I originally became interested in taking my own photos while I was a student in college. I had a basic point-and-shoot camera that I bought for myself, and I went to my friends’ rugby matches and took pictures for them. As the season passed and I found myself attending more and more games, I realized that my sense of timing was improving as I learned more about the game. If I knew what to expect on the field, I would have a better chance of snapping the shot at the right time. I never took any photography courses and instead just focused on teaching myself the skill set I wanted to have.

After a couple years, I upgraded to a digital SLR (a Canon Rebel XSi for anyone who is interested) and was seriously intimidated by its vast array of settings. However, these machines come with an automatic setting for a reason. Don’t be afraid to use the automatic settings just because you think it means you’re not a “real” photographer. Real photographers have to learn sometime too!

My favorite approach to teaching myself is totally hands-on. If there’s a shot I want to perfect, I’ll use the automatic settings for my first shot, then look at the photo on the camera screen. Not only does my camera tell me all the settings used for the shutter speed, the ISO setting and the F-stop, but there is a lot of other information to take advantage of. Then I’ll adjust one of the settings and take another version of the same shot. This is a great way to show yourself visually what each different function does.

If you’re interested in improving your photography skills, my advice is to get a camera of some kind (nearly any kind will do) and start by taking photos of something you love. Your affection and expertise of your subject will shine through your photos even without the top quality camera or perfect composition. The internet has plenty of tutorials and explanations so you can educate yourself. After all, photography is a creative art and creativity comes from within!

Today, I rarely go anywhere without my camera. I bring it with me to work in case anything exciting happens during the day. Sometimes while driving, I’ll see a scene so pretty I just have to stop and snap a shot of it. My favorite thing about photography is that you never know when you are going to get your best shots. I also provide photography services for my friends and family in times when they can’t get behind the camera themselves – weddings, band performances, skateboards in the skate park, and more. It’s more than a hobby for me, it’s a lifestyle! If you’d like to see more of my photography work, just check out my Facebook page!

Browser Statistics – April 2012

The web browser statistics have been released through April 2012. The stats are published monthly at W3CSchools.com.

Below are the web browser stats for April 2012.

In summary, people who use Internet Explorer seem to all be upgrading to the newest version, which isn’t very surprising if you think about it. They probably get upgrade prompts all the time. Among the other browsers, Chrome is maintaining a firm lead and increasing by a solid percentage point every month, while Safari and Opera are hovering at their respective percentages. Firefox is really the only browser here that is becoming less popular.

As for PCI DSS 2.0 Compliance, eCommerce websites developed, hosted and maintained by inConcert Web Solutions are  PCI Compliant as is required by the merchant services company. If a client decides to host and maintain their own website we can not guarantee PCI Compliance upon release of the website. Sometimes we have clients who use other hosting services, or maintain their own websites while we provide hosting. We always do our best to help each of our clients, of course, and recommend ways to keep their websites PCI Compliant (if they are not already doing so).

Upon completion of the eCommerce website, the site is reviewed and approved by the merchant services company for PCI Compliance before the site can be released. There are 12 standard rules of the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) that our websites, hosting and maintenance conform to.

This includes but is not limited to:

• hosting on a fully PCI compliant dedicated server
• firewall protection
• a dedicated ip address with a 2048 bit encrypted SSL Certificate
• complex passwords and password storage redundancies
• server virus protection
• restriction of physical access to cardholder data
• unique user access IDs
• access logging

Even one breach of your website’s security can do serious damage to your company’s reputation. If your website doesn’t meet PCI standards, you should definitely take action to protect yourself and others as soon as possible. For more information on this topic, read our earlier blog article about security standards.

1. Show up often
2. Show up early
3. Find compatible businesses that can you can refer business to
4. Setup a time with those businesses to learn more about them in depth
5. Talk about them, not you
6. Show up again
7. Make sure to find folks you have met with and greet them, thanking them for their time
8. Spend about 40%-50% of your networking time with folks you have met with before, no more.
9. Find and send referrals to people that you know, like and trust.
10. Referrals will come your way now!  Believe me…they will, just be patient!

This system works very well for me.  I continue to have success with it and will continue to work with the system because it works.  I look at the process about once each year to see if I need to tweak it at all.  One note:  Track your sales by referral source, this way you can pull a report at the end of each year to see which networking group is sending you the most business, as well as the least business.  Once you know this, you can now decide if you want to drop the group that sent you the least and spend more of that time in other places.

