Archive for March, 2010

We’ve been hard at work revamping our old email newsletter into a hybrid blog/newsletter and we hope you’ll find it a useful resource! Each month we’ll send out 4-5 articles:

* a main article on internet, web or eCommerce techniques,
* a quick tip or thought from Wendy (business or general) and/or Reed (techo),
* something to make you chuckle (at our sense of humor, if not the article!!!)
* and a special offer of some sort (usually time limited)

The idea is to provide a library of useful internet tips for you on a regular basis – probably about monthly. The articles will remain available on our blog for you to research or check out (see under the About Us menu on our site) all the time, so you don’t need to keep our emails. If you read blogs through RSS, you might prefer to subscribe directly to the blog instead of reading it via email, although you might find the email reminders handy.

Let us know what you think, we love feedback!

With digital cameras manufacturers increasing the number of megapixels to improve the quality of images comes the problem of large images taking up lots of space on your website then taking ages to download onto your customer’s PC or Mac. If it’s a mobile phone they’re downloading on to, the waiting time is even worse!

The images should be resized with this in mind. Luckily there are many applications available to do this. I recently found that Microsoft Picture Manager part of the 2007 Office suite will resize multiple images in the blink of an eye! You simply open a photo with Picture Manager, select ‘edit pictures’ then ‘resize’ You can then select the predefined button which gives you a large or small web size. And click OK. If you have multiple images, go to the Thumbnail view (beneath shortcuts top left) and you can select all the resize all at once. It’s really that simple!

Another really useful program is GIMP (a free Photoshop alternative) which can be downloaded here and is available to install on both PC and Mac. The beauty about GIMP is that you can easilycreate and manipulate all different types of images.

Did I mention it’s free?

To resize in GIMP, open the image (File – Open – Browse), then go Image – Scale Image. You can resize a few ways but the easiest is either by percentage or by pixels.

If you know the specific dimensions, choose pixels to adjust the width and height (ex: scaling a 1300 x 1300 image to 500 X 500). Note: leave the little chain icon link together (if you click on it, it will unlink) because you want the proportions to remain consistent. If you are unsure, choose percentage and resize by reducing (ex: 100% to 50%). Click Scale.

Then click File – Save As – and rename the file with “_scale” appended to the filename (ex: image_scale.jpg) to easily identify that this image has been modified. Click Save when finished.

If you aren’t on the web, which competitors are your clients calling?

How many people are ‘stopped’ about getting a website because it’s too expensive … too hard … don’t have the time to think about it … not that important?? Consider how many opportunities you have lost in the past week by not having a web presence.

While it can be a little daunting it’s actually a very straight forward process. – A web address or domain name ( $20 – $50); some space on a reliable server with solid backend systems admin so it’s available to your customers all the time (from $130/yr); and coherent and engaging content on the site (priceless!).

So how to come up with that! – We always ask our customers which sites they like to visit and why. Try asking yours what questions they like to have answered before they call or come in.

Perhaps the most important aspect of your website is simplicity and beauty! Like a great work of art, the imagery must reach the ‘good-feeling-place’ of the visitor. People base their buying decisions on their feelings and especially a sense that your product or service will have them feel better than they currently do.

It’s also important to realise that your website is also like your shop front. Just as you’d never want your customers to visit a tatty old shop front with rubbish all over the pavement outside, a website that has a clean fresh feel about it is more likely to have your customers take a step or two further to investigate. A bad vibe will have them out of there in a click!  We all know about selling the benefits of our services; a good trick here is to use the common questions your customers ask as the guide to what to put on your site.

If you want people to buy your product/service, Read the rest of this entry »

Spam is normally caused by Spammers getting hold of your email address and adding it to their lists.  They then include you in their regular emails, trying to sell you stuff.  There’s not much intelligence there; they add you to the list and keep you there even when you don’t ever read their emails.

And if you should ever try to unsubscribe, they take that as confirmation that there’s a live person there and double the amount they send to you!

Large amounts of money exist for the taking in the Spam area – the Spam kings make tens of thousands per month, with some of the larger ones turning over in excess of $40,000 – $100,000 per month!  However, as time goes on, most people have wised up to Spam and their response rates have dropped.  As a result, they are sending larger numbers of messages per month in an effort to retain their income – which in turn is making the spam problem worse!  Spam has become a huge problem for webhosting companies and ISPs, with over 90% of email now being spam.

One possible solution has been discussed, involving charging a fraction of a cent per email sent to make Spam unprofitable (Spammers sned millions of messages, looking for a fraction of a percentage response).  While a variety of possible solutions have been discussed, the bottom line is that there is no overarching solution now.  As the problem grows over time, it’s likely that something like this will come into vogue.  Part of the problem is that our current email protocols were designed 40 years ago, in a different world where email forgeries and spam just did not exist.

On our email servers, we run a multi-layer anti-spam approach.  Messages from known spam sources are not allowed to enter our email system at all, which stops over 50% of spam before it gets anywhere near you.  We then score incoming emails, assessing the spam-worthiness of each email using hundreds of spam characteristics in a database that is regularly updated.  Our system will delete optionally “definite” spam and can also be set to deliver or delete “probable” spam, based on these factors.  Also, all email is scanned for known viruses and blocked when a virus signature is found.

What can you do to solve the problem now?

1. Don’t list your email address on your webpage

If you list your email address, it’s only a matter of time before the spammers see it and put your email in their databases.  Once on their lists, you’re pretty much there for life so it’s easier to not get on the lists in the first place.

There are many solutions that can be used instead of putting your email address on your webpage in cleartext.  One of them is to encode the email address using one of a variety of techniques – a trick which renders it invisible to spammers, but makes it visible in normal web browsers.  Another option is to make your email address into an image, which reduces spam – though some spammers can now read these too with OCR techniques!

2. Use a contact form instead

The absolutely bullet-proof solution is to use a contact form which collects their email, phone number and a short message and emails it to you, without making your email address visible on your webpage.  Once the first message has been received, you can directly use email to correspond – it’s only the first message that is sent via the contact form.  A contact form

While a contact form is a good solution, it has to be done properly or spammers can try to trick it into giving them access to your server account or using it to send spam on your behalf.  We have a solution that has worked well over the years since we developed it and stops nearly all of these tricks dead in their tracks.
Read the rest of this entry »

This is Brian’s sense of humour – the team made me say that … the best is at 0:52
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9j0iKs3QNo

And a miscellaneous joke …

A highly timid little man, ventured into a biker bar in the Bronx and clearing his throat asked, “Um, err, which of you gentlemen owns the Doberman tied outside to the parking meter?” A giant of a man, wearing biker leathers, his body hair growing out through the seams, turned slowly on his stool, looked down at the quivering little man and said, “It’s my dog. Why?”

“Well,” squeaked the little man, obviously very nervous, “I believe my dog just killed it, sir.” “What?” roared the big man in disbelief. “What in the hell kind of dog do you have?” “Sir,” answered the little man, “it’s a little four week old female puppy.” “Bull!” roared the biker, “how could your puppy kill my Doberman?” “It appears that your dog choked on her, sir.”

If you have anything funny please send it in!  If nothing else, you’ll be spared from Brian’s humour and the rest of the team will smile!