I just found out about this today. If you wanted the simplicity of using PayPal on your website, but was concerned about the image it would give your website using a 3rd party merchant account or if you disliked having your e-customers being routed to a PayPal page then you will want to look into this one!

It seems that PayPal has just started something called PayPal Website Pro that does the processing of the credit/debit card in the background so that your customer never leaves your site and your web developer can set it up so that it doesn’t look like that you use PayPal.

This version of PayPal is not free however and has a monthly fee. I’m willing to bet that compared to a regular merchant account that its fees are very competitive.

One thing that comes to mind is when the customer receives the receipt does it show it was processed by PayPal? Since the transaction is done and over with does it really matter? I will enter PayPal live chat to find out now.

. . . . . . . . .

Oops, they are unavailable. If anyone has used this and knows the answer please let us know. I know a lot of customers do not choose PayPal because they feel it devalues the site, but are hesitant of the cost of their own merchant account. This may be the answer that they are looking for.

Hello Everyone,

I noticed a lot more people following me on the Webs That Rock twitter account so thank you! If you see this post go ahead and follow me on twitter since most of my posts are sent to twitter as well. It comes in handy when you want to check updates through your phone.

When designing a new site I have to take into consideration what type of people would be visiting the site. Also, what type of browsers would they be using? This is important from an SEO standpoint as well for the conversion rate and how the web site appears to the customer marketing wise. According to Fogg, B.J., Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility in November of 2003 75% of web users admit making judgments about the credibility of an organization based on the design of its web site. Are your users tech savvy and using Firefox or are they of an older generation using an outdated Internet Explorer?

When trying to get an average of browsers used for specific genres I had a tough time finding it on the internet so I complied some data on my own for 2008 and next month I will bring you the results for 2009. Here is the information below.

2008
Totals of top 3:
Internet Explorer 74.66%
Firefox: 21.83%
Safari: 3.55%

Medical Sites Top 3:
Internet Explorer: 93.63%
Safari: 4.6%
Opera: 1.24%
Internet Explorer 7 was 63.89%
Internet Explorer 6 was 35.54% (maybe in 2009 it will finally die)
Internet Explorer 8 was 0.19%

Commercial-Retail Web Sites Top 3
Internet Explorer: 65.65%
Firefox: 31.61%
Safari: 4.47%
Internet Explorer 7 was 71.67%
Internet Explorer 6 was 20.87%
Internet Explorer 8 was 7.32%

Entertainment-Games Web Sites Top 3
Internet Explorer: 83.16%
Firefox: 13.07%
Safari: 3.14%
Internet Explorer 7 was 50.64%
Internet Explorer 6 was 48.74%
Internet Explorer 5.5 was 0.28% (What people are still using this in 2008???)

Vacation-Lodging Sites Top 3
Internet Explorer: 73.44%
Firefox: 20.15%
Safari: 4.13%
Internet Explorer 7 was 62.71%
Internet Explorer 6 was 36.84%
Internet Explorer 8 was 0.18%

Commercial-Business to Business Web sites Top 3
Internet Explorer: 70.32%
Firefox: 23.4%
Safari: 2.4%
Internet Explorer 7 was 74.5%
Internet Explorer 6 was 25.39%
Internet Explorer 8 was 0.31%

Just watched the movie Couple Retreats and in the small scrolling text afterwords it showed it was filmed on location at St. Regis Bora Bora Retreat. If you check Google Trends at http://www.google.com/trends?q=st.+regis+bora+bora+resort&ctab=0&geo=us&geor=all&date=all&sort=0 you will find their was a spike of searches for it when the movie came out. This is just a reminder that Google Trends is another tool that you can use to help with your search engine marketing.

Hello,

This month I will be in business for 7 years!

Michael

I just visited a site that boasts to be a search engine optimization company and looked at the source code. They had a meta keywords tag there that if they knew anything about SEO they should have known that it is totally useless!

I guess Jill Whalens is right when she said that there are only a handful of SEO companies that really know what they are doing.

I just read about a new tool at the Microsoft adCenter Labs. By typing in a search query it will give an educated guess on the people who search for that particular phrase according to their browser habits. The gender and age is displayed.

So, I typed in ‘toy trucks’ and guessed it would be male ages 8 to 12. What came back surprised me and prompted me to delete the shortcut from my bookmarks.

Toy Trucks
Male: 49%
Female: 51%
Age: 35 to 49

I guess the educated guess was really using the SWAG method. (Scientific Wild Ass Guess)

I finally upgraded to Firefox 3 and after doing so my back and forward browser buttons disappeared. Now it is working fine thanks to Google and Trouble Fixers.

I ended up having to restart Firefox in safe mode in order to resolve this so if anybody else has the same problem just follow the above link to solve it.

I just received an email today about Google sharing an API for the development of 3D websites. At first I thought it would pop out of the screen from wearing 3-d glasses, but it turned out to be different and still have the WOW factor.

To view the application you can visit Google labs to give it a try or view the demo. Will this become web 3.0? One thing for sure the gaming community will love it!

Click this link below to view the demo!

3D Website

Hello Everyone!

Google has started implementing longer snippets and new search refinements. With longer snippets showing the text around your keyword phrase this means less real estate for people ranking on page one of Google. Imagine how many listing are showed with 800×600 screen resolution with browser add ons! You can read more about this at Marketing Pilgrim’s site at http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/03/google-rolls-out-longer-snippets-and-new-search-refinements.html.

MSN Live has started something called Active Answers. At first I though Active Answers was a copy of Yahoo’s Answers to create another source of SEO/SEM to tinker with, but it is something new. You can get live up to date answers to questions such as when a flight departs. To read more about visit the Search Engine Watch site at http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/090324-105508.

Facebook, with the way it is set up it cannot be crawled to easily (or at all?) by Google because you need to accepted as a friend in order to even access your pages. So this means Facebook for SEO (search engine optimization) sucks! But in a SEM (search engine marketing) way Facebook is GREAT! Google loves social bookmarking for the simple fact that is is more user like voting of the popularity of a site compared to linking from a directory. With Facebook’s popularity growing Chris Crum wrote a good article on it over at WebProNews entitled, “Ways Businesses Can Get the Most Out of Facebook“.

You can search for me on Facebook by typing in my name Michael Rock but there turns out to be pages and pages of people with the same name as me. After you have fun looking at all of the different pictures of what could be me. (try and guess which one is me) you can do a search via email address using beltanespirit at yahoo dot com.

Hello Everyone,

I have been pretty busy lately and that led me to think about what is really important in life. This below is one of them. Always have to keep a proper balance in life!

Sign the Health Revolution Petition now!