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Get Your Stealth On

May 11th, 2011

Depending on how much of a techno-newbie you might be, you may or may not be aware that all of your online activities are stored on your computer while you browse the internet. For example your browser keeps a history of websites you’ve visited and logs of usernames and passwords that you’d be totally screwed without.

Your browser history can be a handy little tool when you’re trying to remember a website that you forgot to bookmark, but it can also be used to track your online activities. Depending on what you’re doing at work or at home, this could certainly get you into some hot water. For example you probably wouldn’t want your employer knowing that you’ve been looking for a new job while at work. The same goes for your internet browsing at home… whatever THAT may be…

Of course, one way to get around this would be to just clear all of that data after you’ve done the deed, but the problem here is that you’re effectively deleting items that you may need later. Luckily for you, the nerds who create internet browsers needed a way to hide internet porn from their mothers, so they’re on your side. Privacy browsing is here!

Private Browsing makes sure that your browsing activities don’t leave any data trace on your own computer.  Pretty much every browser has some form of Private Browsing built in. It is extremely important to note however that Private Browsing does not keep you anonymous from websites or your internet service provider. It also can’t protect you from viruses or spyware applications.  Private Browsing is simply about making sure that you aren’t storing any data that could be used to track your online activities. You can turn it on when you start and turn it off when finished. You clever shrew, you…

For more information on how to use private browsing with your internet browser, see the links below.

Firefox

Chrome

Internet Explorer

Posted in Web Tools

Do You Comply?

March 9th, 2011

A properly developed website should take into account the plethora of potential technological barriers that the design may face across a multitude of internet browsers – and there are plenty: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, Mobile Safari… and those are just the major browsers. There are still oodles of other browsers out there that people are using to view the web, and they all display web pages differently. The challenge that web developers face is to keep your magnificent website design from exploding in a supernova of jpeg-ized failsauce.

Due to the fact that every browser has particular features that it will or will not support, it’s a difficult balancing act to make them all play nice. This requires the developer to forgo proprietary code that may only be supported by one browser in favour of more recognized standards. Web standards are set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) made up of member organizations that set code standards for code. Of course, none of the standards are mandatory, so it’s up to each browser to adopt new standards as they come and not every browser is quick to the draw. Some may take several months or years to include newer standards, so in the meantime your website developer will need to include a mix of different code and different technologies to appease a variety of browsers.

So if not every browser is standards compliant, then why does my site need to be?

The answer is you’re staying ahead of the game by planning for the future. You don’t want to be stuck a few years down the road with a site that no longer works in newer, standards compliant browsers. Which standards you comply with should be a discussion between you and your web developer. There are many options and many factors to consider between browsers that include coding, styling, scripting and more. The more you discuss and plan with your developer even before the design phase of your website begins, it will help ensure that your website comes out looking like a million bucks no matter what browser chews it up and spits it out.

If you’re wondering how future-proof your website is, contact Point Click Media.

Posted in Web Tools

Using Google Apps On Your Own Domain

January 12th, 2011

Proper organization has become a business necessity that is increasingly crucial to success. In the past, organization didn’t involve a whole lot. You sat behind a stack of papers that busted through the ceiling tiles that are “to be filed” and you had a boss that came around a few times a day to make sure you were still working and not photocopying your family jewels on the company Xerox machine to send to the new girl in the HR department. Today’s business, though, is all about efficiency and employee productivity.   Google has a great network of free applications that allow your business to take all of your individual everyday programs and combine them into a great little package that can really increase efficiency throughout your business.

Email

No biggie, right? We all have our favourite email programs. But what happens when your computer crashes 10 minutes before your presentation to a major client and you can’t open the slideshow attachment from your project manager? Yeah, you look REAL efficient. Luckily Google stores everything securely online and can sync email to virtually any device you want.

