August 2011 – Load Balancing

Filed under: Newsletters,Performance,This & That — Candy Zemon on August 25, 2011

[HTN News] Heavy Traffic

What Can You Do To Keep a Busy Site Responsive?

Would a Load Balancer Help?

After reading “load balancer,” you might be imagining a woman in a brightly colored gown walking down a sunlit street with an impossibly large wicker basket improbably balanced atop her head. Today, though, I want to tell you about a load balancer that you can use with your web site when it outgrows a single server. You might think that your site will never need more than one server but there are several scenarios in which it might. First, let’s talk about what a load balancer is and how it works. Then we will come back to the scenarios to talk about when load balancers can help you.

The people visiting your web site or, to be more precise, the computers which are requesting data from your web server, comprise a “load” on the server. Just as the grocery store has several check-out lanes, you might have several computers to handle the load. If you have several computers, you will also put a “load balancer” in front of them. The load balancer takes the traffic from the visitors and distributes it across the servers so as to optimize the performance of your site. The load balancer acts like the airport employee directing each traveler to the right security lane.
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Google+ for Business

Filed under: Community News,Newly Launched,This & That — Art Zemon on

Google+ burst onto the internet scene in early July with the next must-have set of tools from Google. Though the initial release is targeted at individuals, businesses can already make good use of these tools to enhance customer support and communicate more effectively, both internally and with the world at large.

Though dubbed as another social network by many pundits, Google+ is not simply a replacement for Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn. Google+ is an overarching brand name covering a broad range of changes by Google. By using Google+, you will find it as easy to share something on the internet as it is to share your business card with a prospective customer at lunch.

Google+ gives you “circles” which you can use for organizing your customers, prospects, employees, etc. When you want to post something, be it some words or a picture or a link to a web page, you choose exactly with whom you will share it. If you “send” a message to your employees then your customers will never even know that the message exists. It you tell your current customers about a special sale, the general public will not receive the “special notice.” Of course, you can also post something for the public to read. There is no need to narrowly target your messages unless you want to do so.

Free video chat, for up to ten people at a time, is a wonderful new feature of Google+. Just click the green “Start a hangout” button, invite a few select people (or open up the hangout to the public), and your video conference will be open for business. Your customers can call you on the telephone now. Imagine how much more personal the conversation could be if you were also hanging out on Google+, waiting for an incoming video call.

Google+ is completely free, as are many of Google’s other tools. When you sign up, be sure to register as an individual and using your real name. It is, for instance, OK to create a Google+ account for “Art Zemon” but not for “Hen’s Teeth Network” or using a pseudonym.

Come find me on Google+.

Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter for Business

Filed under: Community News,How To,This & That — Art Zemon on July 22, 2011

Over half of all Americans use social networking sites. As a business owner, how could you not want to tap into that market? Wikipedia includes almost 200 sites in its List of social networking websites but I want to focus on three of the biggest: Facebook (750 million users, over 150 million Americans), LinkedIn (100 million users), and Twitter (106 million users). If you own or run a business, these social networks provide a golden opportunity for you to talk with, instead of to, your customers.

When you buy traditional advertising, you send a message out to your customers. You have some control over where the message is “broadcast” by making choices such as newspapers vs. billboards vs. radio vs. TV. Some media let you fine tune your target audience by time of day, neighborhood, or distribution venue. Ultimately, though, all of these constitute one-way communication and it can be challenging to gauge a campaign’s effectiveness. At best, you can measure sales or the quantity of responses from people who contact you, perhaps with a coupon code or an ad-specific phone number.

Social networks let you open a true dialog with your customers. You can listen, as well as talk, and we all know that listening is, by far, the most important part of communication. You can hear, first hand, how your messages are being received. Much as you might chat with several people at a chamber of commerce event or at a trade show, you can chat with people via your computer. Sites such as Facebook, LinedIn, and Twitter let your customers say things to you, ask questions of you, and even converse amongst themselves. Just as with a face-to-face meeting, you can listen attentively, answer questions, and express your opinions as the situation warrants. Done with respect for the other people in the conversation, your reputation will soar.

How do you choose between Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter? In a nutshell, go to where your customers are.

