SiteKreator Company Blog

Advanced Navigation options

Mark McGrady — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 19:36:53 PDT

As part of an ongoing effort to increase the customization options of your site, we are now introducing Advanced Options ��for all Navigation Areas and Navigation Items. �

When you enable the Advanced options in the Navigation Areas you will have access to some of the less frequently used options like Menu Alignment and Sub-Menu Appearance.

Enabling the Advanced options in Navigation Items properties reveals the Mouse Over Text, Color and custom image options. Also in this mode you can specify whether your links will open in the Same Window, New Window, or a Lightbox pop-up. By default all internal links will open in the same window and all external links will open in a new window, but with the new Advanced settings you can now change that.

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Text and Image Editor Improvements - Part II

Mark McGrady — Thu, 10 May 2012 21:19:51 PDT

Today we are very excited to announce the release of second batch of improvements in the most often used component in SiteKreator: the Text and Images editor. The goal of this release was to simplify the management of images for novice users, while at the same time unleash the power of the web to more experienced users.

At first sight you will notice the image properties panel is significantly simplified with just three settings: Image Size, Caption and Alignment. But with the simple flip of the Advanced switch, you get all the options available before plus a lot more in the newly redesigned panel.

Another major improvement in this release is the ability to set a different image that will appear when you roll-over an image, and what transition effect� should be used between these two images. Having roll-over images can greatly increase the interactivity of your web site, and can be used to create attractive call-to-action buttons. See example of this feature in action below (roll-over the image) as well as on this demo page.

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In addition to the rollover image options, we are also introducing a new stock image library which will allow you to use stock images and icons on any of your pages. You can choose one of several collections of images and filter the images in a collection by keywords.

Once the stock image has been added in the Text and Image editor, you can use it as any normal image, except that you can�t edit it.

Learn more about the new Library features, and how to create rollover images in just a few clicks by following our detailed tutorial�and in these examples.

Update: Timeline-compatible Facebook Pages

Mark McGrady — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:14:26 PDT

If you have not already switched over, on March 30, 2012, all Facebook Pages will be automatically changed to the new Timeline design.

The updated Facebook Page Layouts will accommodate the new 810px page width. and is available now in all recent *stock designs. To access the updated layout for your accounts you will need to re-apply your current design by going to Control Panel > Change Design and clicking Apply.

Note: The Facebook Page Layout is available in the following designs: Atlas, Atria, Chara, Electra, Kuma, Meissa, Mira, Pasta Arc, Pasta Oval, Polaris, Sirius, and Vega.

The text content on your Facebook pages will adjust automatically, however, you may need to manually replace any custom Page Image, and also adjust any tables that have dimensions set in fixed pixels. And if you want to use this before March 30, while logged into Facebook and visiting your Page you will need to Preview� the Timeline design and then Publish� the update.

If you are interested in creating Facebook tabs, than you might also like to check out our soon-to-be-released Facebook Tab Installer application, please join our Early access program to learn more!

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AddThis Application Temporarily Disabled

rene — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 03:23:24 PST

Earlier today, our engineers discovered that an update released by AddThis yesterday breaks editing functionality of our Admin area. As a consequence, users encountered difficulty editing pages that had the AddThis application installed.

We have notified AddThis support of the issue and are working with them to resolve it as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, we have disabled the AddThis application for all our clients until a solution is available.

There are a number of alternative widgets out that can be used in place of AddThis, without causing issues. ShareThis is one very popular option.

We appologize for any inconvenience this has caused. Please follow our blog for updates on this issue.

Update: Improved Link Interface

rene — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 02:21:11 PST

We received lots of enthusiastic reactions to our Text and Image editor update sneak preview. So many of you were eager to get started with the new features, that we decided to split this release into several smaller updates, in order to get them to you sooner.

Today we are releasing the improved Link Interface. We've done a complete overhaul of its design and functionality, giving you more control over how you create links on your website.

Besides the Text and Image editor, you'll find the updated Link Interface in the Page Image Slideshow, Section Tab options, Form action, Members Login, Galleries and Navigation Items options.

Jump in right away by logging in to your account or read on to find out what is new.

