Business Phones – Think New Technology

Bright Idea Tips to Help With Business Phones
Bright Idea Tips to Help With Business Phones

I am moving to the Fredericksburg, Virginia area in July and August this year and as I plan ahead for my move I am revamping my home and business phone technology used to use new things.

Currently, I have a fax telephone line, a business phone line, a residential phone line, two line phones throughout the house, hard wired CAT 5 cabling, and over 9 computers. With my new move, I am going to streamline my use of old tech and move to some new tech.

For example, I am thinking of:

1. Using a Word document/Office subscription fax interface that will allow me to fax using my smartphone as well as to receive faxes this way too. I like MyFax at MyFax.com  as my solution. I selected this one due to ease of use and low price – $10 a month. I’ll be needing to have a temporary fax solution for three months before I move into my permanent office and so want something easy to use and usable on a smartphone.

2. I am actually thinking of not having a separate phone line for my business and using my smartphone as my office phone. I already have set up a Google Voice number and will most likely use this number on my website and have it forwarded to my smartphone or home phone on certain days. I have already purchased a new local phone number from Google for $10, as once you have a number you have to pay to change it. I like the ability to control when Google Voice forwards calls. You can even group contacts and then create different answering messages by group. You can have family and friends get automatically connected without delay which is a nice feature.

3. I know that I will have FiOS as my new office. I already have been using virtual phone numbers which really give a terrific cost saving and use VOIP. I may continue to use this for my business or at least for a dedicated fax line and now only one residential line, but I am still thinking of what is the best and most versatile option for my future needs.

With so many new technological choices what you used to think you had to have in your office phone-wise, you now get to think over and reinvent when you move. What technology have you moved to that has cut costs and streamlined your life? Make sure to let me know by clicking and leaving a comment. I guarantee that I’ll check it out and may use it too.

Mobilegeddon So Far Has Been a Bust

Pros and Cons Sign
What was Google thinking when they back pedaled on the mobile search release?

Fresh from doing a SEO review of five client sites, I have to say that mobilegeddon is a bust, at least so far.

Google started the roll out of this much talked about algorithm that was to have impacted over 14% of the search results in the mobile search sphere on Monday April 21st. But as of April 30th, I was still seeing sites appear routinely in the mobile search space that were not mobile-friendly.

Does that mean that there was all this hype about nothing? No, not really. I suspect that Google got scared of crashing it’s search engine and money driver if it moved too fast to chop sites that had not moved into mobile. I suspect that they will over time tweak this as new sites enter the index that are mobile-friendly, but they have already back pedaled from their previous approach.

Earlier in the year in the pending change announcement Google stated that if you did not have a mobile-friendly site you would be dropped from the mobile index. Later, Google softened this approach to say, well maybe you’d be dropped, but if your website really matched the query best and even if you were not mobile-friendly they would show your site in the mobile results as most relevant – totally watering down the first announcement.

Then, Google AdWords reps started to say, well if your site is not mobile-friendly and you are using AdWords advertising, your non-mobile-friendly website would still show in the mobile results as an AdWords ads. Note the serious conflict here? Advertising vs. Search?

I think that as it got closer to the date, Google decided that there was too much money at stake and sites had simply not upgraded as they had thought they would.

I do suspect that over time there will be a “weeding” of sites from the mobile index but for now I think the change on Google’s part is being driven by a concern for a loss of revenue in AdWords and search relevancy versus the competition.

Late to the Mobile-Friendly Website Game? What to Do

Image of a responsive website on multiple devices.
Make sure you set the viewport for your site to display it properly on multiple devices.

If you are waited to update your website to be mobile-friendly and your traffic and business is crashing, know that Google means business in regards to transitioning to a mobile-focused world of search.

Over the last three months I have seen a huge shift even in AdWords conversions and for many clients all activity is now click to call from mobile devices. If you missed the boat and did not update your website to be mobile friendly by this week, here are a few quick things you can do to remediate that problem.

Some sites that you may want to check out if you are a do it yourselfer are:

DudaMobile – has mobile friendly as well as responsive designs.

WIX – just be careful of the design as not all are really responsive.

Shopify – has some nice designs to consider.

Webflow – is even a consideration.

Of course if you want greater control over your design and content, or simply do not have enough time to do this yourself, we have a very nice turnkey program for responsive websites for you to check out and try out online. Just let us know your interested and we’ll send you a link to over 50 super nice responsive starting points for your customized website.

An Update on My Predictions for 2015

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What has already come to pass?

Well, I was right when I predicted what would happen in 2015 back on December 22, 2014… well at least for several items so far. You can read my full set of predictions for 2015 in this December blog post.

I predicted these things would be hot for 2015 and some are coming to pass right now:

1. The Mobile Web and Google
My prediction: This whole next year expect to see more activity from Google in regards to refining how websites are ranked based on mobile friendliness. If you at the minimum do not have a DudaMobile website to turn you not so friendly mobile site into one that Google will like, now’s the time to make that move. Better yet is to invest in rebuilding your website using a responsive design which will serve you better in the long run.

Update:
Google announced this past month that on 4-21-15 they will drop website listings from their mobile search index that are not Google approved “mobile friendly”. What came out this month as well is that Google does not have a separate mobile index and so appears to simply be massaging data to return mobile results. The next big question will be – will not having a mobile friendly site affect my regular desktop and tablet results on Google.com. On that issue, I am not prepared to make a prediction just yet.

2. Mobile Pay Will Be Hot
My prediction: As all merchants will need to upgrade their swipe terminals to accept the new SIM card personal identifier in credit cards, I predict that there will be greater use of mobile payments with Apple Pay and Softcard.

Update:
I have been vindicated that Mobile Pay or Contactless Pay as it is known is very hot. In fact, Softcard was purchased in March by Google and the technology is being rolled into Google Wallet. I expect to see a much bigger push on Google Wallet this next year. Apple Pay has rolled out and more users are embracing tapping their smartphone to pay at checkout. This is a growing trend and one I expect to see even more announcements come out as the year goes on.