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Tips and articles
Website tips
TIP 1: Start creating your web site’s content during the graphic design and building phase so that you will be ready to quickly post it as soon as your website goes live. Do this using your word processor, a simple copy and paste then click "update" and your site will be ready for business.
TIP 2: When editing your website content you can use drag and drop instead of copying and pasting to move text within a page.
TIP 3: To change the order your subsections are displayed, click on the up or down arrows to the right of the listing in the administration system. Double arrows move a subsection right to the top or bottom, single arrow moves one step.
TIP 4: When you need to browse through several websites, such as from a list of results on a search engine, right click on the links and select “open in new window”. That way you can keep looking at the current page while you wait for the pages you’ve selected to load
TIP 5: Adding images, links, colours and eye-catching formatting to your newsletters is a great idea. But you need to make sure that important information such as titles is in formatted text rather than graphics as a minority of your subscribers will not have html-enabled e-mail and so will receive a text-only version. Use the “upload attachment” feature to attach graphics, spreadsheets or other files that all subscribers will be able to read.
TIP 6: Spam (unsolicited bulk e-mail) which originates in the US often states it is in compliance with Congress bill S.1618. Don’t click on unsubscribe – it usually doesn’t work – instead use your inbox assistant or message filters (depending on your e-mail program) to delete all email containing “S.1618”.
TIP 7: If you want to distribute e-mail or newsletters to customers without convenient e-mail access our Newsletter management system can send the newsletter by fax. E-mail us at mailto:info@websitesatwork.com.au and we’ll tell you how.
TIP 8: To double-check your newsletter is just right put your e-mail address in the box at the bottom of the page and click on “test message”. It is a good idea to send the test to someone other than yourself, as a fresh pair of eyes can often see points which would otherwise slip through. Getting all details right is important to convey the most professional image to your subscribers.
TIP 9: When looking for ways to advertise your website, remember that the total number of visitors is rarely the most important measure of your advertising success. What matters is how well targeted the traffic is and what it costs. A visitor who searched for your services is probably more likely to make a purchase than ten visitors who were looking for “free stuff”.
TIP 10: A refund policy is essential for any e-commerce website that sells products. The key to e-commerce is building trust with potential customers and a clear refund policy will reassure customers that you will not mistreat them.
TIP 11: Choose a font to use throughout your website and use it consistently. Changes in font distract your visitors and make your website look less professional. If you don't need more than one font for your content, Websites at Work can lock this font in to avoid any chance of inadvertently introducing a different font when adding new pages.
TIP 12: Structure your website in a tree hierarchy (the Websites at Work content management system does this automatically) - this means that your home page will get the highest possible Page Ranking. To maximise the benefits of a high score for your home page, make sure it includes your most important key words, and a concise but effective summary of what you offer.
TIP 13: Increasing the amount of content on your website will increase it's Page Ranking. Use the content management system to gradually build up more information. Good information pages will also be linked to by other websites which will further increase your score.
TIP 14: When exchanging links with another website, ask them to link to your home page or another key section page. The page which is linked to gets the maximum benefit to its page ranking.
TIP 15: In addition to checking the results of keyword searches, go to the Google directory. If your website has been listed it will be shown in ranking order - this can be a useful indication of how well your website is doing.
TIP 16: To edit images in your website content simply click on the image and then use the image editing tool which should appear. If the tool does not appear you may be using an old version of Internet Explorer – our customers can contact us and we’ll send the latest version on CD.
TIP 17: Beware of pasting images into your pages which are too large – these will slow page loading and you will lose visitors. In your image editing software set the size of the image to the size you need on the screen. Then save as a jpeg using medium compression – this usually gives best results. The free image optimiser at http://www.spinwave.com/crunchers.html also gives good results. If you need more help then of course call us.
TIP 18: When selecting pages to edit, you can make the tree view wider or narrower by dragging the border between it and the main panel.
TIP 19: Make sure you click "Update Record" to save your changes before you use the tree view to move to another page.
TIP 20: Remember to review your meta-tags frequently - these are keywords that make it easier for search engines to find your website. Metatags can easily be edited by selecting "metatags" from the "tools" menu.
TIP 21: Use bold and larger fonts rather than underlining headings. Underlining should only be used for hyperlinks as visitors will assume underlined words are links and then be confused when they do not "work".
TIP 22: Find out how many visitors are coming to your website through links from other sites by using the "referral sites" graph and tables in the website visitor statistics page. Get to this by logging on, going to "home" and clicking on "visitor stats". Every time a visitor arrives at your website from an external page this is recorded. The table shows how many visitors have arrived from each referring website. This table will show the relative importance of linking websites and search engines. If few visitors arrive from referring websites you may need to pay more attention to getting active websites to link to you.
TIP 23: Another way to bring visitors to your website is online advertising - this is where you pay for placement of a link with a banner, graphic and/or information on a website. The question is: how do you determine if an ad is good value? Once the ad is running your referrer statistics (see tip above) will tell you how much traffic is arriving from. Until then, the website you're thinking of advertising on should tell you how many visitors they get. Assume a 1% click-through rate (it may be higher if your content is highly relevant) to get a rough estimate of how much traffic will arrive. Then you need to determine the value of each visitor - to do this calculate your conversion rate by dividing the number of sales you make through the website by the number of visitors. The value of the ad is then given by the formula:
Estimated return = (number visitors referred) * (conversion rate) * (average profit per sale)
You then compare the estimated return to the cost of the ad to decide if it is good value or not.
TIP 24: To increase your ranking on Google searches (and Google power most search engines these days) you need to increase your "Page Rank". This is calculated based on the popularity of the pages that link to you - to increase it get websites with high page rank to link to you. To see your page rank, and that of your competitors and potential partners, use the Google toolbar. This is free to download at http://toolbar.google.com.