Monday, July 1, 2013

Web Hosting: How To Choose Who To Work With

It's easy to forget that there's more to running a website than just picking a name, making it look good, and getting it advertised. Those seem to be the three core pieces of the puzzle, yet it is proper web hosting that actually keeps them all together and functional. Read-on if you'd like to know how you can make better choices with your hosting future.

If you are looking for a hosting company for your business, avoid going with free web hosts. A free web host will likely place ads on your site, which causes you to lose valuable traffic. A staple of any good online business is the amount of visitors you get to your site. The last thing you want is your free web host to steal away all your traffic.

Make sure you, and not your web host, controls your domain name. If you let your host control your domain name, you may be stuck with that host if you don't want to change domains. Some unscrupulous hosts won't release the domain info if you leave on bad terms. If you control the domain, you can point it at another host's nameservers and start fresh.

When searching for the right web hosting service, you need to remember the importance of a website running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without constant technical interruptions. Do your research, and know which companies are not just available and cheap, but reliable enough to trust with keeping your website up and running.

Now you understand why it is so very important, yet easily maintained. As long as you evaluate options and operate within your budget, there is no reason you can't obtain quality hosting that will be sufficient for quite a while. Once your business begins bringing in the huge-profits; you can investigate larger options.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Some Tips And Tricks For Coffee Drinkers


Pretty much all of us love having our morning cup of coffee. However, we are usually left wondering why our homemade coffee isn't as delicious as coffee from the coffee shops. This article is sure to help you brew coffee house quality coffee in no time.

Coffee is pretty good for you if you lay off the extras. The actual coffee is not unhealthy; it;s the sugar and cream many people put in it. Therefore, try drinking almond milk lattes. Only sweeten them using stevia or honey, which are healthier than cream and sugar.

If you must add something creamy to your coffee, consider using real milk instead of whitener. Whitener is a frightening blend of ingredients you can't pronounce, while milk of any sort - be it cream, homo, 2% or skim - provides protein, vitamin B12 and other great nutrients your body needs.

Coffee can help your home office feel more like a real workplace. Many coffee shops offer free internet, so they are a great place to go when you have to work outside the house. Many restaurants also offer this service.

Keep your automatic coffee maker clean with white vinegar. Run a brewing cycle with one part water to one part white vinegar. After allowing the carafe to soak in the vinegar for a while, run a cycle with plain water to rinse the machine. Clean your coffee maker once every week or two to remove rancid coffee oils, mold and other contaminants.

Brewing your own coffee at home can add up to huge savings when you compare it to the costs of going to a coffee shop every day. Invest in a good no-spill travel mug so that you don't regret your decision. Use that expensive coffee as a way to treat yourself when you achieve one of your goals.

As you read in this article, it can be difficult to consistently make coffee that compares to Starbucks if you do not know how. Make sure you use these tips when you next brew your own coffee, and you will be amazed!

Monday, May 27, 2013

Tips From Experts On How To Select An Excellent Wine


Lovers of wine, rejoice! This article is full of handy tips and tricks you will find invaluable. When you understand the topic, you'll be better able to enjoy a glass of wine. Continue reading to find everything you need to know about wine.

To choose the best wine to compliment any meal you must know what type of wine goes with the different types of meat. One of the easiest ways to remember which wine to choose is to match the color wine with the color of meat. For example, most red wines pair beautifully with red meat such as beef; while white wines work well with white meats like fish or chicken.

When buying wine, do not make the mistake of believing a wine has to be expensive to be tasty. There are many wines out there that taste great and are reasonably priced. If you are not sure you like a particular variety of wine, it is a good idea to try an inexpensive bottle.

Build a relationship with the salesperson or owner of the wine store. Don't be afraid of getting recommendations from them. While you may get some that aren't fantastic, you can usually find some that are passionate about wine. They can also personally recommend certain kinds. Getting familiar with these people can also help them get to know your preferences.

