Sanico's Blog

In one software audit a few months ago I worked with a small business here in Australia that hired software developers from a developing country. Within the first three hours of my analysis of the codebase I noticed I lacked the majority of the code necessary to execute the application. Not only that, I uncovered that the software developers hosted a significant part of the code on the internet, visible and accessible to the public.

Did your Shopify store go down? You’ve tried everything but you still fail to connect to your online store? No stress, we help fix, maintain, and create Shopify stores on a daily basis. Problems with Shopify stores happen regularly, you are not alone, I promise. Today I will share 7 troubleshooting steps to help fix your Shopify store and bring it back online. The steps range in technical ability from basic to advanced.

Emails: something almost everyone uses. Love them or hate them they reign king of modern day communication. Tons of apps exist for communication such as iMessage, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Reddit, Google Meets, and many more. From phone calls, text messages, status updates to forum posts and yet email, in my opinion, sits at the top. As a website developer many clients of mine asked if I am able to help them with their emails.

Yes you read it right. I love Software. Software is my passion, something that I lose myself in. Call me a weird geek but I love me some zero’s and one’s. When I write Software I come to life, I feel exhilarated. Whether I program in the morning, afternoon or the middle of the night, time loses meaning. I write Software for work, for pleasure, and for a challenge. Whether paid or unpaid, I am writing Software.

Shopify is a superior ecommerce platform that helps small businesses sell their products online. It has an ongoing cost to use but this cost is offset easily if you have a thriving store. If you are not a developer, you are required to use one of the several free template themes on offer which has its goods and bads. The major good is that you can have a passable website that allows selling online.

You may have heard of ChatGPT but if you haven’t, ChatGPT is an interactive generative pre-trained transformer built on advanced language models… WOAH, let’s make that a bit easier to understand. It is essentially an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that can provide human-like responses to any question you may have. For example, the image below shows the response if I asked ChatGPT to “write a product description for a montessori toy that is colourful and for kids”.

A majority of the businesses that I work with ask me if I am able to integrate their systems with Xero, the software they use for accounting. Most businesses manage several software systems for their daily operations such as a CRM, ecommerce website, inventory system, appointing booking system and much more. However, the software platforms fail to communicate with one another which leads to wasted company resources and inconsistent, incorrect and duplicated data.

When my brother and I founded Sanico Software we started to freelance website design jobs. We began with websites because we knew a market existed for handcrafted, well designed, and well engineered websites. We immediately boomed with business and decided to double down harder on websites. However, the small businesses that we worked with began to ask for more than just websites: “Can you manage my domain?” “Can you set up my computer network in my home office?

We recently worked with an Adelaide based electrician contractor that works on significant projects around South Australia to help customise their quotes, invoices, and job cards in simPRO. I heard several clients mention this software simPRO since I work with other local tradies in Adelaide such as SIMAC Air Conditioning and RP Connections. However, I never directly worked with the software myself. simPRO allows businesses, in particular tradies, to manage their jobs much easier.

When someone starts a business they go straight on the internet and buy a domain name. Usually they buy both the general .com version and the regional version such as .com.au in Australia. They purchase the domain for a multitude of reasons but the major one of course, to prevent its purchase by someone else. Once they establish their business overtime they use the domain for their website, to set up emails, and so on.

As a software engineer I am not required to work from a particular location, in other words, no office required. I started my first software business with my brother called Infinity Mural back in 2019 that then morphed into Sanico Software. Since we just started as a new business we wanted to start with low overheads so we took the obvious choice and decided to work from home. We saved a ton of money as we required no rental of an office or co-working space, no money spent on fuel or car maintenance, and best of all, we recouped the wasted commute time to drive to an office.

Website Tip #9: Choose a domain that suits your target audience. I noticed many of my clients in Adelaide ask me whether to use .com, .com.au or .au for their website. The answer, as always, it depends. From an SEO perspective you must take into consideration your target audience. If the target audience of your website resides in Australia then use .com.au or the new .au for your website. Instead, if your target audience is international without localised versions then use .

I attended the Collective Markets earlier this year located in Civic Park, right across from SA’s well known Tea Tree Plaza. This is where I came in contact with The Naked Soap Company, a small business dedicated to hand making eco-friendly soaps and skin-care products. Elise is the owner of the company and runs the business with her family. I had the privilege of meeting Michelle (Elise’s sister) at the market stall and mentioned I help locals like herself develop their websites.

On the 27th of November 2022 I went to the Bowerbird market on a beautiful Sunday afternoon to support some local Australian creators. The Bowerbird is a well known market showcasing Australian designers and makers held at the Adelaide Showground in my home town of Adelaide, South Australia. I love to go to the markets and support locals because I get the chance to meet small business owners face to face.

Website Tip #8: Write descriptive, clear, and concise titles for your products on your ecommerce website to rank higher on Google. I wrote this tip because I noticed many ecommerce websites in my hometown of Adelaide fail to write good product titles. I thought what a shame. What a missed opportunity. Many people pay an SEO specialist like myself to improve a website while many just miss factors like this that they possess the ability to modify themselves.

Website Tip #7: This tip may seem pretty straightforward but I constantly see missed opportunities for businesses sharing their website with new customers. Picture your website like a castle in the middle of the woods. Sounds random but stay with me here. You have gone to the effort to get your website published online and it now exists in the middle of nowhere. How does anyone know where your castle is?

Website Tip #6: Avoid putting important text in images as it makes it difficult for Google to understand. User’s can’t easily copy text and accessibility readers lack the ability to read the text aloud for people with a disability. Although this tip is subtle it is something that helps boost the SEO of a website. When Google or other search engines index your website they ingest a variety of information, one critical piece of information is the text.

Dom and myself recently landed our biggest client ever with an Adelaide based company called Jobs Statewide. They came to us with a critical and short deadline handed to them by the Government. They needed to set up their new offices in Sydney and Melbourne and they wanted us to handle the set up of their IT infrastructure in each of their new offices. After negotiating a deal we hit the ground running on a trip to get their tech up and running with an sensitive deadline.

By god this is sort of controversial. Google provides many free services that I use daily but there was one tool that ruled them all… the TIMER! Figure 1 shows the timer in all its former glory, so simple, so elegant and now so non-existent. That’s right, when I searched up the classic word “timer” into Google last week my heart wretched at its disappearance. Figure 1: The free timer tool provided by Google when using their search engine.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.