Thursday, February 21, 2008
Make Web 2.0 deliver business benefits
Web 2.0 is already producing leaders - Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Google - but for many organisations, coping with its implications remains a challenge because for the most part, Web 2.0 has been flying underneath the corporate radar.
In an example of Web 2.0 technology reaping real-world benefits, a major airline's flight crew has chosen to use Facebook to manage their schedules, as did management consultancy Capgemini for the co-ordination of a new starters' "onboarding" programme.
By November of 2007, Facebook had acquired 50 million subscribers, with many organisational personnel already signed up, including 17,000 employees from Microsoft, 20,000 from IBM, and 13,000 from Accenture.
Author: David Bicknell
Posted:
11:52 20 Feb 2008
Posted by : Web Design Company - Webcare - http://www.webcare.com.au
SEO: The Power of Your Page Title
- According to SEO expert Brad Fallon (of Stompernet fame), one of the most important SEO “on site” factors is using keywords in your page title. This is usually a really easy thing to do (particularly if your website has a WebCare Content Management System back-end).
The page title is the name that is displayed for every page of your website at the top of your browser window. Brad says that he has researched the impact of changing the words in your page title and it has had a dramatic effect on his rankings. The mportant principle is as follows:
Use your most important keyword/s first in your title.
Use your secondary keywords later in your title.
Don’t just keyword stuff your title - it also needs to have a bit of “filler” in it.
So, using WebCare’s home page as an example.
The title used to be:
WebCare Solutions: Fixed Priced Websites
What are the keywords here?
“webcare”, “webcare solutions”, “websites”, “fixed price” - all pretty irrelevant (and thus low quality traffic) keywords!
What I really want my website to rank highly on is high traffic keywords like “web design” and web site design”.
So, putting Brad’s research into practice, I have now changed the home page title to:
Web Design by WebCare - Creative Web Design Services
This includes the keywords “web design” (which is my best keyword and so it is right at the front of the title) and “web design services”. So there is repetition of the keyword - “web design” as well as an additional keyword phrase “web design services”.
Of course, you also need to ensure that you use the keywords you want to rank highly for throughout the text on that particular page (the earlier the better and the more prominence given to the keyword the better). Have a look at the webcare home page to see how often we use the words “web design” and the different formatting that we have applied to this keyword (particularly bold).
AAPT: Tell it like it is!
No contracts! I hate being forced to sign up to a deal for 12 or 24 months - especially when i am not purchasing hardware. Why do i have to sign a contract? Who knows what my requirements will be in six months time or what better deals will be around. If their deal really is that good, why do they need to lock you in??
No connection or joining fees! You only pay for the service - there are no other hidden transfer or connection fees. So, if you try it for a month and then find a better deal - you haven’t lost a cent - you have just paid for what you’ve used.
Free ADSL modem! If you have your landline with AAPT, they give you a free broadband modem with your internet connection - and still no contract! Beautiful! Many other suppliers will charge you $129 plus joining fee - particularly when you are not on a contract.
Great rates! The land line plans have really good cap deals (eg $29 with $50 of calls, or $49 with $100 of calls or $149 with $500 worth of calls) and you get $10 discount on your broadband if you bundle your land line with them. We are on a 1500k plan with 15GB of download for $49 per month.
Great service! In the two years we have been with them, AAPT has provided brilliant service on at least 10 occasions (even when they didn’t have to - such as when we were having problems with our wireless broadband which was nothing to do with them!) and stuffed up once (which they finally got right on the next phone call). And their call centre is in Australia! In my experience of Telcos - this level of service is amazing!
No contracts! Did I mention this already? This really is such an important feature. How many people tell you about their crappy phone plan and then tell you that they are stuck for another X months? No contract is such a liberation! if you try it and don’t like it - move!
So, if you are looking for a better phone deal - it may well be worth your while checking out what AAPT has to offer.
Posted by: Web Design Company - Webcare (http://www.webcare.com.au)
SEO: Free Training Videos
I came across some great free videos yesterday that I reckon are really useful. They are from the video training website Lynda - you can buy a membership to Lynda for a month or a year which gives you access to all 19,000 training videos that they have on a myriad of computer-related topics. But, back to SEO!
One of the topics Lynda has videos on is SEO. They have over 9 hours of videos on SEO and you need to join up in order to see all of them. But, you can watch 7 of these videos for free! The free titles are:
Overview
2:57
2.6 MB
What is white hat SEO?
7:19
14.8 MB
What is black hat SEO?
