Kilobites by Sanico

Website Tip #5: Do not forget to add a favicon to your website. I say forget because it seems people usually forget to add the poor little favicon to their website and in doing so they miss out on an opportunity to increase brand recognition and verify the legitimacy of a website. I created this web tip because I am so surprised at the sheer number of websites that I see that forget this little impactful addition. No more, after you read this tip I hope it inspires you to add the favicon to your website.

What the heck is a favicon?

A favicon is a symbol or icon that usually contains the logo of a website and appears in common places such as Google Search or directly within a web browser. For example, when a user queries something on Google the displayed results show a small icon next to the URL of the website. Figure 1 shows a hand pointing to the icons that I highlighted with yellow circles. Google sources the favicons from a website and displays them in their search results adjacent to the URL of a website.

Figure 1: Google search results with favicon images.

Another place where favicons are used is in the tab of a web browser window. No stress if that sounds like gibberish to you. I will clarify. In Google Chrome on a browser tab the favicon appears adjacent to the title of a website, as seen in Figure 2 below. The favicons allow a user to pick between browser tabs with …

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Website Tip #4: Speed is an important SEO factor that needs to be considered by the website owner. I mean, how often do you access a website and wait a million years for it to load? I don’t know about you, but this happens to me more often than not and it really grinds my gears. I have a theory behind why many websites load slow and will share how you can test your own website speed for future fixes.

As the internet has continued its development over the years, the advancement of website builders have grown. When I say ‘website builder’, I don’t mean a literal computer programmer but instead a program built to allow non-IT people to create websites.

Wordpress is currently one of the biggest website builders that started as a tool for creating blogs. Shopify is another major website builder that started as an ecommerce site selling snowboards. I even personally first learnt to develop websites on a program called Dreamweaver 8 years ago which served as a handy drag and drop tool. All of these tools have continued development over the years, offering new templates and plugins to customise your website.

The development of these website builders is bittersweet in my opinion. The great part of website builders is the pathway they pave for non-IT people. It lowers the barrier to entry and allows more interaction in the software world. No longer do you have to interact with a terminal …

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Website Tip #3: You might not know it but using HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) on your website is actually a page experience factor Google uses to rank a website. Many people think black magic, voodoo or casting spells helps a website rank better on Google, when in reality Google publishes a wide range of informative documentation to help websites rank better. Many misconceptions exist and people chase unusual tactics to rank better while they miss basic factors such as HTTPS.

What is HTTPS and why use it on a website?

HTTPS is a protocol that provides a safe and encrypted method for a website and its client to communicate with each other securely. With the rise of hacking, data theft and cyber attacks on the internet HTTPS was created as a method to enforce encryption, increase data integrity and authenticate communications between a website and its clients. It is something that every website should be using both to protect themselves, their users and to additionally receive a ranking boost on Google. I won’t explain HTTPS in technical detail but for those interested check out this Wikipedia article which discusses HTTPS in more detail.

Many negative consequences exist for websites that fail to use HTTPS for their communications, such as:

• Google ranks websites lower that don’t use HTTPS as they want to navigate clients to websites that provide a higher level …

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Website Tip #2: A very common strategy websites use is acquiring newsletter signups via email addresses. However, the mistake many websites make is in the form of large popup windows. What do I mean by large? It is large enough to disallow a user from accessing content on the page as seen in figure 1. These pesky popup windows sound good to prompt users but can actually have negative effects on the website’s search engine optimisation (SEO).

Figure 1: An intrusive popup (dialogue) obstructing website content.

The other technical name for an intrusive element that obstructs content is referred to as an interstitial. Both interstitial and dialogues need to be approached in a non-intrusive manner.

But how can I prompt users without being slightly intrusive?

The concept of the newsletter signup is not negative, it is the disabling of user interaction with the website content that can get SEO rankings punished. Therefore, it is a great idea to implement elements such as banners on the website as seen in figure 2.

Figure 2: Newsletter signup implemented with banners instead of an interstitial or dialogue.

These images serve purely as examples for the banners and are not a showcase of my design skills. They serve the purpose of showing how the user can still interact with the page content without being interrupted. The banner can still be emphasised as long as it does not …

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Website Tip #1: You might not have expected it but the file name of an image actually helps Google understand your picture so that it indexes both the picture and your website better. Before I explain further I want to start with a few examples that will demonstrate the difference more clearly:

Example of bad image names:

• image39_9394.png
• IMG_39382.png
• download_image_50053.png

Example of good image names:

• dog-in-a-garden.png
• cat-playing-with-a-ball.png
• me-and-my-friends-at-the-park.png

If you read the two lists, the difference is obvious. Without seeing the picture I understand that dog-in-a-garden.png will likely contain a picture of a dog in a garden. If I look at image39_9394.png I have no idea what it represents. If I find it difficult to understand then Google will also find it very difficult. When Google discovers an image it looks at many factors to understand what it represents. Google, as discussed in their official documentation, uses the file name as one of these factors.

