But now, everything changes again. It has no surprise that other geeks are having the same love to Chrome and they decided to create Chrome Extension, which has similar function to Firefox Addon. I digged into those extensions and was very satisfied to them, therefore I decided to pick up 40 extensions which is extremely helpful for web designers and share with you guys. |
So here they are for you, gear your Chrome and boost your productivity up. |
Just as its name, ColorPicker is a convenient extension created mainly to pick and get color’s value from anywhere on the web page. Additionally, you can pick an area then click on the color palette to see how the area’s color changes without touching any code. |
Having headache on finding color scheme from image? Chrome palette solves your problem efficiently by create up to 64 color palettes from website’s image for your design or inspiration needs. |
Colour Tweaker can modify the color of the website as Color Picker does, but with a more specific method. Just input the CSS selector on this extension then tweak the color of the text, background and border color to your will. |
No more guessing and tiring program switching, Font Editor allows you to modify and observe font setting like size, line height and variant lively. |
As specified in its name, this extension allows you to preview font from Google Font Directory with text styling options which are size, style, weight and shadows. If you are satisfied with particular font, you can copy and paste the link and the CSS code provided in the extension to your website’s code to use the font. |
Probably the must-have extension for web designer and developer. From viewing script to display object information, Web Developer aims to provide every piece of information you need from an existing website. The extension is also armed with useful tools like color picker, window resizer, validator, etc. |
Lightweight and handy developer tool that’s similar to the Web Developer, but only equipped with necessary tools like style viewer, source viewer and validator. |
Different from what it is in Firefox, Firebug Lite offers Firefox-like visual representation when it comes to HTML elements, DOM elements and Box Model Sharing. It also comes with the ability to inspect HTML elements with your mouse, and you can edit CSS properties with this extension lively. |
Stylebot grants you the ability to style any website directly without touching CSS code, which saves a lot of typing work. The best feature of this extension is probably its ability to generate CSS code for your use everytime you make a change to the website. |
Tired of pushing ‘Inspect Element’ everytime you want to know what CSS style is applied to certain element? CSS Viewer helps you by display essential information such as font, color and positioning of the element lively. |
Reloads CSS stylesheet without refreshing entire website, which greatly saves your waiting time especially for designer with slow internet connection. |
The coolest part of this extension is it lists out every implemented web technology such as frameworks and web standard with very detailed information. |
Proved to be the most similar one to the original Internet Explorer, IE Tab Multi is your Internet Explorer within Chrome which supports tons of IE’s default feature like multi tabbing. |
With Window Resizer, you can test your website’s screen resolution compatibility with standard or user-defined screen resolutions. |
One of the best validator extension that can validate HTML code of online or localhost web page in either auto or manual mode. You can also choose to show the validation result in the web page or view it in a completely new tab. |
With various theme and font options, Sight highlights the source code of the website into a more visually comfortable form. |
Being bugged by PHP erros but don’t know what and where it is? PHP Console assists you by display errors, exceptions and debug messages in notification form. |
JavaScript API Search adds support to the Chrome Omnibox, or so called address bar to search for JavaScript functions online with autocomplete feature. If the extension cannot find the function you are searching for, it will further suggest you related searches from Google Codesearch, Development and Coding Search, and the Mozilla Developer Network search. |
While jQuery has proven itself to be the leading Javascript library that improves user experience, jQuery API Search grants you the ability to search though jQuery API from Chrome Omnibox. Just type ‘jq’ followed by a space in omnibox, then you are on the go. |
Similar to jQuery API Search, this extension adds support to your Chrome Omnibox to search PHP code for your reference use. |
Swored to keep yourself away from time wasting website but never did it successfully? Stay Focused acts as your virtual supervisor that blocks time wasting website for a specified time, and advises you seriously when you try to unblock or decrease the blocking time for the site. It’s also armed with crucial feature like nuclear option and challenge mode which kills your time wasting desire in a merciless manner. |
