We are pleased to announce that 3RD sense Australia and Big Click Studios have joined forces and will be operating as one entity.

The merger brings together a vast array of knowledge from both businesses to provide our clients with a wider range of innovative digital solutions.

We will be maintaining our Central Coast office to support and grow our local client base as well as providing employment opportunities to the local community.

Over the coming weeks we will continue to integrate the businesses and we will keep you updated.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to give me a call on 1300 677 924 or by emailing dean@bigclick.com.au

Dean Collins
Director
Big Click Studios

There’s no question that tools like SMS, and mobile technology in general, have changed the way in which we communicate in our personal lives. The efficiency and succinct nature of SMS enables us to communicate quickly, without hassle, and in a very direct way.

However, SMS has also opened a very important and popular new channel when it comes to business: SMS Marketing.

What is SMS Marketing?

While SMS Marketing may sound complex, it’s actually quite simple. Essentially, it’s any form of marketing that involves you sending text messages to your customers, or potential customers. Typically, these messages will include a very powerful call to action: encouraging customers to visit you in-store, call back, or visit your website to secure a special offer.

How does it work?

While you can, of course, perform your SMS marketing yourself, using a company mobile phone, this is very labour-intensive, and open to error. It requires you manually selecting each customer you wish to send to every time, is not scalable or customisable, and also doesn’t involve any form of measurement.

Instead, it makes sense to engage a company like Big Click, to create an SMS Marketing tool on your behalf, and provide guidance regarding ongoing marketing.

How can Big Click help with your SMS Marketing?

As well as providing consulting and advice on how best to engage customers via text, Big Click can help your business embrace SMS marketing by creating an online tool and database – through which messages can be easily composed, sent, and measured.

While you still need to engage a telecommunications carrier such as Optus, Telstra or Vodafone to distribute your messages, we can create a robust and very easy to use system that you can use over the web.

Once implemented, our customised SMS Marketing tool can help you:

• Manage your campaigns. You can keep a library of your SMS marketing messages – so you know what’s been sent in the past, and to whom.
• Compose and send messages. Our system will enable you to compose a message in an instant – and send it to all registered members in your database.
• Track campaign effectiveness. You can easily track how many people receive your messages, and how many people respond to each SMS you send.
• Tie into your other marketing. We can help you connect your click-through rates (if your message includes a URL) or call centre responses, and tie these back to your database, so you know which customers are responding, and how they are doing so.
• Maintain your database. Automatically manage and cleanse your database, and effectively remove customers who wish to unsubscribe, or whose numbers don’t work – ensuring the accuracy of your information, and that you’re not paying to send messages that don’t work.

Of course, we can also help you by providing guidance regarding the types of messages you should send, to who, how often, and what the calls to action in your messages should be.

Why embrace SMS marketing?

SMS marketing has recently emerged as a very low cost, highly targeted, effective means of marketing.

There are several key benefits:

• Effectiveness. SMS Marketing has an average open rate of over 98% compared with email open rates which can be as low as 30%, or even less.
• Qualified leads. SMS marketing is an opt-in service. This means that people only receive your messages if they want to; increasing the likelihood that the message will be suc-cessful in its aim. This also means you’re not paying to send an unwanted message.
• Immediacy. You can reach customers in an instant, wherever they are.
• Timeliness. With SMS marketing, you can also target customers with specific time-oriented marketing. So, for instance, if you are a takeaway food shop, you could send an SMS to customers in your vicinity letting them know of your lunchtime specials. Or on a particularly hot day, a store stocking air-conditioners could promote their special offers to locals.
• Two-way communication. If required, BigClick can also establish a two-way SMS service, enabling clients to interact with your system. You can also publish a feed of the latest messages you have received on your website, or send automatic replies for different in-coming messages to allow mobile support and information for your clients.

Technology website www.emate-econtent.org also points out that SMS marketing has a short preparation time, compared to traditional marketing methods. This is certainly the case if you have an online SMS Marketing tool created and ready to go at any time.

Does it work?

Definitely. In most cases, SMS marketing can be extremely effective and can also deliver a significant return on investment.

How could it work for your business?

