Here it is boys and girls, we’re back and dancing on the grave of our old website. And we don’t know how to slow dance.

So what do you all think? Big improvement? Be sure to submit a comment if you have any suggestions, or we might let the assumed perfection go to our heads.

Anyway, instead of our usual blog drivel we thought we’d throw you good people a few real world facts and figures might be of use to eCommerce retailers out there.

Here’s a bit data that we’ve collected over the Christmas 2009 period (part one):
Source of all data: XSIS WebMaster Shopping Cart website transactions December 2009

Sales by Payment Method

New business owners often find the costs to get a Merchant Account set up with their bank to be prohibitive. And don’t get us wrong, they can be. With monthly costs for the bank, payment gateway and merchant service fees, it can be a big pill to swallow.

The truth however is that if you aren’t offering payment by credit card, you will be severely limiting potential customers. The graph below tells the story:

Source: XSIS WebMaster Shopping Cart website transactions December 2009

Moral: 87% of online purchases are paid for by Credit Card. You need a pay by Credit Card option for your customers.

Transaction size

No huge analysis to be gained by this, but the average online transaction size over Christmas was about $138 (excluding shipping costs).

That’s all for now, but be sure to keep an eye on this very blog for more eCommerce stats and the thrilling conclusion to this two-parter.

What’s brewing at MaxGen? What isn’t.

On top of launching a slew of new XSIS WebMaster-powered websites, stick around for all this goodness:

• New Twitter feed for xsis. This replaces the old panel and will consist of the same updates, downtime and maintenance notices. Exciting stuff for people who like their news dull, dorky and under 140 characters. Follow us @xsis.
• Semi-secret project, watch this space.
• The delightfully named Mailbomb, which is a long overdue overhaul to our email marketing system. It’s looking good and should be ready for takers in about a month. Take a peek here – (preview pic).
• iPhone Apps. All the ‘cool’ web-types are into this thing in a big way so we’ve gone ahead and registered as an official developer. Stefan and Daniel are heading this up for us, so be ready for MaxGen’s app offering when the version 3.0 iPhones are released sometime in June.
• A new design for this very website. Almost 2 years we’ve been rocking this look now, and while it’s still passable, it is definitely time we knock it up a notch. We’ve been passing concepts round for a couple of weeks now and are finally on the right track.

Long time no see, with good reason though.

Catch up time:
Last month, both Dan and myself were fortunate enough to be invited to speak to a couple of very different groups of people.

First was a conference held by Tristan Nickless of Word by Mouth and the collective crew of Speech Pathology Australia and the New Zealand Speech-language Therapists’ Association. It was great to speak to a bunch of interested owners of private speech therapy practices about the pros (no cons here) of getting a Website.

A week or so later, we met up with the emerging talent out of Botany Downs Secondary College. First off, what a sweet complex. The school has only been around a few years and has already been labelled as the ‘learning institution of the future’, surely thanks in part to the progressive teachings of Mr. Enda McKenna (head of IT). During the hour or so we spoke we covered a few topics including working with clients, design principles, SEO and general traps for young players.

Couple of pics below:

Big thanks to both groups, was our pleasure to bore you all to tears.

Stay tuned this week and next for some updates to the blog as we:

- Unveil the big projcet that’s been keeping us from posting regularly
- Introduce a new weekly feature
- Spew miscellaneous trite

It’s been a while since our last blog post. Not going to lie – we haven’t had much to rant about. I’ve been kicking around a few ideas, all to no avail. But I have a gem for you today.

Last week I hear that exciting jingle of new mail entering my inbox.

“Whoever could be emailing me?”, I think to myself (note: for dramatic purposes only, I don’t really think things like that to myself).

Just so happens it was Mara Fischer. Mara Fischer from Fischer IT. Fischer IT in Brazil. Apparently that’s her below:

And this is the email that Mara sent me:

“Huh?”.

