If your site is not hosted by RegisterDirect or Net24, you will need to ask your hosting service how to find the stats.

For RegisterDirect users, use your browser to go to www.yourname.co.nz/stats/ (where "yourname" is the domain name of your own site), then enter your User ID and password (if you can't find them, email David for a reminder, but they are provided on the documentation supplied when you signed up to hosting). If asked, answer "yes" to having Windows remember your password.

The graphs you see there may look a bit daunting at first, but take a bit of time, have a good look and use your mouse to hover over things to see ways of getting more info (such as clicking on "2004" to see last years results, or on month names to see that month in detail).

For Net24 users, refer to the instructions on the documentation your received when you started your hosting contract, which provides a URL to go to, with an ID and password.

Whchever mechanism you choose, it's a great idea, once you've got the actual stats page(s) on the screen, to bookmark it as a favourite so you can revisit it easily and frequently.

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What useful information is available in my website visitor statistics?

See answer to general FAQ on this topic.

RegisterDirect and Net24 users should also feel assured that with practice, what looks initially to be a jumble of technical data can with a bit of practice start to show patterns and interesting facts, so if you're put off at first, just stick at it and try hovering the moust over columns or clicking things to see what happens. For example, clicking on "2008" shows that year's results, or on month names shows that month in detail).

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Using Google Analytics to improve my understanding of visitor patterns

The clever guys at Google offer some excellent tools for refining a website and improving its ability to market goods and services. And Analytics is one of the best. Google Analytics has been fine-tuned into a really powerful tool which allows precise monitoring of site performance and tracking of marketing strategies and programmes.

I started using it by connecting it to my own website, aiming to get a feel for its usefulness, and I've been blown away by the information it offers. I can tell, on any page, how long visitors stayed on it, which page they moved to next (by which navigation link), which pages they left on, etc etc.

Now for many of you, this level of detail is of low priority. If you rarely look at your standard visitor stats now, you won't be interested in Google Analytics. But there are a smallish number of you who are (rightly) concerned about how your site is being used, which routes people take to get to it, then move through it and finally exit, how often they come back, etc. If fine-grained marketing analysis would help your business, then this product is for you.

It's free insofar as Google is concerned, and it takes me about 20 seconds a page to install it in all the pages you're interested in tracking (so only a few minutes for a site up to 15-20 pages). You will have to learn how to use it, best done by my own method - just click on things, see the graphs and numbers and read the explanations that Google provide with each set of stats. (I can give some initial advice but then I'm still learning myself.)

How do I register a domain name with RegisterDirect?

Go to their website (www.registerdirect.co.nz) Near the top the home page under "Search for a domain name" is a place where you can check whether or not the name you want is available or already taken. You can try any number of names here. When you get an available one that you like, proceed to register it by entering the details requested. The form is pretty straightforward, though be careful to format the phone number as instructed. When you get to the field "CC Email Address", it helps to enter "david@techwriter.co.nz". Have your credit card ready.

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How do I start RegisterDirect hosting?

Obviously this advice is for people who have their domain name registered with this company. (For others, just contact the provider for instructions.)

Go to www.registerdirect.co.nz and click on "Client login" (near the top left). When asked, enter your ID and password (which were issued to you in the documentation you received when you registered the name). You are asked to choose which domain you want to manage - for most people there is only one on the list. Then a page appears with a menu down the left hand side, and about half down it is "HostDirect". Click on this and answer the few questions required.

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How do I find out who my domain name registrar is?

If you are not certain who your registrar is, or how long you are paid up for, you can always run a WHOIS domain lookup.

Go to the Domain Name Commissioner's site, www.dnc.org.nz.
Type your domain name into the domain search box.
In the .nz box choose whether your site is a .co, .net, .org etc.
Click the green arrow and up pop all the details about your domain name, including the registrar and the date up to which you have paid.

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How can I find out how many of my website's pages are indexed in Google?

See answer to general FAQ on this topic.

When did Google last visit my site?

Google has restored the date facility to its cached pages. You can check how often a crawler visits your site, simply by using Google's search box to search for 'www.yoursite.co.nz' and click on the 'Cached' link. It will show you not only when Google last visited but what it saw (ie, what it has in its cache right now).

How quickly does Google react to changes in my web pages?

You've asked me to make a new page for your site, offering a new group of products or a new service. Or you've changed the emphasis of an existing page and added new text to support it. How quickly should you expect Google index the new information and start listing your site under the new keywords? I'm afraid some of you have shown vast excesses of optimism in this regard following some site updates.

Google will see your change in strategy only when its "robot" (called Googlebot for those who check their site visitor statistics) next visits your site, and that could be tomorrow or next month, depending largely on how often you've done updates in the past. The more often you add material, the more robotic visits you get. And even if Google does note the changes, it may not give them a high ranking until it has come back several times to ensure you're not trying to trick it.

So the rule of expectation is: Your rise in the charts for the new keywords will generally be gradual, just as it was when your site first launched. Don't ever rely on a good Google ranking to make your new page succeed.

Can a Google Sitemap help my search engine ranking

This question is aimed at those clients for whom good rankings on Google are important or even crucial. You will probably be aware of the frustration that arises from not finding your site ranked highly under your preferred keywords, or seeing minor pages highly ranked while your important ones are not. Google this year introduced a new facility, called Google Sitemaps, that may reduce these frustrations.

