After sitting parked for several months, the owners of Router.com decided to turn their powerhouse domain into an information portal to be reckoned with. They turned to Vroooom Web for the design of their website, the SEO, and the ongoing maintenance and management. Router.com is now on its way to become the most trusted source of information regarding routers and router technology on the web. You can search reviews, learn about the history of routers, search brands, and you even have the ability to speak your mind about a particular router.

Many companies are allowing employees to participate in the growing initiative: “Bring Your Own Device (BYOD).” The initiative allows employees to select and use their own mobile devices for business rather than a company-issued device. Some experts state this type of program provides a greater impetus for business owners to take care of devices since they will be financially responsible for the device. Despite the benefits, there are some concerns about the BYOD program which has some companies reevaluating the concept.

It’s easy to assume that some of the same laws that protect our privacy in the physical world apply to the virtual and digital world as well, but laws that address and govern Internet privacy have always been a great source of debate and controversy and are still in the process of being developed. Currently, private companies have been allowed impunity to track as many of our movements online as technology allows, exchanging and even selling that information to other companies. The technology to track this information is advancing as rapidly as communication technology is advancing, which makes it very difficult for people to keep abreast of what is taking place when they access and surf the Internet, let alone what steps to take to protect themselves and prevent these intrusions.

The issue of privacy and freedom of speech has always been a major debate in regards to the Internet. Even though the policies governing the Internet are underdeveloped as a result, which makes it largely unregulated, the federal government has been increasingly pushing for regulatory laws regarding the Internet. The Stop Online Piracy Acts (SOPA) and the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Acts (CISPA) bills have been some of the attempts to address this issue in the House of Representatives. SOPA was basically scrapped due to immense public opposition against the bill. Then on April 26, U.S. Congress passed CISPA on a bipartisan majority vote.

Though CISPA has faced opposition, including from the White House, it’s gotten much less criticism mainly because of the slight differences in what they represent. SOPA was more about intellectual property rights; whereas CISPA specifically addresses cyber security, but opponents of the latter believe that it has the potential to violate constitutional rights as much as the former. CISPA would basically make it easier for online companies to share data, such as user private information, emails and direct messaging, with U.S. government agencies as long as it’s deemed a “cyberthreat.” In theory, the goal is to enable private companies and government to protect themselves against cyber attacks quickly and more efficiently and keeping themselves up-to-update to security risks.

Opponents against CISPA argue that the guidelines of what define a cyberthreat are too broad and would be difficult to enforce. Another concern they have is that CISPA also provides protection to the private sector against liability of shared user information, just so long as it’s deemed necessary for national security purposes. The most recent version of CISPA defines a cyberthreat as a threat “pertaining to a vulnerability of” a computer system or network, and government is not allowed to proactively use the information provided to them that is unrelated to cyber security. Privacy activists against the bill, such the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reporters Without Borders and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argue that the bill isn’t specific about what constitutes a “cyber security threat” in order to prevent potential abuse, and have currently launched campaigns for public awareness about the issues that are associated with it.

The White House has threatened to veto CISPA and also cite a lack of privacy protections that they say would give too much power to military and intelligence agencies, which would enable them to take on a policing role of a sphere that is still primarily a civilian one. The Obama administration has openly backed a Senate bill proposed by Joe Lieberman, which would instead concentrate the regulatory authority into the hands of the Department of Homeland Security.

There are a couple of ways of you can go about the situation from here. First, would be to find out if you have the Flashback virus on your system. You can simply go to Flashbackcheck.com and enter in your UUID, from there the website will detect if Flashback is showing up in any of your system files. Or you can do it manually, checking for the Flashback virus using the Terminal app. Open up the Terminal application (it’s in the Utilities folder in your Applications folder). Use this line of code in the terminal and hit return:

defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES

The response back should look something like this:

The domain/default pair of (/Users//.MacOSX/environment, DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES) does not exist

If the message doesn’t say that the pair “does not exist,” than Flashback is present on your system. Assuming the message is negative, let’s keep going. Now check out this line:

defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment

That should generate the same “does not exist” message. Again, if it doesn’t then your Mac has been infected with Flashback. If it’s negative try this line:

defaults read /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment

Again, the message is (hopefully) negative. If it’s not, then you most certainly have the Flashback Virus. Which brings us to the next step, removal. Not to worry too much though, a special app made by Kaspersky Labs, found here, can remove the infection from your system. While malware and viruses generally hit Windows based machines more often, it doesn’t mean Apple’s OS X is anymore secure. Virus detection software only goes so far, it takes savvy computer use to stay ahead of the curve. Knowing how to avoid suspicious links and files are more useful in preventing an exploit than the top virus protection software can offer.

