bosweb blog

From Click to Ka-ching!

Tue, 14 May 2013 09:15:00 GMT

Before you spend another cent on social media campaigns, hit send on your next email campaign or pay for Google Adwords - read on!

It is no use sending traffic to your eCommerce store if once you get them there, you can't get them to buy.

We have listed some tried and true methods that you can use right now to get them to click that buy button!

1. Make it easy for them to get into your store and to see what you have on offer

Have you named your categories so that they make sense to your customers.
Are your images large enough to be easily assessed for that buying decision.
Are you using a ZOOM tool to enlarge your images?
High quality photography is a MUST for your store - do not scrimp on this item. SAVE MONEY in other places, but high quality images will add hundreds to your bottom line.
Colours - are they pleasing to the eye? Avoid colours that are hard to look at and become distracting - such as flouro colours!
Buy Button - is this a contrast colour from your other links or buttons? Make sure it stands out and draws attention

2. Shop in your customers shoes

Get your store road tested by family and friends or new staff who are not familiar with it. Tell them nothing and test the process.
Keep this buy process simple and try not to get them to fill in too many items to actually buy something.
Avoid making them become a member to buy - ALWAYS have a shop as guest feature
Wish lists - if you want them to come back - create a wish list feature so that they can save ideas for next time they shop.
Make sure your check out area and view cart process are easy to see - don;t have them leave in frustration
Include images of your products in your cart
Perhaps get them to sign up to your newsletter after the purchase process on the thank you page. This is great way to highlight the other parts of your site that might interest them - rather than cluttering up the buy process

3. Put your customers mind at rest re site security

Make sure that your site is protected via HTTPS (SSL/TSL Protocol).
Showcase perhaps the payment gateway you are using, show their logo and link to their security page.
Highlight your card logos as well as PAYPAL

4. Focus on providing excellent customer support.

Make sure your refund policy is clearly available
Highlight your delivery methods and time frames easily
Show your phone number prominantly through the site - so that people can contact and speak with a real person.
Provide an online FAQ section that is easy to find and navigate
Include some online videos that will help people browse and buy from you

5. Merchandise your online store.

Don't forget to group items together - make sure people can easily grab the rest of the outfit
If the item has a spare part, a widget, an add on - make sure that your customers can Add to Cart with one click!

6. If you are discounting - have a real discount!

Today's online shopper is very savvy and also suffers from 'Discount Fatigue'. So if you are having a sale - don't tinker with discounts.
Go the whole way or bundle items to add value.

Tuesday Tip - Drive conversions with m-Commerce!

Tue, 07 May 2013 08:58:00 GMT

It's no secret that the huge rise of tablets and smartphones has changed the way that consumers shop.

According to a February 2013 media release from ACMA, almost half of Australian adults now own a smartphone.

They also also found that 9.2 million Australians went online via their mobile phone and 4.4 million accessed the internet using a tablet in the six months to May 2012. As an Online Business specialist, we've seen this trend increasing now faster than ever.

But do people still prefer to use a traditional desktop or laptop device to make online purchases? Not so much.

According to a report released by eBay and PayPal:

Mobile e-Commerce (or m-Commerce for short) accounted for $5.6B AUD in retail sales in 2012 - up from $155M in 2010. That's a 3600% increase in the space of two years.
Based on a poll of 3,200 people, the study forecast that 64% of Australians would own a smartphone by the end of 2012, compared to 51% in 2011. These totals hit 39% and 18% respectively for tablets.

As the owner of any store knows, first impressions matter.

If your potential customers are faced with a tiny screen they're forced to zoom in and scroll around on, you're potentially losing leads. There are two ways of providing your customers with a seamless mobile shopping experience:

With a responsive design that resizes automatically to the screen size. This is ideal for both mobiles and tablets, as it takes advantage of the screen resolution to provide a smooth viewing experience. This is the best idea for a new website, as it can be costly or technically difficult to convert an existing design to a responsive layout.
With a mobile version of your online store; a completely separate area of your website that is displayed on mobile devices only. Instead of displaying a scaled down version of your website as a responsive design does, it's a completely new layout optimized for mobile displays - big icons and reduced information on the screen so your customers just get the information they need, rather than having to scroll across multiple screens. While easier and more cost-effective than a responsive design, they are not as versatile, nor provide as smooth a viewing experience.

Whichever way you go, optimizing your store for m-Commerce will ensure that you aren't left behind.