Improved Workflow

The first thing you'll notice when you open the pull-down menu, is that the list of pages from your site that appears inside the pull-down menu, are much better organized. The pages now appear grouped and indented if they are in folders.

You'll see an anchor icon appear next to any page that contains one or more anchor links. Clicking on the triangle next to the icon, will lists all anchors on that page. Linking to any place, on any page on your site, was never this easy!

When you are linking images, a new { Image Lightbox } option will appear in the Link Interface. Selecting this option will create a link that opens the full-size image in a lightbox-style window. This new functionality will replace the Zoom application.�

Typing the name or URL of any page into the Link text box, will instantly update the pull-down menu and filter the pages shown to match your search criteria.

Passing your mouse cursor over a page name in the pull-down menu a new tooltip will appear, �that will show the name and the URL of that page. This comes in extremely handy when you have multiple pages with the same or similar names.

Different Link Types

To add an external link, all you have to do is click inside the text box of the Link Selection Interface, and start typing. The set button [ICON] becomes green as soon as you've entered a valid link to help you reduce the chance of entering invalid web addresses.

Linking to an email is as simple as typing a valid email address into the text area. You can even link to a phone by just typing tel: followed by the phone number. Linking to an external secure (https) page requires that the URL starts with https://.

Whether you select a page to link to from the pull-down menu, or enter it manually, a valid link is automatically indicated by an icon that appears in front of the link address, specifying the type of link. SiteKreator has different icons for internal pages, normal (http) and secure (https) external links, email addresses, and phone numbers.

Advanced Options

When advanced options is enabled for the Text and Image editor, the Link interface shows several additional options.

New or Same Window

By default, all internal links open in the current browser window, while all external links open in a new tab or window. With the advanced options enabled, you can change this behavior any way you want and have full control over where you want your links to open.

Open in Lightbox

New is that the pull-down menu now includes a Lightbox option. Instead of sending your website visitors to a different site, you can opt to show content you are linking to inside a lightbox, layered on top of your site. Note: this is different from the { image lightbox } mentioned earlier.

More Search Engine Control

When search engines index the web, they look for links on pages that they already know, to find new content. This is how your new articles get automatically found by Google and other search engines.

Sometimes you don't want a certain page to be indexed by search engines. One way to achieve this is by creating a so-called "nofollow" link any time you link to that particular page. The new No Follow option in our Link interface lets will automatically create a link that instructs search engines not to follow or index the page you are linking to.

This is just a quick overview of the most significant changes and updates of the Link interface. Let us know in the comments below what you think of the update.

Updated Form Error Messages and HTML Snippets

rene — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 07:11:49 PST

Earlier this week, we held our second, company-wide Hackathon. Based on the work done during that day, we are today releasing two exciting updates.

Improved Form messaging

Clear and proper messaging is crucial when optimizing forms for better conversion. Today's first update is a change in both the success and error messages for Forms.

Sometimes people make a mistake or skip a required field when they are filling out a form. When this happens, it is crucial that information about this error is provided in a way that will encourage users to correct the mistake and submit the form, to complete the conversion.

The updated error messages of our forms that we released today, immediately show users which form field needs their attention and what action they need to take. We are confident that this change will help significantly improve your forms' conversion rates.

By default, success and error messages appear at the top of the form, as shown in the screenshot above. If you want these messages to appear in a different location, you can do this with the new placement option in the Form menubar. Clicking option icon inserts a place holder at the cursor location.

HTML Snippet Name

Using HTML Snippets can be extremely powerful, and working with snippets lets you go beyond what is possible with SiteKreator's already-powerful mouse-driven tools. The only drawback is that when you have several HTML Snippets on a page, it can become hard to remember what each of them did.

We have now made this much easier by allowing you to give each snippet a name. This way, you can easily identify the functionality of each snippet, without having to open them one by one in the Snippet Editor.

The Snippet name will also appear in the snippet placeholder.

The Snippet name field becomes available when you enable Advanced settings in the HTML Snippet Panel.

New Image Editor

Slavka — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 05:57:24 PST

SiteKreator users have come to rely on our fully-integrated image editor for correcting their photos before adding them to the pages of their website.

