There is only one employee that can work 24/7, assist unlimited customers at one time, not take sick days, arrive late or cost you a weekly wage.
It’s your website! Your website has the potential to be the most valuable employee at your business.
When planning your website the website team at Design House, we ask what you aim to achieve with your website.
A good way to think of your website is how you can replicate systems and commonly performed tasks at your office.
Programming can be used to build small applications that can save you hundreds and thousands of staff hours, freeing your staff up to do more important things.
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By Ben May
For those who blog in Wordpress, you probably write your post up in something like Microsoft Word. I see it on a day to day basis, people copying out of word, into Wordpress. Although it looks like it worked, Word makes a huge mess of the formatting / coding.
However, tinkering around in the latest version of Wordpress 2.5.1 which has got a tonne of great new features. One of which, is a Paste from Word feature. Basically, you copy your text straight out of word, into this box, and it converts it to neat, clean, tidy code.
To access this feature, you need to switch the second tool bar on when typing a new post or page. To swtich on the “Kitchen Sink” as it’s called, either press Alt + Shift + Z or click on the little icon that looks like this;
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By Ben May
You probably know that a website is one of the most cost effective and useful advertising tools a business can have. It’s something that is open 24/7 and lasts all year - unlike basically any other medium plus it can have as little or as much information as you want on it…. pretty much unlimited.
Once you have your website - how do people view it? There is definitely a market of people who are searching for the services or products online and would find your site if it is optimised for search engines or discovered through online ads such as Google Adsense. But there is most likely an even larger amount of people who still trawl through traditional mediums, such as the newspaper, billboards, flyer’s, radio and TV.
If you have a website, and employ additional marketing mediums for your business, you should always advertise your website. What you can’t say or do on your tv, radio or paper ad, you can more likely do on your website. You can sell your products in more detail, track visitors, complete online sales and more. If you have invested in a website you should definitely be taking your visitors through to it!
Your website has additional powers that no other marketing medium has…. you know who has actually looked at your site, in accuracy. You can also track how many people have visited your website from watching TV or reading the Newspaper, or hearing your ad on the radio. Your website can help you partition your marketing budget into what is working the best for you.
At Design House, we can help you use your website to its greatest advantage. We know all the tips and tricks of the trade, that can help you market your business more effectively.
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By Ben May
I received a phone call from a client recently who had signed up for their website and was about to go somewhere else for some other print media, like business cards.
A lot of people don’t know that Design House can design and print everything you need! From business cards, letter heads, flyer’s, stubbie coolers, right up to car / shop signage and newspaper ads. We don’t only just create outstanding websites, we also design print and promotional media keeping the clients branding and theme the same throughout all mediums.
Take a look at what exactly we can do for your business!
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By Ben May
I was recently listening to Tech Talk Radio, where they were discussing a new book and released these new statistics.
How important is a good looking site these days. The answer is very! Did you know that 75% of web users admit making judgments about the credibility of an organisation based on the design of its website and 83% of businesses use the internet to search and find potential vendors?
That statement says two things,
- You need to find a website design company that knows design - your website needs to reflect your business. If you’re trying to run a business, you don’t want your website appearance letting you down. The best search engine optimisation and content will sell your products, but if your website portrays your business as a “back yard operation” or “shonky” you have no chance of the visitor even reading your content.
- You need to find a website design business that knows Search Engine Optimisation - your website will sit on the internet and float around like all the other billions. If your visitors aren’t finding your website, you’re not going to benefit from it. Your website needs to be found for terms you’re offering!
Remember, Websites that look nice, do function better. A well designed, formatted website will make you and your business look credible and professional giving your visitors a favorable impression of your business, and are more likely to make contact with you.
Design House are proud to build well designed websites that function online. Our clients come back to us and let us know that their website has generated so many sales, the site has actually paid for itself, sometimes as short as under 2 weeks.
Businesses in Hervey Bay, The Fraser Coast, and beyond, Design House welcomes you to make contact with us, and talk about how we can transform your existing website, or build your new one, to accurately reflect your website and help you work online.
Regardless of who you use for your website, be sure to check out what you’re getting into - all web designers should have a active portfolio online for you to see. This gives you a sample of what they’re capable of, and you know what to expect. Click here to see Design House’s Portfolio for Websites.
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By Ben May
We all know of Google and it’s domination of the online searching market. There are billions of theories on how to get your website to the top of the list. Some spend hours on hours every day reading SEO Blogs, some pay other people hundreds on thousands of dollars for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). SEO is one of the most important element of a websites existence, the greatest website unread, is useless.
There are some very simple things you can do to increase your position in Google, such as links from other websites, relevant content, well built code, a high Page Rank etc.
What is the Google Pagerank system? It’s one of Googles very mysterious factors that is used in positioning of websites in Searches.
From Google
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance.
Or From WikiPedia
PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references.
Just lately I’ve noticed that the Design House website has jumped from an average 2 out of 10, which it had sat whilst we developed and launched our current website, to a much more respected 5 out of 10. This shows that the Design House website is getting it’s feet in deep into Google, for one of a better term.