Take a look at these hypothetical ways in which SMS marketing could be used by a small business:

Carol’s Florist

Carol runs a popular florist on the Central Coast. Delivering flowers is a large part of her business, and whenever she is taking an order for a delivery (in person, via her website, or over the phone), Carol requests a mobile number and asks if the customer would like to receive updates regarding special offers. This means that, over time, she has built up an extensive database of customer numbers. Whenever a special occasion is coming up (Mother’s Day, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, etc), Carol uses an SMS system to quickly and easily send personalised messages to her customers. For instance:

“Andrew, don’t forget that Sunday is Mother’s Day. Want to order a dozen for your mum at $50 a bunch? Call 4365 3333 to place an order.”

Ron’s Personal Training

Ron is a Sydney-based personal trainer. He runs morning classes, and his classes operate on a per-visit basis. So Ron only gets paid if people show up. Ron uses SMS marketing to reach out to his customers every day, provide reminders about upcoming classes, and increasing the likelihood that they will attend:

“Carly, tomorrow’s classes: 6am Boxing in Centennial Park, 7am Cycle in Centennial Park, 9am Core session at Bronte beach, 6pm Yoga at Clovelly Surf Club. Hope to see you at one of these?”

Want to know how SMS marketing could work for your business? Give the team at Big Click a call to arrange a free, no-obligation chat about our services.

In an email to shareholders and loyal customers announcing the company’s financial situation, Borders Australia’s Managing Director Adrian Jones said that Borders needed to be restructured ‘in order to compete in what has become a global marketplace for book readers’.

Indeed, the globalised nature of the book world – and the popularity of online book retailers such as amazon.com – has definitely changed the way in which people buy and enjoy printed books.

It’s typically so much cheaper to buy books online and from overseas, even when delivery costs are taken into account, that it’s no small wonder huge volumes of people are deserting actual walk-in book stores like Borders, Dymmocks and Angus & Robertson.

Another very significant factor in the demise of the bookstore has been the gradual change in the way we consume information.

First of all, there’s the fact that we’ve become incredibly impatient as consumers – and as readers. Thanks to online technology and TV, our attention spans are much shorter than they were, say, 30 years ago. We’re wired for fast, furious consumption of information, in bite-sized chunks. This doesn’t leave much time for absorbing long, detailed books.

Plus, the advent of technologies like e-readers, ipads and tablets, means that there are different ways to consuming books rather cuddling up with a rustic, printed novel.

An article on BookBee.net says that a major problem for Borders was that they didn’t take this trend into account soon enough – claiming ‘Borders was very late in the game to get onboard the ebook bandwagon, a long way behind Barnes & Noble, and their Nook.’

The same article compares the modern scenario with books to what happened to the music industry a decade ago, saying: ‘anyone else get the same feeling that you go 8-10 years ago when music monoliths were shrinking and merging under a similar digital paradigm shift?’

So where do we go from here? Is there hope for the book?
The answer, in our opinion, is yes. Most definitely. Books are inspiring things that will con-tinue to be enjoyed by generations.
However, we predict three key changes.

1. Online book stores will thrive. Regardless of whether they’re here or overseas, it appears that online book stores are doing extremely well and will continue to do so. Without the overheads of rent and expansive staff numbers, online stores are able to undercut on price – which is going to continue to attract customers. In fact, in July last year, according to an article on the ABC News website, Borders in the US launched an online electronic book store to challenge Amazon, Apple and Barnes and Noble in the fast-growing market for digital books.
2. More self-publishers will start selling books online. Got an idea for a book – but can’t find a publisher – or a distributor? These days, it’s easy to do it yourself. If you can find a cost effective printer and can easily set up the mechanism on your website (which Big Click can help you with), you can sell your own book, or books, over the internet.
3. E-readers will gain popularity. According to the previously mentioned article on BookBee.net, Borders’ situation is actually helping encourage the demise of the printed book – claiming ‘… news like this [Borders’ bankruptcy] gets picked up and repeated around the world, outside the techie, geek world…. This starts to get peo-ple who don’t know what an ebook is, or haven’t even considered buying a Kindle, to start to understand that there is an alternative to paper books…’

It’s also reassuring to see that Borders haven’t yet closed their doors. In fact, their U.S. CEO Mike Edwards is also very optimistic about the future – saying that he hoped the company would emerge from the process ‘as a stronger and more vibrant book seller’.

