Web Design News

As web designers we’re often asked by clients about how they can go about marketing to their customers via email lists. Here in Australia the law is very clear about constitutes spam and the penalties for spamming are harsh so we web designers need to know what we should tell our clients.

If you’re wondering about the law regarding email spam then here’s something I wrote for our small business blog. Please don’t just take my word for it … do some research yourself because you could already be doing exactly what your country’s spam laws class as illegal.

More and more small businesses are using email as a way of marketing their products and services to past customers and some future customers too. But there’s always a potential risk of being labelled as a spammer when you use email.

Many countries these days have strict anti-spam laws in place that clearly identify what constitutes spam and what penalties those who break the anti-spam laws will face. Because the anti-spam laws in each country are different I would encourage you to read those laws for yourself.

Here in Australia there are three key requirements set down by our anti-spam laws. Those three requirements are:

1. Consent - you must have the consent of the recipient and you must be able to prove that you have received that consent.

2. Your emails to past clients and potential clients must clearly identify you and your business as the authorised sender.

3. Your emails must contain a functioning unsubscribe link
(you can read more about the Australian anti-spam laws here)

Now if your laws are similar then there is an important factor for every small business in that first point. You must have the consent … and prove you have the consent of the recipient … before you can start sending them emails. That means that you just can’t go round harvesting email addresses wherever you might find them and adding them to your email list. There’s simply no consent in doing that.

I know that’s what a lot of small businesses do to build their email lists but if you want to stay on the right side of the law then the only way you can build your email list is with the consent of of the people you want to send those emails out to.

If you’re trying to build up an email list of potential customers then the only way to do it to stay within the law is via an opt-in option … nothing less will do.

There are some exciting and challenging times ahead for businesses who want to stay competitive and accessible to consumers who use the latest technology and those challenges are there for web designers who want to keep abreast of the latest technology too.

Yesterday I was able to attend and important conference in Sydney that looked this latest technology without leaving my desk here in Hervey Bay. Thanks to Twitter I was right there in the conference room and connected to some of the leading experts despite the fact that there was no formal broadcast from the conference and only one of the people I could intereact with actually had a laptop with them.

It was fascinating to “listen” in as these people discussed cutting edge communication technology that can take your business to what has now become known as the “fourth screen”.

Stay tuned for more because this is the stuff of the future and look for an important announcement from the ABC … they’ll soon be launching an initiative that will bring consumer focus to that fourth screen.

If you’re a web designer and you’re setting your clients up on hosting that uses Plesk then you really must read this post over on Webmaster World.

If there is one unchangeable truth in the web design and search engine optimisation industry it’s that nothing stays the same and everything is changing.

While many web designers here in Hervey Bay still seem to think that search engine optimisation is all about submitting their clients’ sites to Google the world has moved on.

It’s also a lot more than just getting a few links pointing back to a website. Google’s personalised search is about to engulf us and that is going to change the search engine landscape in ways that a lot of people haven’t even thought about yet. 

These days search engine optimisation is a lot more than just submitting a site to Google, or getting a few links, as Lee Odden points out here.

K9cuisine.com is a small but successful online retailer that was featured in a story over on Search Engine Land today. K9cuisine is a business that relies on a local web design team for all the work that gets done on their website and the owner of K9 had this good advice for anyone thinking employing a web designer to build a website.

“The most important thing is to have a clear idea of what you want the end product to be. The vision needs to be clear and you need to be able to articulate that to designers. The biggest mistakes I have ever made in development was when I started and tried to figure it out along the way. Communication is also critical. A good design team has to be able to communicate the pros, cons and alternatives. My group never says something can not be done. They may scratch their heads and give me a cost but they never say it can not be done. They are also extremely good at articulating alternatives. I am very careful not to micro manage them …”