Monday, May 31, 2010
Unless requested we will no longer be testing new website
designs against IE6. Very few of our customers users are still
using IE6 and companies such as Google and YouTube have also
stopped testing applications for IE6.
If you have users experiencing problems viewing your site using
IE6 we will do our best to resolve the issue if you bring it to our
attention.
We will continue to test designs against the latest versions of
IE7, IE8, Firefox and Safari.
And we recommend using the latest versions of IE or FireFox (we
prefer and use Firefox inhouse) when editing content using
Umbraco.
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Monday, January 25, 2010
by Maria
Whenever we are approached by a potential client to rebuild an
existing website or undertake a search engine optimisation (SEO)
programme, or to increase web traffic, we always recommend that a
website audit report is undertaken first.
A website audit reviews the technical structure of a website and
also reports on layout (for the user experience) and content and
links for search engine rankings.
We consider the technical structure of the website to be the
most important component of a website audit. If the structure
is fubared, then no amount of content updating or link building can
improve the visitor numbers or increase sales.
The results can be very surprising. We have completed
website audit reports on websites with modern layouts and really
nice designs, but built so that the website would only appear if
the company name was entered as the search phrase. In this
case, the only visitors coming to the site are people who already
know the name of the company. This website would not attract
new visitors because it wouldn't appear in any search results.
Another recently completed website audit was for a website that
was technically sound, but the main navigation menu (which was at
the bottom of the page) was different on every page. For a
user this is confusing and frustrating, and it is easy enough to
return to the search results to find the next website.
Technical Issues:
- Canonical URLs: multiple domain names that point to a
website. Where a website has more than one URL, one should be
chosen as the target URL and the other URLs should be pointed to
it. This is a common problem and it reduces the page rank for
the website, but it should be a simple matter for a developer to
remedy.
- Use of images for text: where text is converted into an
image instead of html text. Images appear as blank areas to
Google's 'crawlers', so any text stored as an image will not return
search results.
- Search engine indexing: web pages need to be 'indexed' by
a search engine for it to appear in a search result. There
are several different scenarios that would cause crawlers to ignore
a site or to incompletely crawl a site.
- Slow page loading: overly complicated scripts,
table-based programming and large images can cause slow page
loading. This would mostly affect the user experience (and
they leave the site) but can also affect search engine
indexing.
Design and content:
- Where possible we test the keyword phrases used by
visitors.
- Check whether the website conveys the right messages to
visitors. It should be immediately obvious what the website
is about.
- Check meta data - titles and descriptions - are present and
optimised.
- We check that the overall layout is easy to navigate and give
our opinion on the user-experience.
Links
- Links are the single most important factor that impacts page
rank. Google, and other search engines, use links to
determine what the website is about and to measure website
quality. Links to relevant industry-related websites are what
count.
- We check as best we can the internal, inbound and outbound
links for a website.
Recommendations
When the results show that the website is structurally sound, we
always include recommendations to the website owner that they
themselves may be able to implement. We make recommendations
on content, meta data and external factors that will improve
website traffic.
If the structure or other circumstances, e.g. high costs,
dictate that the website is rebuilt, we guarantee to resolve all of
the issues that we find in the original website.
The website audit report collates the tangible and intangible
parts that form a website presence on the Internet and helps to
focus effort and money on the areas where it is needed the
most.
For a website owner that wants more business it is a great
opportunity to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their
website and to find the area to focus their efforts.
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Thursday, January 14, 2010
By Maria
Make Your Website a Valuable Business Asset
We have found that some small business owners recognise that
websites are a useful promotional tool, but they do not want to
spend a lot of time or money on it.
It is very easy to create a free website and there are many free
online website building tools available. Our experience has been
that while the websites may look professional, there are problems
with search engine indexing and hence poor search results, or
updating the website is difficult and hence it rapidly becomes out
of date (I will write more on this in a later blog).
We are 100% confident that umbraco's content management system,
coupled with Paul's awesome developer's skills ensure that our
websites are easy to update and searchable on Google.
Once the first hurdle, a useable website, is
taken care of, having the confidence and skills to build a website
into a valuable business asset then requires time and
commitment. It might also take you out of your comfort
zone.
Make a Website Maintenance Plan
Planning a website maintenance strategy might sound daunting,
but can be as simple as planning to review and update one page
within the site per month and writing a weekly news article or
blog.
Keeping website page content fresh and releasing regular updates
will result in better search rankings and is a sound strategy for
long term growth.
Better Search Rankings
Search engines such as Google rank websites that have new
content higher than websites with static content. Google
places a high value on updated content, to avoid displaying
websites that are no longer active.
Being in the number one spot in search results also increases
click rates exponentially over subsequent search results, so
refreshing page information and releasing keyword-rich news on a
regular basis will be worth the time investment.
