Internet Marketing
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Written by Christine
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Tuesday, 29 November 2005 |
Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet
marketing campaign, and the success or failure of your site
depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your
website goals. If you don't know what you want your site to
accomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplish
anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and
monitoring your website, all your site will be is an online
announcement that you are in business.
If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action,
whether it is visitors filling out a form so a
representative can contact them, or purchasing a product,
there are steps you can take to insure that your website is
functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators
of how well your site is working for you is finding out the
number of visitors in a given period of time. A good
baseline measurement is a month in which you haven't been
doing any unusual offline promotional activities.
However, just because hoards of people have passed through
your gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually,
you want those visitors to actually do something there. It
is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to
your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the
site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the
efficacy of your website.
To find the site conversion rate, take the number of
visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them
that actually performed the action your site is set up for.
For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only
25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion
rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of
visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors
who made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25 ?00 X 100).
If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a
form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is
between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion
rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form
will actually become your customer. However, whether your
site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the
visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will
measure the success or failure of your website whenever you
make changes to the site.
You may find that you need to implement some additional
marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your site
is extremely low. There are several effective methods to
improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly
launching a search engine optimization campaign. This
campaign is targeted at increasing your position in search
engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster
and easier. You can either research the steps you need to
take to improve your search engine rankings, or employ a
search engine optimization company to do the work for you.
In either case, after your have improved your search engine
positions, make sure you keep on top of them by regular
monitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain high
positions.
Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor
to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up
for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill
out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the
visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If
it's too difficult to get to, the customer may just throw
in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure your
buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or
ordering page quickly accessible.
Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your
website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to
make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be
specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a
cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right
copy can make the difference between profit and loss in
your online campaign. |
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Thursday, 27 October 2005 |
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Of course you know that Google Adsense is an excellent way to get some additional income on your site. Adsense are the text ads that you can display on your site that are generated by Google. The ads are tailored to the content of your site, so they display relevant text links to your visitors to click on. Each time that someone clicks on one of these links, you get some commission.
To place Google Ads on your site, you need to sign up for an Adsense account, then you can cut and paste some text on your site and viola! the Google ads will display.
Living in South Africa as we do it has always been difficult though to get your money out of Google. You had the option of getting in the format of a cheque (in USD), or directly into your US Banking Account. Yeah right.
The costs for converting a USD based cheque into ZAR is EXTREMELY expensive. You pay R100 fee to start off with at most banks....
SO... it is extremely good news to hear that Google now pays out in cheques made out in ZAR!
If you aren't already making use of Adsense on your site, why not!
Click on the button below to sign up for your own Google Adsense account - Google has lots of training tutorials to get you going.
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Monday, 03 October 2005 |
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This is rather typical. The day after Yahoo finally indexed my site I learned that Yahoo now also allows one to submit a sitemap. The difference between the Yahoo sitemap and the Google sitemap is that Yahoo's format is merely a list of URLs below each other and not in XML format like Google. But now I can't really test it since my site is already fully crawled by Yahoo. I still don't know why it took so long for Yahoo to crawl my site, but I am finally out of the doldrums! But in case you are interested - here is a nice little freeware tool that you can use to generate a list of URLs of your site. It is called the XENU Link Sleuth and you can download it on http://www.snapfiles.com/get/xenulink.html. After you have generated a list of URLs of your site (you might need to play around a bit with the settings since you might not need all the options to just generate the list of URLs) you can submit your sitemap to Yahoo here: You need a Yahoo account (basically the same account that you would have for accessing your Yahoo Email or MyYahoo.
** Update - 2007-07-15: As of 2007 this information is actually redundant, since Yahoo will now also interpret the Google format sitemap. Once can place the line sitemap : your-sitemap-file.xml in your robots.txt file and both Google, MSN and Yahoo will pick up your sitemap from your website.
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Sunday, 11 September 2005 |
Well, after a couple of days Yahoo still hasn't indexed my site. It has the first page in its index and nothing else. It does not seem as if the blog and ping technique is working any more - which is a great pity.
