Any telemarketers out there, be warned about the Tom Mabe story.

I first came across this as an mp3 file, linked from one of Gary Halbert’s articles. Isn’t it strange how YouTube has liberated so much audio content.

A lot of businesses want their own website, but have put it off because they don’t know how.

At OM4 we have put together a system that allows you to create your own website quickly and easily. Importantly, when you have created your site you can:

• update your own content - add new pages, add blog posts, change information any time you want
• update your own design - either follow our instructions to do this yourself, or you can use any graphic designer to do a custom design for you
• use your own domain name - just register with any domain name registrar and we’ll help you with the rest
• add images, YouTube videos, audio, links to Google Maps
• add contact forms to allow visitors to contact you with enquiries
• add your own BuyNow, Add To Cart and Donate buttons to accept payments direct to your PayPal account
• full integration with Google Apps so you can have free email at your domain

Sign up here for a free trial: OM4 Website 30 Day Free Trial

We’ll send you regular emails giving you instructions on how to use your site. While we have lots of information that you can read all at once (if you are in a hurry), most of our clients find it easiest to get instructions bit by bit.

You’ll be learning to maintain your website using the industry leading Wordpress platform. Every time Wordpress issues a patch or an upgrade, we apply it for you. You don’t need to use FTP or anything more complex than the Wordpress dashboard, which is used by millions worldwide.

You’ll have access to a very useful set of Wordpress plugins for you to use, and keep these up to date as well. While anyone can download and use Wordpress, in practice you may find upgrading the software can be a bit tricky. As can selecting the right mix of plugins to support a business website. With OM4, this is all taken care of for you.

And what does it cost? Nothing to try it out. If you want to keep on after our 30 day trial, then it costs $20 AUD per month. That is less than you would pay for a normal business website hosting account (and that wouldn’t normally include someone administering your website for you).

So, did you get the link? OM4 Website 30 Day Free Trial

Wordpress plugins are really useful for all sorts of business purposes. We support plugins that:

• let people subscribe to your blog posts using RSS or email
• enter client testimonials and have a randomly selected one display on every page
• maintain a collection of quotes and display a random one each page
• integrate an email autoresponder such as Aweber or iContact so visitors can sign up to your email list direct from your sidebar
• integrate your website with Google Analytics so you can see exactly how many visitors are coming to your website, which keywords they are using to find you from search engines, which websites are referring visitors to you, and which pages they are reading

Ok, no reason now not to give it a try. If you have any questions, just log on to our OM4 forums and ask a question - no charge for forum answers.

See you on board.!

Fascinating snippet from the Rubicon 2008 Online Advertising Market Report:

Ten years ago only 5% of consumer time was spent online, today consumers are spending 33% of time online.

The stat is a bit odd - I think this percentage must refer to the time consumers spend consuming media.

But what I am interested in is the shift represented, a shift in attention. 6 times as much attention online as there was 10 years ago. More attention available online than ever before.

That is why online marketing is so important for a business.

When you track your website with Google Analytics, one of the figures you can see is Bounce Rate.

If a visitor comes to your website, views one page and then ‘bounces’ off elsewhere, that is called a bounce.

If 40 visitors out of every 100 only view one page before leaving, that is a 40% Bounce Rate.

You can view the bounce rate for your website overall, but you can also see it reported for individual items, such as by keyword or by page.

This is an extract from the Keywords view (with keywords removed) - you can see the bounce rate for each keyword in the right hand column.

The bounce rate by keyword shows is which keywords are delivering the most qualified traffic.

If you look at the bounce rate by page, you can see which pages don’t engage interest and lead visitors in to the rest of your website.

Trellian - who own the excellent keyword tool Keyword Discovery - sent me a good promotional email today.

Now Keyword Discovery is a good tool, I’ve subscribed to it before.

But I wasn’t really paying attention to what they were saying. It didn’t matter that much, as Google’s keyword tool is comprehensive, accurate and free.

Life must be really hard for Keyword Discovery since Google unleashed the economics of free on the keyword research market.

Online marketing is a field with enormous amounts of information available.

The sheer volume of concepts is a real challenge if you are coming at it for the first time. And things keep changing all the time, just to add to the complexity.

For this reason, good summaries and lists are very useful. SEOmoz have put together a very good collection of resources called the Internet Marketing Handbook.

This link building article - referred to from the Handbook - is definitely worth looking at if you are wanting more links (and who doesn’t): Link Building Notes of a SEO Kindergartner.

Learning about online marketing is a good idea. But don’t get stuck in learning mode and neglect doing. Take the link building PDF linked to above. Take notes as you read it and take action on 3 link building tactics this week. Integrate your learning with your online marketing activity.

(Found this list thanks to Copyblogger and 10 Cool Links for Bloggers and Copywriters)

We’ve recently gone live with a new OM4Tourism website for Roderick and Alida Woodland at Digger’s Rest Station.

This website was a lot of fun to work on. The landscape of the Kimberley region is just breathtaking - we have four clients from the Kimberley region, and each time I see new images I want to take a few weeks off and head up there. The horse treks run out of Digger’s Rest are particularly interesting - one of the best holidays I have ever had was a 6 day horse ride in the Victorian high country. So I’m a big fan of horse treks.

