Archive for October, 2006



18
Oct

Using Ajax with a Business Website

Taking a step away from my previous post critisizing the use of Ajax and other dynamic website features, Ajax does have uses in business and other website designs. Ajax has an ability to simplify a user’s experience on a website when used properly. It ‘can’ provide very user friendly interfaces that work smoothly, quickly, and better than traditional programming.

However, Ajax creates a usability gap when a measurable percentage of visitors don’t have javascript enabled on their web browser. Coincidentally, business and ecommerce websites are a group that often has that measurable percentage. Traditionally, business and ecommerce websites and their images in general rely on clean, simple, and static features. Their visitors know exactly what to expect, what to do, and how to so it, and that creates stability both in the minds of customers, and for the people running the website.

For business websites, care should always be taken to provide non-javascript friendly alternatives because the visitors without the ability to interact with the Ajax application, may be the best customers.

A savvy website owner asks the question, How can I integrate Ajax into my business website while still maintaining a usable website with a professional appearance?

Here is my list of usable Ajax for the business and ecommerce website.

Click to continue…

13
Oct

Website Hosting (Data Backup, and Redundancy) – a few tips

I was looking over one of my websites a few weeks ago on a Sunday evening, and I started getting major errors on the site. I logged into my server, and after finding nothing obviously wrong, I gave the server the command to reboot.

About 5 minutes later, after the site didn’t return, I realized that there was a real problem. I called my host and asked them to check my server out. They proceeded to reboot the server, several times, and again nothing. After several minutes of diagnostics, the cause was traced the the primary hard drive, which had failed, mechanically.

Click to continue…

12
Oct

Situations where Overture kills AdWords

I recently launched a service with my company and started a pay per click campaign for this particular campaign. I created my keywords and a similar ad for both AdWords and overture, set my cost per click, and added the new campaigns to each account.

Now, the Pay per click campaign so far has been the most successful that I have done in the last three years, so I am very happy with the results thus far. However, I am not happy with AdWords.

Overture has a running 12%+ conversion rate with this campaign, and has been getting well over 100 visitors per day. AdWords has a 0% conversion rate, and has only sent 20 visitors total. The ads are very similar in content, and I’m currently bidding over two times as much in AdWords than overture. So, what’s the problem?

Click to continue…

11
Oct

SEO – a guide to the blogs

At some point during the search for knowledge regarding search engine optimization and online marketing, most website owners will start searching through the SEO blogs. This is a good idea to do right from the start.

SEO blogs often cover many more topics than just “SEO”. SEO blogs often reach into every aspect of online marketing, which is very fitting considering most SEO’s also play their hand on mediums of traffic on the internet other than organic search engine traffic.

What makes a good SEO blog?

The main ingredient is high quality, unique information. Interesting enough, these traits are also shared by good websites in general.

Click to continue…

2
Oct
Comments Off on Do It Yourself Ecommerce

Do It Yourself Ecommerce

The ecommerce times wrapped up it’s do it yourself ecommerce guide today.

The guide cover some good information about getting into the business side of ecommerce. This guide is a good read for people that are already successful with their ecommerce ventures because several good services and resources are cited throughout the article.

The ecommerce guide is broken into three parts:

Part 1 – Now Bigger and Better (General introduction and ecommerce background)
Part 2 – Nuts and Bolts (Hosting, ecommerce platforms, SSL, general operation)
Part 3 – Taking Care of Business (Ecommerce future, success story, marketing, accounting, wrap-up)

This guide is by no means a complete resource. It is more a of an outline and should definitely be read more as an information primer. For a complete guide to ecommerce, I recommend the Mind Valley Ecommerce Guide. It’s not free, but mind valley offers 7 free tactics from their guide.

I recently reviewed the mindvalley guide, and I completely recommend it, especially for persons new to conducting business online. It is a small investment, but it is sure to pay for itself many times in the time that you will save compared to learning all of the information on your own.

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