Yahoo also seems to be extraordinary slow in indexing pages. Both MSN and Google have indexed over 100 pages from my site.
Yahoo - 1 page!
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Written by Christine
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Wednesday, 07 September 2005 |
There are two ways of reading your email - either through one of the the built in Webmail readers that come bundled with your hosting packages (Neomail, Squirrelmail or Horde). Or you can configure your Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express to read your email.
This is a quick (non-flash) tutorial to configure your Microsoft Outlook to read your emails. (There is an auto-configure function with your Cpanel that you can play around with, but I prefer doing a manual configuration).
Step 1:
In Microsoft Outlook, go to Tools->E-Mail Accounts
A window will come up looking like this:
Choose the 'Add new Email acount' option and choose 'Next'
Step 2:
You will choose POP3 as the right option here
Step 3:
Complete this form with the right information. Your mail server information is always 'mail.yourdomain.co.za' or 'mail.yourdomain.com' - whichever is applicable!
Step 4:
You then have to click on the "More Settings" button.
The first tab is General information. Complete the relevant info and remember to use your email addres here that you are busy setting up as the "Reply Email"
The second tab is important - this is the outgoing server information. Set it up as per the example below:
The third tab you should set up the relevant information for connecting to the internet - here it will depend on how you connect, via a LAN, a modem etc.
The fourth tab once again has an important setting. The option circled in red determines whether your email remains on the server or is physically downloaded to your machine.
What is the difference, you may ask?
If you choose to download the emails to your physical PC it means that:
1. The emails are now only physically located on your PC and you will not be able to read them by making use of your CPanel Webmail reader. Choose this option if you are never going to travel and if you are the only one ever going to access this email account.
If you choose to leave the emails on the server it means that:
1. You can still read these emails from anywhere and from any PC through your web based email reader
2. These emails take up space on our webhosting server. If you are expecting to receive large emails, this might become a problem since it will quickly use up your allocated webhosting space! If you are faced with this scenario, contact us so that we can plan your email space utilisation and possibly allocate more space to you.
Last step:
Return to the main 'Internet E-mail settings window and choose 'Test Account' - it should try and read and send a test email and according to the results you will be able to see whether your account has been successfully created. |
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Written by Christine
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Sunday, 04 September 2005 |
If you are looking for an affordable ecommerce website - look no further!
We have various ecommerce webhosting options available, from corporate web design and ecommerce, to customized ecommerce web site development, to ecommerce web site design for small storefronts or one-off products.
We can build an ecommerce web site from as little as R285 p/month (VAT Incl) to R570 p/month (VAT Incl) if you want to go for one of our standard packages.
But we are ecommerce web designers and can therefore build a customized solution - our hourly rate is R350/h (VAT Incl).
If you are interested in our standard packages:
Option 1:
A Standard ecommerce storefront design from R285/m
Option 2:
The Advantage e-commerce option, for R399/m
Option 3:
Large E-commerce for R570/m
These three options work on a monthly fee only - no upfront costs except if any customised development work is required which will be quoted for separately.
But before you start - this all assumes that you know exactly which product(s) to sell, which is great. But if you are just testing the market, or maybe just to confirm that your intended product is really one that will cut it on the internet - why don't you subscribe to this FREE 5 day mini email course that will tell you exactly how to choose products that will sell and avoid ones ones that will only drain your time and energy and not make you any money!
In this course I have summarised the collective wisdom of a whole host of successful internet marketers. Normally their courses cost thousands of Rands and Dollars - in this course I give away some of their greatest secrets for FREE!
- I will tell you how to find out which products are selling well on the internet - and for which there are an insatiable demand
- I will tell you how to develop niche markets - lots of demand with little competition
- I will tell you how to test your website and your product - before you waste your money on a non-performing product.
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Sunday, 04 September 2005 |
During the past couple of weeks there has been a lot of upheaval around the Open Source Content Management System known as Mambo, which is one of the website building tools that we use to create custom web sites.