Sure enough, “Fischer Internet Technologies” have copied our Website design. Fair enough, it is gorgeous. If I ran a sub-par Web design company I’d probably do the same. Take a look for yourself and see if they improved on the original – http://www.fischerit.com.br/. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised displeased. It’s alright Mara, we can’t all be good Web designers.

Today Dan explains the difference between organic links and using JavaScript to links to other pages, and its effect on Search Engine Optimisation.

JavaScript is a tool that’s widely used in the Web design industry today. Essentially it gives Web designers more power to control objects on pages and to deliver special/fancy effects and interactive functions to Website visitors.

Unfortunately when you use JavaScript to link to other pages on your Website, it will not be indexed by the Google Robot. This is because Google will not treat your link as a real link – but rather as a script, and therefore your Website will not be “fully” indexed and will lose visibility on search engines.

Should I remove JavaScript to appease the search engines?

To blatantly contradict what I just said, I’m now going to clarify that it isn’t entirely true to say Google will not read any JavaScript links.

Some JavaScript is still recognised by Google, such as “On-click” events. You can still use JavaScript, but you must make sure search engine robots accept your code.

Relating to your Website visitors

According to some Web trend analysis report I read [yeah citation needed, I can't remember though], about 3% of users have a non-JavaScript Web browser. This includes users who disable JavaScript functions from their Web browser to avoid possible hacks and virii. So if you’re using JavaScript in any form on your site you’re automatically blocking a portion of your audience.

Conclusion

To design and develop a modern Website, we have no choice but use JavaScript. However, if you’re using JavaScript to link pages, add alternative links to ensure your site is indexed by the search engines.

For example, go ahead have a fancy JavaScript drop down menu in your header, but remember to put normal text links on the footer, so that the robots still have a way to dig through your Website.

MaxGen Media

All of our Websites are fully search engine optimised, so you can expect all your Web pages to be indexed by Search Engines. As a result the visibility of your Website will be maximised and enjoyed by the world.

In this post, Court is going to help you find stock imagery.

As Website designers we’re aware of the vast resources available to us on the Internet that we can use to make great looking sites for our clients. But once we’ve done our part, people using our XSIS Content Management System sometimes get stuck when it comes to adding stuff in, especially images. A couple of posts back, Danilo explained how you can use Picasa to organise and manipulate your photos. But often the questions stands – where does one find good quality stock images in the first place? You could spend hours searching Google for what you’re looking for, but its tough to narrow down the best sites.

Never fear, here is a compiled list of some great *free* stock photo Websites. I’m pointing out these sites because of their selection, ease-of-use and quality.

Stockvault – Really nicely categorised stock. The site has a friendly, Web 2.0 feel and they have a massive database of shots totaling over 8,000.

stock.xchng – Over 300,000 completely free images. This site is legendary and according to them gets over 3 million hits a day.

KAVEWALL – This one’s a little different. If you want something with a bit of texture,or a detail shot, check out KAVEWALL.

A Digital Dreamer – This one doesn’t have heaps of photos, but they’re all really good quality. You can tell that these have all been hand-picked.

FreePhotosBank – Neatly categorised with lots of options and info about all the shots. Not a massive selection like stock.xchng, but the shots are usable and interesting.

More good sites – Free Pixels, open stock photography, Photogen.

So have a peruse and hopefully you find what you’re after. Wouldn’t hurt to say cheers to the Website owner if his site has what you want. If you’re still finding it tough you can always give us a call here at MaxGen Media. We have a few secret stashes which are bound to have the specific photo you need.

In this post, Danilo is going to discuss the finer points of Website formatting relating to usability.

It’s really important to know how to prepare your Web text so it can be easily absorbed by your audience. In fact, formatting your content can have a significant impact on how well people read, respond to, and retain what you have to say. In some ways it can be just as important as the substance of your content.