Calendars

We know that most email programs have built in calendar features that allow us to book meetings and schedule tasks, etc. Google however, allows you to share calendars with other people and send reminders and invites to upcoming events, making sure everyone is always on the same page. Additionally, you can set calendars to private for internal use or to public for broader access, so if you operate a concert hall, for example, and want to put your scheduled performances on your website, you can embed a Google calendar right into it.

Documents

With Google Docs you don’t need to open Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint just to create a presentation for your board meeting. Google Docs allows you to create documents, spreadsheets and even slideshow presentations all from one place. Further more, you can also share these documents with other people in your office and allow them editing and revision rights. And you thought there was nothing easier than sorting through 14 revisions of attachments from an email discussion with your coworkers…

Now here’s the kicker. Google Apps is fully adaptable to your domain. That is, everything you do now with a half dozen programs can all be unified under one brand. Your brand. You now have the ability to organize all of the little things into one great cloud of information for your business all under your domain name. There are also loads of add-ons to make your life even easier.

Google Apps is free for businesses of up to 50 employees. We’ve really only scratched the surface of what Google Apps can offer your business, so for a look at the additional services that you can take advantage of check out the Google Apps for Business information page.

To get your business set up and running with Google Apps, contact Point.Click Media.

Posted in Web Tools

3 Free Ways to Start Serving Web Ads

October 20th, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

If you’re looking to expand the revenues brought in by your little chunk of real estate on the interwebs and have it begin pulling its own weight, you may want to look at selling advertising. We’ve recently put together a three-part series outlining some things you’ll need to consider and get in order before jumping into web advertising.

If you’ve taken the initial steps and are indeed ready to start advertising then you’ll need a place to serve your ads – a database that can keep track of impressions, clicks, clients, campaigns and all of that revenue-y goodness. It wasn’t too long ago, say 5-10 years or so, that in order to acquire such a system you’d be forking out so much cash that you would need to sell an astronomical volume of ads just to pay the operating costs. Never mind burning a hole in your pocket, this would blow your legs clean off.

Luckily with the somewhat recent development of open-source software there are oodles of absolutely free systems out there that are easy to use and can have you serving ads quicker than you can say Bubba Gump Shrimp. Here are 3 excellent and FREE advertising systems that you can bolt on to virtually any website and be on your merry way:

OpenX Source

If you’re looking for something that you can host and control yourself, tinker with, and still have all kinds of flexibility in how you can accommodate your clients’ advertising needs, OpenX Source is great. It allows you to define zones on your website and designate them as ad spots, setup clients and associate campaigns with them, and collectively gather tracking information including clicks and impressions so you can generate valuable reports for your clients. A very good system for beginners.

Click here to learn more about OpenX Source

OpenX OnRamp

If servers, installing and settings are not your thing, OpenX has a strictly online version of its ad serving software for use. With OnRamp you get every bit of the same functionality and features as OpenX Source, without having to worry about hosting the database and all that technical mumbo jumbo. All you need to do is sign up for an account and get to serving!

Click here to learn more about OpenX OnRamp

Google Double Click for Publishers (DFP)

Google DFP is another web-based open source advertising system similar to OpenX OnRamp, except DFP is slightly more advanced as far as the advertising model goes. It works much the same way as the OpenX products, only it has a different method of how the advertising model works since it is developed for small businesses to large corporations, and everything in between. Don’t let this scare you, though. There are loads of great tutorials on the product to help get you started. DFP is also nice because if you already have a Google account you can get right to it. DFP also allows you to integrate the Google AdSense product into the mix, giving you another chance to maximize revenues.

Click here to learn more about Google Double Click for Publishers

Listed above are 3 of the more popular and best solutions for small to medium-sized businesses that are just getting their feet wet in the web advertising game. The start up costs are only limited to your time for the most part, allowing you to focus purely on filling up those spaces and getting your website off the ground.

Do you have an existing advertising system that may be causing headaches? Contact Point Click Media.

Posted in Web Tools

Are You On the List?

September 22nd, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

You know, I could come up with a bunch of cheesy metaphors and crazy statistics about how many people around the world use Google, but let’s be honest; you already know it’s a lot. Google isn’t just a search engine anymore. They’re developing everything from email to business applications, to sharks with lasers on their freakin’ heads.

