Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Google Website Optimizer - Split Testing For Everyone

Internet Marketers who use split testing experience higher success levels than those who do not perform such tests. Split testing allows marketers to measure the effects of different content on their landing pages against user response, and thus select the best performing page. Split-testing is typically a time consuming process. Without any special tools, a marketer would need to create their landing page content, and run it for a specific period of time to test the results. Then, the marketer would need to run the same page with one change- perhaps a different headline font, or a different wording for the headline, and test the results of that variation. It’s expensive and time consuming because you can only test one item at a time in order to obtain accurate results, and because it is completely based on trial-and-error.

Google Analytics has allowed marketers to measure their conversion rate (how many visitors become buyers or perform the specific action a web site asks them to make), but tracking this doesn’t tell you what content on your site is effective and what areas need improvement. As any internet marketer knows, if you’re going to spend money on pay per click advertising and other means of getting web site visitors to your web page, then what content you actually put on that page is priceless! You want successful performance from your ads. How can you monitor the actual effectiveness of the content on your page, and know what content is performing well and what isn’t working?

Google is currently offering a new service for split-testing landing pages, called “Website-Optimizer”. It makes split-testing much more manageable and less expensive than testing without the tool. Basically, the optimizer is going to allow you to try different variations of content on your landing page and measure the results to see which page has a better performance (conversion rate).

The Website Optimizer is free, and can be used without extensive experience running testing experiments on landing pages. In other words, you need not be a split-testing genious to use the optimizer tool. Before beginning a landing page experiment, Google even provides internet marketers with a “pre-experiment checklist”. It details step by step what you’ll need to do, from selecting your test page, to setting a goal for the experiment, to the actual running of the experiment and reading of results.

Using the optimizer, a marketer can experiment with new headlines, different promotional copy, and a variety of images designed to turn web site visitors into “conversions”. Google will provide you with easy to read, graphical reports to determine the content that performs the best and encourages site visitors to the highest conversion rates.

When determining what to test on your page, you need to take your goal into consideration. If you want your site visitors to take a specific action such as downloading a document or making a purchase (the call to action) then you might want to test different headlines. You might try different graphics- to see whether photographs of products or a person using the product has a better result. Changing the actual page copy to decide whether lengthier text offers better results, or shorter and more direct copy has better conversions. Testing the format of text might offer changes in conversion rates as well; try bulleted points or paragraphs. Finally, try altering the actual “call to action” portion of the site. If you have a button that says “sign up”, try a different phrase, like “quick sign up” or “get it free”.

While you need to have an active Google AdWords account to use the optimizer tool, you will be able to test traffic coming from various locations. You’ll test incoming visitors that are a result of your AdWords advertisements, Google search results, and other search engine traffic.

Article source: ContentLog.com

Author Description

Norman Freeman, active DJ, label- and club-owner since 1994, did dozens of video-interviews with top-DJs and combined the knowledge in a unique website/eBook project called where members can download the eBook and 20+ hours of DJ-Video-Interviews. DJ Book and DJ Interviews

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Monday, September 15, 2008

Why Buy Digital Cameras?

Technology development started at a very high pace during the 20th Century. Like many other areas of development, photography also saw major developments in its field. Photographic camera technology has seen a constant improvement from way back in 1913 when a 35 mm still camera was produced till 1985 when digital technology was first introduced in photography by Pixar.

Basically digital camera is an electronic gadget which captures and stores photographs in a digital format without using any processing films. The first true digital camera was launched in 1988 by Fuji Company .This camera used a memory card for storage purposes. The latest models of Digital Cameras are also able to record sound and video. These digital cameras store pictures on a small device called CCD (Charge Coupled Device). From Digital cameras the images can be transferred to computer and the images can be edited with the help of software like Adobe Photoshop.

Advantages of digital cameras

Convenience of use: The foremost advantage of using the digital camera is that you don`t need to worry about buying films and changing the rolls. You can click as many pictures you want, transfer them to computer, have a close look at them and get only the good ones printed after editing them thoroughly.

Edit options: The Digital cameras allow you to edit the photographs in the easiest way with the help of software. The color, brightness and contrast of the photo can be adjusted and the image can be cropped and resized as required. This helps to optimize the resolution of the photographs.

Economical: Digital cameras are economical in the sense that they do away with the cost of films and the cost of processing. When pictures are taken in bulk quantity the cost of films saved works out to a considerable amount.

Flexibility: You can view the photo you have just clicked on the LCD display of the Digital Camera and if you don`t like it you can retake the same.

Disadvantages of digital cameras

Quality of output: For professional reproduction purposes the conventional film camera is still the best as digital cameras cannot match them in resolution and depth quality.

Initial Cost: The initial investment cost for digital camera is higher than the photo film camera. The cost of the camera for home use runs from around US$ 150 to $1000 whereas the professional models cost may go as high as US$20000.

Slower Speed: Digital cameras take some time for storing the images which is unsuitable for action photography in which you need very fast clicks.

Important features

The digital camera quality largely depends upon its optic features, color depth, resolution etc. While shopping for a digital camera one should take care of following.

High Resolution: Resolution of a digital camera depends upon its capacity to store the dots or pixels. The more pixels it can store the higher will be the resolution. Cameras with a capacity of 5 mega pixels or more are ideal for home photography while professional photographers may look for a capacity of more than 7 mega pixels.

Capacity: The capacity of the digital camera to store pictures is also very important. The cameras have a built in memory capacity and additional memory card slot to store pictures. The cost of the memory cards is high but nevertheless they are very important to serve the purposes of storage.

