Invosoft has been commissioned by a leading Cumbrian property maintenance firm, based near Carnforth, Cumbria to create a website following its well publicised merger with a local landscape gardening firm. Together, Select Property Maintenance and A & A Garden Services (going under the banner of Select Property Maintenance) will provide their customers with over 15 years of expertise from an expanding range of craftsmen, all experts in their fields.

The merger is set to create up to 15 new jobs also, and the company is set to deliver a high level of maintenance services to the hospitality, retail and commercial industries as well as private residences.

David Greensmith, director of Select Property Maintenance, said “existing customers of A&A with whom we are merging will now benefit from a wide range of additional services including painting and decorating as well as gas and electrical services.”

The website will have detailed listings of the wide range of services Select Property Maintenance now have on offer, which include ground works and construction, interior decorating, kitchen and bathroom installation, an emergency call out service and a carefully designed package of Service Level Agreement tariffs.

The easily navigable website is fully editable via Invosoft’s advanced .NET content management system (CMS). Full Search Engine Optimisation should give this brand new website a great start.

There are a few useful tricks we regularly use to market new holiday home sites. Invosoft recently blogged about holiday home SEO and the importance of having your own web presence. However, there are a few specific tricks I have learnt since then that I’d like to bring to your attention.

Get your past guests to write reviews

These could be on your website but are far more effective on popular travel sites like travelpod.com and ivebeenthere.co.uk. Both sites are really popular, ranked heavily in the search engines and let the reviewer leave live links in back to your site.

Sign up for Flipkey.com 

Not only do they have a great review service which allows you to send out review reminders to all your past guests, you get a listing on both FlipKey and TripAdvisor! (the FlipKey page has a link back but the TripAdvisor page doesn’t). There are also a host of cool widgets you can use to promote your listing and reviews (like the one on the right).  The only drawback is it’s a paid for service. However, at a current $1.99/month until December, it’s worth a shot – you never know, you may get a few extra enquiries!

Thanks to Tom Henry of YouPR - journalist-inspired public relations for contributing to this article. 

Invosoft have just completed construction of a new e-commerce website for national carbon-neutral fuel supplier, Logs Direct. The North Lancashire based company supply ethical fuel products to the likes of B&Q and the National Trust. They stock a range of softwood and hardwood fuel logs as well as kindling, firelighters and wood pellet fuels. They are also the main distributors for Blazers, an ethical and effective alternative to wood logs.

Not having a wood burner or multi-fuel stove myself (yet!), it was an area on which I knew little. One thing I do know is that wood burners perform best when burning very dry, seasoned wood. After chatting to Andrew Foulds, Managing Director of Logs Direct, it seems the best wood in terms of performance (heat output, efficiency and value for money) is kiln dried wood. Kiln-dried logs have a 10% to 15% moisture level which ensures they burn hotter for longer. We spent an afternoon in Andrew’s purpose-built production facility getting to know the products and the one thing that stands out from that day is aroma from the kiln dried stuff – nothing beats the fragrance of a real log fire!

The website is based on the 'dashcommerce' codebase –  kudos to the team there for all thier hard work! We found the platform very easy to customise, in both design and functionality terms.  We, however, added lots of custom features not present in the standard platform, such as our video guides section and delivery calculator based on postcode. The system is feature packed, user-friendly and easy to manage and maintain. You can view the results for yourselves at:

http://www.logsdirect.co.uk

and here are a few tips on using wood burning stoves and selecting the the right firewood.