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