Tuesday Tip - Focus your marketing with targeted lists!

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Are you making the most of your email marketing? While it's convenient to just have one or two large mailing lists, you're potentially losing out on conversions by bombarding your audience with communication that may not apply to them.

For example, we have a number of clients with eCommerce websites, and a number of clients without. If we're advertising eCommerce-only services to the clients without that feature, they'll eventually just automatically assume that our communication is no use to them and our campaigns will go straight into the trash.

To avoid this, the most successful email marketers use targeted lists to ensure that the audience they're reaching will actually have a use for the product. With Business Catalyst you can achieve this in two ways; by multiple mailing lists, or via custom reports.

Mailing Lists

One of the great things about Business Catalyst is that there is no limit to the number of mailing lists you can maintain. These lists are static, which means that they won't be automatically updated by the website - rather, new readers will need to be added either by you or by themselves through the website. As such they're great for seldom-changed databases.

You can have exactly as many as you need to make sure that you're not advertising to the wrong audience.

To create these lists, you just need to create a new Excel file with your desired audience and upload it to a new list in the Email Marketing area of the website;

Grab our tutorial on that here.

Custom Reports

Custom Reports are a great way to target users dynamically, especially where the audience will change regularly.

Say you want to target all of your customers that placed an order greater than $100 over the past month - with custom reports, this will always be updated to match the last month without the need to constantly keep it updated manually.

You just need to create and save a custom report for it to become available in the Campaign Recipient list.

Excluding Lists or Reports

In addition to the ways you can select recipients to receive your communication, Adobe Business Catalyst recently introduced a function whereby you could select lists to exclude.

You can view a video tutorial on this here,

but the long and short of it is that you can select lists to exclude; even if you have users in a recipient list, if they appear in an exclusion list they won't receive the campaign.

If you need a hand with targeting your campaigns, feel free to get in contact with us today and start increasing your conversions!

Tuesday Tip - Using tables in email marketing

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 08:59:00 GMT

We are often asked by clients what is the best way to layout your information in a newsletter

Because of the nature of mail programs, it is best and easiest to use a table to layout out your content.

We tend to create a template that tops and tails the style for the newsletter and then you have flexibility within the centre.

Important things to note

1. Your table should be set to be 100% - your overall template width will already be set to be 600px. This is standard email marketing practice

2. Plan your content first so that you know how many rows and columns you will need before you start.

3. Don't speak about more than 3 things. I know that sometimes you need to speak about more items, but try and keep to this rule.

4. Find an image for each item if possible - the more visually appealing the better to draw in the clickers.

5. Drop images into a cell, to enable better linking and positioning within your newsletter

A good example

Listed below is a table layout that is a good start, we have coloured the cells so that yo can see a good starting point.

Hi <tag_recipientfirstname>,

Anthology of Interest I

With gusto. Bender! Ship! Stop bickering or I'm going to come back there and change your opinions manually! Can I use the gun? We're rescuing ya. Kids don't turn rotten just from watching TV.

Can I use the gun?
WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOOD NIGHT!
Bender, quit destroying the universe!

Can I use the gun?

You'll have all the Slurm you can drink when you're partying with Slurms McKenzie! Noooooo! All I want is to be a monkey of moderate intelligence who wears a suit… that's why I'm transferring to business school! I decline the title of Iron Cook and accept the lesser title of Zinc Saucier, which I just made up. Uhh… also, comes with double prize money. Well I'da done better, but it's plum hard pleading a case while awaiting trial for that there incompetence. Belligerent and numerous.

IMAGE

WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOOD NIGHT!

Bender, quit destroying the universe!

IMAGE

Tuesday Tip - Hard bounces? No worries!

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:39:00 GMT

One of the most laborious and time-intensive parts of Email Marketing is keeping your lists clean. If you don't clean your hard (or permanent) bounces from your mailing lists, you end up just sending to addresses that don't exist - wasting your email credits and screwing up your campaign statistics.

To help with this, Adobe have released a new feature that will automatically remove the hard bounces from your mailing lists and unsubscribe the contact. This has been introduced for two main reasons:

To improve deliverability of email campaigns across the board
To reduce the amount of email credits used and wasted by hard bounces

This means that you no longer have to manually remove your hard bounces as the mailing lists are automatically kept up to date! No more wasted credits, and no more skewed performance reports from sending to old addresses!

