Category : Web Processes
Get Details about SOPA
Over the past few weeks, the Internet has exploded with furious users. In one of the most amazing shows of the Internet community coming together, businesses across the United States have blogged, tweeted and even blacked out their websites with the single goal of stopping the bill SOPA.
People like Matt Cutts, Jimmy Wales and Craig Newark worked together to influence members of Congress enough that the bill was shelved earlier this week. However, Congress brought it back, and it is set to be voted on next week. Many business websites have publicly opposed this bill together, by organizing a blackout on January 18.
But while many businesses fight back against this bill, several others wonder—what exactly is SOPA? Not everyone has been a part of this revolution, so it’s understandable that a lot of people got left in the dark on the subject.
What is SOPA?
SOPA stands for “Stop Online Piracy Act,” and is a bill that was introduced in late 2011. Wikipedia summarizes the details quite well, and we’ve included an excerpt here:
The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement.
Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites.
The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for 10 such infringements within six months. The bill would also give immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement. This would make copyright holders liable for damages, when they knowingly misrepresent that a website is dedicated to infringement.
Although Wikipedia is against SOPA, they provide a pretty fair representation of what it is. It’s a bill that could stifle free speech on the Internet, potentially censoring business websites that host content. It has good qualities, of course, as any bill would; supporters remind us that it will protect global intellectual property, and say that it’s needed in order to enforce copyright infringement on the Internet worldwide.
Smart Solutions’ Stance on SOPA
At this time, Smart Solutions does not support the SOPA bill in its current form, for the same reason that Internet professionals across the world don’t—it eliminates free speech on the Internet, and goes completely against the reason that the Internet was created in the first place.
Google has played a big part in this movement, and you can help them by signing their petition: End Piracy, Not Liberty.
What are your thoughts on SOPA? Let us know in the comments!
What is A/B Testing – Multivariate Testing for Websites
A/B testing—or multivariate testing—is an experiment that you can use to increase the productivity of your website. A/B testing shows visitors alternate versions of the same web page simultaneously and randomly, to help the website owner find out what elements of the page need to be fixed.
Although A/B testing can be applied to any website, it is most often used for testing e-commerce websites, because you can directly track conversions, and see just how certain elements of a page are limiting or increasing sales.
E-Commerce Website Testing
You can test just about everything on an e-commerce website, but it isn’t necessary or feasible to test everything at once. There are three key areas that get tested the most often, and are usually the most important parts of an e-commerce site. These are the call to action buttons, the product placement and the shopping cart.
A/B Testing E-Commerce Call to Action Buttons
The call to action button is probably the most A/B tested aspect of an e-commerce website. You can analyze the results of different colors, fonts, sizes and more through A/B testing. The different options will show up for different visitors, and you can test their reactions through conversions. The call to action button that does the best can be placed permanently on the site, and we can continue on to test a different aspect.
A/B Testing Product Placement
How do the products on your website invite a customer to click through and purchase? You can A/B test products by putting them in a different placement on the page, making images larger or smaller, or even renaming some of the products.
A/B Testing the Shopping Cart
They’ve followed your product placement, clicked your call-to-action, but then they abandon your shopping car. Why? There are a number of reasons that people abandon their shopping carts online, and we list a few below:
- Login
No one wants to remember another password! A/B test giving them the option of just checking in as a guest, against having to set up an account.
- Asking for too much information
You don’t need to know their birthday in order to sell them a product! Try A/B testing an option where they only have to fill in the essentials, against the option where they have to fill in everything.
- Using a trustmark
If the customer doesn’t trust you—they won’t buy from you. Try A/B testing with a McAfee trustmark, and see if your customers respond well.
A/B testing is a great tool to see what works and what doesn’t on your website, and it’s a feature that Smart Solutions offers to all of our customers. Get the most out of your website, and let us know if you want to try out some A/B testing on your site.
If you don’t currently have an e-commerce website, but are considering one, we’d love to help you convert your site to e-commerce! Give us a call or send us an email, and we’ll set up a meeting to discuss it.
Google’s Mobile Payment App – Google Wallet
Google is involved in a lot of areas of Internet marketing. As a search engine, they’re perfectly positioned to handle just about everything; many website owners believe that using Google’s services will provide them with more exposure, although there is no solid evidence supporting this view.
