Web Hosting Geeks' Blog

IXWebHosting In-Depth Analysis

Art — Thu, 24 May 2012 11:10:45 +0000

Here at Web Hosting Geeks, we consider it one of our prime directives to keep you informed about most of the popular, inventive, and otherwise chic web hosting companies floating around on the Internet. We make a point to cover some of the larger companies, giving you the full scoop on those institutions that a lot of web masters are choosing. However, we also consider it our duty to keep you informed about some of the smaller venues, too. Those that are just starting up, or who cater to a smaller audience. Often times these places come with an increase in service and performance, and as such, we feel you should be informed about them.

Which is why today we’ll be taking a look at a web hosting provider that you may never have heard of before: IX Web Hosting. It’s a company that we enjoy, and for a number of reasons. If you’re looking for a slightly smaller company to handle your needs (but one with the utmost in performance and reliability) then stick around! We’ll be shoveling out all of the facts as they lay, including pricing, contact information, hosting plans, and general know-how. We’ll also be giving their tech-support plans a run for their money. All in all, you’ll find the sum total of that information below, as well as a whole lot more. If that sounds like a good deal, then head on below the break, Soldier! We’ve got your IX Web Hosting boot camp locked, loaded, and ready to roll!

Who is IX Web Hosting?

With any web hosting provider, no matter who they are, we try to firstly paint an accurate picture of the company’s drives, who they cater to, and what their promises are. We’ve done this for all the bigger providers, but we feel it’s particularly important with smaller places like IX Web Hosting. With that in mind, just who in the heck of things is IX Web Hosting?

To begin with, IX Web Hosting boasts a network of some 503,408 sites across its entire network. That’s a lot of customers, especially as the provider has only been in business since 1999. During that time, they’ve grown one heck of a lot, now holding more than 110,000 clients in their roster. They began their company with a single server in the founder’s living room, and have since become a really mammoth operation. They offer a lot of guarantees, which if you’re looking for security in information, we’ll pass along to you now.

Firstly, IX Web Hosting works to offer one of the most personable tech-support teams in the game. Their company wide philosophy is to provide a unique and personalized customer support experience, as quoted from their website. How is this accomplished? By assigning each and every new account a single tech support rep. We’ll dive into the juicy details of this much later in the article, but it’s worth mentioning here at the forefront of things.

They also offer a full, zero risk guarantee. What does this mean? Well, it largely means a couple of things. Firstly, it means that you can enjoy all the services that IX Web Hosting has to offer for one full week without paying—yes, that’s at no charge to you, Señor! For a week you can simply enjoy the benefits, and if you don’t like the service, you can cancel everything without being hassled. There’s no fighting for refunds, no excess bills: Just free service for a week.

The company also boasts one of the best technical focuses in the game. What we mean by that is simple: IX Web Hosting strives to provide its users with the best, the latest, the quickest, and the most solid hardware available. We’ll bite deeper into the tech apple in a second, but we’d like to tie all of this off with a simple point: IX Web Hosting offers full, 99% up-time on all its servers. Guaranteed. Sure, a lot of hosting companies promise that, but with IX Web Hosting’s network of ace hardware, you can bet it’s a sure guarantee.

The Tech Behind IX Web Hosting

So how exactly is it that IX Web Hosting is capable of promising you and its users a full 99% guaranteed uptime? The truth lies in the machinery, as well as the location and set-up. Firstly, IX Web Hosting controls its own, state of the art data center located within the United States. Furthermore, this data center is housed and staffed by system administrators, customer relations experts, and an ace marketing department. What this means for you is that the physical hardware you’re taking advantage of is nearby, and is staffed by people who can fix problems as they arise. Is your site down? With IX Web Hosting, you can fully expect a nearby associate to be working on the problem before you even notice it’s there.

IX Web Hosting also makes use of its own, proprietary Tier 3 (n+1) network. What does this mean? It means that the hardware your site is stored on is expected and designed to provide the best possible connection speeds and up-times. That plus one also indicates that, in emergency situations, you will always have a single, additional backup on hand to update your site with. If something should happen accidentally to your data, you can rest assured that it will be backed up and restored in mere minutes. Oh, and they’ve also got two industrial diesel engines to handle blackouts—Just thought we’d throw that into the ring!

The Hosting Plans Offered by IX Web Hosting

Up until this point, we’ve talked a lot about who IX Web Hosting actually is, as well as what kind of hardware they’re supporting. However, we have yet to dive into the meat and potatoes of their actual hosting plans. Don’t worry, though, we plan to fix that little problem right here and right now! Starting with the most basic brick in the wall: The shared Linux hosting plan!

Personal Linux Hosting Plans

Before we can give you the specifics of the actual plan, we have to first mention the way that IX Web Hosting’s services are arranged. You see, within their personal Linux hosting plans, the company actually offers a sum total of three unique pricing and service tiers. These are designed to meet the needs of specific consumers, and can be a tremendous boon for those with set goals and budgets.

To begin with, the bottom tier of their personal Linux hosting plans is the Expert Plan. This plan starts at a scant $3.95 a month, which may seem low—that’s because it is! The pricing rate listed there is one of the best we’ve seen on the market. But what does it earn you?

It’s worth mentioning at this point that all three of the IX Web Hosting hosting tiers come standard with unlimited disk space, unlimited band width, and unlimited hosted domains. These are all points that we positively demand in our hosting providers, and we feel you should too. Within the Expert Plan, however, you’ll be earning quite a few other features, as well. To begin with, you’ll be given a total of two dedicated IP addresses, which is a tremendous boon for search engine optimization. On top of that, you’ll also get one free domain registration with an extension of your choice: .com, .net, .org, .biz, etc. And of course, you’ll also get that dedicated support representative that we talked about earlier.

The next better thing to the Expert Plan is the Business Plan. For only $7.95 a month, you’ll get even more features, and more service that’s been geared to your needs from the ground up. To start off with, you’ll enjoy the same unlimited features, as well as a whopping three free dedicated IP addresses. There’s also two free domain registrations, to boot. And, as mentioned, you can also enjoy the 7 day free trial period and dedicated support rep once you’ve actually signed the lease on your new server space.

The last plan is the Unlimited Pro option, which clocks in at the same price as the Business Plan. For only $7.95 a month you’ll get all the unlimited options, 15 free IP addresses, three free domain registrations, and full access to the support and trial periods you need. It’s a killer bargain, and considering it also comes loaded with site building technology, site marketing and promotional tools ($75 free Google AdWords), eCommerce options, and emailing software, you’re looking at one incredible bargain!

Personal Windows Hosting Plans

However, unlike most hosting companies curently on the market, IX Web Hosting is not a Linux-only affair. In fact, they offer perhaps one of the best Windows-based hosting experiences we’ve seen around town. And, as you might have expected, these plans are also broken up into a couple different pricing tiers.

Where Windows hosting is concerned, you’ve only got two unique plans to think about. Firstly, there’s the Business Plus plan, which costs only $9.95 a month. For that money you’ll get the unlimited features you need, as well as three free dedicated IP addresses and two free domain registrations. You’ll also get the full bevy and load of additional features, including site building technology, a Plesk control panel, site marketing and promotional tools, eCommerce options, and emailing software, and full customer support. But what’s the other pricing tier look like?

With the Unlimited Pro Windows hosting option provided by IX Web Hosting, you’ll be spending a scant $9.95 a month on your Windows hosting. With that, you’ll get some of the most powerful Windows technology in the game, as well as a full 15 free dedicated IP addresses, three free domain registrations, and all the unlimited disk space, bandwidth, data transfers, hosted domains, and email accounts you can stand. And, you’ll also get the full roster of other features that we mentioned above. All in all, it’s a rock solid way to go if you’re in serious need of some good Windows hosting, and the price isn’t bad, to boot. In our eyes, it’s a winning deal.

Linux VPS Hosting

But what if shared personal hosting just isn’t cutting it for you? What if you need a little more oomph in the tank to get by, and a shared plan of any sort just won’t meet the needs of your personal site or your business venue? If that’s the case, then you’re in luck! IX Web Hosting offers a wide range of virtual private server options, allowing you to take yet another step toward web hosting freedom—and at a price that might surprise you!

