…SPEED.  Super Fast Speed!!!

I want to change your life today.  Read this article and take my advice and enjoy your future days browsing the wonderful world wide web…fast.

* If you already use Google’s Chrome browser then please stop reading and go back to work…with your speedy browser.

** If you are a Web Marketing guru then please stop reading because you already know everything about everything.

I am constantly online reviewing websites.  I spend several hours a day analyzing sites and reading the latest & greatest on web marketing, hosting trends, design ideas, etc.

Until this past June, I used Firefox primarily.  I transitioned from IE to Firefox roughly 3 years ago because of all the Firefox toolbar features.   Firefox is still an important tool for me when I want to study a website’s SEO attributes but for the general public simply browsing the web…Firefox is overkill.

If you simply browse the web, give Google Chrome a demo.

You will quickly get used to the startup time and page loading speed.   I don’t know all the technical reasons for the speed and efficiency of Chrome but I know this….IT IS CONSIDERABLY FASTER than other commonly used browsers.

* Reply to this blog post if you try Chrome and like the results!!

Enjoy your new life,

Patrick

336-232-5668

pflanagan@beacontec.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickflanagan1

For Information Purposes:

Browser usage statistics show that Chrome is experience steady growth and now is owns ~17% of the market.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Browser Statistics Month by Month

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of discovering (on my own, mind you) that Google had changed how you pull Account, Campaign, and Ad group reports. After some time with the Adwords support team, I was able to figure out where to pull them and how the new reports work. To save you the time and frustration I experienced, see below.


Creating a Report

Going forward, Account, Campaign, and Ad group reports are created from the main Campaigns (#1) tab. Once there, you can access each report type from its respective sub-tab:

• “Campaigns” tab (#2) for Campaign reports
• “Ad groups” tab (#3) for Ad group reports
• “Dimensions” tab (#4) for Account reports (If you do not have a “Dimensions” tab, click the down arrow at the end of your sub-tab list (#5) and select the “Dimensions” button.)

Choosing Your Criteria

To create a report, set the date range you’d like to see (#6). Then access the correct tab for your report type. Selecting “Columns” in the sub-menu (#7) allows you to choose the information you’d like to see, like CTR, CPC, Conversion Rate, and Cost/Conversion. The “Segment” button (#8), also in the sub-menu, allows you to select content or search network, day, week, month, etc.  Then use the optional “Filter” sub-menu tab (#9) to create your own filter, like display data for only specific campaigns or average CPC. You can even save your filter for future use. Click the downward arrow (#10) to create the report. You can also schedule reports here as well.

Once you press the “create” button, you will be prompted to either open or save your report to your computer. Make your choice and you have your report at your fingertips. If you’d like to access previously create or scheduled reports, simply click on “Control panel and library” to the left under the “All online campaigns” quick access box.


Thoughts on the New Adwords Report Access

Being a long time Adwords user, I’m not entirely happy with this change. Although it does create reports MUCH quicker and allows you to do so without leaving campaign management, I don’t agree with removing access to these report from the “Reports” tab. Doing so seems counter-intuitive and creates a real possibility that new users, never having run these reports, could easily overlook their existence. Perhaps in the future Google will make this new integration more seamless and intuitive. For now, it’s just a change that seems like it was not entirely thought through.

There are many system and system pseudo tags within Cascade Server that I often can’t remember exactly. Its like my brain doesn’t want to remember the correct spelling of asset (always wants to put assett) or I get frustrated trying to output CDATA tags and forget there’s a tag for that. I often go back to 5 main pages of Hannon Hill’s knowledge base that are worth bookmarking.

• Linking: Provides the correct ways to reference system assets both locally and across sites.
• Available System Tags: Provides tags used in template creation.
• System View Tags: Provides internal and external tags and how to use them.
• System CDATA Tags: Provides information on how to output a CDATA section.
• Code Sections: Provides Passthrough and Root Code Section tags and how to use them.

If your like me then you know what they do and how to use them; you just forget the exact syntax sometimes. Below is a quick reference I created for myself to get straight to the ones that I either use or forget about on a regular basis.

• Cascade Server Quick Reference
  

Also I wanted to include the following link for Commmonly used XSLT:

• Cascade Server XSLT: Just found out about this one but it looks to be extremely useful for common XSLT formats within cascade.

Beacon is very pleased to announce that the Framingham State University redesign is live as of yesterday!

The client is thrilled with the new design and just renewed their contract for another year.  This shows the value that Beacon has provided to them with our graphic artist skills and Cascade Server knowledge.

Many thanks go out to Wendy Honeycutt, who navigated the design process very well and came out on the other side with an exceptional design, to Miral Desai for developing the site and putting it into Cascade Server, to Tiffany May did a terrific job with her development, including the Flash player on the homepage and to Thomas Brinegar for his many hours of Accessibility work on the site. Annette Fowler, Justin Klingman and Patrick Flanagan also played an important management role on this project. When you choose to work with Beacon, you choose to work with a team!

