While we were busy getting our new website together we also passed another significant milestone with Cadimage.

$1,000,000 USD in Online Export Sales.

While this milestone has taken longer than we would have hoped the graph below shows that sales are growing at an increase rate.

You can also see (as would be expected) that sales jump everytime there is an ArchiCAD Upgrade.

Note: The graph above shows till the end of 2010 hence the flattening off!

My team and I are extremely proud of this achievement and it is especially rewarding knowing the revenue is 100% export based which complements our existing New Zealand business well.

It’s a while since I did a 80+ hour week but this last 7 days once again cracked that number (and yes that means I worked most of Queens Birthday Weekend.)

Over the last week we have put the finishing touches to our new brand and website.

It has been a long project with the inevitable last minute rush but we hit our target date and we can now all breathe a sign of relief!

The new website is only the beginning and we have a whole host of projects we will be working on through-out the rest of the year.

UPDATED: 12/03 Full Press Release on Lance’s Site + Technical Details

It is great to see a lead being taken with regards to New Zealand’s broadband (and over at Stuff)

This is exactly what we need to get New Zealand business competing on a world stage.

I can’t say I am too surprised to see this as Rod @Xero has been advocating this for a long time, obviously to the point of him saying – well no one else is doing it, we might as well do it ourselves. Sam Morgan also eluded to it in the latest issue of Idealog.

Lance Wiggs (who is now also part of the Cadimage Team) is also part of the group behind Pacific Fibre so I look forward to hearing first hand how this progresses.

I can’t wait for this to come on stream so thanks to the group for doing what Kiwi’s do best – just getting on with it!

Twitter is certainly getting a huge amount of hype at the moment as it makes the transition from gimmick to becoming a core part of  business and their social marketing plan.

Twitter to many seems like a waste of time and as many tweets revolve around what I ate for breakfast or what my dog just did. As a result of this and not surprisingly there is a lot of scepticism as to whether Twitter is a fad and how long will it last. I myself have times where I tweet a lot and then days go by without a single tweet.

Many smart businesses are now finding that Twitter is a great tool to communicate with customers, make offers and answer support questions. This is based on Twitters ability to connect quickly with a large audience that can see your messages on all types of devices from Internet cafes, to computers, to phones. While I cannot mention the exact number Andy Lark recently told me how much business Dell does via Twitter which was simply astounding.

While we are starting to use Twitter increasingly for our Cadimage Tools business (@cadimagetools) initially we have also found it beneficial as a way of receiving information. *

For those who want to read more here are some recent links that may be of interest:

Twitter 101

Twittering on about Business

Twitter marketing tool of the future

Seth Godin outlines on his blog he doesn’t have time to Twitter but does at least have his blog ‘hooked up’ to Twitter so that a Tweet is created everytime he posts a blog item.**

Twitter and Business

* There are many ways to receive Tweets I find Seesmic Desktop particularly good as I can easily create different lists or groups of tweets so I can easily review them.

** There are a number of ways of having Tweets automatically created when a blog article is published. I use Twitter Tools, Seth uses twitterfeed - there are many more but once set up it is a great way of publishing content to multiple sources in a simple and efficient way.

Over the last few weeks I have been taking care of Customer Care for our Cadimage Tools International Customers. It is certainly a job where you get right down to the detail and consequently you may have noticed a drop off in my blog postings!

I have also fallen behind in reading everyone else’s blogs but I have come across a few things that are either great, cool, I agree with or just plain weird!

There is the recently released Dell Adamo which is a pretty cool looking, extremely thin laptop.

Xero has made two great announcements – Xero Personal and a massive increase in Revenues

Andy Lark has a good point about Rugby going global – it must be tough being in the US and not being able to watch the All Blacks. I also though his post on Critical Non Essentials was interesting.

There are the Mindflex puzzles where you use your brain power to move objects!

Lastly there is a post about 10 Secrets To Staying Informed About Web Design – I think this could help me keep up with all my blogs not just those on Web Design, but I haven’t yet had time to read it!

The whole area of Website Usability is something that I am incredibly interested in, not least as I am trying to build an international business that is predominantly website based.

Evaluating how people use your website is a challenging task and it is extremely hard to pretend you are viewing your own website for the first time.

Website Usability is a fairly hot topic and not surprisingly the web is a great resource of information.

Here are just a few links for anyone who may be interested:

Homework! Interface Design Basics for Developers

Minimising Complexity in User Interfaces

Rowan Simpsons Archives – Usability

Also for anyone who is really interested the first book to buy is Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug – a very simple and easy read.