Getting a Google Analytics Account:

First things first, if you haven’t signed up for a FREE Google Analytics account you will need to do this first.  Click here to do this now! Once you do this you can move onto the following steps.

Creating a Website Profile

The first step that you need to take once you have your Google Analytics account is creating a website profile.  A website profile allows you to define the domain name that you are going to be tracking and whether it’s an existing domain name from your Google Analytics account or a new one.  To create a website profile for the domain name you want to track you are going to need to take the following steps…

1.  Click the “Add Website Profile” link

2. Fill out the information for your website’s domain name

3. Click the “Finish” button

Getting the GATC (Google Analytics Tracking Code) from Google Analytics:

Now that you have an account open with Google Analytics and you created a website profile you are going to need to generate the Google Analytics tracking code that you will later add to your website and do get this you will need the Google Analytics Tracking Code.  To do this you will need to do the following…

1. Click “Edit” next to the website you’ve setup.

2. On the “Profile Settings” page for your website click the “Check Status” link which will take you to the “Tracking Code” page.

3.  The Google Analytics Tracking Code comes available in 3 options including Standard, Advanced and Custom

The Standard Google Analytics Tracking Code comes with the ability to be used on a single domain name (This is the option most beginners should choose), one domain name with will multiple subdomains or multiple top-level domain names.

The Advanced Google Analytics Tracking Code comes with the built in ability to be used on a single domain name (This is the option most beginners should choose), one domain name with will multiple sub domains or multiple top-level domain names or tracking websites built for mobile phones and devices that use either PHP, ASPX, JSP or Perl coded web pages.

The Custom Google Analytics Tracking Code comes with a copy and paste functionality so that you can use this however you see fit.  This option is more for the advanced user who is comfortable with coding so I personally would NOT recommend this option for beginners.

Implementing the Google Analytics Tracking Code

Google Analytics recommends that you copy and paste the snippet of code into the head section just before the end </head> HTML tag on the pages in your website.

<script type=”text/javascript”>

var _gaq = _gaq || [];

_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-#######-#']);

_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

(function() {

var ga = document.createElement(’script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true;

ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’;

var s = document.getElementsByTagName(’script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);

})();

</script>

Once you’ve got this added you will need to go back into your Google Analytics account and click the “Save and Finish” button.  This will cause Google Analytics to verify the tracking code installed on your website and you’ll be able to capture the core metrics of your website.

Being an avid lover of Google Analytics allows me the ability to stay on top of the latest changes to the web analytics platform.  They recently added the ability to add annotations to the web analytics data that you collect about your website which is now available on all Google Analytics accounts.  This is really a very useful improvement to Google Analytics and for anyone developing a website over a period of time it’s pretty valuable.

So what’s the big deal with Annotations?

Annotations give you a way to mark a specific day on your Google Analytics account to track and manage changes you are making to a website.  In the past I’ve found myself saying “How do I know that this change I am making to my website is a good change or a bad change?” and that answer largely went unanswered until now.

Now you can add annotations to days when you’ve made changes to your website and know exactly what day a change was made when you look at your web analytics.  It’s very useful if you are from the school of thought in web development that when you change your website it does have an effect on your visitors.

How to add Annotations in your Google Analytics Account

So now that you understand how annotations can be used to help you and your website let’s talk about actually how you can set them up and use them in your Google Analytics account.  First of all, you’ll need a Google Analytics account.  Click here to get an account if you don’t already have one and once you’ve got one simply take these steps…

• Login to your Google Analytics account
• Click on your website’s website profile
• Click the down tab located in the main dashboard visits area
• Click the “+ Create new Annotation” link
• Enter the date of the annotation, add an annotation a.k.a. “a note”, select whether you want the annotation “Shared” or “Private” (You would select “Shared” if you had were sharing the annotation among other people who have access to the Google Analytics account and website profile you are setting annotations on specifically)
• Lastly, click “Save” and you are now done creating an annotation

Now that you’ve got it the annotation created you can view it by selecting the day you created the annotation on or a range of days that contain the annotation.  When it’s all said and done the ability to add annotations in Google Analytics can help you identify changes that you made to your website and the outcome of those changes giving you greater insight into what your website is doing and how it’s doing it.

