Only kids use the Web . . . . . Right?

People ask their friends when they are looking for information.

These were some of the kind of ideas being put about this weeks in meetings regarding websites and getting a website for a business. This is a common statement when in fact the people involved don’t use the Internet themselves.

It is true, many people don’t look up information on the net, but the truth is more and more people and companies use the Internet to research for new suppliers and look for products and services on-line. We often find that sometimes people will tell use they don’t use the internet for business but they will tell me that they do their Christmas shopping on-line.  Maybe not realising that by shopping on-line they were indeed doing business online to the company receiving their on-line payments!

No matter what the topic or subject is using the Internet is taking over from Traditional Advertising and now that Reccession in Ireland is kicking in people are demanding a marketing method that is more accountable and tracable. Companies are questioning their marketing and advertising budget and want to get a good “bang for their buck“.

Your clients look up the Web!

Amarach Research in Dublin tell us in recent stats from February 2009 that 67% of Irish Adults are now on-line and expected to be over 75% by 2010. (that’s in 3months from now)

Don’t let your own non-use or understanding of Internet usage blind you from where your target market are actively looking for your business each day.

Call Dave Jordan from Cada Media on 053 9430748 to get a website for your business.

A Sure Sign of The Times

Cada Media Ltd are delighted with our new Signage on our buildings here at ROSC House, John Street, Gorey.

Our0utdoor signs and indoor signs were manufactured by Tom Bolgers team at  Sign Solutions in Arklow.

So if your passing by and are interested in starting a business, promoting your current business or getting onto one of our many Local business directories than why not call in and see what we can do for you.

It must be said what with “The Web being Everywhere” this is surely a Sign Of The Times….

“The Web Is Everywhere…Be Part of It”

Is traditional advertising dying?

This questions was on the table this week on Sunday’s edition of the new business program on tv3. Part of the program talked to traditional Advertising Agencies in Dublin who would see digital advertising as a small part of their business. Overall it was great to see that Yes in fact traditional advertising as we know it, TV, Radio and Print are taking a hit, but that “Digital Media” is holding it’s own in an Ireland gripped in recession.

I must say that I was smiling all the way through the show as our ideas of how to help business grow in a recession were confirmed. It was also mentioned that companies who are involved in the Advertising Game still think of the Internet as some sort of fad, or something their kids do on their laptops. It’ true it won’t make the Advertising Companies the profits they are used to. I thought they were totally missing the numbers who are on-line via all sorts of methods, including free wifi for laptops, net books, mobile devices and the list goes on. Sit on a bus from Gorey to Dublin and see how many people are on-line. Please try it, you will be amazed.

Only two weeks ago their was a supplement in a Sunday paper telling use how broadband and the Internet will help get Ireland out of a recession. Using every element it offers can help companies reduce costs and indeed expand their target market.

One item that did catch my attention too was the talk about diversifying your online advertising into niche areas and going to where people are on-line. A quick version of this is facebook, a client of ours is using FaceBook to attract and retain clients for their on-line shop, with in weeks they have over 2,000 fans and are updating their facebook page daily with special offers and news. It has been a great success for them.

Advertising needs to be more specific and more targeted. If you advertising in a magazine for sports then find an on-line edition and make sure you are listed on that. If you are looking for get clients in a certain town then advertise on a website for that town.

Overall the program is very good, Ivan Yates is at the helm I would recommend to sky+ it if you get a chance.

This is a question we got in last week and we were able to point the client to an open source program to allow them to have an easy to use program that was not Microsoft based.

Eudora Mail

http://www.eudora.com/

Windows Mail

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/features/mail.aspx

Thunderbird

http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/

We would recommend using Thunderbird as it has great plug-in features that the other are only catching onto now, and it easily allows you to configure separate in-boxes for different emails. A common question into our offices.

