ThinkingPower recently had the opportunity to work with a small consultancy business located in the Dandenong Ranges. The business serves a specific niche, advising product manufacturers how to navigate the complex standards and requirements necessary for their particular market. The business owner had set up a website but realised they weren't getting the traffic they expected, nor was the website showing up in Google results.

The customer had used Wix to set up a website for their business. Wix is a great service, simplifying the process of creating, updating and managing your website. If you've struggled with the complexities and costs of running your own WordPress website, Wix will come as a breath of fresh air.
The new website looked great and had plenty of relevant information. Nonetheless, the customer was concerned that they weren't getting visitors to their website, so they called out to ThinkingPower for some help.

The website looked good and our tools showed no major problems with the site content. It loaded up nicely in a browser and on a mobile device. Images loaded, security was enabled.
​However a simple Google search indicated there were problems because the site didn't show up despite looking for some very specific keywords. In addition, the customer wasn't able to find any data about visitor numbers, and without some data we wouldn't be able to tell how well we were doing. 

Despite it's huge computing power, Google still needs to be told what to suck in. Unless it is told what to process, Google can be ignorant that a website even exists. 
Introducing Google to our customer's website was the key to unlocking the potential for this customer and enabled visitor tracking. We also added 'structured data' information to the website, providing further information that Google could use to improve it's knowledge of our customer and refine it's search results. And we added some tracking code so we could gather more information about the visitors to the website.
Over the course of the next few days, we saw statistics about the website visitors start to appear. We also saw the website start to show up in search results.
​Over the next few weeks we were able to see significant improvements in the number of visitors to the website and see that the website was performing well for searches on specific keywords within it's industry niche.

We were delighted to see this improvement in results from Google search results. We'd been able to get our customer's website visible to their potential clients and we'd been able to track improvements in the number of visitors to their website.
But more significantly, we learnt from our customer that they were getting more enquiries about their services from genuine clients and prospects. Their website was finally driving business results because of the expertise of ThinkingPower Site Maximiser.

Is your website struggling to get visitors and generate business? Why not contact ThinkingPower for free today to discuss your needs and find out how ThinkingPower can help drive real business results.

What makes a computer into something special? The answer is the software - the apps. Without software you've got nothing but a box sitting there doing nothing. But add some software and you've got something interesting - maybe open a web browser and surf the web. Maybe open a word processor and write a book. Maybe open Photoshop and edit some photos.
Of course over the past decade or so, another option has become available. Instead of running apps on a computer that you can see and touch, the 'Public Cloud' of Amazon AWS, Google Cloud Platform and others means that anyone with an internet connection, technical skills and some patience can run apps that are accessible over the internet, running on computers that are never seen.
This comes with it's own set of problems though. Have you ever been in the middle of replying to an email only to be told that your computer needs to update? The same thing happens in the Cloud - there's a continual background task to ensure that your 'virtual computer' is running properly, is up to date, has enough disk drive space etc.
As a software developer, this is frustrating. In an ideal world, the developer would create the software and just let it light up. Developers really don't care about the computer itself as long it has the right performance, capacity and features to run the software they've created.
Another matter is cost. Imagine your business has a process that needs to run occasionally - once a week or once a month. . Perhaps you had an Excel macro that reformatted a financial report. Wouldn't it be great if this service only runs when it's needed and spends the rest of the time asleep?
A couple of years ago, Amazon AWS introduced a new way to host applications. Instead of running your own virtual servers, instead you hand the code over to Amazon who then runs it for you as and when it's needed. Google has had something similar for a while under the guise of Google App Engine and Cloud Functions, however the AWS solution, called Lambda, allows the developer to split their app into separate functions and host those functions independently. Then use other services like DynamoDB to store data, Cognito to identify and authenticate users and ignore the system that runs the code altogether.
This all sounds great, but the reality has been that setting up all the different components to work together has required brain surgeon skill levels. The idea is to ignore the platform (compute, networking etc). Instead the developer needed to become an expert in these things. If the goal is to go from written code to running app quickly and easily, there was a gap. 
Fortunately I'm not the only one that recognised this as a problem, and a variety of tools popped up to take away the hassle of configuring the AWS goliath. Since I'm familiar with Python coding, I decided to have a play with Zappa and so far I've been really pleased with the results. I've been able to get some running code onto AWS very quickly and without a great deal of code complexity or change. I'll be continuing my experimentation and hope to bring some examples for public consumption soon.

