Archive for June 2010

Twitter has just announced that they will not allow third party advertising platforms to place adverts on their service.

Keeping out Clutter

This is probably because they shortly plan to roll out their ‘Promoted Tweet Program’, which allows you to pay to promote your Tweets to more users. No doubt they do not wish to clutter the service with lots of competing adverts from alternative providers, which may put users off the service.

Twitter also plan to launch ‘commercial accounts‘ for businesses. Since they have yet to make any mone, there’s a lot resting on both of these programs.

Twitter is usually open to 3rd parties

Twitter have always been very open about third party services and websites accessing their service. They have an open API which allows programmers to access data and stream data live from Twitter. This is how it’s possible to place your Twitter feed on your WebEden website. It also makes possible all the third party client platforms such as Tweetdeck and Seesmic.

It has also made it possible for Twitter results to appear on both Google and Bing.

In a ponderous post on the official Twitter blog, founder Biz Stone defended his position by saying that he was looking to ‘ensure the long-term health and value of the user experience’ by ‘fostering user delight and satisfaction’

Woah.

Promoted Tweets themselves will exist ‘primarily in search and then in the timeline’, but won’t bombard users. Twitter are keen that “Promoted Tweets are only shown when they make sense for users and enhance the user experience”.

Giving your Website a Personality

Twitter can be an important way for you to give your website some personality, and for you to maintain a relationship with your website visitors even when they’re not on your website. Promoted Tweets look like being a good opporunty to grab more potential visitors.

Once live we’ll be sure to be writing about Promoted Tweets – and showing you how to use it – here on the WebEden blog.

Recently we’ve looked at how the weather and the World Cup have change what people search for on Google: it looks like a volcano can do it too.

We all know what huge effects the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland has had on air travel. Recent data released from online traffic monitoring firm Hitwise UK has shown how it has changed what we’re searching for.

Up to the 10th of April, there were only around 1,000 different search terms that included the word ‘volcano’. The week after, this number exploded to 10,000.

The eruption also had a huge impact on visits to aviation websites, which were up 45% that same week. People were very concerned about how this extreme event would affect their travel plans, but this didn’t stretch to trying to find out more about future impact – weather website traffic was unaffected.

Whilst air travel traffic surged, so did that of trains: Visits to eurostar.com were up 67%, and to ferry companies by 59%.

Here’s a graph from Hitwise:

Are you in related area? Did the volcano eruption affect traffic to your website? Have other events changed the number of visitors you have? Leave us a comment below.

According to the UK Online Measurement company (UKCOM), the amount of time people spend online has mushroomed by 65% over the last three years. The average Briton now spends almost a day a month surfing the web.
Most of that time is spent either on social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter or MySpace, or on blogs. These account for almost 25% of all time spent online.

Not all web activities have grown: Instant Messaging (IM) used to be a real favourite in the UK, but its use is in decline. Whilst three years ago people spent around 14% of their time using IM, it now comes in at just 5%.

Meanwhile, that old favourite ‘Email’ continues to play an important role, up from 6.5% to 7.2%.

Other risers include classified adverts & auctions (up to 4.7%) and online news (up to 2.8%).

Here’s the full list:

Social networks / blogs – 22.7%
E-mail – 7.2%
Games – 6.9%
Instant Messaging – 4.9%
Classified/Auctions – 4.7%
Portals – 4%
Search – 4%
Software info/products – 3.4%
News – 2.8%
Adult – 2.7%
Source: UKOM

Since there are 85 different categories, the fact that ‘adult’ makes it into the top ten shows that it continues to be popular.

What does this mean for you

If you’re a website builder, this survey makes interesting reading. To start with, increased net use shows that your website will have an ever growing opportunity to gain visitors.

Second, the online activities of Joe public point to the areas that you should be using to boost your visitor numbers.

The increasing popularity of social networking sites shows that you should be looking to get visitors from both Facebook and Twitter. Here’s a Video Tutorial on how to integrate your website with Facebook and Twitter. And here’s one on how to add a Twitter feed to your website.

Email is also an important way to reach visitors. Make sure you give users the chance to sign up to a newsletter from your website.

And search engines should also be a good source of visitors. Here’s a link to the first part of our SEO Guide.

Do you know where your visitors are coming from? Has that changed? Leave us a comment below.

There’s been a lot written about Rupert Murdoch’s plan to start charging for access to the Times website.