Inspired from Opera browser, Speed Dial is a classic extension that changes the Chrome’s new tab into a predefined visual bookmarks with links and site thumbnails. You can even specify background theme and image to comfort your visual experience. |
With PopChrom, you can define your own shortcuts for text phrases, such as ‘ty’ for ‘thank you’. The activation key is needed to transform the abbreviation into the defined text phrases, so choose a key combination that does not crashes with other shortcut key. |
Quickrr Productivity Kit provides you a bundle of basic yet useful tools such as translator, calculator, task-to-do, unit converter, etc. |
With an easy-to-setup account, you can access into this task manager to jot down and edit every task you need to complete. The best part of this extension is your tasks are stored online so you can access the task record on every Chrome with this extension installed. |
Track your time spent on certain task, or record the time you spent on particular website. Ananke timer also supports multiple time tracking and allows you to browse though what you have tracked in past. |
Created by Google, Chrome Toolbox brings you custom features like tab behavior modification, form data restoration and shortcut creation that launches predefined links from bookmark folder. |
Nobody loves to click more to access certain page, Chrome Page Extended is your fastest shortcut to access all necessary Chrome page like Extensions. |
With AppJump, you can organize and quickly launch Chrome application from browser toolbar. |
Too many bookmarks and failed to organize them efficiently? Boorkmark Bar Switcher allows you to create brand new bookmark bar and switch between them easily. |
Save your windows sessions and restore them later on any computer with TabCloud, which saves you a lot of time from re-open different website from different part of bookmark folder. |
Developed by search engine giant Google, Similar Pages searches the web for similar web content that you are reading and interested to discover more. |
Resourcing or referencing are easier with Universal Search, which gives you an search box with option to search on Wikipedia, Bing and other search engines. The search box will also pop up when you highlight any text from the website you are currently viewing. |
A totally awesome screenshot extension that captures any part of the website and annotate it with rectangles, circles, arrows, lines and text. You can then export the screenshot in PNG file format to your computer or web. |
Official extension by Evernote to capture and note your discovery on the web then upload to Evernote. The extension also supports the feature to search and synchronize your saved note. |
Use Diigo to hightlight, annotate or post sticky notes privately or publicly to the web page so you can view it on anytime you reach to the web page. |
Think Thinkery as your online brain, then save your link address and text selection into it for viewing later. |
Note taking should be an easy process, and it’s possible with myNotes which allows you to bookmark selected text with just one click on the context menu. |
Stumbled upon an interesting web page but don’t have time to read it? Just right click to bookmark the page into Google Bookmarks for enjoyment later. |
Probably the only search extension for you to look for high quality stock photo from famous agencies like Fotolia, Dreamstime and Shutterstock. |
This morning on Hacker News, members spotted a gaping security hole in Tumblr, which exposed more than 748 lines of sensitive configuration information out into the open. Members pointed to possible errors at the core of the PHP scripting language that might make the data dump inevitable. The error could have been a coding mishap, such as a missed opening PHP tag. Other coders felt that blaming PHP was unfair as security holes can be design as much as language. |
The problem with PHP is that there’s no easy way of sharing state between requests. If you have a separate (ini-style) configuration file, every time you get a new request, the file will have to be read in from disk and parsed.
On heavily-loaded web servers this can be a significant performance issue. Configuration stored in a PHP file will be cached by your opcode cache and so doesn’t incur any per-request parsing/reading overhead.
The problem here is not that Tumblr stored their configuration in PHP. The problem is their lack of testing their changes.
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A human error caused some sensitive server configuration information to be exposed this morning. Our technicians took immediate measures to protect from any issues that may come as a result.
We’re triple checking everything and bringing in outside auditors to confirm, but we have no reason to believe that anything was compromised. We’re certain that none of your personal information (passwords, etc.) was exposed, and your blog is backed up and safe as always.
This was an embarrassing error, but something we were prepared for. The fact that this occurred at all is still unacceptable, and we’ll be seriously evaluating and adjusting our processes to ensure an error like this can never happen again.
