Your own photography may be appropriate. Especially if you are creating galleries in your website. Just remember to take note of shadows, light, and composition. In this digital era it doesn’t cost anything more to take 10 photos and choose the best one.

When it comes to other images on your website, a professional touch can really help. This is where stock photography can come in.

Stock sites such as iStockphoto http://www.istockphoto.com/ have a huge range of styles and topics covered. Images can work out to cost mere dollars. Note it pays to check how many $ = a credit or a point before you accidentally buy something expensive! Also make sure you are buying images at an appropriate image pixel size and file size for web. You will find they are cheaper! Online images only need to be 72 dpi unlike print which requires 300 dpi.

Think about your website. Will clear cut images stand out best? Do you want your images all to be rectangular? Make sure your images make sense together as a group and match stylistically. Little details such as making sure images are all the same width lend design edge and credibility to your website.

Think about good search words to find that perfect image. “Man Suit Orange Fish”

One last tip… step away from the clipart!

Check your Finda Listing then Register

* Browse to http://www.finda.co.nz/
* Search for your business to check if you are there! Put your business name in ‘I’m looking for’

… and your location in ‘Located In’

…. and click FIND.

* Not there? Click on REGISTER at the very top right hand corner of the site. Follow the registration process.
* Surprised to find your business listed? Check your details. If you didn’t create this account, get in touch with Finda and get access to update your details!

NOTE: Finda definitely used to be free. We are getting some feedback that they are now charging for changes to your details. So make sure you check first!

So the task this week is simple. Go and edit that home page (now).
And write a nice welcome message for 2012, or better yet write something exciting and new your company is offering clients this year.

Tablets have been around for a very long time. Touch screen technology has been around for a very long time. The two never took off together in the market until Apple launched their insanely successful iPad and iPad 2. There are a multitude of me-too products being released, with Android or Windows Mobile operating systems on them. So far none have made much of a dent.

As mobile Internet speeds got quicker, and chips got smaller, smart phones became possible. Rather than phones, these are literally little Internet enabled computers, with speeds and capacities seen in laptops not long ago. Again lead into the market by the iconic Apple iPhone. The difference with smart phones to iPads is that other manufacturers came on board quickly with their own handsets, with the largest number of smart phones running the now dominant Android operating system.

Brands and competition aside, there are big ramifications for website owners. From my own experience, these gadgets redefine how I consume content. I’m not big on entering large amounts of content through them yet, but I now read more emails on a touch device than my laptop, check the weather, find routes and get turn by turn in the car, and constantly check on social media such as facebook. Of more interest is the fact I find most of my accommodation through my phone. I use an app to scan barcodes on items I want to price check. Last week my wife and I watched a how-to on breast feeding, on YouTube on the phone.

But of most significance of all, I search for places on the phone and tablet.

In comes Google. With so many people consuming Internet content on mobile devices, and Google’s dominance in search and mapping, you simply can’t ignore-

1) Google places listings for your business and
2) Search engine optimising your website , especially for your local geographical area. Think about dotting your city or even local suburb names into your website content.

If you are in a very competitive industry, and/or have a very specific market you want to reach online, its a very different story. This is when you need to know exactly what you want to optimise for. I.e. Which search phrases are the ones you really want to rank well for. Then it is a whole new level of optimisation and measurement well beyond simply writing content with keywords, meta titles and descriptions.

The trouble is, anyone can call themselves an SEO specialist. You need to know what they plan to achieve. It is particularly easy to optimise a website for key phrases that aren’t competitive, achieving rankings on page one. Likewise traffic can be artificially increased by optimising for particularly broad terms. On the face of it this can all look great. The reality is if it doesn’t translate into conversions then it is a waste of time! You need to hit your target market and increase the traffic from that group.

We don’t optimise our site for just “design” as this can cover design of anything at all. It could also get traffic from people seeking design training in many areas.

So in short, before you start thinking about optimising, or even talking to an SEO specialist, the reality is you need to know what it is your target market search for. You need to know your target market’s language. The best person to analyse and determine your target market behaviours is actually an experienced marketer.

First of all go to http://www.obviousidea.com/windows-software/light-image-resizer and click on the green button “Download Free Now”.

For a really quick getting started, watch this 30 second video on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siQzcF9h9TY&feature=player_embedded

I really like the fact you can right click on an image in your File Explorer and select Light Image Resizer from there. Or you can open it as a program and open files in it.

The first part is simple. Either click to open image files, or select a whole folder with images in it.

Next click the Options tab or the Next button. There are a lot of options here. And a few more on the Effects, Misc and Publish tabs. But you don’t need to look at these if you don’t want. Simple select from the first drop down box a profile. So for instance to simply resize some images to upload to your website through the editing tool, you might select the 800×600 Profile. This will knock your photos back to something that will upload easily without timing out.

You could just hit the Process button now and you are done!

For the more adventurous, here are some cool features….
Note you can hit the Preview button at the top right at any time to see what the results will be!

