Email and the happy inbox

Here's a couple of pointers on issues I see from time to time. The first is an quick discussion on housekeeping and avoiding your inbox from outgrowing the space quota it's got. The second is a discussion to highlight a particular setting used most often by people who want to view there email account from multiple locations and have access to all emails (in the POP3 environment not IMAP).


Inbox health and you!

There is one main issue to consider with inbox's in general and that is exceeding your designated inbox limit. You might ask what that means and what happens then?

You inbox is typically given a quota in MB's that it can not exceed. Every email and every attachment takes up some amount of space (Kb, MB or beyond?). The total of all emails and attachments can not exceed the mailbox's size limit.


Well what happens if it does?

You will not be able to send emails but more importantly everyone who sends you an email will get an error stating the users mailbox is over it's limit. Unless they are diligent enough to keep resending it until it works, there's very little chance you'll ever see the email.

One of the main ways to avoid this situation is to delete email that are no longer needed or move them to locally stored folders.

If your shouting at your screen right now: Hey now Adam wait just a minute, I delete emails all the time!!! You've got a screw loose.

I might just have, but that's fodder for another post. But what I do need to say is: Until you have emptied your deleted items folder the emails have typically not been removed from your mail server! haha!

If you've been humbled and are moving on to the next point: What's a local folder?

Let's take outlook for example. If you look under your "Outlook Today" folder you'll see your inbox, sent and deleted items folders. Your inbox and deleted items folder might represent emails still on the server if you have a setting called "leave a copy of messages on the server" checked off. This setting is the crux of the next discussion BTW. If you right click the "outlook today-->New Folder" selection, the resulting folder will represent a local folder. Anything you move there is stored on your hard drive regardless of the above mentioned configuration. Multiple local folders are the best way to organize your emails and keep the server healthy.



Do you need your email account available at multiple locations?


The "leave a copy of message on server" configuration is the crux of making this possible. If you don't leave a copy on the server then you have downloaded it to a particular PC's hard drive. Once this is done it obviously can't be seen by PC's at your other locations.

There are trade offs with the capability of configuring for multiple locations the most important of which is the mailbox exceeding it's limit. The best way to avoid this and maintain usability of this type of environment is to do a couple of things:

• Whenever you move an item to any PC's deleted items folder... EMPTY IT to remove emails form the server. Multiple deleted items folders on multiple devices can spell trouble.
  
• Select one PC to be the repository for items that you will move to a local folder. A second option is to move them to a mobile device that can be synced with the repository. Failing to do this will result in the "I now I saved that email but where is it" or more commonly referred to as INISTEBWII syndrome.
  

Hopefully these discussions can help you avoid a bad situation that only your friends will tell you about, your customers shore wont tell you an email bounced!

posted by Adam Signore @ 6:47 AM 0 Comments

Got them to your site? Now what? Why your site needs a search function!

Web site owners get very focused on what will get their web sites found in the search engines. What will bring in visitors to their spanky new web site and they should get focused on that.

Of course we all want users to find our own sites and just love them.

But one should not assume that because site visitors are showing up in dribs and drabs (or droves) that they are getting what they want.

You might look at it this way:

Getting hits on your site is only 1/3 of the puzzle. In general terms you should think of your web site recipe like this:

• 1/3 Good SEO
  
• 1/3 Good content
  
• 1/3 Good understanding of site visitor's needs and wants
  

OK, Good SEO makes sense and I'll run right out and clone myself so i have enough time to always be creating good content but how the heck do i understand what the site visitor wants?????

Well there's a couple things to become familiar with once the cloning process is completed. I hear it makes you feel like half the man you used to be, but anyway I digress.

• Google Analytics
  
• Some form of site search avec reporting functions
  

BTW, Signore Web Design set's them both up when we do a web site for you!

Google analytics and Bounce rate

The first item, Google Analytics™ is a great tool that provides you with detailed unbiased information (compared to web hosting tracking tools) on site visitors activities on your site. The pinnacle of this information is the "Bounce Rate".

Bounce rate tells you how many people get to the first page on your site and high tail it out of there. It's a great indicator of weather your site is completely disgusting users or drawing them in. Believe it or not, typical bounce rate runs around 40%. Boy that seems high, but based on the ADD nature of web surfers it does sort of make sense.

The response to a bad bounce rate can vary. One of my sites GBI-Avis modular Home has a bounce rate that runs around 20%. Yahooooo! that's half the industry average. If you look at the site you'll find it's pretty enough but not flashy. No flash intro's (bad idea anyways) and screaming graphics, rollovers, etc. It does more with a focused text box (text with a bordered div around it) than you would believe. The point here, lowering bounce rate is not about "flashing up the site". It's about finding out what your visitors come to your site for and make those items stand out.

So where bounce rate lets you know there's a problem, site search helps you determine what it is.

Site Search

There are a couple of free services, atomz.com and freefind.com that we have integrated into client sites. These services provide a customizable form & customizable results page that integrate into the site but also provide statistical reporting. This allows you to see what the site visitor TRIED to find on your site. Coupled with Google Analytics you can tell if they ever found it. If a predominant portion of your visitors search your site for the same terms (and that term describes something you offer) then it's obvious your not presenting the product or service clearly enough.

To sum it up, getting them to the site wins the battle. If you don't capture them
quickly then you've lost the war.

posted by Adam Signore @ 4:59 AM 0 Comments

Organic SEO - I need to get higher in the rankings by Tuesday!

How quickly can i get ranked higher in organic search results?