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All in all- this morning’s Tumblr bug wasn’t catastrophic and it’s hopeful that users’ passwords weren’t compromised. The event seems likely equivalent to a Saturday morning hangover- the kind where you wake up exposing yourself to a stranger, wishing you’d used better protection. |
A similar event occurred 3 years ago at Tumblr, which also made it into the Hacker News forum. In this instance, one user noticed that if you login to a personal Tumblr account then manually type in /admin, it directs you to the systemwide Tumblr admin page. |
Members argued over whether or not the coding error should’ve been posted into the forum before or after notifying Tumblr. Unfortunately, Tumblr doesn’t provide an easy mail to address on its home page. |
We’re taking our best thinking from iPad and bringing it all to the Mac with Mac OS X Lion, available in summer 2011. Here’s a preview of some of the top features. |
The best way to find and download Mac apps. |
Just like shopping the App Store on iPad, the Mac App Store offers endless possibilities for browsing and purchasing apps. Newly purchased apps install in one step and appear right in the new Launchpad. The Mac App Store is available now on any Mac running Mac OS X Snow Leopard and will be a part of Mac OS X Lion. Learn more about the Mac App Store |
A home for your apps.
Launchpad gives you instant access to your apps — iPad style. Just click the Launchpad icon in your Dock. Your open windows fade away, replaced by an elegant, full-screen display of all the apps on your Mac. It takes just a swipe to see multiple pages of apps, and you can arrange them any way you like by dragging icons to different locations or by grouping apps in folders. And when you download an app from the Mac App Store, it automatically appears in Launchpad.
Ready to blast off.
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Get a full-screen view of all your apps in Launchpad. |
In iPhoto, see all your Events at one time in full-screen view. |
The app and nothing but the app. |
On iPad, every app is displayed full screen, with no distractions, and there’s one easy way to get back to all your other apps. Mac OS X Lion does the same for your desktop. You can make a window in an app full screen with one click, switch to another app’s full-screen window with a swipe of the trackpad, and swipe back to the desktop to access your other apps — all without ever leaving the full-screen experience. Systemwide support allows third-party developers to take advantage of full-screen technology to make their apps more immersive, too. So you can concentrate on every detail of your work, or play on a grander scale than ever before.* |
Mac command central.
Mission Control is a powerful and handy new feature that provides you with a comprehensive look at what’s running on your Mac. It gives you a bird’s-eye view of everything — including Dashboard and full-screen apps — all in one place. With a simple swipe, your desktop zooms out to Mission Control. There you can see your open windows grouped by app, thumbnails of your full-screen apps, and Dashboard, arranged in a unified view. And you can get to anything you see in Mission Control with just one click. Making you the master of all you survey.
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More handy ways to interact
with your Mac. |
Multi-Touch gestures make everything you do on iPad easy and intuitive. Now a richer Multi-Touch experience comes to the Mac. Enjoy more fluid and realistic gesture responses, including rubber-band scrolling, page and image zoom, and full-screen swiping. In Mac OS X Lion, every swipe, pinch, and scroll looks and feels more responsive and lifelike. |
Say good-bye to manual saving. Auto Save in Mac OS X Lion automatically saves your work — while you work — so you don’t have to. Lion saves changes in the working document instead of creating additional copies, making the best use of available disk space. The lock feature prevents inadvertent changes from being saved and automatically locks documents after two weeks. And the revert feature returns you to the state the document was in when you last opened it, so you can feel free to experiment with confidence.* |
Versions records the evolution of a document as you create it. Mac OS X Lion automatically creates a version of the document each time you open it and every hour while you’re working on it. If you need to revert to an older version or retrieve part of a document, Versions shows you the current document next to a cascade of previous versions — in an interface similar to that of Time Machine — so you can see how your work looked at any given time. You can revert with a click, or quickly copy and paste work from a previous version into the current version.* |
Pick up exactly where you left off.
If you’ve ever restarted your Mac, you know what’s involved. First you save your work, then close all your apps, then spend valuable time setting everything up again. With Resume, that time-consuming process is a thing of the past. Resume lets you restart your Mac — after a software update, for example — and return to what you were doing. With all your apps back in the exact places you left them. In fact, whenever you quit and relaunch an app, Resume opens it precisely the way you left it. So you never have to start from scratch again.*
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A whole new way to look at email.
