The Daily Blog
2009
Jun
25

Windows web hosting is now live!

Thanks to sterling work on the part of the Dev team and the Support team at Daily HQ, we’re happy to announce that our shiny new Windows shared hosting packages are now live!

The new accounts sit alongside our existing Linux hosting and are a great choice for customers who are keen to work with Windows-specific technologies such as MS SQL and ASP.NET. We’re using MS SQL 2008 and ASP.NET 3.5, so customers have access to the very latest Windows hosting technology.

Plus, as a special introductory offer, we’re giving 20% off yearly and two yearly accounts - just use the promo code WIN20 when you buy before 31st July.

Order your Windows hosting account now.

Package Updates

We’ve also taken the opportunity to tweak a few of our other products in response to customer demand. You’ll see that we’ve introduced a monthly payment option even on our cheapest hosting packages and on our Instant Website packages, so there’s more flexibility than ever before. Why not take a fresh look?

2009
May
21

Free WHOIS Privacy on domain transfers

The weather might be a bit variable at the moment, but we’re crossing our fingers for a sunny bank holiday weekend all the same. So, as a special offer for Spring Bank Holiday weekend, we’re giving away free WHOIS privacy when you transfer any existing .com, .net, .org, .info or .biz domain names to Daily!

All you need to do is add a WHOIS Privacy to your basket for each domain you want to protect, enter the promo code ‘SPRING’ and you’ll get the WHOIS Privacy free for the first year.

Transfer your .com domains to Daily.co.uk now
Offer terms

2009
May
19

Online Shopping offer: 20% off eShop accounts

If you’ve ever thought about setting up own online shop or upgrading your existing shop, now could be the perfect time.

Following on from our introduction to building an online shop, we’re giving you 20% off when you buy an eShop account before 16th June.

New customers and existing customers who want to upgrade their current eShop account can use the code ESHOP20 to claim their discount.

Get your discounted eShop now

2009
Apr
30

Building an online shop - an introduction

Online trading opens up a national and even worldwide stage, whether you already have a bricks and mortar retail shop or you’re just interested in running a small business selling bits and pieces from home. There are, though, a few things to consider when planning your venture.

First and foremost is just that - planning! Think about what you want to achieve, what your skills are and what your future plans may be. For example, are you hoping to need the option to expand in the future?

Are you comfortable building a website and installing and configuring eCommerce software such as OSCommerce yourself? If so, a web hosting package is likely to be the best choice for you - choose the highest spec package you can reasonably afford to give yourself plenty of room to grow in the future, but make sure that it includes a database as it’s likely that any shop software you use will require one.

If you’d prefer not to construct your shop yourself you have a couple of choices. You could hire a website designer - in which case, make sure you clearly scope out exactly what you want from your site, including the administrative back-end as well as the website your customers will see - you’ll need somewhere you can upload new products, manage inventory, manage customer databases, create invoices and so on. Or you could opt for an integrated shop design, admin and web hosting package like our eShop products if you’d prefer to keep costs low or stay on top of your site yourself but without having to delve into code.

Whichever method you choose, it’s crucial to keep your potential customers at the forefront of your mind. Choose a clean, clear design and make sure it’s really easy for people to navigate your site, find what you want, and pay for their items - the more complicated the process, the more potential customers you’ll lose along the way. You’ll need to develop a look and feel for your brand that you can use throughout your site for a consistent feel - think about what sort of style might fit your products, and keep it as clean and uncluttered as possible to really show your products off.

Think about how you’ll showcase your products - what sort of categories might people expect to find them under? Have you got good photos of them, including additional shots of any particularly unusual or interesting details? How will you describe them? With your images and copy you’re aiming to highlight their key features and benefits to customers as concisely and enticingly as possible - keep it short and sweet, use bullet points for feature lists, tell customers why they want it, and keep the format consistent from product to product so it’s easy for customers to compare items. Make sure you include crucial information like weight, measurements, number included, colour etc where appropriate.

While developing your web shop, you’ll also need to think about how to take payments. There’s a number of options, but one of the simplest and most recognisable is PayPal, which allows you to accept credit and debit cards, bank transfers and PayPal balance. Online consumers are used to paying by PayPal and they’ll handle all of the card processing for you, so it’s a great option - you can start taking payments online whilst still a fledgling business yet benefit from the customer confidence invoked by an established, trusted name. Our eShop packages can be integrated with PayPal easily.

For more detailed information about things to consider when setting up your own online shop, download this pdf Guide to eCommerce, written by PayPal in conjunction with Daily Internet.

Need more information?
We’ll be talking about starting to sell online in more detail in future articles, but we know that lots of our customers have questions about payment processing. So, if you have any questions about online payment processing, we’d be happy to put them to the PayPal team - just drop us a line and we’ll see if we can answer your questions in a future blog article.

2009
Apr
29

.tel domain names now available

.tel domains are a great addition for any business. They’re totally different from standard domain names, in that they’re designed to work along the lines of a directory listing, giving you worldwide exposure.