7:18
10.1 MB
Get inside the mind of the searcher
5:43
11.5 MB
Keyword research
7:38
9.7 MB
Hubs and authorities
8:40
10.4 MB
So, head on over to Lynda and watch these free training videos on the basics of SEO. They will give you a good head start on your journey of mastering this important internet marketing strategy. For more information, visit webcare at http://www.webcare.com.au
Welcome to my musings on internet marketing
The purpose of this blog is as much about recording for my benefit, the nuggets of information (tips and tricks) that I find in the course of my online day, as it is about communicating those nugget to others.
As most of WebCare’s clients are starting up new online businesses or are starting fledgling online versions of existing businesses, their learning curve is huge - search engine optimisation, pay per click advertising, blogging, podcasting, web 2.0, on-site optimisation, link building etc.
This blog will work through each one of these concepts over time and add new information as it emerges.
For more information on webcare, visit us at http://www.webcare.com.au
Find out what people are searching for
Google has recently upped the ante on Overture. For example, have a look at Google Trends. This tool lets you search a keyword (eg “ipodâ€) and see a graph of the no of searches over a certain period of time. You can also set it to report on a particular geographic region and compare it to other keywords (eg “creative zenâ€). Fabulous!
Another great Google tool is its Google Keyword Tool which generates potential keywords for your ad campaign and reports their Google statistics, including search performance and seasonal trends. You can see whether a keyword is competitive and frequently searched (and obviously you want something that is frequently searched, but low on competitors. Google will also generate you a whole list of keywords (including lateral or synonyms) that you can then transfer straight into your Google Adwords campaign. The features of this tool well exceed what the Overture Keyword Tool has to offer.
For more information on search engine optimisation and SEO, visit webcare at http://www.webcare.com.au
Outsourcing: Save Time, Make Money
Money is not the only limited commodity that most of us have - TIME is the other. So the equation of becomes:
Save money and spend time OR save time and spend money.
This strategy is about spending some money (usually not a lot) to get someone else to do something for you (outsourcing). There are only so many hours in a day and if you want your business to be successful, then you need to be doing the things that will build that business. The secret to giving yourself more time in the day and still doing all the tasks that are essential to building your business, isoutsourcing. Get someone else to do it for you!
What Can you Outsource?
Pretty much everything! In particular, outsource the things you are not particularly good at or you don’t enjoy doing. You can then focus on the things you love!
Here are a few ideas for things you can outsource:
Copy writing - your website content, email promotions, newsletters, sales letters, ebooks, articles, reports etc
Products - all digital products - ebooks, videos (including screen capture tutorials), software, podcasts etc
Customer Service - responding to customer enquiries, troubleshooting, help desk etc
Search Engine Optimisation - an expert can analyse your site, make recommendations for improvements, implement the recommendations, find link partners and monitor and tweak the results. WebCare can do this for you.
Advertising Campaigns - set up your Adwords, Yahoo, Sensis etc campaigns, find the right keywords, lower your cost per click and increase your conversions. WebCare has Google Adwords Professionals (GAP) on its team and we can set up and manage your pay per click campaigns for you.How do you find a person to do it for you?
Talk with Webcare to see if we can help (chances are we can and we will give you a great quote). Alternatively, you can look for a person with the skills you need on sites like:
Rentacoder
eLance
Workaholics 4 Hire
Outsourcing Success Tips
Make sure you write a very clear description of what it is you want done. If there is any ambiguity, you may be disappointed. Create a detailed specifications brief - the more detail the better. Make sure you state in your description “This job will be quick and easy for someone who knows what they are doing.†This makes the job sound easy and will reduce the bids that people make.
And don’t just pick the cheapest bidder - you will usually find that this does not work out as planned. Ask for examples of their previous work. Give them a small project to start and if they handle that well, then engage them on the next one.Once you find a great person, keep working with them - make it a long term relationship - but do it on a project by project basis.
Use screen capture software (like Camtesia) showing the person exactly what you want done.
If you are worried that someone might “steal†your idea, then use vague project titles and don’t give any info in the description about how you are going to use the work.
For more information on outsourcing your work, visit webcare at http://www.webcare.com.au
Reducing Email Spam - Finally!
Why did this take me so long to do? I have been getting upwards of 400 spam messages per day - around 250-300 of these get automatically identified as spam and put straight into my spam folder (which I used to check every day to make sure that I wasn’t missing anything important - like a Viagra special offer!) and the other 100-150 went straight into my In Box! This take ages each morning to work through and was a distraction throughout the day.
Why was I getting so much spam? Because I have so many old websites that have email addresses on them and, more importantly, because I had the “catch all” option selected for most of these old domains. What that meant was that any email that is sent to “anything@mydomain.com” will get re-routed to my standard email address. I didn’t bother setting up email accounts for most of these old domains - with catchall on, I didn’t need them. So, all spammers need to know is that my domain name exists and they can send an email to “xyz@mydomain.com” and it would arrive in my mail box. Stupid!