I've written MANY times about how Google appears to work (no outsiders know for certain) and how you can and cannot influence its ranking of your site. I hope you're not getting sick of these articles, but they ARE the key to so many problems that some of you complain of.

Until Google Sitemaps, optimising a site for Google was an informed guessing game at best. A web page might be omitted from Google, and I as Webmaster have no idea why. Alternatively, a site's content could be scanned, but because of the peculiarities of the algorithm, the only pages that would rank well might be the "About Us" page. Us webmasters were at the whim of Google's seemingly arbitrary computer program that could make or break a website overnight through shifts in search engine positioning. There was no way to communicate with Google about a website - either to understand what was wrong with it, or to tell Google when something had been updated.

Now that is changing. Google Sitemaps provides us with a way to tell Google some key information about your website - in particular, which pages are more important and are updated more frequently than others - AND you and I can use Sitemaps to learn what Google thinks about your website, by reading reports it produces about the outcomes of its "crawling" of your site pages.

It takes about 10-20 minutes for me to make a Google Sitemap for your site, depending on how many pages it has. (It took me about 15 minutes to make one for my own site, which has 24 pages.) I just need from you an estimate of the relative priority, from Google's ranking perspective, that you place on the information on your site (for example, the home page has top priority while your "contact us" page is way down). I also need a rough idea of how often you intend to update your pages (I often have a good idea myself), because Sitemaps will tell Google which pages to come back and visit often and which not to bother too much with.

In return, Google provides reports about how often your pages are indexed, which onoes, who's visiting them and what keywords they're using, plus if there are any problems with your site construction that would make some pages rank worse than expected. I'm still trying to sort out the meaning of some of the reports and the usefulness of others, in respect of my own site.

I suggest that those of you who are keen to get the best out of Google should ask me to initiate a Sitemaps file and facility on your site. The likely cost, including a bit of consultation on the details required, may run to somewhere between $20 and $50. It's probably not of much use for smaller sites (say less than 10 pages), but could evolve into a useful tool for larger ones.

If you want to read more about Sitemaps and how they're supposed to work, email me and I'll send a couple of articles I have on the matter.

Techwriter's own beginner's guide to how Google works

See answer to general FAQ on this topic.

How could a website newsletter strategy be implemented?

See answer to general FAQ on this topic.

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My new website is not ranked in the top few pages of Google or other big search engines. What is going wrong?

See answer to general FAQ on this topic.

Is my website working for me? How can I tell? What could I do better?

See answer to general FAQ on this topic.

How should my home page text be written to maximise search engine friendliness and visitor satisfaction?

How should text and photos be used on the home page of a small website? It's a question that arises when planning the content and appearance of almost every new site I'm asked to develop. Here are the strategies I use or recommend in such projects. If you are thinking of revising your home page content (and many of you should be doing this every year or two to keep your site fresh), then this may help.

I see the home page as analogous to the entry area of a shop - the first thing a potential shopper sees around him/her and hears from the shop assistant. Imagine three people involved: (1) the shopper (= the website visitor), (2) the proprietor (= you), and (3) an independent appraiser looking over the shopper's shoulder and writing a review of the shop's offering and service for the local paper (= search engines like Google).

A shopper is likely to leave quickly if the shop entrance has any of the three following characteristics: (1) too much to see at once and too much variety of products spread all over the place; (2) too little to see, no clear product presentations, with nothing much to indicate what the shop mainly sells or to entice the busy shopper to proceed further into the shop to find out; (3) too flashy with little substance, thereby not communicating to the window-shopper what really may be inside.

Most website visitors (and most of the ones you want, who are thinking of buying or using your service) want a home page (or shop entrance) that:
1. Tells them enough about what this site provides so that they can either (a) go to inner pages if they're interested or (b) leave quickly without annoyance if it's not what they're looking for;
2. Indicates clearly how to find out more detail and how to contact you or ask questions - that is, provides clear navigation and a handy "inquiries counter";
3. Doesn't take too long to get from the door into the "real stuff" - that is, doesn't have a time-wasting over-large "splash page" where you have to wait to view the presentation and then click to proceed;
4. Has a friendly written presentation that provides information and facts, not just marketing babble and loud slogans. People stop reading after a paragraph or two if the words are thick with sales-talk and thin with information.

As for the reviewer (Mr Google):
1. He may not have the patience (or ability) to visit inner areas if the navigation is poor or he cannot see where to go next;
2. He may lose interest very quickly if there is little substance within, or if the talk is merely verbosity for its own sake;
3. He will score black marks if the shopfront advertises some things just to get people in, then sells something altogether different inside;
4. He will ignore largely product photos and concentrate mainly on the words and conversation provided as information to shoppers.

So the message for planners of home page text is:
1. Not too much, not too little text - enough to indicate clearly what is inside and let people decide whether to investigate further. Over 150 words and under 400 words is good.
2. Large use in the text of buyer keywords (mainly nouns) and avoidance of marketing hype and jargon.
3. Avoid large graphics and animations that slow page delivery.
4. No "splash pages" unless you don't need good reviews.

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What can I learn from my competitors' websites?

Ever wondered how some of your business opponents get ranked much higher than you on Google? Perhaps they're using better or more pertinent keywords. How can you tell if that is so? In most cases it's simple - just get their home page up on your browser, select View . . . Source from the menu bar, and voila - up comes the complicated looking page coding. Look right near the top at the line(s) that start something like <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT= "blah blah blah . . .>" Those are the keywords they use. Similarly, look for a nearby line starting <META NAME="description" CONTENT=". . more stuff . .">, and that shows more use of the keywords.

