123-reg.co.uk

With about 3.3 billion email accounts registered worldwide, if you have a popular name or surname like Harry, Jack, James or Thomas and want to include it in your email address, chances are you won’t find one that you can share with your friends without feeling embarrassed.

The one you really want, not the only one you can get

Contrary to common belief, not all good email addresses are gone. With 123-reg email hosting, you can create a personalised address to your own domain name, which means no more james685@whatever.com. In this post, you’ll learn how to create the personal email address you really want and not one that you finally managed to find available.

With a mailbox from 123-reg, you will be able to create a personal email address personalised to your domain name so that you can easily send and receive emails. The Webmail online application allows you to check your email whenever you want, no matter where you are in the world. You can also use it with Outlook or mobile devices such as iPhone or BlackBerry.

How to make a personal email address

So, if you want to create a personal yet professional email, there are few simple steps to follow.

1. First, log into your 123-reg Control Panel, scroll down the page to the Email section and click on “Manage email”.
2. Next, click on “Create your email address”.
3. Then enter the prefix you want for your email in the box on the left such as info, sales etc. Now choose the domain name you want to set the account up for from the drop down box to the right.
4. Enter a password and type it again in the Repeat password box.
5. Click “Save” and you’re all done.

If you want to check your email on the go, you can log into 123-reg webmail via https://webmail.123-reg.co.uk and you will be able to send and receive email from anywhere in the world. Go through our email hosting guide as you’ll find everything you need to know about using your personal email address with 123-reg webmail.

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2012 continues to be a year of great excitement for 123-reg. We are thrilled to announce the release of Site Scanner, powered by Stop the Hacker.

For those not in the know, Site Scanner is a SaaS based malware monitoring tool that scrutinises a user’s website, notifying the customer when malicious code/viruses are found via email and in the 123-reg control panel. Furthermore, the software provides the user information on where the damaging code is located (the line of code it starts and ends on) and provides steps on how to eradicate it.

Protecting your online business against malicious code couldn’t be more important in 2012. This year has seen the issue of internet security rise to the front pages of the national newspapers. Whilst events such as the Linkedin security breach are unfortunate, they are helpful in educating the market.

123-reg spoke to Anirban Banerjee, Co-Founder of StopTheHacker Inc., in a bid to help inform website owners of the growing threat of malware and detail how purchasing Site Scanner can give you peace of mind. A blacklisted website can have serious implications for any online business in terms of lost revenue, potential customers and credibility. We asked Banerjee about the threats to 123-reg customers who run websites with little or no malware detection service. ‘Malicious hackers are targeting websites in order to compromise them. If your website gets compromised and is misused to distribute malware to innocent visitors, the infected website is put on a blacklist by Google and other search engines.’

The potentially spiralling affects could be disastrous for your online business as Banerjee explains. ‘If your website is blacklisted, users will be blocked from coming to your website. This could lead to a loss of revenue. Moreover, this could result in an irreparable loss to the reputation of your website and business.’

The threat of being blacklisted by Google is one that is not only very real but one that every website owner needs to protect against. Once malware infects a website, it harms both the company and its customers. Website owners typically have no idea they have been infected, and many do believe that anti-virus protection software is enough. However, it is not.

‘9,500 websites get added to the Google blacklist every single day. Given the UK market is quite big; this represents a substantial number of UK businesses. It takes 7-10 days for a blacklisted website to clean up its act, on average, this process can cost thousands of pounds in lost revenue before even considering the potential revenue lost from your brands’ reputation being tarnished.’

Prevention is better than cure, but having said that, Site Scanner also acts as a quick reaction, something users can take heart from. If malicious code is found on the user’s website at any time, they are sent an email detailing exactly where the code is, and just as importantly, how to delete it.

‘Site Scanner incorporates the best of breed technology when it comes to malware detection, Antivirus engines, signature databases and reputation monitoring. It will help 123-reg customers by providing them with peace of mind. Together, we will help fight the battle for them!’