What you may not have realized, is that the editor itself was provided by a service called Picnik. A few weeks ago, Picnik announced they would shut down the service on April 19, 2012.

Without wasting much time over the loss, we immediately started to look for a replacement.

Today, we are announcing that we have replaced Picknik with Aviary as our new, fully-integrated image editing tool.

Aviary is a photo-editing platform that works just as seamlessly with SiteKreator as you are used from Picnik.

Aviary offers a number of great tools to spruce up the photos you add to your website. These include, among others, tools for correcting and enhancing brightness and color balance, adjustment tools to adjust orientation, cropping and sharpness, even tools to remove red eyes and whiten teeth. In addition, Aviary also offers about a dozen beautiful stylistic effects to make your photos pop.

You can access Aviary by clicking the Edit button that appears after you upload an image in the Text and Image Editor, Image Galleries, Form Editor, Page Image Options, as well as in Customize Design > Custom Site Background and Custom Site Ornaments.

How to Optimize Your Content for Social Sharing

rene — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:35:35 PST

When we create fresh content for our website, we are used to thinking about search engine optimization, but how often do we think about how our content gets shared on social networks? What can we do to optimize our content for social sharing?

First of all, the obvious difference: when people use social networks, they want to connect in the first place, and they want to entertain and to be entertained in the second place. They look for information in a different way, so we have to present our information in a way that it will attract them.

Any share-friendly article starts with high-quality content. If your readers do not think the content is worth the time to read, then it is not likely to be shared.

Once you have the content taken care of, you need to make sure it has a title that stands out and pulls people in, while at the same time giving them an idea of what the article is about. You will also want to keep the title short so that it can be easily shared on media like Twitter where every message has to fit in 140 characters, including the URL.

Next, add high-quality, attention-grabbing photos or videos. It is best to use images with less details. Most social networks will show sized-down versions of your files, so having lots of details often leads to unclear, noisy images that are no longer attractive.

More Than Just Share-friendly Content

So far, you may still find most of this very similar to good SEO practise. Under normal circumstances, social networks like Facebook and Google+ are perfectly happy to use the Title and Description meta-tags that you have provided as part of your SEO.

But if you're going to try to improve social sharing, you'll want to add a few extra pieces of information to your pages. In technical terms these are called Open Graph metatags, and you can find out all about their technical details on the Facebook Developer pages.

What is important to know is that social networks tend to use these tags instead of the standard metatags you create in SEO. In the rest of this article, we'll focus on the three most important Open Graph metatags for social sharing and on why you should add those to your pages. All of this is very simple to do with SiteKreator's new Social Tools.

Image.�Has this ever happened to you: you click on the Like button on a page, only to see later on that the article you Liked has been shared using an ad that was on the same page as the thumbnail image? You can prevent this from happening by defining what image Facebook and other networks use when your pages are shared. This way, your shared articles will always use that one, extra-attention-grabbing image that you picked for the article.

One thing to keep in mind is that Facebook is very particular about the size of these images; minimum 50 by 50 pixels, but no larger than 130 by 110.

Title. Research has shown that people on social networks are more likely to share entertaining or funny content. Sometimes, using a slightly different, more enteraining title for your content, can help make it more share-friendly.

Description. Here too, changing the description of the page to be a better fit to the attitude of the social network users that you are trying to reach, increases the likelihood of your content getting shared or clicked on.

Adding these extra pieces of information to your pages is extremely simple with SiteKreator and takes just a few clicks of your mouse. You can set the social sharing image for all the pages on your site in the Site Properties Panel, but you'll want to make these settings separately for every page that you are trying to optimize fully. This is done from in the Page Options panel. You don't, of course, have to optimize every single page on your site. Focus on those pages that are most important.

And even if you don't specify these settings at all, SiteKreator still has you covered, as we'll provide social networks with the content from your SEO settings.

Do you have any other suggestions to make content more social media share-frienly? Let us know in the comments below.

