October 2006 - Posts
buySAFE, Inc., a leading online
trust and safety company for e-commerce transactions, this afternoon announced
the launch of the buySAFE Developers’
Network, a program that allows developers to access buySAFE’s API
(Application Programming Interface) to seamlessly integrate buySAFE trust
signaling into retail Websites, marketplaces, and third-party shopping
applications. Developers can gain access to the buySAFE API by registering for
free membership on the buySAFE Developers’ Network site. Major features of the
buySAFE Developers’ Network include API documentation to leverage buySAFE in
search, browser plug-ins, enterprise retail Websites, and marketplaces (like
eBay and Overstock.com Auctions); a knowledgebase that provides an easy way to
create a database of questions and answers; a collaboration tool that allows
development partners to create Wiki-based pages to track implementation
progress; discussion forums for developers, and an intuitive bug tracker.
New features of the SitePal talking avatar (which, one of these days WSM plans to test) have been released and includes a lead generation tool.
SitePal is a product that allows small business owners to create talking avatars for any web site. The new online lead generation and customer conversion features will be appealing to salespeople and small business owners looking to collect and store more contact information from customers for follow up.
The features in a little more detail:- Lead Generation Capture – Your personal business avatar collects and forwards customer information such as phone numbers and email addresses for sales follow-up.
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) – An interactive talking avatar that can answer FAQs using text-to-speech or recorded voice.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) – An upgrade of the existing AI feature allows users to type in free form questions that are answered by a customizable talking avatar.
“
Small Businesses, like any business, are obsessed with getting new clients. With the avatars acting as front line salespeople and generating leads, SMBs are gaining a cost effective way of generating sales leads. Site owners easily program the avatar to pitch the product to visitors and collect their contact information. The solution works wonders and is very affordable. Imagine coming into the office every morning and having the phone numbers of visitors who are interested in learning more about your product or service” said Adi Sideman, Founder and CEO, Oddcast Inc.
Technorati Tags:
sitepal, oddcast, sales, sales prospecting
clickdensity, a tool Website Magazine
has
discussed before and that provides instant insight into website usability
and visitor behavior through virtual heat maps, now provides A/B testing to
enable users to test website changes. Users can now utilize clickdensity
reporting features to compare the results of visitor interaction with two
versions of webpage content. For example, two versions of advertisements or
links can be tested against each other. clickdensity will record the
click-though rate, whilst integrated reporting features provide a quantifiable
measurement of the success of the changes, thus supplying the hard evidence to
support or reject proposed alterations.
Box UK Technical Director, Dan Zambonini is aware that the key to clickdensity's
success is its broad spectrum of functionality:
"Not only is clickdensity the most comprehensive web usability and heat map
product, it now incorporates the most intuitive and accessible built-in A/B
testing service. It's so exciting to see the impact that this is having on the
websites of organisations that didn't have access to these valuable metrics
until now."
Technorati Tags:
clickdensity, heatmaps, ab testing, a/b testing
If you're not using
Yahoo! Site Explorer to determine how your site is indexed at that search engine, then you should be. If you have a Yahoo Store, now you've got even more motivation to get it done. Last night, Yahoo introduced the ability to authenticate Yahoo! Stores in Site Explorer.
From the official post:
Registering and authenticating your site with Yahoo! Site Explorer allows you to access detailed information in Yahoo! Search for your site's online presence. You can get information such as:
* Find which sub-pages within a URL are indexed by Yahoo!.
* Find pages that link to that site or any page. (inlinks)
* Submit and track feeds for your sites.In order to register and authenticate your site you will need to add your site to Site Explorer, copy your authentication key information, then add your authentication information to your store. Once completed, you can then submit a request to authenticate your site with Site Explorer.
Technorati Tags:
yahoo, yahoo store, yahoo site explorer, site authentication
PayPerPost, a much maligned (and simultaneously celebrated) marketplace for advertisers to reach
the blogging community and their social networks, today
announced it
has funded, created and launched www.DisclosurePolicy.org to accelerate
transparency across Consumer Generated Media (CGM).
Resulting from (according to the release) "months of research on the diversity of CGM creator goals,
expectations and relationships with their audiences, DisclosurePolicy.org
provides policy creation tools, best practices and forums for discussing the
delicate balance between content creator freedoms and audience transparency
expectations" it's a wonderful attempt to lessen the criticism levied on
PayPerPost the past several months.
