Masking - can it be used for good as well as evil?

What’s the problem with masking?

Well, if you use the same password for everything, and it is all in lower case letters with no special characters, capitals or numbers, then it usually isn’t a problem.

However, as password cracking becomes more common and hackers get increased access to computers around the world, people increasingly have quite complex passwords, which vary for different sites. If people get a password wrong three times and are kicked off your site, it certainly isn’t good for business!

Also, as mobile devices with tiny keypads matched with big fingers become more common, so do password errors and the resulting frustration.

What’s the alternative?

Personally, I see two alternatives. One is to simply remove masking altogether, and this is the option that Jakob Nielsen recommends. This would leave your password up on the screen for anyone to glance at and see … I don’t believe that it is just as easy to see what someone is typing by looking at their fingers, as to look at a screen and notice what they’ve typed. This would mean that using a computer in a public space would be extremely limited … or extremely unsafe.

The other option would be to routinely build a ‘Mask’ button into the login page of every website that uses a password, so people could turn masking off when they are in a private space, or on when they are in public. As with many of the best things in life … this is unfortunately NOT free!

Which would be the better option?

I honestly believe that a large proportion of web users would be LESS comfortable without password masking. Please feel free to correct me in the comments if that is the case.

While it is not currently a ‘done’ thing, I also believe that giving users the option to mask or unmask, or creating software that can automatically mask passwords to install on public computers, while websites themselves remain masking-free, are the ultimate solutions.

It is certainly time to challenge the norms … but with new ideas, not just ‘the stuff we used to do’.

Let the words of wisdom flow!

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Charles Darwin

Caught me again – not really intended for internet marketing. But soooo relevant! The early adopters are the ones that become industry leaders, and the ones that establish themselves on a platform first are always the companies people remember.

“Customers can’t always tell you what they want, but they can always tell you what’s wrong.” Carly Fiona on the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast

What’s the takeaway lesson from this quote that, superficially, seems like a meaningless complaint about customers in general? Find out what customers will consider ‘right’, by finding out what they consider is wrong.

“Consumers don’t care about you. They just don’t care. Part of the reason is, they got way more choices than before and way less time.” Seth Godin

The companies who can understand the idea that consumers don’t care about them, get over the hurt feelings, then get on with the business of providing what consumers DO care about (their own time, money, happiness, health, etc) are the ones that prosper.

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”  Peter F. Drucker (1909)

Knowing the market for your product or service is a two-way street. You have to both know who will buy from you (and generally ignore the other demographic segments), but also be willing to change your offering to suit them better.

“The consumer is not a moron. She is your wife.” David Ogilvy

Don’t forget this when you are thinking about the layout of your website. Don’t be obscure and unusable … but don’t patronise your visitors, either.

Who’s Roxy?

Roxy is the women’s clothing brand owned by the Quiksilver company. They make swimwear, clothing and accessories for surf, snow and skating situations, as well as general purpose wear. They are a fairly high end brand.

Roxy internet marketing implementation

Roxy has developed a ‘Style Squad’ – a group of around 900 girls nationwide between the ages of 13 and 23. Each of these girls was handpicked in stores across the country,, and each of them gets benefits for being a part of the Style Squad:

• Welcome pack with the latest clothing designs
• Free access to new items
• Discounts in store

The Panel Manager of the Style Squad posts questions on message boards when there is a business issue such as thoughts on a new design, how the girls respond to advertising, etc. It can be used for both qualitative and quantitative market research.

How you can follow Roxy’s internet marketing example

• Create your own community of brand ambassadors, asking people to become part of the community in your physical stores, and offering significant benefits for doing so.
• Make sure there are ongoing benefits for remaining part of the community
• Create an online forum – social media like a Facebook page, Myspace account, or Twitter account that your members should add.
• Whenever you are wondering what your customers think about a change in your business – a new idea, a new promotion, a competition, a new page on the website … ask them! When people feel valued, they are happy to give their opinion.
• Use the information to improve your brand in the eyes of your customers.

The keys to success for Roxy’s web marketing strategy are offering significant benefits to the members, and them implementing enough new strategies and changes to make the effort worthwhile! Don;t forget that this sort of marketing has a direct effect on your SEO, by encouraging backlinks and pushing your traffic (and therefore your Google rank), skyward.

Text Speak in Domain Names

Using the number 2 instead of the word ‘to’, the number 4 instead of the word ‘for’, etc is a great way to create a snappy-looking domain. In reality, though, they’re a pain in the backside. Every time you spell your domain out for somebody, you’ll have to say ‘number-4′, or ‘letter-U’. It’s very clunky.

