AppliedI.net Receives Windows Hosting Award

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award-84x134_medal Since our inception Applied Innovations (www.appliedi.net) has always strived to provide professional Windows Hosting at a cost effective price.

Recently Webhostdirectory has named Applied Innovations as one of the top 3 Windows Hosting Providers.  Webhostdirectory had this to say:

Applied Innovations:  Applied Innovations understands that the relationship between a web host and the company relying on this web host for their online web presence is more of a business partnership than a classic vendor-client relationship as the success of one ultimately dictates the success of the other.

Webhostdirectory clearly understands that our goal as a hosting provider has always been to be more than just a provider and build a relationship with our customers that allows us to understand their business and provide the technology, tools and services that help their business succeed.  By assisting our customers to grow and succeed our business in turn grows and succeeds.

We’d like to thank the people at The Webhosting Directory for recognizing us for this award and our hosting partners (that’s you, the ‘hosting customer’) for nominating us for this award.  In the coming weeks Applied Innovations has many new and exciting products and partnerships we’ll be announcing that will only bring greater value and a wider range of tools to each of our hosting partners.

SSL Certificates - the differences beyond their names

E-Commerce, Hosting Enhancements No Comments »

Everyone has heard that e-commerce sites require SSL Encryption in order to be successful.  But what about the differences between all of them? What about getting a final explanation for their general purpose? This is why I sat down to write this article today.

Basic comparison between all the certificates we offer: »» Positive SSL: 128/256 Bit Encryption and 99.3% browser compatibility rate. No warranty, no trust logo and no EV Auto-Enhancer™ included.
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»» Instant SSL Pro: 128/256 Bit Encryption, 99.3% browser compatibility rate, $100,000.00 warranty and corner trust logo. No EV Auto-Enhancer™ included.
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»» SGC SSL: 128/256 Bit Encryption, 99.3% browser compatibility rate, $250,000.00 warranty and corner trust logo. No EV Auto-Enhancer™ included.
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»» EV SSL: 128/256 Bit Encryption, 99.3% browser compatibility rate, $1,000,000.00 warranty, corner trust logo and EV Auto-Enhancer™ included.
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»» EV SGC SSL: 128/256 Bit Encryption, 99.3% browser compatibility rate, $1,000,000.00 warranty, corner trust logo and EV Auto-Enhancer™ included. This certificate also includes the patent-pending SGC technology (we’ll cover this further in this article).
——

Alright, so now all the features are exposed. You might be wondering “aren’t they all just certificates anyway?”. I do understand your concern for spending a little bit more. But the answer is no, they aren’t exactly the same product.

In terms of functionality, I’m pretty sure you won’t notice any major difference between all of them (probably with the exception of both SGC and Auto-Enhancer technologies), but the most important aspect of them all and what you should wonder is:

“What kind of impact will a certificate have on my sales and how will they help me to convert a prospect into a customer?”

As a concerned and responsible businessman/woman, this is the right thing to do.
In fact I cannot emphasize this enough. It’s the most important aspect of them all - your business image and position on your prospects’ minds. Remember: first impressions are everything, and most of the online consumers will buy on impulse. In a simple sentence, this means you won’t have any competitors if you do things right. Doing things right would mean to analyze your competitors web sites and writing down what you can do better then them.

One of the things you can do is to transmit more trust to your customers. More then your competitors do. If they don’t pay attention to this, then you just found a way to stand out from the crowded market you’re in. You’ll be the “secure” vendor.

Let your prospects feel safe, let them know they are providing their financial information to a responsible company. Your company. This is why I have to praise Comodo’s SGC and EV Auto-Enhancer™  technologies. They will help you to do this; and here’s how:

EV Auto-Enhancer™
This technology will actually turn your prospects’ browser address bar to green. They will know they’re on a safe place, and that you invested on this technology exactly to remind them of this fact.

Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates are the next generation SSL Certificate because they help protect against phishing attacks. They work with high security Web browsers (e.g. Microsoft IE) so that visitors to Websites with an EV SSL Certificate will see a “Green Address Bar”. EV SSL Certificates represent a new industry standard for e-merchant identity verification developed by the CA/B Forum.

Source: Comodo’s Official Web site

Here’s an example of this technology in action:

SGC™
This technology will actually force the certificate to rely on our server’s Cryptography capabilities, rather then just using what your clients’ browsers are able to support. With Sever Gated Cryptography (SGC), you will actually be able to guarantee a high level of encryption during critical data transmission like you have never been able to do before.

128/256 bit SSL Certificates designed for securing leading web sites. Server Gated Cryptography (SGC) enabled certificates upgrade the encryption capabilities of older browsers from 40-bit encryption into full 128/256 bit encryption - ensuring your website protects and is trusted by the highest number of internet users possible.Source: Comodo’s Official Web site


TrustLogo™
This technology will reinforce the trust your prospects deposit on your web site (hence the TrustLogo name) by authenticating your business contact information directly from Comodo’s secure servers.

