Category: News

Privacy Policy – it’s the law

Just like low cut jeans in the early 2000’s, privacy policies are all the rage right now. From Mark Zuckerberg testifying in front of the Senate to the new European privacy law, GDPR, privacy is a hot topic. But what is a privacy policy? And do you need one? A privacy policy is a statement or legal document that informs people on how a particular company collects data, what data is collected, who it is shared with and how it is used. A privacy policy can usually be found on a website or application and provides the users or visitors with all of the relevant information on their data. You need a privacy policy if you collect any personal information on your website or application. In fact, a privacy policy is required by law if you collect the information of users from California or the European Union. Noncompliance with laws that require a proper privacy policy can lead to millions of dollars in damages. Furthermore, a privacy policy that is copied from another website and is not accurate to your organization’s acts can lead to lawsuits by the Federal Trade Commission, fines and can be a huge disruption for your business. Having a privacy policy is obviously important if you want your business to stay open. However, where do you get one? Lawyers are so expensive. As such, we have decided to offer Termageddon as a solution to our clients. Termageddon is an online generator for privacy policies, terms and conditions, disclaimers and end user license agreements. What’s cool about Termageddon is that it charges one low fee for all policies and their policies update automatically as the law updates so that you are always protected. For example, GDPR came into effect on May 25, 2018 and their policies updated so that you can be in compliance with minimal effort on your part. You can read more about the service and why policies are important on https://termageddon.com/.

June 12, 2018
Why booklets must contain a multiple of 4 pages

All bound booklets must have a page count that is a multiple of 4, for example: 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, etc.

Pages of a booklet are created by printing four pages (2 in the front and 2 in the back) on one sheet of paper and then folding that sheet in half. In the illustration shown from Opus Design, you can see that each page is connected to 3 other pages. Because of the way a booklet is produced, you can’t have a random number of pages. It has to be a multiple of 4.

Exceptions to the rule

The only exceptions are wire bound projects, spiral bound projects, and perfect bound books.

Because of the binding process, these types of specialty bindings don’t involve folded sheets. These bindings require page counts to be multiples of two, instead of multiples of four. Perfect bound book binding consist of printing 2-page spreads and glueing them to paper board. Spiral and wire binding are 2-page spreads that are cut and drilled before being bound by spiral or wire.

August 1, 2017
Why you should use .com rather than .co for your domain

We get this question a lot with our clients when searching for the best domain name. Often times their company name is already taken as a domain name, therefore, they must search for alternative domains. An easy solution would be to purchase the same .com domain that is currently taken but use .co instead of .com. However, you must consider these items before purchasing a .co domain.

The most recognizable domain extension, .com stands for commercial. Some may say it stands for computer or for commerce, but it was created with the intent or representing commercial websites. It is also the most popular with over 100 million registered domains.

The .co domain extension is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) assigned to Colombia. However, there are no restrictions on who can register second level .co domains, and it has become widely accepted as an international domain representing “company” or “corporation”.

Pros and Cons with both domain extensions

The .com extension is the most popular and the extension most internet users default to. You don’t have to be quite as creative with advertising your website if it’s a .com. Most people will assume you’re using this extension and will try to find you by typing in your company name and the .com extension.

However, if you’re using the .co extension, you may have to place more emphasis on this. For example, O.co has done a great job of branding the .co extension and it just makes sense their company. O.com doesn’t have the same ring to it as O.co.

The biggest difference is the way the domain name will rank. There has been quite a bit of debate about how the .co ranks in search engines compared to the .com. Google doesn’t place any priority on the .co domain extension and still prefers the .com. However, it’s still possible to rank high with a .co extension, with good SEO. Just don’t expect to outrank the same domain, with the same SEO and a .com extension.

When looking at country domain extensions, the .co is often used, such as with .co.uk and .co.in. These extensions are used to tell the internet user that the website belongs to a company in that specific country.

This also causes some confusion. The fact that over 20 countries use the .co extension and the Canada extension, .ca, is very close to it, many people confuse .co as a different country. This can be a disadvantage when using the .co.

We’re here to help

If you are still searching for the best domain feel free to contact us for advice. We’re happy to help you search for the best domain, you can even do a search right now on our hosting page.

