I logged into the customer’s BlueHost account and went to the cPanel.  Then I clicked on Domain Manager and assigned the new domain to the account as an Addon domain.  So far so good.  Then I made a mistake.  I made a typo when I named the Addon Directory for the account.  The Addon Directory is where the files for the website reside.  Yikes!  What to do?

Since I hadn’t yet moved any of the website files to BlueHost the fix was simple.  I un-assigned the domain name from the account.  Then I reassigned it, this time typing the correct Addon Directory. Problem solved!

Periodically studies come out about shopping cart abandonment.  Shopping cart abandonment is when people start to buy from an online store and then leave the site before they complete the checkout process. The percentage of customers that abandon their carts during the buy process was calculated to be 63.83% by the Baymard Institute.  It’s a really discouraging fact of life for people selling things online.

Take a look at this study of  the issue.  Some of the top reasons for the behavior are high shipping costs, customers aren’t ready to buy, the customer was just checking prices and the prices are too high.   There are many other reasons for cart abandonment including a complicated buy process and forcing people to register for accounts before making a purchase.

One of my customers took this data to heart.  We worked together to make some changes to her Zen Cart shopping cart.  She added a plugin from Numinix.com that cuts down on the steps in the checkout process.  The plugin also added the option of checking out without an account.  It’s early days and her sales are small, but the changes seem to be working.  From the first to the 15 of this month she had two sales from her online store.  The plugin was installed on the 16th.  From the 17th through the 25th she’s had five sales!   That’s over a 100% increase and the month isn’t over yet.

OK, statistically this isn’t a big enough study to come to any conclusions.  Just don’t tell that to my customer.  She’s one happy online business owner!

I’ve been using Xenu’s Link Sleuth ™ for a long time.  How long?  I started writing code in 1998 and I think I found this tool within my first year as a website developer.

Xenu goes through your site and finds broken links.  It’s a great tool for “traditional” (non-blog) websites.  Just download the software and follow the instructions.  The interface is very easy to use.

If your website is hosted at GoDaddy be careful before you run this tool though.  I’ve taken sites down temporarily because GoDaddy limits the number of concurrent connections for each website.  To avoid this, click on the “more options” button at the bottom of the Xenu interface.  Reduce the amount of parallel threads to somewhere between 5 and 10.  The search may take longer, but your GoDaddy site will stay up.

Be braced when you look at the Xenu website.  It’s more functional than snazzy.  But when the software is useful, stable and free who cares about how the website looks?

For those of you with WordPress sites, try the Broken Link Checker plugin.   You can set the plugin to run periodically and email you if it finds anything amiss.  You can’t get more easy than that.

What is a SSL Certificate?

SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer.  Pages using a SSL certificate typically start out with a https in the URL as opposed to a http.  A  SSL certificate encrypts data as it travels from computer browsers to website servers. However it does nothing to protect the emails that are then sent out from the website server.

Why it’s not safe to email credit card information

As emails travel through the Internet to their destination they’re passed through different servers. Hackers could intercept the email at any point along the email’s journey.  (Earlier in the week I posted a video about how email works. )  So despite the fact that my new customer was trying to safely collect credit card information, it wasn’t a good way to go about it.

So what are the safe ways to collect credit card information online?

One  way to transact business online is to use a merchant gateway.  (Authorize.net is a popular one. PayPal is another.)  Systems like Zen Cart and 1ShoppingCart.com help website owners to tie merchant gateways together with shopping cart software.  PayPal even has its own shopping cart system that’s great for business that sell services or just a small number of products.

What happened?

My new customer was just as concerned about this website vulnerability as I was.  We redesigned the website form.  Website visitors now either pay by check or phone in their credit card information.  Problem solved!

Today I’m blacking out my three literary sites LitQuotes, The Chronicles of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens Gad’s Hill Place in protest of the Internet censorship bills, SOPA & PIPA.

If you’d like to take part in the protest you can install this WordPress plugin to your WordPress site or click here to learn about other ways to take part.

From time to time I come across interesting articles or websites that I think you’ll enjoy.  I save them up until I have five, and then I share them with you.

Here’s today’s batch:

The Perfect Is the Enemy of the Good - Working with websites involves making a lot of choices.  PayPal or E-Junkie?  What WordPress theme to use?  What information should appear at the top of the sidebar?  I help my customers make informed choices, but there is rarely a perfect or best choice.  And that’s OK.  We build.  We learn.  We grow.

Google Browser Size Lab – Friend and client, Sara Chapman, sent me this link.  Enter your URL in the box at the top of the page and you’ll get an idea of how your page looks to others.   Because of different monitor settings and sizes what you see when you look at your site and what others see isn’t necessarily the same thing.

Speaking of Sara Chapman, have you had a chance to check out her book?  The Seattle Times called Flowers of Volunteer Park Conservatory: Blooming Month by Month a “perfect gift for the gardener on your list. Photographer and gardener Sara Chapman has done a stunning job of showing off Seattle’s gem of a conservatory in all seasons.”

Why the Road to Blog Success is Bumpy (and What to Do About It) -  I really like the simple, easy advice from this post.  As with the best posts the advice doesn’t apply just to blogging.

1,000 Visitors Per Day – Customers always ask me how they can get more visitors.  I urge them to follow the same tips that James Penn writes about in this article.

On January 3rd WordPress released version 3.3.1.  The new version contains 15 fixes to WordPress 3.3.  It also address a security issue.

If you haven’t updated to 3.3 yet, this is a great time to make the switch.  Not only will you get all the fixes, people who make themes and plugins will have had a chance upgrade their code if any problems occurred because of changes in 3.3

Remember to back up your WordPress installation before you update.   If this is your first update, prepare to be amazed. It’s super easy! 

Wishing you and your family
the happiest of holidays!

I’m so grateful for your trust, support and business.  May 2012 be a fantastic year for all of us!

In honor of the holidays, I’ll be out of the office December 26^th and January 2^nd.

WordPress 3.3 is now available for download.  It has some great new features, including a drag-and-drop photo uploader.   You can learn more about it on the WordPress blog.

While WordPress 3.3 has some great new features, I’d recommend not updating for about a week. Some plugins are having problems with the new WordPress code.  So give the plugin developers a few days to update their work and then update away!

Remember to back up your WordPress installation before you update.   If this is your first update, prepare to be amazed. It’s super easy!  This is what the WordPress update will be like.

Once you’ve completed the update, take a look at your site and make sure that everything still works. If you do discover a problem turn off the plugin and email the developer of the plugin about the issue. They should be able to update their plugin to work with the new software.