We are looking for someone who wants a FREE website

Each year we do a pro-bono project for a community organisation. So far we we dont have a deserving candidate for 2011. Take a look at some of our past pro-bono work and apply to us at Spiral if you think we can help you.

Rotary Club of Hutt Valley - 2010

The Rotary Club needed a website to:

1. Encourage people to visit the club 
2. Show the clubs history and provide a place to expand the historical information about the club
3. Support new and existing members

The website meets the goals plus it provides a "members only section" for club notices and information.

Jackson Street - 2009

Jackson Street is a heritage precinct managed by a locally elected board and funded by a levy on local landlords. Many people contribute to making Jackson Street a success story. The street is growing in popularity, not just with the locals with people coming from outside the region to visit the street.
The old website was dated, boring and did not reflect the old world charm and diversity of the street so we revamped it.



MIRO - Mainland Island Restoration Operation - 2008

MIRO (Mainland Island Restoration Operation) is a volunteer group who work in partnership with Greater Wellington Regional Council in East Harbour Regional Park. To:

• protect and restore the natural forest and lakes ecosystem of EHR
• eliminate pests, both plant and animal 
• see vulnerable trees, birds, insects and fish flourish again
• reintroduce native species lost to the Park

The website was designed to:

• encourage new volunteers
• support the existing volunteer network
• provide news about events and projects 

The website includes our CMS and is simply maintained by one of the volunteers.

What we are looking for in a pro-bono project
As software developers we excel at providing software that meets the needs and goals of the organisation we are working with. We can provide:

• software development
• website management software
• websites
• facebook pages
• database management software

and maybe a sprinkling of Twitter.

We work best with organisations that have a person committed to managing the web presence of their organisation and have strong content writing skills or the ability to engage a content writer for the website.

To submit your organisation for consideration please email Audrey with a short paragraph about why you need our help.

Sorry! you need TWO email addresses

Email is here to stay, until we can find a better (quicker?) method of remote communication, you better get used to it and you need to show your customers you know how to use it correctly.

If you think you can get away with myname@paradise.net.nz as your business email address AND your family email address - think again. As I have mentioned in previous posts it is important for your professional image to use an email address for your business that uses your domain name. Professional  email addresses look like:

• myname@mybusinessname.co.nz
• info@mybusinessname.co.nz
• sales@mybusinessname.co.nz
• etc

Unprofessional email addresses look like

• mybusinessname@myisp.co.nz 
• mybusinessname@yahoo.com.au 

they just don't cut it in todays business world.

Business vs Personal
You can split email communication into two types - business and personal. Don't confuse them! Having your business email send to your personal, or worse family, email is confusing and unprofessional. Having your personal email sent to work is wasting your time and what happens when you sell the business or leave? Take the example of the CEO of a small 15 person company. She has myname@mycompany.co.nz as her email address. To provide continuity of service and proper support for important customers the new CEO will need to receive the previous CEO's emails - do you really want your private life paraded in front of a stranger?  

There is no excuse for not having your very own email address. The proliferation and ready availability of free email addresses from Yahoo and Google mean its easy, quick and free to setup your own email address. You don't even need your own computer - you can use a computer at work, at a friends or in a public place like the library.

Opens & Clicks for Mailroom Users

A brief explanation of the Opened & Clicked terms in Mailroom.

Opened
Opened means someone has opened the mail (hopefully to read it). This statistic does not include emails that have been read in preview mode. The best way to treat "Opens" is to look at trends and remember they will actually be higher than recorded.

Total Opened
The total number of times your campaign was viewed by your recipients. This means that if you send a campaign to 2 recipients and one reads your email twice while the other reads it once, the total opened will be 3.

Unique Opened
The unique opened does not take repeat opens into account, meaning the figure represents the total number of recipients that actually opened your campaign.

Clicks
The Clicks data provides a number of important figures about the links in your campaign. As an example, "2,481 (14.28%) recipients clicked 7 links" tells us the following:
A total of 2,481 recipients clicked at least one link.
This resulted in a click-through rate of 14.28%.
All up, 7 different links in the campaign were clicked.

It may be a link to your website or an extension of the article in the newsletter. You can deliberately encourage "clicks" by putting a summary of the article in the newsletter with a link to the full article residing on your website or blog.

How to look like an amateur - is this you?

Heres some tips to looking casual and amateurish:

• Don't get a domain name
• Have your car sign-written with your yahoo, gmail or paradise email address
• use your ISP email address on your emails eg mybusiness@paradise.net.nz
• Get the wrong domain name eg use mybusiness.net.nz when your are a company and should use .co.nz

I see examples of these nearly every day. Having a domain name, which will cost you between $40 & $70, is worth it just for the level of professionalism it adds to your business on your email communications. Heres how to look professional:

• register a relevant domain name for your business
• use it as your email address eg me@mybusiness.co.nz
• keep your Yahoo, GMail & ISP email addresses for your personal stuff

TIP: You can create an email alias to combine your personal and work email addresses yet still look professional.

Confusion about virtual servers could undermine your decisions

There is misconception and confusion regarding shared servers vs virtual servers. Having a basic understanding of the difference will help you quickly make good decisions about your website or web application hosting.  Virtual servers provide the most robust, dependable solution available at this time while shared servers (if not set up 100% correctly) have the potential to open your website up to poor performance or at worst, to hackers.

Shared Servers
Shared servers are an older technology where many websites/companies shared a server and even a database. The software running on the server portions up the server and shares slices of it to the multiple users. When the server fills up you need to setup an additional server or add more resources in a tricky process that can involve periods of down-time. Its a bit like cutting up a cake, there is only so much to go round and when its all gone you have you have to make another one if you want more cake.

For startup companies, a shared server keeps the initial capital outlay down - we started like this. As soon as we were able we purchased our own dedicated server and moved all our websites, databases and applications onto our new dedicated server.

Dedicated Servers
Dedicated servers are owned by one company. They are dedicated to running just that companies applications/websites or they could be dedicated to running a single website/application. When we setup our dedicated server, we called it Kauri for strength and growth. Kauri is still running and many of our customers still have websites hosted there. It's working well - even better since we moved all our databases and some of our bigger websites onto the virtual server we commissioned earlier in 2010.

Virtual Servers
Virtual servers look like a dedicated server from a software view. They are totally autonomous, like Kauri. The key difference is in the hardware. Instead of the server software sitting on just one hard (physical) server, it sits across a bank of servers which can be added, changed or removed without impacting on any of the individual virtual servers. The changes are managed by the server software, in our case, the world leader VMWare.

