One of the most important aspects of a website is usability. Web usability is defined as the flow of your website from page to page. In other words, it is a measure of how well your website is put together and whether improvements are needed to clarify or completely redo a part of the site. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com, are all masters of usability because their graphical user interface (GUI) is easy to use and accessible for even the least tech-savvy Internet users. There are a few steps and tests (like http://www.usability.gov/) that you can utilize to test the usability of your website.

The best way to test the usability of your website is to imagine situations related to visiting your website, and then asking people to act out these scenarios. While family and colleagues may be a varied (as far as Internet usage) and reliable source, the best results will come from people who are randomly selected. Ask the participant questions to make them feel at ease and discover their background (“How often do you use the Internet? How long each day? What do you use it for?” etc.) to better understand where they are coming from and how technologically inclined they are.

One of the most important aspects of the usability test are the scenarios that you provide for participants. For example, if I own a sporting goods store, I might give the user a scenario in which they must be able to find out if they can rent equipment, what the estimated cost would be, and how long they can rent the equipment. I may know that my business provides a special, 6-month rental deal but if the participant is unable to easily find this information on their own, then my website has a usability issue. Missing information, “dead” links (502 forbidden error), and a misleading or confusing layout are a few of the concerns that can be fixed after a usability test.

The goal of a usability test is ultimately to create clarity to your audience for all aspects of your site. Recognizing and deleting or renovating ambiguous terms or actions, as well as noting the efficiency (namely for eCommerce sites) of your site, will allow you to improve and strengthen your online presence. A web usability test is incredibly helpful and should be considered as an essential part of creating and maintaining your website.

Today almost everyone has a website of some sort. Whether it’s for business or pleasure, we are all connected to the Internet. Social media websites give you a generic, yet customizable theme that allows you to express yourself by posting text, pictures, videos, and listing your likes and dislikes. The World Wide Web encompasses so much information that it can be daunting to consider it on a holistic, international scale.

One element that all websites have in common is the language behind the images and information seen on a webpage. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the language that web pages use and translate to create the words and format of a webpage. Most likely, you will go your entire life without having an actual conversation in HTML but it is important to understand the language behind what our websites display.

In the early days of the World Wide Web, HTML code had to be painstakingly typed to the point of perfection for a webpage to appear the way you wanted it. While HTML and CSS (design/appearance code) are still major components for all websites on the Internet, sites like WordPress or Dreamweaver can now make the HTML-illiterate feel like the most tech-savvy person in the room by furthering your interaction with web design.

If you are interested in learning more about HTML and CSS, there are a plethora of resources available on and offline. Most colleges offer classes on HTML and hundreds of books and articles examine, explain and expand on HTML, its importance, and effect. Merely glimpsing at any webpage’s HTML code will make you marvel and appreciate the complex, attractive websites we visit daily.

So you have your website up and running. It’s receiving a decent amount of traffic and your business is beginning to expand. You’ve left the contact info and are beginning to have your private email filled with business related matters. Now, you want to create an email through and connected to your business’ domain name. Gmail and YahooMail are great for private matters but it can be overwhelming when business and pleasure, as far as email is concerned, collide.

To create an email through your business’ website, log into your control panel and search for the “Email Setup” button. You can than choose the kind of email you want to have (i.e. “Add new POP3”). Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3) is the most common and frequently used kind of email, allowing the messages sent to you to be transferred onto your computer and be seen when you log into your account. Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) lets you work with messages without downloading them to your computer. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is used to send and receive messages in both the POP3 and IMAP email options. Use POP3, create a user name and password, and save your info. Be sure to send a test email to your new address to make sure you’ve done it correctly.

Any questions or concerns, feel free to contact our 24/7 email tech support: support@webii.net.

We are a visually oriented society; from films and photography to illustration and art, we are stimulated in unique ways by endlessly varying combinations of pictures and motion. It follows that designing a website is a visually intense, interactive experience. There are many different aspects of style and design to consider. Whether aligning a page, picking the perfect graphic, or choosing a complimentary color scheme, website designs are full of visual stimulation.

