March 2016 News

In this edition of website.world news:
  • Recent Work
  • Switching Content Editor Modes
  • Customer Site Of The Month
  • Website Builder Usability Updates
  • New Improved Google ReCaptcha Version 2
  • 100% website up time
  • Ecommerce Upgrades
  • New Features 
  • Need training? 
  • Clearing your browser cache
  • Professional web design options
  • Getting Found On Google
  • Better Broadband & 0800 telephone numbers
  • 25% discount on hosting
  • Start your own business - reseller options
  • Cool links/system links
  • Websites of the month

Recent Professional Design Work

Andrews latest work for "Beautiful Manukau" and a sub site "Brand it competition", using large rich images in a stacked layout.

http://www.beautifulmanukau.org.nz/Brand-it-competition

Albies latest work for People Kind, a rebrand of their existing website, including design of their new clean logo. 

http://www.peoplekind.co.nz/

Switching Content Editor Modes

We have made it easier to understand and switch content editor modes. In the top right corner of the our content editors, you can choose between 

  • Drag and Drop editor, great for tidy layouts of mobile responsive content.
  • TinyMCE - our traditional robust editor that can cope with most content styles, great for text heavy blogs or complex tabular layouts, or content pasted from other sources. 
  • CK Editor - great for editing custom forms and form fields. 

Each editor was developed by different open source communities, or purchased under license. Each editor has it's pro's and con's. We have attempted to make each editor use our standard image wizard and link wizard, so that there is consistency in those items. The link wizard and image wizards now popup faster when editing a new link or placeholder image in the drag and drop editor. 

You will note all editors now make maximum use of a screen realestate. A new maximise button will give you even more screen real estate when working on lower resolution screens.

When changing modes, it attempts to determine if changes have not been saved. And removes the annoying popup message. Sometimes certain content will always say it hasn't been saved even if it has, this is due to the editor making subtle code cleaning changes to your underlying HTML code, or treating whitespace differently. After a few saves, that issue should go away. 

Customer site of the month

We all agreed that Precious Bambinos did a great job of designing their own website, using a simply layout, a clean banner, and custom font. Well done!

Website Builder Usability Updates

We've made sweeping changes through our online CMS to make it easier for you to do the things you do every day.  

  • The content editing screens have been given more screen real estate, and a maximise button can fetch even more.
  • Save button always visible, bottom right of screen
  • Search boxes for big list pages have been moved to the right side of the screen.
  • When ticking checkboxes, the bulk actions will now hover on the right side of the screen. 
  • The option to quickly add blogs/photos/faq pages will display on the right side of the screen.
  • You can drag/drop most file types into the FAQ/Blog/Gallery area. Depending on the file type, it will create an appropriate page object. eg photos will be displayed in gallery format, where as files will be linked, or movies/music will be linked plus have a playable widget. Be careful uploading large media files as it can affect your traffic.  
  • You can paste youtube/vimeo page link URL's into our embed object boxes, and they will auto expand to a full embed object widget. This makes is faster than navigating through the youtube embed feature. 
  • It is now easier to drag/drop banner images into the banners area.
  • The use of percentage widths, means the CMS editor is more compact on small screens, and more useable on large screens. Our CMS also renders in mobile mode targeted for big finger presses. 

New and Improved ReCaptcha Version 2

We have updated all our forms to the latest version of Google's anti spam reCaptcha human prompt. The latest version includes a simple tick box to prove you are not a robot. In many cases, ticking the box is enough. Or if not, google may popup some images for the user to select and prove they are human. This human proof feature is more user friendly that the previous item where you had to type words from an unintelligible picture. 

We also have some other robot detection features. If you don't opt in to use google captcha on our forms, then we do our best to block known robots. If we suspect anyone is a robot, due to the use of posting URL's in the content of the form post, then we will present the google recpatcha prompt anyhow, thus allowing a real human to prove themselves. 

Recaptcha is required on all form file upload posts, and in forums, and password reminder areas. That's because these features are targets for bad robots.  

100% Up-time

Once again, all our website builder powered websites had 100% up time in January and February. Really happy with that. 

Ecommerce Upgrades

  • Previous order counts are now displayed in the footer of merchant copies of orders/invoices. 

  • When sending a newsletter, you can now include POINTS_SUMMARY in side square tags if you want to remind your users how many points they have. It includes a link for them to auto login and redeem those points. But only displays if the user has any points to begin with. 

  • All shopping sites powered by website.world, are automatically able to provide a price feed to pricespy.co.nz. You can find the price spy feed URL in our shopping API area. Promoting via price spy is great if you have unique products, or the best priced products.  

New Features

  • Learn how to create your own annoying popup subscribe boxes.  http://www.help.cmstool.net/blog/662432

  • You can now hide email and URL addresses from your contact page. We advise keeping your email address public as it is more customer friendly for your visitors to use their own email software to email you. Not everyone likes using forms and entering captcha boxes. Although you make think hiding your email will keep spam away, you can be fairly sure that the spammers will get your email address one way or the other, and most of that type of spam is blocked in any case. 

  • All product pages of all websites have been updated to be compatible with Google Rich Snippets for products. Learn More

Need Professional Help? 

We have design consultants from all over who can take your website to the next level. All Web Designers are independent businesses who will consult and bill you directly for their time.

Need one-on-one Website Builder Training?

If you require personalised training, please contact one of our consultants, who are based all over. Several consultants also provide over the phone and web based 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

Get 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

Better Broadband (NZ Customers)

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.  

https://www.websitebuilder.world/listing/nz-broadband-providers

0800 Numbers and Cheaper Tolls (NZ Customers)

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. 

https://www.websitebuilder.world/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 you can Contact - Web Designers or lodge a Support ticket

Cool links

All those links and more at our new toolbox page: 

More Cool Links

Websites of the month

Here's a selection of some of our recent Go Lives.  


View more example websites

 

Please contact us for more information. 

From the Team @ Web Widgets Ltd

Website World - Free Website Builder

www.website.world

Posted: Tue 15 Mar 2016

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