) - Google My Business (or Google+ if you are marketing yourself), Facebook & Twitter - is always where we’d suggest starting. When signing up, try to get usernames that are the same across every social account to strengthen your branding. For example we are facebook.com/letgroup & twitter.com/letgroup where “letgroup” is our username.

Customize the profile pages with consistent branding once you set up each account. All 3 make this easy, but you will need size variations of your profile picture and “cover” photos. Luckily, the good folks at Buffer made a guide for that (along with some cool gifs like what’s seen above).

2) Choose a tool that allows you to post multiple updates to all of your social networks at once. We love BUFFER and HOOTSUITE for this very purpose. In addition, they both post great, regular updates in their blogs about, well, achieving success on social media. In the end, if you are a success using their platforms to manage your social accounts, you happily end up paying for their services on a monthly basis (like we gladly do)…and everyone wins.

3) Start updating! Finally, the fun part. Once again, there’s no perfect formula for success, but there are metrics and reporting built into both Buffer and Hootsuite to show you which of your posts get the most engagement. Follow other accounts that follow you back - and be careful of your ratio of followers to following. You don’t want to seem desperate and follow a bunch of accounts who don’t follow back. Include the links to your social media accounts on your website, email signature, blog, etc. Tell friends and colleagues. Post relevant photos with your social updates - they drive more engagement. You’ll quickly grow a nice network of followers across all accounts, and following others of interest to you will give you ideas for new posts. Finally, whether you choose to update daily, weekly, or monthly, check out Buffer’s “The Social Media Manager’s Daily, Weekly, Monthly Checklist”.

Once again, we’ll never pretend to know it all when it comes to social media management. There are a ton of free resources that cover much of what you’ll read in this post and what’s forthcoming. What we’re outlining here is an actionable social strategy that’s good for getting started. If you finish steps 1-3 above, don’t be afraid to search around and try something else.

If you are just reading this for the first time and like our advice, the greatest way to thank us is to become a customer. Submit your RFP at letgroup.com. We’ll provide a FREE, no obligation quote shortly after. :)

In the meantime…

W Fort Lauderdale Hotel - 8,800+ likes as of this blog entry, they use the prime real-estate under their cover photo to showcase their hotel videos. They are CURRENT, relevant, and engaging. One of the more recent videos shows the view from a rooftop lounge as the Thunderbirds fly by for the air & sea show in Fort Lauderdale – also a key demand generator for the hotel!
More @: http://www.facebook.com/WFortLauderdale

Marriott Delray Beach Florida - This hotel & resort uses their top-most real estate (under their cover photo) to integrate a Survey Monkey survey for feedback about their website. Nice idea…and well executed. I also like how their cover photo is (as of this blog entry) a panoramic view you’d see from any of their oceanfront rooms. There’s nothing better to lure folks from the north who are just de-thawing after a long, cold winter.
More @: http://www.facebook.com/delraybeachhotel

Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe Resort, Spa & Casino - Okay, I’m a little biased here having just returned from an amazing L.E.T. snowboarding trip, but I love their cover photo. It combines a summery and wintery feel, the text overlays are smartly placed…and they do a great job of making it seasonal with a very small scripted font pointing to their logo “welcoming you this summer!” You can see this was well-planned as this cover photos was added on May 13th. Well done, Hyatt Lake Tahoe!
More @: http://www.facebook.com/HyattRegencyLakeTahoe

The Setai - Their 3,760+ Likes don’t even display in the default view. Instead, they’ve chosen to showcase photos, videos and open table online reservations for booking at Setai Grill…their on-site restaurant.
More @: http://www.facebook.com/theSetai

Costa d'Este Beach Resort in Vero Beach, FL - At nearly 7,000 likes, this facebook page’s setup is very well thought. The cover photo displays a nice, enticing beach photo just steps away from the resort. Don’t miss the recommendations on their page. All hotels and resorts should strive for reviews like this!
More @: http://www.facebook.com/Costadestebeachresort

The Ritz-Carlton Cancun, Mexico - Almost daily I get great English AND (in the same update, translated) Spanish updates in each of their posts. It’s a fantastic idea as I have both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking friends as facebook friends. So, I can re-share their updates and get commentary in both languages. Oh, and the Ritz in Cancun has 18,500 likes as of this blog entry.
More @: http://www.facebook.com/ritzcarltoncancun

