She used to have a simple HTML site.  I revamped the site for her about a year ago to a WordPress site. She saw a good jump in her traffic and her bookings. One of the reasons is she writes a post in her blog occasionally. Imagine her traffic if she does regularly!

she is very happy with the site and regularly gets compliments. Here is what she wrote to me yesterday:-

” Getting lots of compliments for the site, even from a web designer who is staying here so all is well!”

She loves it so much that she wants a second site for another business of hers.

As a small business the website is crucial to her marketing and bookings. So if you are a small business and want an editable website that you can update easily contact me today!

Here is the website that my client loves   www.okaritoboattours.co.nz

It is integrated with  Gmail – allows users to post status updates, share and read and comment on friends posts.

This is pitching Google directly against Facebook, which has nearly 400 million users.  Buzz will try to capitalise on the number of Gmail users, which is around 170 million now. It needs to be seen if they can snatch users from Facebook & Twitter

Some features of Buzz

The features are directly built into Gmail.

• Users can post private or public status updates – known as a buzz – and share content from other sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Picassa.
• The messages – highlighted with a Buzz symbol – are incorporated directly into the inbox. Private updates are automatically added to a user’s profile page, whilst public updates will also be available to search engines.
• The site also incorporates elements of Twitter, such as the ability to “follow” people that share updates, and features that appear in Facebook such as the ability to “like” content.
• Buzz will also recommend content from people that it thinks you may like to see and incorporate it directly into a users content stream.
• Google mapping service has been set up with this for mobile platforms.
• Google also says public updates will also be added to Google Places, a directory of businesses that include reviews of restaurants and theatres, for example.

This is not the first attempt of Google with social networking site. Orkut did not take off except in Brazil and India.Hopefully they got it right this time. But it will still be hard to beat Facebook with that kind of popularity. The new site design to search and chat only makes Facebook better.

Did you know that “Facebook” has become a verb? “Do you facebook” or “do you FB” is a common query at social occasions!

I am planning a few different strategies for my online business this year. I am almost done with the new look and feel for pixels. It got delayed due to various reasons. It will feature a few bells and whistles. WordPress has evolved so much in the past couple of years. You can do amzing things on the interface side and have all that muscle that makes it work on the backend as well. What more could you ask for?

I just want to touch base on an earlier post here.

Why have a website?  For small businesses:-

• The website is a great marketing tool
• Builds Credibility.
• Builds trust
• Before a prospect contacts you they will always check out your business and you online
• Your products & services are available 24/7 online
• Your market reach increases enormously
• So much cheaper than printing a whole lot of brochures again and again
• Not having a website will cost your business dearly – you miss out on the youth market

A prospect came to me recently and wanted a website. I asked her why she wanted one?

One of the things she said was ” Every time I give my business card to someone they want to know why I don’t have a website”.

It is like the norm these days.

contact me for a simple editable website.

While having a chat with my hosting support one of the things I was told could happen was – if you had a malware or virus on your local hard drive and if you uploaded a file through FTP the malware could install a billion files on your remote server. WOW!  This was news to me. Yuk. It took me an hour to delete the files from the server.

I have started scanning my PC every night for Malware now.  I use Pareto Logic’s virus & malware checker . It seems to do the job well.

So if you have a website and you upload files please keep your PC scanned and cleaned regularly to avoid any nasty viruses.

On that note I read a funny bit today. The tech review site Gizmodo got caught themselves. (funny) They were advertising spammy antivirus on their site. These software come in disguise and actually install real viruses on your hard drive.

But lately the news about hotmail users emails hacked and Gmail users getting hacked by a phishing scam is a bit more scary. If those big corporations cannot keep the hackers at bay what are ordinary people like me going to do?

What is phishing?

Phishing is a broad term for any effort to gain personal data, directly from the user – login details, passwords, bank account details, etc. – by tricking them into entering it into a website or email.

How does it work?

Most often, a phishing attempt will direct a user to a “spoof” website, designed to look like a user’s legitimate banking site, payment service, or social network site.