Technorati Tags:
disclosure, content, consumer, payperpost, policy, disclosure policy, transparency, generated
Hot Banana Software , a popular content management software today announced a strategic partnership with FuseTalk that intends to give users a faster, easier way to build online communities, share information and manage discussion-forum logins from within Hot Banana's Web content management system – Web CMS.
"FuseTalk's ability to centrally manage multiple discussion forums is already best-of-breed – but now we're taking it to the next level by fully integrating FuseTalk within a Web content management system," said Fuse Talk President Greg Waite. "With Hot Banana, administrators will now have one place to go to manage discussion-forum logins, as well as blogs, RSS feeds and Web-publishing tasks."
Krista LaRiviere, general manager and co-founder of Hot Banana added, "Our clients have been asking us for the best way to build interactive communities where they can share knowledge, exchange information and views, and help solve problems – so we choose FuseTalk to be our best-of-breed partner and integrate their solution into our Web CMS."
Technorati Tags: cms, cms intranet, cms software, cms solutions, cms system, cms tool, cms web design, content management, content management system, content management web site, hot banana
AvantLink.com
announced an upgrade to its existing
Affiliate tool center with the addition of the
Deal Of The Day dynamic web publishing product, provided as a fully
integrated and standardized network tool. Once Affiliates
publish the Deal Of The Day creative to their web site(s), auto-updated, daily
product deals from their merchant partners will display highlighting the
featured item, its discounted price, a description and the product image.
Integration options for the daily deal content for Affiliates include dynamic
text, banner and html ads or dynamic RSS feeds.
AvantLink is a network focused on deep-linking, spiderable & dynamic Affiliate
tools, progressive niche merchants and high-value Affiliate partners. The
AvantLink tool center features an array of next-generation marketing
tools free to qualified Affiliates, including Datafeed Manager v3.0, Custom Link Builder,
Product Display Builder, Dynamic Coupon Feed, Coupon Feed Syndication
and now Deal Of The Day.
Technorati Tags:
affiliate, affiliate marketing, merchants, affiliate technology, affiliate rss feeds, datafeeds, daily deal, deal of the day
SEOresearcher.com has released a new study about Google results pages. The study reveals areas where users are scanning the pages and subsequently clicking on results. The study was completed using Cornell University students who were instructed to search for 397 queries on various topics. Among the findings:
- The first two positions on the SERP garner more than half of time spent on the page, divided almost equally amongst the two.
- The first position nets nearly four times the amount of clicks as the second position.
- Results 6-10 receive roughly equal amount of attention.
- Result 7 gets less attention than 8 - presumably because the user skips that listing as the page is scrolled past the page fold.
- The top ranking of the second page of results gets nearly 2.5 times less attention than the lowest ranked position on page one.
One interesting side note is that for the results that were clicked, scanning of those listings above that result grow as you move down the line and those results below the clicked result shrinks. In other words, as a user moves down the page the likelihood of them scanning results after they decide which link to click diminishes. But an interesting twist to that is when the last result of the page is clicked, every result above it is scanned. It seems the user does his/her homework before resorting to clicking on the very last result.
One aspect that is not discussed in the study is the variation of results per page. For instance, depending on the search query, the #7 listing is sometimes above the fold, and sometimes below the fold.
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How do you become a serious player on the Internet? One way is to make the purchase of domains a priority. It's not uncommon for some of the most Web savvy to own hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of domains. In many respects it's like buying real estate - there is value in owning commodities like this as you'll always have a place to "rest" your Web content until you are ready to do something with it. If that weren't motivation enough, you can make a few bucks parking domains but more on that in another post.
A few options for cheap domains on a one year contract:
-
Yahoo offers domains (
with a Yahoo account) for $1.99 - renewals are less than ten dollars.
-
Hostway has a deal right now on .info domains - selling for as low as $1.45
-
DomainsAreFree.com is one of the lower providers of cheap domain names at just $3.99
On Thursday, Six Apart Ltd., a supplier of the software used to create blogs (Typepad and MoveableType - used more for business and professional blogging), unveiled another blog-writing tool dubbed Vox (
http://www.vox.com). The free service, which has been in test mode with 50,000 users for several months, attempts to attract new categories of bloggers and encourage them to publish personal text, photos, audio or videos to share with known acquaintances. It certainly sounds similar to others blogging software solutions, but the company claims that what makes Vox different is its focus on maintaining the private conversation of its users - and here I thougth blogging was about public access. With a focus outside of mass blogging tools, Vox may have a long way to go to topple similar providers but it's at certainly worth a look.
