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When you sit down to write content for your website, who exactly are you writing the content for?

It’s very easy to fall into the trap of writing your web content to please yourself as a business owner – or if you work for a larger company, to please your boss, or the person who’s going to sign off on the finished article.

STOP!

If you want your website to deliver results, your web content should be written to appeal directly to just one group of people: your site visitors.

Know your web audience

When you built your website your web designer / web development team will have spent time researching the online audience your site is designed to appeal to (or at least they should have). That information is just as crucial… if not more so… when it comes to writing effective content for your website.

Take a bit of time to re-acquaint yourself with your online audience. Work out who you want to reach out to online, and tailor your content accordingly.

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Malware is on the increase – and it’s not just your desktop PC that’s at risk of infection.

We all know how vital it is to keep our desktop computers up to date with the latest patches, updates, virus definitions and so on. But many forget that their webserver, and the software that runs on it, could also be prone to exploit and attack by unsavoury cyber-hackers.

Irish website owners need to be vigilant that their sites aren’t being compromised by unscrupulous hackers and malicious code.

We take care of most updates for you

At LetsHost the security of our servers, and your website, is a top priority. We’re constantly vigilant, and follow industry best practice when it comes to our server security set up.

All relevant patches and security updates are applied to all of our server software as soon as they become available, and we stay up-to-date with the latest security news, upcoming threats and solutions, giving you peace of mind.

There are, however, a few steps you, as a hosting customer, can take to help us make your website even more secure.

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E-mail marketing is still a winner when it comes to selling products and services. Consumers prefer e-mail communications to direct mail, social media, in store promotions and text messages, according to the latest figures.

A recent survey of shoppers across Illinois, Kansas, North Carolina and Ohio by CrossView revealed that almost 4 in 10 of them would elect to receive promotional information via e-mail.

E-mail turned out to be the most popular promotional communications channel amongst US consumers, followed by direct mail (23%), Text Messaging (18%), in store advertising (11%), social media (9%) with newspaper, TV and other traditional channels bringing up the rear with a total of just 3% between them.

Those are pretty telling statistics, and suggest strongly that investing in building a solid opt-in e-mail list and delivering compelling e-mail marketing on a regular basis is still a fantastic way for businesses to connect with consumers.

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Your LetsHost account offers great e-mail features as standard, with everything you need to set up and manage all of the e-mail addresses you’ll ever need.

E-mail from LetsHost is straightforward to set up, easy to use, and with a few simple maintenance steps management is a breeze.

Keeping your e-mail accounts healthy

• Keep an eye on space: check your e-mail accounts, regularly. If you have quotas set up for particular accounts, ensure that none of your mailboxes are full or approaching capacity. If they are download or delete mail to free up space.
• Clear up your “catch-all”: if you use a default address for undelivered mail on your domains (often dubbed a catch-all address) check it regularly for legitimate undelivered mail (miss-spelled e-mail addresses and the like) and delete any spam.

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When you’re choosing your web hosting there can be so many variables that it’s difficult to know where to start.

There’s storage to think about, monthly bandwidth, domain registration, e-mail, databases, online applications and scripts, website builders and much more.

Here at LetsHost we pride ourselves on having some of the best web hosting support in the business… but what about supporting people who aren’t yet LetsHost customers?

We decided it was time to take the pain out of choosing the perfect Irish web hosting plan.

Just click on the banner, answer a few simple questions about what you want from your Irish web hosting plan, fill in your contact details and one of our friendly team of web hosting experts will get in touch via your preferred contact method (phone or e-mail) for a chat.

They’ll talk you through everything, and once they have a clear idea of exactly what you need, they’ll advise you on the ideal hosting solution for your needs.

LetsHost offers a wide range of hosting and domain management solutions specifically tailored to deliver outstanding value and performance to Irish website owners. From shared hosting for home users and hobbyists to high-performance dedicated servers for large business clients and high-volume e-commerce systems, we have all your Irish hosting needs covered.

So click on the banner, and let us help you pick the ideal Irish hosting solution today!

We are pleased to announce the following software packages have been updated in our Fantastico software installer.

- Coppermine Photo Gallery: 1.4.26 -> 1.5.6
- Joomla 1.5: 1.5.17 -> 1.5.20
- Moodle: 1.9.8 -> 1.9.9
- Soholaunch Pro Edition: 4.9.3 r17 -> 4.9.3 r41
- TikiWiki: 4.1 -> 4.3
- WordPress: 2.9.2 -> 3.0
- Zen Cart: 1.3.9b -> 1.3.9d

These updated scripts are available immediately on all shared server accounts. You can install or update your current software installation from your control panel.

Fantastico, for those who have not used it, is a great tool that allows you to automatically install or update many of the most popular open source scripts.  For example, if you want a shopping cart on your website, you have the choice of many scripts, including osCommerce or Zen-Cart.  For blogs, we have Word Press, Drupal and many more.  Simply log in to your control panel, and select Fantastico.  You are then presented with the range of scripts available, and with a few click your software is fully installed and working.

Image by suzukik via Flickr

In a recent post we looked at how you can use web analytics tools already included in your LetsHost Complete Hosting Plan to analyse your website traffic and gain valuable insight into how your visitors use your site.

While these basic log file analysis tools are fine for giving you a general overview of activity on your site, they offer a very basic user interface and a pretty inflexible window on your logfile data.

Enterprise class analytics software for free

Enterprise class analytics software can (and does) cost many thousands of Euro, but thanks to Google many of the features you’d typically find in high end commercial analytics software are now available for free.

Welcome to Google Analytics.

Setting up Google Analytics on your website is easy. Once you have a Google account (if you don’t already have one you can sign up for a Google account here), just head over to the Google Analytics website.

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According to a study by the e-tailing group and PowerReviews around 50% of Internet users now routinely use the web to research products and services before deciding what to buy.

E-marketer reports that even when the customer buys offline, the web often plays a fundamental role in the purchasing decisions that they make. Respondents to the survey said that online research saved them time and made them more confident about the products and services they were buying.

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According to a report by The UK Online Measurement Company (part of the Nielsen group) UK internet users spent 65% more time online during April 2010 (some 884 million hours) than they did during the same period in 2007.

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Blogging can be a powerful tool for your business, helping you to engage with your customers and attract more search traffic. But it’s important to bear a few things in mind before diving in and taking your business into the blogosphere:

• Give and take: a blog isn’t about pushing a message or peddling your wares… leave the sales pitches on your corporate / business website. Use your blog to inform, entertain and reveal a more personal side to your business.
• Announcements are fine, just don’t go overboard: of course, your blog is a great medium to announce new products, special offers or competitions… but intersperse the promotional posts with plenty of interesting added-value content.
• Listen and engage: any blogging platform worth its salt will allow (and encourage) comments from readers. Make sure these are enabled, and listen to what people are saying. Your blog can give you invaluable insight into what your customers are looking for from your business.
• Update regularly: if you’re going to blog successfully you need to blog regularly. Regularity isn’t the same thing as frequency – you can choose to post once a day, once a week, once a month… whatever suits (although once a month may be stretching it a bit), but do try to add posts to your blog on a regular basis.
• Read and respond: Remember that your blog isn’t an isolated entity. Make sure you read and comment on other blogs in your industry or field of expertise. If you feel you have something of value to add, respond to what you’ve read with a blog post of your own (if you link to another blog from an article on your own a link called a “pingback” will normally appear in the comment section directing readers from that blog to yours).

Blogs can be a fantastic way to expand your web presence beyond the often mundane facade of a corporate information site or the utilitarian imperative of a functional web-store. So go on… inject a bit of personality into your web presence, and start building a community around your brand.