Elise Kendall

You may have seen them on posters or cards: A strange barcode-like box with squares on three corners. They're called QR codes and the idea is that people scan them using the camera on their phone and are then (generally) taken to a web-page.

It is possible to store information other than a website URL in a QR code, but for this blog post I'm just going to talk about QR codes that store website addresses. If you want a QR code to do something else and you're not sure if it's a good idea, send me a comment and I'll let you know what I think.

QR Codes: Are they useful? Or just a passing fad?

My favourite part of my job is when I get to make things work better than they worked before, so I am thrilled to announce a couple of small updates which I think will make the lives of Web123 Clients that little bit easier.

We've recently released a number of SEO products. We've got eBooks and SEO services. So which services are right for you? 

Have a read through the following profiles and pick the one which feels most like you: then read the services we recommend!

One of the great things about Web123 are the free upgrades! If you're a Web123 customer you might have already noticed a few changes. Here's a quick rundown of some things which you might see and a bunch of things that are available to switch on... 

The challenge we tackled this week was making your Web123 Shop more social -- getting greater interaction from your visitors and encouraging them to comment and share.

I've written a fair bit about simple SEO techniques that you can use to help boost your ranking in Google. But if you don't have any success on your own (or you don't have the time to dedicate to SEO because you're busy running your business!) you may want to engage the services of an expert. 

It's rarely wise to just throw money at someone without knowing what they're doing. So here's a handy guide to help you understand what is SEO, and if you're hiring someone to do SEO for your website, what exactly they may be doing for you and how to choose a company for SEO. Some of the things an SEO expert may do for you (or claim to) could be potentially harm your site just as much as they could help it, so it's important to go with a company for SEO that is honest and upfront about its methods.

If you've got a website it's pretty important to know how much it's benefiting your business. If you're spending money on SEO or AdWords you'll want to know how much that money you're spending is benefiting you. Most people can't afford to just throw money online without knowing what it's doing for them!

Website statistics allow you to work out:

• How many people are visiting your website
• Where those visitors came from
• What they were looking for (if they came from a search engine)
• How many pages they looked at before they left
• Whether or not they bought anything or filled out any online forms

There are many different elements to getting your business online, least of which include hosting a website. If your website were a monkey, your web-hosting would be the enclosure that you keep your monkey in.

It can be tempting, sometimes, to scrimp on hosting: after all, people are coming to look at the monkey, not where it is sitting.

But cheap and dodgy hosting can make your website unstable, unreliable and unsecure. If your monkey doesn't have a nice clean place to sleep - what do you think it's going to start throwing?

If you’re setting up an online store something you’ll have to think about as early as you can in the piece is shipping.

The first thing you need to do is have a think about how to price shipping.

How are you going to deliver your products to your customers? How much is it going to cost you?

You’ll probably want to make sure that your product prices will either cover the shipping on their own or else you’ll want to add a shipping charge to your orders.

This means that your online store will need to anticipate how much a particular order is going to cost you to ship and charge your customers accordingly.

By now you might have heard of Google's new Social Networking product. Google+ (Google Plus). This article will be directed as you as a business owner looking to market your business and your website. 

What is Google+?  Do you need one? Should you use it? How can you sign up?
 

Google+ Accounts

Google+ is a bit like facebook and a bit like twitter. A person looking at their Google+ account will see a feed with updates from the friends, acquaintances and celebrities they follow. 
 

So you’ve got a new website, you’ve even got all of your content, products and images in place! So now it’s time to flick the switch and GO LIVE!

But what’s involved in getting your website from a staging address (The address that we put a website on for you to work on it before it’s visible to the general public) onto your domain so that you can start ranking in Google and Tweeting and FaceBooking about your great new website?

It’s really disappointing when someone’s ready for their website to go up but they need to wait for domains and passwords and transfers. The good news is that if you start thinking about these things early then we can make sure that everything goes quickly and smoothly when the big Go-Live day rolls around.