Central to seeking a partnership, 123-reg looked-for a provider with a real passion for the online security industry. What 123-reg customers should also take from the partnership is Banerjee’s passion for helping people secure their websites as well as the quality of product that his company provides. ‘Our goal is to make website security ubiquitous. Having a secure website and not worrying about hackers installing malware on your site and getting blacklisted shouldn’t be a luxury, everyone should have access to a high quality, reliable and accurate malware detection prevention like Site Scanner.’

Releasing a product like Site Scanner highlights 123-reg’s commitment to helping its customers secure their websites. 123-reg is working with everyone involved with Site Scanner to bring website security to millions of users.

Remember, you don’t have to be a high traffic website to be targeted. Even if you see yourself as a small site, you are attractive to hackers because your site will have more vulnerable openings for hackers.

For more information on Site Scanner please visit http://www.123-reg.co.uk/security/site-scanner/

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What’s the point of promoting your products online if you can’t track the results and see if your strategy is working? Analytics software is a must-have for any respectable business that doesn’t assume their business is successful just by counting the number of visitors with a counter.

As a business, you need to understand the visitor’s behaviour and, based on that, find new ways to reach them and grow your business. Google Analytics is Google’s popular free analytics tool that allows you to access both general and in-depth statistics on your site.

Many use it to get basic details on how many visitors they’re getting but there’s a lot more to it than that. So, here are Google Analytics’ less known features that could tell you a bit more about your site’s visitors, hopefully some apply to your site.

See what your visitors are searching for on your site

This is different from the visitors’ search queries visitors on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. This time we’re focusing on the words visitors enter directly into your site’s search box. While most businesses are interested in the keywords people are searching on the web to get to their site, looking at what they’re searching inside your site is just as important.

Why it’s good: You can see exactly what a visitor is searching for on your site and also on what page he was on when he made the search. As well as the search results you will also see what page the visitor chose from the results.

How to set up site search:

1. Go to your Google Analytics standard reports
2. Click on the “Admin” button in the top right
3. Click on “Profile Settings”
4. Go to the bottom where you’ll find “Site Search Settings”
5. Select “Do Track site Search”

See who’s downloading your e-books

Google Analytics has a great feature that allows you to see statistics on document downloads or other links.  You simply need to add a small piece of JavaScript to the link you want to track and Google will track it for you.

Why it’s good: This is perfect if you’re publishing an e-book, a report or any other document and want to see how many visitors have clicked on it and downloaded it. You can also use this feature to test the links from a specific page and see which one gets more clicks.

How to set up it up:

You simply need to add a small piece of JavaScript to the link you want to track and Google will then gather the data for you.

Export your Analytics reports

This feature will save you a lot of time as it allows you to export the data from your Analytics account to a CSV file and then open it with Excel. You can also export it in a PDF format.

Why it’s good: Say you need to send a report to your marketing department but not everyone has access to the Google Analytics account. So, the easiest way to show them some stats is to export the report they’re interesting in seeing and then send it via email.

How to export a report:

Open the report you want to export and click Export; then select the format in which you’d like to export the file: PDF, CSV, CSV for Excel or TSV.

Filter yourself out

Every company out there should use this feature if they want to get accurate statistics. By setting up this filter, you’re telling Google to remove all traffic coming from your company network. If you’re also collaborating with an agency outside your company network, filter them out too to ensure their visits do not inflate your real stats.

Why it’s good: It helps to get accurate statistics on your visitors by excluding traffic from your company’s employees and outside collaborators.

How to set up a filter:

Go here for step-by-step instructions on how to set up a filter.

What other interesting features are you using to get insights on your site’s visitors?

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Running an online business has many advantages over a traditional bricks and mortar company. A virtual shop front gives you the ability to attract customers from all around the world. You’re not restricted to people passing on the local High Street. Your overheads are typically smaller, and if your product is an online service, you don’t have to worry about manufacturing or shipping costs.

But there’s a downside too. If your business only exists as a set of pixels on your customers’ computer screens, how do you prove to them that you’re more substantial? Can you demonstrate your credibility, and can you persuade them that you’re not a here-today-gone-tomorrow company?

