Acorn Web Studio - Melbourne web design and web development

The web has become a workhorse for small business. It abounds with tools and information that provide value and productivity that would be unthinkable only a few years ago.  The cost of accessing and using these tools and services is dropping all the time. 

Sounds great doesn't it?  However it's not without its difficulties. You don't need to go far before you hear stories about the cost and frustration of failed IT implementations.  So what does it take to get it right?

We've all heard that term "web 2.0" recently, meaning the new wave of development, design and progress that has been made on the web in the last few years. It's a term that has ended up encompassing a number of trends, from the technological to the commercial.

One of those trends has been the acknowledgement of the importance of interfaces - if it is a web 2.0 application you can bet its got a clean, simple control panel. If its a 1.0 application, odds on you need an IT degree to work out how it all works.

This week has been a week for demonstrating how important this sort of thing is.

I became a Telstra customer late last year, purchasing one of their wireless broadband products.

Now, I've never been a Telstra fan (so there is my bias right up front), but I chose their product because it seemed to be the only one I could find at that time that worked on the Mac.  And once it was installed properly it worked well. The data download was blindingly fast, and it was pretty useful having web access everywhere.

I won't go into the tech support they provided during the setup phase. Suffice to say I ended up passing their tech support people some useful info rather than the other way around. I got it working by myself, and so as long as you weren't relying on Telstra for any sort of support or service it was a pretty good product.

Unfortunately about a month ago I lost the modem, so I had to contact Telstra again to order a new one as well as change my subscription level.  It was a journey into the belly of the beast...

There are hundreds and thousands of them on the web now. Some of us use them on almost a daily basis, but shopping carts can still be their own special version of hell!

We  built and launched a new site for Alltrails bicycle tours last year (You might have seen them on TV over the holiday break), and the new site included a shopping cart to allow visitors to book rides online.  Unfortunately it just wasn't working...