Find out what you can do to help reduce the amount of Spam you receive

Unless you are one of a lucky few Internet users, you will no doubt be inundated every day with massive amounts of UBE (unsolicited bulk email), or UCE (unsolicited commercial email), otherwise known as Spam. Spam is an ever increasing nuisance (estimated at over 90% of all email traffic), which can often be malicious in nature, that is choking mail servers and networks throughout the Internet, not to mention causing a loss of productivity in every workplace that uses electronic communications.

What the Government is doing

Several countries around the world have outlawed spam, and now impose penalties against anybody found to have been a source of Spam. The New Zealand Government has recently brought in the “Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007”, which is legislation that prohibits any person from sending unsolicited commercial email, or using address-harvesting software or a harvested-address list in connection with the sending of unsolicited commercial electronic messages. This is a step in the right direction, but unfortunately a very small percentage of the Spam we receive originates in New Zealand.

What the Internet Community as a whole is doing

Most ISPs hate Spam, and work together to fight against “spam-friendly” providers who allow users to send out Spam from their networks without consequence. Most ISPs use several forms of ‘black-list’, which basically is a method of identifying spam-friendly providers and rejecting any mail received from them.

What you can do as an Email User

The obvious way to reduce the amount of Spam you receive is to make sure that spammers don't have your email address! Spammers get hold of email addresses in five main ways:

1. They pick them up when they're used publicly on the Internet, e.g. in a newsgroup posting or on a webpage. This is by far the most common way, and is known as "harvesting".
2. They buy a CD or List of email addresses. These addresses were most likely harvested in the same way described above, and can often be years out-of-date.
3. They guess them. For example, it's a fair bet that "bob@example.com" could be a valid email address, although there's no way of knowing for sure. But it takes so little effort and cost to send Spam, they just try sometimes several hundred possibilities @example.com.
4. Some unscrupulous ISPs (and other organisations) sell spammers our email addresses, although this is quite rare.
5. We give them away. Always carefully read the privacy policy of any website before you give up your email address, as sometimes email addresses are passed on or used for purposes other than those we intended.

Yes, times are tight and it is hard not to get a bit discouraged by the steady hike in food prices, a global trend.

Given that it is often not easy to find funds for business promotion, particularly press and magazine advertising many businesses reason that they can't afford a web presence. I urge those ones to ask themselves, "Can we really afford not to be there?". Increasingly the trend is for potential purchasers to do their market research on the internet and, indeed, many of them also are now concluding the purchase process on-line as well.

In an effort to balance the need for an on-line presence with the cost involved in getting a sound, professionally designed product we have introduced a strategy that should make the acquisition of a company- or small business website rather more manageable.

At the simplest level we are offering terms of up to a year to pay without interest or other obligations. We also have a plan whereby you may lease your site and thus conserve capital - your accountant will be able to advise if this is an option that will better benefit your business.

If that still doesn't look affordable, we are quite open to negotiation so, please, talk to us.

SHALL WE FIGURE OUT A NO-OBLIGATION
FLEXIBLE PAYMENT OPTION THAT WILL WORK FOR YOU ?

Is it time for your business to have an on-line store?

There was £288bn spent on debit cards during the year - an annual growth rate of 9.4% - compared with £266bn in cash. Internet shopping for Christmas presents was marked by accelerating card spending in November, it said.

"The internet has really changed the way we shop at Christmas, with many of us choosing to shop online to get the best deals and to avoid the shops at the busiest time of year," said Payments Council spokeswoman Sandra Quinn. "That is why there is a distinct shift in spending towards November. This has only been possible with the vast expansion of card usage in the UK. "Even the looming increase in VAT which flattered December's spending was not enough to mask the rise of November. "The problems of dispatching Christmas goods through the heavy December snows last Christmas mean this year, people are likely to get even more organised and get their orders in online early."

Meanwhile, there were 1.1 billion cheque transactions made in 2010, a fall of 13% compared with the previous year. The Payments Council has decided that this payment system should come to an end, by setting a date of 31 October 2018 for the abolition of the system that processes cheques. However, this would only occur if adequate alternative payments to cheques were found, it said.

Article sourced from BBC News

See our informative page on e-commerce.