What a coinkydink… you as a small business owner are looking to expand your customer base while Google is just dying to know everything about you, and do you want to know the coolest part? Even if you’re not ready to make to make a complete jump to the web, there’s lots of little things you can do to make sure you’re still getting some extra exposure. One of those things is Google Places.

You’ve probably noticed Google Places before. When you perform a search for a local product or service, you may notice a map pop up with lettered markers related to the various business listings on the right.

Google Places appears above the organic search results and is completely free. It also allows you to update your business contact information at any time, so if you’ve recently changed your address or phone number, no sweat. Take that Yellow Pages! In addition, if you own multiple businesses, you can control and manage all of your listings from one single account.

Why are you still reading this? We’re talking about a free business listing that shows up ABOVE organic search results on the largest search engine on the planet. You should be over there right now setting up your account.

Still here, eh? Alright. Here comes the Billy Mays two-for-one offer… Google Places is also integrated with Google Maps. That means that when you create a business listing, it not only appears atop the organic Google search results, but anytime someone is searching the Google Maps interface, your listing also pops up with directions to your location.

There’s only one thing left to say about Google Places:

For additional information on establishing an early web presence through feature like Google Places, contact Point Click Media.

Posted in Web Tools

Advertising with Facebook

September 15th, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

If you’re not familiar with Facebook by now, chances are you’re probably some form of Yeti creature living in the Himalayas and avoiding human contact at all costs. Allow me to attempt put the scale of Facebook into perspective. There are over 500 million people on Facebook. That’s the entire population of the United States, Canada, and Mexico combined, with some leftover space for good measure to throw in all of your fabulous destination countries like Jamaica, Barbados, the Dominican, etc. So sit back with your favourite mai tai and listen to this…

Both Google and Microsoft have tried to purchase Facebook, with Microsoft even offering around $15 billion – yes that’s a B – and get this; they got turned down. It would seem like the prospect of owning the identities of every last person on planet Earth is worth slightly more than owning a Grand Canyon full of nickels. Go figure.

So why is this information so important? Well, when you can harbour the profiles of all these people, you can also control what they see. When you consider how much time the average person spends on Facebook looking up friends, playing Farmville, chatting with family, playing Farmville, flipping through photo albums and playing Farmville, it’s not hard to see why advertisers are eagerly throwing fistfuls of cash at Facebook like a Hipster at the Apple Store.

Facebook advertising works much the same way as Google advertising where you can pay either by click or by number of impressions (or page views) to have your custom ads appear throughout the site targeted to whomever you so choose. The thing is, where with Google your ads are targeted to users in general who are searching for keywords, with Facebook you can target a specific age group or a specific interest group. For example, a wedding photographer could target their ads specifically to people who list ‘engaged’ as their relationship status. In addition, your business can set up a company profile page that allows you to reach out to a much larger audience at the tip of your fingers.

I recommend the Facebook Advertising Guide to learn more about how it all works.

There’s a reason why there’s an arms race by all the major players to snap up Facebook as soon as they can, but Mark Zuckerberg has shown loud and clear that Facebook isn’t ready to sell out just yet. With a product that can target its users so efficiently, there’s a reason why more and more businesses are jumping on board with Facebook.

Beyond simple advertising, there are many more avenues you can pursue with Facebook. Contact Point Click Media to find out more.

Posted in Web Tools

Part 3: Playing The Rate Card

September 8th, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

After you’ve acknowledged which parts of your website have the most potential for advertising revenue, and after you’ve decided exactly what types of advertising you’ll be offering, you’ll need to decide on a value for each of those spaces and assign pricing for it.

This is likely to be the most difficult part of getting into online advertising – generating the revenue model. For one, you’ll need to study your metrics, demographics and statistics to find out which pages are the most visited. For example, your homepage will likely be your most visited page, and why not? The home page is the entry point to your website. It’s likely how your visitors find you through search engines or through referrals and it’s also where they go to find out what’s happening throughout your site. Naturally, the more traffic to the page, the higher the value – and with that you can associate a higher price.