As you might have guessed at this point, IX Web Hosting isn’t just going to give you a flat rate for its services. No, they’ve got three tiers of pricing and features to entice you with, as well as two unique operating systems: Windows and Linux.

In the realm of Linux, you’re looking at the X2, X4 and X8 pricing tiers. What do these earn you? To answer, we’ll start with the lowest rung, the X2. For only $29.95 a month, this lowest pricing scheme earns you one heck of a lot of virtual private server power. To begin with, you’ll get one CPU core with 384 megabytes of guaranteed RAM. Then, you’ll get a total of 500 gigabytes of data transfer, 10 gigabytes of storage, and a whole two dedicated IP addresses to boost your search engine optimization. Want unlimited features? You got them! You’ll get unlimited hosted domains, burstable RAM, and complete Root/Admin Access.

The next step up, the X4, offers roughly the same additional features, but with much bustier hardware. Clocking in at $54.95, the plan earns you a full four CPU cores, 786 megabytes of RAM, 1500 gigabytes of data transfer (whew!) and 15 gigabytes of storage. You’ll also get two dedicated IP addresses, a cPanel/Plesk panel, and all the other features we mentioned earlier.

Now, though, it’s time to bring out the big daddies of the hosting plans. Yes, we’re talking about the X8. The pricing on this one is much higher ($89.95 a month) but for that price you’ll get a whopping eight CPU cores, a total of 2048 megabytes of RAM, 2000 gigabytes of data transfers, and 100 gigabytes of storage. All of this also comes loaded with the aforementioned bonus features, and the full security of the IX Web Hosting dedicated support team. In other words, if you need heavy-duty virtual private server hosting with a Linux flavor, there’s no better place to go than with the X8.

Windows VPS Hosting

On the Windows side of things, you can expect to pay slightly more. Plans are exactly comparable in both hardware and performance, but the prices will go up just an hair. For instance, the X2 Windows plan costs $44.95 a month, the X4 Windows $69.95, and the X8 a whopping $104.95.

In other words, if you don’t need the Windows application support or file system, the Linux side of IX Web Hosting’s virtual private server hosting will save you money without shirking performance.

Cloud Hosting

Here at Web Hosting Geeks, one of the things we enjoy most about web hosting is cloud-based technology. We’re absolutely ape for it, and if you want the best performance with the most security, there’s no other way to go than with the cloud. All of this in mind, we’re absolutely stoked to see that IX Web Hosting offers a full range of cloud hosting plans to its consumers. What do they look like? Well, let us tell you!

To begin with, there are a total of four different pricing tiers to work with where cloud hosting at IX Web Hosting is concerned, as well as a total of two unique operating systems: Both Linux and Windows. In the realm of Linux, the lowest possible cloud hosting plan costs $99.95 a month and earns you two CPU cores, one gigabyte of guaranteed RAM, 300 gigabytes of data transfer, 20 gigabytes of storage, and two dedicated IP addresses. To be fair to this lowest of plans, the amount of power offered is much higher than we’re used to seeing with other cloud hosting companies.

And at the very top end of the system, we’re looking at $424.99 a month for a whopping eight CPU cores, 8 gigabytes of RAM, 1500 gigabytes of data transfer, 150 gigabytes of storage, two dedicated IP addresses, and even your choice of the Linux operating system. It’s a wealth of power, data, and performance, with plans in the middle ranging from $174.99 to $249.99. All in all, we have to confess that we’re rather blown away by the statistics on this side of IX Web Hosting’s plans, and we genuinely feel they’re one of the best cloud hosting providers on the market.

Of course, the Windows plans are roughly equivalent, but will cost you slightly more than their Linux brothers and sisters. The lowest plan possible under the operating system will cost you roughly $129.99 a month while the utmost runs a full $444.95 a month. Still, though, if you’re looking for cloud hosting with Windows as the base, you’re typically out of luck. This level of variety, and the mere fact that Windows is included as a possibility is an impressive reason to give IX Web Hosting a try.

All the Other Additional Stuff

So, now we’ve given you the grand picture of the total hosting plans that IX Web Hosting offers. However, as with most web hosting providers, that’s not quite the full picture just yet. No, the host offers a few other perks to entice you with, and they look a bit like this:

With IX Web Hosting you’ll get a free eCommerce SSL Certificate (to order click here) to both prove the security of your eCommerce site, but also to lock it down and protect it from outside influence. You can also enlist the company to design your website for you at a modest fee using their design services (request free consultation). Want to set up a merchant account with your IX Web Hosting plan? Not a problem! And to top it all off, you’ll also get a full range of free advertising coupons and credits to kick start the promotion of your new site. All in all, it’s a fun barrel of perks, and if you needed another reason to consider IX Web Hosting, there it is.

Contact Information

But don’t just take our word for it! If you’re looking to get in touch with the company yourself, you can use the contact information provided below to find an easy fix.

New Customers

Sales Email: sales@ixwebhosting.com

General Questions: questions@ixwebhosting.com

Existing Customers

Hosting Support Email: support@ixwebhosting.com

VPS Support Email: vpssupport@ixwebhosting.com

General Billing Email: billing@ixwebhosting.com

Affiliates Email: affiliates@ixwebhosting.com

Phone Number: 1-800-385-0450

Conclusion (and Coupon)

All in all, IX Web Hosting looks to be one of the best hosting providers we’ve seen in a long time. They offer a unique focus on the consumer and on personal sales support and tech assistance that we simply don’t get a lot of in the industry. Furthermore, their prices are reasonable, their services wide—the dual operating system support is top-notch—and their image trusted. If that’s not a good reason to look into them, then here’s a 10% off coupon that might do the trick.

Keep in mind, though, that you should always read our user-submitted reviews before agreeing to any digital lease! We’ve got heaps of them, and if you’re not familiar with a web hosting provider, it never hurts to have a look under the hood. Our users have been there, and they’ll let you know what the company is like without any holds barred.

Read our user reviews of IXWebHosting.

Website: https://www.ixwebhosting.com/.

Microsoft Cloud Solutions

Tolga BALCI — Wed, 23 May 2012 06:39:56 +0000

This time Microsoft could see the future ahead and played wisely: it is the only company that is offering a 360 degree cloud coverage with its offerings. This is not a pure Microsoft appraisal, I will also talk about the competition and see why I have concluded that Microsoft offers firm cloud solutions.

Infrastructure as a Service

This is the stronghold of Microsoft with its System Center suite of products. With System Center, you have everything you need to build, deploy and manage your infrastructure:

System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM): SCCM enables you to inventory your existing Information Technologies infrastructure, deploy applications, operating systems remotely, manage mobile devices, manage compliance and make baselining. With SCCM 2012, there is the concept of user-centric management, based on the notion of “consumerization of IT.” You can target software to users and their software selection will follow them on each device they log in; no matter if this device is their primary device or not. With the implementation of power management, you can define policies to reduce your company’s power use by shutting down the unused systems.
System Center Operations Manager (SCOM): SCOM is by far the most comprehensive monitoring solution for Microsoft environments. With the acquisition of Avicode, the realtime .NET Application Monitoring startup, Operations Manager 2012 now goes beyond the systems and network monitoring to application monitoring. The application is discovered and monitored to the code level: the developers can now see which exact SQL statement or .NET code is slowing down the application. SCOM also supports monitoring network devices and UNIX/Linux computers (certain distributions.)
System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM): “Datacenter Manager” might be a more appropriate name for the VMM. Although its name implies that VMM only manages virtual machines, it is not: VMM manages your entire entire datacenter as a fabric of resources and lets you provision the add›itional resources with minimum effort. You can create clouds, optimize resource usage at the top level and also manage your storage at the LUN level.
System Center Data Protection Manager (SCDPM): Data Protection Manager is Microsoft’s backup solution designed for Microsoft environments. The important thing to note here is the “Microsoft environments.” Do not expect to use SCDPM for UNIX, Linux computers. In the Microsoft products, the abilities of SCDPM is as expected such as faster backup/restore of SQL databases, item level recovery in Sharepoint, hardware snapshot on SAN (using hardware VSS provider), etc.. Although it is still rough on some edges, it is a solid backup product for Microsoft environments.
System Center Service Manager (SCSM): Service Manager enables you to standardize and monitor your services with incident, change and problems management, comply with industry needs.
System Center Orchestrator (SCO): Orchestrator is the best name chosen for the product because what really does is to automate the routine tasks, workflows and processes across your Information Technologies infrastructure. You can define role-based services, automatically route requests, automate provisioning and integrate services with the third-party software components.