Website Magazine has posted a new article on the website.
Written by Editor Peter Prestipino, this article looks at some intriguing and unconventional ways to get more customers and how to keep them for long-term relationships. It's available here.
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EcomXpo, the virtual trade show taking place right now has several hundred exhibitors, enough for everyone to find something of interest. But you better hurry because today is the last day!
One of the great things about this show is that you have access to all of the exhibitors and it includes live chat (with exhibitors and other attendees), high-quality speeches and, if you play your cards right, (and know where to go) you can get some free stuff which will help your Web-based business grow. Some give-aways include advertising credits from the Google and MSN booths and a free domain name from Moniker.com. Website Magazine encourages you to register (free) today and come by to chat with a member of our staff in the virtual booth. We can be found by looking under the gold sponsor section.
So, what are you waiting for? Did we mention that this show is virtual? You can sign up and log on for free, from the comfort of your office, living room - anywhere. Okay, we've given you more than one reason to attend. The show ends at 8:00 p.m. EST, so visit eComXpo right now!
Yahoo! recently announced support of the NOODP tag. For those not familiar with the NOODP tag, it tells search engines (Google, MSN's Live.com, and now Yahoo!) to not display the
Open Directory Project (ODP - DMOZ.org) title and description in search results. Many listed in DMOZ found that their titles and descriptions were replacing their default meta tags in search engines, and many did not care for those outdated or inappropriate listings. If you've actually managed to get in the Open Directory Project (
congratulations by the way) then you can include one of the following on your pages.
META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP"
For Yahoo Only:META NAME="Slurp" CONTENT="NOODP"
Officially launched in January 2006, Sitening's free SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Tools help Webmasters, Website owners and search engine marketers optimize their Websites and develop strategies for improving their search engine results pages. Their SEO Analyszer tool just recorded its 100,000th page analysis and Sitenings system just marked the creation of the 5,000th free user account. Pretty impressive.
"We created SEO Analyzer as an internal tool to produce better websites for our clients," says Jon Henshaw, Sitening's Internet Strategist. "Eventually we decided to make the tool free and open to the public, with no expectations that it would become popular. We now receive emails from Webmasters and consultants all over the world who are using our tools and reporting significantly better search engines results after applying our suggestions."
After creating a
free account on Sitening's Website - Website Magazine tried out SEO Analyzer on its own site to test its strengths and weaknesses in relation to Sitenings SEO criteria. The average score was 69 (which is satisfactory) out of 100 -
WebsiteMagazine.com scored an 80. We don't feel so bad though, our competition didn't fare so well either (InternetRetailer - 50, RevenueToday.com - 50).
In addition to SEO Analyzer, the SEO Tools suite offers some other interesting, complementary tools including their SERP Tracker and Backlink Analyzer. Both require a Google API key which is available
here.
Technorati Tags:
seo, analysis, analyzer, seo analyzer, sitening
Jay Berkowitz, CEO of
Ten Golden Rules, will present the small business internet marketing webinar "Web 2.0 – Discover The Ten Companies Defining the New Internet," as the keynote speaker at the
Women's Internet Marketing Summit on Saturday, October 28, 2006. "This new presentation will give examples of professional website marketing, show innovating ideas in small business internet marketing for the women attendees. Lastly we will discuss how to capitalize on, and monetize, Web 2.0 marketing trends," Berkowitz said.
The keynote session (Web 2.0 – Discover The Ten Companies Defining the New Internet) will discuss...- Who is dominating small business Internet marketing and how companies can position their website to take advantages of the opportunity.
- Blogging. Podcasting. Wiki's. What new internet technologies are important to small business?
- What is the new science of Online Public Relations and how can you benefit from this internet marketing strategy?
- What is 'User Generated Content' and what are the opportunities for professional business women?
- Which websites are building ongoing relationships with customers?
women, internet, marketing, summit, berkowitz
Google announced the launch of their customized search service. Here's a quick roundup:The Search engines name and description will be shown on its Google homepage. Creators of the custom search engines can choose sites to include search results from (excluding sites is also possible). Refinements (labels that you apply to web sites) can appaer as a list of links above search results offering users a way to narrow their search. You can of course customize the search box on the Google results page, e.g. with your logo. What will be most appealing to those considering the custom search is the ability to integrate Adsense. There are some interesting advanced features, including the use of annotations (which specify which sites are included in your search engine) and the direct use of XML files (which can avail some of the more advanced features). You can learn more about creating your own custom search engine
here.
