e-Kit news and web issues

Happy new year to all - I can't believe its 2008 already!

Unless you monitor visitors to your website, and how those visitors browse it, you will be in the dark about how your website is performing, and how any marketing campaigns are working for you. Here are a number of solutions available to you:

Google analytics:
In 2007 Google released their analytics package that monitors all visitors to your websites and presents it in a very user friendly way.

This service is available to all e-Kit customers for a small setup fee, and come as standard on our business and Enterprise packages.


e-Kit visitor stats analysis software:
Of course we do have our own comprehensive analysis software solution integrated with our servers, and we can install this for any customer websites.

Our stats software records more specific data than the Google solution, and is available as standard, with advice, guides and documentation as part of our to our Web Manager enterprise packages and services.

Do contact us if you wish to discuss more about recording, monitoring and analysing visitors to your website.

Hope to speak to you all soon,

Woody
(And Anthony of course!)

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Our latest Content management Systems put you in the driving seat to manage changes to your website as and when you want them - without the need for technical knowhow.



Features include:

• Adding, Removing, Renaming and Editing pages
• A complete preview site to view changes before publishing
• A comprehensive, easy to use web-based HTML editor
• Built in fundamental Search Engine Optimisation techniques
• Global Web standards Compliance
• File and image upload features
• Document management facilities
• Additional modules available (e.g. Gallery+photo management)
• Menu management and ordering
• A range of pre-built, compliant and accessible website templates

If you want more than to choose a template, we are happy to work with you in developing a unique site that incorporates your current or new business style. We also have the ability to redesign you a brand new site with a content managment system built in.

The Web Manager systems are easy to use and you can read about our customers who are already enjoying the benefits of our comprehensive, but simple web management tools.

Hope to hear from you soon,

Woody and Anthony

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Phishing - emails are not always from who they appear to be from
Phishing emails differ from normal spam in that they attempt to fool the recipient into revealing sensitive information, usually usernames and passwords for banks and payment systems.

They often contain a link to a 3rd party website that has been made up to look like the real website's login page. Only once you have typed in your details, the criminals on the other end use those details to steal your money! Remember,
Banks should not ask you to login to their site via email!

Treat every email as suspicious, and always go to your bank's website via your own links in favourites or bookmarks.

Hoax emails - What have I told you before about lying?
Hoax emails attempt to get people to forward the note onto others. . . . "Send this to 20 people and you will get £14000, a box of choccies and a kiss from Bill gates" . . . . . Hmmmm . . use your noggin - don't fall for it! - You may accidentally be helping to feeding spammers with hundreds of new email addresses to abuse!

Web Form Spam - for those who have websites
Many of you will be familiar with spam in the form of junk email in your mailbox. Unfortunately there are more types of spam than that.

Sites across the internet are experiencing spammers trying to automatically use the 'forms' on their websites to both send emails (email server abuse) and also spread their junk messages and links across the web (Link spamming).

If you have form-to-email capabilities on your website, then you may have experienced some of these messages recently. We have taken measures now to prohibit these illegal spammers from abusing e-Kit web-forms in all versions of our Content Management Systems, but the odd annoying spam message may get through, although they should be no threat.

We are also updating all our other customers' websites with the new anti-spam measures.

Enjoy the festive season all, shop online safely and hope to hear from you soon,

Woody and Anthony

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Monday 3rd July was another day of the 'Setting up a website' course organised by Creative Leicestershire. Dave Everitt and Woody Kitson talked about the basics of setting up a website. To see full details of the course, book a place or see if the course is to be run at other times, please do visit the Creative Leicestershire Website.

Woody

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The science of search engine marketing (SEM) is a constantly evolving one. The page ranking and position placement methods used by the main search engines like Google and Yahoo are changed slightly at intervals. There are of course a number of steps that you must always take to ensure you optimise your site properly.

Key phrase research and selection
You must choose your key phrases based on thorough research using data recorded from the billions of real searches that are made across the world. By using statistical tools available and a little bit of lateral and logical thinking, you find your best set of key phrases for use in your new site.

On-page factors - Including key phrases in your pages
Building a website with pages optimised for specific key phrases is something that is most easily done from the start of the design and development process. Some of the basics include, title, key phrase placement(s) in content, internal link text. The list is large!

Off-page factors - Getting links from elsewhere
Relevant links from other sites on the internet are interpreted by search engines as a positive, and many of these links will be a great help for boosting your rating in search engines. The best incoming links are from relevant, highly rated sources and also use your key phrases as your link (or anchor) text.

That's all for today! - We haven't touched on paid advertising such as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigning, but please keep an eye on this page for an introduction on this, or contact us if we can help out with your online marketing campaign.

Happy new year from all at e-Kit

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Making websites accessible and usable to all visitors is becoming more of a focus today. This is because a greater number of people use the web for everyday tasks.

My dear Granddad is blind and my Grandma is partially sighted and the internet is a fantastic tool for them to enable them to bank and shop without the long bus journeys into the town. The websites she uses have all followed some basic accessibility rules to make her user experience more comfortable. Here are a few guidelines and points for making your site more usable and accessible:

Keep your site in a standard web format
Websites that are written in Flash, or that have text in graphical format are not good for accessibility. If you do require a flash site then it is good practise to provide an HTML version of the site. For all non-text elements of a web page, you should be providing a text equivalent.

Make you text as readable as possible
Legibility of text is one of the most important areas of usability to address. Common sense points - keeping the text a readable size, contrast in colour with the text background and using standard screen typefaces. All the better if you can give the user the option to change text settings through Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

Make navigation of your website clear
Make links obvious to users, not just in menus, but also links within body texts - use bold, underline or colours to highlight link texts. For all links it is good practise to differentiate between those already visited by a user. Try and use relevant text phrases for links. eg: use links like e-Kit Homepage rather than for e-Kit Homepage Click Here.

For More reading on Usability and Accessibility, visit The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and website of Jakob Nielsen - a highly regarded web usability guru.

Published By: Woody

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We have decided to start on a most important theme - General I.T. Security.

3 Simple ways to help prevent the tears:

• Backup your data! - many people and businesses neglect the important act of backing up data. In the event of accident, malicious attack or hardware failure, this is what can save a business. - Get it copied regularly to another PC, server or disk and keep it safe elsewhere! A brief overview of methods and reasons for backing up data.
  
  
• Get a firewall installed on your computer. Microsoft Windows and other computer operating systems are vulnerable to attack unless access to them from the NET is restricted. This is what a firewall does - If you use the internet without a firewall you are extremely vulnerable. Latest version of Windows XP has a firewall built in, as do nearly all versions of Linux.
  
  
• 'Phishing' attacks are fake emails attempting to fool you into visiting a web page to disclose personal information. Most Phishing emails will pretend to be from your bank, or other online payment websites. Remember - Treat every email as suspicious! More information on the latest Phishing scams.

Published By: Woody

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