April News 2012

In this issue of Website Builder News, April 2012. "Happy new financial year!"

  1. New Features
    • Pimp My Site Winner
    • New Standard Templates
    • New E-Commerce Templates
  2. Training Options
  3. Quick Professional Touch ups
  4. Facebook Branding
  5. Tips and Tricks
    • Email Spamming and Scaming
    • SEO - Google Places
    • Image File Size vs Quality (Image Optimisation)
    • Cool Links
  6. Free Sites for Charity
  7. Start your own Website Business
  8. Help Promote Web Site Builder
  9. Websites of the Month

New Features

Pimp My Site - Competition

Our Pimp My Site Competition is now completed. Thank you for the overwhelming response and the feedback given. It is much appreciated.

The Winner of the Competition is Vern Murray and the site to be Pimped is http://www.funasinflatables.co.nz/

We look forward to Pimping Vern's site over the next few weeks.

New Standard Templates

We also have a few new templates created by our designer Albie.

You can view these templates here

New E-Commerce Templates...

We have new E-commerce templates that introduce 4 great new features to help promote your products.

+ Featured Products
+ Products on Sale
+ New Products
+ Best Sellers

These options can be given to a product/s in the CMS and will display on your website (sorry, new templates only).

The options can be accessed from the product details area under promotion (dropdown)

There is the possibility to add the new features to your pre-existing template, costing dependant on your existing design and requirements... not all templates will be suited to the new features.

New Templates based on these new cart options can be seen here

Training Options

Our training videos are currently being updated with our New CMS layout plus we will be videos for recently added features. We will let you know as soon as they are made live.

Our original videos are still available to help you setup your website, or shopping cart, or payment options. Please note these videos show the old look and feel CMS and we are slowely upgrading the videos.

/Video-Tutorials.html

We also have a collection of excellent tutorials on our FAQ

If you require personalised training, we can provide this training to you over the phone, or in person at our offices in Grey Lynn, Auckland. Training costs $100 per hour by either method. Minimum time is 30 minutes.

Book personalised training here

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 plenty of magic in just 1 hour (100+gst per hour),

Discount Tip: If you purchase 6 or more hours, you will only be charged $90 per hour! Saving 10%.

Web Design Options

Facebook Branding

If your interested in Branding your Facebook business page with your logo and imagery to match your website or a new product release then please contact us to discuss and request a quote from one of our designers

Our in-house trainers can also bring you up to speed with Social Media and how effective it can be when used with your website.

Book personalised training here

    Tips and Tricks from our staff

    Email Spamming and Scaming

    If you receive an email you think is a scam, then it probably is... Eg asian trademark, bank deposit, anyone asking you to login anywhere, anyone asking you to pay for something you didnt want to buy. The only exception might be a OpenSRS registry email asking you to confirm your domain contact details, but not asking you to login or pay for anything. If it involves money or logins, = scam.

    Search Engine Optimisation Tip of the Month - Google Places

    If you search using a geographic place name, then google will likely show a map and several business listings from a special database called "Google Places". It's free to register your business in that directory, it just requires about 5 minutes of your time. Other data may also come from the Finda listing, so make sure that one is also up to date. Learn more and register your business at the link below.

    http://www.google.com/places/

    http://www.finda.co.nz/

    More SEO tips and keyword tools here

    Image File Size vs Quality.

    Over the last few months we have been monitoring some of our clients Monthly Bandwidth with some surprising results.

    For those not in the know it works like this. Each time a user views your website their Internet browser downloads the web page from us your website host. This web page is measured in kilobytes. The average website document contains text and images, Images can come in all varying formats( jpg, gif and png ) and varying file sizes. The average file size of a jpg photo from a digital camera is about 2000kb (2mb) now that's a lot of information travelling between us your web host and the viewers computer. Especially if your getting 100 views a month. which equates to 20,000kb of Monthly Bandwidth and that's just on one photo up loaded from your camera.

    The cool thing is that we can do 3 things to resolve this

    1. re-size (dimensions in pixels)
    2. optimise (Compression)
    3. change resolution (72dpi)

    This month I will only look at Option 2 - Optimisation! as it is the most important and most effective way of reducing band width traffic. Optimising an image basically strips out unnecessary elements and compresses the file to produce a image with a file size often 60% - 80% smaller. Most Image software offer percentage based optimisation so that you can get the right percentage without destroying the image quality. This means that large photograph image that is 2000kb could be reduced to 400kb. However in this example we are looking at a standard photo from a digital camera, to get the best optimisation we should also consider re-sizing you images. I would suggest a gallery image should be no bigger than 600px wide and a product image for your shopping cart no smaller than 320px wide. Once these images are optimised correctly using your image software or one of the programs listed below you should find that you can get the file size down to 60-30kb which is perfect for websites with high monthly traffic, If implemented correctly this process could save you $$$ in excess traffic charges..

    Here are some free online or downloadable optimisation tools to get the job done if you don't use Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Fireworks

    Shrink O'Matic - Download
    SMUSH.IT online
    Dynamic Drive - online
    RIOT (Radical Image Optimization Tool) download
    PunyPNG - Online (PNG Files only)
    Site Report Card - Online
    Web Resizer - Online

    Cool Links

    Free Websites For Charity

    There are 2 new hosting plans, FREE for very charitable websites serving the greater good helping those less fortunate, or $150/year for other community groups and sports teams. Existing customers may retrospectively request these plans.

    All charities must comply with our special terms and conditions, primarily that they must not have any paid staff or income apart from donations. Free websites will include an advert promoting website builder services.

    Learn More: - Learn more about free websites here

    Start your Own Website Builder Business - Discounts of 33%+

    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 33% discount on our hosting fees and can purchase domains for only $22/year. We also give you full administrative access to our system, and special training. Alternatively consider our affiliate scheme below.

    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 DIY Go Lives.

    And a few of our recent professionally designed / upgraded websites, or websites that received some professional help.

    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,
    Michael Stanbury
    Web Widgets - Free Website Builder

    www.websitebuilder.co.nz

    Posted: Tue 03 Apr 2012

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