Imagine a world where paper is digital. This electronic paper is as thin as paper, flexible, wraps, folds, rolls, looks more or less like paper, but is far more technically advanced.

We pick up the morning paper from the grocer along with a coffee. The single sheet of digital paper is as cheap as paper but thats where the similarities end. We touch the center of the page to turn it on and instantly we see the first page of digital content, touch it again in the right hand corner and we move to the next. Double tap something of interest to zoom or activate media such as video or audio.

The digital paper could be designed to hold a preloaded piece of information such as a newspaper, company brochure or lecture. Alternatively, we could even update our paper over a wireless network and thats where things get exciting. Imagine a digital business card updating a changed phone number or a highlanders poster updating the latest rugby ticket prices. The possibilities are exciting and achievable.

Before we get carried away, the print industry does not need to close up shop just yet, razor thin digital screen technology has been a hot topic for television and computer manufacturers like Hewlett Packard for over 5 years, yet we have not seen a commercially viable paper thin digital product that can compete with the economics of paper for the mainstream.

Advancements are sure to come. We have found many ways to get website content from the internet to computer screens, laptops, our televisions, and even mobile phones but still nothing has come close to replacing paper. Until we get the technology thin enough, flexible enough, and digital paper with wireless delivery cheap enough, there is no beating paper just yet.

As business owners we are ready. Its been a tough ride but content management systems have improved in leaps and bounds and website owners are getting much smarter at presenting well written content, tailored for dissemination across many digital mediums. All that and the rise of Social Media. All in a good days work I would say. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? New mediums for digital content will mean that companies like Myth will no longer create websites, more likely we will create Digital Brands. The website and print industries are changing as we speak. It is the dawn of a new digital age.

Everyone wants their website to be number one in Google. Getting there can be straight forward you simply need to know where to look. Did you know that the greater the number of links to your website, the more important your website will appear to search engines and the higher your website will perform in search results.

The goal is to get other people to place a link on their website through to yours. It is easy to see how you are performing in Google. Simply load up the google website and in the search field area enter “link:www.yourwebaddress.co.nz”. What this does is ask Google to find and tell us all the websites that have links through to our website.

Now that you know who is linking through to your website, you can begin to build a list of people and organisations that you would like to exchange links with. It is often appropriate, when asking for a link to your website, to offer a link back in return. Many people choose to have a links page, or a partners or suppliers pages on their website for this purpose.

One final thing, when you are asking people for a link to your website, try and get one of your most important keywords included in the link. This will help Google to qualify your website as important for that particular keyword search.

Webstock 09 was a real eye opener. The web is a mature 2.0, or maybe 2.0.1 and anyone with half a computer can post their photos, twitter their life away, and network with friends to their hearts content.

The question on everyones lips, where is it all heading? The answer is “no one really knows.” The best guess is that every thing will be more connected and I am not just talking about the people.  Things will talk to things, yes thats right. plants, fridges, pens, toilets will all communicate the meaningless and meaningful via the Internet. Sometimes these connection will be really helpful to humans and sometimes they may be completely senseless. The truth is what doesn’t serve a purpose will at least entertain us if not inspire us.

What did I take from it all…things don’t have to have a purpose to be meaningful; stay and take the time to play in what you build; successful websites are fun and like games, and finally the web is about people, their lives, their loves and emotion.

Thanks Ze Frank. Thanks Bruce. Thank you to all the presenters. What a great community of people we have here in the New Zealand web industry. Together we can help to make the world a better place.

There are different kinds of business people in the world, those that know that they need a website and get it done quickly, and those that understand a website is a powerful business machine.

If your business relies upon being found by customers, then getting found on the Internet has to be the number one priority for you. The Internet is the easiest way for customers to search for goods and services. Potential customers need to find you and consider your business the better alternative than your competitors. So fact one, you need to be on the Internet, we all understand that. Fact number two, you need to have a website at a decent standard of quality in order for it to do you any good.

