Kilobites by Sanico

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.

First and foremost, before sourcing a local Shopify expert, it is worth checking out the Shopify Help Center as Shopify provides worthwhile information on a lot of common issues.

Shopify Help Center quick options for support.

They also provide a great support chat online for paying customers. They will often help solve simple issues if you are willing to wait for instant message responses.

However, communicating through instant messages or reading online documentation can also become a headache for the business owner. They want to focus on their product and consumer side but are forced to liaise with support teams and spend time trying to fix issues that they are not experts in.

I recommend to business owners to give it a go themselves but if it is taking too much of their …

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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”.

Asking ChatGPT to write me a product description for a Montessori toy.

All I did was write a question, make sure to mention a few important details and away it went. It actually generated more text but I cut the rest of the answer for simplicity’s sake. Yes, this tool is pretty powerful and could be used to automate a lot of menial tasks. It is no surprise that since its initial release on November 30, 2022 that it had over 1 million users after 5 days and now has over 100 million users to date. However, the tool has limitations and biases that need to be understood by the end user. It is important to quickly discuss who developed ChatGPT to understand its origins in a nutshell.

Who developed ChatGPT?

ChatGPT was developed by the company OpenAI who was co-founded in 2015 by notable names such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman and others. The co-founders pledged $1 billion to fund this project that …

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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.

Software integrations enable software systems to communicate and move data between one another without the need to double handle. Well-engineered integrations enable a business to save time, money and resources instead of manually moving data between systems themselves. Integrations also allow for new internal processes and automations that never existed before.

Why Xero?

Different businesses use various software products specific to their industry. However, every business, no matter the industry, requires software for accounting, therefore a significant amount of people utilise accounting software, especially services such as Xero, Quickbooks, MYOB and others. With a user base of over 3.5 million across 180 countries, Xero possesses a vast number of companies that utilise its software.

People want to integrate with Xero because they use it as the bedrock of their financial status as a business. To determine their …

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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.

However, as more and more clients ask me questions like the ones I listed above, I find it difficult to …

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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 more easily. 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.

The company we worked with said they used simPRO for a significant amount of time but the quotes, invoices, and job cards failed to show the way they desired which meant they refused to use them. Instead, they copied and pasted information generated from simPRO into their own Word document with the styles and information they desired. This meant double handling of information which wastes time, effort, and money.

Instead of the double handling of information they decided to call …

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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 over time they use the domain for their website, to set up emails, and so on. The problems begin here.

The problem occurs when a business owner or their employee misconfigures a domain name that leads to emails, websites, and much more going offline. Over the last year alone I received over 10 requests for help with misconfigured domain names where a small business lost the ability to send and receive emails and for customers to access their website. Even worse, some of the businesses failed to realise their emails or website went down until their customers began to complain.

Cheap Domain, Costly Future Problems

Many small businesses manage their own domain names due to the cheap cost of $18aud to $25aud from domain providers such as GoDaddy, Google Domains, Crazy Domains, and many more. However, most domain companies offer these cheap prices with the hope that businesses subscribe to other services such as websites, emails, security tools, and much more. Make a loss on the cheap gateway product to make a profit on the addons, that sort …

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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!

So many benefits, no drawbacks, right? Wrong! After 3 years of home office working I am here to tell you, dear reader, that working from home ain’t perfect. I wanted to share 4 drawbacks that I found when I work from home. A small disclaimer, although I discuss the drawbacks all in all I still prefer to work from home rather than in an office, I will write the benefits of working from home in another post!

Drawback 1: Distractions from others in the house

If you live in a house with other people sometimes they forget that you work from home. They will ask small unrelated questions throughout the day, do overly loud chores such as vacuuming, talk on the phone as loud as possible to their cousin from Sydney and many other small annoyances.

It is a house after all, a shared space where one or …

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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, is that 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.

The type of domain purchased gives a strong signal to Google about the location and target audience of a website. If I buy a domain name with .com.au Google recognises that the domain originates from Australia and therefore allows them to show the website to the correct target audience.

Remember, Google wants to serve people with the most relevant search results therefore to send a strong signal such as a geographically specific domain name helps Google understand the relevance of a website.

For example, say I want to find a local plumber in my city of Adelaide, South Australia. I crack open Google and search: “Local Plumber Adelaide Australia”. Do you think Google will show me links for local plumbers from the UK? From China? From India? Look at the links below and guess which domain you expect to show up if you typed “Local Plumber Adelaide …

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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 her develop their websites.

Fast forward several weeks later and I was in a Zoom call with Elise understanding what her primary goal was for the new website. Elise explained to me how their previous website wasn’t hitting the mark and wanted an update.

Why was the previous website not hitting the mark?

The previous website, as seen in the images below, made sales but it had a poor user experience. After viewing it myself I noticed that the website had slow load times, was designed with an average template and didn’t fully represent the quality of their products. These sorts of issues are not just aesthetic but practical issues since Google ranks on all of these factors.

A screenshot of the old website home page for The Naked Soap Company.

The website would take its time to display product images which can make users frustrated and deterred from staying on the website.

Products taking their time to load on the old website for The …

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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.

Cards that I bought from Popcorn Blue Illustrations at the Bowerbird market.

At the Bowerbird market the small business owners travel from far and wide, from Melbourne to rural New South Wales. Predominantly the market consists of South Australian businesses but also gives business owners from interstate an opportunity to come along and share their products with us South Aussies.

The Bowerbird market reminds me of the stories my Dad used to tell me of when my family sold their fresh fruit and vegetable cultivated from their farm at the local markets. It reminds me of hard work, determination, and local Aussie spirit. The Australian dream, to have a home amongst the gumtrees with lots of plum trees.

A discovery set of perfume that I bought from the Botonic Enve at the Bowerbird …

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