The real power of Microsoft’s System Center suite is not the sum of its individual products but their integration with each other. Surely your business flows are different, but this example will give you an idea on the power of integration. As IT department you create a workflow to deploy a new virtual PC for a new employee (SCO.) HR will fill the required form and create a ticket (SCSM) which will be routed (SCO) to the relevant people in IT for approval. After the approval (SCSO) a new machine will be created according to the predefined policies (SCO, SCVMM), operating system will be deployed and the applications (according to the user role) will be installed (SCCM), Active Directory account will be created (SCO), the PC will be specified in a backup group (SCDPM, SCO) and then the ticket will be closed and the HR and IT departments will be notified (SCO, SCSM.)

This does not need to happen in your private cloud. You can define the steps to utilize your private cloud and your public cloud. System Center suite supports public, private and hybrid clouds.

Of course there is the competition, and there are products that individually perform better than a particular System Center product. You may argue that Cacti can monitor network better than SCOM or SalesForce provides a better ticketing solution than SCSM, or VCloud can manage your virtual infrastructure better than SCVMM. I do not disagree. I just try to say that System Center has an excellent integration between its applications. You do not need to integrate anything, this is already done. I also say that the suite is very comprehensive so that it leaves almost nothing to be desired. But of course, if you need the “better” items that are offered by the other vendors, it is only you that can evaluate which offering suits better to your environment.

Platform as a Service

Microsoft plays with Windows Azure in the Platform as a Service (PaaS) market. Windows Azure is a service that allows you to create and deploy applications and to locate your SQL Server databases. As expected, it uses the .NET environment. With Azure AppFabric, you can connect your Local Area Network (LAN) to the Azure platform and use many roles in your LAN such as Active Directory authentication, certificate uses and the like.

The competition in this market is tough compared to the Infrastructure offerings. The barrier to implement the PaaS offering is the architecture first. If you are developing PHP code on a LAMP stack, it is obvious that Windows Azure is not a fit for you. In this scenario, you will most probably choose Red Hat’s OpenShift over Windows Azure. Or if you are developing for Google Apps, then it is AppEngine that you will consider. Or of DB2 applications, the solution will be Workload Deployer.

The choice for the PaaS solution is not a pure IT decision; it is the business that decides on the platform. If a company is founded to develop and sell applications for Google Apps, then it will not make any sense to choose Windows Azure for development. Similarly, if the company uses Microsoft environment to the full and develops applications with .NET and SQL Server, then it will be of no use to choose -say- Workload Deployer as the PaaS solution.

Software as a Service

This area is where all the hell breaks loose. As the largest Software as a Service (SaaS) providers also have their own mobile and desktop platforms, the competition is way fierce. Although Apple is also in the SaaS arena with its cloud solution (iCloud), I will take a business oriented point of view and consider Microsoft and Google.

Google offers its Google Apps for Business, and Microsoft offers Office 365. Google was the first to market and you can easily see that Google Apps is optimized for online use. On the other hand, Microsoft brings its experience on the business side to the table and brings a familiar Microsoft Office experience online. Google Apps is made mobile on the Android platform and Office 365 on Windows Phone and Windows 8 platform.

The two giants offer almost identical services inside their SaaS offerings. Google is more mature but Microsoft is taking very solid steps to establish its presence. I cannot conclude a clear winner in this area; but if you are planning to migrate your existing Microsoft-based infrastructure (Exchange, Sharepoint, Microsoft Office) to the cloud, then I can say that Office 365 will make this migration less painful.

The Final Word

As we have just scratched the surface in the cloud solutions and the cloud market, I can safely repeat that Microsoft is the only company that has presence in all markets. Taken at the granular level you can find products that perform better than Microsoft in certain areas but in the broadest perspective Microsoft is alone.

When I take a step back and evaluate the cloud environment from an objective perspective, setting the business decisions aside as we have discussed in the PaaS section, I can safely say that Microsoft offers a less painful transition and with a known, well-backed Microsoft support.

My heartfelt congratulations goes to Redmond.

Web Site Or Facebook? Depends On Your Needs!

Speider.Schneider — Mon, 21 May 2012 04:45:53 +0000

©GL Stock Images

There’s always discussion as to what is the best way to present your product or services to prospective clients. A company without a web site is rare. Only the smallest of main street businesses can survive without a web site… possibly. As people turn to the web, rather then the phone book to find the service they need, an online presence seems to be necessary to survive. From haircuts to juice bars, unless you are in a great location that guarantees constant foot traffic, you need to be found by other methods.

With newspapers and magazines dwindling, not to mention the cost of ads and television advertising, the web offers free marketing for any firm. The question is; what is the best venue? The answer is; what does your company need?

What Is The End Product/Result?

Recently a friend of mine needed help for an event he was holding. He wanted an eFlyer, web site, Facebook page, Twitter account and anything else I thought would help get the word out about the event and aftermath.

After a discussion of his needs and desired results, I sent him a creative brief that suggested a digital flyer that could be posted to sites, Twitter and emailed to his mailing list. It made sense, as this was a limited, time-sensitive project. It would have the build up to the day it was held, occur and then have some photos and comments. After that, it was a dead issue. I suggested a Facebook page to reach more people within the demographic, a Twitter account to keep people up on the event and undisclosed location as well as reach more of the demographic through the use of hashtags and I told him to forget a web site.

For this need, a static web site, even one updated regularly, including a blog section was just a waste of time and effort vs. what is available through Facebook. He insisted on both but his ability to dedicate the time needed to keep all accounts updated and fresh was limited, so the idea of the web site and blog was dropped.

The eFlyer was designed and he had friends and contacts post it on their Facebook pages, pointing people to the fan page of the event. The eFlyer was also posted to his Twitter account with the appropriate hashtags and the Facebook page garnered close to 4,000 hits in the first week.

It was easy to keep up with the two basic accounts, Twitter and Facebook, for news and blurbs leading up to the event and within the month leading to the event date, the fan page had over 10,000 hits.

Would a web site draw the same attention? Possibly but it would have to draw on the addition of the Facebook page, which would be an extra step in his daily posting schedule. For one person servicing all of the social media needs, it was a time drain he couldn’t handle.

This fit his needs but what fits YOUR needs? If you are a Fortune 100 company, you have a team of marketing/social media people to post all over known creation and that is where you need to be. If you have a small service-oriented company, such as being a freelance designer, hair dresser, house painter, plumber or limo driver, just to name a few, you certainly don’t need both a Facebook page AND a web site. A web site alone will do better for you with the proper SEO so customers will find you easily.

With Facebook…

A Facebook page will allow a small business to update information quickly and has tie-ins with Twitter, Foursquare, Pinterest and Instagram. If you want to announce daily specials to your followers, show new product offerings or encourage inbound marketing and interactive response, a Facebook page is ideal for businesses that don’t have a lot of time for social media management or paying a web master to update a web site.

Facebook also has a “close proximity” factor for gathering and tracking followers. This means that people are logged in and concentrating on their timelines. If your information is viral on Facebook, you are part of these figures:

One in every nine people on Earth is on Facebook (this number is calculated by dividing the planets 6.94 billion people by Facebook’s 750 million users).
People spend 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.
Each Facebook user spends on average 15 hours and 33 minutes a month on the site.
More than 250 million people access Facebook through their mobile devices.
More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook.
30 billion pieces of content is shared on Facebook each month.
300,000 users helped translate Facebook into 70 languages.
People on Facebook install 20 million “Apps” every day.

The use of viral images and information, you can grab a part of Facebook users. With the tools that are a part of Facebook, as well as those that have sharing integration with Facebook, you can keep your social media marketing organized with a minimum of time needed to use multiple channels of social media marketing.

