Christmas Tech Traditions

It's become a Christmas tradition for me to serve one of our clients as the last thing I do before going to bed on Christmas Eve.

Every year, the online Thai restaurant at http://www.laddas.com.au closes down for Christmas and reopens a day (sometimes two days) later.

When I close it down and stop customers ordering online, the menu is replaced with a bit of holly and ivy and a Christmas message from the owner (Graham Thompson).

I love this because it is another one of our clients who lets their online business work for them, but not become enslaved to it.

The online restaurant started last century when a larger competitor opened up down the road and Ladda's couldn't expand their seating. Instead, we developed a technology that allowed customers to order from home, with the internet orders faxed straight to the kitchen so the staff could get cooking immediately.

It's proven a great success with an average of 200 order pages faxed through every month.

Speaking of pages, another christmas tradition was trumped by technology this year, with Amazon.com selling more e-books (readable on the Kindle and iPhones etc) than physical printed books.

It's been 2 months since I downloaded my first ebook to a Kindle, and it seems I've got a lot of reading in front of me. Amazon.com has a library of over 390,000 digitised books available for download.

Getting things for free is part of Christmas, right? So if you want to download free ebooks, check out Project Gutenberg. You can keep an eye on the 100 most popular downloads daily. I'm glad to see that Pride & Prejudice made the top 3. And of course, the Charles Dicken's classic, A Christmas Carol, made the top 10.

Google as a Referral Source

Executive Chairman of Loan Market Group recently presented research findings on referral sources for mortgage brokers, according to the latest edition of Brokernews.com.au

Sam White said "Clients search for and find mortgage brokers firstly through word of mouth and secondly through Google....borrowers are Googling mortgage brokers in their area then seeing who come up and starting from there."

Considering that in 1999 Google was still operating out of a garage, and certainly wasn't available as a client acquisition tool for Australian organisations, it speaks volumes about how the market place for the very traditional business of banking has changed in the last 10 years.

Sam White went on to say that "Clients..want to get a feeling of who they are dealing with and whether, through their web presence, the broker demonstrates professionalism."

Your web presence should include not just a web site, but also a blog, twitter, facebook, and you tube at a bare minimum.

Client Goes to Hawaii - and you're invited

I've just finished some maintenance on one of our client sites.

Anne Sargeant is a former Olympian, and world champion - she knows how to win! She's also received the Order of Australia medal and regularly appears on television as a Netball comentator.

I consider it a real honour to have Anne as a client. And updating her website is always a pleasure. But this time, it was even more exciting!

You see Anne is holding her annual netball "boot camp" in Hawaii. Along with all the young, fit athletic contests (like under 15s, and under 17s), there's also divisions for "social" players and "over 35s".

C'mon, we all must fit into at least one of those categories.

So if you want to feel good about taking a holiday in Hawaii, why not check out Anne's website at http://www.annesargeant.com.au/html/___contact_anne.html now.

Of course, you can always book in for one of the many netball clinics Anne holds in Australia, but they're not *quite* as exciting as the white sands, pumping surf, friendly locals and cocktails served to your sun lounge, are they?

Welcome to Onliners

Welcome to the onliners blog. Looking for information on how to prosper online? Whether you've been online for a long time, or you're just starting out, we're excited about helping you publish, promote and profit from the good news about your business.

Onliners has been helping clients (from individuals to large government departments) expand their online presence since June, 1994 - when commercial traffic on the Internet begain in Australia. Our motto is "Virtual Presence. Real Prosperity." And that's what we focus on delivering to every client, every time.

If you're just starting out we have a report (e-book) at a website which will help you. It's called "hot to create a website that pays the mortgage". And it's free! You'll then probably want to find out more about choosing a domain name, and a web hosting service. We can also custom design a web site for you and publish it to the internet.

If you've been around online for awhile, you might be more interested in our advanced services. We can provide regular maintenance of your website, help you promote it, implement e-commerce solutions so you can profit from it, and consult with you on strategic options to help you manage issues such as scalability, social media, intellectual property, digital assets, backups, security, spam and viruses.

Please leave a comment on our blog - we want to hear positive and negative things - we're always learning from our customers. You can also contact Onliners by email - help@onliners.com.au And of course you can follow us on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/onliners and become a fan on facebook - just search for "onliners".

Whatever your online goals are, we hope you'll choose Onliners to help you achieve them.

Sharon Hague

Founder