You can use the same technique to look at your own keywords and description, which I programmed into your site when it was set up. If you want to change or add to your keywords, just get in touch with me - it's a quick job for me to make such refinements.

And another check you can easily make on your well-performing rivals - look at their "Links" page (or wherever they have links to other sites) and see who they have reciprocal links with; then you could take steps to form such links yourself. (See the next question.)

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What can I do to get more inbound links into my site?

See answer to general FAQ on this topic.

How can I use industry-specific online directories to my advantage, and which ones should I target?

For web site owners in competitive industries and markets such as Tourism, one of the best ways of getting yourself noticed by Google is to become part of the leading online directories catering for that market. This is particularly important in the tourism and accommodation industry, but also in some markets like photography, sports, healthcare, education, most retail, and art. In most of these areas if you look in Google for specific products or services, the first few pages are taken up by large directories before you get to any particular suppliers. This can be very frustrating for small operators, but with a bit of effort you can use it to your advantage. In principle, if you make sure you are listed on those directories, you'll be found eventually, although indirectly.

But which directories should you subscribe to? You probably know some of the larger New Zealand ones (such as Yellow Pages, NZ Search and NZS), but would be surprised at the number of other industry-specific ones which are quite happy to list and advertise you. There is one simple method to find and contact the best directories for your business, but first you should check which you are already listed on. To do this, go into Google and enter your own specific business name and location (so there is no ambiguity about whose site you're looking for - your own. For mine, I would type Techwriter New Zealand). Apart from your own website (if it's not listed there, then you really do have a problem!), you will see a list of all the other websites that refer to yours as a listing or in passing (mine should be one of them) - check which of these are directory-type sites.

Which other directories would be worthwhile approaching to include you? To find out, simply type into Google the main keywords which you would like people to find you through, then note all the directories which come up in the first few pages. (For example, a Queenstown motel should enter "Motels in Queenstown New Zealand".) Then it's simply a matter of looking at each directory, deciding if you want to be part of them, and contacting them to ask if you can. Of course, some of them may require payment from you in order to be listed, so you will need to decide whether this is a worthwhile option or not. To help decide this, check how many listings they have already and how easy it is for people to use their directory -- if it looks cheap and nasty or there are only a few listings then payment to be listed may be a waste of money as people will rarely use it.

Some directories request that you reciprocate by placing a link to their site on your site -- usually it's not mandatory, so it's up to you as to whether you do this or not.

How can I get a paid first-page ranking on Google?

From time to time, clients who are frustrated at not being shown on Google's first page ask me what they have to do (or who they have to pay) to get listed there under the correct keywords. Well, there is a way, and it doesn't cost a lot. If you're on a low advertising budget and are really keen to be seen high up on Google, here is the answer (or at least as good as you'll get!).

I've read and known about Google AdWords for some time but have never had the cause to use it seriously. Over the past couple of months I've been helping create a marketing strategy and awareness campaign for a website that offers a directory of NZ soft furnishing businesses, and decided that AdWords was ideal to do this within our low-end budget.

AdWords generate the "featured" or "sponsored" listings you see on Google results, usually down the right-hand side but sometimes in a coloured background above the main listings. Have a look next time you're using Google. They're perfect for marketing to a tightly defined market. Although some Google users don't look at those listings because of their "paid" nature, enough people do to make it potentially very effective.

Anyone with a website can run their own AdWords campaign - it's free to set up within Google and you only pay when people click on your "advertisement" during search results. You are in total control of how much you spend and what keywords you target. And you can create it all on your own. I'm happy to help and advise anyone setting up such a campaign, using the experience I've gained from my own campaign, but it wouldn't need much input from me before you'll be sailing along watching the clicks come in and fine-tuning the tactics.

So how does it work and who is it best suited for?

First, you sign up for a free Google account. Then you enter your account area and sign up for AdWords. You start a new campaign. This involves four main factors:

1. What country or countries you want your ad to appear in; ie, the countries where the Google user is located at the time. (I chose NZ-only because we're only appealing to Google users who are located here.)
2. What keywords and key phrases (as many as you like, though about 20 is recommended) you want to use in order to trigger the appearance and ranking of your paid listing.
3. How much you're prepared to pay as a maximum for each click that goes to your site from this listing and each keyword. (I chose $0.33.) This can be changed at any time.
4. The maximum you're prepared to pay per day for such clicks and visits. (I chose $2.00 per day.) So the campaign cannot "get away on you" and empty your credit card. As soon as your daily limit is passed, your advert no longer appears for those keywords for that day.

You enter your credit card details, so payments can be made periodically based on clicks received, and you're away. There is a nice reporting facility so you can see how many clicks were made to your site from the paid listing, how much you've paid as a result of these, which search terms or keywords gained which clicks, what average ranking position you held in the paid listings column as a result of your pay-per-click maximum, and what percentage of people using each keyword finished up at your site (we're currently getting around 3%, which is much better than nothing).

The higher the pay-per-click (or "bid") among the advertisers for each keyword, the higher they are placed in the paid listings for each search result. You are competing with other people also wanting to put ads up for those keywords, so early on you'll be adjusting your maximum payment per click to ensure you're neither being outbid by too many other people nor paying more than you need to get good visibility. In our case, the most common keyword used in our market within New Zealand is "curtains" and our advertised listing appears normally about 3rd or 4th in the list at the side of the page. About 4% of people seeing those pages visit our site as a result.

