 It's 10.30 p.m. and given the day I have tomorrow I really should be in bed but I just felt I had to write a testimonial for Weebly, AGAIN! Here is my first review, written in early 2012 - two years ago. The web-building service that Weebly provides has developed enormously in the last couple of years. These are my favorite things about weebly: 1. Easy To Use There is ease of use and then there is weebly. Whoever came up with the user interface has a mind like Steve Jobs. Weebly is super intuitive and you can figure out how to use it without using their FAQ pages and without any coding skills whatsoever. When I started using Weebly in 2010 I figured out what to do immediately. 2. Fair Pricing Their pricing is ultra fair. I have been subscribed to Entrepreneur magazine for a few years now and every now and again there's an advert for a new drag and drop web builder. I usually go to the website to see how they compare to Weebly and EVERY SINGLE TIME they are charging more than Weebly but offering less. I get so incensed by it! This brings me to my next favorite feature... 3. Great Variety of features You can do whatever you want to do with Weebly without having to write any code. Changing fonts, colors, headers, the features of the blog side bar is ultra easy. You can change the entire look and theme of your website at the click of a few buttons and I have done that several times myself without any stress. 4. Fast Rate of Development Weebly are developing new features all the time and my business has been growing with them. Importantly, weebly allow customers to suggest new features and they take suggestions seriously. 5. Customization A lot of people ask why I prefer weebly to WordPress. This is the biggest reason: when I visit a WordPress site I usually know it is WordPress. Many of their themes have a similar feel. I have tried to use WordPress in the past and I don't think they are nearly as easy to use as Weebly. Conversely, Weebly is so customizable you can make your site look very different to any other site out there. I run over 10 websites with Weebly and they all look very different. 6. Mobile friendly The mobile version of a Weebly-based site which comes as standard is second-to-none! This applies to both the general webpages, blogs and eCommerce. I think them coming into eCommerce later paid off rather than backfired because they appear to have learnt from the mistakes of all the eCommerce platforms that came before them. That brings me to my next point... 7. eCommerce I have been struggling to decide whether or not to use the recently launched eCommerce feature on Weebly. I have been using sellfy.com for digital goods for over a year now and they are quite good. I also tried DPD and they were quite good too. A friend recommended 3dcart very strongly but I thought they were awful. Even with a First Class degree in Economics from Cambridge I was struggling to use 3dcart. It was not easy. I thought that being so new Weebly’s eCommerce facilities would be far too basic for my needs. I deliberated over it for a couple of weeks and ultimately thought to myself:
The answer was yes to all three questions so I bit the bullet and paid the $469 fee to use the platform for two years. The amount sounds high but if I consider the fact that I am paying $135 to MailChimp monthly, it's not much at all - it's $19.94 a month. When Weebly create an email management system they have a good chance of getting that business too because I don't feel MailChimp's pricing makes sense at all...but that's another story! After two days going through Weebly's eCommerce thoroughly, I don’t regret it. In fact, for suggesting a feature improvement Weebly gave me a couple of extra months for free! That brings me to my final point: 8. Awesome customer service From the start, Weebly have responded to emails in 24 to 48 hours. Although they have grown massively, they still respond promptly. As someone with a small business growing faster than I can believe I know how tough it is to maintain that kind of responsiveness so I really appreciate it. IN SUMMARY... ...If Weebly was a man, I would say we were engaged before and with me buying into the eCommerce platform – we just got married! This is a tool I believe I will be using for life. Weebly makes my life easy. It has simplified my life for coming up to four years now and the day I discovered Weebly is one of the best days of my life – and trust me, I have had a very good life! lol
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 Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf Of Wall Street 5*/5 F'ing brilliant. I haven't been to the Cinema since March or April 2013 and this film reminded me why I love the cinema so much - I switched off completely and just enjoyed it. Well done, Leo!