Mambo was originally started by a firm by the name of Miro. After their development efforts were abandoned. the software at that stage was moved into the OpenSource domain and development continued by a community of developers. The product went from strength to strength, winning numerous prizes along the way. While the software itself is Open Source, the copyright of Mambo still resided with Miro.
Recently, Miro indicated that they wanted to become more involved with the development with Mambo again. Various events transpired during which the core development team decided to break away from the newly formed Mambo Foundation, which was seen as an effort to commercialize Mambo and ignored the wishes of the core development team.
The upshot was that the core developers decided to break off from the development of Mambo and create a new product, Joomla!
What does this mean?
- Because the code is in the Open Source Domain, the developers can take the code and create a new product and develop it further. They are just not allowed to call it Mambo.
- Third party developers of Mambo Components and Modules have all indicated that they support Joomla, therefore I firmly believe that I will be able to use Joomla with the same level of support and committment from these developers than when I used Mambo
- I have therefore started to change all references to Mambo on my site to Joomla! It will, however, still take some time to get all the Joomla infrastructure set up for software, components, modules and so forth, and until that time I shall still refer to some Mambo sites until the migration has fully taken place.
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Written by Christine
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Sunday, 04 September 2005 |
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Get Your Own Website And Attract More Customers To Your Business...
But more than that ...
Also Get A Web Site That You Can Easily Update And Maintain! Our Affordable Web Design And Web Development Services Make It All Possible.
Why should you make use of our Web Design services?
Don't pay more for your web site..Our websites are on average 10% to 20% more cost effective than web sites designed by other web designers. Please note! We are NOT the cheapest. But you get much more website for your money than with other providers - more traffic, more customers, more functionality.
Don't wait longer for your web siteWe develop websites fast! You will get your fully functional website up and running in the blink of an eye.
Don't struggle to attract visitors!We build websites that are Search Engine ready and we advise on the best layout, content and functionality to make your website ready to attract visitors and convert them into customers. In addition to our web design services, we also offer Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Internet Marketing services to help you promote your website on the Internet.
Special Copywriting ServicesWe also offer very cheap copywriting services for your site (R500 for 5 pages of 200 words each) to ensure that your company information is presented in exactly the right way on your website. You give us the raw material and we will turn it into a work of art - please note, this is an optional extra on all our website packages but is highly recommended.
How can I claim to give you a website for less than you would expect and in a quicker timeframe than you would have thought?
Easy - We specialise in website design using Content Management Systems.
A Content Management System (CMS) has the following advantages:
- You can update your website content yourself - save money by not having to pay a webmaster to do it for you
- Set up complex sites (or simple sites!) very quickly - with our tools your website can literally be up and running in a matter of days, instead of weeks (and dare I say it - months?)
- With the powerful tools that come with the CMS we can implement functionality on your site to attract visitors and keep them there - we are talking here of podcasts, webcams, forums, membership sites and much, much more. If you can think of it, we can implement it - quickly.
- Don't pay thousands for the graphic design of your site - of course, if you want to, you are welcome, and frankly, if you are in an industry where looks really count then it is an important step. But face it, if you are running a business what you need is a professional looking website. Our CMS tools come with GREAT looking designs. Look at some of our client sites to see what our websites look like.
Take a look at our different web design options or contact us to talk about your requirements.
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Sunday, 04 September 2005 |
Yes, we offer a Cheap Web Hosting Package so that you can get your small business or home based business online in no time at all.  But what exactly is meant by "cheap web hosting"? The international trend for webhosting is to be cheap. There is a lot of competition out there and that, in combination with lower hardware prices, is driving down the prices of web hosting internationally. So basically ALL webhosting prices are leaning towards the cheap these days. The more you do yourself, the cheaper it will be.
South African prices are still relatively expensive. So if you really want cheap, you can register a .com (or .info or a .biz) with almost any of the international registrars (like Namecheap or GoDaddy) and then buy hosting from any of the international Webhosting companies out there. There are literally thousands, if not millions of them. Most of your cheap web hosting is done through linux hosting and most service providers offer PHP and MySQL as a standard, as well as full control over emails as well as free scripts such as shopping carts, forums, galleries and so forth. Of course, this implies that you do all of this yourself. If you want to go this route, do your homework first by hanging around in the web hosting forums so that you get a feel for which Webhosting companies are any good.
