I Do Websites Australia

I'm not internet savy but I need an E-Commerce store - HELP!

2011-04-09T00:25:00.000+09:30

If you are a business owner and have very little technical know-how, then you will probably be sweating and procrastinating and be drowning in the confusion about what to do? You need to take the step but every time you have investigated you just get so many options - everything is Apples and Oranges and you just leave the computer in complete anxiety.

OK, so this is why you need to tread very carefully. It is a little like cleaners - you need to have someone who you trust recommend someone to you, and usually they are booked out and cost too much and - well you have been there - just like me!

So maybe what you need is a service where you can work with your web designer to start your e-commerce platform from humble beginnings - a bit like the toe-in-the-water technique? There are not many web companies I know that are willing to go down that path with their eager but newbie (and penny-poor) clients. They would much rather deal with the "biggies" who have the $15k - $50k budgets and be done with it.

So this is why we encourage our clients who are in this position to contact us about the many "start-up" options we have that will :-

1. See you with your first online store;
2. Not have to break the bank in the process;
3. Maybe even be coached in how to stock your own store and
4. Definately understand more about the process and build your empire from the ground up.

So if shopping carts, region settings, shipping and handling providers, security, categories, product options, reporting tools, sizing and colour variations, merchant accounts and card processing gateways gets you reaching for the bex and a good lie down, then contact us for more information on our simple and creative solutions to your e-commerce needs.

NatB
www.idowebsites.com.au

email me ! Making Easy Contact Forms

2011-03-01T02:57:00.000+10:30

email me ! Making Easy Contact Forms

http://emailmebutton.com/

Everybody knows how it works, you publish your email address on a website or blog, the spam bots read it through their automated scripts and then fill your inbox with Viagra deals. EmailMe is a nice tool that lets you hide your email address behind a button so only humans can get to it.
Simply enter your email address and submit to generate the button. The tool will then provide you with a small JavaScript code that you can paste anywhere on your website or blog to embed this email button. Bots will now not be able to see what’s behind it but real people can still click on it. A contact form pops up that will let users email you without revealing your address. The button can also be added as a sidebar widget on WordPress or a gadget on Blogger.

Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers!

www.idowebsites.com.au

Google search to reward high-quality sites

2011-02-27T16:02:00.000+10:30

With the latest changes to its search algorithm, Google is aiming to reward Web sites that offer original, in-depth content at the same time that it penalizes those that simply borrow content from others.

Rolled out this week, the changes will help ensure that sites considered to be of "high quality" will rank higher in Google's search results, while those deemed of "low quality" will get dumped lower in the ranks, according to a blog posted yesterday by Google fellow Amit Singhal and principal engineer Matt Cutts.
Google is clearly looking to crack down on "content farms," sites that purposely tailor their pages with content that often makes little to no sense but is loaded with keywords and other information designed solely to generate a huge number of hits.
How does Google figure out which sites are high-quality and which ones aren't, especially since that sort of determination can be subjective?
Singhal and Cutts explained in general terms that sites with original information, such as research, in-depth reports, and thoughtful analysis would be looked upon more favorably, while those that offer low value-add, that copy content, or "that are just not very useful" would be in the doghouse. And the criteria used to make this determination are part of the new algorithm.
A spokesman for Google told CNET today that the company can't share the specifics of how the algorithm works because "we don't want to give bad actors a way to game our algorithms and worsen the experience for our users."
The company said that the new rankings won't rely on feedback obtained from its Personal Blocklist, a new Chrome extension that tracks which Web sites are blocked by users and then sends those results to Google. But the company said it did compare the information from the Blocklist with the sites caught by the new algorithm and found that many of them popped up in both places. Specifically, 84 percent of the top dozen domains flagged via the extension have also been caught by the tweaked algorithm.
For now, Google has deployed these changes only in the U.S. but plans to roll them out in other countries over time. The company is also promising further updates that it thinks can further improve its search results.

Originally posted at Digital Media

www.idowebsites.com.au we can make sure you have those things covered!

The coolest SEO advice Out - Search Engine Optisation Rap

2011-02-26T10:01:00.000+10:30

THis is the coolest SEO advice I have seen so far!

Have a fun day!

Nat
www.idowebsites.com.au

26 Ways to Enhance Your Blog Content | Social Media Examiner

2011-02-03T08:48:00.000+10:30

26 Ways to Enhance Your Blog Content | Social Media Examiner

This is great adrvice if you are often stumped about blogging. Keeping up with the trends is very important and this article will help us all to get better at this "here-to-stay" business tool.

Natasha

YouTube - North Point's iBand

2011-01-12T11:10:00.001+10:30

YouTube - North Point's iBand

How awesome if this? We humans are pretty cool!

