Archive for December, 2005
While I am willing to redesign a Web site any time a client finds it convenient to do so, some planning may help you choose the best time for your project. I’ll keep this short and easy to understand.
Some consequences of redesigning your Web site no matter how well your designer plans and executes the project are:
- Re-orientation of existing customers who have grown accustomed to the status quo.
- Probable search engine results dip for from one week to 3 months, especially on Google’s pages as your new pages are indexed.
- There will be a period of several weeks of bug-testing and tweaking of your Web site post-launch.
Because of these factors, I suggest redesigning your Web site three months before you need the improvements the redesign affords. I often work on much shorter notice, but your stress level and the pressure you experience will be much less with some advance planning. It is always best to redesign a Web site during the off season.
December 15th, 2005
For anyone interested in Christmas gifts for the hard-to-please nature lover should consider a maple syrup gift basket from Golden Maple Shanty. Why? For one thing, I just redesigned their Web site and it is easy to use and easy on the eyes. For another, their maple products are pure New York State Grade A - the real deal.
Another client who offers great holiday gifts is Adirondack Rug Braiding. Artisan Helen Condon offers hand braided 100% wool rugs that will grace your floors for generations.
… and thanks for supporting my clients.
December 14th, 2005
According to O’Reilly’s Emerging Telephony blog yesterday, Yahoo! is challenging Skype for computer to phone and phone to computer voice calling. I’ll be watching this over the next few months. The world of telephony is being remade!
December 14th, 2005
What does this post have to do with online marketing? Any online marketing resulting in a sale requires a payment processing company. Some choose Authorize.net, their local bank, or a third party processor like 2checkout.com or PayPal. Any online payment processing system will expose you to fraud risk because they require you to enter personal financial information online. I hope this post will help you identify scams and become a wiser consumer of online payment processing services.
Recently, several people have sought my advice regarding emails that came to their inbox soliciting information regarding personal finances such as credit cards and bank accounts. The company the email represented was highly trusted and so some responded more openly than perhaps they should have. These unfortunate ones are victims of a clever identity theft technique that has been dubbed “phishing.”
Though the most commonly misrepresented companies are PayPal and eBay, email phishing scams are also attempted for any market that a criminal decides to target.
The scam is, in general, quite simple.
- Gain access to customer correspondence from the target company such as eBay or Paypal.
- Steal the graphics and re-use them in your own email.
- Most importantly, mask web addresses with fake URLs. Here is a simple example that uses PayPal’s address but points to my company’s Web site: http://www.paypal.com
- A variation on the masked URL is the solicitation of financial and personal info in a form contained within the email message body.
Some things to look for then are masked URLs, forms embedded in email body text, and any email requesting financial information the company you are dealing with should not need or already has obtained from you via their secure Web site.
I’ve covered some of the absolute basics here. These guidelines should help you begin to assess risks from email, but more resources are needed.
PayPal has posted an excellent page that offers a great deal more information and very useful visual aids at https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/general/SecuritySpoof-outside
December 12th, 2005
Since a big part of marketing online depends on understanding what your customer is doing on your Web site, I am pleased to see that Google has decided to offer the Urchin Analytics hosted service free of charge.
In what seems to be a bid to further control online advertising revenues, Google has tightly integrated the new Google Analytics with its pay-per-click arms, Adwords & Adsense.
Now the reality check. I went to the Google Analytics Web site to sign up and begin registering my clients for more advanced reporting tools (Who wouldn’t want that?). What I found instead of a registration area was a form soliciting my name and email address.
I am now officially on a waiting list for free analytics.
But how long is this free analytics waiting list? Analytics and Adwords are tightly integrated. I am guessing that the companies with the most revenue generation in the Adwords/Adsense program are being offered analytics first.
In the final analysis, this means that the rest of us may have to wait a long time.
December 5th, 2005
A few months ago I made the switch to Vonage from Verizon and it saved me a bundle. I now have a telephone line for pennies on the dollar and can call all over the globe with very little added to my monthly bill. I am happy as a clam.
Lately, however, there has been some buzz about Skype. This brings me to my question. Will Skype Become a Telephony Replacement Service?
When I made the decision to choose Vonage over standard land-line service, I looked into Skype. At that time, Skype-Out was in its infancy. Skype-Out is the Skype service that lets users call standard land-line numbers. I had hoped that Skype-Out was what I needed and that I could save even more money that Vonage saved me.
I was wrong. At that time, Skype did not offer a true telephony service. It did not interface with 911 emergency dialing for one thing. No incoming calls were available from landline phones for another. Browsing their Web site today I noticed that this disclaimer is still in place. “Skype is not a telephony replacement service and cannot be used for emergency dialing.”
Now, Skype offers another component of telephony replacement: SkypeIn. Now Skype allows customers to receive calls, with their own phone number, as well as make them. Skype offers voicemail as well. What’s left before we no longer need a telephone or more advanced service?
Sweetening the deal even more, the Skype folks recently launched a beta service that adds video conferencing to its growing suite of services. With their considerable investment in features and upgrades since I last looked seriously at them, it seems that the only piece of the telephony replacement puzzle that is missing is emergency dialing.
It looks to me like Skype may be a viable telephony replacement service in months. Perhaps it already is for some small businesses.
… now off to Skype to try another download and test …
December 1st, 2005