The disadvantage of doing this is that your domain name will not be a .co.za and with recent progress made on the front of regional searches it is now possible for people in South Africa to search for local sites only. If you have a .com domain that is hosted in the USA or elsewhere your site will not show up in local searches Our cheap web hosting package offers you all the functionality that you would ever need to set up your own e-commerce or business related site: Option 1:
R100 setup feeR57 per month (VAT Incl)5 emails and a web based email interface (or accessed through Microsoft Outlook)Free Forum software, Chat room software, shopping carts, Web site design builder softwareWeb StatisticsMySQL DatabasesPHPRead more about this cheap web hosting package!
Option 2:
R100 setup fee
R164 per month (VAT Incl)
5 emails and a web based email interface (or accessed through Microsoft Outlook)
Free Forum software, Chat room software, shopping carts, Web site design builder software
Web Statistics
MySQL Databases
PHP
A free website is included in this package - read here more about the details of our Basic Package and the conditions linked to this offer
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Friday, 02 September 2005 |
For those of you who doesn't know this already, Google Sitemaps are one of the essential tools in any website owner's arsenal.
It is relatively easy to get indexed in Google. You just need to ensure that your newly created site is linked to in some or other fashion - from another website or a web directory. Your site will be picked up and indexed into Google within a day or two. But Google will most likely only index the first page of your site on its first visit - spidering more deeply down into the content of your site on return visits. And these might be far and few in between.
But with Google Sitemaps you now have a failsafe way to get your whole site indexed in less than two days.
The process is simple:
Step 1: Create a Google Sitemap Account here : http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login
Step 2: Use a tool to generate a Sitemap of your site. A Sitemap is exactly what it says - a map of your site with links to all its pages.
I use the following tool - it is easy to use and free (but please make a donation - people work hard at creating software!)
http://johannesmueller.com/gs/
Step 3: Once you have created your Sitemap, UPLOAD it to your site, then you submit it to Google and within 2 days your site will be completely indexed.
But please note of course, having your site indexed does not neccessarily mean that you will appear on the first page of the search results! That takes a bit more effort. But getting your site fullly spidered is a bit like trying to win the lottery - at least you now have a ticket!
Yahoo does not have the same facility, but there is a 'back way' to getting your site fully indexed - the so-called 'Blog and ping technique'. I recently tried this but have to say that Google is just so much more efficient. After 4 days I have had no luck with Yahoo yet.
It works like this:
Step 1: Create a blog. You can use Blogger - the free Google Blogging tool, or Wordpress, or even Mambo, as I have explained in other posts. On this Blog you put a reference to your site somewhere.
Step 2: Create a Yahoo account and log into MY-Yahoo. At the bottom of the page you will see that you can add content. There might also be a heading that says: RSS Headlines (BETA).
Select the ADD option. The following screen will appear:
Enter the path to your blog and save. Now this is where it might get tricky. When I first tried this Yahoo refused to recognize the full path to my RSS blog on my Tailormade4you Website. At that stage, my site www.tm4y.co.za was not yet indexed AT ALL by Yahoo. I then left it for a day or two until the Yahoo Spider picked up the first page. Then I went back to try and add it again, but it still didn't want to recognise the full RSS feed URL. In desperation I just added the normal site URL (www.tm4y.co.za). It accepted that!
But..... 4 days down the line I am still waiting to get spidered. I have now added in these links to the site itself (above) and will see if anything changes.
And one thing that I forgot is that you can explicitly ping Yahoo to inform them that you have added a new blog content. The link looks like this:
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=http://www.tm4y.co.za
I have now done this as well and will see what happens.
I have recently read some posts from blogging experts who said that because of misuse of Blogging and Pinging, Yahoo might be shutting down this 'backdoor' into getting fully spidered.
So the verdict is out.....
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