Get Customers to Notice Your Updates
Regular information updates encourage visitors to return to your
website. Social media sites are a great way to reach out to
customers and remind them that you have a service or product to
offer them.
An RSS feed on a news column or blog (we are adding an RSS feed
to our blog this month - we are just waiting for a software
release), twitter updates and facebook pages all bring your
information to your customers.
How Do Social Media Sites Increase Website
Visits?
Take twitter for example. I follow a number of people
through my twitter account @fairliebusy. When someone tweets
about the latest blog update on their website and I follow the
link, I am taken to the blog. I will read the article and
then I might look around the website for related articles or any
other interesting information. I might not buy a product or
service this time, but I am building up trust in this contact and
when I need that product or service - I am more likely to buy from
a trusted source than an unknown source.
But I Have Nothing to Say!
There will always be something you can say about your
business. We regularly blog about topics that our customers
bring to our attention, we feel that if one customer experiences a
problem, others might have the same problem too, so why not publish
some information about it - the rest will think you are amazing for
anticipating the issue.
If you have no news of your own, you can also link to an
industry-related article written by someone else. They will
be thrilled for the promotion of their work as well.
Measure, Measure, Measure
I love statistics and I use Google Analytics to check page
visits, page source and traffic information on a regular
basis. I can see that when I publish a blog the number of
site visits increases. Analytics can also help you to see the
popular areas on your site. Checking your statistics can help
you work out if you have any problem areas on your website and you
can fix them. If you have access to your site's statistics
then use the information to target the problem areas and see your
efforts making a difference.
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Wednesday, January 13, 2010
by Maria
Our most recent website went live over the weekend. Peel
Forest Estate's website (www.peelforestdeergenetics.com) was a rebuild
of an existing website. The existing website had a content
management system but it required a high level of knowledge of
html. The content management system also required users to
duplicate information across pages.
A website audit uncovered an incomplete main navigation menu,
slow page loading times, broken internal links, untidy home page
layout resulting in a poor user experience.
With the new website we have standardised the navigation, and we
have added dynamic drop-down menus. Other features
include:
- Hyperlinked Pedigree tables for Sires
- Automatically updated photo galleries - if an image is added to
a sire's media folder it automatically displays within specific
Sire page and the photo gallery
- Dynamic navigation menu - new pages are automatically added to
the main navigation or sub-menu
- RSS News Feed
- Google Analytics
With the new website the client will reduce the amount of time
it takes to update the website, giving them more time to focus on
website content and performance and lowering costs.
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Sunday, December 13, 2009
by Maria
How to deal with SPAM email
SPAM is now a part of daily work and home life and there are a
couple of ways to manage it, but they have their drawbacks.
There is no magic answer that will deal with SPAM that doesn't
impact you or your customers, but here are two options:
1. Obfuscate email address within the
website.
Obfuscate means to make obscure or unclear (I had to look it
up). BUT the options available to obfuscate an email address
in a website all impose restrictions on the user experience (this
is a bad thing to do).
Two ways of obfuscating email addresses are:
Option 1. Put the email address into an image.
SPAM-bots will have a hard time scanning an image, but it
forces the user to do something more than
click.
Option 2. Another option is to use a contact us
form. I personally don't like to use contact forms when I
visit a website, and I feel this is common for many web-users.
2. Living With SPAM
If you leave your email address in your website as a clickable
link you will be spammed, but it can be managed. Anti-SPAM
software and the Junk email folder in Outlook can help you to
manage your SPAM.
Treat it as an everyday necessary chore - like changing your
underwear. You don't even think about changing your underwear
and it feels great when it's done (the consequences of not doing it
- yuck!).
Users perceive an email address as a sign of trustworthiness and
security. Providing a real email address gives your website more
credibility with potential customers - which is an invaluable,
intrinsic asset for your business.
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Sunday, December 06, 2009
There are many options available for setting up the payment area
for an online product store. Here are the pros and cons of
three popular options available for New Zealand-based
businesses:
1. Manually process bank transactions and update
membership details.
Pros: There are no set up costs.
Cons: Many customers do not like the delays of email-based
transactions.
This option is only suitable if you have a low number of
transactions and a loyal customer base. It could work if you
offer a niche product, or are dealing in a small number of
transactions. This method would become cumbersome as higher
membership numbers are reached. It is easy to upgrade to a credit
card based solution later if required.
2. PayPal Hosted
Pros: No set up fees and a security certificate is not
required. An invoicing module is built-in.
Cons: Customers are taken to the PayPal site to complete
the transaction.
Cost: For monthly transactions less than $5,000 the rate
is 3.4% + $0.45 per transaction. E.g. you'll pay $3.85 NZD on a
$100.00 NZD transaction.
This option uses the PayPal website to process payments.
