Blog

  • 4 Keys to Better Productivity In my role as technology consultant I often have the experience of watching people using their computers and smart phones. I see them wrestle and wrangle their way through Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, often without much finesse and even more often with a great deal of struggle. Take this example from a few days ago: One of ...
  • Not just building websites… Most of you know insilico as a web design and development company. But we are much more… But before i continue why should you care? Well because I think we can help you. The days of businesses just building websites are now a fading memory. With business owners catching on to the idea that their website is more than ...
  • Haven’t you forgotten something? It seems like much of our time spent running our businesses is spent obsessing over a myriad different compliance and registration issues. From company registrations to motor vehicle licences to employee certifications there are a plethora of things to remember to comply with. How do you manage? Is it in an Excel spreadsheet? Or do you store them all ...
  • What is your business missing? A really interesting thing happened to me late last year – I attended a course on how to better run my business and came away with the missing piece of a personal productivity issue I had been wrestling with for ages. The course was a Practitioners Introduction to Holacracy which is a kind-of GTD for businesses, ...
  • The Paddington Alehouse insilico wishes to congratulate the Paddo on winning Best Sports Bar of the Year for the 2nd year running. Congratulations to Ben and the team for an outstanding effort!!
  • Meredith Saayman Lawyers Meredith Saayman Lawyers was created in 2012 after the merging of two successful Perth based practices – Meredith & Co Lawyers and Saayman Law Pty Ltd. As an existing client, David Meredith contacted us to re-brand their existing HTML website to match the livery of the new practice.
  • Arlington Apartments Arlington Apartments is a strata unit with a number of different owners. The counsel of owners wanted a website where they could share information with the owners both public and private. We developed this self-managed website and added a embers only area to provide 2 levels of private information: information for all owners, and information specific ...
  • Atlantic Health Atlantic Health wanted a redesigned website to replace their earlier one. They also wanted a self-managed site so they could promote the various events and courses they held. Their new website provides all that as well as an event manager making it easy to host and promote events, including a Google Map to make the venue ...
  • How To Keep Your Website Safe, Sound and Secure With the release of another new version of WordPress, our preferred Content Management System (CMS) of choice, it seemed the ideal time for us to introduce Web Maintenance Agreements. To find out more about our new Maintenance Agreements, click here and we’ll have your website safe, sound and secure in now time!
  • Basic WCAG 2.0 Principles WCAG 2.0 is founded on 4 “top level” principles. These require that accessible web content must be: Perceivable: Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language. Provide alternatives for time-based media. Create content that can be presented in different ...
  • Changes to Website Accessibility The Sydney Olympics website set an international precedent when a website user with visual impairment could not access information on an event that was being run. He was awarded $20,000 under the Disability Discrimination Act One in five Australians has a disability, and the proportion is growing. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities ...
  • Getting Your Website Noticed Having other websites link to your website will influence your search engine rankings. These are known as inbound links where your website is listed on another website and when someone clicks on the listing, it takes them to your website. For example a real estate company may be listed on www.realestate.com.au. When someone clicks ...
  • Optimising Images It is widely known that the loading time of a website has a major influence on the overall experience of a user on your site. Research has shown that users will leave a site if images/photos fail to load within 4 seconds. A best practice for speeding up your website loading time is to optimise images. ...
  • Is your website a billboard in the desert? Just because you have a website does not mean that it can be easily found among the millions that are out there. Many people think that having a website built for them means they will automatically have heaps of people find them online and it will totally change their business. Sadly this is ...
  • 7 Golden Rules for Corporate Website Content When it comes to making your corporate website stand out in the crowd there are 7 golden rules to follow. These golden rules will ensure that your website has a higher impact rate as well as increasing visitors to your site. At to insilicoTM we can look at your website objectively and see if your ...
  • A Statistical Look At Online Marketing As the way people seek information evolves, interesting trends develop. Research has shown that the internet is having a huge effect on the advertising industry with 22% looking at printed publications, 25% discussing in person and 47% using the internet. Australian customers consume more online media that anything else when researching and searching for local ...