Bit Depth: This relates to the color capability or the capacity of a digital camera to reproduce colors. Good cameras are capable of handling 24 bit color which fulfills the range of the human eye.

Optics and zoom features: A good camera must have optical zoom lenses with automatic flashes in order to produce better images.

Display: A good LCD display is important for a digital camera as it allows the user to flip through the images he has taken.

The digital camera is certainly becoming more and more popular in the modern era and is set to replace the conventional ones for all general purposes.

Article source: ContentLog.com

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Cellular Phone Cases - More Security As Well As Reflection Of Your Personality

The most challenging things when it comes to cellular phone cases is choosing the right one of for you. The majority of them will work for the purposes of shielding your phone from getting scratched of damaged in some other way, however using cellular phone cases have a tendency to exhibit their unique personality is just as significant to the majority or individuals.

For the majority of cellular phone cases, holding your cell phone is the only things that they need to be proficient at. On the other hand, there are other types that aim to make a statement and go in the direction of logo branding cases to display their enthusiasm for their best-loved sports team.

Companies are selling cellular phone cases for close to every professional sports team and the business end of these teams are cashing in big by billing for their license fees for the use of their logo.

A few of the larger manufacturers are also getting cellular phone cases designed in such a way as to have their logo on them to be given away without cost so they can get free advertising and those who are employees of these particular companies or their associates are putting them to very good use.

Additionally, there are other manufacturers that produce cases that act as holders not simply for cell phones, but to also hold personal data assistant devices or PDA for short as well as other types of hand held electronic devices, giving users the ability to maintain all their items in one convenient place.

Manufactured With Protection In Mind

As the popularity of cell phones persistently continued climb users of these handy communication devices realized that they required some kind of way to guard them when they were not tied to their ear and at the same time having quick access when they were making a telephone call.

The majority of cellular phone cases merely enclosed the phone and were a part of the the holder which clipped onto your belt, purse strap or onto a lanyard. Protection against scratches if the phone was dropped in earlier days was secondary for their main use or stopping the phone from being dropped while it was being carried.

Their was a time when the body glove cellular phone cases were well liked for quite a bit of time, however access and retrieval was somewhat constricted it typically took both hands to get the phone from its case. There was one model that was popular that hooks onto a belt and gave the user the ability to single-handed removal so that they could answer calls more promptly. They have the ability to attach to a persons belt or any other kind of strap and have even been spotted attached to a cars seat belt.

The initial cellular phone cases were challenging for users who had models that were more modern style of flip phones, on which part of the phone flipped open for use. Cellular phone cases were manufactured for specific models of phones and functioned only with that particular model. Newer cases allow several different models of phones to work in the same case design and are more popular with users.

Article source: ContentLog.com

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Monday, August 4, 2008

Cloud computing

DEFINITION - Cloud computing is a computing paradigm in which tasks are assigned to a combination of connections, software and services accessed over a network. This network of servers and connections is collectively known as "the cloud." Computing at the scale of the cloud allows users to access supercomputer-level power. Using a thin client or other access point, like an iPhone, BlackBerry or laptop, users can reach into the cloud for resources as they need them. For this reason, cloud computing has also been described as "on-demand computing."

This vast processing power is made possible though distributed, large-scale cluster computing, often in concert with server virtualization software, like Xen, and parallel processing. Cloud computing can be contrasted with the traditional desktop computing model, where the resources of a single desktop computer are used to complete tasks, and an expansion of the client/server model. To paraphrase Sun Microsystems' famous adage, in cloud computing the networkbecomes the supercomputer.

Cloud computing is often used to sort through enormous amounts of data. In fact, Google has an initial edge in cloud computing precisely because of its need to produce instant, accurate results for millions of incoming search inquries every day, parsing through the terabytes of Internet data cached on its servers. Google's approach has been to design and manufacture hundreds of thousands of its own servers from commodity components, connecting relatively inexpensive processors in parallel to create an immensely powerful, scalable system. Google Apps, Maps and Gmail are all based in the cloud. Other companies have already created Web-based operating systems that collect online applications into Flash-based graphic user interfaces (GUIs), often using a look and feel intentionally quite similar to Windows. Hundreds of organizations are already offering free Web services in the cloud.

In many ways, however, cloud computing is simply a buzzword used to repackage grid computing and utility computing, both of which have existed for decades. Like grid computing, cloud computing requires the use of software that can divide and distribute components of a program to thousands of computers. New advances in processors, virtualization technology, disk storage, broadband Internet access and fast, inexpensive servers have all combined to make cloud computing a compelling paradigm. Cloud computing allows users and companies to pay for and use the services and storage that they need, when they need them and, as wireless broadband connection options grow, where they need them. Customers can be billed based upon server utlilization, processing power used or bandwidth consumed. As a result, cloud computing has the potential to upend the software industry entirely, as applications are purchased, licensed and run over the network instead of a user's desktop. This shift will put data centers and their administrators at the center of the distributed network, as processing power, electricity, bandwidth and storage are all managed remotely.

Getting started with cloud computing
To explore how the Cloud computing is used in the enterprise, here are some additional resources:
The distinction between grid and cloud computing: Analyst Dana Gardner explains why the term cloud computing has gained so much traction and how the concept moves beyond what has been traditionally identified as grid computing.
Grid applications and SOA infrastructures This expert answer details how the on-demand concept of grid computing dovetails with the creation of a service-oriented architecture.

Source: techtarget



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