Isle Creative attends MCA E-Commerce Forum

Today we attended the  eCommerce Forum entitled DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS – the challenges and opportunities. It was held at the Westin Dragonara resort and was as usual organised by the Malta Communications Authority. Some interesting points emerged, one of which was the figures for internet usage in Malta and especially the numbers relating to use of E-Commerce facilities. According to official statistics:

• 69% of the Maltese use the internet regularly
• 73% of them regularly shop online. Therefore there are around 200,000 online shoppers in Malta, dispelling the myth that Maltese people are afraid to shop online.
• 7% of Maltese online shoppers are using local shops – nearly half of them are buying flights (from airmalta.com)
• Therefore only 3.5% are actually finding other items from local retailers. The most popular items bought online locally were electronics, books, foods and toileteries.
• 93 % of Maltese online shoppers use foreign shops.

Clearly these figures show that Maltese businesses are probably not yet taking advantage of online shopping facilities, even though it is now proven that Maltese people do shop online and do so regularly as well.

Will we have a drastically different picture in a few years time? I believe Maltese businesses will soon realise the advantages of setting up an online shop and therefore be able to compete with their foreign rivals. This will be good for both the businesses themselves and the Maltese consumer as well.

Looking forward to seeing more Maltese businesses online!

Free Photoshop Template for Web Designs

Today we are sharing our Photoshop template file, which we typically we use when starting new designs. It is based on the 960px grid and has folders readily created so you can just start designing straight into them and keep everything neatly organised.

If you are into web design, this is another interesting post on how to prepare your final Photoshop file before handing it over to the developer.

Click here to download Free Photoshop Web Design Template

Isle Creative present at JCI’s Business Networking Event

We recently had the pleasure of attending the JCI Business Networking Event at the Grand Hotel Excelsior in Valletta. The event was excellently organised and we will definitely be attending similar events in the future. This business networking event brought together established players in the local scene and young entrepreneurs. During our networking sessions it quickly became evident that there is alot of talent here in Malta, with lots of business ideas coupled with a strong will to succeed.

Our thanks go out to the organisers of this event and we would also like to wish the best of luck to all the participants in their business endeavours.

See you all at the next business networking event!

New Business Cards

We have recently printed our new business cards, and would like to share some pictures with you.

They are printed on both sides of premium quality matt laminated paper, and also feature Spot UV effects on the Isle Creative logo.

Whether you run a small business or are employed by a major company, business cards are an absolute must. They allow people you come in contact with to easily find you after the initial meeting and reach you for potential partnerships, deals, and jobs. However, it’s up to you to make a good impression and make everyone want to follow up with you in the first place.

Of course, business card creation is one of our services. Need a revamp for your business cards? Contact us now, we even take care of printing the business cards at the highest quality for you.

Get Tax Incentives for Developing a Website

Malta Enterprise is offering tax incentives of up to 40% on the cost of developing or renovating a website in Malta. These tax incentives can be obtained through the microinvest scheme and are aimed at self-employed persons and small businesses which employ 9 people or less. Isle Creative is helping small business benefit from this scheme and create a beautiful website which gives high returns to the business. Now is the time to go ahead and invest in a new website or renovation, contact us today to discuss how you can benefit from this scheme.

A summary of the scheme can also be found on Jean Galea’s blog post about the subject.

Isle Creative featured on Jesus Buenrostro’s Usability Blog

Jesus Buenrostro, a web developer in the US, has mentioned our website in his informative blog post about colour and usability considerations in website designs. There are literally millions of websites (205,368,103 in April 2010, to be exact, according to NetCraft), and web designers are faced with the challenge of creating unique websites that grabs the attention of the visitors.

At Isle Creative we strive to provide the best Website design services in Malta as well as being experts in WordPress development. We thank Jesus for mentioning us in his blog and look forward to continue creating attractive and usable websites for our clients.

Affiliate Partner Program

Isle Creative is now offering you the chance to become one of our affiliate partners and resell our high quality services.