An additional problem is that to experienced web users, these domains look a little sleazy … and often akin to virus-laden or spam-creating sites. Not very professional.

The hyphen – hot or not?

Last week we teased you with a few funny domain name examples that could easily have been saved with hyphens … Pen Island could have rescued their site www.penisland.net with nothing but a little dash, and so could www.expertsexchange.com. Hyphens are sometimes strongly recommended!

However, when you have a full business name in your URL, hyphens just add to the length. Also, they aren’t part of many computer users’ ‘defaults’ – if someone can’t remember your website, they are unlikely to try with hyphens between the words. Only use in cases of hilarious misunderstanding.

Should I use a business acronym?

Many businesses are known both by their staff and clients as an acronym of their proper name – for example, NAB for the National Australia Bank. Should you use the acronym as your domain name, though?

It all depends on how commonly you use your full name, or your acronym. Full names may have a little advantage in terms of SEO (giving the search engines keywords to feed off), but if your customers are more likely to search for ‘www.nab.com.au’ than ‘www.nationalaustraliabank.com.au’, you should make things easier for the humans whenever possible.

Buying an existing domain

Sometimes you’ll have the opportunity to buy an existing domain name that fits your business. They cost A LOT compared to getting a new domain, but sometimes have quite a bit of money invested in them, in terms of SEO. Have a web marketing expert check on the domain’s Google performance – if it has a good SEO basis, it might be worth the extra expense.

Selecting your domain extension

The most recognizable extension is the dot com, although most users will also try your country code extension if they can’t find your site immediately. It is always worth registering a dot com, and a dot com dot AU, or CA, or TH, or whatever the case may be… even if you intend to use .org or .net as your primary website. Otherwise, people who don’t remember your address properly might land at a competitor’s website at the .com, instead of yours.

If you will be serving international visitors on your site, a simple .com extension makes the most sense – having a country code could scare away some visitors who believe that you don’t deliver or serve global customers. If you purchase both, you can direct interntional visitors to your .com, and local visitors to your .com.au site. You can be a global business, but still inspire local confidence.

Using your business name

Using nothing other than your business name as your URL is simple, and will help people that are trying to find you for the first time. However, it is not always the best SEO strategy. If your business name contains no indication of what you actually do, you are missing out on the most valuable element in the Google algorithm.

Using your keywords as your URL

While using your keywords as your URL is ideal for SEO, it carries its own set of problems. Users often expect businesses to be named after their URLs (or the other way round!), and may mistrust a site where this doesn’t ‘add up’.

Solving the dilemma – three strategies

Obviously, there is a dilemma to deal with when deciding whether to go with your business name or keywords for your URL. Here are a few possible solutions:

• Use your business name PLUS your keywords, if it doesn’t make the URL too long
• Use your keywords and your businesses initials only
• Change your business name to include your keywords, if you’ll be primarily web-based

Next week we’ll look at some of the less pressing, but still common problems in domain name selection!

Demographics - power of the (knowledge of) the people

How Crowd Science works

Crowd Science delivers short surveys to visitors who are already on your site. It will pop up a survey invitation at a set point – perhaps after somebody has viewed three pages. They remain on your website while taking the survey, and might answer questions about:

• Their demographics – sex, age, family status, geographic location, etc
• What they think of the site currently
• What they think the site needs
• How easy they found a particular task on site

Not sleazy!

So often, market research on the internet is a very low-brow activity. Animated banners, ‘Free iPod!’ links and automatic sound abound. Crowd Science is a little classier than that. A simple pop-up appears in the middle of the screen, not much different to the email newsletter sign-up forms that you quite often come across on websites nowadays.

Personalizable features of Crowd Science

You can customize the Crowd Science experience for your own site, with features like:

• Personalizable colours, invitations and text
• Personalizable reporting
• Tracking across multiple sites can be integrated

Non-intrusive

Use of cookies and scheduling ensures that your visitors shouldn’t be asked to do a survey more than once, and that only a small portion of visitors are asked to participate.

We do not make money from your use of Crowd Science, but do believe that their demographics information is one of the building blocks of a good web marketing campaign. Remember, knowledge is power!

A social network

Set up a Myspace profile

Myspace is far more commercially oriented than Facebook. There are spaces to offer music samples and downloads, and facilities to take orders for your products through the site. You are marketing in a normal way, just on a social media. Myspace is a relatively non-threatening way to get into social media marketing.