Large organisations have been using virtual server technology for years so it was exciting to find a similar offering in the SMB market. We commissioned our new server, called Pounamu, in early 2010 and experienced an increase in dependability measured by less call-outs for our team. The benefits of a virtual server, and why we have one are:

1. Dependability. If any one of the physical servers in the array has a problem the software switches the work-load off that server and spreads it across the rest of the servers. Then the problematic hardware can be replaced or fixed without affecting the performance of your website in any way.
2. Scaleability. Many websites start of with a small amount of traffic. Later, some experience significant growth and may need more disk space or processing power. With a virtual server additional CPU, RAM or storage can be commissioned and operational in as little as 2 hours! A process that used to take days.

With the virtual server technology, we can have a new dedicated server setup and running an application in a couple of days or changes made to cope with a sudden increase in web traffic in just 2 hours - it's  phenomenal!

Are you using The Web or The Internet?

If you are using The Web then you are also using The Internet but if you are using The Internet you may not be using The Web. People often use the the two terms interchangeably but at Spiral it's important we define the two terms correctly so we can focus our services where our expertise lies - on The Web. So what's the difference?

What is The Internet?
In a nutshell, The Internet is a massive network of networks. A worldwide infrastructure that connects millions of computers and networks. Information travels across this infrastructure via a number of different protocols of which HTTP (The Web) is just one. These protocols include:

• HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol
• HTTPS - Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol
• Telnet - bidirectional text communications
• USENET - distributed discussion system. Often used for news servers.
• FTP - File Transfer Protocol
• IP - Internet Protocol
• SMTP - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. For delivering mail.
• POP - Post Office Protocol. For retrieving mail.
• IMAP - Internet Message Access Protocol. For accessing email from multiple devices.

History of The Internet

The architecture and design of the Internet was conceived in 1973. Email predates the Internet, it started in 1965 as a way for multiple users on a computer to communicate. 

In 1983 the Internet proper was born when the global network switched to using TCP/IP for communications (still in place today) and the University of Wisconsin created the Domain Name System (DNS). The World Wide Web was released in 1992.

What is The Web?

The World Wide Web (WWW) is a way of accessing information across the Internet. A turning point for The Web was the release of the Mosaic web browser in 1993, making it easier for regular folk to use the web.

The Web uses the HTTP protocol to share information over the Internet. You  use your web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari etc) to access web pages that are linked to each other via hyperlinks. Those pages may also contain text, images, video, sound etc.

Trivia

Queen Elizabeth II sent her first email in 1976.

Anatomy of a Hyperlink

Heres the breakdown of a hypertext link for all our Nautilus CMS users that anyone creating hyperlinks will find useful.

4 Parts to a Link
The 4 components of a link are

1. The A href tag which tells the browser that the following text or image is a link to somewhere else on the web. It has an opening section and a closing section. 
2. The web address where you put the address on the web you want the link to go to. This could be in your own website or some other place on the web such as a:
• webpage
• blog
• facebook page
• twitter entry
3. The title of the link which gives the visitor information about the link. The title will display when the mouse hovers over the anchor text
4. The anchor text is the clickable part of the link which is displayed for your visitor.  Search engines also use this anchor text.

Link Example

This link to the Spiral website shows each component of a hypertext link.

Inserting Links for Users of Nautilus
If you are using our content management software, Nautilus, then you can easily add a link as follows

1. Select the destination for your link, in this case its the mailroom free trial sign up page http://www.mailroom.co.nz/signUp2.aspx
2. Select the anchor text on the page you are editing and click on the link icon
   
   
3. When the link dialogue box opens, insert the destination address in the URL input space
   
   
4. Enter your title for this link by selecting the advanced tag on the link dialogue box and entering descriptive text in the "Advisory Title" space
   
   
5. Click Ok to finish and insert the link

The Trade Me Story

Spiral table

Last Friday Mike O'Donnell, Head of Operations at Trade Me ,spoke to my local chamber of commerce here in Lower Hutt. If you weren't there you missed out on some funny stories, great tips on growing an web based business and Mike's view on the future of the web. I wish I'd taken more notes but I was pretty much enthralled by what he was saying and so was the whole room. Along with entertaining us through breakfast, Mike was promoting his book, "Trade Me - The Inside Story" - a mixture of good business advice and funny anecdotes.
This month I have a signed copy of Mikes book as our prize draw.
If you sign up during November 2010, to receive our newsletter, you will go in the draw to win a copy of this book.

Cloud Computing for SME's

Last week I attended a packed presentation on cloud computing from our friends at LANtech. This well thought out presentation explained clearly what cloud computing is good for and when you wouldn't use it. The room was full of, mostly, business people with no interest in computers but a lot of interest in protecting and growing their business. There are two important messages relating to cloud computing.

1. Cloud computing takes the hardware out of the equation for you

2. You can use it anywhere you have an internet connection.

Consider cloud computing before you lock yourself into an expensive local server

If you have software running on a server in your office you will know how expensive and time consuming it can be to keep the server running  and the software up to date, virus free, add  all the microsoft updates and patches plus the new versions etc etc

With cloud computing it’s a no-worry scenario because you let your developers look after that for you - of course you need to establish a relatiuonship with someone you trust. But cloud computing also means you can move your apps from one developer to another or one server to another without it being your bother.

Do you wish you could be free of the office?

With cloud computing you can. Because its out there on the internet, you can access your files and work anywhere. This one is very dear to my heart and in my last newsletter I touched on some of the things we do and tools we use  at Spiral to enable the team to work from anywhere. 

All the software we develop goes out into the cloud. As well as the bespoke development we do to assist people manage their databases, we also have our own products used by so many of you i.e.

- Nautilus for updating your website

- Mailroom for managing your email communications and marketing campaigns

Getting out of the office

This post is about getting out of the office and working remotely. With my 3 weeks in Ontario coming to a close, I've had plenty of time to practice working from abroad, I’ve also worked from Australia, Turkey, NZ and the UK. Our flexible working policy at Spiral means that on any given day you might see anyone on our team working from a number of different locations. There have been a number of challenges in setting this up and I am happy to share our experience if you want to contact me.

3 tips for effectively working remotely

1. You have to have a great team to do this so tip #1 is build a great team so you can support each other
2. Stay up to date with emails and avoid the email avalanche when you return to the office
3. Use web based tools that make your job easier

We are experienced in all these areas and especially creating, evaluating and setting up web based software. You can use web based remote access tools to work remotely but this article covers the purely web based tools and methods you can use. Pure, web based software runs in your browser so theres no software to install.

