'Skinning' your Blog

Today we decided to 'skin' the spiral Blog to make it fit in with the rest of our site.

There are three great reasons for this:

1) To keep the spiral branding when people are reading the Blog. Having invested in a custom built web site with a look and feel to represent your company it seems silly not to carry this look and feel through to your Blog.

2) Bringing the main navigation from the website into the Blog so users can efficiently access your site.

3) SEO (search engine optimisation). Modern search engines rely heavily on two things content and links. The content on your Blog although not as keyword rich as say a well-designed homepage is likely to contain many of the key words and phrases relevant to your business. Links between your Blog and your site will help improve the ranking of both as they are indexed.

Once it has been 'skinned' and linked the Blog can be treated as part of the companies' web site rather than a separate entity.

Something else worth mentioning is a feed from your Blog can be used to add some dynamic content to your home page which will keep the interest of both users and search engines. See the right hand column of www.spiral.co.nz/ for and example of this.

Can't see your web site changes?

Sometimes clients phone us and say they can't see any changes to their web site. This is easy fixed and relates to the settings you have in your web browser. Your web browser caches (or saves) files, pages, images etc on your computer, in a temporary internet files folder, while you are browsing the internet. We make the changes and your browser, thinking its doing you a favour, displays the old page, which it has cached on your computer.

To fix this and see the new page immediately, you need to clear or delete your temporary internet files. If you are using Internet Explorer simply click on the Tools button at the top of the screen then Internet Options then on the General tab half way down you will see, under the Temporary Internet Files heading, a button -> Delete Files - click this then go back and look at the web site - you should see the changes in place.

2 tips for Google Ad-words

Results from our Google Adwords had been stunning for the year. Then wamo! over three days our entire marketing budget for the month was gobbled up by someone clicking on our ad and eating up the money.

And so 2 tips for running your Google Adwords campaign are to keep your daily budget capped to a low rate and review your campaigns regularly.

We've moved

The weekend move went very smoothly. You can find us at 240 Jackson Street, Petone - directly opposite the clock tower and upstairs above the chemist shop. The phone number stays the same.

We're moving

Yes, we are moving after just 12 months in our office in Gracefield. The lack of coffee shops nearby is too much - so Jackson Street here we come. We are hoping to keep our existing phone number, but Telecom will not commit to guaranteeing it. If you have trouble getting hold of us please, please phone me on my cell phone. The move happens this weekend - Labour weekend - should be business as usual on Tuesday 25th.

Taking my medicine

It seems I must take my own medicine and write more often to our blog. The subject of our next newsletter - which is in the final stages of beta testing - is once again - blogs. Now my natural inclination is to go off and talk about the wonderful technology around our new e-Newsletter but I should keep to one topic per blog (thats a tip for you!).

There is lots coming up for us at Spiral and much of it impacts, positively, on our clients. So first up is my committment to write, at least weekly to our blog and share with anyone interested what's happening. BTW (thats By The Way) the Dominion Post Mon 10 Oct has an article on blogs - go read.

e-Newsletter Upgrade just days away

Yes - after much discussion, programming, tweaking and tuning we are just days away from launching the Beta version of our new e-Newsletter software.

It has a much improved editor. My turn at sending newsletters comes tomorrow and I'll keep you posted.

-Audrey

e-Newsletter upgrade is on the way

Spiral's e-newsletter is getting an overhaul.

At our first project meeting today, Cain, Mary and Audrey defined our deliverables for Stage 1 of the project (and 'parked' a few readyfor stage 2!) and developed the first cut of our new and improved site menu.

The main outcome for users of Spiral's e-newsletter manager will be:

Refinement of the existing system to make managing your e-newsletters and mailing lists more intuitive.

Our project goals are to

• ensure a smooth transition for users of Spiral's e-newsletter by maintaining the overall navigation structure
• improve acccess to key functions by rationalising some menu items
• enhance the usefulness of the main console - currently called 'home'
• improve system help documentation

A targetted e-newsletter is a powerful marketing tool, delivering your message direct to your clients inbox. We'll be keeping you posted on our project to make Spiral's e-newsletter manager an even better solution for you to manage your e-newsletters and mailing lists.

New Web Site Developer joins Spiral

Welcome to Cain our new developer.
He is already powering through any work we throw his way.

New Clients

Welcome to new clients
- Aatea Consultants
- ChangeWorks
- Te Puni Kokiri

A blog is easy

We just type here.

We live . . . we shop !

Regular internet users in NZ are shopping online and using the internet to make purchasing decisions. According to Nielsen//NetRatings Market Intelligence, close to a quarter of online users report having used a credit card to pay for items bought online in the last two months.
trademe.co.nz was the top rated site in the survey. Read more»

Sue wins

Either no-one read my newsletter or you couldnt spot the blog. We didn't get many phone calls about our compitition. Anyway Sue wins 1 hour of free updates for being the first and if you hav'nt worked it out by now - this paragraph on our homepage is from the blog.

Congratulations

Michelle (super-swimmer), swam from Rangitoto to St Heliers in 1hr 55m. She has sore arms but what determination! Oh - and by the way Michelle, whats wrong with Wellington as a swimming destination?

Announcing Blogs!

This entry comes to you from blogger.com.
Our latest service enables you to create a blog via blogger.com and have it display on your web site.

Whats a blog?

It's whatever you want it to be

• a list of specials
• your latest news
• a personal/business diary
• a collection of links
• memo to the world

A blog is a web site, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what's new. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you. Or not.

Our blog is with blogger.com and we take an RSS feed from it to display on our web site.