The fact that your can read newspaper websites for free has meant that many people no longer choose to buy the paper version. And since advertising revenues for websites are much lower than their printed counterparts, the Times – like all other national papers – have been losing money hand over fist.

Most recent figures are that the Times lost £87m in the last year alone.

So Rupert Murdoch is making the brave step of trying to charge users for access to the news on its website.

This is a huge challenge for two separate reasons:

1. Why pay when you can get it for free

With all other newspaper websites, not to mention the BBC, giving away access to the news for free, why would people pay to get the same information for the Times?

Niche newspapers and journals such as the FT have been successful at charging for online content, but only because they have specialist journalists delivering information that can’t be found elsewhere. That’s hardly the case with the Times.

2. Search Engines can’t spider the content

A key source of traffic to newspaper websites is Google and other search engines. Web users often search online for the latest news and events, and as newspaper websites have a rolling delivery of the latest developments they are often the recipients of visitors from search.

By introducing a paywall, Murdoch is blocking the ability for search engines to ‘read’ the latest content that is added to The Times website. And if search engines can’t read it, then they can’t rank it higher in the search engine results page.

What is everyone else doing?

Other news providers have rejected charging for content. Some favour a system of micropayments that would allows users to make small payments for access to specific niche content. Others – such as the Guardian – have introduced a paid-for iPhone app that gives users a ‘personalised’ version of the news.

A good innovation?

Despite these factors, News International are pressing ahead with their plans. Since they are losing money anyway, perhaps they see no alternative. Murdoch reckons that he’d rather have fewer customers who were paying. And he has always been a good innovator – look at Sky.

What do you think of the plans? Would you be prepared to pay for access to the news? Leave us a comment below.

I reckon its about time for another Website of the Week!

This time its ChrissToeTappers.co.uk by Chris Rhydder. I really like this site, despite the fact that it goes against a few design conventions.

To start wih Chris has used an intro page – which tends to be less common these days. But rather than preventing the visitor from getting to the content, it gives them a taste of the fun that lies behind it.

There’s lots of content on the site. Chris (a keen Twitter-er) has added his Twitter feed; there’s music; calendars; and some use of the HTML widget too.

Website address

http://www.chrisstoetappers.co.uk

When did you build your Site?
I began thinking about building a website at the beginning of 2009, but my site was finally launched on 1st March 2009. Since then I’ve made quite a few changes and have tried lots of different things to try and improve it for my visitors.

Why did you build your Site?
After Teaching Adult Tap Dancing for 25 years we finally felt that we should launch oursleves on the world wide web!! And it was also a great way to keep all our students updated without having to ring or write to them all the time!!

What do you like best about your Site?
I like the fact that it’s easy to maintain (because I’m NO Computer genius believe me!!).
I also like the face that it was straight forward & not too complicated to set up!! Made life much easier I can tell you!!!!

What is your Website tip?
Play around, experiment and have fun with your site when you get going!! Try lots of different features so that you get a feel of what works for your site!!
I’d also say that another tip is to make sure your site is clear and easily accessible for your visitors, as if it’s too complicated then it can put people off visiting!!

Every computer, every server, everything connected to the Internet needs an IP address. These insure that any data passing through the web reaches the right machine.

If you are even moderately technical you’ve probably seen them – they’re 12 digit numbers separated by a ‘.’ into 4 blocks of 3. You can find the IP address of the computer you’re using by going to whatismyip.com.

IPv4 is running out

The news is that according to experts is that the Internet is going to run out of IPv4 addresses by April 2012. Considering there’s around 4 billion of them, that’s quite a feat. There is just 7% left – around 300 million.

IPv6 can help

There is apparently another system waiting in the wings, called Ipv6, which has many trillions of alternatives. But most businesses and countries are being very slow to make any switch. But unless the switch is made, the web will not be able to have any more devices added to it.

Set up in the ’70s

The current Ipv4 system was set up in the 1970s, when scientists could hardly have imagined such huge growth of the web.

Europe is a bit behind the game here. In China they have already been forced to make the switch to Ipv6, due to their huge growth in web users.

Working out when to make the change

Apparently it’s quite hard to work out when the IP addresses will run out, due to ever accelerating growth in the number of Internet connected devices.

“Ten years ago we said it would happen far in the future,” said Mr Pawlick of Ripe NCC, responsible for distributing IP addresses in Europe. “Now we are all running around with iPhones, we’re in that future.”

