Connect

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Using Connect with your business or organization can help you in several ways. Here's an overview.

Build your website online.

Building a website online does not have to be hard or time consuming. Nor do you need to be able to write or understand code. Connect toolbars and icons are easy to learn. The simplicity of the tools, however, pose no limit on how much your site can do. From very simple "brochure" sites to full-fledged e-commerce, custom-designed, deep-navigation sites, Connect makes it easy to have your site quickly published and fresh with new content.

As a business owner, you can easily delegate certain areas of your website to other employees or contract workers, review pages before being published, schedule content to appear and disappear on specified dates, see when pages were last updated and quickly add events to a published calendar, for example.

Attract new customers.

Attracting new customers is vital to business. The best way for new customers to find you on the web is through search engine results. Connect helps your business website show up in all major search engines by supplying keywords and following search engine guidelines.

Connect includes site-wide and page-specific fields that allow you to specify keywords, search titles, search descriptions and other text that will help search engines find your business and website. In addition, all text created in Connect is instantly searchable by visitors and search engines.

Sell your products online.

Connect is not just a website builder for your business. It is also an e-commerce store. Add categories, products, descriptions, photos and pricing along with dates the item is available, what groups can see individual products, and where the items appear along with inventory levels. Customer orders come to your attention via email so you quickly act upon orders even when you are not viewing or managing your website.

Connect comes with everything you need to create and manage an online store. To handle payments online, you will need to create an account with one of the six most popular payment gateways (including Paypal, Authorize.net and Verisign) and contact your bank for a merchant account to handle credit card transactions.

Learn about your visitors.

Serve your customers and market better by uncovering their needs through structured interaction (like forms and polls). Get to know their needs by asking questions and encouraging feedback with tools already included in Connect.

Next, with analytics services, like Google Analytics, you can learn what content on your site, what day and even what hour is most popular, and what other areas of your site need improvement. Connect gives you the flexibility to use any major online analytics software that fits your specific needs.

Keep in touch with customers.

Targeting customer communication by their interests -- or any other category -- can easily be accomplished with the community tools included with Connect Gold and Connect Platinum plans. Here you can set up groups and specify which content they not only have access to, but also what their level of participation on your website will be. In addition, Connect can send rich emails to any group -- all from Connect, all online.

Keeping in touch with the tech-savvy customers is easy too. Connect makes creating RSS feeds likes blogs, or even podcasts, easy. You simply create the content and publish it. Your subscribers receive it through their preferred RSS reader.

Get help when you need it.

Connect gives you access to one or more support options 24 hours a day. By email and phone, customer support can help you find the solution you need to keep your website and business moving forward. Online support, video tutorials and tips can help you with detailed step-by-step instructions.

Customer support is one of the most vital services we provide our Connect user community. As a Connect user, you receive live support at no charge. Because our support team is located in our corporate office (not overseas), they meet regularly with our developers to continually provide top-tier, no-charge customer support.

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Designs

Creating or changing your site (or page) design is as easy as clicking the design of your choice in the Design Manager. You can choose from professional designs categorized by subject matter. You also have the option to create your own web design from scratch or adapt a current Connect design for your own use.

Pages

The creation, management, deletion and accessibility of pages is accomplished through the Pages Manager. Likely to be your most frequently used tool, the Pages Manager offers a branched directory of all the pages in your site. The work on these pages is done with the assistance of a powerful page editor using toolbar icons similar to the ones you find in word processing software.

Panels

Panels are sections of content that can be displayed on one page, several pages or all pages of your site. You can use your own content (like weekly updates or event promotions) or outside content sources (like photos or links to other sites).

Albums

The Album Manager enables you to build and display your own photo albums. An album can be about a specific event (Ex: Mission Trip to Guatemala) or for a particular department (Ex: Youth Ministry). You also have the option to add cover art � a photo from your collection, for instance, or an image such as a Vacation Bible School logo � and you can use internal site links to link another page to a specific album.

Events

Create a searchable calendar of events that stays current automatically, displaying events prior to their scheduled date and removing them from display as the date passes.

Syndication

Content distribution through such means as RSS feeds, podcasts and blogs is accomplished through the Syndication Manager. As visitors view your site, they�ll have the opportunity to subscribe to receive your syndicated communications. Every time you make an update through the Syndication Manager, that information will be pushed automatically into subscribers� hands.

Resources

If you would like to make articles, newsletters, annual reports and other materials available to all visitors (or to restricted visitors), the Resource Manager will be a great tool for you. It serves as an online library, enabling you to provide reference material that is searchable by category and can be cross-referenced.

Polls

Visitors to your site will have a quick and easy way to interact with your organization when you use the Poll Manager. The Poll Manager enables you to create a simple question-and-answer series that can be posted on your home page and/or other pages within your site. You can use one poll for one page or for every page, or create different polls for different pages.

Discussions

The Discussion Manager is a tool used to generate interaction by allowing people to post comments about particular topics on your website. You have multiple options to broaden or narrow the ability to conduct online discussions � from as large a group as all site visitors to as small a group as inter-office communication. In other words, you create the topics and provide the forum for discussion, yet you can retain control about the content of your site.

Requests

The Request Manager, another interactive tool, allows site visitors to post specific requests to the site. It can be used to request funds for projects, seek volunteers for events or anything else appropriate for a �bulletin board� type of function.

Store

The Store Manager enables you to enter the world of e-commerce by providing a tool to create a searchable catalog of products and manage inventory and purchases. Using the Store Manager to sell products online requires that you open an account with a third-party payment processor through a separate agreement. Connect users can choose from five integrated payment gateways, including PayPal and Verisign PayflowPro.

People

The People Manager is the tool used to control viewing and editing access to your site. User levels fall into five categories � Guests, Members, Contributors, Editors, Administrators � each with progressive levels of access to viewing and editing content. The range runs from the read-only viewing of Guests up to the full website and email management decisions enjoyed by Administrators.

Visitors will be able to register with your site through a log-in section, and once they register, their information is stored in the People Manager. You also have the option to import data from other sources � member or customer databases, for example.

Groups

With the Group Manager, the data collected in the People Manager can be organized into logical groupings � customers, prospects, vendors, board members, etc. Whereas the People Manager controls what individuals can do, the Group Manager controls who views and who edits on a Group basis. In other words, Groups can be used to display information to certain audiences or to communicate to certain audiences.

Members can either join Groups or be assigned to Groups, or both, depending on your preference. For instance, as members register, they can select their own Group. One example could be �Sale Alert.� Anyone wishing to receive an emailed sale alert could elect to do so and would be effectively joining that Group. In another example, a Coordinator could create a Group for an upcoming project and assign various members of the team to the particular project group. As members of your site are assigned into groups, this tool will prepare your ability to target your communication.

Communications

The Communications Manager is a tool that allows you to target your communication, including sending email messages to Groups created in the Group Manager.

Statistics

Connect gives you the option to sign up for Google Analytics through the Statistics Manager. This is a free service that will provide statistics on how many website hits you get each day, as well as what days of the week and what times of day are most popular for people to visit your site.

Account

Here is where you change your address, update your phone number, email contacts, change your billing method, update or add credit card details, check to see what services you have, and add or upgrade your services.