The Power of Multichannel Attribution at TD Bank [#CZLNY]

In his session at ClickZ Live New York, TD Bank's Nick Necsulescu shared the importance of multichannel attribution in making good marketing optimization decisions.

Solar Light – Your Questions, Answered

There are fantastic ways to save money, use less electricity and be more energy conscious. You can make a difference by learning all about solar lights. If you’re tired of feeling like your questions about solar lights are never answered correctly then you should continue reading. Solar lights are a great way to brighten your ...

6 Awesome MailChimp Automation Hacks – Lead Scored Emails, Pre-Filled Forms & More!

For the last couple of years, I have been running marketing automation campaigns for large corporations and multinational brands that want to take their marketing strategy to the next level. The work involves advanced clustering and segmentation, automated email flows, social media integration, lead management, and other push and pull mechanisms for personalizing the brand’s […]

Portable Solar Panels – Tips To Buy The Right One

The clean energy industry is a booming market in recent times, when the protection of the environment seems to be a priority for all. Solar energy has long been accepted as the best source for the safest and efficient energy that humans produce electricity for our consumption needs. Most countries are opting for this system ...

5 Mistakes to Avoid When Deploying Analytics

If you can avoid these five common mistakes when deploying your analytics, you will save yourselves, and your clients, a lot of trouble.

Luxury Maids, Inc. Impressive 5 Star Review by Maureen H.

Luxury Maids, Inc. reviews Excellent Rating Excellent service! Very courteous! Luxury Maids, Inc. Jupiter, FL

How Onnit Can Use KISSmetrics to Drive Their Growth

Launched in 2010, Onnit is a fast-growing company that sells nutritional supplements, food, and fitness products. Most products Onnit sells are their own private label, while a few are from third-party sellers. Many of Onnit’s products are consumables, meaning that customers need to reorder on a regular basis. Therefore, the key to Onnit’s success and […]

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Solar Powered Products

Sustainable or green energy is becoming one word above all for those who want to save on their energy consumption. The use of solar energy is becoming very popular not only because it is free and plentiful, it is also one of the cleanest renewable energy resources used today. Whether you are looking for some ...

Highlighted Aspects of the Solar Industry

Solar energy has entered our lives for decades, and has been the change in our lives since. With more spin-off industry, many things that have become difficult to treat. While many aspects have become very popular rooms that provide large amounts of benefits every day. What are they? Distributed solar Service The service relates to ...

Driving SaaS Growth With Customer Success

A business cannot survive without loyal customers. SaaS companies depend on recurring customers. Ecommerce companies need repeat purchase customers. Consumer internet companies need visitors to keep coming back on a routine basis. Happy customers are loyal customers. That’s why within many SaaS companies there is a department for customer success. It’s more than a support […]

Will a Solar Power System Work for You?

If you still think of going solar and find it difficult to choose the right provider and installer, then you’re in the right place. Here, we help you look more closely at how installing an outside residential solar reliable network allows you to save a lot of money and the best possible energy. Installation of ...

Solar Energy Risks to Health

Solar energy is a potential free electricity and water heating source. It has the power to take advantage of electricity in remote areas of the world. It seems to offer health and safety with power, but is it? Rarely health risks of solar energy are mentioned. This may be partly due to the limited use ...

SCVH Presentation

14 Ways to Find Any Email Address in 10 Minutes or Less

Posted by Freddie.Pro

Imagine you have a great piece of content. A complete piece of awesome, we'll call it. You know exactly who you want to share it with, but you can’t find any email addresses for them. 

There are some pretty obvious ways (and some not-so-obvious ways) you can attain such information. In this post, I am going to share with you my methods for acquiring the email addresses of crucial influencers, which is a critical step in amplifying your content.

1. The contact and about us pages 

You might think, “Seriously, Freddie? That’s pretty obvious.” Well yeah, it is, so how comes it’s missed so often?

Some people hide these pages in footers, in random links in the sidebar, or in author images.

If you still can’t find it, just try putting it in the web address bar as in the examples below.

	Example.com/contact
	Example.com/contact-us
	Example.com/contact-me
	Example.com/about
	Example.com/about-me
	Example.com/about-us

2. The author page

Scrutinizing the author page is a much underused tactic but is the ideal starting place. 

Some Wordpress themes and sites automatically show a lot of information on this page, usually linked to the author’s name on any blog post.

I found this author page on Econsultancy. Their editor-in-chief, Graham Charlton, has been so kind as to put his email address on the page.

3. WHOIS data

WHOIS data is publicly available, and is primarily used when registering a domain. 

Looking at Freddie.pro’s WHOIS data, you can see my address. (Oops, that's actually my old one. I need to update that!)

Check the full data out at Who.is.

