If you've been dabbling in building your own Weebly website recently you may have got to the point of wanting a truly custom look for your site - a step up from the standard themes that Weebly offer. If that's the case, you've got a couple of options - hire a brilliant Weebly designer like 543 Designs (!), or purchase a custom Weebly theme that you can upload to your site yourself. There are a few companies out there who build those custom templates, but if you're looking for somewhere to start, try our Weebly themes site. Once you have your theme chosen and downloaded though, you're going to need to know how to upload it.

Step 1: Download The Theme
When you purchase a custom 3rd party theme for Weebly, you'll be asked to download a .zip folder or something similar. Depending on who you buy the theme from, this will either be the actual file/folder you will need to upload to your site, or it may need to be extracted to get to the .zip folder to upload. To figure out what type of file you have, click into the zip folder and see what the contents are. If the contents looks something like the picture below and have a whole lot of html files, then that folder is the one you'll be wanting to upload to your site. If the folder contains another zip folder, then you'll need to extract it and upload that final .zip folder. If in doubt though, just try uploading the folder to Weebly - if it works and you are offered a new theme to choose from, you've got it right, if it doesn't, then you may need to extract your .zip folder to get to the contents/.zip folder within it! Lot's of zipping around...!

Step 2: Upload The Theme

1. For the next step you'll need to login to your Weebly account and head to the site you've started to setup. If you haven't set one up, you'll at least need to do that and get to the point where you are sitting in the Weebly editor.
2. Next up you'll want to click on the "Theme" Tab in the top grey bar of your Weebly website editing screen.
3. This will open up a dialogue on the left hand side of the screen which gives you the option to "Change Theme". Click this and a new page will appear with all the standard Weebly themes for you to choose from.
4. To upload your custom theme, look for the "Import Theme" button in the top right of the screen. Click this and you'll get asked to upload that .zip folder we mentioned earlier.
5. Upload the custom theme .zip folder, and you'll then be able to choose it in the "Custom Themes" tab which opens. Once you've chosen it, you're good to go!

Below are some screenshots of that process.

Step 3: Get To Know Your Theme
Once you've uploaded your custom theme you'll realise that it will likely operate a bit differently to the standard Weebly themes you've come across. The first thing you'll want to do is make sure you have chosen the correct page setup you are wanting. Custom themes tend to come with alot more page variations than standard Weebly themes, so if you've seen a demo site that you want to imitate, you'll want to make sure you have figured out what 'page type' that demo site uses and choose it in the Pages menu.

From here, you'll find each Weebly custom theme has it's own peculiarities. Some one page themes need you to change your Page type to setup the navigation menu, some will have a set structure where you'll need to upload images or content in certain boxes, and alot these days have 'Theme Options' (see the screenshot below), which let you change individual elements of your theme (button colour etc). The first thing we would recommend doing is just familiarising yourself with all these options and page types. A little bit of effort in learning the theme at the start will stand you in great stead in further down the line.

You've got your theme
Hopefully once you've done all those things you'll have a good handle on your new theme and will be able to implement it on your site. Most theme providers also have pretty good support facilities, so if something really doesn't seem to be working, drop them a line and they should fix it up for you. Like everything new, your first Weebly theme may seem a bit daunting at first, but the more you use them and understand how they work, the more you'll love having a custom and flashy theme on your site.

If you're just launching a business or have an idea you want to turn into reality, you might hear the letters "MVP" thrown around quite alot. Off the sports field and in the tech world, MVP isn't the most valuable player in the office, it's a bit of a catch cry for doing the least you can to have your idea out in the world - the Minimum Viable Product. That's all well and good - but what is Minimum Viable Product? And why is it so important to a budding entrepreneur or business person?

What is Minimum Viable Product?
In a nutshell, your minimum viable product constitutes the lowest effort and spend you can put in to have a functioning business live. From our end, this is easiest to explain in terms of a website, but in reality the concept expands to the whole business. As a practical example - let's say you run a delivery business and ideally you want custom parcels with your logos on to send your products in. The MVP for that delivery business may be sending the parcels in a more generic package initially - until you have enough sales and proof of business to invest in a custom parcel design. From a website perspective, we can probably explain this in a bit more detail looking at a company that wants to take online bookings.