Who is the leading SEO & Web Design business in Hervey Bay and the Fraser Coast? - you can be the judge of that. Google key phrases like, “web design hervey bay” or “graphic design hervey bay” - Currently Design House sits number one at the top for both these searches, without paying a cent be there!
Don’t spend extra on Google Adsense or other excessive monthly charges to get your website to #1 - contact us and get honest advise on how your website can reach the top!
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By Ben May
Your domain name, and how to ensure you keep it safe and why.
We all know what a domain name is, its your website address, like designhouse.com.au or google.com.au. Our domain name lets everyone know where our website is basically. When you’re getting a domain name purchased on behalf of yourself, you need to ensure a number of things:
The domain is purchased in your business details, such as your ABN
You are listed as the Registrant of the domain, this includes your email
Ensuring that your details are listed as the registrant gives you the peace of mind, that should your website designer, or web hosting company disappear, you can still re-claim your domain name.
If you were to loose your domain name, it would be an expensive exercise to get everything back in order, as you’ll need to re-print all stationary, re-optimise your new domain for SEO.
To check whether you are your domain names registrant, head to the AusRegistry Website and do a lookup on your website, here
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by Ben May
In a world of email communication, the email is becoming the sole point of contact for many businesses and individuals. The email has the advantage over the phone call, or instant message that it can be delivered and read at the earliest convenience. The email has the advantage over something like a posted letter in that the response can be immediate, and no delays in transporting the message, especially inter-state or internationally.
When we now fire up our workstations every morning, and make our cup of tea, whilst the computer is downloading all the emails received over night, or since the last check. Whilst pulling down the large number of emails, you’ll see a number of emails from family members, fellow workers, and unknown contacts. Among the unknown contacts there will undoubtedly be emails trying to sell Viagra, offshore drugs and other pieces of junk email, better known as spam.
How does it happen and what does it do? Spam is sent to any email address the spammer has in their database. Trying to sell something, trying to direct the recipient to a virus based website, trying to gain traffic to a new website, or to simply be a nuisance, regardless of the reason, spam annoys the best of us.
How does the spammer get my email address? There are multiple ways a spammer can get your email address. If you have your email address posted online, then you’re almost guaranteed that they will get your address. Spammers can also get your email address from buying your details from other people such as other websites that may collect your email address however this is rare; as most people caught doing this, are shut down.
How does one avoid spam? There are a number of theories of how to avoid spam. The best, simple ways to do this, are to avoid putting your email online. If you must, there are certain scripts available to prevent this or to say yourname [at] yoursite.com.au most people will understand that means yourname@yoursite.com.au. But it can be tricky. Further, you should always have a more difficult email address, a spam bot can guess simple email addresses, such as bob@bob.com, or sales@mysite.com.au, info@mysite.com.au as they are commonly used on most sites. The other way to help reduce spam, is to have two email addresses: one that you use online- this will receive more spam. You should then have a secondary email address where only your verified contacts know about, this will always be good email.
Is there anything else that I can do? Yes there is! Where your email comes from, either your Internet Provider, or Website Host (if you have a website) will be able to run spam filtering software, that will be able to scan your email, to see if it looks like spam. The spam filtering algorithm is fairly complex, but in most cases is accurate. If you’re getting the spam blues, talk to your email provider about some spam filtering! Or switch your web hosting over to Design House we’re more than happy to help you with the spam blues! Click here to see the Design House Premium Australian Web Hosting
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By Ben May
Today we all have high spec. digital cameras that take huge photos. Quality digital photos are becoming easier and easier to take. Even a novice such as myself can easily take a good photograph with a good camera. The only problem with taking such high quality photographs is the transportation of the pictures.
Say you take 30 great shots and wish to send them to friends and relatives worldwide, this would take hours and hours to send and most likely not even work as the there is a limit of a few megabytes that you can send in an email.To send 30 photos straight off your camera is looking at about 60megabytes at the minimum.
You’re not going to send 30 different emails, each with an image attached. Professional software can resize your images down to a standard size, simply for viewing, say 800×600 or 1024×768. However, most people don’t have professional photography software on their computers. Even with the software, resizing images is not that simple.
The Microsoft PowerToys for Windows is a collection of simple tools that have been created by Microsoft for simplistic tasks. The entire collection of PowerToys can be found by following this link. One of the most handy tools is the image resizer, this is a tool I use almost on a daily basis.
PowerToys add fun and functionality to the Windows experience. What are they? PowerToys are additional programs that developers work on after a product has been released.
Note: Microsoft take great care to ensure that PowerToys work as they should, but they are not part of Windows and are not supported by Microsoft. For this reason, Microsoft Technical Support is unable to answer questions about PowerToys. PowerToys are for Windows XP only and will not work with Windows Vista.
Microsoft PowerToys Website
If you are running Windows XP and need a way to resize images easily, then head on over to the PowerToys website and download the image resizer on the right hand site of the site. (Direct Link Setup Installer)
Once you’ve installed the software, it’s as simple as right clicking on an image, and then selecting re-size!
Choose the appropriate size, for what you need. Generally, Medium or Large will do. You can also specify advanced options if you need to.
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