Traditional IT systems are frighteningly expensive and out of reach for small businesses. Whether it's the up-front cost of buying servers, the on-going costs of maintaining and operating systems or the challenges of creating software solutions, small businesses wisely steered clear of these expensive endeavours.
But times have changed. Over the past few years, Cloud-based systems have arrived, making it unnecessary to buy hardware and deploy systems, instead allowing anyone to just use the services that run in the Cloud. We don't need to think about servers running in the background as we post updates to Facebook or send emails via Gmail. And yet we use these services as critical elements of our small businesses.

As well as 'standard' systems like email, every small business also has it's own process and systems. Whether it's a staff roster, a customer list, suppliers, inventory or accounts, there's probably some spreadsheets kicking about that you absolutely depend on. But what happens when you're away from your computer? Or your computer dies? What if you want someone else help you work on the task? 
​Sound familiar?

With dramatic evolution of Cloud-based solutions, we are now seeing a new set of tools becoming available that make powerful custom IT systems an affordable option for small businesses. Called 'Low-code" or "High Productivity" platforms, they provide development and deployment services that allow anyone to create and run systems without the expense attached. Tech analyst firm Gartner is now tracking this set of tools and has released it's first Magic Quadrant.

At ThinkingPower, we focus on delivering business solutions as efficiently as possible. We build on powerful development platforms that provide massive functionality without complexity and cost, allowing us to deliver robust solutions quickly and cost effectively. We've been using low-code platforms for years to help our clients run their businesses more effectively and we're excited about helping you too. Contact us today to find out how we can use a Low-Code system to help streamline your business.

A client needed to keep a record of daily cash-flow to help balance the books and track the day-by-day performance of the business. Instead of using a spreadsheet, ThinkingPower built a solution on Zoho Creator, consisting of:

• an easy-to-use data capture form with built-in calculations and several short-cuts, reducing the time and complexity of entering data,
• an online database to store the data,
• a roles-based security system based on Google accounts,
• a set of reports and custom views.

The system has worked well since we started using it but the additional benefits of using a Cloud-based solution truly emerged later on:

• being cloud-based, data can be entered from anywhere - from the computer, ipad or phone - at home, at work or on the go.
• other people can be given restricted access to the system, so other staff members can enter data but cannot see previous entries.
• new reports can be developed later on. After capturing data for 18 months, we added a report to show performance compared to the previous years.
• the client does not need to worry about backing up data or managing versions of spreadsheets. All the data is in one spot and always available.
• using the power of Zoho Creator, the solution was delivered quickly and cost-effectively.

Interested to know more about cloud-powered solutions for your business? Contact ThinkingPower today.

When starting out with a new business venture, money is tight. You know you need to get online, so the temptation is to sign up for a cheap or free web hosting plan and launch your new business online that way. Simple, right?

So you set to, registering a domain, creating a great landing page, writing pages of great content, maybe getting someone help you create some graphics and photos. You publish your page and sit back, waiting for customers to start knocking on your virtual door. Except... it's just too quiet. No-one seems to know you're there. The only people talking to you are your friends and relatives, people you already had a relationship with. Your website hasn't reached anyone outside of your direct circle of contacts. And after the first couple of clicks, even your friends stop dropping by. With no traffic, you lose interest in updating your website and the content starts getting stale. Your business survives in spite of your website. Rather than driving sales, your website is just a drain on your precious time and a distraction from the rest of your work.

What has gone wrong? The problem with this approach is that you've just thrown your website out into the wide ocean of the web, hoping to get noticed among the millions of other websites already out there and the thousands of new ones popping up every day. People can't find your site and dumping more content onto your site does nothing to solve the problem.

That's why we created Site Maximiser, the web presence optimisation service from ThinkingPower. With Site Maximiser, your site will be configured to direct relevant traffic to you, your website will be discoverable, you will be able to tell how your website is performing and gain insights how to make your website perform even better. You'll have the information necessary to drive customers to your website.
By working with ThinkingPower, your website will bring business and work for you.

Even better, get online with a My Website package from ThinkingPower and your website will benefit from Site Maximiser straight away.

We worked with a local cafe business. Located in a tourist area, it's a competitive landscape with many great options and alternatives. The business has a great reputation among locals but we wanted to make sure that visitors were also able to find the business when planning their visit. 
With only minor changes to the content of the website, we were able to push the business higher in the search results and see how our web traffic compared to other businesses in the area. We could see how often people got directions to the cafe or made a telephone call. We could understand how to tweak and tune the website content to better reflect the products and services offered.
The business continues to have a great reputation among the locals but we're now able to let fresh visitors come and experience what great products and service is on offer.