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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.

Here are a few tips to help you write more effective web content:

1. Grab attention: web users are impatient – forget flowery introductions and verbose descriptions, make your writing clear, concise and to the point from the start.
2. Make it scannable: avoid large blocks of uninterrupted text. Use headings, sub-headings and bullet points to break up the text into manageable, scannable stand-alone chunks.
3. Make it original: unique, original content is a great way to engage your users, establish your relevance and authority, and search engines love it.
4. Use the inverted pyramid: the inverted pyramid writing style, often used for newspaper stories, tends to work well on the web. Aim to deliver the most important points of your story/information first, going on to deliver supporting details in order of decreasing importance down the page. Ideally, the user should be able to stop reading at any point and still get the gist of your content.
5. Be consistent: use a simple, easy to read writing style, and keep things consistent across the site. If you have a number of people creating your content, consider developing a style-guide or house-style to help maintain consistency.
6. Engage with your reader: use a conversational style, and write as if you were talking to an individual rather than a large audience. It will help your writing to engage with the reader on a much more personal level.

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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.

1. Choose a secure account/FTP password: this is the number one route by which any hosting account is compromised. Use a long enough password (at least eight characters) with a mix of capital and lower case letters, numbers and special characters. Don’t make it easy for them.
2. Keep your software up to date: there is a lot of software out there that makes running your website a lot easier – content management systems like WordPress, Joomla or Drupal, for example. Periodically these projects will release software updates, many of which contain security patches for vulnerabilities discovered in the code. APPLY THESE UPDATES DILIGENTLY as soon as they’re released to help keep your site secure.
3. Choose third party content wisely: if you choose to share third party content (widgets, ad-placements, etc.) on your site, make sure they are coming from a reputable source, and that you’re happy the code you voluntarily drop into your site is only doing what you expect it to do.
4. Look out for suspicious activity: everything that happens on your webserver is recorded in your server log files… make a habit of scanning them periodically for anything that looks suspicious or out-of-place – such as redirects or links to IP addresses or domains you don’t recognise.
5. Keep an eye on Google Webmaster Tools: if Google indexes your site and finds malicious code it will typically flag the offending pages as potentially dangerous to users. It will also flag those pages in Google Webmaster Tools for the afflicted domain, letting you know which pages on your site are compromised (look under “Diagnostics > Malware”).

What if my site has been hacked?

Having well maintained servers like LetsHost’s, and applying diligent account management practices, will help keep your hosting account malware free, but hacking can still happen.

If it happens to you the best thing to do is to take your site offline as soon as you notice a problem, and follow this advice on removing malware from Google’s Webmaster Central blog, or contact the LetsHost Support team for advice and assistance.

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.

E-Mail Marketing tools for small businesses

When you’re just starting out it seems easy enough to manage your promotional e-mail using your desktop e-mail client, but that soon gets unwieldy. It’s also difficult to manage industry best practice and comply with anti—spam requirements like double-opt-in and unsubscribe requests.

To market effectively using e-mail you’re going to need dedicated e-mail marketing tools.

Do it yourself e-mail marketing tools

If you’re a LetsHost Complete hosting customer, you already have access to a great free e-mail list manager in your Fantastico script library. Just log in to your control panel, scroll down to Fantastico and look for PHP List.

You can install PHP List on your server for free, and use it to manage all of your e-mail lists and campaigns. Installation and setup is reasonably straightforward, but is a bit more involved than the hosted tools listed below.

You’ll find a detailed article on setting up and configuring PHP List on the webreference.com site.

Hosted e-mail marketing services

These are a great option for small businesses, because all of the technical stuff is taken care of for you. You simply create your account, fill in your details, and start managing your e-mail marketing campaigns.

E-mail services typically offer a free or very low cost trial, so you can try before you buy, and then charge an ongoing annual or monthly fee depending on the volume of e-mail you send in any given month.

Here are a few popular e-mail services you can try to help connect you with your existing customers and give your sales a boost:

Benchmark E-mail: an affordable, feature rich and easy-to-use  system that lets you start small and grows seamlessly with your business. Benchmark offers a free 30 day trial.

AWeber: the e-mail marketing and sequential auto-responder service of choice among many A-List internet marketers, AWeber has everything you need to seamlessly manage multiple e-mail marketing campaigns for your small business. You can sign up for an AWeber account for just $1.