Anyhow, this morning that all changed! I logged in to the control panel (”cpanel’) of every domain hosting account I had and changed the “Default Email” setting to ” :fail no such address here” - this will now bounce back all those spammy emails to the address they came from! Since I did this about three hours ago, three spam messages have arrived (all to legitimate email addresses) - compare that with the 40 odd I would usually receive during that same time span.
If I wanted to get rid of all spam completely, I could enable BoxTrapper (installed as part of Cpanel hosting accounts). BoxTrapper protects your inbox from spam by forcing all people not on your white list to reply to a verification email before they can send mail to you. This means that if you haven’t approved someone (ie they are not on your whitelist), then they will be sent back an email to verify who they are, before you receive their email. If they do not reply, then you will never see their original email. So, this can be a little dangerous as you might miss out on legitimate emails. But, it will solve your spam problem!
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
WebCare: Australia’s First Totally Green Web Design Firm
We at WebCare are very excited about being Australia’s first 100% green web design firm. From the core of our business model, we are totally committed to being not just carbon neutral, but carbon positive (WebCare produces much more carbon than it uses)!
Modern technology and communications infrastructure allows us to operate our business from anywhere with power and an internet connection. So we chose to set up our headquarters on a farm with more than 4000 mature trees (if each tree absorbs 650kg of carbon in its lifetime, then this property can absorb 2600 tonne of carbon) and new plantings of about 3-400 trees (260 tonne of carbon) occurring each year. The property is located about 35 minutes from Adelaide, South Australia - so ordinarily that would mean a long commute for staff and long drives to see web design clients or for clients to visit the office.
That is where our web design business model provides a solution - about 95% of our work is conducted by phone and email rather than face to face. So we are able to keep travel by car to an absolute minimum! The environmental benefit of this approach is huge. But that is not all!
The electricity that WebCare uses to power its business is 100% Green (Renewable Energy) Power. The other emissions from our business (such as the few times that a car is required and plane travel, and our host server) are offset by carbon credits from Easy Being Green.
Our office practices also support this committment to being environmentally conscious in everything we do. The office uses recycled copy paper, recycled toilet paper (yes - it is a bit scratchy, but we cope :-), is self sufficient for water (relying upon rainwater and dam water) and, of course, all lights have low energy globes.
If you want a website that is 100% green from its very conception, then talk with WebCare and you will know that the design and building (and hosting, if you want it) of your website is totally carbon neutral. You can read more on our environmentally friendly web design page.
Editing Meta tags in Zencart
Zencart enables you to easily set the meta tags for products via the admin system. But what if you want to change the meta tags for other pages in your site? This starts to get a little trickier. These instructions are not for the faint hearted. And, remember, you should only ever change the original code for your site if you have an up to date backup! Don’t panic though, because apart from Page Title, the meta tags are nowhere near as important as they once were.
Firstly, the meta tags are set in different files.
The default META_TAG_TITLE is set in includes/languages/english.php and as you browse through the pages additional text is appended to this title. This additional text is generated in includes/modules/meta_tags.php
The META_TAG_KEYWORDS are set in the /includes/languages/english/meta_tags.php..(custom keywords )
Also, the keywords are generated depending on the product selected in includes/modules/meta_tags.php. These meta tags can be set in the admin area for each product.If these meta tags are not set then the product name is used as meta tag keyword and its description in meta description.
The other meta tags (authors , generator) are hardcoded in the /templates/template_default/common/html_header.php
Initially category names with custom keywords are appended to it.
The SITE_TAGLINE is set in the includes/languages/english.php.
The META_TAGS_REVIEW is set in the includes/languages/english/meta_tags.php and it gets appended to the title.
See, I told you it wasn’t for the faint hearted! For more information on zen cart web design, visit webcare at http://www.webcare.com.au
Editing Your Photos for Web - No 2!
In our last blog posting on this topic, I wrote about some free software you can use to edit your images for web. In this article, I want to focus more on the practicalities of image size - why it is so important that your images are optimised, and what the real difference in image size means.
A couple of important rules of thumb for you to remember:
1. Image size - between 4kb and 20kb per image (depending on the no of images per page)
2. Page size - each page on your site should be a maximum of 50-80kb in total (though I reckon in these days of broadband that going to 150-200kb is probably acceptable).
3. Stickability - 50% of people leave the average website within 30 seconds! If your website hasn’t even loaded after 30 seconds, how many people will hang around?