Luc Arnold

http://www.mysite.com/category/page.html

Everything was great, then as dynamically driven websites (a.k.a. websites that use databases to grab content and display that content in a generated web page) became more popular there was a problem.  The problem was that the URL structure became and looked dynamically generated as well leaving it looking like this…

http://www.mysite.com/?p=881

This left things looking messy, confusing and not very pretty to look at.  That’s why they call it an “Ugly Permalink”.  So what was the solution to this problem? Pretty Permalinks, of course! But what are permalinks exactly?

Permalinks come from the concept of “Permanence” meaning that people want to link to something that is “permanent” so that they can source it, refer to it or link to it without thinking that it is going to change.

A permalink looks like this…

http://www.mysite.com/my-about-page

So what CMS website platforms support using permalinks?  Here is a list that should help you choose a website platform that uses the permalink structure.

• WordPress
• Drupal
• ExpressionEngine
• Moveable Type
• TypePad
• Blogger

Using Permalinks in WordPress

WordPress has done a great job for a while of allowing people to use Permalinks in their blog and website posts and pages and I believe the reason is because they’ve made it easy to use for everyone.  If you currently use WordPress for one of your websites and you’ve never tried to customize your permalinks or you don’t know the first place about where to begin then hold on tight.  The first thing you need to do is log into your WordPress website and follow these steps…

• Look for the “Settings” section and then look for the “permalinks” section and click on it.

• Next, you’ll see something similar to the screenshot below that allows you to customize your permalinks in WordPress

Depending on how you want to custom your permalink structure you should be able to find a solution that allows you to display URLs the way that you want to show them.  If you are interested in all the supported permalink attributes click here to get a list of them that WordPress currently supports then click here.

For those of you that don’t currently use WordPress on your website here are some links to other documentation for different platforms like Drupal, ExpressionEngine and others.

• Permalinks in Drupal
• Creating permalinks in posts using Blogger
• Using the permalink variable in ExpressionEngine
• Publishing Settings in Moveable Type
• Using Permalinks in WordPress

Benefits of Permalinks

Some of the benefits of customizing permalinks include that it can help you in a number of ways like optimizing your URLs for search engines and specific keywords, having a pretty link that people can link to and read, removing the “chronological” structure from your site and allowing you customize the URL as you see fit!  It gives you a great amount of choice as to what your readers see, how they see the content and experience your website.

What are post slugs?

No they aren’t the kind of slugs that you find in the garden on your Tomatoes and the term “slug” does really give you a good impression of what it actually does.  Simply put, a “Slug” is a one or two word description of a post that is used in the permalinks when you post an entry in WordPress.

How to edit Permalinks in WordPress at the Page or Post level

If you are creating a page or a post in WordPress then you might have noticed once you’ve entered the Page Title or Post Title the Permalink is filled in automatically with the contents of the title you’ve entered.

At the Post level the permalink will include the structure you’ve chosen under Settings > Permalinks mentioned above but at the Page level the only thing included is the contents of the page title.  Have a look at what I am talking about…

Page Level Permalink Example

Post Level Permalink Example

Are Hackable Permalinks bad?

A note about “Hackable Permalinks”: “Hackable” Permalinks are permalinks that are easy to break down and allow the user to navigate to a different part of your website easily.

Hacking and being hacked has had a bad reputation associated with it in the computer and internet world but the truth is that Hackable Permalinks are some of the best kinds of permalinks available according to WordPress.  WordPress has this to say about Hackable Permalinks…

“The best Permalinks are “Hackable,” meaning a user might modify the link text in their browser to navigate to another section or listing of the weblog.”

Source: WordPress Codex

What are the best permalink structures available?

Having the best permalink structure to your links is up for debate because some people prefer to do some things one way or another and there is no standard out there that says “This is how you produce the best permalinks”.  Some of the experts out there have their own ways to produce the “best” permalinks but again this isn’t set in stone because largely what they (the experts) are writing about is what has worked for them.

