Facebook has been described as the murderer of privacy. I deleted my personal profile months ago (a process which took over two weeks!) and I haven’t looked back since. Good thing, because it was recently discovered that Facebook’s controversial tracking cookies continue to track user behavior even after the user is logged out of Facebook. What other website puts 9 cookies on your machine (that’s how many I counted when I deleted mine)?

All that being said, I still have some business Facebook pages that I use for marketing and branding. It would be asinine for me to quit using these because they help to bring in additional revenue with very little maintenance overhead. So, if you only use Facebook to promote your brands, you probably don’t have too many privacy concerns to worry about.

Obviously, the simplest way to stop Facebook from tracking you is to delete your personal profile and don’t use Facebook as a replacement for a social life, like I did. I know many folks will not be willing to give up their Facebook profiles (I wasn’t at first), but these folks could at least browse a little safer.

To continue using your Facebook personal profile without being tracked, download an additional web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc.) and only use that browser for Facebook. That way they cannot track any of your online behaviors because you won’t be using any other sites with that browser. Use your default browser for everything else.

Alternatively, you can add an exception to your browser’s cookie settings to block all cookies from the domain facebook.com.

Maybe if I didn’t read the book 1984 when I was 10 I wouldn’t be so paranoid about privacy. Down with Big Brother!

These days, many people are making money online. There are a lot more who aren’t.  How can you be sure that your online marketing efforts are a success so that you don’t end up wasting a lot of time and energy?  We’re here to walk you through it.

How It’s Done

To make money online, the sites you are promoting need visitors.  To get visitors to your site, you have to offer them something that other sites do not have.  It doesn’t matter what that is, it just has to be unique.  It can be as simple as some text that you wrote yourself or a product that only you sell.

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Does your business have an online e-commerce store? Now it can.

Visual Harmony offers E-Commerce Shopping Cart solutions starting at $1999.

Here are just a few benefits of owning an online storefront:

• Wider Reach: If you own a “brick-and-mortar” store is in Florida, you can now reach potential customers in California, Maine or even Zimbabwe (if you ship there) much more easily.  You can get a lot of exposure that you otherwise would be missing out on.
• Increased Revenues: An e-commerce capable website can make sales 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• Low Overhead: Once your e-store is operational, there is very little-overhead to keep the site running for years and years to come.  Unlike the expenses for operating a walk-in storefront which pile up month after month.
• Better for Local Customers: People within driving distance of your physical storefront can learn more about what you are selling before they come there.  Just think how many times you have checked a price on something online before driving to pick it up.  I do it all the time.

Do you really need a Brick-and-Mortar Storefront?

It’s clear that some stores such as Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy make the majority of their sales in their brick-and-mortar stores.  I assure you that they are the exception and not the rule.

If you do not already have a physical storefront, who says you need one?  Statistically, the need for a physical store increases your overhead and cuts away from your bottom line by at least 15%.  Why give that up?

Fact: Visual Harmony has been in business since April 2007, without ever needing a physical office.  Everything clients need to know about us or how to communicate with us is available on our website.  By declining to use a physical storefront, we are able to offer higher-quality services at a more affordable rate than the competition.

Get it!

Give us a call at 352.207.5855 or email us to discuss your new online e-commerce store.

Visitors are essential to every business website. In order to attract visitors, they have to be able to find you. If you have a website that isn’t getting the exposure it deserves, your business can surely benefit from our effective Search Engine Optimization services.

By continually optimizing your site we will gradually improve your search engine ranking which yields more traffic and more business. In the highly competitive on-line world, ranking is a crucial component to making your business visible to would-be buyers. Not only will optimization improve your site’s ranking but it may attract additional lucrative opportunities. Who knows? People may eventually want to start advertising on your site. Cha-ching!

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Would you like to show your latest tweet (or tweets) on your website?  Well, here’s a quick and easy way to Twitter-ize your site.

Twitter provides a couple of scripts that need to be included in your code.  It’s probably best to add them right before the </body> tag so the rest of the page loads first.  Go ahead and add them:

<script src="http://twitter.com/javascripts/blogger.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

<script src="http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/your_username.json?callback=twitterCallback2&count=1" type="text/javascript"></script>

Edit the src attribute of the second script to replace “your_username” with your Twitter username. If you would like to show more than just the latest post, you can change the number where it says “count=1″ to reflect how many posts you would like to show (eg. count=2, count=3, count=4).

Now you need to place this code in your markup where you want the tweets to show up:

<div id="twitter_div"><ul id="twitter_update_list"><li> </li></ul></div>

Your tweet(s) will be added to this div automatically. Style the Twitter div with some CSS and you’re good to go!

Why Analytics?

If your website was built by Visual Harmony, you’re probably already familiar with Google Analytics.  In my humble opinion, Google Analytics is the best website statistics tracking software available.  And with the whopping price tag of $0.00, why would anyone use anything else?

There are plenty of paid alternatives to Analytics, but the features of them pale in comparison to what “The Big G” delivers for free:

1. Track multiple websites under one Analytics account
2. Accurate and detailed reporting
3. Conversion tracking
4. Custom reports
5. See which cities, states and countries are sending you traffic
6. Learn how long visitors are on your site and each page
7. If you have Google custom search built into your site, you can see the terms for which your visitors are searching.
8. Find out which websites are referring traffic to yours
9. Integrated with AdWords to track effectiveness of AdWords campaign

There are many other features that aren’t listed above, but you should really try Analytics and see for yourself, even if you are already using a paid statistics service.

How do I get Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free service—it’s just needs to be set up on your site.  Here’s how you do that:

1. Sign up for Google Analytics.  You will need a Google account to sign up. If you don’t yet have a Google account, get one here.
2. After you sign up, make sure you are logged in to Analytics.
3. Once logged in, you will come to the Overview screen.  Near the bottom of the page, click the link that reads “Add Website Profile.”
4. Select the option “Add a Profile for a new domain” (if not already selected) and enter the domain name of the site you want to track.  Click “Finish” when you are done.
5. Google will then generate and display the tracking code for Analytics.  This snippet of Javascript needs to be added to the source code of all the pages you would like to track right before the closing body tag (</body>).  After you have added the tracking code to your pages and re-uploaded them to your server, Analytics will be ready to receive data from your site!
6. Congrats!  You are now ready to put Analytics to use for your site.  Make sure to brag about it to all of your friends so they know just how cool and nerdy you are!