July 26, 2017
Facebook Cover and Profile Image sizes

The web is always changing and updating, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Good news is that Facebook finally realized the old page layout with the profile image slightly covering the cover photo was NOT a good design option. The new layout allows the profile image to sit fully left of the cover photo allowing the full image to be seen and not hidden behind the profile image. This gives designers more canvas to work with for cover image and the profile image (or company logo) doesn’t have to be designed within the cover image. This new layout solution is much better. THANK YOU Facebook!

For specific sizes for images and how they are positioned, visit https://www.facebook.com/PagesSizesDimensions/.

July 1, 2017
Contact Forms – does it matter where it’s located on your website?

It’s obvious you but great care in determining where content goes on your website. It’s important to list the pages in an order that makes sense to the visitor, and it’s strategic to place opt-in forms next to relevant content. But did you ever consider the contact form? Do you even have a contact form on your website? Well it’s a good idea to have a form for conversion rates. This tells you how many people are looking at your site and interacting with you.

Contact forms might seem unnecessary if you simply list your contact information on a page (phone, email, address, fax….does fax still exist?). However, most visitors prefer the contact form method because it’s quick and easy, they don’t have to open their email program or write a letter and drop in the mailbox (who does that?). So it’s a great idea to have a contact form on your website.

The next step is to decide where to put the contact form. It seems obvious to add it to the “contact” page because we’ve been trained as web surfers to go there first when we need to contact the website owner. Some businesses build it right on the home page, at the bottom, which is also helpful. Take a look at American Express, they have added a helpful contact form at the very end of the page as a feature box.

There’s no right or wrong answer when it comes to the placement of the contact form on your website. If a visitor needs to connect with you they will take a moment to find the form and fill it out, unlike special products or services that the visitor might not know about. So keep it on the contact page or about page and it’s sure to be found.

June 2, 2017
EVERY website should have an SSL Certificate

Most people think of SSL for ecommerce websites only. In the past that has been somewhat true…but now ALL websites should include SSL.

Many websites you browse already have SSL, you can verify this by looking at your navigation bar above and if you see a padlock this means any data you transmit to the website will be secure. This would seem necessary if you have an ecommerce site (asking for credit card information) but what if your site doesn’t sell anything? Well it’s still important to have an SSL even if your site has a contact form. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is used to secure the data transmitted over the internet between your computer and the destination servers. This could be log-in passwords or your credit card information when you are purchasing something online and yes, even contact information entered into a contact form.

With an SSL certificate, any information that is transmitted becomes encrypted by inserting random characters into the original message making it unreadable to everyone except the intended server. This makes it nearly impossible for hackers to steal your information. If you have a website, especially an ecommerce site, SSL is a priority. It keeps your customers’ information safe, as well as their mind at ease knowing they are safely shopping on your website.

What if I don’t have an ecommerce site or a contact form?

Well now it’s a priority for ALL types of sites to have SSL, starting in 2017 Google will start labeling all websites that do not have SSL as “Not secure.” This could scare visitors to your site in thinking your site has been hacked. If you can’t see the padlock in the navigation bar then the site is not secure with SSL. You can also verify the “HTTP” is replaced with “HTTPS” in the URL. If you don’t, then the website is not secure.

How do I get an SSL added to my site?

You’re in luck!!! ODEZ Hosting offers SSL certificates at a low cost. They start at $49 per year and ODEZ can install the SSL on your site for free! Visit this webpage to purchase today and email us when you’re ready to install. It’s as easy as that!

March 3, 2017
Should all Ecommerce Sites have Personalized Experience?

This question seems obvious, of course you want your customers to have a personalized experience on your website…especially if you’re selling products that might be of interest to them in the future. However, not every customer shops in the same manner and not every customer offers information (birthday, anniversary, etc.) to allow you to know them better. Not to mention customers often purchase gifts online and don’t need to be reminded of reorders when the gift was a one time purchase.

This blog post by Paul Boag is very insightful and points out the pros and cons of personalizing the ecommerce experience on your website.

