1. Change is ever present – simply because you may not be facing a major change doesn’t mean you are immune from change.  The fact is, we all live and work in a world that is constantly changing.  It is short-sighted and naive to imagine that these changes are not putting pressure on organisations in subtle, if not major, ways.

2. Don’t get complacent – your organisation may be doing pretty well, but it is risky to become complacent in a world that constantly changes.  New competitors emerge, technologies morph, global markets shift: shifts such as these constantly reshape the environment in which we all operate.

3.  You can always improve – you may be doing well, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do better.  It is great to be able to function well in the present, but how well will you function in the future?  How adaptable is your organisation to change?  Organisations that promote a change readiness culture recognise that functioning well in the present is not enough.  You need to develop your change readiness potential so you can continue to function well through all the changes and uncertainties the future will bring.

4.  Change readiness refers to underlying capacity – change readiness comprises a set of psychological resources and change-empowering stories.  In other words, it is about having the potential to deal with change in general.  Think of it as someone who learns martial arts in the present so that he may be better able to protect himself in the future.  There is immense value in developing readiness before you need to change.  It may be too late to do it after.

5.  Retain your change leaders – people with change readiness find it much easier to change than others.  This means that your change leaders may find it easy to leave your organisation and go work for one of your competitors.  Unless you value them and utilise what they have to offer, you may lose valuable people and your competitors may have a windfall.

6. Recruit change readiness – it doesn’t cost any more to recruit people with change readiness?  Yet people with change readiness can help your organisation become more adaptable.  Furthermore, it will cost you less time and money in training them.  It makes economic sense to recruit people who are ready for change.

7. Promote people with change readiness – people with change readiness are natural change leaders.  They are often natural leaders, full stop.  Promoting natural change leaders into positions of structural leadership makes good sense when it comes to change.

So even if you are doing well and you are not facing immediate change, there are good reasons to identify your change readiness resources and make the most of what you have.

This article was written by: Steve Barlow PhD

Businesses that are new to the online environment, must know that there website can face two challenges- getting found by the right audience and converting visitors into profitable customers. You can overcome these two challenges by hiring a professional web developer who can develop a robust website design strategy.

Some of the strategies that must be incorporated by the web developer in your website design plan are discussed below:

1) Defining the purpose of the website- Though the primary purpose of a business web site is to attract the targeted audience and improve the conversion rate, each website has its own goals and objective to achieve. You can achieve these objectives by discussing them with the web developer, who can create a strategic site design idea that strives to achieve the specified objectives. For instance, if you want to create a website in order encourage people to do online shopping on their online portal; the web site developer can sketch a plan accordingly.

2) Creating a theme that reflects your brand and sticking to it- Businesses invest in web site design so that their business is well represented on the World Wide Web. In order to achieve maximum results, you should provide elaborate information about your brand and services that you offer to your developer. A uniform theme in the website reflects the professionalism of the company that improves its reputation.

3) Using the latest technologies and tools that enhance user experience on the site- There are always new technologies and tools being developed across the world in order to simplify web design process and improve the user experience. The developer must stay up-to-date with these technologies and tools that make the site easy to use and navigate and compels the users to take a positive action.

The key reason for having a strategy for your website design is that it creates a vehicle for your business to capture and convert visitors and sales leads. When you work on these strategies during the development of your website, you can be assured of effective business promotion in the online environment, make more profits and get value for money. Your website can be a highly cost-effective marketing tool in comparison of the traditional marketing methods.

Tip: If you have budget constraints and cannot hire a web design and development company to develop a performance-oriented website, you can do-it-yourself. While a web design company can render highly professional website that can provide significant increase in your profits and revenue, developing your own site wouldn’t harm you either. Though you may not be able to generate that much profit, you may still be able to establish your online presence and continuously improvise on your website design.

Based on our research we have put together 2 charts which show globally the most used browsers as well as that of our monthly visitors and users on NZ Directory.

On both charts for the Internet Explorer browser all versions (1 – 9) are included within it’s percentile count.

