How “Regular” People Use the Web

Frank Gilroy has a GREAT post on his observations on “6 Things Regular People Aren’t Doing on the Internet.”

He also covers some I haven’t harped upon like “buying big ticket items sight unseen” and “telecommuting” but first and foremost on his list is this: “regular” people aren’t subscribing to RSS feeds.

It’s a common question for tech teachers such as Dave Taylor and despite a WEALTH OF posts and pages on how to subscribe,  according to SlashDot… as of January 2007, only 12% of internet users knew what RSS was and even fewer, 4% used it knowingly.

Most of my clients aren’t creating web sites directed at the tech savvy 4-12%….  instead, they’re focusing on reaching “regular” people…. which is why I recommend that ALL of my clients treat RSS in the same manner  that they treat the search engines.

Treat RSS as if it doesn’t exist.  Any RSS subscribers to your blog are “gravy”.  The real value is in your email newsletter.  The level of trust required to subscribe to your RSS feed is minimal (see Trust is Not Transitive) so even if regular people WERE using RSS to subscribe, it’s still a good idea to have an email newsletter in addition to your RSS feed from your blog.

If your customers are “regular people” you’ve got to meet them where they live.  Regular people may not understand RSS but they do understand email and that’s where your email newsletter comes in handy!

GoDaddy Domain Names and Hosting May Put Your Business in Danger

I’ve had more than one client politely listen to my warnings about using GoDaddy as a domain name registrar/host and then go right on using their services. I do understand their reluctance to accept my warnings at face value. After all, I do offer in the course of my business what I believe is a “better” alternative.

I wrote way back in April 2007 on my free Blogger account about the GoDaddy Tar Baby. (You can actually see that at that time, I recommended the service for my clients. UGH! More crow for me to eat…. see my post “Quasi Scientific Blogging Observations).

Back to the Tar Baby that is Godaddy…. for those who think that the stories are of the “urban legend” category, Mashable offers this recent report GoDaddy Pulls the Plug on RateMyCop.

Daily Blog Post concurs and offers commentary on the “quality” of the hosting services at Godaddy as well.
Trouble has been brewing at GoDaddy for a while. Here’s an article I wrote a while back about GoDaddy’s troubles for my clients (it’s a PDF…. so you might want to save this rather than try to open it in your browser.)

Shortly after I wrote and posted that article, Godaddy began donning the cap of “internet police”… the horror stories are chronicled at the site NoDaddy.com In response, I created a GoDaddy Transfer package for my clients. A few took me up on the offer.

I will admit, I still use Godaddy’s domain name registration services for picking up domain names I have yet to put into “action”…. but now, I’m considering whether or not this is wise.

See the following for why I’ll probably be closing my Godaddy hosting account:

• Godaddy grabs a valuable domain name from their customer because of invalid email and profits from it.
• Godaddy silences Police Watch Dog Site Rate My Cop Update
• Web Hosting Talk Thread

Hey, I’m just like everybody else. My preferred ICANN registrar charges a LOT more than Godaddy does…. and I don’t want to pay more than I “have” to for my excessive list of domain names. But I’ve been getting a LOT of “update your information or else” emails from them and it makes me nervous… because I DID pay for those domain names because I DO want access to them!! Paying less than $10 per domain name looses it’s attractiveness when you realize that they can be taken from you on a whim.

On one  hand, some of those names on the list aren’t worth paying more for… which should have been my FIRST clue that maybe they weren’t as grand as I thought they were when I was registering them.  However, on the other hand, there is a short list for the ones I’m being “hassled” on from Godaddy and those domain names are all extremely short and all revolve around online video.   Perhaps there are “squatters” waiting on those domain names just waiting for a mis-step on my part.

Year end web site clean up tips

As 2007 draws to a close, here are some tips for end of the year “clean up” web site duties.

1) Check your error logs. Your error logs will show you what files have been requested and not found. This provides a “short cut” for you to find pages that have been deleted or renamed in your web site that people are seeking.

2) Make certain your web site has an XML sitemap, a.k.a.Google site maps. They’re known as Google Sitemaps because Google was the first to require this map of your web site in the XML format. Now MSN, Yahoo and other search engines use them to navigate your site as well. If you already have a site map, be sure it’s current. If you created your site map manually then you’ll need to do so with every page you add to your site. The end of the year is a great time to make sure your site map is up to date. (Reason #532 why I ADORE self hosted Word Press blogs…. the google sitemap plug in does this type of “web clean up” automatically!)

3) While you’re rooting around in your root file, make sure your robots.txt file is up to date as well. The robots.txt file is a set of instructions for visiting robots (spiders) that index the content of your web site pages. While your XML Sitemap provides a road map so the search engines can find the pages within your site, the robots.txt file provides a map for what the search engine bots can, and cannot index. (It’s important to note that not ALL robots “obey” the instructions in this file.)

4) What are your web site goals for 2008? Set up a plan for your web site for the coming year. Want to increase visitors? Increase sales? Both? Now is the time to lay out a plan for the upcoming year.

