For the second year running Shrewsbury based Information Solutions Limited have won an award at the Mayor of Shrewsbury annual awards ceremony.

This year the Gold award was presented by the mayor in recognition of Information Solutions’ “outstanding contribution to the community in the business sector”.

On receiving the award, company director Pete White said: “It’s great to be recognised for the hard work we do in the town helping local businesses with their IT and web requirements. We’ve been helping local companies to improve their competitive edge with advanced information technology for the last ten years."

Information Solutions also trade as The Web Orchard and are one of the companies behind the popular Love Shrewsbury website. Pete added "Undoutably our success with Love Shrewsbury over the past year is one of the reasons we've won this prestigious award and we look forward to continuing this over the coming year".

Information Solutions have been providing IT Support and Services to businesses throughout The Midlands and Wales since 2003. They serve some of the largest and smallest organisations in the area from their offices in The Pump House, Shrewsbury.

The company provides a wide range of services, from advanced websites and server/network installations through to computer maintenance and IT consulting services.

www.info-sol.co.uk

www.theweborchard.com

When I was writing the April Fools editorial in bed at 8.30 yesterday morning it didn't cross my mind that it would be the best day ever on the site. We over doubled our previous visits record, 5 times the average good days traffic and even got mentioned on local radio.

What was really interesting about the day was how quickly the article went viral and how quickly it started to bring visitors to the site. I published the article at 9.09, I immediately shared this on the Love Shrewsbury Facebook Page (with an audience of 877 likes), I then reshared to my personal Facebook friends (an audience of about 500). I then shared on my personal Twitter (knowing that the Love Shrewsbury Twitter would be tweeted automatically from IFTTT).

Almost instantly people started to click through to the website. Between 9.09 and 12pm traffic was fairly consistently showing 20-25 people reading the article. Just after 12 we broke the sites previous hits record (set sometime last year), by 9pm we had doubled this amount.

What was also interesting is the number of people that used the Facebook like button within the page, as I write this post it has 163 likes, given we struggle to get comments on the site its good to see people interacting in this way.

We've put a lot of work into developing our social media channels and days like yesterday so how effective they can be in distributing content and bringing traffic to the site.

The big challenge is continuing to develop content, the 1st of April only comes round once a year and this sort of article wouldn't work any other time.

Today we have a great photographic piece about the closed Shrewsbury prison that I was hoping would be the big article of the week however something tells me it won't cause as big a stir! 

Originally posted on petejwhite.com

Pied Piper, based in Milk Street, Shrewsbury, has just completed development of the site – www.piedpiperchildrensclothes.co.uk – which features its full range of clothing for boys and girls aged from birth to 14 years.

The shop is owned by sisters Helen and Caroline Francis and is one of the region’s longest-established children’s wear specialists.

“The site has taken some time to launch as we wanted to include all the brands we sell, as well as our accessories, toys and gifts,” explained Caroline.

“However, working with web designer Ron Gale and developers The Web Orchard, both based in Shrewsbury, has been a very rewarding process as we are delighted with the finished product and we have had an excellent response from new and existing clients.

“The site includes a ‘click and collect’ feature which many customers have been using already, attracting people from throughout the county and mid Wales.

“There are very few specialist children’s wear shops around and we have a very loyal customer base but we are hoping that the launch of a Pied Piper internet presence will make our clothing available to a much wider audience,” Caroline said.

The shop sells brands including Joules, Jean Bourget, Sarah Louise, Mayoral, Lego, Emile et Rose, Steiff, Bobux shoes, Kaloo, Happy Horse and Franck & Fischer.
 

Based on the massive success from LoveShrewsbury.com we wanted to bring the same to Telford! We have all very best Telford has to offer including Local news, Whats on, Local events and much much more.

LoveTelford.com brings together various strands and areas of the town. The What's On zone of the website enables people to discover the wide variety of events that are taking place across the town and this is enhanced by the Tourism area, which highlights things of interest to those considering spending a day, weekend or even a week in Telford.

A Community zone showcases worthwhile community initiatives and is destined to become a popular feature with site visitors, whilst other areas of the new website include Pulse, an area for younger residents of the town – and finally business, for the commercial community of Telford.

The Love Telford site has been set-up via a partnership of Michael Tinkler from the increasingly popular Severn Magazine, Peter White and Nathan Bensley-Edwards from The Web Orchard. Got a scoop then send it to us on info@lovetelford.com!

It's not very often that Shropshire gets a web conference and last nights ShropGeek Theory of (R)Evolution certainly didn't disappoint. The four speakers gave fascinating insights into their past and current projects and it was interesting to see the success and failure.

Jake Smith from JP74 spoke about app and systems development for creative awards organisation D&AD. Specifically he talked about the challenges they had to overcome to develop a system to allow judges to be able to use second generation iPod Touches for casting votes on entries at Olympia in London.

Neil Kinnish and Mike Kus gave a fascinating account into their start-up WorkFu and the highs and lows of the development process, attracting investors and eventually calling day on the project.

To end the evening Paul Annett, Creative Lead for the UK Government Digital Service (GDS), spoke about the challenges behind the new Gov.uk website and how integrating the many different services the government offers into one place. His focus on usability was especially interesting and how through feedback in testing the site has evolved into what it is today.

A big thanks to Kirsty Burgoine for organising the evening and I look forward to next years event!

Shrewsbury based Web Developer, The Web Orchard part of the award winning Information Solutions Group have been accredited by the World Bank to work on projects funded by the organisation. The Vendor Accreditation will allow the Web Orchard to be engage in World Bank projects worldwide.

The Web Orchard’s Director Pete White says the recent accreditation is significant. “Our highly successful work in the middle east, in particular websites that focused on the needs of Iraq and Libya, attracted the attention of investors and the World Bank who encouraged us to enroll as an accredited vendor. This will enable us to leverage that experience to World Bank sponsored projects around the world.”

Over the past two years, the Information Solutions Group has managed the website of the Iraq Business News (www.iraq-businessnews.com), helping to take the site from ten thousand visitors to over one hundred and fifty thousand per month. Earlier in 2012 a similar project was setup in Libya (www.libya-businessnews.com ) to help promote business growth in the country.

Some of the World Banks mandates include being:
- The world’s largest funder of education
- The world’s largest external funder of the fight against HIV/AIDS
- A leader in the fight against corruption worldwide
- A strong supporter of debt relief
- The largest international financier of biodiversity projects
- The largest international financier of water supply and sanitation projects.

Information Solutions paired with their web design consultancy,The Web Orchard, offer world class technology solutions from their offices in Shrewsbury, UK. In May 2012 the company was awarded a ‘Mayor of Shrewsbury’ award for their outstanding contribution to the community in Shrewsbury.

For more information, please visit www.info-sol.co.uk or telephone 01743 343411.

If you run a Shrewsbury business which you love - and the chances are you will indeed love your Shrewsbury business - make the most of the opportunity to add it free of charge to the new Love Shrewsbury business directory.

Love Shrewsbury is your exciting new website which has all the very best that Shrewsbury has to offer as a town, including local news, whats on, business and much more.

The Loveshrewsbury.com directory enables you to add your contact details, description and business logo in a category of your choice - plus for a limited period, it is free to add your business!

To view the Love Shrewsbury business directory, visit:
www.loveshrewsbury.com/directory

You can add your business in a few quick and easy steps!

This opportunity won't last forever, so take the chance to add your Shrewsbury business today and share the Love for your town on LoveShrewsbury.com