When we took over the site late last year, one of our objectives was to increase search engine traffic. By employing standard SEO techniques during the development process (such as compliant code, css based design, naming conventions, search engine friendly urls, etc.) and some help from 2bscene with a targeted link building campaign and optimisation of the site, we are really happy with the results this week. Being no. 2, pushes Blue Sky Mortgages above the likes of GMC Mortgages, Permanent TSB, Irish Mortgage, Mortgage Store, Ulster Bank and Simply Mortgages - to name but a few.

Blue Sky Mortgages also rank very well for other terms such as “mortgage”, “mortgages ireland”, “mortgage broker”, etc. We’re looking forward to analysing the statistical information and improving on the current results. This actually coincides with a new service we will be offering our clients that makes use of PPC campaigns to achieve exceptional results. We’ll have more on that soon.

I hope you are all feeling very green and proud this festive weekend. I’d just like to share some photos with you that a photographer friend of mine, Reggie Smit, sent to me recently. He attended SkyFest at the Rock of Cashel on Saturday night and took some fantastic photographs. He’s given me permission to post a few up for people to see and if anyone is interested in buying printed versions of these, they can contact him on his photography website. Well, I hope my readers aren’t too hungover on Tuesday. Enjoy the photos.

Images are the copyright of Reggie Smit and cannot be reproduced with express permission.

If you’ve ever tried navigating a photo gallery on somebody’s bebo, myspace or facebook page, you’ll know what a headache it can be. With this application installed, you click an icon on supported images and it loads all the images into a cool interface that shows all the images on a “virtual wall” that you can skip along quickly, zoom in, zoom out, start a slideshow, and more. It’s hard to describe how it works but the best thing I can suggest is to just try it. For Mac users our there, it’s like looking at images in cover view.

My First Implementation

Web Design Inspiration Virtual Wall
This got me thinking about the application of such a tool into my every day life and I’ve come up with my first implementation. I subscribe to css galleries to keep a fresh of new techniques and designs. I put the collection into a little web app for my viewing pleasure. However, it’s not that easy to browse and find what I’m looking for so I decided to integrate PicLens into it. I’ve come up with a cool Web Design Inspiration Virtual Wall that I can quickly flick through, find a site I like and open it directly all from within PicLens. You can try it out for yourself but make sure you are using FireFox and have the PicLens extension installed as I haven’t configured it for IE or Safari yet. I’ve got a number of ideas floating around for this in my head but I imagine any site I create in the future that has a photo gallery will have support for PicLens or similar apps. I can’t see me ever browsing a gallery using standard pages if I can use PicLens instead.

Using PicLens for Web/Stock Image Searches

There’s a built in search facility that allows you to search for images on Google, Yahoo, Flickr and DevianArt. The results show up in the app and when you find a pic you like, you can click a button (top left) and it will bring to the page it is from. Way cool! We were chatting on Irish Webmaster Forum about the app and James came up with a great use of the app. I, and a lot of other designers, love iStockPhoto for images for our websites. It can be very annoying and time consuming trying to find the right image so instead of using iStockPhoto’s built in search, you can use PicLens to search Google Images for “site:istockphoto.com business” and you’ll get business related results. You can quickly browse them and open the iStockPhoto page that has the image for sale. I’m sure this same technique could be used on countless other websites too.

Well, that’s it for now. Hope you like the app and let me know what you think with a comment below. Any other good uses of this tool you can think of? Tricks? etc? To finish… Here’s a few screenshots of PicLens on my Web Design Inspiration Virtual Wall. 2 thumbs up to the guys at who created it! Superb!

Screenshots

Sponsored by Blacknight

The kind people over at Blacknight who provide excellent hosting in Ireland, are kindly sponsoring the event. There’ll be free drinks available to attendees so make sure you turn up early! I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Michele, Paul and the team over at Blacknight for their great support and service, and of course for sponsoring the event. If you don’t host with them already, you should really consider it. Check out their website at www.blacknight.com

Where and When?

Date: Saturday February 9th
Time: 7.30PM till whenever
Venue: Harbour Master, IFSC, Dublin

More information can be found on the IWF Forum. Drop a reply into the post to say you’ll be there or contact me and I’ll add you to the list.