4. Google

How would you search for anything else?

Simply enter the name of your target, followed by “email address”.

In the example below, you can see how to quickly identify Rand’s email address within the meta descriptions. You don’t even need to click through to find it.

Sometimes, if you are super lucky, the email address will be displayed via Google’s Knowledge Graph.

5. Facebook

Facebook pages are a great place to find email addresses for blogs and companies. When setting up a Facebook page, most people willingly fill in all the information they can and forget about it. This makes it super easy for you to pick up the email address they use the most.

6. Spokeo

Spokeo makes the sourcing of email addresses super easy—sometimes. All you need is an account ($5 per  month), and you can get cracking on sourcing email addresses.

It really is as simple as that. Well, usually.

The problem arises when you are searching for a popular name and have no other information about the person. You can end up with a list of potential emails, yet have no clue which one is correct.

So make certain you know as much as you can about the person beforehand (e.g., where they are based, age, and full name).

7. Your own email list

If you have any visibility in your industry, chances are good that people have signed up to your email subscriber list. Chances are also good that at least a few of those people are part of your target outreach list. By conducting a quick search of your database, you could save yourself some hassles. 

---

8. Buzzstream’s Buzzmarker

Buzzstream is a long-time market leader in the outreach space, and for good reason: The service is awesome. 

As well as providing an amazing outreach tool to track your sends, replies, and more, Buzzstream allows for some great contact details via its extension, the Buzzmarker.

In the above example, you can see that while the service cannot find a direct email for Brian Dean at Backlinko, it has picked up his contact page and about us pages. 

Check out Paddy Moogan's guides for a step-by-step ways to use the Buzzmarker and Buzzstream for outreach domination.

9. Ask for help on Twitter

You may think asking for help on Twitter is simple, but your tweet could easily be lost in a sea of mentions for your target (depending how popular they are).

Keep your tweet concise, and provide a compelling reason for the target to respond to it.  That is, make them want to give you their email address.

(Note: The images above are fictitious tweets.)

Sometimes you can suggest they DM you, as giving out an email address on Twitter can lead to serious spamming. (Be sure to make sure you are following them first, though.)

10. Ninja Outreach

Ninja Outreach is the new kid on the block, but it is poised to become a strong player in the outreach space.

Rather than making you crawl through the potential contact details of a site, this service automatically brings it to you.

Ninja Outreach is not foolproof, but can be a great way to attain an email address quickly when it works for you.

Along with email addresses, it can provide you with social media accounts and a whole host of other interesting data to help you qualify and connect with your outreach targets.

11. Export your LinkedIn connections

Chances are good that some of your connections on LinkedIn fall into the realm of outreach targets. 

A little known tool in LinkedIn’s settings is the ability to export your connections. Here's what to do:

1. Pop over to your connections page and click on the small cog in the top, righthand corner.

2. On this screen you will see “Export LinkedIn Connections”.

3. Click the button to see all your connections' email addresses organized in a beautiful spreadsheet.

 Your list of emails appears right before your eyes!

Warning: Please do not abuse this method. If you try to add random people in your industry on LinkedIn, you will be banned from adding future connections and could potentially lose your account.

12. Take a guess

Well, don’t blind guess. Construct an educated guess based on experience and how the company structures its email addresses. Potential structures of email addresses include the following:

		[FirstName]@example.com
		[FirstName].[LastName]@example.com
		[FirstName][LastName]@example.com
		[FirstInitial].[LastName]@example.com

If you have someone else's email address from the same company, you can likely infer how your outreach target's email address is structured.

13. Ask for an introduction

We all know the best form to get an “in” when building a relationship is being referred by a mutual friend (particularly an influential friend).

Chances are, you're linked in some way to your desired contact, whether it be through a single person or a network of people. Maybe you're linked by a small chain.

Conspire is a great tool to use for seeing the ties between people, and could prove invaluable for identifying the contact you need for an introduction.

What's great about Conspire is that it also shows an indication of how close connections are, from "acquainted” (meaning you have spoken once or twice) to “knows very well” (i.e., connections regularly contact each other).

In the image above, you can see that there are multiple possibilities to connect with Rand—potentially through Gianluca Fiorelli, Alex Holliman, or even through Lindsey Scott at Seer (via Wil Reynolds!). 

I could even go direct to Wil and ask for the connection if I was feeling brave enough.

14. Response Source

Response Source is a paid subscription service that brings journalists' content requests directly to your inbox (much like a UK version of HARO), so you know they're ready to receive content requests from you. The best part? They all have to leave at least one email address. Most supply a phone number and Twitter handle, too.

There are shortcuts out there like Response Source, albeit really expensive shortcuts. (Hat tip to Matt Evans for reminding me to include this particular example.)