Here’s an example of this technology in action:

Sales Conversion Tips

  • Make sure you place your trust logo on all your web site pages. This should imperatively be done as you never know which page will trigger a “buy-now” reaction. Having your trust logo displayed on the page that triggers this action will actually add weight to the decision.
  • Keep reminding your customers that your site is secure, otherwise the green bar wouldn’t be displayed. Make sure you emphasize the fact that this identity verification isn’t done by your company, but by a 3rd party company which is reliable and trustable (Comodo). Always add links to your explanations so your customers can confirm this by themselves.
  • Never forget to mention that even if their browser has a limited decryption level, your web server is prepared to add the extra security they need when exchanging sensitive information with your organization.

That’s it for SSL. I hope you enjoyed reading it and most of all I hope to have clarified most of your concerns before deciding which certificate suits best your organization.

To conclude this article, here’s our SSL Certificate products link:
http://www.appliedi.net/ssl-certificates/

Sincerely,
Andre F

DotNetInvoice Hosting introduced and a special offer on the ASP.NET billing system

ASP.NET 2.0 Applications, Hosting & Partner Discounts, Partner News, Useful Tools, Web Applications No Comments »

Applied Innovations is pleased to announced we have partnered with DotNetInvoice, makers of the ASP.NET billing and invoicing system, DotNetInvoice to offer dotnetinvoice hosting.

DotNetInvoice is a comprehensive ASP.NET based invoice and billing system that allows all types of organizations to offer online invoicing and real-time payment processing. Today DotNetInvoice is commonly used by webhosting companies, web design firms,  web developers and consultants of all types.

Professional ASP.NET Invoicing software features

DotNetInvoice includes a large number of features that can be found on their features page and some of the features that really stand out for us include:

  • ASP.NET 2.0 Application Integration - DotNetInvoice uses the standard ASP.NET 2.0 membership and roles providers so it can easily be integrated with your existing ASP.NET 2.0 based web application for seemless integration.
  • Automated Hands-Free Recurring Invoicing - DotNetInvoice supports the ability to setup recurring invoicing on any period of time you wish, days, months or years and then will automatically email your clients their invoice when it comes due.
  • Support for PayPal Website Payments Pro, Paypal and Authorize.net - Real-time online payments for your invoices, no phone calls, no checks to deposit just setup the site, email your clients and let the payments get submitted and best of all since it’s online your clients can submit payments at anytime, night or day, that’s convenient for them.
  • Globalization - Out of the box, DotNetInvoice supports the following countries and currencies: Australia (AUD), Canada (CAD), China (CNY), Great Britain (GBP), India (INR), Ireland (EUR), Japan (JPY), New Zealand (NZD), USA (USD).
  • Graphical reporting - A pictures is worth a thousand words:
    am_invoice_report

These are just a few of the features we found most useful in DotNetInvoice and we believe our hosting partners will enjoy. We recommend you visit the DotNetInvoice site and the DotNetInvoice Demo to experience all of the power of this great application.

Special Offering: $40 Off Coupon for DotNetInvoice

DotNetInvoice is compatible with all of our hosting plans but we recommend the VS-1 Small Business hosting plan since it includes 250MB of SQL database spac, full support for ASP.NET 2.0, the ability to run your own SSL certificate (which you’ll need if you’re taking credit card information over the Internet) and starts at just $22.50/month. 

In addition, DotNetInvoice is making a special offering to all Applied Innovations hosted customers and offering $40 off their normal price. Deploying DotNetInvoice will save you time and money and with $40 off you’re already ahead. To access this special offer and any of our other great offers, remember to log into your control panel and select the Marketplace icon.

Windows Live Writer

Useful Tools 1 Comment »

Hello, this is Andre, I’m one of the newest members of the team and thought I’d share a little with you about this new tool from Microsoft called "Windows Live Writer".

Today I’ve been introduced to Windows Live Writer by a colleague and thought about sharing this magnificent tool with you.
Basically, Windows Live Writer is a very small application that will allow you to manage your posts directly from your desktop.

This is extremely practical because you don’t need to log into your blog’s admin page anymore. Windows Live Writer stores your admin details so all you have to do is to run the application and start posting!

Here’s a screenshot of the dashboard:

(this is actually how it starts up)

As you probably noticed on the top-right corner, there’s a WordPress logo and our Blog Title there.
This helps you to identify the blog you’re currently posting to (very helpful if you work on multiple blogs).

