A mentor early in my business career impressed upon me that personal pride has no place in business—I couldn’t agree more. But when does pride and defending your hard earned reputation cross paths?

I’m writing this post after recently being served some unsolicited criticism. Naturally, the first reaction is defensive. Recognizing this knee jerk reaction from a sensitive pride, I set the email aside and read it again later to hopefully learn something from my ‘e-lashing’ by the anonymous critic.

From this person’s perspective, the missing or misplaced website elements from particular portfolio projects appeared to be poor workmanship and a general lack of skill and knowledge. Of course, what is anything without proper perspective? Well, it’s your own reality.

So after digesting the feedback, I thought it better to give my critic a better understanding of my work and that scope and budget, among many other project factors, can influence a final product . . . not to mention the natural aging and evolution of a live website.

I replied, not as a mater of pride, but in an effort to correct a misperception of the services and quality that I deliver.

Everyone receives negative feedback. Most often it’s an opportunity to learn and improve. On other occasions it’s a chance to be humble. But some times, it’s a case where the record needs to be set straight.

Dominic Taverniti is the owner of Applied Web Vitals, a web design and development company specializing Dreamweaver templates and the Adobe Contribute CMS. Please feel free to contact us any time to explore your next web design or development project.

Dear Client:

Following are steps and corresponding documentation for setting up Google tracking links for your website. The specific example that we discussed was to set up tracking links from Clear Channel radio station websites, but this method will work for any inbound links where you can provide the custom tracking link to the source – website, email, or anywhere a link can be displayed.

Google Tracking Link Documentation:

How does campaign tracking work?

How do I track my Links?

Understanding campaign variable: The five dimensions of campaign tracking.

Tool: URL Builder.

Back-end Google Tracking Link Setup:

• Go to the Google Tracking Link URL Builder
• Enter the destination URL – for the radio stations we discussed using the splash page (http://www.yourwebsite.com/welcome.html)
• Fill in the five campaign variables (source, medium, term, content, name)
  • The variable “Campaign Name” will be used to group the traffic data together for reporting. So enter a single name for the traffic that you want to group together. For example: if you would like to group all radio station traffic into a single campaign, use something like “Clear Channel Radio” for all links
  • “Campaign Source” could simply be “Clear Channel”
  • “Campaign Medium” could be used to separate different types of source links. For example: if you will have both text links and a banner ads being displayed on their site, you could provide tracking links specifying “text link” or “banner” as the medium.
  • “Campaign Content” will let you differentiate between two different graphical banner ads that you may rotate on the same site. This will allow you to see if the yellow ad with brown text was more effective than the image of the smiling business people . . . for example.
  • “Campaign Term” is something you may or may not want to use. This refers to which term or “keyword” you’re paying to have the ad display for. Your Clear Channel ads are not keyword or term specified.
• Provide special tracking links to the source (Clear Channel).
  • If you’re going to provide multiple links for multiple banners, it can be helpful to do so in a consolidated spreadsheet, with each ad on a single row, with respective info – i.e. | name | link | graphics | description |. It can also be helpful to use a date in the file name so that updated files are easy to identified.

Google Tracking Link Reporting and Analysis:

• Log into you Google Analytics account
• In the left-hand menu, go to Traffic Sources > Campaigns
• In the main body, all traffic sources will be presented.
  • Those that haven’t been set up under a campaign will be presented as (not set) – for now it represents almost all of your site traffic
  • I had set up a test campaign link under the Campaign Name “test promo”
• If you change the “Dimension:” from the dropdown menu in the header row of the table, you can see the various tracking link variables (source, medium, campaign, keyword (term), and content). Under dimension, you can also separate traffic by city, region (state in U.S.) and more.

If you have any questions about the process, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Thanks,

Dominic

Dominic Taverniti is the owner of Applied Web Vitals, a web design and development company specializing Dreamweaver templates and the Adobe Contribute CMS. Please feel free to contact us any time to explore your next web design or development project.

I’m working remotely today from cafes in Charleston, SC—a needed change from the home office. In search of a free wi-fi connection, I left a Starbucks for another cafe down the road. From a business owner’s perspective, I couldn’t help thinking about the customers that Starbucks looses by offering a pay wi-fi service while others give it away.

