The Rebel City Tour of Cork is a passion project of mine. A marriage of tech. and history; my 2 great loves. The goal of the tour is to bring visitors from all over the world to Cork city.
The story started many years ago, when i was graduating college. What began as a clash of wills, between me and my parents. Subsequently turned into a free online tour many, many years later. Enjoy!
A Very Cork Upbringing.
Me and my brother.
When I was growing up in Cork city, I had the same growing pains as any kid. I wanted to play soccer on the green and hand out with my friends every day.
Looking back as a 40-something-year-old man. I guess I thought those days would last forever. At school, I was a relatively bright student.
When it came time to go to college, I did pretty well in my end-of-school exams or leaving cert. I had my pick of courses and universities.
I was always passionate about history. Particularly, in Cork history, I wanted to explore my passion more deeply in a university setting.
The College Years.
Me and friends in Thailand
The problem, of course, was my parents. Like parents in every country – they wanted to see me enter a ‘proper’ profession. Since my dad was an engineer, they encouraged me to gain some hard skills and enter Electrical and Electronic Engineering at University College Cork.
Since I wasn’t particularly wilful or sure of my career path, I reluctantly agreed to enrol as an engineer and study maths, computer programming and electronics.
Inevitably, I was not too fond of every minute of it. Four years later, I graduated – just about. And set off on my career path.
Since my chosen profession is the web, I began to appreciate my parent’s wisdom. Having a hard skillset, in computers, engineering, programming, etc., is beneficial.
After nine years of travelling the world. Including living in South Korea for seven years. I finally settled on a career path.
Presenting The Rebel City Tour of Cork.
Rebel City Tour of Cork
So when I got the opportunity to combine my two passions – history and the web. I jumped at the chance. Hence, the Rebel City Tour of Cork.
I’m dedicating the tour to my dad. Who made it all possible. You could say that the Rebel City Tour of Cork is my teenage rebellion phase writ large as a middle-aged adult.
I hope you enjoy taking the tour as much as I did in creating it!
Back in my web developer days, I often came across websites with page speed/download time issues.
Often these are caused by clunky page builders with What You See Is What You Get page editing interfaces ie. Shopify, Wix, Divi etc…
The first tool in my toolbox for these kinda problems would be to optimize the lowest hanging fruit ie. large video and image files.
After that, there would be Javascript files, HTML, Time To First Byte of the server ie. the server page response time – on self-hosted websites only – since none of these factors can optimize using the aforementioned websites.
Google Ads Bounce Rates
Why Speed Kills?
Although there are tools to examine all these factors on a webpage, we won’t go into them here.
The key takeaway is simple. Like the TV ads suggest – speed kills.
We can all relate to this phenomenon. You click on a website in Google and wait for the website to load. And wait, and wait and wait.
If you get tired of waiting, press the back button. You are brought back to Google and you’ll probably choose another website link to click.
Google records this information and uses this info. in its web ranking algorithm. The more users who click the back button on a website after only a few seconds. The further down the Search Engine Results Page, the website will slide. As a result, the page will lose its Google ranking.
Google Ads Logo
What About Google Ads, Though?
We’ve shown how Google handles organic (non-paid) websites with slow page speeds. So how does this extend to the Pay Per Click or Google Ads competition?
Google handles slow websites in its paid listings in a similar manner to Google’s organic listings.
This means you will be punished for having a slow website. And by punished, we mean crucified.
Google Ads Bounce Rates
Google publishes the bounce rates or percentage of users that don’t wait for Google Ads to load. Based on the page speed times of websites.
It doesn’t make for pretty reading, especially if you have a slow website and advertise with Google.
But surely Google doesn’t charge you when someone clicks on your Google Ads paid link and leaves your website before the page downloads, right?
Wrong.
Finally
So, if you are wondering why your Google Ads campaigns aren’t earning you the Return On Investment you’d like. Try our Google Ads Saver Tool.
You might be surprised to find that our technical solution can come to your rescue.
Now you can choose from our create a range of fonts and post to social media, and the web in general, to your heart’s content.
Mix things up with a classic sans font. Add some class with a traditional serif font.
The world wide web is your oyster with our font generator…
LinkedIn Fancy Text Generator. Words + Font = Art.
Enjoying using the Fancy Text Generator?
Why not commission your own custom web tool to get yourself noticed online? It’s easy and surprisingly great value for money.
Alternatively, link back to this page from your website or blog so that your visitors can see how easy it is to write on social media using cool fonts.
Although we created the font generator with Social Media in mind. You can cut-and-paste from our font generator onto any website on the web that supports Unicode.
Hahamarketing.com Suite Of B2B Tools
Finally, check out our range of B2B tools and see how easy it is to jump start your sales and marketing process. These tools are guaranteed to boost your sales and productivity as well as taking the pain-inducing, manual tasks out of your marketing workflow.
