According to our friends over in ZNet.com the World Cup in 2010 has brought high volumes of traffic online with people using the web to find out information about the World Cup. In fact not just before a game, but whilst a game is actually being played.

Most people say that men can only do one thing at a time, well now we have that stats that shows that they can also use a laptop, iphone or even a desktop pc whilst watching the box!

Internet usage is on the increase in Ireland with broadband being rolled out to more and more regions. Speeds of 100mb now on trial in Wexford in fact means that businesses understanding it’s significance can avail of it’s use for voip calls, online backup, software as a service, online spam filtering and all rolled into the Cloud allowing a business to be virtual.

What does this mean?

It means that you don’t have to go to the office to check your emails, you don’t have to use an in house mail server for emails, you don’t have to store documents on an in-house server, you don’t need to use a backup tape unit, you don’t need to buy expensive software, you don’t need to worry about data protection act, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to get all of this on place either!

What do you do next?

Call Dave Jordan of Cada Media Ltd today to see how we can roll out a web solution for you and get ahead of your competitors.

The web is everywhere, be part of it!

053-9430748

Great and when is it going to be finished? Today we had another call from a business asking us could we start and finish a website in 10 days as he has been waiting over 2 years for the favour of creating a website to be completed.

Getting a website created for a business is like most things in life, there is a procedure and a process, bypass these steps and getting a mate or a friend to do it often leads to projects being put on the long finger and in fact, usually not being don’t at all.

If I take a look at the number of domain names that are registered in Ireland each year and then look at the amount of “Under Construction Signs” that are on the sites it would amaze you the volume that are not utilised for an actual website but rather a holding page that is permanently on hold.

Either the favour is not being worked on or the business is only using the domain name for email and does not really understand the impact of having a good website open 24/7 selling and promoting your business.  Whilst the under construction page has been on display often we find that a competitive business will and worked away and got their website up and runnign and is live in a google search. Mean while you seeing the guy or gal in Tesco and waving over wondering when they will ever get around to working on the site.

So by asking a real business to work on your website you are taking up a proper goal and deadlines with your web designer. “We need the website by the 1st September” etc. It has to be created, tested, marketed and proofed and live by then, can you do it?

Yes, Call Dave Jordan using your long finger you put stuff on and dial 053 9430748 today!

This year (2010) we are receiving many “website design” briefs in from businesses who have decided to look online to increase sales and promote their businesses. They have either come up with a design brief themselves or they have got in a marketing consultant in to help them do the website design.

Great, more inquiries, I’m happy, the guys in here are happy.

That is until we open the brief and it is nearly identical to the last one, except the name of the company have been changed! So some hero in an office has copied and pasted in a specification that was created for some other business and thought that it would do for their own business.

Who should design a website?

More and more these days we find that companies are willing to get anyone who owns a pc to design a website for them, Great work away and then later when it all goes wrong we get a call asking us to help out. We can and we do without saying ” I told you so…”  But if you want to get a job done right from the start going to a professional business may not be as expensive as you think.

Web packages can start off from as little as €600 these days, (I know you can swap them for a sandwich and marble too) but generally prices are not €20k or 30k anymore.

This image is just one of the pages from a 25 page web design specification that we received in and they client was looking for a website that had all the bells and whistles and they amount of pages was around 170 mark. We had emails flying to and from the clients making sure this was the exact design that they had needed and they were positive it was.

The Meeting.

They came to our offices and we discussed the objectives of the website and the reasoning behind the structure that they have come up with. Most of it was unnecessary and the goals of the project we defined by both parties listening to how the web really works and what they wanted to gain from the new website.

The website is now actually just a normal Content Managed Website that will have about 60 pages and their staff will be trained on how to make more pages if required in the future.

Their website specification made the price of the website much higher than it needed to be and finally now they will get a brand new website at a great price and with a proper structure and layout, not menu upon menu and everything being buried 4 or 5 clicks deep.

Designing a website is not rocket science, but it is a computer science and no matter what field in business you are in, you are in it for a reason. Hopefully because you are good at it. Therefore my rant for today is : stick to what you know in terms of business knowledge.

I have a ruler and and pencil, I’m not an architect !