Create a real world presence

Perhaps your online business needs a real-world presence, to build confidence and trust among more sceptical customers. At 123-reg, we’ve decided to try a high-profile route, by advertising on some of London’s buses. But there are plenty of other ways to ground your online company in reality too:

• Attend trade shows and events. Conferences, industry gatherings and public events are a great way to show the face of your business and meet potential customers. Maybe it’s wedding fayres or perhaps it’s motorshows, but attending the right events can dramatically increase your company profile among your target customers.

• Open a pop-up shop. A growing trend over the last couple of years, a pop-up shop is where you temporarily take over a retail space, usually for just a few weeks. It gives you a physical presence without having to worry about a long lease. Business campaign group StartUp Britain is currently giving online retailers the chance to sell on the High Street in a pop-up shop.

• Brand up your car. Driving around in garishly-branded cars is a trend popularised by estate agents. But there’s no denying it can be effective, particularly if you drive a lot for business or tend to use your car in areas where potential customers live. You just have to make sure you’re happy piloting a big, attention-grabbing advert for your company.

• Offer a collection service to local customers. Many online businesses are run out of small industrial units, large enough to store stock but not suitable as a retail outlet. If you have premises, why not give customers the option to visit to collect their purchases? Simply offering this facility will reassure customers that your business is established and successful.

Finally, always ensure you include a bit of background information on your website. At the very least, it’s important to provide full contact details, including a postal address where people can reach you. Additionally, your website’s ‘about us’ section is the ideal place to provide more information about the people behind the company.

Have you done anything to make your online business more tangible in the real world? Leave a comment to let us know.

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How building a wedding website can help you to save time and money

Summer is right around the corner and with hopefully warmer weather coming it also brings on the wedding season. Getting married is one of the most important and happiest moments in life, but the actual planning can be a hassle. There are so many things to take care of starting from the dress, the band, the flowers, the photographer and so many other details that cannot be ignored.

Back in the day, the bride and groom would get their pens and paper and write down all the details, from budgets, reminders, dates to phone numbers for various vendors. Nowadays it is so much easier to plan a wedding or, as we say, there’s an app for that as well.

The easiest way to plan a wedding is online. Most of your friends and family are already online so what better place to put your wedding together than on the Internet? Your wedding website will provide your guests with the information they need, such as the wedding schedule, directions to the venue, travel arrangements etc.  Furthermore if you have a gift list you can also link to this – making it easier for people to get organized.

So, here are a few simple steps to help you to build your wedding website:

Step 1 – Create a website

Register a domain name personalised to your wedding – so it’s instantly recognized as yours. You can build a site quickly and cheaply – you can even use our easy to use website builder if you don’t have the time or the skills to build it completely from scratch.

Step 2 – Use collaborative tools for planning

You want to have all your wedding information in one place, easy to access no matter where you are. To do that, you can use Google Docs, Dropbox or Google Tasks to manage the things on your to do lists.

Step 3 – Invites

Getting printed paper invitations and save the date cards can be very expensive. So, why not save money, and be eco friendly by saving paper as well.  Create them online , email them out and  then link Google Form to your website to allow people to RSVP.

Step 4- Registries

All major retailers offer gift list services – so it will be very easy to link to them and share your reference details saving your guests time and giving them more time to shop!

Step 5 – Photography

Search online for the photographers you like or go through online portfolios and pick the one you think would fit you perfectly. Once you get your digital wedding photos, you can easily create an album on your site and upload them for anyone to see. You can do the same with the videos taken at your wedding.

Anyone else got any good tips on what to do to help build your perfect wedding website? 

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Image source: icelava

Nowadays we no longer depend on a PC to check emails, interact on social networks, check flights, and shop online. We can do that and a lot more with a mobile device, and we can do it no matter where we are – in a bus, in a store or in a coffee shop. When it comes to the web and mobile devices, there’s no longer a space limit. But there’s definitely a time limit – if we’re looking for information, we expect to find it immediately, if not sooner.

This is where frustration comes in. There are few sites that have a version designed for mobile devices. Just imagine how frustrating it is to access a site and instead of being redirected to the mobile version, you have to navigate through the desktop version. This means scrolling, zooming, scrolling and zooming again. If it’s difficult to get around and find the information we need, than we just give up and exit.

