Spring is upon us once again and to get you warmed up and ready for the summer we have a hot deal to offer you.

Get a scorching 50% discount on domains with our most popular endings (e.g. .com, .co.uk, .net, .info, .org and many more) when you use the discount coupon code “SPRING”.

Attract more visitors to your website with multiple domains

A well selected domain name can help increase traffic to your website.

For example, if your domain contains keywords that people use to search at Google and co. you have a higher chance that your website will have a better placement in the search engine results. This leads to more visitors to your site which in turn can increase your number of customers and revenue!

You can multiply this effect at Cabanova because you can attach more than one domain to a single website.

Check to see if the domains you need are available now, and save a refreshing 50%!

* Offer applies only to new domain registrations. Prices exclude 19% sales tax.

You can now enhance any images you have in your Cabanova website with Pixlr, the powerful online picture editing platform. Choose from a huge selection of adjustments, effects, overlays, borders, stickers and more.

Whether you want to get rid of red eyes, whiten teeth, add vintage effects, fireworks or textures, you can do it all (and much more) in just a few mouse clicks.

Here’s how you use it:

1. Select an image [a] in your website and in the “Format” [b] menu hit “Edit” [c]. Then select “Pixlr Express” [d] for quick and easy image manipulation, or “Pixlr Advanced” [e] for loads of extra tools and options.

2. Pixlr will load in a new browser window. Edit your image, and when you are finished hit “Save”, and your image will be updated in your Cabanova website.

You can also check out our online instructions on how to use the pixlr express image editor and the pixlr advanced image editor to enhance the photos in your website.

Try it out now!

We had a lot of members who wanted to be able to let their website visitors make date based reservations online. To make this possible we developed a “datepicker” element. Place it in your web form to allow visitors to select a date from a mini calendar. You can add multiple datepickers in your form, which you can use for example to allow “from – to” dates to be entered

This feature is especially useful for hotels, bed & breakfasts, events, rental services and more. You can also easily add the datepicker to any existing forms you may have.

You can also read our detailed instructions on how to use the datepicker element.

We wish you a successful website and many bookings/reservations.

Cabanova built Websites are SEO friendly and a huge amount of work has been already done in the background to make them easily indexable by search engines.

A part of the SEO aspects are handled automatically and require no User intervention.

Another part needs to be handled manually by the User though and to ease it up for you; we came up with an SEO guide based on the Google SEO Starter Guide.

The Cabanova – Google SEO Guide comes with additional sections through which we explain in detail how advices within the Google SEO Starter Guide can be applied to a Cabanova built Website.

After going through the SEO Guide, you’ll be surely surprised by the fact that SEO process is not that technical at all and it’s just a bunch of a little small details which need to be taken into consideration when thinking, building and updating your Website.

All put together, these small details will have a significant positive impact on your Website ranking.

Here is a brief summary of the Cabanova – SEO Guide content – You can reach a section by clicking on it:

1. Introduction
The introduction contains a table of content through which you can reach any section or subsection of the SEO Guide… Go to Cabanova – Google SEO Guide introduction

2. SEO Basics
SEO Basics section covers the Meta Data SEO aspect and helps you to set it right for your Website pages… find out more about SEO Basics

3. Improving Structure
Improving your Webpages URLs structure and making your Website easy to navigate are the main aspects covered by this section… Read more about how to improve the structure of your Cabanova Website

4. Optimizing Content
The quality of the content you offer through your Website has incredibly a huge impact on your Website ranking. An easy and comprehensive Website for visitors is an easy and comprehensive Website for search engines… find out more about how to optimize your Cabanova Website content

5. Dealing with Crawlers
This section helps you understand the robot.txt file use and how to fight spam comment through your Website… find out more about Dealing with Crawlers

6. Promotion and Analysis
You’ll find in this section useful information on how to promote your Website in the right way and how to optimize it for search engines by using SEO Tools… find out how to promote your Cabanova Website in the right way and how to use Webmaster Tools

The Cabanova – Google SEO Guide is available for download in PDF format.

As you probably already know, you can publish your Cabanova website in HTML5.

Many of our members have already been using it to their advantage. Because of this we are starting a monthly showcase featuring 10 fabulous websites that have been published in HTML5.

Take a look below to see the top 10 HTML5 websites for December:
(Click the image to open in full size)

We hope you like our selection of sites. if you think your website is worthy of being featured then we invite you to submit it by sending us an email with the subject “TOP TEN” to info@cabanova.com.

First impressions count, and that’s why we are creating a new generation of website templates that have a strong focus on design. Our mission is to create a series of beautiful website designs that you can use directly, or as inspiration for creating your own template. Remember, if visitors like the design of your website, they are more likely to spend more time on it.

