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What You Need to Know about Google’s New Dynamic Remarketing for Merchants

Posted on July 25, 2013 by Hosting

Imagine going to a store you love and having employees from the store follow you around for the rest of the day making purchasing suggestions based on the products you looked at. They’re always on hand to show you that pair of shoes you were lingering in front of or that MP3 player you were thinking of purchasing as a birthday present. No matter where you go, these employees are a constant reminder of items that are back at the store waiting for you. While this might be a bit annoying in real life, Google offers a subtler and much more effective advertising method called Dynamic Remarketing . Dynamic remarketing displays customized ads to visitors based on the part of your website they visited. If a visitor was browsing tennis shoes on your site, then Google will pull the information for those shoes from your website and place it into a dynamic ad that the user will see when visiting another site in the Google Display Network (GDN). Using dynamic remarketing on your website makes it much more likely that users will come back and make a purchase. Google’s Dynamic Remarketing program offers Google’s brand of search retargeting to all users with a Google merchant center account. This is a powerful tool for boosting revenue, as it keeps interested customers in the sales funnel longer.   How It Works What makes this technology dynamic is that it tailors ads across the web based on your visitors’ activity on your website. Basically, you add a tag (a snippet of code) to your site, along with a parameter for the product ID and a few other customer parameters. When someone visits your website, the tag automatically adds them to a list based on their activity and keeps track of them via a browser cookie. When the user visits a different website in the Google Display Network, then the tag uses the product ID to pull the product image, name, and price to the dynamic ad.   Features Auto-optimized layouts: Choose to customize your ads with your brand characteristics, or just upload your logo and let Google select the most optimum layouts for the user and device. Products recommendation engine: This feature chooses the best mix of ads to display to users in groups of one, two, four, or six. It selects products based on popular choices on your website, what items the user was closest to purchasing, and the items that are most frequently purchased together. Real-time bidding algorithm: Calculates the best bid for each impression. The system drives each bid up or down in real time based on expected performance.   Advantages Affordable: Before Google Dynamic Remarketing, search retargeting was closed to smaller operations because of budget restrictions. Unlike other search retargeting programs, Google Dynamic Remarketing has no minimum spends. This makes it a great choice for small to mid-sized businesses. Effective: Google maintains more targeted information on users, thereby allowing marketers to bid to specific demographics according to characteristics like age and gender. More control: With Dynamic Remarketing, you can control what sites you show up on by bidding up or down on specific sites, or choosing not to appear on them altogether. Large potential reach: The Google Display Network reaches 80% of all internet users worldwide, and includes spots on Youtube, Blogger, and Gmail. Choice in Pricing Models: You can choose either a PPC or CPA pricing model, and Google will optimize your campaign for clicks and/or conversions based on your business goals.   How Soon Does It Start Working? A remarketing list must have at least 100 cookies on it before it can display a related ad on the GDN. A list for Google search ads must have 1,000 cookies before it tailors users’ search result ads. Visitors are added to your lists within seconds of their arrival on your site, and there is no maximum number of cookies a list can contain.   Tips for Your Dynamic Remarketing Campaign In order to use the service, you need to link your Google Merchant account with your Adwords account. Note that you can link multiple Adwords accounts with your merchant account. After running one or two campaigns, use what you’ve learned to create your own custom lists. This will allow you to better target your visitors and optimize your bids for future campaigns. For example, you may want to create lists for users who view specific product categories, or a list for frequent visitors to your website. You can add the tag to specific pages of your site, or place the tag in the footer of your website for it to work across all pages. Use Google Tag assistant, a free Chrome extension, to check whether or not you’ve correctly added a tag to your site.   Like most PPC programs, there may be a slight learning curve associated with Google’s Dynamic Remarketing.  Dip your feet in with a carefully-controlled spend and optimize your campaigns as you generate data in order to get the best results from this new program. Now, we want to hear from you.  Have you started using Google’s Dynamic Remarketing program?  If so, share the impact it’s had on your business in the comments below! Continue reading →