Mobile is not desktop

Designing for mobile is not like designing for desktop. It’s a bit more complicated because it’s all about sacrifice. You will be forced to remove a lot of content and keep your message clear and simple.  This means that if there is content that you can take out and still get your message across to the user, then you should have no problem removing it.

When it comes to designing for mobile, you must stick to the content and navigation that makes it easier for the user to get around and find what he needs fast. The keyword is simplicity – take advantage of the little space you have available to squeeze in only the relevant information.

Now that you realise how important it is to design a mobile version for your site, here are some more specific things to consider:

Starting from scratch?

That is usually the first question that you ask yourself: should you use your desktop version and convert it or should you just create a mobile version from scratch? We suggest you use a sub domain of your main site. This way you can get insights in to your visitor’s behavior on your mobile site and optimize it accordingly.

Find out more about your visitors

Before removing any content, it’s better to find out first what information your visitors are looking for on your site. Gather some insights from them (using a poll might be a good idea or just go through your Analytics account) so you can decide how to organise your content in order to give them easy access to the areas of your site that they’re visiting the most and remove the ones they’re not interested in.

Focus on navigation, not on a pretty design

The most popular screen resolution for smartphones is 320×480. This means that you have to be smart about the little space you have available. Keep design elements to the minimum and make the navigation simple so they can find their way around easily. Jakob Nielsen, the user interface guru, says that “when everything is prominent, nothing is prominent”.

Using a 3 elements simple page structure can’t fail: header with your company logo, body with a short description of a post and a footer with contact details or other relevant information about your site. Try to get passed the pretty design elements because an attractive design not a priority, but an easy navigation is!

Don’t make them zoom in

Make sure to optimise the navigation in order to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to go through your site. For touchscreen devices, pay extra attention to the clickable areas – links and buttons. These have to be big so people can easily click on them without having to zoom in.

If in doubt, cut out

Cut out as much content as you need and only leave that information that is relevant for your visitors. At the beginning of your research, you have managed to determine what your visitors are looking for on your site – that’s the information they need and that’s the one you have to include. Find our more about writing for mobile.

Using images

Images take up space and considering the little space you have available, it’s better to leave them for the desktop version. However, you can use images but only if you believe it would reinforce your company’s message and make it more powerful.

Test it over and over again

Once you have finished designing and implement your site’s mobile version, start testing it on as many mobile devices as you can to see how it look and moves. This is something you would need to do constantly to ensure there are no issues and that everything is displaying correctly.

What are, in your opinion,  the most important things to consider when designing for mobile?

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WordPress is one of the most well known blogging platforms. In recent years it has evolved so much that people like myself use it as the CMS of choice for all their websites. As well as this you can install a wide range of plugins, acting like extensions/add-ons to the WordPress platform, that can really help your site or blog in many ways. Here are 8 plugins I make sure I have on all WordPress sites:

1. WordPress SEO by Yoast

2. Google Analytics

Another plugin by Joost de Valk, which helps you connect your WordPress site to a Google Analytics account. If you are interested in analytical data this is a great plugin as it lets you segment data directly from the plugin settings page so you don’t have to learn code yourself!

3. W3 Total Cache

Google doesn’t like websites that take a long time to load. In fact, they actually use page load time as a factor on where to rank your site in their search results. This plugin helps this by using a number of methods to reduce page load time.

4. WP Smush.it

smush.it is a service owned by Yahoo! that lets you compress your images to the lowest filesize without reducing any quality whatsoever. Simple really! If you already have a bunch of images on your site that’s fine – there is an option to “bulk smush.it” which will go through each image already uploaded and compress them for you.

5. Facebook Comments

I developed this one This plugin inserts the Facebook Comments system into your site and places it above the native WordPress comments form. Once installed and configured you can then manage all comments within your Facebook account. I use this for a few reasons:

1. There is less spam activity as you need to be logged into your Facebook, Yahoo!,  AOL or Hotmail account.
2. The comments are now indexed by Google, which means they are more SEO friendly than they were a month ago
3. When someone comments on a post or page, the comment can be posted to their Facebook profile. This adds a social aspect to your site as the comment will appear on their friends’ news feed with links back to your site

6. Twitter Feed

Another one I developed. This feed is a more SEO friendly way to output your latest tweets, search results, hashtags, mentions and favourites into your site. Using a simple shortcode is all you need to do to insert the feed and is highly configurable.