Bonus: Rapportive

If you haven't heard of Rapportive, take the time to check it out. This service is absolutely worth adding to Gmail, even if you only set it up to check it out. 

Instead of rehashing what's already out there, I'm going to point you to this excellent how-to post on Rapportive by Rob Ousbey for Distilled: Find (Almost) Anybody's Email Address.

Do you have any other tips and tricks for finding elusive email addresses?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Should We Give Solar Power Another Try?

Cities in many countries suffer degradation of air quality. Oxygen levels are decreasing every year making it harder to breathe. Our water is actually much more polluted and trees are dying. The human race has made decisions that are harmful currently causing our planet to fade. Perhaps returning to the things we use at the ...

How to Use Bootstrap Basics to Enhance User Experience

Posted by Think_Traffic

Mobile is important for pretty much any website these days, and responsive design is by far the most popular way to cater to mobile visitors. Sure there are other solutions (e.g., mobile-specific sites or apps, for example). But from an SEO point of view, responsive design is hard to beat.

You can start from scratch, but it is often easier to use a framework such as Bootstrap. Using Bootstrap, you can create a nice-looking, simple, and responsive design super quickly. 

Here's how:

Getting Started

To get started, all you need to do is create an HTML file (or PHP for that matter) and link to the core Bootstrap files. There are two CSS files (one is optional), one Javascript (JS) file, and a few icons. You will also need to link to Jquery to make the Bootstrap JS file work correctly.

There are two ways to do this:

Using the Bootstrap CDN

All of the required Bootstrap files are hosted and available free of charge on a content delivery network (CDN), provided by MaxCDN, which means all you need to do is include links to those files in your HTML and everything will automatically work. 

Here's the links you'll need:

<link rel="stylesheet"
href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.2.0/css/bootstrap.min.css">
<link rel="stylesheet"
href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.2.0/css/bootstrap-theme.min.css">

<script src="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.2.0/js/bootstrap.min.js">
</script>
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.1/jquery.min.js">
</script>

Important Note: There are a couple of other recommended bits of header code to include too, so check the Bootstrap "Getting Started" page to see what you need to include or, alternatively, if you are new to Bootstrap, click here for a simple guide to creating a Bootstrap template that I wrote recently.

The upside to this from an SEO point of view is the CDN ensures these files load super fast, which is good for user experience. Additionally, because these same files are used on thousands of other sites, many users will already have them cached.

The downside is you won't be able to edit any of those files (although that could be a good thing really) and that you must keep your site up-to-date in case of any major Bootstrap updates (again, arguably a good thing).

Downloading the Files

For the experts, you can download the core LESS files and customise to your heart's content. But for most users, just downloading the standard precompiled CSS / JS is fine. You will get a folder with the files you need and you can then link to them from your HTML just as above, except of course the urls you link to will be wherever you upload the files to.

Create Another CSS File

Whichever option you choose, you will almost certainly want to add styles of your own. Bootstrap provides a framework, but you will need to customize it to your needs. You could edit the Bootstrap CSS directly, but it is best to create a new CSS file for your edits, in case you want to update your Bootstrap files down the line.

Creating Your Design

Remember, the main reason you're creating a responsive design is to improve the user experience for your visitors. So start by planning how you want your site to look. There are four sizes in Bootstrap by default:

• xs (mobile devices)
• sm (large tablets and netbooks)
• md (small to medium computers)
• lg (large computers)

But you don't have to create four different layouts. Many people just have one layout for mobile devices (typically single column) and a basic two-column layout for any other screen. (You can also make small changes as you move to a larger screen.)

Let's demonstrate this with a very simple example using a two-column layout:

And here is how it might look on a smaller screen:

To achieve this column design using bootstrap, all you need to do is enter the following code into your HTML page (excluding the code for the header):

    <div class='container'>
        <div class='row'>
            <div class='col-xs-12 col-md-4 col-md-push-8'>
                This is the sidebar
            </div>
            <div class='col-xs-12 col-md-8 col-md-pull-4'>
                This is the main content
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>

There is full documentation of how to use the CSS, components, and JS that is included in Bootstrap on the site. So I won't bother going through everything here. Hopefully though, creating the actual layout won't be difficult. So what about the SEO aspect?

SEO Considerations for Bootstrap

The main SEO considerations fall under two areas: user experience and load speed. Of course responsive design is principally about user experience, so as long as you think about your users as you design your site, you should be good.

Load speed, on the other hand, is always a tricky issue, as the demands on load speed vary from device to device, and you want to provide the best overall experience to each user regardless of device and bandwidth.

That being said, let's explore how we can make our Bootstrap pages load super fast on all devices.