Google also, of course, has a hand in mobile technology—and not just in search—as an online payment service. This is Google Wallet.
What is Google Wallet?
Originally launched in September of 2011, Google Wallet is an online service that you access through your smartphone. It stores your credit cards on your phone, which allows you to pay for things by simply tapping or scanning your phone at their kiosks. Google’s main problem is that this application isn’t available at many locations right now—or on many phones.
The only way you can use this application in-store right now is if you own one of Sprint’s Nexus S 4G phones. In addition to that, you can only use it at select locations that feature the MasterCard PayPass. In Central Oregon, that’s a total of 26 places—most of which are 7 Elevens. You can search the Google Wallet website to see where you would be able to use the mobile Google Wallet in your area.
What is the Point of the Google Wallet?
Because of the limited number of people able to use this feature, a lot of people have wondered what the point is—why would Google choose to release a product that so few people would be able to use? The answer is this: money is becoming digital. The technology isn’t advancing very quickly right now, but it is coming—and Google wants to be at the forefront, labeled as an innovator.
Google Wallet is also taking over Google’s old online checkout system—so the wallet is becoming very integrated into Google’s ecommerce work. Any retailers who are currently using Google Checkout will now be moved into Google Wallet—although it will work in the same way.
So what are your thoughts on the integration of Google Wallet and Google Checkout? Can you see yourself using Google Wallet on your phone?
Happy World IPv6 Day. So, what is IPv6?
Today is June 8th—World IPv6 Day. Everyone at Smart Solutions would like you wish you Happy World IPv6 Day.
So what is IPv6?
The Internet operates by routing small packets of data independently across networks as specified by an international communications protocol known as the Internet Protocol (IP). Each packet of data contains two numeric addresses that are the packet’s origin and destination devices.
Since 1981, Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) was the publicly used version of the IP, and it is currently the foundation for most Internet communications. The growth of the Internet has mandated a need for more addresses than what IPv4 can provide. Its successor—Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) allows for vastly more addresses.
IPv6 allows the ability to build larger and more efficient networks and support greater international interoperability. Businesses can implement better just-in-time processes, increase mobility features and location-based services, leading to greater economies of scale. Examples include access to information in real time and increased remote business capabilities.
IPv6 versus IPv4
| Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) | Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) | |
| Address Size | 32-bit number | 128-bit number |
| Address Format | Dotted Decimal Notation: 192.149.252.76 |
Hexadecimal Notation: 3FFE:F200:0234:AB00: 0123:4567:8901:ABCD |
Table courtesy of American Registry for Internet Numbers
IPv4 currently supports a maximum of about 4.3 billion (4,294,967,296) unique IP address. IPv6 supports 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses. Try reading that number.
With the enormous growth for the need for new IP addresses, switching to IPv6 is the answer. IPv6 should meet the world’s IP addressing needs well into the future.
Benefits of IPv6
IPv6 implements additional features not present in IPv4.
IPv6 was designed with scalability and extensibility in mind. This allows many different kinds of devices besides personal computers, like mobile phones, notebooks and wireless handheld devices, to engage in using the Internet.
IPv6 simplifies aspects of address assignment, network renumbering and router announcements when changing Internet connectivity providers. Network security is also integrated into the design of the IPv6 architecture, and the IPv6 specification mandates support for IPsec as a fundamental interoperability requirement.
How about a fun IPv6 test?
Internet Explorer 6 is Dated
As you might have heard, Microsoft is ceasing support for Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) as of July 13, 2010, when it stops support for Windows XP SP2. This isn’t bad news. This nine year-old browser is showing its wear and doesn’t cut it with today’s web standards.
The higher-performing and more design-savvy websites of today require the latest versions of modern browsers for the best user experience. Considering both realities—support and performance issues—we want to encourage our customers to ask their viewers to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, Firefox or Safari for a better web experience. Supported browsers for admin include the latest two versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox
Our team doesn’t mind supporting older browser versions and understand some government agencies and companies use it. However, since working with IE6 is becoming ever more difficult, an extra fee for its support will be necessary moving forward.
