Inside AdWords: Google Website Optimizer Service Plans

Inside AdWords: Google Website Optimizer Service Plans

Google Trends for websites

Google has extended Google Trends to websites. Just key in the website address and search to generate a graph that reflects the number of daily unique visitors to the website. Multiple websites could be searched, separated with comas to show comparisons. A very good way to compare your website with your competitors'. It is worth it to ensure that most number of people land up on your site than your competitors'. A maximum of five websites could be searched at a time.

You could also narrow down on particular geographies and check how you fare in that geography. You could also check what other sites your visitors visited. It does throw up a lot of interesting finds, and personally, I was surprised at some of the sites that my visitors visited. You could also view search terms related to your website and an indication of the volume.

You must note that the data is only indicative.

Visa on Facebook: Get $100 worth of Facebook Ad credits free!

Visa has joined Facebook with introducing a network for small businesses within Facebook. The objectives of the network are:

1. A great place to network with other small business owners.
2. Explore ways to promote business on Facebook.
3. A resource centre featuring exclusive content to help manage the business.

For the first 20,000 small business owners who sign up, they are offering $100 worth of free advertising credits credits on Facebookfor just joining the network. I just signed up and got my $100 worth of advertising. It is such a good 'no loss' way to explore how advertising on facebook works. The ad designing and management is pretty much like adwords. Just waiting to see how effective it is going to be. As of now, I am impressed by the way I could target people with specific interests and designations. And once you have added the targetting, it shows you exactly how many people fit that targetting.

To get the $100 advertising credit, all you need to do is sign up and you will get an email with the coupon code and the link to redeem it.

Will post in detail about facebook ads and my experience with it as soon as I have got the campaign working and starts showing results.

image courtesy: FaceReviews

PDF editing online!

If you are not game on draining your bank account buying Adobe Acrobat, the other option you have is to use a PDF printer like Primo PDF. However, once the PDF is printed, you can't make any changes. You will need to go back to the orginal file, make changes and print it again.

PDF Hammer saves you all that hassle. No installations required. All you need to do is upload the PDF file to the website and perform your edits. After that you could download it back to your computer. With this you can merge/combine PDF files together, rearrange or delete pages, and add and edit document information fields including author, title, subject and keywords. You can also lock the file with a password.

It is yet another product from Nitro, the creators of several very useful PDF tools like PDF Download, PrimoPDF, PrimoOnline and PDF Editor.

A new Website Optimizer from Google

After Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools, its now Google Website Optimizer. Well, all google applications have been pretty non-geeky and simple to use till now. But Google Website Optimizer is where it gets a little complicated and for the first time google reveals its geekish tendencies.

Do check out the optimizer here. You could go through the tutorials to get to know it better. You could also check out the articles on optimization.

Last week Google announced support packages to help users with this tool. Perhaps they found out that most users could not go very far with the experiments. They have partnered a couple of consultants to offer the following service plans:

1. $250/hour: Designed for specific questions and quick answers. Maximum 1 call per hour. No commitment, no obligation.
2. $600/3hours (in increments of 30 min): Designed for more complex issues at discounted hourly rates. Must be used within 6 months after first hour of service is used.
3. $1,200/8hours (in increments of 30 min): Purchase this plan and use for an entire year. Must be used within 12 months after first hour of service is used.

However, the rates are only a suggestion. You can negotiate with the consultants to get a lower price. With 13 listed consultants and 6 participating in the service plan, a fair deal cant be difficult. If you are interested in contacting all the partners, go here.

Apart from the Service Plans, the consultants could offer you:

* Experiment design
* Experiment set up and implementation
* Report analysis
* A la carte incident consultation
* Phone and internet-chat support
* Personalised training


Happy Optimizing!

People prefer online search to research products

In a survey of 736 adults, Opinion Research Corporation found out that people prefer using online search to research products they want to buy. Not only that, they rely heavily on online customer feedback.

Click to get the full PDF of the report.

Forget all your passwords! Manage all your passwords in a click!

Mozilla Firefox already has a pretty cool password manager, but Secure Login 0.9.2.3 integrates with that to help you login to websites with a single click or a keyboard shortcut. It also provides convenient selection for multiple logins (multiple users). It also provides direct login to any site from the bookmarks and helps prevent any malicious Javascript code from stealing your data.

This application would save a lot of time, if you are the sole user of your workstation and is protected with a password. Ideally, a single user laptop with an admin password would be terrific and pretty secure too.

The addon was designed by Sebastian Tschan of Blueimp who developed the Autofill Forms addon.