Home Staging in Ireland

We are please that a local business here in Gorey has looked towards the future of property selling in Ireland and seen that their is a demand for home staging in Ireland. Local business woman Diana Stafford has put her passion for Interior Design and sales into play in a dynamic business here in the southeast. Only just started the business already has a happy client base.

We were approached to help this start up business get off the ground and with our initial conversations it was clear they mean business. We secured great domain names for their industry and their own business name of course. We then sat down and discussed their needs and their budget. Matching the two can often be difficult but we hope that we have created a site that will help drive their business  forward.

Diana has a great eye for design and this was obvious when we say the photos of the before and after of one of her recent projects, These photos in fact inspired the style of the website. the photo were taken by Rose Photography, a local photographer here in Gorey. The site is packed with features and we hope it does well for them.

Services supplied:

• Domain Name Registration
• Web hosting
• Consultancy
• Website Design
• Content Management
• Training
• Support

Site: Property Staging in Ireland www.DesignToSell.ie

We’ve had a number of inquiries about broadband in the Courtown area, there are a number of providers our there including Regional Broaband, 3 Mobile, Eircom and Alpha Broadband. All have different price ranges and different coverage areas and different terms and conditions.

• Eircom might suit if you already have an existing telephone line and are in the middle of a built up area, then you are just paying for the addition of broadband to the existing line rental of €24 a month, so with a basic package for example you would now be paying €50 per month.

• 3 Broadband, this is the gadget that you plug into your laptop or pc, signal travels through the air and can be blocked by older building that have thick walls etc, it is fine for basic stuff. Heard of a few people standing on their landings trying to get coverage with the laptop on the window sill. Costs are about €20 a month with a contract for 18 months, or you can pay as you go and use it for 1 day, 1 week etc. Don’t know anyone who has taken that up around here.

• Regional Broadband are a wireless business, that means they transmit their signal via small dish attached to the house pointing to their nearest transmitter. They have several packages starting from €24 euro per month with no fixed line costs, but remember that means the speed of the broadband could be a 1 meg line. So dont expect to use it for on-line gaming or several family members on-line at the one time as it be be too slow. Coverage depends on “line of sight” to their antenna’s around the North Wexford area.

• Alpha Broadband, a local company based in Courtown, with their transmitters placed at various high point around the North of County Wexford. They too are a wireless broadband company specialising in the local area. You don’t have to have a telephone line to get their service. They call out to your house, do a site survey, usually get up a ladder and test the signal strength of their system to your location. If it’s ok they can install their little receiver box (about the size of a shoe!)

Then they bring the cable back down into the house and then they would advice you on how you want to use it around the house, either by plugging it directly into a pc or plugging it into a “router” as pictured above that then you can transmit the broadband around the house to be used on you mobile or by several users.

They currently don’t over a basic package, as I can understand a little bit as many people would probably upgrade to their the better package after some time anyways.

We use their service at home in ballycanew and it works perfectly for surfing, voip calls, can even view the remote CCTV cameras using it. Broadband isn’t just about Bebo, you can use it for all types of purposes.

Choosing a broadband business to use it about choosing a service that will suit your needs, as always jumping at the cheapest option isn’t always the best plan in the long run, evaluate them all.

Our Recommendation for Broadband in Courtown is Alpha Broadband Ltd call them on 053-9485360

If you are ordering your Christmas shopping on-line I would suggest that you start shopping in October as some Irish online shops take up to 28 days to deliver. We noticed that talking to clients last year that many had done 100% of their shopping online. These were not Internet nerds, just normal rural Irish families.

This year looks to be a bumber year to online shops in ireland. If you are looks for a directory or shops that sell on-line have a look at the following link, also sheck out some of our own clients

www.armchair.ie

www.berneysaddlery.com

www.allaboutweddings.ie

We received the new Autumn schedule from the Wexford County Enterprise Board last week and are delighted to see that they are now running website clinics run by our good friends Graphedia , Niall Reck is a local Wexford man who runs this excellent website design business based in Wexford town. Niall is an accomplished web desinger who also works on companies printing needs too.