I have recently had some clients who have experienced some challenges from this issue of image size - both clients I am thinking of have shopping cart (or ecommerce) websites. One of them had product images that were about 50kb and the other had product images in the order of 400kb!
Now, just having one image that is that much bigger than standard (4k to 20k in size) is not going to be a huge issue. But in shopping carts, you might have a page with 30 of these images showing at a time! 30 images at 400kb each is a whopping 12,000kb (12 MB) per page! Even at 40kb per image you are still looking at 1200kb (1.2MB) per page.
How long does it take to fully load a web page that is 1.2Mb or 12Mb in size? Lets check the
Page Size - 50kb
7 secs - Dial Up - At 56kb (which is quicker than people on Dial Up usually get)
1 sec - Very Slow Broadband (256KB)
Instantly - Slow Broadband (512kb)
Instantly - Medium Broadband (1500kb)
OK Page Size (150kb)
21 secs - Dial Up - At 56kb (which is quicker than people on Dial Up usually get)
4 secs - Very Slow Broadband (256KB)
2 secs - Slow Broadband (512kb)
Instantly - Medium Broadband (1500kb)
Huge Page Size (1200kb)
2 mins 55 secs - Dial Up - At 56kb (which is slightly quicker than actual Dial Up speed)
36 secs - Very Slow Broadband (256KB)
18 secs - Slow Broadband (512kb)
9 secs - Medium Broadband (1500kb)
Massive Page Size (12,000kb)
29 mins 15 secs - Dial Up - At 56kb (which is slightly quicker than actual Dial Up speed)
6 mins - Very Slow Broadband (256KB)
3 mins - Slow Broadband (512kb)
1 min - Medium Broadband (1500kb)
So - you can see the problem with large image files!
From a speed perspective there is no question that you want small file sizes. So why would anyone want to use large image files? To preserve image size (ie the physical dimensions of the image) and image quality (low-resolution, medium-resolution, high resolution, very high resolution). If you are selling products (or services for that matter), you want the customer to be able to see the product in its best light - the image needs to be clear (not blurry) and large enough to see all the detail.
So, it comes down to a choice between SPEED & CLARITY!
The great thing about the way images display on the web, is that usually you can look at a fairly low resolution image and it looks pretty similar to a much higher resolution image.
Two Million Businesses in Australia!
The good news is that 58% of businesses that opened in June 2003 were still operating in June 2007 (four years later!). If a business is going to fail, around 1/3 of them will do it in the first year.
It is these 1.93 million small businesses (variously known as home businesses, SME’s (small to medium enterprises) and SOHO (small office home office) that are the target group for WebCare’s web design and development services. There were 2.4% more businesses in 2007 than 2006 - or around 48,000 new businesses. All of these businesses need a website and WebCare’s fixed price packages suit start-up businesses with low capital reserves to a tee!
If you are one of the 10% of people in Australia with their own business, and you don’t have a website, give us at WebCare a call today. We can talk through the options for your website - what sort of site you need, what is its primary purpose (attracting new customers, providing information to existing customers, selling services, selling goods etc), and what are the best options for marketing this site. Best of all - this consultation is free - a great way to canvass the options for your businesses website and to make sure you have enough information to get quotes on your new website.
For more information on web design and development, visit us at http://www.webcare.com.au
How are the Prices of Web/Online Advertising Calculated?
Web advertising is a bit different to display advertising - but I suppose the principles are similar.
The main cost driver is not size, but no of impressions (ie how many times the ad is viewed) - so how much traffic is each page on your site getting? Until you are getting reasonable traffic levels, advertising is not really worth much (because very few people are seeing it).
The other driver is click through rate (CTR - how many people actually click on the ad to go through to the advertiser’s site?).
You can sell ads by:
no of impressions
CTR
size
location (top rather than bottom)
sub-pages
time
etc
I was talking with a client yesterday who told me they looked at advertising on one big niche market site - start price is $20k!!! So - they are advertising with the competitor of that big niche market! But, they are not advertising on their site - but in the emails that get sent out to people on their mail list - and that is costing $900 per email just to people in one state!! It is massive traffic that is driving these prices.
To my mind impressions and CTR are a much better measure than time - as you could buy a months worth of advertising that only gets 50 impressions and 0 CTR’s!! CTR is better than impressions (which is why google adwords works so well) as you are paying for actual traffic rather than potential traffic! So, if you can guarantee advertisers on your site a certain level of traffic to their site (which is what CTR measures) then I think you are offering a much better deal than just impressions.
For more information visit us at www.webcare.com.au
Do you process credit cards online? Be Scared!
