NZS.com Newsletter November 2007

Welcome to the November NZS.com Newsletter - it's been another month of new beginnings for us following the redesign and launch of a new-look NZS.com.

This month, we've added a fantastic new weather section to the site and a funky hot search buzz cloud letting you see the latest top searches.

Contents:

• Top Ten Sites
• Site Visitor Statistics: How Sticky is Your Website?
• New NZS.com Weather Section Shines
• Keep Visitors Happy With Useful Content
• NZS.com at the Search Engine Room Conference
• Buzz Clouds: Keep An Eye On Our Hot Searches
• New Zealand Bands Rock in Search and Traffic Stats

Our top ten sites this month are taken from the ever-popular Shopping category and show an interesting combination of consumer habits: Supermarkets, Weapons and Ball Gowns.

Top Shopping Category Sites

Rank	Site Name	URL
1.	Countdown	www.countdown.co.nz
2.	Dress To Kill	www.dresstokill.co.nz
3.	Ellen H	www.ellenapparel.co.nz
4.	Firearms Direct	www.firearmsdirect.co.nz
5.	Gun City	www.guncity.co.nz
6.	New World	www.newworld.co.nz
7.	Women's Dress Hire	www.womensdresshire.co.nz
8.	Bella's	www.bellasonline.co.nz
9.	Active Outdoor Clothing	www.activeoutdoor.co.nz
10.	Formal and Bridal Clothing	www.fabclothingnz.com

Using one of the many available site statistics tools, it's easy to gather useful information on who is visiting your website, what they do while they're there and, importantly, how long visitors spend on your website. Once you know the average length of time each visitor spends looking at your site, you'll be able to introduce new features and fresh content - and then track how this affects visitor behaviour. Hopefully, visitors will stay longer and come back for more!

Making your website more sticky (meaning visitors spend longer on your site) can be simple:

1. Ensure your site has good, easy-to-use navigation which leads from one page to another, clearly shows what else your site has to offer and keeps visitors clicking.
2. Get your users involved with a forum for community discussion or a blog where your team can provide industry news and relevant tips, while also getting reader feedback.
3. Remind visitors to bookmark your website with a bookmark button.
4. Email a monthly newsletter to keep in touch with your customers, provide useful information and let your users know about any new features, products or services.
5. Include useful, informative and readable content on your website - and update it regularly to keep your site fresh.

Talk to a professional Web design or Internet marketing company for assessment and optimisation of your website.

The weather has been known to do strange things (anyone for a dose of climate change?), but now you can be prepared with weather forecasts, reports and updates online. NZS.com has recently added a weather section, with up-to-date information delivered fresh each hour to your browser. You'll get all the weather information you need, including:

• Today's weather, updated every hour
• Weather forecasts for the next four days
• Weather reports for North and South Island regions, cities and towns
• Information on climate, sunshine hours, rainfall and average temperature

Rain or shine, stay tuned in for local weather updates on NZS.com.

Just what are your visitors looking for? By providing information that is directly useful and relevant to your visitors, you'll give them something of substance to chew over and motivate visitors to explore your site further. Once you know what works (again, check your site statistics) you'll be better tuned in to the needs of your visitors and be able to create an information-rich site.

A consistent high performer in our articles section is our guide to writing your CV. While NZS.com has a broad focus and users from all walks of life, job hunting skills (and by necessity, CV writing) obviously have appeal to a large number of visitors. To create useful content for your own website:

• Use an online keyword tool - find out what people are searching for in your area of business, and write on these topics. For example, if you're in the travel industry, some of the most popular searches are based around adventure travel, maps of New Zealand and travel insurance.
• Work with industry experts - collaborating with an expert in your field will provide accurate, current information and add to your own credentials.
• Provide useful resources around your area of expertise - topics can be general or very specific, but always keep your reader in mind.
• Make sure your content is unique - think about what you can offer which isn't available anywhere else and create content that's 100% original.
• Go for quality rather than quantity - a small number of quality, targeted articles or content pages will be more beneficial than dozens of low quality pages.

On Tuesday 13th November, the Hyatt Regency in Auckland was abuzz with search talk at the Search Engine Room conference. This annual event attracts more than 300 search industry leaders every year in Australia - at the inaugural New Zealand event, NZS.com general manager, Gary Jensen, spoke about the role NZS.com plays in New Zealand's growing search engine and Internet marketing industry.

The diverse and engaging lineup also featured:

• Eurekster co-founder, Dr Grant Ryan, talking about swickis, buzz clouds and the evolution of search globally.
• A panel of search experts discussing New Zealand's search industry and emerging trends.
• Aaron Shear, US search marketing expert, outlining the benefits of search in relation to your ecommerce strategy.

Tune in next month for Gary's top picks and search engine news from the conference.

Utter the words "buzz cloud" and you might get some blank looks, but these nifty devices are actually little rays of sunshine for website owners. You might have heard buzz clouds referred to as tag clouds; either way, they're a visual representation of popular search keywords (also known as tags) which link through to a list of results for that keyword or keyword phrase. The relative popularity of each term is shown by the size of the word itself.

NZS.com has just added a hot search buzz cloud, which you'll see on the right of pages throughout the site. What's brilliant about tag clouds is their interactive nature - they show exactly what users are searching for at any given time. This makes the whole search function much more social and also adds an attractive extra for site visitors.

It wasn't very long ago that New Zealand suffered from a bad case of the cultural cringe. Luckily this has all changed; last month, we blogged on the New Zealand Music Awards - not out of obligation, but with great pride in the quality of New Zealand bands and musicians! The Mint Chicks and Hollie Smith were the big winners on the night, but Evermore, Brooke Fraser and Opshop also received accolades for their performances throughout the year.

NZS.com users agree with us about the state of New Zealand music: 'New Zealand bands' is a consistently high-performing search month after month, and our Rock and Pop Music category is one of the most-viewed Entertainment categories. A presence online gives bands and musicians the opportunity to provide biographical information, let fans know where they're next playing and sell music downloads or albums direct online. The Internet has become essential in all areas of business - what company would be without a basic Web presence? - and is becoming increasingly important to the entertainment and music industries.

Getting listed on NZS.com is free and will give you access to targeted traffic. There are also advertising options for those wanting a higher profile for their business.

We're interested in your opinion, if you have anything you'd like to hear about in the newsletter, let us know!

Kind Regards

Greta
for NZS.com Ltd