I’ve been jealous of Writeroom since the first time I laid eyes on it. Sadly, it is Mac only. Writeroom is a full-screen barebones word processor that allows you to do one thing: write without distractions. This application brings brainstorming back to the computer by keeping out all distractions and simply allowing you to focus. I can’t praise its usefulness enough, you simply need to try it.

There are several clones for Windows that attempt to accomplish the same thing. None are as polished as Writeroom, but are just as effective.

Dark Room is the most popular PC version. I used this for a long time and was pretty happy with it. However, it does require the installation of the .Net 2.0 Framework. This is a bit much to simply install a “basic” program such as this. I also had some funky behavior from time to time using Dark Room. (such as it leaving all of my Windows selection bars green after shutting the program down…)

Next up is JDarkRoom. This is a Java based app similar to the original Dark Room, but without the need to install the .Net framework. It is a little bit more clunky (as Java apps tend to be…), but I’ve found it expands upon the concept nicely with a few additions. This is the version I currently use and would recommend.

There are also a few other cloans that I have not tried:
http://codeboje.de/MatrixFSE/
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Word-Processing/PyRoom.shtml
http://pyroom.org/
http://pomarancha.com/writemonkey/

Hi Brandon,
www.bucketracingseats.com is NOT a current nor former TRUSTe Web privacy seal holder. I will be forwarding their site to my compliance department for further investigation. Thanks a lot for the heads up. TRUSTe really appreciates your keeping an eye out, and for verifying the TRUSTe seals.

I contacted BucketRacingSeats concerning this and received no response. The certifications are still being displayed.

Let me iterate: I have not had a transaction with this company.
But if a company is going this far to deceive customers prior to purchase, I certainly wouldn’t risk dealing with them.

To make it simple, it is unlikely that you will see a significant conversion increase with either of these.  The best candidate for these services are sites that appear inherently suspicious. However, if this description fits your site, your time would be better spent elsewhere. After running on multiple sites, it is apparent that there is little to gain from having these seals. However, as there is little negative side effect of having them, it is could be worth it if the cost is minimal.

Hackersafe (now McAfee Secure) is ~$1690/year for 2 domains.
TrustGuard is $200/year for the first domain & $100/year for every subsequent.

TrustGuard simply verifies the existence of your business through an address check (post card with an activation code mailed) and a phone call. Hackersafe tests your site daily for different technical vulnerabilities. These tests can be helpful if you are planning on accepting credit cards directly and need PCI Compliance. However, if PCI Compliance is your main concern, this verification can be found elsewhere for much cheaper. Hackersafe is a marketing/hard sales company attempting to hide under the guise of a being on the forefront of internet security. The best thing we got for our money was their fridge magnet.

In conclusion, real world A/B testing for both of these services shows a minimal advantage. The only way to have a shot at any ROI using these would be to use Trust Guard. You get less with their service, but you get the only important thing: the badge.

One day I logged into my adwords account and found a new campaign (entitled ‘Electronics’) inside of my account. It is worth mentioning that even though this campaign burned through a couple thousand dollars, it did not appear on my Account Snapshot screen or chart. This is because my account snapshot was set to display the metrics of a certain campaign. I have since set this to display data from “All Online Campaigns”, that way if this issue arose again, I could quickly spot it from this page.

Not too difficult to spot the problem area, eh?

The new campaign contained 3 Ad Groups and burned through a total of $2,377.61. The ads were linking to the site world-el.com, an obvious scam site selling electronics gear. All of the bids were at $1.00 and were hitting terms like “cell phone”, “iphone”, and “digital camera” with a $2,900/day budget.

Upon seeing the campaign, I immediately paused it, changed my Google password, and called Adwords support @ 1-866-246-6453 (not an easy # to track down.) The representative I spoke to immediately forwarded the account to their “specialist team” and the account was suspended by the end of the day. By suspended I mean that the entire account was shutdown and even my legitimate campaigns were not allowed to show ads. Here is the email I received:

On the phone we discussed how you detected an unauthorized campaign in
your AdWords account. I’ve forwarded your complaint to our Specialist team for investigation. As a precaution, your account will be suspended during our investigation, which may take up to several business days. At the end of our investigation, we’ll reactivate your account and reimburse you for any costs accrued due to the unauthorized activity. I’ll email you at that point to let you know the result.

