Archive for Featured Articles
Lunarpages News – December 2011
Posted by: | CommentsLunarpages Now Offering WebMatrix
WebMatrix is a free web development tool from Microsoft that includes everything you need for website development. Start from open source web applications, built-in web templates or just start writing code yourself. It’s all-inclusive, simple and best of all free. Developing websites has never been easier.
Google+ For Business
Google+ for business does a unique job blurring the lines between personal social networks such as Facebook, and business networks like LinkedIn. We know what you’re thinking, “not another social media network I need to join and keep up with”. However, before you decide stop reading, checkout the list below. Here are just a few reasons why Google+ shouldn’t be ignored.
Blogging Matters!
Blogs come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. A blog can be a web log, a daily pulpit, a collaborative space, a breaking-news outlet, a collection of links or an online public diary or journal that is written for others to read. Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them and there are no real rules. In simple terms, a blog is a website where you write informative articles (blog posts) on a continual basis. Most recent entries show up at the top so your visitors can read what’s new. You can even set up your blog so your visitors can comment or link to it.
Check In With Foursquare
Have you heard of Foursquare yet? If you haven’t then you should read this, Foursquare is a smart-phone social network of over 10 million users and growing. Chances are, some of your target audience is already using Foursquare.
Site of the Month – Space Gun Studios
We would like to thank everyone for your submissions for our site of the month contest. This month our winners are the interesting creators of Space Gun Studios. In this interview, we had the pleasure of getting some behind the scenes information from Luan, who is one of the four awesome members of Space Gun Studios!
Lunar News – November 2011
Posted by: | CommentsWelcome to Lunarpages News. This month we cover:
In a short video testimonial tell us what your experience with Lunarpages has been. Do not be afraid to get creative and tell the world why Lunarpages is your number one choice for your IT needs!
Grand Prize
$300 American Express gift card
2nd Prize
$200 American Express gift card
3rd Prize
$100 American Express gift card
Apple’s iCloud is replacing MobileMe
iCloud is the latest incarnation of Apple’s online services, replacing MobileMe which is due to be discontinued in the middle of 2012. iCloud is a free service which replicates most of MobileMe’s functionality, such as syncing email, contacts, calendars, bookmarks and notes between multiple desktops and gadgets.
Other existing Apple features such as Back to My Mac (remote file access), and Find my iPhone (remote location check) have also been brought across to iCloud. Apple has also added a range of new features such as document storage and sync, photo syncing, and iTunes Music for accessing your music in the cloud.
10 of Joomla!’s Popular Extensions
Joomla! has many extensions but here are 10 of the most popular ones. This month we reviewed many of them and came up with our Top 10 list. After reading through this article, we would encourage you to not only share them with others, but also leave us comments with Your Top 10 list.
Your Business Website and ADA Compliance
There is a current litigation trend in which courts are being asked to determine whether websites, specifically websites facilitating business transactions, fall under the purview of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Jeffrey A. Cohen, Internet attorney and the founder of InternetLitigators, discusses this topic, the Justice Department, how it pertains to your website and what you can do to protect yourself from upcoming legislation.
InternetLitigators is also offering customers and friends of Lunarpages Internet Solutions a special discounted membership.
WordPress Theme Offer From 4Templates.com
4Templates.com offers website templates and WordPress themes that are not only unique, beautiful and functional, they reflect where web design is headed – not where it’s been. Customizable? Of course. Adobe Photoshop (.PSD) source files are included with every template.
With hundreds of innovative and stylish designs to choose from, you are certain to find one that meets your individual needs. And just to show you we mean business, use this online coupon and save 40% off your entire order of website templates or WordPress themes at 4Templates.com!
Site of the Month – KNDY Radio
This month we had many submissions and we would like to thank you all for participating. After much debate, our emerging winner is KNDY Radio in Marysville, Kansas.
We took a few minutes to get to know Derek Nester of Dierking Communications and KNDY Radio. We hope you enjoy the interview and if you’re ever in Marysville, Kansas be sure to tune in!
Lunar News – October 2011
Posted by: | CommentsWelcome to Lunarpages News. This month we cover:
Site of the Month – Team Brennan
This month we had quite few submissions for the Site of the Month; however, one in particluar stood out to us and gripped our hearts. It isn’t the site name McCowen.net rather the content on the site that made us stop and take a long hard look at how precious and fragile life can be.
If you read one post this month, make it this one.
Learn How SMBs Are Cutting IT Costs By Over 50%
Data centers and complementary security infrastructure are essential elements of any business. Whether to interact with customers, collaborate with business partners, or equip workers with access to the latest files and productivity-enhancing business applications, these critical operations require a well-designed and well-run IT infrastructure.
Lunarpages Offers Its Clients an Additional Layer of Security with SecureLive™ at Half the Cost!
