• Your website is available to everyone, all over the world, all the time, 24-7, marketing your business while you sleep.  Of the 7 billion people on earth, 3 billion have access to the internet, and your website.  That’s a lot of customers!

• A website gives your business credibility, reputation and trust.  It used to be that businesses seemed shady if they weren’t in the phone book, had a phone number and a physical address.  Now-a-days, it’s generally accepted that a business must also have a website and email address.

• A professionally designed website boosts your image.  A one-man-shop could feel like a large business through a website.  It shows that you are not just doing a hobby, and that you really mean business.

• A website makes information about your business available to customers, with no pressure to buy, and ability to anonymously research your products or services.

• A website is affordable continuous marketing.  It’s an online ad for your business that you only pay for once.  Newspaper ads are important for local advertising, but the days of $1000 full page ads annually in the yellow pages are becoming something of the past.  Flyers and television spots are expensive and are hit-and-miss.

• Changing your business information is fast and easy on the internet.  Changing photos, wording, pricing and contact information on all of your catalogs, brochures and marketing materials get very time consuming and expensive.

• A website is a multimedia source of advertising.  A brochure can have photos, but sound and video make your website a 3-D experience for customers.

• Websites can have a FAQ page – Frequently Asked Questions.  This will save you tons of time on the phone, answering the same questions over and over.

• The amount of information you can get on a website is endless.  You can provide far more information than you could ever fit on a brochure, flyer or business card.

• With Google Analytics, you can see exactly how many visitors come to your site every day, what times of the day are busier, what pages they are reading, and how they found your website.

• Unlike other forms of advertising, a website allows potential customers to give feedback on your products and services.  Companies pay large sums of money to have their businesses analyzed for find their pros and cons.  With your website, ask for feedback and reviews for your products, services and customer service.  A website allows people to feel anonymous; therefore they will be brutally honest.  Take the good comments and pat yourself on the back.  Take the negative comments AND FIX IT!  Tom Hanks said, “There’s no crying in baseball!”  Well, there’s no crying in business.  You can’t afford to be offended.  

• A website is simply an incredible way to sell things.  You can’t beat the exposure.  And a website, even costing a one-time $2K-$4K fee, undeniably beats a $1K per month rent on a physical store!

The post Top 12 Reasons to have a Website appeared first on Websites by Robyn.

Google says Responsive Web Design is a must by April 21st

Series 4, Article 36

Starting April 21, 2015, Google will be ranking websites higher in their mobile search engine if they have a responsive design, meaning a theme or template that enhances the user experience on both desktop and mobile devices by scaling and stacking the content according to the width of the screen.  

This means that if you want to keep the same search ranking you’ve had in the past, you cannot ignore the need for a responsive website any longer.  This change will not affect a desktop search, but with increasing mobile usage, your website cannot afford to lose customers.  

Mobile usage for accessing the internet and mobile searching exceeds desktop internet usage for first time in history in January of 2014 and it has been rising ever since!

It is extremely frustrating for users to click on a website on a mobile device only to find out that it wouldn’t load properly or that you had to play the “expand and swipe around” game once you landed on the page.

Google has been dropping hints that it would rank mobile-friendly sites higher for quite some time. Back in November, Google added a “mobile-friendly” label that appeared with each search result on a mobile search results page. While this designation wasn’t a ranking factor (plenty of websites without the label were still appearing prominently in the mobile search results), it certainly did improve the user experience. Once the mobile-friendly label launched, users knew what to expect, and likely began avoiding websites without the label while searching on a mobile device. Incorporating mobile-friendliness into the mobile search algorithm only makes sense, and it’s official as of April 21st: make your site mobile friendly or see a severe dip in traffic from mobile devices.

So here’s the bottom line. If you want to continue to generate traffic from mobile search after April 21, 2015 your site needs to be mobile-friendly. Hire a web developer and get it done. It’s a worthwhile investment and you’ll be happy you did.

No clue what Responsive Design means? Have a look at this video:
http://goo.gl/fiM3yA

The post Google says Responsive Web Design is a must by April 21st appeared first on Websites by Robyn.