  • How Does AdWords Work? When a user enters a search query on Google.com, Google scans keywords on each webpage in its index to see if that page matches the user’s query. Google then displays the webpages that most relate to the word or phrase entered in the query. Google also displays ads in response to search queries. But with ads, ...
  • What is Google AdWords? According to the Google AdWords website it is a service that lets you create and run ads for your business. You can set a budget and you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. AdWords ads are displayed along with search results when someone searches Google using one of your keywords. Ads appear under ...
  • 25 Reasons Why Another Site Will Link to Yours Here are 25 reasons why another site could provide a link back to your website: You pay them for the listing You are a member of a Trade or Association People are discussing your products You are a member of a local group You make a great case study You belong to a specific demographic group You submit a tip You comment on ...
  • How Video Can Help with Your Search Engine Optimisation Google is placing more value on the length of time that visitors stay on your website. One way to make them stay for longer is to have video on your site. Results from a recent study suggest that a product page with a video on it is 53 times more likely to achieve a page ...
  • Do You Know How Many People Visit Your Website? You have a website – great! But do you know how effective it is? Do you know: How many people visit your website? How long they stay on your site? Which pages are the most viewed? How people are finding your website? If you are not able to answer any of the above questions, then you can’t be ...
  • Planning a Website We often meet clients who know they want a website but are unsure of how it can help their business. A friend, a colleague or their business coach may have told them they need an online presence but that is as much thought that has gone in to working out exactly what they are trying to ...
  • Hyphens in Domain Names There has been a lot of debate as to whether domain names should contain a hyphen or not. There are a few things to consider when making your decision: Benefits: Hyphenated domain names work with targeted key word campaigns If your domain name is long with several words that could be read incorrectly, then hyphens are good ...
  • Are Your Domain Registration Details Up To Date? Many people register a domain, especially small businesses and sole traders, using whatever email address they have at the time – typically, this is the email address you got from your Internet Provider e.g. johns@hotmail.com. And this is one of the most important contact details to keep up to date unless you want your domain whipped ...
  • Dropbox When we build websites our client’s often have large photos to send us. Most of you have probably discovered by now that emailing that large photo, say 10MB doesn’t work. “Why not?” I hear your cry! Well there are a couple of reasons: When non-textual “content” is emailed, it gets “UUEncoded”. This is ...
  • Not All Domain Renewals Are Equal!! Over the last couple of years we have had several clients contact us to check if a domain renewal notice they have received is legitimate. There are 3 different types of “renewal” notices that we are aware they have received: Notice that appears to be an invoice but offers a renewal for a domain name that ...
  • Does Your Website Have a Sales System? Every organisation that wants to grow online must sooner or later develop an effective sales system. An online sales system is a set of principles, processes, strategies and tools that are put into place to make a website bring in the results day-in and day-out. Most companies fail to incorporate a sales system into their websites ...
  • Planning an eNewsletter So you have decided you want to send a regular eNewsletter campaign to your clients but are not sure where to start. Firstly, plan a newsletter template and stick to the same format each newsletter. This way you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. One example of a format to follow could be: Article 1 ...
  • Newsletter Campaign Checklist Remember that all communications from your office are a reflection of your business. Before you hit the send button for your next newsletter campaign, you might want to check the following items: Is there a clear call to action for readers? Is there a reason for readers to act right now? Is the subject line compelling? Has the ...
  • 5 Tips for eNewsletter Campaigns If you go to the effort of preparing an eNewsletter, you want to make sure that the person receiving it at least opens your email and preferably reads it too! Here are some tips to help get the results you are chasing: Be consistent – decide how often you intend to send a campaign and stick to ...
  • Raise Your Hand Remember when you were in school and the teacher asked a question that you knew the answer to – but you were hesitant to raise your hand? Darn… another student gave your correct answer and got the credit. That was a good lesson learned – you’ve got to raise your hand. Are you raising your hand often ...