For whom is this marketing tool best suited? I doubt it would help much for mass-market commodities in worldwide sales - the competition for popular keywords is very high and people overseas have big pockets. But it is great for niche markets and/or local markets, where you don't have to pay much to be listed on your niche keywords.

It won't be much point if you're already listed on Google's first page for your most desired keywords - you're already doing just fine so stay with the flow. But if you're having trouble getting a good listing for some other keywords then AdWords is probably the best tool. For example, the (hypothetical) graphic design business Graphics-R-Us may be ranked on Google's first page for "graphic design auckland", but for some reason cannot be found under "business cards new zealand" even though "business cards" are promoted heavily in the text content of the site. If this was considered to be an important keyword phrase, then "buying" a listing for that poorly performing phrase would make sense. Or what if you're selling cellphones but only to the local market: trying to compete with cellphone sellers worldwide on Google's results for "cellphone retailers" would be out of the question, but if you choose the right phrases for local Google advertising then you could be onto a winner.

How to run a blog to help my Google ranking

Creating a blog is one very good way of making your online presence more interesting to site visitors, as well as very attractive to Google. Making your own blog is easy - just Google "free blogging sites" and check out sites such as Wordpress, www.blogger.com or www.sharemynz.co.nz. Google itself also provides a free blog service. On them, you can freely write what you like for whoever wants to read it, without having to get me to update your site.

If done well, this blog can boost the popularity and ranking of your business website. In your blogsite, write mainly on topics that relate to your business products or services in general (so Google sees them as worthwhile information on the topic), and then get me to include a link from your website to your blogsite. Ensure your blog has one or more links back to your website (you just include it in the stuff you write on your blog). Google will love it, and the two-way links will boost both the blog and the business site up in its rankings based on the information value.

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You said you've updated my site but I see nothing has changed. What's going on?

Here's a handy tip for making sure you're seeing the latest version of your (or any other) site. Quite often when I add new material to a client site I get a call/email the next day saying the site looks just the same as before.

The reason is that your web browser (such as Internet Explorer or Netscape) tries to be clever (or lazy?) by keeping the last version of a site in your computer's "cache" so it can avoid wasting time downloading it all each time you revisit. That's great until the site changes but the browser doesn't necessarily know that and merely fetches files from the cache again. (Those of you on office networks may also find that the network server caches some often-used websites.)

The answer is to force the browser to reload from the server. You do this by clicking the "Refresh" or "Reload" button on the browser tool bar. You should then see the page reload from scratch. If you still can't see what you believe to be the latest version, exercise severe discipline on your computer by again clicking the Refresh button, but this time while holding down the CTRL key. This tells it to "reload from scratch or else…"

And if that doesn't work, get really stroppy and delete your computer's Internet cache, ensuring there is nothing there to shortcut the process. The trouble with this, though, is that all the other sites that you visit often will also re-load from scratch when next you try to access them.

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How and when should I use downloadable PDF and Word documents on my website?

There are 3 common ways of providing text material for your site visitors - as standard text in your page (that's HTML - HyperText Markup Language - code); as a clickable (downloadable) Word document; and as a downloadable PDF file.

All my clients have plenty of the first. All that HTML material is coded by me to create the desired layout and formatting when the site is made. But sometimes you want to make available full documents, often long ones, such as the latest newsletter or annual report, and with some fixed formatting of your own choice. The most efficient way of handling this is to create a separate, formatted document (like a word-processed file) and make a link to it clickable from your website.

This has four big advantages: (1) It saves me often huge amounts of time (and thus saves you money) to format the material in HTML. (2) You have total control of how this part of the site looks and its content - you merely send me the file and I upload it to your server and make the link to it, and if you want to change the file you just do it on your own PC and then email it to me to re-upload (3) It enables web page sizes to not get too big. (4) Visitors can choose to view or not view the downloadable documents.

The main disadvantage (or risk) is that some client browsers or computers do not handle Word or PDF files well (or at all), so you can't guarantee all visitors will see the contents. There is also the small issue of large (= slow) file downloads, which can annoy some people.

Of the two (Word and PDF), PDF documents are safer. This is because more computers have the PDF reader software (called Acrobat Reader) installed, or they can download it easily (no cost) if they don't have it. Word, on the other hand, is a Microsoft commercial product which, although common, is not used (or owned) by quite a sizable minority of people. Those who don't have Word (or Word Viewer) will not be able to see your document.

How do you create PDF files for your site? You can either do it yourself or get me to do it for you. To do it yourself. you need to purchase or download a product that writes Acrobat files. Unless you're going to do this a lot, it's more cost effective to make the documents as Word or (usually) Excel files and email them to me. Normally it takes me only a few minutes to convert them and upload them to the server.

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What's the best way of handling a time when I'm going on holiday and don't want website visitors to expect responses to requests?

