Welcome back to those, like us, who have returned from their Christmas Holiday to start a new business year. Although 2011 ended with more shakes (which experts say could last decades!) we hope that 2012 will be more positive for those businesses that managed to make it through 2011.

Looking at the website visitor statistics for www.lostchristchurch.co.nz it would seem that earthquakes were very much the topic of interest. Our post on the history of quakes in Christchurch received 4000 visits over the Christmas period.

It is great to see that Christchurch’s “World Buskers’ Festival“, which played out for many years around us when we were located in the City Mall, is still going ahead – this time in Hagley Park. What a wonderful space for it.

Facing the inbox and the Christchurch Startup Weekend

One of the downsides of returning to work is going through your inbox. I’d managed to clear mine twice during the break but there were still 153 waiting for me! Most went quickly into the trash, but one that caught my eye was for the Christchurch Startup Weekend. This event, to be held at the Westpac Business and Community Hub on the 22-26 February, is described by organisers as “54-hour events where developers, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch startups!”

It’s hosted by a not-for-profit organisation and helps kick start new ideas in a weekend. Ideas are pitched, worked on and judged at the end of the event. They’ve been held all around the world, with Auckland and Wellington holding their events last year. It looks like it will be a great way to kick off the business year and inspire loads of new ideas. For more information, check out the Christchurch StartupWeekend website.

Successful Campaign to provide Christmas Gifts for Women’s Refuge

In the lead up to Christmas Hot PJ, along with budding young social entrepreneurs ‘Crafty Kids’ and the ‘Craft Collective’, banded together to provide Christmas gifts and cards to some of the families supported by Women’s Refuge. We were thrilled to receive the generous support of the following individuals and organisations that enabled us to deliver 12 Soft Toy Kits and 10 Cardmaking Kits.

• Jane Sherriff
• Sharon McIver
• Valerie Wright-St Clair, New Zealand Association of Gerontology
• Newhaven Perendales
• Search Engine College
• Hot Pyjama Productions

Thank you so much to these kind people for their support. Pictured are the Crafty Kits team delivering the gifts to Julie McCloy from Christchurch Women’s Refuge.

Posted on January 11th, 2012 by Wendy Riley-Biddle
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The added stresses of a year full of earthquakes has meant the Christchurch Women’s Refuge has been busier than ever. Every year at this time, the call goes out for donations of gifts suitable for families who find themselves needing the support of Women’s Refuge over the Christmas holiday period.

Hot PJ, in association with the Craft Collective and Crafty Kids, have put their heads together to come up with a plan… but we need your help.

For just $20, you can purchase a Crafty Kids Sock Monkey or Giraffe Kit which will go to a Women’s Refuge parent to give to their child at Christmas.

And because we can’t forget the Mums, for just $4.50 you can add a Xmas Card Kit for a child to make up and give to their mother, parent, grandparent or sibling.

The craft kits have been made by Crafty Kids, and are especially designed for children, by children. They don’t just provide an activity, but help develop essential fine motor, cognitive and problem solving skills, as well as building self confidence.

Your gift will be delivered directly to Women’s Refuge on Wednesday 21. We’ll also make sure that the Women’s Refuge know that the gift has come from you.

We have 20 Cuddly Companions to find new homes for, and heaps of Christmas Card Kits. The Kit prices have been kept to a minimum to just cover costs whilst making them a quality affordable gift.

Women’s Refuge Christmas Gift Pledges:

• Hot Pyjama Productions: 4 x Sock Companion Kits and 4 x Card Kits
• Search Engine College: 2 x Sock Companion Kits.
• Sharon McIver: 1 x Sock Companion Kit and 1 x Card Kit.
• Valerie Wright-St Clair, New Zealand Association of Gerontology: 2 x Sock Companion Kits and 2 x Card Kits.
• Jane Sherriff, 1 x Sock Companion Kit and 1 x Card Kit.
• Newhaven Perendales, 2 x Sock Companion Kits and 2 x Card Kits.