You’ll also have to keep in mind things like production costs. Will your advertisers be supplying their own content? Remember that not every business has a team of designers ready to provide you with an awesome barrage of advertising. You may need to develop some concepts for your clients and have some back-and-forth with them to ensure their satisfaction.

When factoring in production costs, it’s not uncommon to see many websites budget the first week or month (depending on how the ads are sold) of a sale toward the initial production. Once those initial costs are covered, be it for the design work or perhaps a commission to whomever sold the space – then you can begin to turn a profit. This all goes along with ensuring that your website has a proper business model in place before you start lighting up your site with ads like a Christmas tree and lose your shirt by not covering costs.

Web advertising can also be sold in a slew of different methods. One is by dedicated time slot where the ad is sold by a number of days, weeks, months, etc. This is the most common and traditional way of selling advertising. Other methods include selling per impression or per click. This works by charging the client for a predetermined number of page views or by charging based on the number of times someone has clicked on the clients’ ad(s). Just as you can begin to get creative with what types of advertising you will be offering, you can be just as creative with how you sell it.

A proper business model is the key to making sure that your website blossoms into a healthy revenue stream. To do it properly, it’s not as simple as filling your white space with ad spots and plastering “Buy Me Now!” tags all over the place like a used car lot. There’s loads of strategic and careful planning to be done to ensure long time stability and viability.

We’ve touched here on the basics of preparing your website for advertising. If you’d like help in studying your website with the goal of helping it pull its own weight in revenue, contact Point Click Media.

Posted in General News, Web Tools

Part 2: Standard Living

September 1st, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

Now that you’ve established which parts of your website are best suited for advertising, you’ll need to figure out exactly what type of advertising you want on your site.

But I thought advertising was just different sized boxes and graphics…

Web advertising can in fact be as simple as a logo placed on a page, but it can also be so much more. Web advertising can take on many different forms including everything from simple graphics to full video, animations or even contextual advertising.

No matter what method of advertising you choose, keep in mind that there are web standards to follow. For example, there are a set of standard ad sizes that are most commonly used across the web for banners, tiles, skyscrapers and more. These standards include dimensions, file size and length (if your ads are animated). For a complete list of standard web ad sizes, see the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Ad Unit Guidelines.

Do I have to follow these rules?

These guidelines aren’t written in stone. It’s not like Charleton Heston brought down slabs of stone tableture from Mount Sinai that said “Number Five! Thou shalt not exceed 40 kilobytes on all Skyscraper banners”. You can build all kinds of wacky sizes if you wish, but keep in mind that your advertisers will need to build custom sizes for your website, and it will cost them more, which can be a turn off for many advertisers. The standard works for pretty much everyone, so why deviate? In the end you’ll likely end up investing more in trying to customize your advertising than you would get out of it by sticking to the standard guidelines.

If you’ve decided to go the contextual advertising route and place third party ads on your website to generate revenue rather than enduring the labour of going out and finding and securing advertisers, it’s important to know that each third party program has their own set of rules for what can be displayed on your website. For example, when placing Google ads on your website, there are restrictions as to what you can do with them. You can’t place more than 3 on a page. You also can’t label them as anything but sponsored links or advertisers. Google ads work on a Cost-Per-Click basis so their guidelines are strict but very adaptable to any website.

I recommend reading the Google Adsense Program Policies before deciding to apply.

There’s a lot to consider when figuring out what to offer for advertising on your website. In fact, we’ve only really discussed a few traditional methods of generating advertising revenue. It’s often the campaigns that think outside the box that make the biggest impact, so keep your mind open to all sorts of advertising avenues.

In the final segment of this feature we’ll examine the factors you’ll need to consider when deciding on pricing for your spots. If you’d like to discuss what other forms of advertising that could work with your website, contact Point Click Media.