7 Tips to Prepare for Valentine�s Day

Slavka — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 06:17:44 PST

A couple of weeks ago we asked our Facebook friends what their Valentine�s Day ideas and plans were on how to boost their sales for the holiday. If you were among the many that responded, we'd like to thank you! Some of you shared their strategies, but the majority of our clients who sent us emails asked us for advice. There is only 2 weeks left until the holiday, and if your business could benefit from it, there is still enough time to prepare and execute a successful Valentine�s Day campaign by following these 7 useful tips.

1. Make sure your website is relevant to Valentine's Day.
If you consider capitalizing on Valentine�s Day, the first and most important thing to keep in mind is that not every business is going to see an increased demand for the holiday. If you're offering business-to-business services, don�t set your expectations too high. But if you're selling chocolates, beauty products or services, jewellery or other desirable Valentine's presents, putting a little bit of extra effort into your site might get your sales to really peak this holiday.

To best promote your holiday-themed products and services, make sure your presentation has a strong Valentine's Day look and feel. You can achieve this by simply changing your background color and applying relevant background ornaments.

All our modern designs (Atlas, Atria, Chara, Electra, Kuma, Meissa, Mira, Pasta Arc, Pasta Oval, Polaris, Sirius, �Vega) support Site Background and Site Background Ornament customization. We've even pre-loaded some Valentine's Day ornaments.

[Before]

[After]

2. Create a prominent feature area.
Next, pull all of your Valentine's Day merchandise or offers to your home page, so customers don't have to search through your entire website to find the perfect gift.

If you haven�t already done so, setup a Page Image Slideshow on your home page and use relevant images to link to your product or service pages.

3. Create your own special offers and packages.
Gift Certificates are a great way to turn services or even a vacation package into a Valentine's Day present. Why not create a promo package by pulling several related products together? Don't forget to add a gift-wrap option and promote this package as the perfect grab-and-go Valentine's Day gift.

You can easily add gift certificates to your site with our new Local Promotions application. Even though it is not officially released yet, you can get access to the application by joining our Early Access program. Just fill out this form today, and we'll send you all the instructions you need by email.

4. Help your customers offer creative gifts.
Many customers will visit your website looking for a unique and special present, but without a clear idea on what that would be. You can sell more by thinking up creative gifts around your offerings. When creating your special gift packages, think of a story that goes with them.

Fairy tales and romantic movies are always a good source of inspiration for Valentine�s Day gift ideas. Why not create a �Sleeping Beauty� gift box of evening flavored teas that you already sell, or a �Romeo and Juliet� selection of beauty salon treatments for two.

5. Get the word out.
So you�ve gone through all the tips so far and you have the site decorations, the gift packages, and the gift certificates ready. But still, if nobody knows about it, it won�t get you the results you�re planning for.

Send out an e-mail to your customer mailing list and invite everyone to your website for some great Valentine's Day gifts. Let them know about the special gift packages you�ve selected for them, the special deals you�ve set up and don�t forget to mention it if you�ve started offering gift certificates.

6. Use social media to drive more traffic.
Don't forget social media and third party blogs to announce your Valentine's Day offers. Use your Facebook Page and Twitter to remind all your fans and followers why you are the place to go for great Valentine's Day gifts. If you have a large fan base on Facebook you may want to go the extra mile and create a special Valentine�s Day page tab.

7. Be prepared for increased demand.
After you've followed through all the tips above, make sure you are ready to handle any increased demand. Nothing is worse than running out of stock on your themed merchandise or offers and lose precious holiday sales. If you�re offering beauty services for example, it will be easier to keep track of your appointments by using SiteKreator�s built-in Appointment Scheduler application. The application will not only prevent double-booking which may ruin your clients� holiday, but will also help you fill-up all your available slots.

One last tip from us: don�t forget to do your own Valentine�s Day shopping in time for the big day so you won't have to resort to desperate last-minute purchases, that will leave you with nothing to choose from, but cheesy greeting cards and overpriced carnation bouquets.

Update: Improved Support for Automated Feeds in News and Events

rene — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:24:23 PST

Our News and Events Application is used by thousands of our customers to automatically add fresh and up-to-date content to their business website.

Today we are announcing an update of this application that will let you include even more types of feeds.

There are several technical standards for automated news feeds. So far, we have supported the RSS standard.

Today's release adds support for the Atom standard.