Creating a Fast Page

The biggest downside to Bootstrap in terms of SEO terms is the CSS and JS files are relatively big, and in most cases, you will not be fully utilizing every aspect of that code. This means that your users are downloading unnecessary data.

The easiest way to speed things up is to make sure you link to the minified files rather than the normal ones. But you can do a lot more to speed things up by using the Bootstrap customizer:

Step 1 - Create your design and HTML

I recommend you download the regular, pre-compiled Bootstrap files and create your page as normal. Make sure to create your own CSS file. Don't make any changes to the core CSS or JS files.

As you code your page, make a note of which aspects of Bootstrap you are using.

For example:

• Are you using any tables? Or just divs?
• Are you using buttons? Or creating your own?
• Are you using the default typography?

Step 2 - Create a custom Bootstrap

Once you have completed your design, go to the Bootstrap custom compiler. You will see, at the top of the page, a long list of checkboxes. Hopefully, you now know which aspects of Bootstrap you actually need.

Uncheck any of the boxes you don't need. If in doubt, uncheck it. (You can always add it again later.) You can also make edits to the individual settings, such as colors, padding, and even the number of columns. (The default is 12.)

Side Note: You may think you only need two columns, but 12 is actually a very good number because it divides by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12, which gives you an awesome amount of flexibility. So my advice is to stick with 12 unless you have some really specific requirements.

(If you don't understand these options, simply leave them for the time being. However, if you have had to make many changes in your own CSS file, you might be over-riding settings you could change here instead.)

With a bit of practice, you can make your Bootstrap files much more efficient by customizing these settings, and hopefully, avoid having to use excessive amounts of additional CSS in your own CSS file.

Step 3 - Compile and download

Once you have finished editing your settings (or skipping past them), click the compile and download button at the bottom of the page for your custom Bootstrap files. Now, simply unzip them and replace the original files with your customized ones.

Hopefully, the page(s) you've created look and work exactly the same. Test them thoroughly, and if you find anything is not working, go back to the customizer and make sure you checked all of the right boxes (including any you were unsure about before).

For a fairly simple website, you can probably halve, at least, the size of your Bootstrap files by going through this process, which would make your site much faster.

Creating Faster Images

Images are tricky when you're talking about responsive design because big screens obviously need bigger images. You don't want to be sending a 1600px image to a mobile browser because that's a waste of bandwidth.

Unfortunately, there is no good solution to this problem yet. But here are a couple of techniques that can help make things faster:

Use media queries for backgrounds

This only works for background images, since we are going to use CSS media queries to serve the right image. But if you have any background images on your site, that might help to reduce load times substantially.

Start by taking your main, full size background image and creating a smaller version of it (and maybe also a medium version, if you wish). Now just include the following CSS for the element that contains your background image:

    #header {
        background-image: url(largeimage.jpg);
    }

    @media only screen and (max-width: 320px){
        #header {
            background-image:url(smallimage.jpg);
        }
    }

This will ensure that on smaller screens a smaller image will be downloaded, as the media query will override the original CSS property.

This article offers a really thorough guide to optimizing images for responsive sites, so check it out for more details.

Using media queries for images

There is no good option to use the same technique for regular images. However, one solution is to use background images instead of HTML img tags. The downside to this is that you miss out on the opportunity to include an alt tag, which is bad for SEO.

 Yet if you have a very image-heavy site, using this technique could substantially reduce load time for your mobile visitors. You'll have to make a decision as to which option is most important.

One alternative is to include a regular image:

    <div id='imageholder'>
        <img src="smallimage.jpg" alt='Your Alt Tag, for SEO' />
    </div>

Then use the following CSS:

    @media only screen and (min-width: 320px){
        #imageholder {
            background-image:url(largeimage.jpg);
        }
        #imageholder img {
            display:none;
        }
    }

As you can see, on larger screens the smaller image will be hidden and replaced with a background image at a much higher resolution.

With this technique, every user download the small image, but only desktop users download the (much larger) large image. This saves download time for mobile users, yet still gives you the opportunity to use an alt tag.

As of right now, it's not clear how this would impact SEO, since you are effectively hiding that image from desktop users. But if you have a lot of images, this could be a good compromise, and it will certainly improve load times for mobile users, which can only be a good thing.

Summary

This isn't a one-size-fits-all sort of a topic since every site is different, but the better you get to know Bootstrap, the more you can do with it.

Remember, Bootstrap, at its core, is a tool for making sites responsive and, hence, improving user experience. That, to my mind, makes it well worth investigating. 

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Irresistible Reasons To Create Your Own Solar Power At Home

1. promotion of government: the federal government offers discounts for the use of clean energy. For example, wind turbines and solar energy systems installed at the end of 2016 are eligible for a tax credit of 30 percent. A tax credit is better than a tax deduction to take money directly from their taxes instead ...

