Their new website will be a promotional tool for the Caravan Park. In addition to providing information on the facilities available at it will also highlight places to visit and activities to do in the area and of course provide important contact information. The site will also contain a “news and events” section that will be updated regularly and a guestbook for visitors to sign. The website will be based around an easy-to-use Content Management System allowing the park owners to update the site and the news and events whenever they wish.

An overall look has already been agreed upon and I have just started work on producing the website itself so it should be live later this summer.

I’m working on a couple of brand new websites and have a couple more in the pipeline. I’ve been working on various functional updates for Babyfeet, along with the usual daily updates for Fairiesworld and Fantasy Artists. Pantyfod Garden website has had a few minor tweaks and I’ve also been doing lots of work on my personal weblog ‘A Simple Life of Luxury‘ and have been adding social media features to Forces-of-Nature.

I’ve been playing around embedding Twitter comments into some sites and providing people with the ability to post ‘tweets’ on each article if they wish. I’ve also been adding ’share this’ features for a whole host of social media and social bookmarking services. Much of this has been done in an experimental way to see just how much extra traffic it can generate. Some of the results are amazing and not only does it bring in extra traffic, but if done correctly can bring in quality traffic from visitors who actually want to read the content on your site. It is all about getting the word out there and putting your content in places where people can see it.

If you haven’t explored the marketing opportunities provided by social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook, then now is the time to do so. With a little bit of effort you can get your message out to a huge group of people, many of whom will be potential customers. Not only can it be useful rom a marketing perspective, but it is good fun and you will probably make some new friends in the process.

If you would like help or advice on such topics then Pixelwave Web Design can help wth all your social media marketing needs. I can provide one to one advice and tuition to help you get your head around all of these new technologies and services. I can provide information on the best techniques to employ and the ettiquette expected at such sites, and I can implement various features to help connect your website to social media services so that you and your sites visitors can take advantage of all they have to offer. Contact me now to see how these social media technologies can help your business.

The company already had a website that had been built by another developer but was built using proprietary software and they hadn’t been receiving the support they had hoped for. In addition, the site had various usability issues and users were finding it difficult to achieve tasks on the site.

Initially Pixelwave Web Design was asked to move the site to a new server and work some magic on it to improve usability, but the proprietary nature of the software meant that this wasn’t an option due to the licensing agreements. The only option was to build a new website from scratch, this time using software that is freely and widely available and that any web developer will be able to work with.

The new eCommerce system will also allow us to address the usability issues and at the same time streamline some processes and therefore save some money on operating costs for the company.

If all goes to plan the new site should be launched sometime in July

To start ‘twittering’ (or posting Tweets), you simply sign up and then you can start adding short posts about things you are doing, things on you mind, links that you come across etc. etc. etc. People can start following you and those that do will see what you post. You of course can also follow other people to keep up to date with their Tweets.

No right or Wrong Way

As a website owner or a business owner, such Social Networking sites can be a useful tool to promote your website or business. Although there is no real right or wrong way to use Twitter as a promotional tool, some ways are better than others.

It is of course possible to set up a Twitter account for your company and then simply post special offers and general promotional material. This is fine and if your company and promotions are of interest to people you may well develop a band of followers and your Twitter account becomes a useful broadcast tool. However, what prompted me to write this article was an experience I had recently from a company that uses Twitter to actively engage with its customers and rarely posts promotional material to its Twitter account.

Engaging with People

Graze is a company that delivers fresh, healthy snacks to your office. I’ve been using them for a few weeks and they are certainly switched on to the whole Social media and viral marketing scene. First up they offer a kind of affiliate benefits scheme for their customers. As a customer you get a ‘Feed Your Friends’ code which you can give to as many people as you want (My code is DZ3F24D). If you enter this code when ordering from Graze you will get a free box from Graze and your second box for half price. I also get £1 off a box too. Perfect viral marketing. I benefit so I tell as many people as possible, you benefit with a free box and Graze benefits as it spreads the word and encourages new customers.

Now, the other day, the postie arrived with a Graze box for me, and a box of live crickets for my pet frogs. I therefore posted an off-the-cuff remark to my personal Twitter account saying something like

“Postie has been with Graze box for me and live crickets for Frogs.. Must make sure I don’t mix them up!”.

The people at Graze picked up on this and sent me a message back saying:

“check out www.hotlix.com – you’d be surprised!”

As you can see, the message doesn’t promote Graze at all. In fact it links to a separate company which may seem counter-productive. However, it is engaging with me as a customer and talking TO me not AT me and most importantly it prompted me to write this post, once again spreading the word about Graze!.