Thank you so much everyone!

Only 8 Kits to go, but still heaps of card kits at only $4.50 each.

Posted on December 14th, 2011 by Wendy Riley-Biddle
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Search Engine Optimisation for Canterbury Businesses

Many companies are cutting back on print advertising and questioning the return on investment for print directories, with more and more searches being performed online. Search Engine experts, Optymise, are offering Christchurch website owners a special online marketing package to help them through these difficult times.

Hot PJ have worked with Optymise before so we know the quality of their work. Their offer will save you $1499 on the initial set up – that’s the work they need do to make your site search friendly in the first instance. You’ll only pay for monthly site maintenance, which is from $300 per month, depending on the size of your website, the industry sector you operate in and the amount of competition.

• To find out more, contact the Optymise team on 377-0803 or visit their website.

Website hosting – Free Site Transfer

If you have been unhappy with your current website hosting provider but have been too worried about how to change, OpenHost are offering free transfers for new accounts within 30 days of sign-up, which will not only save you the worry of switching, but will also save you money.

OpenHost will transfer for free your:

• Domain name registrations
• Web site files
• Databases
• Advanced features such as cron jobs and SSL

We’ve been using OpenHost for a while now. We chose their service because not only is OpenHost a New Zealand based company, but also their service is guaranteed:

• 14 Day full money-back
• Up to 300% account credit for downtime
• Fast technical support

To find out more about this offer and how to transfer your site, click on the OpenHost banner below.

If you make the switch, use the following referral code: http://www.openhost.co.nz/ref/14591

Posted on October 20th, 2011 by Wendy Riley-Biddle
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Hot PJ has spent the last ten years occupying historical buildings in the City Mall. We moved into the former Shades Hotel over the new year 2000, thumbing our nose at the Y2K bug. Our next space was in the lovely Old Weekly Press building, affording prime viewing of the Busker’s Festival. Late 2010 we began a move into the earthquake strengthened (yeah, right!) Cashel Suites in the Whitcoulls Building… so we keenly felt the loss of the heritage buildings that surrounded us.

One of my favourite views was looking out onto the Venetian Gothic facade of the Guthrey Centre, (built originally as shops and offices for John Anderson of Anderson’s Foundary) as the setting sun warmed the red bricks. For a moment I could fool myself into thinking I was somewhere in Italy.

We wanted to do something to commemorate these losses and so joined together with Christchurch Writer, Helen Solomons to create www.lostchristchurch.co.nz

Helen has a remarkable talent for building stories around the many wonderful old photos of Christchurch we have found in repositories around New Zealand and overseas, enriching them with personal stories about the people who occupied the buildings that most of us took for granted.

We’ve uncovered some fascinating stories… my particular favourites being the story of Allen McLean, a wealthy bachelor owner of ‘Holly Lea’, our first and largest wooden mansion on Manchester Street, who left a substantial estate at this death in 1907 of over £500,000 generously distributed amongst his extended family of nieces and nephews, as well as to friends, staff and charity.

I was surprised to read that donkeys were a regular feature on Sumner Beach in “The Edwardian Seaside of Sumner” and chucked over the bathers who were described as being ‘like a lot of pigs’ by the New Brighton Mayor,  as they sunbathed on New Brighton beach in “Bathing Machines and Indecent Swimming Atire”.

We’ve created the site so that anyone with personal stories and memories of old Christchurch can also contribute them, as well as read other stories and reminisce.

• Follow Lost Christchurch updates on Facebook.
• Visit the website www.lostchristchurch.co.nz

Posted on September 26th, 2011 by Wendy Riley-Biddle
Filed under: Websites | No Comments »

From time to time there seems to be a rash of hacked sites appearing on the web. If you are running an application to manage the content of your site, like a content management system, this can be the area the hackers will target, injecting malicious code into your website’s pages in order to use it for spamming or phishing attacks.

