News and Articles from Hyperlink

Please note: Our archive of past newsletters will be available for reading shortly. In the meantime, please feel free to read our last newsletter:

A Year of New Hope

Welcome to our first newsletter of the year. For the first issue I thought I'd focus on things that we can do to improve our own online security. Being in a position where I can see things from a different perspective, I'm can see that our online security is increasingly under threat by the unscrupulous few who stalk the internet. However, for a start I'd like to talk about improving website performance and the value of a website audit.

In this newsletter:

• Getting a Return on Your Website
• Passwords That Can Leave Your Pants Hanging Around Your Ankles

Getting a Return on Your Website?

One of the things I have learn't since running seminars on how to generate leads and sales from a website is how many sites just don't generate any return on investment. Worst of all many businesses have never viewed their website as a business channel. For many it's just been regarded as a "presence".

The problem with this approach is there is no such thing as a presence. On the web you are either viewed or you are not, and only if you are viewed do you have the opportunity to convert. There is no such thing as just being there.

If you want to be in with a chance, then you must have a strategy to be viewed, and if you want to convert some of these views, then you must have a conversion strategy. In the off-line world we do this all the time, but it seems when it comes to our websites we leave it to chance.

One thing I've noted with many websites in the United States is the very different approach they take. They don't leave it to chance. for them it is all about continual testing and measuring to ensure their website's "sell". Because everything on a website can be measured, it's all about the "science" of selling.

One of the things many of these now successful sites do is audit their website's performance to find out how they can increase both traffic coming to the site and then the conversion rate.

Over the past months I've been enrolled in a course of study dealing precisely with online marketing, conversion and auditing. It has taught me that it is only through rigourous analysis and letting the numbers speaking for themselves (and interpreting them correctly) that you can systemmaticaly increase the performance of your website.

An approach that I have developed towards auditing and increasing the performance of websites involves 6 steps:

• Technical analysis: We will analyse your site from a technical perspective to see if there are any technical faults that is preventing your web site from performing.
• Content analysis: Content is often the last thing that is thought about during the site's development. During our analysis we will examine how well your site engages visitors to your site. Is your content compelling enough to take action? Also, is there a call to action?
• Business strategy review: At this stage we will discuss your business objectives and their alignment with your web site.
• Promotions review: This review will focus its attention on the promotions you are currently actively engaged in and the type you should be doing according to your industry type.
• Conversion analysis: A conversion analysis looks at how well your pages convert visitors. The analysis will look at your conversion ratio (the number of sales or enquiries you get per page view).
• Action plan: The action plan will summarise the things that you can immediately work on to start changing the performance of your web site. This plan will prioritise the action points, so you will know the most important things to work on first.

A Website Audit can pay handsome dividends in increasing the return from your website. So call me now to arrange an obligation free meeting to discuss how we can improve the performance of your website.

Passwords That Can Leave Your Pants Hanging Around Your Ankles

In this online world we are required to have passwords for everything. Whether it's for online banking, logging on to your email or being able to log on to a membership site, we need a password. And this is where the fun begins. After choosing a password we have to remember it.

It's surprising to realise that most passwords are easy to crack, and in fact are on a daily basis. Each and every day thousands of dishonest people around the world are trying to 'crack' online accounts, either for the sheer hell of it or for other motives. If your password can be found in a dictionary or word list, or is a reasonably common sequence of characters (for example, abcd1234, qwerty), you are a prime candidate for being hacked. It's just a matter of time, chance and opportunity.

It's not easy to create a good password, but there is some pretty good advice you can follow:

• Make sure your password is at least 8 characters in length
• Include a digit (a number)
• Use both upper and lower case
• Make yourself a memorable phrase that you will be able to remember. For example: "My Emu 8 Baked Beans On Toast For Breakfast". Of course, if you haven't got a pet emu, the you could replace it with cat.

A lot of people base their passwords on things directly related to themselves, for example their pet's name or their birthday. Generally, these passwords a considered to be poor password choices.

The consequences of being hacked by a poor password can be serious and devastating. Just imagine logging on to your Internet banking to find that your savings had disappeared, or to have logged on to your website to find that it had been defaced or otherwise ruined.

Even having a good password may not be enough to save yourself from a pure serindipity, but it's all that we have got. So, we should make it the best we can.