Hodgeman Web Design

How to: Claim your username for your Facebook business page

hodgeman — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 04:42:46 +0000

If you’ve got a Facebook business page with 25 or more fans (likers) and your page URL still looks like:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/My-Business-Name/123456789012345

Then you can have a vanity URL or custom username which is a way to customise the URL of your Facebook businesss page to anything you want it to be after facebook.com (as long as it’s not already taken).

For example Waimangu Volcanic Valley Rotorua New Zealand’s Facebook page URL is:

facebook.com/pages/Waimangu-Volcanic-Valley-Rotorua-New-Zealand/125335127492981

Since 318 people like this page, they could set a custom username.

Simply visit facebook.com/username and select your page from the drop list of Pages, enter your text, e.g. WaimanguVolcanicValley as their username, check availability and set it. Then you could direct people to:

facebook.com/WaimanguVolcanicValley

Now, isn’t that so much nicer? This would mean people could more easily remember your Facebook page address and you could use it more effectively across your traditional marketing.

If you haven’t got a Facebook business page yet, what are you waiting for?
There’s over 750 million active users worldwide and over 2 million users in New Zealand alone with over half of them on the site at least once a day.

Top 10 benefits of using Google Analytics for your website tracking

hodgeman — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 03:24:48 +0000

More accurate number of actual users
By only measuring the number of visits to your site by web browsers, you get a more accurate picture of the number of humans to your site compared to automated bots (e.g. search engine spiders) which can inflate your stats.
Detailed stats on visitor sources
See where in the world they’re coming from and via which sources: direct, referring, campaign or search engine.
Optimise content
See what pages get the best traffic, longest time on page and lowest bounce rates and site exits. Tweak or get rid of poorly performing content to streamline your content offering.
Track website events
Track links to external websites, downloads and on-page interactions (print, email, bookmark etc.)
Campaign Tracking
Create a custom tracking code (url) for any link to your website, so you can measure which campaigns drive the best visitors.
Goal Tracking and Funnels
Time on site, pageviews, visiting a specific page, downloads and purchases. See which traffic sources have the best conversion rates. Analyse and optimise the sales funnel to increase conversion.
Operating System, Browser, Mobile and Connection
View how much traffic you are getting from various platforms, including mobile tablets and smartphones. See common browsers and screen-resolutions to best optimise your content.
Compare historical data
View and compare trends across all data across any length of time. Use this information to better understand customer online behaviour.
Reports by email
Setup and send appropriate custom reports (via multiple formats) to those in your organisation that need to know certain things, a huge time saving.
It’s free to use
All of this and more in a powerful yet simple to use package. Besides this blindingly obvious fact, it’s almost becoming an industry standard analytics tool for websites.

Key aspects of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

hodgeman — Sun, 08 May 2011 23:33:09 +0000

There are lots of companies out there claiming to guarantee you first page placement in the organic search engine results pages (SERP).
It’s not all smoke and mirrors as they might make you think, there are three main things to get right that have the greatest influence over your organic search engine rankings, they are:

Site structure/architecture

Ensuring entire website can be readily accessed & crawled by search engine spiders.
Good text:code ratio meaning page is not bloated with excessive code.
Required tags (Title, Metatags, H1) are defined and unique to each page using the keywords and key-phrases you wish to rank for.

Quality Content

Ensuring appropriate content is present in the right amounts and in the right places for search engines to index & readily interpret.
Focus on only 1 or 2 primary keywords / key-phrases per page.
Other relevant sites will want to link to useful content because they think it’s worthwhile.
If your intended audience likes it, then the probability is that search engines will too.
If pages are updated periodically with new content, then search engines and site visitors will keep coming back for more.

Inbound Links

A key aspect of good organic ranking on the search engine results page (SERP) is quality inbound hyperlinks, linking to your website.
Enhancing a website’s reputation by securing inbound links from thematically relevant and authoritative sites.
60+% of SEO success depends on it.
Use key-phrases in the linking text you want to rank for and link to the specific page that has that information.
Ideally linked from a web page of higher Google pagerank than your own.

