Category - Moonfruit in the news

Wed, 8 Feb 2012

Clare

Clare

Wed, 8 Feb 2012, 14:45

How To Optimize Your Facebook Shop For Valentines Day

This article by Joe White originally appeared in All Facebook

This year, the National Retail Federation projects that consumers are prepared to spend over 15.7 billion dollars in gifts this Valentine’s Day season, and with over 845 million monthly active users on Facebook, it’s time for shop owners on the network to take note.

With Valentine’s Day just under a week away, here are three ways to romanticize your Facebook shop and drive last-minute buyer traffic to your store in time to cash in on sales before the holiday.

Encourage Likes, Shares And Suggestions

Facebook’s natural format, optimized for sharing and suggesting serves as a perfect environment for both getting and giving gift ideas.

Shop owners can take advantage of the Facebook news feed to publish gift guides and package popular items as coordinated gifts for that special day, urging shoppers to connect and share their finds.

Additionally, shops can connect their Facebook shop to their main web site, linking users to published posts with content themed for the upcoming love day. .

Offer A Free Gift

For boyfriends, wives, fiancés, secret admirers and parents, Valentine’s Day is a cherished day for gift giving and as customers are looking to buy, they’re also looking for the best buy.

Offer shoppers an incentive to purchase from your storefront. Whether it’s an entry for a weekend trip to wine country, a 15 percent discount or simply free shipping for the customer — shoppers will be more inclined to purchase from your store.

For example, Méli Jewelry’s love-themed blog posts to Facebook and subsequent offer for free shipping through Valentine’s Day has already driven countless customers to purchase everything from watches to bracelets on its Facebook shop.

Design A Valentine’s Day Storefront

Draw in those rose-colored glasses and lovestruck shoppers with a themed storefront, recognizing the upcoming holiday and giving customers a virtual window-shopping experience.

Stores can utilize online site building and do-it-yourself design tools from numerous free storefront software providers to create a Valentine’s-themed microsite in a matter of minutes, producing a gift-giving guide for their Facebook storefront and planting their shop directly in consumers’ search feeds.

Shop owners have the opportunity to get creative with visual collage platforms such as Pinterest, to showcase suggested gifts for that special someone in a simple, eye-catching format.

Take advantage of this shopping occasion and give your Facebook shop a rosy tint this Valentine’s!

For the original article, click here

Wed, 1 Feb 2012

Clare

Clare

Wed, 1 Feb 2012, 14:31

Easily Create a Website with Moonfruit

This article by Sam Cater originally appeared in AppStorm

Many tools and packages exist online to help people create websites with minimal effort and involvement. Of course, each one has their own strengths and weaknesses. Some are more aimed at creating blogs, while others are better for single-page info sites.

Moonfruit is another competitor in this market. It looks stylish, promises to be simple, and … you do want to create a new site, right? So what does it have to offer, and what are its pros and cons? Lets take a look…

Making Creativity Easy

Moonfruit is designed for people with absolutely no web design experience. It attempts to give small business owners and individuals easy access to web management and creative tools. So without further ado, lets take a look at the site itself.

Choosing a template to work with

The first step in creating a site is choosing one of hundreds of themes as a starting point. From there it’s a case of altering and tweaking pretty much everything you see into a website that you would use to represent yourself.

The tools in the editor are very simple and easy to use, which is great because that’s exactly what people need. The elements, contents and formatting can be added and removed in a way that resembles Word or Publisher, so most people will feel comfortable using it. Moonfruit effectively turns a website into a page-by-page online document, where everything you see is configurable and can be adjusted as required.

The Editor window - More tools are made visible by selecting the categories at the top.

The content of the site has been intelligently and automatically mobile optimized.

A very useful feature Moonfruit has is automatic optimization of your site for mobile viewers. You don’t even have to configure or enable this, it’s there from the word go, no plugins, or code to meddle with. It didn’t show the Gallery image you can in these screenshots, however I am sure that this is solvable. Mobile-optimization is important these days, as with the growth of smartphone and tablet computer popularity, more and more views may come from such devices.

