If you are having issues with emails sent from your website contact or enquiry forms please read on…
Email that is sent directly from your website works differently from email sent from Outlook, gmail or other provider. Most websites sendemail directly from the server where the web site is hosted. This is common practice and worksfine in most cases, and is separate from normal email.
However, there area few potential downsides:
Email from the hosting web server is more likely to get wrongly identified as spam by the recipient system.Correcting this is pretty complex.
When email is sent from the website server there is no easy way to track sent emails or analyse issues with bounces (for example incorrect/old email addresses or their system being down).
Ezonehave launched a new service that solves these issues in a very straight forward and easy to implementmanner.Wecanus athird party system that sends the emails (instead of the web site server). Thisthird party tooldoes all the work to try and reduce spam issues and also provides us with a way to track and investigate issues.
Many of our clients websites either have integrated booking systems (or direct links to booking systems). A lot of our clients are hotels whose WMS websites require functionality for site users to be able to book rooms and perhaps also restaurant tables. Some of our clients websites also require to book things like: golf course tee times and tour ticket bookings.
Here are some of the systems used by websites in the WMS: Hotel Room Booking Systems:
If you don’t see a booking system in this list that you are looking for – don’t worry! We can work with any booking system. We can also set these up with Google Analytics (and/or other tracking code) so you can keep track of your booking information and maximise your bookings.
Next week on Tuesday 12th June the WMS user interface will be upgraded as mentioned in our previous blog posts (06/06/12 and 08/05/12).
The video below (which lasts under 5min) compares the current version of the WMS and the new user interface and highlights the changes:
You can also see the above video split into 3 sections:
WMS Login Page
WMS Dashboard Page
WMS Site Page
Also not shown in these videos – your website favicon (if your website has one) will be displayed in the WMS Site page when you access your site in the WMS.
The WMS will be unavailable for approximately 2-3 hours on Tuesday afternoon (12th June) while it is being upgraded. This will not affect your websites within the WMS these will still be up and working as normal. You will however not be able to update your website content for the 2-3 hours that the WMS is unavailable.
If you have any questions about this please email [email protected] and we will be happy to help.
Improvements to the WMS interface and support ticket system
For the last few months we have been working on some improvements to the design of the Ezone WMS. We have also changed the system we use for support tickets. Both of these upgrades will be ready for release on Tuesday 12th June 2012.
So what are the changes? Well…
For changes to the WMS User interface please see our recent blog post for more information.
As part of the upcoming WMS User Interface upgrade we are also launching a new WMS Support ticket system.
This will have the following improvements:
– Email based Support Tickets – The whole support ticket discussion will be visible within each ticket email notification from WMS Support. You can reply to the support ticket by replying to these notification emails. Therefore a support ticket discussion takes place just like a normal email discussion.
–WMS Support through Social Media – With our new support ticket system you can open tickets using Facebook or Twitter. We can respond to tickets on these platforms so the whole support discussion can take place in Facebook or Twitter through to ticket closure.
–Improved Email Notifications Acceptance – The occurrence of our support ticket email notifications going into your junk mail will be minimised.
And at our end: – Improved ticket management features – we can deal with your tickets more efficiently which will improve our WMS Support service
We will continue to provide the Knowledge Base of articles on using the WMS. This will be called “Solutions” on our new support ticket system.
Watch this space for more news as we near the release date…
For the last few months we have been working on some improvements to the design of the Ezone WMS, these will be ready for release very shortly!
So what are the changes? Well…
Better use of screen real estate
We’ve reduced the amount of screen space that the header and menu options use.
This further increases the amount of space on the screen for the important things!
Simplified main menus We have reorganised many of the options into an extended tab bar.
The WMS has a huge range of functionality and we think this will make it even easier to find and use the features you need, when you need them.
Moving between sites If you manage multiple sites in the WMS you may find this change useful. As well as making the name of the site you are currently working on even more obvious, we have added a new “Switch Site” menu that makes it easier to move between sites.
And more! There are also a number of smaller improvements and changes as well as some bug fixes in this upcoming release.
Coming soon! It has been several years since we last made these type of changes and we hope that you will find them useful and the WMS even better as a result!
Watch this space for more news as we near the release date…
With the deadline of the 26th of May drawing nearer, after which the new cookie laws will begin to be enforced, we wanted to look at how different websites are adhering to the changes in legislation:
The new cookie law states that:
“Those setting cookies must:
• Tell people that the cookies are there, • Explain what the cookies are doing, and • Obtain their consent to store a cookie on their device.”
Whilst there has been considerable debate as to what is an acceptable way to address these changes in the law there appear to be three solutions commonly being implemented:
To simply have a prominent link to your privacy policy on your home page and to provide detailed information within the policy regarding what cookies your site uses, what they do and how the user can adjust their settings regarding what cookies are allowed to be placed on their computer. This seems to be quite a popular solution as it is the least disruptive to the browsing experience for the user. Examples: http://econsultancy.com, http://www.waitrose.com and http://www.dominos.co.uk/
An ‘opt-out’ setup whereby the user is prominently informed on the home page that cookies are being used and given a link where they can opt-out of the cookies being used (or in some cases select what sort of cookies they want to allow). These also include links to a detailed privacy policy. Examples: http://www.magiq.com/, http://www.bt.com/ and https://www.gov.uk
A full opt-in plugin. In this case cookies are disabled by default and the user must choose to opt-in to enable them. This also includes a link to the privacy policy with details of what cookies will be used if the user does choose to opt-in.