Website owners take holidays like everyone else, but what do they do with their sites while no longer on call? Some (masochists?) carry on, checking their emails every day etc, but many prefer that their website Inquiry or Contact form is de-activated during the time, respectfully asking visitors to come back later when business resumes. You don't want to scare people off, but then again you don't want people sending you inquiries and getting no answers. I recommend one of the following three methods:

A few days before you want to escape, let me know the dates and what you want to do about it. Then we can word a small box on the home page providing appropriate summary information. On the Inquiry/Contact page, we can put a similar notice only larger, near the top so no-one can miss it. Then at the end of the form (the thing they fill in), where there is normally the "Send" button, I will remove this and replace it with another small box again providing the message you want to impart. This means they cannot send the form, and they know why.
Similar to the first method, but leave the "Send" button intact and have the message saying that you will be back in business on a certain date and will respond then. Or that will be checking emails regularly so expect a possible delay in response.
If you adopt method 2 (leave the button active) and if your hosting service is RegisterDirect (or another service that supports autoresponses), you can ask me to program an automatic email response to the sender saying you will get back to them when you return (or some similar explanatory message).

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Should I get a special email address (POP account) for my business or use my ISP's email account?

One question that comes up in most new website projects is whether to keep your old email address or not. Many of you who have been operating a site for some time may be thinking of making your email address based on your domain name, rather than the one provided by your ISP. Here are a few comments that may help you to decide.

Regardless of how you host your website, you can (and generally should) retain your ISP email account for general Internet access. The only reason to change should be if you are not getting good service or prices change.
All RegisterDirect-hosted sites (and probably those of you using other reputable hosting services also) provide an email redirection service, so that email addressed to anything@your-domain-name will be redirected automatically to your ISP email account. Examples (for my domain name) would be sales@techwriter.co.nz, david@techwriter.co.nz, complaints@techwriter.co.nz. Each of these could be redirected by RegisterDirect to my Paradise account, inhouse@paradise.net.nz, and I access them via my Paradise account. It just needs to be set up, which I can do in a matter of seconds for my RegisterDirect-hosted clients.
The main uses of these addresses (rather than those based on the ISP name, like my inhouse@paradise example) are twofold:
(a) Using them, my advertising etc material is promoting my domain name (techwriter.co.nz) rather than promoting my ISP's name.
(b) If I change my email account from the Paradise ISP service to a new ISP (bad service, better price, etc) then none of my customers and contacts need to know, because I merely change the account to which my webname emails are redirected - a very simple change.
The main reason to retain your ISP account as your contact brand would be if it is a widely known address and it would simply be too costly to replace all the letterhead, cards, print adverts, etc.
Notwithstanding item 4, you can still change to webname-based email address at any time in the future, such as when you've finally run out of old stationery or you are going through a minor business rebranding exercise.
You can set up a dedicated email account (called a POP account, for Point of Presence) on your host server, which works in tandem with your ISP to keep all emails to that address physically separate. For RegisterDirect-hosted clients (and probably for other host services), it's free (up to 10 POP accounts). All you have to do is create it (I can help for RegisterDirect clients, or Lee at RegisterDirect is great at helping on the spot) and then change your email-access program (such as Outlook Express) to go looking in the POP account rather than to your ISP server.

In my household it's invaluable. We have 2 computers, one for family stuff and one for my business. The family one is programmed conventionally to look for new mail in the ISP account (in our case, inhouse@paradise.net.nz). My business laptop is programmed to go looking at my POP account, david@techwriter.co.nz, at RegisterDirect. So our emails remain separate - great! You can do the same if you have 2 or more computers in your small business, each used for specific purposes or by specific people who have different tasks.

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Why and How should I add online sales facilities to my website?

For many websites it's not appropriate to sell products or services online. Non-sales sites are used rather to introduce your offerings and get people to make contact and purchase by conventional methods. However, for some types of sites (specially those selling products in commodity-type and speciality markets), site visitors often expect to purchase directly from the site. Likewise for some niche markets an online sales capability will often clinch a customer.

Online sales requires you either to set up a facility to capture credit card details from buyers (yourself directly or through a third-party payments processing service such as PayPal), or to instruct them to send you a cheque or make an electronic bank transfer payment (or some other payment mechanism that does not require credit card entry).

If you want to handle credit card transactions yourself, first you will need to sign up to a "secure" hosting service, which allows buyers to send their credit card number and know it will not be seen or intercepted by others. This sort of service commonly costs from about $20-35 a month. You will also need to set up a transaction management procedure with your bank or other financial instrument, which is easy if you already accept credit cards at point of sale.

If you have a range of products to offer, you will need a "shopping cart" program built into your pages. This will add cost to the programming, and may require some extra functionality at the hosting service.

If you have quite a few products (say, over 100), perhaps in several categories, you will probably require an online product database to be set up, to avoid a stock management nightmare. This can cost from a few thousand dollars extra, and requires host-server software support for databases. An alternative for larger multi-product operations is to purchase an e-commerce package.

You will also need to check your site content to ensure that online contracts are watertight and that your site conforms to legal requirements. You must take care to ensure that what is advertised is actually available (which may mean more frequent updates to your site content, e.g. if product lines run out).

In July 2005 I wrote a more detailed article about e-commerce, called "A Beginner's Guide to Setting Up E-Commerce on Your Website". You can read and print it by clicking here.

In July 2006 I wrote another, called "Cheap Ways of adding Online Sales to your Website". You can read and print it by clicking here.

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How can I make sales from my site using a PayPal account?

I've installed PayPal "Buy Now" buttons on several of my existing sites. The huge advantage of this method is that you don't need to pay extra for (a) site hosting to provide secure payments, and (b) shopping cart programming. And you don't need to set up your own credit card handling facilities. The free-to-join PayPal service allows purchases by anyone with a credit card, and it handles the credit card security and notification emails and money transfer without you needing to worry about it - you just move the money from your PayPal account to your bank account.

