Having a form on your website is a great way to get feedback from your visitors. It makes it easy for someone to send you a message, and they can do it from any computer, they don’t need to open their email program.

One problem with online forms is they attract spammers. Automated spam bots (bots are really just software programs) search the web looking for forms, then they submit them with their unwanted message.

One method of stopping spam bots is the CAPTCHA, a challenge that is easy for a human but hard for a spam bot. Here are a couple of examples:

The trouble is, often humans have trouble reading them as well as spam bots, and humans also generally find them an annoyance, which can deter them from submitting the form at all, which is not good for your business.

A simpler style of CAPTCHA is to ask a simple question, such as “What colour is an orange?”. This is much easier for most humans than trying to decipher distorted letters. The form will only submit if the answer is correct, in this case “orange”.

Everyone uses Google to search, but are you being efficient and getting the best results? Here are some tips you can use to increase your search productivity:

Leave out small words like the, or and of unless it is part of a title or famous phrase, like to be or not to be. Searching for how long is a piece of string achieves mostly the same result as how long piece string.

Searches are case insensitive. So searching for fred, Fred and FRED will deliver the same result.

To search for an exact phrase or sequence of words, enclose it in double quotes. Searching for engaging online educational resource brings up amazon.com, whereas “engaging online educational resource” brings up something altogether different!

Lastly, to see how many pages of your website are in Google’s database, prefix your website address with ‘site:’ like this site:www.yourwebsite.com.

Here’s what happens when I Google “Arrowsmith Websites Maleny”:

Google provides a map and details about my business! That’s great, thanks Google!

When you do a location specific search on Google, often you’ll get a map and business details. This handy feature is even more useful when you are using a mobile phone to search for a business or service in an area you’re not familiar with.

Google your business and location and make sure your business is listed in this way. If not, you can add it using the Local Business Centre.

If your business is already listed, Google may have found your details on your website or a directory website and listed them for you. If so, you can correct the listing and add more information, even photos.

With Google becoming the main way people look for products and services, this is a simple and free thing you can do to help potential customers find your business.

So you’re putting together the content for your website, and you’re wondering where to start. If you’re a small business, you’ll want to keep it as simple and to the point as possible, to make your website easy for people to use.

There are website conventions that have become accepted to the point that people expect certain items to be there and in the right place.

You should always have a ‘Home’ button somewhere near the top left, and you can guarantee if you don’t that people will say ‘where is the home button’.

You should always have a ‘Contact’ button linking to a page with all your contact details, it’s one of the things people look for, and most people in business want to make it easy for potential customers to contact them!

Another standard feature to include is the ‘About’ page. This is your opportunity to share your history and qualifications with visitors to your website, allowing you to build rapport and become less anonymous.

What you put in between the Home, About and Contact pages is the stuff that makes you different; it’s the products and services you offer.

This formula will make it easier for people to use your website, and if you’re in business, that’s good news.

One of the recent developments that have come with faster broadband connections is an increasing prevalence of software that runs over the internet, rather than being installed on your computer.

Non Cloud – Most people have used Microsoft Word or other similar office software products. You create documents on your computer and save them on your computer.

Cloud – With Google Docs, the software is installed on Google’s computers, and the files are saved on Google’s computers. You log in using your browser (internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari) to create and edit documents.

Also known as ‘Software as a Service’, the term ‘cloud computing’ comes from schematic diagrams of computer networks, where the internet is drawn as a cloud.

Some advantages of cloud computing are:

• Low cost – the software is generally free to use
• No upgrades are required – the software always up to date
• Automated backup – if your computer crashes, the files are accessible online
• Collaboration – many users can work on the same document, no need to email back and forth.
• Flexibility – You can work on the document from any location with Internet access, even your phone

Word processing is one example of cloud computing that you can start using immediately. But you can do almost all your computing in the cloud – email, accounting, customer relationship management, ecommerce, project management etc.

Your domain name is your home on the internet. It’s your online brand, it’s on your business cards, and it’s in your email address. You’ll be using it a lot, so it makes good sense to get the best one you can.

So what makes a good domain name? Starting with the suffix, a .com domain name is essential for a commercial business. Leave the .net and .org for networks and organisations.

If you’re doing business in Australia then a .com.au will be good to have also. You can put your website on either the .com or the .com.au, and redirect the other one, so both names will lead to your website.

www.example.com

www.example.com.au

Then comes the main part after the ‘www’s. If you can register an exact match of your business name, then that’s the way to go. If not, then you can be creative and use relevant descriptive or locality keywords. If you sell widgets, then www.examplewidgets.com could be an option. If your market is based in Maleny, then www.examplewidgetsmaleny.com would be a good choice.

Domain names can include a dash (-), however be wary of getting one in your domain name, as you will forever be reminding people to put the dash in, and if they forget then they may end up at another website instead of yours.

www.example-widgets.com

Keep it as short as possible, if your domain name is too long, there is more chance of forgetting or misspellings.

www.examplehasthebestwidgetsinmaleny.com

You can research available domain names on the Arrowsmith Websites Domains page.