When it comes to online consumer purchasing decisions, one area that is growing in significance is the influence of other people’s opinions. Similar to the offline world, word of mouth is equally influential online. It is also helpful to remember that reviews read and shared online don’t just stay there, the people who wrote or read these, may also tell others whom they see at home, in a social environment or at work. According to Marketingcharts.com, research performed by Deloitte’s Consumer...

In an earlier post I introduced just some of the ways you can try to improve your website's conversion rate and get more visitors to complete a desired action on your website such as submitting an enquiry, signing up for an offer, providing you with their email address, making a purchase, and so on. In this follow-up post I'll introduce you to the process of Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO), while also highlighting some of the tools that can be used to...

According to Gartner (the world's leading information technology research and advisory company), by 2013 mobile devices will overtake desktop computers and laptops as the most common web access device worldwide. And while New Zealand’s smartphone uptake is slightly behind the rest of the world, the increased adoption of these devices cannot be ignored. As a consequence it’s becoming more and more necessary to not only consider these devices, but actually cater to them in your website design and build process. When...

It seems that on a daily basis the news contains reports of someone being hacked, whether it is a large company or your friendly neighbour down the street. These days most people appear to be a lot more aware of spam emails, but there is another very important security issue that is often over looked – are you running the latest version of your browser? There are five major browsers available at the moment and all of them are constantly being...

If you haven’t heard of Google AdWords before (also known as PPC and Pay Per Click advertising), chances are you have seen it at work, but just haven’t realised it. When you last performed a search on Google, you may have seen small text advertisements appearing at the top of the page and down the right-hand side of the page. If you ever wondered how they got to appear there, it is because of Google AdWords advertising. How Does Google AdWords...

As online marketing becomes increasingly mainstream in NZ it’s clear that any successful online marketing strategy needs to address a variety of factors, not just traffic generation. While it’s certainly important to see your daily/weekly/monthly visits graph trending upwards over time, you also need to pay close attention to what’s happening with your website’s ‘conversion rate’ - the percentage of visitors who take a desired action on your site, such as submitting an enquiry, signing up for an offer, providing you...

Each email service client treats HTML and CSS differently and this can cause many issues when trying to code an HTML template that looks effective for all recipients. With this post I'll point out some main problems you may come across when building an HTML email template and give you some tips avoiding them. Before you even start designing your template you need to start thinking about how it will work as an email. Your design should be simple. You want...

At 12.51pm on Tuesday 22nd February Christchurch as we all knew it changed. The beautiful ‘Garden City’ and my hometown of Christchurch has been in a state of turmoil and mixed emotion since. Many iconic buildings that I, along with many others used to walk past on a daily basis have been reduced to rubble and more importantly many people have been severely affected. The CBD is out of bounds and suburbs are gradually gaining use of water and power, meaning...

'The pressure on website developers to be experts in all areas of the web is becoming greater and greater. It seems every few months there is a new tool, new idea, new way of approaching the same thing, and the expectation is that web developers must learn and incorporate it. Google Page Speed is one of these tools. Google Page Speed was initially released in June 2009 (source: http://code.google.com/p/page-speed/wiki/ReleaseNotes) as an add-on for Firebug in Firefox. The aim of the tool...

It seems that most things these days can be done via your friendly web browser from devices of many shapes and forms. For the most part, viewing websites should be a breeze after the hours of input from the designers and web developers. But, it is no longer enough to just slap up a 2 dimensional website and display the bare basics of your client's information. Nearly everyone these days wants the 'Web 2.0' experience, and if they don't know about...