The Webmecanik Blog

when 1+1 equals zero business

Do it yourself Unless you live on another planet, it’s hard to miss the new ad from the world’s largest website wholesaler. Let’s be clear, from now on, building a website is as easy as a “click”. A suitable layout? Choose from hundreds of available templates. A photo? A tie-wearing executive shaking hands with his […]

how to kill your business in a single page

in industry too, you can win new customers through the web

Two years ago, at a trade show, I met the owner of an SME of about fifty people who wanted to bring his website up to date. While I was trying to learn more about his business, in an attempt to assess the benefit of a web approach in his case, he spent the entire […]

The 6 pitfalls of marketing automation

Webmecanik comments: In this article, Stacie Susens presents 6 pitfalls to avoid when implementing a marketing automation solution   The 6 Biggest Potholes of Marketing Automation | ClickZ The journey toward marketing magnificence can be an exciting but nerve-racking adventure. The path to inner peace and profit is not always smooth and there are many […]

the effectiveness of Facebook advertising

You may have noticed that Facebook has been heavily distributing “Coupons” worth a few dozen euros in France to promote advertising on its network, imitating Google in this respect, which has been doing it for ages. I won’t hide the fact that we were long reluctant to advertise on FB, even though the social network […]

should you put music on your website?

I quite often come across clients who have a website that automatically plays music. When I advise them to disable this feature, I come across as a killjoy: “But it’s nice!”, “It’s cool music”, “But why, we’ve already paid for this feature”… Here are 3 good reasons not to do that: Music is intrusive Like PopUps, it […]

telemetry: when the virtual feeds on the real

With the advent of smartphones, the virtual and the real are very often intertwined. Locating nearby services, meeting singles in your area, train departure times at the station across the street… the possibilities are many and endless. By making the real interact with the virtual, we can now develop more relevant and truly differentiated services. It […]

8th Devcom Lyon Rhône Alpes

Marketing Performance Challenge The objective of the DEVCOM Marketing Performance Challenge is to identify and reward the best tools, real-life cases or innovations enabling companies to develop their sales, customer loyalty and communication. To do so, it brings together marketing and communication directors from the region who will judge the demonstrations of the candidate companies […]

The benefits of marketing automation

Here are the benefits of marketing automation: Regular processing and monitoring of sales leads, Improved sales efficiency through better identification of “hot” leads, Increased ROI of marketing actions thanks to a better lead-to-sales-opportunity conversion rate, A shorter sales cycle thanks to systematic monitoring (scoring or nurturing) of leads, Increased efficiency of marketing teams thanks to […]

adwords, your best market research

  In the previous article, we talked about the actions to implement in order to maximize your return on investment with Adwords. Today, I suggest you discover another benefit of using Google’s advertising services: becoming better at marketing. How? By allowing you to continuously analyze the reactions of hundreds of people. Using Adwords is like […]

don’t waste your money with adwords

As you know, Adwords is Google’s advertising platform. It allows anyone to buy “keywords” in order to appear among the sponsored links on Google and its partner sites. The system offers a double advantage: it is simple and the results are immediate. The service is billed per “click”. You therefore only pay for internet users […]

the sunday crm migration

An attempt to appease users after migrating their CRM tool over the weekend: “Dear CRM users, Thank you for taking the time to read this entire email before getting down to work this Monday morning. This weekend, while you were merrily and quite rightly frolicking in green meadows (well, not with this cold weather), we […]

the dangers of supernatural SEO

While we now have a few years of hindsight on Marketing, which is no longer exactly a new science, I am still amazed to see that certain practices persist in spite of common sense. When you want to promote a company on the Web, there are several challenges: Attract prospects to the company’s offering Convert those […]

the miracle-working interns of generation y

In this line of web work, there are a few perennial topics that come back at regular intervals. Among them is the subject of interns. Indeed, for many companies still, the Internet and new technologies are children’s toys. So who can work miracles in this field for next to nothing: the young people of Generation Y (you […]

Recommendation and fake online reviews

In this article on fake online reviews, Les Inrocks explain how unscrupulous companies offer to fabricate fake customer testimonials for mainstream websites and forums. Besides being illegal, and the fact that the clients of these companies deserve to be publicly exposed for fraud, these practices completely undermine the anonymous review system: when all hotels (for example) have thousands of glowing […]

don’t buy websites anymore

I won’t dwell yet again on the websites of the 2000s, their deliciously outdated Christmas-tree look, their bright colors and their legendary usability. This time, I really mean all websites, including the real ones, paid for at full price and built by competent professionals. Websites that are said to look good, that convert visitors into […]

