At Chilli Chocolate Marketing we have one rule when it comes to computers: when in doubt, get a Mac. We’re undoubtedly in the minority though, as all recent studies show that Microsoft Windows still dominates the Australian corporate desktop.
Tech guru Renai LeMay of Delimiter recently asked a range of industry commentators – including yours truly – about the pros and cons of using Macs in the workplace.
Over recent months we have worked on a number of projects with a fixture of Adelaide's home-improvement industry, Homeplus Improvements. We have been able to assist Homeplus Improvements with a number of behind-the-scenes technical details - the sorts of things we touched on in our post "Know your domain details" - in order to launch a new website to support Homeplus Improvements's salespeople and sales activities.
Has it worked?
Time is money, as the old adage goes. But how many of us actually consider what that means to us personally? Well, what it means is this: when you waste time in your business you waste money in your business.
Here are some common-sense tips in a guest post from Hayes Knight SA Director Tim Sargent, aimed at improving efficiency in the office and maximising the usefulness of your time, both as an individual and as a member of a workplace team.
Hot on the heels of the commentary in our last newsletter regarding the importance of your website's geophysical location for search engine listings ("Location, location, location") comes news that Google now includes your website's load time as a factor influencing your Google Ranking. Load time? What? Well, what this means is that Google will consider your website to be less important if it loads slowly. If you can click on a link to your company website then go and make a cup of coffee before the frontpage loads, you should be worried.
Here's Matt Cutts from Google explaining why:
So how can you speed up your website and get back in Google's good books?
Here are some quick tips:
Make sure your server admin has tuned your web server for speed. A simple tweak like enabling HTTP compression on the server can speed up your site's load time by a huge degree.
Make sure your site is well-designed at the code level. Clean efficient code makes for a faster-loading website. If you wouldn't know a well-coded site from a badly-coded one, talk to someone who would!
If you have a database-driven site, consider implementing a software solution to enable your site to be presented as static pages. Every millisecond that your site has to talk to its database now counts against you.
Optimise your site's images. Image files like GIFs, JPGs, and PNGs each have advantages and disadvantages. If you don't know why you should choose one over the other, you may be slowing your site down unnecessarily.
When Google announced this change to its ranking policy, we made several "speedup" tweaks to one of our testing sites and saw improvements immediately. If your website is crucial to your business and you need someone to translate the search-engine technojargon into plain English, talk to us today about Search Engine Optimisation.
--Simon
I have long retained one leftover from my time living in Sydney: membership in the NRMA. When my household acquired another vehicle recently, I contacted the NRMA -- hey, I'm a customer! -- to make sure that the vehicle was added to my account so that I would still receive roadside assistance if I ever found myself in a tight spot. The operator I spoke to informed me that I would need a new membership specific to that vehicle, effectively doubling my payments. When I queried this policy and pointed out that a membership in South Australia's RAA would cover me regardless of which vehicle I was in, the operator suggested that maybe I should just cancel my NRMA membership seeing as I lived in South Australia anyway.
I was gobsmacked.
"Let me get this straight. I've been with you for over ten years, a regular paying customer, and you're saying... maybe I should just swap to another provider?"
The operator replied with some indifference that I might as well. I replied that if the NRMA didn't care if I remained a customer or not, I didn't care to.
Here are some things I might also have pointed out if I thought that the operator cared:
But I didn't. So I didn't.
Suffice to say that I am now an RAA member :)
If anyone from the NRMA is happens to read this, you need to talk to your customer service representatives... they're not helping your organisation!
Kelly Wright
Since last October (when we asked rhetorically "Social Networking – what’s it all about?") we've fielded a lot of enquiries about Internet social networking and how exactly such services can help small businesses and their operators. We've found some great resources at UK site Marketing Donut for getting started using online social networking to help you as individuals, to drive sales, and to form stronger relationships with your customers.
LinkedIn is a free business-focused networking platform that seeks to replicate the ‘real-life’ process of word-of-mouth introductions between trusted contacts. It has a global reach, with 8.5 million members, and straddles a great many industries and sectors.
Facebook is a free networking website which enables friends to keep in touch with each other by acting as a hub for a range of online social activities. ‘Friends’ - ie people who opt into each other’s networks — can post short ‘status updates’ about what they are doing or feeling, share photos and videos, recommend other websites, leave messages on message boards, have ‘real time’ online conversations, and much more besides.
Twitter is a free online ‘micro-blogging’platform that enables you to send punchy messages (‘tweets’) to other Twitter users. Messages are limited to just 140 characters and can be read by anybody else on Twitter, even if they are initially directed at members of your personal network (your ‘followers’).
So what are you waiting for? Jump in!
--Simon
Thank you to all of you who've sent me your chocolate recipes - its amazing the number of you that require alcohol with your chocolate :-) I'm going to try each recipe and if I absolutely love it I will put it in our newsletter - with you and your company credited of course!
This issue however I'm going to give you one of my easiest recipes using chocolate.
Chocolate Omelette (I have been making this for years and it never gets old)
Beat the eggs like you would a normal omelette then mix in the drinking chocolate powder. Pour into a non-stick oven-friendly frying pan and cook until the bottom is set. Sprinkle the chocolate buttons (chopped pieces, chips etc) over the top of the omelette and then put under the grill until cooked to your liking. Put a large spoonful of Pauls Dollop cream or vanilla ice-cream on the top and eat.
Enjoy!
Kelly Wright - kelly@chillichocolatemarketing.com
Google's search engine is based on an link analysis algorithm known as PageRank. Google occasionally tweaks the PageRank algorithm to place greater or lesser emphasis on particular variables in order to improve its service. One of the things that Google has done recently is to include the geographical location of a website's server as an influential factor. Where your website is hosted now affects your Google ranking.
Read MoreBased just south of Adelaide in McLaren Vale, Chilli Chocolate Marketing is a boutique marketing agency with a particular focus on email marketing, customer retention, and relationships.
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