If you found this useful, please comment or share.

Top 10 tips on using Google Analytics

hodgeman — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 01:40:04 +0000

The top 10 tips for Google Analytics as outlined by Nick Guebhard, Search Operations Manager from Surefire Search

1. Track website events

Track on-page events using either:

Event tracking
Virtual pageviews

Examples of events you can track:

Links to 3rd party providers.
Email links
Brochure downloads
Form interactions
“Print this page” clicks
“email this page” clicks
“bookmark this page” clicks
Facebook “Likes”

2. Setup Goals and Funnels

3. Consider e-commerce tracking

Why?
Connect actual revenue to different traffic sources and marketing activities.

4. Tag non-adwords marketing campaigns

Example of campaign tagging at the end of URL:

http://www.mywebsite.co.nz/destinations?utm_source=autumn%2Bnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Autumn%2Bin%2BNew%2BZealand

5. Annotate important events

Uses:

Explain peaks/troughs
Mark campaign start and end dates
Mark site changes
Mark changes to GA tracking code
Mark important events

6. Setup dashboards

Find the reports that you use on a regular basis and add them to your dashboard

The new GA interface dashboards are better:

Build your own widgets
Filter data

7. Monitor bounce rates

Bounce rates may be the first indication that:

A marketing activity is not working for you.
Your content can be improved

8. Setup custom reports

9. Embrance advanced segments

Common tourism examples:

Visitor country (setup for each main country)
Traffic source (add segments for different marketing activities)
Site section visitors (e.g. accommodation, activities, tours)

10. Be/Find an Analytics Ninja

Visit GA regularly
Investigate your data – drill-down, segment, slice and dice
Do the free GAIQ online course (Google Analytics Individual Qualification)
Act on your data!

How to setup Facebook Places for businesses in New Zealand

hodgeman — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 09:09:11 +0000

Facebook rolled out Places in New Zealand on Tuesday March 8, 2011.

What this does is allow anyone with a GPS enabled smartphone to ‘Check-in’ to your business, which is instantly posted to their wall and any of their friends walls who they tag during their check-in. A great way to build exposure for your business and increase foot-traffic.

Access Facebook Places from touch.facebook.com on your web enabled smartphone or via one of these dedicated Facebook Apps: iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, HP webOS or Windows Phone 7.

What is Facebook Places?

Facebook defines Places as ‘a Facebook feature that allows you to see where your friends are and share your location in the real world. When you use Places, you’ll be able to see if any of your friends are currently checked in nearby and connect with them easily. You can check into nearby Places to tell your friends where you are, tag your friends in the Places you visit, and view comments your friends have made about the Places you visit. Use Places to experience connecting with people on Facebook in a completely new way’.

1. Check if your Place exists

Search for your business name on Facebook via the normal Search bar. If your business’s Place already exists on Facebook, click on it to visit its page and continue from step 3, if not, continue from step 2.

2. Create a Facebook Place

Fig 2.

To create a new place, follow these steps:

Access the Places application on your supported device.
Click “Check In“
Enter your “business name” in the search box as you’d like it to appear on Facebook.
Click the Add “business name”… link below
Check your business name is correct and enter an optional description. Then, click the “Add” button at the top right of the screen. (fig 2.)
You will then have the option to both write a description of what you are doing at the new Place, and/or tag your friends there
Click the “Check In” button to share your visit.

The default location for any new Place you create will be where you are currently located. Also, keep in mind that any Place that you create is public. This means that other people may see your created Place while browsing Facebook or the Places application.

3. Claim your Facebook Place

To claim your Facebook Place, search for your business name on Facebook via the normal Search bar. If your business’s Place already exists on Facebook, click on it to visit its page. At the bottom left side of your Place there will be a link that says “Is this your business?” Click on the link and follow the steps.