When is the Best Time to Tweet?? or Post

2011-01-05T09:27:00.000+10:30

This is some great advice from socialnomics.net

See more from socialnomics HERE

Natasha Boyar

Taking Advantage of Social Media

2011-01-05T09:11:00.001+10:30

The message here is : - don't just sell, make the connection strong before you go all out with your products and services.

See video here

Go visit Stephanie's site : HERE

Thanks Stephanie for lots of great info.

Natasha Boyar

www.idowebsites.com.au

Ingredients for your own Facebook Secret Sauce

2010-11-28T18:44:00.000+10:30

Here are Just a few tips from one of my favorite tipsters on how to make small but effective changes to your Facebook page.

Ingredients for your own Facebook Secret Sauce

Just keep in mind that I Do Websites will be offering customised flash Facebook page design from January 1st 2011.

If you want more info - just email me NOW: natb at idowebsites.com.au

Natasha Boyar

How to shorten long URLs for Twitter

2010-11-24T19:48:00.000+10:30

OK - you newbies out there. To save characters in Twitter, use www.bit.ly to shorten your long addresses and be more user-friendly.

28 Top Directories for Australian Websites

2010-11-24T19:41:00.000+10:30

http://www.google.com/Top/Regional/Oceania/Australia/Business_and_Economy/Directories/

Click to this list and start joining the Directories if you are not already on them. This is good for lite backlinking - every little bit counts!

How a 30 Minute Reject Post Brings Me Hundreds of Subscribers a Week

2010-11-24T18:26:00.000+10:30

How a 30 Minute Reject Post Brings Me Hundreds of Subscribers a Week

This worth reading - especially if you are trying to build a list of subscribers or want to know how to give away a free ebook to get subscribers. Often our mistakes are our greatest achievments - well worth it.

Natasha

adelaide web design I Do Websites.com.au

Internet Marketing GOLD advice

2010-11-24T14:50:00.000+10:30

The BEST tips for Social Media Marketing:

Natasha
www.idowebsites.com.au

Best Twitter Tips from a PRO

2010-11-24T14:38:00.001+10:30

If you have 850,000 followers on twitter, then DON'T watch this video.

If you are new to Twitter watching this video is ESSENTIAL.

Natasha
www.idowebsites.com.au
website design adelaide

YouTube - 100 Twitter Tips in 15 minutes

2010-11-23T14:19:00.000+10:30

How frustrating for beginners - Twitter is powerful but how the heck does it work and what should I do to make an impact using Twitter. Especially for my business. Link it to my site and find friends and fellow tweeters in the same subjects I am interested in or do business in. Here are 100 Twitter Tips for you.

How to Set up a Twitter Account watch this Video

2010-10-22T01:58:00.001+10:30

This is for my readers - and even better - my new clients who are new to the world of Blogging,
Tweeting and other social media Networking. You have been asking me how to find out more about how to start doing these things.

Why do you need to? Well, the answer is - to market your business and website online. To drive traffic to your site and with the help of your web designer, attract people to use and recommend your products and services. Here's a good start.

CLICK HERE

Guest Video Blogger - Christine Worth of boneheadseo.com

Be your own DJ to the world

2010-10-21T10:17:00.001+10:30

Hey, being a DJ, playing to the world is now right here. Blip.fm. If you scroll down, you will see my Blip Widget. This is where I have my own Station on the internet and my listeners can just dial me up, hit play and listen to the songs I choose, free of charge. It is a great system. I am now revelling in listening to songs I had forgotten about from my youth and sharing obscure songs with others and finding friends who know the same obscure songs I do.

It works with both video and audio. It is an ingenious system. You just search (right from your station) for the songs you want to listen to and share. Blip.fm is connected to You Tube, Amazon and iTunes and in a matter of seconds you can be blipping a version of your songs and getting listeners.

And the best part - it's totally free. Give my station a listen and start yours today - it's lots of fun. Then get me to put your Blip Widget on your website!

NatB

Canon showcases imaging innovation at Canon EXPO 2010

2010-10-15T16:08:00.001+10:30

A few more goodies coming in 2011!

"I Give Myself Away" - by William McDowell

2010-10-12T17:29:00.000+10:30

I absolutely love this song - I hope you like it too - let me know with a comment below xxx

Do It Yourself Web Sites - Why You Need A Professional Web Designer Pt 2

2010-10-11T22:28:00.001+10:30

by Natasha Boyar www.idowebsites.com.au

In Part 1 about assessing the merit in a DIY website, I proposed a very short checklist to see if you knew a few "basics" before attempting to design your own site. I did this in response to the large number of clients and potential clients who come to me having had shocking experiences with the "cowboys" in the web design industry, especially in Adelaide Web design industry, and having had a go at doing their own site and then needing it "fixed" or wondering why no-one clicks on their site.

