Dear Friend,

August has finally ended, my kids are back in school, and business is really cranking up for the fall. In this shortened issue we have selected two articles only. The first covers our most asked how-to question and the second brings to light privacy concerns that you may want to consider in regards to Google Analytics.

Best Regards,

Nancy McCord

Our Top Tip - Setting Up Multiple Email Accounts | Google Analytics Privacy Issues

Our Top Tip - Setting Up Multiple Email Accounts

When you want to reply to mail that has come to another address on your Web site like support, info or sales, what do you do? Your default e-mail address will show your name not the department name that you want the mail to have come from.

Perhaps you want to give the illusion that your company has many separate departments, how do you set up your e-mail program to respond with several different account names when composing correspondence?

The answer is to set up multiple account names in Outlook or Outlook Express and then choose the one you want when you are composing your outgoing note.

The instructions are the same for either Outlook or Outlook Express. The first most important step is to find out your primary e-mail incoming mail and outgoing mail information before trying to set up any accounts.

How To Get Your Primary Internet Mail Information

1. Open Outlook or Outlook Express, click on Tools on the top menu bar and then Accounts.
2. Select your main account under the Mail Tab and then click Properties.
3. Click the Server Tab.
4. Write down the information appearing on the page POP3 and SMTP boxes or other server type as well as your account name and password.
5. Click Cancel. We will use the above information in setting up each new account.

How To Set Up New Account Names

1. Open Outlook or Outlook Express, click on Tools on the top menu bar and then click on Accounts.
2. Click on the Mail Tab and click Add and then select Mail.
3. Enter your name (you will change this later so just enter anything). Click Next.
4. Enter the e-mail address for the account you are setting up, like support@yourdomainname.com.
5. Select the server type for your main Internet Mail access in the drop down box.
6. Enter the POP3, SMTP or other server addresses that you wrote down in the first section about your primary Internet mail information. As an example, my server is a POP3 from the drop down box selection, in the first line incoming mail, my address is something like: postoffice.net.att.net. The second line is something like: mailbox.att.net. Click Next.
7. Enter your primary Internet mail information name and password that you wrote down in the first section here. Click Next. Click Finish. You are almost done, don't stop now!
8. You will now see on the Mail accounts screen the new account that you just made highlighted in grey. Double click on it.
9. Change any information that you want. Make sure that the first line is descriptive like Support Department or something on those lines. Under user information enter the account name as name, your company name as organization, and the e-mail address as the account e-mail address you are setting up (support@yourdomainname.com). The reply address should be the same as the line above.
10. Uncheck the box at the bottom that says Include This Account When Receiving Mail Or Synchronizing. Click Apply and then Okay.
11. You are ready to enter another account name in the same fashion.
12. When you respond or send an e-mail on the compose screen. Go to the far right side of the page at the end of the From line and you will see a down arrow. Click on it, and it will show you the mail accounts set up to use as the sender for your correspondence. Select one and you are ready to start composing your note.

Our Recommendations

We recommend setting up an account on Outlook/Express for your info, sales, service, support, employment, and Webmaster accounts. You may want to set up an account for every email account on your Web site.

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Google Analytics Privacy Issues Did You Know?

In late 2004, Google quietly bought Urchin Analytics without any fanfare. Urchin Analytics was a web technology company specializing in website log analysis. The product was available as stand alone software, available to be integrated into shared hosting platforms, and as an online service for $199 per month.

We have used Urchin Analytics and really like the unique depth of information. For a very modest $5 per month paid to our hosting company, we are able to track all navigation, page views, and aggregate visitor information on our website. Which we have in turn used to fine-tune our message, enhance our content, and to evaluate our marketing approaches. It is a great product that gives outstanding in-depth reports.

In December 2005, Google re-introduced the Urchin product rapidly on the heels of its October 2005 patent release and re-branded it as "Google Analytics". With the re-introduction of this product, Google announced that it would no longer charge $199+ per month for the services and that it would be free to all Google AdWords users. It would also be tightly integrated into the Google AdWords interface. Not only that, but Google would allow you to use this product to track non-Google marketing efforts across many channels.

What happened next is understandable. Nearly the entire world of professional Webmasters raced to sign up. Website owners embraced and continue to embrace the program. But do you as a website owner understand what Google is doing with the information that you are freely supplying to them when you use Google Analytics?

First the privacy ramifications. In Google's October 2005 patent, they spoke about the impending change on their engine; gearing up to show personalized search results and a change in their patented PageRank algorithm. We wondered how they were going to get some of the information to move in this direction and now we know how -- Google Analytics. With the advent of Google Analytics, Google now has stored on their own server, your own website traffic log information and website click patterns. This information has always been considered proprietary and never shared. This in-depth information about your website shows how traffic comes to your site, what it does once it gets there, visitor information, and how visitors rate your page from traffic and search metrics. Google gets all this private information by offering you an important and valuable product for free with the trade-off being your privacy.

For some Web sites, the overall benefits outweigh the loss of privacy as they do not have good options for statistics, but for some sites, it is simply not the wisest choice. Google has moved this past year into personalized search which is changing the complexion of both search optimization, organic search placement, and even what search results you see based on all of this historical information that is has quietly can carefully been accumulating over the past two years.

For some site owners, the sharing of previously closely guarded information by using Google Analytics will not be worth the risk. For other site owners, the ability to potentially increase sales and marketing successes with this powerful information tool will be worth the trade off. Either way it is very important to consider this loss of privacy before you decide to implement Google Analytics on your own website or blog.

If you are interested in Google Analytics for your Web site. You can visit the Google Analytics Web site and set up a free account.

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