But how to find out if a contact has been removed this way? Head to the contact's Email Marketing History and sort by the sent date - the most recently delivered will be the campaign that the contact returned a hard bounce. You can then click through to the campaign and check the bounce report; if they appear in the list then that's why they were removed!

As always, we're here to help with any questions or concerns! Fill out our online support form and one of our Support team will contact you to discuss how this update will help your campaigns!

Responsive Website Design - The New Black

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:00:00 GMT

Responsive Web Design is the latest buzzword in the web design & development community, but what is it exactly?

To put it simply, Responsive Web Design is an approach used when developing a website that ensures it scales onto any device that is used to view it and responds to the users behaviour.

The central idea of Responsive Web Design is that a website can use the same HTML/CSS/Javascript to serve a number of different devices with varying screen sizes/resolutions and automatically adjust to fit correctly. For example if you've ever browsed the web on a mobile device or tablet you will have noticed that when viewing some websites they appear tiny and you have to zoom in to read the content. Responsive Web Design aims to conquer this by ultimately using the available space and scaling content to fit.

How is this achieved?

Responsive Web Design uses a number of techniques to adjust and adapt to the screen size/resolution of the devices that are being used:

CSS Media Queries: Media Queries allow multiple layouts to be built within the same HTML document by selectively serving CSS Styles/Stylesheets based on the features of the device that is being used to view it. These features may include window/screen size, orientation and available colour output range. Basically it allows a layout to be specifically tailored to a range of devices without having to modify the HTML content behind it.
Flexible Layouts: When developing the HTML for a Responsive site Flexible Layouts are normally used to structure the elements of a page into modular components. This separation allows for independent scaling and movement of the components and the content within them. Using CSS Media Queries the layout of these components can be adjusted to fit the screen size of the device being used to view a website. Commonly on Desktop browsers page components are positioned into multiple columns sitting next to each other, whereas Tablet and Mobile device layouts would adjust the page components to stack on top of each other.
Responsive Images: Responsive Images are used in conjunction with CSS Media Queries and a Fluid Grid Layout, they scale and move automatically according to the layout that a device is using. This allows one version of an image to be used in multiple layouts, no extra loading is required. These are most commonly controlled through the "max-width : 100%" CSS rule.

Benefits of Responsive Web Design

Responsive Web Design negates the need for separate device templates and content duplication, one set of HTML/CSS/Javascript can be used to serve multiple layouts to devices and switch accordingly.
A website is not locked down to a specific screen resolution, rather it shifts and adapts to the screen that it is being viewed at.
No messy redirects are needed to switch between desktop and device layouts.
Improved SEO; your desktop/device content is served from the same URL.
Enhanced User Experience as the layout of a website has been tailored to suit the viewer.

Leveraging Device Features

The User Experience of a website can also be improved by utilising the native features of the users device in conjunction with Responsive Web Design. These features differ per device, the most common are listed below:

Phone: Utilising the phone feature of a device allows a user to dial a specified number straight from a website's content, no application switching necessary.
Email: Similarly to the phone feature, the email feature of a device allows a user to click a specified email address in content of a website, this will normally then open the email client of the device to send a new email to the specified email address.
Map: If you want to point a user to an address within a website the map feature can be used, this allows a link to be inserted into the website content and when it is clicked the devices default mapping program will open and show the provided address.
Location: The location function allows a device's browser to detect and find the geographic location of a user. This is particularly useful in providing proximity based searches.

Useful Links

Responsive Web Design Interactive Guide
Media Queries - A collection of responsive websites.

Kick arse keywords!

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 13:00:00 GMT

A common client question is how do I find good keywords? It is no good focussing on a phrase that no one actually searches on!

But first what are keywords?

Keywords are answers to your customers questions.

As any parent knows, a phrase is always better than a one word answer - so you need to think about key phrases and not just key words. Get in your customers head and think about the questions they might be asking online - and how your business will be providing the answers.

Google Ranks pages and not websites

Focus on keywords and phrases for the main pages or landing pages of your website in particular and not just something generic that would only suit your home page.

Start on your key landing pages first and then revisit your home page last, to help get all your head around what is really important in terms of answering your customers questions. Some pages of your site may not really answer your clients questions, so you do not need to focus on those pages initially.

Each page should only have say one primary keyword/phrase and a secondary keyword/phrase - otherwise you can dilute your relevancy to the search criteria or question.