Attendees

Some of the attendees to date include:

• Ken Stanley
• Richard Hearne [Redcardinal]
• Dave Davis [Redfly Marketing]
• James Larkin [Forbairt Media]
• Cormac Moylan
• Louie [Eire Web Design]
• Mark Walsh
• Allistar [Logon]
• Eoghan McCabe [Contrast]
• Ciaran Rooney [Weeno]
• Gavin Doolan
• Micky Wall
• Gavin [Ireland SEO & Marketing]
• Michael Flanagan

Pre Meetup, 6 Nations, 2-for-1 Special Offer

There’s a few of us meeting up earlier in the day for the Ireland v France rugby match at 4.30pm in Fitzsimons, Temple Bar. If you’re interested in meeting up to watch the game with us before heading to the IFSC, contact either myself or Ken Stanley and we’ll exchange numbers!

Looking forward to meeting people on the night! Slainte!

Well I’ve noticed something from one of my suppliers that I thought was so simple. Maybe a lot of them do this but I just noticed this as I ring them usually when I’m in my car as not to waste time when at my desk. Car kit in place, dial 1907, press 0 and I’m through to Vodafone Customer Care!

The only reason I’ve noticed this is because I’m driving in my car. When you are finished with the person you are talking to - they never hang up. They always wait for you to hang up. People in general (psychologically) hate to hear a phone being hung up on them. I just think it’s something simple and doesn’t necessarily add something to the callers experience but it doesn’t take anything away is the point. The experience isn’t ruined by the caller hearing the phone go down on them at the end of it.

As I said, the only reason I noticed this happening is because I’d be driving my car while talking to them. When I say goodbye in the car, I usually let the other person hang up so it saves me looking for the phone hang up button or pressing the special Nokia button on the dash. After a few seconds of hearing someone breathing on the other line, I usually have to do the hanging up. I’m going to test it next time. I’m not going to hang up and see if they say anything to me and I’ll try the old lovers play fight thingy - “you hang up”, “no you hang up”, “no you first”, and see what happens!

I can’t see myself ever moving from Vodafone - there’s just too much love there (plus I get free 087 calls, 600 minutes to any network, and 600 free texts a month for €89 - see here)!

Well over the past few months, I’ve been working hard with a couple of the guys on my team to launch a new website called ourmemoryof.com. This website is aimed at people who may have just suffered the recent loss of a friend or family member, and will allow them to create a memorial website in their tribute. The website they create will allow visitors to view messages from the family, photos, videos, messages of condolence and contribute to the site with their own messages of condolence.

We’ve just moved into alpha testing and we’re welcoming people to sign up for the beta test or to be notified when the new site goes live in early Spring 2008. You can visit the website by visiting the link below.

Memorial Websites

If you like to know more about the project or have any feedback at this early stage, please do not hesitate to contact me directly or leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading! Rgds, Dave

Padraig Smith wins Best Property Website
Well, it was Golden Spider Award time last Thursday in the Burlington Hotel, Dublin. After last years success of RaymondPotterton.com winning Best Professional Services Website, we had 3 clients up for Best Property Website - Padraig Smith Auctioneers, Raymond Potterton Auctioneers and Geraldine O’Reilly Auctioneers. I am very glad to say that we were successful when Padraig Smith Auctioneers won the category. It was our second year entering and our second year to win! I must say well done to Raymond Smith and all the team at Padraig Smith Auctioneers for their ideas and effort they put into the background while running the site. It’s an award they will surely cherish! Well done guys!

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I also had another post about how crap the booking system were for the major ice skating rinks up in Dublin - Smithfield on Ice and 7up Christmas on Ice. I haven’t gone over to see if they have improved yet so there might be another rant about them later on! This also generated a lot of traffic to the site as these companies where spending a lot on traditional marketing, which had people searching for their names and related keywords in the search engines! Guess who was coming up?

So, where am I going with all this stuff? Well, it’s coming up to that time of year and as these keywords are seasonal, I thought I’d throw up this post as a bit of a test to see what traffic I can nab from people searching on terms like “ice skating dublin”, “smithfield on ice”, “7up on ice”, and of course “merry chrismas”. I’ll let you know how I get on but I’ll put it to some of my readers to try something similar in whatever area you like and see what traffic it generates. If you’ve got any suggestions or good stories, I’d love to hear them!

And just for the record… Happy Christmas!

#UPDATE - Related sites:

7up Christmas on Ice
Booterstown Ice Skating
Dundalk Ice Dome

Last week saw the launch of the new Blue Sky Mortgages website. Blue Sky Mortgages are a network of mortgage brokers across Ireland, that help their customers save money by switching mortgage providers, help first time buyers get on the property ladder with the best mortgage, and a lot more. Their new website exhibits a web 2.0 feel, a number of DHTML features, Google Maps of their offices, as well as being fully XHTML 1.1, WAI AAA and Section 508 compliant.

Visit their new website at www.blueskymortgages.ie

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