Getting clicks on your paid listings can be a challenge. You need to compel the consumer to click through, yet your ad must also comply with editorial standards controlling what you can say and even the punctuation you can use. You also want the RIGHT type of click. Choose your words poorly, and the wrong audience will come, costing you money and offering no hope of conversion. This webcast looks at ways to get the right clicks.

Writing Compelling PPC Ads
July 9, 2008 1:00pm (EST)
Cost: FREE Webcast | Register now!

I received snail mail today from the Domain Registry of Canada. I thought it odd to receive mail as opposed to email so I thought they must have had difficulty reaching me by mail or perhaps there is a conflict with a previously registered domain name.

Upon opening the bill I was quite surprised to see a Domain Name Expiration Notice and the opportunity to send in my order by mail! I have registered domain names for years and just last month renewed 2 domain names online!

After reading the entire piece of paper (ok the front anyway) I have come to realize that the Domain Registry of Canada is NOT who I registered the domain with (I registered with my hosting company, but ultimately the domain is controlled by Canadian Internet Registration Authority or CIRA).

The Domain Registry of Canada would like me to TRANSFER my domain name to them and renew it… for $40 for one year. Crazy talk as I have a very reliable firm I have been using for years, who do not waste trees to send my renewals - and they charge $5 - $10 for a one year renewal!

The Domain Registry of Canada is abusing their power as a domain registrar by trolling the database for expiring domains and contacting the owners of these domains to transfer and renew their domains, when in reality these domain owners will be contacted by their own registrars shortly for a renewal.

Perhaps it is not illegal activity but it sure is shady. Many customers will be duped into believing they need to do this. Weigh in - have you been duped?

Absolutely fantastic! Google Analytics has a beta feature out that allows viewing of your web stats by day, week or month. Previous to this beta, if you chose a period of 3 months for example, you saw numbers for the entire 3 month chunk. Now if you were to choose a one year time period you would be able to see each month individually in the date graph.

In this first screenshot you can see where you would change the date view options from day to week to month:

How the first quarter of 2008 appears in day view:

And week view:

And finallly, month view:

Way to go Google! Now if date selection could just be a touch faster we’d be happy :-)

And yes I realize the quality of pictures here is not very good. I’ll have to get Jess the Intern to fix those up this afternoon :-)

It’s not a joke! As much as I love Google I am going to participate in the first ever Google Free Day on April 1st. How will you find information? Try using one of the alternative search engines - my thoughts in the beginning were “they suck” - but really when I think about it, I can’t complain about Clusty for example, or Ask.

Wendy Boswell at Lifehacker lists a few of her favourites - and I am going to try out at least one or two of them! Copied here for your convenience are a few that I found interesting:

1. Clusty: Clusty is a metasearch engine, meaning it combines results from a variety of different sources. However, Clusty adds extra search suggestions arranged by category (clusters) for example, if you type in “coffee”, Clusty responds with clustered results to the left such as Tea, Espresso, History of Coffee, etc.
2. Indeed: Indeed.com is a job search engine. It is not a list of message boards, or a place where you can actually submit your resume. Indeed is extremely simple to use, and covers all the major job boards, newspaper classified sites, niche industry sites and corporate job sites. I found more jobs in five minutes on here than I did searching on other job boards. You have to go to the individual websites in order to apply (which is kind of a pain) but this is a great way to generate job leads. Indeed also offers a nice toolset for the job searcher, including a JobRoll, “a customized, dynamically-updating list of jobs that may be placed on your blog or website.”
3. FoodieView: FoodieView is a recipe search engine searching over 175,000 recipes from all different kinds of sources, including AllRecipes.com, The Food Network, Martha Stewart Recipes, and many more. FoodieView is a targeted recipe search engine with a lot of really interesting features; it’s also extremely easy to find good recipes on FoodieView that are actually relevant to what your search query is, which, if you’ve ever tried to find a recipe using certain ingredients on one of the bigger search engines, you’ll agree with me when I say that it can be a huge time-waster.
4. Healthline: Healthline.com is a medical information search engine, with lots of interesting features that make it very simple to use (in other words, you don’t have to have an MD degree to find what you’re looking for here). Healthline is solely dedicated to finding medical information online, and it offers medically filtered results developed by trained medical personnel.
5. FirstGov: FirstGov.gov is an absolutely mammoth search engine/portal that gives the searcher direct access to searchable information from the United States government, state governments, and local governments. It can be overwhelming, simply because there is SO much information here. I would suggest that you get your feet wet with FirstGov by using the Information By Topic directory, or you can choose to drill down by viewing the Site Index. In addition, FirstGov offers an above average Advanced Search help page.

We are running a WebTrends training course at a client site Tuesday and Wednesday of this week and I wanted to make arrangements to have breakfast catered for the students.

By using Google Maps (or Google Local) I looked for catering near the client’s postal code. After looking through a few websites (and finding companies that don’t have websites (????), I found what I was looking in Druxy’s. Druxy’s is known for their deli sandwiches and, unlike many other caterers, offers breakfast catering.

One can view the menu and price per person and then in order to place a catering order, must create an account. No problem - this is typical in the world of ecommerce.

I go through my entire order, indicate I would like to pay by visa, enter the delivery address, etc. thinking that the next screen will ask for my Visa # and billing address. Nope! Bang the order is done and the only phone number associated with the order is my clients! I receive a confirmation email that the order has been received. Thankfully there is a phone number at the bottom of this email so I can call and circumvent Druxy’s calling my client for payment. Unfortunately I was too late - they had already left a message for my client, seeking payment.

*ack* How totally embarrassing. I ranted how this is a poor setup on their website and did I miss the obvious? Apparently I did - I should leave special instructions for them to call me rather than the client to request payment information. Wake up Druxy’s - try taking credit cards over your website and like other ecommerce sites, offering a different delivery address from the billing address.

It gets worse unfortunately. As much as my online transaction indicated $42, the final bill turned out to be $52. Delivery charge. Hello people - put the delivery charge online and include it in the total purchase. High delivery charge given that the client is within walking distance of the restaurant but really the dollar value is not the problem - the poor usability is the problem.

The end result of poor usability can be canceled orders, negative publicity and loss of repeat orders. Definitely worth fixing on a website.