All in all, whether or not the printed book remains a popular commodity – or whether it is replaced almost entirely by its digital equivalent remains to be seen.

What do you think? Where do you buy your books these days?

Of course, quality web design is all about embracing innovation – not simply for design’s sake, but to ensure we’re utilising the very latest tools and techniques at our disposal to engage customers and help our clients achieve their objectives.

Also, these days, the very term “web design” doesn’t just relate to type and imagery. More than ever, it’s now become an overarching term that embraces functionality, navigation, usability and even SEO.

So what are our overall web design predictions for 2011?

Here are our top ten:

1. Everything will be designed for mobile

Over the last few years, we have seen an explosion of mobile devices that provide a quality and very flexible web browsing experience. Smart phones, netbooks and tablets all allow us to experience the internet on the go. And of course, this has already started to dramatically change our perception of web design. It’s no longer simply enough to create a website that’s optimised purely to suit a laptop screen or desktop monitor.
Instead, you need to create a site that’s easily viewed on a mobile device – or, create a separate version which can be.

A few great examples of websites/brands that have already embraced this trend are domain.com.au, and smh.com.au. These mobile sites are simple, pared-back, and very easy to navigate. However, it’s also important to enable your users to view the full version of your website if they want to – and not just restrict them to viewing the mobile site simply because they’re using a mobile device.

2. Social media is king

There’s no question that social media has already changed the way we use and navigate the web. This year, we predict that it will continue to be even more so – with a strong focus on the promotional opportunities offered by social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

In this article ’10 Web Trends to watch in 2011’, Patrick Stafford from Smart Company agrees that connecting disparate social media is going to be big this year. “Social media is nothing new and we all recognize that businesses without Facebook and Twitter pages risk being left behind. But now comes the next step – connecting all your social media links together and plugging them whenever possible”, he says.

3. Move away from Flash

For us web designers, this one is quite significant. This year, we’re seeing a definite swing away from Flash technology – which has been the tool of choice for web designers for almost a decade.

Now, as the web becomes more and more functional, we’re seeing a move away from websites that use (and over-use) Flash technology to present animation and slick branding. We believe this is due to a few factors. Perhaps most importantly, Flash can take a while to download – and can be quite labour-intensive, and is at odds with the more fast-paced, content-driven, blog-style web design that we’re seeing now.

Flash is also not yet compatible on iPads and iPhones – which is a major consideration for any web designer these days. And lastly, it’s also still not as easy to optimise for search as HTML and CSS – something which is becoming critically important.

Instead, we are moving more towards embracing HTML5 and CSS3 – which can create a similar result. We predict that Flash can and should still play a role in web design – but it won’t be as significant as it once was.

4. Touch-screen design

Thanks to the trend towards mobile-based design, we predict that this year, we’ll also see an increase in websites that are designed with in-built touch-screen functionality – making them accessible on a whole range of devices.

Similarly, we also predict a trend towards large, touch-screen style design – with big buttons, very clear instructions and almost over-simplified usability.

5. Bold use of colour

In keeping with a trend towards simplified interfaces, we are also predicting a trend towards big, bold, block colour – which can stand out and help you create a distinct impression.

In an article titled Web Design Trends for 2011, Jacqueline Thomas says of this trend:

“Forget black and white or shades of gray. Think of green, yellow or even red as your primary color. However, limit your palette to two or three colors. Work within the shades of each color for variety. It can be truly remarkable what a few colors can do for your message”.

6. Large background imagery

Though this trend has been around for a while, we predict that this year, the use of large, confident photographic imagery will become even more popular in web design.

Jacqueline Thomas says: “Large scale backdrops will surge in 2011. These images will be high resolution, and covering the entire site. Large photos are an instant way to grab your audience– they cannot help but to see it and have an opinion about it”.

7. Even more focus on SEO

Search Engine Optimisation is becoming more and more important all the time – and this year, we predict it will become even more so, with cleverly optimised content becoming a major consideration for any organisation looking to promote their brand online.

Since SEO includes both navigation and body copy, we predict an even stronger trend towards keyword-based navigation, linking strategies and optimised headings and body copy in any design. This of course means more copy – around 300 words per page – a trend away from websites that are light on copy and heavy on design features or animation.

