Maki & Brian DeLaet EduCyber founders

Web Hosting Special

Move your web site host to EduCyber or start your web site with EduCyber during the month of July and get a $50 discount! That's right; each new customer gets a $50 discount off of the first year of hosting.

Five reasons to host your site with EduCyber:

1. You get personalized and timely service
2. You get all the email accounts you need
3. You get access to all the important web statistics: how many visits, what search engines are used and even what key words people are searching for
4. You get 30 minutes of updates to your site each month at NO additional cost
5. We can manage all the details of your site for you so you can focus on your business.

Whether you're getting nickeled and dimed to death by your current host, you're looking for superior service or you're just getting started and need a place to host your web site, give EduCyber a second look. Call 720-275-4646 today for details.

Email Management, Time Management

Email can quickly become the great time stealer. When you ought to be finishing a proposal or checking your financials or starting that presentation, do you ever find that you are instead taking a peek at your emails? And then finding that the peek has turned into 90 minutes? In business we often deal with interruptions to the flow. A phone call might interrupt a meeting or a client might call in the middle of your preparation time. But when you're at your desk and ready to work, the call of the email can be insidious, luring you away from productivity.

What can you do to stay on top of email while also staying productive? Here are a few tips:

1. Use spam filters so you won't be distracted by junk.
2. Create rules in your email so that mail is routed to the appropriate folder. This will help you prioritize your email time so you are most effective. Messages in the Customers folder might receive higher priority than subscriptions to your sports web site, for example.
3. Set time blocks for you to respond to email and STICK WITH the time limits. If you need to deal with email first thing in the morning, then set aside a 30 minute block to deal with urgent messages at the beginning of the day. When 30 minutes are up, move on. Then perhaps right before or right after lunch you can set aside another block of time to catch up with emails. Depending on the volume of email, you might need one more time block in the afternoon, perhaps right before quitting time.

For many of us, communicating via email is an integral part of our jobs and the ability to quickly communicate with others is essential to getting and keeping clients. But that doesn't mean that we can't stay on top of email AND focus on the other parts of the business as needed. Try these tips or modify them to your needs and see if you aren't more productive.

The Three Requirements for a Great Site

There are three requirements for a web site to really shine:

1. Usable. A good web site is usable. This means that a visitor to your site can easily and intuitively do what you want them to do. If they have to really think about what your intention is, you will lose them. Say, for example that you want someone to purchase your gizmo in the online store. If they don't see gizmos on the front page, they likely get their gizmos elsewhere. If they see the gizmo they want right on the front page but can't add it to their shopping cart from there, they'll go looking for a site that makes it easy to buy gizmos. If they have to give up all kinds of personal information just to buy your gizmo, they'll find a gizmo site that isn't so invasive. So the key is to make the site usable, whether you're selling something or whether your goal is to get them to call or email or whatever, it has to be easy for the visitor to do so.
   
2. A great site is searchable. In this case it doesn't mean that you have a search feature on your site. Instead it means that I can go to Google or Yahoo or Live and do a search for gizmos and end up at your site. You would be surprised at the number of web site owners who haven't carefully thought this one through. If you want to be ranked for "funky gizmos" you need to use the phrase "funky gizmos" on your web site. Attaining and maintaining high ranking in the search engines is an art and science. If you've got the time or someone on staff has the time, great. If not, outsource it (yes, that's a plug for EduCyber).
   
3. Lookable. OK, that's not really a word but it fits with the first and second requirements. What we mean is that your site ought to look nice. And yes, these requirements are listed in order of priority. Often a web site owner will spend the most time on number three and not much if any attention to one and two. Statistics show that if a site is usable and listed in the search engines, it can be very successful even if it doesn't look pleasant. Myspace has some of the gaudiest looking pages possible but as it fills a need (for people to share and connect), it has been wildly successful. We believe that a good looking site is a requirement however. That's because your site will be your marketing message. This is what your customers and prospects will see when they encounter your company. You need to present a good public face to them and that is why it is required.

Small Business and Email Privacy

Most small business owners go to great lengths to protect their client communications from outsiders while also making sure those communications are kept so that they have something to refer back to. What would happen though if your Internet Service Provider (ISP) shared those records?

You'd go crazy, right? Well what would you say if they shared your email with the government, unbeknownst to you? Since your ISP ensures that your email gets to you, and since you'd be mad at them if it didn't get to you, did you know they had a copy of my email?

What am I getting at? Well today, June 19, 2007, a federal appeals court affirmed that as business owners we have an expectation of privacy of emails, even emails stored on your ISP's server. The ruling says that the government has to get a warrant to get those emails. This is definitely a win for small business owners (large businesses typically have all their emails stored on their own servers).
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© 2007 EduCyber, Inc. This newsletter is brought to you by EduCyber, Inc. EduNotes can be viewed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week online at http://www.educyber.com/edunotes/ . Visit us on the web at http://www.educyber.com or call us at (720) 275-4646. Permission is hereby granted to redistribute all or part of this newsletter as long as this entire copyright message is included.