December 2010 News

Hi [FIRSTNAME]

In this Christmas issue of Website Builder News, December 2010...

  • Training Options
  • Our Christmas Present to You
  • Quick Professional Touchup
  • 20 Beautiful New Templates
  • Domain Names
  • How to setup Multiple Screens on your Desk
  • New Website - Geeks on Wheels
  • Holiday Hours
  • Social Media Tip of the Month
  • Search Engine Optimisation Tip of the Month
  • Free website design for charity - And the Winner is?
  • The year in review
  • Start your own website builder business
  • How to help us promote Website Builder and get a 20% rebate
  • Websites of the Month 

 

Training Options

Free training is available via our YouTube channel.

Our group training sessions are perfect for learning more and asking questions. Introduction course covers all the basics including design, content management, galleries, enquiry forms, shopping carts, domain names, and how to go live. Our Search Engine Optimisation course is great for learning how to get your website higher on Google.

  • Auckland - Website Builder Introduction 2 hours  - 15th Mar at 1pm - $75
  • Auckland - Search Engine Optimisation 2 hours - 10th Dec at 10am - $75
  • Wellington - Website Builder Introduction 2 hours  - 16th Mar at 1pm - $75
  • Wellington - Search Engine Optimisation 2 hours - 16th Mar at 3pm - $75
  • Queenstown - Webstite Builder/SEO - 10 Feb 2011 at 9am - $75
  • Christchurch - Website Builder Introduction 2 hours - 14 Feb 2011 at 1pm - $75
  • Christchurch - Search Engine Optimisation 2 hours - 14 Feb 2011 at 3pm - $75 
  • More Locations and Times - Book Your Training Here

One on One Training is available for $90 per hour at our offices in Auckland on an appointment basis, or over the phone. Or timed to coincide with our regional training above.

 

Our Christmas Present To You - $10000 to Charity

Traditionally we have purchased goats, chickens and similar items from Oxfram Unwrapped. This year we decided to donate $10000 towards a specific Oxfam project, targeting 150 rural villages across Samoa. In association with WIBDI (Women in Business Development Incorporated), Oxfam are helping alleviate poverty, creating sustainable village economies and revitalising the agriculture sector. In particular, co-ordinating and providing transport for the remote farmers to attend a weekly organic vegetable market.

Read More

 

 

Quick Professional Touch Up

 

Do you want one of our professional web designers to give your website a quick once over and clean up the rough edges. Contact us for a quote, our professional designers can do alot of magic in just 2 hours (2 hours=$180+gst), however if you specify your budget, they will do their best in the time given.

 

 

20 Beautiful New Templates

Mike has been busy creating some new templates, with some bright new imagery, and many new features allowing you to put borders and backgrounds around important content in your pages.

View the new templates

 

 

 

Domain Names

Don't be fooled by trademark infringement warnings from Asia. You don't need to buy those domain names unless you really want them. There are just so many domain suffixes, it really is pointless buying them all unless you have a specific reason.

.nz domains (just NZ$29+gst per year, discounts for multiple years)

.au domains (just AU$58 for 2 years)

All other International Domains (from US$15)

Tips

  • Domains containing keywords are great, but you can really only have one primary web address per website. Focus all your SEO linking effort on your best domain name.
  • Use alternative domain names in offline/radio/tv advertising, to guage the success of those mediums.
  • Buy additional domain names only if you think misspellings or "address guessing" will get you some traffic.

 

How to setup Multiple Screens On Your Desk

Many people who visit our offices have been inspired by the multiple screens we run on our desks. You can do that too, most computers automatically support 2 screens, including notebook computers. Multiple screens increases productivity and staff morale!

Learn more about extending your desktop

 

New Website Design - Geeks on Wheels

We have just completed the redesign of the Geeks on Wheels website. Geeks on Wheels are a mobile computer repairs & support service nationwide. The primary importance of their new website was to improve their searchability for keyphrases across several geographical regions where they operate. We encourage anyone experiencing problems with their computer to give Geeks on Wheels a call. 0800 4 A GEEK or

www.geeksonwheels.co.nz

 

Holiday Hours

Our office will be closed from Christmas Day until 9th January.

In remainder of January/February our staff will be alternating weeks off

We will all check our email intermitently throughout the period. However, we won't be answering the office phones, so if your issue is really urgent, then please call Reuben on 021 709996. We hope you will be enjoying your holidays as much as we want to.