The only costs are (a) my time to install the buttons, and (b) a few percent of each transaction going to PayPal. My services may cost between $25 and $250 depending on how many products you need to sell and how you want to present them. All this is far, far less than what you'd pay for secure hosting and a programmed sales facility with product database. (Note, you could well need me to also make some extra supplementary pages for such trust issues as "Policies" and "Procedures" and "Shipping" charges.)

This simple "Buy Now" button set allows only one purchase of one product per visit - there is no ability to group products into a shopping cart. However, PayPal also offers a free shopping basket function which is also easy to set up. Using this would still provide a good, safe shopping system satisfying many requirements.

The main downsides affect people wanting a serious shopping basket in a large operation.
(1) There is no easy facility to provide complex shipping charges. You would need to add an average shipping fee to each advertised product price.
(2) You cannot change your product details (such as prices) yourself but need to send them to me to maintain for you.
(3) The sales "checkout" section looks like a PayPal page (which it is) rather than a page of your site. Some customization of appearance (such as including your own logo) is possible, but not much.
(4) You should not use this for sale of one-off items, as there is no way of immediately knowing an item has just sold, so someone else may click "Buy Now" again and pay but there is no product left. Keep it for items that will always be in stock.

If you want a sophisticated shopping cart system that integrates fully into your total website, which you can maintain yourself, let me know and I'll put you onto some very good Christchurch-based ones I've recently found.

How can I update my own site once it's running, rather than getting Techwriter to do it for me?

Some clients would like the convenience and possible cost-saving of adding new text and photos themselves to their running site whenever they please. This can be done in certain carefully controlled circumstances, and some of our clients use these techniques. Be aware of these considerations:

Once a client begins changing a page, they must formally take on-going responsibility for that page. There can be only one master version of each website page, which is normally maintained by us. TechWriter establishes a written agreement to cover this. If subsequently we have to take over the maintenance of that page, costs may be incurred to reconstruct the up-to-date master files.

The client must acquire and learn to use an appropriate tool to maintain the material - either a decent HTML text editor or authoring software like Dreamweaver or Front Page, or a Content Management System (CMS) package. You will probably also need to buy and learn the use of a decent image-editing program, and acquire a file-loading FTP program if none is built into the authoring software.

Experience does show that using CMS almost inevitably ends up, a year or three down the track, building a site with variable formats and complicated navigation, as bits are added without the overall site 'look and feel' being maintained. This end result may not be worth any initial cost saving.

Keep in mind that our maintenance service is very cost-effective. We have no minimum time charge, can act immediately when asked (or within 48 hours in general), and can make changes very quickly. Is it really worth your while to invest time and money on equipment and expertise to do it yourself?

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How can I reduce the amount of spam I'm sent?

There have been several recent complaints from clients about the amount of spam they're receiving. We all know how much of a problem spam is, and it's definitely the major downside of publishing your email address on your website (and therefore easily reaped by spammers). But why do some people get swamped while others manage?

For a start let me weasel out a bit by pointing out that it's not an issue that webmasters can do much about. It's really an issue between yourself and your mail provider, so you need to speak to them if it's getting to you. However, here are some pointers:

First, if you operate and publish a Hotmail or Yahoo account, then you need to think about getting real and paying for email provision. Spammers target users of FREE email services because it's so easy to. If you have to retain such an account, keep it relatively private and don't publish it on your site - it's an open invitation to spammers collecting and on-selling such addresses, and those global mail providers will not help you avoid the results.

If your email comes via an established ISP such as (in NZ) Xtra, Paradise, etc, then contact them and ask what you have to do to have spam and virus screening operating for you. If they charge a bit each month for it, then it's your choice, but don't complain if you want email on the cheap and get spam as well!

If your published email is one based on your website name - called a POP account (see earlier answer) - then again contact your hosting organisation and ask them for help. If RegisterDirect is your host, they offer a great filtering product (I use it, with about 98% accuracy). The guys there can also help refine your email address use to reduce (and in my case finally kill off) the incidence of what looks like bounced undeliverable emails from funny addresses associated with your domain name.

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Please explain Techwriter's update fees and policies.

My service-charging method is probably the most inexpensive and customer-friendly in the business. Most large web-design firms charge a minimum fee, usually for an hour, for ANY time spent changing anything on a site - even just a few words.

As you know, I run a "tab" system. I have a little database running in the background on my PC, and when I start an update job I note the time started. Any interruptions (such as longer phone calls or a coffee break) I note, so as not to charge you for these, and then I note when I finish. I charge $60 an hour (with discounts for long-standing clients who use the service often). Sometimes for small, quick changes I charge nothing.

The result goes into the database, and when the tab reaches around $40 to $60 and I believe no other changes are planned for a few weeks, I send out an invoice - usually near the end of each month. If you want your accounts to be itemised, please let me know, as my database archives the details.

If you don't use the service for a while (usually about 12 months triggers this action), you may receive a small bill to settle for any work done over that year, which is normally a minimum of $30. Sorry if this appears to come out of the blue, but it is a small downside of the cost-minimising "bar-tab" policy.
Speaking of TechWriter policies, another important reminder: Please send update documentation by email (preferred) or mail or fax, but not by phone. You may certainly phone to advise or ask about an update, but I need physical documentation to ensure accurate completion and an audit trail of work requested and done.
And one final policy, which thankfully has been called on only a handful of times so far: If you are more than 2 months overdue for payment of an account, no further update work that you request will be done until the account is settled.
Also remember that whenever I make site updates and let you know by email that they're done, you may have to refresh the affected pages to ensure the browser downloads the current (new) version - click the "Reload" or "Refresh" button and if this doesn't work, hold down the "CTRL" key at the same time.