Just like Mail on iPad, Mail 5 in Mac OS X Lion features a new layout that takes advantage of the widescreen display on your Mac. You see the messages in your inbox as well as a full-height preview of the selected message. The new Mailbox bar gives you one-click access to your favorite folders. Mail 5 also includes a powerful new way to search that makes finding what you’re looking for quick and easy, even in the largest of inboxes.
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Keep the conversation flowing.
Mail 5 also introduces Conversations, a natural new way to read and manage email that automatically groups messages from the same conversation — even if the subject changes along the way. Just click a conversation in your inbox to reveal a streamlined feed of individual messages in chronological order, and easily file or delete an entire conversation.
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With AirDrop in Mac OS X Lion, you can send files to anyone around you — wirelessly. AirDrop doesn’t require setup or special settings. Just click the AirDrop icon in the Finder sidebar, and your Mac automatically discovers other people nearby who are using AirDrop. You’ll even see contact photos for those who are already in your Address Book. To share a file, simply drag it to someone’s name. Once accepted, the file transfers directly to the person’s Downloads folder. When you’re done with AirDrop, close the Finder and your Mac is no longer visible to others. |
All-new FileVault
A new level of security.
Keep all the data on your Mac even more secure with XTS-AES 128 data encryption at the disk level. Initial encryption is fast and unobtrusive — it encrypts everything in the background while you work. FileVault also encrypts for your external drives, and provides the ability to wipe all the data from your Mac instantaneously.
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Lion Server is now part of Mac OS X Lion. It’s easy to set up your Mac as a server and take advantage of the many services Lion Server has to offer. Here are just a few of the new features that make server deployment faster, easier, and more powerful than ever. |
Manage users and groups easily. Even monitor performance with graphs. |
Easy Setup
Lion Server guides you through configuring your Mac as a server. And it provides local and remote administration — for users and groups, push notifications, file sharing, calendaring, mail, contacts, chat, Time Machine, VPN, web, and wiki services — all in one place.
Profile Manager
Profile Manager delivers simple, profile-based setup and management for Mac OS X Lion, iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices. It also integrates with your existing directory services and delivers automatic over-the-air profile updates using the Apple Push Notification service.
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Wiki Server 3
Wiki Server 3 makes it even easier to collaborate, share, and exchange information. Users can quickly switch between a server’s home page, My Page, Updates, Wikis, People, and Podcasts. File sharing is simpler than ever, and a new Page Editor makes customization a breeze.
File Sharing for iPad
Lion Server delivers wireless file sharing for iPad. Enabling WebDAV in Lion Server gives iPad users the ability to access, copy, and share documents on the server from applications such as Keynote, Numbers, and Pages.
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 For one hour on March 26, millions of people will turn off their lights and sit in relative darkness. It may seem like a random way to support environmentally sustainable action, but Earth Hour — a global initiative in partnership with the World Wildlife Fun (WWF) — is hoping that one hour of darkness will lead to a whole year of change.
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Begun in Australia in 2007, Earth Hour has grown exponentially. Last year, more than 125 countries participated in the self-imposed blackout. Even major landmarks such as Rome’s Colosseum, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, Toronto’s CN Tower and Egypt’s Pyramids went dark to support the cause. |
This year, Earth Hour will take place from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., local time, March 26. The various time zones will create a wave effect as countries show their support hour by hour. |
Despite the international acceptance and support, Earth Hour has been plagued by accusations of poor effectiveness. Sure, it’s great for people to spend an hour thinking about the planet, but what happens at 9:31 when all the lights go back on? What kind of change can a one-off event really have? |
Earth Hour, on its skeleton crew, has been trying to answer that question for five years. Now, they think they might have the answer in a new platform designed for and powered by its millions of supporters. |
While we’ve heard some great stories about Google’s Street View over the years, it’s not often that we get to see the technology behind that makes it all happen. As Google has traveled the world, gathering Street Views for Google Maps and more, the team has collected some amazing images that we’ve not gotten to see as of yet. |
While we’ve been able to photograph most places in Street View with our cars, plenty of unique and interesting locations around the world aren’t accessible by car. To help us visit places with smaller paths or unpaved terrain, we’ve developed the Trike, Snowmobile and Trolley, which have enabled us to share parks, ski trails, and even museums with you in Street View. You can now check out pictures and 3D models, and learn more about all of these platforms on the site. |
It’s an interesting read, especially when you consider the tech behind the whole project. We all knew about the Street View cars, but did you know that there are even tricycles, for those hard-to-reach spots? |
Warner Bros. Entertainment said it will start renting movies via Facebook, the latest effort by movie studios to find new revenue sources as consumers buy fewer DVDs and spend more time online. |
The studio, owned by Time Warner Inc., created the rental application independently of Facebook Inc., enlisting a third party to host and stream the movies. The first movie on offer is "The Dark Knight," the 2008 hit Batman movie. |
The initiative represents one of the first times that a major media company has used the social-networking site as a means to directly offer movies. |
Warner Bros.' move also indicates that, at least for now, Facebook prefers to simply allow other companies to use its popular platform to set up their own virtual screening rooms, with Facebook taking a cut of sales. |
Facebook is taking its first step to connect users with movies and TV shows, with Warner Bros' "The Dark Knight" now available to rent on Facebook's website. Should services like Netflix and Hulu worry about Facebook's massive user base? Peter Kafka discusses with Lauren Goode on digits.