Alternatively, check out our portfolio of the work we’ve completed on-time and on-budget. We can help your business get noticed online in no time. Start today.
Contact Us Today
At Hahamarketing.com, we help small businesses get noticed online. Contact us today for a free consultation and start earning leads and customers for your business.
I created the turkey in time cooking calculator for my elderly mum. To help her cook the Christmas turkey during lockdown.
Dara, Creator of Turkey in Time.
The story behind the turkey calculator.
As my parents get on in years, it’s getting more and more difficult for them to cook the holiday (Christmas) meal every year. My mum especially is having trouble with the turkey.
This is only aggravated by COVID. Since lockdown is a very real possibility again this year in Ireland. I won’t be able to guarantee that I can come home to help with the turkey.
Hence, the turkey in time web calculator, to make it as easy as possible for my mum to create the perfect holiday turkey.
How does Turkey in time work exactly?
I developed the Turkey in time web page to guide, even the most novice of cooks, through the turkey cooking process. I wanted the interface to be as easy to use as possible.
You simply enter your turkey weight, stuffing and eating time. And the turkey in time calculator will tell you when to start prepping your turkey. When and how long to cook your turkey.
You can also download a turkey cooking tips and tricks guide. There’s a video. There’s also a link where you can purchase your turkey and all/any ingredients.
Dara Burke, founder of Hahamarketing.com
Bio of the creator.
My name is Dara Burke, from Cork city, Ireland. I’m the creator of the Turkey in Time web page.
I’ve been a web nerd for nearly 20 years now. I spent 6 years in South Korea after finishing engineering at University College Cork. I ran a web business in Korea called EnglishTeachingKorea.com, which paid for my world adventures. And which I eventually sold after returning to Ireland.
I took the time to travel extensively around India, China, Russia, South East Asia, Europe, Japan, the Philippines, the USA and many other countries. In addition, I got the opportunity to travel the trans-Siberian railway journey from Beijing to Europe.
I’ve also lived and worked in several countries such as Germany, Belgium, England, Korea, the US etc…
I’m a recent graduate of Dublin Business School where I completed the Digital Marketing postgrad with a 1st class honours grade.
When I’m not taking history walks around Cork city. I’m working on passion projects and client projects with Hahamarketing.com. Or training in the local gym.
I can be reached by email at dara@hahamarketing.com. I’d be happy to arrange a time to be interviewed over the phone or by video conference.
I can only imagine you are equal parts tired and inspired. The beautiful scenery. The mountains and lush valleys. It truly is a great adventure. Cross the ring of Kerry cycle off your bucket list.
But the question remains. What’s next?
Well, there’s always tons of great things to do in Ireland. Whether you want to continue along the Wild Atlantic Way. North or South. Or you want to head across the country towards Dublin. You’ll be sure to find a friendly greeting from the locals along the way.
Couple enjoying Cork City.
Why not come to Cork City? After cycling the Ring of Kerry.
Just a 30 min drive from the southernmost tip of the Wild Atlantic Way. Cork city is well worth a visit in our opinion. Not only does it have great food. But it also has tons of attractions to keep you entertained.
We might be a little biased of course. Because we love our home town. If you don’t believe us though. Ask the Lonely Planet. Which rated Cork city among its top 10 destinations in the world to visit.
Cork city is a cyclist’s dream. Not only are there cycle paths everywhere. But you can also rent a bike from any number of central locations spread across the city.
You can explore one of the world’s largest natural harbours. Visit the last stopping point of the Titanic before the doomed ship took its final journey.
Or how about visiting Spike Island? An ex-prison and fort off the Cork coast. And now a popular tourist spot.
All these experiences and many more are within cycling distance of the city centre.
Cycling in Cork City.
Are there organized bike tours in Cork?
Sure. If you want to go on an organized bike tour. There are tons of options out there. Check out these tour operators with rave reviews on TripAdvisor.
And don’t worry. If you don’t have a bike. You can hire one. Or if your bike is broken. There are tons of bike shops in the city that would love to help you out.
Great accommodation, fantastic views and more importantly. Lots of fun. Guaranteed when you take one of these bike rides.
After the Ring of Kerry cycle. What if I want to socialize with the locals?
It’s only natural that you might wish to let your hair down after the physical effort of completing the Ring of Kerry cycle route.
Well, you are in luck. Cork has a dizzying array of pubs, clubs and bars. Where locals and out-of-towners can meet up and let it all hang out.
In fact, I’ve just been reliably informed. That there’s a pub in the city with a pint of Murphy’s stout with your name on it…
Cork city old waterworks
Is there any family-orientated experiences in Cork city?