Nothing happened for the next 3 days, at which point I received this email:

 Thanks for your continued patience. Our AdWords Specialists have performed a thorough investigation of your account CID ————, and I’ll detail our findings and recommendations below.

WHAT WE FOUND

It appears that your account was compromised between - via login email ——–. During that time, unauthorized activity caused $2,377.61 to accrue on your AdWords account. The following campaign shows unauthorized changes: ‘Electronics’. However, the unauthorized activity was not charged to your credit card/bank account.

RECOMMENDED ACTIONS

1. Please delete the compromised campaign and recreate your original ads in a new campaign.

2. We strongly recommend scanning your computer for malware and changing your Google Account password. Be sure to clean your system first, and then change your password, as malware could capture your new password if the malware is still present within your computer.

3. In order to prevent any further unauthorized charges, your account has been temporarily suspended until we institute one of your two ‘unauthorized charge options’ detailed below.

UNAUTHORIZED CHARGE OPTIONS

You have two choices to clear out the pending unauthorized charges on the account:

1. AdWords credit: We can reactivate the account, allow the charges to go through, and your credit card will be charged. We will then apply a credit for the charges to be used for future clicks shortly thereafter.

2. Write-off: We can process a write-off for the unauthorized activity, which can take several days. Once the write-off has been processed, we can reactivate the account. Please note that the write-off will appear on your Billing Summary page.

Please reply to this email and let me know which option you prefer, along with any additional questions or concerns you might have. Thanks again for your patience and understanding.

I went with option 1 to speed the re-activation of the account. The next day I received this email:

Thanks again for your patience. Our investigation is complete, and your account has been reactivated. We’re processing an AdWords credit, which will appear on your account soon.

Please note that you will be prompted to change your Google Account password the next time you sign in to your account.

In addition, all your campaigns have been paused to allow you to make any necessary changes. We also recommend reviewing and making any desired changes to your account settings.

My account was re-activated this same day. However, for the next several days my account fell under the Adwords Account Review of being limited to $50/day spend. This took some more back & forth emailing between me and the Adwords Support to get resolved.

How was my Adwords account hacked?
Well, it certainly wasn’t from a phishing attempt. I can honestly say that I’m not sure how my account was compromised. I have scanned all of my machines and come up with nothing. (all I can think of was the use of un-encrypted coffee shop wifi a few days before) In any case, the issue has now been resolved and other than being down for 4 days of advertising, there have been no lasting problems with the account.

BustAName.com allows you to quickly query the whois databases for domains:

However, its most useful feature is the built in word combiner:

Using bustaname has allowed us to track down unregistered domains that we otherwise would not have discovered. We are doing the world a favor by redirecting money from the domainers back into our business its creation of economic value.

• Advice = Limited Life Experience + Over-Generalization 

I’ve searched many times for this type of software before. All of what you come across is either crippled shareware or other useless spam. This time, however, I finally came across a free open-source piece of software that makes all of my dreams come true. Like most open-source software, it is initially rather unintuitive and unbelievably flexible, but after a few minutes of actually reading the help file (ugh) it was working perfectly for me.

http://www.autohotkey.com/

Below I have pasted the basic AutoHotKey.ahk file that I am using for my project. Simply, I have mapped the 4 functions I am looking for to the arrow-keys, which are activated by hitting Ctrl+Alt+ArrowKey. In AHK, Ctrl is defined as ^, Alt is defined as !, and the arrow keys are simply the direction of the key. The double colon :: signifies the end of the key combination required to trigger the action. Send places the following text in the active window, while return ends the function.

^!left::
Send <br>
return

^!up::
Send <ul><li>
return

^!right::
Send <li>
return

^!down::
Send </ul>
return
—–

Ctrl+Alt+UpArrow, now out puts <ul><li> into my active window (notepad++.) I have these arranged in the order I am using them, so I can just follow a left-up-right-down flow for every product I work on. I only wish I had come across this software sooner.

Sometimes solving the littlest of headaches can truly mean the difference between productivity and frustration.

