Apr
20

Stopping Power: A Sneak Peek at Five E-shop Designs

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So you’re an SEO rockstar, and every time an e-shopper googles your product – oh let’s say, rubber duckies – they immediately see your site at the top of the search results.  But once they land on your homepage, what’s to say that this insatiable bath toy consumer will take the time to enter your e-shop? By setting your catalog as your homepage (coming soon to Neosites), your customers will stop in their tracks to check out your products showcased with sleek new designs.

Here’s a sneak peek at five of our new homepage-catalog designs.  These will give your site some serious stopping power, and help you send your customers off to tubby time in a jiffy!

(The fine print: due to internal discord, the Neosites design department will not indulge blogger whims by including stock photos of rubber duckies in sample templates)


1. Watermelon Delight


A sugar coated background and prominent product display give this design an eye popping edge.  The high contrast between the background and text makes your story stand out, leaving the hospitality of the homepage intact.

 

2. The Plane Jane


Less is more with this bare bones design that focuses your customers directly on your products.  Seven product boxes let you show off a wider variety of your inventory, while sharp lines keep the design clean.

 

3. After Hours


Late night shopping never felt so right!  Dimly flashing lights contrast with five strikingly displayed products and a smoking hot logo.  Customers will want to order pumps and gogo boots just to wear while touring your VIP site!

 

4. Gentle Moments


So maybe sultury and saucy isn’t right for your site…This design combines a cozy background with a widescreen product shot, and four pieces nestled below.  Welcome e-shoppers to your site with a warm hug wrapped in fresh linens, and keep them there long enough to clear the shelves!

 

5. Cloud Nine


Who would have thought that you can show off so many products without causing serious clutter?! Showcase three different products with expanded tooltips, and have room for six more.  Give your customers so many choices, that they’ll just have to buy them all!

Apr
18

Neosites and Santander Partner to Drive Small Business Growth

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We’re happy to announce our new partnership with Santander Rio, and so are CBS Money Watch and the San Francisco Chronicle.  Now, small businesses and professionals that bank with Santander Rio can take advantage of launching their businesses online with a Premium Gold plan with full e-commerce. Customers can access the benefit, PYMES Online, directly from Santander Rio’s website.

Mar
30

Murder Your Darlings: Spring Cleaning Tips for your Company Website

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We’ve all been there before: whether it’s your dashboard covered in bobbleheads or those parachute pants from your MC Hammer years, everyone has something endearingly hokey that they just can’t part with (despite your friends’ insisting prods). Chachkies are one thing, but when it comes to your company’s website, sentimental clutter is a big no-no. The next time you go to update your site, try following one of the cardinal rules for novelists: murder your darlings.

Take a hint when your friends say that your site stinks!  Source

It may seem like tough medicine, but purging your site of outdated content will give it a clean look and tighten it up like twitter. So, how do you know what to chuck? We’ll look at three different types of content – text, images and logos – to help you decide which darlings to kick to the curb.

Homepage Britannica: If the US Constitution can wrap up its preamble in fifty two words, so can you. Take a look at the introductory text on Vintage Wineyard’s site, built with Neosites. While the word count is OK, the second sentence is vague and doesn’t make much sense. By revising their intro to something like ”Committed to your palate, we offer a wide variety of wines to help you find the perfect gift, compliment your favorite dish and expand your collection” Vintage Wine Yard could take out the hedge clippers on its flowery language and reduce their word count by a third.

Grain Grain Go Away: Don’t join Polaroid in Chapter 11 by uploading scanned photos to your website. If you have crisp professional photos of your products, by all means use them. Otherwise, don’t be afraid to make a withdrawal from an image bank to give your site a more professional look. As long as your images don’t absolutely scream stock photo, you are much better off than scanning hard copies.

No-go Logos: For anyone who spent middle school scrawling “S” doodles all over their notebooks, there’s a little graphic designer in all of us. Nonetheless, creative licenses should be revoked when it comes to overly complex (and sometimes just plain weird) logos. Unless you want to spend hundreds on a professional logo, you’re much better off keeping it simple like Neosites user KML Furniture does with their logo.

Now that your darlings are in the doghouse, do you even miss them that much?

Feb
10

Newsflash: Slideshow Editor and New E-shop

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Hi there!