  • Evernote If you haven’t discovered Evernote yet you are in for a treat!!!! Evernote is a program that can be downloaded and installed on your computer and, as the name suggests, you can write notes in it. You can also take screenshots from your Mac or PC and store them in Evernote. But that’s not all. There’s ...
  • Keeping In Touch A newsletter is a great way to keep in touch with your clients and customers, and if you’re not contacting them on a regular basis then you might find they’re looking for someone who will! At insilicoTM we can build your newsletter template and then we can hand it over to you and you can send ...
  • Why PDF’s Can Sabotage Your Newsletters By now, many of you realise the benefits of sending newsletters to your existing customers: You can keep in touch frequently You can inform them about things that may affect them You can tell them about changes you are making But are you doing it properly? For example, did you know that in Australia we have the Spam Act ...
  • So we have some suggestions you can use to help drive business your way 1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) While a lot of businesses have cut back their spending, not everyone has. There are still lots of businesses that are spending. In fact, some are spending more as they see this as a time to spend less money (as businesses discount their services) to get more coverage to generate more ...
  • Is Your Website Being Found? So, you’ve finally done it! You’ve built your first website for your business! Now you can just sit back and all that business will fly in through the door, won’t it? What? It won’t? What do you mean that there are 7 million other pages about businesses just like mine? But the Internet is the way of ...
  • Helping Google Find Your Website Here are 10 steps you can follow to make your site easier to use and easier for Google to find, index and rank: Have clear hierarchy Have clear text links Offer your visitors a site map Do not use too many links on any given page Write clearly and use lots of keywords and phrases that relate to your topic Use ...
  • Improve Your Rankings Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via natural search results for targeted keywords. The higher a page ranks in the Search Engines the earlier it will appear in the search results. A higher ranking page is likely to receive more ...
  • I Have A Website, But What Do I Do Now? After hours of work you have just launched your shiny new website. You are waiting with anticipation for the results – new visitors, new orders and new business. But nothing is happening… Why is nothing happening? There are a number of factors affecting the interest in your website: No-one knows about your website – you may have ...
  • Survey Monkey Don’t be afraid to ask your customers what they really, really want. We recently surveyed some of our clients and the results were suprising. We thought they wanted one thing but the results showed that they actually wanted something else…. It has never been easier to send a survey to your clients. We ...
  • Generating More Leads From Your Website What is it that you want your website to achieve? If you really think about it, I bet your answer is – more leads. The more leads you have, the better your chance of achieving a sale of your goods or services – right? Or even better is a targeted lead – someone who ...
  • Colour My Website Have you ever thought about the colours used on websites that you visit? There is a whole psychology behind colours. For example: Red = energy, passion, excitement, power but it can also imply aggression and danger Blue = coolness, spirituality, freedom, patience, loyalty, peace, trustworthiness but it can imply sadness and depression. Have you ever heard of Corporate ...
  • Typography – What Font? In The Principles of Beautiful Typography it is suggested that In order to start your quest for the perfect font, you should first define the feelings you’re trying to evoke in the members of your target audience. Are you trying to show that the company the web site represents is hip and young, or would you ...
  • Tips for Facebook Marketing Take the guesswork out of Facebook marketing, and follow these 5 tips for making the most of your fan page: Keep content fresh Engage new visitors Promote a contest via Facebook Give fans something they can’t get anywhere else Encourage interaction If you haven’t done so already, start promoting your social media presence.  Have a Facebook icon prominently displayed on your site and print ...
  • Facebook Pages If you haven’t already integrated Facebook into your online marketing mix by creating a fan page, consider recent staggering Facebook statistics: More than 500 million users are active on Facebook 50% of active users log in on any given day The average user spends 55 minutes a day on Facebook More than 1.6 million active Facebook fan pages have ...
