This is a one-off special edition of The Takanomi Newsletter, where I answer as many as possible of your technical problems, queries and issues.
For those who don't know me too well, I'm a kind of 'technical marketer', the type of guy who not only understands the internet marketing side of the equation, but also the other more technical side that lies behind everything you see online.
Many of us have similar technical problems - I spend most of my daily life online, and see these problems all too frequently (and they're a real sales-killer).
But unless you have the technical skills to deal with them, you have two main options:
So I decided to offer the one-off opportunity to get some of your queries answered - and to be honest, I love this interactive type of format.
I was inundated with questions to say the least, so my apologies that I cannot answer all of them - I only wish that I had the time to do so.
However, many were on a similar theme (it's surprising how many have the same issues or problems facing them), so I've tried to prioritize the questions that are likely to help the most people.
We've got questions here from hit counters to image optimization to popups to text wrapping to simply where to start with developing web pages - there should be something of interest and, I hope, of real value here for everyone who runs a web site.
And right at the end, I've got a few quick questions that I hope you won't mind helping me with in return.
Wrapping text for newsletters...
My programmer was never able to find a way to allow me to wrap the text in my newsletters to a specific width, like let's say 65 characters wide. Consequence, I have never used the newsletter functionality that he had built for my web site www.aliv-e.com.
Denis Letendre, http://www.aliv-e.com
The easiest way to do this, regardless of how you send out your newsletters, is just to write your newsletter normally, and then use the free formatting service at http://www.jbmckee.com/formatit/ - you can specify the column width you want, and either upload or paste in the file you want to format.
Once you've formatted it, you can just copy and paste it into wherever you normally send your newsletters out from.
They even have a reformat tool in case for text that has been previously formatted.
Hit counter problems...
I added a hit counter to my website which I built using Frontpage 98. The problem is the counter did not count, it just sat there. So rather than having an in-operative counter, I removed it.
Ken Collins, http://www.all-tips-for-you.com
More than likely, this was probably just an installation problem of some sort, but without more details it's impossible to say what the problem would have been here.
However, the question brings up a good opportunity for some general advice on hit counters and similar.
If you're running a site with any kind of commercial interest in mind, hit counters have limited use.
If you're using one of those counters that displays the number of hits on the web page itself, then firstly that can give a negative impression to your visitor, and secondly if you're trying to gain some credibility, you lose it instantly with a counter that tells the visitor that they're say only the fifth person to have visited the page. This type of counter is a big no-no, unless it's on a page all about your three cats that only your Great Aunt Nell is going to visit.
And any type of counter that just tells you the number of hits serves very little purpose anyway. The main purpose of any type of statistical gathering like this should be to guide your marketing and thereby push up your profit levels - basic counters don't tell you nearly enough information.
The service I'd recommend using (and you can try it out for free first) is at http://www.index-tools.com - they give you heaps of information such as where your visitors are coming from, unique visitor counts, what search terms they're using to find your site, even their complete 'visitor path' as they look through your site.
All the information gathered can be used to improve and target your marketing approach. For example, you'd be able to see that an improvement in some sales copy led visitors to stay for an increased amount of time on your web page. You'd also be see that a small link you added to your site is dragging your visitors away in droves, and you'd be able to go and fix it quick to increase your retention levels.
Help, where do I start?...
Of course to get my web site up and going I am studying beginning internet courses on Macromedia Dream Weaver. Much to my surprise, it is not too simple. I think I am creating an index.html file in Dreamweaver, but I'm not sure how to correct or properly format this index.html file. Next, I don't find information of how to replace the given index.html file above with my own file...
Name and URL withheld.
This was one of many questions I received about where to start with developing web pages. Dreamweaver is in my opinion a fairly complicated place to start, and it may be better coming back to it after a bit of hard-coding experience in HTML.
What I'd recommend is downloading the (free) HTML editing software from http://www.evrsoft.com, and spending some time at http://www.webmonkey.com, which has a huge amount of free easy-to-follow tutorials on all aspects of web development.
If you really want to get started with Dreamweaver, and want to work towards earning a living online, I'd strongly recommend Frank Garon's and Lee Benson's Hynotic Blueprint - apart from everything else they give you, they're going to soon start doing video tutorials on Dreamweaver development and show you how to put a whole money-earning site together from the ground up.
Countdown popups...
How easy is it to create one of those countdown popups? You know, the ones that say something like "Congratulations, you have been selected for a $?? Discount if you act within the next 10 minutes" and have a counter which counts down 10 minutes.
Steve Wylie, http://www.stevewylie.com
Thanks for the question, Steve. That gives me an opportunity to tell you that there's an incredibly easy way to exactly that. Version 3.0 of PopUpMaster Pro will allow you to generate that type of popup in less than three minutes - so you'll get the popup that will auto-close after say 10 minutes, and you'll also get the code to counts down the 10 minutes in front of your visitor's eyes.
