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.

Meeting of minds

Callisti is now in talks with ICT Advisor to develop new working relationships for international ecommerce SEO.

After attending a Business Gateway event in Gretna (Dumfries and Galloway) it was clear that more investment in building knowledge and skills would be the true path to illumination.

There are upcoming opportunities for tenders and Callisti says put best foot forward.

Why optimise?

Your corporate or business website is your 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, non-stop marketing and information machine. It can reach a massive audience and relay your products, services and relevant information about your company.

Nobody wants to be misrepresented so it is important to maintain this window into your business. How do you manage your website?

Are you reaching as much of the right audience as you'd expect? All your website development efforts may not be fully realised if your website is hard to find.

We believe that a website isn't just an add-on to your marketing strategy. It can be integrated efficiently into the way you traditionally share information and distribute changing information about products, services and events.

We also know that time spent clarifying your target keywords, updating the web-copy where appropriate and building relevant links, in short 'search engine optimisation' (SEO), can help you get a lot more out of your website and, in some cases, restore your faith in how effective a website can be for your organisation.

Callisti can also help you with sponsored listings, such as Adwords, which is an efficient way to drive traffic to your site especially once your target keywords and SEO has been completed. In cases like this it is good to think about your online marketing budget and the targets you would aim to meet to demonstrate value for money.

So much information is available on the internet, all it costs is your time. You also need some experience and judgement to make sure that you're getting the best information.

Contact Callisti if you are starting to think about SEO and online marketing. We can guide you by principles of good practice and help clarify what you can expect when you have a well managed website.

A whole host of problems

We don't market ourselves as a hosting service but we are finding that a lot of new customers feel it's time for a more reliable service and are asking if we can provide.

There is much more administration involved in keeping a website and email service ticking over nicely with so many factors affecting how well your current hosts can deliver on their promises. Even the process of switching to a new provider is seldom hassle free.

However our strength is that we keep our client base small; if it's too big how could a small team look after everyone properly? It seems obvious but different companies have different business plans and philosophies.

If the market was truly free...