I’m not saying that everyone should be doing this as it does take time and effort to do, but there are many ways to use tools such as Twitter and if you get it right it can certainly be a very powerful promotional tool for your website or company.

Something to Say?

If you have something to say then having a Twitter account to help spread the word is certainly something to think about. Use it to engage with your customers, spread the word about promotions and connect with other people that interest you. Don’t just use it to blindly promote you business, people won’t follow you if you do, but if you post useful content and people want to follow you then it is not only a very cost effective way of spreading the word, but fun too.

This isn’t an approach I would normally recommend as in most cases the planning of a project is probably the most important aspect. Making sure the objectives of a website are well defined and developing strategies to achieve the objectives within the various constraints of usability, branding, technology, time and budget are essential steps in producing a website and they are usually paramount to the success of the website. In this case, there were no clear objectives or plans, so simply getting something up and running was the main priority, allowing my client to start experimenting to see what direction he wanted to take the site.

In a way, Frogswrold is a personal hobby site for my client so there were no real pressures or constraints as far as the project was concerned. At the moment, the site looks as though it will be using art to highlight topics relating to conservation and the environment, both promoting awareness of environmental issues and promoting the artists involved, but who knows, it may lead to something bigger.

The website was built using an open-source Content Management System and a  template. Pixelwave Web Design customised the template to fit the needs of the website whilst maintaining as much flexibility as possible. The reigns were handed over to the client within a day or two of starting work on the site so that he could start ‘playing’ with it, adding content and deciding which direction he wanted to go with it.

Pixelwave Web Deisgn have been providing support and guidance along the way and will continue to provide technical support were required. I have a good, well-established working relationship with this client and often have long chats on the phone about various possibilities. Many of these ideas never see the light of day but with Frogsworld we just decided to do it and see what happens. If nothing else my client is having fun with the site and enjoying the process. I too have enjoyed the project so far as the lack of any real plans have had a slightly liberating effect! the website may have been quick and inexpensive to set up and may remain as a ‘hobby’ site, but in my experience, it is sites such as these, where the website owner is passionate about the content that often prove the most successful.

Morris and Bates Solicitors are one of the largest law firms in mid Wales with offices in Aberystwyth, Knighton and Llandrindod Wells. Their new website is a brochure style website that outlines the wide range of legal services they offer and introduces you to the practice partners. The website also provides background information and contact details.

The website was designed to give a professional, clean, ‘business-like’ look to reflect the personality of the company. It was also built to be standards compliant with conformable xHTML and CSS. Accessibility was also of prime imprtance whilst building the website and of course it was built to be search engine friendly.

Morris and Bates have said they are delighted with the website, and I shall soon be adding a Welsh language version to it. I’m pleased with the results and hopefully you like it too.

Of course, as a freelance website designer I do need to use some energy and can’t be completely carbon neutral. My office does have a fairly powerful computer in it and I use two screens for my website design and development work, I also have several external hard drives attached to it along with other peripherals such as routers, USB hubs etc etc. All of these consume power. The good news is that I do always switch it all off when I’m not working, and peripherals such as printers and scanners are only switched on when I need them. I do have another computer that is on 24 hours a day, but this drives the Borth and Ynyslas Weather Station which serves files to the web every minute of every day so can’t be switched off. It doesn’t use a huge amount of energy though and rarely has any additional devices attached to it, even the monitor is usually switched off.

As far as heating and lighting goes, then I’m a home worker so I’m not heating and lighting a separate office, just a room in the house. Being a modern house we are well insulated, have efficient heating and energy saving light-bulbs, so energy consumption there isn’t too bad. I’m also a firm believer in an extra jumper in the winter rather than turning up the thermostat. I do have to keep my working environment fairly comfortable, it is afterall a little difficult to type with mittens on, but if I close the office door it actually gets quite warm in here anyway.

Elsewhere around the house we are pretty good at switching things off rather than leaving them on standby. We have an energy monitor which shows us exactly how much electricity we are using at any given moment, so we can see which items use up the most and are careful to keep our monthly consumption as low as possible. We’re not perfect, but no-one is and ironically the energy monitor itself uses up a tiny amount of electricity, but I think it is worth it as it does make us aware of our consumption.

Being eco-friendly in the home and office isn’t just about saving electricity though. Working from home means I’m not using petrol or diesel for a commute every morning and evening which has to be a good thing. We’re also very good at conserving water. It’s a long story, so I won’t go into it but we had several years without any drains here so got very used to using next to no water. We’re still pretty careful and have also recently installed some water-butts in the garden too, so don’t waste water there either. As far as waste goes then everything that can be is recycled and shredded paper and kitchen waste is all composted.