What do you need to work remotely?

• Good hardware, that is your laptop or mobile device.
• Wireless Internet connection or WiFi
• Mobile phone

Web base software tools
These are the software tools we use:

• Nautilus for updating our websites. Nearly all our clients use Nautilus which was designed by us to be a stress-free way for business owners and marketing professionals to use. Because its web based it can be used from any computer connected to the web.
• Mailroom,  our easy to use, powerful solution to creating beautiful email marketing campaigns, managing subscribers and tracking the results.
• Skype for staying in touch with clients and talking amongst ourselves - its free, easy to use and doesn't tie up our phone line. We also use Skype with video for team meetings.
• Basecamp for managing our projects, collaborating with our team and with our clients.
• Highrise for tracking our client contact details, deals and followups.
• Xero for invoicing
• Blogger for writing articles

Ways to get online
If you take your laptop or internet enabled mobile device with you, e.g. iPad, iPhone, Blackberry then you will be looking for WiFi access for your device. If you are traveling light then you need to source internet cafes and public internet access points along your route before you leave.

Using Wifi abroad
Check the data plans in the country you are traveling in and what your current NZ data plan charges for data roaming. Data roaming can be expensive depending on the country you are in, I have found data roaming on my plan in Austalia costs the same as here in NZ.

A good option in some countries is to purchase a prepay plan for data on one of the local networks. Again, you need to check before you go as each country can have very different options. For example, there are good plans available in the UK but in Canada (in Sept 2010) none of the networks offered data and international calls on a prepay plan.

Other tips

Having organised your software, laptop and WiFi access, there are a few little extra tips that will improve your experience of working remotely.

• Make your phone calls at mutually agreeable hours - check the timezone differences and watch out for weekeknds
• Use headphones with a microphone for best sound quality 
• Use video (available with Skype) to personalise some of your calls
• Try to set aside a regular time each day to work

and finally .... keep up the communication with regular phone calls, it reminds everyone they are part of a team and gives us all an opportunity to discuss small issues before they turn into big problems.

Welcome to freedom!

Send me your own tips.

Designing Navigation

This month we have been immersed in our latest challenge .... how to structure the navigation for a content rich site that uses big words and long phrases for its articles and consequently the planned navigation.
I like things simple, although comprehensible may be a better word, and when we are dealing with complex issues we sometimes need to go beyond simplicity to make things comprehensible. This is the issue with the navigation in question. Heres what we did to resolve this issue.

As always with our design we focus on how people will use a website or piece of software. Any navigation needs to help visitors answer 3 questions:

1. Where am I?
2. Where have I been?
3. Where can I go?

Along with answering these 3 questions, I have the results of numerous studies and the practical experience of observing people while they interact with user interfaces to help us reach a solution.

The more sections and pages planned for a website the more complex the navigation problem is. We cannot represent  every single piece of information in the navigation so we strive to provide the visitor to a website with enough information to quickly and intuitively work out where to go.

If an article buried at the lowest level of the navigation is the hardest to find then this would be our "findability" benchmark. While the designer was doing the visuals we built a wireframe and created a page for all the sections we knew about, along with pages deep in the site, that we could use to test out theories. Our programmer applied interactive code to the navigation and we are now testing the behavior of people on the site to determine if we have it right.

I am always searching for a solution that will make it easier for people to find the information they want on your website. If you want help on designing or redesigning the navigation structure on your website give me a call.

How we manage the future

Testing for every browser is a costly and time consuming excercise and I have put a lot of thought into how we get the best result for our clients and their customers while keeping the cost under a million dollars . Heres what we do ....

We manage  future bowser version compatability by developing using the W3C guidelines for world wide web standards

We manage browser compatibility by testing to the following browsers:

          * Internet Explorer(IE) 6, 7 & 8
          * Firefox 2 & 3
          * Safari - Mac & iPhone
          * Chrome

Roughly 60% of the market (Net Applications via Wikipedia) is using IE. IE6 & IE7 do not fully support the world wide web standards so we sometimes go away from the standards in order to make things work in IE, which is the major web browser. Of course we check everything works fine in the other browsers at the time, but new browsers and new versions of the browsers can be, and will be, realeased after we have delivered the project.

When new browser versions are released we check that our Nautilus software works in the new release but not custom built software.

How to grow your Twitter following

Here are 5 ideas for growing your following on your business Twitter account:

• Post your Twitter link/username everywhere - website, email signature, blog etc
• Retweet great, appropriate tweets
• Respect your followers - don't flood them with sales messages
• Follow users you have something in common with
• Remember you are a professional - don't tweet your personal life on your business account

Collaboration Success

The latest consultant site delivered by Spiral also involved collaboration and working with a branding expert.
Working with other people and organisations to bring you the best possible result is something we are very practiced at and we very proud of our achievements in this area.  We have numerous examples of successful collaborations. To date they include:

• SME's who have a great relationship with their graphic designer where the designer has primarily been working on print collateral and they now want to upgrade their website. As software developers, who also do some design, we are well placed to interpret the visuals and build the website or newsletter template.
• Historic Places Trust. This project, implemented late in 2009 was a collaboration between Historic Places internal marketing department who wrote all content for the new site, Datacom who supplied the content management software and Spiral who supplied the database and web programming plus detailed visual design elements based on pre-existing concepts. 
• New Zealand Registered Architects Board (NZRAB). NZRAB have a database of all the architects registered in New Zealand. This information is shared with the public via the NZRAB website and via web services with the NZIA who manage architects professional development. Spiral is responsible for the technical management of this database and collaborates with the technical team at NZIA to enable secure sharing of some information and passwords across the two sites.

My tips for working with others are:

1. Leave your ego at the door
2. No-one likes to be left out - Include everyone in the communication
3. Have well planned a strategic meetings when needed, distribute the notes to all involved
4. Be honest and speak with kindness
5. Speak up and if the group decides against your recommendation, get over it - see tip #1

If you have ever watched a team of Husky dogs pulling a sled you will note that it only works if they all work together - it becomes a tangle if one dog says "Oh, I think we should go this way today!"

