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Monday, May 17, 2010
Google Analytics Not Working With Magento
 We were having a heck of a time trying to figure out why Google Analytics wasn’t capturing any data with a new Magento eCommerce (V 4.1) website we just built.
We added the Google Analytics account ID within the admin area, but no results.
We then noticed the error:Â _gaq is not defined being displayed from the browser.
Searching through the Magento community, Google search and blogs we were given various fixes and advice that suggested replacing the original code or updating the Magento core files. We did not want to change the existing code or core files because we wanted our client to be able to use the eCommerce portion of Google Analytics with Magento and we’re suspect about some of the fixes.
So we took matters into our own hands.
Since the error was not being defined, we defined it.
- Open /app/design/frontend/default/yourtemplate/page/html/head.phtml
- Add the code
var _gaq = _gaq || []; on line #38 to the head tag of the head.phtml file after var BLANK_IMG = '<?php echo $this->helper('core/js')->getJsUrl('spacer.gif') ?>';
- Refresh your Magento Cache
- In a few hours Google Analytics should start registering your data.
I hope this helps others who may be experiencing the same issue.
Posted by: Michael Swartz at 4:55 pm
Comments: None | Filed under: HTML, SEO, Web Design
Thursday, May 13, 2010
MJS Web Solutions Offers Email Newsletter Campaign Services
 MJS Web Solutions not only offers custom website design, but also transforming your website design into a custom email newsletter campaign that gets results.
MJS Web Solutions will deliver a complete email newsletter campaign that is consistent with your branding and image. This includes strategic planning, design, HTML conversion and testing thoroughly on multiple email clients and platforms.
Email Newsletter Campaigns and Landing Pages
Email newsletters are not just for weekly or monthly updates. Email newsletters can be used for marketing campaigns, like announcing a new product or service.
MJS Web Solutions also develops the landing pages that complement your email newsletter campaign. For example, if you were announcing your new product in an email, you could add a link to a sign up form on your website (i.e. landing page) that would capture the recipient’s data (i.e. email address, name, etc.) and automatically send them a coupon for free shipping.
Contact us to learn more.
Posted by: Michael Swartz at 12:30 pm
Comments: None | Filed under: News
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Design Your New Website in 3 Simple Steps
 So you need to get your website up and running fast or you just want to know how it’s done?
A website can usually be broken down into 3 simple steps.
- Get a Domain Name
- Setup Web Hosting
- Design Your Site
1. Get a Domain Name
Whether you use your business as the domain name or choose a vanity domain name (i.e. ilovesushi.com), you will need to have it registered. A fun and useful tool for researching a variety of domain name ideas is BustaName.com. After you decide on a domain name, register it at GoDaddy.
2. Setup Web Hosting
Hosting is fairly straightforward. Two important considerations are web server uptime and customer service. It’s hard to find out if the company you’re choosing will keep your site up, but contacting customer service shouldn’t be a problem. Two companies I trust and work with exclusively are Westhost & Alentus.
3. Design Your Site
Whether you choose to design it yourself, go with a pre-designed website or hire a professional, you will need to have something available online (A one page website can be sufficient). There are many do-it-yourself choices: GoDaddy Website Tonight, Homestead, etc. You can also purchase a pre-designed website and have a web company or web designer set it up for you. Or you can hire a professional web design company and get the exact website for your business. Hiring a professional should offer you a completely customized website design, giving you a design that showcases your business and is well represented by your customers.
In our experience, a website will usually consists of these 3 steps.
If you have any questions or you would like assistance on setting up your own website, please contact MJS Web Solutions. We’re here to help.
Posted by: Michael Swartz at 5:32 pm
Comments: None | Filed under: Business, Web Design
Thursday, April 29, 2010
How to Remove the Blogger NavBar?
 We’re doing many Blogger conversions this month and Blogger has decided to keep the Blogger Navbar intact. (i.e. we can’t switch it off).
We’re not a big fan and wanted to remove it.
Here is how we removed the Blogger NavBar.
- Login to Blogger
- Click on the Template tab
- Add this code to the <head> tag:
<style type="text/css">
#navbar-iframe {
display: none !important;
}</style>
- Click the Save Template Changes button
- You’re done
Posted by: Michael Swartz at 3:40 pm
Comments: None | Filed under: HTML
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Save a Tree: Print to a PDF
 Happy Earth Day 2010!
One thing I’ve done to reduce my carbon footprint is to print all my documents to PDF (Portable Document Format).
I wrote about a free program that will print your documents to PDF format. It’s called CutePDF and I recommend it highly.
What can you do to reduce your carbon footprint?
Posted by: Michael Swartz at 3:56 pm
Comments: None | Filed under: Computer
Friday, April 16, 2010
Best SEO Title Tag for Your Business
I just found the best SEO (search engine optimization) title tag for your business:
“Wedding photography San Francisco Bay Area, Napa, Destination weddings”
The text explains what she does, where she does it and what service she provides.
