The use of smartphones such as the iphone to view websites is increasing as such a rate that by 2014 research shows that mobile web browsing could surpass that of regular desktop PC’s and Laptops.  Right now some 8 -10% of all hits to websites come from smartphones and we need to ask ourselves if our current website is user friendly when viewed and used on Smartphones.

There is an increasing need for businesses to develop a scaled down version of the website for the smartphone community and evidence shows that users of smartphones stay longer and view more pages when provided with a mobile specific website.

Statistics and research show that:

In September 2009 just 0.02% of all UK web traffic originated form a mobile device.

In January 2011 the figure was some 4000% higher at 8.09%

iphone traffic accounts for around 4.5% of all UK website traffic (not just mobiles) and over 60% of mobile traffic

By 31st August 2011 the BBC News Technology site reported that 45% of people surveyed said that they made use of the internet whilst out and about

Bounce rates on websites without a mobile Website version is much higher when viewed on a smartphone (Bounce rate is the number of visitors that leave your site with viewing any further pages)

The figures speak for themselves; if you value your web presence you need a mobile version of it.  To see what a mobile site looks like visit this site on an iphone or other smartphone.

Ataga Media develop Mobile websites from as little as £200 + VAT. Call us today for a free quotation.

Austins Department Store in Newton Abbot have been trading online for a few years.  They wanted to push their online activities and needed a website and Internet Search Marketing to meet their needs.  Working with Sunflower Consulting who have been working with Austins for many years together we have developed and optimised a new Magento Ecommerce website for them.

We are Optimising the site for search engines, running a comprehensive Google Adwords Pay Per Click campaign for them particulary aimed at their underwear brands selling Sloggi, Jockey & Triumph underwear and Bras.  In addition we have optimised a new ‘Sub site’ at www.triumphbra.co.uk dedicated to the Triumph Bra and Underwear ranges such as Doreen and Amourette.

We have also developed a Facebook landing page for them and a facebook business page at www.facebook.com/AustinsOnline that they will be focusing on in 2012.

Visit the new shop and have a look around, there are lots of bargains to be had.

“Ataga Media is the sort of company you want to be working with if you need reassurance that when you need help it will be there.

Ataga Media designed a site for Ways With Words which allows us to have control of those areas of content which we regularly need to update (thus reducing our overall costs) and are always only a phone call away if something unexpected happens. We have been delighted with their involvement with our company and recommend them very highly.”

“Ross Kernick at Ataga Media was recommended to us and comes highly recommended.

In our line of business at Kingsley’s School of Motoring, we often need to make quick changes to our website.  We are able to email Ross with the necessary changes and know that they will be attended to professionally and without delay.

Our knowledge of Social Media and Google Adwords was very limited, but being the modern way forward and the most effective way of advertising, we have been able to rely fully on Ross’ quick assistance, with the guidance we so badly needed.  As a result, this has put us fully at the forefront and in pole position, for being found in the right market, on the web, to attracting the right client, which has significantly increased our ‘hits’ in a remarkably short space of time.

We are tied into no contract and Ross has also given us his free time with some of the changes he has been able to make for us.

We have had a number of web designers before Ross who have been expensive, less than helpful and constantly needing to be reminded with the work we required to be done.

Thank you Ross”

Kingsley White, DSA ADI – Proprietor of Kingsley’s School of Motoring

We have created a new Facebook account and Landing pages for Hoopers Department Stores.  Their Facebook Landing page features a competition to create a new ‘Like Us’ landing page where anyone can enter to win £250 worth of Gift Vouchers.  Check it out at http://www.facebook.com/hoopersltd

New E-commerce websites for Lawnmower and Garden Machinery Dealer.

Direct 4.

Parent company Gay and Hunt Ltd contracted Ataga Media Ltd to create 2 e-commerce sites for them.  One selling Garden Machinery such as Lawnmowers, Chainsaws, Hedge Trimmers, Strimmers and one dedicated to Honda Garden Machinery such as Honda Lawnmowers.

The sites have been set up using the Magento E-commerce platform.

A great testimonial for Piping Hot Music who we have recently undertaken Search Engine Optimisation on their existing website.  Just 2 weeks later and they now have page 1 positions for both search terms and no 1 google position for their main term.

“I wanted to leave it a couple of weeks before I got back to you, and now I can see the benefits of what you did for me I am extremely pleased with what you achieved for me - no:1 spot on google can’t be bettered!!  Enquiries have virtually doubled.”

You may receive an email from a Janice Jacobsen with the following or similar content

I’ve helped hundreds of companies increase their traffic and I’d love to show you what my service can do for you. I don’t promise the world, I’m straight forward and to the point … I deliver rankings. My rates are completely affordable and I don’t want to oversell you either, I start small and have my clients begging for more. I won’t take on your site unless I know I can deliver rankings. Reply to this e-mail if you have the slightest interest … you’ll never see rankings the same way again.

This person is known to offer little for a lot and in some cases their work has resulted in websites being blacklisted from Google.  Do not use anyone sending an email like this.

From time to time we have a negative experience from companies which we like to share with as many businesses as possible to save them from the same experience.

In this case we write about 2 services provided by the company Scoot. The first is their ‘google places’ service which was sold to us on the basis that we would be guaranteed a top 10 google places listing. I was sceptical and made the sales person specifically confirm that my company would appear in google places for 4 different search terms. He confirmed this and went on to say that scoot had secured an ‘exclusive’ deal with google to offer this service. On this basis I agreed and after some 5 months I am still not appearing. To make it worse, despite numerous phone calls and emails my complaint has not been dealt with. In short in my case this was a complete scam by the sales person and it appears that scoot are charging £299 for a service that we provide for £50.