• SmartBlogTips – Best Permalinks URL structure for your WordPress blog
• Zemalf.com – Quest for the Best Permalink Structure
• EnlightenedWebMastery.com – Best SEO WordPress Permalink Structure

Permalinks is a core topic if you are using a lot of website platform technologies like WordPress that are out there today because they control what types of links you generate and what types of links people can use to link back to your website.  Links are the bricks and mortar that hold the web together and paying attention to this means that you will build a stronger and more structurally sound website ready for search engines, referring sites and the people who visit your website.

Luc Arnold

Permalinks are cool and useful!

“…a single line of text to show a page’s location in the site hierarchy…”

Source: UseIT.com; Jakob Nielsen

Now that we know what a breadcrumb is let’s explore them in a little more depth.

Breadcrumbs Explored

Many times (more than I’d like to count) you’ll see breadcrumbs on ecommerce websites, community based portals or other large sites but this doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t have this functionality on your own website.  Breadcrumbs, most notably the ones from the story of Hansel and Gretel and they act in the same manner allowing people to find their way back when they navigate back easily and they look like this…

When you think about improving your website’s usability regardless of whether you run it on WordPress, something custom or some other platform it’s important as web developers and web designers to understand that you don’t have the same knowledge of the web that your visitors do for the most part and it’s your job to make navigating the website easier to use.

Breadcrumbs are considered as secondary navigation on your website because they work similar to sitemaps in that they provide a site hierarchy breakdown and usually they only take up minimal space on the website.  They show users where they are currently in the grand scheme of things on your website and allow single-click access to higher levels of the website to help people go back without the use of the web browser’s back button.

So you may be sold on using breadcrumbs now but they aren’t included in your website’s current features.  No need to panic!  If you happen to be running WordPress, Magento, Durpal or some other pre-built website content management or ecommerce system here are some plug-ins that can help you get this functionality working on your website.

Adding Breadcrumbs in WordPress

Yoast Breadcrumbs – This great little plug-in allows you to all a breadcrumb trail to your website and gives you plenty of ways to tweak it.  It was designed by Joost De Valk to give people control in adding breadcrumbs to your website and also provides the ability to edit them in a wide range of ways with good SEO practices in mind.  Click here to read more about it and download it as well.

Breadcrumbs NavXT – This is a great plug-in for people looking for the ability to control their breadcrumbs specific to the Pages & Posts, Categories, Tags, Date Archives, Current and Miscellaneous web pages in your website.  In comparison to the Yoast Breadcrumbs plug-in if you are looking to be able to control your breadcrumbs specific to what is being accessed this will definitely help you out.  Click here to read more about this plug-in

Adding Breadcrumbs in Magento Commerce – Breadcrumbs are included in this ecommerce system by default under their “Catalog Browsing” features. Click here to read more about this

Adding Breadcrumbs in Joomla! – If your site runs on Joomla! They have some instructions on how you can go about adding breadcrumbs.  Click here for more information.

Adding Breadcrumbs in Drupal – If you run Drupal 7.x or later the ability to add breadcrumbs is included but if you run another version of Drupal before 7.x there are modules that Drupal specifies and that you can download to give your website this functionality.  Click here to get more information about this.

Adding Breadcrumbs in ExpressionEngine – If you run ExpressionEngine there is a simple piece of code that you can add to your website that allows you to display breadcrumb hierarchy.  Click here for this information.

As you can see the major CMS platforms and ecommerce systems have ways that are pretty easy to add this functionality to their web platform.  Even if you are developing your own custom solution adding a breadcrumb hierarchy will help your visitors get around your website quickly and keep them happy!

Luc Arnold

Remember “Follow the Breadcrumbs!”

If you are just beginning to understand what web analytics can do for your business then there’s a good chance that you are looking to understand what you are seeing when you open up your web analytics platform and are starting to analyze the data in order to apply it to your business.

