Facebook domination of web page screen real-estate

A simple Facebook page was created for Sledges.co.uk with some information about the Aviemore-based outdoor shop in the Scottish highlands, along with some product images from the different sections: wooden sledges, snowshoes, budget sledges, etc.

The latest step was to add and test the like button for each of the products on the e-commerce website so that visitors could share products with friends within their own facebook worlds. Also a link from website to facebook page seemed obligatory!

The emerging trend is that wee facebook icon links and like buttons (and associated html5, og meta-tags, etc) are getting peppered across more and more sites on the internet. Facebook can piggyback on the hard work people put in on driving relevant traffic to their websites by siphoning off "social" activity by visitors.

Under the radar stuff

January has been a time of investing in new equipment and software as well as working on some yet-to-be-made-public projects so nothing much to post to the world. Pleased to get VMware up and running at last and upgrading workstations to dual monitor setups - amazing to have gone so long without this!

Some new ecommerce developments in the post as well as some interesting logo design and wordpress experiments.

Six-figure sledges

As the year closes and the snow melts across the UK leaving the winter detritus, Callisti can reflect on an interesting 2010 and look forward to 2011. One milestone was the sledges online shop breaking the six-figure record turnover for the December, a far cry from when Callisti first took over management of the website - a lot of snow certainly helps. New possibilities have emerged as a result of the improved online presence heralding some business developments in the years to come.

JBA seed potatoes has grown significantly and is scaling up in terms of hosting and development requirements - Callisti has acted as a nursery for the ecommerce site, bringing it from a catalog website to the number one seed potato ecommerce site in the UK,  but with the new ranges of domestic and merchant services, a new strategy for hosting and development is required - Callisti will likely offer specialist support in 2011 with other support services being provided to ensure the most stable solution.

One difficulty for small operators is the balance between specialisation and broad adaptability for the range of potential clients. Do you concentrate on hosting services and volumes? Or specialise in one particular development platform? 2011 will be a year for new decisions...

Hammock the week

After convoluted development process using Actinic v9, Handmade Hammocks website is now refreshed and taking advantage of some Kit Allen design work and integration with google services.

The ecommerce website sells handmade hammocks that meet Fairtrade standards to meet the prinicples of ethical trading. The company is based near Kirkcudbright in Dumfries and ships internationally

Callisti has gained a lot of experience working with the nuances of Actinic development from different locations, development by remote access, and all the joys of site exports, missing files, huge folders of backup files, cgi-bin dramas, incompatible server platforms, and payment gateway issues. The reward is a sweet-looking ecommerce site that now has more SEO potential for the new season, and a clean working environment after some thorough administration work.

Itsh a compromizhe

This has been on the back-burner for a while. Initially the site was transferred into Callisti's website hosting service toward the end of last year. The vision was to develop a Dr Martens focussed ecommerce site as these products seemed to perform well online, while reducing the in-shop administrative burden of monitoring and updating hundreds or thousands of products.

The site was developed for Christmas 2009 but hit a snag with Dr Martens (who advised against the particular design and domain name we'd settled on.) So what we have done is used a Zen Cart ecommerce engine to replace the previous incarnation of CubeCart and merged the first new build structure into the existing Outdoor Spirit design.

The outdoor-spirit.co.uk has a domain history which can be used and is also familiar to existing customers. More subsidiary work is being done to build around the Outdoor Spirit brand using content channels such as Youtube, a Blog presence, and other linked entities to help promote and review products and provide relevant outdoor activity feedback to help inform website visitors.

Other initiatives such as the Gap Year travel kit have helped package outdoor equipment into one stop shop kits that offer savings to customers and ease of in-shop administration.

Sleigh bells ringing

Looking forward to the new year at Callisti - a number of new projects to get stuck into and we're pleased to say our customers have been enjoying a good year. We have a new ecommerce site about to launch but the news of the day is surely the performance of Sledges, the Aviemore based retailer, since we organised professional DotNetNuke hosting and updated the site to a more stable version.

Traffic and sales are escalating wildly, even just the mention of snow on a UK weather forecast has an impact on visitors to the site, and this month online sales have hit a record high in the website's history. The month's not over yet but there may be a tail-off as the last order cut-off for Christmas 2009 delivery approaches.

Historically the sales and visitors rise again in the new year as demand for sledges is very much winter weather dependent and Scotland won't be short of that in the coming months.

Keeping the outdoor spirit alive

Patties of Dumfries is one of Dumfries and Galloway's established outdoor shops and provides brand name outdoor wear and kit. A timely transfer for Callisti given the recent and impending weather!

We will be working with the team at Patties to develop an effective ecommerce solution for a select range of outdoor wear. News to follow...

Late crop summer potatoes

JBA Seed Potato customers should now have received the first potato newsletter with information on ensuring a healthy crop over the summer.

There are also autumn and winter harvest potatoes which can be planted in July in time for Christmas.

The newsletter is a simple interface in the management section of the website which draws from subscribers to the newsletter (who also received discount voucher to buy potatoes) and has a simple unsubscribe feature to ensure that those who prefer not to receive such things can opt out.

There were over a thousand recipients to the first e-mailshot which shows just how far the website has come since the ecommerce site launched.

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.

Planting potatoes

Using a different IP address, even on the same server, is a way of creating external links to a website. We thought we'd try this with planting potatoes - a way of siphoning off specific content into a mini-website and then linking back to a client's ecommerce site where relevant products can be bought.

Chitting potatoes - now there's a phrase I never thought I'd use.

Organic Farm in the Scottish Borders

Current website development news:

Organic meat from Liddesdale Selection is a website outlining the farm produce and services of a farm in Newcastleton in the Scottish Borders.

The web design is being signed off and will be converted to xhtml and css compliant brochure website for the organic farm produce in the first instance.

We'll then monitor and move on to developing an ecommerce website as required with any SEO work ongoing.

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.

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.