Website Designers in Wexford, Ireland – Cada Media Ltd

We would like to wish all our clients a Happy Halloween and a great weekend.

Website Design Rules

There are so many myths and ideas that are floated around the net these days and we have heard most of them. Multi Media students are always over loading site with heavy flash or fecking intro pages that take a few seconds to download and when there are ready you just have another button to click on to actually get into the website so now I’m just going to name a few basic rules for what a well designed website should have.

1. A Small amount of Flash
   • Try to limit the amount of flash a website uses, if a user does not have flash installed on their pc they can be asked to install it, This is when users click BACK and don’t view your site.
2. Navigation Menu
   • People who are new to website design nearly always forget that a website is not like a book, that in fact users are often brought into a website via a search engine and therefore not onto the homepage that may contain the navigation system. You should be able to access every page from every page.
3. Make sure users know where they are.
   • This is a follow on from the last rule, meaning that that you can do a “Hansel and Gretel” and follow links back to the homepage. In the industry we call this having “bread crumbs” links on the site.
4. Font Use
   • We are often asked to make a website look like a flyer and clients ask to mad looking fonts to be used. This has it pros and cons. Pros, yes it can look funky, cons are , sya they don’t have they font on their pc, the browser will display a default on, therefore loosing the desired effect you wanted to achieve.
5. Loading time.
   • This is a following on from rule no 1, designers often forget that the people using the site are not all on 10MB Office broadband lines and infact still on basic dial up as they can not get broadband. Make sure your website downloads within 10 seconds or else….. they have clicked BACK and are gone from your site before they even got in the door !

How can you tell beside from listening to see if the phone is ringing!

Your site stats will give you great feed back into how many people are looking at the site:

• What page are they looking at?
• What search engine brought them to you?
• What Key phrase they used?
• What token the used if you have an ecommerce site?
• How long they looked at each page?
• What country they are from
• What region they are from?
• What day your site is visited the most?
• What time your site is been looked at?
• Which sites are linking to you?

There are many reasons for lookat at your site stats so for further info on your marketing campaigns and their effectiveness give us a call today on 053-9430748

WorldWideDomainName.com

These guys are really pushing the envelope when it comes to getting in touch with your clients. They are currently bomb barding the internet with tonnes of junk email about website, domain registration and web marketing services.

It is spam, delete it and what ever you do : Do Not reply to it, it only comfirms your email address to the program sending it out.

I know I shouldn’t be here but the phones are quiet and I can get some work done, Promise I won’t stay long. Have a great Bank Holiday !

[Update - Feb 2010, They have moved and are near the market square]

Out and about on our 3.15pm compulsory staff break today and we spotted a new computer repair shop just opened by one of our old friend who used to work in a local mobile phone shop for the past few years. Marius or Mario if you can’t pernounce his real name has gone out on his own and opened up this new pc repair shop. We get many calls each week about this stuff so now I can point people here as I wont be able to remember all the details !

Computer repairs, mobile phone repair, mobile phone unlocking are the main services they will be supplying.

The Best of Luck.

His details are:

Ultimate Repair Solutions or URS

Lower Main street
Gorey
Co. Wexford
Tel: 087-7882220
Email: ultimaterepairsolutions@yahoo.com
They are just on the corner of St Michaels Road across from the Ulster bank.

Start your online Advertising Campaign for Christmas Now?

Yes!

I know it might sound a bit mad but yes, definately it’s that time. The end of October is the right time to get geared up for Christmas especially if you operate an online shop. As many of you know your online sales during this period will jump many fold and its a case of rolling up your sleves and getting stuck in to fullfil those orders.

Having a content managed site allows you to build packages suitable for Christmas and will also allow you to feature products at this time.

For more information just get in touch and we can bring you up to speed.

What are Content Management Systems?

A Content Management System is a program/software installed on your website that allows you to access and update your site through your Internet browser. You can add content from anywhere in the world. There is no need of any prior content management experience and you do not need to understand <HTML> code.

Content Management can be used to manage simple business brochure style website, portal or directory and also an ecommerce online shop website.

To Sumarise if you get a content management system, your site is ready for expansion in the future as it is built on a powerful base.

I was reminded this morning of how common this question is . Many of our inquiries always say they “want to be No 1 in Google” but don’t have an idea how to get there. I talk about search engine optimisation SEO (this goes over 99% of peoples heads) but really i am talking about getting a natural listing in Google listings.

I have to remind people that this is 2 tasks, 1 getting a website and 2 getting it top of the search engines.  It doesnt automatically happen (sorry!)