If your business is B2C then Facebook is probably the place for you. You can build a “business page” on Facebook and invite customers to “Like” it. You can then use the Facebook page to interact with your customers, tell them about special offers, etc.

If your business is B2B then you may find your customers on LinkedIn. This is a much more professional network than the informal, personal Facebook. You will be able to connect multiple employees to your business presence. You can also use LinkedIn to promote your products and services, including posting reviews from other LinkedIn users on your business, product and services pages.

If you have frequent announcements to make, Twitter may be exactly the venue for you. It can be a perfect way to tell your customers about new products, unique applications of your services, or burgeoning new deals. Twitter can also be an excellent venue for providing customer service since many people prefer it to the telephone or email.

There are a couple of pitfalls to avoid, regardless of which social network(s) you choose to dive into. First, make a plan for what you want to accomplish and then execute the plan. Without the plan, any social network can suck up inordinate amounts of time to little benefit. Second, keep in mind that participating in social networks will provide long term more nebulous benefits than traditional advertising. It can be tough to calculate an ROI. Think of it as a long term investment, like joining your local chamber of commerce. Third, keep your social networking presence fresh. A stale Facebook page, which has not been updated for months, looks much worse than no page at all. If you experiment with a social network and decide that it is not for you, close the account. Do not leave skeletal public profiles for customers to find.

Finally, and this is by far the most important point, give social networking a try. The cost can be minimal. The prospective up-side is huge. And you will probably have a lot of fun!

July 2011 – Traffic Signs

Filed under: Newsletters — Candy Zemon on July 21, 2011

[HTN News] Reading The Signs

What Can Google Analytics Do For You?

Understanding What You Get

If you are wondering why your site is (or isn’t) getting the traffic you expect or producing the sales or interest levels you expect, one of the tools that can offer insight on these questions is Google Analytics.

A really nice feature of the Google Analytics reporting is that you can see graphs summarizing the data it collects about how folks use your website. I am not a numbers person – I don’t readily convert columns of digits into useful information. For folks like me, graphs are essential. You can also zoom in to see the detail under any graph point, but the graphs are a good way to understand trends. Once all that collected data is available to you, though, it is up to you to decide how to use it. Before you can take any action based on the data, you need to understand what you are looking at. Here is an overview of some of the high points you can see in your Google Analytics reports.

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June 2011 – Privacy

Filed under: Newsletters,Security — Candy Zemon on June 10, 2011

[HTN News] Privacy

What Do We Do About It?

Protecting Your Privacy

It used to be that we felt a certain level of protective anonymity as we went about our daily lives – particularly if we lived or worked in urban areas. As the internet has changed the way we communicate, work, learn, play and shop, it has also changed how we think about (and value) privacy.

If you do any internet business, either as a consumer or as a provider, privacy is a code word for security of personal information. We expect our personal details – particularly our passwords and financial data – to be kept secure, not shared, not leaked, not lost, not abused and not stolen. In a world where we can’t really know who has access to details about us and our lives, we are nervous. Identity theft does happen. Credit cards do get compromised. And personal account details, including date of birth and home address, do get breached.

It’s not all about credit cards, either. There have been debates about school badges or emplyee badges that can track the wearer’s location. Is it an invasion of personal privacy for others to know explicitly where you go in a building and for how long? Is it an invasion of privacy for your boss to monitor your computer activities?

We all know that telephone records are detailed and personal. We also know they can be accessed by the authorities in investigations. Similarly, the records of when and where toll passes for cars are seen are also collected and available to the authorities. We accept this because, unless there is cause for the authorities to see those records, we assume they are unseen and private.

There are really two levels of concern under the heading of privacy. One is about how secure the collected personal information is – who can use it, who can see it, how securely is it kept? The other is about how the collected information is used. Some of the furor over Facebook privacy rules centers in how Facebook chooses to use the data about a person and his/her actions and friends’ actions to shape what he/she sees.