The website example - online booking
So, let's say you have a hair salon and you want a new website - but don't have a huge amount of money to invest in it. Ultimately, you want to take online bookings in a custom system where clients can specify a whole lot of detail. A good web designer will quickly let you know that a custom booking system is extremely expensive, that the next step down would be using a booking plugin which may have a monthly fee, but the MVP (minimum viable product) version of that site would just use a simple contact form to take the bookings. Eventually you could grow to have that custom booking system, but while your costs are restricted, you'd still be able to test the theory of having online bookings by having a simple contact form that you then use to manually make bookings at your end. It's not perfect - but it does provide proof of concept, without a huge outlay.

Why is MVP so important?
The MVP stage of a budding business provides a huge opportunity to test your idea without over extending your finances early on. You may think that your idea is the greatest in the world, but an idea isn't a business until it has sales - and spending vast sums on your first version of a concept could lead to alot of losses. Chances are your idea is phenomenal, but why not get it out to market and tested in some way first? Sit down, think about what your ideal business/platform looks like, then work backwards to a point where you are satisfied you have enough to go to market, but not so much it will drain your budget on day one. In the above example that thought process would have gone "I definitely want a website and I definitely want to be able to take bookings online. I don't NEED for that system to be automated, customised, or have online payments just yet, so I'll test it in a more basic form on day one and grow."

Now, next time you are standing around a tech hub and someone throws the letters MVP at you, you'll know they aren't about to award a little trophy for the best team player, and you'll be able to verbalise your skin and bones plan to get your idea out to the world!

Like alot of small businesses, our financial year has just come to an end which has meant spending alot of time perusing our books and figuring out what our tax returns should look like and in particular what is deductible and what isn't. Often, one of the big ticket items in the year is a new website build, so it's a really important question to think about where your site sits from an accounting perspective. Remembering we aren't accountants or tax experts at all, below is a bit of a summary of how the Income Tax Act and the IRD look at things.

First up, before you have a website live, you'll need a domain name (website address/url). We organise those for our clients for $45 + GST per annum, however, if you are buying a prominent address (eg money.com), then you might end up paying a considerable sum. The IRD's advice on this one is a domain name is capital expenditure, non-deductible and not depreciable.

The website design itself on the other hand is seen in a slightly different light. It is generally a one off fee and creates a capital asset that may be depreciated. Like other computer software, that rate of depreciation would be 50% diminishing value or a 40% straight line. The tax man basically looks at your website as if it is just a digital asset that will lose value over time. But that raises the question - if you update the site regularly...what happens with those costs?

This is where it can get a little bit tricky. On one hand, regular maintenance/updating of a website is looked at as revenue, while 'upgrading' a site can be seen as capital. That has a few tax implications, so the courts have clarified it all for us - but there is still a little bit of interpretation involved.
​
Maintenance includes:

• Updating content
• Adding content to an existing page
• Correcting minor bugs
• Minor style/format changes

An upgrade includes

• Adding new features (eg adding e-commerce)
• Adding extra pages
• Upgrading the CMS or plugins
• Completely changing the layout

The last cost to consider with a website is the hosting. This is a bit easier to quantify - being revenue that is deductible.  The only grey area may be where you have a website design fee that is integrated into the hosting/maintenance cost. In those scenarios...we'd say a call with the accountant might be in order!

Tax can be a bit of a brain drain at the end of the financial year, but hopefully the above helps. If you want to read up a bit more thoroughly, head to theIRD's site on website and tax at this link.

Introduction:
At their core, Weebly and WordPress are both Content Management Systems or CMS’s which let non-technical users edit websites. Both exist in the same basic niche, in that they allow you to create or edit a website, blog or e-commerce store. They both present a range of features to users and have various strengths and weaknesses that we will explore in this article.

Ease of use:
​Weebly
As a cloud hosted service through Weebly Inc, getting started entails getting access to an account by either signing in with your username & password, or signing up with a Weebly Cloud provider like 543 Design. The drag and drop interface makes it extremely easy for non-technical website owners to add or edit content, the idea is that you shouldn’t need to touch any code for most changes.
Pros:

• The built-in features and drag+drop feature makes it very simple to use out of the box
• Weebly provides a great selection of responsive themes included
• A Weebly subscription includes paid technical support who are available to assist with technical issues or basic website updates.