You can add keywords and link to your main website to make it easy for online customers to find you and even link to a Google map showing your location to make it easier for potential customers to find your bricks and mortar premises. .tel pages are automatically optimised to make them load more quickly on mobile devices, too, and there’s even iPhone and Blackberry apps available to make it easy for you to update your listing on the go.

Take a look at ours: www.daily.tel for inspiration.

Register your .tel domain name now.

2009
Apr
20

uk.com domains - now available for one to ten year registration

Thanks to a change at the registry, it’s now possible to register or renew Centralnic domain names - uk.com, uk.net, gb.com, gb.net, de.com, eu.com and us.com - for one to ten years at a time.

Previously, the domains had to be registered for a minimum of two years, and at £24.99 per year we understand that the initial cost may have put some customers off, so we’re delighted to be able to offer a more flexible way to buy.

Register your uk.com, uk.net, gb.net, de.com, eu.com or us.com domain now.

2009
Apr
16

Customer Profile: Gary Hodges Wildlife Art

We spoke to talented wildlife artist Gary Hodges about his experiences setting up http://www.garyhodges-wildlife-art.com to promote his art using our Instant Website Pro Package.

www.garyhodges-wildlife-art.com

Firstly, what made you build the website?
My wildlife pencil art has been sold all over the UK and around the world for twenty years. My support base includes celebrities and other artists as well as a loyal group of fans and collectors. Most of my limited editions have completely sold out and increased in value many times - the most extreme being a Green Turtle print which originally sold for £8.50 and resold on the secondary market for £3,500.00!

It has become clear over the years that internet sales have affected gallery sales and it was time to get in on the act. My wildlife drawings are very detailed and I have always been suspicious of the quality of images on the web, but I am very happy with the outcome.

It looks like yours was already a flourishing trade in some wonderful artwork - how would you say the internet has made a difference?
My business has been successful over the years and I have kept in touch with a loyal group of supporters by mail, which is costly and very time consuming. It became apparent that I needed a new way to communicate my art to my supporters, and also to gain new support. The internet allows me to do this as well as expand my UK support to other countries. Clearly the web is extremely competitive but I believe that my established market gives me a useful boost.

Can you talk us through the evolution of your website?
My partner did the work on the site with my considerable input. It has been three months of deciding what to say as well as learn how to say it. My support base already asks certain questions so I knew what people would want to read. We started with the biographies and then the galleries. Each stage took time as we learned the process using Instant Website Pro. One of the problems were that the templates were quite complicated - and my art needs simplicity. So we stripped out some of the layouts and built each page separately using the text editor.

What was the biggest challenge you faced in getting your site to where it is now?
I am not used to the web or even emails, but my partner has been using it for over a decade. It took a lot of time for me to be convinced that it was the way to go, although now we have the site up and running I’m really excited about the possibilities. Once we’d decided to go for it, we had to decide how to build the site since neither of us had this experience. Instant Website Pro gave us an affordable option which overcame the technical challenge of website building. The mental challenge has been overcome by the passing of time!

So what’s next?
The site is simply a portal for my art and a way for people to buy limited edition prints. I have already notified my support base and early response has been really encouraging - including sales! In the future, the website will be regularly updated with news, new art, and even new thoughts. With the use of Google Analytics we can see how successful it is and react to the data provided. I want it to remain a friendly, warm place to visit for those who like my wildlife art.

What measures do you take to promote your site?
It is early days but we’ve already filled in all the search engine optimisation data on the page provided by Instant Website Pro and started to look at Google Analytics. We’ve submitted it to the search engines but understand that it will take time to appear. It has been promoted to people who already receive a printed newsletter from me and they have been asked to tell their friends. At the moment we’re contacting web directories for free inclusion and creating web links with charities I have donated to over the years. We may soon offer a promotional deal through some of our connections linking back to the site. It is still a learning process.

What attracted you to Daily.co.uk?
We found Daily through a search engine when buying domain names. We then found the site fast and easy to use and the Instant Website Pro package seemed to be a feasible option to learn how to publish a site. It turned out to be the case. I’ve found Daily responsive to questions and the site loads really fast, so I’m very happy.

***

If you’re a Daily Internet customer and you’d like your site to be featured on our blog, just drop us a line and we’ll see what we can do.

2009
Apr
14

Michael Edelson joins as Non-Executive Chairman

We’re delighted to welcome Michael Edelson to the Board of Daily Internet PLC. He brings a wealth of experience as Director of companies such as Sterling Green Group PLC and has been on the board of Manchester United Football Club Limited since 1982.

Michael has previously worked with Abby Hardoon, who continues as Managing Director, in an extremely successful partnership from the early days of Abby’s first web hosting company, Magic Moments Design Limited in 1999, through to that company’s growth into Host Europe PLC in 2001.

We all look forward to continuing this successful relationship into Daily’s future.

2009
Apr
8

Do you tweet?

