Content Marketing is a relatively new term (first used in 1996), which describes a very old technique used to spread and establish the  reputation and presence of a company.

In simple words, Content Marketing is the technique through which your company offers free information (articles, images, video) about the products or services you provide and communicates it using all modern communication media (websites, blogs , forums, etc.).

This practice began in 1891 when August Oetker, decided to sell baking powder in packages on wich recipes were printed. Later he made a book "Cooking Guide" which he provided for free to his customers. In 1895,  the same idea was used by John Deere, who established a periodic version information for farmers. And the most known example of the use of Content Markenting is Michelin company, which in 1900, decided to issue a guide for motorists with information about the car (maintenance, repairs) and travel information (accommodation, restaurants, shopping).

"The first version of the guide distributed free Michelin 35,000 motorists."

All the above examples show that all these companies, and many more managed to establish their name and reputation, giving the audience what they were looking for. They manage to create confidence in the company, in which the audience was addressed for shopping. 

Today, Content Marketing is based of the same principles.

The difference today, is the change of means used to spread the information. Back then, it was a printed information (in packaging, or in a magazine or in a book), and today  the world of internet (websites, blogs, forums, newsletters, etc) is used.

Trying to better understand Content Marketing, you should know that a successful Content Marketing strategy answers the question to your audience, "How can I help you?".

You may be suprised since your website primarily aims to answer this very question. However,  through your website you address  to a wide audience, with different interests and needs,  so your information is quite general, in  odrer to help and inform the majority of users.

Through blogs, forums, and other tools, you can offer different useful information depending on the target audience. For example, if you are a travel agency, you will provide different information to a family who is planning its summer vacation while other information will take a group of students and of course other information you will give to the organizers of a conference in your country.

So, depending on your target audience, you modify the content of the information you provide.

Offering useful information, all in connection with the subject of your own business, to a wide audience, cultivate confidence and establish loyalty to your products and services. Your company name becomes the first name that comes your users' mind when they are looking for the products or services you offer.

Content Marketing is a major factor of your business success.  You need an effective content marketing strategy, which should be designed by professionals who, using with their knowledge and experience will ensure you the best possible result.

Do you already have a successful business idea, which you have already developed and you are considering to expand it online?

Or

Do you want to start a new business idea entirely online?

The affirmative answer to any of the above questions, leads you to the decision of creating a website.

You should keep in mind that each site should meet three goals:

1. Visitors must find what they want easily
2. Visitors must get what they want easily
3. Visitors must easily perform the appropriate actions that you want them to perform

Besides these main goals of any website, other goals should be defined based on your needs and desires. To help you better sort out your thoughts and ideas, and set up your goals, we prepared a questionnaire for you.

• What do I want to achieve by creating a website?
• What is the purpose of the website?
• Is this website an informational site or a transactional one?
• Do I know what visitors of websites like mine are looking for?
• Do I know what competition offers the web?
• What features and aspects of my competitor's site do I like?
• What websites do I find useful and user-friendly?
• How much am I willing to spend on my website?

Read the questionnaire carefully, think about it, and try to answer as clearly and precisely as you can. Let some days pass by and then read the questions and answers once again.

Do not rush!!

The questions will help you to properly plan your business movements and as we all know "Proper planning is half the success of any effort."

By answering these questions, you will have a clear picture of what you are looking for and what will satisfy your needs.

When you are sure about your answers, do not hesitate to contact us, in order to discuss the design and development for you a website. A website that meets your needs and desires.

An economic web hosting service is the High Performance Shared Hosting.

A small dynamic website, does not need the expensive packages of dedicated server hosting or VPS hosting services.  But it needs security, reliability, accessibility and continuous technical support.

High Performance Shared Hosting is the best solution for the basic needs of your website.

One of its  advantages, is that management of hosting parameters and accessibility of your website is performed by the hosting services provider.  The safety and security are provider's responsibility, eventhough there are limitations due to hardware and software used.

The main disadvantage of this option is the sharing of system capabilities (processing power, memory, storage) from all websites hosted on this machine. This means that websites with increased need for processing power or memory can cause problems in the response of the server, and thus problems for users of your website.

Another major disadvantage is the inability of the system upgrade individually. This is due to the fact that not all all websites hosted on the server  wish to upgrade,. As a result, your need for upgrade may not be possible to be fullfilled.

The High Performance Shared Hosting is probably the most popular hosting package. It covers the needs of most sites, offering excellent value for service / price.

There is always the possibility to upgrade your hosting package, if for any reason you decide that  this does not meet your needs and expectations.

Contact us today to discuss your needs and requirements in order to come together on the best hosting package for your website.

The cheapest web hosting package on the market today is Low Performance Shared Hosting Package.

In simple words is a hosting package on a machine where many other websites are hosted.