An interesting use of Facebook marketing which actually relies on Twitter for the main social media element. A local food truck announces its daily location via Twitter and then Facebook and allows for recommendations and reviews, along with fan interaction via a Facebook fan page. They have no web site and probably won’t need one unless they decide to park in the same place every day.

So, Why Use A Web Site?

There were an estimated 2,459,646,518 internet users worldwide as of February 2012 (representing about 30.2% of the population worldwide), according to Internet World Stats data. The figures grow every day as technology allows more people to gain access to the internet.

Those figures aside, there will always be a need for a company or individuals to have a web site. Again, it depends on your needs.

When you have a web site, aside from the morals and taste factor of society, which isn’t really much these days, Facebook has rules and privacy settings (although no one seems to be able to figure those out) and will place ads on your page which may very well compete with your product or service, so owning your own web site gives you complete control over content (although you need to read the terms of service of your web hosting provider).

©GL Stock Images

When planning a web site, the first thing to consider is how it will be built. Will you use a ready made template, a WordPress theme or hire a web designer to build the site from scratch to your particular specifications. All will cost money but make sure it’s money well spent. When hiring a designer, it’s best to let them use their expertise at understanding your needs and then allowing them to design your site without interference.

If poorly designed and developed, your site won’t work very well with your users and search engines. Getting involved because you believe design is simple or you need to control the process or, worse yet, you want to brag to friends that you helped design your own site, you will end up costing yourself prospects via lost SEO and a site with bad navigation or designed poorly so people surfing the site won’t stay to view your products or services.

A no-nonsense site is best for a business that offers a product and pricing information that is available to the casual shopper, 24/7. In this case, a well designed website will help you sell more. The website can become a powerful visual aid for your business and a knowledgeable, convincing and tireless virtual salesperson who will always be there when your clients want more information to make the buying decision.

Because of this 24/7 digital salesperson, you will save time and money. Your website will be always available online, even after hours, so won’t have to answer the phone as frequently because now people have another way of getting the information they need about your business: through your website.

With a digital presence, you can reduce or even eliminate the costs for printing and distributing flyers, brochures, newsletters, etc. Including a digital PDF on your site allows prospects to download all of these at no cost to you and they can be updated at any time.

With a website, your business can be listed in various online directories including the web directories of Google, Yahoo, Bing and other business-specific online directories. For your customers, these are like on-demand phone books that will come in handy. Specific searches from local prospects can bring customers right to you.

Show Your Work Process And Successes!

Facebook allows for quick updates to show projects and how they turned out. The same can be used on a web site and will boost customer confidence. With a web site, you can place reviews where they will be the most effective. A big project for a big client will bring big SEO for your site.

One way to encourage a new customer is by showing the transparency in your work process. Tough economics, competition between companies and the cost of services has clients worried…not that they weren’t worried before but now it has become imperative to waylay the client’s fears with a lot of “hand-holding,” explaining what will happen when, how, and why. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it makes perfect sense.

By showing the process, in detail on your web site, before a project even starts, both parties should understand the milestones and what can and should be expected by BOTH the client and the supplier. By simply stating, “this is what my company does, and this is what it typically costs,” it eliminates a lot of the needless bartering and wasted time crafting custom proposals for clients. By defining what you do for a client, and what you don’t do, it’s become easier for you to determine costs.

When prospects see examples of your successes, they will also be inspired for their own projects. Often, if they see what they like, they will ask you to repeat the same project. They may see a style or process they like and ask you to provide the same for them as they now have confidence you will deliver their vision without guessing at the end results.

Yes, these can be added to Facebook, too, using the photo album function but, once again, on your own web site, you can control placement and impact.

What Price For Fame?

There’s been endless discussion about price lists on web sites. The internet, technology itself, has changed the way we all do business. The rise of Amazon.com and the effect it has had on certain retail sectors (i.e. retail toy and book sales). We have gotten use to the ease of point-and-click buying. Personally, I prefer to hold the product in my hands before buying. I like looking at the package, flipping through pages, trying on clothes and shoes BEFORE considering the purchase. Unfortunately, that option is disappearing.

Some would say that’s a con and not a pro but apparently society doesn’t agree as evident in the bankruptcy and closing of retail stores and chains. There will always be the projects that need the personal touch. The meetings, the briefs, the back and forth and the negotiations for the fees involved…followed by the arguing and non-payment thereof. With a posted price, the prospective client or buyer knows what the product or service will cost and is more likely to pony up the entire cost up front. If not, payments split into two or more with milestone payments are still acceptable to internet shoppers with a final payment due upon delivery, which, thank goodness, will erase the “30 day” payment period. As a friend once said, “30 days is a jail sentence and not a payment term.”

©GL Stock Images

People argue the notion of price lists on a web site as “too rigid” and “unchangeable.” Companies that post products would scoff at that. If you are in a product oriented or service industry that can post a flat fee or price, they can be changed albeit by a person who can handle the web site and needed changes. You have to ask if there will be frequent changes to your prices and costs. If not, placing prices on your site may put you ahead of competitors when prospects are shopping around the web.

As mentioned in the opening of this article, it’s up to you to know your business plan before jumping into social media. Your business plan has to consider the demographic of your targeted consumer and what will reach their needs when marketing your company. Jumping in blindly is a bad business decision and a savvy businessperson will know that planning is the first step in execution.

Shared Hosting Complaints: Compiled and Counted

Art — Sun, 20 May 2012 10:25:33 +0000

Over the last month or so we have been meticulously counting up all the little complaints and problems you, our readers, have been experiencing with some of the largest names in the business. We’ve exposed everyone from iPage to JustHost, from HostGator to HostMonster, from Web HostingPad to WebHostingHub. During all of this, however, we’ve also noticed a few similarities between the complaints. In fact, we’re almost positive we could compile a list of a few issues that all shared hosting providers suffer from. We’re so sure of it, actually, that we already did it. You’ll find that list below, broken up into sections that best detail what our readers have been clamoring on about. However, before we dive into that set of meat and potatoes, we feel as if we owe you a quick roundup of who faired the best during our investigation. We’ll try to keep things level with you as we round the corner to:

Who’s Complaints Were the Least Drastic

This is a tough category to create, as it’s somewhat subjective, and largely the number of complaints we received about a host had to do with the number of users the host actually provided for. To say it another way, the more people using a host, the more likely we are to get a few complaints here and there. However, we can point a few clear winners, in no particular order.

First and foremost, HostGator tended to do quite well for itself. The provider is far from perfect, and suffers from most if not all of the complaints listed below, but on the whole we feel the hosting provider will still do quite the job if you’re looking for a spot of cheap and efficient shared hosting. We also feel like Web Hosting Hub is a solid option, based on the sort of reviews we received. Sure, sometimes the tech support reps don’t have an immediate solution, but the performance and hardware at the core of the company appear to be rather solid. And lastly, we’ve heard some strange things from the FatCow camp, but on the whole, they also appear to deliver where needed. Best of all, their tech support really does seem to be as cracked up as it ought to be.

Hosts to examine before signup, at least according to customer reviews in our database, are HostMonster, iPage, and WebHostingPad. All of these companies offered somewhat decent service, but based on the amount of complaints we’ve hauled in over the last few months, we’re willing to bet they’re not quite as solid as they’d have us believe.

Now that the juicy details are out of the way, let’s jump on down to a full look at some of the complaints and ailments that all shared hosting providers suffer from, as told to us by hosts users:

Unlimited is Impossible:

We’ve known this for a while by just looking at the technology involved, but it is quite nice to hear our readers say it, as well. By all indications, there doesn’t seem to be a shared hosting provider alive that can offer real, honest to goodness unlimited hosting. You see, shared hosting technology simply doesn’t allow you to soak up as much power as you need, or as much memory as you might want. We haven’t really got a problem with these limitations, however we do have a problem with hosts that charge you for “unreasonable use”—of which there were quite a few. As such, be wary of the unlimited services claim, and always ask the host if they have any sort of limitations you should know about.

Tech Support Not Calling Back:

This isn’t a breakup story, it’s the real, cold truth about web hosting. According to our readers, it seems fairly common that a web hosting provider’s tech support representatives will occasionally drop a call, not respond to an email, or otherwise disappear from commission, leaving our readers (or potentially you) in the lurch. Obviously this is a bit of drag, and we’d hate to see it happen to anyone. Depending on the severity of your problem, this may or may not be a deal breaker, but either way, expect it from time to time with virtually any shared hosting provider.