By comparing these 2 charts we can see a similar trend with the exception of the Internet Explorer browser which is roughly 18% up on NZ Directory compared to the global usage. This can suggest that the Internet Explorer browser may be more widely used within New Zealand, based on our monthly visitors of 55,000 – 65,000.

This article was written by: Mike Stevens

Below we have put together a list of popular resources on everything you need to know for living, traveling and experiencing New Zealand.

Learn about New Zealand

• www.newzealand.govt.nz
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_zealand
• http://wikitravel.org/en/New_Zealand

Things to experience in New Zealand

• www.newzealand.com
• www.destination-nz.com
• www.tourism.net.nz
• www.tourism.govt.nz
• www.explore-new-zealand.com
• www.nz.com
• www.newzealandnz.co.nz

Facts and figures about New Zealand

• www.newzealand.com/int/facts/
• www.linz.govt.nz

If you are looking for more information, please also see our post on: Travel & Tourism Within New Zealand

Shopping Vouchers and Coupons:

• www.yellowvouchers.co.nz
• www.vouchermate.co.nz
• www.govouchergo.co.nz
• www.treatme.co.nz
• www.ezycoupons.co.nz

Competitions and Giveaways:

• www.winstuff.co.nz
• www.blinky.co.nz
• www.contest.co.nz
• www.gimme.co.nz

Have we missed something? Feel free to post a link if you’ve found a website that you think should be added to these lists.

When a web browser has loaded a website and detects it has a feed available, it will display a small RSS icon in the address bar.

Visitors can click on this icon, view these feed(s) and subscribe to them if they find them to be of interest.

If your website has a blog or RSS feeds available, you can have the RSS Autodiscovery feature setup with just one simple line of code also known as a link tag, placed within the <head></head> of our HTML document.

The Code:

<link rel=“alternate” type=“application/rss+xml” title=“Your Website or Blog Title Here” href=”http://www.yoursite.co.nz/blog/feed/” />

Below is an example of how it would be implemented in to a basic HTML web page.

Please remember when linking your feed to a web page that you give it a valid title and ensure you have added the correct URL.

If you have multiple feeds which you would like included within a certain web page, simply add another link tag as described above and your done. When your visitors now click on the RSS icon within their browsers address bar they will see a list of feeds available for them to subscribe to.

Adding the RSS Autodiscovery feature to your website is also positively validated by W3C and adds additional SEO value.

This article was written by: Mike Stevens

Have you ever heard of this term ‘on-page SEO’? If not, then the first and foremost thing you should learn is this only. On page SEO ensure that your website is as search engine friendly as possible and for that you should help the search spiders find other pages easily on your website after finding your website. If you are website is not well optimized, then you have less chances of getting good results in the search engines.

Here is a quick guide towards good on-page search engine optimization:

Make sure that all of your web pages can be indexed by search engines – make sure that they all have at least one link from somewhere on your site.

Provide proper paths for spiders to follow from starting point to the end point of your website and then again to the starting point. If you use text based links rather than flash, it will increase the relevancy of your website page.

Do not forget to add XML sitemap which is the ideal and structured way to redirect the search spiders to catch hold of relevant pages. For effective on-page SEO, you can also place a link at the bottom of your website.

You can use robots.txt files for certain pages of your website which need not be included in the database and this will result in effective on-page optimization.

You also have to ensure that the images in your website use descriptive URLs as it will make easier for the search engines to index that particular page of your website.

After learning all the basics of how search engine actually take your website, you have to come down to the contents of your website which is the most important thing to tell search engines what you actually sell.

The title tags should include some of the strongest keywords first and less relevant at the end.

Do not forget to optimize the description tag which is used by the search engines to know about the theme of the page. Once the search engine spiders have relevant information from the starting of the website, they scan the whole page for the same kind of relevancy.

For better on-page SEO, you must create separate page for each topic as it becomes easier for the search engines to crawl and index it without any kind of confusion. You must keep the content simple, add keywords in the link names, put keywords in anchor link also.

Ready to take your business to the next level? We recommend our premium business listing option to fully market your business throughout New Zealand.

Below we have some quick tips on helping you decide which domain name best suits your website.

