Tag Archives: tips and tricks

cPanel Conference 2013

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Hosting

The post cPanel Conference 2013 appeared first on HostGator Web Hosting Blog | Gator Crossing . If you happened to read our blog post about cPanel’s 2012 conference , then you already know that cPanel throws a conference like no other.  This year’s conference was September 30 to October 2 in New Orleans, Louisiana.  The meals were top-notch, the exhibitor floor packed with exhibitors and attendees, and the nightly outings and events were all quite memorable (for those who remember them).   Just like we said last year: cPanel does it right! Everything kicked off with a gathering of attendees in front of the hotel for a New Orleans tradition, a Second Line , which is basically a giant group of folks following a marching brass band.  We were unhampered by the slight rain due to orange cPanel umbrellas having been supplied to the group: While we waited on the dock prior to boarding the boat, Creole Queen , we were treated to several more tunes from the band.  From our vantage point here, you can just barely see the top of the tuba, but trust us the band was there and they were amazing: As soon as we stepped on board, we headed down to the dining hall where we were treated to some delicious Cajun food: And the band played on: After dinner, our cruise on the might Mississippi river officially began. The view of New Orleans from the water was truly impressive: The night concluded with a party at the Masquerade Bar inside of Harrah’s casino. It might be worth noting that at this point in our tale, the actual exhibit floor of the conference had not yet opened: The next morning, we awoke to find a little surprise. Apparently, WHMCS ninjas had deposited their custom product into each of our rooms whilst were we all out the night before. Presenting the WHMCS Complete Hangover Solution: water, Tylenol, stain remover, band-aids, Pepto, Tic-Tacs, and 5-Hour Energy: It was then time for the exhibit floor to officially open.  We spent the day chatting with customers and other industry providers, making new friends and handing out tons of HostGator merch, all from the comfort of our own booth: We had some interesting visitors stop by and see us as well, they took a particular shine to the Snappy dolls: Throughout the course of the conference, our displays took many different shapes and forms: Unlike last night when we floated on a boat, tonight we rode on floats. We were accompanied by a marching band and and given a police escort through the streets of New Orleans.  As  you can see in the following image, the floats were stocked with plenty of beads to toss to the revelers on the streets: We ultimately arrived at the venue and were treated to a high energy set by New Orleans’s own Bag of Donuts, who play an impressive mix of music from the 50′s up through current hits.  We will say it here for posterity: that singer plays a mean cowbell! We had certainly come to expect the unexpected, as interesting characters seemed to appear out of the woodwork in New orleans, but we had never quite encountered the likes of this individual, who prowled about the venue all night: As day two of the conference began, the exhibit floor again had its own surprise cast of characters, including this very tall gentleman: It was another day or talking with customers and colleagues and handing out copious amount of HostGator t-shirts and stuff Snappys.  Once the convention floor wrapped up, we found ourselves at the House of Blues for the closing ceremonies. The food was amazing and the drinks flowed into the night: As morning arrived, it was the time to say our goodbyes and call it a wrap on the 2013 cPanel conference.  We then saw this sign, reminding us that we’ll be doing it all again next year, back in the hometown shared by HostGator and cPanel: Thanks again to our friends at cPanel ! We’ll see you next year! To see more behind-the-scenes pictures, please visit our Instagram page . Continue reading →

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How To Get Your eCommerce Website Up And Running