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What this means in practice, is that you now have a much wider range of news and event feeds that you can add to your business website. Atom feeds can be found in Blogger, Google News, Gmail, �on Wordpress.com and in many other places around the web.

Go ahead and add one to your site.

New: Swipe Support for Galleries and Improved Social Sharing

rene — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:04:24 PST

It's been quite a busy weekend! We held our first company hackathon and today we will be releasing two of the new features that have been created during the event.

We are enabling swipe support for galleries on mobile devices and tablets, and we are releasing Social Sharing, which lets you control how your content is shared on social networks like Facebook and Google+.

To learn more about our hackathon event, visit our special hackathon page.

Swipe Support for Galleries

In just a few short years, swiping through a set of images has become a standard gesture, and is now pretty much expected behaviour for image galleries. Today we are releasing support for swipe gestures on mobile devices and tablets that run the iOS or Android Operating Systems.

If you are reading this on a mobile device, you can try the demo gallery here.

Support for swiping is automatically added to any galleries you have already published.

Swiping is supported by the Slideshow, Filmstrip and Mosaic visualisations, as well as in the Large Image Viewer and in Animated Page Images.

This feature has been tested on iOS on iPads and iPhones, and on Android 1.5 and 2.2. We will continue to test and support more devices and platforms. If you have a device that is currently not supported, please don't hesitate to contact support at sitekreator dot com and let us know.

Take Control of Social Sharing

Has this ever happened to you: you are excited to share your freshly published website or page with your Facebook friends, but when you paste the URL into Facebook's status box, Facebook does not find all the images or gets the title or description wrong?

Today we are launching Social Sharing, which gives you full control again over your page titles, page descriptions and thumbnail images as your content is shared on Facebook and Google+.

You can define Social Sharing settings for each page individually in the Page Options Panel, or for your entire site in the Site Properties Panel. As with Search Engine Optimisation, Page Options will override site-wide settings.

What's even better is that if you have already defined titles and descriptions in Search Engine Optimization, Social Sharing can directly use those. As you can see, you are in full control of how your content gets shared!

SiteKreator's Social Sharing uses a technology called Open Graph, which was originally published by Facebook but has since been adopted by Google for its +1 sharing, as well as by one of the largest social networks in Japan; Mixi.

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Sneak Peek: Updated Text and Image Editor

rene — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 01:11:58 PST

We are currently working on an update of our Text and Image Editor and we are so excited about how it is turning out, that we would like to share a preview with you. The current editor is already quite powerful, but we are going to really jam-pack it with power in this update. Here's a quick overview of what is coming up.

The first thing you will notice when we open the new Text and Image editor is its enlarged size. We have designed the new editor to take better advantage of larger screen sizes, giving you more space to work with your content.

Above the new edit area, you'll see an updated and re-organized toolbar. One of the most noticeable difference is the grouping of the alignment and list buttons into menus. In addition to that, we have done a complete overhaul of the Insert Link interface, giving you much more control over how links on your site will work.

The Insert Image sidebar has also been revamped. The new layout gives you, among other things, more control over Alt-tags for images, which is immensely valuable for Search Engine Optimization.

Also new in the Inset Image sidebar is the image library. We'll have a large collection of high quality stock photos and icons for you to chose from.

The Insert Table sidebar layout has also been redesigned. You will be able to chose from several different table Background Styles, including setting an image as the table background, or setting different colors for odd and even rows of a table.

As you can see, this is an important update of the Text and Image Editor. But these are just what is available in the standard layouts. When you switch to Advanced mode, additional powerful options appear in each of these layouts!

We'll tell you all about those in the official release. Meanwhile, we hope that you are as excited about this coming update as we are.

Why SOPA/PIPA Is Bad Legislation And What To Do About It

rene — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 06:59:42 PST

We normally do not talk about politics on the SiteKreator blog but we feel that now is an important moment. Two bills have been making their way through Congress that could change the way we all use the internet to publish and find information, and to do business.

Reddit's announcement this week that it would use "the nuclear option" and black out the site for a 12 hour period on January 18 in protest of the two bills has led to lots of speculation about what other services would 'flick the switch' that day. At this moment we do not have plans for SiteKreator to join a possible wider blackout on January 18, but we do want to express our concern over this legislation and we want to share with you why we think these bills are bad for you and your business.