If you are concerned about the security of your network, or think you have a virus that you just can’t get rid of, you can visit us today at Vroooom to see what we can do to put your mind at ease.

VRoooom is looking to expand its team with the hiring of a new PHP web developer. If you meet the below qualifications, then please contact us today by submitting your resume here: http://www.vroooom.com/company/career/

General Description:

Candidate will have extensive PHP programming knowledge and will work with a team consisting of web designers and front-end CSS programmers. Candidate will have the ability to work on several projects at once, and manage their work load accordingly. Candidate must have an excellent work ethic, be able to work in a team atmosphere, and have an excellent attitude. This is a KEY to our success.

Responsibilities:

• Build and maintain code using PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS
• Collaborate with project managers and designers to create project specifications
• Accurately estimate project time requirements
• Maintain applications built using PHP and .NET technologies
• Develop Content Management Systems (CMS) for client websites
• Develop ecommerce store applications

Technical Requirements:

• PHP 5.3
• MySQL
• Clean hand coded HTML
• CSS
• JavaScript and JavaScript libraries such as jQuery
• Experience in Linux and Windows environments
• Understanding of Object Oriented Programming
• Experience merchant web services and API’s such as Authorize.NET

Experience

Candidate does not need a specified amount of experience, but must be able to present working examples of projects and must have referrals specific to the required skills.

Work Status:

• Full time/Part time
• Work Remotely if desired
• Work weekends/off hours available if desired

Google Analytics: The Navigation

This is an overview of the original Google Analytics Dashboard and Navigation on the upper left hand corner of the page. They have a new version that is out, but it is not widely used, and in my opinion, is much less user friendly than it’s original version. You do have the option to toggle between the two version when logged in to Google Analytics.

Google Analytics Overview

Dashboard

The dashboard tab is basically an overview of your website’s analytics. It is a redundant link also listed under the “Visitors” tab. The overview allows you to alter what is shown on the dashboard, but the default shows you the visits for the date range, site usage numbers, a visitor overview, traffic sources overview, and a content overview. Nearly every option listed in the Google Analytics Dashboard can be clicked to further drill down to data. There are also drop-down boxes that allow you to filter and sort the results of your data based on more specific criteria.

Intelligence

These are basic alerts that you can setup to receive reports via PDF, Excel or XML.

Daily Alerts:
Allows you to receive automatic daily updates via email.

Weekly Alerts:
Allows you to receive automatic weekly updates via email.

Monthly Alerts:
Allows you to receive automatic monthly updates via email.

Visitors

Overview:
This is the redundant overview tab discussed earlier.

Map Overlay:
Allows you to view an interactive world map. The map’s countries, states and cities can be clicked to drill down and view the data according to your choice. You can view which countries, states and cities provide the most traffic, and even drill down to page views, content, sources, and other data for each geographical location. This also displays in a text list under the map. This can greatly benefit how you plan your marketing by showing you where your clients/visitors are located.

New vs Returning:
This shows the amount of new visitors versus the amount of returning visitors to your website.

Languages:
This shows the language source of the IP for each visitor that visits your website.

Visitor Trending:
Visitor Trending is analytical data about your website’s visitors that includes visits, absolute unique visitors, pageviews, average pageviews, time on site, and bounce rate.

Visitor Loyalty:
Visitor Loyalty is analytical data about your website’s visitors that includes loyalty, recency, length of visit, and depth of visit.

Browser Capabilities:
This allows for you to see what browsers your visitors are using, along with what operating system (Vista Safari, Windows 7), screen colors, screen resolutions, and which update of Flash and Javascript they have installed on the computer that they made their visit from.

