As many are learning, Google has announced that one of the factors that will improve your SEO performance and, naturally, your user’s experience, is by speeding up your website. At GlobalSpex, we’ve always been cognizant of this but more for our customer’s and their target market rather than search engines. By using CSS, alt tags, image compression in our web design for speed, style, and 509 disability compliance, it seems this might be helpful for optimization as well. But, as always, we are always learning.
Browser Caching – to help with the browser by instructing it to load previously downloaded resources (images, css, html, etc.) from your local disk rather than over the network.
CSS compression – Removing CSS from documents, compression external CSS and removing unused.
JavaScript compression - minimizing and combining javascript code.
Images – Optimizing and setting dimensions.
So far I’ve compressed our website’s CSS file by removing spaces and extraneous styles. The next suggestion was installing in our .htaccess file with the recommended caching code. (My next post will include this code)
I am often asked how a company can get paid through their website. Many have heard and use PayPal which is a quick and cheap option. It has definitely improved over the years (you don’t need to have an account to pay, subscriptions, donations, etc.) but it does have its drawbacks.
Before I continue, I want to recommend that you don’t limit yourself to one payment option. Customers like having a choice when paying for your product or service. Give it to them.
If you are interested, there are other options that you should consider, below are two types:
Merchant Accounts. This is more expensive option but your flexibility is higher and you are not promoting another company. With this option, your customers never leave your website. But you will also need additional customization to your website, for example SSL Encryption and an online form payment customization. Below are some example rates:
$100 one-time sign up
2.3% – 3.5% fees and $0.75 – $1.00 per sale
There is usually an application fee
Usually up to $24/month monthly fees.
No statement fees are about $10/month
3rd-Party Payment Processors. Much like PayPal, this option takes away the frustration of custom coding for your website. But, as you can see below, your fees per sale are higher. This will affect you as your sales volume increases. There may be other downsides, for example, customers leave your website for a moment to make the purchase, but whey may return once the transaction is complete.Another downside is that on the customer’s credit card receipt, the merchant’s name will show and not your company name and phone. This can frustrate you customer if they have a question about their purchase. They will call the merchant and not you. But, depending on your business model, this may work better for you.
List of 3rd Party Merchants
I’ve compiled a list of various merchants that either I have used as a merchant or customer or my customers have recommended.
PayPal. The most widely used 3rd party merchant.Fees depend on the type of PayPal setup you decide on using.
2Checkout. This merchant works much like PayPal but does have higher transaction rates.
$49 one-time sign up
5.5% and $0.45 per sale
No application fees
No monthly fees
No statement fees
No gateway fees.
Google Payments. With Google Checkout, you’ll be charged rates that range from 1.9% + $0.30 per transaction to 2.0% and $0.30 per transaction, depending on your monthly sales volume. And there are no monthly, setup or gateway fees.
Intuit. I have not used this merchant but I have customers that are happy with their service. Besides the ease of being able to process credit cards through your Quickbooks and easing the process, their pricing can be competitive.
$100 one-time sign up
2.44% – 3.5% fees and $0.27 per sale
$60 application fee
Up to $20/month monthly fees.
ProPay. Another easy way to accept credit cards. I do notice that their rates are variable depending on your ProPay package and type of credit cards you accept.
ClickBank. Another popular option as they will accept both Credit Cards and Paypal for you, but they have very high transaction rates starting at 7.5%.
As with any business decision, do some research and using a spreadsheet, I suggest calculating a typical sale to help you decide.
This tutorial reviews the process to add and edit a photo in your WordPress blog post or page. It doesn’t matter which you choose to add your photo to b/c the process is the same.
Thanks to Hongkiat.com. This is a wonderful list for web designers and website owners. It helps compile all the neat tricks and design elements that a WordPress website can do beyond the standard install and configuration. If you are website owner and not sure what you would like your website to do, this list can help you explain to your designers, “see, just like they do here.”
There have been several times when I’ve (and I am sure many of you) been given an error that provides no explanation to doesn’t offer any solution. My solution? Google the error message.
Copy/paste or write the error message on a piece of paper and copy the message into the search box. You will see results from others that have had the same problem, and if you are lucky a solution.
Don’t see a solution? Try Google groups to see archived discussions that may relate to your problem.
When you get an error message, sometimes it may be too long to copy on paper to send to your tech support. A solution would be to press to copy the message the to past the error alert into your email message.
If the picture is too big, press (Ctl) (Print Screen) at the same time to capture an image of the error message box. Then you you can paste the screen into Windows Paint imaging utility and press into the picture. Save the picture as a JPEG and you can attach the picture to your e-mail and send to your tech support person.
With so many logins and passwords that you have to remember, but the most important password to remember and protect is the one that allows you access to your personal computer. With this tip you can be sure to keep your password safe without it written on a sticky note and attached to your moniter for all to see.
Follow these steps:
With your memory stick attached to your USB, type Control Panel | User Accounts.
2. Select your account and click Prevent a forgotten password in Related Tasks list to the left.
Follow the steps within the Forgotten Password Wizard.
Safe Mode within your PC allows you to set your computer to use minimal set of drivers. This will enable you to access your PC if it stops responding after rebooting. It will let you diagnose the problem and then you can start Windows normally.
Follow these steps to get to Safe Mode:
Reboot and press before Windows loads. This will bring up the ADvanced Options menu.
Use the arrow keys to select Safe Mode, and press to launch Windows.
You will notice that the computer will look very basic with minimal options available.
