Webhouse Squad

Webhouse Squad.

It was a morning like any other, we all got to the office still tired from yesterday’s missions. But todays Wednesday…it means we all getting together to discuss what we’ve all find this week.

I slump down in my seat and start applying my mask, my war paint. I hear the heavy squeak of the door, I turns towards it and I see Dom the Don standing there, he signals for us to make our way to the Webhouse watch tower for the pow wow session.

When we’ve all gathered, Seshni Steel was first, she let us know about her find, soft spoken but she packed a good punch – http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/27/facebook-messenger-video-chat/ – Facebook Messenger Launches free VoIP video calls over cell and wifi.

Then me, Sam Storm, to be honest I didn’t really come prepared…I just needed to wing it….I felt all eyes on me. Listverse, http://listverse.com/ – http://listverse.com/2014/09/10/10-reasons-apple-will-control-the-future-of-mobile-technology/ – http://listverse.com/2014/09/09/10-ways-social-media-may-predict-the-future/  …these might not help us with everyday work, but they are a damn good read.

Zelda Zoom was next, she found a very interesting tool, knowing her, it would help us get the job done – http://thenextweb.com/ – The Next Web is a technology focused media company founded in 2006. It manages several initiatives focused on international technology news, business and culture.

http://gizmodo.com/all-the-stuff-you-can-send-to-your-android-phone-from-t-1700571807 -Over the last few weeks, Google has quietly been rolling out the ability to interact with your Android device on a limited basis, right from the search bar. It started with asking Google to “find my phone”; now, you can set alarms, send directions, or leave yourself a note – Is what Bronson Blade shared with us…good ol’ Blade…he always had the latest news.

Preetha Power was up, you could see by the grin on her face, she had a few secrets to share…

http://ideate.co.za/social-media-lessons-by-social-media-lawyer-emma-sadler-at-heavychef-event/ – Ideate | Business resources, tips, success stories, interviews and business ideas – https://twitter.com/EmmaSadleir

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/campaigns/google-chrome-spell-up.html – An online word game that helps you improve your English

http://blog.justperfect.co.za/ssl-certificate-why-it-matters-to-your-website-24032015/?utm_source=JustPerfect&utm_medium=Article_24032015&utm_campaign=JustPerfect – SSL Certificates (Secure Socket(s) Layer)

NAS stands for – Network Attached Storage….and here we all thought Theo Thunderdome gave the sucker a cute name.

http://www.marketingshropshire.com/blog-post/26/do-i-need-an-ssl-certificate-on-my-website.htm – Marketing Shropshire is a full service marketing company. In a nutshell this means we can handle all aspects of marketing, such as branding, websites, PR, social media and design and print.

http://www.semrush.com/ – SEMrush is created by SEO/SEM professionals for SEO/SEM professionals. We have the knowledge, expertise, and data to help you take your projects to the next level – Calvin Carnage shocks us with this little gem. He’s always thinking about the people.

As the meeting draws to a positive halt, we leave the tower feeling confidant and ready to take on anything.

Webhouse Squad…saving the world one website at a time.

Staffers of the “Sort of rectangle table”

Some websites we thought everyone could benefit from.

Last week in our meeting around the “sort of rectangle table” we were asked by Calvin to find a website we thought everyone at Webhouse could benefit from and then present them the following Wednesday.

These are our

Zelda the Sales Queen introduced us to http://blog.hubspot.com/sales – With our powerful, easy to use, integrated set of applications, businesses can attract, engage, and delight customers by delivering inbound experiences that are relevant, helpful, and personalized. HubSpot is, after all, on a mission to make the world more inbound, one business transformation after another.

Seshni the Website Warrior explained to us how to shorten – https://bitly.com – Since 2008, we have been committed to unleashing the power of the link. Based in New York City, we shorten nearly half a billion links per month as an integral part of social, SMS, email efforts (and more) from brands, marketers, publishers, government organizations, non-profits and individual users.

Thirusha the Support Samurai was so busy slashing those sales that she forgot to find a website but she promised that the next time we meet, she will have two websites to present.