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Domains & Hosting, Metaphorically Speaking

Posted on July 12, 2013 by Hosting

A topic that seems to generate a fair amount of confusion among those new to building websites is that of domain registration, web hosting, and the difference between the two. One of the best ways to effectively explain the difference is by using analogies.  This is especially true because in today’s society, there seem to be two groups — “techies” and everyone else. If you are a techie, you probably wouldn’t be reading this. My goal is that after reading this page, you’ll feel competent and comfortable enough to discuss these topics with a techie and feel like you’re on the same page.   Domains are Television Shows? A domain is like the name of a television show. Every show on TV has a different (unique) name. Imagine the confusion that would result if this were not the case [Related Article: Tips for Choosing Your Domain Name ]. A website is like the show itself. All the files, text, code, graphics, etc. that make up a website are like the props, sets, actors, lighting, sound, etc. that comprise a TV show. Before a show goes into production, it is just a name, or concept. You can register a domain and choose not to create a website, although you may have grand ideas or a general concept of the kind of website you’d like for your domain to have someday. A hosting provider is like a network that provides studio space (disk space on a server) for the show (website) and also broadcasts it into people’s homes (like when visitors view your site in a browser).   Web Hosting is an Art Store? Another way to look at web hosting is that it is similar to an art store. An art store provides you paint, brushes, canvases, and other tools you need to paint a masterpiece, however the art store does not create the actual painting for you. You purchase the tools you want to use from the art store, and then use those tools to build your website. Or hire a painter to paint a picture for you. Similarly, a web hosting company like HostGator, provides you with a variety of tools that you can use to build your website, such as a server and web space where you can upload your files, control panels that make it easy to configure your hosting account, and even provides the ability to install scripts like WordPress, or use one of our many site building solutions. However, the web host does not actually create your website. You can choose to build it yourself using the complimentary tools provided, or hire a web designer to develop your site for you. We specialize in providing the tools you need to build your website. But just like an art store, HostGator does not actually build the site for you. This is your creative space, allowing you to build the site of your dreams, any way you choose with the tools provided (and of course, you can always provide your own).   A Word on Domain Registration Let’s get a little more in-depth now. First we’ll take a closer look at domain registration. You can register a domain name at any domain registrar and then host it with HostGator. This is because domain registration and web hosting are two totally different things (just like a TV show’s name and its network are two entirely different things, although they do work together).  To host a domain that is registered elsewhere with HostGator, all that needs to occur is the updating of what are called nameservers.  Nameservers tell your browser not only which hosting company (TV network) a domain (TV show) is with, but also which server (think of a big broadcasting antenna) it is located on. When you sign up for web hosting with HostGator, we send you our Welcome Email. This email contains, among other items, the nameservers for your hosting package. You’ll need to log into your account with your domain registrar and update the generic or predefined nameservers already there with the ones that we sent you in the Welcome Email. HostGator has produced video tutorials to assist you with updating nameservers at many of the major registrars. If your particular registrar isn’t listed, I recommend watching two or three of these videos anyway to get the general idea of how the procedure works: HostGator Video Tutorials – Managing Your Domain With Another Registrar Now let’s move on to hosting. Assuming you already have a registered domain, you now either 1) wish to build a website (or have one built for you by a designer) or 2) have a functioning website.  You will need hosting 1) for the disk space that the website files will reside on and 2) so that the website can be transmitted to visitor’s browsers or phones.   Hosting Packages are Swimming Pools?  Why Not?! We have various types of hosting packages available.  In sticking with our analogy theme, here they are explained via a swimming pool metaphor: How Do I Choose Which Hosting Plan Is Right for Me? No matter which pool is right for you, happy swimming!  Um, happy art-making?  Happy television show production?  Happy hosting! Continue reading →

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Infographic: Kids of the Past vs. Kids of the Internet Generation

