Wow! Just saw GoDaddy deal for $15 per month for unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited domains. You could host hundreds of sites for $15 a month. I’ve seen some pretty good deals out there but this takes the cake. Oh wait, Host Gator is also one I’ve used and they have a similar plan for $8. I’ve been very happy with Host Gator, from reliability to support they’ve been great! Their plan comes with your own toll free number which includes 100 free minutes! Both the GoDaddy and Host Gator plan comes with a free SSL cert in case you need to have a certificate for ecommerce or other secure transactions. For a control panel I’d recommend cpanel which Host Gator provides. It’s much easier to use. The Go Daddy panel can be difficult and limited in what you can do. Both come loaded with plenty of software so you should be good to go. My favorite of course being WordPress, a great blogging platform! Both plans also come with a credit to Google Adwords in case you’d like to market your new site through pay per click advertising. Host Gator seems to be a step ahead with this one as well by offering $50 while GoDaddy offers a $25 credit. GoDaddy makes up for this though with a $25 credit to facebook (sorry facebook! wordpress wouldn’t allow me for some reason to link to you). Host Gator offers a 45 day money back guarantee while GoDaddy does not, but both are cheap and you can go month to month. Drum roll please….. dndndndndnd And the winner for the affordable web hosting award goes to HOST GATOR!! Good job Host Gator!! They also provide green web hosting that are powered and cooled by wind power in the state of Texas!! They also have a fall special so signup before Nov 1st to receive 20% off your order. And I have no affiliation with them I swear! Just a happy web hoster!
Archive for October, 2009
Wow! I have a few domains still with Network Solutions, the original provider of the .com, and in the last two days I’ve received a call and an email trying to solicit me for web marketing. I guess it makes sense for them to get into this business since they’ve been around for so long and probably have a ton of resources and backing to start competiting in the search marketing space. The reason I’m writing this blog post though is to talk about the tactic this particular salesperson is using to try and solicit my business. I’m not sure if this is Network Solutions new tactic or just a pushy salesperson. I hope the former. In the call he claims to have already spoken to me.. ok i get it. And in the email he sends, there’s no subject line and he references the call he made.. the email is brief but again he states that I’m interested in getting more clients through the internet.. hmmm? It’s not a huge deal but I’m anoyed at the fact that he’s claiming we’ve already communicated and that I’m also interested in getting more clients through the Internet. In my opinion, it’s not the best tactic. I would of rather received some helpful info along with how they’d get me more business. Well good luck Network Solutions. I’ll pass on your search marketing plans! They’re also one of the more expense domain sellers now so I’ll bet they’re search marketing plans are not cheap. Please post a comment if you know how much they’re services are going for. Thanks!
Wow! I just came across this site through a Google ad when I did a search for “ecommerce software” and was shocked to find no pricing or no easily visible call to actions to get more info. They definitely push their video through a bright orange button that catches your eye but there’s no simple way to get more information other than clicking the contact button at the very top of the page. The Google ad drove me directly to their ecommerce page which is good but this page should of had a few easy ways for me to find out more about the product other than watching a video. The user also needs a way to learn more and should not be prompted to download a feature guide which is what they have in place. This site seems to be run by a decent size company who spent probably over 6 figures to build this site but it’s lacking some very basics. There’s also a list of data sheets which is fine but these pages could of been built in html and then the user could have the option to download the page or printing the page(s). So I was able to find out after downloading a 17 page PDF and running a search on what I was looking for but will the average user go through this many steps to find these answers? Probably not. You have less than a minute to capture the users attention and in most cases under 20 seconds. I actually stayed on much longer due to the point that I was shocked that there wasn’t an easy way to find out more!!
Wow! Another cool feature for Bing! So I did a search for our company this morning, emarketed, and then clicked the video button up at the top. It then displayed all the videos on our YouTube.com channel. When I hovered over the videos I discovered that most of the videos will play directly on Bing within the thumbnail. See below for an example. The left navigation also lets you narrow down the search by length, screen type, resolution, and source. I still haven’t made the switch but this is a cool feature. I imagine Google will follow. I also noticed this morning that Bing had my search history for the day and this was actually from searches I made this morning on Google.. hmm..
WEB + MARKETING 