Another factor that would definitely make Moonfruit appealing to people who want a hassle-free experience is that the hosting and domain settings are handled for you. No FTP client is required, and there are no HTML or CSS files to manage. The web interface handles it all. On the subject of domains, you can link one you own to Moonfruit in a matter of minutes. They guide you through the process of changing address records with the company you purchased the domain from and so forth. You can also use Moonfruit to register a new domain if you so wished.

The social aspect of a websites? They are included too, with Twitter integration, RSS feeds, comment boxes, forum backends, and chat widgets.

Costs?

Free website? Why thank you, yes.

They start you out on a 15 Day Free trial with 20MB of storage space. For any more space than this you have to crack open your wallet.

I chose the trial at first, and was expecting to have a really restricted interface and being prompted to pay for extra features. However when I signed in a popup box asked if I wanted to continue my 15 day trial, or keep a site for free. I clicked free, and the only condition is that I have to sign in every six months to keep the site ‘active’. Seemed like a good deal to me.

Obviously if you want a site for small businesses and enterprises you are going to have to break the 20MB limit, but for individuals or small groups it seems you can have a website on Moonfruit for nothing.

Bolt-ons

There are several pieces of functionality you can add into your website if so required, such as a blog, or even a shop.

Blogs

The blog interface is very simplistic, offering only minimal functionality. What you see in this screenshot is all that you get. However for those of you familiar with feature-rich WordPress, remember that this entire service is geared towards people looking for straightforwardness and simplicity. Whilst it may look pretty bare, this is all that a blogger really needs. Three design modes are offered, Text, Image, and Article, so it definitely won’t be replacing WordPress any time soon.

For the original article, please click here

Clare

Clare

Wed, 1 Feb 2012, 14:20

How to survive a crisis

This article by Emma Haslett originally appeared in Management Today

It can be hard to stay in calm control through economic turbulence. As Rudyard Kipling wrote: 'If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs ... yours is the earth and everything that's in it.' That's more easily said than done. But, in his book Managing Through Turbulent Times, Anthony Holmes says it's important to distinguish between a crisis and a problem: 'A problem is straightforward, while a crisis changes and evolves.' So how do you keep a zen frame of mind even when your business is suffering?

Admit defeat

When things start to go pear-shaped, it's easy to hum loudly and hope the problem goes away. And denial may not come just from you. Wendy Tan White, CEO of website builder Moonfruit and seasoned crisis survivor, says that in the run-up to the original dotcom crash her business model clearly wasn't working, yet her investors put her under pressure not to change tack. The sooner you react to what's happening, the easier it is to work on a solution.

Look after number one

By its very nature, a crisis causes panic, so the first challenge is to think clearly. Often, your instinct is to keep pushing until you find a solution, but the best course might be to remove yourself from the situation - even if that means just taking a walk around the block. As the person in charge, says Tan White, it's important to look after yourself. 'Put your own lifejacket on first, keep your head clear, then you can look after everyone else. There's no honour in going down with a sinking ship.'

Phone a friend

When your livelihood is under threat, it's hard to look at a crisis objectively. If you're emotionally invested in something, it is difficult to set your feelings aside. If you find yourself at a loss for ideas, call for outside help: a friend, mentor or coach - one whose judgement you trust and who might have experienced a similar situation and can calmly talk you through your options.

Plan ahead

When you're up against it and your team is thinking with all the rationality of a cornered animal, this is easier said than done. Even in mid-crisis, though, planning is essential. Anthony Holmes says: 'You will need a well-thought-out plan B. It might not be as good as plan A, but if plan A isn't working, move on immediately. And the moment you do that, go away and work out plan C.' Jenny Irvine, chief executive of the Pure Package, adds that planning for the worst-case scenario often covers all eventualities. She had planned for her business to be 'burnt to the ground', she recalls, so when some laptops were stolen, it didn't present a problem.

Communicate

When your business runs into trouble, don't beat about the bush, because once the rumours start, they will serve only to erode your employees' morale. The more open you are with your staff about what is going on, the better they will respond and the more empowered they will feel. Try to keep staff informed in advance about what their roles will be when a crisis hits. 'It is about knowing who is in charge,' says Irvine. 'People need to know whose job it is to step up and find solutions.'