NewsWeaver: Irish e-mail marketing services company NewsWeaver offers another very popular solution focussed on the distribution of high-quality e-mail newsletters, but with all the features necessary for managing comprehensive e-mail marketing campaigns. Newsweaver offers a 30 day free trial.

There are many other services out there, and most of them offer a “try before you buy” free trial.

So give e-mail marketing a whirl, it could be just the thing to boost your small business’s online sales.

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.

• Monitor spam tools: BoxTrapper and SpamAssassin, both of which come as standard on your LetsHost Complete Irish Hosting Plan, are  very powerful tools for managing the incessant flow of junk mail into your accounts. It’s important to monitor your spam management tool of choice regularly to make sure all of your legitimate e-mail is being white-listed and delivered correctly.
• Remove unused / unnecessary accounts: we’ve all done it… left “dormant” e-mail accounts sitting on our servers when they’re well past their sell-by date. They not only take up space on your server, they also add to clutter in your e-mail control panel, making maintenance of your active accounts less efficient.
• Check your forwarders and filters: your hosting account offers comprehensive filtering and mail forwarding features to help you manage the delivery of your incoming mail. In some respects these are “set them and forget them” rules… but it pays to check them regularly to make sure they’re still up to date, and that all of your mail is being delivered to the right place.

Your LetsHost e-mail is a powerful, versatile and cost effective communications tool. With just a little bit of e-mail account maintenance you can keep it efficient and effective.

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!

- 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.

While you’re on the Google Analytics homepage, check out some of the great, free Google resources to help you get more out of the product. When you’re ready, just click on the blue “Access Analytics” button, and sign in with your Google credentials.

• Follow the on-screen prompts to set up your analytics account.
• Once you’ve created your account you’ll see a page with Analytics: Tracking Instructions. For a standard setup you can leave the settings on the left at the default (single domain) value
• The code in the pane in the middle of your screen is your Google Analytics tracking code for your website.
• You’ll need to copy this code and add it (or ask your web designer to add it) immediately before the closing </head> on every page on your site that you want to track.

That’s it. Google Analytics will start tracking data for your website, and offers you a wide range of metrics, tools, goals and customisations to help you make informed decisions about your online marketing.

For a quick overview of the basics, check out the video below, and check out the great free Google Analytics learning resources in the Google Conversion University.

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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.

An increasingly important part of that online research process is  reading consumer reviews. They can do this on specialist consumer review sites like Irish based LouderVoice.com, on niche vertical market review sites like TripAdvisor, and, increasingly, on retailers’ own websites.

Respondents to the “2010 Social Shopping Study” cited customer reviews as the most critical capability for a retailer to have on their website. 71% of respondents said that reviews had a strong influence on their online purchases, while the figure was just 25% and 17% for Facebook and Twitter respectively. 49% of respondents said that lack of consumer reviews would prompt them to leave the merchant’s site altogether.

Despite these impressive figures that put consumer reviews way ahead of other social components in terms of consumer appeal, an earlier study by e-tailing group showed that merchants lend more weight to Facebook pages and almost as much weight to Twitter. Are they missing a trick? Perhaps!

“Customer reviews have become a critical piece of the marketing puzzle, based not only on consumer demand but also on the sales they deliver,” said Pehr Luedtke, CEO of PowerReviews, in a statement.

If you run an e-commerce site on your LetsHost Irish Hosting account, consider letting your best customers tell the world how great your products and services are right on your website, and watch your conversion rates rise.

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.

But it’s not just the amount of time we’re spending online that’s changing… it’s also what we do with that time.

In April 2007, Social Networks & Blogs accounted for less than 9% of UK Internet time. In April 2010 they accounted for 23% of UK Internet time.

In absolute terms the amount of time spent on Social Networks & Blogs jumped 340% between April 2007 and April 2010, from 40 million hours to 176 million hours. Only the Coupons/Rewards (516%) and Food & Cooking (363%) sectors showed stronger growth over the same period.

“Despite the large increase in the amount of time people spend online and the increasing proliferation of websites and online services, one thing has remained constant and that is the bulk of time accounted for by communicating, networking and playing games. These are the pillars on which the Internet as a heavily used medium are built.”

-Alex Burmaster on behalf of UKOM.

Irish patterns are likely to mirror, to some degree, the online behaviour exhibited by our nearest neighbours… and these shifts in internet usage are something to consider as you ponder the future online strategy of your business.

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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.