With over 200 million hacks blocked, thousands of hackers shut down and many active prosecutions, SecureLive is an advanced security system designed to seamlessly integrate into a variety of platforms including: Joomla! (Versions 1.5.x, 1.6.x and 1.7.x.), WordPress, Drupal, E107 and standard PHP websites. With a simple plugin installation and activation, customers will immediately begin blocking hackers and seeing reports of the malicious activity on their site. SecureLive goes one step further and reports the hackers to the appropriate authorities.
Are you IPv6 Ready? Lunarpages Is Out In Front of the Conversion Wave
Lunarpages Internet Solutions is an award-winning and technologically driven hosting company with a commitment to customer service at its core. It makes sense, then, that Lunarpages is already fully IPv6 ready and has made the technological commitment to remain ahead of the game for the benefit of all our customers – current and future.
Ten WordPress Plugins Worth Considering
Many programmers, both amateur and professional, have augmented the power and usability of WordPress by creating plugins that enhance the user experience and make it easier on the blog or site owner to create and manage content.Adding a WordPress plugin is easy and can yield great benefits. Plugins are unique in that they can be a great solution to a problem you’ve been actively trying to solve, or a “Why didn’t I think of that” tool to improve your website or blog without any programming knowledge necessary.
Lunar News – September 2011
Posted by: | CommentsWelcome to Lunarpages News. This month we cover:
How to Tap into the Power of Social Networking with Your Own Facebook Store
How can a business owner harness the potential that lies within a business Facebook page? LunarMods’ new application allows you to sell products right from your Facebook’s business page without any additional programming.
How to Use Facebook for Business – An Introductory Guide
At this point, you have heard of social media and inbound marketing. Maybe you’ve experimented with Twitter and checked out your kids’ Facebook profiles, and you can see the value for college students who want to make sure they’re all at the same bar on Saturday night. But why does any of this matter to you or your business?
If Your Website Has Organic Ranking Problems, Try SEM
Sometimes websites are created in such a way that it is difficult to achieve organic search ranking without a complete overhaul of your website. Many times these sites were created incorrectly, and you may not be aware of that fact until you experience little or no results from SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts. Occasionally, our strategic partner LocalDirective has seen these sites even have problems ranking organically for their own business name!
Establish Your Online Presence Quickly and Easily with Quicksite
Looking to make your mark on the Web? With Quicksite™ by Lunarpages, you can have your new website up and running in less than two hours with the help of our award winning customer support by your side the whole way.
An Interview with Lunarpages’ Marketing Manager
Diane Van Pelt joined the Lunarpages team in November 2009. From research to implementation, Diane has us covered. This month we took the time to get to know Diane better and share with you.
Track the Effectiveness of your Investment in Social Media
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It’s important to all entrepreneurs to follow the effectiveness of their investment strategy. Regardless what the water cooler talk is on the latest stocks or ground floor opportunities, what matters isn’t buzz, but results! With all the talk about social media, you want to be able to analyze data that shows your return on investment. In this article we’ll look at 4 steps to tracking your investment in social media marketing.
First Step: Track your Social Media Efforts Consistently and Accurately
Differentiate the results of social media: To correctly track your social media ROI, you’ll want to ensure you are tracking both your direct social media efforts, such as links you have placed on social networking sites, as well as organic social media returns that are placed by outsiders.
To do this, you’ll need to make consistent use of campaign tracking. Campaign tracking must be added to each link you leave at social media sites that direct people back to your site. Remembering to use campaign tracking is easy when you use Google’s URL builder tool, but it can get tricky if you don’t carefully assign names to specific parameters. You’ll want to keep careful track of your various campaigns for accurate reporting results. Google campaign tracking is capable of using 5 different marketing dimensions:
- Source
- Medium
- Term
- Content
- Campaign
Although you don’t need to use each one of these categories in all your campaigns, it’s important to identify your links so you know where they’re coming from and why you’re getting the results you are!
Once you can see the results of both your direct social media efforts and the results of 3rd parties that link back to your site, you’ll be able to replicate and redouble your efforts with a more informed strategy!
Second Step: Consider Last Click Transactions from Social Media Sites
It’s great to know which social media sites drove traffic to your site, but Google Analytics, when used with the advanced segments discussed above, does that and more. Social media’s value can’t be measured based solely on last click transactions, so you’ll need to complete a couple of more steps to ensure you get great data.
Third Step: Consider Data from Social Media Assisted Transactions
Although its use is currently limited to the beta version, Google Analytics tools for tracking these types of transactions will be invaluable for the entrepreneur attempting to gauge the effectiveness of social media campaigns. This tool allows you to go beyond the last click and determine a referral to your site within the last 30 days.
Now you’ll have two great segments of data to compare: Last click transactions as well as social media assisted transactions from the last month.