Whether you use a static website generator, Shopify, SquareSpace or any other Content Management System (CMS), rename image files to contain more descriptive names to help Google understand your images better. It only takes a few moments to rename an image to give a more descriptive file name before uploading it to a website, time worth spent in my opinion.

I left a few suggestions below that I …

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Anyone can create a social media account. You can be in adolescence, a baby boomer or even a business. The fact is, if you have access to the internet then you can create an account. Applications such as Facebook and Instagram provide platforms at the initial cost of $0 and this is enticing from a business perspective.

As any business owner that is just starting, they quickly become aware that the bills can add up in multiple areas. Therefore, staying cost aware and spending money wisely becomes very important. Many businesses research different ways to market their business and an extremely common response is to get active on socials!

The image seen below shows the top result (minus ads) from searching “how to market my business” on Google. The top answers found by Google mention social media, you can try for yourself for sanity’s sake.

A screenshot of the search query ‘how to market my business’ in Google.

I mean, why WOULDN’T YOU?! You get to expose yourself on platforms like Facebook with 2.91 billion monthly active users and Instagram with 2 billion speculated monthly active users. That is insane. I personally recommend it too, getting your business out there and creating unique content for your intended audiences is invaluable.

So what the hell am I talking about here? Well, I have had many new business owners question the point of a website when …

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We, Dom and myself, built a custom ecommerce website for Pup Hub Cafe, a local pet food company founded by Jo Rugless and based in Adelaide, Australia. Jo Rugless and her company Pup Hub Cafe sell homemade pet food with use of local ingredients from South Australia. I will discuss how we met Jo, our approach to build the website and some of the key things that we implemented.

The Origins of the Job

We met Jo at a local market in Adelaide where we saw her very unique homemade pet food. After selling at the market for the last few years she really wanted to grow her business online through ecommerce. A way to increase professionality, spread brand awareness and add an additional channel to sell her pet food.

Jo attempted to do her own website with a website builder from Amazon. Her and her husband tried but admitted they lacked the technical skills and time necessary to complete the website to a high standard. Many website builders exist on the internet and sell people on the dream of building a website without a developer, which in my opinion, this dream fails to meet the reality.

People lack the skills to build professional websites and instead they use website builders, shove a bunch of information on a page, and end up creating an awkward frankenstein looking website. Customers then arrive on the page, they see the lack of professionality and leave due to a poor experience …

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I have been told that I am lucky I love software. However, many do not realise that I have invested much time and energy to feel these emotions. Software has been a growing passion of mine but the love did not start grand. I happened to program for the first time in a year 12 subject. They pushed the students to use a basic website-building program and I hated it, so I found an alternative by programming the website from scratch. The school subject was based on design skills and I left with the skill of basic programming - an unintended benefit. Did I know I wanted to program for my career? No… but I did know how cool it was to solve problems with code.

I chose to study a Bachelor of Software Engineering and thought I would just give it a go. I enjoyed the concepts with each new course I studied and completed my degree. However, I could have easily changed or left if I felt no enjoyment for the content.

We are pushed at a young age to choose a career path based on what we may excel in or where the money is. I also felt pressure to choose a career path based on my ATAR (final score of year 12 grades) as if it was currency. For example, if I scored an 85/99.95, I would feel pressure looking at university courses that I had no interest in but felt compelled to apply just because I could. I look back at this time fondly and smile as it was shrouded with panic for no good reason. …

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Welcome to Sanico’s Blog. We decided to create this blog because we want to share insightful information with local Adelaide businesses to help them leverage websites to create a stronger online presence and increase their discoverability on search engines such as Google in an organic manner.

First an introduction of who we are! We are Sav and Dom Tripodi, two brothers from Adelaide, South Australia. We have been an inseparable brothership team even before the days of Sanico Software where we now work together professionally. We have lived together all our lives, both went to the same school, both graduated in software bachelor degrees, both got girlfriends from the same party and both tell similar jokes. Ok… maybe we spend way too much time together!

Although our venture Sanico Software is relatively new, we have been creating software for the past 10 years. We have made many software programs big and small, for organisations and companies that are also big and small, like IBM, the University of South Australia and Government departments. We have made countless personal software projects that have never seen the light of day, except one called Infinity Mural that we spent the last two years producing, publishing and promoting.

We have been making websites since we attended high school, although in Australia, and Adelaide in particular, the teaching of Information …

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