Money Back Hard to Get Back:

We’ve seen this with enough hosts that we feel it’s worth mentioning. According to many of our readers, it appears that getting your money returned from a money back guarantee is something of a tricky ordeal. In the best case scenario, you may have to talk for a while with a tech service representative. In the worst case scenario, you’re looking at a company that doesn’t answer your cancelation emails or calls, leaving you with the same plan you’re hoping to dump before the time limitation runs out. There’s not much you can do to prepare for this, except read the user reviews located on our site first, and then hope for the best if you come to this bridge.

Uptime is Not Always Transparent:

On another note, we’re also getting many, many reports from our users that the 99.99% guaranteed uptime simply doesn’t exist within the realm of shared hosting. We’re not particularly surprised, though we wonder how companies can get away with advertising such a promise. You see, at the worst, we’re seeing reports that shared hosts like JustHost are only online for 70% of the time. In other cases, the service may cruise along fine until, all of a sudden, things are halted for as much as three days at a time. No matter how you skew this, it’s a terrible thing, especially when your website is the lifeblood by which you live. If you need constant uptime and cannot live for a second without your website’s continued presence on the Net, we’d suggest you look for a more dedicated hosting option, rather than shared hosting: At least according to what our readers have been saying.

For more customer reviews and complains visit out User Reviews section.

IaaS, PaaS and SaaS Explained

Tolga BALCI — Sat, 19 May 2012 07:15:07 +0000

IT as a Service

In our previous post we have emphasized that the cloud, by definition, offers minimal management or provider support to deliver the information technology infrastructure to the user. That means, the user will not undertake the lengthy process of obtaining an IT service nor she will bother with the complexities of it. What she needs is just getting her work done without having to listen to the IT jargon. She can request one or any combination of the following services:

IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service
PaaS: Platform as a Service
SaaS: Software as a Service

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

In the IaaS case, the cloud provider offers the “computing resources” to the customers. The cloud provider can be the company’s IT department or an outside company who charges you for the use of these resources. In any case, the user receives the service: she is not bothered with the lengthy processes of obtaining a server for her accounting department to accommodate the heavy load of upcoming fiscal-year-end accounting calculations. She knows that her department will be working hard and she needs more computing power. She fills out the form, details what she wants and receives the server in some hours. When the hard times are over for her department, she delivers the server back.

In this scenario, the IT department has offered the IT infrastructure (servers, storage, network infrastructure) to the company and the accounting department used some part of it. The accounting department is (incrementally) charged by only the use of the resources for a specific time, meaning that when the hard times are over, there will be no additional charges.

If you have beared with me so far with the cloud articles, you have just caught that the company’s private cloud is offered as an infrastructure.

The question here is if anybody else can offer this service. Yes, whomever that has made the necessary investments can. You can purchase resources from providers such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud for deploying your own servers or just storage such as Amazon Simple Storage Service.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Platform as a Service is one layer on top of the infrastructure. The computing resources and the solution stack running on top of the resources are delivered to the customer. The solution stack here means the platform. PaaS is for companies that develop applications, databases or integration services. The typical offers are:

The framework and the libraries for application and/or database development,
The environment for developing, testing, hosting applications,
Web-based user interface development applications,
Web services and database integration,

What does an IT department manage in IaaS, PaaS and SaaS environments?

That also includes multi-tenant architecture, collaboration environment for application developers and reporting facilities.

There are various companies who offer different platforms:

Microsoft: Windows Azure: C#, Java, .NET, SQL Server
Google: AppEngine: Python, Java, Go
Red Hat: OpenShift: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Python, PHP, MySQL, MongoDB, Perl.
IBM: Workload Deployer: Java, DB2

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Software as a Service offers the software, the data that the software uses and the means for allowing the user to access the service via a web browser. In many cases all the users of the service uses the same software version but sometimes a second version, most probably a beta for the upcoming release, is provided. In today’s world, almost all of the Internet users are using at least one SaaS offering, such as Google Applications, Hotmail, Evernote, Google+, Facebook.

SaaS brings the following benefits to its users:

The software is hosted centrally, there is no need to upgrade, whether in terms of hardware or software,
There is only one release of the software that makes test and development times shorter.
The software provider can better analyze user data (most/least used features, top items that users seeked help for etc..)
All these allow faster and more stable releases.

SaaS is the top level that is reached by the cloud. All that is needed to get the job done is a web browser – the hardware and the software that is running the browser is irrelevant. This is really what the users need.

Image Credits:

Featured image: Microsoft, www.microsoft.com
Inline image: Venture Beat, http://venturebeat.com/

Fax My Jeans Up, Scotty

James.D.Carmine — Wed, 16 May 2012 20:17:46 +0000

Additive manufacturing (AM) known as 3-D printing or Direct Digital Manufacturing (DDM) makes teleporting a reality. Not people yet, but soon– though at best it would only be a copy.

BAM (Biomedical Additive Manufacturing) however, is a reality, and according to a recent University of Texas publication, real meat AM organs are projected to arrive in under 15 years. Had they arrived a little sooner, Steve Jobs could have printed himself the liver he needed. Already, AM hips, joints and artificial limbs are digitally manufactured and successfully installed in and on people.

The manufacturing of the humanoid is inescapable since the same printing machine could make lunar landing gear components and hip acetabula indiscriminately. Materials including titanium and multiple varieties of polymers are applied in micron thin layers and forged using Selective Laser Sintering (SLS). The original technology grew out of Stereo Lithography (SL) that used polymers for quick prototypes. Now AM is the rapid manufacturing of single fully customized objects, both humanoid and otherwise.

This is the most disruptive gig going: No more shipping. And the AM printers are becoming cheaper. Currently some can be homemade for under a few thousand dollars, whereas those under development to assemble complete airplane wings are of course vastly more expensive. AM is the ultimate fax, fax on crack, and Computer Assisted Design (CAD) is the engine of it all. What’s digitally designed can be stored in the cloud and rained down– or up– to any one with the appropriate printing machine. Think Guttenberg’s printing press changed things? This is bigger. Printing DNA (yes, the stuff of genes!) is on the horizon. Digitized objects or progeny in the clouds delivered to outer space or inner space. We’ve arrived: virtual reality to real reality. Beam me up my perfect fitting jeans or a kneecap or even designer human ova. “In the future,” says the National Center for Manufacturing , “90 per cent of all products will be developed virtually.” Fax is a feminist issue now. Study CAD!

No Related Post

Seriously, What is the Cloud?

Tolga BALCI — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:40:09 +0000

The formal definition is, well “formal” and we’re inclined to think it like a definition that has been made specifically to confuse rather than explain, but we will start with it and further explain everything one by one.

Let’s see how American National Institute of Standards and Technology answers “what is the cloud” question. Here is the cloud computing definition:

“Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”

This definition gives us the five characteristics of cloud computing:

Ubiquitous, convenient access,
On-demand access,
Shared pool of computing resources,
Rapid provisioning,
Measurable

Let’s make the answer to our “what is the cloud” question clearer by defining the characteristics as follows:

We have a pool of computing resources: the processor, memory, network, storage etc.,
Users of these resources can conveniently access them,
Users of these resources can access them whenever they want, and deploy them on their own,
The IT personnel can quickly deploy these resources, whether automatically as in item no. 3 or with minimal effort,
Both the IT personnel and the users can meter their usage.

The underlying concept of all these is the abstraction of the applications from the underlying hardware.

Let’s stop and think for a moment: everyday we access tens or maybe hundreds of websites on the Internet. We just type an address and hit Enter, and we’re done. We do not, just for once, think about whether the website is hosted on an IBM/HP/Dell server, or whether the website is hosted on a physical/virtual server, or whether the website is hosted on a Windows/Linux/BSD platform, or whether the server uses an SAN/DAS/NAS as its storage. It’s just this point that the website – or the application – that matters. It is abstracted from the underlying hardware: we don’t care about anything as long as we can reach the the website.

