Email automation the cost is very low and high potential of financial return and consumer engagement. Email works for businesses of all sizes. If the business automates most or all of its email marketing activity, they stand to benefit the most.
If you are an email marketer then, you are aware how time intensive managing email communications and campaigns can be. Testing of different email techniques (text / HTML) and strategies to get the best ROI.
Automated emails are of three types: recurring, transactional and threshold.
Recurring emails are based on a specific date or timeframe. Recurring emails are is used in various online services, such as weekly reports and also to maintain a level of consistent engagement with the customers. Example, setting up a recurring reminder to buy additional supplies or renew a subscription. This requires deep integration with existing software systems.
Transactional email is just a single email following a transaction. It can be a confirmation email after purchase or a welcome email after signup or request for information. Online buyers expect transactional email so it is important to test message types. Consider a transactional email to be the trigger for a "drip campaign"; a series of messages triggered by an event such as a purchase. This is called lifecycle messaging. Drip emails can be useful in B2B email marketing, because you have a longer sales cycle.
Threshold email occurs when customers behavior reaches a certain point. Example: a customer purchased five items in a period of six months. A threshold email can be sent to the customer to offer a percentage discount on the next purchase. It could also be used in reverse thresholds, example: emails could be sent to those who have purchased only one product and did not buy another for six months. Sending an email with the survey about their specific purchase behavior can provide meaningful data.
As you might imagine, combing through databases to find the right audience segments
and aligning that with marketing objectives can quickly become overwhelming. Select
one of the many email service providers offering segmentation, integration with popular software solutions (e-commerce or CRM) and plan ahead, setting up recurring and threshold campaigns, and continually reviewing transactional emails for opportunities.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Friday, July 1, 2011
Live Chat and Video Chat Customer Service
ITSRx is an online specialty pharmacy that dispenses drugs for serious and chronic diseases like cancer,hepatitis C and multiple sclerosis. Many of the medications have to be injected, which means the retailer’s customer service agents often have to assuage the concerns of those new to the drugs.
For years the retailer handled those requests via e-mail,phone, mail or fax. But last September it launched both a webcam-based video chat and a text-based live chat program. The video chat service gives customers the option of scheduling one-on-one private consultations via webcam with ITSRx pharmacists. A customer, for example, can
show the pharmacist how he is injecting the needle to see if he is doing it correctly. Or he can talk with the pharmacist about drug interactions or side effects.
“Customers can be 1,500 miles away from the pharmacist but video chat brings them together like they are in person,” says Brian Smith, director of information technology at ITSRx. And the retailer’s text-based chat lets consumers get order-related questions—such as scheduling delivery and refi ll requests—answered quickly.
Since adding the two chat options, ITSRx’s call volume dropped, saving the company about 25% in call related costs. Moreover, the pharmacy’s web site conversion rate increased 20%.
The retailer is not alone in adding new technologies like video chat and more established methods like live chat to enhance customer service. A recent survey from market research fi rm Datamonitor shows 98% of companies offer phone support, 90% e-mail support and 25% live chat. Each additional service channel means more consumers can get the help they need, however they want it.
Live Chat
More web retailers are adding live chat as consumers become more comfortable with communicating by typing questions and comments into chat boxes on web sites. For instance, 58% of U.S. consumers say they’ve interacted with an e-retailer using live chat, up from 54% last year, according to a recent survey by retail consultancy e E-tailing Group Inc. Moreover, 20% of consumers say live chat is their preferred way to interact with a merchant.
“Adoption is on the rise generally, and there is a significant population of web site visitors who prefer live chat as a contact method,” says Lauren Freedman, president of e E-tailing Group. “It’s only been a short time that consumers have truly been able to take advantage of live chat, and to see that it is almost equal in preference to the telephone is exciting and transformative.”
Chat’s effectiveness was particularly apparent during the 2010 holiday season when 77% of e-retailers who used live chat rated it a critical communication method, up from 69% a year earlier, according to a recent survey. In part that’s because more than half, 54%, said customers who engaged in online chats with retailers over the holidays converted to a lead or sale 20% or more of the time.
The survey also found that proactive chat—when an e-retailer invites a consumer to chat based on her on-site behavior—yielded higher conversion rates than when
consumers asked to chat with the e-retailer.
Video Chat
Chat is about building connections, says Joan Conlin, vice president of customer care services at Lands’ End, which is a subsidiary of Sears Holdings Corp.
Fostering that relationship is important, she says. “Establishing personal connections with our customers has always been an important part of who we are at Lands’ End,” says Conlin. “Offering our LandsEnd.com users real-time, one-on-one personal shopper assistance makes online shopping even more efficient and enjoyable.”
The retailer recently launched Lands’ End Live, a new live video chat service that lets shoppers see and talk to a personal shopping assistant as they trade messages on
LandsEnd.com. The retailer says the service is the first of its kind offered by an apparel retailer in the U.S.—making it a novelty that attracts consumers’ attention.
It’s a one-way video service: the customer can see the retailer’s agent, but not the other way around. That way the consumer can be comfortable shopping in her pajamas. Meanwhile, the personal shopping assistants can navigate the site, provide product recommendations, compare merchandise, demonstrate product features and discuss details about merchandise colors and patterns.
