Avatar News November 22, 2007

Written By:: Steph Kendall
Edited By:: Tara Topliff
Published By:: Avatar Ltd

Hi Web Groovers,

Web statistics may seem a little bit dull at times, but don't leave them to the number crunchers. They can tell you loads about your site — you just have to remember to read them! This month, our feature article is all about what Web statistics can reveal and how you can use them to devise a strategic approach to your Web site content and improve your conversions. Cool, eh?

Using Statistics to Improve Site Conversions
Online Christmas Cards - It's Only 32 Days Until Christmas
Tidbits
This Month's Site of Interest

Using Statistics to Improve Site Conversions

If you think that viewing your Web statistics is a waste of time, think again. Using your statistics and other measures of your site performance can help you create a systematic approach to your Web site content. By working out what Web content works best in persuading your site visitors to take the desired action, you can increase your conversion rate and turn more of those 'lookers into bookers'.

View the full Using Statistics To Improve Site Conversions article.

Online Christmas Cards - It's Only 32 Days Until Christmas

If you can't face licking and sticking stamps or signing your name hundreds of times over this year, why not send an electronic Christmas card? You can commission us to design static, flash and animated games-style cards for you, customised with your company logo and Christmas message.

Tip: With the money you save on postage, you can make a donation to your favourite charity (and let your mailing list know that you've done this in your online Christmas card greeting).

THIS MONTH'S OFFER: If you commission a Christmas card from us before 15th December, we'll give you a discount of $25+gst. (This offer is valid until 15th December 2007 only.)

Tidbits

Test your typing speed. If you think you've got nifty fingers, take this quick (and painless) speed-typing test and find out just how fast and accurate you are.
Get to grips with the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act. If you're still wondering whether you can or cannot send emails to your mailing list, check out this handy and informative Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act Compliance Flowchart from Lowndes Jordan.
Banned veggie-lovers advert. This Vegetarian Society's appeal for vegetarians to sign on the dotted line resulted in an incredible display of 'veg-love'. Only watch if you can pear it (sorry, that should have read bear it — ho, ho, ho!).
Virtual theft on social networking site reported. If this one sounds a bit weird and other worldly, that's because it is. A teenager has been arrested for stealing virtual furniture from rooms in "Habbo Hotel", a 3D social networking site.
Shakespeare said it all so beautifully! Hurling insults with a Shakespearean touch may still be a bit rude, but for us wordy-types it's quite entertaining too. All you do is start with "thou...".
Inspiration for car insurance claim forms... These are (allegedly) a few of the entries made on claim forms that offer the perfect mixture of denial and excuse.
Decorate in complementary colours. This nifty colour tool enables you to create a colour palette from an image, so you can paint the entire house in colours that complement your fave pic.
The ultimate sci fi desk. Rocket would love to be orbiting the moon right now, but since he's a desk jockey, he's settling for making the most of his time in Earth's gravity well by hankering after this dynamite Danish-designed desk.

This Month's Site of Interest

You don't have to browse the Internet looking for Web site inspiration, if you have an idea, a vision and a mission, call us. We can make it happen through our Web design, development and marketing services.

Interior Effects

The Brief — Greg from Interior Effects came to see us and said (not quite in these words), "Make me a Web site that showcases my handles, taps, knockers, fittings and fixtures. Make it look sleek and sexy, modern and informative. Help me out a bit with the words and bear in mind, that you need to include our existing branding."— We love this sort of challenge and created a stylish, user and viewer friendly Web site for him.

What We Did — We designed and developed the Interior Effects Web site as a Joomla! CMS Web site, which means that after some initial face-to-face training, provision of a help manual and some telephone support, Greg is now up and running adding and updating new content for the site himself. Some of the funky features we incorporated include:

Product search facility
Product catalogue
Flash animation on the home page to showcase product lines
Tag cloud-styled home page content
Clear call to actions
Search engine friendly structure

A Real Result — Not only did we all enjoy working with Greg, but his company soon saw the number of online enquiries and sales take off, whilst our site optimisation has helped to ensure top rankings on search engines such as Google for 'hardware' related keyword search phrases. In the real words of Greg, it was a " Job well done."