Sanico's Blog

In the software industry I meet many people who deem themselves as technical wizards, those who live and breathe software for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They know and understand things about software that others know nothing about. Most of these technical wizards, in my experience, lack people skills so when people enter their dungeon to ask a technical question they give what I call, the scoff of superiority. The scoff, you know, that exhalation of breath. The shock that you don’t know the answer and they do. A breath of air that slaps your face with the regret that you even asked the question to begin with. The scoff where you feel inferior for that moment of time and the scoffer feeds off the ego boost that they know the answer.

I hear this one a lot, the complaint that to start a business you must do something new or different. BS. One person I know told me of their concept for a business but reeled back on it when they discovered someone already created a similar business. So what? Who said there wasn’t room for another business to do the same thing? Who said it had to be different to succeed?

Software costs both time and money to write and create. It’s not some magic fairy dust that you wave a wand and earn a butt ton of money. You just wake up with an idea in the morning and earn a billion dollars by nightfall. No. An idea sometimes serves as a start point but an idea alone won’t put food on the dinner table tonight. A friend of mine tells the story of their original idea to customise a car to add a stereo system, people love music so why not add it to a car to enhance the driving experience. An idea that we all live with today, thanks to my friend. Actually no, he never implemented the idea. Instead he thought and spoke about it a lot but never advanced to the implementation stage. Now in hindsight he swears even today if he went through with the idea and built it then he would be a millionaire.

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. This decision is extremely poor practice and whether malice intent, incompetence, an honest mistake or just laziness, it breached the trust of the owner of the company.

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. If they fail to fix your problems then you may always reach out to an expert like myself to help but in my experience usually one of these troubleshooting steps fixes the problem.

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. Some wanted custom emails but lacked the knowledge on how to set it up themselves, others pleaded for my help because their emails failed to send and receive.

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. However, the bad is that you may face issues changing, updating and even selling anything on this website. Getting Shopify support from a local expert should not be underestimated in solving these bad problems.

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?” “Can you filter my emails?” “Can you customise this off the shelf software?” “Can you transfer my Facebook business page that I sold to another business?” “Can you go to Sydney and Melbourne to set up the IT infrastructure in our new offices?” “Can you audit the software that someone built for me overseas?” “Can you connect our inventory system to Xero?” Now, a quick pause here, I label myself primarily as a Software Engineer, even if I graduated as a Computer Scientist from UniSA. I say Software Engineer because I construct and architect software products, although many well respected people disagree with the use of this term, I stay out of the political and social debates. Long story short, I am a Software Engineer.

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. For example, to generate quotes with costs of materials and labour, management of client information, inventory management of materials, and much more. simPRO works great except the quotes, invoices, and jobs cards generated by the system show in a default output, not specific to how a business necessarily desires. It also shows information that a business might want to keep private from quotes, invoices, and job cards.

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. The problems begin here.

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. Win, win, win!

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 .com or another Generic Top Level Domain.

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. No instagram, no Facebook, no technology, no phone call, literally face to face with the owners. They are usually warm, friendly, kind, and passionate people, definitely worth meeting in person.

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? You could tell your friends and family which would create a magical path directly to your castle. However, this is a pathway just for friends and family. Unless they share it with other people this path will barely be used. You need to create more pathways and let people know.

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. Google rips all of the text from a website, interprets it, and understands its relevance which then allows it to recommend the webpage to people searching on Google. This is called the organic search ranking.

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. We started with a super early flight from Adelaide airport and once landing in Sydney and Melbourne we went straight to the first offices.

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. No more, after you read this tip I hope it inspires you to add the favicon to your website.

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. 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.

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!

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.

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.

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 have similar jokes. Ok… maybe we spend way too much time together!