October 2008 News

In this issue of Web Widgets News, October 2008...

  • Spring has Sprung
  • Free Training Sessions in Auckland and Wellington (and now Christchurch)
  • Displaying Discounts on Shopping Carts
  • Paymex Gone... But Back Again
  • Check Your Hosting Plan
  • New templates on the way
  • Websites of the Month

Spring has Sprung

If you haven't started gearing up, stocking up, and getting busy for the silly season - now is the time to do so.  Regardless of what the media say, every year things just get busier from now until the break.  So it's time to make sure you have everything in place that will help you cope with the increased activity.  Of course these preparations are different for everybody, but we can all nonetheless ask ourselves; Are we taking advantage of available technology? 

Can you utilise eCommerce on your website?  Answering email orders may be easy when times are quiet, but nothing beats having a shopping cart doing most of the legwork for you.  Those with thriving online business wouldn't have it any other way.  And what's great is that all Web Widget clients have the ability to add shopping cart functionality to their site at no extra charge. 

Automated quoting - even those with tiered pricing structures can take advantage of this.  We may not be available to take a call from a curious client at 4am on a Sunday, but our technology enables your website to happily respond and get you one step closer to another sale.  Again - no extra charge, just set it up.

Forums - though they may require some ongoing answering of questions and moderating, forums are a great way of building your online presence, generating content for your FAQ's, providing more than just products to your clients and encouraging them to return.  By giving your site visitors opportunity to get involved in 'online conversations' you cultivate their involvement and generate in them a sense of ownership, so when it comes a time for them to purchase or make recommendations to their friends - who will they think of first?

We are constantly working to improve the Widgets available to you, we want for you to have and to use all the tools available for your online success.

 

Free Training Sessions in Auckland and Wellington (and now Christchurch)

There has been a great response to the free training we are hosting in Auckland and Wellington. Those attending will receive a basic understanding of using our CMS and have answered to questions that most new users face.  The location, dates and times are now confirmed -

The Wellington session will run from 11:00am to 12:30 on Wednesday the 15th of October and be located in the iPlay Cafe at 76 Courtney Place, above Rain Bar

The venue for the Auckland session is confirmed to be the Onehunga Internet Cafe, 246 Onehunga Mall on Wednesday 22 October. We had originally scheduled 11.00am-12.30pm however please note the times have changed to 9.00am through to 10.30am.  

We can still accomodate a few more people on both courses (other staff members or your friends?) - please enquire ASAP

Another reminder - one on one training at a rate of $100 per hour is available at any time (by arrangement) to those able to visit our Auckland office.

We have also had some enthusiastic response from "The Mainland" AKA the South Island, so we are considering running a session in Christchurch in late November or early December. Please email us if you are interested.  We'd also love to hear your recomendations for a suitable venue.

 

Displaying Discounts on Shopping Carts

Do you often run specials or discounted products? You can now put a RRP or Normal price on your pages with a red line through it. Everyone loves a bargin, and this is a great way to show your customers how discounted your prices are. Just add the RRP  to the pricing page of any product - the (Price Pre Discount) field



Paymex Gone... But Back Again

Paymex as we new it, is no more. They went into receivership last month. Soon after the branding was picked up and resurrected. Effectively Paymex is now a new business.  This means, unfortunately, that any paymex account history (and any credit you had) has not been continued, so if you wish to use the new Paymex you will need to re-sign.

Our advise is that you are best to pay for a proper merchant account, that normally involves a monthly fee. Otherwise, make sure you withdraw all funds from any online wallet systems asap to mitigate risk.

Whether or not you choose to resume using Paymex is your decision but we would like to remind you that there are other options integrated in our CMS (PayPal, Paymate... etc)

http://www.webwidgets.co.nz/payment-gateways.html


 

Check Your Hosting Plan

Last month we let you know about our revised system for excess bandwidth usage.  This will not immediately effect the majority of our users, however note that the onus is on you to check and take responsibility for which plan you are on.  If your site has high bandwidth usage due to high a high number of visitors we congratulate you - your site must be doing well.

When checking your statistics, remember to add both "viewed" and "unviewed" traffic. You need to change to the actual month in question to see that information as unviewed traffic does not show in the year long summary. Please don't be too worried about this. If your site does experience an extraordinary spike, we can make a credit adjustment based on your historical usage. Alternatively we may be able to backdate a plan upgrade.

Similar changes have taken place within the bulk emailer.  Limits (of for example 100 emails per month per month on our starter plan or 1000 on the business plan) are now being implimented. 

Note that our prices have not increased, this simply means that we are charging according to what we have long advertised.

http://www.webwidgets.co.nz/web-hosting.html


New templates on the way

We are currently working on several new website design templates. We look forward to making these available over the next month.


Websites of the Month

Here's a small selection of our customers newer DIY websites. Some of those we think have done a great job of designing and creating using the Web Widgets tools.

And this month we are showcasing some of our older websites who have recently updated them and want to show off... (do you want to be in this list next month? - Email us to nominate your site)

And Albies latest professional design this month


Do you have any feedback on our newsletter or CMS products? Please let us know.

 

Best regards,
The Web Widgets Team

www.webwidgets.co.nz

Phone: 09 6220797 

Posted: Tue 07 Oct 2008

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