There are ways to prevent this. If you are running a WordPress site, then check out “My site was hacked” on the Worpress Codex, which contains some sage advise for protecting yourself as well as what to do if you are one of the unfortunate victims of this type of unscrupulous behaviour.

A couple of regular housekeeping tasks will help minimise risk:

• Keep a regular eye on your site. You’d never leave your car parked in town for months on end without checking if it had been stolen or broken in to, so do the same for your site.
• Always keep regular back ups of your site files
• Update your CMS software regularly

and if you are hacked… stay calm. Get in touch with your developer and/or host company, as in most cases it can be fixed.

Posted on September 22nd, 2011 by Wendy Riley-Biddle
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In an update to our post “Foray into the Red Zone“, on the 9th July were were able to try again to gain access to our office in the Whitcoulls Building.

The rules for access had changed again, and after the different permissions had been granted, I joined a small convoy back in to City Mall. This time the street looked must like it must have been in the early days of the city. Where paving stones and tram tracks had been visible, there was now a thick dirt track made from the ground rubble packed over the paving and tracks. The plantings and seating areas had also been encased in wooden boxing. I was glad to see ratepayers’ investments were being protected.

This time we accessed the building via the loading area next to Murray’s Chemist, climbing over abandoned boxes of stock and taking care not to skate on magazines that had formed into sludge where they lay. We made our way into the centre of the Whitcoulls store, where I saw that June’s major shake had brought down bricks through the roof from our old office next door in the Weekly Press Building. It didn’t feel a particularly safe place to hang about in.

I wondered what the ghost of Bertie Whitcombe, former Managing Director, would be thinking about all this? He is alleged by staff to still occupy the building.

It was still a mission to find our office again, but this time we succeeded, but not without ending up in the wrong places all over again. Our equpment was covered in thick plaster dust but fortunately very little had fallen over and been damaged. Actually damaged or not, it didn’t really matter as the whole lot would be demolished in the coming days.

With the help of the two engineers who accompanied me, I was able to take out some files, a bit of equipment and our precious collection of retro orange glassware.

Now, nothing but memories remain of that iconic Edwardian building and its Victorian neighbours. I wonder where Bertie has gone?

Posted on August 22nd, 2011 by Wendy Riley-Biddle
Filed under: Environmental, General | No Comments »

So far 2011 has gone by in a blur of natural and weather related phenomina, which has interrupted and changed our business and personal lives. Out of necessity has come adaptability, not a bad thing when it comes to business, but for many the struggle is ongoing, with no quick fix in sight.

These events have been a catalyst for the big questions, forcing many of us in business to examine what it is we do, why and how we do it…  and if we want to continue doing it.

I was talking this week with a psychologist who, as part of an agreement with the Ministry of Social Development, provides councelling for quake effected Cantabrians. It would seem that many keenly feel the loss of control that has come about as a by-product of the quakes. For business owners in particular, being the master of their own destiny was a key factor in setting up their own business.

Business owners tend to be strong minded by nature – we have to be to survive in business, and seeking advise can be seen as a personal failing. However the real strength is knowing what your limitations are, seeking out and utilising the skills of others to fill that gap. Talking to someone who is trained to understand and support is one way to regain that feeling of control over your life and business direction.

On the subject of business adaptability…

On one of my now rare forays into the inner city, I noticed a fellow CBD refugee, the Caffeine Laboritory, formally in The Shades Arcade, had set up in the car park on the corner of Montreal & Walker Streets. On a less than tropical day, I admired his tenacity as he sat perched on a stool outside his new ‘premises’, a small 2.4 metre shipping container!

Does Christchurch still need a CBD?

As the City Council have launched their draft plan for the inner city, I feel the question has to be asked, do we still need a CBD? Business has already moved out into suburban hubs and will have settled and built their businesses in those areas over the long months/years until they are able to return to the inner city. By that stage the need for a return will have deminished.

