Warning: Domain Renewal Scam

Have you received a letter in the mail recently reminding you to renew your domain name? Does it look like an official invoice? Be careful. We remind you that Internet scams don’t always just arrive in your email inbox, some unscrupulous companies are now additionally resorting to spamming your postal address.

Right now, a couple of these companies are targeting New Zealand businesses - mailing out Domain Name Expiration Notices to domain name holders (postal addresses are easily obtainable via a domain’s whois information).

A quick glance at one of these notices would easily fool you into thinking it was a genuine invoice and a reminder to renew your domain name – i.e. to write out a cheque and put it in the envelope they considerately provide for return mail.

Be warned, these “notices” are an attempt to trick you into re-registering your domain name - with a different company to your present domain registry, and for fees well in excess of what you are currently paying.

Merry Christmas

The first ever SMS text message sent went out in the UK in early December 1992. The message read: "Merry Christmas". Sixteen years later, and it is calculated the British exchange more than one billion SMS text messages every week (Source: Mobile Data Association). One billion text messages (of say an average of 8 words in length) equates to about the amount of text you'd find in 100,000 novels.

Keeping in touch is important

Email Newsletters

Before the Internet, keeping in touch with your customers meant waiting either for them to return to your store, or by snail mailing out a brochure or flyer (expensive and time consuming).

Thankfully, we live in the information age and we have the email. The email newsletter can be delivered directly to your customers' inboxes - instantly and at (virtually) no cost.

A regular newsletter is an excellent way to keep in touch with your customers, and keeping in touch is important. It maintains awareness of your business, and if what you send out is well put together, you can further develop and cement relationships with your customers.

You can use your newsletter to:

• Highlight new products and services
• Answer frequently asked questions
• Offer free tips and advice - you'll enhance your standing, if your customers know you to be an expert in your field

If you can, try to personalise your newsletters. For example, include the name of the person receiving it: "Hi John, here is our latest newsletter..."

A newsletter is an extension of your website, so provide links to it. Link back to:

• more information, or further reading
• related products and services
• online-only specials

You can also entice people to return to your store (unless your business is entirely online), by offering time-limited discounts and other in-store specials.

Make sure your newsletter is sent out regularly, and that it is well written and free of spelling and grammatical errors.

Help! My website is stale!

Website Makeovers

One of the most important elements of a website is its freshness. The presence of new content is the best incentive to encourage a visitor's return - return visits increases the likelihood of sales, and turns a new customer into a repeat customer.

If you're reasonably diligent, you'll be keeping your website's content relevant and up-to-date. But what about the website itself? How does that look?

Like everything else (the car, the TV, the computer), a website can grow old. Given time, it can start to look dated. At worst, it can become "so last decade."

For this exact reason, Internet majors like CNN, Microsoft, Amazon, and eBay (to name a few) regularly and routinely change the look and "feel" of their websites. Every year or two, they give their websites makeovers.

And you can too.

Giving your website a makeover is not like reinventing the wheel -you're not rebuilding your website from the ground up, you're just changing it's appearance.

Even the most basic of makeovers - a new colour scheme, for example - can revitalise your website instantly.