June 2015 News

Welcome to website builder world, where we solve all your online business needs.

In this issue of Website Builder World news:

Hosting Price Decreased
Referral Discount Increased
Shorter URLs on product and blog pages.
Mobile view port changed
Need training?
Clearing your browser cache
Professional web design options
Getting Found On Google
Better Broadband
0800 telephone numbers
20% discounts on hosting
Start your own business - reseller options
Cool links/system links
Websites of the month

Hosting Price Decrease

We have decreased the cost of a small brochure website with low traffic to only $10 per month. If you are currently on the $15 a month plan, and have less than 10 pages and low web traffic, please go to the accounts tab in website builder, check you are within the new hosting plan rule limits and change your plan to the brochure plan. It's even cheaper if you pay annually.

The hosting cost of all annual plans have also been discounted slightly. Annual plans will save you about 16%.

View Hosting Fees

Refer a friend for 25% discount

We have increased our referral discounts. If you recommend to 4 friends to use website builder to build their website, then your web hosting will be free. (Based on equivalent hosting plans).

Share this unique referral link on social media: /page/83689/cms/new-website.html?aid=[MBR_ID]

Learn more about customer Referrals

Shorter URLs on Product and Blog Pages

We have shortened the URLS on products and blog pages, and all unpublished pages. The new shorter URL format looks tidier in web browsers. It is unlikely to produce any greater SEO benefit, but it has been long requested by users that we reduce the size of those dynamic URLs.

We have also implimented 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new URLs so that google will be happy.

We are automatically publishing all websites that have not been published for some time to make note of these changes. But if you are in a hurry, and have not published in the last 2 weeks, you might like to publish your wesite now.

Default Mobile View Port Default Zoom Changed

We have changed the default zoom of our mobile templates. Some users were getting very different results on different mobile devices, or different browser types within. We have therefore defaulted to the default zoom of 1, so that there is more consistency between devices.

Your website may need to be published so that the stylesheet and zoom levels are in sync. We will do this for you in any case over the next week or 2.

If you had a custom mobile template, you may need to make changes if you had not previously defined your own mobile view port zoom level. You might like to select one of our default mobile templates again, then reapply any customisations.

Need one-on-one Website Builder Training?

If you require personalised training, please contact one of our consultants, who are based all over NZ. Many of our Auckland team can also provide over the phone training at a scheduled time.

We would encourage all customers to get at least one hour of training at the early stages of building their website, and one more review prior to going live, just to give your website that professional critique, and quick tidy up of the rough bits.

Training topics include:

How to use website builder and shopping cart
How to design websites
How to crop and tidy up photos
How to optimise to get your website higher on google and other search engines
How to setup a facebook page, or other social media account
How to send newsletters
How to use any other feature we offer.

Book personalised training here

Clearing your Browser Cache and Publishing

Caching speeds up your computer, but it also causes confusion when viewing changes to your website. Every web master needs to become familiar with this concept. Almost a third of all our support tickets relate to mis understandings about caching. We can't change the nature of the internet, we only educate.

Pressing publish button is neccesary even before you go live. Pressing the publish button allows you to navigate your trial website. When you navigate your trial website, you are actually navigating the published pages in many cases. Only the first page to preview in preview mode usually shows your recent changes.
Your web browser is not aware that you are currently editing your website. The web browser does not undersstand any connection between our website builder CMS, and your website with a completely different URL. You typically need to press REFRESH on your browser to see recent updates. Or you may even need to clear your browser cache.

Learn more about Clearing your browser cache

Professional Web Design Services and Training

If you require training or professional help getting started with your website, please review their portfolios, specials etc and contact a local consultant. We have authorised all our resellers and design consultants to engage with you directly, and bill you directly for their time.

You can see all the available consultants at the following link from all across NZ.

/directory/web-designers-specializing-in-our-cms

Getting Found On Google

A website to begin with, is like a new shop down a dark alleyway, that no one knows about. Google wont know about your page until you tell google about it either.
First you need some links to your website.

You can get a link from our customer directory in the SEO tab inside website builder.
You can submit your URL to google in the same place
You should add your URL to any other online business directory you can find
Ask your suppliers to list you on their outlets page.
Ask bloggers to blog about you.