Facebook will ask you to verify that you are the owner through a phone verification process, or you may be asked for document verification. If your claim is confirmed, you will be able to admin your Place on Facebook.

4. Merge your Facebook Place and existing Facebook Page

[NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE]
Once you’ve successfully claimed your Facebook Place, you can merge it to your existing Facebook Business Page.
Visit the Place that you have successfully claimed, and scroll to the “Merge with existing Page” link in the left side navigation menu. Click this link, and a prompt will appear to walk you through the process.

5. Offer Deals to customers via your Facebook Place

[NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE IN NEW ZEALAND]
By offering Deals via your Facebook Places page you’re instantly connecting with potentially thousands of people who have a smartphone and are using Facebook while near your location.
If you’re offering a Deal, you instantly stand out from the rest of the Places nearby, so will attract more views and will encourage more people to visit your business to redeem their Deals.
Find out more from Facebook

Hopefully that’s enough to get you started.
We welcome any comments or feedback.

Website we designed featured in Web Design Book

hodgeman — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 22:10:03 +0000

I’m surprised we forgot to mention this earlier in a blog post here.

A website we completed back in July of 2009, needanelectrician.co.nz was featured in the The Web Designer’s IDEA BOOK – Volume 2 by Patrick McNeil.

We were super stoked to have one of our websites selected by the author from the thousands of websites submitted to be featured in the book and we couldn’t wait to get our hands on our copy. But when it did we quickly flicked through the beautifully presented book to find our handywork, and there ‘proud as punch’ on the top left hand corner of page 238 was a screenshot of our brightly coloured ‘Need an Electrician‘ website.

We couldn’t be happier and look forward to seeing our hand-crafted websites being featured in books and other websites in the future.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years

hodgeman — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 01:41:38 +0000

On behalf of all of us here at Hodgeman Web & Design, we’d like to thank you for your continued support and business with us in 2010.

It’s been another great year which was helped by the explosion of Facebook and Twitter for business use.
We recently hit a milestone of managing 100 domain names, which we were pretty chuffed about.

Our featured websites added in 2010:

Hodgeman Web & Design will be closed over the holiday season from December 24 until January 5.
We will have access to the internet and will be periodically checking emails for any emergency work.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas with your family and friends and a prosperous New Year for 2011.
We look forward to continuing our business relationships with you next year.
If you’re traveling over the break, please drive safely and don’t drink and drive.

We’d love for you to become a fan and like us on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter.

Have a safe and enjoyable break and we’ll see you in 2011.

Say NO! to sexual abuse

hodgeman — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 01:52:10 +0000

Today marks the launch date for the new WordPress powered website for the Sexual Abuse Centre (Rotorua) Inc.

Eric from the centre contacted us wanting an uncluttered, professional web presence, so using the neutral ‘earthy’ colour palette and logo that was designed by the talented Glenn McLeary from Red Spot Design we designed this custom WordPress theme.

We had to tread carefully with such a topic, so the website needed to remain clean and not to overwhelming.

Read the full case study here.

New look for Regent of Rotorua

hodgeman — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 09:16:32 +0000

We’ve recently completed a second iteration of the WordPress for the Regent of Rotorua website.

Version 2 has a vertical menu and large, gorgeous images to help showcase the new additions to the business. Some of which include new glamorous designer rooms, outdoor heated swimming pool, stunning restaurant and wine & cocktail bar.

The height of the design now expands to show all the content without having an internal scroll bar.

Version 1

Version 2

See the new site live here

Rotorua websites in development

hodgeman — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 23:40:53 +0000

Well, wasn’t Winter a blur!

We’ve been busily working through and have got a few more sites we can give you glimpse of before they hit the world wide web.

Currently under development are the following websites:

craigstevensmotorcycles.co.nz
indexengineering.co.nz
nestling.co.nz
sexualabuse.org.nz