8. Non-browser-safe typefaces

Thanks to technologies like Google Type and TypeKit, we’re also seeing a whole range of new fonts being used online that aren’t your traditional browser-safe fonts. This opens up a whole range of new branding and design possibilities for our customers, which is quite exciting for us web designers.

9. Move away from traditional navigation

We’ve also noticed that many websites have now started using a different form of navigation on the home page to what they are using when you click through to the rest of the site. Previously, this inconsistency was frowned upon – particularly by usability experts. However, as users have become so accustomed to the web, different approaches are certainly becoming more acceptable – particularly if they actually simplify the user experience.

10. New perception of design

As mentioned above, this year we believe we’re seeing a real shift in terms of the way in which web design is perceived. It’s no longer primarily about creating aesthetic web pages that look good. Now, it’s all about functionality, usability, navigation and content. While this makes things more complex for us web designers, it also makes things way more interesting – both for us, and for our clients.

So all up, we predict it’s going to be an exciting year online.

What do you think? What are your predictions?

Like most Australians, the team here at Big Click have been following the updates very closely – and we’re all aghast at the scale and the speed with which they have spread, and the damage they’ve caused.

While all of the television stations have been providing extensive, day-long coverage of the disaster, we were particularly impressed by the fairly unprecedented level of coverage that the flood received online, and across social media. We were reminded, yet again, of just how important the internet and social media is in today’s world, and the role it plays in enabling up-to-the-minute details to be shared and disseminated.

Here are a few ways in which we noticed that the internet and social media has helped in this major crisis:

Collecting online donations

Enabling donations to be made via online payment channels, the internet has been a sensational way of collecting funds and quickly allocating them into the right channels. In fact, if you haven’t already done so, you can donate online using a secure payment form on the Queensland Government website. Thousands of businesses have promoted this link on their own websites and are calling for donations – and at the time of writing, the Government has raised a whopping $35 million.

Facilitating corporate support

Plenty of retailers and private businesses are also using the internet and associated channels to independently collect donations from their members and customers – and share them with devastated Queenslanders. The results of some of these donations have been quite staggering.

For instance, on Wednesday the 12th of January – the day that the floods were reaching the Brisbane CBD, online retailer Cudo (www.cudo.com.au) called for online donations from members – saying that they would match every dollar that was donated. In just two hours, Cudo raised a whopping $100,000 for the relief fund. Impressive.

And it’s not just corporations who are getting organised and calling for donations. Plenty of individuals are too. One online user has set up a $1 donation PayPal button, which has been quite heavily promoted on Twitter. He is encouraging each of his 900+ Twitter followers to each donate $1.

Yet while lots of companies are calling for donations and agreeing to match the donations of their members or customers, there are some who haven’t done so in the most tasteful of ways. Bing Lee, for instance, specified that they would donate $1 for every ‘like’ of their Facebook page – and received considerable backlash in social media channels for attempting to raise their Facebook fan page under the guise of charity.

Avoiding payment scams

Believe it or not – there are some horrid people out there trying to scam donation money. However, with the help of social media, people are quickly becoming aware of which channels are fraudulent, and which are genuine. You can read more here if you’re interested.

Connecting people

Another key website that’s trying to make a real difference in the crisis is www.floodaid.com.au – which launched very quickly after the floods, and can be followed on Twitter. The site claims to be a social platform that connects those in need, with those willing to help. They are currently developing mobile applications to add to the effort.

Interestingly, they have also just launched www.floodaid.com.br in response to the devastating floods which have just hit Brazil.

Providing up-to-the-minute information

Perhaps most importantly, Twitter, Facebook and other social media channels have played a vital role in allowing information about the flood crisis to be immediately shared with millions of people all over the world.

A recent tweet, for instance, urges people to take in stranded animals:

PLEASE REPOST: QLD Floods, Fairfield RSPCA is going under water, anyone who can take in any animals please call (07) 3426 9999 #qldfloods

Another spreads the word about volunteer efforts:

For the great many Qlders who want to help others during and after the flooding-register on VolunteeringQld hotline 1800994100 #qldfloods

And another provides information on yet another donation avenue:

Got Virgin Blue Velocity points? Exchange them for donations to #qldfloods http://bit.ly/e6gxjb #bnefloods #travel #virginblue #brisbane

Interestingly, there have even been a few tweets criticising mainstream media coverage, such as this one:

Yet again, Channel 9 showing pics and footage from Twitter, etc., without attribution. Bad form. #qldfloods

These tweets are of course just a handful of examples from thousands upon thousands of tweets from all over the world, relating to the crisis.