An old standby for malware in general being brought into the phishing tackle box is pop-up advertising that offers updated system performance or anti-virus software. Instead, users may be installing a key-logger that reports back with any passwords or details entered thereafter. This is exactly what you are trying to avoid.

How do I avoid being phished?

Some simple steps to take:-

• First and foremost, having up-to-date anti-virus and anti-spyware programs is the best first line of defence. I use Pareto Logic anti virus software suit which seems to work well

  Also, always remember that your bank and most reputable third-party payment services will never ask you for your password. They would already have it.

• They will also always address you by your name and not dear customer etc.
• It is easy to create a spoof site but not easy to mask the the actual place where it sits in cyberspace. All you have to do is to hover over the URl in the browser and watch the bottom left to see where it is.
• Never click on attachement from an unknown source. This is an easy place to hide viruses and malware.

I can’t stress more on having a wordpress site. Looking at my blog stats I have watched my traffic grow so much. All the stats can be viewed with a few clicks. You know

• Where your visitor came from
• What keyword they used
• Who refered you
• Which pages they visited
• You can endlessly tweak your content to suit your visitors.

You can update and add content in a few clicks as well. And when I am traveling I still update my site.

What more can you ask for? So those of you that have a HTML site and want to change it to WordPress and see some quick traffic and conversions contact me for a quote.

Do all the above and keep marketing actively and see the results within a few months.

get your website revamped to a Web 2.0 one now by contacting me me for a free quote.

• Tell the visitor what your business is all about.
• Tell the visitor what to do – buy product, sign up to newsletter
• Tell them why your product/service is better
• Make them feel safe when they are visiting your site. (Display clearly any Better Business Bureau badge encrypted buying facility etc)
• Make it easy to buy from your site. Give them many payment options
• Once they have bought, send them a thank you email and a follow up email.(that way they will come back for more products or service

I have only scratched the surface. To have an effective small business website there are many other important components to make the website work properly.
contact me to revamp your existing website and increase traffic.

Anyone can look up your website from anywhere.Your prospect could be 100s of miles away and looking for your the product or service you sell. Your website can help them find you.

You can sell 24/7 365 days a year

Gone are the days where you sell 9am to 5pm to your local community only.

Build credibility
People can look your up and find out how long you have been trading, your physical address before contacting you. They can read your customer testimonial etc.

You can showcase your products services easily
It can be like an online shop at a fraction of the brick & mortar shop. And it us open 24/7.

You can get into social sites

And create a presence like Dell and HP. They have a huge following in places like Twitter and Facebook.It is instant exposure and awareness of you products and services.

You can advertise online

By sending some Google or Yahoo traffic to your site. It is instant traffic and if you are smart you will see conversions quickly.

You can swap links with complimentary businesses

Your visibility will increase.

Advertising and promotions can cost a fraction of your offline efforts
One of my customers spent a whopping $20000 for printing brochoures for his upcoming workshops. Just imaging the amount of traffic it could have got him for that kind of money.
He is not in a competitive niche at all. Around $5000 or much lesss would have got him enough conversions.

these days if you don’t have a website customers will not even consider you for buying.

Having an effective website and using it as a marketing tool is important for every small business owner. contact me contact me for website packages from $500 onwards.

To make your website work for you and give you  a good ROI you need a plan and a clearly identified goal.

These are the main point to consider before getting a website for your business.

• what is your target market
• What will the website do for your business
• How will it help your existing customers
• What is the main purpose (generate leads, sell online, support your existing customers, inform the prospect)
• How will you accomplish the above tasks on your website?

In this day and age the Internet is the first point of getting information, buying, hiring etc. Think about this.How many of us look in the phone book or yellow pages or go to the library to get info, buy or hire some one first step? We may check online then go to the shop to buy or may even buy online.

so whatever product or service you are selling, ask those questions first before getting your website done.

I have just scratched the surface here.  Once it is up you need to test and track and tweak as you go to get maximum results.

It is not that hard to do that if you have a website with Content Management System installed. You can update and edit your site whenever you want.

contact me to get a website with CMS at a very reasonable cost.