There are a few things that are “universal” in web analytics and website traffic in general.  As long as there are websites there will be visitors, visits and unique visits and because there are people visiting websites they will always spend time on a website, look at pages in a website and leave a website.  These web metrics are universal and even though, how a web analytics platform chooses to view this elements the concepts remain similar but not the same.  So what web analytics come standard in web analytics platforms?  Well, just have a look at the following web metrics…

• Visits – This referrers to the number of times that some visits for website in a given timeframe.  From here the number of visits can tell you where the website traffic came from for certain posts, pages and content on your website.
• Pageviews – This website metric will tell you the number times that a web page is viewed.  This metric can pose some issues because users refreshing web pages over and over again and also robots that “crawl” your website have been known to inflate these numbers as well.
• Pages per visit – This metric shows you the number of web pages that are viewed during a visit on average over a given time period on your website.
• Bounce Rate – This is the rate at which people come to your website and leave after looking at only one page.  A sudden spike in a bounce rate can allow you to test your website’s usability to lower this number and keep your visitors coming back for more.
• Average Time on Site – This average tells you the average amount of time people spend surfing your website.  This tells you how long on average they will spend reading articles on your website.

I use these metrics on a daily basis when I analyze website traffic for SpicyWebDesigners.com.  The data from bounce rates to the number of visits that I am receiving help me to make decisions about how to change the usability, navigation and gain insights into why a particular article on my website was successful.  Naturally once you’ve mastered the core web analytics terminology you can start learning more advanced topics and applying them to your website analysis.

Pretty much any web analytics platform that you pick up today is going to have these metrics available.  The essence of web analytics is related to visitors and the pages that they visit on your website.  Without those two things you cannot begin to track meaningful website metrics to base your decision making on and because the study of web analytics is growing, advancing and changing rapidly it’s great to know that some things stay the same.

Luc Arnold

Teaching the basics of web analytics

One of the gifts that I received for Christmas was Steve Krug’s book “Don’t Make Me Think”  It’s a quick little read, at around 200 pages that offers up some valuable thoughts for web design professionals from project managers to beginner web designers and everyone in between involved in the process of designing websites and it discusses the core concepts of web usability.

The book itself contains the interesting perspective that most web design professionals give users of their websites too much credit as to how they use the web and websites in general.  If you run your own website or you design websites for a living then you may have heard of the term “web usability” which is best defined by saying that…

“Web usability is the approach of making websites easy to use for end users.”

That is the plain and simple definition of web usability and the key to great web usability is that a website is “easy to use”.  This does not mean that it is easy to use for a web designer or web development professional but that it’s easy to use for the average visitor to your website who may not have the same technical abilities as the people who built it.  At the end of the day, most people don’t build websites in their spare time and can get lost easily if your website is not accommodating to the average website visitor.

The book “Don’t Make Me Think” contains hundreds of bite-sized chunks of valuable information about web usability but the true value of this information is in its application.  One such area that the book focuses on are the core elements that improve web usability specifically through how people use standard websites and their associated web pages.  The 5 key elements that help website visitors use a website more effectively are the “Site ID” also known as the Logo, the “Utilities” of a website, Sections and Subsections of a website, a way to search the website and Page Names.  So let’s explore each of these elements a little more in depth.

1. “Site ID” aka “Logo” – When users are on a website they usually identify where they are by being able to see the site name, branding and associated logo of the specific website they are surfing.  The Site ID allows them to make this distinction and allows them to trust in the website they are viewing.  The Site ID can and should be clickable allowing them to click and go to the Home page at any point in their journey on a website.
2. “Utilities” – Just like it sounds the utilities of a website are more about information or ways of getting to information that help you (the website visitor) when surfing a specific website.  Some examples of utilities are a sitemap, FAQs, Forums and an “About” page just to name a few.  As a general rule you should only include a few utilities because the more utilities you add to a website the busier it becomes and the more confusion it caused amongst your website’s visitors.
3. “Sections” and “Subsections” – The sections of a website are the main places you want people to go and are also referred to as the “primary navigation” of a website.  On an ecommerce website this would include sections like products, downloads, books and specials just to name a few.  These sections lead you to subsections of the website and if you have a section like Products some associated subsections would include Audio / Video, Computers, Gaming and other various related subsections.
4. A way to search the website – Not everyone that visits your website is interested in clicking and clicking some more to get where they are going.  Using search on a website allows you the freedom (if done correctly) to search and find things fast.  If the search is accurate then your visitors will be happy that they got what they are looking for in the first place and if it isn’t accurate then they will get frustrated and most likely leave.  The other thing that Steve Krug’s book states and something that I think most people forget is to name your search “Search” and not “Quick Search”, “Fast Search” or some other take on that because it confuses people and makes them think more then they need to.
5. Page Names – This particular element of a web page is important to website visitors like the ones visiting yours right now because it tells someone that clicks on a link that they’ve reached the correct page.  If your link is called “Store Hours” then the proceeding web page that is brought up should being called “Store Hours”.  Whenever you go into a store and look down the aisles what do you normally see?  Big signs that tell you what you are going to find in the aisle.  They are clear and you can see them from a mile away.  Page names should act in a similar way; easy to view and on a certain level easy to understand.  Put aside the styling and the color palettes for a while and draw attention to the page that the viewer is currently on because it builds trust and communicates clearly that they’ve found the correct page and no further thought is required.