Hilton Naples FL - We’ll go ahead and brag about our client at the beautiful Hilton in Naples, Florida having nearly 3,750 likes as of this posting. We’d like to think their website traffic has something to do with this :) …and they do a great job with engagement. They post relevant updates for all of the happenings at the hotel and in the surrounding area almost daily and they very smartly include photos with most of their updates. This way, it’s hard for their fans to miss updates in their news feed.
More @: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hilton-Naples/117880481571805

Visit Maui - Although it’s not a hotel or resort page, per se, this page (and its 24,500+ likes) sends amazing photos of this beautiful Hawaiian island through my newsfeed almost daily. It makes me want to go back. Hoteliers could learn from this as well…if you feel something is beautiful about your property, no matter how small, showcase and share it. Your followers will be glad you did.
More @: http://www.facebook.com/visitmaui

Our competition is fighting responsive design. We’re unsure why. It is not a trend. It is simply THE best practice for delivering the same message to any device a visitor might use to view your website on either the full web (via laptop or desktop), tablets, and mobile devices. The question shouldn’t be “SHOULD my website be responsive?”, but rather, “WHEN can I get a new, responsive website launched?”

In early 2012, L.E.T. Group committed to making responsive website design our standard form of website development.

Here are 5 reasons why responsive website design is best practice:

1) Google (yes, Google) endorses responsive website design 100%. Don’t take our word for it. Here is a direct quote from Google’s Official Developer website:

Sites that use responsive web design, i.e. sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs, with each URL serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device. This is Google’s recommended configuration.  | Source: Building Smartphone-Optimized Websites (Google’s Official Website Developer Site)

2) Your website code controls what is displayed on smartphones & tablets. Carefully coded responsive website design that uses meticulously thought out (excuse the technical terminology) media queries allows certain portions of the full website to be hidden on a tablet &/or mobile version of a responsive websites. This can be seen in action on a few of our properly coded responsive website designs as the mobile and tablet versions of these websites includes information that is tailored exclusively for these devices.

3) A good responsive website design can still be developed in the same amount of time it would take for a package that includes a standard website plus a mobile website. Our developers are highly skilled & know how to code efficiently. Our production speaks for itself. We have launched 14 new responsive websites in the past 30 days.

4) Tablet use continues to rise and the importance of having a website that looks good on them can’t be understated. As of August of last year, Apple shipped a combined total of 17 million new Retina display-equipped iPads and iPad 2 tablets combined, an increase of 44.1% from 11.8 million in the first quarter and enough to capture 69.6% of the global tablet market (Source). Couple this statistic with the rise in Android Tablets and Kindle sales, and it’s easy to see that tablets are another very preferred form of web browsing for your potential customers & clients.

5) Updates are easy! Since all versions of your website are, in essence, using the same text content and photography, updates can be made in one central location. Usually, a CMS can be easily tailored to power a responsive website, and L.E.T. Group has carefully created our My L.E.T. Content Management System to make website updates easy.

Although responsive website design is our best practice, we also have the skill to create a standard website along with a mobile website if absolutely necessary. However, in the long term, we always advise our clients to choose RWD.

Whatever the project may be, we’d love for you to choose L.E.T. Group – we’ll show you how easy it is to create a beautiful website that fits every device.

Jason Reuter
L.E.T. Group CTO & Social Guru

The title of this post is wrong. Unequivocally and dangerously, wrong.

Digital copyrights on the internet are important to content creators and they will do whatever it takes to assure they are compensated for their work. This is important to remember when you’re scouring the web looking for images to use on your website. Unless an image you find is explicitly noted as “Free for public or commercial use” or an image is purchased with an unlimited license for commercial use, chances are, it can’t be used on your website or any other type of media. Repercussions can be very severe — here is what can happen (Source: About.com):

If you are found guilty of copyright infringement, civil law allows the copyright owner to seek damages against you for illegally using their property. Under the Copyright Act, damages may be set as low as $200 for innocent infringements and up to $150,000 for willful infringements. In some cases, punitive damages may also be assessed

So what can you use?
Plenty of great websites exist where royalty-free stock photography can be purchased. Examples include: BigStockPhoto.com, ShutterStock.com, AgeFotoStock.com, Veer.com, iStockPhoto.com, and many more. Each of these sites offers a large selection of royalty-free photos for business use. Just make sure the license you purchase covers your intended use. If you frequently need to download images for use in online or offline marketing collateral, many of these sites also offer subscription based services that can be purchased by the month or year offering unlimited image downloads.

