In the last few days articles highlighting cyber security breaches have been hitting the media. While these security threats are good to know about, it is also important to remember that the media can blow these threats out of proportion.

At Zeald, we have a team who constantly updates and improves our CMS. The sole aim of this is to ensure we provide our customers with the safest, strongest software available. This means that they are continuously looking at the security of our CMS, and applying patches.

In the latest article from the Sydney Morning Herald, they discuss the new website threat ‘Heartbleed’.

“…Google security engineer and some other researchers published information indicating they had discovered a serious flaw, dubbed "Heartbleed", in numerous but not all versions of the OpenSSL cryptographic software library, which is used to secure millions of websites.”

"This ... means that the little lock icon (HTTPS) we all trusted to keep our passwords, personal emails, and credit cards safe, was actually making all that private information accessible to anyone who knew about the exploit."

At Zeald, our R&D team had already applied a security patch to prevent our clients websites being affected. We have also ensured the front end servers which run this software don't have access to any private data as part of our server structure. 

Closer to home, Stuff posted an article this morning about ransomware.

“...mid-last year, crypto-locker ransomware emerged which encrypts the files on victims' computers and gives them a deadline to pay up before the key to decrypt the files is destroyed.”

“Netsafe advises people to regularly back up their files and store them safely offline, which would reduce the likely impact of crypto-locker attacks.”

Anyone who wants to gain access to someones computer needs to be let in by the owner, usually via malware, which can come through via attachments & downloads. These most frequently come in through emails, or hacked open source websites which masquerade the infected files as legitimate downloads, using the hacked company's credibility to build trust with the user.

At Zeald, we have a filter which filters out most malware based emails for customers that use our email system. We also scan our web servers for any malware uploaded by clients to their websites which can happen if the clients computer is infected with viruses and malware.

For anyone interested in reading more on how to protect yourself on the internet, please read our article, ‘Online threats- is your website at risk’

In the meantime, here are a few quick tips on general internet security:

• Have a complicated password that is not guessed easily. It's best to have a mixture of letters, capitals, and numbers. Stay away from 'qwerty' or your date of birth.
• Change your passwords every now and again.
• Have different passwords- most people have one password for most of their accounts, this means that if someone gets one, they get them all!
• Do not open any email that looks like spam. If you receive an email from someone you never talk to with an odd subject line, avoid opening it as their email account may have been hacked.
• If you do open an email that seems like spam, do not download any attachments.
• Avoid clicking on any dodgy looking pop-up windows. 
• Do not buy from sites that you don’t trust. A good idea is to check the credentials of the website. Does it have a PayPal logo? Have you read their security and pay information?

Late last year, Google stopped providing outsiders with the information that tells website owners what search phrases were used to find your website

They made this change for security reasons (Google Official Blog, 21/05/10). Mainly to protect website users’ search behaviour from being watched by third parties.

Prior to this change, when a user performed a Google search using a phrase such as “Auckland Plumber” and the user clicked on your search result, Google, would pass these search phrases to your website. Through your reports you could learn what search phrases people used to find your website.

As of September 2013 this information was encrypted and no longer accessible to website owners.

_{The below example shows a Search Phrase as an ‘h’.}

This information provides valuable marketing insight. It is a shame to lose it, but not all hope is lost... We can source most of this information using Google Webmaster Tools and Google Adwords.

Using Webmaster Tools search queries report

The Search Queries report  shows what keyword searches your site is ranking for and what keywords have generated traffic to your website. See below.

Let’s have a look at the top phrase used by people to find the above listed site which is ‘Plumbers Christchurch’. It has 77 Impressions which means 77 users have used this search phrase to search in Google and have seen your website link in the search results.

Clicks means 63 people that have clicked the listing in the search results. Click Through Rate (CTR) means 82% of the 77 impressions clicked on your link to your site. This information is extremely valuable and helps you to determine if your keywords will drive targeted traffic to your website to buy or enquire about your products and/or services.

Learn more about Google Webmaster tools.

Using Google Adwords keyword planner

The Keyword Planner is a free tool that enables you to identify and analyse potential keywords that can be used to direct traffic to your website through Google Adword Campaigns. With this tool you can see exact traffic numbers for Advertisements that are associated with specific keywords.

In this example you can see information based on the keywords for ‘plumbing Christchurch’. If you were to run a campaign that targeted the search terms ‘plumbing Christchurch’. You can see that approximately 0 - 1.54 clicks per day can be predicted for those find the site with the keywords plumbing Christchurch. It also predicts that 15.8 to 80.1 users might see the site’s Adword campaign on a daily basis depending on the budget. This tool is useful to experiment with your keywords, to see the approximate Cost Per Click (CPC) on your keywords, and to see local search trends to name a few. Click here for help with the Keyword Tool.

Webmaster Tools and the Keyword Planner provide excellent assistance with identifying and utilizing highly targeted, planned keywords to drive traffic to your site and to find out how users are accessing it. Please contact Zeald Support for more information.

Zeald is a full service website company. This means that we can help you with a variety of services in addition to your base website. Some of these include:

• Adwords/ Pay Per Click management
• Copywriting 
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Email marketing
• Blogs
• Website optimisation
• Usability testing

If you are struggling to get the results you are after or feel like it's time to refresh the look of your website, then someone at Zeald would love to help. Click here, fill out the form and someone will be in touch. We can discuss what improvements you would like to see, and run you through different ways to make that happen. 

One of the great benefits of having a Zeald website is that the platform is solid, secure and up-to-date even if the design looks a little dated. The good news is that you don't need to start from scratch. With Zeald you can redesign your website for a fraction of the cost of a new website and with a fraction of the effort.

Take a look at other Zeald companies that have redesigned their websites and hear from Annah Stretton, why she wanted a redesign.  

Click here to see more redesigns. 

Integrating with Unleashed can be a  huge benefit to ecommerce businesses that need to keep track of stock. In  this article we will walk you through what Unleashed is, and what are  the advantages to integrating with your Zeald website.

What is Unleashed?

Unleashed is an online inventory management system which allows you to manage your suppliers, purchasers, shipments, consignment stock locations, warehouses, productions (BOM), and sales through multiple channels. Your stock on your Zeald website will be kept up to date in real time so both you and your customers know exactly what is available.
 

What are the benefits of Unleashed?

• Real time stock levels shown on your Zeald website
• Update your stock information in one place and have those changes reflected across all of your stock locations. This means no re-keying or double handling
• Set up minimum and maximum stock levels for each product. This will give you alerts for over and under stocks for urgent action.
• Invoice, quote or park your orders offers great flexibility in managing your sales processes. Simply create an invoice or quote and email it instantly from Unleashed in one easy step.
• Custom Document Designer to personalise the look and feel of purchase orders you send to your suppliers
• Late purchase alerts, let you know when to chase up suppliers on any late deliveries.
• Multi-currency and conversion options
• Stock and value adjustments

Who is Unleashed suitable for?

Zeald ecommerce customers who want to more effectively manage their stock levels via their website.

Want to know more?

If you are not a Zeald client, please click here. If you already have a Zeald website, please click the image below and fill out the form.