The first of these new designs are ready and available online now in the Cabanova website builder. As well as looking stunning, they are also already optimised for display in HTML5 to ensure compatibility with not only desktop computers but also iPads, iPhones and other tablets and smartphones.

Here is a preview of the new creative template designs:
(Click the image to open in full size)

You can try them out directly in the sitebuilder. Simply create a new free website, choose one of the templates (you will find them showcased in the section “New Template”) and get creative!

There is one mistake that many small businesses make when building a website for their company. They are focussed entirely on the goals of the business, and little or no thought has been made on what goals the customer may actually have when visiting their website. If you want to build a successful relationship with the customer online you need to satisfy their needs also, and not just your own. A good way to look at it is like a marriage between the two.

Business goals
Business success can mean a number of different things depending on what line of business you are in. Here are some examples of business goals:

• Generate appointments
• Convert visitors into customers
• Increase your existing customer retention rate
• Deepen the relationship with your customers
• Improve the productivity inside your company

These business goals correspond to various levels of depth of your relationship with the customer. It is relatively easy to focus on just one of the goals, for example converting your visitors into customers, but you need to realise that your website can be a great tool to help deepen the relationships with your customers. For example you if you regularly update your website with content that is interesting for your customers, they will have a reason to visit your website more often. You could even let them sign up to a regular email newsletter on your site.

You may also be able to increase the productivity in your company through your website. For example, if you provide a list of frequently asked questions and answers, you can save costs on personal support phone calls and emails.

Customer goals
The people visiting your website will also have varying goals, depending on the depth of their relationship with your business. They could be simply looking for information on a particular product without a direct intention of purchasing, or perhaps they have made the decision to make use of your products/services etc. Maybe it is a journalist from the press who is writing an article on a subject relevant to your website, who may want to contact you.

As you can see from the examples above, each of these three people need to see different information on your website, and all of them have a potential to have a positive effect on your business, whether it be through a direct sale or public relations.

No matter what kind of customer is on your website, they do at least share some similar goals on a more general level that you need to make sure you address:

• They want an easy to learn experience
• They want it to be easy to find, buy or otherwise solve their needs
• They need access to help if they need it.

If you take some time and make a list of your customer goals and your business goals, you will have a great basis to decide what kind of content and features will be useful in your website. The two go hand in hand, because the satisfaction of customer goals leads to the satisfaction of your business goals. Take the example with the frequently asked questions – not only does your business benefit because you save costs, but your customers are also much happier because they can quickly find a solution to their problem.

Once you have made a list of all your business and customer goals, you can start on the doing research (step 2).

It’s one thing to have all the tools that you need to build a website here at Cabanova, but actually creating the perfect website to represent your business online can seem like a daunting task. There are a lot of things to take into consideration when building your site, some of which you may already know, and others that we can help you with. We can’t build your website for you, but we can do the next best thing by providing you with the all the information you need you get your website up and running.

We will be publishing a 10 part guide detailing the most important aspects involved in building a professional website for your business. We will be covering the following topics:

The 10 steps to a successful website

1. Define your website goals
2. Research
3. Information architecture
4. Set the mood and tonality
5. Writing copy for your pages
6. Create a website template
7. Building your content pages
8. Search engine optimization
9. Launching your website
10. Maintaining your website

This guide is not only for those of you who have yet to build a website, but also if you already have a website online. One of the advantages of using Cabanova is that you can edit your website anytime. So if you decide to apply any of the concepts described in the guide all you need to do is log in to your account and make the changes directly in the website editor.

Step 1: Define your website goals

At the heart of every website is the navigation – it allows your visitors to jump from page to page and find the information they are looking for. We are excited to announce a completely overhauled tool for customizing your website navigation bar. You now have much greater flexibility in making your navigation bar look exactly the way you want it to look. And the best part is that no matter how you customize your navigation, it will work flawlessly on HTML5 touchscreen devices such as iPhones, iPads and other tablets and smartphones. That’s something you won’t find anywhere else!

Check out these examples of navigation bars you can create with this powerful new tool:

Here’s what you can customize:

» Navigation direction – horizontal and vertical
» Button types -  rectangular, rounded corners or tabs.
» Shading – matt, shadow and glossy button looks
» Padding – complete control over the gaps between the text and buttons
» Text style – 75 fonts are available, in the size you choose
» Colors – background, buttons and text
» Sub-pages can be listed inline or as drop-down menus, or not at all

There is a detailed description how you can insert and customize a new navigation bar in our Help & Support Center.