After creating an attractive design for your site, you should consider adding a video to your post or page. Videos are incredibly effective website tools because people usually prefer to watch a video rather than read a large block of text. Video gives the site viewer information in a more accessible and appealing format. Inserting videos into your website is an efficient way to inform visitors about your site and persuade them to spend more time browsing. Adding a commercial to your site, as well as YouTube or Vimeo, allows your business to reach a wider audience. Keeping your site updated with videos of interesting and relevant content will encourage people to visit your website more often.

There are two major methods to using a video to your website: you can either have a professional, high-quality video made for your company or embed a video that is relevant to your business and deals with a subject that your clients may find interesting.  Making a video for your company does not mean simply sitting in front of a webcam and describing your business or successes. Your video should be created by a professional who understands you, your target audience, and what you want to say about your business and website.

To add video to your site, here are a few programs, like Video LightBox, that require you to download their software in order to embed videos. This type of program often includes features that allow you to customize the appearance of the video to help integrate it with your website’s design theme.

If you have a basic understanding of HTML, there is an even simpler option. Everything on the Internet, from text to links to dropdown menus, requires specific code that computers recognize and translate into a format that you are familiar with. This same kind of coding applies for embedding a video into your website.

First, find or create a video that you want to put on your website. YouTube is a great resource for uploading your videos or finding one you want to share. Then save the video to your computer using one of the various sites that translate the video code into a format (like MP4) that you can save on your computer and use on the Internet. Websites like SaveTube.com, SaveYouTube.com, and KeepVid are easy to use and effective, allowing you to save the video to your computer and then upload it to your site. If you use WordPress to edit your site, there are a number of easy-to-use plugins that can help you embed a video into your page or post.

Adding video is simple process that can dramatically improve your site. Videos are constantly watched all over the Internet and embedding one on your website makes the content more accessible and, if updated consistently, video will attract more and more people to your site. Video is a modern must-have for any website.

A guide to boosting your business using online tools…

With the seemingly constant buzz over social networking, some people may wonder what all the fuss is about. How could these cleverly-named contrivances ever be relevant to your personal or professional life? The answer lies in people power. Millions of people use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and daily deal sites like Groupon on a regular basis. Each of these social media outlets offers ways to connect with customers and generate growth for your business. This includes opportunities in marketing, networking, and advertising. As an added bonus, they’re all free.

LinkedIn

Why it’s useful: LinkedIn’s 135 million users are focused on professional networking. Whether you are staying in touch with colleagues, seeking to fill a position at your company, searching for a potential vendor, or keeping updated on the latest industry news, LinkedIn is all business all the time.

Get started: Creating a LinkedIn account is simple – it only requires your name and email. To get the most return for your efforts, fill out your profile as thoroughly as possible. At minimum this information includes your current job, past jobs, education, honors & awards, and groups (service, industry, alumni, etc.) Next, start searching for and linking with colleagues, former co-workers, old classmates, and any business connections you may have. You can also create a company profile to keep your business connected with current clients, searching for potential customers, and up to date on the competition.

LinkedIn is a great way to follow up with business contacts you have recently met. A quick “Nice to meet you,” message can go a long way in establishing and maintaining a business relationship. As with Facebook and Twitter, always include a link to your LinkedIn profile in your email signature, website, etc.

GROUPON (and other daily deal/group buying sites)

Why it’s useful: An estimated 85 million people subscribe to daily deal sites and there are literally hundreds to choose from; Groupon, Living Social, Google Offers, Yelp Deals, Amazon Local, and BuyWithMe are just a few. The appeal of these sites is advertising exposure to a huge, targeted (i.e. local) audience, which could potentially generate a massive amount of sales and new customers.

Get started: Each of these sites work generally the same way: the merchant (that’s you) contacts a group buying site and arranges to offer a particular product or service at a great discount, usually 50% or greater, if and only if the site can generate a specified amount of sales. Carefully calculate how much this deal may be worth to your business. After factoring in the actual discount as well as the cut for the group buying site, you may make about 25% of what you would on a normal sale. If you think that sounds like a terrible business decision, consider this: 97% of merchants featured on Groupon request to be featured again. The effectiveness of the advertising and the enormous influx of new customers are worth the potential short-term drop in profit. If this viral advertising technique seems like a good fit for your business, go online and fill out a form on any daily deal website to find out more.

Social media offers powerful opportunities for mass advertising, connecting with customers, and industry communication. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Groupon are highly effective tools for your marketing and advertising arsenal. Equipped with these tips (and SOCIAL MEDIA 101), you can step confidently into the world of social media to boost your business and grow your customer base. Happy networking!