The Future of Content: Predictive Personalization

The future of marketing lies in data management platforms, which have the power to help marketers leverage consumer data to create personalized, targeted ad content.

Should Brands Pull Back on Detailed Analytics?

There is tons of data that can be gleaned from detailed analytics, but do brands really need all of that data? Does it really benefit them in the long run?

Environmental Benefits of Using Solar Power

Electricity is known to be the best invention of all time. With electricity, people have good lighting at night with the use of light bulbs. Electricity is the main source of almost all devices used in homes and institutions to work. And electricity enables companies to operate with the use of machines. With the help ...

Top 5 CMO Mistakes & How to Avoid Them (The Mistakes, Not the CMOs)

Introducing the 5 most difficult jobs in America, according to Career Overview: Coal Mining President of the United States Alaskan Crab Fishing Mercenary Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Confession: I may have bumped up CMO a few spots. OK, a few hundred spots, but that job is darn hard. (I’m blending CMO and Director of Marketing […]

Is Residential Solar Energy Worth It?

The amount of solar energy varies greatly depending on what part of the world that you can live. Places to get much sun are most beneficial when it comes to installing residential solar power systems. Any person residing in an area like Florida or Phoenix would actually losing significant savings. You can save thousands of ...

Reasons Why Your Solar Lights Are Not Working

One of the best solutions you can get for your home is solar lighting. It is economical and help reduce your energy costs. However, sometimes, sunlamps may stop working. You should know the reasons why solar lights do not work so you can correct them quickly and return to the economy. First, it is important ...

Protect Your Brand: Push Your Product, Not the Promotion

Brand promotion through email marketing is a crucial tool for customer acquisition and engagement. Many businesses waste precious effort and resources because they don’t plan their brand promotion properly. Traditionally, retailers have been able to just post huge signs and distribute flyers making consumers aware of the sale in the back. Their storefronts could remain […]

50 Digital Marketing Tools to Grow Your Start-Up

This list of 50 tools can help you boost your digital marketing start-up in every aspect, from SEO to social media to email.

4 most common uses of solar technology

Solar energy is one of the most popular forms of people have jumped on the bandwagon “Going Green”. The solar systems provide ways to make clean, renewable energy from the sun to electricity; However, as with all new systems, a large initial investment is required in terms of installation and setup. There are four main ...

10 Ways to Capture Email Leads Without Disturbing Your Visitors

Your email list is your biggest asset! Michael Hyatt, the “intentional leadership” author has built a multimillion-dollar business on the strength of his email list (115,000 and counting). (Source: His blog.) According to him and other industry experts, list building is the key to a regal online presence. But list building often annoys people. The […]

It Can Be Hard to Shift a Habit

What does it take to break consumers of their shopping habits and move them to your brand?

4 SEO Data Reports You Haven’t Looked at In a While (and Should)

We marketers are drowning in a sea of metrics. We have more numbers, statistics, analytics, percentages, pie charts, line graphs, and data crunching than we know what to do with. Why in the world am I going to tell you to look at four more? Here’s why. Often, we look at the same metrics over […]

Five Frequently Asked Questions About Solar Power Generation

Solar energy is different from any other form of energy. This is a special moment because it’s clean and green. More importantly, it has at least two essential functions. One is that it can be used to generate electricity, and the other is that it can be used to generate thermal energy. The first is ...

IBM Teams Up With Twitter for Social Media Data Analysis

The collaboration between IBM and Twitter will allow brands to incorporate Twitter's social data into other data sources in an effort to improve marketing decision-making.

How to Efficiently Use Solar Panels for Your Home

Finally decided to go solar? Fantastic! You will find some great energy savings in your near future. Plan to install yourself? There are some things you should know before buying. Read on for more information. To determine how many panels you will really need, you will need to do your homework. The first thing you ...

How to Multiply App Downloads with One Simple Localization Test

As of last July, there was a combined total of 2.5 million apps in the Google Play App Store and the Apple App Store. The app stores get more and more competitive every year, and app publishers are using every available advantage to increase their downloads. Number of apps in each of the app stores, […]

How Marketing Executives Use Twitter: Top Content Sources, Most Retweeted Handles

Nearly half (47%) of the content links shared by marketing executives on Twitter comes from mainstream media sources, according to a recent report from Leadtail. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

20 Must-Have Tools for Clever Marketers

As a marketer, you're often wearing many hats and simultaneously managing a variety of responsibilities and tasks--from social media to content creation. Luckily, there's an app or service for almost every marketing activity out there. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

6 Questions to Ask Your Programmatic Audience Targeting Partner

Before you begin working with any potential programmatic media partners, these six questions can help you make sure your campaign performs to the best of its ability.