Cons:

• You are somewhat locked to Weebly, however your site can be exported and moved to another web host in a “static” form, or content (blog posts) exported by logging in

WordPress
Provided as open-source (free) software, WordPress can be installed into any standard web host service. It has been around longer than Weebly and it is known for being the tool of choice when it comes to blogging and eCommerce. 
Pros:

• The blog interface, ease of use and functionality like post categories, tags and “pretty URLs” is regarded as industry leading.
• WooCommerce is simple to setup and many themes are built to cater for an eCommerce store.

Cons:

• As a self-hosted site, updates & security patching often need to be managed by the website owner, or a web-developer
• Editing page content can be more involved with page content, widgets and themes all having slightly different ways to edit them
• Initial setup and installation of WordPress is a more involved process, and usually requires more technical skill

From day one, 543 Design made the conscious decision to design in Weebly rather than WordPress. That has given us a unique perspective, and we definitely think that for most small businesses, Weebly is the way to go. In a nutshell:

• The drag & drop interface is MUCH easier for our customers and the average Joe to use than WordPress - it's fantastic and our clients constantly comment about how much they prefer it to their old WordPress CMS.
• The e-Commerce platform is incredibly easy to integrate and is getting better and better every day. Just this week Weebly added new features like 'reviews on products' and 'sale'/'out of stock' label options.
• Blogging is also super simple on Weebly - with tags, search functions and drag & drop editing of blog posts - it's very easy to use.
• The centralised system and Weebly continually updating their platform means you don't have to worry about security and patching etc. As of this week, Weebly also offers free SSL certificates - so all our sites now have that option free of charge.
• Weebly sites seem to perform well in search results out of the box, but the system also gives access to the source code and other important areas for us to really help with client's search engine optimisation.
• Lastly, as a Weebly Cloud developer/designer, we have a direct line to Weebly. That means that we can raise any core issues directly with the CMS provider, and are involved in their discussions on how the platform evolves - it's a great position to be in for our clients.

Weebly really is a fantastic platform and we love working in it. For a really complex build, sometimes we do suggest other platforms, but for 95% of clients out there,  it's the ideal fit.

Get in touch with us if you'd like to get us to build your site, or try giving it a crack yourself direct with Weebly. And if you really want to get fancy, try one of our Weebly Themes (Weebly Templates) - they are really easy to add to your site and give it a whole new level of professionalism.

If you do decide to use WordPress, please get in touch with us and we can recommend a WordPress designer we trust. A big thanks to Keiran from Freeparking (a sister company to our domain provider Discount Domains) - if you have a WordPress site and are looking for a New Zealand web host - either of those companies would be a great place to start looking.

Last week Mark Zuckerberg made a huge announcement, one that is likely to have very big ramifications for any business that uses Facebook as a way to reach more customers. It was such a big announcement that Facebook’s stock took a big dive as investors tried to get their heads around what it meant for the social media behemoth. The plan is simple - make our social media feeds more about our friends and family.

The driving force behind the change is Facebook’s desire to bring back more meaningful social interactions to the platform. Over the past couple of years (and particularly through the American election), Zuckerberg has faced increasing complaints that Facebook was causing more social harm than it did good. Besides social media addiction, the platform’s algorithm was mainly serving us up content that confirmed our previously held viewpoints. That wasn’t what Facebook was created to do, and with this latest announcement, they are trying to make our newsfeed far more positive and personal to our actual daily lives.

But what does it mean to businesses? Well, that’s the bad news. Because the newsfeed will be shifting from a focus on ‘topics’ and ‘relevant content’ to ‘meaningful social interactions’, it’s highly likely that a business page’s organic reach will decrease. We believe the emphasis will become less about topics and engagement on page posts, and more about how those posts are shared amongst your friend group. So where currently, if someone who likes cars likes a post, the post might get shown to someone else random who likes cars, in the future, it’ll be more about those posts being shared amongst friend groups. The organic Facebook game definitely just got harder for businesses.

The bigger unknown will be how this newsfeed change affects sponsored content/advertising on the platform. Given Facebook will want to stay profitable, it seems likely that where companies could get great organic reach previously, now they may need to focus their efforts into paid advertising and sponsored posts. The hardest thing to pinpoint right now is how those sponsored posts will be displayed. Will they stick to the ‘relevant content’ policy, or will there also be an element of the new ‘social engagement’ approach applied to the advertising as well?