How do I send HTML email?
This was from a subscriber called Chrisy who didn't leave a web site URL - it is a question I get fairly regularly, and it has a pretty simple answer.
You can use Outlook to send HTML mail, but you get very limited formatting options and no real control over the HTML code used, so I suspect this is not what Chrisy meant.
The usual reason for wanting to do this is to send a nicer looking newsletter or ezine to a subscriber base.
And quite logically, the best place to send HTML email from is a mailing list/autoresponder type service - various services allow you to do this. The one I use allows you to send HTML mail and plain text mail in combination, so those who can't see HTML mail get the plain text version rather than a lot of messy code - and AOL subscribers get it optimized for them too.
You might want to check out this article too, which is all about HTML email.
What do they all mean?
I would love it if you could provide a clear, simplified "explanation" of WHAT each of the terms you mention are. PHP, ASP, CGI/Perl, MySQL, HTML, Javascript. I understand this can be a quite involved answer, but I would like just a basic understanding of what each does, is used for, as I come across them.
Jim Nelson, http://www.jugglenow.com
This was a fairly common question, and yes, the answer could be very involved, but I'll keep it as brief as possible.
To understand my explanation, first understand the concepts of 'client-side' and 'server-side' - client-side is what happens on the visitor's PC, i.e. for the purposes of this discussion, their browser; server-side is (unsurprisingly) what happens on the server that 'serves' your web pages to the masses.
Here goes...
PHP and ASP are both server-side languages used in web page development - PHP is used on both Linux/Unix and Windows servers, whereas ASP is only used in Windows environments. The code behind your web page will be a mixture of HTML and PHP or ASP, or just one or the other. What the language will do is dynamically generate the HTML to send to the browser - so if the visitor views the source from a browser, they'll still see HTML, but some or all of that will have been dynamically generated.
CGI/Perl is a server-side scripting language and can be used for a wide variety of purposes, from web page counters to form processing to whole dynamic web page generation.
MySQL is a common database used by dynamic web sites, commonly used in combination with PHP. The PHP code (or other server-side scripting language) will access the MySQL database to request the relevant information it wants to display. For example, if the database stored articles, the PHP code could request the raw text of the article, and then present them in HTML for display on a web page.
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the code that tells a browser how to display words and images on a page, and what the layout should look like.
JavaScript is most commonly used on the client-side to add some dynamism to a web site, such as popups, moving text, image swaps, and so on.
Note the above are only very brief explanations to give a rough idea of what the various terms mean.
Stop appearing once popup has achieved its purpose...
Popups are good tools to use, but I would like to control certain popups so that they no longer come up if a customer submits his/her info for a newsletter/report or has purchased once and is coming back again. I hate getting popups for something I already have acquired and I am sure so does everyone else. Any suggestions?
Arnold Brownridge, http://Know-HowMarketing.com
If you're using PopUpMaster Pro to generate the popup (which all good webmasters will be, right? ;), you can use the following code on the 'thank you' page (i.e. the page the visitor sees subsequent to a purchase or a subscription):
<script language=JavaScript>
<!--
var cookie="popupmaster";
function setcookie () {
var today = new Date();
var expdate = new Date(today.getTime()
+ 3650 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
document.cookie = cookie
+ "="
+ escape ("done")+ ";expires="
+ expdate.toGMTString();
}
setcookie();
//-->
</script>
You can copy and paste this script anywhere on that page.
Note however, that there are three provisions to this code that you should follow:
- The popup you want to prevent must use cookies in the script that makes the popup appear (if you can see a line beginning 'var cookie...', you're okay on that one)
- The value of 'cookie' (in the script above, "popupmaster") must match the value in the script for the popup you want to prevent.
- The code is only compatible with PopUpMaster Pro.
The script works by making the cookie effectively permanent (actually 3650 days, or 10 years, in the script above, but that's a lifetime on the Internet) - before the popup displays, your popup script checks to see that the cookie exists, and if it does it won't display the popup.
Slow site...
My site seems to take ages to download, what's the best way of making pictures small but viewable?
Richard, http:// www.ebookhome.co.uk
This is a common problem, and there are three main options:
- Resize your images - making images smaller may be an option if the images are bigger than strictly necessary, and this will of course reduce the file size. To maintain quality, increase the number of colours used as much as possible prior to the resizing; you should optimize too...
- Crop your images - cut of any 'dead area' of the image, for example the border areas surrounding the actual subject of the image
- Optimize your images - this effectively reduces the quality of the image, so it's important to find a balance between quality and file size that's acceptable to your site.
The software I use for both of the above options is Paint Shop Pro, but you don't have to use fairly expensive software for this.
