Showing posts with label callisti. Show all posts
Showing posts with label callisti. Show all posts

Wednesday 10 February 2010

2010 Arts Festival in Dumfries and Galloway

Events for the 2010 arts festival held around Dumfries and Galloway at the end of May are now being listed on the new website.



Callisti teamed up with Weesleekit to develop the new site in time for the festival brochure release and other strategic marketing for the events. There will be a few further developments to the site when more content is provided for us to work with so we can keep improving every year.

This website was built using a very customised Wordpress install as the basis for the CMS. Playing with Custom Fields is fun.

Monday 15 June 2009

Galloway Tourism

South West Scotland is characterised by rolling uplands, cattle and dairy farming, sheep farming and forestation. The ubiquitous industry is tourism which takes advantage of natural features and wildlife.

Inland there are mountain bike trails (7 stanes), hill walking tracks (Southern Upland Way), and many historical monuments, most notably relating to Robert the Bruce (Earl of Carrick and Galloway).

On the coastline, which goes from the Solway estuary at Gretna (the border between Scotland and England), along past Auchencairn Bay (Dalbeattie), Kirkcudbright Bay, Whithorn Bay, Luce Bay and Portpatrick (on that iconic peninsula associated with the ports of Stranraer and Cairnryan), there are protected environments for breeds of birds such as at Caerlaverock, and many small sailing and boating clubs dotted along the beaches and bays.

Given that much of the visiting trade to the region is tourism-related, and latterly location-related (such as film companies requiring rural landscapes), there are many small accommodation providers that rely on internet marketing.

The latest requiring Callisti services have been the Annandale Arms Hotel in Moffat and Galloway House Estate in Garlieston, each being established accommodation providers in the region. We carry out SEO work for such websites as well as basic web design and content updates to ensure they keep getting found.

Sunday 7 June 2009

Rudimentary SEO

We have placed this handy guide to SEO on the Callisti website. It's criminal that the site update isn't finished yet but clients come first :)

Tuesday 19 May 2009

We are illuminated

Well it took a couple of days longer than we thought but that allowed for some final feedback and tweaks to improve the eProjectorLamps website functionality.


This is a portfolio design so the web design and web development team Callisti brought together for this project should be proud. Lots of use of jquery and vb script, moving away from the previous php incarnation, have made this into a more direct, search based ecommerce site.

A nice feature is the credit account option for public service bodies, schools, colleges and government offices so that they can be part of the eprocurement scheme for local authorities when buying projector lamps and replacement bulbs online.

All the projector manufacturers and models, e.g. Epson Cinema 200 lamp for projectors, can be found using the home page search filter or by navigating using the 'more from this manufacturer' links. You can also enter the projector lamp part code or model number to find the bulb you are looking for.

Thursday 7 May 2009

They call it projection

You know when you do or say things in a roundabout way to distance yourself from them but the same message, at least once removed, comes across? Projection.

That aside, Callisti is currently working on a lovely design and build for a projector lamp supplier who needed to sweep out the dead wood and breathe new life into the competitive world of replacement bulbs.

The user interface is being tested and is behaving across the browsers, and the website should be able to handle a variety of product feeds from suppliers to stay agile in a changing market.

Oh and if you ever hear someone say "future proof" with any seriousness when trying to sell a technology-based idea, ignore everything they say from that point on...

Tuesday 28 April 2009

National Vegetable Society

April 28 issue of the Garden News features a preview by Medwyn Williams of the National Vegetable Society's Championships which will be part of the Dundee Flower Show.

Jamieson Brothers of Annan (JBA), and in particular, Iain Barbour, have been resurrecting vintage exhibition potato varieties, such as Armour and Sherine, and are also sponsoring the event in 2010.

Good news for Callisti as Iain's potato website continues to expand and JBA are able to keep updating new and existing content for the very season sensitive market.

Tuesday 14 April 2009

Bad website hosting

'Issue first reported to FastHosts 11 April 2009 at 15:22 BST
Issue unresolved for 3 days, 19 hours and 41 minutes'

Callisti is disgruntled and angry at the poor level of service from Fasthosts with the dedicated server hosting. The reason for choosing this hosting provider was to maximise the chance of 99.9% uptime. Right now we've got 100% downtime as the server is powered down.

All was well until Easter Saturday when a complete loss of service and connection to the network was experienced. Unbelievably this is still the case and engineers are still reported to be looking at the problem.



The current diagnosis is hardware failure of a network card which is taking 3 days to replace. Many Callisti customers are experiencing loss of service for their websites and email and we can only apologise for this.

Fasthosts have acknowledged that the problem is at their end but the speed at which they are addressing the problem is lamentable.

Friday 10 April 2009

Google Ad variations

Callisti has been optimising adword account ad variations for time lapse photography suppliers, Lobster Pictures, and is noticing an almost immediate improvement in CTR (Click through rate) and a reduction in CPC (Cost per click).

The best way to do this is to target the ad to the most relevant content, which usually means pages on the website aside from the homepage. By using the Ad structure you can match the search string closer to the Ad title and related the keywords in the ad copy to the landing page.

This is logical as the keyword relevance in the ad should match the keywords of the landing page. Otherwise you're not targeting your Ads very accurately!

Sunday 5 April 2009

Page Rank update

Thought it was an April Fool, but noticed after some optimisation work that Google had re-cached the Callisti pages and the SEO website is now PR4. G'night...

