Getting Your Construction Products Specified

Getting Specified is about getting your construction products specified by architects and engineers in the US and Canada. The focus is to provide marketing and sales managers with the information and tools they need to market their products and provide useful web sites for architects, engineers and specifiers.

How Much It Worth to Get a Visitor to Your Site?

Marketing Resources - A list of companies and individuals who can help you develop specifications, CAD details and AIA Learning Unit seminars.

Our Newsletters and Articles: This is the list of newsletters and articles of use to the sales and marketing managers for manufacturers of "specified" construction products. This are listed in chronological order, and some have had some minor editing to bring them to up to date.

Is Your Website Up-to-date? - March 2008
Maintaining Your Mailing Lists - February 2008
Get Specified! - January 2008
Make Your Next Web Site Easy to Maintain - November 2007
Basic Search Engine Optimization - September 2007
Set up Google Analytics in 20 Minutes - June 2007
- Google Analytics - Part 2 - August 2007
How Are Construction Products Categorized? - May 2007
How Does A Specifier Use Your Website? - April 2007
What Do Users Search For? - March 2007
Which Key Words and Phrases Are Important to You? - February 2007
What Does a Search Engine See When It Visits Your Website? - January 2007
Make Your Website a Process, not a Project - December 2006
Winning Through OODA - Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action - November 2006
Major Redesigns of Your Site (October 2006)
Make Your Home Page Powerful! (July 2006)
Our 10th Brithday! (March 2006)
Site Maps - Are all your pages included in Google? (February 2006)
Tracking Site Statistics (January 2006)
Really Great Product Websites? (December 2005)
Getting Your Reps in Front of Architects and Specifiers (November 2005)
Hot, Warm and Cold Medium (October 2005)
Marketing and Sales to the Specifier in the Future - Part 2 (Sept 2005)
Marketing and Sales to the Specifier in the Future - The Next 5 - 10 Years (August 2005)
A Survey of 4specs Users (July 2005)
How 4specs Uses MasterFormat 2004 (June 2005)
How to Understand Your Web Site Activity - (March 2005)
What is a Referral - (February 2005)
Getting Your Products Specified on LEED Projects - (December 2004)
Email Control Directions (September 2004)
Glossy Brochure or 3-Ring Binder - which does your user want? (August 2004)
A Quick Fix to Your Website Problems - One way to work around a faulty web design (July 2004)
Your Overall Internet Objectives (December 2003)
How Can You Improve Your Results, If You Don't Know What's Happening? (November 2003)
An Update on Search Engines, Spam and AIA Learning Units (July 2003)
Domain Name Management - do it right or lose it! (June 2003)
Optimizing Your Website - additional resources (April 2003)
What are typical web site statistics, and how did people get to the web site? And how do you get more visitors? (March 2003)
Online Product Design Manuals for 2003 - Web site or Online Product Design Manual. The definition is essential to being specified. (January 2003)
What Has the Internet Really Changed - The answer is probably not what you expected. (October 2003)
What is your web site's purpose? Sounds simple, but many web sites do not demonstrate that the web designers had the right purpose in mind, or even any purpose. This article discusses our perspective of what your web site's purpose should be. A marketing tip on increasing exposure within an architects office is also included. (September 2003)
Getting Your E-Newsletter Through (August 2002)
Sending Your E-Newsletter (July 2002)
Developing Your E- Newsletter (June 2002)
Marketing with AIA Learning Units (May 2002)
Advertise on Google (March 2002)
Get More Visitors from Google (March 2002)
Key Search Engines (January 2002)
Make Your Web site Search Engine Friendly (December 2001)
A Five-Year Plan for Your Web site (October 2001)
2 Questions Before Advertising on the Internet (September 2001)
6 Tips to Speed Up Your Web site (discussing all of the techniques used be 4specs to make 4specs fast) Image Examples (July 2001)
Construction eCommerce - A Year Later (June 2001)
Web site Statistics - Part 2 - Examples of what information is available from your webserver (May 2001)
Web site Statistics - Part 1 - The mechanics of web site statistics (April 2001)
Web site Usability (February 2001)
Web site Objectives (January 2001)
What does an Architect or Engineer Want to Find On Your Web site (October 2000)
You Have 60 Seconds - Don't Waste Them! (September 2000)
WebFormat - This is the 4specs proposal for a standardized layout for manufacturers' web sites This is the paper published by the Construction Sciences Research Foundation. The full-sized sample pages used are:
- Home page - this is a sample home page. Key concepts:
  - You know what types of products they make and the CSI sections their products are generally in.
  - You know immediately the company name, address, phone number and email.
  - Loads very quickly
- Product page - this is a sample product page. One page for each product or product type.
  - You get an overview of all the data available.
  - The manufacturer can add pages as they are developed
- Specifications page - sample specs page. Could also be used for CAD details. Note specs are available in editable form using Word, WordPerfect and RTF formats.
Construction eCommerce - Hype and Reality (July 2000)
Protecting and Using Your Domain Name (January 2000)
Internet Advertising (October 1999)
Know Where Your Visitors Came From (July 1999)
Hits, Visitors and Referrals
Our Recommendations for Web Design - an overview of website recommendations for "specified" products.
Developing a Construction Product Web Site (1997 CSI Specifier article)
Deliver Your Product Information Using the Internet (1996 CSI Specifier article)