“Help me! I am being held hostage and can’t escape,” sobbed a woman into my phone. It was a late midweek afternoon. I had been savouring my last tea of the day while bathing in the last of the sun’s fat rays through my office window. “Tell me what is going on,” I...

2020 has been a cow of a year for the world, and most small business owners are finding they are tired, frazzled and aching for a few days of downtime over the Christmas break. But, unless you are the Cookie Monster or suffering severe lockdown compensation behaviour,...

Have you ever noticed that wearing activewear sneaks up on you (particularly during COVID)? It starts just one day when you forget to get changed after your walk. And then before you know it you live in stained, baggy trackie-dacks with t-shirts holier than the turf...

Many website owners make some common, easy-to-fix mistakes with their WordPress websites. This is the first in a series of Fix-It Friday posts, where we will tackle some of these common mistakes and nuke them into smouldering oblivion (which sounds a lot more final...

"I am looking for a website that I don't have to think about. That just looks after itself and just works without me having to do anything. Is that doable?" The Holy Grail of websites is a site that you build and then ignore, with all the tech bits that go into the...

Hands up if you LOVE waiting in queues. Anyone?   People are hard-wired to hate waiting around – especially on the internet. Just a few short years ago, we used to patiently wait 10 seconds or more until sites loaded. Now 47% of people expect a site to load in 2...

“Can you please send me through your logins to your website, host, domain name registrar and all of the bits that relate to your website, and then we can get started on your project.” “Um. I have to go back through my emails to see if I kept them. Give me a minute.”...

I was at our local Chamber of Commerce breakfast and was approached by one of our members: A fabulous mature lady with a gorgeous South African accent. She had a worried frown and stress was showing in her eyes. “I really must get you to teach me how to maintain my...

A picture paints a thousand words. Seeing is believing. Show don’t tell. The soul never thinks without a picture. There are oodles of research papers and mountains of memes about the power of images to convey meaning and create emotion, which is why the images that...

“I want a new website. How much will it cost?” This is the first question that we hear from most potential clients, but before we can answer that question, we need to ask a whole stack of questions of our own. Why? Building a website is like building a house. Get...

One of the questions we ask new clients is what bugs them about their existing website, and websites in general. Over the years we’ve collated their responses into the ten most common complaints people have about websites. You can use this list to check your website...

You have decided that the time has finally come. You are closing your business to retire; because you are going back to a j-o-b; you lost that election you had your hopes pinned on or perhaps you won Lotto and are heading off to a life of luxury cruising the Barrier...

Businesses regularly go through transformational events such as a merger or a rebranding. A company name that seems brilliant in your early start-up days may feel “wrong” as you grow, so you decide to rebrand to give your business space to expand in new directions....

Competition is a good thing in business – it keeps prices keen and customer service front and centre of mind. Where there is a lack of competition, companies begin to ride roughshod across their customer base and bump prices in search of the almighty buck. In the past...

She shuffled her feet under the desk while looking downcast at the papers in front of her. “I am just no good with tech. Computer type people start to talk at me, and my brain turns to mush. After a few minutes, I start to get panicky and can’t understand a word they...

I looked out over a sea of business-suited executives crammed into an over-heated conference hall. I was the last speaker before lunch, and thoughts of sandwiches and coffee were front-of-mind for most of them. “Our next speaker needs no introduction – Ingrid Moyle!”...

Batman and Robin. Thelma and Louise. Han Solo and Chewbacca. Patsy and Edina. Bert and Ernie. Sometimes you just need a partner to get great things done. When you build a website, you need the dynamic duo of a domain name and web hosting working together to create...

Websites that are slower than a toddler being told it is bedtime cost businesses clients and money. A recent page speed report by Unbounce showed that nearly 70% of consumers say website load time affects their willingness to buy. So, what’s an acceptable web page load time?

The number one cause of slow loading websites is fat, uncompressed images. In a previous article, I talked about ways you can compress images to still make them look the same, but not be as heavy. This is great when you are the only person looking after your website...