There are also specific tools available for free to help with images, such as at http://www.irfanview.com/.
Popup once every X days...
How to set up a cookie so that my popup only comes up once every X number of days?
Shawn Meldrum, http://www.mortgagemarketingtips.com
That's an easy one, Shawn. PopUpMaster Pro allows you to do this literally in seconds - all you do is set the number of days, and click the button to generate the code.
I could go through heaps of code to tell you how to do this yourself, but firstly only the odd person will have enough patience to go through it, and secondly the software really will save both of us a stack of time on this one.
Popup on a link...
Can you tell me exactly how to add a pop up link to your own link. I have tried but did not succeed. It seems very complicated.
Name and URL not provided
This type of code is complicated, yes. But again, with PopUpMaster Pro it's easy to add this to your site. You just select for the popup to appear via a link, set any other settings you want, and click the button to generate the code you need. You get both the code and easy installation instructions.
Product download link...
What is the proper code and procedure for the customer to download a product? In other words how do you set it up to download from your thank you page?
Walter
The product should be on your server and accessible via a normal URL, eg. http://www.yourdomain.com/products/download.exe - if you type the URL into a browser, it should start to download.
Once you know this URL, it's simple, you just provide a link to it on your thank you page, for example:
<A href="http://yourdomain.com/products/download.exe">
Download - click here</a>
Load page into parent browser window...
I have an exit pop up on my site http://www.ebookomatic.com. When they click on the link within the exit pop, the window loads another page in the pop up window but the new page is larger than the pop up window. Ideally, if they click the link in the pop up window, I want the pop up to close and send the visitor to a different page in the main browser window. Is that possible?
Steven Schneiderman, http://www.ebookomatic.com.
This is a fairly common requirement, so I'm glad to be able to reveal just how this is done. It's really fairly simple.
On the link in question, you just need to add the following code:
onclick="opener.document.location=
'http://www.newpage.com';self.close();"
Note that all this code should be on a single line with no line returns.
Just replacing of course 'http://www.newpage.com' with the page you require to be loaded.
For example:
<a href=""
onclick="opener.document.location=
'http://www.takanomi.com';self.close();">Visit
takanomi.com</a>
Note that this code in yellow should all be on a single line (no line returns), and it can only be used from within a popup window.
Traffic analysis...
How do I set up non-obtrusive traffic analysis tools on my web site? I need to calculate my sell through rate [Sell through (conversion rate): The average percentage of people who buy from your Web page] and my visitor value [Visitor value: The amount of money an average visitor is worth]
Naseem Mariam, http://www.123projectmanagement.com
There's a couple of resources I'd recommend for this: http://www.index-tools.com for general traffic analysis, including advanced ecommerce functions; and http://www.pro-analyzer.com for analyzing the effectiveness of advertising.
Both of these are non-obtrusive.
Grabbing customers with V3...
How can I use popupmaster V3 when it's released so that it really grabs my customers attention?
John Coulter, http://www.donnadirect.co.uk
There are a number of ways you'll be able to use the software to do that, but here's three important ones that are really going to stand out:
- Moving popups - you'll be able to add a popup to your site in the normal way, but you'll be able to set it to slide in from the left, right, top or bottom. You can even set the speed too.
- Countdown popups - you can get all the code you need to add one of those 'countdown popups' to your site, the type where the visitor has so many minutes to take advantage of say a discount on a product you are selling. When the time's up, the popup auto-closes. You not only get the code to make the popup auto-close, you also get the code you need to add a countdown timer, synchronized exactly with the amount of time left on the clock before it auto-closes. Previously this type of popup would cost a few hundred dollars in programming charges, which is why it has tended to only be in use by mega-earners like Marlon Sanders, who can afford the investment required.
- Delayed exit popups - so your customer leaves your web page to go somewhere else, and a few seconds later you show them a popup containing an offer they can't refuse and inviting them back to the site. This type of popup is in use now by people like Corey Rudl - the popup software will allow you to add a delayed exit popup to your own site with just a few clicks of the mouse.
Just as a brief update on the eagerly awaited new version, Version 3.0 will be out over the next few days - remember that customers of the current version 2.0 will get the upgrade for free, and before everyone else.
I hope you've enjoyed this question and answer session, a change from the usual format for the newsletter - I'd love to have been able to answer all the questions I received, but depending on the feedback I get back, we may well do this again soon.
The Takanomi Newsletter is your newsletter, and I'd really like to maximize its usefulness for you. I'd therefore deeply appreciate it if you could let me know what your thoughts are on the following:
I hope you've enjoyed this brief change in format. If you have any comments you want to send my way, please feel free, it's always great to hear from you.
And thank you for your participation and readership.
Kind regards
Steve Shaw
The Takanomi Newsletter
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