Whether your family is young or older. You’ll certainly find lots of ways to keep them entertained in Cork city.
Come to Cork!
Cork is located right next door to Kerry. So after you’ve finished the cycle of the Ring of Kerry. You’ll find that Ireland’s real capital as the locals would have you believe.
Is the perfect destination for experience and leisure travel. So make sure to stop by and say hello.
Thinking of visiting Cork city this year? Let us show you a list of experiences in the city that you won’t get if you go elsewhere. We have everything from War of Independence anniversary tours to feeding the local wildlife in the city centre.
Experience Cork city like a true local with our free immersive experiences. Hear the stories behind the city’s most popular attractions. Take a leisurely bike ride. Party during a local festival.
Whether you are coming from touring the WIld Atlantic Way. You are coming down from Dublin directly. Or you have just finished the Ring of Kerry cycle.
You’ll find Cork to be a great destination for experience holidays in Ireland.
The Burning Of Cork City During The Irish War of Independence. Smartphone Tour by Hahamarketing.com.
Strolling around the city today. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Cork has always been a peaceful town. Little would you know that 100 years ago the streets were erupting with violence.
With roaming gangs of British military and police looting, shooting and burning their way through the city. On the other side were a group of plucky Republican volunteers. Members of what was then known as the IRA. Conducting raids, ambushes and using hit and run tactics against the – much larger in number – Crown forces.
The smartphone tour is an immersive experience bringing you back to the days of the Irish war of independence 100 years ago.
Not only is it free. But it’s accessible 24/7. All you need to bring is a smartphone – and preferably, a pair of headphones. Enjoy!
Now for something a little more sedate. After experiencing the highs and lows of the war of independence tour. Why not get up early in the morning and visit the English Market Grey Herons?
These local Cork residents congregate outside the English Market in the heart of the city early every morning. In the hopes of begging some free fish from the fish delivery men in the market. Indeed they are such a regular sight. The English Market caretaker has named them all.
Bring along some fish for the birds if you’d like. Yes. They do eat canned tuna. Or alternatively, visit the famous fish merchants the day before and stock up on fresh fish pick and mix.
These hungry local fishermen only attend the market for the fish deliveries. Which happen around 5.30 AM. So set your alarm clock early and visit the city centre. For more info on this Cork city experience – pls click English Market Grey Herons.
Free Bike Hire In Cork City.
3. Take a Bike Ride.
Looking for a way to pass the time in the city? Want to see the sights and experience one of the world’s largest natural harbours?
Why not take a bike ride on the Coke Zero bikes?
These bikes are available to rent for locals and tourists alike. The first 30 mins are free. With only a small charge per half hour after that.
For more info on how you can register to rent a Coca-cola Zero bike. Pls click Coca-cola zero bike Cork.
Walking Shandon Tour of Cork City. Developed by Hahamarketing.com
4. Take the Walking Shandon Tour.
The walking tour of Shandon covers many of Cork city’s top attractions. Everything from Shandon Church to St. Finbarr’s Cathedral.
The Walking Shandon tour is free and available to anyone with a smartphone and headphones. Take a tour through the streets of the city and be transported back to the days of old.
Hear the stories about Cork’s oldest attractions. That only locals know.
Similar to the English Market Grey Herons experience above. The local Cork city Herring Gulls only make an appearance for part of the year.
With the Herring Gulls being migratory birds. They only appear in the city during the winter months, unfortunately.
However, if you are lucky enough to see them on the banks of the River Lee in the city. You can have fun for all the family watching them take flight.
St. Patrick’s Day Festival Cork City.
6. Visit a Cork City Festival.
When better to experience Cork city. Then during a local festival?
They say the Irish know how to throw a party. Well if it’s a party you are looking for. We have many, many of them in Cork city.
Amongst the annual festivals in the city. There are gems such as the St. Patrick’s Day parade, Cork Heritage Week, Cork Harbour Festival and many, many others.
Whether you are an industry player or you are a small fish juggling many roles. It’s always interesting to find out how long it takes your support staff or sales team to reply to customer leads.
Our Secret Shopper Email Facility will let you send an email lead to your business from our Hahamarketing domain. So it’ll appear as if we are inquiring about your products or services.
Secret shopper email facility
Secret shopper email facility
Don’t forget to try our Calculated Spreadsheet Speed-to-Lead form to record the difference your lead response time software makes to your business.
Also, find out how much your Lead Response Time is costing your business per lead on average with our Lead Response Cost Estimator Tool.
Create A Tool Of Your Own…
Enjoy using our tools and considering coming up with an online tool for your own business?
Not only are online tools a great way to get noticed online. Attracting visitors to your website. But they are also great at attracting coveted backlinks from other websites to your own. Raising your Google ranking in the process.
