Each computer or device that communicates over the internet has a numerical label assigned to it – your IP address. This way your computer can be distinguished from everyone else. Think of it as your computer’s phone number.

You may need your IP address to set up a firewall, or sync a device or program to your computer. It is also handy to know so you can exclude your IP address from your Google Analytics results. By excluding your IP address you will block any data from your office network and get a more true picture of your website’s results.

There are lots of ways to figure out your IP address….

Jenika likes IP Chicken, but let’s be honest… she probably just likes the chicken.

Matt, on the other hand, likes the new Google feature where if you Google the phrase ‘IP address’, it will show your IP address above the search results.

Hope that helps! Got this question twice this week!

We talked a lot about mobile last year and we’re probably going to talk about it even more this year. Hopefully you’re all okay with that and hopefully you took our advice and reviewed the mobile visitors on your website and maybe even considered using a mobile site. Did you see what Google Analytics is doing with mobile analytics now? They are showing you the actual device that your site visitors used to browse your site.

Why does this matter?

There are so many devices that use different screen sizes and offer different browsing experiences. It’s a lot to keep up with! The more you understand about the types of devices people are using to visit your site, the better you can improve your mobile site to give them a good user experience. Of course there is always responsive design, which allows you to cater your website to all mobile and tablet devices. However, you may still want to give your mobile visitors a unique mobile experience when interacting with your business website. So, if you do have a mobile site, you can use the information in Google Analytics to customize their interaction. Not only will the device type help you understand how they are browsing but it also gives you some insight as to who is browsing. For example, if you have a higher number of Blackberry visits than iPhone visits, what can you learn about the people browsing your site?

Other cool mobile reporting

Not only can you see the device, you can see who their service providers are and “Mobile Input Selector” tells you if they are using a touchscreen, a click wheel, or another method to select information using their mobile device. You can also see top screen resolutions in a simple report format.

It can be intimidating to try to accommodate so many different resolutions and device types but, there are lots of tools to help you see how your website looks on different devices.

(I think) This is the third year in a row dubbed as “the year of mobile” so you should all be ready for this by now. I know I am interested to see what happens in the mobile world this year – how voice search changes mobile browsing and how that will affect mobile advertising.

I am always intrigued to learn new and creative ways that businesses/brands are using mobile marketing. Is it to nerdy to say that I’m excited to see what mobile will bring to us this year? Oh well, it’s true, bring it on 2012!

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

Ahh… Here it finally is! My favorite day of the entire year; Christmas Eve Day! It’s full of so much excitement and anticipation! This year I tried to stretch it out as long as possible. I think I started listening to Christmas music the first week of November! It seems Google got in the spirit this year too. Has anyone noticed any of the fun effects they have added to their search results over the past month?

• By far one of the most fun toys I’ve played with this season; brought to us by Gmail, you can send a call/video from Santa! I highly recommend checking this out!
• Type “let it snow” in Google’s search engine, watch the snow fall, and then scrape the snow using your mouse (only works in some browsers).
• I absolutely love Christmas lights and, apparently, so does Google; check out their holiday doodle. You click on it and it lights up and then plays a song!
• Try using Google’s search engine and type in words including “Christmas” and “Santa.” Google’s results page becomes decorated with a string of holiday lights.
• YouTube even got in the spirit by adding a snowflake button to some of the videos so, when you click it, it starts to snow inside the videos!

It’s been fun to see how Google has gotten into the spirit. It seems like it was contagious too; people searching for the words “let it snow” increased more this month than it ever has! It’s nice to see that Google is helping spread Christmas cheer! Now I’m off to do the same thing!

I hope you all have a wonderful and safe holiday season!

Read more from our Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series!

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

I am sure that somewhere in Santa’s workshop there is a Testing Committee that spends all day testing the toys to make sure they look good and work the way they are supposed to. Testing is an important part of creating toys; I know those elves want to make sure the kids are happy on Christmas morning and not crying over broken toys.

Testing is also an important part of the website business. You want to make sure your website looks good and works too! But what about your mobile site? We talked a lot about mobile this year and encouraged you to check out what your website looked like on a mobile device. Did you?

If you were on the Testing Committee for mobile sites this is what you would test:

1. How does it look? If it doesn’t fit within the tiny screen very well or different elements are overlapping each other, send it back to the work shop!
2. The speed. Recently graduated from Google Labs, Google offers Page Speed testing for mobile.  Simply put the URL into the form field, click “Analyze,” and  make sure the “Mobile” option is selected in the right hand corner. The overview will give you a score out of 100. Did you get an F? Are there any high priority items to fix?
3. Is it broke? At Hall, we like to test the validity of site code using the W3C code standards. Now there are W3C standards for mobile so we can check out the code using that tool.  Same as Google Page Speed you just need to put the URL into the form field and click “Check.” Again, you get a score kicked back out of 100%. How’d you do this time? Similar to the Page Speed Test, they try to prioritize the edits you need to make to your mobile site in order to have it comply with mobile standards. If you’re still seeing critical errors, you might need to send it back to the work shop.
4. How does it look on different devices? Does it look good on some devices and poorly in others? Depending on your industry you might want to ask other people you work with to test it on their devices and report back. If your industry requires more extensive, ongoing testing you can purchase different devices for testing or (probably a cheaper option) download a device emulator. We like MITE (Mobile Internet Testing Environment) a lot because it has a huge device library. Using MITE, you also get a grade based on Content, Performance, and W3C best practices; plus you get a visual of what your site looks like in a particular device. But there are also other device emulators that you can download  and even some good Firefox add ons that we have found helpful.

Your mobile site is more important now than it has ever been. By now you should have a clear idea of how much traffic your site is getting from mobile browsers and how that is growing over time as well as how to review your site’s performance. Don’t overlook testing your mobile site; just like the elves you want to make sure that it looks good and works properly for everyone that uses it.

Photo Credit: Elf Yourself by JibJab & Office Max

Read more from our Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series!

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

Happy Holidays everybody! As the new guy here Hall I have spent the last few weeks cutting my teeth on all things Internet Marketing. Needless to say, it has been busy. All of sudden, we are knee deep into the holidays and I haven’t done a lick of shopping.

I need a plan, and I need it now!

Rather than totally freak out. I look to Santa and all the elves in the North Pole for lessons to make my plan successful. You’ve seen the Christmas shows, all the elves running around crazy trying to build the toys, load the sleigh and get Santa off and running out the door. It looks like total chaos. What the TV shows do not show you is the full project management department and the comprehensive project plan that is behind the holiday festivities.

There are lots of little kids depending on Santa. For that very reason, the entire elf team follows the methodology developed at the American Management Association and their process for the “Accidental Project Manager”.  And Santa’s elves know that following a process is the most predicable way to be successful on a project. Let’s face it; projects are about creating a defined deliverable, within a reasonable time and within a reasonable budget. With the holidays looming, there isn’t much time to fumble around without a process.

Their plan looks something like this: Happy Boys and Girls – receiving toys on Christmas Eve without bankrupting Santa’s account.

The way they do it is to break the process down into four parts.

Initiate (Why, What) Build a business case defining the customer, problems, solutions and estimated costs.

Make the list and check it twice.

Plan (How long, How much) Create a schedule breaking down tasks, predecessors, estimates, timeline and risks.

Work backwards from Christmas Eve, determine timelines, costs and potential problems that may occur in assembling something like a toy truck.

Execute (Do) Turn tasks into action items, addressing any issues that arise and resolve any questions that occur. These get tracked, assessed and recommendations made to keep the project on track.

Coordinate and create all the parts and pieces that go into a toy truck; Build the chassis, wheels, assemble the parts, painting, quality control, packaging, processing and handling.

Close (How’d you do?) Use actual data that is captured during the process, and determine what went well and what can be improved.

Review how happy the little boy is with the truck. Determine whether they were delivered to the correct house at the correct time. Make note on how things can be improved in the future.

While I only have one household to spin my holiday magic, I am still going to break down my efforts into the distinct phases. Make my list, check it twice, review my time available and budget, and head down to my local shopkeeper to help me make my purchases. I am also going to remember to review my process- hopefully before my credit card statement comes in January.

Happy Holidays everybody- Wish me luck!

Read more from our Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series!

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

Before you open any gifts this season, let’s take a moment to talk about Open Source, and why it means everything to the way your website works. It’s easy for Open Source to become one of those buzzwords that you hear all the time but never really get to know. In reality, it’s a drastic departure in a new direction that will save your company time and money – even if your business has nothing to do with software.

First, lets start with the alternative: proprietary software. Proprietary software is a pretty basic model where a company will build a product, and if you want to use it, you pay them for it. Sounds simple, right? A good software example for this is the Windows operating system. An even better example for our purposes would be the Encyclopedia Britannica (just go with it). In both of these cases, you have a company who develops a product in a certain way they think will work for the most amount of people.

Now let’s get back to open source. Wikipedia states “the term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product’s source materials.” Now that’s kind of confusing, but the idea of Wikipedia isn’t. In fact, Wikipedia is one of the world’s largest open source projects. What open source really means is something along the lines of “community built”. The definition up above is getting at the idea that anyone can access the building blocks of the project and contribute their own pieces to the whole.