We pay a 10% referral commission

The Affiliate/Partner Program has been setup to help many business add extra value and service offering to their clients. At Isle Creative our job is to make you look good and by partnering with a company like ours you can be assured quality work, on time delivery, ongoing support and most important of all keeping all promises.

Create a new source of revenue for yourself

To thank-you for referring a new client to us we pay a 10% referral commission on the first service. This amount remunerates you for the effort of passing the referral to us, as well as representing the saving to us by not having to spend on advertising.

In addition, you have the option of marking-up our services. We are competitively priced, which can mean that in some instances the value clients receive from our services far exceed our cost. You may also provide your services or support alongside our delivery, and require remuneration for that.

Either way, you are able to create a new source of income by helping your clients out.

Please note, there are no costs to you to participate in this Partner Program.

How do I become a member of the Partner Program?

Simply get in touch with us today.

DFK Malta launches new website

DFK Malta, one of Malta’s longest established auditing firms, has just launched their new website www.dfkmalta.com

The team here at Isle Creative worked with the partners at DFK Malta, who recognised the need to be at the forefront of technology in order to give the best service to their clients and prospects, as well as explain the company’s services and areas of expertise.

This was our first foray into the financial sector and we truly enjoyed with the organised and professional staff at DFK Malta, which ensured a swift development and implementation of the new website.

Here’s what the client had to say about us:

“Isle Creative were entrusted with revamping our website www.dfkmalta.com, in order to move ahead with modern design trends, and more importantly to enable our own staff to edit the website, something which was impossible to do with our previous website.For a busy company like ours, it is essential that any news updates or changes needed can be done in-house instead of having to ask a web designer to do this every time.

Jean Galea from Isle Creative helped us organise our content and created a clean, modern design that showcases our major services. Clients easily learn more about us and eventually get in touch. I would not hesitate to reccommend Isle Creative for website redesigns or new website development, they’ve proved to be reliable and extremely professional in their work.”

– Emanuel Farrugia – DFK Malta

Why does your business need a Website?

An on-line presence for your business is simply an essential part of your overall marketing strategy.

There are several reasons a Web site will be beneficial to your company:

• You will become available to the entire world 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• Regardless of your company’s size, you will have the same marketing opportunities as the largest of companies.
• You can reduce phone charges, fax charges, paper, mailing costs, printing costs, and office personnel, and local and global customers will be able to access information about your company, obtain product and service information, support, updates, and news.

We will combine your existing business promotional materials and our creative input to present you with a project bid. Once you supply any text or images we may need, we will start building your site.

Once your site is designed, you will need to select a good host. A host is simply a reliable and high-speed network where your Web site physically resides so everyone in the world with Internet access can view it. Most internet providers provide this service.

Once your site is developed, you want to make sure that it is registered with the most common search engines.

Why You Should Consider an E-Commerce Website

In the real world find me a shop that is open 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year, that has sales staff working to their best every day all day, where you have an accountant who keeps the books and prepares accounts on time perfectly and constantly.

A shop that always keeps it’s self spotlessly clean and does not require cleaners, and where all the workers work for free. This shop must also be able to be so close to someone’s house; it is effectively IN their house, and not just that one person’s house but everyone’s house in the world (that has the internet).

This shop must also have a team of staff to analyse information of its customers, when they visit, how long they stay, what days are most popular, what months are most popular, how much the average customer pays, what the ratio of people walking into the shop to people buying from the shop is, where the people are visiting geographically, what advert attracted them into the shop, and possibly more.

The shop needs to have a team of people that will re-price all items in the shop in a split second as soon as the shop owner decides to change the price of something.

It needs to be so good to those with disabilities such as people that are blind, that the shop will send a taxi to pick them up and lead them into the store, and then show them around and tell them about all the products.
Now find me a shop like that in the real world that costs under €10,000 a year to run! If you can’t, then maybe you should consider an e-Commerce website.