The ability to stay connected is more important than ever in this digital age, and having the ability to access your emails on mobile devices such as your Iphone or Ipad, has become essential for conducting business while out of the office.

Though it is a useful resource, if you don’t know how to configure your email settings on your Ipad or Iphone, then that leaves you without a very valuable weapon in your business arsenal.

Fortunately for you,  WEBii offer both video and screen shot tutorials for how to configure your Idevices to receive emails from your WEBii email accounts.

You can check out our Ipad tutorial video, as well as our other webtutorials by clicking here.

Our support page also offers screen shots to go along with the video tutorial and you can view them here.

We hope that this helps, and if you need further assistance, we are always happy to help.

Let’s face it: automated translation software just does not cut it.  So what if I want to translate my English-based WordPress website into Spanish or another language?

This can be done with a little bit of template editing and some unique pages.  The suggestions below will help you establish an alternative navigation menu, display an alternative header, and create content with a unique template.  All of these steps are supported with the latest WordPress (3.x) so no plugin necessary!

Create some new pages.

Testing your new section will be much easier if you have some pages to populate the menu first.  Create at least one page in your language.  Be careful not to use accents or other special characters in the url (if you have one in the title you will need to edit the url).  The url structure should be basic letters and dashes to prevent breaking the ability to view that page.  You can Publish these new pages, assuming you did not include them in the menu of your live website (English version) – so they are still behind the scenes for now.

Make a new menu.

Under Appearance > Menus, you should have a listing of your current menus.  Click on the “add” tab (a plus sign) to create a new menu for your language section.  In my case, I will call it menu Spanish.

Add the pages you created earlier to this menu and Save the changes.

Now, we need to find out the menu id number. An easy way to do this is to click the tab for your menu and notice the url in the top, which will end in an id number like this:

wp-admin/nav-menus.php?action=edit&menu=71

So, my menu id is 71.  Jot this number down for reference.

Create a new header file.

In your wp-content folder, you should have a standard file header.php. I am assuming you have a basic understanding of the file structure of a typical WordPress website.  Make a copy of this file named appropriately for your section, such as header-spanish.php. Now make some small edits to the file to replace English words with your language (maybe a slogan or other text displayed in this header).

Toward the end of this file, there is probably a reference to your navigation menu.  For example it might look like this:

<?php wp_nav_menu( array( ‘container’ => ”,’menu_id’=>’suckerfishnav’, ‘menu_class’ => ‘sf-menu sf-js-enabled’, ‘menu’ => ‘menu’,  ) ); ?>

This one is a little more elaborate because I added some dropdown menus and classes.  At the end, notice it just has ‘menu’ as the identifier.  WordPress looks for the first, default menu.  Change this value to your id number instead.  So my line in the new header file becomes:

<?php wp_nav_menu( array( ‘container’ => ”,’menu_id’=>’suckerfishnav’, ‘menu_class’ => ‘sf-menu sf-js-enabled’, ‘menu’ => ’71′,  ) ); ?>

Save and upload your header file to the server.

Create a page template.

Make a copy of your default page.php file.  Put a template name in the heading of this file.

In the top of this file, you should notice a line to include the default header. The parenthesis within it are blank.  Include the name of your new header file, enclosed in single quotes inside this parenthesis, such as:

<? get_header(‘spanish’);?>

You might decide to change other things in your page template, but this will at least include your custom header (along with the custom menu) into this layout.

Assign your template to the page.

Now go back and edit your pages for this special language section, and update the Template to your new custom template.  You should see the name of it in the dropdown choices.  Update/Publish the page to reflect this change.  The next time you preview the page, you should see your updated header information and your translated menu loading instead of the default.

And lastly, once all your pages and menu items are complete and your new section is satisfactory, add some links to it on your main index page or your default menu so your visitors will be able to locate it.

Situation: You have a WordPress developed website and you want additional sidebars for different sections in the website, so you can display different widgets on different pages. This is especially handy for adding various sub-menus to different sections (like one for About Us section, a different menu for Contact Us).

Solution: You don’t need to be a PHP expert – just some comfort with the WordPress structure can help you accomplish this in a few easy steps.