The two bills in question are the PROTECT IP Act of 2011 (Protect IP, S. 968) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, �H.R. 3261) in the House. SOPA is currently awaiting a final vote in the House Judiciary Committee.

Supporters claim that these bills aim to take down websites that host or point to pirated intellectual property. To do this, the bills would give far-reaching powers to rights-holders to stop online advertising networks and payment facilitators like PayPal from doing business with allegedly infringing websites, to stop search engines from linking to these sites and to require internet service providers to block access to these sites. Opponents of the bills, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), have compared the way these powers are granted to "handing out chainsaws in an operating theater".

What is the Problem with these bills?

The PIPA and SOPA bills have a long list of serious problems that have been pointed out by industry experts and others. Some of the most important that directly affect many of our customers are that the bills are:

Expensive
Estimates by the Congressional Budget Office show that PIPA alone would cost US tax-payers $47 million in the first 5 years.
A threat to online free speech
Harvard University professor of constitutional law Laurence H. Tribe published an open letter, saying that SOPA violates the First Amendment.
A threat to online security
Former Homeland Security Assistant Secretary and former General Counsel for the NSA Stewart Baker has argued why the bills thwart efforts to make business online more secure.
A threat to online business
Several experts have pointed out that the vague definitions and severe penalties in the bills could seriously hurt e-commerce and investments, and lead to a loss of jobs.

Most of all, the bills are widely expected to be ineffective in fighting online piracy.

What is happening on January 18?

As said, SOPA is awaiting a final vote in the House Judiciary Committee. Ahead of that vote, Representative Darrell Issa of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee has announced that it will hold a hearing on January 18 to hear technical experts, technology job creators, Internet investors and legal scholars.

Among those invited to the hearing are Alexis Ohanian (founder of Reddit), Stewart Baker (former Homeland Security Assistant Secretary and former General Counsel for the NSA), Brad Burnham (founder of Union Square Venture investment firm, which invested in Twitter and Foursquare, among others), Lanham Napier (CEO of Rackspace), Dr. Leonard Napolitano (Director of the Center for Computer Sciences & Information Technology), Daniel Kaminsky, and Michael Macleod-Ball (Chief of Staff and First Amendment Counsel for the ACLU).

You can follow the meeting via EFFLive.

What Can I do?

There are many things that you, as a citizen, can do to influence this important piece of legislation.

The first thing to do, if you haven't already done so, is to make sure you are informed on the issue. The following list will get you started:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation SOPA PIPA One pager
Stanford Law Review - Don't Break the Internet
Lanham Napier - Why Rackspace Opposes the �Stop Online Piracy Act�
MythBuster Adam Savage: SOPA Could Destroy the Internet as We Know It - Popular Mechanics
TechDirt - The Definitive Post On Why SOPA And Protect IP Are Bad, Bad Ideas

Next, contact members of Congress or set up in-person meetings with your Congressional Representatives to speak out.

If you want to do more, or if you are not in the US but want to voice your opinion, American Sensorship has a full action checklist to get you started.

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Introducing: Localized Date and Time Format

rene — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:58:21 PST

People in different locations use different formats to display date and time. Though these difference may sometimes seem minor, being able to provide them in a familiar format goes a long way to making your site visitors feel at home.

Today, we have released a Location setting that lets you control the way date and time appear on your site with just a single mouse click.

You can find the Location setting in Control Panel > Site Properties > �Special Features.

Select one of the locations from the pull-down menu, or select Custom if your location is not in the list or you want to have full control over the way date and time are displayed on your site. Currently, the Location setting provides presets for a limited number of countries, but we will be expanding this list in the future. Send us a note if you want to see your location added to the list.

The Location setting affects how date and time are displayed in many different places of your site. Applications like News and Events, and the Appointment Scheduler, as well as building elements like the File Area�will all now display date and time according to your Location setting.

The Form editor�will use the setting to determine the format for form fields that use the $date$ and $date_time$ default values.

Clicking on the Insert Date icon in the Text and Image editor, will insert today's date and time at the current cursor location in the text.