Series 4, Article 29

“Google Analytics not only lets you measure sales and conversions, but also gives you fresh insights into how visitors use your site, how they arrived on your site, and how you can keep them coming back.”    Paul Koks, Online Metrics

It generates detailed statistics about a website’s traffic and traffic sources, and measures conversions and sales. It’s the most widely used website statistics service. The basic service is free of charge and a premium version is available for a fee.

Knowing your audience and what they want is an important success factor for any website. The best way to know your audience is through your traffic stats and this is exactly what Google Analytics provide for FREE. Google Analytics is a must have for every website or blog.

It shows you who visits your website – user’s geographical location, which browser did they use, what is their screen resolution, which language they speak, etc.

You can see what people do when they are on your website — how long they stay on your website, what pages they are visiting the most, which page is causing the users to leave most often, how many pages users are viewing, etc.

You can see when they visit your site — which time of the day is the hottest for your website. This helps you pick the time to publish your posts.

How are they finding your website — whether it was through a search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo etc), social networks (facebook, twitter etc), a link from another website, or a direct type-in. Google Analytics also shows you the breakdown of each traffic source, so you can focus on specific ones if you like.

How users interact with your site’s content – You can see how many users clicked on a specific link.

We use all the data to improve our site and give our audience what they like.

www.wpbeginner.com       www.online-metrics.com

The post Google Analytics: Knowing your Website Statistics appeared first on Websites by Robyn.

The time may soon come when cell phones and iPads are a thing of the past, and the smart devices on which we all rely will sit innocuously on our bodies like jewelry, watches or sunglasses with built- in super computers.

Google Glasses are already able to respond to verbal commands, and may soon include a laser-projected virtual keyboard.   The glasses can display information from the internet or company files with a verbal command and display that information in the upper corner of the wearer’s vision field inside the glasses without anyone knowing.

How about smart glasses with diet management sensors that tell you your calorie intake and how much exercise you need to burn off those calories. It would know your mineral deficiencies and health needs and would create a meal plan to suit your health needs. This device would be linked to your refrigerator and would scan the UPC codes of its contents, determining your grocery list.

What if drivers wore smart glasses, which had a small screen for navigation, but also recorded the entire trip.  If there was an accident, smart glasses would record exactly what you were looking at the time of the accident, as well as other information such as speed, and body information like driving after a lack of sleep or blood alcohol levels.

You would be able to recall specific details of what has been in your field of view in the past. Smart glasses could ‘remember this’ and photograph or video tape things to remember for a later time — the business card of a partner, the menu at a restaurant, a technical specification, or a particularity beautiful sunset. Each item could be tagged by the user using voice commands – location, time and date.

While saying, “Oh, Wow, Cool.”  Be aware that wearable technology certainly promises a whole new level of conveniences, but it also raises some very serious privacy issues.

The post Wearable Technology Will Change Your Business Part 2 appeared first on Websites by Robyn.

Wearable technology devices are often categorized as fun novelties and interesting gadgets, but they are actually a game-changing influence with the potential to utterly disrupt the modern business world.

“Wearables”, “fashionable technology”, “wearable devices”,” tech togs”, or “fashion electronics” are clothing and accessories incorporating computer and advanced electronic technologies.  The three main wearable technology product categories are body sensors, smart glasses and smart watches.        

Data will not help you if you can’t see it when you need it.  In purely technological terms, the wearable revolution could take shape much faster than the mobile revolution that preceded it.  Wearable Technology will be as big or bigger as the smartphone.

The recent wearable tech influx in the business world was launched with the promise of improving workplace productivity and the overall efficiency of organizations.

Wristbands that notice when you fall asleep and then record the TV show you are watching.  Wearable technology for pets will keep track of your pet’s activity day and night, whether you’re at work or at home.  Construction workers are using this wearable technology to easily see inside piping and walls.  Taking pictures using voice commands.  Keeping track of your daily calorie expenditure or receiving inbound messages.