Surely it’s not because the mega franchise can’t afford to give it away. Which begs the question, do they charge just because they can? Or are there other considerations involved. Maybe it serves as a way to shew away squatters that plant themselves for hours on end. But the squatters at cafes are generally caffeine addicts that chain drink. I’m on my third cup now, not to mention the breakfast sandwich, bottled water and 1 lb. bag of coffee beans that I purchased.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bashing Starbucks. I’m actually a fan of franchises and admire their finely tuned business model. So I’m left to think that the free vs. paid wi-fi decision must have been run through “the formula” and the pay service option came up the winner.

On a side note, didn’t the company just announce the closing of over 600 stores due to changes in in-store traffic? …changes in traffic just like my relocation to another local cafe for free wi-fi? Perhaps not, but you have wonder.

So how does this example apply to your business? What is the relative cost of providing a service or feature that would keep customers at your store or on your website, vs. the added revenues gained by simply keeping that customer around a while longer?

To be sure, there are cost-benefit considerations to any and every service that you offer. A recent example with my business was discontinuing our email marketing service. The time and cost of maintaining the back-end applications outweighed the return we were getting. Now I refer clients to third-party email marketing services. While I can’t help thinking that I’m sending business elsewhere, I know that I made a business focus decision that made sense for my business at the time.

From a consumer’s point of view, the Starbucks paid wi-fi decision seems like a poor one. But is it?

I turn the question to you. What are some cost-benefit decisions that you’ve made recently with your business?

Why Adobe Contribute? Because Contribute works well with other applications . . . with ease! What we accomplished in this new client site, Netblaze.us, could very well have been built on another platform, but not with all these features packed into the budget.

The design for this site was drawn up and then coded from scratch. Using Contribute as the base for the site platform, all the special features chosen for integration, like flash animation, multiple javascript elements, web forms, Google Maps and more, could simply be plugged in where needed. Unlike the considerations with other database CMS (content management systems), Contribute allows us to start with a blank canvas and quickly build according to our best practices.

To back up really quickly, for those who aren’t familiar with Contribute or how it works, here’s a quick overview. Contribute is a workstation-based computer program (like Microsoft Word for lack of better example) that accesses websites via an FTP (file transfer protocol) connection over the internet. The real power features of Contribute are realized when the websites being managed are built on the Adobe Dreamweaver templates structure. So start to finish, the process would be 1. an experienced Dreamweaver template developer builds the website and launches it; 2. a website owner edits, publishes to and manages the website with Contribute.

I have to plug the Contribute platform once again for being virtually bulletproof. When I launched this site recently, I did so with full confidence that it—like the Contribute client sites before it—would be stalwart. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of several server-side database application, like WordPress and ecommerce templates. But with databases and server-side components, comes added complexity and the need for more maintenance down the road.

So in short, when the project calls for a custom design, client publishing capability, integrated applications and a long, long life span between developer intervention, Adobe Contribute is the hands-down platform of choice.

Netblaze Systems, Inc., located in Walnut Creak, CA—inland from the San Francisco Bay Area—is a network consulting and integration services provider.

Dominic Taverniti is the owner of Applied Web Vitals, a web design and development company specializing Dreamweaver templates and the Adobe Contribute CMS. Please feel free to contact us any time to explore your next web design or development project.

Thank You Body, located in Myrtle Beach, SC, offers a broad selection of spa services and products. The company has been in business for several years and have steadily improved their web presence.

Like many businesses, they found the build-it-yourself website tools provided by their hosting company to get them by for a period of time. That period of time recently came to an end! The company needed to rebrand their online image to reflect the quality of services that they actually deliver. Thank You Body contacted Applied Web Vitals to design and build the new e-commerce website for their spa and product business.

The Thank You Body website was built on an advanced Adobe Dreamweaver template structure for full Adobe Contribute accessibility. A database e-commerce application was installed on their server and integrated into the website design, providing a seamless shopping experience for their customers. Some of the special requirements for this spa website were dynamically generated gift certificates, an integrated affiliate program, a product vs. service segmented hierarchy . . . and of course, the ability to edit and manage everything without special technical skills.

Thank You Body health spa now has direct and easy access to their website at any time. Whether they need to update their company information or run a discount on spa products for the week, the business now has full control of their website.

Specs: PHP, CSS, XHTML, JavaScript, MySQL, Adobe Dreamweaver templates, Adobe Contribute website, Ecommerce Templates

Applied Web Vitals is a web design and development company. Please feel free to contact us to explore your next design, redesign or site enhancement project.