The 15 Minute Rule
By HHI Golf Guy | October 12, 2006
OK - so now you have your fancy web site up and running and developing web traffic through PPC or search engine rankings. You get a decent amount of email requests for information, but rarely convert those contacts to prospects and buyers. Why?
Think about your own web surfing habits. When you’re looking to buy something in particular you probably hit your favorite search engine then bop around from site to site. Internet homebuyers do exactly the same thing.
Now you might check your email 5 or 6 times a day, but chances are by the time you respond to the email request for information you received that same web surfer has visited 4 or 5 sites of your competitors before you have the time you respond. There’s even a good chance that web surfer has already hooked up with another agent in your market.
If you want to convert more of your email contacts to prospects and buyers you must make it a point to contact them within 15 minutes of receiving their email.
But how can you do that when you’re out of the office networking, showing a home, or out on the golf course? The answer is easier than you think.
You can set up your email system to send a duplicate email to your PDA or cell phone as well as your primary email account. You can accomplish this task by either having your email form handler send the email to both addresses or set an email rule on your web hosting account to forward the email to your cell phone or PDA.
One word of caution, though. Your cell phone provider will charge you extra for bandwidth, so you [b]do not[/b] want to set up an email rule that forwards all of your primary email account emails to your cell phone. You need to set up an individual email account for all of your form submissions (i.e. requests@yourdomain.com instead of yourname@yourdomain.com).
Setting up a special email account for your forms is also a good practice in case that form/account is ever comprimised by spammers. If that ever happens you can just delete the old account, set up a new one, and update your form handler. You won’t have to worry about having to reprint stationary and collateral material with your new email address.
Remember - you have 15 minutes to respond or potentially lose that homebuyer to a competitor.
Topics: Real Estate Marketing | No Comments »
Buying PC Gear
By HHI Golf Guy | July 28, 2006
I have a 5 year old Alienware PC that I have wanted to replace for a while now. Back in its day it was a screamer with a 1.9GHz AMD chip and 1GB of RAM. How the times have changed!
I went to the Alienware site to price out a new PC, and I also searched the internet for the latest consumer opinions on Alienware. I was worried that since they were bought out by Dell that things may have changed for the worse. I saw a lot of complaints about their PC quality and especially their tech support. One poster suggested building your own PC instead.
I had never thought of that before, but since I’m fairly handy with electronics I though I would check it out. I went to TigerDirect.com and started pricing out components. As I started pricing out all of the components that I needed I was surprised at how little it would cost to build a great PC.
To start off I selected the new Intel Pentium D 3.2GHz dual core socket 775 processor, the ASUS P5N32-SLI motherboard, and 2GB OCR DDR2 667MHz RAM. I added an Ultra 550W X2 titanium power supply, Thermaltake Silent 775 heatpipe CPU cooler, GeForce 7900 video card, and a Seagate 300GB SATA hard drive. I already had a great, new Lightscribe DVD drive that I could transfer to the new system. I also already have a great Sony 19″ flat panel monitor.
One neat thing that I added was the AeroCool Coolpanel 8-in-1 flash card reader. Not only is it a card reader, but it also has a firewire port, high speed USB ports, video port, audio ports, and 2 SATA ports. Perhaps even more important it monitors and controls fan speeds and temperatures to prevent overheating.
The hardest decision I had to make was choosing a PC case. Because I worry about PC overheating I looked into a liquid cooling system. Thermaltake has some nice options, but the case/cooling system combo runs about $280. Another concern I had is locking down my PC - I have an 8-month old son that loves to crawl around and get in to things. And since my PC is on the floor under my work station I didn’t want to tempt him with cabinet doors, knobs, and buttons.
I finally settled on the Thermaltake Tsunami case because it completely locks down all panels. I had considered the Thermaltake Shark, Kandalf, and Armor cases. I opted not to get the liquid cooling system and opted for the heat pipe instead. The case I did buy has two 120mm fans and one 90mm fan, so that should be enough cooling for now.
I decided to go with the on board audio for now instead of a sound card, but I may upgrade that a bit later. I did buy the Logitech Z5300E 5.1 THX speaker and subwoofer combo. I also added a new Microsoft ergonomic keyboard and a USB 2.0 hub.
All of my components are scheduled to be delivered by July 31st (3 business days from my order date) EXCEPT the motherboard which is now on back order. That really stinks - I wish it was the speakers on backorder.
Since the MB was on backorder and I was really anxious to put this thing together I called Tiger Direct and asked how much it would cost to overnight the motherboard when it was in stock. To my surprise they said that they would overnight it for FREE! Now that’s great service.
One more thing - I priced shopped a lot of sites and overall Tiger Direct had the best prices and a TON of compliments about their service. All told, the total cost for this screaming PC came in at around $1,400. When I priced out these same (or as similar as possible) systems from Alienware, Dell, and others I saved over $1,200! Not a bad deal at all. I just can’t wait until it all gets here so I can put it together!
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Topics: Miscellaneous Ramblings | No Comments »
First Impressions: Microsoft Expression Web Designer
By HHI Golf Guy | July 28, 2006
When I first learned to design web sites I used MS FrontPage. But while FP may be OK for hobby sites and novices, it leaves a lot to be desired as a professional web design tool. I tried Dreamweaver, but it was buggy and ran very, very slow. After that, I began the practice of coding all sites by hand using good old Notepad.
But a few months ago I read that Microsoft had a Beta version of Microsoft Expression Web Designer available for trial. I decided to download it and see what it’s all about.
The first thing that you need to know is that this beta version is buggy. Don’t get too ticked off if it crashes or something occasionally doesn’t work as expected. It’s a beta version - live with it.
I don’t use any drag and drop features, and use the Code View to enter my scripts and HTML. But I will go to the design view to see how things look or to change properties of my tables. What I like about EWD is that it uses CSS for control and layout. For example, when you edit the background color or style of a table, EWD automatically formats your changes using CSS (it enters the tags in the HEAD section of the document).
While that may not be great if you like using only external CSS files because you have to transfer the auto-generated CSS to your external file. What I do is keep my sitewide CSS elements in an external file and any page specific elements are in the HEAD tag.
When you have the visual aids turned on you can see the layout and borders of all of your DIV tags and element tags. Another item of not is when you enter a tag that uses quotes (i.e. style=) EWD automatically enters “” after you hit the equal sign. Of course, it took a while for me to get used to this and I kept doubling up quotes. I suppose I should have just turned that option off.
Another key feature of EWD is HTML validation. For example, if your DOCTYPE is XHTML and you enter code or omit a tag or element that would cause the page not to validate, EWD automatically highlights that part of your document (in code view).
There’s a lot more to EWD than I can fit in a single blog post, so go ahead and download it and take it for a test drive. If Microsoft can get all of the bugs worked out by its release date in mid 2007 I think they will have one great web design application.
Topics: Miscellaneous Ramblings | 2 Comments »