Spy on your Competitors

Look at your competitors online from the point of view of your customers. What do they call their pages? What are their page URL - what is the page title tag? Read their content, are they using their key phrases in their content.

This could give you good ideas for how to describe your products and services

Research

There are several free tools that can help you find good keywords and phrases for your business.

Google Keyword tool – free tool. track the # of searches your keyword or phrase is getting locally and globally. The competition column tells you how many advertisers are bidding for that word.

KeywordEye

This tool defaults to Google UK since it’s developed by a UK team, so if you’re using it in the AU, you’ll have to change it to Google AU.

KeywordSpy

Keyword Spy allows you to quite literally “spy” on keywords. Great for competitor research.

SEMRush

This tool is also a paid tool with a free option.

How can I tell where make page comes now?

Before embarking on keyword research, it is a good idea to determine where your landing page is currently situated in google. This way you can see how any changes you make will improve page position.

http://whatpageofsearchamion.com/

Adobe Business Catalyst Update - March 2013

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:00:00 GMT

As part of their commitment to the Business Catalyst product, Adobe is continually releasing updates and enchancements to make the software better. The update that was rolled out last night is one of the biggest, and most exciting, we've seen.

What does it mean for you?

eCommerce

Fancy being able to include discount codes in your customer's invoice or order? How about gift vouchers?

Email Marketing

Lots of very nifty things happening here. While there are some very cool updates...

Changes to the mechanics of email delivery mean that your campaigns are significantly less likely to be marked as spam by the recipient email system.
Updates on the routing information included in the email code will assist with transparency and security.
The precursors to some changes that will trim the editor down to display only the tools you need.

The really big update here is the addition of recurring campaigns, an extension of their inclusion of dynamic content support for email campaigns.

Case study: One of our clients sends a weekly campaign including a link to their price list literature item. To do this each week, they need to do the following:

Upload a new file to the literature item
Create a new campaign
Update the campaign send details
Send the campaign

With this feature though, they can set up a weekly (or daily, fortnightly, monthly...) campaign - or have us do it for them - after which they'll have to do the following:

Upload a new file to the literature item
~~Create a new campaign~~ This happens automatically!
~~Update the campaign send details~~ This happens automatically!
~~Send the campaign~~ This happens automatically!

And of course this doesn't just cover literature. How would you like to be able to create a campaign to automatically send a monthly recap of your blog posts to your subscribers? Or upcoming events? Latest news items? It really is just set-and-forget!

If this is something you're interested in, contact your account manager to talk about how these new features can work for you!

SEO for Dummies - really!

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 22:11:00 GMT

I am not implying that you are a dummy - but sometimes in our haste to focus on our real jobs - we can forget some basics.

1. Focus on what your website and each page is all about

Seems obvious doesn't it - but sometimes we can forget the KISS principle and just forget the key message.

Picture in your mind a website for a bakery. We might have a page that takes about the history of our bakery, a page of easy to follow recipes, a page of awarding winning cakes and an order form to buy some. We might also have a series of pages that focus on our specialties - our sourdough, our chocolate cake and our chocolate chip cookies.

So we shouldn't spend too much time talking about our new ovens - no one cares about that!

Correct SEO attracts people to your website!

2. The page’s filename and path — the URL — is very important.

Get keywords in there. Don’t waste this space. You might have something like this: http://www.yourdomain.com/award-winning-chocolate-cake-recipes.

It doesn't matter if it seems long to you - be reasonable, but the Googlebots can still read all of it.

If you have named your page http://www.yourdomain.com/ourawards - people looking for award winning chocolate cake recipes might have a hard time finding you.

The page’s <TITLE></TITLE> tags are also very important.

You should make sure you include your keywords, like this: <TITLE>Award Winning Chocolate Cake Recipes - Step by Step Guide</TITLE>.

You need a different one for each page - they must be unique.

3. The description tag is important, though not always for search-results placement;

The description tag is where you can control the snippet of page text that appears in Google search results. This can often be the key reason someone clicks on your site and not someone elses. So stay on message.

4. Keywords - but not as you know it

Despite what you may have heard, the KEYWORDS meta tag holds little value; search engines either ignore it or give it very little weight. You should think of keywords more in context of being the "key words" that are in your page content and form the basis of your clients search criteria.

Put your keywords in Heading Styles

This tells Google to pay attention to this text - it is important, it also tells your viewers to pay attention to!

Wherever possible, use text links.