Posted on September 28, 2013 by Hosting

The post How To Get Your eCommerce Website Up And Running appeared first on HostGator Web Hosting Blog | Gator Crossing . According the U.S Small Business Administration, online business is growing much faster than traditional brick and mortar business. It’s no wonder that more and more traditional businesses are bringing their products and services online. Here’s how to get your own ecommerce website up and running.   STEP 1: Set a goal. Since your website will be the hub of your online marketing efforts , you should set a goal for it. As Google’s guide to building your online marketing plan states, a goal can be anything from making a sale, promoting a discount, spreading the word about your business, or reaching more people with your website. Just make sure they are S.M.A.R.T goals: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-based.   STEP 2: Choose a domain name. Your domain name is the address that people identify you by, so choose it carefully.  A domain name should be tied to your brand , and it should be memorable. It should be self-explanatory.  Don’t worry too much about including relevant keywords in your domain name.  This doesn’t matter as much for SEO as other factors like website content and backlinks.  Also, take care not to infringe on anyone’s copyright with your domain.  Use copyright.gov to verify whether or not your domain is safe to use before you register it .   STEP 3: Set up a merchant account. A merchant account allows a seller to clear debit and credit card payments made online.  You can set up a merchant account either through your bank or through an ecommerce institution liked Paypal or Authorize.net .  However, if you don’t have an established sales history, you might need to set up a merchant account through an independent sales organization (ISO).  When a bank takes on a new account through an ISO, it reduces the financial risk posed to the bank.  The downside is that joining an ISO can be expensive.  Whichever solution sounds right for you, be sure to do your research. There are many online merchant account providers, and not all of them are legitimate.   STEP 4: Create your website. HostGator provides many options for creating your website .  WordPress and Joomla are popular (and easily installed via QuickInstall within your cPanel), and Weebly makes it easier than ever before to build a website with little-or-no prior site building experience.  Of course, you can also hire a web designer to custom build a site for you.  When it comes to building your actual website, the options are virtually limitless relative to the time and budget you have to complete this task.   STEP 5: Install analytics. Analytics software gives you important information on how your website is performing . It gauges metrics that include your number of monthly unique visitors, conversion rate, bounce rate, and which pages on your website are most popular. It’s important to have these numbers so that you know what is working and what needs tweaking. Google Analytics is widely considered the best free analytics solution   STEP 6: Populate your site. Once you set up your site, you have to do more than just add your products. You should have a home page, About page, Contact page, and a blog to post updates, industry news, and helpful tidbits. An ecommerce website usually features certain products on the home page such as weekly deals and sale items. Be sure to include an About page with a brief description of what you do, as well as a contact/customer service page.  It’s also a great idea to display your contact information in the header so that your customers can easily reach you without needing to search for your contact details.   Brick and mortar business will likely always be around, but the internet gives users access to a larger selection of products and services. Once your website is set up, the only thing left is to drive traffic to it. There are plenty of ways to do that, including participating in social media, guest blogging, and using SEO best practices. Statistics say that over half of small businesses lack a website, so getting online gives your business a competitive edge. Continue reading →

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Infographic: 7 High Tech Wonders of the World

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Hosting

The post Infographic: 7 High Tech Wonders of the World appeared first on HostGator Web Hosting Blog | Gator Crossing . If it can be imagined, it can be created.  As creative minds have risen to positions of power within companies, or created companies as a result of their creative endeavors, it was simply a matter of time before the architecture that housed said companies would manifest in unusual and unique ways.   From the Googleplex to The Eden Project, this infographic presents 7 High Tech Wonders of the World: 7 High Tech Wonders of the World via HostGator Continue reading →

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Discounts and Deals Don’t Damage Online Brand Image

Posted on September 21, 2013 by Hosting

The post Discounts and Deals Don’t Damage Online Brand Image appeared first on HostGator Web Hosting Blog | Gator Crossing . As we approach the online holiday shopping season many websites owners are wondering about the value of offering coupons and discounts.  While some think that it can devalue a brand, we have found that it actually helps generate additional traffic and sales. A survey conducted by eAccountable in conjunction with our market research partner Clear Vision Research, provided valuable insight into consumers’ shopping habits as they relate to coupons, offers and cashback promotions. Our findings show that online coupons and deals are being used by those who can more easily purchase without discounts – the affluent.  The survey found higher income shoppers – women and those making above $100k per year – are more likely to use online coupons to find better deals. Respondents with an annual household income over $100k searched more than one website to find the best deal before making a purchase.  These online shoppers were also more likely to join a cashback, reward or loyalty website to get discounts.  In the last 12 months, 69% of respondents said they used an online coupon to make a purchase.  When looking at just the higher income respondents with yearly household incomes exceeding $100k, that figure jumped to 86%. Over 1,500 consumers responded to the survey, which was conducted for one week during the height of the December 2012 holiday shopping season.  There was approximately a 50/50 between male and females.  Read the entire report here . The majority of those surveyed use online coupons and the report shows that offering online coupons and deals do not cheapen a brand.  Rather, merchants can attract a desirable demographic with significant buying power,  by giving customers deals on their own website and through affiliate cashback, deal, offer and coupon sites these retailers and merchants work with. This research highlights just how much consumers value cashback, deal, offer and coupon websites and significant impact on the retail channel.  Whether the growth of online cashback, deal, offer and coupon usage was a result of the economic times, a flashback to offline usage or any other factors, the message was clear – discounted deals are here to stay. So, as you prepare for the 2013 holiday shopping season be sure to include and promote offers and deals with special landing pages and you’ll likely find that Q4 ends up being a very Merry Christmas for your bottomline.  *** Durk Price is the Founder and CEO of eAccountable , a Denver-based digital performance agency specializing in retail representation for clients including managing affiliate marketing, performance marketing, search, email, and social media campaigns. Continue reading →

