April 2009

In this issue of Website Builder News, April 2009...

Free Training NZ Wide - Dunedin 18th May
Advanced Training - 14th July
Shopping Cart - Multiple Currency
Shopping Cart - Price Formating and GST
Inserting Video clips into Your Pages
Animated Banners
Customising Enquiry Forms / Opt In / Referred By Functionality
Get 20% discount for referring us new business
Start your own business selling websites
Websites of the Month

Free Training Sessions NZ Wide

Our free training sessions will teach you how to use our website builder to build your own website or online shop. The course covers all the basics with some tips on bulk emailer, shopping carts, and search engine optimisation included. Nearly all our recent events have been booked out, so please make sure you book early.

Auckland - 29th April and 13th may, 8am sessions only
Auckland - 4th and 5th of June, both 8am and 3pm sessions available.
Dunedin - 18th May 1pm
Hamilton - 9th June 2pm
Palmerston North - 6th July 1.30pm
Wangarei - 3rd July 2pm
Wellington - 29th July 12.30pm or 3pm
Christchurch - 12th August 12.30pm or 3pm
More Locations/Times

Remember there is extensive help available from our FAQ's which is backed up by phone and email support. Or there is always the option of 1 on 1 training - usually just one hours training (@$100+gst) will give you a jump start in your ability and greatly improve the results for your time and effort.

Please also note that if you have already attended a free training course, then you can only be wait listed for a free spot, or pay $50 to attend extra sessions. You may also like to pay $100 for a personal one on one session.

Advanced Training Sessions - July 14

We now have a selection of advanced training sessions available. Each event costs $50 or attend all 3 for only $120.

We include the following sessions

10am Advanced Web Design Training, customising templates, importing CSS libraries, HTML tips and tricks
1pm Advanced Shopping Cart Training - learn all the shopping cart features
3pm Search Engine Optimisation Training - 2 hour course focusing only on search engine optimisation.

These are for people who have already attended our Web Builder 101 course, and want to get more out of their website. We have a jam packed day on the 14th July in Auckland, so if you live out of town, book your flights today.

Shopping Cart - Multi Currency

You can now have up to 17 currencies on your shopping cart, and you only need to maintain one price list.

Customers can now select their preferred currency for all pricing and checkout.

Multi currency checkouts make sales more accessible to international audiences as it will allow the customer to checkout in a currency they are more familiar with, and will minimise any international transaction fees on their credit card statement.

You can add up to 17 currencies using your own fixed exchange rates, so long as you can support payment in those currencies. Paypal accepts 17 different currencies. Fixed exchange rates ensure that your prices are presented to users at the same price every day. If real fx rates fluctuate too much, you can always change your exhcange rates (and thus your pricing in that currency at a time of your choosing)

You can force certain delivery destinations to pay in certain currencies, or allow the customer the freedom to choose. eg Gifters do not always have the same credit card currency as the recipient of their gift.

Here is a great example of one of our customers websites using our multi currency feature: http://www.allergycards.net/nz-dairyfreecard.html

Shopping Cart - GST Rates and Pricing Display

We now offer more options for displaying the price of your products. This is good for our merchants who integrate to Xero or who export and want to separate GST from their export orders. You can now choose to only display the GST inclusive price even if your prices are GST exclusive. GST is shown only for domestic currency, and will be ignored for export orders or orders in another currency. Please note that GST exclusive prices will be displayed against the item lines in the basket and order, with GST applied at the end.

Inserting Video Clips into Your Pages

There are several ways to insert videos into your pages. You can first upload your video to youtube for free, and then select "Insert Video" from the "Insert" dropdown from our wysiwyg editor, and follow instructions to see your youtube video displayed nicely within your own website. (wysiwyg=what you see is what you get).

You can also insert videos easily into news pages. And there are several page type widgets specifically for inserting videos including youtube, flash animations and other movie formats that can be hosted directly from our servers. Please note that youtube movies do not effect your web traffic, but all other movie formats that are uploaded to our servers will increase your filespace and traffic usage.

Animated Banners

Are you a DIY website designer who wants to lift your website to the next level? You can now add several similar sized images that will be displayed in rotation, with pleasant blended fade transitions between each slide. To add your additional images, please login to website builder, then into design settings, banner upload area that allows you to upload additional banner images. Any template that supports a dynamic banner will support dynamic animated banners. If you have a fixed template without a dynamic banner, then we suggest you change to one of our more customisable "banner templates".

Another option for advanced users is to create a flash animation. If you upload a .swf file instead of a JPG, then this will be displayed as you expected. Typically the flash files should be optimised for either 600x100 or 750x100 depending on the template used.

Please be aware that the bigger your image files, or the more images you include, then the slower your users website download experience will be. So go easy eh!

Customising Enquiry Forms / Opt In / Referred By Functionality

Throughout your website, you may have several enquiry forms, including contact us pages, informational enquiry pages, and product enquiry pages. All of these pages have a common Name/Phone/Email format. You can now add additional questions for address, country and post code, plus prompt your customers to join your mailing list or let you know how they were referrred. These options had previously been set on a page by page basis. Now you can control these options from the bottom of the green "Members and Messages" area, and they will affect all applicable enquiry forms on your website.

You may also have noticed a small change to the layout of these enquiry emails. We hope that you will appreciate the additional changes and validation of data.

If you want to block spam you can also do this by configuring your "bad words" list in the same green "Members and Messages" area.

Get 20% discount for referring us new business

Did you know that if you refer new customers to us, that we will give you a kickback of 20%. So if you refer 5 customers on an equivalent hosting plan, then your website hosting will be effectively free. Ask your friends to include your email address in the referred by box next time they sign up, and you will be automatically linked. You can also tell us at any time if they have already gone live, or are under construction. The 20% discount you receive will only apply once they have gone live.

Start your own business selling websites

Did you know that we really like customers who want to resell our services and add their own value. If you have SEO skills, business skills, graphic design skills or just super enjoy building websites with our free website builder, then we encourage you to start a business doing it. You will not be stepping on our toes at all. We want to support you in your business endeavors and will give you access to special advanced training courses and support, so that you can in turn provide better support to your customers. Using our affiliate scheme or our official reseller scheme, you can also make ongoing revenue from web hosting. But we encourage you to correctly place a commercial value on the time you put in to helping your friends start websites. We hope we are providing you with a great new opportunities during this recession.

Websites of the Month

Wow what a month, this month was our best month ever. Over 40 people went live with their websites this month. And the quality of these DIY sites are getting better and better. So much for the recession, we thank all these businesses who are making a positive effort in these tough times to take this time to build their website. We know that those who do will take advantage of the forthcoming upturn, and will be better situated to make sales when people increase their spending again.

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

http://www.topcatcharters.co.nz/

http://www.holisticanimal.co.nz/

http://www.pacifikaspirit.com

http://www.acaciabaylodge.com/

http://www.jumpers.co.nz/

http://www.thankutoday.co.nz/

http://www.little-snuggles.co.nz/

http://www.meshuga-jewels.com/

http://www.jamesthomsonpainters.co.nz/

http://www.slipperelectrical.co.nz/

http://www.nzcandlesupplies.co.nz/

http://www.bideawhile.co.nz/