 My yum yum lemon drizzle cake My 2013 goal: go from 63.5kg to 60kg (i.e. 140 to 130lbs) I haven't been 60kg since I was 20! This is what happened: I gained 10lbs! With the post Christmas indulgence I hit an annual high of 68.4kg (151 lbs) just after Christmas. The weight gain did not come as a shock - I've been tracking almost weekly using the Fat Creep app and I saw it coming but didn't particularly care. This year, I decided to make the goal SMART and actually set out how I was going to lose the extra weight. Luckily, my husband got me the FitBit for our anniversary and just having the gadget made me realize how sedentary my life was. My two weekly 5km jogs were not enough to counteract my incessant nut scoffing and my passionate love affair with desserts. Because I wanted to start the year at 67.5kg exactly, I started my weight loss regime on 30-Dec. By some stroke of luck my Fit Bit is sending me summaries that exactly match my diet cycle. As always I am not dieting but getting rid of the silly habits that I had started slipping into. So, what changes have I made? 1. WALKING I have committed to at least 10,000 steps a day! I never really considered walking exercise so I didn't do much, I thought it was so low impact and hence not worth the effort. What I have discovered with my FitBit is that I was only walking 3,000 to 5,000 steps a day which is as low-activity as a life gets. Not good enough! 2. JOGGING No change. I am still only doing my two 5km a week. The only difference in 2014 is that I'm doing it at a gym rather than outside - I couldn't take the cold anymore. With a treadmill I can increase the intensity of my jogs much more easily so I am enjoying it. I am currently jogging on Tuesday and Thursdays. 3. WORK OUT IN THE MORNING I always used to jog around midday but I have always known there is an extra benefit to doing it first thing in the morning - it gives your metabolism an all day boost. I decided to stop being lazy and just do it! I'm now up at 6.30 a.m. instead of 7.30 a.m. - it's not a huge change. 4. RESISTANCE TRAINING Two thirty minute sessions a week. I hate resistance training (!) but I can't deny that I do see much better weight loss and maintenance when I do it. To start off with I think two sessions a week is enough. I'm using a DVD to do it. I am currently doing my strength and resistance training on Wednesday and Fridays. 5. PRE-WORKOUT FOOD Research suggests you burn more fat if you have a shot of unsweetened black coffee 30 minutes before you work out. I am using green tea - I don't know if that is as good a substitute. 6. WEEKEND ACTIVITY I have committed to either a swim, a long walk (2 hours) or a gym class once a week at the weekend...finally! 7. FOOD! Weight loss is really just about what you eat; eating less is enough to lose weight even if you do no exercise at all. I am also exercising because I actually want to be fit. I've made the following changes:
What am I missing?
So, at the moment I am not doing anything drastic just what I should be doing anyway taking care of my health.
Five portions of cake completely destroyed week 4/5. What was meant to be an "I am feeling sorry for myself" cake turned out to be a big celebratory cake leading to a portion of cake per day for four days with two portions on the Sunday! Yikes! Of course, weight loss = zero, I should just be happy I didn't gain!
 I read about coursera.org in an edition of Entrepreneur, the only magazine I read religiously and decided to try it out. You can take all the courses for free and for some you can pay to get a certificate if you want it. If you don't want the certificate then you can do the course entirely for free. At first, I wasn't going to pay for the certificate but then I decided that $49 is really not that much to have a record of having done the course so I paid up. Luckily I passed with flying colours which is always worth having on paper. I know a lot of people in Asia are taking advantage of these courses and getting real value. I found the course very useful but I didn't study hard for it. I just watched the videos and hoped I would remember what was relevant to me. I have a super good memory so this technique may not work for everyone. It took me about 6 years of serious graft in high school to master that technique. Anyhow...why don't you take a course too? Check out my certifcates on coursera:
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By Heather Katsonga-WoodwardI'm always thinking, debating, considering and revising my views - some of those deliberations will be shared right here. |
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Photo used under Creative Commons from Jerry Bunkers