There is now a $10,000 minimum fine for small online merchants in Australia who do NOT adhere to the new PCI-DSS standards introduced in September 2007 by the Security Standards Council (SSC). Standards? What Standards?
You can download the standards here:
PCI- Data Security Standards v1.1
The upshot of this document is that there are a whole bunch of minimum requirements that an ecommerce that receives credit cards numbers (called PANs - Primary Account Numbers) MUST have in place. These requirements are:
Requirement 1: Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data
Requirement 2: Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other
security parameters
Requirement 3: Protect stored cardholder data (ie encryption)
Requirement 4: Encrypt transmission of cardholder data across open, public networks
Requirement 5: Use and regularly update anti-virus software or programs
Requirement 6: Develop and maintain secure systems and applications
Requirement 7: Restrict access to cardholder data by business need-to-know
Requirement 8: Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access
Requirement 9: Restrict physical access to cardholder data
Requirement 10: Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data
Requirement 11: Regularly test security systems and processes
Requirement 12: Maintain a policy that addresses information security for employees and contractors
If you are already doing all this. Wow! Great job! If you are not, then you might want to look for an alternative way of processing online credit transactions!
Here are some options:
1. Use a bank’s merchant facility that DOES NOT require the card no to be given on your website. In other words, the credit card details are given “off-site”. If the customer wants to pay by credit card, when they click on the “Pay Now” button (or equivalent), they are taken to the Bank’s Merchant Facility to enter their credit card details. At no stage are you, the merchant, in possession of or responsible for the customer’s PAN (ie credit card number). So, the PCI-DSS requirements do NOT apply to you! Examples of merchant facilities that fall into this category are:
ANZ eGate
NAB’s NSIPS
Commonwealth’s XXXXX
2. Use a third-party processor. Paypal is the most popular example of a third-party gateway in Australia. It is secure, it is free to set up and WebCare integrates PayPal into all of our ecommerce websites - free of charge! The only cost is the roughly 2.5% transaction fee. Yes, this is higher than you pay with a bank, but there are no other fees! So could be saving many hundreds of dollars in the first year alone (depending on the volume of transactions that go through your ecommerce site). Paymate is another example of this type of processor but their fees are significantly higher than PayPal (if you include the 3% fee they automatically charge your client!).
3 . If you have manual credit card processing facilities and you are authorised (or can get authorised) for “no-card present transactions” (including phone and fax), then you can use e-Path to gather the credit card details from your customer and to make them securely available for you to process manually. e-Path looks like a third party processor to the customer, but it does not actually process the card. Rather, it captures the details on your behalf. You then retrieve the credit card details from your e-Path account and process in the usual way. Because your website is NOT receiving the customer’s credit card number, you are not subject to the PCi-DSS requirements. Of course, you still need to treat those credit card details in accordance with your merchant agreement.
The other great advantage of e-Path is that you can then investigate the legitimacy of each order before processing the card (eg check country, delivery address, valid phone number, non-free email address (hotmail, yahoo, gmail etc)). This should reduce significantly the amount of credit card fraud that you are subject to. Yay!
4. Stick with non-credit card forms of payment - cheque, money order, direct deposit to your bank account. You won’t have to worry about any of these issues, and there are virutally no transaction costs. Any (or all) of these forms of payment can easily be added to your e-Commerce system but…and it’s a pretty big but…this form of payment is manual - your ecommerce system will not know that a payment has been made until you record it in the admin system.
If you are not sure which type of approach is best suited to your business, give us a call on 1300 656 902 to discuss. We will happily talk you through the advantages and disadvantages.
For more information on ecommerce web design, visit us at http://www.webcare.com.au
Friday, January 25, 2008
CMS Web Design Adelaide Australia
What is a CMS? It stands for Content Management System (CMS) - and basically, that means that you can manage your own content, through an administration system (or "backend") that is part of your website. This site is the perfect solution for most small businesses. Why? Because it gives them control over their content. Customers (and search engines) love new content and you don't want to have to pay your web designer every time you want to change a few words!
WebCare Offers reliable CMS Web Design Adelaide, Content Management Systems Australia, CMS Web Design Brisbane, CMS & Ecommerce Web site Melbourne, Real Estate CMS Web Design Perth, CMS Web Design Sydney.
For more information visit Webcare at http://cms-web-design.webcare.com.au
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Webcare - Leading Web Design Company of South Australia
Webcare prices for small business web design are so good that many people confuse our full service web design with other "off the shelf" design services.
Webcare's standard web design starts from only $295 (inc GST) and every single small business in Australia needs at least one of these sites.
Contact Melinda at 1300 656 902 or visit the website at www.webcare.com.au .