Thanks to everybody involved!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

OK – it was not those YMCAers, but the kids from the Spears YMCA Counselors in Leadership Training camp who came by for a field trip to visit Beacon a few weeks ago. We gave them a brief overview of our business units and their respective functions – the lead counselor was busy keeping the kids awake!

Actually, we did a great job relating the business world to a sports team, which certainly was something they could relate to and kept it entertaining.  We then headed off to TW Telecom to show them our hosting facility.

I actually called ahead of time to let my rep know we were coming by for a brief tour.   Unfortunately, my rep did not read my email closely and the Operations Manager was extremely nervous when I showed up with a busload of kids.   It was a very funny moment when we arrived (had to be there to enjoy it) but everything worked out fine as we toured the facility in groups of 10 and everyone was well behaved.

In the end, it was a great visit and made all of us feel good to give back to community as well as getting some kids interested in career opportunities in Information Technology.

If you have read any previous Beacon blogs than I am sure you know what a CMS is and what it’s used for. In case you haven’t read any other blogs, a CMS or Content Management System is an application that allows any user to update content on a given website easily. It doesn’t require any technical knowledge of programming languages such as HTML or CSS. Here at Beacon, we use Cascade Server CMS for the majority of our clients’ websites along with our own website.

I have used a few Content Management Systems (CMS) in the past before I started working with Beacon. These range from free open-source systems to custom-built systems created for a specific client. I can honestly say I prefer Cascade Server out of the bunch. Cascade Server has a lot of features that most of the other CMS’s lack. Below are some of the features that I really like about Cascade:

• Personalized Dashboard – you can customize the home screen for each user based on their preference.
• Work Flow Management – with multiple users updating content on the website, you can make sure that the only content you (admin) approve of will be able to show up on the live web.
• Version Control – have you ever accidentally made a change to a document and saved it only to find out you can’t undo it anymore? With Version Control, you no longer have to worry about that, it will let you revert back to an older version of the document/file in the CMS.
• Recycle Bin – if any user accidentally deletes a file or an entire folder from the site. With the addition of the Recycle Bin, they can undo the delete file/folder.
• Site Preview – you can preview each page or the site inside Cascade before publishing it out to the web.
• Spell Checker/Link Checker – before you save a page, the spell checker can automatically check for spelling errors. Also the link checker will check for any broken links before the page is saved.
• WYSIWYG Editor – (What You See Is What You Get) Editor is included in most CMSs but Cascade differs from a few. In Cascade, you can copy content from Microsoft Word and bring it in Cascade with original formatted (bold, italics, underline, etc.) content.
• Multi-site Management – if you have multiple sites, you can manage them all through one instance of Cascade. It even allows sharing files/templates between sites.
• Technical Support – most open-source CMSs don’t have tech support instead you have to post on a forum and wait for another user like you to post a possible solution. With Cascade, you get tech support from their knowledgeable staff that will resolve your issue.

There are a lot more features that are in Cascade that I haven’t listed here. Check out their website for a whole list of all their features at www.hannonhill.com. On their main site, you will also find a small list of their clients that currently use Cascade Server, including NC State University (Go Woflpack!). If NC State uses Cascade Server for their site, than you know it must be good.

To learn more about Cascade Server, please contact Beacon.

Recently we were in the process of upgrading a site to AspDotNetStorefront 9 and with the upgrade comes multiple changes to how things are coded. One important change is that the entire page is now a form. This form controls all things within it including add to cart or add to wish list. This caused two main problems that I dealt with while trying to integrate the old code into the new.

• The first one was trying to integrate the old search with the new search. I took what I could from the old code and copied it into the new (shown below). We figured out that the type of image didn’t work so we made it a button and styled as needed to match.

  OLD:   <input name="submit" src="/skins/Skin_1/images/go.jpg" type="image" />
  NEW:   <input id="searchBox_button" name="submit" type="button" value="Go" />
  

  A few hours later I realized that the add to cart and add to wish list buttons didn’t work anymore and I was getting an error ‘theForm.submit is not a function’. After some quick googling I ran across a page where I immediately realized what was causing this. The page basically states that there was a button somewhere improperly named submit. So I went back to the search form and sure enough I had copied this over from the original code. All I had to do was change the name to something else and voila! It works :)

  FINAL:   <input id="searchBox_button" name="go" type="button" value="Go" />
  

• The second issue was integrating a newsletter sign-up form within the main form. The form was in the left column and fell within the flow of the page. When I say this I mean it was positioned relative to other items so it could not be absolute positioned into the left column. This meant that the code had to reside inside the new form. The problem is you can’t have a form within another form.I feel like this was one of those problems that called for thinking outside of the box. Normally you wouldn’t develop something that had this problem but since we are actually customizing something that’s already built (AspDotNetStorefront) and integrating our code into it we needed to find a work around. On my way home my mind seems to subconsciously still be working and trying to solve problems from that day. So as I was driving home that day all of a sudden iFrame! I knew we had used this for different reasons on another site so the next day I tried and it worked like a charm :) This is a solution that could come in handy for multiple things down the road.