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Hosting

Kids these days… am I right?  The following infographic takes a look at today’s kids as compared to the children of the past.  In other words, it’s a no-holds-barred face-off: Kids of the Past vs. Kids of the internet Generation! Enjoy! Click image to see a larger version Kids of the Past Vs Kids of the Internet Generation via HostGator Continue reading →

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HTML 101: Your HTML Cheat Sheet

Posted on July 4, 2013 by Hosting

Once your website is up and running, you may find yourself wanting to make some small additions or edits. Contacting your designer or a webmaster for every little change can become tedious (not to mention expensive), which is why it’s so helpful to understand some basic HTML. HTML is the language that most websites are coded in – it drives the layout, fonts, colors and other formatting and functionality aspects of your website. You may be thinking, “That’s great! But I don’t know any HTML.” If you’re in this position, this short cheat sheet will serve as a guide to making basic HTML changes to your website. This way, if you’d like to change some minor formatting on a page, you can quickly make these changes yourself.   What is an HTML tag? An HTML tag is a snippet of code that tells the website how to read or format your content. HTML tags are surrounded by the < > characters. All HTML tags must be closed with corresponding tags. This tells your website where your formatting changes begin and end.   Where do I make HTML changes? Before we get started, it’s important to note where these changes get made. In most content management systems (CMSs), you’ll find that each page has two views. One is a design or visual view. This lets you see the page as it will look when it’s posted to your website. The other view is often referred to as the text, code or HTML view, depending on which CMS you are using. HTML changes should all be added to the text, code, or HTML view. To enter a change, you’ll need to find the section of the page you’d like to change. Simply scroll until you see the text you’d like to alter or the space where you’d like to add new content. There, you can add the appropriate tags. After this, make sure to check the design view or preview the page to make sure everything looks the way you’d like it to.   Make text bold using HTML To make text on a web page bold, use the HTML tag . For example, if you wanted to make the sentence, “This is important” bold, it would look like this:   This is important   Make text italic using HTML To make text on a web page italic using HTML tags, you would use the HTML tag . This is short for emphasis. For example, if you wanted to make the sentence “This is important” italic, it would look like this:   This is important   Add a link using HTML Adding a link is somewhat trickier than simply changing the formatting of your text to be bold or italic. If you’d like to add a link, you’ll use the HREF tag. HREF tags tell the website what text should be linked, where the link should go, and how the link should be opened.   For example, if I wanted the text “Google” to be linked to the Google website, it would look like this:   Google   For contrast, if I wanted the text “Yahoo” to link to the website for Yahoo, it would look like this:   Yahoo   Additionally, if you’d like your link to open in a new window or tab so that users aren’t directed away from your site, you can add some additional information to the HREF tag. For this example, you would tell the code that you’d like to open the link in a new window by indicating that the target is blank. In this instance, the HTML code would look like this:   Yahoo   Add a picture using HTML Adding imagery is a great way to help users connect with your content and become more interested in what you have to say. To add an image, you’ll first need to host that image somewhere online, either on your CMS or on another service. Once you’ve uploaded the image to the place where you’re hosting it, simply add an image tag. As an example, an image tag should look like this:     Images are somewhat unique because they do not always have an end tag. The code does not need to know where the image ends – the image itself can dictate that. However, you can link images to a web page. For instance, if you wanted to link your image to your home page, it would look like this:     You’ll notice that, in this case, the code for the image simply replaces the text in the HREF tag. Obviously, these few tweaks only scratch the surface of full HTML coding. However, simply knowing how to handle these simple changes on your own can save you big money by minimizing the need to contact your web designer every time edits must be made. Start with these HTML 101 steps and continue to grow your coding skills as you go! Continue reading →

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Infographic: YouTube Sensationalism

Posted on June 28, 2013 by Hosting

In 1968, Andy Warhol was quoted as saying “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”  YouTube has, by and large, facilitated the realization of this prophecy.  Enjoy our infographic, YouTube Sensationalism: YouTube Sensationalism via HostGator Continue reading →

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