Facebook has also played a key role in generating assistance, with countless websites set up to provide information and collect donations and offer words of support.

A Facebook website for Queensland Flood Pet Options, for instance, enables people to quickly and easily share information about pets and arrange to provide care for needy animals. On this site, people have been volunteering to host animals, sharing their contact details, and arranging pick-up and drop-off locations.

Online blogs have also provided a great vehicle for people to share their personal stories – such as this great account by Matt Granfield, whose mum was temporarily missing in the floods at Toowoomba. Thankfully, she was found safe and sound.

And of course, YouTube has been a fantastic channel for TV stations, businesses and individuals to share their video footage of the tragedy with people all over the world, such as this video upload by ABC news.

It’s certainly been a crazy week online. And while we’re incredibly saddened by the disaster, we’re extremely impressed by the way Australians have rallied together to show their support – particularly via the web. Hopefully it will all go some way to healing the wounds.

Queensland, our thoughts are with you.

We’d like to thank EVERYONE who’s supported us this year – from our clients, to anyone who’s read our blog, followed us on Twitter, subscribed to our newsletter, or given us a call regarding their business. We’re really passionate about what we do, and it’s so nice to be able to share our passion and interests with you.

So on behalf of everyone here at Big Click, we’d like to wish you the happiest of holidays – and a very relaxing and well deserved break. We look forward to working with you again in the New Year!

Here’s to a BIG CHRISTMAS and NEW YEAR!

See you in 2011.

Cheers, Justin, Dean and everyone at Big Click.

Are you one of those organised types who plans all their gifts meticulously, shops well in advance, and has all their presents wrapped and under the tree as soon as December comes around? Or, are you like most of us – and leave your shopping to the last minute, and then spend up big in a flurry of indecision and excited panic?

Fortunately, the internet has opened up a whole new world of possibilities for us last minute shoppers. And so this year, the team at Big Click have decided to practice what we preach – and do the majority of our shopping online.

Here are some of the great benefits we uncovered:

No crowds! One of the most frustrating things about hitting the shops is always the queues. First, there’s the parking, then there are the crowds milling about the merchandise, and again at the checkouts. Shopping online means you avoid all of this. No screaming children, dawdling consumers, or cranky shop assistants. Simply search, select and transact. Done.

Shop intermittently. Online shopping means you don’t need to dedicate hours to trawling through shopping centres – which is great for the frantic lead up to the holiday season. Instead, you can pop onto a website in your lunchbreak, or mid-afternoon, and browse and buy as it suits you.

Discounts. Perhaps the biggest benefit of shopping online is the fact that it can save you an enormous amount of money – as long as you shop around and are discerning about what you buy, and who from. Lots of businesses provide online discounts for customers – as they’re saving on retail and staff expenses. Also, the current strength of the Aussie dollar against the U.S. dollar opens up a whole range of cheap overseas purchasing possibilities.

Delivered to you. We’ve all exhausted ourselves carrying bags of shopping around shopping centres, and back to the car (no doubt parked streets away at this time of year). However, when you shop online, your packages get delivered to your home or work address – all neatly and conveniently packaged. Easy!

Secure. These days, shopping online is incredibly secure and easy thanks to technologies like PayPal, a third party security system which takes care of the financial transaction on your behalf. And if you buy from reputable suppliers, you shouldn’t encounter any problems.

Unique. This is one of the things about online shopping that we liked the most. There are some fantastic (not to mention bizarre!) gifts out there in cyberspace that you can only discover online.

Research. When you shop online, it’s also incredibly easy to shop around, compare goods, and get yourself the best price possible. You can even get online prices and then present them to actual retailers to encourage them to match their prices in the interests of getting a sale.

So, could your business benefit by selling online?

If your business sells products direct to consumers, an e-Commerce facility can certainly help you convert more sales – particularly in the lead-up to Christmas.

When it comes to sales, your website is available 24/7 – unlike your shopfront. This means that if a customer has a question about something, they can go straight to your website any time of the day or night – without calling you or your customer service teams.

