Part 1 of this series of posts included the following topics:

• What type of back-ups you should be doing
• How often you should be doing a backup
• How to store your back-ups once you’ve done them

In this post we’ll be covering:

• Which services/programs are out there to help you securely backup your information
• How to recover your deleted data

What services to use? Well there are many on-line services that provide a safe and secure place to store your files. Most of these services are free to use and some you will have to pay to use. Below I’ve listed a few I’ve used, there are 100′s of on-line storage providers, most free services limit you to how much you can upload.

• - Google offers a place to hold / edit* your files on-line. Yes there are limits on Google Doc’s but the space they offer is huge! Currently Google Docs offer 1GB (Thats 1024mb!) and can be great for storing word documents and other useful / important documents you wouldn’t want to lose!
• - 1 Click hosting, 500mb per file. I believe up to 10gb is free, but I’m not quite sure on their packages these days either. You are limited to how much you can download but its around 30GB. You can optionally buy a package that will give you more space and downloads etc..

• Another popular well used 1 click hosting provider would be MegaUpload. This provider offers 200GB online storage if you sign up for a free membership which is not such a bad idea if you are going to backup a lot of data.

• IDrive is more of the professional option as the service they provide is first class. They are quite a new provider and I believe they offer a 2GB free storage – with great package deals for just you, your family (upto 5 pc’s) and businesses. Recently IDrive released a plugin for WordPress blogs which allow you to back up your wordpress content directly to there service. So that means no hassle of upload/downloading. A useful plugin if your a serious blogger!

Great! What about programs? There are 1000′s of back-up programs though I’ve never really used one. So I can’t say which ones are great and which ones are poor. If you are going to buy a backup solution program check the web for an open-source version – they are free to use and a lot of the time they work better than paid software mainly due to the fact they are updated more regularly compared to the big name companies version.

Here at e64 we use a really good backup application called ‘Backup for WorkGroups’ for backing up the servers. We can restore lost files within a few seconds compared to a service customers use. It can take up to 30 minutes to 2 hours for 1 single file to be restored. This can hurt your sales if it’s an eCommerce website. So make sure you plan your backup strategy carefully. Some of our clients have now brought this software for their own servers to prevent loss of sales.

RoboForm, have you heard of it? Well if you haven’t it’s great! It pretty much stores all the information for forms and login details (only if you allow it) so you can click a button and it fills the form in automatically. RoboForm is available on most modern browsers which include IE6+, Chrome and Firefox. I’ve not tested RoboForm on Safari, but I’m guessing it works and its FREE!

What can you do if you lost all your work, or non-replicable pictures. Well there are a lot of programs that will help you recover these files safety. If your not sure or scared to do it you can pay a lot of money for professionals to recover this data. Lets start with the free programs that will help you get back your stuff after a disaster…

Recuva by Piriform can recover a lot of files including files deleted from recycling bin, and can also recover files after formatting your hard drive. Open source software does have its benefits.

Data Recovery Wizard by EASEUS – this software costs money but it can be very useful for drives that have crashed and can not be read by the computer. I’ve used it to recover important files off a portable hard drive and it works like charm. It also can recover deleted files like Recuva but with a lot more options.

I hope you have enjoyed reading my backup series of posts and please share your mishaps – forgetting to back up can be costly. So luckily there are ways to undo human error. I hope these posts have reminded you to backup and do it daily!

If you do buy some software make sure you have a backup copy – especially if it’s a backup one!

Classic Example of forgetting to backup

Your site should offer your customer a pleasant experience……. it should lure them in and then give them opportunities to navigate comfortably around the site. Not only is navigation around the site important to a customer, the speed of which this event happens is also important. Waiting for pages to load can frustrate a customer, consequently making them leave your site to visit your main competitors.

It is vital to understand that the overall flow and design of your website is aimed towards your customers because they are going to be the ones using it. Therefore you MUST make them happy, and you MUST make them want to stay and read more.

Not only can site navigation and loading speeds push your customers away, but advertisements can also have this effect. Your customer has visited your site to view YOUR products so why have you completely smothered your pages with products that have no relation to your company?! It’s just sheer madness. OK so a few advertisements are acceptable and can also help with the promotion of your site, but having a page covered with different banners of different colours and sizes will inevitably ruin your overall design and aesthetics and will also contributes to your traffic moving away. Your customers may find your advertisements annoying, however they will completely detest pop-ups every 5 seconds telling them information that they just don’t care about. Remember to be careful when involving advertisements, quality over quantity.

To conclude, as the person in charge of your site you must take into account that the site is for your customer rather than yourself. Remember not to over do it when pulling in advertisements, audio and video. Not only will this annoy the customer if its not implemented correctly, but it will also reduce the page loading time. Make sure that your customer is comfortable when visiting your site and can take full control over what they want to achieve.If you don’t look after your customer, then they will just leave your site.

Could your visitors become their visitors?