There are many search engines that are in use, Google, Yahoo, MSN and there are also directories such as browse.ie and of course GoreyLinks.com our baby ! Each search engine has it’s own formula to read a website and categorise its content into relevance for search terms people use when searching the net.

So what is SEO?

SEO is where you configure / program a website so that you are giving a better chance of coming up for a particular search phrase.

Why is SEO important?

It’s important because getting and retaining customers is important. If your website is not optimized to be read better by search engines you will not be on the first page of google let alone on the top. Remember being on the top of Google is google’s way of saying this is the best website we can recommend for your search term. So don’t expect a one-page for a chipper to be listed No 1 for “Restaurants in Ireland“.

This is actually a very common fact, that people who have a “One page website” often think that their job is done. Just put it up there and people will find it. With about 20 billion pages up on the net that theirs will pop up. You might as well nail a flyer to a tree in the amazon and hope that passers by will read it.

The internet is not “Field of Dreams“, Build it and they will come.

You must work at it, read up about what search engines want, get rid of :

• Frames
• large images
• large flash animation

And Make sure to insert:

• Meta tags
• Keywords tag
• Description tag
• Title tag

These may sound basic, but basic means to have the foundations correct before you build further on your site. Also a quick hit, make each page unique with titles, meta and content.

What is link Building?

This is the process of getting relevant website to point to your. It’s no good having a website but no ones knows about it. You don’t get a business telephone line and then keep your number our of the phone book, so don’t do it online.

Get your website listed on directories and portals that are important to your industry. Links are the Internet version of sign posts, Get “links” or signposts from good sites. The more signposts/links you have pointing to your site the more footfall you will get.

Note: don’t get links from crap sites, sites that are just one long page of links for every industry in the world, This is a link farm of 000’s or links and does nothing of benefit for you site. In fact some think it may have a negative effect on your site. Like putting a link in the local dump to your hotel, Its guilt by association.

Time for lunch…..

I was browsing the Sunday Business Post and saw an advert for this website. The ad was catchy and described the site very well. A little further reading dragged me off the couch and onto the laptop. There I started reading what this Dublin based business is doing and even better who they are!

A business started up by an old employer of mine in Dublin from my SGML and Publishing days!

www.web4print.com

These guys will take a database of content , text, graphics and turn it into a catelogue for you. This sounds like the type of thing that the online shops have been looking for.

Going to investigate more, looks very promising.

We have a number of requests to get a content managed system (C.M.S). This is a website whereby the client is able to log in and update and write content, new pages on their own website. Thus keeping it up to date and fresh. This is now becoming the standard style of website that businesses today.

CMS websites are great idea, but a few things must be taken into consideration when you are looking into getting a website of this style as opposed to a “static brochure website” whereby the pages are created in a format that can only be edited by either a web designer of a kid with good web knowledge.

Content management is about being able to edit content, but its a lot more that that it actually allows you to edit the whole site, the menu system, the layout, the colours, the design, everything!

Now here’s the But. . . this is all great but a few factors we would suggest would be required in getting involved in this.

• Time
• Creativity
• Experience in Desk Top Publishing or Graphic Design and Layout.
• E.C.D.L

Time: Being able to change a websites content is wonderful and really puts power in the owners hands. That’s of course if the user assigns time to the project and we have found that the more time the users give to their website management the more they will benefit from this tool. And that’s all this is, a tool to editing the site, so depending on how you use it will depend on the results.

Creativity: Say you edit the text and insert only a few words about a topic. The search engines will see that this is all you know about the topic. Don’t keep this knowledge in your head, put it on the site. Write about your chosen topic and remember you are not writing a book, Think of it as a magazine, you need to understand you reader and the time they have to scan down through you content.

Layout and Design: Ok so now you have the time, you’ve inserted the content. How does it look? Does it look like a long back and white page or have you used indents, bullet points, italic, bold, remember you online users scan down through the content so grab their attention and highlight words for them.

ECDL: These types of courses are great to give the user an understanding of the methods that can be involved. But do note that content management is not MS Word, Its a thousand time more. We think of it like comparing MS Word and MS Excel to Content Management and An Accounting System.

If you post an invoice on an accounting system you can not just click “back” and start again, you have to insert a credit note to minus the invoice. Its a little more structured but there is method and reason for this.

Content management systems are similar to this as you can’t just click back, they are online applications that need to be closed properly otherwise you lock a document. And once the document or page is locked it may not be accessible to edit by another editor. A Desktop application like Word etc can close and you can open it again it may have tried to so an auto-save.

So to sum up, think about your design skills, your time and your typesetting skills.