Posted in Web Tools

Part 1: Preparing Your Website for Advertising

August 25th, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

If you’re a blogger, media outlet or any other form of web publisher, you know that one of the most traditional and stable methods of generating revenue is through simple web based advertising. Just like any newspaper, magazine or television show, there is commercial support to keep the product running – and your website is no different.

So where do we start when preparing a website for online advertising?

When putting together the credentials for web advertising there are a few things to consider. The first is to consider your content and where advertising should be placed so that your advertisers can get the biggest bang for their buck. Of course, as much as revenue is important, it’s equally important that the content of your website not be comprised. Remember, it’s content that keeps people returning, not a page full of ads.

Take time and study your website when choosing ad placements and have others use the site as well to get feedback. By doing this you’ll begin to figure out which parts of each page on your website garner the most eyeballs and thus have the most earning power. For example, websites typically charge more for advertising that is placed “above the fold” or “above the scroll” – meaning advertising that is placed high on the page so that a user doesn’t have to scroll down to see it.

Blending advertising in with your content is also an excellent way to combine both content and advertising towards a single revenue goal. Society is growing increasingly immune to the constant bombardment of ad after ad and slogan after slogan. This requires publishers to get a little bit creative. By targeting advertising and incorporating it into your content, you stand a much better chance at having interaction between your users and your advertisers. For example, if your blog or website is about movie reviews, you may want to begin targeting movie theatres or rental stores, etc.

After you’ve identified what portions of your website would be the most appealing to potential advertisers, you’ll need to take the next step and decide what kind of guidelines your advertising will need to follow.

Next week we’ll be looking at choosing ad types and sizes for your website. Is your current website layout not quite ready for advertising? It may be much more ripe than you think. If you’d like some help with the review process, contact Point Click Media.

Posted in Web Tools

Verifying Your Website’s Accessibility

August 18th, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

Accessibility includes many functions and many forms. So how can you tell if your website content is indeed accessible to everyone? There are more than a few tests and methods that one can and should take to ensure that their website is not leaving anyone out in the cold.

1. Drop that mouse, mister…

The very first test is the keyboard test. Not everyone has a mouse or it’s quite possible that they may have trouble using one. Try navigating your website with only your keyboard and see how you make out.

2. The screen reader feeder

A screen reader is a piece of software that reads the contents of a web page and provides speech for those with visibility problems. A screen reader can be a costly piece of technology to acquire just for testing your website, but most have free trials that should suffice.

3. Magnify this!

Try viewing your site using the magnification tool. This tool is available on both Windows and Mac. The magnification tool does exactly what it suggests, allowing the user to zoom in on parts of a page like a magnifying glass.

4. Check your website for validation

If you’ve hired a web development firm to design and/or build your website, then chances are this should have been done for you during the process. If you’d like to check it out for yourself, most browsers have additional plug-ins and add-ons that allow you to check for valid website code. You can also try the W3C’s Markup Validation Service. Invalid code can interfere with the ability of assistive technologies to properly interpret your site.

5. Watch your language

Sort of, but not really...

Not everyone is a Harvard graduate with a 4.0 Grade Point Average. There are a variety of different languages and reading levels among the population so it’s important to take this into consideration. Now, it’s not very realistic to expect your website to have translation for every language on earth, but the main part of this exercise involves identifying your main demographics to make sure they aren’t ignored. If you’re concerned about how your content is written or how it may be interpreted by your visitors, it may be a good idea to hire a copywriter. Often, copywriters are experienced in appealing to different audiences and a good copywriter should have no problem verifying your content or making adjustments for you.

If your website can stand up to the above tests then you should remain confident that your site is quite accessible. Of course, how far you take your usability study is up to you. There are no definitive checklists that outline exactly what you need to do to be labeled “certified accessible”. All one can really do is take the proper precautions to ensure that every user gets the most out of their visit to your website.

If you’d like to chat more about accessibility and how you can improve your website, contact Point Click Media.

Posted in Web Tools

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