• What type of back-ups you should be doing
• How often you should be doing a backup
• How to store your back-ups once you’ve done them
• Which services/programs are out there to help you securely backup your information (Part 2)
• How to recover your deleted data (Part 2)

Most people never think about doing a back-up, and there are many reasons why people don’t. Have you ever thought to yourself  ‘I wished I done a back-up!’ I personally have done – many of times. There are many types of back-ups that you can do easily, these are:

• Full back-up – this pretty much explains itself – it’s a entire backup of all your data including files that have been modified and not modified. This type of backup should only be done occasionally.
  • Pros – it’s a complete back up of all files, so it can be easily restored
  • Cons – it can take a long time for the back up to be completed and can take up a lot of space
• Incremental back-up - only backs up the files that have changed since the last time an backup was ran
  • Pros – uses the least time and space, and also lets you have multiple backups of the same file
  • Cons – this can take a lot of time to trying to restore a particular file. Makes restoring a bit of a nightmare as you have to restore the full backup and then all the increments in order.
• Differential back-up – this is similar to incremental back-ups, but only backs up modified files since the last full backup has been preformed
  • Pros – takes less time and space than a full backup, and provides a more efficient restoration than incremental backups
  • Cons – stores a lot of useless information as it saves the original information including the changed information since the last full backup. The more files that are changed, the longer differential backup will take

How often should you being doing a back up? Well….. every person/company is different depending on how much data is changed. If your an online eCommerce website, then you should be doing backups at least every night to prevent loss of customer data! I’ve listed a few options to help you decide how often you should be doing a backup

• Daily – Much much back-up every day to prevent loss. This is useful if your creating / editing a lot of files / information daily. Also can be very useful for busy online sites such as a eCommerce.
• Weekly – Similar to daily, but less files being updated. A waste of time and space if your not changing files / information every day.
• Monthly – Only occasionally you update files, this type can be useful for a static website that you change only change a few times a month.
• Yearly – Pretty much if you don’t change much or just haven’t got the time nor space to store all backups.

Great, you’ve done all these backups and all but where to store them? There isn’t much point of doing a backup and storing it on the same computer is a bit of a waste of time. As if something does happen to the computer your backups could be lost during the process of it being fixed. How to store and where are good places?

Well there are many places you could store it such as a external hard drive (also known as  portable hard drives ). You could save it to CD/DVDs but theses can take up a lot of space and are easily damaged. This isn’t a recent  way of storing your backups but it has became more popular in the last few years with so many companies offering similar services.  Next week I’ll write more on this topic, including a small list of online backup services and different programs that you can use to make daily back ups!

My next post will cover:

• Which service/programs are out there to help you securely backup your information
• How to recover your deleted data

The Outstanding Achievement award is the second highest honour presented by IMA and an extremely challenging award to win. ‘Outstanding Achievement’ was defined as The Watch Hut’s website having excelled in all areas of the IMA’s  judging criteria and represents a very high standard of planning, execution and overall professionalism.

The IMA’s comprehensive judging system utilise a point based scoring system allowing entries to receive a maximum of 500 points. Judges adhere to specific guidelines and criteria within this system and  so are able to maintain the highest degree of fairness, accuracy and integrity; competently and effectively evaluate entries; and, deliver clear results.

5 specific criterions are scored, with a score from 0-100 awarded for each, which then provides the overall score for the website with a maximum of 500. The IMA states that websites receiving an overall score between 460 and 479 receive the ‘Outstanding Achievement’ award – such as The Watch Hut - with those between 480 and 500 receive the ‘Best in Class’ award.

The Watch Hut was scored as follows:

Design: 92
Content: 97
Feature Functionality: 98
Usability: 96
Standards Compliance & Cross-Browser Compatibility: 85

Total: 468

A big congratulations to The Watch Hut from the team at e64 – particularly as there were 57 entries submitted under the ‘E-Commerce’ category in the 2010 award year.

What does ‘penalised’ mean?

‘Penalised’ means that the site exists in Google but ranks considerably lower than it has done. A ‘ban’ refers to a situation where the site gets removed from Google and doesn’t appear in search pages anymore.

A penalty causes a severe drop in ranking results – so of course, a penalty is something to worry about – a drastic dip in traffic can severely hurt your bottom line. To rectify this you can file a reconsideration request (pledging innocence) using Google Webmaster Tools.

So what can trigger a Google penalty?

• Link Buying/Selling links/Dodgey link exchanges – buying & selling links just for the sake of increasing PageRank is not appreciated by Google. Google can also penalise websites for exchanging shady/bad links (e.g from porn & gambling sites can cost you!), selling text ads, and writing sponsored posts (without no follow).

• Black hat SEO tricks – avoid hidden text or hidden links.

• G Bot cloaking- don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.

• Being hacked of course can create some nasty problems!

• “Cookie Cutter” approaches – avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or sites involving affiliate programs with little or no original content.

• Mass duplicate content or filters on them – you may not have intentionally created them but it’s worth checking whether similar content is posted in other categories and archives. Multiple pages, sub-domains, or domains with substantially duplicate content should be avoided.

• Automated queries to Google should be avoided!

• Excessive use of keywords – Google only likes keywords that are at most relevant to your article/content. Using irrelevant or unnatural keywords can give you a penalty, as can repeating a long list of the same ones.