Look for opportunities

They say every cloud has a silver lining - which is worth keeping in mind as 2012 shapes up to be ever-more financially taxing for businesses. But as your competitors slash their costs, keep your eye on the future and don't stop innovating. During the previous recession, many businesses dutifully battened down the hatches, only to find that when things improved, their competitors had outmanoeuvred them. One company's crisis can be another's golden opportunity.

Don't live in the past

The most important thing to remember is that you cannot turn back the clock. A genuine crisis isn't a temporary blip - it will change your business forever. As Holmes explains: 'You can't drive a car forward looking through the rear-view mirror.'

For the rest of the article, click here

Fri, 27 Jan 2012

Clare

Clare

Fri, 27 Jan 2012, 11:58

Top 100 Influencers in Social Media – Wendy Tan-White ranked as #31

This article by Bonnie Boglioli-Randall originally appeared in Social Technology Review

31. Wendy Tan White- Veteran founder in the digital space, Tan White founded Moonfruit, the UK’s number one website builder making significant inroads in the U.S. market. She is a mentor with 500startups, a startup accelerator program, and leverages her extensive experience to guide new companies in business development, e-commerce, design, PR, fundraising and more.

32. John Batelle- What do you get when you mash up a co-founding editor of Wired Magazine, professor, publisher and best-selling author? Someone who would be named John Batelle, Chairman of Federated Media Publishing. Founding and presiding over the next-gen publishing house, Batelle continues to disrupt the space by leveraging the digital ecosystem, building conversation around a product and measuring engagement. In his free time, you can be sure to find him dishing his prolific thoughts to any number of media outlets and making the conference rounds. You might also catch him receiving any number of awards, most recently from the World Economic Forum as ‘Global Leader for Tomorrow’.

33. Jolie O’Dell- Technology journalist (a nom de plume in case you’re wondering), got her big break covering the tech industry for Mashable. Today, O’Dell covers the sector for VentureBeat and offers up her decade’s worth of insight and a healthy dose of computer literacy (she’s a computer science student in her spare time). From web startups and mobile apps to conversations with Vint Cerf (yes, that Vint Cerf) and more, O’Dell dishes up multiple articles each day to keep you in the know.

34. Chris Brogan- Brogan is a New York Times bestselling author and speaker who puts his knowledge of digital media to unique use. As President of Human Business Works, Brogan works closely with large corporations to implement social media strategies that make a difference. If judging on clients alone, he’s helped some big fish like Microsoft, Ford and Cisco. Brogan is also well-noted for co-founding PodCamp, a crowd sourced gathering of new media stakeholders who participate in so-called ‘unconferences’ at cities around the world from the U.S. and Canada to the U.K., Australia and Denmark.

To read the original article and see the rest of the list, please click here

Thu, 26 Jan 2012

Clare

Clare

Thu, 26 Jan 2012, 11:49

Help For Small Business As Cameron Launches “Business In You”

This article by Jemma Porter originally appeared in PABNews.

UK – The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills has launched a national campaign called “Business In You” in an attempt to try and get UK people to turn their dreams into reality.

The entrepreneurial push is based on the concept that there is “a business in everyone” and to encourage millions of people to start their own small businesses.

The campaign, which was launched in Leeds by UK Prime Minister David Cameron, will see the Government work in partnership with the private sector in order to support small businesses that want to grow and help entrepreneurs kick start their ideas.

In order to inspire people, the campaign has teamed up with nine of the UK’s most successful business owners including Wendy Tan-White co-founder of Moonfruit and Richard Moross head of Moo. The partners will offer free online seminars, video tutorials, workshops, and face-to-face sessions.

In an attempt to stir up motivation in the UK’s budding entrepreneurs David Cameron said that the government is determined to do everything to help small businesses start up this year. He went on to say that he wants people to fulfil their business dreams in 2012.

Business In You will advertise the initiative by advertising real-life case studies of the successful business partners. Moonfruit.com has been selected as one of the businesses to front the marketing campaign as it is still currently in the growth stage itself.

Startup Britain has plans for the Business In You campaign to influence at least one million people over the next three years. This target may prove difficult to reach as there is no budget for television advertising. Hopefully the association with major businesses in the UK will help spread the word about the initiative.