Windows Live Writer is compatible with the following platforms:

»» Windows Live Spaces
»» SharePoint (Supported by AppliedI)
»» WordPress (Supported by AppliedI)
»» Blogger
»» LiveJournal
»» TypePad
»» Moveable Type
»» Community Server
»» dasBlog (dasblog hosting is offered by appliedi.net)
»» BlogEngine.NET (blogengine.net hosting is offered by appliedi.net)

One of the things I like the most on this small application is its built-in WYSIWYG Editor.
So no more HTML coding for highlights, links or anything else. You can just do it there, using its simple and effective interface.

Did I also mention that it also has its own Spell-Checking engine? It does!
So this is great news to all of you that were worried about that. Not to mention that you won’t need any extra plugin in your blog platform to check for grammar errors.

Another feature that has impressed me is the fact that you can blog without being online.
So now I can comfortably write my articles while watching TV or even on the kitchen while I wait for my pizza to be ready. Impressive, isn’t it?
It will basically save your posts on the local hard drive, and it will publish them as soon as you connect to the internet.

So I guess we won’t have reasons not to update our blogs anymore.

Windows Live Writer Beta Download page:
http://get.live.com/en-us/betas/writer_betas

NOTE: During the installation, the InstallShield Wizard might appear to have crashed during the "Checking for Installed Products" step.
While I don’t believe this is normal (most likely a bug), it didn’t really crash. I personally had to wait almost 5 minutes for that step to complete; so don’t panic.

I get 21 million hits to my directory!

Hosting Enhancements No Comments »

Yesterday while sitting in my dentist’s office, a gentleman was talking to one of the office managers about their online presence and how his company could help them market their business better, especially online. He kept emphasizing that can really help get the hits online and one of his key points that he kept repeating was:

“we get over 21 million hits a month to our directory, don’t you want some of those hits on your site too? We can send them there!”

I just couldn’t bring myself to break it to him that the number of hits your website gets has absolutely no real value. 

In the early 90’s, when the WWW was just in it’s infancy, hitcounters and counting the number of hits your site got was all the rage and hit counters like these:

hit1 hit2

were found on almost every single website out there. What these little scripts did was each time the image was called it would increment and that would be used as a way to show the number of visitors your site received.  So when your boss asked “Well, we’re spending all this money on a website, what’s it doing for our business” you could say “look at all the hits we got this month”. 

Why Counting Hits is a Waste of Time.

There’s really three definitions we need to make:

  • Visitors - Visitors is the number of people that come to your site. You can break this down further into the number of new visitors and the number of returning visitors.
  • Pageviews - A Pageview is each time a page on your site loaded. If you want to www.appliedi.net/default.asp that would be one pageview, when you click on asp.net hosting and are taken to a new page, that would be another page.
  • Hits - Hits are the number of items loaded from your site. The homepage on www.appliedi.net has 48 objects on it, when you load that page you’re making 49 hits against my webserver (1 hit for the page itself and 48 hits for all the other images, flash animations, css and JavaScript files you’ll pulling from my site).

So by just loading our homepage, www.appliedi.net, you generated 49 hits! But you were just 1 visitor (either you were 1 new visitor or 1 returning visitor) and you created 1 pageview. So as you can see the number of hits a website receives really provides no real data. What you really want to know is how many visitors your site had and then how many pageviews (generally each visitor will load more than just one page so pageviews should be higher).

Web Analytics Evolved

So because website owners like you want more realistic data, web analytics has evolved and provides far more data and ofcourse Applied Innovations provides one of the best web analytics applications, SmarterStats. SmarterStats key features are:

  • Track your website’s growth and forecast Internet trends
  • Features over 130 report items, plus Geographic Reporting
  • Log compression saving 90% of your disk space
  • Email Reports
  • Enhanced data mining available

And ofcourse you can view your Visitors, PageViews and if you really want it, your hits!

A picture is worth a thousand words so here’s a few screenshots from the SmarterStats reports for http://jesscoburn.com (Jess’s personal blog)

Visitor and Page View Trends

image

Bandwidth Usage

image

Top Referrers

image

Search Engine Stats

image

image

image

image

image

 

Top Pages

image

Visitor Demographics

image

image

Browser Details

image

I know that’s a lot of pretty pictures and since this is a personal blog site, it doesn’t get alot of traffic, but this should provide a pretty good idea of the reports available in your smarterstats accounts.

How do I get SmarterStats for Free?

So now that you’ve had a taste of smarterstats you’re probably wondering how you can get it right? The good news is, it’s included for FREE with 75% of our shared hosting accounts and available as an add-on for a small monthly fee for those accounts it’s not included in (mainly the valueplus and reseller accounts). If you order a new windows dedicated server or Windows VPS Server, you’ll get a free SmarterTools bundle which includes SmarterStats, SmarterMail and SmarterTicket licenses for free!

If you want to learn more about smarterstats, I recommend you log into your shared hosting control panel and click on ‘advanced analytics’ or you can visit SmarterTools.

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