I'd like to add a few more here.... just for fun!

I CAN DO MY OWN WEBSITE IF I:

Understand the navigation and menu options to access my pages
Know about wireframing
Know about using frames or not using frames
Know about XML site maps
Can test the finished site in the top three web browsers to make sure they all read the code of my site correctly (and what to do if they don't)
Know what slows a page down when loading
Know about CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
Know what this means:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"

><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"

I'm having so much fun - so I'd better stop in case you are starting to get annoyed.

So now I will move onto the design side and shoot you some criteria for that, just incase you are good at the technical side more than perhaps design.

So here are some on the subject of Web Site Design:

I CAN DESIGN MY OWN WEBSITE IF I:

Understand Hex codes
How to match my site to my logo which was designed by my printer
Know about recommended layouts and type faces that every computer will be able to read
Know the conventions about why some websites look awesome and are easy to navigate and others crash and burn
Know what size my site needs to be in pixels (height and width) so that it can fit most computer screens
Know about Computer screen Aspect Ratios such as 4:3 and 16:9 and widescreen
Know how to optimize my images/photos for faster viewing on the web
Know that there are two sizes to be concerned about - resolution and file size
Know how to write text that will get my site noticed by Google and the other major search engines
Know how to use video on my site and if so where the best host for my video is and what format should I have my video in - MPEG2, MP4, H.264?
Know about Flash. .avi and .mov files
Know the best frame rate to have my video for upload to the net
Know how to attach my video to it's video player

Stop - stop I hear you say - enough toture already! OK, so maybe I have convinced some of the sceptics out there that there is a reason why we pros study for many years, learn all the latest things, stay up and work long hours to get it all working correctly so that it all looks easy to our clients.

This doesn't address the issue of why there is so much variation in the quotations coming from web designers.

Why is it that some clients get a cheap website that works great and yet others pay thousands and thousands of dollars for one that doesn't work at all and everytime you ask for a correction - out comes the invoice book?

The short answer is - you haven't done your homework. Reading this will help, but at the end of the day, buyer beware - like most industries.

So, how can you go from not knowing anything, to being confident in talking with prospective web designers?
How do you decide where you fit in and how to find the right fit?

The easy and quick solution is to get me to do your website - problem solved!

But seriously, this is important as I would like my clients to have some understanding too.

Well, that's the topic of my next article in this series.

Stay tuned, and soon you'll get some more tips on how to get through this process......

Thanks for visiting, Natasha Boyar
www.idowebsites.com.au

Now, to make it up to you for being mean - listen and watch this great live performance by Shawn Colvin - bass by Larry Klein

Do It Yourself Web Sites - Why You Need A Professional Web Designer Pt 1

2010-10-09T11:58:00.000+10:30

by Natasha Boyar www.idowebsites.com.au

As a web designer I come across two very constant stories.

I need you to do my website because I can't find my web designer or my website; and
I have done my own web site but I need you to "fix" it up for me.

I forgive you all past and future for trying to save money and thinking "it can't be that hard doing a website". I and many of my professional and educated colleagues are devastated at how many people call themselves web designers and promise the earth and then disappear, usually taking a big chunck of their clients' money with them, leaving a mess or nothing at all.

It is also very frustrating and hurtful that the poor client now has little or no money left in the website kitty and we have to either let the client flounder or agree to take less money than our highly skilled efforts should attract.

The last client that had this issue commented, after she realised that there is a huge skill set associated with web design,

"I wish I knew before what was involved. I had no idea how much went into a website"

It is common with most of us who have a great niche with the fledgling business or fledgling website owner. The client is great at what they do and have little to zero understanding of what is involved in making a web site look good, easy to navigate and impell people to buy from or call the business.

I have mulled over how I could present my prospective clients with a "potted" understanding of how it all works and why they need to be prepared to find the REAL web designers and pay for our skills and time in making a successful site.

So in this series of articles, I am going to attempt to do that. Any comments and additions from other pro designers are most welcome.

So I came up with this Client Checklist -

I CAN DO MY OWN WEBSITE IF I:

Know a web authoring software well and have paid the $800 - $1500 price for it
Know how to embed html
Know what a widget is and where to get one
Know how to install a widget
Know how to FTP my site to the server
Know if my domain host and my web host are one and the same
Know how to set DNS information
Know how to set up an email client
Know how to transfer my domains to a new host

And this is just a brief list well before you get to the design stage!

If you answered "YES" to all of the items in the checklist, then I would say, yes, you passed and you have what it takes to think about doing your own website.

In part 2, I will provide the Design checklist and go into further detail about the backend and front end of web design.

