Category Archives: How To

GoDaddy Website Tonight Review

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GoDaddy Website Tonight product is just what many people these days are probably looking for. When looking to create or build a website it can be a daunting task if you have not done it before. And like so many other tasks you may only do it once. Therefore do you need to learn everything and become a pro or do you just want a web presence fast? Here is a review of a product from Go Daddy that does just that, builds a website for you quickly.

Website Tonight Coupon FAN123 – 20% Off

* use the coupon at checkout for 20% off the already low prices

Website Tonight Review

The Website Tonight product has an aptly named platform. The idea is that you will sign up and within no time have a web site tonight complete with a professional design, graphics, and the text you want. You choose the look and feel of the site you want, choose the color combinations, and your own text and you are done. Here is more about the website tonight review.

How it Works
You start by choosing a template from their library. They have different design and color combinations for the templates. There are also full pre-built websites. Think about the typical website building process. You may work with an individual or a company that discusses your needs and wants and then creates some mock ups of how the site will look. Next you pick a mock up and then they go to work creating the site. This site could take a week or more to create and may be very costly. But with the Go Daddy Website Tonight product you get an entire website already built and you choose from the library.

You pick the color and design. You then simply click on the pages and add the text you want. The process is really that simple. They call the text adding a simple click and type. You can add graphics from a library they provide. You also get a built in photo album and can add video. Go Daddy provides all the pieces to the “used to be” complex website building process. But not any more. Be up and running in no time. You may be worried that the one size fits all websites will not be unique, think again, here is why.

Worried about Your Site Being Unique?
There are over 3,000 different combinations of design and color in the template library. Of the pre built websites they have 120 complete websites. There are also over 8,700 images you can add to your site. With over 3,000 combinations, the ability to add from 8,700 images and the ease of dragging and dropping sections to change the layout you will have no problem creating a site unique to you. I hope this website tonight review has been helpful.

Auto Detect Visitors Devices

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There are so many devices these days you have to be careful not to have your desire to provide the best experience for all users backfire. An article by google about Android user-agent information pointed out an interesting difference between mobile users and tablet users. Why does this matter to you? If you, as a marketer, or someone with a site needs to assure your users have the best possible experience you need to understand how those dealing with your site operations handle different devices. You may wish to provide a different site experience depending on whether the visitor is using a full size browser on a computer, using their mobile phone (and which kind) and also tablets.

androidWhat google points out is that by looking for the user agent “android” does not necessarily mean the visitor is using a mobile phone as they may be using a tablet. In this case it is possible you will want to provide a mobile optimized site to those with android on a phone and a full browser experience to those using android on a tablet which has a much larger screen. Read the full google article above for specifics on how to do this, and/or send it to your tech team.

Amazon Email Service

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Use the Best Email Service
These days you do not need to reinvent the wheel. Most importantly some of the largest and most successful e-commerce companies are not only telling you how they do what they do but letting you use their infrastructure. Sounds crazy doesn’t it, but in Amazon’s case it is true. Obviously they email a large number of customers for a variety of reasons. Chances are this system of theirs has been put through a battery of tests and obviously proven itself over time. What if you could access it on a ‘pay as you go’ basis? You can. Here what they have to say about it:

Through a simple API call, businesses can now access a high-quality, scalable email infrastructure to efficiently and inexpensively communicate to their customers. For high email deliverability, Amazon SES uses content filtering technologies to scan a business’s outgoing email messages to help ensure that the content meets ISP standards.

Read more here at Amazon.

Let the Social Community Work for You

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Social Community Does the Work for You
A while ago websites created their own content, much like a magazine would create their own content. The only user, or community, generated content came from letters sent to the editor and usually occupied a page or two of the magazine. Websites began with content created by the website editors. Fast forward to present day and instead of only 1 or 2% of the content coming from the audience it is in some cases 100% or close to it. Take a look at Squidoo, the majority of the content is from the audience or community. Provide them with the best tools and ability to openly communicate with you and others in the community and your site / service will thrive.

