March 2010 News

In this issue of Website Builder News, March 2010...

  • Free Training Sessions - Auckland, Wellington & Christchurch
  • One on One Training
  • Windows 7 Review
  • More new design templates - Brochure/Portfolio
  • More FONTS
  • Navigational Tips
  • SEO Tip of the Month
  • How to help us promote Website Builder and get a 20% rebate
  • 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 on line shop. The course covers all the basics with some tips on bulk emailer, shopping carts, and search engine optimisation included. We also have advanced courses available for a small fee.

  • Auckland - Website Builder Introduction 2 hours  - 16th April at 10am - FREE
  • Auckland -Search Engine Optimisation, and intermediate web design 4 hours - $75 - 16th April at 1pm 
  • Wellington - Website Builder Introduction 2 hours - 13th April 2010 - FREE
  • Wellington - Search Engine Optimisation, and intermediate web design 4 hours - $75 - 13th April at 1pm
  • Christchurch - Website Builder Introduction 2 hours - 14th April 2010 - FREE
  • Christchurch - Search Engine Optimisation, and intermediate web design 4 hours - $75 - 14th April at 1pm
  • Whangarei - Northlan Business Expo Fri 23rd April - Saturday 24th April
  • We will also be at all the Bizzone Expos, Auckland June, Wellington July and Christchurch in August.
  • More Locations and Times - Book Your Training Here

Please invite any friends along to our training events. Remember you will get 20% referral discount off your hosting ongoing for any who go live with their website..

 

One on One Training / Hourly Web Design Service

One on one training is a great way to enhance your website at a discount price. Sit down with one of our professional web designers for an hour and see what evolves. This is a great way for intermediate users to increase their skills, or for novice users to speed up the process of creating their website. For just $100 your website will be greatly improved. The same fee also applies for SEO or any other professional help you need. One on one available at our Onehunga Auckland office with either Albie or Mike, or in Christchurch and Wellington with Reuben timed to coincide with our scheduled training courses. Reply to this email or phone to book a time.

If you are not based in the main centers, our design staff can still provide the same service over the phone. They will look at your website, and make changes that you will be able to see as you refresh your browser.

 

Windows 7 Review

We have now trialed Windows 7. So far it seems very quick, very intuitive and worth purchasing with a new computer. Definitely better than Vista. We also made use of the "family pack" to update 3 existing computers for less than $300 in total, and this seemed to work ok, and have not yet detected any errors.

The main differences we have noticed with Windows 7 is that the task bar and system tray have basically been merged. Large icons remain active in the task bar, and a hover menu effect gives you access to individual instances of browser windows. This is very intuitive and similar in some ways to our left menu hover effect. 

 

More New Templates - Brochure / Portfolio

Mike has designed a new set of design templates with a large left hand vertical banner, and a smaller right hand content area. The menu is horizontal and there is no categories menu nor zone 2 area.

See the new templates here

 

More Fonts

We have updated the fonts area of the CMS. We now have all the most common font combinations, to ensure your text looks right on PC, Mac and other operating systems.

Please note that you can't change fonts on individual pages, but you can change the site wide font in the design settings area. If you want to control the fonts of individual elements like Headings , then please consider making your special text as an image and inserting it as an image (which is good for uncommon fonts) or use the CSS wizard/editor to add fonts to specific headings or to the special 1,2,3 classes, which you can access from the style menu when editing your content.

 

Navigational Tips

Many people like the popout hover windows, and many other people don't. We have noted that everyone finds it easier to locate the features they need, as our support calls have dropped. But we also note, that sometimes the hover windows consumes so much space on the screen, that you can't get back behind the hover window.

We have 2 ways to fix this. Click the wheelchair icon top right, which makes our navigation more accessible to people with hand mobility issues. eg it disables the hover menus completely and you can still access all the features by clicking the appropriate button on the left.

The second option is to move your mouse up towards the search box in the left menu. Once your mouse is over the search box or above, then the hover windows will disappear.

We plan in the future to make the old and new left menus an option that will automatically be chosen depending on your user preference. However, this might be some time away.


SEO Tip of the Month - Domains and Hosting

Have you asked anyone recently to link to you? If not, you should dedicate some time to this. The more incoming links you have, the greater your website will rank and the more traffic you will get as people follow those links from other websites.

It is best to have incoming links from websites in your industry, or in your country. The more highly ranked the website that links to you, the more highly you will rank.

Ensure that they use your keywords in the link text.

Another great way to get incoming links is to write testimonials for your suppliers and other businesses, or even a hotel you recently stayed at, or a product you purchased for your home. Whenever you provide any content to another business, ensure you include your website URL. Do the same in every email, on every invoice, brochure, business card, in PR and any communications from your business.

More tips at the following link, or book in for one of our SEO training courses next year.

/DIY-search-engine-optimisation.html

 

Help us promote our Website Builder (20% referral discount for your troubles)

There are many ways for you to help us promote website builder. If you would like any brochures or business cards, please contact us and we will send you a bundle. Please let us know how many you require.

If you would like to promote website builder from your website, you can now easily add an affiliate page using the "add page" button. This page will allow you to write your own introduction about how wonderful our service is and will include a link with tracking codes so that you will receive the 20% referral discount automatically.

Alternatively, please encourage your friends to just sign up directly for a free trial, or to come to one of our free training courses. Once they have signed up for a free trial, please don't forget to contact us and let us know so we can link your referral.

Or if you are finding work a bit slow in this recession, why not 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 endeavours 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. 

White label reseller accounts also available for a setup fee.

More information about affiliates and reselling here

 

Websites of the Month

Here's a selection of some of our recent Go Lives. DIY websites are always a mixed bag, so we encourage you to view several example sites if determining if Website Builder is right for you. Please note that some DIY websites may have been completed by 3rd party professional web designers or novices.

Do you want a more professional look and feel for your website? A more professional look will instill greater trust in your customers, and encourage them to stay longer on your website or make a purchase. Please use our on line quote or contact us.

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

Best regards,
Reuben Jackson (CEO)
Web Widgets - Free Website Builder

www.websitebuilder.co.nz
Phone: 09 6220797

Posted: Thu 18 Mar 2010

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