NZS.com Newsletter : October 2007

Welcome to the first newsletter from the team at NZS.com, New Zealand's highest traffic search directory.

Each month we'll showcase features from NZS.com and bring you information on site statistics, online user trends and Internet marketing for your business.

Contents:

• Top Ten Sites
• Know Your Users - Internet Browser Statistics
• "Free Samples" Ranks Number One
• New NZS.com Site Launched!
• NZS.com's Power Is In Its Regions
• Where's Your Traffic Coming From?
• Business Blogs Are Attention Grabbers
• Finding It Hard To Get Your Website Noticed? Get Into Directories

The top ten sites from our Trades category last month show the popularity of kitset homes and portable buildings.

Top Trade Category Sites

Rank	Site Name	URL
1.	A1 Homes	www.a1homes.co.nz
2.	1880 Cottage Company	www.1880cottage.co.nz
3.	Customkit Buildings	www.kitsethouses.co.nz
4.	Designer Kitset Company	www.customkit.co.nz
5.	Country Lifestyle Homes	www.countrylifestylehomes.co.nz
6.	Cabins to Go	www.cabinstogo.co.nz
7.	Cozie Homes	www.cozietrailerhomes.co.nz
8.	Kitset.co.nz	www.kitset.co.nz
9.	EcoKitHomes.com	www.ecokithomes.com
10.	Quality Portable Buildings	www.portablebuilding.co.nz

How much do you know about the people who visit your website? The more you know, the better equipped you are to tailor your website's functionality, appearance and content to suit. Using a site analysis tool to look at visitors to the NZS.com directory, we've noticed interesting Internet browser habits.

A hefty 78% of visitors view our site through Internet Explorer, while the remainder are split between Mozilla Firefox (16%), Safari (4%) and other browser options (2%). While Internet Explorer still wins the gold medal by a mile, it's important to bear in mind when developing your website that your users may be surfing the Web using alternative browsers.

It's always interesting to see what our savvy searchers are looking for on NZS.com. I guess it's no surprise that we love giveaways. Searches for giveaways and free samples rank highly as top searches globally, as well as here at home. Promotional giveaways are a win-win idea for both business owners and customers.

As a business, feeding our universal love of freebies will give you:

• A positive corporate image
• A strong relationship with your customers
• An easily identifiable brand

And remember, promotional products aren't just for large companies; they're an easy and affordable way for small and medium sized businesses to get their name and visual brand into the marketplace.

A brand new look for NZS.com was launched on Monday 8th October: we hope you like our fresh new face. The whole team has been working hard for months to bring our newly evolved site to fruition. Along with a cosmetic update, the structure of the site has also had a good re-work, so you'll find the site faster to load and easier to use across the board.

We're all excited by the new beginning, which marks a new phase of development in our quest to map the New Zealand Web space. We're driving hard towards our goal - to provide you with the simplest and quickest way to find websites and resources on the New Zealand Web.

Take a look around the new site and let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions. We'd love to hear from you!

Users are looking online for listings that are relevant to their locality. Because users are scattered throughout New Zealand, from Kaitaia in the Far North to Bluff in the deep South, it's a good idea to provide your site visitors with a quick, easy way to find locally relevant information.

For instance in the NZS.com directory, every category can be viewed in its complete form or by region. Locating Kaikoura bed and breakfast accommodation is much easier than sifting through the 1,000+ listings in the main bed and breakfast category. We've also made it easy to navigate entirely by region to locate all directory listings for a particular town, city or district.

Think about where your users are located and what information they might be seeking, depending on their location in New Zealand; it might just give your website and your business some regional leverage.

Rugby World Cup madness (and sadness) are currently sweeping the globe. With the Rugby World Cup in full swing, Kiwis and rugby fans worldwide have felt the joy and pain of wins and losses in rugby's highest profile competition. National pride burns brightly here at NZS.com, so we were just as disappointed as the rest of the nation at the early departure of the All Blacks from the tournament. We're out of the running, but that doesn't mean we should stop supporting our boys in black; they did their best under massive pressure!

Looking at our site statistics over recent weeks, we've noticed a significant increase in the level of traffic from France and South Africa, as international rugby fanatics search for information on New Zealand rugby and the All Blacks. This trend has occurred for many New Zealand based websites which feature content on the All Blacks and the Rugby World Cup.

To improve your online presence and better target your users, it may be helpful for your business to consider where in the world your visitors are coming from and what's bringing them to your site. A range of site statistics tracking and analysis tools are available for this purpose.

How many of you were eyes to the sky some weeks ago, hoping to catch a glimpse of a red moon? The lunar eclipse was even rarer than a 'blue moon' (that's when a full moon happens twice in one calendar month), and apparently we all wanted to know about it. The number of people visiting our blog rocketed the day we wrote about the upcoming lunar eclipse. Blogs were once the realm of personal musings, but today blogs are used by a growing number of businesses. With a blog, you can:

• Entertain and inform
• Add personality to the online face of your business
• Raise issues that are relevant to your business and your customers
• Give voice to your company's employees
• Improve sales

Writing a blog will take time, but it may be worth the effort for your business. Topical, interesting and informative blog posts will not only bring more visitors to your website; they'll keep customers coming back for more.

If you're not getting the results you hoped for from your new website, you might be in need of some extra link-building zing. When search engines trawl the Web in search of sites to deliver in search results, they rank the importance of your site according to popularity and relevance. As well as quality content and keywords, getting other sites to link to yours is a great way to ace it in the popularity stakes.

Part of your search engine optimisation strategy should involve submitting your site to local and international directories. Directories welcome new websites - to have your site listed, you'll need to submit the title and URL of your site, along with a snappy description of the services or products you offer visitors. Remember to pack your description with powerful keywords and choose the most relevant category (if you're not sure, find out where your competitors are listed).

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

PS: Congratulations to Graeme from Urban Wheels, last month's winner of an Apple iPod NANO!