Font style

Your website needs have a consistent font style (font type, font size, font color, font spacing) across all pages. Changing fonts styles on every page will do little more than confuse your reader. According to studies, 12-point Times New Roman and 10-point Arial result in the fastest reading speeds. That doesn’t mean you can’t use other fonts – generally if the font you want to use is between 10-point and 12-point it should be all right to use. In the case of using an online editor (WYSIWYG), be careful because the more you change your text, the more “dirty” the text will be and may affect your SEO.

Use subheadings

People usually use headings, but rarely subheadings (the one you see above this paragraph). As people tend to scan pages, not read them, it’s very important to divide a long text with short and relevant subheadings. A good example is how Wikipedia’s pages are formatted.

Use bullet points

Presenting information with lists is one of the more effective techniques that will capture your reader’s attention. By put large parts of information in short extracts, listing makes reading and retaining information easy.

Highlighting text

It’s important to highlight words in the text flow if you want to give a different intonation and bring your point closer to the reader. You can make the text strong (HTML tag <strong>) or emphatic (HTML tag <em>). Don’t over-do it though.

In general, keep things tidy and to the point. If you’re looking over your blog or Website at the moment and aren’t sure if it’s easy to read or not, give MaxGen Media a call or email and we can arrange a consultation to give you a hand.

In this post, Danilo Cortazio is going to give you tips on using Google’s Picasa, a free image editing and storage application for Windows.

A lot of clients are always asking us how to manage their photos in an easy and fast way. We used to refer them to Photoshop or Fireworks, which are very good no doubt. But honestly they are very difficult to deal with for the average user. There is also Photoshop Album and ACDSee, but even these easier ones can’t compare to the simplicity of Picasa.

Google acquired Picasa and began offering the software for free download. In particular, it is one of my favourite pieces software for practical and fast usability. It’s definitely intuitive enough for even the greenest of computer newbies. I highly recommend the app for those who want to have better results with the quality of the pictures on their website. For a free download, click on the link below and also check out these two tutorials explaining how to use Picasa.

Using Picasa – Part 1

Using Picasa – Part 2

In this installment, Dan Cort provides insight into Web Standards and why they are becoming increasingly important.

Imagine if each household appliance came with a different plug, and when you bought it you had to adapt a socket in your house for it. That would become chaotic, wouldn’t it? Fortunately there is a STANDARD plug for every household appliance. So if you buy a micro system in Auckland, you can take it to Christchurch and it will work normally. I offer this example so we can realize the value of standards. On the Internet it is no different, we need to have standards to realize the full potential of the Web. To turn this dream into reality, a project called WaSP (Web Standards Project) came to spread the Web Standards with the organization which is behind these, the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).

What are the benefits of having a standards compliant Website?

Standards compliance helps ensure that everyone has access to the information you are providing on your Website, and also makes access to it faster and more flexible. WaSP defines these Web Standards on their website:

“Standards compliance makes it easier for people with special needs to use the Web. Blind people may have their computer read web pages to them. People with poor eyesight may have pages rearranged and magnified for easier reading. And people using hand-held devices can browse the Web just as easily as those using high-end workstations.”

Also if your Webpages are complied with Web standards, they have greater visibility in Web searches. According to WaSP, the structural information present in compliant documents makes it easy for search engines to access and evaluate the information in those documents, and they get indexed more accurately. Read Daniel’s previous posts about SEO to understand this more.

Accessibility is also really important for Websites. After all, if you have a Website certainly you want it to be viewed by everyone, including people with disabilities and people using browsers other than the usual ones – including voice browsers (which read Webpages aloud to people), Braille browsers (that translate text into Braille), hand-held browsers (with very little monitor space) and other unusual output devices.

Conclusion

As a Web Development company, MaxGen Media are constantly bringing the best, newest and coolest technologies to our clients, and Web Standards are one of them. The W3C explains why you should buy a standards compliant Website, so before you move forward with a Web designer its wise to pay attention to what you are buying and the quality offered by the company.