Earlier this year, I wrote a post about the dangers in giving discounts to your customers. This post has recently been getting lots of traffic - both via search engines and a freelancer forum - that I thought I should discuss some situations where giving discounts is okay.

In my experience, you should generally avoid giving discounts unless you are getting something of value in exchange.

But what merits giving a discount? That depends on your business, your industry, and your personal preferences. One of the best reasons for giving a discount is in exchange for a quicker payment. This is what 2/10 n30 invoices are based off of: Your invoice is due in 30 days, but should you pay us in ten days, we will give you a 2% discount. In this example, having the cash available to you within 10 days is worth the same or more as the 2% cost you are essentially paying.

Another example? If you are in a Software as a Service business for example (or any other business that offers a service on a monthly basis), you want to balance monthly recurring revenue (MRR) with your pre-payments. So you offer a x% discount to your customers who prepay the year upfront. You get cash upfront, and they get a discount (incentive) for doing so.

By offering discounts in exchange for something of value, you are not devaluing your own products and services because you are asking for something in exchange. This is different from the type of discount many small business owners offer where they give the customer a discount just because he/she asked.

The new Compass site went live today. Check out the Compass Web Content Management System website and let me know what you think! Here's a preview from the site:

Back in February, I wrote up a blog post discussing how to develop a keyword strategy for SEO. In that article, I discuss how keyword-spamming has changed how you should select your keywords. To recap: a long time ago, website owners were putting scores of keywords in their keywords meta tag - often keywords that were irrelevant to the content on the page itself. Search engines quickly picked up on this, and realized that website owners aren't the best source of information when deciding what a specific page should rank for (they are after all, bias). So search engines began placing less emphasis on this meta tag and looking at other, more accurate ways to rank content.

I've long advised my friends and clients that the keywords meta tag is optional (and can be used as good practice) because its most likely ignored. Others have suspected the same for quite some time. So I was happy to see a post on the Official Google Webmaster blog that confirmed that Google does not use the keyword meta tag for web ranking.

Here's a quick snippet from that post:

Q: Why doesn't Google use the keywords meta tag?

A: About a decade ago, search engines judged pages only on the content of web pages, not any so-called "off-page" factors such as the links pointing to a web page. In those days, keyword meta tags quickly became an area where someone could stuff often-irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing those keywords. Because the keywords meta tag was so often abused, many years ago Google began disregarding the keywords meta tag.

And here is the video. Matt Cutts of Google also addressed the issue on his blog (which I highly reccomend you subscribe to if you're interested in SEO).

Keep in mind - this doesn't mean the concept of keywords (short phrases) are useless. In fact, keyword researching is critical to a successful SEO strategy. But the actual keywords meta tag does nothing to help your position with Google. Instead, you should use your keyword research to build relevant content, a strong description tag, and good anchor text in your backlinks and internal link structure.

It's been weeks since I've updated my blog. I have been so busy with all kinds of exciting things that have been keeping me from writing posts as frequently as I'd like. There have also been a variety of client news/awards since my last update that I decided to mix both into this post.

Swift HR Solutions wins Best Service Provider to Startups

Shannon Swift and the Swift HR team recently took home the Best Service Provider to Startups award at the first Seattle 2.0 awards. If you know Shannon and the Swift HR team, it's no surprise that they won this award. Having worked with the SwiftHR team over the last year, they are just a great group of people. Shannon was also featured in Tech Flash's Top 100 Women in Seattle Tech. And if you're a business owner considering hiring your first employee(s), their SwiftHR product is something you should definitely look at!

Tom Varga announced as Entrepreneur Of The Year Finalist

Tom Varga, managing partner of CFO Selections, has been selected as a finalist in the 2009 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® Award in the Pacific Northwest. Once again - this is no surprise to anyone that has spent more than 10 seconds talking to Tom. Tom is one of the smartest people I know. His business sense is incredible. Congratulations to Tom - as well as the CFO Selections team!

CFO Selections Launches New QuickBooks Consulting Division

CFO Selections added an entirely new division to their firm - QuickBooks Consulting. Along with their executive search and consulting division, they now have a variety of finance and accounting services. And according to their press release, there are only a handful of Intuit® solutions providers in the state of Washington.

Launch of the StrategicPay™ Series Website

Just today, Doug Sayed announced the launch of the StrategicPay™ series website. This is a Compass project I have been working on over the last few months. The website offers a variety of do-it-yourself compensation toolkits authored by a team of experts - all intended to help businesses who can't afford to hire a compensation consultant. The toolkits also include some consulting time. Doug is also on twitter @strategicpay.

Nearing Launch for Promega LLC Website

I have been working with Promega LLC (a Seattle-based Leadership Development Consulting company) recently to get their site migrated over to Compass. I did a design refresh, and helped them rebuild a backend tool that is part of their 360 Leadership Workshop. Be on the lookout - the new site should be launching very soon!

All Kinds of Compass Updates

I'm really excited about the next year in regards to Compass Web CMS. There is now a short demo video available on the Compass website that has been getting a great response. Late Wednesday Compass version 2.4 upgrades began. This version of Compass includes enterprise level access control, a revamped documents area with bulk file uploading, spell checking, significant performance enhancements, and various patches. There is a lot of really cool stuff coming down the pipeline - I'll post more as soon as I can start talking about it!

I've setup a banner ad on a CMS website. Compass has also been listed on CMSWire.com in the Hosted (SaaS) category. Let me know of (or feel free to submit Compass to) any other CMS or industry websites you think it should be listed on.

Moving This Week

Starting tomorrow I will be moving into a bigger place - which also includes a much improved home office. Although it's supposed to be 102° tomorrow in Arizona, I'm looking forward to getting setup in the new place.

Customer surveys are critical to any business. Whether you provide a product or a service, knowing what your customers think about your offering and what is missing is how your business can best improve its products and services. But surveys often produce inaccurate results - leading businesses to invest resources in the wrong areas. Eric Almquist and Jason Lee of Bain & Company have a much better approach - and I'm very impressed with its simplicity and effectiveness.