Sustainability Update - Congratulations Cain

Being sustainable means several things to us,  its not just about the environment! A sustainable business offers products and services that fulfil society's needs while placing an equal emphasis on people, planet and profits.
Cain recently published code he developed for the new version of Nautilus, to the open source community. This is part of our commitment to people in the community, in this case the world wide programming community.  The user control Cain developed, which is part of the code in Nautilus used to resize images and create thumbnails, was downloaded 4 times within 2 weeks of being posted.
If you know anyone into .NET programming and code bashing then send them the link - http://thumbnailcreator.codeplex.com/

Good enough becomes awesome

Theres an old saying that good enough is good enough - it's really a comment on delivery and meeting deadlines. As a team we are constantly delivering to deadlines, both ours and our clients, and we know what excellent is so we always strive for excellence - trouble is, the web changes every day and what was excellent today may only be "good enough" tomorrow.
If we look at that project thats been on your desk (or inbox) for weeks, it would appear to be nearly finished, maybe you want to do a few final tweaks to it, maybe you will get it QA'd (Quality Assurance tested) just one more time, is the spelling all correct etc, etc. The question is, deliver it now or wait until it 110% awesome?

Delivering now doesn't mean it wont ever be awesome. Even Apple delivers on "good enough" - who remembers the first iPods?  The first generation of iPods had some issues but Apple sold truckloads because they were good enough to be awesome. They keep improving them and iPods are still awesome.

You can deliver now on your website or software app. and keep improving it too. Each day you say "Lets wait until we have the ... finished" is another day you put off the launch of your project.

You know that tomorrow you are going to think of a better way to do something, say something or display something. Its a given, the big question is are you brave enough to launch as you are - is it good enough to launch - can your project be delivered now?

This week we launched our new profiles pages. We know from our web stats that these pages are looked at a lot. I surmise that people are checking us out before they work with us, so they are pretty important pages on our website. The deadline for delivery was the end of May. The pages were delivered with some photos missing and two quotes missing - was this going to lose us business? I wouldn't think so. Were the pages complete and fabulous? nearly, they were good enough. Should I have waited until they were complete? Whats complete? Each day brings new information and new ideas to add to our projects. One of the joys of the web is its ability to embrace change - I can update my website everyday if I have time. So can you!

Which brings me full circle to what projects have you got that are just waiting for that final 5% before they are delivered? Can you deliver them now and make changes next week when you have more information. If we are talking about webpages or software applications, consider what can be delivered now:

• if its a webpage/s:
• look at the webstats after its launched and make adjustments based on whats popular
• get a friend or colleague to give you feedback and make adjustments
• watch people using your pages and make adjustments
• if its software:
• pretend you are a user and find out how hard it is to use
• try it on different computers and make adjustments
• ask a friend to try it and make adjustments

Get away from your ego, launch now and good enough project is on its way to becoming awesome.

Search Engine Optimisation in a Nutshell

Search engine optimisation is an art and a complicated one, but in a really over simplified nutshell. To be found on google:
Use the phrases you want to be found on in your content

To increase your rank on google:

• Use the phrases and variations of those phrases repeatedly in content and headings
• Get links in to your site preferably from sites that Google rates highly and if the text of the link (or to a lesser degree the content around it) contains your keyword phrase, even better
• Be around for a long time - google rates longevity

New server - true cloud computing

Most of what we do at Spiral, all that software development, happens out there in "the cloud".  This week we gave our customers the same dependability and flexibility enterprise applications enjoy by going truly, madly, deeply into the cloud with our new VMWare server.

VMWare enables us to virtualise our server. Virtualisation dramatically improves the efficiency and availability of resources and applications. Our server "sits" on a collection of pooled computing resources in the form of CPU, disk space and memory - between our server and the hardware is a 'hypervisor' layer that manages the server resources. Virtualisation is a proven software technology that is rapidly transforming the IT landscape and fundamentally changing the way that people compute. Today’s powerful x86 computer hardware was designed to run a single operating system and a single application. This leaves most machines vastly underutilised. Virtualisation lets us securely, share the resources of our physical environment with other organisations thus conserving the Earths energy.

Energy Savings

As a member of the Sustainable business network we are constantly looking for ways to reduce our impact on the environment. Virtualisation provides energy savings as high as 70-80% without sacrificing reliability.   Most servers today are in use only 5-15% of the time they are powered on, yet most x86 hardware consumes 60-90% of the normal workload power even when idle. VMware virtualization enables consolidation and increases utilisation of the hardware to as much as 85%. Read more on the VMWare website.

Flexibility

Virtualisation of a single server is just the beginning- we can build an entire virtual infrastructure, scaling across hundreds of interconnected physical computers and storage devices. We don’t need to assign servers, storage, or network bandwidth permanently to each application. Instead, our hardware resources are dynamically allocated when and where they’re needed within our private cloud. Our heavy use applications always have the necessary resources without wasting excess hardware that is only used at peak times.

Need more resources? we can expand "the cloud" with just a few simple commands to meet increased demand.

Cloud computing gives our customers the flexibility, availability and scalability they need to thrive.

Cloud Email reduces Spam by 98%

Spam is the single most annoying email issue and it can be expensive or timeconsuming to find a suitable solution to blocking it. Our website has been around for more than 10 years and spammers have had plenty of time to find us, so we get more spam than a lot of people.  Our mail provider is out there in the cloud where we like to operate too - our mail provider is Google.

NOT GMail - we use the Google mail app - it's a solution that deals with large volumes of spam, effortlessly. If you want to see whats being marked as spam its a simple process to check the list and, happy situation, the mail stays on Googles server(until you delete it), never to taint your computer, it all happens out there in the cloud.

Any company from just 1 or 2 employees to big corporations can use the app. At Spiral there are just 6 of us, so we use the free version of the application. NZ Post use the paid version and are New Zealands biggest user (at Sept 2009) of Googles corporate email (the paid version of the Google mail app) which includes phone support and extra features.

5 simple reasons to use Googles cloud based email app:

1. It takes care of spam spectacularly
2. You can access mail via POP, IMAP or webmail - keep using Outlook if you want too
3. You can set it up yourself with the easy to follow help - no geeks required
4. Its free for organisations with less than 50 employees
5. Its reliable

Give me a call or send me an email if you would like to know more and we can point you in the right direction.

Does scrolling beat paging?

Your website visitors know how to scroll, according to internet guru Jakob Nielsen's latest report, based on an eyetracking study of over 500 webpages. Nielsens findings show that a website visitors viewing time was typically spread 80% above the fold and 20% below the fold.

"The fold" is the content visible on a webpage without having to scroll. This obviously varies depending on the size of the monitor used to view a webpage. You can read more about the fold on our website.

Important information goes above the fold

With 80% of visitors attention going on what they see without having to scroll, placing important information above the fold is critical. If you have a long article it is better to deliver it as a long page with scrolling than to split it up into short pages. You may need to write it in such a way that the important stuff comes first, a little like a magazine article is written, or if you are not able to structure the content to have the import information above the fold you can use clues to draw the attention of your reader to the text below the fold.

