For those who live in the Ottawa area, you have likely seen on the news the desires of an ill 8 year old boy who would like to win the Guinness Book of Records for the most birthday cards received.

His name is Shane and he will be 8 in May, so the idea is for everyone to send him a birthday card and make sure it is there by May 30th (which is his birthday).

To verify this is not a hoax, you can view a short video about Shane’s story or by checking various hoax sites such as:

• Urban Legends at About.com
• Snopes.com
• Wikipedia - while not a valuable resource in and of it’s own, it verifies the above information

To send your birthday card:

Shane Bernier
P.O. Box 484
Lancaster, Ontario
K0C 1N0

Drop a comment or trackback to show that you sent a card!

This is the title of a fabulous piece written by some squirrel that I just stumbled across.

It explains what the software does, talks about what a conversion is, and then proceedes to give you 101 tips on using the software or what you could use it for. If you sign up for a newsletter you receive 6 more tips, a printable version of the tips and apparently an excel spreadsheet for writing headlines and Unique Selling Propositions!

Great way to increase the conversions of your website and improve the usability experience!

Check out Google Website Optimizer directly!

This is the title of a fabulous piece written by some squirrel that I just stumbled across.

It explains what the software does, talks about what a conversion is, and then proceedes to give you 101 tips on using the software or what you could use it for. If you sign up for a newsletter you receive 6 more tips, a printable version of the tips and apparently an excel spreadsheet for writing headlines and Unique Selling Propositions!

Great way to increase the conversions of your website and improve the usability experience!

Check out Google Website Optimizer directly!

I was catching up on my reading this morning and found a link to a new free keyword suggestion tool from Wordtracker.

Apparently Yahoo! will be pulling down the current Overture tool and replacing it with a new one at some point in time; so far this WordTracker tool is getting some positive feedback - go ahead and give it a try right here:

So many people rely on search engine rankings as an indicator of how they are doing and for a while I have been trying to get people to look at their web analytics as a guide rather than using ranking software. My reason in the past has been that rankings change throughout the day and definitely vary depending on where a person lives - how often do you see UK results in the search engine rather than US or Canadian? Google offers personalized results - at the very least based on the address of your ip address.

Yesterday I received proof of why top rankings are not the be all end all. DriveTraffic does not have top rankings for a particular brand of web analytics software (to protect the innocent I am going to keep this post relatively vague) - there are at least two other companies based in the same province that have higher organic rankings and also pay for Sponsored Listings on all of the search engines.

When I received a cold call from a potential client inquiring about service related to this web analytics software, I was wondering why they were calling me when these other sites are always more visible than mine. I figure it had to be that the look and feel of my site appealed to this individual more so than the look and feel of at least one of the other competitors. Turns out I was right! One of the competitors sites was a little busy looking for this particular individual and they chose not to dig around too far in the site to find the information they required.

So…. it is ok not to be #1 in the search engines, especially if you have more content that can help a prospective client make a decision about using your services, if your site conveys a credible image, and is layed out in such a way that the client can easily navigate the site, find your contact information and make an informed decision!

One last part to all of this - your sales technique. Do you answer your phone? Do you return client phone calls promptly? Are you aggressive in trying to close a sale? These things all add up.

If you would like a non-biased view of the credibility of your website, consider hiring DriveTraffic to conduct a focus test on your behalf. You may also want to consider reading some credibility resources.