Preetha the Princess of Production introduced us to Larry Kim – Larry Kim founded WordStream in 2007. He bootstrapped the company by providing internet consulting services while funding/managing a team of engineers and marketers to develop and sell software for search engine marketing automation. Larry on Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

AND

https://www.periscope.tv/about – Just over a year ago, we became fascinated by the idea of discovering the world through someone else’s eyes. What if you could see through the eyes of a protester in Ukraine? Or watch the sunrise from a hot air balloon in Cappadocia? It may sound crazy, but we wanted to build the closest thing to teleportation. While there are many ways to discover events and places, we realized there is no better way to experience a place right now than through live video. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but live video can take you someplace and show you around.

Bronson the Knight of ISP shared some interesting info with us – http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/03/30/introducing-project-spartan-the-new-browser-built-for-windows-10/ – “Project Spartan,” the new browser we are introducing in Windows 10. Project Spartan will be available across the Windows 10 device family. It is fast, compatible, and built for the modern Web. Project Spartan is designed to work the way you do, with features enabling you to do cool things like write or type on a webpage. It’s a browser that is made for easy sharing, reading, discovery and getting things done online.

AND

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/21/champageviews-for-my-real-friends/?ncid=rss&utm_medium=twitter#.gnpfce:qm1w – for some good tips and updates.

Calvin the Wizard of Aus – showed us http://twit.tv – The TWiT.tv Netcast Network with Leo Laporte features the #1 ranked technology podcast This Week in Tech, along with over 20 other top-ranked online shows.

Samwise the Scribe – presented us with http://www.technobuffalo.com/ – TechnoBuffalo has one focus: To help you get the most out of your tech lifestyle.

AND

http://www.polishmywriting.com/ – they use artificial intelligence and natural language processing technology to find your writing errors and offer smart suggestions.

Let us know if you have any helpful websites we could all be using to make our lives easier, or if any of these interested you!

Getting your Business out there

Image. Marketing. Advertising.

Three things you can’t ignore when owning or running a business.

Corporate Identity

How we identify ourselves and how we identify with others is very important. It can make or break relationships. But what about how we portray our business? Corporate Identities and branding reel the customers in, it’s the first “message” you send out to the public and this message has to have some good bait dangling on the end of the line. Your corporate Identity should portray exactly what clients can expect from you, your company and your employees…professionalism, quirkiness, knowledge, quality, power, structure. Building a good corporate identity is done through professionalism, passion and innovation. That’s where the Webhouse Group comes in.

Social Media Marketing

As of 3rd October 2013, there are 500 million People use Facebook, twitter has a reported 232 million users and LinkedIn has reached 300 million registered users since April last year, so if you haven’t jumped on the social media bandwagon yet, best you let Webhouse get you rolling straight away! With the numerous benefits of an online social media presence (Increased brand recognition, more opportunities to convert, better search engine rankings) you would be doing you and your company a favor by letting us create and or manage or both, your preferred social media accounts.

Search Engine Optimization

We all want our companies to appear on the first few pages of Google, we want our companies to stay there too, even if the end-user has tweaked his search terms slightly. Wikipedia explains SEO or Search Engine Optimization as the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” or unpaid (“organic”) search results. Here at the Webhouse Group we pride ourselves in our SEO abilities and results. With increased traffic, brand awareness and better ROI, SEO is not a cost…it’s an investment.

Google Ad Word Campaigns

Google AdWords is paid advertising or pay per click (PPC) advertising on Google, which means, when someone types in your key words in the search bar, your ad will pop up in the organic search results and you only pay if they click on it and go through to your website. A big benefit of Google AdWords is that YOU decide how much you want to spend daily or monthly so it’s very cost effective. You can measure and analyze exactly which key words are working for and which ones need work or need to be changed. Here at Webhouse, we will sit with you and decide on the best key words for your company and set up your Google Ad Words for you, with you deciding how much you would like to spend. So you can sit back and relax while we manage the campaign for you and your ads.

ADD TO YOUR BUSINESS

The Google Adwords campaign is an opportunity to use the vastness of the internet as a platform to spread the word about your business. And let’s be honest, who isn’t on the internet these days? It’s our first port-of-call for most things, especially when searching for a company that will fulfil a need your own business may have.