Avoid Hidden Text or Hidden Links - Black Hat SEO Techniques

Answer: A symbol or emblem that acts as a trademark or a means of identification of an institution or other entity

Logo’s are incredible things, if they are produced appropriately they can completely enhance a companies reputation. But on the other hand, if its a poor design, then you are destined for doom! Thinking of a logo can be extremely hard, or extremely easy. It’s down to you and the ideas that make the logo what it is.

For example take the Orange logo:

What a fantastic logo, in essence this logo carries with it a large proportion of Orange Mobile’s success. With me, when it comes to logos, I literally think LOGO:

• Limited
• Out-standing
• Graphically Remember-able
• Objective

By this I mean limited text, images and colour to make sure the information being displayed isn’t too much for the reader to take in at a glance. Out-standing design, which MUST grab the attention of anybody looking at it immediately. Graphically remember-able, self-explanatory in its own rights, but seriously the image itself must be good enough to be lodged into someones brain. Objective, the the goal intended to be attained! Think about your goal before just putting anything on paper and hoping for it too work.  If the objective isn’t met, then I’m afraid its back to the drawing board.

So remember when your thinking logo, think  limited out-standing graphically remember-able objective!

Quality Score is a variable used in PPC advertising (I am referring specifically Google for this post although Yahoo! Call it quality index, and MSN also use this but it was first introduced by Google).  It is an algorithm used for ranking the relevancy of landing pages to their corresponding text advertisements and keywords. It focuses on the searcher being provided with specific and highly relevant adverts. Scoring increases from 0-10, with the higher the scores indicating a stronger correlation. Google has said recently that Adwords ranking in the future will be based more around the Quality Score and less around the amount bid by the webmaster.

How does Quality Score get calculated?

Quality Score is calculated through consideration of various factors:

• Click-Through Rate of keyword & the matched ad. Additionally, Google also takes into consideration the overall historic CTR of the entire AdWords account as well as the historic CTR of the display URLs in the ad group.
• Relevance of your ad text – ads with copy that contains the keyword will have a higher Quality Score than ads with copy that does not contain the keyword.
• Quality of landing page – does the page contain relevant & original content? Is the navigation efficient?
• Landing Page Load time – Google revealed in June 2008 that landing page load time impacts on Quality Score
• Geographical Considerations – Google has revealed that the accounts performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown impacts Quality Score.

Quality Score Influences

Quality Score determines what position the ad will be shown at (rank) – the higher the better – and influences the cost per click (CPC) of ads. The higher the Quality Score, the lower the price you’ll pay per click.

So it is important that you optimise your Adwords PPC campaign in order to increase your quality score – it is an ABSOLUTE MUST if you want to reduce your spend and at the same time increase your sales.

Google PPC Advertising (Adwords) & Quality Score

Usability is vital, it is one of the key items that makes a website work for your readers. If it is done properly then there is a greater chance that the user will return to your site.

What does accessibility mean in the context of website design?

Choosing the right font for your website matters. Most websites today use a Sans-Serif font mainly as this is easier to read on screen. There is:

• Serif
  Fonts like Times New Roman that have little extra parts added to them (known as serifs) – these are hard to read on size due to the serifs
• Sans-Serif
  Similar to serif but it removes the serifs from the font. Fonts are like Arial & Verdana. These are more easy to read on a screen even at a smaller font size.
• Monospace
  These are fonts like Courier that have a set width/height no matter what letter they are which are mainly used for a code view.
• Cursive
  These fonts are like hand writing – the letters flow together and join up with each other – so hard to read at a small font size.
• Fantasy/Script
  Symbols or other decorative properties tend to appear with these fonts so similarly to Cursive fonts, it can become harder to read at a smaller size.

Most websites use a base font that is normally easily readable – typically a sans-serif as it doesn’t contain serifs. This doesn’t mean that your stuck with having to use a boring font on your website. They are some websites that use a serif font which works as they space the lettering out so it makes it easier to read.

Using a none standard web font can cause issues on websites with browser compatibility. The font has to be installed on the visitors computer to view the same font you have on the site. Nearly all computers have Arial/Verdana which is why it is used so much throughout the web. There are many ways to overcome this issue if you wished to use a different font…

You have a limited choice of things you could do however if you wanted to have a none web standard font display on your website. One of the most popular methods is to save the text as an image. This can cause issues later on if the user has images disabled. Until more recently you could only really use images to use fancy fonts on your website, but now there is alternative methods to do this:

• Use flash to replace (sIFR) the text within flash to give you a fancy font for all visitors
• Some website services offer a pay to use service so you can link to a fancy font and use it on your site
• CSS3 has became popular for allowing web designers/developers to include custom fonts on the web
• Google has released a new Font API that will allow you to use their services for free to use custom fonts on your website.

Once you have decided on which font to use you need to choose a font for your website/business name. If you don’t already have a logo then choosing the right font is need important consideration as customers will potentially remember your website by the style of your website/business name.

A lot of big name websites use only a font for a logo e.g. Google, Yahoo!, Ebay and even Amazon!

Choosing the correct font and colours can make your website perform better!