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How can I minimise the size of emailed photos so they don't take forever to send?

One of the most troublesome Internet tasks for quite a few of you is sending me photos by e-mail -- the photos are so large (measured in megabytes rather than in inches!) that they clog up mailboxes and taking an eternity for you to send. (Note that this is not a problem for me - I'm on fast broadband so downloading is quite quick - but it does trouble those on dial-up connections.) Here is some advice which may help. It's very hard to you offer specific steps because you all have different digital camera brands with different numbers of megapixels and different image handling software on your computers. However there are some general principles.

Although camera retailers love to promote the number of megapixels in a camera, for all activities except printing large format prints (larger than A4) the number of megapixels above about 5mp is largely redundant. Certainly for photos to email for a website, you only need a maximum of about one megapixel. So the first thing you should do is look on your camera settings for one that is somewhere around the 1024 x 800 or 1600 x 1200 mark. This will still produce excellent results which are larger than the monitor size, but the resultant file size should be 1MB or less.
The other easy adjustment is for the image fineness or compression. Most modern cameras offer three settings - standard, fine and super fine. They normally show a chart indicating how large the file sizes are at each setting and how many photos you can fit on a memory card as a result. For all Internet and Web work, standard compression is perfectly good, and the fine and superfine settings merely make the file size too big but for no extra gain. Try changing the resolution setting for your camera.

On my Canon camera, the instructions in the manual for these adjustments are under a heading called "Changing the Resolution and Compression".
Finally, if you have image editing software which includes the ability to "resize" images, then please do use that facility to reduce images so that the number of pixels in either direction (vertical and horizontal) is no more and then 800 to 1000 dots max. You can keep the original on your computer with the larger number of pixels, but make a copy at a smaller size for e-mailing.

How does Google work and how can I improve my site's listing on it?

See answer to general FAQ on this topic.

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Making and publishing HTML newsletters

Several of you have asked me to make nicely formatted newsletters, the kind that look like (and use the HTML coding of) a web page. In the past year or so, I've declined such requests, advising instead to seek out businesses and services that specialise in this technology. Early 2006 one of my newer clients twisted my arm to pursue this further for them, and now I can say that I have mastered the basic technology sufficient for most purposes. So if you are looking to improve your newsletter (or general email) presentations, get in touch to talk about costs and options.

Basically, I charge the same as for a web page (ie, my hourly rate). Your first newsletter may cost in the vicinity of $100 to $300 to make (depending on complexity), but once the template is confirmed (using your logo, photos and presentation style which usually plays on the feel of your website) subsequent newsletters would be considerably cheaper to provide as they mainly involve only changes in text and photos. The general delivery mechanism is that I make a file which I send to you and then you email it to your recipient list, using the "send format" option of "HTML".

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Using my website for private family photos and letters

Would you like a free bit of private webspace on which to put family photos and news, to share with family around the world? Most of you have the infrastructure to do this, even if you haven't realised it.

All we need to do is make a page and put it on your server (your "host") with a filename that only your friends know about. For example, our son Mark, living in the UK, wanted to show his family there some photos of his early childhood, so we scanned them and put them on a page with a filename known only to the family (and anyone Mark tells), and put the page on my wife's hosting space. To see the page, one has to type www.curtainz.co.nz/ followed by the filename, and up it pops. Only we know this address, and you cannot see it (or a link to it) anywhere on the main website so it doesn't interrupt business activity or allow curious outsiders to snoop.

If you looked at that page, you would see that no effort has gone into pretty formatting or design, so making such a page for you could be a matter of a few dollars only - a very cheap way of running a private family web page. Let me know if you want something similar for yourself.

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Using an online calendar to show service availability

I recently put an online calendar onto the site of a homestay client. It took me only a few minutes to actually place the coding, and only a short time for the site owner to activate the service by signing up and providing me with excess codes. It's a free service offered to BraveNet members. Anyone can join BraveNet for no cost, and they seem a reputable service not given to unreasonable pestering of their members.

I highly recommend this type of service for small accommodation and some other tourism sites where visitors would like to be able to book for definite dates. This really helps people who have found your site and want to try a booking there and then, without having to first send you an inquiry as to whether the room is available when they want it and have to wait for your reply, which may take several days to come. They may be trying to line up several overnight stops in a tour, and need quick answers while they're online. Seeing the booking calendar online helps people to take the next step (request a specific booking) with confidence, and I think this is a very strong feature to help convert website visitors into paying clients.

Because of the simple nature of this (or any) calendar, it is useful mainly for small operations with only, say, 1 to 3 rooms to let. (One downside may be that it shows the website visitor that you may be getting very few bookings; but then if you want to break out of a slow cycle then you need to do something.)

It works like this: once you have signed up to BraveNet and requested its free calendar, you can place entries anywhere on the calendar, alter them or delete them at any time. Only you can do this, via your password. Meanwhile, I place a little bit of code on the booking page to the effect that if the visitor wants to see what nights are available they click the calendar icon and they can see the vacancy (see how it works at www.kingswoodlodge.co.nz). They cannot change any of those calendar entries and cannot complete a booking through the facility, but at least they'll know if they'll be wasting their time sending an inquiry and waiting. AND it is so cheap and easy to build this into your site. If you are interested, get in touch.