Unfortunately, in this package there is not the possibility of management of hosting parameters of your website. Also there is not the possibility of upgrading the system (and an upgrade would be desirable to all owners of websites hosted on the machine). The capabilities of the system, such as processing power, memory, storage, are shared with all the webpages hosted, and this may effect the response times of your website.

Finally, price is directly related to the needs of system maintenance and installation. In order to keep purchase and maintenance costs low, in most cases Low Performance Shared Hosting is using low standards hardware. (Some providers use outdated hardware for Low Performance Shared Hosting)

In intros.gr, although we offer Low Performance Shared Hosting package, we do not recommend this package.

We believe that you can choose it only in cases where the site is a small static website for a short period of time, and only at the very beginning of the website’s life. As your website will be known and gets more traffic, as it will enrich its content, this option will not cover its needs.

However do not forget that you always have the ability to upgrade your hosting package in either High Performance Shared Hosting or even VPS or dedicated server hosting.

Contact us to discuss your hosting needs of your website.

Please, read carefully the following questions:

1. Do you have a website, in which you invested money and it is not efficient? 
2. Do the visitors find easily and quickly what they are looking for? 
3. Do you have a website that no longer meets the needs of your business? 
4. Did the company, that undertaken the development of your website, although they promised a lot, left the site incomplete? 
5. Have your competitors mastered the web business even though you can out beat them with your brand name and reputation? 
6. Have you requested to add new features or functionality in your website and the developers say to you that it can not be achieved? 
7. Is the website unattractive when displayed on mobile devices?

If one or more of the above questions, your answer is “yes”, then probably it is time to seriously consider to redesign and redevelopment of your website.

Over the years the design trends, in web design, changes, so they create a need for redesigning of your website in order to maintain its fresh and innovative look.

Redesigning your website, means to create a brand new website, most probably using a new design, and definitely new approach in presentation of the benefits and information you want to promote. Key aspect for the redesign of your website, nowadays, is to implement all the principles of responsive design in order to be mobile-friendly, as this is the new ranking criterion by Google (see also our blog post “Change in ranking criteria”).

If you set up a new internet marketing strategy, maybe a redesign of your website will be needed in order to support the new strategy. In intros.gr we can redesign your site in such a way as to eliminate any problems you experience with your current web presence. Contact our concerns and ideas to redesign the best possible result and your own website.

When we are trying to optimize a website for search engines, we often overlook to optimize images and photos used on the said website.

Optimizing images is very important. A website with many images can not be ranked properly because images and photographs are not correctly used thus grows the website response time (one of the key ranking criteria used by search engines).

The first basic element, that should be kept in mind, when we want to optimize images and photos is that you need to convert files of pictures and photos in smaller files that can help to have faster loading time of the site. This usually works by using images and photos lower resolution. Computer monitors operate on RGB (Red-Green-Blue)  color mode and display images with relatively low resolution (usually 72-75dpi) unlike printers which use  CMYK (Cyan-Magenda-Yellow-Black) color mode and the images must have higher resolution (at 300dpi).

In order to help you understand the difference, I will give you an example for an image sized 1000X700pixels. An image of this size with high resolution for printing purposes (300dpi) will give us an image file size of 5 MB while the same image with analysis of 72dpi gives a file of 80KB, and if you select to save the image for the WEB, then for the same picture will have a file of just 15-20KB.

Tip: Be aware, that photos or CMYK type pictures (basic four-color printer) can not be diplayed on the computer screen due to the difference in color mode they use.

The second essential element when we use pictures and images on our website, is to save them using a name representative for the image and to avoid names like image1, photo2 etc.

Finally, for every photograph or image that we use, we should be include a short and representative description. The advantages of this practice are numerous. We help disabled people to understand the content of the image. We make it easier to search engines to check the relevance of the image with the contents of our website, and we help them to integrate our images and photos into image search program. As a result, our website will be better ranked by search engines.

In intros.gr, optimizing images is an integral part of search engine optimization services, that the company offers to its customers. Do no hesitate to contact us to discuss your needs regarding the optimization of your website, or ask us for a quote. You will receive a prompt reply to your request.

A second option, that you have for the hosting of your website is the V.P.S. (Virtual Private Server) Hosting.

It is a web hosting service with many advantages.

Although the resources are shared, virtualization provides a higher level of security, as the individual virtual servers are mostly isolated from each other and may run their own operating system which can be independently rebooted if and when is needed. This practically means that each piece (virtual server) is able to make use of its own resources and be configured with its own parameters using a dedicated software (WHM / Cpanel). Due to the independence of each server, it is able to make use of any software necessary for the operation of the website hosting, without affecting or being affected by other virtual servers.

By choosing a VPS, you know the processing power, memory and storage space that corresponds to your own virtual machine. During virtualization, we as a web hosting services company, we adjust and allocate the technical characteristics of the machine to its virtual components.