As the change rolls out we’ll be keeping a close eye on it, but it’s fair to say that this is a major shift in the online advertising world. By making this change now Facebook hopes to become more relevant and important to it’s users – which may mean that it becomes a more powerful tool for advertisers…or it could mean a huge hit for business engagement. At the end of the day it’s businesses that pay the salaries at Facebook, so our view is that businesses natural reach will drop, but their advertising reach will stay steady…but let's just watch this space.

A few days ago Facebook quietly made an announcement that should have pretty big ramifications for both personal and business users of the platform. The social behemoth has set their eyes on 'engagement bait' - those spammy posts that blatantly beg for you to like, comment or share in an attempt to increase engagement and organically get the post seen by more and more people. Primarily, Facebook have heard their users complaints about the increasing amount of 'spammy' posts filling their newsfeed and are going to do something about it - using machine learning to identify these types of posts, stop them from being shown as much and eventually punish those pages that 'systematically' use this tactic.

Facebook started 'demoting' these types of posts earlier this week, but are rolling out the page-level demotion over several weeks to give those of us with Pages the chance to change our behaviour and not be caught out by the new model. What this means practically is that if you do own a Facebook page, you should definitely refrain from any type of 'baiting' type posts:

• Vote baiting - involves using the 'reaction' buttons to vote on different options
• React baiting - is just asking your followers to use the 'reaction' buttons in some way
• Share baiting - begging for your post to be shared
• Tag baiting - getting people to 'tag' a friend
• Comment baiting - is requesting your users comment in the posts

Recently there has been a real trend for the above type of baiting to be used by businesses for things like competitions and giveaways. These types of posts have always been a little bit borderline, so it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that they'll now likely be punished by the almighty Facebook algorithm!

Our advice - just cut the baiting out of your newsfeed completely. Create content that people are going to want to engage with, click and comment on without the baiting, and you'll not only do better by the algorithm, but you'll also actually be providing your followers with things they WANT to see - which at the end of the day is what social media is all about.

Below are some graphics from Facebook just setting out the various examples of baiting that will be clamped down and you can find Facebook's 'Fighting Engagement Bait' announcement here.

As the sun starts to set on 2017 it's the time of year we all do a little bit of reflecting on our own business, how it went, and what we could do better. For us, that means looking at what YOU were most interested in on our Tech Tips Blog. So, without futher ado, below were the most read articles of 2017.

Hotjar - Visualising Website Data
A surprise entry at number one, our blog post on Hotjar proved the biggest hit of 2017. There is something quite satisfying in being able to track where people scroll and click on your site, and Hotjar's fantastic heat mapping tools visualises that data for you. A great little assist for any New Zealand website designer.

New Websites & Google
The newbies out there who have just got a website live were eager to get straight onto the Google search results this year, and our article explaining how new websites and Google work was another winner.

Why My Website Doesn't Show On Google
In third place was one of our simple search engine optimisation blogs. Plenty of business owners wonder why their site doesn't show on Google and we did our best to explain why.

Payment Gateways - PayPal versus Stripe
A hit with anyone taking payments over the net, our comparison of Stripe and Paypal also drew plenty of attention. Which should you use? It's a horses for courses scenario for sure.

Facebook Mobile Studio
Rounding out the top five was a quick look at Facebook's mobile studio. Proving once again that social media remains a hot topic for all NZ businesses.

So there you have it - our most read articles and blogs of 2017. We'll be back in the New Year to keep providing you simple, understandable tips to help your site hum online.

1) It's not mobile friendly
This one should almost go without saying. If your site doesn't scale well to mobile - you've got a gigantic problem. Our 543 website gets over 60% views on mobile devices these days, so making sure your site is easy to use on a phone is crucial. If it's not responsive or mobile friendly, you're going to lose customers AND lose search rankings. This isn't negotiable...if you're site isn't mobile friendly - contact us....now.

2) You can't edit it easily
Times have changed, and websites should be super easy to edit these days. If you're finding your backend clunky, struggle to use it, or your website designer hasn't given you easy access to it - you should think about giving the site a revamp. It's pretty important to keep your website design up to date, and to do that you should be able to make changes yourself. If you can't - make a change.

3) The competition has moved forward
Take a look at your competitors websites. Are they flashier? Do they appear higher in search results? Could you see a customer choosing them over you because the website is easier to use or looks better? If so, then it's time to invest in revamping your site. Stay ahead of the game, keep up with your competition online and you should see an improvement in sales.