Shoppers on LandsEnd.com access the online tool by clicking the Live Help button on the site’s customer service pages. e site opens a brief welcome video, and shoppers
can get more details by selecting the Find Out More option. They can launch the video chat by clicking the Help Me Now button at the bottom of the browser window.
Web site visitors who launch Lands’ End Live video chat can communicate with the agent via voice using a headset or their computer’s built-in microphone and speakers, or by typing in comments into a text message box. Lands’ End personal shoppers can demonstrate product features and details, as well as help navigate the
web site regardless of the chat option selected.
Serving the Customer
Retailers have ample possibilities when it comes to deciding what customer service tools to off er—regardless of whether they outsource some or all of their customer service functions. But key to determining what tools a retailer needs is a thorough understanding of who its customers are, says Justin Christopher, marketing and sales director of Jenson USA, a retailer of bicycle and accessories.
For instance, because roughly 15% of Jenson USA’s sales come from abroad, the retailer offers a language translator in its live chat. And because its high-end bicycles have long sales cycles, consumers—particularly those who will have to deal with an international shipment—want to ensure the product meets their expectations, he says.
Meanwhile, a retailer like Offi ce Depot Inc. aims to speed up its customers’ ordering process by using a customer relationship management system that determines
whether the consumer has called the retailer before,the content of previous contacts with customer service,and, if he’s a member of the retailer’s Worklife Rewards
program, nearly every item he’s ordered in the past.
Retailers have to pay heed to the tools they’re offering shoppers because the consumers who demand the most online customer service are also those who spend the
most on the web—that is, at least $301 annually for travel, apparel and consumer electronics, according to a recent survey. 65% of apparel shoppers rate online customer service extremely or very important for web shopping and 59% of consumer electronics shoppers say the same thing.
Additionally, 53% of survey respondents who shop online more than once a month deem customer service extremely or very important, compared with 45% who shop online once a month and 40% who shop online every four to six months. at means that retailers can’t afford not to focus on customer service because the consumers who most want
outstanding service are also a merchant’s best customers.
For years the retailer handled those requests via e-mail,phone, mail or fax. But last September it launched both a webcam-based video chat and a text-based live chat program. The video chat service gives customers the option of scheduling one-on-one private consultations via webcam with ITSRx pharmacists. A customer, for example, can
show the pharmacist how he is injecting the needle to see if he is doing it correctly. Or he can talk with the pharmacist about drug interactions or side effects.
“Customers can be 1,500 miles away from the pharmacist but video chat brings them together like they are in person,” says Brian Smith, director of information technology at ITSRx. And the retailer’s text-based chat lets consumers get order-related questions—such as scheduling delivery and refi ll requests—answered quickly.
Since adding the two chat options, ITSRx’s call volume dropped, saving the company about 25% in call related costs. Moreover, the pharmacy’s web site conversion rate increased 20%.
The retailer is not alone in adding new technologies like video chat and more established methods like live chat to enhance customer service. A recent survey from market research fi rm Datamonitor shows 98% of companies offer phone support, 90% e-mail support and 25% live chat. Each additional service channel means more consumers can get the help they need, however they want it.
Live Chat
More web retailers are adding live chat as consumers become more comfortable with communicating by typing questions and comments into chat boxes on web sites. For instance, 58% of U.S. consumers say they’ve interacted with an e-retailer using live chat, up from 54% last year, according to a recent survey by retail consultancy e E-tailing Group Inc. Moreover, 20% of consumers say live chat is their preferred way to interact with a merchant.
“Adoption is on the rise generally, and there is a significant population of web site visitors who prefer live chat as a contact method,” says Lauren Freedman, president of e E-tailing Group. “It’s only been a short time that consumers have truly been able to take advantage of live chat, and to see that it is almost equal in preference to the telephone is exciting and transformative.”
Chat’s effectiveness was particularly apparent during the 2010 holiday season when 77% of e-retailers who used live chat rated it a critical communication method, up from 69% a year earlier, according to a recent survey. In part that’s because more than half, 54%, said customers who engaged in online chats with retailers over the holidays converted to a lead or sale 20% or more of the time.
The survey also found that proactive chat—when an e-retailer invites a consumer to chat based on her on-site behavior—yielded higher conversion rates than when
consumers asked to chat with the e-retailer.
Video Chat
Chat is about building connections, says Joan Conlin, vice president of customer care services at Lands’ End, which is a subsidiary of Sears Holdings Corp.
Fostering that relationship is important, she says. “Establishing personal connections with our customers has always been an important part of who we are at Lands’ End,” says Conlin. “Offering our LandsEnd.com users real-time, one-on-one personal shopper assistance makes online shopping even more efficient and enjoyable.”
The retailer recently launched Lands’ End Live, a new live video chat service that lets shoppers see and talk to a personal shopping assistant as they trade messages on
LandsEnd.com. The retailer says the service is the first of its kind offered by an apparel retailer in the U.S.—making it a novelty that attracts consumers’ attention.