A website will be the most affordable value for money advertising investment you will ever make. You do get what you pay for, there are standards in the industry and if your website is designed so cheaply that it does not conform to these standards then you will harm your business in the form of poor search engine results and lost customers. The alternative is that you pay a fair price to commission a website machine that is designed by marketing experts solely for the purpose of making you money.

This is the difference between someone who needs a website and gets it done quick and cheap and those people who understand to get something good you have to do it well.

Your website marketing team will help you to refine and fine tune until you have a machine that exceeds the objectives you have set out for it. The beauty of this is that once designed and built you will reap the benefits over and over again.

Often you hear people talking impressively about websites with 30,000 hits a month. Sounds like a lot doesn’t it, but is it?

In order to get an idea about how your website and others are actually performing statistically and make judgments based on this information, you need a grasp on what the different terms such as hits and visitors actually mean.

Let’s just keep things simple today by just talking about hits and visitors. Simply, Hits measure every request for any file on your server while Visitors are unique, based on IP address.

Hits

Every time a visitor types in your website address, their browser “hits” your website hosting server for access to instructions on how to display your website. Your web pages are instruction documents that tell a visitor’s browser what and how to display your website. What happens next is that the visitors browser starts “hitting” the “hosting server” for all the elements needed to create that web page such as images, movies etc. For example, your company logo will represent one hit and so on. Therefore, the number of hits will be very high in comparison to the number of actual people visiting your website, especially if your web pages are comprised of a lot of different elements other than text.

Unique Visitors

Your computers connection to the Internet is represented by a unique identifier called an IP address. Most computers (people) are assigned a different IP address every time they log onto the Internet or connect to their internet service provider.

So every time a specific IP address connects to your server and accesses your website it is logged as a unique visit for that day. Even if the visitor comes back multiple times it is counted as just a visit from a specific IP address and doesn’t accumulate the number of visits from that person or computer for that day. Therefore, if you see that you had 10 visits on Sunday is likely means you had 10 different computers and people looking at your website.

Now with your new found knowledge, forget about the horror of School statistics classes and take a look at how many hits and visits you are receiving. It may be time to invest, advertise, or bask in the glory of your own websites growing Media Empire.

What key points do you need to get across?

Often a business will have a compelling proposition that defines its brand. This may be matched to a key advantage that the business has in the marketplace. What’s your key advantage? For example, our company creates custom designs and databases for websites. We are also at a size where we have specialist people working in areas of Internet Marketing, and project management. So themes that should exist throughout our website include custom design, solutions and advice.

What content to include on your home page

Commonly businesses include more about us type information on their home page. Your home page should include enough “why choose us” information for a potential customer to at a glance understand your unique buying proposition.

Your home page should provide a summary of the key sections of the site or focus specifically on achieving the key objectives of the website. For example, if the focus of your website is to satisfy the informational requirements of existing clients in order to reduce phone support demand, the real estate used for promoting this type of information to consumers will be evident vs other needs.

Dynamic content in the form of news, blogs, or special offers should also be evident on the home page so that consumers are encouraged to take further action on the site.

Your home page is commonly the first point of call for many website visitors so it is suggested that you spend a significant amount of your time writing copy for this area of the site.

Working on the about us page

While many customers may be interested in the great history of the business and whether the owner is into fishing etc, make sure you provide enough buying information about your business. Ask yourself “what does my website visitor need to know about my business”? What makes my business different from my competitors? Is there something different about it physically, is their something different about my product or service, do we price differently?

A could way to start this section is with a brief intro paragraph which summarises what is to come. Stick with the Who, What, Where, When approach if that helps. For example, we could say “Myth Limited is a Website, Design and Marketing Company based in Dunedin New Zealand, developing custom website solutions for customers, who understand the value of the Internet.” Then we could expand this to talk further about solution capabilities and unique technologies, a brief history and key people. Depending on how big you want to make this you can keep this short and to one page, or you could break this up into a section with pages for each key piece of information.