There are still plenty of other things we could do to improve. Overall I feel that Pixelwave Web Design is a fairly ‘green’ business which is why I registered as a ‘Green Achiever’. The scheme itself doesn’t really mean a huge amount but it does make people aware of their impacts which can only be a good thing.

So far he seems fine, punctual, interested in what I do and with lots of relevant questions to ask which is always a good sign.

Unfortunately I don’t have much actual ‘design’ work on at the moment as I’ve been busy with web development and website maintenance work. I have therefore spent a bit of time devising some tasks for him to do, none of which are needed at the moment, but they may come in useful one day and they should give him something to get his teeth into and to add to his portfolio.

It’s also quite nice to have someone else in the office from time to time for a change and it forces me to take coffee breaks now and then as well! Hopefully he will gain some useful skills from the exercise. If nothing else, he will realise that a freelance website designer actual does very little website design on a day to day basis, but does do lots of admin!

Get only the graphic design source files without having to download or pay for all the extras such as html files, Flash files etc.

What is a custom error page?

When you request a web page from a server, normally everything is fine, the server finds the page and your browser displays it, but if for some reason the server is unable to find the requested page then the server will provide a standard error page instead. The “404 – page not found” is the commonest error page and it simply means that the page you requested could not be found on the server.

A custom error page is simply a replacement for this standard error page.

This article will consider the custom 404 error page and what can be done to improve it.

Why would MY website need a custom 404 error page?

The main reason for having a custom 404 error page is to keep people on your website. Most people following a link to your website will simply leave and go somewhere else if presented with a standard 404 error page. Your site may contain exactly what they are looking for, but if they don’t get past the error page and into your site proper, then they’ll never know and you will have lost a potential new customer.

Why would visitors to my site get an error page?

There are many reasons why someone visiting your website might be presented with a 404 error page. It may be that the page they were looking for has been removed or replaced with a page at a different URL. Obviously if the link the visitor followed to get this error page was from your own website then that should be fixed, but it isn’t so easy to fix broken links from external sites.

If you have a good number of inbound links to your site, then there is a strong possibility that some of these will point to pages that no longer exist. Search engines too can point to pages that no longer exist. Even if your site is fairly static and pages haven’t been removed then it is likely that some inbound links will contain typos that then lead to 404 error pages, or people may themselves simply type in an incorrect URL to the address bar of their browser.

Whatever the reasons, people will get 404 error pages when trying to access your site, and if this error page is a standard 404 error page they will simply leave.

Replacing the standard 404 error page with a custom one is relatively easy and will allow you to retain these visitors and guide them to the correct place.

What should a custom 404 error page contain?

A custom 404 error page can contain whatever you want it to, but in my opinion the following are important and some, if not all of them should be on any custom 404 error page.

1. A consistent look: It makes sense to make your custom 404 error page look the same or at least very similar to the rest of your website. This allows people to know that they are at least in the right place, even if they haven’t found exactly what they are looking for. It also allows you to display your company branding.
2. Explanation: This is an error page, so explain that. Let people know why they may have been presented with this page and what it means.
3. Reassurance: It is always a good idea to reassure your visitors. Let them know that the error isn’t their fault and reassure them that you’ll soon have them back on track.
4. Options: The most important thing a custom 404 error page should do is get the visitor back on track. So it should present them with some (but not too many) options. Maybe links to the most important parts of your website will be sufficient.
5. Search Tool: If your website has a search facility then this should be a prominent addition to any custom 404 error page. The search tool will hopefully allow the visitor to find what they are looking for.
6. Navigation: I tend to include the standard top level navigation elements of a website on the custom 404 error page. Normally this helps provide some consistency with the rest of the website and also provides the wayward visitor with a means to navigate to other parts of the website and get back on track.
7. Contact / support details: Custom 404 error pages should also contain a means of contacting the webmaster. If the visitor is unable to find what they are looking for despite the options above then you should provide them with a means of contacting you so that you can point them in the right direction and help them on their way.

These simple steps can make a huge difference to visitor retention on your website but are often overlooked. Click here to see the Pixelwave Web Design Custom Error Page, I think you’ll agree that it is much more useful than the standard 404 error page and is something that every website should have.

If you would like to add a custom 404 error page to your website and need help doing so, then feel free to contact Pixelwave Web Design, it is an inexpensive addition to your site that could have a huge return on investment.