Get Ready for Webstock

Ready to be inspired? To open up your mind, unleash your creativity and reconnect with your community? Webstock is to tech heads today what Woodstock was to hippies and music fans back in the 60s… without the emphasis on free love and mind-altering substances.

And Webstock 2010 is set to offer one of the conference’s most exciting lineups yet, with industry experts, legends and up-and-coming movers and shakers aplenty offering the best presentations, workshops and insights into what’s new and exciting in the industry.

Webstock aims to have their attendees return to their places of work more energised, more knowledgable and more connected. These are some of the conference presentations we’re most excited about:

• Jeff Veen  :  How the Web Works

• Lisa Herrod  :  Designing for Diversity – Inclusive Design and the User Experience

• John Resig  :  Practical Mobile JavaScript Development

• Toby Segaran  :  Beautiful Data

• Ben Cerveny  :  Off the Grid: New Models for Designing Games, Products, and Places

• Jeff Atwood  :  Stack Overflow: Building Social Software for the Anti-Social

• Eric Ries  :  The Lean Startup

• Amy Hoy  :  Shift+Cmd+R: Hard Refresh Your Design

• Daniel Burka  :  Iterative Design Strategies

• Thomas Fuchas  :  I Can’t Believe It’s Not Flash!

Webstock is running February 15-19 in Wellington. NZS.com GM Gary Jensen will be attending, so if you see him on tha day be sure to stop and say hi. For more information, including 10 Reasons You Should Attend, check out the Webstock website.

Quality Web Content

We’ve all heard the old adage that content is king – but why exactly is content so important to the success of your website?

Firstly, you need quality content to assure your visitors and potential customers that you are legitimate and offer the perfect services to meet their needs. Secondly, good website content is the backbone of search engine optimisation. Which is equally important if you’re to have any chance of ranking in search engines and gaining genuine traffic.

Though innovative and eye catching design may impress potential clients, it’s relevant, well written content that is really the heart and soul of your website. It is that content that will ultimately drive visitors to your site, capture their attention and keep them wanting more. In short: great website content is the best relationship building tool you can have with your customers.

Think of your website as a cake. You nip into a bakery to buy a delicious cake to share with your customers. You spy the most delectable, and expensive, cake in the store, but the moment you taste a slice you realise the baker has forgotten to add sugar. Now the cake is bland and boring and hard to swallow… and your customers are less than impressed and losing interest.

Think of web content as the sugar that needs to be added to your cake. While great design may make your website look professional, without quality content you’ll find customers are not satisfied and soon lose interest.

A well designed website can attract visitors to your website, but website content is the key element that will bring regular traffic, persuade your visitors to take an action and convert visitors into sales.

For more information on creating quality content and search engine optimisation be sure to check out our Website Resources on NZS.com.

Website Marketing Options For NZ

The team here are very excited with the way the recently launched Website Resources section on NZS.com is building momentum since it was launched last month. Businesses from across New Zealand are getting involved by adding their business details directly to NZS.com including using the extra marketing options for marketing descriptions, search tags and even marketing URL’s like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Anyone adding their business details also receives a “Business Info” button next to their website listing in the normal category results which is proving a valuable addition. For an example, have a look at the Black Sheep Marketing listing further down the page on the Strategic Marketing category. This helps increase clicks through to your website from NZS.com and it only takes a few minutes to complete.

To give you an idea of the information you could have on NZS.com as well you can see what Avatar Web Promotions have entered on the Avatar.co.nz Site Profile.

All you need to do is head along to the Website Resources section on NZS.com, register and follow the instructions.

While you’re there, if you’re interested in a succinct introduction on how New Zealand websites can enhance their performance, usability and visibility, read The First 15 – A Guide To Improving Website Performance.