There has been comment about Christchurch developing into a donut city, with no centre… but  so what? This implies that a city can only have business at its centre.

Our central city was already starting to flourish again as a place for leisure and entertainment activites. Large suburban malls had sucked business away from the centre. I do hope that out of this awful series of events will come the long term revitalisation of suburban business and shopping areas. The heart of Christchurch doesn’t need to be business, perhaps a CRD instead – Central Recreation District.

Posted on August 19th, 2011 by Wendy Riley-Biddle
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On Thursday morning I donned a borrowed hardhat and high viz vest, and joined a small group of business owners escorted in to the CBD Red Zone. Three months after the February quake, it was the first time Hot PJ had official access to try and retrieve what we could from our remaining office in the Whitcoulls Building.

We drove in convoy down Kilmore St and turned onto Manchester, passed gapping buildings that we had only until now seen on TV. As awful as it is to see on TV, seeing them up close for myself was still an enormous shock.

City Mall looked much as it does from all the photos I had seen, however the Whitcoulls Building, where we have an office on the top floor facing towards Hereford St, is in worse shape than the pictures reveal. Cracks segment the facade in many places – that is all we can see at this stage. The team escorting us comment somberly that the building is in a bad way, as are many in Cashel, Hereford and Kilmore Streets.

We’ve been warned not to stand close to building facades and to always look up, as the biggest danger is from falling masonry. I ask if I can go and look at our office next door in the Old Weekly Press Building, or what is left of it as it is now a gapping hole. I wasn’t prepared for the wave of shock and sentiment that came over me as I stood looking straight in to the place where we had sat, worked, laughed and complained for over seven years. I notice that the ceiling of the shop space underneath has collapsed. Again I thank all my lucky stars that we were not there on the 22nd of February.

As we wait for the engineer to arrive, we chat to the owner of a business whose building on the corner of Colombo and Cashel is undamaged. Like many in his situation, it would have been better if the building had suffered permanent damage. Once the cordon is lifted then business interruption insurance payments will stop regardless of the fact that there will be a major reduction in the number of people in town to patronise his business. He is preparing for lean times ahead.

We are escorted inside the building through the Whitcoulls store. The shelves are mostly empty but products still lie about – ‘The Game of Life’, a large book on the ‘Earth’, and strangely out-of-season, a Christmas Tree greets us at the entrance. For the first time I look up and notice a lovely atrium-like ceiling of glass letting in the only light. None of the glass appears to be broken.

As we are lead into the bowels of the building and the natural light disappears, the engineer points out hazards and we proceed by torch light. We emerge near a suite of offices, dropping off one of the group to recover what he can from his office space. As we proceed, winding through back offices, a board room, past a fish tank, children’s toys on the floor, I feel uncomfortable treading through other people’s offices, through the remnants of their work lives. I don’t recognise any part of the building we are in, we are no where near our office, so we retrace our steps and reassess outside.

The engineer shines his torch through the main access door and gestures us over to see for ourselves why he won’t let us in through this way. The ceiling has collapsed, leaving only a crawl space not big enough to allow anyone in and out to recover property. Another engineer appears in the window of the first floor over our side of the building, but he is a floor below ours and we decide it is just too difficult to proceed further.

We drive slowly out of City Mall unsure when or if we would be able to return, past the remains of Hanafins at the intersection of High, Colombo and Hereford, past the Cathedral (is that a mangled wheel chair amongst the mountain of rubble?), turn on to Gloucester and make our way out. Stopping to thank the engineer, his parting recommendation is ‘if you can live without out, then best just leave it where it is’.

Posted on May 27th, 2011 by Wendy Riley-Biddle
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Why is marketing important?

This is a question a lot of small to medium sized businesses ask. Experts say the average person takes less than two seconds to decide whether to read your advertising material or not. The ‘sale’ or ‘no sale’ decision is largely made when a person first looks at it. So, your first impression is absolutely critical to the success or failure of your business.