For example, to track Google Product Search append this to all of your urls:

?utm_source=Google-Product-Search&utm_medium=organic

making your final url:

http://www.example.com/product1.html?utm_source=Google-Product-Search&utm_medium=organic

You can stick anything in the utm_source and medium sections, but it helps to keep these in a similar format as all of your other analytics data. We also do this for our MSN & Yahoo PPC campaigns:

http://www.example.com/product1.html?utm_source=msn&utm_medium=cpc

http://www.example.com/product1.html?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc

 (Make sure the “yahoo” & “cpc” sections are lowercase or Analytics will not recognize them as search engines.)

Simply insert this text as your ad links in your campaigns. (You don’t have to do this with Google Adwords as Google automatically handles the CPC differentiation for Analytics Data.)

You don’t even have to generate these urls yourself. Checkout the Google UTM URL Builder.

It goes without saying, the more you can track & differentiate your data, the more informed decisions you can make.

Unfortunately, Google only allows the merchant to access these reviews. I’ll repeat this again to reiterate its ridiculousness: Google Checkout doesn’t allow the public to see your Merchant Reviews, much less have them available on your website in front of potential buyers.

There is one way to get access to ratings publicly, however, it won’t by itself solve the issue of getting the information on your site. Google Product Search is an extension of the ever unpopular Google Base made specifically for merchants to list products for sale. The unique thing is that Google Product Search displays Google Checkout Reviews. For the sake of example let’s say you search for retailers selling eeePC’s.

What do you find? Nothing other than your site and its corresponding Google Checkout Customer Reviews.

It’s time to get listed in Google Product Search. To this you need to register your Google Checkout account with Google Base. Once registered, upload a product (something that your store actually sells). Make sure you have registered this item as a product. Do a thorough job describing your product as well as including all fields Google recommends you include. In order to make the jump from Google Base to Google Product search, your item must be manually approved by Google- make sure it’s done right. The upload/feed process itself can sometimes be flaky, if it doesn’t seem to take within the first 3 or 4 days, then delete and try again.

Eventually, your item will be listed in Google Base. Several days (probably a week) after being listed in Base you should receive approval for Google Product Search. Viewing your public reviews looks something like this:

Now, you have publicly accessible reviews, however Google does not provide a way for you to show these to potential customers that have accessed your site via other means than Product Search. To this I put together a little Photoshop image and linked it directly to the Product Search Checkout Reviews. The cid being replaced by your sites cid. I also put the sort as 2, displaying reviews by descending rating.

Now just put the logo on your site:

Note: I am not affiliated with the sites linked to or displayed.

Update 1: It seems that Google Changes your author id from time to time. This won’t cause your old link to stop working, it simply will not show your newest reviews. About once a month do a Google Product Search for your own products and see if your link is the same as the one you are using on your website.

Update 2: Google has now reverted to my original author ID. I’m not quite sure why or when these changes are happening. However, as I said before just check the url you are using versus the product search one regularly.

In order to design a 2-click checkout process, we have to develop the cart in such a way that all requirements are met without going back to the customer to request the data. Instead we make a couple of guesses and do our best to search for the necessary information elsewhere.

I do not think simplicity could be more important than it is in Internet Retail. Every second that you cause a customer to wait (or every time you ‘require’ them to input less than absolutely necessary information) you are allowing any doubt regarding their purchase to take root and grow.

Our research shows that customers that are most likely to purchase are on our site for a total of 61-180 seconds. First, let me state that since we are now a Google Checkout only merchant, they may be required to sign up for a GC account which could possibly take 1-2 minutes. If they already have the GC account it takes <30 additional seconds to complete the transaction.

Customers that are on our site for less than a minute are obviously not drawn enough by our sales ‘pitch’ to purchase or bookmark and return at a later time. On the other hand, customers on our site for greater than 180 seconds are less likely purchasers than the 61-180 second customers. They are not as low of converters as the 0-60 visitors, but fall roughly in the middle of the two.

Obviously, one could argue correlation/causation regarding time on site and conversions, but I sincerely believe that much of our data is aligning towards simplicity (short checkout times) being the cause of higher conversions. If we can provide all relevant information to the customer and give them the ability to checkout in under 3 minutes, all the while not requiring anything but the most necessary of information, we have the best chance at concluding the sale.

Providing the customers with a simple (quick/easy) means of purchasing is the most important aspect of a shopping cart design. Unfortunately, it is also the most difficult to foresee and develop.