Search engines read the anchor text in the links to find out what the page the link points to is about. If you need lots of links in your site, use good keywords in those links. We like to use this alot in our footer area for the websites we build.

Repeat your keywords . . . but not too much.

If you want a page to rank well for chocolate cake, then it also needs to appear a few times throughout the body text. Be careful not to overdo it - it needs to make sense.

Draw attention to keywords in your body text. Make them bold; put them in bulleted lists, or make them italic.

Here’s the ideal optimized page:(and they are all in a bulleted list!)

You used the keywords in the filename
. . . and in the <TITLE></TITLE> tags
. . . and in the DESCRIPTION meta tag
. . . and in the page’s first <H1> tag
. . . and perhaps in some subheadings
. . . and multiple times throughout the body of the page
You have the keywords in links, elsewhere in your site, pointing to the page.
You have the keywords in links, on other websites, pointing to the page.

There is more that you can learn - but these are the must do basics - you can get it right!

If you need help - why not ask us to review your pages for you? Sometimes fresh eyes can make all the difference.

How to improve your website's SEO with images

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 07:14:00 GMT

Did you know that correct use of images can help your website rank further up the food chain?

Yes - those little Googlebots 'read' everything on your page - including all the information about your images.

Below are 4 simple steps to make sure your images are working best from a search engine optimization perspective.

1. Use the ALT TEXT TAG.

The ALT TEXT TAG is a field that allows you to label your image and allows the Googlebots to 'see' what your image is.

If for example you are a baker and have a website with a recipe for Chocolate Cake, you might drop a picture of a Chocolate Cake on your page.

The ALT Text TAG ( found by using your right mouse button on the image inside your CMS in Adobe Business Catalyst) is where you type in Award Winning Chocolate Cake for example.

2. Optimise your image for the web

Don't forget to resize your image.

This means to use image editing software to control both the physical size of your image and the file size of your image.

Images that are slow to download will have a negative impact on your site in terms of how Google will rank the page.

3. Give your image a good file name

Make sure you save your image with a description that matches the image.

My example above of the chocolate cake would work best with an image called award-winning-chocolate-cake.jpg and not DSC00056.jpg which indicates it has come straight from your digital camera!

4. Drop a caption on the page

We are drawn by our very nature to look at images before reading text. So whilst you have people immediately drawn to your image - give them something meaningful to read below/above or beside it as well.

Whilst I have no stats on this, a well chosen and captioned image on a page, could help reduce bounces.

SEO - it can be a piece of cake

3 simple steps to get your site indexed with Google Fast!

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:00:00 GMT

When a new site goes live, one of the very first things people wonder is when will I be on page 1! How can I make sure people find me?

Often clients are waiting for the Googlebots to index their site, so that people can find them online.

A Googlebot is the search software that Google sends out to trawl the internet and bring back data of new information. This is called crawling.

Indexing is what happens when the Googlebot comes back to Google with the data. This allows Google to determine when and how your site will show up in search results. During this process the Googlebot analyses the words on the page, the page titles, internal links, ALT tags and headings. There is alot of data it takes in.

We do 3 simple things to make sure your site gets indexed quickly

1. Submit a sitemap to Google.

The Adobe Business Catalyst platform creates this for you (its called sitemap.xml) and sends this automatically to Google everyday with all your changes.

It's a great way to get Google to take notice of your new site.

We always hook this up for our clients on Go Live and then it is a set and forget process - easy!

2. Verify your site with Google via Google Webmaster Tools

This process will also kick off the Googlebot's to trawl your site.

All our client sites are listed with Google in this manner - it gives us additional insights into your site as well to help with further SEO work and to help us and you identify areas for future keyword improvement.

3. Submit your Blog via Feedburner

A recent feature we are providing to our clients is to submit their Blog via Feedburner ( a free Google tool ).

This will again notify Google of all new blog posts - helping to boost your relevancy for search results.

SPECIAL OFFER - Rocket! Live, Realtime Website Analytics

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 13:00:00 GMT

Want to know who is on your website? What they're looking at? If your online marketing is working?

Rocket! Live is a powerful, easy to use website analytics tool providing realtime statistics - no experience necessary!

Watch your visitor interaction live; instantly see what is happening on your site, how they enter, how long they stay and which pages they're looking at.