Starting with these 5 key elements you can improve a website’s usability and its profits.  It’s all about clear and unified communication when maintaining, optimizing and designing websites that people actually want to use.  Without this your visitors can get lost, become frustrated and confused or simply give up and leave which raises that ever present “bounce rate” and stops people from coming back.  So give it a try and keep those “fans in the stands” so to speak.

Luc Arnold

When you are talking about web analytics you are talking about collecting data about your website “accurately”.  This brings me to the topic of excluding website traffic like the website traffic that you generate when updating your website and testing it.  Naturally this does present a problem because most people visit their own website when they make changes to it or if they are updating it.  By default, web analytics platforms will track website traffic regardless of who you are and you have to tell the web analytics software to exclude your traffic from the web analytics reports.

There are a few standard ways to exclude traffic from your web analytics platform.  You can exclude traffic by an IP Address or a range of IP addresses or by creating a custom cookie that can block your traffic.  I personally prefer using the custom cookie when I am working with the Google Analytics platform because I am only trying to exclude my specific traffic but if I ran a company with more than one employee I would be sure to use to exclude traffic based on an IP address or a range of IP addresses.  When I get into showing you how you can exclude traffic from your web analytics platform I am using Google Analytics as an example but depending on the web analytics platform there should be a way to exclude traffic using either of these methods.  So let’s get started with the Cookie Content Method and then move on to the IP Address Method.

Excluding Traffic from Google Analytics – The Cookie Content Method

Like I said, this is personally the way that I choose to exclude traffic from my web analytics reports.  It’s simple and straight forward.

1. Create a new web page and upload it to your website containing this code…

<body onLoad=”javascript:pageTracker._setVar(‘my_cookie_content_value’);”>

2. Than simply visit the web page containing the above mentioned code which will create a cookie with Google Analytics (Your web analytics platform may differ so refer to the documentation from your web analytics platform vendor)

3. Create a filter in your Google Analytics account to remove the data associated to users with this cookie.  Make sure the filter that you create includes the following…

Filter Type: Custom filter > Exclude
Filter Field: User Defined
Filter Pattern: my_cookie_content_value
Case Sensitive: No

It should look like this…

Excluding Traffic from Google Analytics – The IP Address Method

This method requires you to understand how to use regular expressions

1. Click “Filter Manager” from the “Analytics Settings” page in your Google Analytics account

2. Enter a “Filter Name”

3. Select the “Filter Type” equal to “Exclude all traffic from an IP Address”

4. Enter the “IP Address” field enter the IP address you want to exclude in your web analytics reports.  If you are entering an IP address 178.155.2.1 you would need to enter it similar to 178\.155\.2\.1 and if you wanted to exclude a range of IP address like 176.168.1.1-25 and 10.0.0.1-14 it would look like this ^176\.168\.1\.([1-9]|1[0-9]|2[0-5])$|^10\.0\.0\.([1-9]|1[0-4])$. Now this method isn’t for everyone and given your situation it may or may not work for you.

So as you can the IP Address method for excluding traffic requires you to have knowledge of regular expressions because of how you have to enter the IP Addresses into Google Analytics.  I am not sure whether other web analytics platforms are different or if they too require you to use regular expressions as well when excluding by IP Address.  No matter how you choose to do this or whatever web analytics platform you currently use there is a solution out there that can and will work for you when you exclude your traffic from web analytics reports.