The course is a 1 day event that covers areas such as

• Website Design
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Online Marketing
• Social Networking
• and more

The course/clinic is aimed at business owners / managers / marketing staff

Costs: €95

Date: 11 November 2009

If you can’t wait till then contact ourselves and we can run a similar program for you. Call Dave today on 053 9430748

Google Webmaster Guidelines are in Black and white.

I came across a website today for a company over in the west of Ireland doing surfing lessons and when I scrolled down the page i noticed that they have about 6 inches of nothing at the bottom. I click the mouse the tried to select and there it was . . . paragraphs and paragraphs or extra hidden content.

I think it strange it this day and age to be still pulling tricks like this and yet I also noticed that they are number one in google for the services they provide. So are they actually doing anything wrong, according to Google’s webmaster Guidelines we shouldn’t do this but on the other hand they still have an ok page rank of 4.

These hidden text guidelines go a little further and tell us that if Google find these they they can remove the site from their index. Yes, that means throw you out of Google. It happens all the time and business are there one day and gone the next. Not understanding that their webmaster has actually put their their business offline to google users.

For a quick glance of do’s and don’t in website design see the following google help and guidelines

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

We are proud to launch the revamped website for the this years Colligan Gorge Games. This new site have the ability to take the entries via the on-line entry form. The site also have a media gallery, currently of last years.

The new site is fully content managed and will allow the guys running the event, Shielbaggan OEC, to edit the text, images and the site also have a results page that will display the games results in the categories the user clicks on.

We have happy to be with with Colin and Paul from the OEC as we have worked for them before on their main site for the outdoor education centre in Shielbaggan in Wexford

To view the new site go to:

www.ColliganGorgeGames.com

I wonder how true this is for irish surfers. If you have moved to searching the internet and using bing, ping me back and let me know.

Would be interested to see how many people out there in Ireland are using it on a daily basis?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10354394-75.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

I was at a business meeting this morning and I allowed give a quick presentation about the Internet and so I talked about an interesting part of the web industry called “Link Building” as part of a Search Engine Optimisation campaign. I started by trying to make a similarity of a link on a website to a verbal referral from a business colleague.

The more of my business colleagues that let their friends and staff know that we have worked on their website the more people who are likely to let others know about ourselves. In Internet terms, it’s whereby you, your website address to be exact is named on another website. So if you are a garage repair service and you are members of SIMI. Do they list you as a member? By doing so they telling Google and the world that you are related to them in a business sense. Search engines count these “Links” and use it as part of their Algorithm to judge the benefit of your website to the world.

If your site is informative about your products and services, if it’s up to date, and is the best documentation that the search engine can find, then your sites “Page Rank” is increased.

How to get people to link to you?

Some companies will try to tell you they can do it for you and indeed they may be able to get you a few links, but are the links of any good. Good links I would suggest are from relevant and respected sites. Dodgy sites that are “Link Farms” (sites that could have a 1000 links on one page) are not recommended. Using these types of links can often be categorised a Black Hat* tricks by search engines

* Black Hat methods of SEO are sneaky tricks like, putting your key phrase in white text at the top of the page to add extra key phrases.

Sites that are respected by search engines are generally sites that you yourself would recommend, Use a spoonful of cop on when choosing sites to get linked from. Getting back to that Car garage, if he was offered a link from a Circus website, do you think that link would be of any use. . . . Me Neither. . .  I doubt Google would too.

So, I would recommend that you contact your suppliers in your industry and ask them to put a link to your website from their website. I could try to do it but they are more likely to do it for you rather than a stranger these days. Once that is in place make sure you put a link from your website back to them. This is called a reciprocal link.