We appreciate your understanding. If any additional browser-related questions come up, don’t hesitate to contact our team. Or, if you’re interested in the latest browser trends and statistics, check out:
http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
http://gs.statcounter.com/
How Mind Mapping Helps Smart Solutions’ Clients
For awhile now, our team has utilized Mind Mapping, from the tools from a great client, Mindjet. Mind Mapping has assisted in organizing client’s site architecture while easily and quickly highlighting areas of weaknesses for content structure. Recently, KM World Magazine interviewed Smart Solutions and posted an article, titled Enriching Web Sites and Engage Customers Better.
Excerpt:
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Firms that rely on advanced Internet services for their marketing, customer relations and other business processes are turning to knowledge management solutions that measure customer response to Web sites, in order to improve traffic and to identify customer preferences so they can retain them and boost sales.
Smart Solutions, a software and Web development company, was working with a local nonprofit firm that wanted to redevelop its Web site to gain new members and achieve higher attendance at events, many of them fundraisers.
“The non-profit wanted to drive traffic to the site, then have visitors engaged in a meaningful way,” says Smart Solutions President Mark Knowles. Smart Solutions was using MindManager 8 from Mindjet for meetings and to collect relevant information from the Internet and other resources. A feature of the software enabled Knowles to map the existing structure of the nonprofit organization’s Web site.
“By exporting the navigation structure of the site into MindManager, we were able to see the relationships between different [pages and elements],” Knowles says. MindManager displayed the navigation structure as different branches from the same tree, and it was easy to see that some branches weren’t grouped together properly, according to Knowles. That meant that it was difficult for users to navigate.
“The site was static. That tends to happen because Web sites are built organically, a page at a time. After a while, they become disorganized,” he says. “People would come there, but they would leave quickly.”
That’s if they found the site at all. According to Knowles, part of the organization’s problem was branding. People could find the site if they knew what to look for, but they would likely miss it if their search was less specific.
Google, Yahoo and similar services use site navigation as part of their search parameters, according to Knowles. “That’s part of the SEO [search engine optimization] puzzle,” he says.
Once the site was revamped, it was much more intuitive and easier to use, with the nonprofit organization benefiting as a result. Some wording was changed as well, helping to catch the attention of the search engines.
As a result, the site has seen a 25 percent increase in traffic and a 40 percent increase in conversions (memberships and attendance at events), Knowles says.
Full Article
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Mind Mapping, as well as the other products we use and love, help our team deliver client solutions for increased web traffic and conversions on their web sites.
Choosing the Right Business Name – from an Internet Marketing Perspective
What’s in a name? Frankly, a LOT. Any marketing and branding agency can go through the important details of naming a new business or one that is renaming from a brand perspective. It’s fascinating how business naming research is performed, tested and consumer analysis is created – in fact I totally respect it. However (and this is important), it is essential that this research is embodied from an Internet Marketing perspective.
Here’s how to protect yourself from online blindness when naming your business:
#1 – Make sure the domain name is available or easy to acquire ahead of time. Domain names, i.e. www.yourbusiness.com are the life force of branding online. Your domain availability should include these principles:
- You can “see it, spell it.” In other words, it’s simple
enough to resonate without a lot of possibility for misspellings. - Determine that most or all extensions are available. Everyone thinks of the ‘.com’ but it’s important to grab the important extensions (.net, .org, .us, etc.). If you’re a larger organization – grab as many as you can. Brand hijacking – by your competition buying those domains is not a pleasant situation to find yourself in.
- Misspellings are available. If there is a possibility of misspelling your domain name, grab all the necessary misspellings too. A random example would be: www.smithswarehouse.com – be sure to grab www.smithwarehouse.com and www.smithswearhouse.com
- Moderate length. We get the question, “Is my domain too long?” quite a bit actually. With domain names at a premium these days, it’s more important to “see it, spell it” than it is to keep it short. Moderate length of the domain is okay as long as it’s not overwhelming.
- Domain names (i.e. business names) with search specific keywords have a double advantage. Although sometimes this is not practical, it is helpful.
#2 – Evaluate the competitive landscape of your business name online. If it’s competitive, be prepared to have the resources necessary (time and money) to effectively launch an SEO campaign early. Here are some basic things to check when evaluating the competitiveness of your keyword phrases:
- Review the total number of Google results for your prospective business name. (As a very general rule of thumb – If it’s less than a total 250,000 results, and incorporate SEO from the beginning, you’ll be golden). Any words results over 1 Million – plan ahead for potentially robust ongoing SEO resources.
