Friday Bits and Pieces
Posted On: 2013-11-30
Once again I could talk about yet another crazy week but I won't ... instead I'll just say that I'm writing Friday's column on Saturday because that's how insane this week has been.
I hope this week has been a crazy one for you too ... especially when it comes to sales ... and if it hasn't been a good week then hang in there because things will improve. Porn is one of those products that never goes out of fashion ... there may be seasonal influences but basically the demand is always there.
Make your message easy to understand.
When you're out and about shopping ... driving ... even just walking you should make sure that you're always looking at what's around you because you will often see some great reminders about how we should be marketing our products.
While there's a lot of skill and psychology involved in crafting a complete message that will sell your product the message itself should never be complicated ... involved ... or require the surfer to have a membership in MENSA to be able to understand it. That was something I was reminded of while I was out yesterday.
My partner and I were heading down some of the back roads inland from where we live to make a call on a client who is having problems getting all their stock into their new online shop and right there ... beside the road ... was one of the simplest but most effective marketing messages I've seen in a while.
The roads we were on are lined with small farms that often sell things at the farm gate and leaning up against one of the farm gates we passed was a large white sign with big black letters that proclaimed ... Horse Poo $2.00.
There in just two words and a couple of digits was a sign that told anyone who was passing by that they could stop off and buy bags of one of the best forms of fertilizer you can get for your garden. But whoever wrote that sign kept the message plain and simple and didn't let anything fancy get in the way of the message.
They didn't use fancy words ... they didn't use fancy colors ... they just hit you with a sign that you couldn't miss. I don't know what I was thinking of as we drove by that sign but it certainly wasn't our garden or a desire to buy fertilizer but that sign sure jumped out at me.
So how complicated is your marketing message? How hard hitting is your call to action? Are you trying to do too much when you should be keeping it simple? Try reducing your basic marketing message to just three words ... you might be surprised at just how complicated your message has become.
WordPress hackers
Sadly the popularity of WordPress has begun to attract a huge amount of attention from hackers who want to insert all sorts of crap in every site they can break into and that is becoming a real headache for web hosts and a real worry for webmasters.
I know I've talked about this before but this problem is not going away ... in fact it's only getting worse as more and more websites come under attack. A number of hackers are continually bouncing their botnets off several of our sites that we've locked down about as tight as you can make a WordPress site but there are plenty of sites out there that are not locked down and they are just begging to be hacked.
Earlier this week one of our clients who self-manages his own site called us to say that he couldn't access his login page anymore. For a few moments I had that sinking feeling in my stomach that you get when you think your day is about to turn to crap. Fortunately it wasn't one of those 'Oh no' moments because our server techs were really on the ball.
Because this guy self-manages his site nothing had been updated in several years and if that wasn't bad enough he was using 'admin' as the first step in his access codes so that had given hackers a free first hit but fortunately they had stalled on his password.
However, whoever was trying to hack his site had a sniff of victory and the number of failed password attempts had increased and alerted our server techs and not long before our client called me the techs had locked down his wp-admin page so that no one could see it.
We've suggested that it's time we upgraded everything for him and tightened up his security ... and hopefully he'll listen. If he doesn't he may never see his wp-admin page again ... we think that the situation for this guy is that serious.
So how tight are your WordPress installations? You're not using 'admin' as your username are you? Your password is a little more involved than 'password123' and you are using letters, numbers and characters in it aren't you?
I'm sure you would hate to see all your hard work start to unravel because someone hacked your websites.