It can take a few weeks or even a few months for google to find you, and then once they have, the focus is on keywords and ranking.
Every page of your website should be optimised for a different "key phrase". A keyphrase is a combination of 2-5 words that describes your business, product or service in some way. eg "red running shoes" or "grey lynn bed and breakfast"
Don't put the same phrase on every page, the trick is to use different phrases on different pages. This way, google will take users to the right page for the right phrase. This is proven to be much more effective that trying to put all phrases on one page. These pages are referred to as "landing pages" being the first page a searcher will land on. From there, they may continue to your about us page, contact us page or shopping cart page.
In the SEO tab you can quickly optimise lots of pages, categories, blogs and products. You should focus your biggest effort on the meta title and the SEO filename. get your keyphrases into both of those... The SEO filename is the green URL part of the google search results. The SEO meta title is the search result title for your page... So these are very powerful ways to signal to google what page is most relevant for a phrase.
Geography is important. Google doesn't make sense of phrases like "nationwide" or "everywhere". But google really cares about suburbs, towns and cities. So if your business is targeted at a gepgraphical region, please be specific. You might even include surrounding suburbs for accommodation or a cafe... However, if you are selling bouncy castles, it's probably more suited to a city or region name. For online sales, geography is not so improtant, but saying you are from NZ is. Google also doesn't relate your contact us page to the rest of your website, so if geography is important, it should be in the first paragraph of any relevant landing page.
Often google shows results including your phone number and address that may be out of date. You can update your details here: http://www.google.com/business/

Learn more about SEO here

Better Broadband

We have teamed up with the awesome 2talk team to offer you some great broadband options. If you have become disgruntled with your current isp, now is the time to get a great bundled broadband offering.

/listing/nz-broadband-providers

0800 Numbers and Cheaper Tolls

Do you need an 0800 number for your business? We think 2talk provide a really awesome service, and it's who we use. For example, you have an 0800 number call your landline first, then your mobile, then your 2IC's mobile to ensure that somone will take the call. Their rates are cheap, and all the value added services can be managed via a web page control panel, so you don't need to wait on hold for any call centers. You can manage your lines fully yourself.

/listing/2talk

Receive a 25% discount off your web hosting, for life, by referring a friend

Did you know that if you refer a friend to use our awesome website builder service, you get a 25% discount off your hosting? If you refer 4 friends, then you will essentially get your web hosting for free! Not only that, but your friends will also get their 2nd month web hosting absolutely free. That's a nice little encouragement for them to check our service out and gives us the opportunity to setup your discount. Both discounts apply for your 2nd and subsequent websites also. It doesn't matter if it is yours, a friend, family or a stranger. Discounts begin once both websites are live. Please make sure you or your friend communicates the referral at the earliest opportunity.

More information about affiliates here

Reseller Options

We have an awesome new offer for web designers and awesome business networkers. We can setup any web designer who is interested with all they need to get started as a web designer at no cost:

There are no setup fees, no contracts to sign.
You will earn $2+ on every domain name sold (based on RRP $19 per year).
You will earn (25%-50%) commission on hosting
You can manage all your customers content, domains, emails etc, easily from just 1 login.
We take care of all the billing arrangements, so no administrative hassle.

If you know of anyone who might be interested, point them at our reseller page. We'll offer a $100 finders fee commission for any existing customer who finds us a new reseller who set's up 3+ live websites. Offer expires 28th Feb 2014.

More information on reselling here

Need Help! is at hand...

There are several places you can find answers to questions about how to build your website and add features (which, there are a lot of) and its free for you to look:

If you can't find the answer you need - then get professional help

Contact - Web Designers or lodge a Support ticket

In 99% of cases the answer to a problem is covered in one (or more) of these places. We always fix bugs fast, with all the users we have we get notified very fast of any real bug - they are not common, so if you are having an issue operating the CMS consider some online training with us - you'll always take something away worth value. In all other cases we are happy to do anything you are having trouble doing yourself for a small fee starting from $20 for 10 minutes.