Start Tweeting

There are plenty of guides around the net about how to use Twitter for business purposes. Read a few of them, and start Tweeting. It is best to do a little research before you get into this regularly – follow some of the leaders in your industry and see how they use the service.

Start a Facebook page or group … and update it

Connect your company with people who like your products, and connect your customers with each other. The average Facebook user joins abouthte same number of groups per month that they leave … so give people a reason to keep following your page or your group. Wish them happy holidays, leave product updates, post news relevant to your product, etc.

Create content with a view to getting it Dugg

The easiest way to do this is to have someone do it for you – it is a fine art!  Once you have your content on your site, get a few of your friends to Digg it using their accounts, to get it going.

Cut out the ‘be’s

Okay, you won’t be able to remove all of the ‘be’s from your writing – but odds are, many of them are superfluous. Look at the sentence: “I will be putting these up on the website next week”. You can change that quickly and easily to “I will put these … etc”, and retain the same meaning.

Given the fact that conciseness is of paramount importance on the web, this and the next tip are more useful than you might think!

Cut out ‘is’s

Clunky heading, I know . Keep reading anyway. Often you can cut out ‘is’ from sentences quite easily, and chop out surrounding words along with this little seed of verbosity. You can either:

• Shorten your full ‘is’s to contractions – ‘what is’ to ‘what’s’. Roughly the same characters, but easier for people to grasp.
• Look for instances of ‘there is’, and rearrange the sentence to cut them out completely.
• Look for other ‘is’s, and think about whether you can use other words to shorten the sentence. It’s usually possible.

When it comes to facts, don’t generalise

Here is a handy cheat-sheet of words to help you identify whether you are generalising. If you say:

• Often
• Many
• Approximately
• Can (as opposed to will)
• Virtually

You are telling your audience there’s an exception to whatever you have just written. It’s like a legal loophole for getting out of having your product do what you implied it would. These aren’t forbidden words generally, but you shouldn’t use them when you are talking about facts.

Learn to love full stops

Any sentence that goes on for longer than 15-20 words is usually too long. Full stops are the best way to break up sentences, but not always possible. Use semicolons where you can, or simply cut out a part of the sentence that isn’t really necessary.

Aaron Wall of SEObook would do things like…

• Setting up an alternative source of income while he put himself through a self-paced study course, spending around $20 to $200 on books
• Buy a cheap domain
• Get cheap hosting
• Start a WordPress blog that included no ads whatsoever, and he was truly passionate about and involved in
• Get a cheap logo
• Use free keyword research and analytics tools

Once the site started making money, Aaron says he would reinvest in the growth of the site first.

Andy Hagans, author of Tropical SEO would do things like…

• Buying good quality content
• Buying good quality links

He has said he would spend his entire budget on this, no matter whether he had $100, $250 or $500. The ‘good links’ he indicated were joeant.com or botw.org for lower budgets, and the Yahoo Directory for slightly higher budgets. All leftover money would go to hiring writers for linkbait.

By the way, thanks go to SEOish for the SEO expert opinions in this post!

Caught by linkbait

Linkbait for its own sake is worthless

Your linkbait content must support your overall internet marketing strategy, or it is almost worthless. The point of creating linkbait content is to get relevant links, pushing your site higher in Google’s estimation, and therefore presenting you earlier in the results when someone searches for your keywords. However:

• If your linkbait content is not relevant to your core business, you will get few ‘qualified leads’ clicking through
• If you encourage sites that aren’t relevant to yours to link to you, the worth of the links in Google’s algorithm is lowered.

So, you can’t just publish a controversial rant about Barack Obama as a linkbait strategy, if your company sells medical diagnostic equipment. You must think within the box!

Fake Linkbait could get you de-listed in Google

The best example is a story published at money.co.uk, titled ’13 Year Old Steals Dad’s Credit Card to Buy Hookers’. This FAKE story got plenty of links … but it wasn’t made obvious on the page that it was fake. Matt cutts of Google indicated that the company would view that as dishonestly trying to create links (no matter what the writer’s intention), and could be added to the list of things that will get you banned from Google.

Linkbait’s ROI is unpredictable

This is the case with all activities in internet marketing – you must test and refine your techniques over time to be confident of getting a good return on investment. So just be cautious of investing a lot of money in linkbait content, without an *excellent* understanding of what makes the market tick.