“If you make a product good enough, even though you live in the depths of the forest, the public will make a path to your door, says the philosopher. But if you want the public in sufficient numbers, you would better construct a highway.”

William Randolph Hearst, Publisher and Newspaper Magnate

We’ve seen many businesses struggle with marketing, making expensive mistakes with ad hoc advertising and promotional efforts, hoping they will provide long term results. Most of this can be easily remedied by taking a planned approach.

But where do you start?

Our ‘No-nonsense Guide to Promotional Marketing’ has been specially written to guide small businesses and organisations through the process of:

• defining your target audience,
• selecting the appropriate tools to communicate with them,
• defining the budget,
• implementing the plan,
• measuring the results
• and reviewing the plan.

Download your free copy of “No-nonsense Guide to Promotional Marketing for SMEs

Fill out the form below to download. All fields are required.

Posted on May 5th, 2011 by Wendy Riley-Biddle
Filed under: Marketing | No Comments »

SEO guru and friend, Kalena Jordan of www.ask-kalena.com and  Search Engine College fame, shared with me her copy of Search Marketing Standard recently, a US publication which always carries quality articles to help website owners better leverage their online marketing. The lead article on the ‘Nuts and Bolts of Search Engine Optimization’ provides a useful reminder of the ‘what to do and not do’ when it comes to website architecture (the structure of your site;  how information is linked together and navigated by your site visitors), if you want your site to be found in search engines.

• Site contains mostly images and the menu systems are built in Flash or Javascript

Flash and Javascript are not crawlable. Html text content and links are the ‘food’ of search engine spiders, without these they can not navigate your site. If I’m using Javascript menus, I always make sure I have a plain text html menu on the site as well, maybe in the footer, and/or a site map.

• Broken site links and an unclear hierarchy of site pages.

These not only annoy and confuse website visitors, but also search engine crawlers. On that subject, equally annoying for site visitors is underlined text which is not a link. Never underline text unless you are using it as a link.

• Renaming site pages and not installing a redirect

Often when a site is redesigned, the content gets shifted around and placed on new pages. There is nothing wrong with this if it improves or updates the content, but it can mean that crawlers and regular site visitors can no longer find the content they are looking for. To prevent this loss of traffic, add what is called a 301 redirect from the old page url to the new.

And while you are at it, ensure that you have a redirect from the http:// and the http://www versions of your site (assuming they are both the same site), otherwise search engines like Google see these as two separate sites, and you’ll risk watering down your rankings.

• Errors in the site’s robots.txt file

This file is viewed by crawlers to see what parts of the site are blocked from being indexed. Perhaps it contains some errors preventing crawlers from accessing parts of your site.

• Using frame web design

Frames have long been an issue for search engines and thankfully sites that have used frames have almost disappeared. This method results in every page with the same URL so they are not able to be bookmarked by users or crawled by search engines. If your site still uses frames… shame on you, it is long overdue for a complete rebuild.

• Make sure your site code is clean

Excessive or invalid code can improve the site visitor’ and the search engine crawlers’ experience!

Dymanic URLs were often considered something else that hampered search engines from crawling a site. These are sites where the page URL changes, and happens with sites that are managed through a database. They contain characters like ? = & and can look like this: http://www.sitename.co.nz/product.php?categoryid=1&productid=09 Google has said in the past that they doesn’t see these as a big issue (Dynamic URLs vs Static URLs) , an opinion that caused a lot of controversy amongst website developers. As a website user, I prefer URLs I can understand, as they help me to know I am in the right place and appear more trustworthy. For this reason alone I change all dynamic URLs to something logical.

• To learn more about search engine optimisation (SEO), sign up for a free lesson with Search Engine College.
• I don’t think ‘Search Marketing Standard’ is available in NZ magazine stores, but you can subscribe to Search Marketing Standard

Posted on April 28th, 2011 by Wendy Riley-Biddle
Filed under: Marketing, Websites | No Comments »