1. Make a new sidebar file.
2. Add the sidebar to your functions.
3. Create a new template file.
4. Edit the template to include your new sidebar.
5. Add widgets to your new sidebar.
6. Assign a Page to your Template.

Step 1: Make a new sidebar file. There should be a file called sidebar.php or maybe leftbar.php in your theme folder.  Make a copy of this file and name it something intuitive, such as sidebar-about.php.  You should revise the code reflect a suitable name for the sidebar, for example:

!dynamic_sidebar('About Sidebar')

Step 2: Add the sidebar to your functions. Locate your theme folder’s functions.php file.  Below your existing sidebars, you need to add something to recognize your new sidebar.  Such as:

register_sidebar(array('name'=>'About Sidebar',
 'before_widget' => '<div>',
 'after_widget' => '</div>',
 'after_title' => '</div>', '<h3>',
 'after_title' => '</h3>',
 ));

Step 3:  Create a new template file. When creating a new layout for a Page in WordPress, start with making a copy of your default page.php file and naming it to something intuitive, such as page-about.php. Next you need to notate the name of this template in the top description comments of the file:

* Template Name: About
*/

Step 4: Edit the template to include your new sidebar. You should reference your new sidebar for this page so it will be included:

<? include('leftbar-about.php'); ?>

You might completely replace the default sidebar with this new one, or you might just append this so you have more than one set of widgets showing up on this Page layout.  Upload your final template file to the server so it is ready to use.

Step 5: Add widgets to your new sidebar. Login to your WordPress Admin interface and visit Appearance > Widgets.  Your new sidebar should appear in the options at the far right.  Drag widgets you desire into this new sidebar and save any changes you make to them.  In the case of a sub-menu, you might use the Custom Menu widget to insert a Menu you created.

Step 6: Assign a Page to the Template. So now your sidebar is ready but nothing is displaying it.  Visit a page that you want to use the new template variation you created, with this new sidebar, in my case the About page.  At the right side under the Parent navigation settings, you will see a Template dropdown option.  Select the new template name (eg: About) and Update (publish).

And finally – visit your website and refresh the browser to check out the new layout.  My customized About page now sports a completely different sidebar than other pages in my website or blog.

With Blog Inspirations we help you find topics to maintain your business blog.

Incorporating an interview into your blog post is a great way to create a unique, entertaining and informative article. It is ok if you are at a loss for words – just get somebody else to do the talking!

Are you planning on attending a conference related to your business or industry? This is a great opportunity to speak with professionals in your field who can offer their opinions and advice. If you have access to a list of attendees or speakers, take a look through it and pick out several professionals you are interested in speaking with. If you want to secure your interview, try contacting the people you would like to talk to in advance. This way, you can introduce yourself and let them know the nature of the questions you are interested in asking them. You might ask them to meet you for coffee after the event, or meet you between seminars and workshops. If you do not have access to a list of attendees, you are sure to meet some interesting people while you are there, and most professionals are happy to sit down for a quick interview – especially if they know it is going to be featured on a blog. In addition to bringing your pen and paper, bring a small tape recorder with you, so you can capture your interview and review it later. Recording the interview makes it easier for you to engage in the interview, and you won’t have to scribble notes while trying to talk.

You don’t have to go to a conference to meet people to interview. In fact, you most likely already know many interesting professionals in your industry. Consider requesting an interview from your boss, perhaps your readers would like to hear from someone in an executive seat. You could request an interview from your co-worker, perhaps he or she recently completed an interesting project and you could tell his or her story in your blog post. You can even go through your rolodex and contact people you have met and worked with who may have interesting insight into the future of your industry. You can even interview someone outside of your field, someone in a different specialty – you can always find a way to make the information relevant to your readers.

If you have a topic in mind to write about that you are very interested in, but know little about, you can conduct a panel style interview. Do some initial research on the subject of interest. Formulate some questions you would like answered by those who know the subject best. Also consider questions you think would elicit informative answers for your readers. Then, contact people you would consider experts in the subject. Maybe it is a professor at a local college, a government official, or a small business owner – you can ask each individual the same questions and compare and contrast their responses. This type of investigative interviewing lends itself to a very comprehensive blog post.

So, the next time you have a case of blogger’s block, get out your tape recorder. Your interview is likely to inspire an interesting and informative new post.