Let’s dig a little bit more with the website: the underlying hardware is a pool of computing resources: the network that you access the hosting company, the webhost’s switches, network cables, servers (which are made up of CPUs, memories, ethernet adapters, mainboards), load-balancers are pooled, provisioned, deployed and managed by the IT staff. And that website we just visited? It is running on just a portion of these resources. It’s not uncommon for the webhosts to host tens of thousands of websites in a datacenter. And what do we do as the users? We access them whenever we want from our desktops/notebooks/tablets/mobile phones.

From the users’ perspective, the application is there -no matter if the application is a website, an e-mail application, a photo editor or an online radio and he does not care how and where it runs as long as he accesses it whenever he wants from whichever device he chooses.

Just take this idea and extend it further in your company: now you can provision a server for your department in a couple of minutes, ready with the software of your choice:

Things getting slow? Need one more server? Up and running in a couple of minutes!
How does the IT guy do it so fast? Basically, he just approves your request, the system provisions the server in the background and returns you the IP address and the hostname.
How will your department be charged? The usage metering and reporting is transparent and already there: no surprise expenses in your department budget!

Yes, this is the cloud.

This is the transformed IT infrastructure that enables you to receive it as a service and you do not care what is running in the background. You do not care about the IT staff’s downtime, you do not have to think about the server upgrade budget, you do not have to bother about the peaking demand for your servers in certain times of the year. You just want to come to work, sit down at your desk and mind your own business, not IT’s confusing, tecchy business.

What is the cloud? Welcome to the cloud.

References:

National Institute of Standards and Technology, The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing, http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145.pdf
Featured Image, Wikimedia, Creative Commons, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cloud_applications.jpg

You’re Finally Online. Now What? Marketing, Social Media And Mobile Marketing

Speider.Schneider — Mon, 14 May 2012 05:55:18 +0000

When I speak to students about business, I always make sure to point out that they just can’t sit by the phone and wait for the calls from prospective clients to pour in. This is when their eyes glaze over.

The worst argument I ever heard from a student in response to my talk on steps to market oneself was, “I thought I’d just get an agent.” It seems the teacher of the class gave the students that sage advice. I wonder how many took my advice and how long it took the others to realize that advice was sound. How many careers, I wonder, never took off at all.

It doesn’t matter what business you’re in – marketing is as important, if not more important, as what you know and how well you do it. There are horrid incompetents who do extremely well and talented people who go nowhere due to their marketing efforts, or lack thereof.

Some people believe that search engines will help people find them on the web and that’s true to a certain point but at its best, it won’t replace marketing. In any business, you need to encourage growth and new customers. Don’t wait for prospects to find you – go out and find them!

The question is – what kind of marketing tools do you need? The answer is not what tools are out there but what tools fit your business. Social media is free or costs less… well, can be cost effective in most cases. As with fresh, young students setting their first step into the business world, the challenge is knowing what to use, how to use it and what NOT to use.

Is Your Site Really Ready To Promote?

No matter what business you are in, you need to show your services, product(s) and in some cases, the price(s). What’s more, you need to do it quickly as people will spend less then a minute on your site if they are surfing several different competitors. Make sure your site has the most important information in the space that will come up when your site loads. If people have to scroll excessively or your navigation is difficult, then your site is weak and marketing will be a waste of time. Your site is the foundation of your marketing and it has to be strong and reliable.

Let’s say you have a great site and you’ve allowed a seasoned and talented designer or design team to create something great for you without mucking up the design by asking your 12 year-old niece, who won a fourth grade art contest at her school, for her opinion on the design and then forcing the designer to put in prancing glitter unicorn gifs all over your site. In other words, don’t tell your doctor how to remove a malignant growth by telling him/her that your seven year-old son plays the game, “Operation” and will be assisting during the operation. You will die! Have your niece help with design and the site and your business will die!

Aside from that, design blogs LOVE to spotlight the best and worst of web design. Under which label do you want your site appearing? It won’t help when people search out your site. Let a professional design and code your site. They want to do their best so you’re happy and keeping coming back for more as technology changes web applications and technology.

Do You Sell, Process Or Manufacture?

What is it your business does for customers? Do you sell hard goods through a store and an ecommerce site? Even if only through an ecommerce site, be sure, once again, to listen to your web designer so the proper SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will allow people surfing for your type of products will show up and best if they show up within the first page of a search and even better if they show up within the top five.

What else can you use for selling hard goods? By having a tight and focused Twitter following, you can announce new products, sales and specials. Twitter is your billboard and even though it’s free, you have to know the optimal times to post your tweets to catch peoples’ attention without multiple tweets to the point of aggravation to your followers.

When are the best times to tweet? According to an article in Forbes.com, “Twitter gets busiest between 9am and 3pm Monday through Thursday (EST).

An article on Mashable.com also uses the same information compiled by bit.ly (URL shortener and link tracking), writing, “the company revealed that posting links to Twitter between the hours of 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. ET (or 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. PT) will give you the highest click rank, especially on days earlier in the week. Meanwhile, sending a tweet with a link after 8:00 p.m. should be avoided — as should posting links after 3:00 p.m. on Fridays.

I disagree only on the basis of what they point to as “peak times.” I deal with a global clientele and followers, so I have to plan tweets for the same working hours in different time zones. I have noticed that even tweets at 2:00 a.m. (EST), have drawn responses from people in (PST) as well as those just starting their work day in western Europe as well as eastern Asia.

The key is to know your targeted audience, tweet at times they are most likely to see your tweet in their feed, which can fill up with 500 tweets within a minute, pushing yours far off the page. Tweet at optimal times, but not so much that your own tweets sent page looks like an endless list of the same tweet. Bit.ly, to its credit does note, “by understanding the simple characteristics of each social network, you can publish your content at exactly the right time for it to reach the maximum number of people.”

This also brings up the practice of mobile marketing. Have you made your site mobile friendly? If not, you are sorely behind the times and being left behind quickly. Think of it as jumping off a speedboat at night. Within 60 seconds you will be lost and either drown or be eaten by sharks… the sharks being your competition.

With a mobile site and mobile marketing to smart phones, an opt-in list will give you a willing audience who will read your messages sent directly to them. Better then a tweet, more ROI then email marketing and simple to maintain an active database.

SMS (Text) Marketing is the popular way of using mobile marketing as almost every single person is an active text user. Many of these people prefer texting to most other forms of communication and most people carry their mobile device with them at all times. With text marketing, you have the opportunity to contact multiple customers at the same time and they receive the message in real time. SMS message delivery can be guaranteed which makes it a preferred method to email in many instances and there is a greater open rate for texts as opposed to emails.

SMS marketing can also be “location-aware,” so that if a potential consumer is nearby, you can send them a coupon or make them aware of time-sensitive specials. Foursquare is a site/application that you should check out if you want to offer pop up specials and sales.

Developing an application that promotes your business to a mobile user is another great way to harness the growing power of mobile marketing. Mobile apps are one of the hottest items available and you could apply the same concept to mobile games as well. Any application that builds your brand into a potential buyer’s mobile experience is a great way to increase your business.

If you manufacture products, the same techniques apply. The main difference is you are marketing business to business. Mobile marketing will not fit your efforts as well as email marketing and print catalogs. If you specialize in small runs in, say a firm that manufactures promotional items, having a fan page on Facebook with Google ads (which are also good for retail sales) is quite effective.

If you sell services based on intellectual properties, such as web design, consulting or copywriting, there are different choices that must be made. Your site, naturally, must show samples of your work and contact information. Unlike ecommerce sites that show a product and the price, most freelance designers and photographers would rather field requests from prospective clients and price projects accordingly. There has been some discussion if it’s a good idea to actually offer a price list so people surfing for design services can see costs upfront. By the same token, although it commoditizes design work, it also offers upfront payments of 50% or higher before the work begins and terms of sale the customer must accept before the project proceeds.

A design firm in England has found a unique middle ground to this question. Promo Design hits the “process,” “value,” and samples of their work right up front on their home page. Their contact page asks the PROSPECT to layout all of their needs AND budget before the first contact is ever made. The pull down menu of budget will act to weed out the clients looking for a bargain but it still gives the salesperson at Promo a chance to negotiate the work and fee.