101 Ways to Source Content Ideas

As the author of thousands of blog posts, one question I often get is: How do you think of new ideas for blog posts? I have had occasional writer’s block; but for the most part, coming up with ideas has never been an issue. If you pay attention to the world around you and listen […]

6 Must-Have Energy Efficient Devices In Your New Home

The good news about going green and installing energy saving devices in the home is that it is not necessary to make big changes immediately. You can make your home energy efficient by installing a device at a time. What devices are these? Let’s look at the most popular. 1. Programmable Thermostat Installing a programmable ...

SXSW 2015: Pandora Reaches Moment of Critical Mass With Audience Targeting

Pandora sat down to speak with ClickZ at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, about connecting with Millennials through better audience targeting.

How Can Solar Electricity Become Even Cheaper?

At the start of mass production of electricity from sunlight, discussions on solar electricity prices have never been arrested. The main focus is electricity produced from sunlight, which was generally more expensive than that supplied by the mains. Prices may be lower? If they can, how can we achieve it? falling costs One solar panels ...

Green Building Strategies

Homeowners and businesses of all sizes around the world are beginning to pay more attention to the techniques and strategies of ecological construction, both for the sake of the environment and the pocket of building occupants end. The good news is that sufficient time to evaluate exactly what initiatives have been helpful had elapsed. Manufacturers ...

SXSW 2015:Pandora Reaches Moment of Critical Mass With Audience Targeting

Pandora sat down to speak with ClickZ at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas about connecting with millennials through better audience targeting.

Off Grid Solar – The Best Financial Solution for Your Home

Consider using solar energy in a better way? Installing a solar power system outside the network today and stay tension free all year – round! As we can see, solar power systems have become very popular these days because of its effectiveness and meaningful approach. This new trend of installing solar systems in homes has ...

Driving Sustainable Business Growth

Growth is unique challenge. Knowing how and when to grow are just a few of the challenges young companies face. Three panelists at Airbnb recently chatted about these challenges. The panelists were: Annie Chang, who runs product at Homejoy. Sam Schillace, who is VP of Engineering at Box. Gustaf Alströmer is a product manager on […]

Predictions for the Solar PV Industry in 2015

The global market for solar PV is facing a strong growth momentum due to reduced production costs and technological advances in the industry. Governments and other agencies around the world to promote the use of solar energy through various financial incentives. The year 2015 should see continued growth, emerging markets and changes in production processes. ...

Solar Energy: Prospects and Challenges in the Arab World

The Arabic or region of the Middle East, the world is very rich in oil and natural gas resources that meet 96% of its total energy demand, while renewable energy sources are directed to a meager 4%. This influx of oil reserves is a major challenge for the development of renewable energy resources in the ...

A Guide to Implementing a Digital Asset Management System (It's a Lot Like Running a Bake Sale)

This handy little guide will steer you through the best-practices of setting up your digital asset management system--and show you that it's as easy as running a bake sale (but maybe not as tasty!). Read the full article at MarketingProfs

How to Solve the Biggest Pricing Challenge in the SaaS Industry

Don’t kid yourself. SaaS pricing is not easy. I understand. I have made a few mistakes when it comes to pricing. Through trial and error (life’s greatest teachers), I’ve learned how to price a product, how to improve customer LTV, and how to add features that improve sales and don’t cannibalize business resources. I want […]

Data Breaches and Brand Management: How to Preserve Your Brand Value

With the recent data security breaches at several powerhouses, brands need to find new brand management strategies to maintain their value.

The Art of Social Media: Viral Virtuoso Guy Kawasaki on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]

Guy Kawasaki, chief evangelist at Canva and author of 13 books, shares tips on content marketing and social media, and discusses how to spot a winning startup. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

The Forbidden Channel: Grow Your SaaS Business Through Direct Email

Some argue that the cold call is dead. However, if my growing business is any proof, the cold email pitch is alive and thriving. And, besides, in a world where spam filters are increasingly sensitive and most cold emails are decidedly unwelcome in a decision-maker’s inbox, then how could anyone be so successful with this […]

How to Assemble a Social Media Dream Team

You need a social media team that can absolutely nail it. That doesn’t happen by just putting warm bodies in front of computers. You need a team of innovators, mold-breakers, thinkers, organizers, brainstormers, collaborators, and strategists who are wicked smart, insanely skilled, and ready to push your business to an extreme level on social media. […]

Getting to Know You: The Key to 1:1 Marketing

One-to-one marketing is beneficial to both consumers and brands, but how can marketers use data to achieve this level of personalization?