In V.P.S. hosting, like hosting in dedicated servers, security and data protection of your website depends solely on you. You can use any security protection software you decide.

As it is understood, the VPS hosting offers all the advantages of a dedicated server at a significantly lower cost, due to the fact that machine maintenance and management expenses are allocated to the users of virtual machines (virtual servers) configured on the machine.

You should not forget that like in dedicated servers hosting, you should clearly know the needs of your website. The market research that you will do, must lead you to the VPS hosting package that will cover your needs completely, in order to

As we have already told the three types of web hosting are:

• Hosting in Dedicated Servers
• Hosting in V.P.S. (Virtual Private Servers)
• Shared hosting

If you have a website that has increased needs in space and high traffic, such as a large news portal or a forum, then what you need is hosting in a Dedicated Server, to get faster speeds and more reliability.

Hosting in a dedicated server, gives you full control over the server. You can use full processing power, memory capacity and the entire storage space. You get the maximum data transmission speed. All these are major benefits but you should be aware of the specifications of the equipment you need, in order to select the server that meets your expectations. It makes no sense to pay for a dedicated server with a processing power that will not serve the requirements of your website.

Another advantage offered by using a dedicated server is a complete management software and your accounts, as well as personalized customization of hosting of your website. In dedicated servers you have the ability to install your own applications which will help to improve performance of your website.

Finally, with a dedicated server you can have complete protection of your contents, as installation and upgrade of security systems depend solely on you.

An extensive market research is advisable, before you decide for both service provider and hardware for you website.

One of the key points in a website's success is its Hosting services.

Can you imagine a website which is not always accessible due to poor hosting services? Or imagine that your are looking for an urgent information, you traced the website in question and you wait and wait for the website to load..

The problems caused due to poor hosting, is a disadvantage for your website and your company as well.

In order to help you choose, the best hosting services for you among the various prices and services provided, we decided to give you some information about web hosting in general.

Web hosting is an internet service, which allows your website to be online and accessible 24hours/day, using special hardware (web servers, data lines e.t.c.).  There are various factors that can secure the best quality of hosting services, such as:

1. Web servers must be located in specific environmental and technical conditions. That is why they are located in Data Centres. Data centres ensure the continuous function of all hardware, since they are equipped with back up power supplies, environmental controls(e.g. air conditioning, fire suppression, security devices e.t.c.) and many more.
2. The hardware used, should be of a reliable manufacturer, with large storage capacities(hard disks), with high processing power(CPU power), and very large RAM memory. Due to the fast development of technology, even nowadays, a web server aged 5 or 6 years may already be outdated and maybe it cannot support modern hosting requirements.
3. The access to control panel and to the operating system of the hardware, as well as the physical access to the web servers, are critical factors to the functionality and efficiency of the server.

It is understood that hosting prices depend on the hardware used, the physical location of the hardware as well as the management of it.

The second key factor of the hosting pricing is the type of hosting you select. There are three major hosting types. Extended post with pros and cons of each one, you will be given soon.

• Dedicated Servers: In this case, as owner of the website, you have exclusive use of hardware (CPU power, hard disks, memory, bandwidth e.t.c.). In dedicated hosting you have full management of software and operating system. Dedicated hosting is advisable to websites with enormous amount of data provided and a lot of traffic.
• V.P.S.: A Virtual Private Server, as its name indicates, is a virtual machine which runs its own copy of operating system, and you as owner, have full access to that operating system. Partitioning a single web server to appear as multiple servers, is increasingly common. Choosing this type of hosting, you can have the benefits of a dedicated server at a lower cost.
• Shared Hosting: It refers to web hosting where many websites reside on one web server. Each website has its own section to keep it seperate from others.  It is the most economical option, since many people share the cost of server maintenance.  One of the main disadvantages is that you can not have system administration.  Part of Shared Hosting is the Low performance Shared Hosting, which refers to hosting to servers of lower specifications, most probably outdated, with low CPU power,  lower capacity hard disks, less memory available, smaller rate of transmission (smaller bandwidth used).

As you can understand, hosting pricing depends on various factors. A very low price may refer to hosting to a very distant datacenter(U.S.A. or Australia), or hosting to outdated hardware, or hosting to lower specifications hardware. All these factors may have negative impact on the efficiency of your website.

An extended market research is advisable in order to decide on the hosting package which will cover your needs and will meet your expectations.

Minitech Autoworkshop company trusted intros.gr for the desing and development of its website back in 2012.  

At that time principles of responsive design were not widely applicable, so now we are design and develop the responsive website of the company.  We also upgraded the website to the latest version of Joomla, for better administration and security of the website.

You will soon be able to access the fully responsive website from any device you like, tablet or mobile, in order to find information about your car.