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Content Marketing 101: What is a Call-To-Action?

Posted on September 13, 2013 by Hosting

The post Content Marketing 101: What is a Call-To-Action? appeared first on HostGator Web Hosting Blog | Gator Crossing . You want to prompt your website visitors to take some sort of action. That’s the main point of having a website, to ultimately influence users to do something. The something that they do—whether it be signing up for a newsletter, signing up for a free trial, or buying a product—is called a call to action (CTA).  A strong call to action is essential to the success of any website, whether or not you’re using it to sell products and services. Some examples of calls to action include: Download our free ebook or industry report Sign up for a free trial Register for our free webinar View a demo Sign up to receive a free coupon Order now and get a discount   Why Have a Strong Call to Action? There are three main reasons for having a strong CTA on your website: Provides direction to your users. If ever your users are unsure of what to do with the information you provide them, a call to action gives them a clear step to take next. Measuring the success of your site. You can tell how your website is doing with the public from the number of visitors you have vs. the number of people who accept your CTA (otherwise known as a conversion rate). Adds an objective to your website. Your call to action leaves no doubt as to what your website is about. For example, if you visit the Adobe Photoshop download page, you know immediately that they want you to download a free trial.   How To Create One Creating an effective CTA requires some marketing knowledge, but it’s nothing you can’t pick up quickly. Here are some tricks to use in creating one that will catch eyes. Use actionable language. This might seem obvious, given the “action” in “call-to-action,” yet the internet is still full of vague language and information. Be clear about what you want your prospect to do. Use exact language. “You can register for our newsletter here” isn’t as strong as “Sign up for our newsletter.” Point out benefits. A CTA should be brief, but you can still express benefits in just a few words. State that the report they’re downloading is industry award winning, or that it will teach them profitable secrets to increasing their sales. Point out that the free trial is for 30 days and comes with 24/7 email support. Basically, give your customer a reason to respond to your call. Offer an incentive. A report published by Small Business Trends found that of the 200 small business websites they surveyed, 96% of them didn’t offer any sort of industry report, white paper, or otherwise helpful incentive. People like “insider” information, and offering it in the form of a free download makes it even more appealing. Keep it simple. You don’t want to overwhelm or confuse your visitors, so limit the number of CTAs you have on your website. For instance, Hubspot has three CTAs on the bottom of their homepage: Call us, request a demo, or start a free trial. You also want to keep the amount of information you collect from your visitors to a minimum. The marketer in you might be tempted to collect lots of juicy demographics, but a CTA form isn’t the place to do that. Studies have found that the more fields a response form has, the smaller the website’s conversion rate. Keep it simple, and you won’t overwhelm your visitors. Make it stand out. Your call to action should stand out from the rest of the page, and be in a place where users can easily locate it. Choose a contrasting background color, and place it above the fold where people can see it immediately. Some internet marketers would argue that a call to action need not always be above the fold. Just keep in mind that you want it to stand out to your audience and prompt them to take immediate action. Have it on every page. The same Small Business Trends report found that 72% of the surveyed websites didn’t have a CTA on any of their internal pages. The chances of a conversion increase when the site visitor always has access to the CTA, so make sure you include it in the same spot on all of your pages.   Having a strong call to action is an overlooked yet fundamental part of optimizing your website for conversions. Whether building a prospect list, rallying activists, or getting your name out there as a blogger, CTAs add needed direction for both the website itself and your visitors. Now that you know the importance of it, there’s no reason not to have one! Continue reading →

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