5 Lessons from David Ogilvy That Still Work for Mobile App Marketing

He cooked for the President of France, sold stoves door-to-door, wrote questionnaires for a research firm, and worked for British Intelligence. Later, he built Ogilvy & Mather. Yes, we are talking about David Ogilvy, often described as the “Original Mad Man” and “The Father of Advertising.” He created some of the most successful marketing campaigns […]

Five Reasons Why Prospects Object to Your SaaS Product and How to Overcome Each Objection

You’d think that by now nearly everyone would be sold on the idea of SaaS, cloud services, and the power and flexibility of a subscription service to meet their needs. You’d think. Unfortunately, not everyone is convinced that SaaS is a legitimate model for software usage and purchase. I’m going to go through their main […]

Why You Need Pay-for-Performance Analytics

It's rare to find a company that suggests to its clients that it be paid on performance - but wouldn't it be nice if that were the standard?

If You Need Any Convincing That Solar Roadways Are The Future, This Video Will Help

Bright behind Solar Roadways released a video detailing his plans to change the world earlier this month, but the language minds really do not attract anyone’s attention. This new designer Scott Brusaw, however, certainly not make this mistake. “The solar access roads Freakin!” It is filled with passionate enthusiasm and specifically targets young minds adults ...

#SocialSkim: Leonard Nimoy Tributes, Clickable Instagram Ads, How House of Cards Viewers Tweet, More!

See how stars and fans alike mourned the passing of Leonard Nimoy. You'll also see Instagram's new ad formats, how House of Cards viewers tweet, and what drives customers to make social recommendations. Skim to stay in the know. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

What The Pulse App Co-Founders Learned About Building Products

Pulse Co-Founders Akshay Kothari and Ankit Gupta are two Stanford graduates that were always building side projects. All this experience made them learn some valuable lessons that helped them build the Pulse app, which earned them a $90 million acquisition from LinkedIn. Two weeks after the acquisition, they gave a talk at Stanford University and […]

Papa Chiropractic & Physical Therapy Jupiter Remarkable Five Star Review by Denise S.

www.papachiropractic.com/ Papa Chiropractic & Physical Therapy Jupiter reviews Excellent Review Prior to seeing Dr. Papa, the M.D. I was referred to for my back injury only offered me narcotics for pain with NO treatments. I was definitely not comfortable with that. When I went to Dr. Papa, he listened to me and started treatments immediately. Although it took quite a while to heal and become pain free, I did it all without ANY pain meds thanks to Dr. Papa. Papa Chiropractic & Physical Therapy 2632 West Indiantown Road Jupiter Florida 33458

Your SaaS Is NOT a Product: How to Change Your Mindset and Boost Your Revenue

It’s hard to think of something as both a product and a service. This whole both/and scenario is tough for those who view the world in black-and-white. But that’s what we have with an SaaS. The acronym spells it out — software as a service. We have software. And we have a service. We have […]

Is CRO a Dead End?

Is conversion rate optimization, in its current state, truly a sustainable and effective strategy?

Case Study: How An OpenCart Store Used Caching To Improve Page Load Speed

Posted by Adam J Thompson

For web users and SEOs alike, page load speed is an important factor for ecommerce sites. All of your hard work designing, copywriting and optimizing user experience is for naught if users become frustrated with slow page load times and navigate elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the popular ecommerce shopping cart solution OpenCart isn't tuned well for sites with lots of categories and products. Larger sites will see less than stellar performance if they use it as-is.

However, OpenCart’s slow performance is due to a couple of factors that can be easily tweaked, as I’ll show in this post.

(Image created by the author of this post)

Thanks to the open source nature of OpenCart, developers can go under the hood to speed things up. One of our clients, the developer and owner of the OpenCart store Budget Neon, took it upon himself to create speed enhancements for OpenCart. (You can run a speed test on the Budget Neon site to see how well these modifications work.) He has shared his OpenCart enhancements in a free and open source project called OCturbo.

Keep reading to learn how to use OCturbo tweaks to increase the page load speed of your OpenCart shop.

Why page load speed matters

According to a study by Akamai carried out in 2009, web users expect a page to load in two seconds or less. Furthermore, the same study indicated that 40% of web users click away from a site once load speed takes more than a couple seconds. The data doesn’t lie: page load speed is a significant factor for ecommerce success.

Ecommerce giant Amazon learned this lesson the hard way when they found out that for every 100 milliseconds of latency on their site, they were losing 1% in sales.

So what are site owners to do? While there are many factors that affect page load speed, server-side caching is one of the best ways to increase speed for database-driven sites.

Free and open source caching solutions for OpenCart

OCTurbo uses two types of server-side caching to increase page load speeds with OpenCart: page-level and PHP call caching in product categories. All code is available between the OCTurbo website and Kerry’s Github account.