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Facebook is becoming an increasingly popular site for uploading and streaming video but the company hasn't announced any plans to launch a paid video service of its own. It also has done little so far to make money directly from the videos it serves itself. There are no ads before or after such videos, aside from the regular display ads along the right-hand side of the site. |
In January, Facebook.com was the sixth-most popular video site in the U.S., with 42 million viewers and an average of 15.4 minutes per viewer, according to comScore Inc. Facebook's popular video content includes user-generated clips and music videos |
Fans who "like" "The Dark Knight" can pay to watch the film using 30 Facebook Credits, costing $3. As it does with all transactions using the currency, Facebook keeps 30% of that fee. Warner said it will be offering new titles down the line. The service went live Tuesday. |
Last month Warner Bros. began offering mobile-device "app editions" of "The Dark Knight" and "Inception." Those editions play the movies within a freestanding application for iPhones or iPads, rather than through a download service like Apple's iTunes Store or Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s Vudu. The app editions cost around $10, the same price as the iTunes Store charges to buy the movie. |
At $3, the Facebook proposition is pricier than a rental from Coinstar Inc.'s Redbox—though it lasts 48 hours, instead of the 24 hours allowed by Redbox's $1 DVD-rental kiosks. Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store also charges $3 to rent "The Dark Knight." |
The movie isn't available via Netflix Inc.'s Web-based on-demand service. |
Warner's president of digital distribution, Thomas Gewecke, said the studio chose "The Dark Knight" as its launch title largely because it has already been "liked" by 3.9 million Facebook users. |
Though Warner Bros. describes its "Dark Knight" and "Inception" apps as tests, they highlight Hollywood's need to deal with the threat of the Web. |
Movie studios and other companies are eager to keep up as consumers increasingly go online for their entertainment. They also are mindful that their video content has to be current, convenient and at prices that won't drive consumers to seek out illegal, pirated options, which remain plentiful on the Internet. |
Amazon.com Inc. recently started offering a subscription plan for instant watching of movies and TV shows. |
Adding major online distribution channels could dilute the power wielded by established players like Apple and Netflix in their dealings with Warner Bros. and other studios. Many in the recorded-music industry have lamented ceding too much influence to Apple, whose iTunes Store, now the biggest music retailer, is effectively able to dictate terms to record labels. |
Studios can no longer count on DVD sales and are experimenting with new ways of earning revenue online. Last year, U.S. sales of DVDs totaled $7.8 billion, down 43% from their 2006 peak of $13.7 billion, according to media-tracking firm IHS Screen Digest. From 2009 to 2010 alone sales of the discs plunged roughly 20%. |
Studios would need many more rental transactions in order to make up for the revenue lost to declining DVD sales. According to an analysis Walt Disney Co. recently showed investors, movie rentals, on average, generate about 20% as much per transaction as DVD sales. An average video-on-demand viewing generates 30% as much as a DVD sale, the company said. |
Renting movies on a popular site like Facebook, where hundreds of millions of users already spend their time—and, increasingly, their money—could help boost that volume. |
 The trend was obvious for quite some time, and now it finally happened: Android is the most popular smartphone platform among U.S. subscribers.