Where dates can be set in various places in the Admin view, we have added date-pickers; small popups that let you select a date with the click of a mouse without having to worry about the formatting.

Lastly, the new setting also controls the way date and time is formatted in Control Panel > My Account, as well as in any emails that are sent to you concerning your account.

All our future applications, like our upcoming Database Editor, Gift Certificates, Daily Deals and Email Marketing, will, of course, fully support the new localized date and time settings.

Sharing Your Page Updates Is Easier Than Ever

rene — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 05:21:18 PST

You may have noticed over the past couple of days that we made changes to the design and functionality of the Page Published status messages that appear in the bottom-right corner of your browser window after you publish a page on your site.

The new status messages now include 1-click social share buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. In addition, they also let you share your freshly published page by email.

We have also made all other status message that appear when you add, edit or remove different kinds of content on a page more insightful.

Besides providing feedback on what action has been successfully completed, they now also contain a reminder of what to do next, like publishing the page.

Driving in the Fast Lane to Improved Conversion Rates with Google Analytics� New Site Speed Metrics

rene — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 01:48:19 PST

Use the new free feature to spot and optimize pages with longer loading times for better website performance and happier clients

We all rely on the Internet for a huge part of our daily activities: from getting our work done to running personal errands like online banking and shopping. As more and more routine tasks become available online, our expectations on the responsiveness of the websites we�re trying to access have increased drastically. In short, we all hate to wait. Read on, as we show you how to use the site speed reports to improve the on-page experience you provide to your clients and improve your conversion rates.

Understanding the technology: Where do I start?

When you log in your Google Analytics account, locate the Content menu. Click on it to expand it and you'll see Site Speed between Site Content and Site Search. Here you can access everything from the average page load time for your site to individual page load times.

The information comes from a sampling of 1% of the site visitors by default, though you can adjust this. You'll see the sample size for each specific page. Note that if you have a site with less traffic, you might see disturbingly high load times in some areas. Check if you have lower load times overall, as the sample size for some of the pages may be too small and thus provide inaccurate results. The 1% sample works well for sites with more than a few thousand users. So the more visitors your website gets, the more precise statistics will show on your report page.

Understanding the numbers: How do I know if my site is fast or slow?

First, the good news. Being a SiteKreator client immediately gets you on the fast track, thanks to our advanced Content Delivery Network (CDN). It is designed to load your content faster than traditional hosting solutions. Read our blog post on this to learn how relying on SiteKreator gets you literally ahead of competition.

But let�s get realistic. You will notice that even though you�ve used the same design and platform for all of your pages, many of them show different load times. Relying on technology alone is not enough. You have to take into account the content you load on your pages, your visitors� location, the type of operating system and browsers that they use.

There are several attention thresholds in terms of an average visitor�s expectation for a page to load. According to a recent study* 40% of all visitors will wait no more than 3 seconds before abandoning a site, while online shoppers will wait no more than 2 seconds before getting frustrated. Google sets the bar even higher, considering anything longer than 1.5 seconds slow loading time.

If your Site Speed reports show that some of your pages are slower that the recommended response time numbers, do not get discouraged. Statistics should not be taken all black and white. Loading times affect us differently, based on where we are in the process of exploring a website. For example, all entry pages like landing pages, the home page, search results, and the product catalog really need to be fast. Slow loading times on those pages may have a significant impact on client experience and conversion rates.

On the other hand, once a visitor has decided to complete a purchase and has started the checkout process, slower response time is more tolerable. There is no need to worry if your login process takes even 5 or 6 seconds to complete, or if it takes 10 or 15 seconds to finalize the conversion.

Understanding the possibilities: How do I optimize my page load speed for increased conversions?

First start with optimizing your entry pages. As we mentioned above, your home and landing pages need to be really snappy. To keep them fast, get rid of the clutter. Do not use large images or galleries on those pages. It is strongly recommended to switch off the auto-play mode on your audio or video files as it may slow down a page significantly. Make sure to always scale the photos before uploading them to your product catalog. If you have the photos already uploaded and want a quick fix, then use the integrated Picnik editor that we provide free of charge, rather than using SiteKreator�s built-in editor to drag and resize them. You will make them fit on the page, but it won�t decrease their actual file size. Minimize the number of steps needed to accomplish a conversion to speed up the checkout process.