We are so sorry to keep you all on the down low for the past few months. First of all on behalf of the entire Neosites crew we wish you all a happy 2012! We hope that your 2012 started full of projects and challenges.

For Neosites, 2011 ended with a lot of new features and improvements. As for 2012, we have a great year ahead of us as we will keep growing and developing new features, in order to provide you with all the tools that will help you obtain a professional site the easiest and simplest way.

Let’s start by giving you the big news! During 2011 we’ve rolled out two big new features that have been a great success amongst our users: slideshow editor on the homepage and a new e-shop.

The slideshow editor is really easy to setup, you just need to upload your list of images, choose a transition effect, save the changes…and that’s it! Your slideshow is ready to be published.

The new E-shop is just as fast and easy to set up as the old one, but we’ve added an impressive amount of features, tools and design improvements.

Let’s check out some of the new features:

-Stock control
-Display of different attributes
-Sale tags
-Variety of currencies
-Personalized URL for each of your products

We hope you enjoy and make the best of this new tool. Remember, in case of doubt, please contact us at support@neosites.com

Dec
31

New year updates!

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As we reach the last days of a fantastic 2010, at Neosites we will not let up and keep pushing ahead to improve our product and service. During these final days our programming team has been diligently plugging away to improve various aspects of the system in order to reach the 2010 year end in the best way possible and charge head on to a challenging 2011.

The improvements this time around point principally at Neosites’s speed and system performance. Lets get to know a little about what they are all about:

-The time it takes for web pages to load has improved substantially.
-Load time for editing websites has improved significantly.
-We have experienced a 50% reduction in queries to the database
-Important improvements have been implemented with the storing of images.

All of these changes will notably improved the creation process, editing and updating your website, plus letting you visitors access your website a whole lot quicker.

We hope that you are as happy as we are with these new changes and have a chance to fully take advantage of them!

On behalf of the entire Neosites crew, we wish you the best end to this holiday season. We hope that 2010 ends on a good note and wish you a fantastic start to 2011, full of interesting projects and challenges.

HAPPY 2011 TO ALL!!

Dec
30

Updates!

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The Holidays are almost over, full of gift giving and season cheer. A new year is upon and here at Neosites we love to give out presents, and furthermore, do not need a recognized holiday as an excuse to spread the cheer.

Many of you may remember that a few months back we launched a brand new tool called “Sites by Activity”. This new tool was designed to facilitate, improve and streamline the web creation process. After mulling over and analyzing the options, we have rolled up our sleeves and today are proud to announce the launch of “Sites by Activity” with even more perks than ever before!

Lets check some of them out…

Inside every category you will find details of all the activities we have included as part of our layouts. Professional photographers, hair dressers, musicians, carpenters, lawyers, Djs, athletes… every one has a wide variety of designs totally adapted to an activity amongst many choices!

But that’s not all! As we mentioned before, at Neosites we love giving out gifts, and that is why this new and advanced version of our amazing tool comes with over 350 new variations of design to choose from to create your website.

If you have just started to build your website, or you have already created one and where thinking about changing your design, don’t waste any time and take a look at our new designs and tell us what you think.

Good luck to you all!

Dec
17

Increase you visitors this Holliday Season!

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The year is drawing to a close and the Holliday Season is just around the corner. Many of you are surely making planes as to where you will spend the Holidays and what gifts to buy. That’s why today, more than ever, it’s so important to prepare your website for this gift giving time of year when online purchases are on the increase.

We at Neosites want your business to grow, and being that you offer products or services, we want to give out some Holiday cheer in the form of advice so that you are not caught off guard and miss out on this opportunity to maximize your sale potential.

Lets see some suggestions.

-Updating your design. To be on top of things for the Holidays, the first thing you can do is edit your images (this goes for your Homepage as well as your secondary pages) by adding Holiday themed images. Remember that you can always go back and replace everything with what was there before, or add new images altogether. Sending Seasons Greeting to your visitors with a Happy Holidays message is always a good way to go.

-Special Holiday Offers. Be it with friends or family, we are accustomed to celebrating this special time with others. That is why that when to come to buying presents, people tend to look for special Holiday offers in order to take some of the pressure of the old pocket book. With that in mind, and knowing that you offer some kind of goods or services, this is a great time to publish special offers that will help increase your sales. This could take the form of discounts, combos, benefits, gifts or anything else that comes to mind. The important thing is to take advantage of this opportunity and be prepared ahead of time. Don’t forget that it is always a good idea to advertise these offers on the Homepage of your website.

