Your Domain Name Is Like A Car. Is The "Title" In Your Name?

Your domain name is an asset like a car and needs to be controlled and protected.

And, just like a car, your domain name has a Title.

If someone other than you (your website provider, an employee or former employee) is listed as the Registrant of your domain name you don’t own it, they do!

It’s very easy, and free, to check. Just go here: http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp

Type your domain name in the “Search all WHOIS Records” box and click the “search” button.

The results will display three contacts:

• Registrant (or owner)
• This should be you.
• Administrative contact
• Anyone the owner designates to manage the domain name, pay for renewals, designate technical contacts and keep the contact information up to date.
• This is usually someone in your organization or your IT or website company.
• Technical Contact:
• Anyone the owner or administrator designates to “point” your domain name to the proper servers for your website, web services and email.
• This is usually your IT or website company.

If you are not the Registrant you need to work with the current owner and the Registrar (this is just a fancy Internet name for “title agency”) to get ownership.

While you at it, be sure that all three contacts have current information (Names, addresses, email) are up to date.

Mobile Site vs. Mobile App

Now I don't want to insult the intelligence of any of you technophiles out there, but there are some folks who are a bit confused about this whole mobile site vs. mobile app business.

Basically your smart phone, (i.e. iPhone, Android, Blackberry) is a little computer. That computer can surf the web using a browser or it can run programs which are...apps! Instead of buying your programs at a brick and mortar store, you buy them at the "app" store and they are downloaded and installed on your phone.

So a "mobile site" is a website that you visit in a browser on your phone, and a "mobile app" is a small program that you purchase from the app store (or download for free from that store) and install onto your phone.

Both a mobile site and your mobile app can pull information off the Internet if you are connected. However, most if not all of the functionality of a mobile app is available, even if you are not connected to the Internet.

For example, if you were visiting an amusement park and that park had a mobile website, you could visit that mobile site and get a lot of information about the park. However, if you did not have an Internet connection while in the park or the connection was poor, the experience could be bad. You may get some information, slow information or none at all. However, if that amusement park has a mobile app that you can download from the app store, you will be able to use the application to find out about ride information, full GPS mapping and even where your friends are in the park, all without an Internet connection!

Mobile sites are important too. If website owners look at their traffic reports they will see regular visitors to their site of 10-20%* or more are accessing their website from a mobile phone. If you have a website and it is important to you that this large segment of your audience be able to see and navigate your site easily on their phone, you need a mobile website. If 10-20% of your users were using a new browser, wouldn't you want your website optimized to look good in that browser?

When a visitor comes to your website, the server can detect what type of device they are using whether it is a desktop computer or an iPhone and display a different interface that is easiest to use. So if you have a mobile site, and someone comes to your web address on their phone, it will automatically show them the mobile site. Mobile sites can also access gps information and serve up conditional content based on the visitors geographic location. Your desktop website can't do that! However, a mobile site needs to have information formatted to be easy to get around and easy to read on a phone. If you have ever tried to visit a site that is not optimized for a phone, you will know how difficult it can be to get around.

Mobile Apps can be for more than just consumers and customers; they can also help with business practices. Now everyone in your company who has a smart phone has a "mobile computer" that can run programs that allow them to do work in the field and on the fly. Custom "apps" can be built for your company's needs and side loaded onto your phones only bypassing the stores. These apps can help reps in the field get and input important information.

Using the amusement park example from above, supervisors or other workers in the park could transmit ride wait times, crowd information or incident reports right from their phone via a custom secure mobile application.

So an app is a program, like a game or an email client that can run on your smartphone. A mobile site is a mobile viewing optimized version of a website that displays on a mobile phone in the mobile browser.

Mobile phones are not going anywhere and smartphone usage is increasing every year. Companies who recognize the value of mobile technology both for marketing and for operations will be ahead of the competition.

Mobile Applications for Family Entertainment Centers

Everyone at your facility has a mobile phone.  How can you leverage that to improve the customer experience in your park?  Believe it or not, there are actually mobile apps out there right now that you can leverage in your park to make being there more fun and allowing you to extend your brand outside of the park.

 

One of the ways to engage guest is by offering a mobile “game” that users can play that involves interacting with your attractions.  Lavahound is a mobile application that leads your visitors to explore your park in a type of virtual “hunt” for items based on photos.  Guests find items to hunt for on the application.  They indicate when they have “found” the item, and they can find out more information, upload their own images and “share” it as well. 

The new Mini Golf Scorecard, from wddonline replaces paper scorecards and pencils with an application on the golfer’s phone.  Guests can keep score and see their score tallied in real time.  After they finish their game they can post their score to Facebook, letting friends know that they played a game at your facility.

Takeaway:  A cheap, fun and easy game to use at your in-house holiday parties.  It is fun and the results are hilarious! The Sentence Game.  Use paper with your letterhead, because folks WILL take these home.

iPhones And iPads Are Fun, But They Can Be Productive Too

Your iPad and iPhone can do a lot of fun things.  But for many people that’s all it does… a lot of fun things.  But sometimes you need to get some work done while you’re on the go.  Here are a few great downloadable apps to make your iPad and iPhone a productive business tool:

Dropbox

Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere.  After you install Dropbox on your computer, any file you save to your Dropbox will automatically save to all your computers, your iPhone and iPad.

Splashtop Remote Desktop

With Splashtop Remote you can go everywhere with your iPad and have full access to your PC or Mac.  This inexpensive app allows you to stream video and audio from your computer, allowing your interact with all of the functionality of a home computer or laptop.

Springpad

Springpad is another free service that lets you quickly and easily save the ideas and information you want to remember – on the web, on your phone and on your iPad.

When you want to remember something you come across, just save it in Springpad – notes, tasks, products, places, websites, anything.  This is a great tool for organizing and prioritizing. 

All of this of course is designed to get back to what’s really important – doing fun things – like playing Angry Birds!

Building Our Own Website

We recently went through a website redesign and it was a very interesting process for us. It revealed interesting things about how our company works together on projects and it reminded us what it is like to be on the other side of the web design process.

Mark and I served as the “clients” while the design, development and marketing team members served as both our web design agency but also contributing members of our staff. What an interesting dynamic it was, competitive and cooperative and amazingly productive. I think it brought our whole team together in a way I haven’t seen outside of brewing beer.

I saw how hard it is to communicate a vision sometimes and how exciting it is to have that vision transformed and enhanced. I also really felt the pain of my clients as we struggled to create all of the content for our new website. Luckily for me some of my staff members are great writers and we have some others who were awesome editors. Graphics were a no brainer, I knew they would be beautiful and development stepped up the plate to make everything work according to my “vision”.

Although I love to look at the portfolio and enjoy seeing all the work our team has done in a way I have never seen it before, I gotta love the staff page. Everyone wrote their own biography and each person was really encouraged to express their inner self in their “fun” photo. I think it is a great representation of our company. This page is really what our company is, us. Picture day was a blast and our photographer captured each person so well. Guess which member of our staff doesn’t put up with tom-foolery, although he has a great sense of humor?

We have a great base but we are still playing, updating and tweaking every day. We didn’t try to make sure our site had “everything” or did everything we want it to do right off the bat. It was launched as a child and will continue to grow and mature.

She’s a cute kid isn’t she?