A visitor to your website should be able to understand who you are and what your website is about from the information presented above the fold. After that, if their attention is caught, they will scroll. A poll on about.com indicates that 49% of people will scroll if the page seems useful and only 5% of visitors hate to scroll.

3 Tips on scrolling

1. Don’t try to squeeze your content into your page to make it more compact because most visitors will scroll down below the fold to see your entire page
2. Make life easier for your visitors when scolling by dividing up your layout into sections
3. You can encourage your visitors to scroll with teasers or a cut-off layout (such as cut off images or text)

Stop worrying about the fold - Scrolling BEATS paging

Placing important information above the fold is still a primary consideration for content writers and editors. Website visitors are comfortable with scrolling and are prepared to scroll to the bottom of the page in some cases.

Read the full report on Jakob Nielsens Alertbox

Whats Twitter, whats all the fuss about and should I be using it?

So what is Twitter?
Twitter gives a voice to even the weakest signal. It can help you make better choices and gives you a platform where you can influence whats happening in the world.

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows you to send short messages, 140 characters in length, that answer the question “What’s happening now?” or "Whats got my attention?". The messages, called “tweets”, can be read by your friends or “followers”. It could be breaking news, a great deal at your favourite shop, a local traffic jam (hands free of course) or simply a friendly hello. You can access Twitter through the internet, on your smart phone or via SMS on a simple mobile phone.

Twitters growth has come from older adults who might not have used social network sites before, the NewYorkTimes reported. You might like to think about the implications for your organisation as more and more of your customers join Twitter.

What can Twitter do for your business?

Twitter helps you stay connected with your customers and connected customers are more likely to think of you when they want something. As a business you can use Twitter to:

* Bring customers into your shop by sharing information ("New stock from Italy unpacked today")
* Show appreciation to your customers ("thx 2 all who sent in their IT horrer stories. The winner is
…")
* Gather feedback ("which was the most fun - the chipmunks slide or the jack in the box?")
* Gather more feedback - Imagine people are having a great experience using your widget, wouldn't you want to know?
* Offer tips ("always do what your mother told you")

Are people Twittering about your business and what are they saying?

Do you know what people are saying about you right now on Twitter and don't you want to be part of the conversation - I would! Heres how to listen in and you don't even need a Twitter account.

Listening in means starting with searching for you business name. You can use the Twitter search at search.twitter.com or Googles Twitter search - we have embedded this on our website at www.spiral.co.nz/twitter - to make it easy for you to find.  If the buzz is good ... great, you have testimonilas you can use. If the buzz is critical ..., great, you can do something about it.

If you want to be part of the conversation you will need to get a Twitter account and start tweeting. If you want to influence whats being said about you, you will need to get tweeting.


Search Twitter now to hear whats being said, right now, about your company, product or brand.

Where are you?

Where is your business, how do customers get in touch with you? Going back to fundamentals - the internet is not for a bunch of geeks and hackers, its very much mainstream and its a communication highway.

Communication is a two way thing. You may be communicating with your customers via your website, or at least you are providing a message, how well you do that and the response you get turns it from a message to communication. One of the simplest, easiest things you can do to encourage communication on your website is to make your contact details easy to find.

Email, fax, telephone or even a letter - each person, each of your customers will have their own personal preference for contact. You could put your contact details on every page or you could have a prominent link in your menu/navigation that says something simple like "Contact Us". Use a phrase like "Location" or "Info Centre" and you could confuse your website visitor and make them stop and think about how to contact you - in that moment you may lose them, another business like yours is only a click away. Use a phrase that everyone understands like "Contact Us" or "Get in Touch" a phrase so common on the internet that people don't need to think about it and you are the business that receives the lead.

Having all your contact details on your website and making them easy to find enables more people to communicate with you - more leads from your website which in turn leads to more sales.

Shorten your email links

How can you help the person receiving your email, who may be your next customer, to follow a link and find a page on your website?

If the URL's on your website look like this http://www.mailroom.co.nz/Default.aspx?page=1597 - what a mouthful! Then you have what is commonly called a CMS or Content Management System. A CMS is great for updating your website but those links are awful - .aspx? - what is that!

If you want to shorten a link you are sending out by email thus making life a little easier for your customer, try one of the websites that create short aliases from long URL's, like Tr.im - http://tr.im .

The Tr.im website generates a short URL for you, from a long URL that you enter into the website. For example the longish mailRoom URL above was tr.immed to http://tr.im/lDzl & tr.im/jxZZ will redirect you to the homepage of the Spiral website.

The service is free.

PS. If you get bored you could try tinyURL-whacking - placing random letters and numbers after the forward slash in an attempt to hit interesting sites without knowing in advance what they will be.

Blogging for small businesses – are you missing out?

Business blogs can be very effective for marketing, PR and branding purposes. They help differentiate you in a crowded marketplace – especially if they create buzz, eliciting feedback and comments.

To promote your business, write about something you are passionate about, something related to your business, perhaps trends, latest releases or "how to" tips, this way you position yourself as the expert in your field. Write in a personal, maybe casual manner so that you can impart some of your personality through your blog then if people like what they read they will contact you for information or to leave feedback - now you’re doing business! Just remember to put your contact details in your blog profile.

You can write about anything you love - short stories about how you got to where you are now, case studies, snippets from your everyday experience in your industry, these all help establish your brand and promote your business.

If blogging sounds like something for your business you can be up and going in just minutes with the help of either of these two popular, easy to use websites - www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com. It’s free, you can do it all online, there’s no technical stuff to get your head around and in just a few minutes you could be increasing the profile of your business – wouldn’t you like more buzz and customers!

Look Professional for less than $53 a Year

Earlier this month I was following a car into Wellington that had been beautifully sign-written with the owners email address - myname@xtra.co.nz - Oh dear, not very professional, how could they be so careless to pay all that money for sign-writing their car and overlooked the most basic thing you can do on the internet for your business - get a domain name. For less than $53 a year this person could have:

• myname@mybusiness.co.nz on their car
• info@mybusiness.co.nz on their print advertising
• www.mybusiness on their business card

A domain name makes you look so very much more professional in all your advertising and promotional material. Who do you want to promote - your business or Xtra?

You can purchase your own domain name online from any number of New Zealand or overseas companies although I recommend using a local, New Zealand comapny. Simply, Google "domain name registration" for a list of businesses offering this service or try one of these - www.freeparking.co.nz, www.2day.com or www.registerdirect.co.nz. Your local web designer probably offers this service too.