Adwords wholesaler: the new web parasite

Allegory (subtle…) of the Adwords Wholesaler  Ok, the title is a bit sensationalist… But what honest worker has never been exasperated by the smart alecks who take advantage of loopholes in the system to make easy money, to the detriment of their own clients? Since Jean-Marc and I created Eureos, our mission has been to […]

when I look at myself I despair, when I compare myself I take comfort

In the web field, the notion of performance is entirely relative. That is why the “Benchmarking Report”, sent by Google yesterday to all Google Analytics administrators, is a valuable tool. It provides orders of magnitude and benchmarks to determine where your clients’ sites or your own site stand compared with the average of websites worldwide. […]

google, a giant unlike any other

Inside Google: a mindset During a recent trip to Boston, I had the opportunity to watch the documentary “Inside Google”. Eric Schmidt (former CEO) explains that when he arrived at the company, he had suggested a new idea in a meeting. One participant then exclaimed: “That’s evil”, in reference to the famous “Don’t be evil”. […]

manage your partners with your crm

It is fairly easy to accept that a CRM tool can serve as a customer database, an email marketing solution, or even as a way to improve customer service and follow-up. On the other hand, the potential of this tool for running and managing a partner network is often underestimated. Example: a solar panel manufacturer […]

the qr code, a bridge between point-of-sale advertising and the web

Reassure your customers at the point of sale Click on the image before scanning it Imagine a customer arriving at a point of sale, at a specialist retailer. They discover your product there, but they do not know your brand. On the web, this person would tend to look for more information: company website, reviews […]

stuck with your old website? migrate to plone with funnelweb.

Many companies and associations have outdated websites, powered by defunct CMSs, or hard-coded. For them, migrating their content to a modern and high-performance system like Plone is very difficult. It is now possible to do it easily with the FunnelWeb script. Migrate your website to Plone For dynamic websites, it was already possible to migrate […]

the first factor of success is the client

You only do good work with intelligent clients. That’s the observation I made last week, when Nathalie, a client, called me to thank me for the work accomplished and the results achieved. Getting to the point The intelligent client gets to the point. They are interested first and foremost in results and keep value judgments […]

never hire a social media expert

I enjoyed reading this article: Why I Will Never, Ever Hire A “Social Media Expert” by Peter Shankman. In it, Peter brilliantly and ironically explains why so-called social media experts annoy him to no end. He had actually planned to title his article: “All Social Media Experts Should Be Thrown Into the Fire”. Why so much […]

website in a box

I recently had the opportunity to speak with a manager from one of the largest communications companies in the world. They recently created a web subsidiary, the merits of which he was praising to me. The principle: volume. With resources suited to their ambitions, that is to say a call center of several dozen people, […]

the web would kill local businesses

A sad story at the end of this week. A famous music store in Grenoble is closing its doors. The reason? Competition from online sales, according to the store manager. This kind of event saddens me: for me, setting the web against local retail does not really make sense; quite the opposite, it is a […]

plone is awesome?!

By using tools every day, we sometimes end up forgetting that what seems obvious to us is not necessarily obvious to those discovering the web and its wonderful world. Thus, yesterday I was presenting Plone to a dynamic business group that wants to equip itself with a tool to showcase its members. The objective of […]

python language of the year 2010

Python: language of the year 2010 We have been using Plone for our projects for 5 years now. Each time Plone is objectively compared with its main competitors (Joomla, Drupal and WordPress), it comes out on top in the key areas of security and user ergonomics. Plone is, however, often cited as a system for […]

the schools of web creation

The new year is often an opportunity to take stock. For 2011, we chose to review the state of Web creation by focusing on the players in this market. Indeed, unlike most other fields, web creation can be approached by professionals with very different backgrounds and perspectives. Which school does your Web partner belong to? […]

use RSS feeds!

At Eureos, we provide RSS feeds as standard for sections such as “News” or “Events” on our clients’ websites. However, we recently discovered as part of a client study that very few companies were using this technology, which is a real handicap in some cases. RSS feeds allow third-party sites to republish and distribute your […]

the pitfalls of the web project brief

When you want to have a website built (brochure site, inter-company platform, e-commerce), common sense dictates that you should write a project brief to clearly define your expectations and your needs. Put that way, it sounds like an unshakable truth. And yet, in practice, it is very often the source of many problems and deep […]

plone versus drupal, worpress and joomla

The 2010 version of the Idealware report has just been released. This document compares the 4 CMSs most used in the NGO world: Plone, Drupal, WordPress and Joomla. The summary of the comparison is as follows: Summary of the Idealware comparison between Plone, Drupal, WordPress and Joomla Plone ranks among the best in essential aspects […]

the 4 steps of the sales process on the web

New technologies have evolved faster than the way companies use them. In barely 10 years, everything has completely changed: it is no longer enough, as in the past, to entrust the creation of your website to the neighborhood IT intern to feel like you exist on the Internet. Here are four key steps to successfully develop […]

e-commerce as a web service

Here is an interesting presentation from the Plone 2010 conference in Bristol (in English). It presents a particularly relevant approach to making a high-level CMS (Plone) coexist with an e-commerce system (here Django lfs). Rather than grafting e-commerce extension modules onto a Plone site, the author sets out his vision of e-commerce as a web […]

test your website!

