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Inside AdWords: Google Website Optimizer Service Plans

2008-06-27T03:48:00.000-07:00

Inside AdWords: Google Website Optimizer Service Plans

Google Trends for websites

2008-06-27T03:47:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-06-25T23:44:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-06-25T23:29:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-25T22:36:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-25T21:27:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-06-25T21:11:00.000-07:00

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.

Why Ymail rocks for Small and tiny businesses

2008-06-25T20:26:00.000-07:00

Yahoo Mail has launched two new domain extensions for its email users, namely ymail.com and rocketmail.com

I have noticed a lot of small and tiny businesses who caught on the Internet bandwagon, with getting email IDs for their companies. And they never understood the value of a paid email package with fancy custom domain names. Well, fair enough considering that their scale of operations might be pretty low, besides they might noe be gettig mails very frequently.

That said and done, a custom domain does give email recipients a better impression as opposed to a free one, especially Yahoo Mail since it is one of the more common of email service providers. While @rocketmail.com sounds outright funky, @ymail.com is pretty good and professional. I am sure @ymail is not going to gain much popularity. People are moving on to gmail instead. In that case, @ymail.com addresses would not be a tom, dick and Harry affair. Therefore, my guess is that @ymail.com email IDs would give as good an impression as a paid email service like say usa.net or an ISP's email ID.

p.s. If you are looking for a very short and professional email id, you might wanna try AOL India at aol.in. They launched a year back and they are so desperate for users that they have gone for TV and outdoor ads. The email service is free, and since there aren't many users you may get a good short email id of your choice. I got jalaol.in.

Ten ways to effective emailing

2008-06-25T10:37:00.000-07:00

Dumb little Man has a very good article on effective email communication and how to ensure better responses, while also following some basic etiquette.

Do check his detailed explanations. His ten ways to turbocharge emails include:

1. Get to the point

2. Greet them by name

3. Put the subject line to work for you

4. Keep the subject line fresh (note: Thats a real good idea...)

5. Don’t send unnecessary or unwanted e-mails (note: Very important.. Sending unimportant stuff frequently, diminishes your email's credibility)

6. Know when to cut the thread

7. Avoid long blocks of text in the main message area

8. Proof it before you send it

9. Send and copy it to the right people (note: When it is a call to action, would advice to send emails seperately rather than cc it. Very often, one recepient would think the other would act on the email and vice versa. )

10. Don’t make them dig through a long string of messages for a needle in a haystack

* notes are mine.

Placely: Helping track Frequent Flier Miles

2008-06-25T09:52:00.001-07:00

Placely, a travel-planning social network, which tries to centralize travel information has launched a frequent flier mileage tracker that helps track mileage across several airlines, reports
Mashable . It saves you from the pain of checking with every airline for mileage information. The service supports several airlines, including American, Continental, Delta, Jet Blue, Midwest and many more.

With a lot of travel planning sites in the market, differentiation is the only way to gain subscribers. Looks like Placely has found a pretty strong footing.

Animoto goes commercial

2008-06-24T07:47:00.000-07:00

Animoto, a web application that helps amateurs create professional looking quality videos quickly and easily have announced a commercial package for businesses, called Animoto for Business.

The Animoto for Business service costs $99 per user for three months or $249 per user for one year; that gives unlimited access to create, view, present and download commercial-use videos. The company hopes to attract a wide range of businesses from mom and pop stores to large corporations.

The site has a couple of case studies that explains how various companies used the product and how effective the product turned out to be.