Once you have purchased your domain (actually its more like renting because you pay an annual fee) you can set up your email - whatever@yourbusiness.co.nz and if you have a website, blog or facebook page you can even point your domain name at that, so people can find out more about you and your business.

Can I say "Send me an email" with any confidence?

Don't throw away the FAX machine!

If you were one of the people affected by Telecom moving it's mail servers to Australia then you understand. Last week every one of our customers, that uses the Xtra/Telecom mail servers had issues with their mail. Because Telecom has such a large share of the market this impacted on just about everyone in New Zealand. Emails delivered late, received late, lost in spam filters and now the latest - spam not being filtered and coming through into our mailboxes.

There's plenty of comment on the fiasco in the New Zealand Herald if you have time to read it - the links are at the bottom of this post. The important points, for the future of your business are

1. We cannot rely on Telecom to provide the service we expect.
2. What can we do about protecting our businesses from this type of problem in the future?
   

What can you do?
As business owners, we are assessing risk everyday in our operations. You probably, hopefully, have backup procedures for your office data and now might be the time to consider what you are doing to maintain the flow of information into your business, in particular, email. Here's a few ideas:

1. Change to another provider, of course the same may happen to them in the future - no guarantees.
2. Install software such as Microsoft Exchange on your office server thus eliminating the need for an external mail server.
3. Use GMail for all your mail. GMail can be set up to look professional if you configure it carefully.
4. Stop using email for your important communications (yeah right!).
5. Setup a dual system enabling your mail to be delivered to two different places. If one mail repository is down then switch to using the other.
   

If you are a Spiral customer, you are welcome to call us. We can check the status of mail on the internet and we can check the website of your mail provider, although you can do this too. Where we manage a customers domain name the mail is often setup to flow through our server like water in a stream. When there is a blockage downstream, similar to a log blocking the flow, we sometimes see a buildup on our server. If this happens the mail sits on our server while it waits for the blockage to be cleared. During this time our server logs messages saying the mail was undeliverable and it will try again later, which it does.

Remember, if you are sending a really important email and you don't get a reply then use the telephone.
Looks like the fax machine will be around for a bit longer.

Links to articles and comments on the Telecom mail problem.
Telecom admits Xtra email fault
Has Telecom done enough over the Xtra Bubble fiasco?
Deborah Hill Cone: Email? Sorry, try Australia

Blah blah wastes your dollars and your customers time

Introductory, or blah blah text, found at the top of web pages is skipped by readers unless it is relevant and succinct.

The worst kind of blah blah text is pure filler and platitudes such as "Welcome to our website, we hope you enjoy your visit"make you look incompetent and insult the intelligence of your visitors.

So why have any intro text?

The introductory text on a page

• can help people better understand the rest of the page
• lets people know what they are getting into
• provides a brief summary of the page

How do I write intro text?

Focus on your visitor and answering these two questions

• What will visitors find on this page?
• Why will they care?

Captivate your visitors with information that is delivered quickly. Don't waste words, people read very little on web pages so give them what they want and help them stay on your web site.

How keywords attract customers to your website

It is critical for small businesses to have a website, but building a site is only half the battle. You must also attract customers.

One way to draw customers is to have a high listing on search engines. You want your site to appear in the first few results when potential customers do web searches related to your business. Optimising your website for your keywords is the best use of your time and money, heres how:

Which keywords?
Keywords are the search terms customers use to find you. Getting a high listing with popular keywords is difficult because there's a lot of competition for them, instead choose narrow, focused search terms.
For suggestions on keywords try Yahoo's overture tool http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion

Use product type, people search by product type rather than brand so if you are selling Masport lawnmowers use lawnmowers rather than Masport in your keywords.

Try location, you may want to optimise by location. If you sell lawnmowers locally then use "wellington lawnmowers" as your keywords

Using your keywords
Use your keywords in your page text. Don’t go overboard, remember people will be reading the page along with search engines. Keywords placed in the following locations on your page are given emphasis by search engines

• the title meta-tag
• description meta-tag
• -h1- page heading
• the first paragraph
• headings
• bullet points
• the last paragraph
  

Monitor how you are doing on the search engines and be patient as it can take a few months to see results. You will need to keep tweaking your website because search engines change their algorithms and as other webpages get higher rankings yours will be pushed down.

Try these simple things on your website and see your website listing soar!

Websites in hard times

This is a happy story, at least for one business and hopefully for the other. Talking to a local business owner today and he was all doom and gloom about the economy, business - "I've been in business for 30 years and I'm proping this company up with half my house (mortgage!), grumble, grumble and I'm just not getting any new business, grumble, grumble, recession." Funny thing is this guy (names are protected) is obviously an optimist or he wouldn't be in business, he's a practical fellow with a can-do attitude.

Down the road another fellow, in the same line of work is going gangbusters. 2 years ago the two companies were equally profitable and the owners are good friends. Now one has as much work as he can handle and the other is dispairing. Whats the difference - you guessed it - a website!

The fellow with as much work as he can handle has a website bringing in business for him and the other guy . . . no website. Thats about to change.

Why does my website look different on my Mums computer?

Mum may have an older computer than you or she may have a state of the art modern computer with all kinds of fancy bells and whistles. Either way chances are your website will look different when you view it on her computer.

Heres some background on why. . . .

Did you know that you can set-up your browser to display things the way you prefer them to be displayed?
At times it may not seem so, but you have control, you are in charge and you can set how you experience the internet - you, the end user or website visitor - control your own experience of the internet. Even if you adhere to the defaults set-up when your computer was delivered there will be enormous variation in

• How your monitor renders text
• How your monitor renders colour

You can also choose to:

• Set minimum font sizes so all the text on websites displays bigger
• Use an older browser like IE6 or IE5.5 both of which veer widely away from the world wide web standards in the way they render pages
• Use a Mac or a PCAdjust your monitor colours to suit yourself
• Turn off images and navigate/use a website in text only mode

The resolution settings of your monitor can also affect the display. Common settings are 800, 1024 or 1280 pixels wide, but there are many other options and your site may end up scrunched together or spread out, depending on Mums setting.

But the Font's different and I want it the same - can't you FIX it!
Different computers use different fonts and sets of fonts. Macintoshes have different fonts to PCs'. Some fonts are universal most are not. For example many people use Verdana , thinking it universal, most PCs' come with Verdana but older Macintosh computers did not!