So if you are starting to look at designing or redesigning your own company website and need to make a good first impression and not bamboozle your target market then talk to us today on 053 9430748

My name is Dave Jordan, I’m here Tuesdays & Thursdays, Try the veil.

Wexford Bed and Breakfast Breaks at Kilmore Quay

Just a quick note to let our readers know that one of our clients, Groveside farm Bed and Breakfast in Kilmore Quay  Wexford, is offering a special discount for those looking to stay more than one consecutive night bb at their friendly bandb in Wexford.

Kilmore Quay Wexford is a delightful fishing village perfect for a romantic getaway or a stopoff from the ferry. Boat trips to the Saltee Islands are also very popular here for all you springwatch viewers!

Treat yourself this June and have a family friendly holiday break in Wexford - The Sunny South East!

Contact mary by email:  stay@grovesidefarm.com or tel her on: +353 (0) 53 91 35305 for more details.

Groveside Farm BandB Wexford:   www.grovesidefarm.com

Clonmines Joinery Staircase Specialists Wexford

Cada media are delighted to announce Clonmines Joinery Wexfords’ new look website at www.clonminesjoinery.ie.

Clonmines Joinery Ltd are based in Co Wexford and design and manufacture Bespoke Staircases including:

• Georgian Stairs
• Traditional Stairs
• Contemporary Stairs
• Straight Stairs
• Curved Stairs
• Wrought Iron Stairs
• Stairs Incorporating Glass
• Stairs Incorporating Brick and Stone
• Bespoke Staircase Design

Clonmines Joinery use the best timber, sourced from replenishable and well managed forests throughout Ireland, Europe and America. They also supply a comprehensive range of off standard custom designed window boards in both hardwood and softwood and are proud to be the only company in Ireland manufacturing curved window boards.

Cada Media Ltd wish Elaine, Willie and the team at Clonmines Joinery the very best with the new website.

If your looking for high quality Staircase design in Wexford, Waterford, Dublin, Kilkenny, Cork, Carlow and to the Uk then contact Clonmines Joinery Ltd at www.clonminesjoinery.ie

BT taken over by Vodafone

Great news for some, hassle and agro for others!

If you are a BT broadband customers and you have found that you can not send emails since last week it might be due to the new settings that you will have to make to your our going server in your email program. It’s not us who changed these, its the Internet service provider themselves.

mail.vodafone.ie

That is the new out going mail server for the BT/Vodafone broadband customers. I wonder did BT or vodafone tell anyone or just put an advert in the Nationals about this. Only because we get about 1 call per day asking why they can’t send emails and when I explain they usually laugh and suggest that they would have received some notifuication about it.

Well I’m telling ye!

If you can not send emails, double check with your IPS, Internet Service Provider as they have setting they need you to have on your PC in order to send emails.

We have worked on many online shops over the years and one of the funny things to come up in the conversation is the ability to run a business from a private house, especially if you have a family. Running an online shop and using the house as storage often leads to issues with storage and the availability to have enough stock in place.

Many businesses choose to either reduce the amount of items they sell or reduce the number of lines they sell. Another issue is the insurance of the stock that you keep in the house, no to mention the security of the stock if it is expensive small items.

One of the suggestions that we have to these types of businesses is to use a storage business, here in the south east, it would mean talking to Staffords Self Storage.  Secure units that are covered by CCTV and an owner that Bites! John Stafford has built a number of storage units to suit all needs, ranging from some as small as wardrobes to garage size lock ups that are ideals for storing cars and holiday home / camping / ourdoor equipment.

So if you have an online shop in the south east and are wondering where else you could store the products besides from your kids bedroom or the leaky shed why not take a visit to Stafford Self Storage near Gorey, Co. Wexford

Contact is John Stafford

www.staffordsselfstorage.com

Yes,  the age old question that every web designer looses sleep over,

Does Size Matter?

Does Size Matter?

Deos Size Matter?

The answer is yes, for over 10 years now we have been creating websites that abide to Google Webmaster rule and keep website page small in order to help keep the Size of the page small. One of the methods of keeping the size of a page small is to make sure the images have been reduced in MB size to KB size.

Often these days we find that companies using Content Management Software (CMS) will have the ability to update a website themselves, Great until they update the website with out decreasing the images in megabyte size to a smaller size that will help download the website faster. We see people reducing the image size by grabbing a conor and dragging the image to “appear” smaller but in fact its still 5mb in size.