There is a fine balance at work here. Much personal convenience comes from increased corporate knowledge of our habits and preferences. Think of all the ways the world is made more accessible and relevant to you online. From Google Suggests search fill-ins to Amazon suggestions of related items, to Netflix predictions of what movies you may like, to weather maps for our current location, our use of the internet is shaped to a surprising extent by what the browsers, search engines, and corporations already know about us personally. That makes it easier for us to find what we want when we want it.

And it also lessens the likelihood that we will change our habits. We are less likely to see opposing points of view, different types of stories or alternative products. We are kept in the comfort zone of what we normally like to see and do and use.

When the decisions about what results we see from a search, what news stories are posted on our Facebook page, or what entertainment is presented to us are driven by non-altruistic corporate design, then we may well wonder whether the convenience is always worth the cost. Amazon is interested in selling us something. Google is interested in knowing more about us so it can use that information for advertising. They are not alone. We have long lived in an advertising-driven world. It is no different on the internet than in the more traditional advertising media.

So what, if anything, can we do?

When someone wants information from you, you might want to find out how that information will be used before providing it. Companies will tell you why they collect information if you ask.
When someone asks a question, think before answering it. Do they need that information? Can you do what you need to do without providing it?
You might invent a “public use” birthday, much like the Queen of England has. As long as you are not being untruthful about your age, most sites don’t need to know the actual month and day.
You should use strong passwords (not readily guessed, short, or in the dictionary). Yes, they are harder to remember.
You might use different passwords for each site requiring a password. Yes, it is hard to keep track. However, one stolen password will only open that site’s account instead of everything you use. Try a tool like LastPass to manage your password library.
You should change your passwords often. Find some trigger that makes sense for you and really change your passwords.
Don’t share your passwords. If you must share a password, change it before sharing and change it again when the need for sharing ends. Be sure it is not a password you use for anything else.
When communicating in email or on Facebook or in other social internet venues, be aware that what you say is available to others, often for long periods of time, often out of context. Before hitting that “send” or “publish” button, imagine your words as a newspaper headline.
Be cautious about detailing travel plans before a trip. Not everyone reading that you will be away from home wishes you well. Wouldn’t it be as much fun to share the news after your return?
If you are on the provider side of the equation, you also need to think about what information you ask for, why you are asking, and how you will use and safeguard that information. Be able to explain when asked. Be sure your employees know, too.

Customer Site News

Ice Cream Party is a new HTN e-commerce customer whose product is everyone’s summer favorite. We are working with this site to enhance and improve its custom interface. There are several phases yet in the works, but we wanted to share the yummy site now. Doesn’t an ice cream party sound like great fun?

Wholesale Boutique had HTN build them an iPad app for taking PDG Commerce orders on the trade show floor. The point is to let floor personnel take orders easily and on pages that look good to customers peering over their shoulders. We customized product and category pages specifically for this iPad format.

AC-Quest had HTN build a mobile app for their PTAC conversion tool (mentioned in a previous newsletter). Though final details are still being polished, it is available in the Android market. Search for AC-Quest.

Other News

Browser Version Support

Google recently annouced that, as of August 1, 2011, it will no longer support the following browser versions: IE7, Firefox 3.5, and Safari 3. HTN follows the general consensus of “current” browsers in its testing. We will also stop routinely testing these three versions. We suggest that folks consider putting a browser version courtesy message on their sites so that folks visiting with older unsupported browsers are alerted to the fact that the site is not optimized for their version and giving them a pointer on where to get updates.

New Profits Plus Adopt-A-Cart Module

The latest Profits Plus module gives your staff the ability to help a customer in real time in the customer’s own cart with their checkout process. If you offer this feature, you would have a message in the cart display to the effect that a customer can call for help if they want. It posts a “cart number” to give to your staff (who answer the phone). Using this number, the staff can work on the customer’s cart while the customer is still working with it, too. When your staff finishes helping the customer, the customer can complete the purchase, save the cart, or abandon it entirely if they like. You can see this feature at work at StageSpot‘s site, as well as at our Profits Plus demo store. The Adopt-A-Cart module is available for a one-time fee of $100. It requires the Base 2 module.

HTN Affiliate Program

HTN is pleased to announce the HTN Affiliate Program. This is an opportunity for our customers to earn some cash – and help other folks enjoy great HTN Cloud Hosting services and products. There is no cost to sign up. There is no minimum required. The only requirement is that you yourself be an HTN customer.