Web audit: an essential step When clients ask us to take over an existing website, we systematically start by carrying out a full audit. This step allows us to better understand the client’s market, build on what has worked while bringing in what is missing. A free test to ask the right questions A website […]

the right price of a website

How much does a quality website cost? Recently on a forum, a member asked the question of the “average price for a quality professional website”. As is often the case with this type of question, the consensus is precise: prices range from 400 to several hundred thousand euros. That really narrows it down for us. […]

8 winning tips for creating a successful bling-bling website

If you still don’t own a Rolex and you’re over 50, you can still make up for it online by creating a “bling-bling” showcase website for your company. This choice will undoubtedly and cheaply earn the admiration of your loved ones and the recognition of your peers. Here are a few simple tips to dazzle […]

you are too well ranked

This week, a client calls about their company space on one of our business platforms: “Sir, I would like to cancel my subscription. Because of you, no one can find my site, you are always ranked better.” A little taken aback, I ask a few questions and eventually come to understand: when searching for the […]

should we be wary of open source?

Since its creation, Eureos has relied on Open Source tools: SugarCRM for CRM, Plone for websites and intra/extranets, LimeSurvey for satisfaction surveys or market research (coupled with PSPP). I’m not even talking about our Ubuntu servers and the slew of small tools that, without their developer community, would have cost us a fortune on the […]

the 250-euro online store

On the websites of internet service providers, you can find people who unabashedly submit calls for tenders for an e-commerce site for 250 euros, and others who are ready to spend 100 euros for organic search ranking in 1st position on Google for keywords such as “car”, “real estate” and other “tax credit”. Common misconceptions […]

the new plone has arrived

Eureos is not an IT company. On the web as elsewhere, doing business development is above all about understanding your market, finding or reconnecting with your customers, and closing sales. For the rest (the technical implementation of websites and extranets), there is Plone: Plone is the content management system (CMS) that allows us to spend 80% […]

corporate video: work on your message!

In the field of corporate video, as is often the case in the world of imagery, the best sits alongside the worst, and the line is thin. While publishing a high-quality video on your website can be a powerful communication tool, it is quite easy to get it wrong, or even lapse into bad taste, […]

the end of the king keyword?

As recently as not long ago, a project manager was telling me about a kickoff meeting with an industrial client (at Eureos, we begin web projects with a marketing study). While the subject of the meeting concerns the company’s market positioning, its competitors, its offer, its strengths, the client has only one word on his […]

retailers, internet marketing and the mirages of the web

I have a friend who runs a portal with relatively respectable traffic (1,000 visitors a day on average). His site is dedicated to a small town in France. He regularly wonders what business model to put in place to monetize his site, without relying solely on Google Ads, which barely covers his hosting costs. The […]

results against the all-free approach on the internet

Everything is free on the Internet Last week, an IT professional was complaining on a forum about competition from “free” on the Net. He was asking whether it was still possible to make a decent living from IT. Some quite rightly replied that obviously yes, and that the free economy was a cash machine. It […]

the extranet: this little-known tool for SMEs

With the recent technical advances offered by CMS solutions on the market such as Plone, Joomla, Drupal and various Typo3-based systems, designing and putting an Extranet online is now within reach for the majority of companies. What is an Extranet? An Extranet makes it possible to share information with a limited group of users. Unlike […]

didier, the engineer who reads the docs

Recently, I had an interesting exchange on a forum about search engine optimization. A beginner asked the following question: “How can I get Google to visit my pages more often, given that I regularly release new products and, because of seasonality, I can’t wait 15 days for the Google bot to eventually come by.” For […]

as simple as CRM software

It’s curious how things sometimes come naturally, without us even thinking about it. When we started Eureos in 2006, we were bringing companies together in person. Then we developed a unique concept for connecting companies based on knowledge sharing (business platforms). Little by little, we specialized in designing and redesigning websites and providing web visibility […]

we are all Internet marketing specialists

For just under ten years now that I’ve been working in marketing and sales, I’ve noticed that, in these fields, there are always countless people ready to give their opinion on your work. It’s funny, personally, I can’t see myself going to the engineering office and explaining to an engineer that they need to put […]

some news from the Eureos network

Hello everyone, This start of the 2010 season has been particularly eventful. After spending 2009 developing and testing platforms for promoting groups, 2010 marks the shift to production mode. Already many French groups (and even Swiss ones) have contacted us to set up a platform within their organization. From experience, we know this takes time, […]

publish a document to be visible on the internet

On Eureos platforms dedicated to groups of professionals in a given field, companies must publish documents to be visible to buyers. Indeed, the operating mode known as “Directory” has demonstrated its limitations in the industrial world: you cannot describe know-how or a skill with a 10-line profile. By publishing photos of their work, client references, […]