What we do
We set fonts up in families or groups so if the first font in the family is not available on your visitors computer then the browser will look for the next one in line. i.e. a common font style for us to set up is: font-family: verdana, helvetica, arial, sans-serif - here we are telling the browser or computer to use Verdana if its available, otherwise try Helvetica and then Arial finally if none of the others are available just display the text in any sans-serif font.

We use standard fonts like Verdana or Arial whenever possible to ensure we get the most consistent result for your website.

If your Mum has a stoneage PC she may not have Verdana and no Helvetica ... your website may start to look quite different. For websites where this is important we can make special allowances for the huge variety in monitors/computers etc.

What about the difference in colour?
A tiny minority of older computers can only display 256 different colours - if Mum has an old computer that cannot display millions of colours then your website colours will morph to what the browser thinks is a good approximation of your colours and the results are sometimes aweful. More likely the difference is because your Mum has a different monitor (LCD vs CRT) or her monitor settings need adjusting.

Perhaps she is using a Mac, in which case the colours are reproduced slightly differently between a Macintosh and a PC.

What we do
Where possible we choose from the 216-colour web-safe palette for our colours Use white or black for the main content areaAccept that a minority of people may get a compromised experience of the site design

What else do we do?
We make the text on your website resizable so maybe Mum has taken advantage of this and has made the text bigger on your website - so she can read it!
Mum may be smarter than you (I know mine is!) and have changed her settings - theres a setting on her browser (and yours) that makes all the text on websites bigger. This makes her life easier but your website looks different.

So while your website may look different on different computers - we design to look great on them all.

Squeeze pages raise questions about ethics and blindness

remember the song "Mama's got a squeeze box, Daddy never sleeps at night" ? - the kids don't eat and the dog can't sleep!

Well now theres the Squeezepage! Squeeze pages are landing pages created to solicit opt-in email addresses from prospective subscribers. The goal of the page is to obtain the visitors email address.

Hyperlinks and navigation are almost always absent from squeeze pages - anything which distracts the visitor is avioded. Anything that takes the visitor away from this page is avoided - total focus is on obtaining that email address.

The method used for obtaining that elusive email address is to offer you something for free - information, access to content, secret passwords, whatever to give up your email and possibly get additional information.

I have seen many of these squeeze pages on the web and only this week found out what they are called which raises the question how do you find out about a trend or idea that you can observe and have no name for. Without a name the trend becomes blind to us - we can't search for it on Google. To not have the words to search for a trend or idea on Google ... now thats a scary thought!

Why do we specialise in .NET development and how does that affect you?

To look at where we are today I need to take you back 8 years to decisions made in 2000 and the consequences there from.

My first major web development application was in the planning stages and coming from the corporate background that I did it was obvious to me that the critical issue was our data. How we managed it, how the database would scale, how easy it would be to manage etc etc. After much research and despite the higher install cost it was apparent that Microsoft SQL Server 2000 was the answer for the database I had designed - a database that would be processing millions of transactions in a day. The logical programming language to accompany that was ASP, at that time in its classic form.

Having made the decision on what database to use the remainder of my technology decisions were easy to make and I have never regretted specialising early. We occasionally look at other technologies such as Ruby on Rails, php, J2EE and Javascript. The only one we have integrated into our existing Microsoft platform is Javascript, largely because it is a clientside script technology and functions alongside ASP.NET rather than replacing it.

The ASP.NET platform has evolved to be responsive, powerful, easy and fun to code. We now have software running under .NET 1.1, .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.0 - our software is robust and our server platform is stable.

We specialise in .NET development so that we may offer you a scalable, enterprise level database along with quick, feature rich, robust software.

A domain name you can trust

Trust is an increasingly important issue on the internet and one of the trust factors for users is the domain name of the website they are visiting. Internet users choose local domain names over .com addresses.

A survey of British Internet users showed they are six times more likely to choose a .uk rather than .com address when looking for information via an Internet search engine. 62% believe a .uk address suggests a company is local or more relevant than a .com, and 32% believe that it is important for international companies to have local domain names in order to attract local customers. 72% said they would visit a .uk web address above any other and only 5% of respondents would try the .com.

How does this translate for New Zealand companies?
Well if you are doing business in NZ than you will be more successful within the NZ market with a .nz domain name. New Zealand internet users experience a higher degree of trust when they are on a local - .co.nz, website, which means having a .co.nz domain name is essential for doing business in New Zealand.

For companies exporting you need to consider 3 things

1. Having a .nz domain name avoids the anti-US feeling in some markets
   
2. Having a .com domain name is essential for the US market
   
3. You could take out domain names in all your major markets .uk etc

You can get a domain name for each of your local markets because your web designer can point ALL your domain names at the same website.

The implication for New Zealand businesses trading in overseas markets is obvious. Having a local domain name is important in building a higher level of trust in your products and services. We have seen this in the Australian market, where .com.au domains perform better than .co.nz domains.
If your market is the UK and your company is based in NZ you would typically have two domain names yourcompany.co.uk and yourcompany.co.nz .You can have as many domain names as your wallet and your imagination allow.

See my previous post for more on how domain names are structured and check if you have the correct one for your business.

Have You Got the Right Domain Name?

Domain name, web address, URL, they all refer to the same thing - it's the way people find your company on the internet. Just as homes and offices have a street address, so your website has a web address.

Your web address or domain name typically has several levels, separated by a dot. The right-most level is known as the top-level domain and is often represented by a country code, such as .nz. Within .nz, a range of second-level domains have been created for specific uses (eg. .co.nz for commercial users and .school.nz for schools). Some second-level domains are subject to moderation and have a restricted usage (eg. .govt.nz). Using Spiral as an example we see:
* third-level domain = spiral
* second-level domain = co
* top-level domain = nz

Third-level domains are managed in New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom on a 'first come, first served basis'. Australian domains are available only to registered Australian businesses, companies or ABN holders

How do I choose a domain name?
1. Choose the top-level domain based on your market and possibly your location

2. Choose the second-level domain based on your activities

• .co or .com for companies pursuing commercial aims
• .org for non-profit organisations
• .net for organisations directly related to the NZ Internet
• .school for pre-school, primary and secondary schools
• .maori for Māori people, groups, and organisations
• .ac for tertiary educational institutions

3. Choose a third level domain based on one or all of the following

• your company name eg spiral.co.nz
• the name of your product eg wondercap.co.nz
• an easy to remember abbreviation eg nzrab.org.nz
• something made up and memorable eg Ilovemydog.co.nz any combination of letters and numbers. You may also include a hyphen anywhere in the string, except the beginning or end.