Happy “Accurate” Web Reporting!

Luc Arnold

Normally when I think of Ecommerce websites I don’t think of WordPress.  WordPress, after all, is primarily a content management system, so when I saw that Templatic had released “Store”, their Premium Ecommerce WordPress Theme yesterday I was interested in checking it out.  Now is this theme going to run a mid-sized to large ecommerce operation for a company? Probably not!  But if you are a company with a few dozen products in various product lines this is a definite possibility for your ecommerce operations.  Let’s take a more in depth look at it…

Major Selling Points of the “Store” Ecommerce WordPress theme

• Different Modes to sell – This theme offers currently 3 different modes that you can run an ecommerce website using WordPress including selling digital goods, using a standard shopping cart and catalog mode.  Let me explain each of these different modes in more detail.

Digital Goods – If you run a business selling “digital goods” like eBooks/PDFs, scripts, licenses, memberships, etc. this theme can not only help you sell your digital goodies but also control the style of the product pages and the buying experience your customer’s will see when they buy from you.

Shopping Cart – Much like this one sounds, you can give your customers the option to use a shopping cart to checkout of your ecommerce website so that they can enter shipping information, change product attributes like Style, Size or Color and complete a purchase of goods with your store.

Catalog Mode – This allows you the option to display the products on your website and require interested customers to contact you instead of accepting payments online.  This mode does NOT allow your customers to purchase things from your store and if your business pricing is subject to change or requires further feedback to quote interested customers you can use the Catalog mode to get them interested and generate leads.  This mode is not for every business owner out there but it’s really nice to see this option being including in this theme.  It’s not something that I expected to see in this ecommerce theme.

• Get your Coupons! – This theme allows you to create coupons with coupon codes to offer discounts when someone enters the coupon code during the checkout.  It’s a great feature to have if you are promoting your business.
• Bulk CSV Uploads – If you are looking to add multiple products at a time this theme will actually allow you to do this using a CSV (.csv) file.  Simply create a CSV file and upload it to WordPress and the Store ecommerce WordPress theme will do the rest.
• Solid Web Browser Compatibility – I tested this theme in Google Chrome, FireFox 3.x and Internet Explorer 6.x and I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that I couldn’t find any bugs with this theme.
• You can still blog! – Another good thing to point out is that you can run a blog for your company.  Since WordPress is the premier blogging platform out there it only makes sense that Templatic kept the functionality and definitely adds something to the fact that you are getting an ecommerce site with blogging capabilities because most ecommerce platforms don’t have this functionality available and most blogging software doesn’t allow you to run an ecommerce website with this many features.

Click here for a full list of features that Templatic’s Store Premium Ecommerce WordPress Theme gives you!

Major “Minuses” of the “Store” Ecommerce WordPress theme

• It wasn’t built for scalability – Don’t get me wrong.  This is a strong ecommerce theme that you can use on WordPress but it isn’t going to give all the features of an enterprise level ecommerce platform and if you are a larger scale ecommerce operation then it may not be fully scalable to meet your needs.
• CRM not included – Many ecommerce packages out there have the ability to store customer data but only a few actually have “full blown” CRM system.  A CRM system for those of you who don’t know what it is stands for “Customer Relationship Management” and allows you to manage your customers and market, view activities of specific customers and other data related to your customer base.  The store theme had limited capabilities to store customer data and if you are looking for an ecommerce solution that doubles as a CRM this may not be what you had in mind without a heavy amount of customization and cost on your part.
• Shipping Limitations – While you have the option to set shipping options with the Store WordPress Theme if you currently have shipping integrations with say FedEx, UPS or another shipping service it won’t be easy to integrate this into the theme without customizing the theme further.  Personally, this is something that you see in more “enterprise” ecommerce solutions so I am not surprised that it isn’t included in this theme but it would still be nice to see.