To start a Link Building Campaign for your business today contact Dave Jordan of Cada Media Ltd, Tel: 053 9430748

We found a great book keeping service in Wexford called SR Accounting. See more info on www.SRAccounting.ie

They have a full book keeping service including the following services:

• Data Entry
• Creditors Reconciliation
• Debtors Reconciliation
• Bank Reconciliation
• VAT
• VAT Returns
• Weekly Payroll
• PRSI Returns
• RCT Returns
  • Construction Industry
  • Forestry Industry
  • Meat Industry
• All Revenue Returns via ROS System

For more details call Sabina on 087 9974323

The Internet has an interesting factor that there are Stats available on each site allowing businesses to see the number of visitors arriving on your site from various search engines and also from direct adverting of the web address. We have site stats going back for various businesses going back to 1999. 

Google Alerts, is another interesting feature allowing you to ask Google to let you know when a search term is requested. Why would this help you… because knowledge is everything, we ar ein the information age, know stats allows you to decide if a product or service is being searched for, maybe even save you the hassle of setting up a business if it’s not or no signs of being something of interest to others.

Beat the recession by arming yourself with the knowledge to be able to plan your business better, plan your services to suit the current market. We are seeing many large businesses fall as they are not able to adjust and are not utilizing the Internet to their advantage.

Online payment systemsare an area that is gaining huge growth in Ireland at the moment, more and more people and businesses are using the Internet to pay bills, send invoices, buy on-line and get money moving faster around the economy. We ourselves are working on a number of new websites with one thing in common, they will all be able to take money directly from the user, safely and securely, there and then. No messing around with cheques and clearing time in bank, no messing around with it’s in the post statements from admin people, No we only issue payment on the first Tuesday of each month.

Real business in real time, money when you need it. Take the time to evaluate your own business and see if ecommerce and the Internet can help your business. Call myself Dave Jordan to see if we can advice you on how to beat the shit out of this recession and grow your business.

Tel: 053 9430748

Cheap Websites, Not!

We had a call to the office this week asking if we could help this company get their website into Google. We had a quick look and finding it difficult to find them, we gave up and put their domain name directly into the address bar. The site itself looked ok but is not in any search engines and has none of the basic elements that a experienced web designer would insert into the background code.

They felt ripped offby this so called  website designer in Wexford. I agree. The company has no login details, no stats details, no ftp details, no emails details etc. oh and they can not edit the site either. The person who created the site also only works off a mobile phone and is not answering the calls since he was paid. 

The Internet is new to many businesses, but I would strongly that they call around and ask before they get involved with a web designer in wexford, I have talked about this before and we recommend designers who we know produce quality sites that are a benefit for their clients as a sales lead generating tool

Website should be . .

Search engine friendly, printer friendly, screen friendly and the list of features goes on and on. I would urge anyone thinking of getting a website to ring around , dont just talk to one or two but at least three companies before they finally decide to go with one. Every website designer has different skills and expertise in various areas, some are great at graphics but crap at search engines, others are ok at graphics and layout but excellent at optimisation for search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo etc

Call your local Enterprise Board and ask which company they recommend. If its in the southeast they will know of us, Cada Media or by our previous name before we expanded last year, The Web Guy!

One of the main thing I learned over the years is that you (the client) has to be able to communicate to your web designer, if the designer and yourself are not able to communicate,  move on. Find a company you are able to communicate with, who answer your calls and are there for you in the long run.

What does this tell us?

It proves to us that more and more businesses are falling for a sales pitch of companies claiming they can get them on page 1 of google in weeks. Most of which are not on page one themselves for their chosen  topic.

Call us even if you have already engaged a designer and we will let you know if they are approved, registered or even any good. We dont want to change your mind and come to us we just want to know that you are not being ripped off by so called “website Designers in Wexford”.

End of Rant !

Dave

Ps, The irony is that other designers are trying to sell fully functional websites for 199 and are always advertising using Google Ads. I love to give them the list of sites we have and sit back but we can’t as we know it’s not what will benefit the client in the long run.