It’s a one-way video service: the customer can see the retailer’s agent, but not the other way around. That way the consumer can be comfortable shopping in her pajamas. Meanwhile, the personal shopping assistants can navigate the site, provide product recommendations, compare merchandise, demonstrate product features and discuss details about merchandise colors and patterns.
Shoppers on LandsEnd.com access the online tool by clicking the Live Help button on the site’s customer service pages. e site opens a brief welcome video, and shoppers
can get more details by selecting the Find Out More option. They can launch the video chat by clicking the Help Me Now button at the bottom of the browser window.
Web site visitors who launch Lands’ End Live video chat can communicate with the agent via voice using a headset or their computer’s built-in microphone and speakers, or by typing in comments into a text message box. Lands’ End personal shoppers can demonstrate product features and details, as well as help navigate the
web site regardless of the chat option selected.
Serving the Customer
Retailers have ample possibilities when it comes to deciding what customer service tools to off er—regardless of whether they outsource some or all of their customer service functions. But key to determining what tools a retailer needs is a thorough understanding of who its customers are, says Justin Christopher, marketing and sales director of Jenson USA, a retailer of bicycle and accessories.
For instance, because roughly 15% of Jenson USA’s sales come from abroad, the retailer offers a language translator in its live chat. And because its high-end bicycles have long sales cycles, consumers—particularly those who will have to deal with an international shipment—want to ensure the product meets their expectations, he says.
Meanwhile, a retailer like Offi ce Depot Inc. aims to speed up its customers’ ordering process by using a customer relationship management system that determines
whether the consumer has called the retailer before,the content of previous contacts with customer service,and, if he’s a member of the retailer’s Worklife Rewards
program, nearly every item he’s ordered in the past.
Retailers have to pay heed to the tools they’re offering shoppers because the consumers who demand the most online customer service are also those who spend the
most on the web—that is, at least $301 annually for travel, apparel and consumer electronics, according to a recent survey. 65% of apparel shoppers rate online customer service extremely or very important for web shopping and 59% of consumer electronics shoppers say the same thing.
Additionally, 53% of survey respondents who shop online more than once a month deem customer service extremely or very important, compared with 45% who shop online once a month and 40% who shop online every four to six months. at means that retailers can’t afford not to focus on customer service because the consumers who most want
outstanding service are also a merchant’s best customers.
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Machine to Machine
M2M has ushered in an age where people, machines, devices and networks are all connected and able to interact with one another. Traditional M2M purpose-built devices differ from consumer facing devices. Firstly, consumer-facing devices have a shorter expected life span and they are typically designed with a specific function in mind or single purpose devices.
These single purpose devices are self contained microprocessors and sensors embedded into everyday objects and connected to networks interpreting and transmitting data without the need of human intervention. These devices apply to business, but there are many consumer single purpose devices too. These are called consumer M2M and include a personal GPS unit, a connected photo frame and an ereader. The primary purpose of each of these devices is the transfer of data to make a realtime decision.
A consumer connected device, on the other hand, is considered a multi-purpose product that can serve, among a multitude of uses, a machine to machine function. When discussing the definition of multi-purpose device, they are products connected over a network that receive and transmit data enabled by human intervention. An example is a tablet.
The ereader is considered a single purpose device. The single-purpose action provides an individual with the ability to purchase, download and read ebooks and magazines.
In the case of a tablet, while part of its functionality can be defined as providing an M2M function, this is not the sole purpose of the device. Tablets offer a wide range of functionality, such as HD video, digital cameras, multi-touch display, music and much more. For this reason a tablet is considered a multi-purpose device.
Both an ereader and tablet fall under a broad definition of connected device, based on primary purpose, each device falls under more specific single-purpose and multi-purpose device subsets respectively.
These single purpose devices are self contained microprocessors and sensors embedded into everyday objects and connected to networks interpreting and transmitting data without the need of human intervention. These devices apply to business, but there are many consumer single purpose devices too. These are called consumer M2M and include a personal GPS unit, a connected photo frame and an ereader. The primary purpose of each of these devices is the transfer of data to make a realtime decision.
A consumer connected device, on the other hand, is considered a multi-purpose product that can serve, among a multitude of uses, a machine to machine function. When discussing the definition of multi-purpose device, they are products connected over a network that receive and transmit data enabled by human intervention. An example is a tablet.
The ereader is considered a single purpose device. The single-purpose action provides an individual with the ability to purchase, download and read ebooks and magazines.
In the case of a tablet, while part of its functionality can be defined as providing an M2M function, this is not the sole purpose of the device. Tablets offer a wide range of functionality, such as HD video, digital cameras, multi-touch display, music and much more. For this reason a tablet is considered a multi-purpose device.
Both an ereader and tablet fall under a broad definition of connected device, based on primary purpose, each device falls under more specific single-purpose and multi-purpose device subsets respectively.
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Saturday, June 4, 2011
hash-bang URL
Hash-bang URLs are URL, that, directly after domain itself, start with '#!'- for example twitter.com/anoop becomes twitter.com/#!/anoop. The part of the URL that uniquely identifies the content of the page is then added at the end. This technique is aimed at improving performance- it is aimed at not entirely reloading an entire page when you only need to reload a small piece of it. But it does come with serious downsides.
