BestBuy Santa Commercials Were Mean

It was the season to be merry, sharing and giving, but not for BestBuy. (more…)

Replying Times…

I’m catching up and replying to week-old emails. It feels they might as well be last year’s. Has replying within a day or two always the norm?

I feel 100 years ago you could take a bit of time to reply, but not today.In fact, there are a couple of vendors that are really close to losing me as a potential customer because they take forever to reply. By forever I mean more than a week. I mean, it seems like a long time… a week? Yes, it seems late, but it shouldn’t feel like I have been abandoned – but it does. I blame email for this.

I’m not sure if I like it.

hm.

Quick Personal Update

It’s been a while since I published anything, sorry.

First things first, how about the photo above, eh? It was during a Meetup organized by ING Vancouver a year ago or so. I’ll use that as default.

So lately every spare minute I get off work I spend on a couple of other sites. I’m not doing a good job at it either as none of them are working as I want them to.

Personal sites aside, the most important news I should share is that I’m now a full-time team member of Cardinal Path . I have the luck to once again work along world leaders in the Internet marketing industry.

I’m not exaggerating when I say world leaders. The Cardinal Path crew is one the most talented teams I’ve met and had to pleasure to work with. Most famous among them are Justin Cutroni and Stephane Hamel.

I’ll post just this for now.

If there is anything you’d like to know more about, leave me a comment and I’ll make a post about it. Of course, don’t hold me up to this for ever. I’m conscious that once something goes on the Internet, is there forever… and this post is not going to be valid forever.

Cheers!

Unveiling Joseuonline.com New Look!

My blog (ahem, now my site) has a new look! What do you think?

It still incomplete, but considering the site has been under “Maintenance” for almost a week, I had to put something out.

It took me a while to customize a few things, and the sidebar still needs work, so please comment and let me know your thoughts about what’s done and what’s missing.

There’s a lot of work to be done, but the obvious change is that my consulting services are now more exposed.

A portfolio page is on the works and I’ll let you know when it’s ready.

It’s been under maintenance for so long that joseuonline.com is no longer indexed in Google and my traffic is dropping fast! I’ve used this Maintenance Mode WordPress plugin, which returns a “503 Service Unavailable” when someone came to my site. This means, I hope, that now that my site is back online, Google will understand that it was down for a temporary time and it’s time to put it back up.

Here’s how the blog looked like before:

This is how the blog looked before.

Pretty Cachapa – Before and After

A couple of days ago I made cachapas, a typical Venezuela dish made out of corn – take a look!

This is a pretty looking cachapa

The basic cachapa recipe is illustrated pretty nicely on this video, but I encourage you to make your own tweaks. For example, my tweaked recipe has a pinch of brown sugar among other things.

They’re super easy to make and very delicious.

Anyway, we took a couple of pictures but failed to noticed the dirty plate.  So I decided to do a little Photoshop magic and, voila, the result made it look more delicious than I imagined.

Click to see a bigger before and after of the same image

If I can do this in a few minutes, I wonder what the design pros can do with the food we see on all the ads we see online and print…

It also makes me think, we’re so gullible. Don’t you sometimes site back and think about the small changes that make a big difference? In SEO, conversion, PPC, affiliates…. everything! Most of the times we react to the most insignificant things.

I’m sure that a better call to action would boost more conversions than a better product.

We’re so gullible

SEO Tools I Frequently Use

I'm not sure this collage is eye-pleasing, but here are some logos for your enjoyment.

When it comes to SEO Tools, I’m pretty agnostic. Like most SEOs I’ve gotten used to a series of tools more because of the habit than anything else. I still keep those tools in my repertoire, though I’m open to suggestions, in case seyou have any recommendations.

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No More Unlimited Internet Plans For Canada

Just add some kids in this picture...

I thought it was a joke, but no, it is now impossible get unlimited internet access in Canada.

The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced it, and now there’s no more unlimited access unless overturned by the government.

Instead of delving into the arguments (I’ll link to the Vancouver Sun article at the bottom of this post.) I would like share my thoughts on the effect this could have and what you should do now.

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Parting Ways With WiderFunnel

You might have already heard the news, as of yesterday, I’ve parted ways with WiderFunnel, the company I was working with, and am no longer part of their team.

What happened?

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I Joined WiderFunnel as an Account Manager

Two weeks ago I left my Internet Marketing Specialist position at Snaptech Marketing to join a conversion optimization firm called WiderFunnel as an Account Manager. I want to tell you about it.

Both Snaptech and WiderFunnel are solid companies. However, one of the biggest differences between the two, while Snaptech is a full service web design and internet marketing agency,  WiderFunnel specializes on conversion optimization, nothing else.

(Conversion Optimization is the process of improving the percentages of visitors to a website that become sales leads and customers. There’s an article for Landing Page Optimization in Wikipedia that explains it well.)

My views on conversion optimization…

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Thoughts on Social Media While Abroad

They're watching, everyone's watching!

This post I wrote two weeks ago while coming back from a family trip in Boston.

I’m sitting at a bar at Boston Logan airport waiting for my flight to Vancouver. My trip is over.

Ironically, now I feel safe sharing some thoughts about the trip that just happened. The first thought that comes to mind is how social media has made me share less about a trip this time – the irony.

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