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Dear %%%FNAME%%%, welcome to the March edition of LCNews. You have received this newsletter as a customer of Low Cost Names (LCN). The newsletter is designed to keep you up to date with the services and products that LCN offers. If for any reason you do not wish to receive this newsletter simply click here.

Save money by recommending Fastsurf Broadband to your friends, family and colleagues.

Did you know that websites are judged in the blink of an eye, that's less than 50 milliseconds! Also this month it is St Patrick's Day on March 17th and we have included a small article explaining the Irish feast day.

I hope you enjoy reading the newsletter and if you have any comments or suggestions please email feedback@lcn.com

Many thanks
 
LCN's Editor

IN THIS ISSUE...

Save money with your friends

As part of LCN's commitment to provide our customers with a full suite of Internet Services we have partnered with Fastsurf.com to offer you a super fast broadband service.

If you recommend Fastsurf to your friends, family and colleagues you can both save money on your monthly broadband subscription. The more people you can get to sign up to the more you can save!

How Does It Work?

It's simple, if you are a Fastsurf broadband customer just recommend us to your friends, family or colleagues. If they sign up with Fastsurf they will be asked if they were recommended by a friend. If so they just need to enter the telephone number that your broadband service has been provisioned on. You will receive one month FREE broadband subscription and your friend family member or colleague will receive their first month broadband subscription absolutely FREE*.

For every person that becomes a Fastsurf customer off the back of your recommendation the more money you can save on you monthly broadband subscription. Just make sure that they know the telephone number that your broadband service has been provisioned on. For more information visit: www.fastsurf.com/recommend_a_friend.html

* Subject to minimum contract term see terms & conditions

Webites judged in less than the blink of an eye

Internet users make up their minds about the quality of a website in the blink of an eye less than 50 milliseconds, a study shows.

Researchers found that the brain makes decisions in just a twentieth of a second of viewing a webpage. They were surprised as they believed it would take at least 10 times longer to form an opinion. The study, published in the journal Behaviour and Information Technology, also suggests that first impressions have a lasting impact. The Canadian team showed volunteers glimpses of websites, lasting for only 50 milliseconds. The volunteers then had to rate the websites in terms of their aesthetic appeal. The researchers found that the speedily formed conclusions closely tallied with opinions of the websites that had been made after much longer periods of examination.

Gitte Lindgaard of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and lead researcher of the paper expressed her surprise at the results. "My colleagues believed it would be impossible to really see anything in less than 50 milliseconds," she told the website of the Nature journal, which reported the research. The judgements were being formed almost as quickly as the eye can take in information.

The researchers also believe that these quickly-formed first impressions last because of what is known to psychologists as the "halo effect". If people believe a website looks good, then this positive quality will spread to other areas, such as the website's content. Since people like to be right, they will continue to use the website that made a good first impression, as this will further confirm that their initial decision was a good one.

As websites increasingly jostle for business, Dr Lindgaard added that companies should take note. "Unless the first impression is favourable, visitors will be out of your site before they even know that you might be offering more than your competitors," she warned.

For more information on website design visit www.lcn.com/web-design

Need a little help with your hosting?

If you need help setting up your hosting accounts maybe our online support page can help. If you can’t find what you are looking for maybe our FAQ’s have the answer!

Two of the most frequently asked questions are:

How can I check who has been visiting my website?

If you have purchased one of our UN hosting plans then you will have the ability to view web based statistics. To Access these web stats simply go to www.yourdomain.com/stats (example www.joebloggs.com/stats) and login with your hosting username/password. Once logged in you will be able to get a break down of who has been visiting your site.

The NT hosting plans do not have a web based stats facility. You can download the weekly raw log files by using FTP to connect to the Server and navigating to the logs directory. These files are not really readable so you would require some software to analyse them for you.

What exactly is Web hosting?

Web hosting is an allocated amount of disk space for your domain name on a computer that serves the information stored on it to the internet. It is where all the files that make up your web site can be found. Hosting removes the need of you having to provide and maintain expensive and complicated Servers. Having your website hosted offers many benefits over freespace offered by Internet Service Providers:

• It gives you disk space on our Servers which you can use to upload your site to
• Support for more advanced features such as CGI,Perl etc.
• You can use your domain name as your web address instead of the long and often hard to remember ISP/freespace one/li>
• You can use your domain to send & receive emails
• You are not sharing the Servers resources with 1000's of other users
• Eliminates the need for redirection altogether.

At LCN we have a range of market leading web hosting plans packed full of features and facilities to allow your site to run smoothly. Take a look at our hosting plans to decide which plan is most suited to your needs. If you are unsure which plan will be most suitable for you, then please don't hesitate to contact us on 0870 744 0823.

Saint Patrick's Day

Saint Patrick's Day (March 17th) is the Irish feast day which celebrates Saint Patrick (386-461), the patron saint of Ireland. It is a legal holiday in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, the overseas territory of Montserrat and the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is celebrated worldwide by the Irish and those of Irish descent and increasingly by many of non-Irish descent. A major parade takes place in Dublin and in most other Irish towns and villages. The four largest parades of recent years have been held in Dublin, New York City, Manchester, and Montreal. Parades also take place in other places, including London, Paris, Rome, Munich, Moscow, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, Copenhagen and throughout the Americas.

As well as being a celebration of Irish culture, St. Patrick's Day is a Christian festival celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Ireland (among other churches in the Anglican Communion) and some other denominations. However, as a Christian festival, St. Patrick's Day sometimes is required to give way to a more important feast. The day always falls in the season of Lent, and it may fall in Holy Week. In church calendars, though rarely in secular ones, if St. Patrick's Day falls on a Sunday, it is moved to the following Monday. If it falls in Holy Week, it is moved to the second Monday after Easter. In Ireland it is traditional that those observing a lenten fast may break it for the duration of St. Patrick's Day (as well as many American Roman Catholic dioceses which contain a large percentage of Irish American parishioners.

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LCN would like to thank you in advance for your continued support.

Kind regards

The LCN Team