“Be the change you wish to see in the world” -Ghandi
There is a brand of shoes named TOMS, and they are changing the world a pair of shoes at a time. Every time someone buys a pair of TOMS (which are sold all over the U.S.) a pair is donated to someone in a Third World country. I admire this brand because they are helping to stop poverty all over the world by donating shoes. In the United States we believe that shoes are necessary for survival and everyone has the right to own several pairs. Whereas, the truth is shoes are a privilege for many people around the world including some people in the U.S. It is commendable that TOMS is aware of this knowledge and sell their durable and comfortable shoes at a reasonable price. The company has done research on the necessities in life to survive and water and food is donated by many companies, so they took it upon themselves to reach a market that had not been touched. According to TOMS annual giving report, “Shoes have value beyond being critical for physical health. Many schools in developing countries require shoes for attendance. And some soil-based diseases not only cause physical symptoms, but create cognitive impairment too, crippling a child’s long-term potential.” If TOMS did not have this campaign that they run, children would continue to be stricken with many more diseases that occur from walking everywhere barefoot. It would just contribute to the country’s needs for more medicine, but some of the diseases are being combated by TOMS campaign. The brand acknowledges that children feet grow as they do, and so it is their mission to continue to donate so that these children will always have shoes, not just one pair in their lifetime.
Another admirable quality is that this campaign has made more Americans aware of Third world Countries needs and in turn made U.S. citizens more humane. As mentioned before, if I walk into the store and buy a pair of TOMS shoes a pair is donated to a community who lacks, economic, health and educational needs. As of September 2010, TOMS stated their customers donated 1,000,000 shoes to communities in need. That means 1,000,000 people went and bought a pair of flat shoes that are not glittery or designer based to wear in support of TOMS. It stands without saying that without the extreme amount of support from consumers TOMS would not be able to fulfill their mission. The campaign is so strong and detailed of how it prevents diseases for poverty-stricken communities but it also helps local U.S. based businesses, by partnering with them to sell TOMS. The campaign is a win-win for all sides and that is why I admire and support the brand. TOMS is not only helping Third World countries prevent disease and try to help the children grow up in a different environment, but they also are helping our failing economy by not overlooking small businesses that keep a community strong.
I thank Blake Mycoskie and TOMS’s crew for being an inspiration for so many people like me that wants to make a difference in this world.
More than selecting random metrics on Google analytics, I think that it is important to ask some questions before getting started. After understanding how metrics are so significant to the website, I think it is better to start with a profound understanding of the problem you would like to solve, this would be a good way to focus on the macro insight first.
Focusing on the Macro insight, it is easier than analysis, and it’s much easier than having all the things together without knowing what to do. To measure the success of my website it is important to ask some questions first and then pick up some metrics.
How many visitors are coming to my website? to answer this, I just need to understand the difference between Visits and my Unique Visits. This two metrics will answer me this question and it would be a good start to know what should I do with all this visitors that are interested in my product.
Where are Visitors coming from? here it is important to take a look at two reports, the referring URLs and the keywords. Referring URLs will help to understand which sites are sending me traffic and which are not. This is a good way to understand what you are doing (direct marketing, other campaigns, affiliates and so on) and what you are not doing. On the other hand, Keywords will help me to look for non branded words.
What do I want Visitors to do on the website?, Do I want them to spend more time? a good way to measure that, is by taking a look to my bounce rate, if my bounce rate is low, lets say 20 to 30 percent it is a fair rate for the website, it means that the visitors found what they were looking for and the average time spent in the website should be higher.
What are visitors actually doing? In this case I think it is important to know what pages my visitors are viewing. Some times the home page is not the most important place you’ll like that visitors spend most of the time, maybe products or the online store will give you better results in profits. Taking a look to which links do visitors are linking will give me a broad idea of my product and website.
Metrics are my horse of Troy when we talk about marketing tools, they should give me the base to start competing with others and what should I do in my next marketing move, should I go mobile? Should I use a video to promote the website or use direct marketing? Etc. Anything you try, Google analytics will give you a result, and the most important thing is to understand how the metrics work so I can implement the results in a better marketing strategy.
For a long time I tried to understand how to use XML into HTML and I couldn’t find anything simple to integrate in my projects. So I decided to make this sample of a “daily news” where you can edit an HTML using XML. Enjoy!
This is another website like Adobe Kuler that will help you in the color schemes for your design. A brand new interface, as well as the engine. Rapidly increased precision and color space conversions, better preview, enhanced scheme creation system, unique scheme IDs and permanent URL of the scheme.
What Is a favicon?
It’s the little icon beside your site’s name in the favorites list, before the URL in the address bar, as a bookmarked website on the desktop, in the “Links” bar and on the windows taskbar.
How to create a Favicon?
Creating a favicon is very simple! just create your image in any program like protoshop, illustrator or fireworks, and go to this website.
Upload your image, and export the favicon.ico to your computer and upload it to your site, just remember to give the right path when you write the folowing link between your head tags.
Internet Explorer has a slightly different format.