We’ve now made it onto the social media sensation that is Twitter! We only joined yesterday, but as you can see we’ll be tweeting a little about life at Daily HQ along with links we think you might find interesting or useful. Plus, we’ve plans for Twitter-based offers and competitions in the future, so keep an eye out for promo codes.

Follow us at: www.twitter.com/dailyinternet

2009
Apr
7

SEO Tips: Optimising your web copy

Getting the copy right for your website is essential in order to improve both the performance of your website and its search engine rankings. You should never forget that your site is aimed at human beings who appreciate clear, readable content, but there are a few tricks you can employ within your website wording that should improve your search engine performance.

Keyword Research
A good place to start is to conduct a little keyword research. Think of this as an extended exercise in working out what terms people who are interested in the types of things your website provides will search on. Once you’ve worked that out, you can include the terms in your copy so that your site is right there when they search. So, the first thing to do is make a list. What words and phrases would you Google for if you were after the type of product on your website?

That list is your starting point. From here, it’s really helpful to use a keyword suggestion tool to try to expand on your suggestions. If you have one of our higher end Hypersubmit SEO products you’ll have one included in that, but there are also great tools available from Google and SEOBook. Just type in the words and phrases you’ve come up with and see what suggestions you get.

By way of an example, if I type ‘web hosting’ into Google’s tool it comes up with a list of related keywords. More importantly, though, it also gives an idea of the volume of searches for each term and gives an idea of the level of competition for that term, so I can now run through that list and rank it in order of desirability for inclusion on our website. This is always something of a balancing act - if you sell a popular product or service, the single word that best describes it will be extremely widely used, so while you do want it in your copy you might like to think about using it in a phrase which is still widely searched for but for which there is a bit less competition. In other words, if you’re running the website for a firm of solicitors don’t just put all your energy into trying to rank high in the search engines for ’solicitor’ - try including phrases which include the name of your town and the type of law in which your firm specialises. There will be less competition for this more specific phrase, so when someone local needs your services they’ll be much more likely to find you.

You’ll also need to consider whether different keywords will be appropriate for different areas of your website - if you offer various products and services, then your descriptions of them should be aimed at describing each item as enticingly as possible - with the most relevant keywords for that particular product.

Keyword Placement
Once you’ve established which keywords you’d like to target for which general areas of your website, you need to work out how to use them to best effect.

We’ve talked before about keywords and the Title tag, so here’s a few other things to consider.

1. Keep it natural
Remember that if your copy is going to impress your human visitors it needs to be clear, informative, and concise. While it’s important to make the most of your chosen keyword phrases, if your site starts to read like a bunch of similar phrases strung together by a few ‘ifs’ ‘ands’ and ‘buts’ you’re going to lose visitors. With a little creativity, you can include keywords and important phrases in copy that flows beautifully, so please - while you’re following the below advice, no torturing of the English language in order to shoehorn an errant word into place!

2. The F principle
People have been shown to read web content in something approximating the shape of a capital F. We scan the title, drop down to scan the subtitle, and then zip down the site with the emphasis on the left-hand side (here’s the science). Broadly speaking, the same holds true of search engines. So, to simplify it, for every single page on your website you need to determine which is the keyword or phrase you most want to rank for and get that as close to the top and the left as you can - without compromising readability. Rate your list of keywords in order of priority and work from this ordered list.

3. Headers
It goes without saying that you’ll use your chosen keyword term as the heading for your page. There’s a little more to it than that, however.

Firstly, you need to make sure that your heading is in text - since search engines can’t ‘read’ images then plonking a graphic, however beautifully crafted and highly relevant, in the most important real estate on the page will do you no favours whatsoever. If you want to include the pretties, use them for background only and make sure any text is overlaid html that’s legible to search engines.

Secondly, try to use the html that search engines expect to see for headings. This is where the <H1> tag comes in - if you put your page header within that tag, it will be recognised as such and should be granted greater importance by the search engines. So, drop in that most important keyword on which you’ve decided and you increase your chances of a search engine realising, when someone searches using that term, that your page is highly relevant. Don’t try to fool them with more than one <H1> tag, though - they’re wise to that sort of sneaky behaviour! You can always use <H2> for subtitles and <H3> for sub headings or paragraph headings if necessary to split out your copy.

4. Follow that F!
Once you’ve got the header and subtitle out of the way, write the rest of your text in such a way that the keywords which you consider to be next in importance to your header and subtitle are closer to the top, preferably over towards the left hand side of the copy. Just work down your list and try to keep your copy as natural and succinct as possible. You can still try dropping in what look like more outside keyword possibilities further down the page, of course.

5. Be bold
If you use bolding sparingly, to highlight important items (like the start of each new point in this list), it will be easier for readers to skim your page and determine that it’s relevant to them. There’s also a school of thought that suggests search engines give greater importance to bolded words and phrases, so a little bolding of your keywords is worth a try. Emphasis on ‘a little’, though - no-one likes to feel they’re being clouted with the bolding hammer every other sentence!

Earlier articles in our Search Engine Optimisation series
Search Engine Optimisation - An Introduction
SEO Tips: Maximising Meta Tags

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