If you want your wine to taste the best, make sure the temperature is right. Red wines are best served at 60°F. Start with your wine at 58 degrees to allow warming in the glass. Serve white wines at around 47 degrees. Serving white wine too warm dulls the flavor.

Wine is everywhere, from Italy to California. You should be able to immerse yourself in wine easily with the given advice. Then you can enjoy glass after glass with confidence.

Friday, May 3, 2013

Explaining How A Tech Blogging Business Can Become Lucrative


Blogging is one of the best greatest inventions that we have created. When you think about blogging and the desire of people to let out their voice on the Internet, you then realize the true potential blogging holds. People blog for various reasons but in the end they're letting out a piece of their mind and putting it online for everyone to see. Go through this article and learn more about blogging and what it means to blog.

Blog about what you are most passionate about. If you are passionate about your blog topics, you will ultimately draw your readers in and your interest in the subject will show through. Readers will want to hear what you have to say about the topic because you will be knowledgeable and passionate.

If possible, have someone else go over your blog posts before you post them. This is especially critical for internet marketing posts. People have a tendency to be blind to their own errors, so they will often miss problems with grammar, spelling, sequence, or logic. Another person may also be able to provide information you have left out or correct errors of fact.

Think of your blog posts as travelers. When you have clicked the publish button, the blog post will continue to survive on its own. Your blog post then becomes a traveler. Try giving your posts what they need to deal with any harsh conditions, along with good instructions on how to prosper online.

When you blog your voice leaves its mark on the internet. So if you wish to blog then get started as soon as you can, because you want your voice heard. Use the information that you learned from this article as well as any outside information to help you create and manage a successful blog.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Mobile Marketing Advice That You Can Trust

Mobile marketing might appear very complicated at first. Once you know what you are doing, it can be a very profitable strategy. If you don't know what you are doing, you can lose a lot of money or lose customers. Fear not, the tips listed below can help you avoid this.

Be prompt with your messages. This goes along perfectly with being relevant. You can send out an email about something happening, but it doesn't always translate when you need to send a text message. Don't be too early or too late with your messages. For example, you can announce a sale minutes before the store opens, versus days.

Have a goal. Do not start a mobile marketing campaign until you know exactly why you want to have one. You may want to have extra revenue or draw in more readers, but whatever the reason, you need to track the information you receive to find out if your program is really successful.

When developing content for mobile marketing, be sure that you portray a sense of urgency along with a reason for your customer to perform at least some type of action. This is important because the fear of missing out on something special is one of the best sales techniques in existence. Also, without an action for the customer to take part in, you are failing to bring in any immediate business.

Negative impressions of your brand can spread like wildfire over the internet, so you want to attempt to jump out in front of negative buzz with a positive spin. Mobile marketing reaches a lot of people, and things can become popular or unpopular in a hurry. If something's becoming unpopular, fix it before it catches on.

So as you can see, mobile marketing is not as complicated as it may appear. You do need to research the basics, and methodically apply what you learn. With the above tips in mind, you should be smarter and more effective when it comes to creating your mobile marketing plan.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Excellent Source Of Information For Anyone Looking To Purchase Wine

Are you a wine lover? If so, then you aren't alone because millions of people from all over our planet love all the different kinds of wine that exist. However, in order to enjoy wine, you need to be knowledgeable about it. Continue reading to learn some advice for enjoying your glass of wine.

Bring along your wine resources with you to the store. There is so much information on wine out there, and bringing along different source materials can help you make better choices. Items like brochures, magazines, books, and websites have great information to pick the best wine for your plans.

Consider purchasing a wine from a lesser-known region of the world. While everyone gravitates toward wines from France or California, there are great varieties to be found most everywhere! You might find a lovely red wine in North Carolina or a never heard winery in Australia. Give a few a try, and enjoy the variety, they bring to your table.

A great tip if you're interested in buying wine is not to get too carried away with buying a lot of wine that you currently like. Tastes change all the time, and you might regret packing your wine cellar with a bunch of wine that you happen to like right now.