Moonfruit is the UK’s leading DIY website builder, it is now home to more than 4 million websites around the world, with hundreds of thousands of them being located in the UK. The company’s CEO and co-founder Wendy Tan-White said that the idea behind Business In You was a part of the make up of Moonfruit, as it is passionate about helping UK small business owners start trading on a wider scale.

To see the original article, please click here

Wed, 25 Jan 2012

leila

leila

Wed, 25 Jan 2012, 18:42

3 comments

Wendy Tan White helps you find the 'Business in You'

At Moonfruit, one of our biggest aims is to help small businesses get online easily. So who better than our very own CEO, Wendy Tan White, to be one of the faces of the new Government Campaign 'Business in You'.

WendyBiU

Business in You is a major new campaign from the Government, in conjunction with the private sector, to encourage UK businesses to start up successfully and grow. Their aim is to ensure that small businesses have the resources and support to help them grow and expand over the next few years. The initiative will offer workshops, web-based seminars, video tutorials and some free services from partners.

Wendy was with the Prime Minister, David Cameron, at the launch of the campaign in Yorkshire on Monday. The day of the launch was Chinese New Year and Wendy presented the PM with a Chinese Calendar and mentioned that the year of the Dragon brings the opportunity for great success or great failure. Both agreed that they are gunning for the former!

Wendy will be one of the featured entrepreneurs on their nationwide poster campaign, alongside Richard Moross (our friends Moo.com) and Paul Lindley (Founder of organic baby food, Ella's Kitchen). You can see what Wendy has to say about how she set up Moonfruit and her top tips for anyone starting out - Wendy's Interview.

So, if you're in the UK, look out for the campaign!

Wed, 21 Dec 2011

Clare

Clare

Wed, 21 Dec 2011, 10:10

one comment

How online and social commerce is opening doors

Moonfruit's COO Joe White writing for the Smarta blog says: As the web continues to evolve, smart businesses look to use its new features in ways that can help them expand, compete and remain profitable - even at a time when the economic outlook seems bleak. This is particularly true when the web gives us opportunities to make money.

When Moonfruit.com was created, its aim was to allow anyone - from individuals through to small business owners and beyond - to control, maintain and customise their online identities, without needing big budgets or technical expertise. Together with the proliferation of social media platforms, this created a more equal playing field for people vying for online exposure.

Since then, people's online priorities have progressed from controlling their presence to boosting their sales. Online platforms use a number of methods to focus on money-making: traditional ecommerce, where people can buy products or services online using electronic payment; ad-supported platforms, which offer a service or content funded by commercial advertising; and paywalls and micropayments, which allow sites to monetise individual units of content.

What's new in ecommerce?

So why has ecommerce been so important for smaller businesses with a mandate to grow? Since launching our ShopBuilder tool - which allows people to publish online shops across a number of platforms, including their own site, Facebook and mobile - we have seen some innovative ways to make money using ecommerce functions. Some of these go way beyond simply selling products for payment.

Our customer Yoga Bellies, a pre- and post-natal yoga class that takes place across the UK, has done something very interesting with ShopBuilder. Its online shop function collects customers' payments for classes that take place offline. Similarly, the King's College London Symphony Orchestra is using ShopBuilder to allow people to purchase concert tickets in advance of the event.

While this isn't new in itself (most people have purchased tickets for a concert or holiday online), Yoga Bellies and King's College are integrating ecommerce into real life without using the complex online registration or billing systems required by tour operators and ticket vendors. This is hugely significant for small businesses and micro-traders because it removes some of barriers that may have inhibited growth in the past: customers not carrying the right cash, for example, or not possessing a chequebook.

Ecommerce vs. social commerce

Social commerce is a concept that builds on ecommerce by adding interactivity and sharebility to the traditional buy/sell structure. A number of studies have shown that people trust the recommendations made by their family and friends online more than they trust other types of promotion. It makes sense: Why would you trust an advert or even a third-party endorsement when you can access unbiased advice from the people you know in real life?

Facebook is a particularly fertile platform for social commerce not only because it has so many users, but also because ecommerce functions have started to be integrated with company pages. It's powerful because it allows people to buy within their own network without needing to visit other websites - and because they can engage with the brand in ways their friends and network can see. This process introduces a viral effect into the selling chain, and enables smaller businesses to grow organically using popular platforms such as Facebook.