What about the www?
The fourth-level domain is also known as a sub-domain and typically we see www as the sub-domain, as in

http://www.spiral.co.nz/ . A sub-domain might be set up for something like a forum or another major section to a website i.e. our mailRoom software website is http://www.mailroom.co.nz/ and the address for the application is http://email.mailroom.co.nz/ - no www necessary.

Other factors around trust will be in my next post.

What is a SQL inject?

A SQL Inject is akin to the worst kind of tagging and is yet another way that hackers make all our lives uncomfortable for no apparent gain to themselves!

A SQL injection attack - and I say attack because it is essentially an attack - consists of injecting (or inserting) an SQL query into the input field on a web application. An attacker can inject SQL commands into input fields, which may then execute against a database leading to database corruption or code execution on the server. These attacks are usually automated.

SQL injection is very common with PHP and ASP applications due to the prevalence of older functional interfaces. The newer programmatic interfaces available, such as J2EE and ASP.NET applications are less likely to have easily exploited SQL injections.

We consider SQL injection attacks to have a high impact on our clients websites and treat them seriously.

How we avoid SQL injection vulnerabilities
All our second generation Nautilus websites have been developed using .NET 2.0 and we avoid SQL inject attacks through the careful use of parameterised stored procedures.

Our older Nautilus websites are vulnerable and we are in the process of retrofitting these websites to repel attacks.

Microsoft Security Advisory article (954462) reported on June 25th 2008 that Microsoft is aware of the recent escalation in these attacks targeting websites that use Microsoft ASP and ASP.NET.

We are currently looking at further ways to secure our server with outside software that may
1. Scan for vulnerabilities
2. Provide protection for all websiteson our server

We'll let you know how we get on.

Advice for people planning their first web presence

The single most important question you can ask and answer before you begin your web project is

Why are we doing this is?

If you can answer this question and be clear on what outcomes you expect from the website then you can measure the success of your website. Ultimitely the success of your website comes down to the bottom line, however you measure it.

I was in a time warp

Yesterday I had the privilege of meeting a gentleman with an extensive stock of weird and interesting items for sale.

In a solidly build warehouse , the company has been accumulating items since it was formed in the 1930's. Founded on old fashioned principles such as value, customer service and providing items to customers that would endure rather than what is cheapest on the day, this company has items that are no longer manufactured. These items are the last of their kind available in New Zealand and I wonder if they are the only remaining ones in the world?

How does one even begin to sell from this type of stock list?
Firstly not all the items are ancient. There is a huge stock of speciality items that there would be a small demand for, the trick is to reach a larger market to increase that demand and so voilà a website becomes the perfect tool to reach that market, especially coupled with extensive optimisation or an adwords programme.

What about the oddities?
The one-offs, the end of lines that are never to be repeated, the items so old and so unique as to almost be classed as antiques? An online auction site would seem to be the answer here. What will the market bear? An auction is the ideal place to sell speciality items and to test the market on everyday items.

I hope we get the job of helping this gentleman move his stock. I'm sure there will never be a dull day exploring in that warehouse!

My 2007 Top 10 list of lists

At the beginning of 2008 and what do we obsessively do? Some of us look at the last years top 10 lists. Here are some lists I like.

1. Google 2007 Zeitgeist
2. The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2007 - you need to sign in to see these but its free.
3. 100 Best Songs of 2007
4. Rolling Stones 2007 Best Music Videos
5. NZ Heralds Best of 2007
6. Top 10 Baby Names for 2007
7. Trev's Top 10 List of Amazing Women
8. Top 10 Political Themes for 2007
9. New Zealand's Top 20 websites according to Hitwise
10. The 10 Greatest Motorcycles of all time - this links to the #1 motorcycle on YouTube, from there you can see the other 9.

Upgrade for ROI

Whats the best reason for upgrading your website?
For a business, it's got to be to improve the return on your website investment (ROWI). Non-profit organisations can also measure this in terms of non-profit indicators, such as members or donations.

So, with the goal of improving our ROWI we embark on the journey with our own website. To help us reach our destination/goal we need to be clear on what it is we want to acheive, otherwise we may have the wrong maps/indicators.

We get a lot of visitors to our website via our clever search engine marketing and website optimisation. After our visitors arrive on our website they drop off in droves and as we have an amazing record off keeping customers once they get to know us, my goal is to increase that retention rate and pursuade people to contact us.
Next Actions:
1. Quantify lost and retained visitors
2. Specify goal. Quantity, quality and timeframes.

Did you notice the upgrade?

Our website received an upgrade last week. Has anyone noticed? Actually, I hope no-one has and the reason is that if we have done our job correctly then the upgraded website should look like the old one.

So why did we do it?
We upgraded the site in preparation for whats to come, a visual upgrade later in 2007 and we wanted to take avantage of the smarter technology on our new server.

3 day listing

3 days after submitting the XML siteMap the site of this story is listed. The site was cached at midnight the evening after we sumitted the sitemap. Nothing showed up on the organic search results over the next two days - very early Friday morning and the site is listed at the top of the search results.

Yesterday was one of those days where your list just gets longer as the day! Then last night I collapsed into bed exhaused and didn't do any of my usual catch-ups. Question is - when did the site actually list? - I checked at 4:30pm and it hadn't listed - Michelle checked at 8:25 and YES! it was there. Howzat!

Page Listed but not site

36 hours on and we find that "the" site is still not indexed by Google.

Of some consolation to us is our client page is listed when we type the name of the product - wondercap - into Google. Interestingly enough the cached version of the page from last week does not show the new updates. Still not good enough for our client. We continue to monitor and do what we can.

24 hours on

No progress 24 hours after submitting the sitemap to Google. Unfortunately an old page from Trade Me in April, with an out of date price, continues to show on Google when searching for wondercap.
Of course the site we are looking to list is wondercap.co.nz
I have one more trick up my sleeve to try tomorrow.

Search Engine Sprint

"Help" says the client, "my website is not listed on Google, I'm going to be on television in 3 days time - is there some way I can get listed so I can catch all those people who will be looking for my product after the show?"

So much for planning! I know it's common for Google to take 3 weeks to 3 months (or more) to list a website. We can usually get them listed within three weeks just by adding a link on our website. Of course adding links to our website has the potential to lower our ranking so I need to be a bit careful with this.

We love a challenge so we have jumped right in - if we get the site listed within 3 days then our client will pay our SEO bill - otherwise theres no charge.

Over the next few days I'll report on whats happening and what we are doing.

How to grow your business web site

Clear content, simple navigation, and answers to customer questions have the biggest impact on business value. Advanced technology matters much less.

Read more on this in Jakob Nielsen's latest Alertbox

'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?