But how do you bring prospects to your site in the first place? Creatives tend to be drawn together in life and on social media. We follow other creatives, connect with them and spend an inordinate amount of time-sharing our work, dreams and disappointments. Misery does love company but how much time is spent on this commiseration as opposed to searching for solid business contacts?

When it comes to business, other designers aren’t the number one source of work for us as freelancers or referrals. The dark side of relying too much on connections with other designers is that they can sabotage others. People can be petty and the current financial and competitive environment is fierce. Learn to trust your own efforts!

While your trusted friends, whether designers or “normal” people, are great connections and should be treasured and nurtured, you need to seek out those who BUY your services.

LinkedIn is a purely business site for networking. It allows you to connect with some legitimate heavy hitters who buy creative services.

Build a list of a hundred dream clients. Search companies, identify the right people (not the CEO; try people who are in a position to book design projects) and build a list. Make sure you respond to every accepted connection with a personal note (via LinkedIn) to thank people for connecting with you and include your site URL for “more on me.”

LinkedIn has thousands of groups you can join and even more “questions” that you can answer for awards for “best answer.” Search for questions on marketing and answer how design helps marketing initiatives or advertising. Become an expert in the eyes and minds of possible leads who will need your services. There are some members of LinkedIn that like to give one-sentence answers that usually make no sense or don’t even address the question. They like to have the “most questions answered” title for all to see. Their reputations aren’t the best on the site so think quality and not quantity! Good, sound answers show others you are knowledgeable about your field. Building trust with prospects is an important step in gaining new clients.

Groups allow you to create closer connections with prospective clients. Are you going to join the “Lovers of Joomla” site or the “Small Business Marketing Ideas” group? The latter is filled with people who need your services. The idea of marketing yourself is to reach out to prospective clients, not to be friends with other creatives. Leave that for local design group bitch sessions. The biggest mistake a creative makes is failing to network which, in its most simple state, is sales or selling yourself and your service. If you attended a college or university for the art program, you will have an alumni group that will contain members that were not art students and they have businesses that need design services. So, why not urge them to use a fellow graduate? Surely you talked to other people at that school… right?

Were you a member of a fraternity or sorority? Your brothers and sisters are no doubt members of a LinkedIn group. If not, then start a group. Starting a group puts you in charge and number one in the spotlight.

Both LinkedIn and Twitter have intuitive feedback that help you connect, join groups, hashtag to hot trends and see who is following you or viewing your profile. Use this information to connect with the right people who will become clients and customers.

Blogging is a great way to reach prospects but very labor intensive. This is why many firms start to ignore their blogs – they don’t want to have an employee using their time to update the content or pay for someone to dedicate the time and effort. I have several clients that pay me to write blog posts for them. The big danger with a blog is having it show that it hasn’t been updated for months or over a year. It reflects badly on you and your company. Update it at least once a week, even if it’s just one little blurb. Ignore it and it is a blot on your company’s ability to keep up with marketing, which is not a good sign in our business.

We are in a Googled world of information flying left and right. With sites like Stumbleupon and Digg, just to name two, and aggregators by the hundreds, your blog will cross someone’s path at some point, either via a shared link, Facebook “like,” or just showing up in a search for some odd term. The key is to bring that person BACK to your blog again and again.

While the internet offers many ways to connect with other people, don’t forget another effective marketing tool – face-to-face networking. You are more likely to do business with people who have met you in person then any other way. The old tried and true firm handshake and confident smile still works.

What Fits Your Needs?

All of the avenues mentioned in this article are dovetailed to work together. One is not better than the others and some just may not be necessary for what you want to accomplish. Any small business needs to advertise, market, brand and reach out to prospective clients. Target your clients and go after them. The idea is to use what works best for your needs, keep at it and make everything count towards gaining clients and business. When using social media or any active marketing solution, be sure you can dedicate the proper time and effort to keep at it. It’s better to have one active and effective marketing outreach then to have six that go nowhere.

How to Bring Your Site Online? A Guide for the Small Businesses

Tolga BALCI — Sun, 13 May 2012 14:19:48 +0000

The importance of your business’s web site is not a point to discuss. But on the other hand some common mistakes and pitfalls can easily make this essential element of your business work against you. There are two ways that you can get your company website online: you can either go for cloud-ready packages from Microsoft (Office 365) or from Google (Google Apps) or you can build your own website. Although cloud offerings provide a seemingly quicker way to get up and running, building your own website has its own benefits. You will have a website that is tailored for your business, which will make you stand out from the similar-looking sites, you will have a total control over the design, you will have a total control over the presentation and the like. Let’s see how you can successfully build and bring your small business website online.

First, you need a simple and sensible web address. It should be something like www.mycompany.com (or yourcompany.com.tr, yourcompany.ru depending on your preference) and not something like www.PleaseBuyFromMyCompany.com. People call you with your name in real life and with your Internet address in the online life, which means a web site is your name, your brand on the Internet. Once you decide on the name, decide on the domain: will you choose com, net or org domain? If your company is a commercial entity, go with the com domain. If you are an organization, then org domain will be a better choice. A friendly note: avoid dashes and numbers unless they are part of your company name.

Next, define the content of your website. Ask yourself some basic questions and make sure that you find the answers on your site:

Why would I come to your website? I am coming to your website because I want to know your products/services better. That means, when I hit your site on the web browser this information should be readily available. Don’t forget: the average attention span of a web surfer is less than 5 seconds. Make sure that your website does not make people trying to find information.
What do I do now? If I liked your products/services what do I do next? Place a visible action call to your website: “Call now for more information”, “Call now to schedule a meeting”, “Leave your phone to allow us to call you back” are examples of action calls on your website. Psychologically we, human beings easily respond to this simple calls. Use it to your advantage, but don’t overdo it. Making excessive calls will make you look like a spammer.
How can I contact you? Would you feel comfortable if a visitor is happy with your products/services but she is leaving because she could not find how to contact you? Make sure that there is at least a clear “Contact” link visible on your website (friendly note: make sure it is either in the top right corner, side bar or footnote). In the contact information make sure that you include e-mail addresses, telephone, fax numbers, address and an embedded Google map showing your location. Make sure that the visitor is able to contact you from wherever place on your site and she can contact you with whichever channel she chooses: e-mail, telephone etc..
OK, I learned about your offerings, so why should I come back? This is an often missed point on the websites. Everything is clearly presented and there is no point in visiting the website again except for the contact information. You can change this by offering fresh, up to date and quality content. This not only gives your website a personality but also will make you benefit on the SEO side, which we will see in the next section.
I am a social creature, are you? Facebook, Twitter and Google+, when used properly will magically work to your advantage. First, it will make your customers your “friends.” Second, it will dramatically decrease your response time, which will make your “friends” even happier. Third, any announcements you put on the social media will travel faster than the speed of light on the Internet. Fourth you can feel the pulse of the market in real time, which will place you steps ahead in the competition. I definitely advise you to appoint one person in the company whose job is primarily working with social media.
I am still not convinced? Customer testimonials is the answer. The experience of the previous customers, honest feedback will build trust way quicker than you can imagine. Just think about yourself: if you are planning to buy a car, and if you have narrowed your choices to a few brands, then you will speak with your friends who own cars of those brands. A good feedback about a particular brand will shift your thoughts to that brand. Your small business website is the same; customer testimonials about your products/services to your visitors are what your friends’ positive thoughts about a particular brand to you. Plus, they tell your customers things that you haven’t said on your website.

Then comes the technical part. Unless you are an enthusiast or you are a high-tech company, you might be hearing the following for the first time:

Site navigation: This is crucial for your website. You have to provide the visitors an easy, visible way to find the information they are looking for. At the very least, you can do this with drop-down menus, but there are lots of very creative sitemap and navigation examples you can find. I also recommend using breadcrumbs so that the visitors can see where they are at a glance.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): In a world of Internet search, the ranking of your website in the search engines is particularly important. You do not need to employ various twists and ninja techniques to rank higher. Make sure that at the very least your website is developed and coded correctly, correct keywords are used, links are properly put and tags for the images and videos are correctly used and you provide fresh and up to date content as I have just said. These all will add to your positive marks in the search engines, helping your small business website to receive higher ranks in the searches.