Payments to you continue for as long as the referred account is with HTN. It is not a one-time or limited-time situation.

Who might be interested in this? If you are a web developer with customers who need hosting referrals, you are a natural candidate. If you are a corporate body with related subsidiary companies who have hosting needs, you might refer those subsidiaries to HTN hosting. If you simply have lots of business acquaintances who have websites, you might mention HTN services at appropriate times. Do your friends a favor (and earn cash while you’re at it) by signing up as an HTN affiliate.

April 2011 – Security Technology

Filed under: Newsletters,Security,This & That — Candy Zemon on April 28, 2011

Security – When Technology Isn’t Enough

Protecting Yourself from Theft

It’s about as newsworthy to note that the sky is blue as it is to say that spam and phishing attempts plague everyone who has an email account. These are the technologically enhanced offspring of the nuisances that plagued the pre-online world – confidence men, flimflam artists, social engineering and outright theft. Both then and now, the goal of those shady actions is to obtain valuable information (personal or corporate) and money.

No threat exists for long without folks inventing ways to combat it. Firewalls, spam filters, Faraday cages and captcha forms are some of the technological tools arrayed in defense of our email boxes, our businesses and our privacy. They are modern replacements for employee training, locked desks, personal assistants and local in-person banking.

These technological devices ward off a large proportion of the unwanted attempts, but some individual messages will get through. At some point you, the human, will need to weigh the risks of your action and decide whether or not you want to open that email, follow that link, send funds to that organization, or answer that question. Take the time to be aware of the situation and to think for a moment – particularly if something seems unusual about the message arriving from that source. If you ask yourself why did they send me this, pay attention and think before acting.
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New Web Sites Mean New Ideas

Filed under: Web Development — Art Zemon on April 25, 2011

Congratulations to the St. Peters Chamber of Commerce on launching its new web site. In particular, welcome to the blogosphere! I am pleased to see the Chamber branching out into additional media beyond email blasts.

Browsing any new web site gives you a golden opportunity to look for new ideas to implement in your own site. In what ways does the Chamber serve it’s community and readership through this site? What visual elements do you like? With which aspects are you less than thrilled? Now take those thoughts and turn to the web sites of your business, your congregation, and the other organizations of which you are a member. How can those sites be enhanced to work better?

The web empowers us to make incremental changes, unlike almost all other media. When you print a brochure or put up a billboard, the results are static — never to be revised — but when you publish a web site, you can continue to refine it ad infinitum. Each change can be as big or little as your imagination and budget allow. You can even try several things at the same time, and run A-B tests to determine which works best.

Don’t Talk to Strangers, 21st Century Version

Filed under: Community News,Security — Art Zemon on April 14, 2011

Be careful! If you shop or spend money and you use email, you probably received several messages in the last couple of weeks advising you that your email address and name may have been obtained by unauthorized persons. The notes further advised you to be careful to protect your credit card and social security numbers, that no legitimate email message will ask you for this information. Over 100 companies sent such notices, including Walgreens, Target, US Bank, Sears, Red Roof Inn, Ritz Carlton, and Citigroup. Those notices downplay the risk, which is not surprising since they were sent by the companies which (indirectly) leaked your information.

When you were growing up, your mother taught you not to talk to strangers. Even more so today, when heaven only knows what bad guy may have your name and email address, be sure that you are really talking to the company or person that you think you are talking to. Here is a dangerous “spear phishing” scenario, one which a criminal might use to gain access to your credit card or bank accounts: You might receive an email message, ostensibly from a company which you trust, asking you to log into their web site to read an important message or to update an innocuous piece of information. Perhaps the request is simply that you log in to verify that your email address is still correct, very low key, very innocent. For your convenience, of course, the message would contain a link that you can click to get to the web site. You click the link, arrive at a web site which looks legitimate (but is in fact criminal), and enter your username and password to log in. You have just been “spear phished” into revealing your username and password to a crook. Since many people use the same usernames and passwords on multiple web sites, the crook can try your same username and password on a credit card web site and, in many cases, successfully log in and gain access to your credit card.

