Sports Card Strategy Show

At Data Driven Design, we love change. It's our sixth differentiator. And it's a good thing we do, because Google is changing Google Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools) all of the time. It used to be that you had to verify your domains for each domain prefix, www., http://, https:// etc., but now, there is a new feature called "Domain Properties" that takes care of all of them at once.  This is now highly recommended, but the verification process is different than before. You need to create a TXT record in your DNS settings now. It's simple to do, but can take up to 10-12 hours to propagate and for Google to see the verification. This video shows you how to verify your site with Google as a Domain Property.

I don't get hit with a lot of spam on my WordPress forms, to be honest, but some websites do, big time. And believe me, I know first hand that small business owners have no time to deal with spam from their new WordPress websites.  For a service provider like Data Driven Design and other agencies, spam can ruin the client experience, leaving a bad taste in their mouth, which is why this Data Driven Daily Tip talks about one of my favorite WordPress plug-ins, Gravity Forms, and how to implement Google reCAPTCHA once your site has gone live.

A common use case for Web Designers and Developers to need to figure out a client's old IP address after maybe not planning for it, would be something like trying to bring back a clients old website to take a look at the content after pointing the A Record to the new site.  Or, if you're like me, a couple weeks ago, I actually went in during the middle of the night to migrate a client's website, and pointed the WRONG A RECORD! Whoops.  I needed to retrace my steps, but hadn't documented what I was doing. So I needed to figure out how to get the old IP address.  Thank goodness I found SecurityTrails.com and brought their website back up immediately, as shown in this video.

In a recent Data Driven Design Q and A session with followers, I was asked, "how can my business build a Facebook Messenger Bot?"  While it's a great question, if you've never built a Facebook Messenger Bot, or managed a chat bot before, I'd recommend starting by utilizing Facebook Ads' ability to place a Facebook Ad with a Messenger Objective that has the ability to add an automated Bot reply. This article shows you how to do it, and it's a good place to start, because you can target an audience, spend $15, have a quick automated conversation set up with people who engage with the ad, and see how well it works for your business.

One question I've been asked a ton recently, and seemingly 40% of all web projects is about adding an automated chat feature to a website. 1. Paul, does it work? 2. Paul, how should we do it? The answer to the first question is, yes, it CAN work, but you have to nurture it just like your other digital marketing and customer service initiatives in order for it to work. For example, an office receptionist can work, if he does his job well, paying attention to people who walk in, asking them immediately how he can help, offering them something to drink, asking about how their day is going, and then directing them to the right place, and even occasionally asking them for their contact information so they can follow up. If you treat your chat bot initiative on your website in this manner, it can be one of the greatest customer acquisition tools in the history of digital. However, if your office admin (in this analogy), is NEVER at his desk - always off doing something else - and when he actually is sitting at his desk he's too busy to look up from his computer, your chat bot initiative will FAIL. To answer question 2, I'm fond of a third party service called TIDIO.com. I've used many WordPress chat plug-ins, and none work as well as TIDIO, which works on any kind of website, all you have to do is insert a line of javascript code in your website.

One of the things about having a WordPress website is that there are several factors that control your website's health, well-being and performance. One of them that controls your site's compatibility with Plug-ins - among other things - is the version of PHP that you're running. Now, if you've been on a Managed WordPress host like GoDaddy, BlueHost, HostGator or even WPEngine for several years, there's a good chance your website is running an older version of PHP, like 5.0 or 5.2. WPEngine is the only host that is requiring updates, allowing you to test on a one click staging environment, and identifying incompatible plug-ins that will break once they upgrade your site. But GoDaddy Managed WordPress makes it easy to upgrade as well. This video shows you how.

A super interesting question popped up during one of our recent Data Driven Academy Live Access Sessions. Member Kelly Savoca of CottonandMoss.com asked, I'm thinking of only picking two social media outlets to go deep into putting content out on, due to time constraints, which two should I pick between FB, Insta and Pinterest. Listen to our answer here.

Pinterest has an advertising platform with the ability to run ads and sponsor pins, but the greatest and most powerful thing we've seen when analyzing web data on Pinterest is that simply being active on the platform drives traffic from your Pinterest page to your website. We explain in this video taken during a Data Driven Academy Live Access Session - www.datadrivenacademy.org.

Pinterest is an often overlooked platform as it relates to garnering web traffic and driving conversions for brands. But if your company is creating content for platforms like Instagram and Facebook, the reward of also creating a version for Pinterest should definitely be worth the time. We discuss further in this audio from our Data Driven Academy Live Access session - www.datadrivenacademy.org

There's no coincidence that I'm posting this on YouTube and embedding it in my website. :) Kelly Savoca of CottonandMoss.com asked a great question in a recent http://datadrivenacademy.org Live Access Session for Data Driven Academy Members. Should I be using YouTube or Vimeo to embed videos in my website? Her concern was related to the "suggested videos" at the end of YouTube Videos. Check out my answer. It's pretty compelling.