Another thing to consider is the location of the most important part of your audience. Google also shows the load time by region, so you can drill down and see how fast pages load anywhere in the world. If you serve mainly non-US audience, you should really take the time to check this report. You can also switch to the convenient Map Overlay tab of the report for a visual representation of the data. To help our customers with international client base, SiteKreator, unlike many other platforms, is not US-centric in terms of connectivity. Our CDN is a network of servers around the world, each of which has a copy of your website. Whenever a user loads your site, the files will be automatically sent from the server that is nearest to the user.

Is your website targeted at senior audience? Then make sure your pages load fast on older versions of the different operating systems and browsers. You can access this information by selecting the Technology option on the Secondary dimension drop-down menu.

Summary

Google has long been known for its obsession with speed. We hope that through experiencing the positive results that come with fast load times, you will start sharing the same idea. You can always stay assured that thanks to SiteKreator�s optimized platform your website will benefit from faster load times, but keep checking on your Site Speed reports. Make sure that your most important pages have not become slower due to heavy content. A slow-loading landing page not only impacts your conversion rate, but can also impact AdWords Landing Page Quality and ranking in Google search.

*eCommerce web site performance and its correlation with an online shopper�s behavior by Forrester Consulting

Display customer submitted details in email headers

Mark McGrady — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 22:59:16 PST

SiteKreator Forms can now display customer submitted details in the To, From, & Subject Form Fields, by applying $xxxxx$ wildcards for the special values of the corresponding Form Field Name.

NOTE: Replace xxxxx with the Form Field Name.

For example, using the Send to Email�option, in this case, the special string $email$�is used in the From field. The email address submitted by the customer will display as the "From: address" of the email.

Follow us on Google+

rene — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:25:57 PST

Yesterday, Google launched Google+ Pages for Businesses.

Today, we have set up the official SiteKreator page on Google+.

Add our Page to your circles to receive automatic updates and announcements that we will be posting there, and become part of our SiteKreator community on Google+.

If you are interested in setting up a Google+ Page for your own business, you can start at http://plus.google.com/pages/create. To get a head start on how Google+ Pages is different from Facebook Pages, read this excellent article on AdAge.

Update: Faster Text Editing

rene — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 07:33:51 PDT

SiteKreator has many components that together make sure the product runs smoothly and flawlessly. One such component is what we call the Rich Text Editor. Any time you add or edit text content on the pages of your site, you do so via our Rich Text Editor.

This is why we are happy to announce the release of our much improved Rich Text Editor. Not only does the new text editor now loads much faster, you'll also notice that it responds faster to mouse clicks and text input.

Because the Rich Text Editor is the heart of our Text and Image, Forms, and even the Forum and Blog content elements, you'll notice that all these features now work much faster.

Lastly, we've also updated the look and feel of the editor to use our new standard Add, Update and Close buttons.

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We trust that you will appreciate the increased speed with which you can now edit and update your website.

More Control Over Your Site with Header HTML Snippets

rene — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 07:32:40 PDT

Every page on every website contains a lot of information that is not seen by website visitors, but that is there to let search engines help users find your site or is used by statistics and other services. This information is stored in what are called meta tags in a part of the page's content that is called the Head.

With SiteKreator, you have always been able to edit the most important of these meta tags right from your Admin interface. The Site Options and Page Options panel let you enter Site and Page Titles, and enter Descriptions and Keywords that are vital for Search Engine Optimization.

Today, we are happy to announce that we have released a new feature, which gives you total control over this important part of your site. With the Header HTML snippet, you can now insert any meta tags into the Head of your site.

You can easily and quickly confirm site-ownership for valuable SEO services like Google Webmaster tools, Bing�or Yahoo. It also lets you add the necessary codes to enable Facebook Insights statistics for your website or adjust the appearance of your site on mobile devices.

There are many other useful meta tags that you can add to your site. You can find a list of the most common meta tags on HTMLForDesigners.com.

See also our tutorial to learn more about how to use the Header HTML snippet.