Wearable devices, such as those used to look inside patients’ veins, are being implemented by hospitals.

Wireless headsets, wearable wrist displays, and tech lanyards all allow employees to access information on-the-go. This means store workers can now look up the information they need without abandoning the customer or visiting a stationary terminal. The impact on the day-to-day may seem small, but in the long run it can increase retail productivity tremendously.

The post Wearable Technology Will Change Your Business appeared first on Websites by Robyn.

1. In 1997, Google’s prototype was named “BackRub”.
2. The name ‘Google’ was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for ‘Googol’.
3. Google.com – The domain was registered on September 15, 1997.
4. Google celebrates Halloween every year in the office. The funniest dress-up was lava lamp in 2007.
5. The prime reason the Google home page is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn’t know HTML and just wanted a quick interface.
6. In the beginning, there was no submit button so users had to hit the Return key to get Google to work.
7. Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests people would just sit looking at the screen. After a minute of nothingness, the tester intervened and asked ‘What’s up?’ to which they replied “We are waiting for the rest of it”. To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as a crude end of page marker.
8. One of the biggest leap in search usage came about when Google introduced their much improved spell checker giving birth to the “Did you mean…” feature. This instantly doubled their traffic.
9. The infamous “I feel lucky” is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button. I’m Feeling Lucky Costs Google $110 Million a Year.
10. There are no restrictions on Googler’s dress code in the office, in which pajama, ugly sweater and even super hero costume were on the records.
11. Google started off its first operations in a rented Garage.
12. Gmail was used internally for nearly 2 years prior to launch to the public. They discovered there was approximately 6 types of email users, and Gmail has been designed to accommodate these 6.
13. Google publishes variety of logos commemorating holidays and events. The first one on the books being a self-made “Burning Man” logo by the founders themselves.
14. Employees are encouraged to use 20% of their time working on their own projects. Google News is an example of a project that grew from this working model.
15. Google products appear in 117 type of languages, including 5 “fake” languages like Elmer Fudd and Swedish Chef. Spanish, German, French and Japanese are the most used search language besides English.
16. Google won the prestigious award for Technical Achievement in 2000. In the nominees list there were no search engines at all.
17. Thinking of working in Google? Well, think again if you can’t answer their mysterious and challenging puzzles. Google setup a billboard in Silicon Valley by 2004, stating “First 10 digit prime in consecutive digits of e”. Geeks who got the hint would have visited http://www.7427466391.com/ (which is not available now) with further puzzles to be solved before they were recruited.
18. Google’s first ever April Fool’s joke went online on April 1st, 2000 and was called “MentalPlex” – Google’s ability to read your mind.
19. 
    The Google logo was never centered (as it appears today). It only appeared centered in March 2001. It was aligned to the left earlier.
20. Google’s first employee is Craig Silverstein.  Craig is the man behind “exact search” (where you get pages containing the exact search term within quotes.)
21. In 1999, when Google moved to their Paolo Alto office, there were only 19 employees in the company. Today there are 0ver 2,700.
22. It will take Google 300 years to put the entire world’s information online.  Google reckons only 10% of the world’s information is online.
23. Google believes up to 20% of the online content changes every month.
24. According to Google, 20-25% of the search queries are unique.
25. The index of Google is 3 times larger than Yahoo’s index or MSN’s index.
26. In Google, thousands of computers are involved in processing a single search query.70% of Google engineers are working on search-related problems.
27. Google uses over 300 factors to rank websites.
28. Google uses over 200 signals for Pagerank.
29. Google has the largest network of translators in the world.
30. “Teaching is like learning again”. Since 2000, Google encourage teaching and learning activities among its employees, from the subject of learning Chinese to Ulysses from Greek mythology.

Source:  techchunks

The post Lesser Known Facts about Google, ‘The Search Engine King’ appeared first on Websites by Robyn.

Resources:   www.makeuseof.com  www.jelecos.com  www.labnol.org

The post Interesting Facts about the Internet appeared first on Websites by Robyn.