TIP: If you are going to offer products or services through your website, who will be your audience? Potential customers within New Zealand or international?

For most websites doing business within New Zealand a .nz domain name will work fine. For websites deciding to expand in the future a .com would be a better choice as an official commercial international business. The reason .com can also be a better choice, is that it is an international domain name extension which can rank higher in search engines and is accepted by more general searches and online directories. A .nz domain can restrict the inclusion of your website to these various online services from around the world.

TIP: If you already have a registered Limited company name, for your customers to find you better online and to spread the name within the market sector you are working in, if possible it is best to use your companies name as your official domain name as well.

For example:

Your business name may be: Fish Fingers Limited.

Best choice domain name would be: www.fishfingers.co.nz or www.fishfingers.com

Try not to use www.fishfingersltd.co.nz/.com or www.fisherfingerslimited.co.nz/.com as having the Limited isn’t necessary, it adds no additional value or rank to your website, simply makes it longer and harder for your customers to remember.

If the desired domain name is already taken, you may need to decide on a work around. Based on the above example the following names may work, however some have as indicated a downside attached to them, which would also be applicable to other names.

1. www.fish-fingers.co.nz or www.fish-fingers.com : With this choice you would still have the ability to use your business title, however this can cause some customers visiting the wrong website by forgetting to add the “-” with the name.
2. You can base the domain name on a main product or service provided. In this cause www.fishproducts.co.nz or www.fishproducts.com : This option would tell potential customers before even visiting your website, that you offer fish products and doesn’t confuse them as to what your business/website provides.
3. If going with another domain name, for example based on a product or service provided by the business : Make sure that this is an easy to remember name, descriptive, not to long and made up of no more then 2 words.

TIP: Never use your businesses phone number or mobile number as a domain name. This doesn’t give your customers any meaning when viewing the domain name in search results,  it also doesn’t tell them where this number belongs to, adds no descriptive or search engine rank value and cannot be used if the number changes.

When you have found the right domain name, it is important to make sure that this is registered through an authorised registrar to prevent any fraud, ensure the safety in your personal information and having full rights to the registered name.  For a list of authorised .nz registrars you can visit the New Zealand Domain Name Commission at www.dnc.org.nz.

I hope that this article can help you to choose the right domain name.

This article was written by: Mike Stevens

In the past, online auctions have lead the way in buying and selling online. However recently there has been a small change within New Zealand, in the way that buyers and sellers are looking for smaller sites to promote their services and/or products, as well as selling to a more local customer range, rather then nation or world wide.

Online classifieds offer both private sellers and businesses more options and potential customers, as most classified websites offer contact information, lists of services provided, product photos and direct links to your own website, which can also help your search engine rank.

Displayed below are New Zealand’s most popular and growing online classified websites.

Trade & Exchange – www.te.co.nz

Trade & Exchange is New Zealand’s largest online classifieds website, currently holding over 600,000 listings in a large range of categories, advanced search options, including local search/browse for private sellers and businesses. Advanced listing options and certain features, will have a fee applied.

With Trade & Exchange you can also have your classified ad featured in their local offline publications.

Happy Sheep – www.happysheep.co.nz

Happy Sheep is a free local classifieds website, focusing on 5 main regions – Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin. This is still a small, but growing and promising website.

Gum Tree – www.gumtree.co.nz

Gum Tree is also a free local classifieds website, focusing on 3 main regions – Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The site features a large range of categories for products, services, jobs, real estate and wanted ads with advanced search and listing options. It currently holds some thousands of listings throughout each region.

Other free, general and growing New Zealand classified ad websites:

• www.olx.co.nz
• www.secondhand.co.nz
• www.adoos.co.nz
• www.noflies.co.nz
• www.exchangeclassifieds.co.nz
• www.freelocalclassifiedads.co.nz
• www.annonz.co.nz
• www.myclassifieds.co.nz
• www.anunico.co.nz
• www.hikiwi.co.nz

If you have come across an interesting and worthwhile classified website, which you believe should be added to this list, leave us a comment.

Happy listing!

This article was written by: Mike Stevens