Create the Right Environment and Your Community Will Thrive
In the past, since the days of Bulletin Board Systems, forums were the typical community interaction. Usually a thread between users on various topics. These days communities are allowing users to register with their site, create a profile, and integrate discussions into the sites. Providing easy communication among members can often assist with spurring creativity from the community. Here is a great example of a site OutSpark that has done that and more. OutSpark provides MMORPG games.

OutSpark Community
Not only can players interact within the games that OutSpark provides but also on the site outside of the game. Each game has it’s own community area and encourages interaction, you can join as a user and begin communicating with others. Here is a thread where a community member created a magazine about the game Fiesta.

Success from OutSpark
Obviously OutSpark has been successful in marketing to their audience and providing the right environment for their community members to thrive as evidenced by the magazine created for members by members.

* disclaimer – through POA LLC we work with OutSpark

Timing Your Email Marketing

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Email Marketing – What Day / Time is Best?
You may be wondering one of two things, “what is this guy talking about, timing of day/hour?” or “I know what’s best because I have read some reports”. I wrote this to say that none of it matters to you. The why is below. I had an online advertising startup in the 90′s. We created a banner ad network as well as a permission based email network. Clients would pay us to either reach the inboxes of particular audiences or to run their own newsletters.

What Times Worked?
We found that on certain days and times the number of emails opened was higher or lower. However the caveat is that we are talking about emails opened and not necessarily conversions. In some instances you may be happy with opens (branding campaigns I guess) but usually what is desired is the call to action is acted upon resulting in some sort of conversion. Interestingly enough we found Thursdays in the afternoon to have the highest open rates, that was 10 years ago. A study two years ago by Aweber found the same results, but again keep reading as it may be useless information for you.
email marketing
A 2008 study.

Monday – 13.67%
Tuesday – 13.21%
Wednesday – 14.07%
Thursday – 14.52%
Friday – 13.25%
Saturday – 12.09%
Sunday – 13.26%

Also the time was that 2-3PM Eastern Time also had the largest open rate.

However none of this matters to you.

What Day/Time Should You Send Your Newsletter?
I happen to be a big-disbeliever in information I read. I always want to run my own tests and either validate or disprove what I have been told by studies like the above. The study above is correct in the aggregate and matches what I found after running an advertising network for many years. That is, that in the aggregate the open rates are higher on Thursday afternoons (EST).

Don’t Believe It
But when does the aggregate matter to you? The answer is rarely (I want to say never but that’s not entirely true). We operate multiple sites in completely different industries which have entirely different audiences. The audiences vary in gender, age, income, education, employment, etc. We have found that each one has completely different reactions (open rates, click rates, call to action conversion rates) depending on the time and day. Therefore we send our newsletters out on different days and times depending on the audiences.

Your Audience is Unique
Therefore the reason I say that the aggregate does not matter to you is that your audience is unique. You need to determine the best day and time to send your newsletter and it may surprise you.

Measure Yourself
Using a system like Aweber’s which tracks open rates and clicks, you can run your own tests. Ultimately you will want to track the open, click and conversion rates. Keep a spreadsheet with a matrix of days and times. Then send your newsletter, or other correspondence, on a different day and time. Track the open, click and conversion rates for each. Once you have narrowed in on days and times that have the best conversions for you then test again to validate your findings.

I am a big believer in testing, measuring and analyzing. Below you can test drive Aweber with a free trial, or use any of the other online newsletter tools to automate the process and start your own tests. Good luck.

Give Aweber a Try
I use Aweber for our newsletters. It automates everything for you. There are templates for your newsletter such that you only have to add the text and it sends both text or html. It takes care of the sign up forms for you as well as the unsubscribes. The emails are sent in a matter of minutes. Also you will see the breakdown of open rates and clicks on links, as well as which link was clicked. You can set your newsletter to be sent in advance, choose a day and time and it will be sent accordingly. They also have an auto-responder – a nice to have along with the newsletter functionality.


Can You Have More Sales, Too?
Helping over 75,000 businesses like yours raise profits and build customer relationships using AWeber’s opt-in email marketing software for over 10 years.
Take a Free Test Drive today!