Writing about products or services

Create categories for your product or service offerings. Put your products or services into groups so that you can clearly describe them to potential customers. Ask yourself “if I was buying from me, what would I need to know before I could say yes”.

Match up each group to a set of consumers. You could say this product or service is ideal for these kinds of people or businesses. Get clear on the key benefit or set of benefits that your product or service gives to customers. For example, we could say that our email marketing system “allows you to communicate more efficiently with your clients saving you both money and time.”
Start off by brain storming notes about your product or service. Once you have these listed down on a piece of paper or in an article, being to expand on each of the items that you think are important. You should soon have a decent list of reasons why your product or service satisfies the needs of clients/consumers better than your competitors. Why not check out the competitors website at this point and ensure that you do indeed have a better offering. If you do not then it may be a good time to refine your selling proposition.

Use language that is consistent with your business and your consumers

The language used by your consumers is a good starting point for the kind of language that should be used on your website. If you sell skateboards and surf boards you will use vastly different language to a law firm. This is an extreme example but I hope that it gets you thinking about the tone of the voice of your business. For example, is your business approach “straight up” and “to the point”? Perhaps your business requires a romantic writing/selling approach, frequently used in accommodation websites? Perhaps you are a romantic comedy, or a war novel, are you an academic journal or a magazine. Figure out what suits you.

Work on one section at a time

It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the website copy required to complete the sections of your website. Remember that your website designer exists to assist you to complete your website when you need help. So get in touch and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Remember it is better to complete the website and get it live with some information, than wait to every little section of the website is perfect. If you have content management you will have complete access to update and tweak your website on an ongoing basis after launch.

So you’re thinking about selling on the Internet. You talk to friends and business associates and they all agree that it would be the next logical step for the business. However, will that new revenue stream become a revenue stream? Many businesses get online to discover that making a sale over the Internet is like finding water in a desert.

If you are blessed with a product that everyone desperately wants and in a market with no competitors you may find selling over the Internet relatively easy. The majority of us in business aren’t so lucky.

The Internet is a shot in the dark if you let it be. Your products are more likely to sell if people interested in purchasing actually have a chance to find your website. Now this may seem obvious, but the majority of website owners rarely consider traffic implementations of their website design and promotion, or lack of. Therefore, a half hearted effort is likely to result in half hearted results or none at all.

Prospective website owners should consider the ease of transportation of their product. The Internet is a mail order system in many cases; products need to be able to be delivered safely and securely. Does this description fit the likely distribution of your products?

Do you have the time and resources to do this new channel justice? Sure you say, I’m committed. The reality is that many small business owners don’t have the luxury of in-house IT teams responsible for managing a web presence. Neither do they have the pockets to pay some else to do it. Consider your commitment to an internet investment carefully. Will you really follow through?

The online consumer has to trust your web offering before parting with their hard earned cash. If you intend to build the online version of a thai market street stall then don’t expect the consumer to willingly hand over their credit card.

On a more positive note, if you have a product that is special and difficult to reach in ordinary distribution channels, you may find the Internet the best place to reach thousands of interested consumers. In addition, if you are committed to making it work, which means you invest in marketing and developing your website offering, you might become another online success story.

If your search engine rankings are important to you then you need to read this. You can save yourself a lot of sleepless nights by talking to an Internet marketing professional before and during the development stage of your website. Many of the ranking and performance issues website owners face, have been derived from websites with poor search engine design.

I suppose some of the readers out there are thinking that’s great advice but I already have a website, what can I do now! Improving search engine rankings is fundamentally about good content. What I mean by that is, it needs to be focused on the most important topic to the visitors you are trying to attract to your website.

If you have a lot of freedom to make changes to your website then by all means get the right advice and begin restructuring your pages and adding the content that you need. There is nothing worse than being locked into some sort of template or contract that destroys your chances of ever getting good search rankings. So think carefully before you choose an internet solution.

