Notting Hill Internet Services blog » Amber

Case Study: 5Dillon.com

Amber — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:15:38 +0000

Case: 5 Dillon is a brand new boutique selling fabulous, high quality, new,gently used, and reinvented items at incredibly accessible prices. As the boutique is located in a small town there are limitations on the number of customers that may visit the store. 5 Dillon wanted to expand their potential customer base by having a strong online presence and an online boutique where selected items will be available to purchase.

Solution: We created a site that mimicked the look and feel of the beautiful cottage that the boutique is run from. The E-commerce facility enables 5 Dillon to maintain their online shop and receive payments online. The built in Content Management System gives them the ability to manage and update their website text as required. The site has also incorporated features to maximise marketing opportunities, such as signing up to 5 Dillon’s mailing list, and friend referrals as well as links to their Facebook and Twitter pages.

Results: As a physical store 5 Dillon’s customer base is limited to the residents of their town. Now they have an online presence 5 Dillon can now reach a far wider target market, maximising their opportunities for sales and income.

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Coming in with a BING!

Amber — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:28:41 +0000

No doubt, by now all you techno buffs out there have heard of Bing, the new search engine by Microsoft, which went live on June 1, 2009.

While Bing’s core index is the same as Microsoft Live Search, Bing comes with some notable additions including:

§ the listing of search suggestions in real time as queries are entered

§ a list of related searches, called ‘Explorer pane’ which display on the left side of search results

§ instant previews of websites and videos

§ automatic categorisation of search results

§ ‘Best Match’ results with deep links

§ Save & Share’ search histories via Windows Live SkyDrive, Facebook and e-mail

There has been much debate in the media and online about how Bing compares with Google and other search engines and if Google now has competition for the top spot. A quantifiable way to measure this is being worked on by Michael Kordahi of Microsoft. He has developed and is refining a blind search engine that displays results in three columns with identical formatting representing actual results from Bing, Google and Yahoo where users can vote for the best results.

Even if Bing turns out to be the better search engine, the question still remains if Googles’ brand loyal followers can be lured away. Not to mention that Google’s search tools are commonly pre-installed in new PC’s and that Google is the default search engine for Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox. Bing certainly has an uphill climb but perhaps it has anticipated the ever increasing wants and needs of today’s sophisticated Internet user.

Joomla Coming Soon!

Amber — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:08:45 +0000

The word Joomla is being banded about the Internet at a rate these days but what is it?

Joomla is an award winning content management system (CMS), which enables users to build websites and online applications. As Joomla is an open source solution it is a free project.

Joomla can be used to build:

Corporate websites or portals
Corporate intranets and extranets
Online magazines, newspapers and publications
E-commerce and online reservations
Government applications
Small business websites
Non-profit and organisational websites
Community-based portals
School and church websites
Personal or family homepages

We have jumped on the Joomla bandwagon and our Development Team is currently incorporating the Joomla interface as a tool that our clients can use to manage their websites.

We are very excited by this development, and look forward to offering our clients even more management solutions.

Watch this space for updates and our Joomla launch.