The user is taken away from the product store to PayPal to complete
the payment. It is a low cost option for online payment
processing, but not as elegant as having the payment integrated
into the host website.
Demo: https://www.paypal.com/en_US/m/demo/demo_wps/demo_WPS.html
3. PayPal Integrated Payments
Pros: All online credit card payments are processed
directly on the host website. Users are not redirected from
your website giving a better user experience. An invoicing
module is built-in.
Cons: There is an additional monthly charge.
Cost: For monthly transactions less than $5,000 the rate is 3.4%
+ $0.45 per transaction. In addition there is a monthly charge of
US$30.00.
Security Certificate: will be required @ NZ$200 per annum.
Demo: https://www.paypal.com/en_US/m/paypal_demo_load.htm
4. Payment Express
Pros: Payment Express is a New
Zealand-based payment provider. This solution can be integrated so
payments are processed directly on your site. Payment Express
does not charge per transaction, so is a good option if high
transaction numbers are anticipated.
Cons: Has a set up fee plus a monthly charge.
Invoicing is not built-in, which will require additional
development cost at start up.
Cost: Setup Fee: NZ$150.00. Monthly Fee: NZ$50.00 (up to
100 transactions per month) or NZ$150.00 (up to 500 transactions
per month).
Security Certificate: will be required @ NZ$200 per annum.
Demo: http://www.paymentexpress.com/knowledge_base/transaction_pricing.html
There are also other payment providers such as Google checkout.
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Sunday, November 29, 2009
Umbraco 4.0+ introduced the ability to inherit document types.
This is a great feature for keeping document types consistent
between pages and even between sites.
I find that 95% of my document types share the same properties.
Once you have discovered what these properties are create a new
document type that contains these properties. For my sites this
generally contains:
* Page header
* Body text
* Page title
* meta description
* and the Umbraco hidden page switch (umbracoNaviHide)
Now when you go to create a new document type set its master
document type to be Page.
Tip
Most of you are probably already using this feature. My simple
tip is once you have created a Page document type, right click on
it and export it to file.
Now whenever you start a new Umbraco project, right click on
document types and import the file into your new project. This will
keep your document properties consistent between projects.
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Tuesday, October 13, 2009
In this article (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html)
dated 21st September 2009, Google confirms once and for all
that the Keyword meta tag has no influence on search rankings.
The reason is that the keyword meta tag was so widely abused by
webmasters that Google no longer use it in their ranking
algorithm.
The comments left by readers show a polarity between those that
believe this already, and many who want to keep hold of their
keywords 'just in case'. I wonder if its a comfort to some
people to believe that keywords help search rankings - and thus it
is a shortcut to actual proper SEO.
Of course, there are other search engines and other algorithms,
but from what I have read, they too don't give the keyword meta tag
much weight in their rankings.
For us, we leave it out - if there's no value, then we won't
waste our time on it.
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Sunday, August 30, 2009
Meta data is information embedded in the code
of the website that is not visible on the screen. However it plays
a huge role in Google's algorithm for website rankings.
There are two very important components in the metadata that
should always be completed - Title and
Description. The third component of meta data -
Keywords is not as important as this does not make much difference
in the rankings.
Titles are incredibly important. This is the
first indicator to Google's 'crawlers' about what your website is
all about. A short (50 - 66 characters) title should be entered
against every page in your website. Google truncates after 66
characters. The title displays in the top corner of your browser
AND in the Google search results - so is also useful to customers
who are looking for the most appropriate site to select.
Image 1: Title at the top of the browser
Image 2: Google search results for keyword "Skiing"
A meta description is the information about
your site that Google displays in the search results (In Image 2
this is the smaller black font). It should be around 150 characters
long, and be informative about what you are offering and compelling
to attract customers to your site.
To update your metadata in umbraco go to each page in turn and
select the 'Meta' Data' tab (see below). Make your changes and save
and publish in the normal way. It's that easy. It will take longer
to read this blog than to actually do it!
The next step is to be very patient. It will take some time for
the updates to show up on Google.
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Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Google is currently offering a promotion so NZ businesses can
receive $75 worth of free advertising, using
Google AdWords.
You can take advantage of this offer here:
http://www.google.co.nz/stimulus
And of course Fairlie Agile can also help you to get set up and
give advice on selecting keywords if needed.
More on Google AdWords:
AdWords is an effective way of pormoting your business online
and attracting new customers to your site. It is simple to set up
and as well as allowing you to target certain search phrases
(keywords) you can also restrict your ad geographically (e.g if you
own a locally run business in Timaru your ad will not appear for
people located in Wellington).
Your Google Ad will appear down the right hand side of the
results when doing a Google search, in the sponsored links
section.
One of the best things about AdWord advertising is that it runs
on a pay-per-click model, so you only pay when someone clicks on
the link and goes to your site. You can also set your budget so you
can keep control of your advertising costs.
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