- Review PPC bids for your phrase, amount of PPC ads. You can use Google’s AdWords tool to evaluate the average bid amount for your business name. Anywhere over $1.00 per click mark may get expensive and is an indicator for the need of a moderately or severely competitive SEO marketplace.
- Evaluate the number of links/number of pages indexed of top results for your keyword phrases using tools such as the: Bruce Clay Toolbar, SEO Book , Yahoo Site Explorer. Plan on acquiring the same amount of links and pages of content indexed as the other top 10 listings. If this will take significant effort, that may be an indicator for a competitive marketplace.
- Evaluate whether you business name of choice has associations outside of your category. For example, a recent organization named their business the same name as a popular TV show – their rankings were buried at onset outside of local specific searches.
#3 – Check to see if your Social Media profiles are available. Social media is essential for business marketing in most all cases, so double check to see if your profiles/usernames are available. The big three would be Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – but that’s just a start. Social media profiles, such as: www.facebook.com/smartsolutions or www.twitter.com/smartsolutions are just as powerful, and just as limited, as domain names. Check profiles using www.knowem.com.
As you can see, there are many factors to determining a valid, compelling business name at the onset. Along with your branding, marketing research efforts – don’t shoot yourself in the foot before you get out of the gate by not reviewing the online marketplace of your potential business name F-I-R-S-T.
We welcome comments on example stories – please post!
By: Wendy Roe
Bend Blogging Panel – SmartGroup Recap Notes
Thanks to those who attended this past week’s September SmartGroup on Blogging. It was an energetic discussion and our panelist did an excellent job on speaking to the do’s and don’ts of both business and personal blogging. Below are the presentations from Andre Jensen and Meg Thompson as well as the notes from Jake Ortman and Jon Abernathy.
If we didn’t get to your specific blog question during the Q/A, please leave a comment here and we’ll create the ‘virtual panel!’
Notes from Jake Ortman (and a review of our general discussion on etiquette)
Some of these blatantly stolen from http://www.tipjunkie.com/2008/05/blog-etiquette-or-blogtiquette.html
For the Blogger
Give Credit where credit is due. If it’s not your content, don’t claim it. Link to the original author.
Don’t blog about something that will get you fired or cause you to lose a relationship, unless you’re comfortable with losing job or relationship.
(This is my biggest issue, personally): Don’t be long-winded. If you have a TON to say, break it up between several blog posts, and make sure to link them all together.
Don’t feed the trolls: Some visitors to your site will always post vitriol no matter what. It’ll just be a waste of your time no matter what. However, think twice or thrice before you delete inappropriate comments from your blog. Some of your best conversation will come from controversy.
But do respond to comments. It’s encouraging to your readers to know you’re involved.
Each blog you visit is the Internet “home” of someone. You wouldn’t dare walk into a home and run your mouth at the host. It’s inappropriate to do on blogs as well. It’s just ugly and you end up looking stupid. Don’t do it. It’s immature.
Don’t be the guy that always has to post “First Post!” or something equally inane. You generally only see this on high-traffic sites, what do these guys think they’re accomplishing? When I think about all the great moments in online history, this guy’s first post is not going to be on the top of my list.
Actually read the post you’re commenting on, because if you ask a question or bad-mouth the author for something they’ve already covered in the original post.
http://utterlyboring.com/archives/2003/09/30/have_a_small_penis.php
http://utterlyboring.com/archives/2003/06/13/how_to_cancel_an_aol_account_in_3_minutes.php
http://utterlyboring.com/archives/2004/09/06/another_great_gmail_hack.php
Don’t plug your own site unless it’s relevant to the discussion or original post. Plugging your diet pill on a site about the latest XBox games? Stupid. Plugging your site just for the sake of plugging it and attempting to get google juice? Unless there’s a compelling reason, I delete those comments.