Via
MicroPersuasion, Google may be about to take the blogosphere to the next
level. Google has included a small but important modification to its
Google News page and included a link to
Google Blog Search. It is interesting
indeed that Google may be considering integrating the two products, as Yahoo
recently removed blogs in the news search results and Ask.com made changes to
its search service to include better representation of the information contained
on blogs. The impact on website owners? Keep blogging.
There is an excellent list of way to optimize your weblog over at
folksonomy.org. It's an excellent overview of some important principles and a must read. The seven ways to optimize you weblog are 1) Spend time on appearance, 2) Focus on information design, 3) keep things futureproof and scalable, 4) Standardize everything possible, 5) streamline the posting process, 6) Keep things simple and 7) Put your readers above yourself. Good rules to live by on the Web, but not just for a weblog.
Microsoft unveiled the
IE7 browser to
the public recently. If you haven't downloaded the tool yet, you may be
instructed to download it in the coming weeks via the Windows OS automatic
update system, so here are a few freeware
IE
Add-Ons to consider when you do!
Online Protection: Safeguard yourself against malicious programs with...
Compete Toolbar for Internet Explorer
Warns of sites with spyware, phishing, and online scams, and automatically
creates three SnapShot alerts: Trust Score, Site Profile, and Deal Light for
every Web site you visit. These alerts lets users know if it is a safe site, how
many people visit the site, and if there are any deals that can save them money.
Business Tools: Streamline your business processes and get more done,
VRE Toolbar for IE
Simplifies e-commerce tasks such as finding a profitable topic, researching
keywords, setting up your Web site (domain name, hosting, design), finding
content, driving traffic to your Website. Gives one- or two-click access to over
100 tools for researching niche ideas, brainstorming keywords and related
phrases, searching for best available domain names, choosing a hosting plan with
all the features needed to host a niche content Web site.
Developer Tools: Get an edge and save time with tools, programs and
utilities to help speed your development processes.
HttpWatch Basic Edition
HttpWatch shows you HTTP and HTTPS traffic from within IE allowing you to
quickly debug, fix and optimize your website. See headers, cookies, status
codes, compression, content and more as you browse a web site.
Web Feeds: Automatically gather and compile news, discussion threads,
event listings, stock listings and more from a variety of sources.
FeedReader
A lightweight, open-source aggregator that supports all major RSS formats,
FeedReader focuses on reading and organizing RSS feeds and offering a seamless
user experience. Licensed under GPL, the source for FeedReader is available for
download, so you can build on it, tailor it to your needs, or even rebrand it
for your customers.
Tomorrow, October 24, is the opening day for eComXpo, the online trade show featuring more than 450 exhibitors.
The show will run from October 24 - 26 and will include dozens of live presentations from such presenters as Chris Anderson (Author, The Long Tail), Steve Denton (President, LinkShare), Paul Botto and Nick Mihailovski (Google) and many more.
EComXpo is a great opportunity to attend a trade show from the comfort of your desk, couch or kitchen table. It's free to register and definitely worth a look around. You can certainly learn some new and interesting things to help your business succeed.
Website Magazine has a booth at eComXpo, so please drop by and say hello and share your thoughts!
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Each year, awards are handed out to various websites, and they reap big benefits from the exposure. You work hard on your website, so why not show the Web world what you have to offer?
The various award organizations offer winners links, directory listings, badges for your site, subscriptions and overall exposure. You might even get a brand-spanking new T-shirt and a shiny trophy to show your clients. There are plenty of different awards to apply for and, if you win, it's an excellent way to set your site apart from your competitor's. Below, Website Magazine has listed five awards to consider applying for.
The Webby Awards
The Webby Awards are easily one of the most recognized and prestigious Web awards. As it states on their site, the New York Times calls this award "The Oscars of the Internet." Competition is fierce for this annual award, but it's a prize worth the effort. Categories cover a wide variety of subject matter, design, content and technologies.
Interactive Media Awards (IMA)
These awards are awarded quarterly, and are primarily focused on the design and construction