Uniform Resource Locator
The term Uniform Resource Locator specifies the location of a certain resource, such as a web page. Since a location is the identification of a place, any URL is also a URI or Uniform Resource Identifier. However, a URL specifies not just a location of a URI but also the method for accessing it- the scheme or protocol.
Here, we focus on web addresses that use the HTTP protocol, and ignore such things as MAILTO, FTP or FILE, as well as ports, embedded usernames and passwords. An HTTPS address is the same as any regular HTTP URL, with the added requirement that it uses a secure connection.
Domain
The www is not part of the domain. It's merely a subdomain that is commonly used by websites. Whether you use www.domain.com or just domain.com, both addressesshould get visitors to one and the same website.
Path
The path is one of the most important parts of URL design and should be created like a folder structure, using forward slashes, regardless of your backend server setup. Each unique page of your website or web application should have its own unique path.
Keep your paths as short as possible.
Query strings
The majority of websites enable visitors to search. This is what query strings are best for as well as related actions such as filtering and sorting the contents of a page.
A lot of server-side systems misused query string parameters to server different pages of a site, such as domain.com/index.php?p=aboutme other sites went one step further and rewrote search query strings as a path. These are both bad practices. A query string should be treated as an optional addition to the page; the URL should work to produce a valid and useful page even when it is removed.
Fragment Identifiers
Is the only part of the URL that doesn't get sent to the server hosting the page. Instead, it is meant to identify a specific location inside the resulting page.
Browsers can navigate between multiple fragment identifiers without reloading the page. Since, this is a desirable user experience browser vendors created the HTML5 history API, which is the appropriate technique for navigating around sites without triggering page reloads.
Breaking the Agreement
A Uniform Resource Locator is a Uniform Resource Identifier that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. A hash-bang based URL insufficiently specifies the mechanism for retrieving the content, as it requires as Javascript round trip to the server after the server has already sent the browser an HTML page- a page that doesn't have the content associated with the requested URL yet. And that's all assuming the Javascript is not filtered out by some proxy server or firewall, and doesn't contain any errors anywhere in the page. When users turn Javascript off in their browser, these sites will stop working. Having the entire site rely on fragile techniques isn't bad enough, hash-bangs are a one way street to permanent maintenance and support.
Bad Practices
There are many different ways to design you URLs. We should know what makes for bad URL design in order to fully understand and appreciate good URL design.
Page Identification Hashes
Some content management systems or blog engines identify each unique page with a long string of random characters. If your CMS or site engine generates such URLs, find out how to overwrite or turnoff that behaviour immediately. There are only downsides to these URLs.
Session Hashes
While not as bad as when used for pages, hashes-used for sessions on your site are still bad. They negatively affect SEO. The bigger concern is that most systems employing them use SHA-1, which is relatively insecure- certainly for user sessions or logins containing any sensitive data.
File Extensions
URLs should be free of .php, .aspx and so forth. File extensions are not forward compatible, so if you change backend systems and all your URLs contain .aspx you are forced to do server side rewriting for every single page on your site. The HTML extension isn't really recommended either, but if your confident you'll only serve the pages you're building as static files it's an acceptable technique.
Non ASCII Characters
Sites with character language as the primary content language are somewhat excused, but accented Latin and non basic punctuation is best avoided.
Underscores
These have poor usability and SEO value, and no tangible benefits to over hyphens.
Keyword Stuffing
Adding multiple keywords to URLs may help with SEO, but it will confuse users. Also, you will very soon be marked as a keyword spammer.
Good Practices
While it is important to know what techniques to avoid, it is obviously more worthwhile to know which you should use.
Robust URL Mapping
It is possible that the recipient's environment might wrap the URL across two lines. This is most common with blog posts that include a full date and long title in the URL.
One good solution is to keep your URLs shorter than 70 characters, but that is not always ideal.Furthermore, the nature of relational database systems is such that ID values are quick to look up but strings are not.
With large amounts of traffic, this can be a serious bottleneck to bring the server down.
Robust mapping can solve these problems for you. By embedding a unique ID early on in your path, you can have long fully descriptive URLs when needed but still enjoy the reliability pf shorter URLs and ID lookups.
Take URL : domainname.com/news/1975-this-post-needs-two-lines. In this example '1975' is the ID value for the database record for this particular post. Your CMS should only use this part of the URL to do a successful lookup: domainname.com/news/1975.
Everything after that is optional, good for SEO, but it won't matter if it gets wrapped onto two lines.
The only downside is that IDs are not too human- friendly.
Hackable URLs
A good hackable URL a human can adjust or remove parts of the path and get expected results from your site. They give your visitors better orientation around your pages, and enable them to easily move up levels. example, domain.com/blog/1975/10/12/ article. Reducing that to each forward slash should produce expectable results. Example: domain.com/blog/1975/10/12/ should return all posts published on 12th October 1975, while domain.com/blog/1975/10/ an overview of October 1975 posts.
How detailed you should be about designing such URLs depends on the site's content and audience. The more topical content is, the more it benefits from publication dates in the URL; the more frequently new content gets published, the more it benefits from finer granularity. No matter how detailed your URLs end up being, they should ultimately be completely hackable.