Thursday 26 March 2009

Script free opacity

I was fooling around with the Callisti Logo and decided to make all the green squares useful in some way. Rather that start using scripts and alternative images I was able to use CSS and some opacity styling courtesy of a good resource by Mandarin Design.

You'll see that each colour uses opacity when rolled over and the links are consistent in a colour coded way. It's very out of your face (as opposed to in your face) so might be too subtle unless a visitor moves or sweeps their pointer over the logo.

Some other content updates have been made, e.g. updating the privacy statement to keep in line with Google, and some content and meta tag updates to reflect the organic shift in services that we offer.

Monday 23 March 2009

Holiday Cottages in Galloway

Another loverly self catering holiday cottage provider in Galloway joined the Callisti group recently and will enjoy a speedier and helpful website service that they weren't getting from their last provider.

The restored Victorian cottages on the Galloway estate feature enclosed gardens and stable courtyards. You can check availability online and use the booking enquiry system to contact the estate for a holiday in the South West of Scotland.

A domain transfer that could have taken minutes was stretched out over about 5 weeks as mysterious invoices suddenly appeared, confusing hosting charges were quoted, and a general poor response to support requests was noted. Not to worry - karma and all that...

Tuesday 10 March 2009

Garden Hammock

Callisti is working on the seasonal hammock project for a local Galloway company and embracing Actinic 9 as an ecommerce solution.

The website design is trying to capture a fresh outdoor feel which should be an improvement to the legacy look of the original website.

Interestingly, the search term 'hammocks' is very seasonal especially in the UK and we are now noticing the rising traffic to the website as the spring equinox approches. Some of the Adwords tools from PPCBully, keywordcountry and keywordspy.com show the value of a click for this keyword and also who the competitors are. Tough market!

As usual we will be applying Callisti SEO philosophy to the site so that the internal housekeeping assists in keeping CPC down and ROI up.

Hypnotherapy Treatment

Currently we're working on a personal consultation and training website that is based on hypnotherapy and the use of hypnosis techniques to deal with stress, helping to quit smoking and performance anxiety.

The back end has been developed to allow online course booking with secure payment and has a user area where registered users can log in to administrate.

There is an Callisti SEO friendly philosophy behind this so even the image names are aiming for search engine friendliness!

Managing conflict
is another course on offer which could be a growth industry in the current economic climate...

Wednesday 11 February 2009

Hammocks

What could be more idyllic than swinging idly in a hammock on a sunny afternoon?

It's a subjective thing, granted, but there is that image in the mind. Callisti is now working on a project for Handmade Hammocks, based near Kirkcudbright in Dumfries and Galloway, with SEO work and a complete redesign of their Actinic-based shop.

This will be ongoing work and we hope for a productive relationship with our new clients!

Thursday 29 January 2009

Fancy a Hummer in Carlisle

This has been a journey of interest - installing wordpress on a Callisti server and then configuring it to behave kind of like a regular website but with added widgets. In a way the back end is more interesting than the front!

There is a flash slideshow plugin based on the NextGen image galleries and aside from some email settings on the server and a lot of CSS editing I've been impressed with the scope for individuation from the Wordpress community.

The next part is testing the site and getting the content and up-to-date images uploaded as well as the google account duties.

sitemap.xml CHMOD 777 and all that...

Monday 5 January 2009

Birthday gift ideas

Jumbo PageRank bonus at New Year boosted the gifts ideas and wish lists, or MyWishWand's, status to PR3 from 0.

This should mean the site will now start to draw more attractive traffic and some Callisti SEO recommendations were carried out by Osborne Brook developers so looking forward to better news this year.

Sunday 4 January 2009

Virtuo So?

Working in conjunction with Smash IT in Edinburgh brought about the Virtual Office Services website that launches in January 2009.

The services include secretarial, receptionist and office administration all in a virtual sense so that businesses can outsource that aspect of their projects to concentrate on client facing activities and networking.

One thing Callisti likes is the backup services image for Smash-It!

Wednesday 31 December 2008

Numerology

So long to 2008. No mega message but glad to see another year categorised safely into the mega system backups archive with all client data and Callisti details safe and snuggled up for the New Year.

Our online shop experiments are trading well and all our clients seem to getting what they need from our services without too much ado.

Can't say fairer than that...

See you at the London Search Engine Conference in February!

Monday 22 December 2008

Opening the next gateway

Recently been looking at the Scottish Enterprise "Grow your business" initiatives. One of the challenges of working in the web/IT industry is that teams are often too busy to allow time for a clean development and testing environment pressure.

The now fragmented LEC now has a localised wing called Business Gateway to further spread the quango funding but their website does have a section of funding opportunities for development.

New Year, new thinking. Well, we'll see, but now that the set-up period for Callisti is mostly sorted and administration is ticking over nicely, it's time to look further afield to the world of possibility.

Tuesday 16 December 2008

Video lackey

What better way to spend the day than working through a script and shot sequence for a DVD production project.

Getting out and about in the fresh air, meeting people, developing skills, intermittent manual labour, knocking off around 5pm,... sigh, sounds like a proper day's work.

Callisti is producing the Forest Sawmills Health and Safety Training DVD and we hope the new callisti website will feature this soon in the first quarter of next year. The website has been serving a very limited role since it's inception in quarter 3 of 2008 but we will be investing time in a more fitting web presence in the coming weeks.