All these boil down to your website design: how your identity, your company’s products/services, contact information is presented to the visitor. Since your website visitors have an attention span of less than 5 seconds, the following items are especially important to deliver them the information about your company:

Slow loading website: Nobody will wait for minutes for your website to load. Make sure that it loads quick, preferably in a couple of seconds. If not, your visitors will leave your website and will not come back.
Complex website: If they cannot find the information they need in seconds, know that you lost them. Make the information visible, let them go where they want to quickly.
Broken links: If you have a link that does not work, either delete it or correct it. How do you feel when you click on a link on a website and see “Error 404: Not found” error? Don’t frustrate your users the same. There are various tools that check broken links. Use them.
Fully functional elements: After the “not found” error, I think the second most frustrating thing on a website is some element not correctly functioning. If that small application is looking good but not working, either remove it or make it work.
Poor design: This is the most obvious of all but still worths mentioning. There are two sides to this item. First, your website should be designed friendly, allowing easy access to content. To accomplish this, you can present information in small paragraphs and/or bullet points, highlight important elements (words and phrases) or present them with graphics. Second, your website should be easy on the eyes. Your visitors want to focus on the information they need, so that dancing cat at the side or the music running in the background will not make your website better, it will make hundred times worse. Use simple and basic colors. Even paint companies do not employ lots of colors in their websites. I strongly recommend working with a professional web designer; you will have a very quick return on your investment.

: The website is dokimos.org. Although an exaggeration in itself, it shows you what you should not do.

Now comes the deployment. Make sure you have a secure host to deploy your website; the top 10 companies that we mention on our front page will be a good starting point. Not only you want to be your website to be available all the time (about 99.9% availability) but also you want your website to be secure. Cheap providers will offer you very good prices but you need to consider think about the future: what prices will they quote for additional storage space? What prices will they quote for the additional bandwidth? Will they be able to handle the traffic? How about the support? A cheap provider can easily turn out to be more expensive then a trusted host.

After all these steps, you have successfully brought your site online but you are not finished quite yet. You need to follow your web analytics. If you are an existing Google user, you can check Google Analytics and see which keywords point to your site, which page visitors land, from which page they leave your site, how much time they spend on your site, what is the rate of the returning visitors etc.. These all will help you analyze, change, improve, reevaluate your website and in turn your online “identity.” And it is not only Google who offer Google Webmaster Tools, Microsoft also has its own Bing WebMaster Tools and probably your web host will also offer you some tools.

I agree that all these is hard, sometimes non-ending, oftentimes tedious but it is your business, your website, your online identity and it is you (and your employees’) duty to keep it in top shape in today’s online world.

WordPress Themes vs. Designing From Scratch vs. Portfolio Sites

Speider.Schneider — Wed, 02 May 2012 07:06:55 +0000

There is a debate about what is the best way to show one’s creative work to clients. Web designers, graphic designers, illustrators and photographers struggle with the question of what is best for ME? Throughout the painful quandary, there is the nagging anxiety of what other creatives will think of a person’s web site. The truth is, it shouldn’t matter what other creatives think of your site. It’s not a competition – it’s about reaching prospective clients and having the clear message about why they should hire YOU!

In art school and certainly in my professional career, I have been constantly reminded that it is the client as the end user. Please the client, make it easy for them to see the message and get it right away. When I worked in magazine publishing, the desire to use grunge fonts was compelling but, as driven by the choices of editors and marketing people, grunge was unreadable and although pleasing to designers, it was quite true that the average person would not like something hard to read and skip over that article or advertisement. It’s not easy to separate one’s creative desires with what is needed for marketing reality. Often creatives fight the advice or direction of marketing people’s suggestions – and yes, they can be power-plays and ego trips at times but often there is a vision that is more that of the average consumer/reader/user then it is of the creative vision of beautiful design.

Jim Carrey’s site is wild, wacky, high tech and really hard to navigate. Does he really need to be sold as a product?

It is of the utmost importance to learn, “what will sell my work to the client?” All the kudos in the world from your peers will not help your career or increase sales. Having your web site spotlighted on a design blog or magazine will not reach clients. The saying, “living well is the best revenge” is akin to what you must do with your site – please those who are NOT creative – the clients.

If you’ve ever posted a creative piece and asked fellow creatives what they thought, you’ll get as many different opinions as there are voices giving them. Ignore it all. What makes other creatives right? When a prospect contacts you and says, I saw the work on your web site and want to hire you, that is the mark of a successful web site.

Why WordPress Themes Have Become Popular

People find the familiar comfortable. Why are the best selling electronics similar in how their controls are engineered and laid out? Because the consumer wants something they already know how to use. Electronic and car manufacturers found this out a long time ago and that is why you know, almost by second nature, how to turn on your TV and start your car. You can do it with your eyes closed.

WordPress, just to get the technical jargon out of the way, is a free (although many themes are for sale, too – some are free but charge for support) and open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It is often customized into a content management system (CMS). It has numerous features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa.com Internet’s “top 1 million” websites. If you doubt the popularity, figures claim that as of August 2011, it powers 22% of all new websites and is currently the most popular CMS in use on the Internet.

WordPress has a rich plugin architecture, which allows users and developers to extend its functionality beyond the features that come as part of the base install. WordPress has a database of over 17,000 plugins with purposes ranging from SEO to adding widgets. It has native applications that make it mobile friendly as well as search engine-friendly with a clean permalink structure. You may have noticed that the popular design blogs all use WordPress.

Hundreds of WordPress themes are available and fairly easy to build with a little coding know-how. Many sites, being blog-centric opt for these themes.

Generally, WordPress themes are clean and well designed but it has, as mentioned, familiarity of use and is easy for designers, photographers, illustrators and web developers to use for personal sites. The ease of use as well as the ability to update information, new samples, link to Twitter and RSS feeds is very attractive to creatives who also use social media for marketing purposes.

Once you’ve plugged a WordPress theme into your hosting site, it’s easy and intuitive to change the preset widgets, headers and other elements.

All of this, of course, is why WordPress is also attractive to small businesses as it negates the need to hire a web designer (although professional design is still needed to arrange columns, widgets and to keep prancing glitter unicorn gifs off the web).

The Downside Of Themes and Templates?

There are only so many themes in the WordPress library, so you will share the same theme as a million other people. Most are simple enough that it won’t matter but some of the more unusual themes stand out and people will recognize that you have a pre-designed template. Only you can decide if it truly matters to you. The content on your site will differentiate your site from others; so don’t fret too much about using one of the more popular themes.

Despite the user-friendly nature of templates, some people just can’t manage the simple HTML to fill out fields and make them look good. As a creative, this will not inspire prospects to trust your abilities.

The Delicate Balance

The challenge in creating your own site from scratch is that you must have many strengths. You can be the greatest programmer but not very good at designing type. Like the best team environments at any art studio, the best teams play to the strengths of each team member. Put together a team of a designer, programmer, type designer, someone with a great color sense and you can have a web site that will grab attention. There are too many examples out there of really bad web sites created by people who have one or more strength but not all needed for an impressive site. Starting with a theme or template can inspire you and, most of all, give your prospects an easy to use avenue to view your design samples with links, your own words on the project (many prospects and art directors also want to hear/see the stages in developing a design and the thought process behind it) and sections to divide different types of work you can accomplish.

Another great thing about WordPress themes is that if one isn’t working for you, you can replace it with another and most of your content will automatically fall into place. Sometimes you just need to test a theme or two until you strike a cord with clients.

Only you, with some honest soul searching, can decide what is best for you. Think about how you feel about your own site. Do you have doubts? Are you REALLY proud of it and feel it’s your best work? Sometimes, you just need to use another avenue to show the work that you have created – the work of which you are really proud. As mentioned before, other creatives might turn up their noses at the use of a template – as they might do for a site you created from scratch, but in the long run, they don’t pay your bills and they don’t lie awake at night, worrying how you’ll be able to sell your work to the clients who help you pay those bills!

Some sites that have free themes for you to download.

http://www.wordpressthemeshock.com/free-wordpress-themes/

http://wordpressthemesgallery.org/

http://www.fabthemes.com/

http://www.wpskins.org/

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