Digger’s Rest Station was one of the locations used by Baz Luhrmann to shoot Australia, the movie. That is pretty special. I’m sure they are going to get a lot of attention, because Tourism Australia is running a big new campaign to coincide with the release of Baz Luhrmann’s Australia.

Locations used in the Kimberley included Digger’s Rest Station, El Questro and Carlton Hill Station:

• Kimberley Echo Article
• Baz The Great - Australia Locations
• Sydney Morning Herald

In New Zealand, a lot of people went to visit the locations used for The Lord of the Rings, so perhaps the same thing will happen in the Kimberley. I don’t think you can stay at Carlton Hill (perhaps if you are friends with the Packer family that doesn’t apply), but both Digger’s Rest and El Questro let you stay in view of the Cockburn Ranges.

In putting together this site, Alida asked for it to be quite visual. So we’ve used image buttons to allow visitors to navigate to the major parts of the website. By looking at the home page, you can see pretty quickly what the Digger’s Rest experience is all about.

Hope you get the chance to visit the Kimberley - watch the Tourism Australia ads on youtube, and perhaps that might happen sooner rather than later.

Is it really possible Skype officially uses a Catch 22 to make their refund policy worthless for business control panel users?

Seems like it is.

Recently I ordered a subscription for one of our team, using my Skype business account. With a business account, you purchase credit, then use your business control panel to allocate it to individual accounts. It is a good system for business.

There was a problem with the subscription - I got charged not only for the monthly subscription fee (expected), but was then charged again for the 3 ‘included’ numbers. As the additional charge was 3x the original subscription, I wasn’t too keen on paying it.

After some glacial responses from Skype support, I requested a refund of the amounts over charged. That is when things went decidedly weird. This is a summary of how Skype has explained it to me:

• to request a refund from Skype, I have to provide an Order Number
• the amount I was overcharged for the online numbers was an ‘allocation’ (meaning Skype allocated the amount from my business account to pay for the online numbers)
• allocations do not have Order numbers
• no Order number, no refund.

Say what?

Skype’s how-do-I-request-a-refund FAQ states:

Now you can try all Skype products at no risk and with no commitment. So, if you’re not happy with your online number (SkypeIn) experience, you can ask us for a refund of your latest subscription purchase. If you ask for a refund within 30 days of your payment, we will refund you the entire amount of your online number purchase. … You can request a refund by submitting a ticket to Customer Support. The refund will be credited to the purchaser’s credit card, so you must be able to provide proof of your initial purchase.

Simple enough - but it should say it doesn’t apply if you buy as business (with an allocation).

In case you think I am imagining this and there is no way a company would create a modern day Catch 22 that had the effect of avoiding refunds, here is the answer to my ‘do you mean you have a Catch 22 in place?’ question:

About the Catch 22 you are referring to. Unfortunately we can not refund Business Control Panel credit allocations. Please read our Terms of Service which say that credit allocated to a user cannot be refunded. We apologize for the confusion and thank you for understanding. Please do not hesitate to email me back, if you have any further questions regarding Skype.

[name removed] - Skype Support
Office of the President
Skype

Saying “we can not refund” isn’t true, of course, “we will not refund” would be more accurate. Their allocation process, their refund policy, their choice.

“Thank you for understanding” - I understand, but don’t agree.

Turns out the whole issue started due to a bug Skype have in their billing. Skype have told me that the amount that is shown as having been allocated out of my account has not been allocated:

Due to a bug in our system, there is a false allocation shown on the BCP. This bug is connected to an allocation of Skype subscription from the administrator to a user and the user has activated her/his online numbers. As soon as the user activates the online numbers, which are including in the subscription, there will be a false allocation shown in the BCP. We are very sorry that this false allocation has appeared in your Business Control Panel and we are working very hard to fix this bug.

The subscription I originally purchased is working, with 3 online numbers allocated. So from that perspective at least, everything is working. And a Skype Subscription is very useful, no doubt about that.

But offering a money back guarantee with a hidden Catch 22 - that is unusual, to say the least.

The way Skype have responded to me means that the way their website represents their refund approach is not accurate. If you use a business control panel to purchase online numbers for members of your team to use, there is no refund available. 

Now Skype could easily choose to treat a business control panel allocation as a purchase. So is this all a crazy mistake on Skype’s part? Would they really have designed orders and allocations and specifically decided to exclude allocations from being refundable? Maybe Skype Support and the ‘Office of the President’ have been confused by the complexity of their own billing system. 

Not that I need a refund now, but I would hope Skype do an internal review on this and get rid of this crazy Catch 22 for business refunds.

Andrew Lindstrom wrote a list of 7 Must Dos Before Launching Your Blog.

A very good list Andrew, we do all of these ourselves.

Two minor add ons to the list.

Search Meter. If you want to track what people search for once they arrive at your site, you can use a plugin called Search Meter.

Robots. You might want to set up Robots.txt to stop robots indexing some parts of your site - we use KB Robots.txt for this purpose, as it works well for both Wordpress and Wordpress MU. Its a minor detail, but I like to disallow wp-login.php ( Google seems to have a fascination for indexing your Wordpress login page, sometimes before more prominent and useful pages).

We’ve recently published a new support article to help you prepare images for your website.

Using your digital camera to prepare images for your website is a wonderful idea. But to keep the response time of your web pages nice and fast, you need to do a bit of prep before posting them.