7. Gravity Forms

This last one isn’t free but I use it all the time and is, in my opinion, well worth the money. This plugin takes contact forms to a whole new level! This highly versatile plugin helps you insert forms of any kind into your site from a simple contact form and questionnaire to a fully fledged entry form to create new posts within your own site. Everything can be configured from what is asked, whether new questions should be asked based on what has been entered already, and your thank you message once the form has been completed.

8. Simple URLs

This plugin lets you manage outbound links and track them by clicks. So, for example, your blog site is at myblogname.com. Your link to somewhere you want to track outside of the site is abc.com. Instead of directly linking to abc.com you can make a Simple URL like myblogname.com/go/abc. This is good for a number of reasons. The main reason I use, is to use them for affiliate links. This way they are easier to give out to people, they’ll be tracked and you can keep them within your own domain and change where they link to at any time.

This article was written by Alex Moss, partner at Manchester SEO agency Pleer. He provides freelance SEO for all kinds of businesses as well as developing WordPress Plugins. You can find him on Linkedin or follow him on Twitter.
Follow @alexmoss

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It still is the real thing. Coca-Cola has been named the world’s most valuable brand for the 12th year running according to the respected Interbrand annual global brand report but Apple‘s value has increased by 58% year on year and at this rate will be challenging for a top three spot next year.

Coca-Cola’s valuation of US$71.9 billion puts it well clear from all except IBM, with even third placed Microsoft ‘only’ valued at just over US$59 billion. Apple in comparison is now valued at nearly US$33.4 billion in 8th from 17th position. These brands are so successful hey  could probably solve many of the world’s national debt problems just by using their name as security.

But what makes a brand? Here’s four considerations to start:

Phrase and Name

In the modern day at its basic, a brand means a phrase / name that is memorable. That means all assets using the same name too. So when you secure your domain name, secure the social media addresses to match too: Facebook, 123-reg, YouTube etc.

Unique Selling Points

USPs dictate a marketeers life, but differentiation is key to making your brand more successful than rivals. Obviously the points you differentiate on need to appeal to the customer too, but if you fail to show why you are better than a rival, you can bet your rival will be publicise how they differentiate from you and will probably pick up more custom.

Values and promise

A successful brand immediately promotes an ethos and way of doing things; values. As soon as a customer hears that brand name or sees a brand logo those values are understood. A brand ethos however must not only offer promise but also live up to that promise.

Reputation and responsiveness

What others think of you is important to any business. It is vital to a brand. Good quality products and customer service go hand and hand with a successful brand. Equally, successful brands need to be one step ahead of competition and new trends to ensure expectations are always met.

Yet that is just a start. What else do you think is essential to creating a brand?

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YouTube is massive. As a stand alone search engine it’s the second largest. It is the third biggest online destination behind Facebook and Google. Those facts alone mean that is has to be a part of your online media mix.

But when consider how engaging video is, YouTube becomes even more important. Consumers like watching video online. YouTube offers a fantastic environment for it.

As a marketeer YouTube also gives you lots of tools. It’s possible to target people by groups, video, and by channel. YouTube makes it easy to forward and share your video content to others or on their own website.

As YouTube is a search engine you can use your video content to answer users search queries, putting brand in front of others people looking for your services.

YouTube also makes it easy to link other content, closing the loop between YouTube and your website tools.

And currently YouTube is currently very cost effective. Apart from the effort, a user or enhance channel is free to set up. You buy ads on a CPC or CPM basis. And at the moment there are more eyeballs than advertisers.

So here’s a 9 tips to make sure your YouTube campaign gets off to a good start.

1. Choose the right name

Your channel name should be keyword rich, to improving its chances of ranking in relevant search queries. If you have a well known brand then include that, so your video content shows up for brand searches, highlighting your great content to new and current customers.

