StepFront » tools http://www.stepfront.com Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:14:06 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 FireFox Plugin to View Global Google Results http://www.stepfront.com/tools/firefox-plugin-to-view-global-google-results/ http://www.stepfront.com/tools/firefox-plugin-to-view-global-google-results/ #comments Mon, 26 May 2008 10:06:27 +0000 Farhan Kamal http://www.stepfront.com/?p=100 Internet users like us, living outside the US, are shown set of Google results that are slightly different to the result set shown to the searchers in US, UK, or any other country for that matter. For example even if you are Google searching from www.google.com or www.google.com.pk the results are different. Previously I used to check my rankings using Digital Point Keyword Ranking Tool, but just lately I found this very useful Firefox plugin using which, you can check your results in any country and region. Pretty useful!
Download Global Google Results Plugin

]]> http://www.stepfront.com/tools/firefox-plugin-to-view-global-google-results/ /feed 4 SEO For FireFox Plugin http://www.stepfront.com/tools/seo-for-firefox-plugin/ http://www.stepfront.com/tools/seo-for-firefox-plugin/ #comments Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:32:34 +0000 Farhan Kamal http://www.stepfront.com/tools/seo-for-firefox-plugin/ Today in the tools category, I thought to mention one of my favorite firefox plugin, the SEO FOR FIREFOX. The cool plugin allows you to see a load full of things when you search Google. You just better go and check it out and if don’t already use FireFox, I would ask, what is wrong with you?

SEO for FireFox Plugin

]]> http://www.stepfront.com/tools/seo-for-firefox-plugin/ /feed 0 E-mail Marketing in Pakistan http://www.stepfront.com/tools/e-mail-marketing-in-pakistan/ http://www.stepfront.com/tools/e-mail-marketing-in-pakistan/ #comments Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:39:03 +0000 Farhan Kamal http://www.stepfront.com/tools/e-mail-marketing-in-pakistan/ I belong to the group of online marketers who believe that e-mail marketing is NOT dead. With effective strategies and best practices, e-mail marketing can give you the best ROI, still!. When deciding to launch an email marketing campaign, as a business you will come across various options which include but not limited to, using third-party rented email lists, sending your e-mail using an email marketing software or using a 3rd-party hosted email marketing service. Which of them is better? I will briefly analyze it here for your benefit.

  1. Third-party rented lists:
    these come handy and cheap. Every other day you will find one of these “email marketing companies” contacting you with their offer to send your promotional message to “millions” of users for anywhere around Rs.500 to Rs.2000 per email-shot. As tempting as it may sound, this way of email marketing is not considered ethical and recipients of such a message might not perceive your company positively. The email addresses (which i personally think are not even close to million) are harvested and gathered by various means and almost all of the service providers have the same database. Since these email addresses have been collected for years, a large number of them are invalid. The chances that your message sent through these users will find the light of the “inbox” are bleak as these messages are auto labeled as spam by all major email providers like Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail. However if you still prefer to send a message through these services, you should closely analyze the result.

  2. E-mail Sending Software
    if you have your own list of email subscribers, you can use an email marketing software to send out your promotional message. The pros of sending email through a desktop software is that you will have to pay a one-time upfront cost only. The downside however is the technical setup. Since these software will use your SMTP information to send the email, you might end up getting your site booted from the hosting company, if the recipients of the message file complains
  3. Third-party Hosted Email Marketing Software
    I personally believe this is the best option if you have a permission based list. You can upload your subscribers list to these 3rd party hosted email marketing services and send it out. They provide a wide selection of email templates, survey templates and some really good tracking and analysis. I have used and personally recommend iContact Email Marketing and ConstantContact


Disclaimer: I am affiliated with icontact

]]> http://www.stepfront.com/tools/e-mail-marketing-in-pakistan/ /feed 14 Speed Test Your Broadband http://www.stepfront.com/tools/speed-test-your-broadband/ http://www.stepfront.com/tools/speed-test-your-broadband/ #comments Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:31:51 +0000 Farhan Kamal http://www.stepfront.com/tools/speed-test-your-broadband/ I came across this really cool flash based tool. It’s worth playing around to find out the download and upload speed your Internet bandwidth speed. You can also take a plugin and install on your website for free. The fancy flash based interface is fun and exciting. Go to http://www.speedtest.net


]]> http://www.stepfront.com/tools/speed-test-your-broadband/ /feed 3 Here Comes a Google Analytics Competitor http://www.stepfront.com/tools/here-comes-a-google-analytics-competitor/ http://www.stepfront.com/tools/here-comes-a-google-analytics-competitor/ #comments Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:56:07 +0000 Farhan Kamal http://www.stepfront.com/tools/here-comes-a-google-analytics-competitor/ nuconomy, an Israel-US based company plans to take website analytics to another level with it’s newly launched Web Analytics System. It’s currently in Beta and requests to test the system are so high that it might not be possible for everyone to test it. But those lucky ones who were able to “get in” have reported positive things about it.

The CEO of Nuconomy Shahar Nechmad says he wants to give people insights that are usually only available to sites that can pay thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars per month, from service providers like Omniture, WebTrends and Coremetrics.

Key Features of Nucnonomy

1. Weighs in impact of Widgets
2. Correlation, which means what elements of a page influence other elements and so on
3. TWO Way API, the greatest of all is the ability of the program to allow the site owner to make changes in accordance with the reports and inputs from the service

]]> http://www.stepfront.com/tools/here-comes-a-google-analytics-competitor/ /feed 1 Take a snapshot of your whole webpage with cool Firefox plugin http://www.stepfront.com/tools/take-a-snapshot-of-your-whole-webpage-with-cool-firefox-plugin/ http://www.stepfront.com/tools/take-a-snapshot-of-your-whole-webpage-with-cool-firefox-plugin/ #comments Thu, 07 Feb 2008 07:18:34 +0000 Farhan Kamal http://www.stepfront.com/uncategorized/take-a-snapshot-of-your-whole-webpage-with-cool-firefox-plugin/ The other day I had to take screen captures of some of our websites. Since some of the pages were lengthy, taking a full screen capture seemed impossible. It’s then when I found out about this cool Firefox plugin that takes the screen capture of the webpage with just a click. Worth sharing!

Pearl Crescent Page Saver is an extension for Mozilla Firefox that lets you capture images of web pages. These images can be saved in PNG or JPEG format. Using Page Saver, you can capture an entire page or just the visible portion. Options let you control whether images are captured at full size (which is the default) or scaled down to a smaller size.

There’s a free and paid version available. Check it out and download from here

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