Remember is the epidose of Father Ted, when Father Ted was explaining to Dougle the difference in size of object in showing hime something “near” and something “far away”, well its the exact same in theis case. Just because the image appears to be smaller, doesnt actually mean that it has changed in volumn in terms of megabyte size.

Anyway, Google is telling us again to stick to these rules so if you have a website and are interested in keeping the Gods happy we would suggest abiding by their rules.

Google Website Speed tips

Just a quick word to say thatnks to everyone in organising the CloudCamp in Dublin this week. A great event covering fantastic topics from database archituecture in the Cloud, Data Protection, Storage and many more. These type of events are great for business networking and helping each business involved in designing web applications of the future.

Cada Media Ltd were there to put their foot in the door of this emerging technology that is sweeping across the country. Not only the large multinationals can use the scalability of Cloud Computing but in fact we are being asked all the time about the use of Cloud for small businesses in rural ireland.

Last week we were contact by two local businesses who are shutting down their in house Windows servers and looking at getting a dedicated hosted web server that will host their emails, office files and their office software in general.

This is where Cada Media come into the picture, we are working with these type of business in helping them choose the right platform to host their company data and applications.

Well done to all involved.

Had an interesting conversation with a client last week about how the effect of having no email for a 24 hour period effected this business. I should add that this was just 1 email address, the info@ address the business uses.

I should paint a picture a little clearer, this is a small rural business in the west of Ireland, 3 people, 1 in the office and 2 out on site working with clients in a service industry.

Whilst some work was been carried out on their website/hosting by ourselves we had some downtime. (I have to put my hand up and say that it was from our part that they emails were being queued on the server, meaning they were not being pushed through to their office pc, but waiting to be pushed towards them)

So we started work on this hosting/email facility for this one email address at about 3 in the afternoon and we had hoped it was sorted by about 6pm that evening but alas now we know that it was still not functioning the next morning and that afternoon too. Once we twigged what it was we were able to rectify it and they got the emails, minus the spam etc etc.

What did we learn?

1, that we now have a new procedure in place to make sure the email set up is signed off

2, that a business not having email, even for 1 day, with 1 email address, can be considered closed down!

Yes, we got a call from the client stating that people will think they are closed down and that in a recession not to have your emails responded to is very serious to a business. I agreed and we have resolved the matter now and all is well, but I really was able to see if from a customers point of view too.

Are you answering your emails?

Do you only answer your email at 9am, 13:00 and then again at 17:00?

The recession has meant that we all assume that if we dont hear back from a business that they have gone out of business.

Conclusion: Answer your emails and do it sooner than your competitor will.

(I’m learning too here folks, I’m not the fastest when relying to people either!)

We would like to welcome Sara Cullen to the team at Cada Media Ltd. Sara is joining us in an ainistrative role, with great experience working in the Gorey Chamber of commerce office we hope the her talents will suit our small and dynamic team. Welcome on board Sara.

This is a great question and often when I’m sitting in a meeting with potential clients there is an open discussion about colours and graphics to be used on a website and maybe a brochure is put on the table asking can we replicate it on a website.

2 Different mediums.

After working in the print industry and migrating into the online publishing and website design industry it is interesting to see that many people are looking at a website like is was a printed brochure and often will have a totally different idea of what people want than ourselves.  Maybe its being responsible for running hundreds of websites and seeing how they do in search engines that gives us a unique point of view.

Website Stats

A website tells you everyday how it’s doing, it communicates to you and tells you who, where, when, what type of screen it was viewed on etc etc. A website doesnt cost extra for extra colours of the fonts that you use because we are limted to the number of fonts a user has installed on their PC. If we use a fancy font, it will only display correctly on computers that has it installed. The alternative is to create a graphic in photoshop that has the word or phrase written on it. We have to remember that a search engine can not read that text, only humans can, and if they can not read it they can not index what is says, so you can have a graphic designer create a lovely looking website that may be slow to download and hard to find in a search.

Don’t get me wrong, I like graphics, I love designing website, but I must always keep my target market in mind and if I was to design a website for the visual pleasure of the audience and neglect the websites main function.   To get found and give the person the content they are asking for.