Call caching in product categories

As shown in this screenshot, OpenCart shows product counts for categories:

(Image created by the author of this post)

Optimizing this code is OCTurbo’s bread and butter for OpenCart optimization. The underlying code that enables product counts for categories is incredibly heavyweight. By using OpenCart’s stock, file-based caching capability, OCTurbo is able to slash page load times of one or two seconds to less than .5 seconds.

Out of the box, the method call getTotalProducts() causes a flurry of SQL queries to be executed every time a page is loaded. OCTurbo caches the script and subsequent queries. After an initial page load, which establishes the cache, page load time improves dramatically. You can see details and code snippets here.

Page-level caching

The second prong of OCTurbo’s strategy utilizes page-level caching to optimize OpenCart speed across the site. The code inside OpenCart’s main index.php file works in two ways:

First, OCTurbo inserts code near the top of index.php, checking to see if a valid cached copy of the requested URL exists. If a cached copy exists, it gets served from the disk without having to run a single line of OpenCart code or any database queries.

At the end of index.php, OCTurbo inserts conditional code that runs only when a non-cached page has been served to the user. After serving the non-cached version, a copy of what was just served to the user is written to the disk.

The results we achieved

The code required for both of OCTurbo’s two main caching functions does use up some additional resources on the first load of each page. After all, the server still has to serve pages once for the code to run and caches to be made. However, any subsequent loads will be dramatically faster.

In order to get some measurements on the effectiveness of the code, we made three test sites with OpenCart, with all three hosting the same dummy site and running on the same 512mb DigitalOcean VPS. An Amazon AWS dataset was loaded to each site.

To level the scales, we measured the time it took to load just the HTML of each page itself, along with the OpenCart code:

(Image created by the author of this post)

As you can see, the results are remarkable. With very little code, we were able to shave almost a full second off the page load time of a stock OpenCart Install. This screenshot shows an example test by Pingdom showing Budget Neon loading faster than 98% of tested websites:

(Image created by the author of this post)

Which sites should use caching?

Caching speeds up sites by removing the need for your web server to execute many lines of PHP and multiple database queries each time a page is loaded. Instead, the server simply serves up a static cached page. The largest performance jumps will generally be seen by sites with a low-performance server or web hosting package, but all websites can benefit from caching. I have personally never seen a website where caching couldn't improve performance.

Measuring your results

How can you tell whether caching has improved your website's performance and by how much? There are several tools you can use, but the best approach is to use a tool that measures page load times in seconds. (Tools like Google's PageSpeed Insights measure your site based on how many of their technical best practices you've implemented, not actual page load speed.) 

I use Pingdom's website speed tool.

Here's how I recommend testing page load speed before and after installing caching:

1. Go to Pingdom's website speed tool
2. Run three tests from each of the two closest locations to your web server
3. Calculate the average page load speed in seconds
4. Install the caching modifications
5. Load the page once more (to save the page in the cache)
6. Run three tests from each of the two closest locations to your web server
7. Calculate the average page load speed in seconds
8. Compare the before and after speeds

Other speed optimization solutions

Implementing page caching is an important part of optimizing Opencart for optimal page load times, but it's certainly not the only area you should pay attention to. In addition to caching, I recommend working on the following two areas:

• Front-end code optimization. Optimizing the browser-facing parts of your website (minifying Javascript, optimizing images, reducing HTTP requests, using image sprites, etc.) typically has a significant impact on increasing page load speeds. You'll notice that Budget Neon also uses image sprites to reduce the number of image files downloaded. Google's PageSpeed Insights tool provides an excellent starting point for optimizing this aspect of your website for faster page loads speeds.
• Upgrade your server. If you’re using shared hosting or working with a slow server, upgrading your server will typically provide a significant boost to your page load speeds. In one test we ran, upgrading from shared hosting to a good VPS cut page load times in half. I've also seen significant improvements by upgrading from a low-end VPS to a more powerful VPS or dedicated server.

If you focus on caching to reduce the need for your server to work, upgrading your server and optimizing the browser-facing code should result in much faster page load speeds across your entire OpenCart website.

Do you have any OpenCart tweaks of your own? If so, please drop a link in the comments and share your work!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

The Psychological Trigger That’s Confusing Your Customers (and What to Do about It)

For countless years, businesses have been searching for their own unique selling propositions, trying to differentiate themselves from their competitors and convince customers to choose them. Businesses go about this in many ways, such as by highlighting the different features they have, lowering prices (or, in some cases, increasing prices), or focusing on the competitor’s […]

Agency Professionals: Metrics for Your Personal Success Dashboard

Creating an analytics dashboard that charts your personal successes at your agency can be beneficial for both you and your company - here's how to do it.