* Click on the New Profile button before playing around with the settings (You don’t want to overwrite one of the standard ones like I did!).
* Put in a custom width and/or height. This is great if you are resizing images for eCommerce products.

* Experiment with the Mode. Center and Crop can have interesting results. Make sure you use the Preview button at the top to see what the result will be.

* Under effects you can even import a watermark and set the transparency and position.

* Filename Mask is an interesting one. With the popup help you can create a name template for the final filename of the new image files. Something like %F_%W will rename the new image files with the original file name and the new width. So you might end up with something like surefire-logo_250.jpg.
* Action will usually be to make new copies.
*Destination can be the original folder, or create a new one.

It is worth spending a few minutes getting your head around this program, so choose some images that don’t matter too much and give it a go!

We aren’t plugging any particular online directory, but frankly at least having a free Finda listing (which is part of the Yellow Pages Group) for your business is a no-brainer.

The first thing you need to know is - its free.

However this is the IMPORTANT part -

Finda is an official data provider to Google in New Zealand, providing Google with local business data which Google uses for its Google Places listings.

What does that mean? When you search on Google Maps for New Zealand pages, and you see information on local businesses and pins on the map, that information has probably come from Finda.

With mobile phone apps and smart phones putting the Internet in everyone’s pockets this is becoming critical.

It’s simple really, get your information in Finda and your business will appear on Google Map searches.

For step by step instructions on how to check your listing or register, check out our blog article here.

NOTE: Finda definitely used to be free. We are getting some feedback that they are now charging for changes to your details. So make sure you check first!

The first step is actually to have in mind the search phrases you want people to find you with on Google searches. You will use these in headings, content and meta tags.

* Think what your clients might search, and test them out on Google yourself.
*Better yet ask some of your real clients the following question: “What would you type in Google, to search for a business with services like ours?”

It can be really helpful to write all of this content in a blank document and transfer it later to your actual website through the content editing tool.
This way there is no pressure, and no distractions!
I find it much easier to write content, load it into the website, THEN add images and pictures later.

Sketch a plan on a piece of paper for the menu structure you want for the site. Remember you can shift the menu items around later and also rename them. A good starting point is the top level menu items shown on your design proof.

For each page do the following:

1 Type the menu name that will appear on the menu button for this page. Refer to your design proof if this is for a new website.

2 Jot down page specific search phrases. These relate to this page in addition to the overall site ones.

3 Write a main page heading for the content page. Keeping in mind the overall and page specific search phrases.

4 Write content. If you are stuck - ask yourself a question. Pretend someone has rung you on the phone. They have asked you a questions about the topic of this page. Simply answer the question! Just as you would in person. Make sure you break the content into paragraphs with subheadings, and always keep in mind the overall and page specific search phrases.

5 This is the perfect time to write the Meta Title for your new page. If you aren’t sure how, check out one of our Surefire Help Videos or blog articles.

6 If you are really committed, now is also a good time to write the Meta Description. If you aren’t sure how, check out one of our Surefire Help Videos or blog articles.

7 Load all of your content to the website using the content editing tool. Then go searching for the perfect stock image to break up the page, or get snapping with your camera.

PC Windows

Okay so on a PC in Windows you can take a screen shot of the whole screen of your computer by simply pressing the “PrtSc” button on your keyboard. It stands for ‘Print Screen’!
Then open something like a Microsoft Word document or a new email, or a drawing program of some type. Right click and select ‘Paste’ or use “Ctrl V” whichever you prefer.

Sometimes you don’t want a screen shot of the entire computer screen. It can be very handy to just capture the current window.

So make sure the window you want to capture is clicked on and then holding down the “Alt” button on your keyboard, tap the “PrtSc” button (then release the “Alt” button). Then just like above, open something like a Microsoft Word document or a new email, or a drawing program of some type. Right click and select ‘Paste’ or use “Ctrl V” whichever you prefer. Just that window will be pasted!

Microsoft OneNote

If you have Microsoft Office and use the OneNote application, it has a really nice capture built into it called screen clippings. This runs all the time and for MS OneNote 2010 can be used in the following way-

Just hold down the “windows” button on your keyboard (that’s the one with the windows flag on it that you’ve never used before!), and tap the “S” key. Very cool!

Apple Mac

With Apple Macs it is a case of using a program called Preview, or trying the following commands.

Command-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it as a file on the desktop
Command-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it as a file on the desktop
Command-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it as a file on the desktop
Command-Control-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it to the clipboard
Command-Control-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it to the clipboard
Command-Control-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it to the clipboard

Then open something like a new email, or a drawing program of some type. Select ‘Paste’ to insert.

Just weeks to Christmas!

Beat the Christmas Eve mad panic to let customers and suppliers know your Christmas hours!

1 Create a Christmas Hours page on your website and enter the details in there now.

2 Mark in your calendar the date to email everyone with a link to your Christmas details. It won’t hurt to get clients looking at your website either!