Ok, my mum and dad are finally getting a computer and getting online — and I’m putting together a list of 30 sites I think would be useful for them!

eBay and finance

Especially for these sites, “real” emails will NEVER have a link in them, and will suggest you visit the website by going into your web browser software and going to the address you already know. Phishing is a way of a low-life criminal tricking you into giving them your login details so they can take your money.

eBay — online auction marketplace
www.ebay.com.au

Commonwealth Bank
www.commbank.com.au

PayPal – online payment system, very popular and an eBay company. Paypal is a good way to pay for something without having to provide credit card details, or even do a bank-to-bank fund transfer (especially for eBay payments). Usually an “instant” payment method, without delay.
www.paypal.com.au

Internet Services

People Telecom — your ISP (Internet Service Provider) — for peoplenet login
www.peopletelecom.com.au

People Telecom Webmail — read/send email through a web browser, from anywhere
webmail.people.net.au (encrypted/secure website)

Google Mail (gmail) — a popular email service, good for mailing lists and things where you want to keep your own email address private. Need to be “invited” to be a user. Free service.
mail.google.com

SpamBob — free “disposable” email addresses — hide your real address from spammers.
www.spambob.com

Communicate via the internet

Skype — internet talk system: Skype to Skype is free
www.skype.com

Searching

Australia Post — find a postcode
www.auspost.com.au

Google — world’s number one search “engine”
www.google.com.au

Google Maps — online, world wide street directory — often with both maps and satellite pictures
maps.google.com

Route Planner — driving directions/distance between two Australian locations
www.visitvictoria.com.au
Or just go to the Visit Victoria site, then click on to “getting here” under Planning A Trip and click on the Route Planner

Online Street Directory — online Melway plus other cities
www.street-directory.com.au

TV Guide — see what’s on without the Green Guide
www.yourtv.com.au

White Pages — all directories, not just your local version.
www.whitepages.com.au

Yellow Pages
www.yellowpages.com.au

Reference and Information Sites

Bureau of Meteorology — all Australian/Victorian weather forecasts and observations
www.bom.gov.au

Bureau’s 7 Day Melbourne Forecast
www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/wrap_fwo.pl?IDV10450.txt

Dictionary
www.onelook.com

Google Earth — free downloadable program to see where you live using satellite pictures
earth.google.com

Internet Movie Database
www.imdb.com

Wikipedia — free online encyclopaedia. Users can contribute to content.
www.wikipedia.org

News

ABC (radio, tv, news)
www.abc.net.au

Geelong Advertiser
www.glgadvertiser.com.au

Herald Sun
www.heraldsun.com.au

The Age
www.theage.com.au

Government

City of Greater Geelong
www.geelong.vic.gov.au

Victorian Government
www.vic.gov.au

Australian Government
www.australia.gov.au

Sport Sites

AFL Australian Football League
afl.com.au

Collingwood Football Club
www.collingwoodfc.com.au

Essendon Football Club
www.essendonfc.com.au

F1 Racing — daily news site
www.f1racing.net/en/

Formula 1 official website
www.formula1.com

Victorian Golf Association
www.golfvic.org.au

Our telephone service is currently partially out of operation (Mon 24 July 2006, 1:00pm).

UPDATE: our phone service is now back in regular action (Tue 25 July 2006, 10:30am).

We’ve been advised by our provider Optus that Telstra have a line fault reported for our number, and it is due to be back in service by 7pm Tues 25 July. Broadband service is working at the moment, but not voice service. Hopefully that won’t change!

Our calls are now (as of 1:30pm 24 July) being diverted to a second number, and you can still call the regular phone number (03) 9372 0055. Sorry for the inconvenience!

I was on a travel site today (checking out the exact distance between home and Albury, which happened to be 314.98km) and spotted a graphic ad in the margins for a “versatile travel and sports towel” for $39.95.

Interested, I clicked on the link - which landed me at the gogogear.com.au travelmate store — the “landing page” for the towel link.

However, no mention of a towel. Anywhere. All I’d reached was the front page of the site. It had six “featured travel accessories” — no towels of course. And 42 categories to browse in the left-hand column — no towel their either. No category for sports towels, travel towels … hang on, there’s travel clothes — nope, when I clicked that, no towels either.

There was a most popular list with “most wanted” products — nope, not there either.

I even typed “towel” into the search field and the product advertised was NOT even in the results shown! Only 2 results came up, and neither of them for this towel.

You can’t buy a product you can’t find!

What a WASTE of advertising.

Big marketing lesson: put some thought into the logical process of what happens from the customer’s point of view. Create a specific “landing page” for the linked product. Or at least make it easy to find if you’re going to use a particular product to draw in visitors to your site.

In this case, I saw a product of interest, followed a link and couldn’t even find details of the said product to decide whether or not I’d purchase. Even with some searching!

Pics:

1. Here’s a screenshot (reduced size link, but you’ll still be able to tell what it is) of the ad on the map page:

2. Here’s a screenshot of the “landing page” - no mention of towels anywhere!