Kakadu 4WD Tours

Kakadu 4WD Tours WebsiteA while back Genda Campbell used to work as a tour guide in the Kakadu region – he loved his job so much, he decided to buy the business.

Check out Genda’s new website: Kakadu 4WD Safaris.

Genda leads small group, four wheel drive adventures.  He likes to spend his time off the beaten track. Working with Web Noise and OM4 for design/web development, Genda arranged to have his website link directly to the V3/Front Desk online booking system.

Utilising an online booking system like V3/Front Desk and means a website is open for business, taking bookings and taking secure online payments 24 hours a day.



Keeping Websites Up to the Joneses

Keeping Up with the JonesesPerhaps you’ve met the Joneses in their television series, produced by independent TV production company WTFN.

Called Keeping Up With The Joneses, the series has been very successful and is being pitched internationally to be aired in a number of countries.

The Jones Group called on Web Noise to help launch their four new sites, with OM4 working on web design and web development:

The four sites share a common design framework, each with its own branding and service offers.

The Jones family and Australia’s Top End receive significant exposure with quality cinematography throughout the series. It is generating a great deal of online interest and exposure.

Tourism NT is also operating a tourism campaign, with activity centering around the three themes of the show; natural landscapes, colourful characters and outback adventure.

Coolibah Air, as the tourism arm of North Australian Helicopters, is the Jones Group focal point for awareness of the Territory as a destination, and as a funnel to take this wide ranging interest and turn it into bookings.



WA Club Membership Website

Western Australian ClubThe Western Australian Club has been a part of WA’s commercial, business and political life for 117 years.

With a new website and email marketing facility, the Western Australian Club is now able to:

  • provide member logins to allow member bookings and reservations for events and dining functions
  • manage efficiently member requests for golf, reciprocal clubs and other member benefits
  • communicate with members regularly via email, using a custom designed email template

Through her team the General Manager is able to publish web pages that include public information as well as private information that is only visible to members when they are logged in.

The new website was designed by Tracy Graffin and developed by OM4.



Simple design for stunning landscapes

Rowena Keall WalshPerth artist Rowena Keall Walsh feels a strong and close connection to the natural landscape and describes herself as passionate about nature and the impact that humans have on the environment.

Rowena says, “Through my paintings I would really like to bring people closer to nature, to appreciate and respect the amazing qualities that it has to offer our society”.

Knowing that, Nick Page from The Creative Page developed a fresh and simple design that lets her portfolio take centre stage, which we then used to develop her website.

You will see Rowena’s corporate commissions hanging in Perth Airport and in the Galaxy Hotel, Macau and as well as in private collections around the world.



WordPress 3.1.4 Security Release

Over night WordPress 3.1.4 was released.

WordPress 3.1.4 is a maintenance and security update, which fixes an issue that could allow a malicious Editor-level user to gain further access to the website.

It also incorporates several other security fixes and hardening measures.

OM4 clients will be happy to know that as part of their hosting, administration and support service all of their websites have already been updated to WordPress 3.1.4. See the OM4 Change History page for more details.



The Importance of Branding for Small Business

What a great title for a post: Why Branding is a Luxury for Small Businesses.

I would have agreed with this statement as recently as two years ago. But today, I’d say branding for a small business should be right up there at the top of the list of priorities.

Measuring the value of branding isn’t easy. Before launching my own business I used to work for IBM, so I got to experience the change from a major brand to no brand at all.

The web is making branding more important for small businesses than ever. I’m in the camp that will argue with Susan’s proposition that branding is a luxury for small business. In the early days of the web, it was a competitive advantage just to be out there. But the rules have changed. The internet is mainstream, and I would argue that the value of a brand – especially for small businesses – is stronger in the online business world than in what we used to think of as traditional business.

Good branding isn’t easy, but it isn’t out of reach for small business. And treating it as a luxury might mean a business finds it a lot harder to compete.

It is a democracy out there. Every business gets to choose where to invest its resources. And the marketplace decides who makes better choices.



Web Browsers and Color Management

Presenting photographs on websites so they look good for the majority of visitors can be a challenge, particularly for photographers.

A lot of computers have high end monitors. But the variety of ways that Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari (and the other web browsers) display colors means that to get consistent results across different browsers, images need to be prepared based on a lowest common denominator approach.

Fabio Pili has published an article on web browser color management that will be useful for photographers who want to use all the capabilities of their high end monitors when working with Photoshop, but also need to know how to prepare images so they look good when viewed in different web browsers.

I’ve added Fabio’s article to the list of useful resources on our How To article for photographers that covers preparing images for the web: Preparing Images for the Web: Color Profiles, sRGB and Adobe RGB.



WordPress 3.1: Internal Linking, Admin Bar, IE9 and More

We have recently updated the OM4 platform to include the latest WordPress (3.1) features, bug fixes and improvements.

There are quite a few improvements, including:

  • Internal Linking, which makes it much easier to create a link to your existing posts and pages. See screenshot below.
  • Admin Bar, which means you’re only ever one click away from the most common Dashboard features.
  • Simplified Writing Interface, with the post and page editor now display fewer options (metaboxes) by default. Visit Screen Options in the top right to get old panels back.
  • Sortable Dashboard List Screens, making it easier to find information in your Dashboard.
  • Improved Importer/Exporter, which allows you to export just post or pages (instead of everything), as well as only exporting certain date ranges, categories, authors, statuses, and more.
  • Internet Explorer 9 Compatibility – the Visual Editor should now work as expected with IE9.
  • and many more

The full list of over 800 new features, bug fixes and improvements can be found here.

We hope these improvements make administering and using your OM4 website a much more enjoyable task.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask below or post your question on our support desk.



A Consulting Business Website for Board Business

Today we welcome Trish Ridsdale and Maria Quinn of Board Business to the web.

Trish and Maria are launching with a minimal design, which they may update in the near future. In the meantime they can get familiar with the WordPress interface and start to share their point of view through their blog.

For a consulting business, a website that shares a point of view and provides a clear overview of available services can be very effective. New and established businesses both benefit from a business website that helps validate a personal referral, serves as a lead generation tool and provides a simple way to get in touch.

Board Business

Board Business



Small Business Websites and SEO

This post provides an excellent summary of what is required for a small business website: SEO Checklist for Local Small Business Websites

If you’ve been thinking SEO is arcane and complex, the emphasis on simple and clear business thinking is really worth noting. A site put together using this approach makes sense to people – and without too much effort, will work very well for search engines.

An item I would add to the list would be this: include a blog in your website, and use it to share information about the problems that matter to your customers. If you post regularly to your blog in this way, your small business website is likely to get an increasing flow of organic search traffic.