Secondly was their Nettracx service which essentially runs a report to see which uk web directories your website appears on. I bought this not for what it can do for me but on the basis that I could run a full report for any company on my account. I thought this may be useful to run for each of my clients and provide the results free of charge to them. Once paid and service activated I found that this was not the case and I could only run one report. The Nettracx service for what you get is in my opinion not worth the money and I would NOT recommend it.

In both cases I am just in the process of taking legal action against scoot for miss selling these products. I will comment on this post with the results. In the meantime its my opinion that Scoot should not be dealt with at all.

Types of spam and ways to prevent it

To stop receiving spam it helps to know what kind of spam you are getting. Each type of spam requires a different method of prevention. Below are the types of spam (I am aware of) and free methods to preventing them.

Harvested address spam

What is it: This is probably the most common type of spam. The spammers use a computer system (spider or spam-bot’) to check almost every website on the internet (including yours). The ‘spam bot’ looks at the code of every web page, it looks for the ‘@’ symbol. When it finds an ‘@’ it knows its found an email address. It then collects the bit either side of the ‘@’ symbol to capture your email address and add it to the spammers database of millions of harvested addresses. From then on that address will receive lots of spam!

How to find out if your email address is published on a website: Go to Google.com and type your email address into the search box. Google can usually show if your email address is on any website. If google can find your address you can be sure the spammers have got it. Tip: Sometimes the website-page with your email address may be very long, from Google click the link that says ‘Cached’ and you will see the page and your email address will be highlighted.

The solution: If the spammers have harvested your email address from a website they are not going to let it go. Get a new email address and make sure your new email address is not published online. If you must publish your email address on a website get your website designer/manager to encrypt your email address so the ‘spam bots’ can’t harvest it as they robotically and relentlessly crawl the web.

Virus Spam

What is it? This is perhaps the 2nd most common type of spam.

1. Somone else’s computer (not yours) gets infected with a virus.
2. The address book on their computer has your email address.
3. The virus sends a spam to every address on the address book.
4. The virus ‘spoofs’ the ‘from address’ in the email it sends i.e. the spam does not appear to have come from the senders email address, instead it says it came from another address taken from the address book.
5. There is no point replying to the spam e.g. to say ‘don’t spam me’ or ‘your computer has a virus’ – as the ‘from address’ is wrong, which means it will go to someone who didn’t send the spam. (note this is why you might receive emails from people saying you sent a virus to them, when you know your computer is clean).

How to prevent it: You can not prevent virus spam from being sent to you. The person with the infected computer needs to use quality anti virus software to clean their computer. You need a good spam filter to delete this kind of spam as it arrives.

Domain name spam

What is it? If you own a domain name for a website you are probably getting domain name spam. Spammers use the whois database to obtain a list of most of the doman names in the world (ie .com, .net. org). The spammers expect most website owners to set up generic email addresses such as sales@… and info@… They simply send spam to all of the standard generic words at email every domain name in the world.
How to prevent it: Do not have a generic email address such as sales@ and info@. Instead have less usual addresses. Here is a list of all of the generric words (I am currently aware of) the spammers are using:
- info@
- mail@
- sales@
- contact@
- contacts@
- root@
- home@
- contacts@
- enquiries@
- webmaster@.

Note: do not use ‘catch-all forwarding’ that forwards anything@ your-domain. Block all but specific names at your domain. Your website designer should be able to help you follow these steps.

Dictionary spam

What is it? You can sometimes receive dictionary spam when you use a well known email service. The spammers know that there is going to be a janesmith@bigmail.xyz. They setup computers to spam billions of names at that mail service simply by targetting every persons name.
How to prevent it: Hopefully your email service provider has put anti spam systems in place to prevent this kind of spam. If they havn’t then you may have to find a better email servide provider.

Windows Messenger Spam

Do you get pop up boxes on your screen with the words “Messenger Service” in the title bar? If so you may be getting Windows Messenger Spam.

Hacked mail service spam

Some ISPs or webmail services may be hacked by spammers or the addresses may be sold to spammers. Read the small print when signing up for an email account. Look hard for that box that says ‘we might give your address to a 3rd party, tick here if you do not want to recieve marketing info from other companies…’.
If you can’t change your email address here is an excellent and free spam filter: Spam Bayes.

More tools and tips to prevent spam

• Anti spam software: There are many tools you can use that check incomming mail and try to detect which is spam and which is not. The spam emails are sent to a ‘trash’ folder on your pc. This is the spam filter I recommend and its free: Spam Bayes.
• MailWasher.net is a free tool to check and manage your e-mails before you download them. I used to use this tool when I received a lot of spam. Its easy to use and free. The main benefit is that you can reveiew your email before downloading it, and delete the spam remotely.
• Avoid CC (carbon copy) for group emails that you send out.
• If you send an email (to a group of people) that might be forwarded on and on, it could get into the hands of a Spammer, who you can be sure will add the nice collection addresses to their spam address database. Instead use BCC (blind carbon copy), this means the recipients do not see the list of email addresses that your message has gone to. Also encourage others to use BCC for groups instead of CC.
• Never add your friends email address to a mailing list.
• You will not get a free prize and your friend will not thank you for the extra spam they receive.

Why doesn’t my anti-spam software prevent all of the spam?

Much anti-spam software identifies spam by the following methods:

• Blocking email from known spammer addresses.
• Identifying obscene words in the email.
• Identifying a form e.g. ‘click here to buy this rubbish’.
• Identifying certain sales/marketing words.

Many spammers use systems to do things like the following

• Each individual spam email of the millions they send appears to come from a different address.
• The invite to buy something is actually an image of text not real text so it can’t be read by your computer. The text behind the image is random words that you don’t see but look innocent to your computer.
• The invite is to click a link for a website, so there is not a form on the email. The form to buy something is on the website.