What type of an SEO would the following basketball players be?

Kobe Bryant – This SEO has seen more #1 search engine rankings than anybody else out there.  He rode a better marketer’s coattails early in his career to the point where he was a bit overrated.  In an effort to improve his legacy, he had his entire team fired and tried to win more rankings all by himself – with disastrous results.  He then demanded a trade to another company until management hired another top SEO to team with him.  This has led to him again finding top rankings and being mentioned as one of the best all-time.

Lebron James – This SEO was hired by a terrible company.  They gave him resources and were patient with his learning curve.  Eventually, he got great results and obtained rock star status.  He never got them #1 rankings, but the first page Google links he obtained were far better than they were used to.  However, when it came time to make a long term decision about his future, he jumped to another company where a couple of his friends worked and they promised to do much of the heavy lifting for him.  He took his [SEO] talents to South Beach.

Tim Duncan – This SEO does it all.  Not just Google rankings, but also PPC and Email Marketing.  He doesn’t toot his own horn at the company picnic, but upper management knows he’s been the reason for their success.  However, he’s a bit past his prime and hasn’t seen the same results with the advent of social media.

Allen Iverson – This SEO always showed great individual stats.  He can tout #1 Google rankings in a variety of categories.  However, this has never translated to great overall results with his clients.

Chris Paul – This SEO is speedy.  He doesn’t get #1 rankings, but he gets you on the first page FAST.

Manu Ginobili – This is your classic “glue” SEO.  He doesn’t do anything outstanding, but he understands all aspects of web marketing.  He knows how social media, search engines, and PPC interact with each other and how to keep the entire team involved in the process.  He’s not going to win you large contracts on his own, but you need to have him if you’re to be at the top of your field.

Stephon Marbury – This SEO has some talent, but he always been with poor companies and will be quick to blame others for his lack of overall success.  Eventually, this leads to him having a breakdown and posting a “What the Heck?” youtube clip.

Dirk Nowitzki – This SEO is tall and German.

-EW

Beacon Technologies sponsored two holes at the NCTA/AT&T annual golf tournament. The event kicked off the North Carolina Technology Association’s Leadership Conference, which is a member-only event that brings together the highest echelon of technology members across the state to discuss North Carolina based issues that directly impact the technology industry.

Another crafty approach to scare smaller businesses into spending money.

Here’s another email message that uses statistics and link to charts to influence the reader.  This approach banks on people being gullible and too lazy to validate the claims.  This is an email that I received quite a while back, but I was saving it so I could vent about it later.

I clicked on the “Your Listings” page to see what was really going on.  This page is designed to support the vendor that owns this site.  At first glance, it makes you say, “Hey, I’m not doing well!”  But let’s peel back the onion here before we panic.  Bassett sells home furniture.  If you were looking to buy furniture, where would you search?  How would you search and what would you search on?

I would bet that MOST people would go to Google and type in “furniture store” or “furniture store fairview heights IL” or something more specific, like “dining room furniture”, depending on how granular of a search they wanted (most people nowadays use 3+ keywords in a search).  So, WHERE IS GOOGLE in this list?

Note that Bassett has visibility in all the ones mentioned.  The only difference is that some have reviews posted and some have paid for higher placement within the respective channel.  More importantly, keep in mind that usage of these marketing channels and directories are so minimal compared to search engines that for the most part, it’s really sufficient to simply be listed.

Also note that the visibility for the website is very high.

Now look at the keywords.  Here’s where I have a real problem.  Bassett is NOT a furniture liquidator.  It does NOT sell gemstones, stereos, precious metals, vcrs, antique furniture, nor are they a warehousing service or a pawnbroker.  These aren’t even close.  From a statistical standpoint, THIS MAKES THE ENTIRE REPORT pretty much WORTHLESS.

Now, let’s check Google (click image below).  Nice.  Out of 180,000 results, they show up in Google Local (1^st page) and are ranked #3 (1^st page) for “Furniture Store2 Fairview Heights IL”.  Lots of real estate on this MOST important page.  For good measure, I checked “furniture Fairview Heights IL” which returned the following (click image below).  A search on “dining room furniture fairview heights IL” displayed Bassett on page 1 and I easily found Bassett in the superpages.com link.