January 12, 2017
What is Malware and How to Protect Your Site

One of the most scariest things about malware is that you probably don’t know it’s there. Online criminals use stealth tactics to maximize their strategies. They plan on the malicious scripts they place on sites are never found. Site owners go about their business, creating and publishing great content, while in the background their infected sites dispense malware and display content while the owners have no clue.

SEO spam is content or links injected into web pages with the intention of hijacking a site’s good standing with the search engines to increase the ranking of another site, often a site peddling counterfeit good, pharmaceuticals, or pornography.

SEO spam malware will insert links to the criminal’s sites with keyword-rich anchor text, in the hope that Google will credit those links when ranking the target site. Of course, if a WordPress site owner sees that their site’s header or footer is full of these links, or that their site appears to contain pages of content that they have not created, they’ll be alerted that not all is as it should be. In fact, often it’s in the interest of the malware creators to hide their injected content from everyone except search engine crawlers, which is why much of the malware that infects WordPress sites is conditional.

Learn more in Graeme Caldwell’s post here.

December 10, 2016
Slow Websites Make For Wasted Time

No one likes a slow website and when you find yourself waiting for a page to load your next thought is “Do I really need the information on this page?”. Viewers will quickly leave if a web page takes longer than two seconds. So if you want to see how your site performs we suggest testing it on Pingdom. This site gives a lot of great feedback on how your website (even specific page) performs and what areas could be improved upon.

November 17, 2016
Data-informed posts: What you should be doing to generate leads and sales with your social media posts
If you post on social media with the goal of generating leads or sales, you should be tracking and analyzing the effectiveness of your posts. Go beyond the number
of ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ and start looking at which posts drive traffic, engagement, and conversion on your website. The insights you gain will help you understand
and prioritize specific tactics that speak to your audience and lead to sales opportunities. The best way to get these insights is through analytics. Read on to
learn what you can do now to start creating data-informed posts.

With the growing number of social analytics tools, it can be confusing to choose a tool that is optimal for your business. Most likely, you will need a combination of
tools for a comprehensive view of your social media performance. In this post, I will focus on two types of analytics tools that every business should start with:

Platform Analytics – Social media platforms provide their own analytics tools such as Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics. These tools provide a good starting point for high level statistics such as follower growth, likes/favorites, reach, and post engagement. These tools are free and require little to no setup. Plus, you will be getting data directly from the source.

Web Analytics – A web analytics platform such as Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics enables you to measure and understand what happens on your website after a post gets clicked. This is done through the use of campaign tracking, which is a unique tracking string that gets appended to each link in a post. The wealth of data you get from using campaign tracking will help you see which posts are the most effective at generating traffic, engagement, and opportunities. In addition, it will help you contextualize your data and see how your social media channels perform against other inbound and outbound marketing tactics.

Traffic – If you post on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or any social media site, you will see how many and what percentage of your website traffic comes from each post. Depending on how you set up your campaign tracking, you can also view data for a set of posts specific to a campaign or posts from a particular social media site. To get a bigger picture, you can also view all of your traffic sources to understand what percentage comes from your social media channels.

Engagement – If you posted about a product or service, you will want to know if your followers viewed the product or service web page. Once they are on that web page, did they engage with the content…download a file, watch a video, etc.? The answers to these questions help you understand which posts lead to interest and action. To get a bigger picture, you can also see how your social media channels stack up against other marketing channels in generating engagement.

Leads and Sales – With a web analytics tool, you can close the loop and track all the way from a post click-through to a form conversion or online order. Whether the conversion happened directly after the post click or a few website visits later, the conversion will still be tracked back to the post. To get a bigger picture, you can see how the conversion rates for your social media channel compare with your other marketing channels.

Like platform analytics, Google Analytics is also free. Adobe Analytics comes at a price, but is much more flexible for tracking campaigns.

With the combination of social media platform analytics and web analytics, the data and insights you get are extremely valuable to your business. A fine-tuned
view of your posts’ effectiveness to a big picture view of social media performance will help you understand your target audience better and enable you to form a more effective social media strategy. If you are going to post anyway, post smarter with data-informed posts.

This insightful post was written by Natalie Kees, Kees Analytics. Odez Designs recommends a professional analytics consultant like Kees Analytics to give your business maximum potential on the web.
October 7, 2016