Network Properties:
This allows you to see the service providers (Mediacom, AT&T, Comcast, etc.). and hostnames that your visitors use.

Mobile:
This gives you insight on which mobile devices and which mobile carriers were used to visit your website.

Traffic Sources

This is probably the most important feature of Google Analytics in regards to analyzing your marketing efforts. The Traffic Sources page will give you information about how visitors found your website, which search engines they used, what keywords they typed in, and much more.

Overview: This is an overview the traffic sources related to your website.

Direct Traffic:
Direct traffic refers to a visitor that typed your website domain name in directly into their search engine. They did not use Google, or click on a sponsor ad. They simply typed in your website address and became “direct traffic.”

Referring Sites:
A referring site is another website that has a link to your website on it. For example, if you own www.yourwebsite.com and you have a link to your website on www.myotherwebsite.com, if someone clicks that link, then www.myotherwebsite.com is going to be a referring website.

Search Engines:
This displays the search engines that your visitors have used to find your website. The current trend has Google being the number one search engine generating about 85% of all searches. Yahoo, Bing, AOL, and Ask follow far behind.

All Traffic Sources:
This is basically a pointless navigation option as it displays redundant information that can be found in the overview.

Adwords:
If you use Google Adwords, then this tab will be beneficial for you. You can view which of your Adwords campaigns are working the best, along with all of the more detailed data that is provided on your regular traffic reports.

Keywords:
This provides you with a list of actual keywords that your visitors typed in to get to your website. When a user goes to Google and types in “find your website” and then clicks on the link to your website, then that keyword phrase would show up on your keyword list. You can also see keyword trends to find out what popular searches are being used to find your website.

Campaigns:
This allows you to view information regarding any custom campaigns that you might have running. This is most likely used by advanced users.

Ad Versions:
This allows you to view specific ad versions. This is most likely used by advanced users.

Content

Overview:
Here you can find all of the analytics regarding the content on your site. This means that the pages on your website will all provide a certain amount of data pertaining to the visits made to a particular page.

Top Content:
This is the most viewed pages on your website, how may views the pages have gotten, how many of them were unique, the time spent on that page, and the bounce rate for that page. The page is displayed on this list using the page’s URL.

Content by Title:
This shows the same information as the Top Content, but it displays it by the page’s meta title, rather than URL.

Content Drilldown:
This displays the page content on your site based on category or top level navigation. This is especially useful if you operate a blog because you can view your highest viewed categories and not just pages.

Top Landing Pages:
A landing page is simply the page in which a visitors lands on after a search.

Top Exit Pages:
An exit page is the page which people are on when they exit the website.

In-Page Analytics (Beta):
This allows you to view a first-hand view of your website with pageview traffic displaying on your actual website.

Goals

Google says that Google Analytic Goals are “conversions are the primary metric for measuring how well your site fulfills business objectives. A goal is a website page which a visitor reaches once they have made a purchase or completed another desired action, such as a registration or download.”

When you first login to Google Analytics, you are presented with your current list of sites you are already tracking stats for. If you have already added the website in your Google Analytics account, then it will appear in this section.

Adding Code for Brand New Websites

1. If you are adding a brand new site to your account, you’ll need to click the ‘Admin’ button in the top right of the page, which is located in the orange bar that expands across the page. After clicking the Admin button, you’ll need to choose which account you’ll want to add the website to. You can choose between an account that already exists, or create a new one. At VRoooom we use these accounts to sort between clients that are in our internet marketing program, and clients that aren’t in the program.
2. After choosing which account to add the website to, click the ‘New Property’ button and fill out the information required. After you fill out the information, click the ‘Create Property’ button.
3. You will be taken to a list of the websites in that specific analytics account. You’ll then need to go through this list and find the website you just added. After you find the website you just added, click the name of the website to go to it’s options menu.
4. You should see three tabs that say “Profiles,” “Tracking Code,” and “Property Settings.” Click the Tracking Code tab.
5. At the bottom of the Tracking Code tab page, you should see a large text box of Javascript coding. You may have to choose a few options before this code will display. Copy and past this code to your clipboard.