Namespaces
The top-level section of the path is the most valuable real estate in a URL. If the site enables users to sign up have have their own profile at this level, you should create a blacklist of usernames containing all current and possible future features you may wish to have.
Namespacing features behind the username:lists or /followers are great solutions for public features that belong to each user individually. Private things , such as account settings, should never be namspaced behind the username, and should appear after /account or /settings.
Uniform Resource Locator
The term Uniform Resource Locator specifies the location of a certain resource, such as a web page. Since a location is the identification of a place, any URL is also a URI or Uniform Resource Identifier. However, a URL specifies not just a location of a URI but also the method for accessing it- the scheme or protocol.
Here, we focus on web addresses that use the HTTP protocol, and ignore such things as MAILTO, FTP or FILE, as well as ports, embedded usernames and passwords. An HTTPS address is the same as any regular HTTP URL, with the added requirement that it uses a secure connection.
Domain
The www is not part of the domain. It's merely a subdomain that is commonly used by websites. Whether you use www.domain.com or just domain.com, both addressesshould get visitors to one and the same website.
Path
The path is one of the most important parts of URL design and should be created like a folder structure, using forward slashes, regardless of your backend server setup. Each unique page of your website or web application should have its own unique path.
Keep your paths as short as possible.
Query strings
The majority of websites enable visitors to search. This is what query strings are best for as well as related actions such as filtering and sorting the contents of a page.
A lot of server-side systems misused query string parameters to server different pages of a site, such as domain.com/index.php?p=aboutme other sites went one step further and rewrote search query strings as a path. These are both bad practices. A query string should be treated as an optional addition to the page; the URL should work to produce a valid and useful page even when it is removed.
Fragment Identifiers
Is the only part of the URL that doesn't get sent to the server hosting the page. Instead, it is meant to identify a specific location inside the resulting page.
Browsers can navigate between multiple fragment identifiers without reloading the page. Since, this is a desirable user experience browser vendors created the HTML5 history API, which is the appropriate technique for navigating around sites without triggering page reloads.
Breaking the Agreement
A Uniform Resource Locator is a Uniform Resource Identifier that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. A hash-bang based URL insufficiently specifies the mechanism for retrieving the content, as it requires as Javascript round trip to the server after the server has already sent the browser an HTML page- a page that doesn't have the content associated with the requested URL yet. And that's all assuming the Javascript is not filtered out by some proxy server or firewall, and doesn't contain any errors anywhere in the page. When users turn Javascript off in their browser, these sites will stop working. Having the entire site rely on fragile techniques isn't bad enough, hash-bangs are a one way street to permanent maintenance and support.
Bad Practices
There are many different ways to design you URLs. We should know what makes for bad URL design in order to fully understand and appreciate good URL design.
Page Identification Hashes
Some content management systems or blog engines identify each unique page with a long string of random characters. If your CMS or site engine generates such URLs, find out how to overwrite or turnoff that behaviour immediately. There are only downsides to these URLs.
Session Hashes
While not as bad as when used for pages, hashes-used for sessions on your site are still bad. They negatively affect SEO. The bigger concern is that most systems employing them use SHA-1, which is relatively insecure- certainly for user sessions or logins containing any sensitive data.
File Extensions
URLs should be free of .php, .aspx and so forth. File extensions are not forward compatible, so if you change backend systems and all your URLs contain .aspx you are forced to do server side rewriting for every single page on your site. The HTML extension isn't really recommended either, but if your confident you'll only serve the pages you're building as static files it's an acceptable technique.
Non ASCII Characters
Sites with character language as the primary content language are somewhat excused, but accented Latin and non basic punctuation is best avoided.
Underscores
These have poor usability and SEO value, and no tangible benefits to over hyphens.
Keyword Stuffing
Adding multiple keywords to URLs may help with SEO, but it will confuse users. Also, you will very soon be marked as a keyword spammer.
Good Practices
While it is important to know what techniques to avoid, it is obviously more worthwhile to know which you should use.
Robust URL Mapping
It is possible that the recipient's environment might wrap the URL across two lines. This is most common with blog posts that include a full date and long title in the URL.
One good solution is to keep your URLs shorter than 70 characters, but that is not always ideal.Furthermore, the nature of relational database systems is such that ID values are quick to look up but strings are not.
With large amounts of traffic, this can be a serious bottleneck to bring the server down.
Robust mapping can solve these problems for you. By embedding a unique ID early on in your path, you can have long fully descriptive URLs when needed but still enjoy the reliability pf shorter URLs and ID lookups.
Take URL : domainname.com/news/1975-this-post-needs-two-lines. In this example '1975' is the ID value for the database record for this particular post. Your CMS should only use this part of the URL to do a successful lookup: domainname.com/news/1975.
Everything after that is optional, good for SEO, but it won't matter if it gets wrapped onto two lines.
The only downside is that IDs are not too human- friendly.