-Promote those special offers. Once you have finished publishing your special offers and Holiday design changes, it’s time to get the word out. Lucky for you, with Neosites you can count on a wide array of marketing and promotional tools that will help you draw more visitors and increase your sales. First of all, make sure you get the word out, via e-mail, to all your contacts and clients by using our promotional tools. The next step is to make an announcement in your website Blog. And last but not least, share all the details in your personal social networks (Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin) as well as those of your business and of Neosites (if you don’t have one, there is no better time than the present to sign up).

-Create new adds in Google Adwords. If you already use this system to promote your site, don’t forget to promote your special Holiday offers. Create new adds and get your campaign moving!

-Activate your Shopping cart and incorporate E-commerce. If you make use of all the advice that we have doled out up until now, you will surely be getting more orders and solicitations for your products. Therefore, if you want to be completely ready to handle this surge in orders and capitalize on as many sales a possible, there are two tools that can make thing much easier. We are talking about the Shopping Cart and the system of E-Commerce which you can have of by simply contracting a PREMIUM PRO or GOLD plan. Once you activate the Shopping Cart you can receive orders directly from your website, and by activating the system of E-commerce you can directly receive payments online. With these two tools you will be more than prepared to take on the Holiday Season.

We are confident that by applying this simple advice in an intelligent manner you can gain an incredible advantage over your competitors over the Holidays. We hope you take this advice to heart and we would like to know how things work out for you. If you have any ideas or advice of your own that you would like to pass on to the Neosites community, please publish them. As always, we love to get feedback from our users.

Good luck, Happy Holidays, and get cracking!

Dec
02

Tips to get listed on Google: How to get Backlinks

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Once again we are back! I hope that you have been able to take advantage of our advise from last week about choosing key words, because today, I have some new tips to get listed on Google. Today’s topic is on an important feature that will help you include, and improve, the position of your website in Google. They are called back links or inbound links.

Anyone who has already investigated this topic already know how important it is to get links that point toward your site, but why are they so significant?

A good way to look at, is to think of back links as recommendations. We ask a friends opinion when looking for a place to eat, well links work in the same way. A link to your website is like a recommendation, and the more recommendations you have, the better your ranking in Google. Think of it as a vote of confidence for your website’s content. The quality of that recommendation is also important. The more popular and higher ranking the website that has your link, the further the benefit you receive with respect to your ranking. Summing up, the more back links pointing towards your website equals more ways for Google to find you, thereby resulting in a better ranking.

Now that we have got that cleared up, lets take a look at how to get some of those valuable links. Here are some things to take into consideration:

-Keep your Blog up to date with points of interest for visitors. By doing so, visitors will be inclined to reference your site or blog, and thereby be more likely to share it with their contacts. We highly recommended that you include widgets to promote your posts inside social networks and RSS feeds. This is probably the most effective way to get links to your site.

-Participate in the blogs of others. Collaborating and giving opinions is appreciated among Bloggers. By participating in discussions related to your field, it generates interest in your topic.

-Include your Blog in Blog directories.

-Be a part of Social Networks. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are a good place to get to know people and exchange opinions and content with visitors. This is a good way to gain confidence, and furthermore, attract people you would like to meet. For more visibility, promote your Blog in Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and include a link to your website.

-Get involved with your users and reciprocate. Answer comments in the most transparent way possible, be it positive or negative. If you get offers to exchange links, or receive a link from a site of interest, you can always respond by adding their link to your site. Reciprocating always looks good.

-And last but not least, we recommend that you get in contact with the entire community of Neosites entrepreneurs. This can be done through Facebook or through our Blog. There are other movers and shakers, such as yourself, interested in your content and are ready to carry out strategic investigations between websites. Remember that with Neosites, you can always take advantage of the Related Links page in order to exchange links in the event that you have received a proposition.

We hope that some of these recommendations can be put into practice and we would like to know how it all works out.

Much success!