While the third approach appears to most strictly comply with the ICO guidelines it is also the most disruptive and it has been suggested that it may not be necessary if your site is only using cookies for purposes such as analytics.
However, if your website has more complex cookie functionality such as, for example, a login then the second or third approach may be more appropriate.
At Ezone Software we can provide the following 4 step solution:
1. An audit to see which cookies are running on your website.
2. The creation of a privacy page on your website (or alteration of an existing privacy page) – to state what these cookies are and explain what they do.
3. (Optional) The addition of a free third party solution to allow the site user to give informed consent that refers/links the site user to your privacy page (or which has this information on screen as part of its functionality) so that the user can make an informed choice.
4. A report will be provided on the audit findings and work done.
As an alternative to step 3 we can work with you to supply a bespoke solution developed at Ezone Software along the same lines of the third party solutions but more befitting the branding of your website.
If you would like us to carry out this 4 step EU Cookie Directive Audit or if you would like more information please contact[email protected].
You get used to your website being up and available, no problem for a couple of years until one day when you type your site’s domain into a browser and its not there! Your domain has expired and your site is down.
This happened recently to a client of ours. The reminders were going to an old email address and the domain wasn’t set to auto-renew. We had contacted our client to give a “heads up” but other day to day matters had monopolised their time. On Friday afternoon we received a support ticket reporting the site as down but we were seeing it as still up. The domain was in the process of lapsing and the site was on its way down for the weekend – not ideal for a hotel website to say the least.
So we got in touch with our client and after a couple of calls between us we managed to track down who held the domain and who had the login details to renew online. The site went back up later that night and was available over the weekend.
To prevent this happening the WMS as a courtesy service tracks all the domains registered within it and we get in touch with clients when domains are due to lapse. Also if your domain is about to lapse you will see the following when you edit your website in the WMS:
“The domain for this site will expire soon! See “View Domain Info” in your Site Properties for more details. “
So while we don’t manage your DNS directly we can help remind you about domain renewal dates. You can also access your domain info yourself at any time in the WMS:
For all involved on this occasion it was a much nicer feeling to go home for the weekend a little later but with the site safely up again. But to avoid situations like this we recommend checking when your domain is due, heeding the WMS warnings and watching out for our reminder emails.
We at WMS Support would like to get some feedback from you on your experience of using WMS support with the following 10 question survey.
This information is important to us to help us improve the WMS support service and experience for you.
Therefore please don’t hold back if you have any criticisms! However also let us know where we are doing a good job so we don’t try and fix something that isn’t broken 🙂
If you have any questions about this survey either prior or post answering it – please contact [email protected].
If you are able to fill out the survey then thanks for taking time to participate! If not then thanks anyway for being a WMS Support service user. We understand people don’t always have the time for surveys – although this one may help us to tailor WMS Support more to your needs.
On 26th May 2012 the ICO will begin to enforce the EU “Cookie” Directive. In the UK this EU Privacy Directive has resulted in changes to the Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations. The directive came into being on 25th May 2011 however the ICO chose to give a year’s grace in the UK before they started enforcing it. Website owners can potentially be fined up to £500,000 for being in breach of this law.
According to the ICO:
“Those setting cookies must:
• Tell people that the cookies are there, • Explain what the cookies are doing, and • Obtain their consent to store a cookie on their device.”
This affects the vast majority of websites in the EU (for instance Google Analytics sets a cookie as will many third party integrations on your website). Due to the lack of guidance on exactly how the directive should be complied with most have decided to wait and see what trends develop to see if one common approach becomes clear. Currently none of the big sites such as Amazon or EBay have moved with their main solution.
The ICO website itself has a box at the top of the page where site users can check a checkbox to accept cookies before they run so a solution similar to this may be the safest option to ensure compliance with the Directive.
So at Ezone Software we recommend the following 4 step solution which we provide as an audit package:
1. An audit to see which cookies are running on your website.
2. The creation of a privacy page on your website (or alteration of an existing privacy page) – to state what these cookies are and explain what they do.
3. (Optional) The addition of a free third party solution to allow the site user to give informed consent that refers/links the site user to your privacy page (or which has this information on screen as part of its functionality) so that the user can make an informed choice.
4. A report will be provided on the audit findings and work done.
If you would like us to carry out this 4 step EU Cookie Directive Audit or if you would like more information please contact [email protected].
As an alternative to step 3 we can supply a bespoke solution developed at Ezone Software along the same lines of the third party solutions.
As well as the EU Cookie Directive audit we also offer the following website audits:
