The AWeber load times are a real pain when you’re trying to run a business and need to be checking in with customers often. I’ve personally experienced long load times that prevent me from providing a good service and also cause me to lose potential customers. At the same time, the load times are completely out of my control. They are completely random and not at all predictable. Sometimes, they can take half a day or more to load.
Fortunately, there’s a simple solution to this problem. You can use a service called Shared Access Signature (SAS)
What Is Shared Access Signature?
Let’s consider an example of a typical AWeber signup process.
When a user signs up for AWeber, a confirmation email is sent to them. At the same time, a receipt email is also sent to the user’s email address, containing a link.
When the user clicks on the confirmation link, they are taken to a page where they can enter their payment information. After the user submits this information, they are brought back to the confirmation page where they can enter their account details. Once these details have been verified, the user is brought back to the home page, where they can start using the service.
In this example, we’ll assume that the customer is using a desktop computer to access their email account, and that the email account is hosted by Google.
When the email account is at the end of its login cycle, Google automatically renews the login cookie on the user’s behalf. This ensures that the user does not have to log in repeatedly when they use the service. However, on rare occasions, the login may fail, and in this case the customer would have to manually log in to their email account, on a computer or mobile device, before they could continue using AWeber.
When this happens, sometimes it can take several minutes for the user’s sign up to be confirmed. In this case, the customer would have to wait until the email account was available again before they could start using the service (assuming they did not delete the email alert or settings that prevented them from receiving notifications when their account is available).
Why Should You Use Shared Access Signature?
Why should you use Shared Access Signature instead of just setting up password-protected access to your email account? Let’s consider the implications of using these two methods to provide access to your email account.
If you use a simple password to protect the access to your email account, then anyone with access to your computer could potentially access your email, if they know your password. This makes your email account much more vulnerable to hacking attempts. Hackers who compromise this type of account can easily access and use the account to send spam or compromise your privacy.
Also, with the exception of the few services that have a telephone number for customer support, your email account will be the only way you can reach customer support if you have any questions or need help setting up or using the service. This means that if you’re using an application or service that doesn’t have a strong support network, then you’re mostly on your own.
If you use Shared Access Signature to provide password-protected access to your email account, then a designated user (typically, a system administrator) would have to enter a unique password for each device that they use to access the email account. This is a cumbersome process and creates the possibility of someone forgetting their password, leading to potentially serious security issues.
How Do You Use Shared Access Signature?
To use shared access signature, you first need to generate a short-lived access token for the account that you want to give access to. This is a one-time process that only needs to be done once, and from then on, the account will be able to securely access it’s email, from any device, with the exception of spamming or sending malicious attachments.
The first step, then, is to log in to your Google account, from a computer or mobile device where you’ll use the service, and then click the gear icon at the top right to get to the settings page.
From here, you’ll be brought to the Shared Access Signature login page, where you’ll have to enter your email account details as before. Once you’ve verified the information, you’ll be brought back to the home page. At this point, the account is configured and ready to use. You can now start sending and receiving emails, as usual.
Because the account is still in the early stages of its login cycle, when it’s time for the Google software to refresh its login cookie, the account will be able to successfully log in without needing to verify the details again. This means the customer will be able to access their email account even if they’re not on a device where they can verify the information. However, if the software detects that the account is being accessed from an unverified device, then it will request that the user verify the information before they can log in again.
Sharing Load Times With Customers
Say you’re running a business and need to frequently contact your customers by email. You’ve set up AWeber, and everything is working well. You’re getting tons of new signups every week, and all of your customers are happy.
Every once in a while, you’ll need to check in with a customer to make sure they’re still happy with the service and to let them know about any important changes, or new features that you’re making.
You could go through the hassle of setting up a private email server, or pay for a Professional level account with AWeber, to be able to send emails directly from your inbox. However, that would be a lot of work, and you’d still have to check in with customers via email, at least, for a little while, until you can send them emails from your inbox.
The better solution is to use the shared access signature feature that AWeber offers. When a user clicks on the confirmation link in the email they receive after signing up for AWeber, they will be brought to a page where they can enter their payment information. At this point, the user can start using the product, without ever having to log in again. The benefit of this is that the user only needs to log in once to access their email account from any device. In this way, you’re eliminating all the middlemen that usually appear on authentication websites, reducing the chances of the user being tricked by fake webpages or malware.
After the payment is processed, the AWeber system will generate a short-lived access token, which allows the user to securely access their email account from any device. This token is stored locally on the device, and periodically refreshed by the Google software when the user returns to their device. This way, you’re only responsible for keeping a single password secure, and only need to update the token, when needed.
Protecting Customer Data
Even if you use the shared access signature feature within AWeber to provide access to your email account, you’re still responsible, to some extent, for the safety of your customer’s data. When a user submits their payment information to access the service, they’re giving you their financial information. This means that you have the ability, with the exception of spammers, to access their account details, and, in some cases, their credit card numbers.
Because this is sensitive information, you should be taking every precaution to securely store this information and protect the user’s privacy. One option is to use a PCI compliant (Payment Card Industry) data security service, such as Cloud Protect, to encrypt the information as it is transmitted to the payment gateway and stored on your servers. This way, even if your system is compromised, the information would be protected and the likelihood of financial loss to the customer would be minimized. It’s also a good idea to keep a record of how the payment portal was accessed, so that you can identify any suspicious activities, if, in the future, you should detect any.
Summary
Using shared access signature within AWeber is a simple, yet effective way of providing access to your email account. It allows you to set up a single sign-in that can be used from any device, and also makes it much easier to update and monitor the activity of the account.
For more information about how to use shared access signature within AWeber, please visit this website. At this point, you should have a good understanding of how to share load times of AWeber campaigns.