Nov
02

Tips to get listed in Google: How to pick your keywords

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If you have finished editing and publishing  your website , or if you have just started creating, surely you are already thinking about how to incorporate into add it to Google. As we had mentioned in the last post on the this topic, it is very simple to do, however there are some key points that must be taken into consideration. Today we will focus on one of them: keywords

Keywords are labels that Google uses to identify the content of your website, it is vital that you select them properly so as to guide traffic to your website. We recommend that you select 5 words separated by comas. That way, for example, if we had to choose keywords for a company that specializes in furniture and interiors design we would use the keywords: interior design, furniture design, furniture, modern furniture and interiors. Lets look at a more specific example:

Why are keywords so important? Well, as we stated earlier, these words will direct traffic to your website, they are the search criteria that visitors use to find your website. When properly chosen, this determines the success of your strategy and the quality of your visits. Returning to the furniture and interior design example, obviously the visits we want are those that require those types of services and not the ones interested in cleaning products. This is what we refer to when we talk about quality visits.

So then, how do I select the appropriate keywords?

First of all, you should have a well defined the goal for your site and know the public that it is directed at. It is very important that if you are going to offer goods and/or services, you should know who those your visitors are and what they want. Second, you need to know the competition. With a simple word search in Google you can get a good idea on how to focus your advertising, the services or products that are (and are not) offered, giving you an opportunity to reinforce your weaknesses and strengthen your virtues. Something many people do not take advantage of are some of the tools that will help you intelligently select your keywords, like Google trends and the keyword tool in Google AdWords. These will optimize your selection of keywords as you will see if the ones you selected work well in searches.

-Google AdWords: although you may not use this type of advertising, AdWords offers an external tool that gives you the ability to come up with ideas for keywords by finding a URL with the same heading to see which keywords and criteria are related. If you are just starting out, it is a good idea to choose words that have little competition (in common).

-Google Trends: allows you to follow up on which searches are most popular in Google and how frequent a particular topic is searched.

The last thing to take into account is how important it is to do follow up of your campaigns and the return they produce. For this you can use our Statistics tool and make your own conclusions depending on the amount of increased traffic on your website or the impact it has on the quantity of visits generated from the new keywords.

We hope that you can take advantage of this advice to improve your ranking in Google. Once again we love to hear your questions and opinions on the subject.

Take care and may you have much success in your endeavors!

Oct
26

Tips to get listed in Google

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We always say it, although everybody already knows, “to be listed in a Google search is synonymous with having web presence”. If you are starting a new business or enterprise and have created and published your site, you want to direct traffic to your site and receive new visitors every day. The best way to do this is by submitting it in Google, right?

If your website is relatively new it is normal that your site does not immediately figure in Google right after publication, this is because it always takes a little bit of time for it to appear. This is why we are going to give you a couple of tips that will not only help include your site in a search, but improve your ranking and get you more traffic. Lets take a look.

Edit your Title, Description and Keywords:

The title is the heading that Google will cast into searches, it should contain no more than 10 words, or around 50-60 characters. The description accompanies the title in the search results and should have somewhere around 40 words at the most. Finally we have the keywords, which are the labels that Google uses to identify content on the web, and those should be no more than 5 words separated by commas. Only the title and description will appear in the search but it is very important to select key words indicating what the search criteria is for your site. It is highly recommended that your key words are also included in your title and description.

Get links to your site:

It is very important that you get your friends websites and social networks to link to your website. Tracing common links is one way Google uses to recognize new sites.

Create relevant content:

It is also important that the texts in your content have relevant information and do not repeat in your other pages. It goes without saying that it helps to have everything well written and spelled correctly as well. Make sure that your keywords are included inside the text of your content, this is something Google pays attention to when indexing your URL.

Include your URL in other search engines:

The first step is to include your URL in Google, but remember that you can also include your sites URL in other search engines like Bing and Yahoo for example.

Lucky for you, Neosites is so complete that it has all of these tools (plus others that we will get to later on) included in our system:

-We offer an easy Google inclusion system that not only permits you to personalize and actualize your title, description and keywords, but also allows you to directly include your URL manually from PROMOTE YOUR SITE!

-Text editors inside your Homepage and secondary pages to make introducing quality content more accessible.

We hope that you can take advantage of this advice to included your site in Google and improve your ranking in search engines. As always, we would love to hear your comments and opinions.

Good luck!

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