2. Think about SEO

Make sure you use titles, descriptions and video tags that are keyword rich, and include links to your website. YouTube search results are based on these, assessing their relevancy and popularity. Just 1,000 characters show up in the initial search, so keep is short and sweet. Although you get 426 characters for tags, stick to 150 or less.

3. Customise your Channel

Brand channels used to cost £25,000, but in the last couple of months Google has allowed many advertisers to create ‘enhanced channels’ for no cost at all. These give you almost all the cool design elements of a brand channel, minus a bit of functionality. It’s a great opportunity to create a customised environment for your video content. See our Social Media Guides for how to do that.

Check out the British Gas YouTube channel for a great customised background:

4. Think about disabling comment options

Negative comments can harm a brand. Consider your Social Networking Policy and work out how you are going to respond to poor feedback. If you don’t have the time – or want to retain the control – consider disabling the comment option.

5. Keep it short

Before you start adding content, decide on some basic rules such as the length of each video, and the number of points you want to make. Although YouTube lets you add up to 15 minutes of video, users don’t often watch more than 1 or 2. And don’t forget your call to action too – give people something to do next.

6. Add plenty of video

Make sure you have at least 3 videos at the launch of your channel, to make it look at bit busier. It keeps users satisfied, and helps it gain popularity and visibility in the Youtube search results. And if you’ve paid for someone to click through to your channel, then it makes to give them plenty to watch once they get there.

7. Consider watermarking

Users love to share video content. Make sure you get the benefit of this share by watermarking your video, or including a call to action to your website.

8. Use Promoted Videos to drive traffic

One of the most effective PPC areas of YouTube is promoted Videos. These serve your videos at the top of the search results. Ads appear as a video thumbnail and several lines of text. Users just click to video. You can then use text overlays to push users onto your website.

The concept of promoted videos – giving users something they’re looking for – is broadly similar to regular paid search, and as such they can deliver an ROI in line with those.

9. Make us of Insights and Analytics

As a channel owner to you can use YouTube insights to find out lots of interesting stuff about viewers of your content. You can identify their demographic, and how they found your videos – through search, sharing or direct links. And you can also see which parts of your video they liked (hot spots) and what turned them off. Use this information to improve your campaign targeting and video content.

That’s it

When it comes to audience and engagement, YouTube is huge; but as a marketing channel it’s underused and undervalued.

Don’t forget to check out the new 123-reg YouTube channel.

Nick Leech runs Digital Marketing Agency Euston Digital

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Years back, it was difficult to figure out what was really going on on your website. You could only assume why some visitors weren’t buying or why others were leaving the site in less than 5 seconds. These days, we have heatmaps.

A heatmap is actually an image that shows you exactly where your visitors clicked on your website. So, if your website is not converting, a heatmap will help you figure out the cause and what changes to make to increase conversions and improve website performance.

With heatmaps you can get insights on your visitors’ behavior on your site. You might find out that your call to action buttons (Buy Now, Subscribe, etc) are not located where people would expect them to be; or that there are too many steps to follow to checkout and users get lost along the way.

Be clear

To figure out where it’s best to put call to action buttons or links, take a close look at your site.  Basically, you have to organise your content so that users find their way around fast. More importantly, give clear instructions so that they know what they have to do, whether it is to subscribe to an email list, buy a product or download an ebook, and what happens afterwards.

Use the heatmap to see where people are clicking on your web page, meaning what are the “hot spots”. You might discover that they tend to click on images, so include links to redirect them to special offers, for instance. You might also notice that users are clicking on blank areas, which means that you can find a better use for that space – you can put some ads up, or maybe a navigation menu.

Hot spots

Heatmaps can help you increase the conversion rate because you can see where people are clicking. Now that you know what the hot spots on your site are, put the call to action buttons right there, where you know they’ll click. Now tell them exactly what to do: “Buy Now”, “Subscribe”, “Invite friends”, “Participate to contest”, “Download”.  The same goes for links – put them in a hot spot so they know they’re supposed to click on them.  Users don’t need to have to discover what to do on your site, they should be able to figure it out instantly.

Have you ever used heatmaps? If so, did you find them useful?

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