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Using Google maps to show where you are located

Most of us know about and have used or seen Google Earth and Google Maps, to spy on your own and friends' houses from satellite or to find a street address you're looking for. Well Google offers the ability to put such a map, along with fully functioning navigation aids, on your website.

We lived in the stretch of Port Hills Road which many Christchurch people don't know about - around a badly-signposted 90-degree bend from the main section of this road. We lost count of the number of times when people cellphoned us from the other end of Port Hills Road unable to find number 411.

If you are familiar with this situation - having to give tricky direction instructions to customers - then get me to install a Google map on your website. To see how it works, go to my home page and scroll down to the contact details right at the bottom. You'll see a link on the words "(View map)". Click it and up comes our Google map, which you can pan around and zoom in/out in the usual brilliant manner. If you click on the bit saying "Get Directions - To Here" and enter your address you get a map showing a good route, along with text instructions at the left.

Google also offers the map in a smaller window as part of the website page (rather than a link to open up the full-page map), but it's not very pretty for anything other than a larger map. If you wanted this presentation then you would need the map to take up about one-third to one-half the page width.

Fro Techwriter clients, I can install this "view map" link (or whatever wording you'd like) for about $10 in your site. The only proviso is that your address must be registered and recognised by Google, which may be several months out of date for newly added roads and properties. To check on this, go to maps.google.com and type your address into the search box near the top.

Map adjustments: If you get your own map, and find that the place it points to is not quite right, then you can adjust it yourself. Naturally there are some security measures (you don't want anyone else changing your map reference, do you?) so you will need to make the change yourself. But here is how to do it (for US, Australia or New Zealand users only). Follow this link to read Google's own instructions.

If you want to read more about the Google Map facility in general, look here

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Using third-party add-on functionality - such as Bravenet or Google tools

Many free web services provide website tools, usually at no cost as long as you're prepared to allow them to advertise themselves (in a civilized way, I think) while your visitors use the tools.

One such tool, mentioned two questions back on this page, is the Bravenet online calendar, which tourism website owners can use to show when their facilities are booked (and therefore when they're available). You maintain and edit the calendar using your membership facilities, and viewers can see but not change the calendar via a simple link on one of your website pages.

I have no vested interest in Bravenet, but I am a member. It costs nothing to join, and the worst you can say about them is that you may receive some emailed promotions a few times a month - which are easy to delete if you're not interested. You join by going to www.bravenet.com

Besides the online calendar, several other Bravenet tools may have potential use in your website:

Guestbook: Reached via a link on a page of your website, people can read and sign a guestbook and leave comments.
Blog: Add your own blog to your website, allowing interactive comment by your visitors.
Mailing lists: I haven't seen this in action, but it looks like a simple way of collecting subscriber email addresses and then using that to send newsletters and notifications (such as when a new product is due). This may take a little more than a few minutes to set up properly.
Vote casting: Allow visitors to vote on questions or opinions you pose.
Message forums: A forum for opinions and questions, providing visitor feedback.
Search this site: A search box on your site to search for words and phrases on all your pages.
Password protection: A facility for you to password-protect some of your site pages.

As far as I can see, all of these features and tools can be added by me to your site in a matter of minutes, as long as I have your login and password. Do note, however, that as with the calendar it is YOUR responsibility to continue to maintain the tool (such as add dates to the calendar), not mine. Having said that, Bravenet do provide very easy-to-use maintenance tools.

These are just some of Bravenet's offereings, and Bravenet is just one of many such services. If this interests you and stimulates ideas, you could do some research to check out other third-party services.

Adding high-quality DVD content to my site

I've been asked by clients if it is possible (or easy) to add DVDs or substantial video to a website. Typically, the idea is to provide another outlet for a company's promotional DVD. The product has been made and paid for (often at considerable expense), so why not just add it to your website?

There is one huge obstacle to implementing this idea - the size of the video file(s) that make up the DVD. A good quality DVD, designed to run on a modern TV or widescreen computer monitor and often in high definition (HD), can be of any size up to perhaps 40 megabytes per minute of video. If your DVD has a 10-minute promo, that's so many megabytes (400) that (a) you would have to pay heaps more for hosting (the disk quotas for most simple plans range from 10 to 50 megs) and, worse, (b) anyone trying to download it would need to wait hours to achieve it, while quickly threatening their broadband data cap.

Other solutions may be possible (in which case I'd love to hear about them), but the only two alternatives I know are:

Get the person who made your DVD to produce a low-res (and low-size) version that will fit in within about 3 megabytes maximum (a real challenge!!). They will have the original HD file(s) and probably have software options that allow lower resolution versions, including less-sharp images as well as physically smaller image sizes.
You put the video on YouTube, and then get me to set up a link to the YouTube presentation from your website. I'm not well-versed on how YouTube manages the resolution of the videos it stores, but I believe that when you upload a high-resolution video (be patient if you haven't got super-quick broadband) the YouTube machine cuts its quality back to enable it to be streamed to the public with reasonable data speeds.

For most people, the second option is by far easier. It's also much much simpler for me, because just setting up a link on your site, with a heading and text to tell visitors what it's about, takes only a few minutes.

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