Moonfruit Lounge

Our latest release is now out there. Check out the additions and bug fixes in the list below. For those of you looking for the comment widget, this has been delayed to the next release, but will be out in May with some other goodies...

Ok, so I've done the work, got my keywords worked out for my different pages, got my site listed on the major search engines (see previous article), now what do I do with them? How do I make these changes in SiteMaker? Good question. Glad I know the answer. Here's the how-to's for SiteMaker...

Ok, so we've prepared our Keywords, and that will come in handy for optimising the site, but the first challenge is getting the site listed at all. Search engines can take a long time (3-6 months) to list new sites, but there are some things you can do to help. However, even getting your site listed can be a controversial topic.

"Without a doubt, Moonfruit is the slickest of these online site buidlers" PC Mag USA. Damn right. Check on the full review.

Search Engine Optimisation on SiteMaker is much like Search Engine Optimisation with any website. The key is to make sure that your site contents are focused and relevant to the keywords that you wish to rank highly on. This means making a real effort in a number of places to make sure the terms you use are consistent. And don't be too ambitious, you're never going to beat the big guys if your words are too general and competitive.

Love it or hate it, PayPal does serve a purpose. For those keen to enter the commercial market place as a trader or seller, the big banks don't make it that easy and PayPal does fill the gap. But this is not a recommendation, this is a quick fix guide to the main problems you (or your customers) may encounter when using PayPal on your website. The most common issues are:

• My customers have items in their shopping basket even though they've not visited my site before
• Customers complain about an error message when trying to pay
• PayPal seems to work on my Moonfruit domain but not my own domain name
• My customers just can't complete a purchase - it keeps failing

So if any of those comments look vaguely familiar, read on...

What do you do when you've launched a new product in the dizzy dotcom days? The answer is simple - Advertise! If you remember the conventional wisdom of dotcom times, it was 1. Build something, 2. Raise money, 3. Advertise the hell out of it, 4. Grab as many customers as possible, 5. Sell or float the company, 6. Retire and write a smug book about your experiences. We were entering stage 3 and starting to ramp up the spend. Little did we know we'd never get to write the book...

There have been a couple of responses to Joe's blog about the recent December release and some entries in the Forum about Google Analytics: how to set it up, what data to look at, and no data coming through at all. So I'll give everyone a few ideas on how it all fits together.

The SiteMaker Video player was released two weeks ago, allowing you to upload FLV (Flash Video) files, or embed any video file you can find on YouTube or Google Video directly in your site. And unlike any other in-site video player, you can drag, scale and manipulate the video just by dragging and clicking. We reckon it's very cool! (and there's more to come).

So what do you think about it? Are you using it? Post a link to your video site and let us know what you think about it.