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According to comScore’s data, Google’s Android rose from 23.5% market share in October 2010 to 31.2% in January 2011, enough to securely grab first place from RIM’s BlackBerry, which fell 35.8% in October 2010 to 30.4% in January 2011. A recent report from Nielsen also claimed that Android is now the number one smartphone platform in the U.S., albeit with slightly different numbers. |
Apple’s iOS experienced a minute growth in the same period: from 24.6% to 24.7%, while Microsoft and Palm continued losing market share, ending at 8.0% and 3.2%, respectively. |
TweetDeck, will be relaunched on both iPhone and iPad devices within the next couple of weeks, bringing with it all of the much-loved features from its Android counterpart so that it will make the most of the iPhone 4′s Retina Display. |
Posting to the offcial TweetDeck Blog, Richard Barley (Community Manager at TweetDeck) notes that the team have completely rewritten the iOS application from scratch so that will “raise the bar for iOS apps”, like it did with its Android app, taking the “level of quality and innovation” to build in “a whole bucketful of magic” to create a new TweetDeck app for iPhone and iPad. |
The new app centres around the flexible columns which can blend mentions, Twitter Lists, Direct Messages and even Facebook feeds. The user will have complete control over what is displayed in their main feed, choosing to load them separately if they so wish. |
TweetDeck is currently doing a final round of testing before it submits the application to the App Store, hoping to release in the “next couple of weeks”. TweetDeck founder Iain Dodsworth and Steve Summers, who handles TweetDeck’s Website and Partnerships, will be heading to SXSW later this week to share the app with 50 lucky attendees, so you if you are attending, you could be one of the first to experience the new TweetDeck iOS app. |
Being big fans of the Android app, we have high hopes for TweetDeck for iPhone and iPad – we will of course let you know as soon as it is released. |
Can You Ditch Your Gadgets For a Day?
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 Tonight marks the beginning of the 24-hour National Day of Unplugging, where you're supposed to avoid technology — including cell phones, Twitter and Facebook updates, email, and even TV — and go gadget-free for a day. The aim is to get people to "reclaim time, slow down their lives and reconnect with friends, family, the community and themselves." I know I won't be able to ditch my phone for a day, but it does serve as a good reminder to disconnect for periods of time and give yourself a break from digital correspondence.
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1. Don’t Just Create – Market Your Content. |
Even major search engines cannot make the difference between quality content and hype, so it automatically cannot make great pieces of writing, art or multimedia visible. Only we as humans can discover, react, comment and link to fantastic content on the web. So, it is only natural that great content cannot simply be created and left for visitors to find. You must market it. Placing your website in “sponsored sites” or link building through article marketing and guest posting is the best way to market your content and get noticed directly by the audience. |
2. Know How Your Customers Find You. |
The way your readers find you changes with the speed of thought, as the splinternet fragments content access and customer experiences due to mobile device proliferation and password-protected content. It’s important how you choose to place your brand in their way and it depends on how they engage with the search engines and devices. Until it will be possible to track consumers across devices, you can use options like purchase path analysis and linguistic profiling. |
3. Identify Your Visitor’s Needs. |
Understanding your customers and their needs and truly seeing where they are coming from during the buying process is essential to your overall conversion strategy. Also, invest in your website. Keep in mind that usability is more important than aesthetics, but at the same time aesthetics are essential too. |
4. Optimize Across A Customer’s Conversion Process. |
Your basic conversion rate is equal to the total number of people that visit your site in a certain time period divided by the total number of orders for that same period. So, if you receive 5,000 visitors in one month and you get 100 orders in that month, then your conversion rate is = 100/5000 = 2%. Optimizing your conversion rate includes monitoring, testing, listening, asking and improving through every step in the marketing process: prospect -> lead -> visitor -> subscriber -> customer -> brand advocate, etc. Once you optimized your customer’s conversion process, you’ll enjoy the benefits of gaining more customers month after month and year after year. |
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