However there is somewhat of an art to ensuring your website is an effective sales channel. You need a quality and well-tested navigation structure, slick web design and branding, and an appropriate content management solution. You need to ensure that these elements are carefully balanced with your business objectives – and that you’re not investing in wasted functionality or features that you won’t use.

While it may be too late to create a Christmas store for your business this year, it’s certainly not too early to start planning for 2011.

If you’re interested in what e-Commerce could do for your business, why not give us a call? We’d love to chat!

What Is a Quality Score?

Before knowing what a good quality score can do for you, it might be worthwhile understanding what a quality score actually is. In short, a quality score is what Google will award your pages, used in your Adwords campaigns. So basically the higher your quality score is, the better Google thinks your page is related to the keywords you are targeting for your campaign.

How do I know what my quality score is?

Google does allow people to see what the quality score is for each of your campaigns, but unless you know where it is in their systems it can be somewhat difficult to find it. To make it easier, here are the steps you need to take to display your campaign’s quality scores along side your campaigns.

1. Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com.
2. Select the appropriate campaign and ad group.
3. Click the Keywords tab.
4. Click Columns at the top of the ad group table.
5. Select Qual. score from the drop-down menu.
6. Click Save when you’re finished. Each keyword’s Quality Score will be measured and displayed on a scale of 1-10 (1 being the lowest score)

If you follow these steps, you will now see your quality score listed with your campaigns.

How Can Boosting It Help Me

Google is good in that it likes to give people what they are searching for, rather than just the highest bidder for certain terms. To help achieve this, when displaying results in adwords, your quality score becomes a big factor in where you display. If you have a higher quality score, you will be able to display higher in the results, for less money as Google sees your page as being more relevant than pages with a lower quality score.

How boost it?

There are many factors that will help boost your quality score and lower your CPC costs.  One quick way is to make sure your content relates to the keyword(s) you are targeting. If you are targeting multiple groups of keywords, you could make separate pages for each keyword group.

For example, if you are selling sports equipment and are targeting the keywords ‘cricket equipment’, ‘soccer equipment’, and ‘rugby equipment’, rather than having your campaign point to a single page for all of these keywords, create a separate page for each product type that relates to that keyword. Now, you have a good chance of increasing your quality score. This has an added bonus that not only will Google think your page is more relevant, but it will also be more targeted to what your visitors are searching for, which may help increase your conversion rates.

Don’t be put off if you spend a lot of time creating pages and your quality score does not go up quickly.  It will take time for Google to give more weight to your pages and boost your quality, just the same as it takes time for Google to boost your position in their free search engine rankings. If you put the time and effort into it, it will pay off in the long run though!

There are plenty of other ways to increase your quality, and lower your CPC in Google. If you would like to hear more, please feel free to contact us.

We have doubled the size of our team, moved offices and undertaken over 300 separate jobs. There are now eight of us in total who make up Big Click, (a big jump from last year, where there was only four of us). To allow for our ever growing team, we needed more office space. We were lucky enough to be able to move to a suite on the same floor with double the space and a view! We now have an open plan office, a boardroom, administration office and a server room. It was a lot of extra work and a logistical challenge to move but in the end it was definitely worth the effort.

It wasn’t just a big year for Big Click as a business. The year as been a roller coaster for our team on a personal level as well. Two of the team got married, another found out he was going to have a baby and another purchased their first home!

We launched our own brand new website, which had been a long time in the works. It has a vastly improved design, information on services and showcases our ever growing portfolio. The new site is built on our in-house content management system (BigCMS), which allows anyone in the team to login and update the different sections of the site. We have loads of future plans to add more features to the site and we are hoping it will continue to evolve as Big Click grows.

Our portfolio has grown massively this year. We have undertaken  number of web development, online strategy, graphic design and branding projects that you can see in the ‘our work’ section of the site. The projects range from small graphic design jobs to large web development projects. Some of the large jobs we have launched this year are Find My Local, Satyananda Yoga and Hartmanns.

This year we have also had some great search engine optimisation results for us and our clients. We have been focusing on some very competitive keywords like ‘Sydney web design’ and ‘web development Sydney’, for which we are now ranking on the first page. We hope to see some even better results in the coming months as our aim is to rank in the top three for those terms and plenty of others too.