Just because you are a technician, doesn't mean you have the design skill to attract people to the content and purpose of your own site. Have you got a horror story to share?

Stay tuned for Part 2 - coming soon....

Viral Marketing Best-of-thebest OK Go - White Knuckles - Official Video

2010-10-07T10:48:00.000+10:30

Now these guys know how to get VIRAL MARKETING happening. All the how-to's and step-by-step, the products that are spammed into our inboxes telling us how their product will help you to market your products and services ...... blah blah blah ..... these guys are the experts! Look at their total number of views from their You Tube Channel... phenomenal!

Small Business Ideas - Top 3 Lessons from Akio Morita (Sony Founder)

2010-10-03T21:10:00.002+10:30

I have always been one to learn learn learn. From the people who have "made" it preferrably. So I follow this series on You Tube. It is inspirational but also very interesting to hear the rags-to-riches stories of the biggest names in business today.

I hope this inspires you to persevere - push the envelope and never listen to the doomsday people!

Dare to dream.

Search Engine Strategies for Beginners

2010-10-02T09:43:00.000+09:30

Search Engine Marketing Strategy is Your Key To More Traffic.
Everyday people online are trying to put together a great search engine marketing strategy.

If you want to succeed online then you will need to know something about SEO (search engine optimization). It is really strange that once people learn what they need to do to get ranked in the search engines they either don't want to take the time or are just too lazy to implement them. Don't let this happen to you!

Below are some great tips on how to rank in the search engines... do yourself a favor and put these into action.

One of the best search engine marketing strategy is keyword research. Yes, keywords are how you get good rankings within the search engines. But, not just any old keyword will do. You need to target your niche and product with the keywords that people are searching for. By doing this you will get free targeted traffic to your website.

Make sure that you use your long tail keywords (keyword phrase, where several words are used to specify the search query) in your titles, url, and sprinkled through out your website or blog. This way the search engines will index your page according to your keywords.

Another great search engine marketing strategy is backlinks. Backlinks are links that other website use to point to yours. The more backlinks you have the better your search engine ranking will be. Search engines love backlinks. So every chance you get to put a link to your website on another site you should be doing it.

One of the easiest ways to drive traffic to your website and get quality backlinks is by writing articles. Articles are very effective and it doesn't take much of your time. You can write at least 2 articles an hour and then just submit them to as many free article directories as you can.

You should use your keyword as a text anchor to link to your website.

Here is a pretty easy plan to follow:

1) Write keyword content for your website or blog
2) Write at least 10 keyword rich articles that point back to your site.
3) Submit your articles to as many article directories as you can.
4) Rinse and repeat.

By doing this search engine marketing strategy on a regular basis you should have new targeted traffic to your site quickly. More traffic means more sign ups or sales. The choice is yours. So take action today and you won't regret it.

Author: Bud Audas

Thanks to Bud for this Basic information on how to get your own SEO going. I do Websites Australia are committed to the growth of your business online. We might be Adelaide Webdesigners, but we have many world-wide clients. Website design is really only a part of the journey through business online. While we are happy to work out an SEO program for our clients, many clients in an effort to save money need advice on how to do their own SEO. This is where subscribing to our blog is a great because I Do Websites Australia want to help you to get to the top of Google search as soon as possible.

If you have queries about promoting your business online, getting a better look to your site, or driving more traffic to your site, then please post your questions here and we will answer them for you in up-coming posts. In the next post, I will talk about how to just take a couple of hours per week to do these things and make your SEO efforts a whole lot more user-friendly.
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Swap a Skill - A wonderful concept

2010-09-29T13:11:00.000+09:30

Have you ever watched Secret Millionaire and longed to be super-rich and to be able to find people and organisations that are doing wonderful things that you would be able to support with your money?

I'm sure a lot of you have, like me, and even cried at some of the stories seen on the program. Well, on a smaller scale, but on the same sort of path, I recently found this site Swapaskill.com

Swap what you can give or can do for what you need

Get what you want - do something you're good at, or give something you don't need.

Their slogan says it all. There is only one thing that I find sad, and that is that there are no others on this site that live where I do. The concept needs to take off quickly so we can all really be of use - well those of us that want to.

I would dearly love to swap my skills in web design with someone who can do my garden and landscaping for instance. Perhaps a handyman just starting out in our local area needs a website and is able to do some small repair jobs for me and I can do his site?

The mind boggles! All is not lost though, as there are plenty of "virtual" swaps to be had.

If I need typing, bookkeeping, accounting, graphics, animations, proof reading .... the list is endless.

So BRAVO to the people behind Swapaskill for doing this in the first place. I hope you can spread the word too.

Do you have something I might need to swap a website design for? Let me know .... Nat B

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