1. LIST YOUR OBJECTIVES - A clear idea of what you would like to achieve from your website goes a long way when deciding how to approach the project. Prioritise your main goals so that these can be considered at every step of the process.
2. REGISTER A DOMAIN NAME - Your web address must be easy to remember, therefore keep it as short as possible while still succinctly describing your company or your business. You will often need to tell people your website over the phone, so bear this in mind when selecting a name. Contact us or your ISP to find out how to check domain name availability.
3. ASSIGN RESPONSIBILITIES - If you have a team of staff, assign one member to be the 'Web-Coordinator' within your company. They will liase with your web designer and communicate all materials and instructions. This will ensure consistency, save time and help avoid conflicts.
4. GET ORGANISED AHEAD OF TIME - Once your website is on the net, your web address should be featured on your business cards, letterhead, company newsletter, in fact on all stationery and advertising. Do not overlook this in signage on your building and vehicles. We are astounded at the number of companies who invest good income in a web site and who then forget about the importance of listing it at every available opportunity. It's rather like leaving your PO box number or your street address off your letterhead!! 
5. PLAN YOUR CONTENT - Put together a basic structure for your intended website with sections and pages logically grouped together how you would like to see them on the website. We will be able to help you with this, so don't worry if you get stuck, but even spending a half hour putting something basic together will help immensely when it comes time to constructing the site.
6. CONTENT IS CRUCIAL - No-one knows your company like you do, and certainly not your web designer! While we will try our best to fully understand your company, the task of writing at least an outline of the text for your web pages will be up to you.
7. BRAND CONSISTENCY - A good web designer will retain brand consistency between your new website and your existing marketing initiatives. We will ask you for samples of your existing business cards, letterhead, brochures, videos, advertising and any other marketing materials that convey your company brand. Why not get them ready now?
8. OFFICIAL LAUNCH - When your website is launched you will want your customers and suppliers to know about it. It's worthwhile thinking about how you will do this and who you want to tell so there is time to plan your launch. We can help you with this and the production of printed promotional materials. 
9. EXPOSURE - It's not enough just to build a website - you have to let people know that it's there! Depending on your budget, leave room for some site promotion. TV, radio and print advertising are the traditional methods, but you should first consider the more cost-effective methods of search engine placement, email stationery, and online advertising.
10. MAINTENANCE - Most websites require regular updating to retain the interest of your customers and to indicate new products or directions your company might be taking. These days, the sites we build all have built in facilities that allow you to change content at will. If you don't feel comfortable about undertaking this task we will, of course, make your updates for you. This is not part of the free support we offer - we charge for updating on an hourly basis. Be assured, however, that we will encourage you to do this yourself - it is surprisingly easy.

I don't know quite what it is about the principal social networking sites that makes site owners direct traffic away from their own sites across to the likes of FaceBook or Twitter.

By all means use a networking site to direct traffic to your site but why on earth ever direct visitors away by putting social networking links on your business site?

Funny, they will invest hundreds or thousands of dollars building a web site with their business profile, contact information, product catalogue and other applicable content plus the time invested in achieving a satisfactory search engine ranking - then on their front page they put a great big sign saying the likes of "Follow us on FaceBook" or similar. Hello! Why direct traffic away. And speaking personally, I don't want to 'follow' anyone on FaceBook or anywhere else. Site owners who do this are definitely being dedicated followers of fashion.

I am amazed at the number of clients who approach me with great enthusiasm to have a web site built, who phone me almost every day to see if it is nearly finished ("are we there yet?") and then, when it does go live they seem not to be prepared to invest a bit of their time to ensure that fresh content is added on a regular basis. In fact it is as if they just forget that the site even exists! Look, if it was a real shop window it would be full of dust and dead flies!!

It's quite a few bob to get a good web site built but, having said that, it is still one of the most cost effective marketing tools available to us today, if used to full advantage. Cost effective, yes, but effective 'NO' unless a bit of effort goes in to keeping it fresh and interesting. If you don't do this, visitors who have returned and found nothing new will not bother to come again and your site 'dies'.

Then there are those who advertise on the printed page in newspapers and magazines who don't even mention their web address in the advertising copy. To use a piece of modern idiom, go figure!

Such a shame that clever coders resort to wasting their lives writing malicious software. This trojan (not the Norton product with a similsr name) masquerades as a fine piece of anti-virus software complete with "would you like to update the anti-virus database now?". The giveaway that something is not quite right is that it keeps popping up very often with warnings about viral infections and popups that warn that someone is trying to hack in to your computer!