Now what exactly does this have to do with your company and saving money? Lets talk about the Internet. In the last ten years, the internet has gotten pretty complicated. If you want a slick looking website, you’re not just going to write a couple pages and call it done. Instead of a giant image on the homepage, you’ll want to put an image slideshow in its place. If you want to update your content all the time, you’ll want to use a CMS. This is where open source comes into play. That image slideshow you’ll use will most likely be an open source project, just like the CMS you choose to power your website might be as well. There are a few key benefits of open source software that will make a world of difference to your website:

1. Price: FREE
   Can’t go wrong there. Open Source projects are super cost-effective because there’s virtually no true startup costs to using them. Contrast this with proprietary software, and you’re in for some big sticker-shock.
2. Features: Lots of ‘em
   This is a big area where open source projects can shine. Proprietary software operates around what it’s creator deems will be most profitable to include. Open source, on the other hand, operates around whatever its users decide to build for it. Pick one of the bigger open source projects like WordPress or Drupal (both CMS platforms) and you’ll find a lot of features that don’t necessarily fit the cookie-cutter mold.
3. Security: Very High
   One of the big original arguments against open source software was that anyone could download and look at the code, so that made it less secure. In fact, most people now believe this makes it more secure. Instead of a handful of people working to ensure there are no security holes, anyone can download the software and review it for security issues, which get submitted back into the software and released into the community. In some cases, this can turn into hundreds or thousands of people contributing to something that will help keep your website secure.

We could go on all day about this, but these are just a few reasons why we always try to use open source software whenever possible. Of course, it’s important with anything to assess the quality of the product – whether open source or proprietary. To learn more about open source vs. proprietary CMS projects, check out our article on What is the Difference Between an Open Source and a Commercial CMS? If you’re curious whether there’s open source software already at work on your website, just ask!

Read more from our Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series!

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

Time is so important during the holiday season! We need time to buy and wrap our gifts, time to celebrate the holidays with family, time to reflect on the past year and think of the new year. Sometimes I get so busy planning and thinking ahead of everything that needs to get done that I don’t focus enough to enjoy the present.

Well Google just stopped me dead in my tracks and made me pay attention to now, now, NOW! Recently Google introduced Real-Time Analytics. Though it’s still in beta phase most of us can see and check it out now (hint: you also have to be using the new version of Google Analytics). You can access Real-Time by clicking on the home tab in your analytics, then you’ll find “Real-Time” on the left hand navigation.
From here you get an overview of how many active visitors are on your site right now! You can see their top referrer sources, top active pages, top keywords, and their locations! Holy cow this stuff is awesome!

As neat as this tool is and as much as I can geek out over it, I also think about how it can be applied. Here are some ways I thought of:

• After you post a blog or add a link on a social networking site, you can more instantly see the effects of that content to your website traffic. We used to be able to see that a day later and we’ve gotten used to it.
• Another application might be as a user experience tool you’ll be able to see how visitors are being referred to and navigating throughout your site.
• Not that you’d ever want this to happen, but in the case of a PR crisis you could watch the real-time analytics to learn information about the people who are engaging with to better target the communication messaging.

Although I am not completely “sold” on the usefulness of Google Real-Time Analytics (yet) I strongly believe that Google will continuously make updates to enhance the tool over time. Right now it’s super cool and also reminds me that the present should be embraced!

Read more from our Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series!

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

Is your site ready to handle the next wave of smartphones and tablets in Santa’s sleigh this season? It used to be easy to design a website…you figured out how you wanted the site to look, sketched it out, and build the site to size. Then came the smartphone… That’s okay, we’ll add a mobile site (which is super important, by the way). That’s when things started to get a little hairy. You had the 9.5” iPad, then the 7” Android tablet, then the 5” Android phone, and that was just the beginning. Obviously a website built for a 17” screen won’t look nearly as good on a 9.5” iPad or a 5” Android phone, so what’s a web designer to do?

Then came Responsive Design. Responsive design says that you can build one website that looks good everywhere – phones, tablets, computers, even on your nephew’s Wii console. Before you get too excited, remember that mobile sites are still important. There’s a big difference between making a specialized experience tailored for conversion on mobile devices and having a mobile version of your site display on a phone. But mobile site or not – if you’re looking for a way to ensure your business website doesn’t look like you designed it on a bar napkin when it gets inside a phone or a tablet, Responsive Design is your ticket home.

So how does it work? Pretty simply actually…and kind of not. It all starts with the design of the site. Think of your website like a newspaper. Newspapers are designed in columns, with some elements spanning a couple columns, while others are broken out into individual smaller sections. When you design your site in columns (a.k.a. a “grid” layout) with Responsive Design, tablets and smartphones will automatically reorient the site content to fit the device. For example, if you have a main content section and a sidebar on your site, the sidebar may move below the content in the center column to make more room for your content. It’s a simple change, but it makes a big difference when your screen is 4” big.

Want to see some responsive grid layouts in action? Try checking out http://960.gs/, scroll down to the examples and click “Show Grid.” Whether you get your shiny new smartphone this holiday season or not you should be thinking about how mobile is shaping the way consumers research products and services on line. Is your website ready?

Flickr Photo Credit: Alice Harold

Read more from our Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series!