Have you reviewed last year’s results

Before making major changes to your current website to reflect the New Year, take a good look at your results and happenings of 2009 – how did your website fare?

analyticsHave you reviewed your annual statistics? What months did you have the most traffic? Is that typical for your audience, or are they looking for things that are most wanted in a given time period?  What is your bounce rate like?  Are people coming to your site from a search engine result only to find no relevancy to what they were looking for?  Take a deeper look at those keywords, see if there are ways you can fine tune them to fit the relevancy of your audience needs.  Have you set your goals for 2010?  What measurement tactics will you utilize to measure those goals?

If all this sounds overwhelming and you are just looking at a screen with a bunch of numbers with a foggy mind, give me a call, I would be happy to consult with you and get you on track so that in December 2010 you can look at these numbers with fresh ideas for your future and continuous growth. Call Jemma 416-451-2063

Happy Holidays Everyone!

InSite Creations Web Design & Development wishes everyone a happy, safe and enjoyable holiday.  Whether you are celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Solstice or any other festivities, eat well, give thanks and stay safe.

Waiting for their treats...

Waiting for their treats...

Different ways to get an online presence

This particular client had already started working on setting up a website using Microsoft Office Live before she called us, and she needed help to design a professional looking website, but had limited budget. Typically InSite Creations only works on custom design and development, but we took on this project to help out this individual. Congratulations, Lucy on launching your home staging business – check out www.homestagingconsultants.ca

Home Staging Consultants Mississauga

Home Staging Consultants Mississauga

Microsoft Office Live offers free website builder and hosting. You just need to build or have someone such as us to help you put your site together.  Key considerations you need to know about this type of web building though, such as:

  • this is templated format – meaning less flexibility when it comes to design, only have certain layouts that they offer, and unless you are familiar with CSS style sheets you are stuck with their colouring and formatting
  • As it is a template, the back-end coding is full of lots of unnecessary code which could hampen the optimizaton for your site for search engines.
  • It does give you ability to enter your own meta keywords, descriptions and title – make sure to utilize this as it will help with your SEO
  • It doesn’t give HTML editing, thus if you are familiar with HTML, you lack this flexibility.

Would I recommend this format?  Well I believe if you are just starting out, have a limited budget, but want to have some presence online, it doesn’t hurt, and you could probably get away with using a site like this for the first year of your business. But as your business grows, and your needs grow, I would seriously consider rethinking about getting a professional custom design done by professionals such as us, who can accommodate your features and functionalities, design needs and get a website that is a great marketing tool for you to grow your business.

Congratulations to Focus for redesigning their website.

Congratulations to Adrianna and Ron for their newly developed redesign for www.focussc.com a One-Stop Book Packaging Services – Packagers for Publishers.

Focus Strategic Communications Inc.

Focus Strategic Communications Inc.

This site has a FLASH entry showcasing sample books, then opens up into a book format.  Clients wanted something clean, simple and to get their message across both visually and succinctly.

Prior to redesign, the client felt that the previous site had too much information on it and much of it now out of date. They requested that the new site offer a more visual appealing interface that projects the industry they are in.

Most of their clients or industry players are already familiar with what Focus provides, therefore, we kept the verbiage to a minimum, highlighted their projects and compacted their offerings into a smaller site navigation flow.

Technologies used: Illustrator, FLASH CS4, Photoshop, Advanced HTML, Advanced CSS and Javascript

Congratulations … Carole Bertuzzi Luciani

Congratulations goes out to our client, Carole for the launch of her first book. Within the first week, she successfully sold 200 books and still counting…

Get your copy today! www.ihaveastoryforyou.com

Get your copy today!

These stories are truthful accounts from Carole Bertuzzi Luciani’s life spanning from 1958 to today. She recalls situations along the way that have been challenging, thought provoking, often embarassing and mostly humourous. www.ihaveastoryforyou.com

I read this book, and couldn’t stop laughing, I could visualize the predicaments that Carole got herself in and could only imagine me being there laughing doubled over. A recommended read to all those who enjoy a good laugh!

Solution InSite Creations provided:

We set up Carole’s book for e-commerce through PayPal. The hard book order was a straight “Add to Cart” functionality, and the E-book, we programmed the purchase to provide a secure unique link for each purchase offering up to 10 days access. We also built an administrative panel for Carole to review e-book purchases in the event if one of her customers had to call in and search for transaction confirmation.  Also for the hard book copy we provided a secondary buy page for transactions that were taking place on-site, for example at a book signing or seminar, so no shipping charges would be added.

Always keep your site secure with the latest versions

Today a client called me in a frantic state, worried as all her images were not showing on her site. After some quick analysis and investigation, what appeared to be a minor concern, actually turned out to be something that is worrisome, as it seems the site has been hacked – most likely due to an outdated 3rd party software version. This concern is a serious consideration when thinking of installing and running 3rd party software. It is so important for reasons such as this, to regularly update your version controls and remove any files that may be easily be prone for access. To remedy this there are two key things to do right away!

1) back up your files in your database and make sure to have a copy on your desktop
2) change your password to the FTP and to the 3rd party application

Then, download the latest version of the software application and reload onto your server, getting rid of all the old backend files of the application. Hopefully this will clean the server and eradicate the issues brought forth because of the virus.

Hackers Ahead

Hackers Ahead

A quick way we were able to detect something weird going on with the site, was looking at the source code and seeing, gobbly gook code that didn’t belong there. From the page source we could see – all sorts of writing not relevant to the site content. From the PHP code we could see script running on the page.

So the rule of thumb, if you own any 3rd party application for blogging, e-commerce, affiliate programs, email/e-newsletter etc. make sure to always have the most up to date version on your host server and stay vigilant with your passwords – change them often and ensure they are strong passwords.