NO OBLIGATION 30 DAYS FREE TRIAL *

Features include;

Live Dashboard - This is your control panel for your real time website statistics. The Live Dashboard is where we provide you with the real time website analytics and tracking of your Online Visitors. Find out what country they are from, how they found you and what page they are looking at and much more all in one page. We will also show you how many visitors are on your site, how many page views you have had, recent traffic sources and search keywords and a location map.

Recent Visitors - What if someone visits your site and you arent monitoring in real time? Will you miss this visitors actions on your website? No way! Recent visitors allows you to view your visitor's information and exactly what they did whilst on your site. Every click and action ( Downloads, Clicking on External Links ) will be logged here and you can choose to go back in time using our unlimited daterange selector.

Referrals - Referrals come from other sites that are not search engines, it's great to know where your traffic is coming from and this is where our real time referral tracking feature kicks in and provides you with this data. They could be blogs, directories or any links that you have to your site. It doesn't really matter where traffic comes from, you Rocket! Live to improve and build high quality referrers.

Keyword Analytics, Recent Searches - See what search terms are being used on the search engines to find your site. This invaluable tool shows you exactly what your site visitors have been searching for. Traffic from search engines is the lifeblood of most websites and blogs. This tool allows you to view the keywords used to reach your site, ranked by their popularity. This can help you identify keywords that are working, and those that aren't, so that you can optimise them accordingly.

Export Reports - Our analytics tools are able to export a full range of reports. Any report can be set to use your pre-defined date/time settings, this means that you can have weekly, monthly or even annual reports. These are professional reports in CSV or PDF format.

Social Network Tracking - We also provide a full suite of reporting tools for Facebook, Twitter and Mentions. You can attach your own or a company Facebook or Twitter account to be monitored. Traffic stats, likes, retweets will also be shown.

Top Keywords - Would you like to know what key words or key phrases are driving traffic to your site? Any serious webmaster must also know. See exactly what keywords are working for you and those that are not performing so well. The real time keyword tracking feature is ideal for those interested in making money online via affiliate sales, those performing SEO work and webmasters in general.

Entry/Exit Page Reporting - For those involved in marketing the entry or landing page is crucial. You need to make sure that if you are spending money on online advertising that it is effective, a poor landing page will mean that your customers have to search your site again to find what they are looking for. Exit Page reporting is the most important feature out of all the real time website tracking features. It is crucial for any webmaster to know what the last page viewed was before a visitor left. The exit page can tell you that there is an issue with your site. The real time exit page tracking feature will display every page that your visitors are exiting your site from.

Email Reporting - For those who do not have the time to monitor your site in real time, you can select to have your reports emailed to a specified address daily, weekly, monthly or not at all. The email report contains the following: Number of online visitors, Number of visitors, number of hits, number of page views, search engines used, top key-phrases, top referral sites, average time a visitor spends on your site, top pages and much more.

Browsers & Operating Systems Used - Understand what browsers and operating systems are used to view your site so your it can be designed to best meet your viewers.

Chat live to your Visitors - Some online service providers charge $10-$30 a month to have an online support chat feature on your site. We include this free as part of our package! The online chat feature allows your site visitors to interact directly with you when you are signed into your website. A great sales feature, as you can proactively 'greet' your viewer to answer customer questions when you see who is online via your dashboard!

Go back in time! - Compare against time. Rocket! Live offers two levels of analysis - simple summary statistics for all your pageloads, unique, returning, first-time visitors, bounce rate and highly detailed analysis of your latest pageloads. we offer unlimited log size, so you can use Archive feature (Date range selector) to view older data.

Detailed Visitor Information - 'Zoom in' on individual visitors for a detailed report on where they're from, their system settings, and most importantly, what link reffered them to your site and their navigation path through your site. Click the magnifying glass beside each to zoom in on and expose detailed reports to view details of everything on your stats and view visitors relating to them.

Live Map - Watch the world map automatically refresh to show your current online visitors location using our accurate city-wide geolocation service on earth map. You can even drag and zoom to breakdown viewers by location.

NO OBLIGATION 30 DAYS FREE TRIAL *

* At end of month discounted setup of $200 - normally $270 + $18 per month (plus gst)

How Mobile is Changing Business

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 13:00:00 GMT

I wonder if Martin Cooper ever realised in his wildest dreams where his invention of the mobile phone would lead humanity?

However as the growth of mobile access will inevitably take over desktop web traffic, you may be wondering about it's impact on your business!

Where has my old interface gone?

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:00:00 GMT

Are you thinking the console has changed recently?