Platforms:
-Sites using MovableType:
http://www.movabletype.com/showcase
BrackObama.com
BritneySpears.com
BoingBoing
NPR Blogs
Instapundit
Gothamist
ArsTechnica
BBC Blogs
Jason Kottke
Tips For Launching a New Website While Keeping SEO In Mind
We have potential clients call frequently with the intent of retooling their web site. The redesign is brought on typically by a multitude of reasons: “The design is old.”; “We have a new brand.” ; “We want to get found by more prospects.” Businesses and organizations that come with a goal of creating a successful balance of creative, search and content are the ones we know are serious.
Before moving or launching your new site, read the tips below and take note:
1) Define your goals
A redesign should focus on ways to impact your business, not just look pretty. What that means is every decision, from design layout, site architecture and SEO should be focused on your goals. Determine your goals in two ways:
The first is to determine what kind of traffic you would like to drive to your site.
Keyword research applies here.
Second, determine what you would like your visitor to do when they land on your site.
Conversion planning applies here. Conversion planning is a guide to the hierarchy of your site so that you guide your visitor to the conversion point (be it a page to read, a product to purchase, a form filled out, a phone call, etc.) and take them through a preplanned path to meet your goal – more leads coming through the door.
2) SEO Assest Inventory
One of the biggest mistakes you can make in launching a new site is to not protect your previous and current marketing efforts that have brought you awareness and conversions to date. In other words: great content, keywords you’re ranking with, inbound links to designated landing pages (and all important pages), successful conversion paths. This is SOOO important.
Many web design experts miss this when the design focus is more important than internet marketing. Discuss with your web designer and developer a plan to setup 301 redirects from your previous indexed URLs (the pages Google and other engines know about) to your new site structure.
3) Setup your Site Architecture To Match The Needs of Your Audience (both Human and Spider)
I’ve heard the saying that “spiders are like 4 year olds with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).” With the growing statistic, even of your human audience, of having a total of 7 seconds to make your first impression online, you can see that both site visitors need the ability to consume information quickly. A spider needs to see keyword directed content in the HTML of your page (like meta data for each page and content of the page as close to the top as possible, lean-mean code basically) – a human needs to quickly navigate and consume content specific to their interest. Setting up the site to create strategic landing pages, then drill down to topic specific pages through links (i.e. siloing) is a helpful advantage to delivering clean, clear content to both audiences.
4) Plan for an Ongoing Content Strategy
One of the best ways to grow awareness and traffic to your site and convert visitors is to develop a strategy for ongoing development for content. Quality, UNIQUE content (i.e. do not copy/paste from other sites) is king to attracting your audience (both human and engine spider) and keep them coming back for more. Build content, build your business faster.
Blogs have the history for frequently updated content, and spiders know it….a blog on your website is good. Not a blog as your website…I said a blog on your website. (future post)
5) Have Web Analytics In Place; Monitor Results
The only way to know whether you are satisfying your goal (and delivering results to your business to make up for the investment!) is to track and monitor your increase in visitors and conversions. As a general rule, if your end result is too design focused, you’ll see fewer leads; If it’s too search focused, you’ll see fewer conversions. With balance in mind, results you will have…your boss will thank you for it! Read more on Analytics
6) Test, Test and Test
“Oh testing, how we love thee.” What a way to determine what’s working and what’s not? Become friends with Google Website Optimizer. Testing is like a focus group, a controlled science experiment (9th grade science comes to mind). Testing demonstrates whether the influence your agency, design firm, neighbor or web developer offered is good advice. Let your visitors tell you what works best for them…then adapt 
Bend Oregon SmartGroup Adds Valuable Insights to Website Success
SmartGroup is a local usergroup setup for our Smart Solutions clients and prospective clients. We’ve covered monthly topics such as: SEO Basics, Newsletter Best Practices, Everything Images, Local Search, etc. Throughout the presentations, now offered in a both a day and evening session, we offer insights to best practices and tips and tricks to help our customers succeed.
Although our clients get the benefit of using the advice within our system, truly the SmartGroup is valuable to anyone in Bend, Oregon looking for some additional information about building successful websites and is open to come to a presentation. SmartGroups are free and beverages and snacks are provided!
Since we are on the phone daily answering client’s questions for best practices, we decided to bring education into a group setting and have the opportunity for our clients to learn from each other and discuss various web topics.
So, join us for the SmartGroup (the last Tuesday of every month) and position your business at the forefront of your competition. Signup now or view upcoming topics online!
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