Do you need a wine all your guests will enjoy? Instead of choosing a rare wine people might not appreciate, choose a Beaujolais, a Chilean, a Sauvignon or a Cava from Spain. These wines are easy to find and offer enough diversity to remain interesting for connoisseurs without making novices feel like they are sophisticated enough to enjoy the wine.

As you have just seen, there is a lot more to wine than you probably realized. When it comes to wine, you need to know how to buy it, store it, drink it, etc. The above article provides an excellent array of tips so that you are certain to enjoy wine to the fullest.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

How NOT to Move Your Business to Mobile

Mobile is a great platform that has worked exceedingly for some companies, but the platform is still young and going through some growing pains; this means that your results from mobile marketing and design/development campaigns can be hit or miss.

Which takes us to the sorrowful case of Pizza Hut's new mobile campaign. Don't get us wrong, we love Pizza Hut, especially Pizza Hut's new Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza, which is already up for an award from our staff. However, their new iOS app is -- in our opinion -- ugly, lacks a quality user interface (UI), and is cumbersome.

From The Intro Screen, Pizza Hut App Looked Promising















We downloaded this app, and were excited from the get-go. The intro video included very good high resolution graphics and delicious toppings flying around the screen of our iPads and on AppleTV, but the awe soon worn off when we arrived at the first functioning screen.

Where it All Starts to Unravel
To the left, you will see the screen we are talking about. While the graphics still look okay -- though you can tell that less work was put into this screen than the intro -- the functionality goes to pot. 

Don't worry about which button to choose, as the flow of the app is so bad, that you will be taken to the same screen no matter which you click on. The page you are brought to is the hideously designed order page, which will be the exhibit B that we get into next.



Simply Unattractive Design
(To the Right) Exhibit B is here for you to see, where a sliding app development project goes from bad to worse. By this point, design wasn't much of a motivating factor. The over-sized buttons could have been made more attractive, but the patterned red background is what really kills this screen. 


I wish we could say that the app got better from this point, but we would be lying.




As if the previous screen weren't designed bad enough, expediting our request as either delivery or carryout only brings further shame. That lovely picture box of flying toppings plays host to shadow-box fields where you must immediately enter in all of your information before even seeing a menu or having any other option to move forward. (See the nightmare image below).

Almost Illegible Before you Start Typing in Black Font
And here is where Pizza Hut is certain to lose more customers than just we that are testing this app... The information fields. Whoever had the idea to make this a black shadow box on dark red with black type is criminally insane. When you start typing your personal information, the black type is nearly impossible to decipher, making corrections frustrating (A huge problem for iPhone users, but still a concern for iPad users). It was at this point that we did not want to continue further in the app, as we felt this was the pivotal point where the entire idea of the app -- and certainly millions of dollars of design and development work -- were wasted. 

Disappointed, we decided to compare the ordering process of the application, to the ordering process of the mobile website for Pizza Hut. Only then did we find that the mobile problems were across the board for Pizza Hut.

To the right, you will find the mobile landing page for pizzahut.com. Even worse than the application, this mobile site should have been first and foremost in the marketing department's eyes and should have been optimized before anyone brought up the idea of an iOS app. Not only are they trying to divert us (the customer) from ordering through the mobile site, and downloading the app, but ordering through this platform is even more convoluted than the interface of the application.

All in all, we have to classify Pizza Hut's entire approach to mobile marketing and interface as a FAIL!!! With all of the money spent on the app alone, the business should have had a clearer strategy from the get-go, and could have avoided this altogether. This is why it is so important to 
really think about your mobile marketing strategy, 
and avoid an embarrassing situation.

We must re-iterate though, that we love mobile marketing and apps, and believe that they can truly benefit a business. However, remember that the platform is still in its infancy, and even designers and developers don't have a full grasp on the capabilities and standards of mobile platforms. Be sure that you have a solid strategy for your app before you begin development; and please, please, please! Develop your mobile landing page before even considering an app.