I really like this title tag. Think about how you search for services on the internet. Most likely you’re typing in what the service is and where to find it. I think the last item in the tag should be extra, like the problems you solve.
The title tag is the most important piece when optimizing your website. Google and other search engines examine the title tag first before anything else to figure out what the page is about, so you better have some strong, targeted keywords.
The reason the above title tag is so good, is that it’s concise. A big mistake is to load up this tag with many keywords. This is bad because many of these words will compete against each other and search engines will not index every keyword the same. You may lose rankings because of it. Heck, I’ve seen websites at the top of the search engines with only one keyword phrase. Now that’s targeted.
For more information on how to get your website higher in the search engines, visit our article section on how to Optimize Your Website in 10 Steps or contact us with your questions.
Posted by: Michael Swartz at 1:45 pm
Comments: None | Filed under: SEO
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Convert Your Website Design Files to SEO Friendly HTML Code
MJS Web Solutions, not only designs websites from the ground up, we also can convert an existing design or mockup to SEO (search engine optimization) friendly HTML code.
We noticed, Luna Packaging, a client of ours had redesigned their website, except each page was an image. The design looked great, but Google and other search engines could not index the text, because the text was an image. We notified our client and got the okay to redesign the site by converting the existing design images to SEO friendly HTML code.
 Luna Packaging & Autism Answers Websites A new client of ours, Autism Answers, came to us needing to re-build their website. Each page on their website were also images, not HTML code and text. Again, we converted the design image files into SEO friendly HTML code.
Now each website is:
- much faster to download
- easier to maintain
- And being index by the search engines.
Is your site one big image? If so, it’s not getting the traffic it deserves.
MJS Web Solutions offers a full variety of website services that are focused on enriching your customers experience and getting traffic to your website.
Posted by: Michael Swartz at 5:46 pm
Comments: None | Filed under: HTML, News, SEO, Web Design
Thursday, March 25, 2010
New Alameda Boys and Girls Club Website Launches
MJS Web Solutions is proud to announce the official launch of the new Alameda Boys and Girls Club website.
The Alameda Boys and Girls Club provides a safe and positive place for young people to enjoy recreation and educational activities.
The new website was specifically designed to provide donations online and help promote their services. A secure Paypal account was setup to allow donations online and a blog and calendar system so visitors could stay up to date with programs and services.
 Alameda Boys & Girls Club Website MJS Web Solutions will continue to provide website maintenance and monitor the website’s placement in search engines.
Special thanks to Gunderson Design who assisted MJS Web Solutions with the beautiful design, Christine Buick for the wonderful copy and Kathie Woulfe, George Phillips and Diarra Piggue for their dedication and support.
Posted by: Michael Swartz at 10:46 pm
Comments: None | Filed under: News
Friday, February 12, 2010
SalesForce Will No Longer Support Internet Explorer 6
As you may know I’m not the biggest fan of Internet Explorer 6.0. It’s a very out dated browser that wreaks havoc on us web developers…meaning we still must continue to support it because a fair amount of users insist on using it.
This may all change soon.
I just received an email from Salesforce, a very well known Customer Relationship Management company, saying they will “de-support” IE6 (Internet Explorer 6) in the spring of 2010.
Why? The Salesforce team explained it well:
- IE6 is less secure. Multiple security vulnerabilities in IE6 have been exploited over the years. The most recent attacks against Google, Yahoo, and other companies specifically targeted vulnerabilities easily accessible in IE6 but much more difficult to exploit in IE7 and IE8—leading the Microsoft Security Response Center to recommend that users of IE6 upgrade to a newer version of Internet Explorer.
- IE6 is slow. Of all of our supported browsers, IE6 provides the slowest and least rewarding user experience for our customers.
- IE6 is a “last generation” browser. IE6 was first released in August 2001. As an obsolete, non-standard platform, IE6 is a difficult browser on which to develop and support the rich internet applications our customers have come to expect.
Google is also going to phase out support for IE6 in March.
Hopefully this is the beginning of a new trend.
Suggested actions to take
Upgrade your browser to IE7, IE8, Firefox, Safari, Chrome or Opera.
Posted by: Michael Swartz at 1:50 am
Comments: None | Filed under: Uncategorized
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google
 No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google, not even Google.
If anyone tells you they can guarantee your site #1 placement on Google, they’re lying.
It is possible to get your site ranking higher in Google and even the #1 position, but there is no guarantee that it will happen. We are really at Google’s mercy.
Learn more about how to get your site ranked higher in Google, by following these 10 SEO steps.
Posted by: Michael Swartz at 11:17 pm
Comments: None | Filed under: Uncategorized
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