This data alone, however, doesn’t take into account the benefits that social media gives to your business, either directly or indirectly. Remember, brand recognition and word of mouth are just as important as page visits when it comes to conversions.
Fourth Step: Record Social Media Influence That Occurs Off Site
By adding a couple of easy-to-answer questions (such as drop-downs) to your checkout process, you can collect information that can be recorded in Google Analytics and used to analyze social media efforts that may not come in the form of last click or social media assisted transactions.
Ask your customers what most influenced their decision to purchase, or which social media sites influenced their purchasing decisions. Many decisions to purchase can be driven by social media, but not necessarily result in click-throughs to your site. This happens when a customer searches using keywords or your company’s name some time after having heard about you through a social media outlet. Google Analytics allows you to set both transactional and non-transactional goals so you can get a better perspective on what social media marketing is doing for you and your business.
Social media sites are here to stay. But just as ignoring them can be damaging to your business, so can attempting to use social media marketing without properly assessing its effectiveness. Using Google Analytics and following the 4 steps described here will get you on the way to effectively measuring your social media investment.
Website Analytics: Knowledge Is Power
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Chances are, if you have a business website, you have it for a reason. And the reason is likely twofold: one, to make sure people who know you can find information about your business; two, you want to grow your revenues by attracting new business. Not to add one more thing to your already busy schedule, but once you have web destinations, our strategic partner, LocalDirective, asserts you must be able to measure your website effectiveness if it is your goal to achieve a good return on your investment.
Google Analytics: The Easiest Way to Measure Website Activity…And It’s Free
Web analytics is the collection, measurement and analysis of data for the purposes of understanding how a website is performing. Google Analytics is a free tool that enables you to see clearly into the behavior of those who visit your site. Everything from information about visitors, pages viewed, measurements such as time on your site, where the visitors came from, and specific behaviors on your individual pages. It is even possible to customize the information, so you can easily see statistics that are most important for your business.
So Much Can Be Measured That You May Wonder Where to Start
No doubt about it, there is a lot you can measure. But, what should you measure?
When people first start reviewing their web analytics they typically focus on number of visits. While looking at these numbers will give you an idea of how well you are directing traffic to your site, focusing on the number of visits is not a good way to measure your website’s effectiveness. So why’s that, you may ask?
If you are like most business owners, you developed your website with the hope that it would generate sales or leads. People who simply go to your website and quickly leave do not result in sales or leads. These people got to your website and either didn’t like what they saw, didn’t know how to take action, or weren’t interested in your product or service. You can see then the hits and visits are nice, but…do they really tell you everything you want to know?
Website Effectiveness: Usually Measured In Conversion to Sales or Leads
As a starting point, LocalDirective’s analytics experts recommend paying attention to measurements that either directly count revenue-generation activities or that are ‘leading indicators’ of future revenues. Here are some examples for various types of businesses:
- For an E-Commerce site, it is easy: you want to measure the number of sales you make. But in addition to that, you may want to measure how many people put one item in your shopping cart, and then left your website. Or how many people look at reviews before selecting a product. Some of these leading indicators will surely give you ideas on where improvements can be made to increase your completed sales even higher.
- For a Business-To-Consumer site, aside from direct actions such as coupons downloaded or forms completed, you might want to deeply understand your various targeted segments. For instance, you may want to understand the differences in behavior of visitors from various referral sites. How does your Bing Pay-Per-Click program work? How does it compare to organic traffic from that search engine? And how does social media work for you? Is Facebook better than YouTube, in terms of traffic that takes desired actions on your website? Knowing where your traffic comes from and the differences in behavior of visitors from those referring sites will help you spend your marketing dollars more wisely in the future for even higher conversions.
- For a Business-To-Business site, hands down it is crucial to classify visitors into appropriate sales pipeline segments, particularly if they don’t take the main conversion actions of providing contact information in exchange for white paper and/or video access. While it takes a little more advanced analytics knowledge, it is possible to segment visitors by source and onsite behaviors, for instance, which will help you to learn where you lose visitors in your sales funnel. This valuable information will enable you to develop improvements that deliver a higher close ratio.
It is clear to see that a good part of using analytics effectively is spending time determining how to best reflect indicators of future revenue or direct measures of immediate conversion. If this sounds valuable but you don’t know where to start, LocalDirective, who specializes in online marketing and business analytics, can help.
Now’s the Time to Get Started
If your website is attracting visits that are not resulting in sales, you should work with a digital marketing agency that knows how help you with all aspects of building a powerful online presence. Soup to nuts, LocalDirective is an agency that can help you develop or revitalize your website so that it is a high-converting site and then can set up your Google Analytics to help you reach the highest conversion rate possible, maximizing your Return On Investment for your website and online marketing programs.