Joanne Musgrave

As Dick Smith this week win the award for the best online retailer, Myer are spending $225 million dollars revamping ONE of their stores.

Myer can’t be doing it all that tough if they can afford to renovate ONE store at $225 million and still see a return on their investment. One would guess that Dick didn’t spend anywhere near that on their web site.

It’s not hard to see who the innovators are.

One of the fun things about running an online store is that you get to decide what to stock, and then you just have to test everything! This is especially hard when you stock organic food (ok, not so hard!).

I’ve been eating all kinds of things, organic cookies, organic chocolate, sweet potato chips, chocolate coconut butter and more. Whoever said ‘hippy’ organic food is all bland and tasteless hasn’t taken an eating tour through my warehouse!!!

The fun now starts with using raw ingredients in cooking. I have brought home a packet of Power Super Foods Organic Coconut Palm Sugar to bake with. It has a IG rating of 35 and contains 12 amino acids, and it tastes like sugar. Woohoo!!

As my naturopath says, it’s all about substitution. You can still eat sweet foods without them being bad for you. Swap out some cane sugar with coconut palm sugar and see what happens.

We have a wide variety of clients that we do websites for, but one of our latest clients really causes my husband to smirk every time he has to go and call on them. You see, we did a website for a rather classy Central Coast brothel, so James would have to be one of the few husbands in the world that gets to say “I’m heading out to the brothel” without getting in trouble!

I just came across a pretty cool iPhone Ad that allows you to turn your iPhone in to a mobile credit card processor. It’s from iCCPay and syncs up with SecurePay, eWay or PaymentExpress.

It’s PCI DSS compliant and a nifty way for tradies or stall holders at markets to take card payments without lugging around a POS machine.

I just learnt something really cool in Photoshop (ok, it’s cool if you’re a nerd!).

Sometimes I have trouble with the PRINT SCREEN button working properly, and when this happens, I have to close Photoshop and re-open it again. Rather annoying & inconvenient.

I tried a ‘hail mary’ and it actually worked – I dragged a graphic off a website straight in to an open Photoshop file. Bloody brilliant!

Looking for a lake change? If I hadn’t just bought a house 6 months ago and we actually owned a boat instead of just dreaming about one, I’d be buying a block of land at Aquilo Bonnells Bay. I may be a little bias, as I’ve been sitting here this week building their new website!

In all seriousness, it’s a beautiful part of the world, really close to major towns & cities but you feel like you’re out in the peaceful serenity of nature. I’ll just need to be content with a drive to the lake for now

Yesterday, we stepped in to the 21st Century and bought our very first Apple computer (if you don’t count the dodgy second hand giant round contraption with the big old screen in it). I was going to buy an iPad for browser testing, but ended up with a MacBook Air for the same price. A very tiny, lightweight solid state hard drive laptop that’s just perfect for what I need.

I think I might have just unwittingly joined a cult

One of our web design clients, Brushwood Fencing, are just fabulous! No cheap & nasty or shoddy work here, just stunningly beautiful brushwood fences. They can also do repairs to your existing fence, do you a pool fence or a side gate and even thatch the roof on your gazebo! CLICK HERE to visit their website and get the best customer service in Sydney. Ask for Narelle. Tell her Joanne told you to call.

I was just wondering today, while scouting some online stores, what kind of moron discounts their whole website with a discount coupon that’s advertised on the front page of their website. If you want everyone to have 30% off, then just drop the prices by 30%. If you want to test a piece of advertising, then offer a discount in a newsletter or some Google Adwords, but putting it on the front page of your online shop is just sheer stupidity.

That is all

On another note, I have had 3 suppliers in 3 days delivery my orders on a pallet. Warehouse exploding at the seams!!!