Just recently Webhouse has discovered the beauty of Adwords and in the space of a month, we have received four online enquiries thus far. Now this may seem like a marginal amount of enquiries when you look at the scope of the internet – but this is just the beginning, and these baby steps are a great start for us. The campaign itself takes some fine consideration and attention to detail when setting up – and the importance of geo-targetting, dividing your keywords into specific groups and using groups of negative keywords cannot be stressed enough. Taking the time to put some real thought into the set up of your Adwords campaign can really go a long way to ensuring you receive that bang for your buck.

If you are a stranger to Google Adwords, I will break it down for you…Adwords is paid online advertising for your business. The Adwords campaign works off a system of keywords so that when an end-user sits at their computer and types in a search query on Google, using a random set of keywords, your business’s ad will hopefully show up in amongst Google’s returned search results. Your ad will most likely relate to that person’s query as the keywords you have entered into your Adwords campaign should line up with what your business offers. So basically, you are selling your keywords, and not really the “ad” per se. Within the campaign you can set individual bidding amounts to each keyword, while Google also recommends good bidding amounts according to how other ads / keywords similar to yours are performing (what would we go without Google, seriously?).

The great news is that you only pay when someone clicks on your ad (hence the term pay-per-click advertising), you are able to set your own daily and monthly budget and there is no minimum. The only catch though is that the more money you are willing to spend, the better visibility your ad will receive. Remember how I talked about the scope of the internet previously? Well, there are hundreds of thousands of other ads floating within the “googlesphere”, so the competition is pretty fierce.

Google Adwords is a great way to get your business the exposure it needs, and the money you spend monthly on your ad can be made back in no time, and then some. Unfortunately the world we live in today thrives off the adage – you have to “spend money to make money” – and this couldn’t be more appropriate when it comes to Adwords. But it really doesn’t have to be an exorbitant amount! You can start small – baby steps – and keep track of your budget daily.

At Webhouse we offer the service of setting up an Adwords campaign for you (thoroughly and correctly) as well as weekly management of your campaign. You tell us your budget and we will try our very best to make a valuable return on your investment. There is also no need to sign into any sort of contract – we are able to run your campaign on a month-to-month basis.

Add to your business by launching it into the “Googlesphere” – contact us at Webhouse for more information on one of these campaigns: info@webhousegroup.com or support@webhousegroup.com.

TEMPLATE DESIGNS – ABOUT US PAGE

SIMPLE KNOWS BEST

Keeping it simple in today’s day and age does not refer to “dumbing things down” (ok, maybe it does a little). It is, in fact, a way of simplifying processes, outlooks, layouts, styles, guidelines and visuals in order to become more “efficient”, in order to maximize time, so that we can get more done. This is the way the world works today – squeezing every waking minute out of a 24-hour day, in the hopes of maybe making it a 25-hour day, a race to beat the clock and win at achieving daily tasks – no matter what they may be.

Thus, the world has naturally gravitated toward simplicity, and with this simplicity we have managed to make our lives infinitely more complicated. Ah, the double-edged sword. But, I digress, and what I actually mean to talk about is simplicity within the design sector as well as functionality of the online world.  Here at Webhouse we have developed a strategy to both steam-line design and development time as well as user functionality, in the form of our template website packages.

Each template offers simple, sleek design – where your content and visuals are laid out in a user-friendly manner – without losing a sense of creativity or individuality. To add to this, our template sites are 100% responsive, designed to scale down or up to a variety of screen sizes, ranging from your standard Android mobile phone, right through to a 21-inch Mac screen, therefore enabling you to reach your audience at all times of the day, where ever they are. Our template sites are pre-designed in a variety of styles and layouts, all we need from our clients is their desired colour scheme, company logo and company content, the rest only takes a matter of days. This process for us as  a website development company, cuts down on a lot of design time and with the exception of additional Java Script and jQuery functionality which can be added to these template sites, also cuts down on a great deal of “cut up” or development time too. So basically, it’s a win-win situation.

Are template sites the future for website development companies? Some may argue that it is the “death of a graphic designer” to have to design within a small, responsive grid, ultimately being quite limited. But it is also argued that this process is made more simple, streamlined, ultimately saves costs and appeals to a wider audience.

Please have a look at some of our template designs to follow.

WEBHOUSE IS LIVE

The Webhouse Group’s website reskin is complete and the latest version of our responsive website is now live! We are proud of our hard work as a team and hope you have a great time navigating our newly dynamic and interactive website.

Please follow this link: www.webhouse.co.za to check us out!