If you are yet to develop your website or are looking to make changes, consider getting good internet marketing advice. Don’t fool into the trap of thinking that your web designer can do everything for you. Most developers have special skills in particular areas of design and development but there are only a handful of firms that can manage website performance.

If you need any more help then don’t hesitate to contact me personally. Here at Myth we apply proven marketing and business techniques to the Internet, enabling you to benefit from the analysis of customers, competitors and markets to build search engine optimized websites with customer focused content.

It doesn’t stop there; we are one of only a few companies who are able to promote your Internet business using the latest online and offline marketing techniques.

Online credit card orders could be the missing link in building your Internet nirvana, but how do you go about setting the system up and what are the best options?

1. Establish a merchant account with your bank

In order to process credit card orders you will need a merchant account with your bank. They charge you a setup fee, there will be a network fee and they put you on a plan that is a percentage commission representative of the volume and value of your transactions, somewhere ranging from 1.85% to 5.90%.

When you contact your bank they will arrange for a merchant advisor to send you out a range of forms to start the application process. They will allocate you a ETSL (Electronic Transaction Services Limited) merchant number. This organisation basically provides the national eftpos facility in New Zealand.

2. Decide how you want to process credit cards

Once you have established a Merchant account with your bank for accepting Internet Credit Card payments, you will need to enable your Internet web site for receiving payments. There are a few different ways to do this.

The automated option

The automated option is to use the software (payment gateway) from a third part organization to process and manage the transaction process. This is appropriate if you plan to have some volume of transactions or have less time to manually process. However, the third party provider will charge an extra ten to fifty dollars and set a limit on the number of transactions per month. They will then charge a variable rate per transaction.

There will be some development required by your website designer to prepare your website to use the payment gateway and the third party provider should supply plenty of resources to get the technical aspects done. Although the lower monthly rate may appear the better deal check the flexibility of the technology and support provided. Sometimes spending a bit more is better. Direct payment solutions and paystation are worth a look as viable third party partners. In terms of security there are options for letting the third party handle this or your website will require a secure feature (SSL certificate) depending on how you want to technically set up the process.

You can also purchase a module that integrates your website directly with the bank; this is only a good option if you have access to very good technical skills to assist and good ongoing support.

If you are comfortable with your money going abroad then paypal may be for you. They have good exposure with internet consumers and are known as a common payment merchant.

The manual option

You can create a secure page; one with a stand alone or shared SSL certificate (a technical security mechanism that you purchase or share), and a form to capture the credit card details. Credit card and customer details are saved securely in a database for a limited period and you use this information to process the transaction manually via paper-based or eftpos solutions. This option is good if you have a lower volume of transactions but it end up just as expensive as the other options depending on the capabilities of your website technology and web designer.

The quality of your Website design effects the number of visitors attracted to your site and whether they take action on the propositions available to them once there. A research study by The Poynter Institute, the Estlow Center for Journalism & New Media, and Eyetools found some interesting results in regard to homepage layout. Here is a quick summary of what they found.

The eyes fixed firstly on the upper left of the page and spend a lot of time at the top of the page, before they then go left to right down the page. The dominant headline will draw the viewer’s eye first upon entering the page. The research also discovered that smaller text has the effect of encouraging the viewer to actually read the words rather than simply scanning over them.

In blurbs, the first one third of text is important, as readers will review this for importance before deciding whether to read on. Viewer don’t read entire headlines either, they scan, spending less than a second on the first couple of words. Top of the page navigation performed the best in terms of being seen and looked at for the longest duration. Amazingly, right side navigation performed as well as left side navigation.

In terms of writing articles keep the paragraphs short and stick to a single column down the page rather than the newspaper formatted multiple columns. If you’re advertising the top left is the money shot, close to editorial content really helps, and text ads were viewed more intently than image based ads. When using images, you can create larger images if you want the viewer to spend longer looking at it.

So next time you are thinking about your website performance, consider styling your homepage layout and then really attract the eye of your visitors.