We are delighted that the Irish Internet Association picked up our blog about the new Vat Rates in Ireland and it’s inportance to the online sales in Ireland. As we mentioned in an early post this month, the sales in Ireland are strong and growing each day

We were supprised to see ourselves No 1 in Google yesterday for “New Vat Rates” search. I’m sure it will change each day, but hey it’s great to be ahead of the Revenue.ie for a change !!!!! lol

I decided to pop down to Wexford town to attend a presentation put on by the Irish Internet Association and Wexford County Enterprise Board. These type of event are run all the time in every county around Ireland and it a great opportunity for business owners and managers to take a day off !!

No. No. Many people think this, but in fact to see the response and the questions from the floor, these type of events are seriously needed. I was surprised by the questions, things that I was taking for granted about search engines, the internet and blogging were not understood by the people there.

There were 4 great speakers to give a talk about how to use social media as a marketing tool for your business or brand. They were:

• Mr. Philip Macartney (Head of Sales Ireland) Bebo
• Mr Donald Douglas (Managing Director) Return2Sender
• Mr. Brian Greene (Director) doop
• Ms. Joy Redmond (Director) Flexitimers.com

Philip from Bebo was not sellign Bebo but rather selling the idea of branding and pushing your brand through a busy social networking site to reach a large audience. Interesting to see him again give us a few examples of how large companies use bebo to reach their target audience. Even more interesting to see that none of them are Irish examples, It was as if this is too high brow or beyond Irish marketeers. I’ve seen a few presentations by Bebo in Ireland and still nothing with an Irish flavour to it.

Donald educated us on how the use of mobile advertising is growing in Ireland, but that it must have a purpose. Assigning it a real task is important. Just putting up your website in a mobile format is great but it really has a getting chance of getting found and used if you use it for a competition to engage your customer base. Guinness are one of their clients and again not sure if your average business in Ireland would get involved but definately worth noting. “Rewards are for the early adopters”

Brian is a Digital Media Consultant with Doop.ie , a business involved with the postcast media and audio industry. He loves his job, it’s great to see someone really understand their topic and passing on the knowledge is a well presented manor. He showed us the growth in podcasting in Ireland and how it has gained in popularity of the past few years. RTE for example are the largest podcasting company with 1/2 a million listeners per month. He mentioned to take note about copyright issues with music and to use bought music from sites such as podshow.com

His point were , Engage your Clients, Expand your customer Channels, Enable internal dialogue, Enhance comapny profile, Enforce your message.

Having a podcast is great but how do you get it noticed, “Every good podcast deserves a blog” thiswill drive search engines towards your podcasts. He concluded by telling us to lookout for “Social Radio” as this is on the horizon.

Joy is a Director of Flexitimers.com, a newly launched business (and our office neighbour by chance) Joy gave us a bit of her background in the Web design industry and that she was at the forefront of website design in Ireland back in the 90’s.  She has great experience in software development and also was a lecturer for 4 years teaching website design etc. During those years she also was thinking about working on a part time basis, with a 1 year old at home, she wanted to be there but still keep her position in the work place. Years later she and her ex boss decided to set up Flexitimers.com to help other professionals looks for part time work. Also of course to allow employers who are looking for people for part time work.

A new step away from recruitment agencies who charge anywhere from 8% to 10% of the salary of a client. Agencies are supposed to trim down the long lists of people looking for jobs and send you the top 3, but often they are commission based and only want to get the top position with the top salleries as then they can get a higher commission. Grr!

Flexitimers.com are looking to get into this recruitment industry in a new and different way.

They are asking employers for a “fixed fee” to list their positions on the site. The site then matches the two like a dating style site.

Great Idea and and having a background in the software and Web industries really puts Flexitimers.com at a huge advantage as many businesses are set up on an idea, but the people running the site often don’t really have a grip of the technology. This marriage of both will be a winner in my opinion.

Joy was easy to listen to and got her point across very well, people scribbling notes left right and center. That’s always a good sign.

We Would like to advice our clients with online shops to make sure they are aware of the new VAT rates announced today. The higher rates must be reflected on your websites.

The upper VAT rate is moving from 21%  to  21.5% effective from the 1st December 2008.

The 13.5% rate will remain the same.

These changes can be make in your back-end administration system to change to VAT rates when selling online.

Call us for more details, 053-9430748

We are proud to annouce the launch of a new portal for searching and advertising positions in and around the home. Jobs from baby sitting to carpenters. This site is a full content managed website that allows the users to upload their adverts to the site, then pay online and start advertising their servers straight away.

The site is available on www.homestaff.ie

We would like to wish Carmel and team the best of luck with this new venture