Our Product Rating

Cost:

9.5

Support and Documentation:

9.0

Usability:

7.5

Web Browser Compatibility:

8.5

Overall:

8.6

SpicyWebDesigners.com rates products on a scale from 0 to 10 with 0 being the worst and 10 being the best.  A typical product review includes looking at Cost, Support and Documentation, Usability, Web Browser Compatibility (using Google Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer).

Why should you buy this theme?

This is a great ecommerce WordPress theme when you look at the functionality.  Click here for a full list of features that the Store ecommerce WordPress Theme has.  I really like the fact that you can sell digital goods, use the shopping cart for physical goods and develop a catalog for customers to contact you directly.  This meets the needs of a lot of business owners looking for an affordable, “Do-It-Yourself” entry level solution and because it doesn’t require lots of money and offers terrific functionality it makes a highly adaptable theme for your online or physical business.

How much is it?

The Single Use License will cost you $65 and gets you the Store Ecommerce WordPress Theme.  You can only use this theme on one website but you’ve got access to the member access area to help you customize your theme and you also have access to detailed theme tutorials.  This is something I’ve always liked about Templatic’s WordPress Themes (formerly PremiumThemes.net); they support you past the initial sale and show you how and where you can customize it.

The Multiple Use License costs $99 and with this you get access to all the things mentioned in the single use license except you get the PSD files (Photoshop Documents) and you can deploy it an unlimited number of times.

And if you really like the themes that Templatic has, paying the fee of $279 (regularly $399) for unlimited access to Templatic’s Theme Club is well worth the money.  It gives you access to all the themes Templatic offers plus any new themes coming out.  It’s their best deal by far.

Whether you run an online web presence for your business or you just enjoy designing and deploying websites you may need to move a website from time to time, from one domain name to another domain name.  It can be full of headaches, late nights and steep learning curves that can leave you pulling out your hair, wondering what you’ve gotten yourself into.  Trust me, at times I’ve been there myself in the past.

Because most of the websites today run on at least one database it means that you need to not only keep the website CMS (Content Management System) software you are using up to date including plug-ins and add-ons but that you also need to perform regular database backups depending on how often you make changes and revisions to your website.  Now, I am not covering how to backup and restore a database in this article specifically but I am going to show you some tools to help you move your mySQL database from one domain name to another and the problems that are presented when you move a mySQL database.  For the sake of this article I am going to be talking about WordPress in this article; however the same concepts should apply regardless of the platform you are using to manage your website.

Recently, I myself found out that how valuable it is to restore a database to a different domain name.  This can be a tricky process and before you attempt it make sure that you’ve got a current backup saved in a good place.  Here are some problems that commonly occur when you move a mySQL database from one domain name to another domain name…

• You didn’t verify the backup of your database before restoring it to the new domain name. This may sound a little redundant but by verifying your back ups means that you don’t need to panic should anything go wrong.  If you are looking for a good plug-in that you can use with your WordPress website or blog I would suggest a plug-in by the name of “WordPress Database Backup” to help you run backups of your website.

• Your mySQL database contains the old domain name when you restore the database under the new domain and it redirects you back to the original domain name with you login. This sort of thing happens because there is a conflict when you login that an application like WordPress looks and sees the old domain and then performs a redirect back to the original domain name and never allows you to fully login.  In order to fix this problem you need to simply edit the “wp-config” file (if you are using WordPress) and add the following lines of code (see below) and upload it to the new domain’s web hosting.

define(‘WP_HOME’,'http://example.com’);
define(‘WP_SITEURL’,'http://example.com’);

• You’ve moved your mySQL database over to the new domain name and you are able to login but when you try to navigate the WordPress website or blog on the new domain name, the links point to the old domain name and you are unable to display the web page. Again there is a simple fix for this problem.  The first thing that you need to do is to install a plug-in called”Search & Replace” that is available for WordPress on your website on the new domain name.  From there the only thing that you need to do is type of the old domain name including the HTTP (similar to http://www.example.com) and the new domain name (similar to http://www.new-example.com) and it will update your database searching and replacing the original domain name with the new domain name.  A few notes about this though, make sure that you save a backup copy first and verify its contents before doing this.  The last thing you want to do is make a mistake and have no course of action to fix it.