Internet is Third Most Popular News Platform

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According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project the internet is now the third most popular news platform, see their study entitled Understanding the Participatory News Consumer. The internet is third behind local and national television news. It is a ahead of national print newspapers, local print newspapers and radio. To me this is substantial.

Unreachable Demographic
Also in their report is that 6 in 10 get news from a combination of online and offline sources on a typical day. As I read news on my mobile device I realize too that I do not consume as much news with a newspaper as I once did, or as my father did. To reach me through advertising it must be online, otherwise I am an unreachable demographic. More individuals are fitting into this category daily.

In my opinion a marketing campaign used to be a mix of different forms of media to reach a demographic, such as print, radio, magazines, newspapers. However these days I believe it is entirely possible that some demographics can only be reached by one form of media, online media. My two cents.

Their report is excellent, take a look through the link above.

POST and IP checking tool

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For developers, here is a tool called Post Parrot. As a developer you can send POST variables to the sites home page and it echos back what was in the post. This is a great tool to help you debug. It also show the client IP and the headers that were sent.

Fast Form Testing
For super fast form testing, instead of just printing it out, or when you are testing a post that does not go to your own site this is ideal.

post toolParticularly when you are sending a post to another site this comes in handy. Many basic tools exist out there that save a ton of time. If you are a developer this is one of them.

Link Google AdSense to Google Analytics

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Why Link the Accounts?
If you use Google Analytics for your website statistics and place Google AdSense advertisements you can link the two accounts. But why would you care? By linking the accounts you are provided with information on which pages are generating adsense revenue. After analyzing the information you can better optimize your site, your pages, and the adsense code itself (type of ads, colors, font etc.) to increase the adsense revenue from your site. Simply placing adsense code is not enough to maximize your revenue, you need to optimize to increase your revenue per page and ultimately per site.

Linking Google AdSense with Analytics
Within AdSense on the main page, after you login, you will find a link to connect the two accounts. If you already have Google Analytics you can choose that option, or if you do not it will allow you to create an account. If you do have an account the next screen will show you all the sites you have in your analytics account. You simply check which ones you wish to link and you are done. However, it will only work if your login email address for AdSense is the same as your login email address for Analytics. If they are different, then read on to connect the accounts.

What If You Login With Different Emails?
This is why I wrote this article. It is a little confusing if your logins for AdSense and Analytics are different. But here is the fix. You login to your analytics account and at the top you choose the link that reads Analytics Settings, then at the bottom of the page you choose to Add a User. Now when you add a user you have to add the email address that you use to login to your AdSense account and you MUST make them an Account Administrator.

Once you have set up that new user in Analytics, return to your AdSense Account. Now click the link again on the main page to link AdSense with Analytics. This time when you choose the option that states you already have an analytics account it will take you to the next page where you choose which site profiles you want to link. It now works because you created an administrator user on your Analytics account that matches the user login on your AdSense account.

That is it, now after a few hours once the two are linked by Google you can begin to analyze your account.

GoDaddy Holiday Deal

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You can obtain a years worth of hosting as well as a .COM domain registration for under $50. By using the coupon FAV20 you will obtain both for $47.07.

For Domain and Hosting
To obtain the deal you choose your hosting which must be a one year subscription. Choose either the Economy or the WordPress Economy if you would like WordPress pre-installed and add to your cart. Next find the .COM domain you would like and add it to your cart as well. If the total is $47.07 then the code has been applied, see the image to the right. If not, then put in the code FAV20 into the promotional area and click to apply the code.

godaddy_deal

New eBook

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I put out a new eBook today. The first book was over 40 pages and too much content. So instead we decided to create a straight forward book focused on just setting up a new website with domain as quickly as possible. This book walks you through a set up to be done in merely an hour or two and and entire year of website hosting as well as domain registration for under $50.

Dare I say you actually could give a domain and website as a Christmas gift? Simply turn over the login name and password to the recipient and they will have their own site, complete with domain and email. Regardless, subscribe to the newsletter on the right and the confirmation email will have a link to the book.