I’m not sure how many of you need or use stock photography in your online business, but if you’re interested in a great resource, I often use iStockphoto. Photos are always a great way to enhance your business (or personal) blog or website and can be used in so many ways. So if you’re looking for stock photography, be sure to check out iStockphoto. Just click on the image above to go to their website. Check out what they have to offer.

When added to your website, this tool will allow your customers to not only send simple feedback, but they can also use it to create screenshots of your site (for example, if they get an error message or if there is a problem in your store they aren’t sure how to describe), and it generates an email to you any time a customer uses it. There is lots more information on their website, which you can find by clicking on their logo (above). They have a demo version on their website too so you can see how it works.

This may be a great feedback tool for you and your customers!

ContactMe is an app made for Facebook, which enables you to add a Contact tab to your Facebook page. It’s super easy to install and the form is very customizable to suit your needs. The perfect way to make it easy for anyone to contact you via your Facebook fan page. Just click on the image above to be taken to the ContactMe page on Facebook.

I’ve come across a neat site that provides a web tool you can use the check for HTML errors on your website. Let’s face it, some of us need a bit of help with HTML…we’re not all experts. So this tool might be of help to you if you need a little help in that department. Just enter your URL in the designated box and click their Test Now button (enter your email address too if you want the report mailed to you, but this is optional). It will scan your site and provide links to the errors it’s found–and not just in your HTML, but also in your Spelling, Links, and even Load Time. It will show you exactly where and what the errors are, so that you can more easily fix them on your site.

Just click on that HTML Toolbox image above to go to their site and run your test today.

]]> http://www.onlinebusinessjunction.com/2011/10/net-mechanic-html-check/feed/ 0 http://www.onlinebusinessjunction.com/2011/08/is-your-site-speed-hurting-your-google-ranking/ http://www.onlinebusinessjunction.com/2011/08/is-your-site-speed-hurting-your-google-ranking/#comments Tue, 02 Aug 2011 17:04:32 +0000 admin http://www.onlinebusinessjunction.com/?p=936

Did you know that the speed of your website can affect your Google ranking? Website speed has been a factor in Google’s ranking algorithm since last year. Google says it’s not the most important factor, out of around 200 different ranking factors. But since it is a factor, it is worth paying at least a little attention to it.

In addition to Google, slow website speeds can have a detrimental affect on your business. Why? Because your customers do not want to sit around waiting for slow pages to load. And lets be realistic: not everyone can afford ultra-fast Internet connections. There are many, many people still on dial-up (yes, really!) or who have less than stellar connections. These people do not want to visit websites that take forever to load, so they will leave your website. And if they leave, you’ve just lost a potential sale.

So what are some things that can and do slow down your website?

• Images with Large File Sizes. This is one of the biggest culprits in slowing down a website. The more photos you have, the slower your site can become, if your file sizes are too large. In most cases, the file size of each of your images should be no larger than 50K. And if you’re website is on a shared server, they should be even smaller. So optimize all photos on your website. See our Graphics and Photo Tools page for a list of Image Optimization tools we recommend.
• Unnecessary Images. If you have cutesy little graphics all over your website (header graphics, divider graphics and such), these are unnecessary. They don’t help promote your products or services. They don’t enhance the quality of your customer service. They don’t serve a function, other than to look cute–and slow down your page!
• Hotlinked Images. I’ve talked before about Hotlinking.  This is when you are using HTML code to link to a photo on another website, in order to make it appear on your own site. It’s also called bandwidth theft and you really shouldn’t do it. Having a lot of images hosted elsewhere, rather than on your own site, can cause your site to slow down as it waits for images to load. And again, the more images you have like this, the worse the problem becomes.
• Slideshows and Videos. Sure they might be fun to look at (sometimes), but they seriously slow down your website. You don’t need these things to showcase your products. All you need are good, quality (well-optimized!) photos.
• Widgets, Widgets, Widgets. Music players, cursor trails, falling snowflakes (or leaves, or hearts, or flowers–ugh, I’ve seen them all) are a great way to slow down your website. And guess what? They’re annoying too! Do you see any of those things on the top shopping websites? No! And with good reason.
• Any Other External Codes. If you have too many external codes on your site it can definitely slow down the page load time. Tweet buttons. Share This buttons. Like buttons. Flash animations. Javascript. The more you have, the slower your site can become. So only use what is needed.

Again, site speed is not the number one factor in Google’s ranking algorithm. But it is a factor. So you should take it into consideration. A website that takes only a couple of seconds to load is considered fast, and that is a great goal. 2-5 seconds isn’t fast, but in many cases it’s good enough. But over 5 seconds? Houston, we have a problem.

Want to test your website’s speed? Here are some resources that can help.

iWeb Tool

Pingdom

Page Speed Online

Web Site Optimization

LinkVendor Website Speed Test

Speed isn’t everything, but Google rankings aside, you don’t want your website to be slow for your customers. They will be only too happy to leave your website to go to a faster one, and take their money with them.

Their free service is for only 100 contacts, which isn’t very much. That being said, sometimes you get what you pay for, and considering all the features Mad Mimi offers, it’s worth considering if you’re looking for a high quality mailing list service.

Also keep in mind that if you can’t pay for a mailing list service there are plenty of free alternatives. Poke around on our Mailing Lists & Newsletters page for some of those. And remember that if you have a blog, that can also be used as your newsletter, and that costs absolutely nothing.  Click the link below to read a previous post on this topic.

Use Your Blog as Your Newsletter

Happy marketing!

Print Friendly offers three ways to optimize web pages before printing them, and/or can convert them to PDF format files as well. This helps to eliminate a lot of the printing of unwanted images and information that appear on web pages, such as ads, graphics, and unwanted text. You can edit the pages to print only what you want, and eliminate what you don’t.

Option 1 allows you to visit their website, enter a URL, and  then edit and print from there.

Option 2 allows you to add the Print Friendly browser tool to your browser and use it that way.

And Option 3 allows you to embed the Print Friendly feature to your website or blog by adding a snippet of javascript to your template.

I just tested out Option 3 on one of my blogs. You can see it in action here:

http://www.tatteredsisters.com/2011/03/primitive-robin-eggs-jar.html

Scroll to the bottom of that post and click on the green Print/PDF button. The PrintFriendly window will open. It will allow you to Print the page, with the option to remove images, if you like. It will allow you to save the page as a PDF. It will also allow you to email the page.  You can even adjust the text size to your liking.

The free service does display ads at the bottom of the Print Friendly window when it opens. But to me, this is not a problem. I think the service is wonderful. It will allow people to print and save pages from your site or blog very quickly and easily. Perfect for anyone wanting to save product information, or save and print patterns/tutorials, etc, if you offer them. There are lots of possibilities for its use.

So if you’re interested be sure to check it out!

When you arrive at her blog you can see the gallery in use, right under her header image and menu. It allows you to scroll through a bunch of thumbnail images, each of which is linked to the posts in her blog where the images reside. And the gallery is very customizable to be whatever size you need.

For any of you who like to feature new products on your blog, this would be an ideal way of allowing customers to see all of your products at a glance. And even if you are just a creative blogger who wants to add quick image links to all of your projects, this would work for you too. Definitely worth looking into, as it’s a great web tool for your blog.

Backlinks are very important for your site’s link popularity and placement in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages), so it’s always a good idea to keep a watchful eye on how many you have. Quantity is important, but so is quality, where backlinks are concerned.

You’ll be able to learn some good Twitter basics that are helpful to anyone, plus there’s a wealth on information on how to use Twitter for business.