Much more information about digital copyright law is available via a simple Google Search. However, common sense also applies if there is doubt about whether or not an image can be used on your website. DO NOT use it unless you paid for it, know the photographer or took the photo yourself.

Jason Reuter
L.E.T. Group CTO & Social Guru

New web coding practice will automatically convert websites for viewing on a variety of devices from cell phones to tablets.

L.E.T. Group, a full service website design and Internet marketing company, recently announced the launch of Responsive Web Design services for all new clients.

This latest web coding practice ensures websites will display correctly on the full web & automatically re-format for optimal viewing on all mobile devices from cell phones to tablets. View an example of our latest website design update at hieduncan.com. Just resize the browser window horizontally to see the design automatically adjust for tablet & mobile widths.

L.E.T. Group’s new “One Design. All Devices.” approach ensures that no matter the size of the browser, a client’s website will not only be easy to view, and read, but also navigate.

“Since 1999, our customers have trusted L.E.T. Group to keep them up-to-date with the latest advancements in technology,” said L.E.T. Group CEO Kent Tewell. “Using this new website coding method we now know that when devices change, our customers will have a website that automatically adapts.”

It is estimated that in five years time, mobile devices will be the primary source of accessing web data, making it imperative that web design evolves to keep pace with the market. L.E.T. Group’s “One Design. All Devices.” not only optimizes a client’s web presence, but it can also serve as a cost savings measure, since the client will essentially get three websites for the price of one.

“We have recently updated our own website, and we have many new sites in development,” CTO and Social Guru, Jason Reuter said. “This is a great time for existing clients who were considering redesigning their websites to contact us for details.”

View the official release here.

I was as nervous about speaking in front of them as any business meeting or presentation I’d ever been a part of…and they were all four years old.

My son’s pre-school class recently sent out a request asking parents to come in & talk to the children about their career. I was immediately intregued by the opportunity, as I wanted to see just how much they’d understand about “making websites”. Then I started thinking about it: how do I teach them about html? What would they really ever understand about SEO? There’s no way they’d understand why we want to rank highly for “internet marketing” & “hotel website design”, or better yet, what “ranking highly” even means. After all, what’s a search engine to a four year old? Uh oh.

Fear started to creep in, and a scene from Kindergarten Cop came to mind:

It was apparent I needed to re-prioritize exactly what, or better yet how I was going to teach the children. I had to make it basic. It was important to get them interested in what I had to say before I would ever get them interested in what I do for a living. So, with the help of my wife (a 4th grade teacher & a HUGE help when it came to setting up the lesson plan), we came up with a way to speak their language by first showing them the various websites their parents likely let them explore. Here’s a scaled down version of 2 of the 5 websites I started with:

From that point, they were hooked…especially after they saw Mickey & Minnie in the broswer window. They immediately wanted to see more, and it was the perfect segue: “Well, those are websites for kids…my job is to help make websites that grown-ups use to find places to stay when going on a vacation. I make websites for hotels. We also make websites for other places, too”. Again, I was speaking their language – I wasn’t about to get into the difference between business and leisure travelers or all of the other types of websites we’ve created. The rest of career day was great from that point, and when I opened up the floor to questions, every kid raised their hand. Most of them actually commented about where they had stayed at hotels, and there were some funny stories. One boy told me that his Dad was angry at a hotel near Disney World because the power went out. A little girl told me that her Mommy’s laptop battery died and they had to pay for a movie on TV instead of watching it on the computer. Listening to each of their little comments was the cutest part of the day, and every single one of them made me smile. It’s all about doing what you love, but when you can convey that love to 4 year olds and get them engaged in what you do, it’s a win-win. I hope just one child remembers a brief moment of my presentation and ends up with an interest in technology. The experience made it my most fulfilling day of 2011 thus far. Jason Reuter, CTO & Social Guru

We absolutely love the work of Stephen Powers and his crew. This video tells a little about what Powers is all about, his style, his reasons, body of work, and his love of sign-painting. Design inspiration (yes, even for the web) can come to us in mysterious ways…and this is definitely one of them.

“People read signs. A business without a sign is a sign of no business.”
– Stephen Powers

Can’t see what’s above? View Flights of Genius by Stephen Powers on Vimeo.