 

Social Media - Tip of the Month - Competitions

As you might know we have recently been running a competition for charities to win a free website. This has been a successful campaign, and we have utilised social media for this.

The first step was to encourage people to use our facebook page to post their nominations. As people did that, all their friends could see that they had interacted with our facebook page, and potentially create new brand awareness.

The second step was to encourage people to vote, in this case we bought them back to our website to vote, but the important part is to encourage all the nominees to post the voting link on their walls, newsletters, and anywhere they want, to help them get more votes. Each person who votes will potentially be new to our brand. Along with voting, they get the opportunity to opt-in, and/or start a free trial website.

The approach we have taken is a win/win for everyone. The charities help promote our brand, and we in turn offer the chance for a few to win a free professional website design.

The trick to social media is to create content that people want to share. Messages that people willing share/retweet etc, is the start of viral messaging. And this is what we all want.

How are you using social media? Are you just talking at people, or are you encouraging your friends/fans/followers to engage with you? Not all of them need to be customers, friends and family will often want to help you spread your message, but it needs to be a message that they would want to share with their FFF.

 

Search Engine Optimisation - Tip of the Month - URLs

Each of your web pages in your website has a unique URL. A URL is a web address and filename, unique to each and every page, that anyone can save as a favourite, or share, or that Google can index in their search engine. Google doesn't always retrieve your home page, often it will suggest some other page of your website that is more focussed on a specific keyword.

You should thus craft each of your web pages to a different keyphrase per page. One very important step is to select a filename for your page, that needs to be unique across your site, and preferably contain a search key phrase. eg. discount-televisions-christchurch.html

It has always been easy to create a custom URL for most pages and shopping categories in your website, but now you can do even more. Look for the SEO tab for gallery pages, FAQ pages and product pages. Note that these new URL formats do not require a .html suffix, and only need to be unique within the current section of your website.

More SEO tips and keyword tools here

 

Free website design for charity - The Winner!

The Winner this month is: Canterbury Playcenter Association

If your charity, club or community organisation wants the chance to receive a free website makeover, or professional design, then go to our facebook page and make a nomination.

We then add the nominations to our voting page. The winner who receives the most votes each month will receive a free professional design worth $2000.

Please note that normal hosting/domain fees will apply.

We will run this competition every month until at least March. Your club will automatically go into every months draw, so get nominated early, and round up all your members and their friends to come and vote for you. 

Submit New Nominations: Facebook Page

Voting Page: - Vote here

 

The year in review

This year our product is now 10 years old.

We have almost 1300 live websites hosted, up from 1000 at the start of this year.

We have helped almost 2500 customers build websites over the last 10 years.

 

 

Start your Own Website Builder Business

 

Our reseller program enables you to setup and sell websites under your own brand. Web Widgets provides you with all the tools and services you need to do this. Web Widgets remain at arms length. Only your contact details and brand are shown to your customer. They won't know anything about web widgets nor free website builder. This program is perfect for website designers, or sales people looking for new opportunities. The reseller program does have a $1000 setup fee, but you immediately get 30% discount on our hosting fees and can purchase domains for only $22/year. We also give you full administrative access to our system. Alternatively consider our affiliate scheme.

Learn more about reseller program

 

Help us promote our Website Builder (earn 20% commission ongoing)

Anyone who refers friends to our service, or sets up a 2nd or subsequent website gets a 20% discount off their web hosting fees. Refer 5 friends, and you pay nothing for your website hosting. Refer more than 5 friends, and we will start paying you.  

Terms - live websites only, based on equivalent hosting plans, payouts subject to minimums.

How to promote

  • Ask your friends to include your login email address on the form when they signup
  • Create a trial for your friends, using their email address, but put your login email in the referred by area.
  • Contact us to tell us who you have referred (after they have created their trial)
  • Create an affiliate link, refer top right within the CMS, then copy and paste into your page
  • Add a page, on the right under tooltips, see "Website Creation Affiliate Link"

More information about affiliates and reselling here

 

 

Websites of the Month

Here's a selection of some of our recent Go Lives. DIY websites are always a mixed bag, so we encourage you to view several example sites if determining if Website Builder is right for you.  

Do you want a more professional look and feel for your website? A more professional look will instill greater trust in your customers, and encourage them to stay longer on your website or make a purchase. Please use our online quote or contact us.

Do you have any feedback on our newsletter or CMS products? Please let us know.

Best regards,
Reuben Jackson (CEO)

Web Widgets - Free Website Builder

www.websitebuilder.co.nz

Posted: Wed 08 Dec 2010

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