Adobe Business Catalyst is making some changes to the website administration interface and some changes may have slipped out.

Version 3 is not quite ready for release and we will be running orientation sessions in March just outlining where things are different.

You know you have landed on the BETA VERSION 3 as it will look like the below.

If you find yourself in version 3 and want to get back -

Find your name in the top right hand corner, mouse over it and choose Older Interface.

To have a sneak peek, just click on the Version 3 link in the top right hand corner of your website admin area.

Is scam awareness your domain?

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 13:00:00 GMT

There are a myriad of potential pitfalls that internet users need to be wary of in the online world - but it’s not just the consumer that has to be wary of online scams. There are some common scams that online traders face as well. In this blog post, the first in a series on protecting your business online, we’re going to examine the most common scam that our own clients experience.

Domain name scams

Domain names are addresses for websites. For example, the main domain for our own website is bosweb.com.au. Basically every site you visit has a domain name – any online trading venture needs a domain name to even get started. As such, they’re a prime target for scammers, since everyone has at least one domain name, and these scams generally aim to get you to pay money for domains you don’t need.

The renewal notice

This is the most common scam that we hear about from our clients. This scam presents in one of two ways:

An 'invoice' for a related domain - .com, for example, when you own .com.au - click on the image for an example
An 'invoice' for your domain, but with a different registrar

While structured like a professionally ordered invoice, if you look closely you can see that nowhere have they told the recipient that money is owed. They are merely either:

Advertising the fact that a similar domain is available to purchase, and at an exorbitantly inflated price.
Offering to transfer your existing domain to their service

Either way, it's easy to see how you can get stung if you aren't paying close attention.

Should the scam be successful, trying to then get access to your domain to transfer it to a reputable registrar or even just to point the domain to your website so it serves some purpose, is a major headache and generally takes weeks or months to resolve. These scammers usually present themselves very professionally - here’s an example - but it’s all part of conning the recipient into paying too much for something the recipient doesn’t want or need.

The “Internet Keyword”

Another client of ours, Kim McRae from iKiFit, received the following enquiry (verbatim) through his website:

Dear ikifit team Our organization received a formal application from a company who is called Maltion Ltd are applying to register "ikifit" as trademark keyword and wireless keyword. The trademark keyword can be typed into IE address bar and go directly to assigned website, it do not need "www." nor ".com", ".net", etc, It will skip google search engine ,can be used all the world's browsers .It is most important.

The wireless keyword is the latest products on the Internet, It can be through SMS or WAP, and 3G fast access to sites, Improve website ranking and traffic. It is more convenient and more important

In order to prevent cyber piracy,Please explain: 1: Whether this company is your IT supplier or distributor. 2: Whether you are interested in registering these keywords first to preservation your company’s brand. We are now obligated to inform you this issue ,So we will handle the next step after this audit procedure. Pls understand.

Best regards Michael INSTRACC – Head Office

This scam is trying to scare you into buying a product to protect your trademark and intellectual property. You might also think that getting these keywords first will make it even easier for your customers to find you online.

Of course, there are no such things as trademark or wireless keywords as described above – it’s simply not how the internet works. You’ll also be informed that on top of the (inflated) cost to register these pretend solutions, they'll hit you with a charge for helping you dispute the other (fictional) company’s claim.

The team at iKiFit suspected it was dodgy, and asked us for advice. For more information on this scam, along with examples of further communication from the scammers, click here.

What should I do if I receive unsolicited invoices or offers for domain-related services?

If you’re unsure of the veracity of an offer you receive, do your homework and check the following:

Double-check that the domain listed matches a domain that you currently own, especially with regards to the country code - .com is not the same as .com.au.
Is this communication from your current domain registrar? Do you recognise the company at all?
Have you searched online for the company? A quick search for one of these scammers brings up their website, along with a number of articles from reputable sources documenting the scam. If you find articles like this, or no information at all, it's probably a scam!
If you’re still unsure, contact us or your current domain registrar for advice!

If you’ve identified a scam attempt, just ignore it – bin the letter or delete the email. You can also report the scam to the ACCC’s SCAMwatch service, which will help them with identifying current domain scamming trends and, ultimately, protecting other businesses from these scams. If you have been the victim of a domain name scam, SCAMwatch provides information on the options available to you.

Remember to exercise the same caution you would normally use when entering into an agreement with another company. And remember, if it’s too good to be true then it probably is!