• The Contact Page simply had a form on it and no other info; and the problem wasn’t the form, it was that I wanted to call them and I couldn’t find their phone number anywhere on the website.  Eventually, after looking, I found it on the About Us page of all places.
• Phone number listed was out of service
• The map that was on the page was showing an incorrect location
• The address was spelled wrong
• The phone number was a graphic and was not in Text format
• Email address is listed on the page

Here are some quick things you can do to ensure that your contact page is effective…

• Check your page for accuracy every quarter, it only takes 5 minutes
• Test your form every month, it only takes 2 minutes
• Make sure your phone number is in text format, this way all the new smart phones can read it and recognize that it is a phone number and the user can click to call
• Make sure your address information is complete
• If you have a map, check its location to be sure that the map application is up- to- date
• Remove all emails from the page, you will get more spam by showing your email on the page

Browser Statistics – March 2012

The web browser statistics have been released through March 2012. The stats are published monthly at W3CSchools.com.

Below are the web browser stats for March 2012.

To sum these results up, people who use older versions of Internet Explorer are declining steadily in number, while Internet Explorer 9 is seeing a slight rise in popularity. Firefox usage continues to decline during the first few months of this year. Chrome is gaining a percentage point monthly in popularity. Safari usage numbers seem to be pretty stable as well as the small Opera crowd.

NOTE: Prices are subject to change.

So how do you make YouTube work for your business? Here are a few suggestions:

• Add one video per month
• Use a simple tool to record a video and upload it. Two suggestions are Flip Video and iPod Touch – they work great and are fairly simple.
• Don’t worry about editing all the videos, it’s not always worth the time
• Establish a YouTube channel and configure it to have your business information on it
• Embed the videos that you upload into your website or blog
• Share the blog or website page on Facebook
• Share the YouTube video on Facebook

So, what do you create videos about? This is always a challenge to think of these things. First, remember that you need to spend time educating and providing valuable information to your viewers and readers, so provide reasonable information that makes sense. Second, think about relevant information that you want to show up for in Google, and write/record videos about topics that will include those keywords and phrases. Here are a few suggestions:

• Tutorials – what do your customers want to know how to do – use a product? decorate a room? make repairs?
• Advertisements -make a video ad for each product/service you offer!
• Events – when you’re hosting an event, break out the Flip Video and simply record how much fun everyone is having. Maybe you had a few speakers, put up excerpts of their speeches. Did you have a famous performer/speaker at your event? Time for a video! …you get the idea.
• Testimonials/Case Studies – Do you have a client that wouldn’t mind being on camera? Ask them to give a video testimonial!

Those are just a few ideas, but the options are limitless…just remember this: you’re representing your business, we suggest not recording any material that might be deemed inappropriate or controversial. Creating and managing your videos is a very simple process, that takes very little time and effort, and can result in more traffic to your business, and that could mean more revenue to your business!

Browser Statistics - December 2011

The web browser statistics have been released through December 2011. The stats are published monthly at W3CSchools.com.

Below are the web browser stats for December 2011.

In summary, again, Internet Explorer numbers are pretty much holding steady. Firefox usage is still on the decrease while there has been another full percentage increase in Chrome users. No changes to Safari usage, but there has been a strange slight uptick in Opera users.

You cannot get high ranking with meta tags.

What is the fascination with the Keyword Meta Tag? In November of 2008 I wrote a blog about Meta Tags. I figured by now, clients would have stopped asking for “Keywords” or “Meta Tags”, or at least for the reason’s that they do. I find that people ask me about meta tags solely for the purpose of ranking high on Google. For some reason, perhaps just lingering rumor, folks think that meta tags help rankings, this is not the case. Let me restate that, “You cannot get high ranking with meta tags”. The primary reason for this is that Google doesn’t care about it. Even Google told us that in September of 2009. Here is a video from Matt Cutts of Google, you can see the proof for yourself.

Now that you can see that Google doesn’t use the Keyword Meta Tag, there is no reason to use it. Instead, focus on the keywords that you want to rank for and put them into the content of your website. If you want to really rank for something here are a few things you can do:

• Update your content on your website
• Add new and fresh content to your website
• Make sure your content has geographic terms in it if you want to show for that geographic area
• Don’t expect things to happen overnight, it won’t
• Focus less on the backend or code portion and much more on the front end, like the content and the conversion factors

Ranking is important, but focusing your efforts in the right direction is much more important! Hope this helps! If you need someone to help you maintain your website, we can help you do that, just contact us.