Hackable URLs
A good hackable URL a human can adjust or remove parts of the path and get expected results from your site. They give your visitors better orientation around your pages, and enable them to easily move up levels. example, domain.com/blog/1975/10/12/ article. Reducing that to each forward slash should produce expectable results. Example: domain.com/blog/1975/10/12/ should return all posts published on 12th October 1975, while domain.com/blog/1975/10/ an overview of October 1975 posts.
How detailed you should be about designing such URLs depends on the site's content and audience. The more topical content is, the more it benefits from publication dates in the URL; the more frequently new content gets published, the more it benefits from finer granularity. No matter how detailed your URLs end up being, they should ultimately be completely hackable.
Namespaces
The top-level section of the path is the most valuable real estate in a URL. If the site enables users to sign up have have their own profile at this level, you should create a blacklist of usernames containing all current and possible future features you may wish to have.
Namespacing features behind the username:
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Website Design blunders
Is your website driving away customers? It could be some website design blunders that are costing you more than you know.
Being Cluttered
Be selective about the content you decide to put on the site and organize it in a clean and logical manner. A lot of people try to put too much, especially on their home pages, and cram more down their customer' throats.
Making Things Difficult
The route from first click to sale must be made easy.It is important to think like customers and prospects while evaluating the design of a website. Let customers buy from you in their own terms. Setting up an account before checkout.
Staying Static
Your website is never complete. Keep finding ways to engage your customers, add content and make your site fresh. This will help keep customers interested and may also help in your web rankings. If you are promoting a specific product or service or have a special promotion going on, it is a good idea to use landing pages that support email an social networking outreach efforts.
Copying Your Competition
Always check out what your competition is doing. If you look too much like other businesses, customers could have trouble telling you apart. Review what others are doing, speak to customers and use your own knowledge to determine what is important to them.
Ignoring Your Audience's Needs
Be sure to understand your audience and its preferences before you build your site. Tiny or hard to read typefaces or harsh colours may look great from a design standpoint, but if your not designing for the people who buy from you, you could be losing their business.
Enschewing Analytics
Review the analytics of any sites you have before you begin designing a new one. Know your bounce rate- the number of people who leave your site after viewing only one or two pages- your top entrance page and your top exit page. Google analytics will help you understand where your traffic is coming from, what keywords people are using to find you and what they are reading on your site.
Refusing to Get Help
If web design is not your strong suite and you need more than what a web design template can provide, seek professional help.
Being Cluttered
Be selective about the content you decide to put on the site and organize it in a clean and logical manner. A lot of people try to put too much, especially on their home pages, and cram more down their customer' throats.
Making Things Difficult
The route from first click to sale must be made easy.It is important to think like customers and prospects while evaluating the design of a website. Let customers buy from you in their own terms. Setting up an account before checkout.
Staying Static
Your website is never complete. Keep finding ways to engage your customers, add content and make your site fresh. This will help keep customers interested and may also help in your web rankings. If you are promoting a specific product or service or have a special promotion going on, it is a good idea to use landing pages that support email an social networking outreach efforts.
Copying Your Competition
Always check out what your competition is doing. If you look too much like other businesses, customers could have trouble telling you apart. Review what others are doing, speak to customers and use your own knowledge to determine what is important to them.
Ignoring Your Audience's Needs
Be sure to understand your audience and its preferences before you build your site. Tiny or hard to read typefaces or harsh colours may look great from a design standpoint, but if your not designing for the people who buy from you, you could be losing their business.
Enschewing Analytics
Review the analytics of any sites you have before you begin designing a new one. Know your bounce rate- the number of people who leave your site after viewing only one or two pages- your top entrance page and your top exit page. Google analytics will help you understand where your traffic is coming from, what keywords people are using to find you and what they are reading on your site.
Refusing to Get Help
If web design is not your strong suite and you need more than what a web design template can provide, seek professional help.
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Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Press Releases
Press releases tend to rank quickly in organic search and news results. That is, if they are optimized and distributed following established SEO.
With instant publishing and search engines to filter information, individuals can filter and find the news that is useful to them. Publishing effective news releases online requires a three pronged optimization approach that consists of search engine optimization (SEO), conversion optimization and editorial optimization. When all three aspects are balanced, press releases can have a dramatic impact on your online visibility.
Press release Optimization: SEO
In order for news to be effective, it must be discoverable by those who are interested. Optimizing your news so that it can be found in search engines for strategic keywords provides a powerful way to reach targeted customers and influencers.
---Title Optimization : The most heavily weighted factor that determines for which keywords a press release will rank is its title. Placing you primary keyword phrase towards the beginning of the title tends to have the strongest impact on ranking for those keywords. However, the title needs to reflect the news angle and be written with clickthrough in mind, and not only keywords.
---Summary Optimization: The second most heavily weighted SEO factor is the summary. The summary is the ideal place to introduce one or two additional keyword phrases while elaborating on the news angle introduced in the title. Within a well-optimized press release distribution site or news site, the title becomes the title tag and the summary becomes the meta description. The same technical rules apply to optimizing a title tag and a meta description in terms of keywords as they do when optimizing a press release title and summary.
