September News

XTRA Issues last month

Last month xtra made several mistakes with their email system upgrade. We were able to help a number of customers who contacted us to ensure their email was diverted away from xtra mailservers, thus avoiding that issue.

In our email area, we can now provide you with POP3 mailboxes for your domain email. Please refer to the next section.

How to bypass the email system of your ISP

Login to our content management, hover your mouse over the red domain name button on the left menu. Click the Email option. You should see your existing email forwarding rules. In the case of an emergency, you can update these email rules to forward your email to any other acount that you know is active. eg hotmail, gmail, yahoo etc.

Or for a permanent solution, delete your email forwarding rule and replace with a new mailbox. This can be a bit complicated for some users, but the instructions are all there. If you need our help, a $20 fee will apply. Please only create 1 mailbox per person, and use forwarding rules to re-route all the other aliases you want. If you want to have a catch-all email address, then please create a preferred email address for your mailbox, then use the catch-all to foward to your new mailbox.

The changes above will ensure that you are in control of your incoming email. I note that you will still be dependent on your ISP for your outgoing email, but you can always use our webmail tool if you need to urgently send an email or check your email while overseas.

If you don't have email active on our server, this means your domain is likely still managed with Xtra, and you are probably paying them additional fees for the substandard service they have provided you. Please refer to the next section on Domain Transfers.

How to transfer domains away from Xtra/Ihug/etc

You can also save alot of money on domain renewals, and support headaches, if you transfer your domain name to us. To transfer your domain, you will first need your UDAI (secret key/password to unlock your domain). Contact your existing registrar or ISP to obtain your UDAI. Then login to Web Widgets, click on the red domain name button on the left menu of the CMS, then click on the new option called "Registry Services", the "Transfer Domain". Just enter your UDAI in the appropriate box and transfer. If you previously had email services provided by your ISP on that domain name, then you will need to complete the previous step .

By keeping all your email, domain renewals, nameserver management and web hosting in one place, you will uncomplicate matters and ensure that problems can be more easily resolved.

I note that in future, we will have to charge for support time for investigating domain name or email issues where another ISP is involved. There will be no fee if we are at fault.

New Credit Card Payment Screens

We have introduced new secure payment screens for credit card payments by Visa and Mastercard. This is to circumvent an issue with Eftpos not completing the callback process when a customer closes their browser window too quickly. We hope that our new screens are much faster to use and ensure no unreconciled payments each month.

New Ecommerce Reports

Three new reports have been added to the reports area of your ecommerce websites. You can now determine your top customers based on the total value, total number of orders, or total number of products placed. The reports are very simply formatted, but are great ways to identify and reward your best customers.

HomepageTips

5 important points for an effective home page

• Ensure your homepage is quick to download.
• Bear in mind that your homepage will draw readers deeper into the site - make your content compelling.
• Make your key message visible, to the point and obvious. 
• Provide the main call to action on your homepage.
• Make it easy to navigate from your homepage .

Kind regards
Emma, Reuben and Albie
The WebWidgets Team