IP Address Rationing

There is already severe rationing of IP addresses, according to Trefor Davies, CTO at Business ISP Timico.

“You cannot just ask for more IP addresses, you have to prove you need them. “The registries will not let you have more until your reserves reach a certain threshold,” he said.

Apparently making the switch to Ipv6 is not easy, and can involve delays for web browsers. Just 1% of the web’s top 1 million websites have Ipv6. Firms will have to get to grips with them soon to ensure a smooth transition for all Internet users.

Something else to worry about

So. Global warming. Nuclear proliferation. Unrest in the Middle East. And now there’s another thing to worry about – the dwindling stock of IP addresses.

Today for approximately 6 hours we had downtime on the www.webeden.co.uk website. This was due to an attack on our nameserver provider and subsequently threw us offline for quite a while.

You will be pleased to know that we have a safeguard in place that made sure that all your webeden sites were not affected and could still be viewed by anyone, it was only our main site webeden.co.uk that was affected.

As the site was down some people where unable to access their control panel. Most users can still access their control panel even if our webeden.co.uk site is down by going to www.yourdomain.com/login and then logging in there.

We do appologise for any distruption that was caused and wish you all a happy building day.

Yesterday we ran a story that highlighted the new Google homepage background. In an apparent copy of Bing, Google started adding screen-wide images to its ‘classic’ homepage.

In less than 24 hours, the whole thing is back to normal, albeit with a nice World Cup Doodle. We’ve got this:

So what’s behind all this?

Google originally added the backgroud to make the homepage appear more personal. But apparently there was such a negative reaction to the change Google reverted to the original.

In the official Google Blog, Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products said:

“…we launched the ability to set an image of users’ choosing as the background for the Google homepage. Today, we ran a special “doodle” that showcased this functionality by featuring a series of images as the background for our homepage. We had planned to run an explanation of the showcase alongside it—in the form of a link on our homepage. Due to a bug, the explanatory link did not appear for most users. As a result, many people thought we had permanently changed our homepage, so we decided to stop today’s series early. We appreciate your feedback and patience as we experiment and iterate.was the reason for that”

I reckon that’s a thinly veiled admission of a mistake.

Some sharp eyed peeps over on Search Engine Land noticed that search was the negative reaction to the change, that the search term ‘remove google background’ was one of the fastest rising searches yesterday!

So even the mighty Google can make mistakes!

Did you like it, prefer it now, have an opinion? Please leave one below.

Have you seen the Google homepage today? If you go to the ‘Classic’, it looks a bit like this:

What’s that all about? Last year Google redesigned their homepage to make it totally minimalist. The idea was to remove any distractions in order to boost searches, since Google doesn’t make money until you start searching.

Making in Personal

This, apparently, is to make it all be a little bit more personal. Whether you believe that works or not, there’s no doubt that Google will have carried out lots of testing before going live with this.

Going all Bing

Of course, it also means that for once Google is copying Microsoft. Bing launched with a stunning background image; Google has decided that’s a pretty good idea.

What do you think of the redesign? Leave us a comment below.

We’ve mentioned previously about the effect events have on how people use search engines, and what they search for.

At the first hint of summer, thoughts turned to eating outdoors, and searches for BBQs hit new highs. And regular events such as Valentine’s day always influence traffic and searches on Google.

The World Cup is coming

This time, the event looming on pretty much everyone’s horizon is of course the World Cup. Kicking off this weekend in South Africa, the world cup is one of the most talked about events on the planet.

And as such, it has a big influence on what people are searching for too. Online traffic monitoring firm Hitwise has reported a huge growth in World Cup related searches.

An interesting element has been the growth in searches for national flags, which peaked at 34,000 last week. The search terms topping the table were ‘flags of the world’. Unsurprisingly the ‘England flag’ was the most searched for country flag.

The other top 20 included German, Brazilian, French, Russian, American, and Italian.

Here’s an interactive graph of Google Insights for search, showing the trend in searches for flags over the last 90 days.

What it means for your website

If you have world cup related content on your website this means that your traffic numbers will benefit greatly from this increased coverage. For the rest of us website makers, however, the world cup promises to be a time where website traffic drops through the floor, as people stay glued to their television sets.

Has the World Cup had an impact on your traffic figures? Are you capitalizing on this interest or battening down the hatches until normality is resumed? Leave us a comment below.