You can defend yourself from such attacks by remembering your mother’s advice against talking to strangers.

When you see a link to a web site in an email message, be wary because you do not know who sent the message. It is very easy to forge the sender of an email message. Just because the message says that it is from Aunt Jane does not mean that it actually is from Aunt Jane. Read the text of the message and use your intelligence and judgement. For instance, if Aunt Jane always signs her email “Love, Jainy” then check to assure that the message you are reading ends with “Love, Jainy.”
Instead of clicking on the link, open your web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.) and type the URL into the address bar. For instance, if you want to visit the web site of the local Community News newspaper, type www.mycnews.com into the address bar. Doing so will assure that you get to the web site that you intend to visit.
Once you arrive at the site, check that the address bar displays a padlock symbol, indicating that the site is “SSL secured.” You can click on the padlock to learn the identity of the web site owner. Check that it is the right company. (Not all sites use SSL security but most businesses use it to protect your privacy.)
Use a different password on every web site. Do not use you Facebook password for your on-line banking account. Do not use the same password for your gift registry at Target and your Walgreens prescription refills. This will assure that, even if you are successfully spear phished into revealing one password, the damage will be limited.

I use LastPass to keep track of all my passwords, and I have a lot of them. LassPass plugs into your web browser and costs nothing. It automatically recognizes each web site that you visit and fills in the right password. Best of all, LastPass magically gets your passwords to all of the places where you need them: your work computer, your home computer(s), your Android phone, your iPad, etc.

Mom was right: don’t talk to strangers. Our internet connected 21st century has made it all the more challenging to truly differentiate friends from strangers. Peter Steiner got it exactly right way back in 1993 when he penned, “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog

March 2011 – Spring Forward

Filed under: Newsletters,This & That — Candy Zemon on March 24, 2011

Some Spring Thoughts

Your Site

When you are clearing out those closets this spring, take a few minutes to look at your hosting account. Are there email addresses no longer used that can be deleted? Is your inbox overflowing with email that should be filed or deleted? Do you have lots of outdated files taking up disk space? In fact, do you have adequate free disk space overall so that your site will keep running well? There’s no time like the present to do something about any unneeded clutter you uncover.

While you’re at it, take an overview look at your statistics. Include any reports you get from such services as Google Analytics. Consider what they tell you about your website health overall. Look for trends as well as the high and low points. Do you find that some pages are ineffective? Maybe it is time to update or remove them.

Your Communication

While you are thinking of things to do with your website, you might want to take some time to review how you communicate with your customers, site visitors, and prospects. If you are not already using email newsletters or similar email campaigns, you might want to think about doing so. There are several things to consider.

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Registering Your Domain in China or Asia

Filed under: E-Commerce,Hosting,Security — Art Zemon on March 15, 2011

One of our clients received a note which began like this. (I have replaced his actual domain name with “yourcompany”.)

We are a Network Service Company which is the domain name registration center in Anhui, China. On March, 12th, 2011, We received HUNDI Company’s application that they are registering the name “yourcompany” as their Internet Trademark and “yourcompany.cn”, “yourcompany.com.cn”, “yourcompany.asia”domain names etc. It is China and ASIA domain names…

Our client asked, “Is this a scam?”

Unlike a lot of the spam that shows up in our inboxes, this one is rooted in enough legitimate business that it deserves a longer answer than “delete the message.”

Yes, this is a scam.

And… many companies choose to protect their brand name by registering not only the .com domain name (yourcompany.com) but also .net, .org. .us, .info, .mobi, etc etc etc. International companies may choose to purchase country top level domains (cTLD) such as .uk (United Kingdom), .ca (Canada), .cn (China), etc etc etc. If you wanted to market in China then you might find it useful to own yourcompany.com.cn or yourcompany.asia. Similarly, if you had a competitor in China, you might want to procure that domain just to “stake your ground” and avoid any cases of mistaken identity.

Should you decide to register a .cn or a .asia domain name, I encourage you to do it via your normal decision making processes and register the domain name(s) with a reputable company operating in your own country, not with the folks who send messages like the one quoted above.