The Village Websmith - Web Design & Development in Your Area

Welcome to Terrific Tuesday

Named from the Germanic god, Tiw, and associated with Mars. Mars is known as the 'Red Planet' so make it a red letter day for your business.

I'm on a bit of a tight schedule today as I will be at the hospital all afternoon getting my nearly repaired leg poked and prodded, so will be brief.

May I suggest that 'brief' could be the watchword of the day. How many words appear on the main page of your website? Could the number be reduced to increase impace while preserving the meaning? One of the most common causes of 'back-buttonitis' is the number of words on the landing page. People can't be bothered to read through a great body of text to find the information they need.

Lists are a great way of cutting down content so have a think about how your business MOJO can be put simply into a series of bullet points that give enough information for people to want to stay on your website, but give it at a glance.

Once a visitor has clicked through onto one of the linked pages, then you can allow yourself the luxury of expanding the information, but giving too much initially can rob you of that vital chance. Take a moment today to look at your site content and edit savagely.

Over the years, hundreds of small businesses have entrusted the Village Websmith to get their message across succinctly and attractively. To find out more, call us on 0203 239 0350 or click in the header of any page to send an email.

Abenhall is a tiny, ancient village in a secluded quiet valley near Mitcheldean. The parish includes the settlement of Plump Hill, on the Mitcheldean to Cinderford Road as it climbs into the high Forest.

Once part of the Westbury Hundred (which was known as Dene at the time of the 1086 Doomsday book) Abenhall is on the Flaxley to Mitcheldean Road. Originally a mining and iron making centre, it is notable for its 14th century Church of St Michael, which is built of local red sandstone and has excellent contemporary carvings relating to the Forest of Dean's industries. These include a shield bearing the arms of the Freeminers on the west wall and the fabulous mid -15th century octagonal font, that has tools of miners and metalworkers incised on its St Michaels at Abenhall sides.

St. Michael's Church - originally built as a chapel of ease, the church was expanded in the 14th century to include nave, south aisle and tower. The arms of the Freeminers can be seen on the south side of the tower and on the 18th century font. St. Michael's Church - Abenhall is 1.5 km south of Mitcheldean and is set in beautiful surroundings on the edge of the Forest. Old Parish baptism, marriage and burial registers, from 1596, are stored at the Gloucestershire Record Office. For more information, please call us on the number shown, or click in the header of any page to email Abenhall-forest-of-dean@villagewebsmith.co.uk.

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Home page for Abenhall,, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire

St Peter's School in South Weald has saved a substantial sum on printing and duplicating through enlightened use of its website.

With a new website for the new year, your school can really brighten up its image, always a help in attracting new parents. Not only that, used to its best effect, your website can replace much of the printed and duplicated material currently sent home with pupils or sent out by post.

Our School Already Has a Website and We Have No Budget!

No budget? No problem! With Webinthebox? from The Village Websmith, there is a new pay as you go option that dramatically reduces the cash outlay for a new website. For a typical school Webinthebox? site, such as St Peter's Primary School, South Weald, this costs just ?30 per month - a pound a day! OK, we ask for the first 6 months in advance, but then you pay nothing until month 7. That is purely because all our costs are incurred at the beginning of the process, so smoothing out cashflow helps us keep costs down.

Already got a website? No problem! Starting with a facelift, we can take over the management of your existing site, adding our own content management system, keeping the bits you like and updating the bits you don't like in the process.

So What Does the School Get For Its Money?

• Website creation and content transfer/upload/creation comprising (for example):
  • Home page
  • Essential information
  • Admissions Policy page
  • School Uniform page
  • Curriculum Aims page
  • BREEAM page
  • News and events
  • Calendar of Events page
  • Extra Curricular Activities page
  • Newsletter page/?blog
  • School Association Info page
  • School lunches menu
  • School Governors page
  • Photo/artwork gallery
  • Extended Services page
  • Document Download page
  • Enquiries Form page
  • Education Links page
  • Head Teacher?s Message of the Day page
Full content management system
• Graphics suite creation
• Choice of
  • Eight content updates per year
  • Eight content management coaching sessions per year
• Website facelift and makeover every other year
• Automatic hosting renewals
• Automatic domain name renewals
• Up to five mailboxes (if required)

Abercraf is well known for these attractions: Waterfalls caves and close by the National Red Kite Centre.

Abercraf is also close to our headquarters in Shirenewton, Monmouthshire, which helps us to maintain our policy of only working face to face with customers to make sure they get the best results quickly when writing the content for their web sites. This is a much quicker method of establishing what aspects of a business are the most promotable and getting the order of things. So, if you have a small business in Abercraf, just get in touch with the Village Websmith and experience the difference of truly personal web design for yourself. For more information, please call us on the number shown, or click in the header of any page to email Abercraf-s-wales@villagewebsmith.co.uk.

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Home page for Abercraf, Brecknockshire, South Wales

Time for an initial clean up of the database

It is now week 7 of our ten week run up to GDPR compliance and time to start making sure that our databases contain only the information that we have consent, or a solid legal basis for keeping or using.

Just in case there is any doubt that the Information Commissioner's Office is targeting businesses of all sizes and in all sectors, take a look at the list of recent actions taken under existing data protection laws on the ICO web site. All it takes is one complaint to start an investigation, then regardless of whether any blame attaches or not, a lot of time is used in the process.

The only way to make sure you don't suffer such disruptions is by being like Caesar's wife, beyond reproach. Thus any information in your database which is not there for a very good reason must be deleted or obfuscated. This applies to all data sources used in a business, not just the web site. In earlier news items, we looked at the benefit of cutting down the number of places in which data are kept, and this is one very good reason to do just that. The less data sources you have in use, the less likely it will be to overlook something that has no place there.

The first contacts to be removed must be the ones who didn't tick the box to sign up for your mailing list in the first place, when they enquired or bought from your site. For those that bought, there is a solid legal basis for keeping their information as we all have a legal obligation to the tax man to keep records of sales. What must not happen is for this group to receive promotional information. Flagging them in the database allows the records to be held while any broadcast email function in use can be programmed to miss out those contacts who have not opted in.

For all Village Websmith customers with GDPR compliant sites, that process will be handled automatically. Customers are labeled in the database separately to acceptance of GDPR policies and opting in to mailing list. Other data sources will need to be examined carefully to make sure that the records for the tax man don't get mixed up with mailing list members.

The final clean up should be scheduled for the eve of GDPR implementation, when anyone who hasn't taken the positive action to opt in must be obfuscated or deleted. Again, for Village Websmith customers, this will be taken care of automatically to ensure cleanliness of the database of enquiries from their web sites. There is still time for one more broadcast email asking current mailing list members to reaffirm their consent to contact. The ICO website has very clear and specific information about what constitutes consent and the ways in which it may be obtained, so is worth a read if you haven't already asked the people in your database.

Aberdare is well known for these attractions: Country park fabulous indoor market and Aberdare Park home of historic motorcycle road races.

Aberdare is also close to our headquarters in Shirenewton, Monmouthshire, which helps us to maintain our policy of only working face to face with customers to make sure they get the best results quickly when writing the content for their web sites. This is a much quicker method of establishing what aspects of a business are the most promotable and getting the order of things. So, if you have a small business in Aberdare, just get in touch with the Village Websmith and experience the difference of truly personal web design for yourself. For more information, please call us on the number shown, or click in the header of any page to email Aberdare-s-wales@villagewebsmith.co.uk.

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Home page for Aberdare, Rhondda Cynon Taff, South Wales