Chat Content:
Brice: [4:00:39 PM] Welcome to our real-time SALES chat. How can I help you with SALES questions today?
FIRST TIME SALE..: [4:00:39 PM] I see your network uptime guarantee, but what about hardware failures, or application crashes, etc…? Do you have an uptime SLA for application and server uptimes, with a documented time to replace?
Brice: [4:01:54 PM] No, this is shared hosting. That’s why we guarantee network uptime and not server uptime. The servers here are very stable for shared hosting, but we can’t guarantee you know what you’re doing and we can’t guarantee that the other users on the server know what they are doing.
[4:02:05 PM] so that’s why we can’t guarantee the server uptime.
FIRST TIME SALE..: [4:02:15 PM] ok, thank you!
Brice: [4:02:48 PM] you’re welcome

Project Scope Control (Also called Change Management)

If you have ever had to learn a new policy, procedure or protocol you have likely been affected by project scope changes. Whenever you are requested to change your operation you are given the choice to embrace it or to disgrace it. It’s not hard to fall into a resentful mindset about every little difference in your routine. It disrupts your work-flow, lowers your production and worst of all makes you question it’s functionality. What is it about change that can make some cringe?
It’s possible you are already recalling these moments in life and this is the importance of Scope and Change Control.
What does change mean? Not every request is a change to scope and not every request is considered small enough to *not* change the scope. There is a clear overlap. The need for change is sometimes obvious wherein a company experiences a merger (changing many aspects or only a few of a project) or competition has gained an edge (warranting desire for additions to a project). Regardless of the reason, change should be addressed in a control environment to prevent risk and to prevent overworking your team without compensating them properly.

The initiation of a project is not void of flexibility and defining your procedure for making adjustments is a must. The stack of specifications are not meant to keep the door closed to change but rather to point toward resolving any issue with ease. It is vital to have these elements in any project scope. Not only will these change management systems prevent contractors from under-bidding (engaging companies in a form of gouging where a contractor bids low and considers any change a “change to scope”, adding large fees to the original budget or leads a project outside of the scope in order to obtain additional work) but it also prevents any stuck feelings between the contractor and the company while keeping the focus.

Generally project scope control involves a simple procedure in which clients can voice opinions or concerns. It should be a simple form that probes lightly for severity, priority and what the call to action implies. The request should be filled out and issued to an assessor who can identify any risks then assign the validated request to action. This way nothing is outside of the project scope and companies can legitimately see the benefit vs. cost when requesting modifications.

How to Launch a Successful Campaign using Google Adwords

Paying excessively for clicks, not tracking your conversions at all, not using negative keywords to aide in controlling your automatic placements and advertising in underdeveloped countries are all standard introductory mistakes in AdWords. Recently, I came across some blog material that was regarded [by readers] for airing this information and comments trickled in about the post’s usefulness. Since a back-to-basics refresher course can keep your marketing efforts on track we will talk basics in Adwords.
Adwords is a popular pay-per-click (abbrv. PPC) web advertising application. When your website needs a boost in visitors (hopefully because your niche is flooded, you are running a special or you are trying to gain a new market and not due to lack of SEO) it is a tool you can use for driving traffic to your website.
When you sign up for AdWords you are projected [by google] to learn how Adwords works, how to manage costs, how to write a successful ad campaign and how to choose effective keywords. While this workload may seem daunting it is standard to most methods when creating and tracking a web presence.
Your initial set-up of an AdWords account offers tips for optimization. Optimization [per google related to AdWords] means improving the quality and performance of your account without raising costs in order to get desired results. Here Google implores us to identify advertising goals, organize our account for maximum effectiveness, choose relevant keywords and placements, create a more targeted ad, optimize our website conversions, track our performance and test while modifying our campaign to get results. That is a fairly multi-facaded process.

Tracking and Organizing:
We have our Adwords account and we’ve read the myriad of information Google provided to guide us to setting up our first campaign. The dread is flooding in that every effort will be wasteful if we don’t organize and track. Time to focus.
These first two steps are very related to each other. You organize your campaign by: identifying your target market and goals then create ads based on that information (often several ads in order to track different targets and goals). You track your campaign by: analyzing any traffic coming in through your campaign to your website and watching the conversion rate (the amount of visitors who bought, the amount of visitors who took a survey, the amount of visitors signing up for a newsletter, etc.). A good tool for tracking is Google Analytics and this is a free service of Google. You are given a code to place on your landing page in order to capture this data.

Targeting and Modifying Campaigns:
So how do we do we get clicks? This is where we take our money and put it where our mouth is. Wanting more clicks is far from getting them. Above we mention goals and creating separate campaigns for each goal. This allows us to monitor our progress and present the subsequent data more easily. i.e. The desire to have more female consumers buy a certain product vs. more male consumers to also buy a certain product. This is one aspect to targeting your campaign that also allows you to track.
Now it’s time to set up your keywords and negative keywords to define the target. Your keywords should not include any duplicates and your negative keywords should be very considerate of your target. Include any keywords that are specialty descriptions of the product/goal. If you sell audio editing software you might want to exclude people searching for audio producing software. Once you feel that you have defined the target well enough be sure and double check your work. Again, keep out doubles. You cannot modify a campaign you have launched without effecting your rank and cost so be sure and get it right!
When monitoring and modifying your campaigns it’s important to know not all traffic will be recorded the same way. Since your analytics relies on cookies to gather the information you will not see data from consumers with cookies disabled, buying outside of the session or at a much later date. This is not a huge percentage but should still be accounted for when analyzing your data during the monitoring process.

Controlling Campaign Cost:
While there are hundreds of mistakes you can make online paying for something you don’t need is the worst. This article is meant to guide you in creating a successful campaign but until you have sat down and worked out the figures. Launching a campaign for a low cost product and paying for clicks could end up costing you money in the long run. Be mindful of your ROI point and never let your marketing budget exceed your means.