  • Managing your social media campaigns We have found a fantastic free online tool for helping us manage our social media campaigns is Hootsuite.  We are able to manage our Facebook Page, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts via this site.  Even better, is the fact that we can manage multiple accounts which is great news when managing personal, company and client accounts. The site ...
  • What do you look for on the web? There are many reasons why you would log onto the internet on any given day.  Some of the reasons include the following: To research, compare, and purchase products To find and interact with other people (business colleagues, friends, romantic interests) To get daily news and information delivered in real time To search for and find information about any topic ...
  • Why your website matters Have you ever thought about why you have a website or what outcome you desire from the site? We talk to a lot of people who know they should have a website but aren’t quite sure what they want it to do or why they should have it. Some purely want an online brochure that they can ...
  • Making your website mobile Your website is your very important piece of digital real estate on the World Wide Web. Your website engages visitors, generates new business and acts as a community hub for your clients. But what happens when your website is viewed on something other than the average computer? The explosion of mobile devices such as iPads, iPhones ...
  • I want a website but where do I start? So you’ve decided you want a website but are not quite sure where to begin.  We usually recommend to our clients to consider the following: What do you want the website to do? Is the site to be purely a way to provide information about your company and your products or services in the same way a ...
  • 10 Website Tips We can all do with some help at times so here are a few tips on how to keep your website current and interesting: Post “news” items or stories about your company’s successes to your website Use your website to show how effective your company, products or services really are Let your clients do the talking through testimonials Add a Twitter ...
  • Creating a Dynamic Website If you were a new visitor to your website would you come back to it after your initial visit?  If your answer is “no” then what would make you come back again? Your website may be the most frequently viewed image of your business. Regularly updating your website will convey that your company is dynamic.  Out-dated ...
  • Building a Meta Website Meta-tags. A word that will make any search engine optimisation officer stand to attention and your average Joe peer around in confusion. What are meta-tags? Meta-tags are a few lines of code inserted in the beginning a web page, invisible to users but vital to having your website found by search engines. Meta-tags supply information to ...
  • Let’s talk about RSS RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it has simplified the way that people stay up to date with their favourite websites. RSS readers work in a really easy way. Step 1: Add your favourite websites’ addresses to the feed reader Step 2: Read Feed readers put all the websites in one place and every time something new ...
  • Helping Google find your website – quality guidelines In our last blog, we showed you some technical tricks to help Google find your website. In our final blog in the ‘Helping Google find your website’ series, you are going to learn about Google’s quality guidelines. Nobody likes spam, and Google will respond negatively to attempts to spam and be deceptive on the web by refusing ...
  • Helping Google find your website – technical guidelines So far in this blog series ‘Helping Google find your website’ we have talked about simple changes you can make to your website’s text and images to make it easier for Google to find, index and rank your website. In this post, we are going to look at some more ways of improving your website’s visibility ...
  • Helping Google find your website – best practices for images In our last blog you learned how to optimise your website’s design and content to make it easier for Google to find, index and rank your site. In this blog, we will look more specifically at images, and how to get your website’s images showing up in Google Images searches. You can also check out a YouTube ...
  • Helping Google find your website – design and content Having a website that adheres to Google’s standards won’t just make it easier for Google. It will also make your site more user-friendly generally, which is always a good thing. There are several steps you can follow to make your site easier to use and easier for Google to find, index and rank… 1.      Your website should ...
  • ‘Helping Google find your website’ blog series There is no point in having a website if the major search engines don’t know it exists. Search engines like Google do not automatically detect your new website – you need to tell Google it’s there. In this blog series you will learn how to help Google find, index and rank your site. This will make ...
  • Welcome to our blog Welcome to our new blog – we hope this will be a valuable resource for our customers and anyone interested in web design to learn about Search Engine Optimisation, Hosting, Pay Per Click, Social Media, Training, Newsletters and website maintenance. Be sure to check back from time to time and see our latest posts!
  • go Fusion Electrical Go Fusion Electrical asked for a self-managed website that was simple to use with an aesthetic that reflected the clients they were looking for.