4) It's not generating sales, or it could generate more
When was the last time a sale came through your website? How many are you getting per month? Do you think there is more opportunity to grow your sales online? These are all really important questions for a company. We've had clients who changed their website and branding and had an instant uptick in conversions on their site. More of the people landing on their site starting contacting them and engaging their services. It's great for us to see, and a real reminder that you should always keep your site moving forward.

5) It's more than two years old
Having an older website isn't an absolute deal breaker, but after about two years time then it's likely technology and styling has probably moved forward. If you've had your site live for more than two years, it might be a good time to  have a look around at the competition and give your website another critical look. Look at it from the point of view of the customer, and potentially get someone else to give you feedback.

REMEMBER: Just because YOU love it...doesn't mean everyone will
Our last piece of advice is never get an emotional attachment to your site! You should really love your site, but don't fall into the trap of thinking that it's perfect because it's yours. We've changed our site every few months and loved every version of it...but we've identified areas we can strengthen or change it up - and made those changes.

The bottom line is - keeping moving forward. We've tried to make our pricing low enough that a change in site every few years won't break the bank (what's $1,200 every 3 years to stay at the top of your game?). Your website can be a fantastic tool, it's easy to change, and a great place to start a rebrand, so why not get in touch with us today about an affordable website revamp.

Over the last few years there has been a real move towards individuals being able to work anywhere for any client on the planet. We are one of the lucky industries that have no real need to be in a certain physical location to do a fantastic job for our clients. As long as we have an internet connection we can build a site or run online advertising for anyone in New Zealand, or across the globe. However, there can be a real sticking point for some clients wrapping their head around how hiring a Napier web design company could work if they are based elsewhere in the country. It's a pretty understandable thought process, so we thought it was worth doing a little blog on how it all works from our end, and the benefits that come along with being based in one of NZ's fastest growing regions.

THE HOW
By email: how we work with our clients varies from company to company. For some, they love just having communication via email, which is all good at our end. They email us a brief, send through examples and changes they want made, and we get those changes made for them with minimal hassle.
By phone: other clients are verbal and would prefer to pick up the phone and chat through their project with us. That works just as well as far as we are concerned. We're more than happy to talk through things and take a brief verbally.
In person: some local clients really do appreciate the face to face, so we often head out and meet up with clients. We get around the country a fair amount to put in a bit of face time if clients would like it - New Zealand is such an easy place to get around these days it's a pleasure heading to Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington or wherever we need to go really. There's also the opportunity to Skype or video conference regardless of where we might be based any day of the week - technology is certainly making the world smaller.

THE BENEFITS
The cost: this is the major one. By being based out of the major centres our overheads drop immediately - which means we can pass on those cost savings to our clients. We're also grounded in a more sensible approach to pricing for small businesses, so by choice we'll never push our prices too high.
The people: cities like Napier, Hastings, and the like are built on a backbone of small business. That means that the people tend to have a real street smarts to go with the education they bring back to the Bay. You won't get outrageous plans from 543 for a marketing plan that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars - you'll get a smart, practical and affordable plan that works. We're friendly, helpful and truly motivated to help our clients with realistic advice and budgeting.
The innovation: we're lucky to be based in a city that is constantly innovating. Whether it be events like the Art Deco Festival or growth in the food and beverage industry, the local scene is constantly moving forward. When companies like Kiwibank and Xero identify Napier as a place to bring their business, that's a fantastic way to be surrounded by smart people and smart ideas. The net result for our clients is that we are constantly wanting to move forward for them and for ourselves.
The convenience: it almost seems counter-intuitive to think that an agency outside of your city would be more convenient than one locally - but the reality is it can be. Because 80% of our clientele comes from outside of our home base, we have to have impeccable communication processes in place. We're extremely responsive, and whenever you have an issue we'll be there to answer an email or a phone call. In this regard we've turned the only weakness of being in a different location to the majority of our clients into a huge strength. If you want to feel like you are a top priority - we definitely recommend giving 543 a try.

​All in all we love supporting Hawkes Bay business and being a Napier website design company and are incredibly excited to be bringing the passion and professionalism we pride ourselves on to more and more of New Zealand's small businesses, no matter where they are in the country. So whether you're based in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin or anywhere in between, make sure you get in touch with us and have a chat. You'll love our pricing, and will find that using a design/online advertising company outside of your city might be the best move you've ever made for your company.