Well that depends on where your starting from and what type of changes are being made:

This is brand new domain:

Well in this case, If SEO has been done from the start your in for a little bit of a bumpy ride. take Google for example; They'll give new sites a boost in the first couple months of operation but then the site will fall off somewhat. The site will fall off sharply if no SEO efforts have been made.


This is brand new web site on an old domain:

Once again attention to SEO will have an impact. If the site structure has been radically changed from what Google has cached, you could disappear for quite a while until your new content is re-ranked (6 Months or more?). There's some things to consider in site redesign:

• Has the file names and file structure been preserved. This change will foul up the weight Google gives the current site. To transfer your current page rank you should use permanent redirects (301) in your .htaccess file (or other similar method) to point Google's cache of old pages to the new/replacement pages.
  

This is the same old site on the same old domain, just getting SEO for the first time:

It might not be that long, a few months perhaps.


Final thoughts

With any SEO campaign, that's done ethically and designed to have long lasting results the time frame for those results is not short. It can be from several months to a year to see tangible and predictable results.

Organic SEO is not as simple as PPC where well written ads and a budget can get you in the sponsored results that day. Actually PPC should be considered on a short term basis to fill the void.

Organic SEO is a more hand to hand combat situation where you need to outrank your competition. and do it in a world where page rank,quality content and quality inbound links have a lot of value in that fight. Where search engines will take months to respond to the value of your site changes it just can't be promised in a day.


If someone tells you it can, I'd look elsewhere for the SEO work.



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Content in the above posting is not meant to be the definitive last word on any topic.
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posted by Adam Signore @ 7:15 AM 0 Comments

Template sites and Templating. What's the difference

Yes, what's the difference

In a nutshell template sites are pre-packaged web sites, typically containing a menu structure pointing to a few pages. There are some attributes about them to consider:

• They are rigid. How was the navigation designed. Does it use graphical elements (almost always)? What if you want to change the menu structure then?
  
• Was it designed to be flexible in other ways? what if you change the logo at the top will it skew the page display?
  
• How do you feel about several other web sites having essentially the same look?
  
• What if you need to add e-commerce, a blog or some other functionality? again, will the framework be flexible enough for these additions without major rework?
  
• If you select a template site and modify it and "break something" who will fix it.
  

these are a few considerations but certainly not all.


What do you mean by "Templating"?

Weather your designing a site from scratch or creating template sites at some point you need to design the first "Template" that other things flow from.

Template site designers do not need to consider any customer specific customer needs at this point they just come up with a pretty design that they hope will sell.

Web site designers also "Template" but we do it at a point where the unique customer design needs have been considered and we do it with future flexibility in mind (because hopefully we will be the go to person for updating the site.

posted by Adam Signore @ 6:57 AM 0 Comments

Spam - Some things to consider about email and your inbox

All of us get spam. It's impossible to get away from.

Below is a very simple discussion on email habits. It's by no means "The complete guide"
but rather a good place to start.

There are some general practices to consider when it comes to your inbox:

Don't Open that email!!!
Don't open an email unless you know the sender or at least it is clear that it is legitimate. Spammers consider a legitimate email address to be gold. They typically embed images or other web-bugs to let them know your address is good. When you open the email you've made their day!

But if you must:
If you must know what this email is about here's a method to help you know this email is a fraud and keep you from opening it (An outlook based answer): In outlook right click the message of interest and select "Options" from the pop up menu. You'll get a bunch of text like this (the email headers):

Received: from ([76.96.62.55])
by sccrmxc17.comcast.net (sccrmxc17) with ESMTP
id (20071022161557s17005ktpde); Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:15:57 +0000
X-Originating-IP: [76.96.62.55]

Received: from dsl88-248-1763.ttnet.net.tr ([88.248.6.227])
by IMTA24.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net with comcast
id 3UFF1Y00Y4ttjZk0000200; Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:15:57 +0000
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:15:16 -0800

From: "some"
To: kced1z3@comcast.net

Look at the areas highlighted in purple you'll notice that the From: address at the
bottom of the email headers does not the received lines (also marked in
purple). Also the display name in the headers is "some" , this is not a name any legit email sender would choose to show. This is not a foolproof check but it can give you a good idea of an email legitimacy. Also, the To: address
(bottom line) is not my address but i received this email in my inbox.
Had i opened this i could have warmed the heart of some spammer somewhere by letting them know it was sent to a real email address.


The email has an attachment, should i open it?

You should know my answer by now! But in case you don't: NO!
Unless it's from someone you know or an email you expect. There's no good reason
for strangers to send you attachments (potential viruses) .


Anything else to consider?

You really should have some basic security app's on your PC. Virus, PC firewall ,
phishing protection should all be installed. Most services charge ~$30 per year to
keep subscriptions current. If you think that's a rip-off then i would figure
you've never been through a disastrous infection on your PC. You can wipe
out 10 times that in one event when you factor in lost information, productivity
and not to forget loss of private information.


Things to remember:

* Don't let spammers know they've reached a legit email address.
* Don't open unless you know who it's from.
* If you must look at it. Look at email headers first to determine if it's legit.
* Make sure you have up to date security app's on your PC. Don't skimp here!

posted by Adam Signore @ 1:26 PM 0 Comments

Is my web site ever really "Completed"? Content VS. A.D.D.

posted by Adam Signore @ 7:32 AM 0 Comments

About this page!

Hi and welcome,
I plan on using this section to comment on a wide range of topics that i hope will be useful to techies and non-techies alike.

I'm just starting this up in the secon quarter of 2008 so it will be a little sparse right now.

If you've got something you'd like to hear my comments on drop me an email at:

adam@signore.net


Thanks,
Adam.

posted by Adam Signore @ 6:47 AM 0 Comments