---Keyword Anchor Text Linking: The ability to build strategic anchor text backlinks from trusted sources is one of the SEO’s most exciting reasons for publishing press releases. Because some press release distribution sites push full-page reprints of your press release out to additional partner sites, a single press release can net a significant number of backlinks using your chosen keyword phrases.
Press release Optimization: Clickthrough Optimization
The purpose of the press release is to hook the reader with the news release and then direct traffic to your website. Online press releases are essentially landing pages for your business designed to drive traffic.
Optimizing for clickthrough helps you achieve that conversion goal.
---Make Use of Multimedia Features: Including images, videos, logos, file downloads and links to other web properties and assets allows readers to be immersed in your message through a variety of senses. When given the opportunity, make use of as many multimedia options as your press release distribution site allows.
---Embedded Website Navigation via iFrame: If you have the option to include an iFrame in your release, choose to link to a page that is a natural extension of the message announced in your press release. For example, if announcing a new product, display the product page in the iFrame instead of the sites’ home page.
---Include a Call-To-Action: A press release is a tool to entice readers to visit your site- give them clear direction on how and why to do so. Some ideas are to send them to your website to download a free ebook, or to read full details about the product or to subscribe to your mailing list for tips and information related to the announcement.
Press release Optimization: Editorial Optimization
Press release sites are news sites an they take their role seriously in order to stay in good graces with Google. In order for your press release to pass the human editing process, it should adhere to the following three critical editorial points:
---A Clearly Stated News Angle from Within Your Company: The purpose of a press release is to announce something new and timely such as a new product or service, limited time scale or contest, participation in an upcoming event etc. That news also needs to originate from the company announcing the news. The reader should be able to determine exactly what the press release is announcing by reading the title and summary.
---Written in Third Person: Aside from a direct attributed quote,a press release is written in third person and does not use casual language such as referring to the reader as “you” or th author as “I”.
---Attribution of Claims: Claims that could be interpreted as opinions should be attributed in a press release. For example, instead of opinions like “ the best real estate software in the market,” present attributable facts such as “ deemed the best real estate software on the market by XYZ magazine.”
The press release ranks well with search engines and can rank almost instantly upon publication. Furthermore, optimized backlinks within the release work to build link value for your site for years to come.
With instant publishing and search engines to filter information, individuals can filter and find the news that is useful to them. Publishing effective news releases online requires a three pronged optimization approach that consists of search engine optimization (SEO), conversion optimization and editorial optimization. When all three aspects are balanced, press releases can have a dramatic impact on your online visibility.
Press release Optimization: SEO
In order for news to be effective, it must be discoverable by those who are interested. Optimizing your news so that it can be found in search engines for strategic keywords provides a powerful way to reach targeted customers and influencers.
---Title Optimization : The most heavily weighted factor that determines for which keywords a press release will rank is its title. Placing you primary keyword phrase towards the beginning of the title tends to have the strongest impact on ranking for those keywords. However, the title needs to reflect the news angle and be written with clickthrough in mind, and not only keywords.
---Summary Optimization: The second most heavily weighted SEO factor is the summary. The summary is the ideal place to introduce one or two additional keyword phrases while elaborating on the news angle introduced in the title. Within a well-optimized press release distribution site or news site, the title becomes the title tag and the summary becomes the meta description. The same technical rules apply to optimizing a title tag and a meta description in terms of keywords as they do when optimizing a press release title and summary.
---Keyword Anchor Text Linking: The ability to build strategic anchor text backlinks from trusted sources is one of the SEO’s most exciting reasons for publishing press releases. Because some press release distribution sites push full-page reprints of your press release out to additional partner sites, a single press release can net a significant number of backlinks using your chosen keyword phrases.
Press release Optimization: Clickthrough Optimization
The purpose of the press release is to hook the reader with the news release and then direct traffic to your website. Online press releases are essentially landing pages for your business designed to drive traffic.
Optimizing for clickthrough helps you achieve that conversion goal.
---Make Use of Multimedia Features: Including images, videos, logos, file downloads and links to other web properties and assets allows readers to be immersed in your message through a variety of senses. When given the opportunity, make use of as many multimedia options as your press release distribution site allows.
---Embedded Website Navigation via iFrame: If you have the option to include an iFrame in your release, choose to link to a page that is a natural extension of the message announced in your press release. For example, if announcing a new product, display the product page in the iFrame instead of the sites’ home page.
---Include a Call-To-Action: A press release is a tool to entice readers to visit your site- give them clear direction on how and why to do so. Some ideas are to send them to your website to download a free ebook, or to read full details about the product or to subscribe to your mailing list for tips and information related to the announcement.
Press release Optimization: Editorial Optimization
Press release sites are news sites an they take their role seriously in order to stay in good graces with Google. In order for your press release to pass the human editing process, it should adhere to the following three critical editorial points:
---A Clearly Stated News Angle from Within Your Company: The purpose of a press release is to announce something new and timely such as a new product or service, limited time scale or contest, participation in an upcoming event etc. That news also needs to originate from the company announcing the news. The reader should be able to determine exactly what the press release is announcing by reading the title and summary.
---Written in Third Person: Aside from a direct attributed quote,a press release is written in third person and does not use casual language such as referring to the reader as “you” or th author as “I”.