We have also had some great SEO results for one of our clients, ‘Tyrrells Property Inspections‘. Tyrrells have been a client of our for a few years now and we have gone right through from creating their brand, to the design and development their website. We have also been undertaking ongoing SEO for Tyrrells.com which has seen the site go from positions in the tens and twenties to a top three ranking!

There is plenty we could talk about, as far as our client’s results go, but that’s what our portfolio is for. Feel free to go and check out our work and if you have any questions about a particular project, don’t hesitate to drop us a line.

So, that pretty much sums up 2010! But, we still have six weeks left in the year and who knows what could happen in that time. Overall, we are ecstatic with our results for 2010 and can’t wait to start 2011. We have some major things planned for next year but that will have to wait for another blog.

But what actually is this National Broadband Network? How will it work? And in real terms, how will it help a business like yours?

The National Broadband Network (or NBN) is a ‘fibre to the home’ network that’s currently under construction. In essence, it’s a giant network of fibre that will allow homes and businesses around Australia to access the internet at much greater speeds than ever before. The fibre won’t reach every home and business in Australia – but the homes that don’t connect directly will be supplied using super fast wireless and satellite technology.

Most importantly, the new network promises download speeds of 1000 megabits per second for 93% of Australian homes and businesses*. In basic terms, this means that many homes and businesses will be able to use the internet around 100 times faster than they can right now.

In fact, the NBN is the single largest infrastructure investment in Australia’s history**.

So what does the NBN mean for business?

This impressive new infrastructure will have considerable benefits for Australian businesses of all sizes. Here are just a few:

1. We’ll catch up to the rest of the developed world! For a long time, Australia’s internet speeds have been lagging behind many developed countries. Once the NBN is in place, we will be able to use the internet and access data in all new ways – and adopt exciting new technology and innovations from other countries such as Japan and the US.

2. Change the way you connect with customers. With super fast download speeds, there’s no limit to the things your business can use the internet for. Customers can engage with your products and services online, via voice, video and imagery in a much richer and more exciting way – meaning more and more businesses can use the internet for advertising, rather than turning to traditional media like TV and radio to get messages across.

3. Faster, more powerful transactions. With a much more powerful network, you’ll be able to use the internet as more of a shop-front, and more businesses will be able to encourage customers to browse and buy online.

4. Reduce customer service costs. With the boost that the NBN will give to the internet, more of your CRM activity can be done online. This means a reduced burden on your customer service and sales teams. The internet can do the hard work for you.

5. More automated business management. The NBN will enable much more streamlined business management via web-enabled software – such as for supply chain management. For instance, businesses with a huge network of warehouses will be able to update information in real-time so that everyone is aware of where stock is at any given time.

6. Reduced travel and meeting costs. The NBN will make it possible to have high-definition video conferencing. This is obviously fantastic for businesses that have offices all over Australia – as people can connect over the internet rather than needing to fly or drive for face-to-face meetings.

7. Huge boost for regional Australia. The new network will connect cities, major regional centres and rural towns right around the country – and it is expected to be rolled-out, simultaneously, in metropolitan, regional, and rural areas. This means that every person and business in Australia, no-matter where they are located, will have access to affordable, fast broadband.

8. Open access network. Importantly, the NBN will be open access – meaning it will not be controlled or dominated by any of the major telecommunications organisations. It will also have a uniform pricing structure, regardless of a consumer or business’ location – meaning rural or regional businesses will not be disadvantaged in any way.

9. Improved international profile. The NBN is set to raise Australia’s profile on an international scale as far as IT is concerned. According to an Australian Government press release that announced the initiative, the NBN ‘will fundamentally transform the competitive dynamics of the telecommunications sector, underpin future productivity growth and our international competitiveness’.

10. More jobs in IT. According to www.nationalbroadbandnetwork.net.au, the project is expected to generate 40,000 jobs within its planned 8 years and will generate a boom for Australian workforce especially in the areas of IT, telecommunications and construction. With IT jobs in places such as the US becoming rare, the opportunities for skilled technicians from all over the world will be enormous.

Interested in finding out about what great things you can do online once the NBN is in place?

Talk to the team at Big Click Studios to find out more.

* Rodgers, Emma (12 August 2010). “Big gig: NBN to be 10 times faster”. ABC.
**http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2009/022/