6. Now is the part where you actually add the code to your website’s code. If you have a website built from just .html pages, also known as a static site, you will have to copy and paste this code on every single page you want to track the stats for. If you have a website built in another language, such as PHP or .Net, you can simple paste the code inside the masterpage files that load for every page on the site.
7. You will need to paste this code immediately before the tag in your code. Look at the image below for an example. Once you have pasted that code there, save and reupload your file to the server. Go back to the Google Analytics page you just received the code from and refresh your browser window. The ‘Tracking Status’ should now say that it is collecting data from your website.

8. That’s it! You have successfully added the tracking code to your website.

Google Analytics: The Basic Terminology

Google Analytics can be confusing if you don’t understand the basic terminology that it uses. The good news is that you can be an expert in no time once you’ve learned what the basic terminology means. In this post we’re going to go over the basics of Google Analytics and understanding what things like “unique visitors” and “bounce rate” refers to.

Basic Google Analytics Terminology

Visits vs Visitors - The easiest way to explain this is that visits is the number of times that a person visits your website and visitors is the number of people. There will typically be more visits than there are visitors because a visitor can make more than one visit. If I visit your website 10 times, then I would be considered one visitor, and there would be 10 visits recorded in the data.

Pages/Visit - This is the number of pages that are visited for every visitor. The above graphic shows that there is a pages/visit ratio of 1.60. That means that for every visit to this website, an average of 1.6 pages are viewed.

Pageviews - This lists the pages on your site and how many times that page was viewed based on the date range you have selected.

Bounce Rate - This one is somewhat tricky. I’ll try to keep it simple, and maybe do a more detailed post on this one down the road. Bounce Rate records people that land on a page on your site and then quickly leave your site from that same page. This might be due to two different scenarios. The first one being that someone came to your site and it was not what they were looking for, so they left quickly. The other being that they landed on your web page and quickly found what they were looking for and then left.

Time on Site - This is the amount of time that was spent on your website.

Time On Page - This is the amount of time that was spent on a specific page.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free website tracking tool that can be installed on your website simply by creating a Google account and signing up for Google Analytics. The Google Analytics tool allows you to track virtually every important element and action that occurs on your website including visitors to your website, what pages have been viewed, how long a visitor stayed on that page, what keywords they types in, what search engine they used, what browser they use, what country they’re from, what state they’re from, what city they’re from, what page they landed on and MUCH MORE!

The data is almost endless, and there are very few questions that can’t be answered by analyzing your data from Google Analytics.

Do I Need Google Analytics?

If you don’t currently have Google Analytics installed on your website (or some form of website analytics), then you need to either hire an internet marketing company, fire your current one, or learn how to install and manage it yourself. One of the most beneficial reasons why internet marketing is so powerful and successful is due to the ability to precisely track it’s effectiveness using Google Analytics.

If you’re new to Google Analytics and are not sure exactly what everything means in the dashboard, how to understand it, or what the data means, then this series is just what you need. We’ll be discussing how to install it, how to use it, what everything means, and how to utilize the data to improve your website.

Having a great website can create years of return customers for your business, but customers that stumble upon a website that leaves more to be desired can hurt more than just your online reputation. Your website should reflect the very best of your business – it is a 24-hour a day store front for potential customers browsing the web that communicates the purpose of your existence even when the sun goes down.

There are some small businesses that have a great in-store, or in-office experience awaiting their customers, but they lack the knowledge required to design and develop an outstanding, effective website that drives customers to your physical location, and produces an excellent ROI.

People are becoming far more web savvy than in previous years, and the percentage of people doing research online before ever deciding to get in their car or even make a phone call is growing exponentially. The last thing you want is for a potential customer to visit your website and be unimpressed by a bad website design or poorly developed online business.

If you are having any doubts that your website meets the same standard of excellence that you require for the other elements of your business, then it’s time to hire a professional website developer and online marketing company that can help you take your business website to the next level.

VRoooom Web is here to help.

VRoooom Web offers full-service website development, e-commerce, networking, and online marketing services for businesses of all sizes. Contact us today to learn more, or to get started on revitalizing the online presence for your business.