5) Once you have your goals laid out for 2008, take a look at your current web site. Does is have all the tools needed for web success? Do you have a newsletter that you send out at least monthly? Do you have a “legal bribe” to encourage people to sign up for your newsletter?

If your goals include more traffic and more articles to promote your business, you might want to consider launching a blog either in addition to or in place of your current HTML web site. Blogs are basically content management systems making it easy to update your web site without having to learn HTML, FTP or other “web master” tools.

The Numbers Game: Hits vs Visitors

As I was walking a blog client through her “webalizer” stats program last week and the subject came up of “hits” vs “visits“.

During the EARLY days of the internet, we loved us our hit counters! My early sites ALL contained a nice little hit counter at the bottom of the page. Those hit counters would measure every time the browser would “hit” the server and ask to have that image file delivered. It was definitely a “feel good” kind of thing to have. Feeling ignored on the internet? Check your hit counter. Fortunately, in those days, it would measure and count the web master’s visits as well! Want to goose your “hit count”? Click “reload” a few (hundred) times.

The same principle is in effect today. A single page may “hit” the server many times during a page load. So the client who looks at his/her 40, 000 hits may be surprised to learn that there were only a few hundred visitors generating all those “hits”.

Sabahan.com has a GREAT post outlining hits vs unique visitors in great detail. (Reason #1021 why I love blogging. I can link to his post instead of reinventing the wheel here!)

A few days later, I was searching for the origins of the quote, “A billion here, a billion there… before you know it, you’re talking about REAL money”. (Turns out, according to the Washington Post, the quote is attributed to late Sen. Everett Dirksen, who claims he was misquoted and liked it so much, he never bothered to deny it.)

During that search, (which I originally thought was MILLIONS not BILLIONS) I stumbled across this forum post: 2 million hits/ month and no real money

In that forum discussion the posting web master, who as it turns out had 11,000 VISITORS creating those 2,000,000 hits on his server, learned that 11,000 unique visitors each month is a $50 per month proposition.

I recently had THAT kind of conversation with another client as well.

Client: “Oh, by the way, I’m going to monetize my blog with Adsense!”

Me: “Wha, wha, WHAT?” (We’d just picked and “customized” a theme template… one that DIDN’T support Adsense! Reason #22 why I encourage new bloggers to go with a pre-made template for starters.)

I recovered with, “Let’s wait until you hit 10K visitors per month before you launch Adsense.” That seemed to satisfy him.

The numbers of potential web visitors is HUGE. Most of my clients’ are AMAZED at the sheer NUMBER of visitors a moderately successful web site generates. Which is why I encourage my people to begin by fishing in “small” ponds, a.k.a. to TIGHTLY target their niche! Because who wants to work hard enough to attract over 10,000 visitors to only earn $50 for your efforts!

How to piss off your visitors….

The title of the article was simply, "How to piss off your customers".  It was an evocative title that did it’s job… it got me tp click and begin reading the article.

Unfortunately, the article wasn’t about customer service or even order fulfillment but it was about spam and how the definition of spam is growing to include "anything you don’t want in your inbox".  I found the article mildly interesting with one important take away: 8 out of 10 users report using the "designate as spam" button for incoming emails. 

It was a great headline headlining a dull article that had absolutely NOTHING to do with the title.

Because of the business I’m in, I went digging further.  Was this a one time thing for this author?  Was he in the habit of writing great headlines that grabbed attention and then disappointing his readers with the article?

At the end of the article was the author’s bio which wisely included a link to his website.  I click and go there.  Located in PRIME real estate territory is a link called "One Page Marketing Piece"…. yet another compelling title and again, I’m a sucker.  I click. 

Without warning, I find my browser is opening a PDF document.

OH THE HUMANITY!  NOOOOO!!!  I have other apps running!  I’m installing an update!!!! 

ABANDON SHIP! 

Scotty’s voice, "Captain, I’m giving it all we’ve got but we just don’t have enough RAM to open that print quality PDF!"

BROWSER CRASH!!!!

I hit ctrll/alt/del… all of my other browser windows have closed except for one… the one opening that monstrous print quality PDF. 

What blows me away is this guy is a self proclaimed marketing expert AND customer service consultant.  He claims to have worked with really big companies on his web site (from what I saw before I made that fatal click).

Want to piss off your visitors?  Include a link to a print quality PDF (aka:HUGE FILE) and be sure not to warn visitors that the link leads to this massive document. 

When I include a link to a PDF document, I ALWAYS warn my visitors to download the PDF to their computer first. (I know… PDF documents are no longer the safe download they once were…. sometimes I HATE the progress hackers force upon us!)  I also provide instructions on how they can download the document and how, if they only click on the link, they will open the document in their browser which very well MAY crash their browser.

Want to piss off your visitors?  Include a link to a print quality PDF (aka:HUGE FILE) and be sure not to warn visitors that the link leads to a massive document.

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