---Attribution of Claims: Claims that could be interpreted as opinions should be attributed in a press release. For example, instead of opinions like “ the best real estate software in the market,” present attributable facts such as “ deemed the best real estate software on the market by XYZ magazine.”
The press release ranks well with search engines and can rank almost instantly upon publication. Furthermore, optimized backlinks within the release work to build link value for your site for years to come.
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Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Social Networking and Security
There is no longer any debate- social networking is here to stay. It is evolving into what is called social business software.
Workers of all ages are using social media as well, though not just facebook and twitter. Sites like Linkedin are also very popular.
And, of course, an increasing number of businesses are adopting social networking strategies for maketing and research purposes.
Technology tends to make great strides forwards without considering safety issues. Social networking is not exception.
Security and Privacy
When discussing security and privacy in regard to social networking, the two have separate definitions. Security is generally defined on how well a site or company thwart hackers and and malware attacks on their firewalls. Privacy has more to do with how much information a social networking site collects and how it shares that data.
Privacy is a tricky issue, because users have the ability to control what information they place on a site and can use site provided settings to control how much of the information can be seen and by whom.
Common sense Attacking
Hackers are a threat to security, but not as dangerous as a con artist in the digital age. The difference between a hacker and a con artist is that the former beaks in, whereas simply persuades you to let him in.
Con artists have a number of well known methods of acquiring peoples passwords, personal information and more. They try to trick you into giving up sensitive information by posing as a legitimate entity or by gaining your trust.
Personality hijacking is a related tactic, which involves creating an online presence for someone else without their knowledge or consent.
This can be done if you have basic information about the person. With hijacking, a cyber criminal can assume a false identity and damage someone's reputation by sending embarrassing messages, posting unacceptable comments and a few others.
These tactics can be frightening for an individual, but in the case of an entire company it can lead to as serious problem. Consider what will happen if a con artist acquires an employee's email account, dug up the company secrets or passwords. Damage can also be done if, for example, someone created a false identity and posed as a company employee on a site such as Linkedin and was able to connect with and get information from actual employees.
Protecting your Business
At the corporate level, maintaining antivirus software and keeping applications up-to-date goes a Long toward fighting malware, although this will do little for combating social engineering scams.
But as daunting as the task of managing social networking related security issues may seem, protecting your business from most social networking enabled attacks and vulnerabilities is mostly a matter of education. Employees need to know basic tactics for avoiding scams and malware.
An easy tactic concerns username and password strengths. Basically, you need to use different passwords for different accounts. If you use the same password for everything from online banking to your company accounts , all a criminal has to do is figure out a single password to gain access to your entire online life. You should also check privacy settings on any social network you join.
Other important strategies may include logging out of every session on a social networking site.
Never let a web browser on a shared machine save form information otherwise, next user can simply log into a site as you.
Workers of all ages are using social media as well, though not just facebook and twitter. Sites like Linkedin are also very popular.
And, of course, an increasing number of businesses are adopting social networking strategies for maketing and research purposes.
Technology tends to make great strides forwards without considering safety issues. Social networking is not exception.
Security and Privacy
When discussing security and privacy in regard to social networking, the two have separate definitions. Security is generally defined on how well a site or company thwart hackers and and malware attacks on their firewalls. Privacy has more to do with how much information a social networking site collects and how it shares that data.
Privacy is a tricky issue, because users have the ability to control what information they place on a site and can use site provided settings to control how much of the information can be seen and by whom.
Common sense Attacking
Hackers are a threat to security, but not as dangerous as a con artist in the digital age. The difference between a hacker and a con artist is that the former beaks in, whereas simply persuades you to let him in.
Con artists have a number of well known methods of acquiring peoples passwords, personal information and more. They try to trick you into giving up sensitive information by posing as a legitimate entity or by gaining your trust.
Personality hijacking is a related tactic, which involves creating an online presence for someone else without their knowledge or consent.
This can be done if you have basic information about the person. With hijacking, a cyber criminal can assume a false identity and damage someone's reputation by sending embarrassing messages, posting unacceptable comments and a few others.
These tactics can be frightening for an individual, but in the case of an entire company it can lead to as serious problem. Consider what will happen if a con artist acquires an employee's email account, dug up the company secrets or passwords. Damage can also be done if, for example, someone created a false identity and posed as a company employee on a site such as Linkedin and was able to connect with and get information from actual employees.
Protecting your Business
At the corporate level, maintaining antivirus software and keeping applications up-to-date goes a Long toward fighting malware, although this will do little for combating social engineering scams.
But as daunting as the task of managing social networking related security issues may seem, protecting your business from most social networking enabled attacks and vulnerabilities is mostly a matter of education. Employees need to know basic tactics for avoiding scams and malware.
An easy tactic concerns username and password strengths. Basically, you need to use different passwords for different accounts. If you use the same password for everything from online banking to your company accounts , all a criminal has to do is figure out a single password to gain access to your entire online life. You should also check privacy settings on any social network you join.
Other important strategies may include logging out of every session on a social networking site.
Never let a web browser on a shared machine save form information otherwise, next user can simply log into a site as you.
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