We originally launched ShopBuilder to allow site owners to set up shop wherever their customers wanted to buy, and to fill a gap in the ecommerce market. So it's interesting to see that our users are most excited about one specific ShopBuilder feature, and that's Facebook integration! Thousands of our shops are already using this feature to publish their whole product catalogue into the social network to allow buying and selling inside Facebook itself. It will be even more interesting to see how they innovate with social and ecommerce in the future.

See the original article here

Tue, 20 Dec 2011

Clare

Clare

Tue, 20 Dec 2011, 11:37

Moonfruit: A New Website Building Service

This article by Kayvon Ghoreshi originally appeared in Social Web Tools

Anyone and their kid can build a website nowadays, and the trend doesn’t seem to be stopping as more and more services pop up to help you build your website. One of the newest services to enter the market is Moonfruit.

In a nutshell, Moonfruit is an easy website builder, but it has a unique style to it. The templates that Moonfruit offers aren’t something you would expect from this type of service. Similar services often have incredibly basic templates you can build your site off of. These templates often have very basic color schemes, and seem blocky in nature. Moonfruit avoids those limited templates and give you some very modern looking templates that look much more professional.

Moonfuit offers immense customization. Every piece of text and picture that you add to your site can be rotated, adjusted in font and size, and even have links attached to it. This sheer amount of customization can be performed all over your site. You can alter backgrounds to have a certain color pattern or even an image if that suits your site better.

The service is also incredibly friendly to people trying to open up a business site. Moonfruit lets you set up an online shop. The shop is automatically compatible with the web and mobile devices and integrates PayPal so your customers can have a smooth shopping experience. Social media is also integrated into the shop so your customers can like and tweet about what they are getting, which should in effect get more publicity for you. The store also stands next to your blog which can be added to your site and have the same level of customization and social media integration to get your content the exposure it deserves.

So that is what Moonfruit offers, but how well does it do in execution? The answer is slightly less than desirable. The Moonfruit interface isn’t exactly the drag and drop interface that you might be used to with other services. It looks more like a Microsoft Office program where you can insert stuff and have options in an overhead toolbar. At times the interface can feel cluttered and you may have no idea where a feature you want is among the menus. Moonfruit also comes with different pricing options ranging from free (where you’ll have ads on your site) to plans costing $12-35 that give you upgrades such as Google Ad vouchers, more shop space, more bandwidth and storage, better support, and the ability to have members and member pages.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Moonfruit is the best web design experience I’ve ever had. It definitely has some flaws with its interface and some glitches with some of the features, but for being a brand new site in the niche it definitely impresses. If you want to give it a shot, Moonfuit offers a 14 day trial before you make any decisions on purchasing a plan.

To see the complete article, please click here

Wed, 14 Dec 2011

Clare

Clare

Wed, 14 Dec 2011, 10:07

Video: Moonfruit's Joe White on surviving the dot com crash and thriving in the recession

This video by Dan Martin originally appeared in BusinessZone: Technology, Business profiles

Web design company Moonfruit raised millions of pounds in funding during the dot com bubble of the 1990s and then almost collapsed after the crash. A decade on, the company is thriving again. Dan Martin met co-founder Joe White to find out why.

To see the video, click here

Mon, 31 Oct 2011

Clare

Clare

Mon, 31 Oct 2011, 10:50

Moonfruit nominated in Website of the Year award

We are thrilled to have made it through to one of the 24 finalists in the Good Web Guide's 'website of the year' awards from a strong field.

The winner will be announced by Jo Malone at the awards reception to be held on Wednesday 16th November at the Royal Institution.

Details about all the shortlisted sites can be found here.

There is also a second category called 'The People's Vote'. The organisers believe it will be a good test of which site is the most proactive on the social media front. The winner of the People's Vote will be announced at the reception as well.

If you click on the following link, you will be taken to a page where your vote will automatically be taken, click here. Visitors can only vote once.

Please help us to do well in (or win!) the People's Vote – and of course, we'll keep you posted about our success in the main event.

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