Depending on the problem that you have with your website when you move it over to a new or different domain name I am sure that one of these solutions will help you.  Databases whether they are mySQL, Microsoft or something else can be tricky and pose a range of problems.  Some areas that will always save you a lot of hassle when you are working with databases are…

Creating a contingency plan – When I say “contingency plan” what I mean is creating a plan that allows you to roll back should you have any problems  and need to move back to when things worked correctly on your website.  This involves having a backup, any notes about customizations that you’ve done and where you’ve stored this information.

Always verifying your backups – After you’ve backed up your database just have a look at it to make sure that all your information is in there.  Sometimes if you don’t you may find out later that you only have a partial database so avoid the headaches and verify the backup the first time!

Doing these two things will ensure that even if you make a mistake in doing it yourself you will have a copy of the database that is current and complete.  When it comes to running your website, databases don’t need to be scary, complex or require extensive training and with the right plans in place you can run your website for years to come even after countless upgrades, revisions and integrations without major problems.

The term “squeeze page” actually refers to the action that a visitor to your website makes by giving you their name and contact information (usually an email address and/or phone numbers).  This is also referred to as a “name squeeze page”.

Effective squeeze pages can help you build your lead generation efforts; targeted and highly profitable emails list and gather detailed information about your visitors.  Really there a lot of different reasons and ways to use a squeeze page in your website that can benefit and add value to the business you are running online.  Now that we’ve covered exactly what a squeeze page is the next thing that is important to discuss is what takes a good squeeze page and makes it great because the proof is in the results and squeeze pages are NOT exempt from this.

What makes a good squeeze page a great squeeze page?

• Easy and uncluttered to navigate – You need to be clear about what you want people to do when they come to your website and having a solid user experience in place can only help the success of your squeeze page for converting visitors.  If you put in too much information you may only end up confusing your visitors which can lead to fewer conversions for your email marketing list.  Leaving an easy to navigate squeeze page that is not cluttered up with lots of information helps people to focus on what the true purpose of your squeeze page is offering and allows them to not feel overwhelmed with too much information like what you normally see is a standard sales page; you know!?… Those pesky and sometimes long-winded web pages used to sell the latest and greatest in information products that you could scroll threw for days and never reach the bottom of the page.
• Design that gets some real attention – Getting attention is a big factor in the overall success of a squeeze page but how do get your visitor’s attention?  Focusing on writing a strong headline to “hook” your website visitors can only help you squeeze their names so make sure that the headline is savvy and speaks to your audience.  If your product or service is beneficial to your visitors then they will be back for more.
• Testing your squeeze page – When I say “testing” I mean running a series of tests to check and see if different content, fonts, colors, brand messages or pretty much anything associated with the appearance and functionality of the squeeze page increases or decreases the success of the page in the number of conversions related to the number of visitors.  The only way to really know what is happening is to test and measure what is happening on your web pages.  This leads me to my third and final point…
• Measure your squeeze pages – I personally spend time measuring the success of articles on SpicyWebDesigners.com and checking where and how people are accessing the content on the site.  With a squeeze page you are able to measure the content, signups and any user events (example. “Playing a video”) using a web analytics platform.  Doing this allows you to make informed decisions off of what is happening on your website.  It’s much better than making decisions in the dark and less costly as well.

You may remember a few weeks ago when I reviewed the “Squeeze Theme” by Unique Blog Designs which is a premium WordPress theme that allows people to use their WordPress website to squeeze more names and information from visitors using a very simple and intuitive interface.  It’s definitely worth a look at if you haven’t read the review or checked out this WordPress Theme

The team behind Unique Blog Designs also put together a guide to Squeeze pages called “Squeeze Pages 101” which is very detailed covering everything from the importance of building an email list, why squeeze page based sites perform better and lots of other important information about using squeeze pages in your online business and on your website.

A squeeze page, when used correctly, can allow you to convert more people into your email list building efforts and gives you the added ability to market back to people who visited your website, gave you there contact information and their permission to contact them and left.  After all, if they were interested enough to sign up in the first place they will also probably be interested to hear from you again and in time you can turn them into paying customers.

Luc Arnold