After many years of thinking about the idea and several requests from members of my Forces-of-Nature website I have now added a clothing shop for windsurfers and kitesurfers.
Forces-of-Nature is a website run by Pixelwave Web Design aimed at the uk community of windsurfers, kitesurfers, surfers and other beach-based sports. It has numerous features such as detailed UK beach guides, personal diaries allowing members to record their sports sessions, free classifieds, lively forums and much more. Over the years the site has developed into a community driven site with a relaxed, friendly atmosphere. Many members of the website meet up at various beaches at the weekends to indulge in their favourite sports and wanted a way to support Forces-of-Nature. I have therefore now integrated the website with that of a T-shirt fulfillment agency allowing website visitors to purchase items of clothing designed for windsurfers and kitesurfers.
The process is fairly straight forward and seems to be working well, so if you have a website aimed at a certain group of people or would simply like to sell merchandise through your website then I would certainly recommend investigating such a scheme.
Pixelwave Web Design have been offering website templates for sale for a while now. The service is offered via an affiliate template scheme providing op quality website templates. Recently several potential buyers have contacted me asking if they could pay by cheque rather than use the automated online payment facility. I have of course been happy to help and have bought the website template on their behalf and sent it to them via e-mail or on a CD.
Although I make very little from such sales I tend to find that going that extra mile and putting my clients first pays dividends in the end. It also gives me an insight into the people purchasing the templates and allows me to be a little nosey as I can see the website they create from the template.
Photo Gallery for Outdoor Shop
I've just finished adding a new photo gallery system to the website of Escape Outdoors the system is based on the opensource software Coppermine photo Gallery and allows the staff of Escape Outdoors to add new categories, new galleries and new photo albums and of course upload and manipulate the photos stored within the galleries. Visitors to the site will be able to upload images ready for approval by the administrators. They can also post comments on the photos within thw albums and rank their favourites.
The gallery has been designed to compliment the existing look and feel of the Escape Outdoors website. Russ, the owner of Escape Outdoors is over the moon with his new photo galleries and has been frantically adding new albums and photos.
Recent Updates
Summer seems to be well and truly upon us and the nice weather seems to have encouraged many webmasters to update their websites. I've been doing quite a bit of work on various Pixelwave Design websites this week.
- Forces-of-Nature has had its classified adverts section revamped and is currently getting a new photo gallery system.
- Escape Outdoors website is also getting a new photo gallery system and has had a few other minor changes implemented.
- I've made a few small changes to the eCommerce system for the Palaeontological Association.
- I have also been to visit Kite Valley Cottages to take some photos of their new annexe improvements ready fro some website updates in the near future.
- Business is booming for Kite Surf Wales and their website is generating lots of enquiries so a few tweaks have been made to their website too.
Hopefully I'll be able to get out and enjoy the weather over the weekend though.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking has been around for a while now but has been coming of age recently. For those who don't know, social bookmarking services are websites that allow users to create and share lists of their favourite websites. The links are generally organised using 'tags' and are often rated. Originally seen as simply a place to store your bookmarks online so that they were accessible from any computer, they are now being seen as a possible alternative to search engines.
You can of course still keep your bookmarks private if you wish, but sharing them is the norm and it is this sharing that allows social bookmarking sites to compete with search engines.
There are a number of advantages:
- Human editors vs Robots
- Sites are categorised through the use of tags which are applied by real human editors who have read and hopefully understood the websites content. This should lead to a more accurate listing than the traditional search engine method of using algorithms based on the keywords from within the web-pages content.
- Human ranking vs algorithms
- The websites within a social bookmarking site are ranked by real human users. This can be both in the form of giving the site a ranking and also by the number of members who have actually bookmarked the site. This is in contrast to many search engine based ranking systems which really heavily on link popularity to determine a websites ranking within their search results. Search engine results will therefore rank those sites that have lots of other sites linking to them regardless of the real usefulness of the website. Social Bookmarking ranks are based on websites that people actually bookmark.
Certain disadvantages also exist due to the fact that their is no real control over the tagging process, so for example a website tagged for windsurfing and surfing may not be listed under a search for coastal sports despite the fact that it is clearly relevant for such a search. Many social bookmarking systems such as Ma.gnolia.com get around this to a certain extent by allowing members to create groups of bookmarks based around certain topics. Members can join such groups and add their favourite related bookmarks to it.
It will be a long time before social bookmarking becomes widely used and by then the systems will no doubt become abused by people trying to get their sites listed above others, but they can be useful both for finding the information you are seeking and also for sharing your favourite sites with the other members of the social bookmarking community.
Some widely used social bookmarking services:
Ma.gnolia is my favourite due to its clean, fresh design and layout and its ease of use.
Website Traffic Stats
As a webmaster, or owner of a website you will know that promoting your website and getting good traffic to your site is one of the most important aspects governing the success of your website. But what is good traffic? 
- Do you know how many visitors your site receives?
- do you know how they found your site?
- do you know where they came from?
- do you know which pages they look at?
The answers to these questions and other questions like them can all be easily answered. They can also provide vital information that will help you tweak your websites content and organisation improving the flow of traffic to and through your site and ultimately improving the effectiveness of your website.
All hosting accounts provided by Pixelwave Web Design offer website statistics packages that allow you to view numerous characteristics of the traffic visiting your website. These tools can be invaluable in assessing the effectiveness of your website, analysing marketing and promotion strategies and developing future improvements. In addition to this Pixelwave Design is now offering website analysis based on Google Analytics. Google Analytics (previously known as Urchin) provides a unique graphical overview of what is actually happening on your site providing you with in-depth knowledge about your website’s traffic patterns. Not only can you discover the number of visitors and which pages these visitors looked at but you can see which search engines they used to find your site, which phrases they use to find your site, where in the world they were located and many other statistics allowing you to make sense of the traffic your website receives.
Google Analytics is the market leader in website traffic analysis and provides you with detailed information in an easy to understand format. If you would like help adding Google Analytics to your website feel free to contact Pixelwave Web Design.
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