Content is king.

A graphic design has a responsibility, a web designer does too, they must both create and make an impressions, the difference is the first is a matter of opinion by a user and the latter is a mixture of what the user likes and what a search engine will read. Indexing a website is a complex matter and depending on how you layout a website will depend on how the website is read. We have guidelines on the layout, font usage, font colour, so its not a case of beauty in the eye of the beholder.

Most of the websites that are in the top 3 searches in google will have little use of graphics and I would estimate are used very sparenly. We get asked every week to “fix” a website and in nearly every case it is due to a graphic heavy website that is not being indexed to its pull capabilities.

This doesnt mean that you have to remove the nice graphics on a website to get in indexed better, but just to note that it’s not the most important part of the site’s purpose. If you talk to a programmer they will be looking in a completely different direction too as they are looking at the database structure and how many sql queries each click makes and the impact on search engines and believe me they will take more of the graphic design away than I would.

My 3 rules for website design

Content

Content

Content

If you are interested in graphic design and website design and have any comments we would be pleased to hear them.

Ok, now I know I said I wouldn’t rant anymore and try to keep this area for news and products launches etc, but I just have to mention “browser compatibility” and websites. Yesterday we had an existing customer ask why their new website we are creating looks weird in Internet Explorer 6.

When I checked the site in Version 6 of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer I did see differences, now as it turns out when I talked to our developer she told me the client was looking at a “draft version” she was actually working on as the call happened. So really it was like standing beside a builder working on a wall as he’s laying each block. It’s better to come back after lunch and see the final product!

Anyways, What I’m getting to is that fact that when we design a website we design a site to be compatible with a number of browsers, and in fact we do what we call in the business as “future proofing” the website. So her site will in fact be compatible with smart phones and iphones etc.

Microsoft no longer support older version of Internet Explorer including version 5 and we can go a step further by telling you that Google too are discontinuing support for version 6 later this year too. So really if you want to have a website that is compatible with all the major Internet browsers and all the versions and revisions, I would ask you to think about a few things.

Who are you aiming at, the people using older versions of browsers are people who don’t move with the times, who are happy with what they currently have and I could nearly guess might not trust the Internet enough to even shop on-line, where as people browsing using newer Internet browsers such as Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above will be the type of people you want and need.

Think about the future folks, . . . . . . .shhh . . . . don’t tell anyone but . . . . It’s coming !

Its great to see new businesses starting up all the time and we often have to remind people the life has not stopped and this is apparent as we learnt of the investment in building and security that David O Sullivan has recently completed in his new massive buildings near Gorey in Co Wexford.

Storage Facilities in Wexford.

Storage facilities are often for self storage for small items like a barbaque or a few boxes from the attic, where as here at Self East Storage they store big stuff, Antique cars, motor bikes, Camper vans, Motor homes, dingy’s and even Yachts from the local Sailing clubs in Wicklow and Wexford.

Services included:

• Website Training
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Link Building
• Web Marketing

www.SouthEastStorage.ie

We would like to wish David & Aine the best of luck with the new website and hope they keep it freash and up to date with the Content Management System.

We are often asked if we can sponsor a website or give a free website to people. We do sponsor websites sometimes, but it depends on the site, if its a registered charity or maybe the local lost pet group then yes we might be in a situation to help, but if you are a small club or group then maybe you could look at using on online web site building tool. We have looked at these before but one that we see being used a good bit in Wexford is one called Weebly.com

Built the website yourself.

Website creations tools are not new, they have been around for many years now, but we hear that weebly.com is an easy to use , fast method of creating a website yourself in a few minutes. Allowing you to update it with images, text and videos.

It’s not what we use and I wouldn’t recommend it for any real business as its just a basic web-page builder. Please don’t mistake this for being the “be all and end all” of website development and think that it’s gonna put us out of business. It’s not. This is for building a basic web-page, its not an online marketing strategy to gain you more sales leads and growing your business over the next 5 years and mentoring your businesses digital strategy. It’s a web-page and only that.

Don’t expect to get support or help in it’s creation or promotion.

It is however a good step for struggling businesses who can’t afford any budget on using the net to help their business.

Once you have the site built you can come to use to help promote it and get it listed in search engines and local directories.