We offer a free consultation to help get you started. Talk to us today!
Form2Text Lead Response Time Tool For WordPress Websites…
Looking for easy-to-use lead response time solution for your WordPress site? Look no further than our Hahamarketing Form2Text Plugin software for WordPress. Ask about our bespoke rollout.
Not running WordPress on your website? We can custom coded solution that’ll suit your workflow.
So without further ado, we’ll pick the top 8 WordPress plugins that your small business website will need to get started. By installing and configuring these plugins you will get a head-start on the competition and run a more streamlined WordPress website than others in your niche.
1. Form2Text WordPress Plugin By Hahamarketing.com
The Hahamarketing.com Form2Text plugin is an easy win for any online business running WordPress. After all, it costs you nothing to be the first to respond to customer leads from your website. And the stats show that it is one of the biggest factors in closing leads to customers.
If you’re not familiar with Form2Text, it works by text messaging your phone whenever someone fills out a contact form on your website. It’s easy to use, comes with direct support and bespoke roll out is available.
For more info on Form2Text please go here. Also, make sure you use the Form2Text Calculated Spreadsheet which helps you calculate your lead response times and the number of times you check your email daily.
Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin Software
2. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO helps you get more search engine traffic to your website. It does this by helping you with on-page and technical SEO work. Such as getting your content keyword density just right and creating a compelling meta descritpion.
Don’t forget to also install Yoast Local SEO if you get local traffic and customers to your business or website.
Yoast also has a great tutorial and exam facility where you can train yourself on the Yoast products. Certainly a must try.
WordPress WooCommerce Software Plugin
3. WooCommerce ECommerce Plugin.
WooCommerce is the world’s most popular eCommerce platform and runs on WordPress. Not only is it free and easy to install and configure. But it also interfaces with payment gateways such as Paypal and Stripe.
If you are running a WordPress website and want to start selling online. Then WooCommerce is your best bet.
The WooCommerce community is large and helpful to newbies. You can sell both physical and digital goods. It also has product variations, custom configurations, instant downloads, and affiliate items.
Bookings, memberships, subscriptions, and dynamic pricing rules are also possible.
Wordfence WordPress Security Plugin
4. Wordfence Security
Wordfence Security is a WordPress Application Firewall (WAF) that keeps your WordPress site free from a whole host of malware, sql injection attacks, brute force attacks and malicious traffic IP’s.
Wordfence is one of the most comprehensive WordPress security solutions available. Since getting your site hacked can lead to a Google manual action or penalty.
Which could include a removal of your website from the Google index. It’s important to have one WAF installed on your site. More than one WAF though can lead to complications as each plugin begins to step on each others toes, so to speak.
It’s best to install just one WAF. And that WAF should be Wordfence Security in our opinion.
Updraft Plus WordPress Software Plugin
5. Updraft Plus Backup Software
Every webmaster should know that it’s essential to have regular and consistent backups of your website. Depending on your website type, a 24 hour backup schedule is advised.
However if you have alot of User Generated Content (UGC) or you update your site often. Then you should back up more often.
Updraft Plus is the most popular backup plugin available for WordPress and comes with a one click restore feature. Which will restore your WordPress site from backup with the click of a button. Life saver.
Akismet Anti-Spam WordPress Plugin
6. Akismet Spam Protection
Not only is spam annoying and a waste of your time and resources. It can also lead to your site slipping in the search engine rankings when it’s noticed by search engines such as Google and Bing.
Akismet monitors your blog comments and blocks spam comments from bad actors and spam bots which troll the Internet looking for WordPress blogs to comment on.
Google Site Kit For WordPress
7. Site Kit By Google
Site Kit By Google is Google’s attempt to join the WordPress bandwagon and make all of it’s tools available to WordPress users without having to go through a laborious installation, configuration and monitoring process.
If you just want some basic statistics on how your website is doing in Google. Then Site Key is the answer. It interfaces with Google Ads, Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
Mailchimp WordPress Plugin
8. MailChimp
Mailchimp is one of the best and easiest ways of building an email subscriber list with your WordPress website.
Simply sign up to Mailchimp. Then install and configure the Mailchimp plugin. And start your very own email marketing campaign.
Mailchimp is free initially until you reach the threshold of number of subscribers. Then it’s a paid model.
Signing Off
So these are a pick of my top 8 WordPress software plugins for your small business site. What are your favorite plugins for your business WordPress website?
Let us know what works for your business and I can include the best choices in our list maybe. Any other WordPress plugin tips that you’d like to share?
Being the first to respond to leads is free. And since the majority of customers on the web shop around for services. With 78% of customers going with the first responder. It makes sense to optimize your lead response time process.
If you are serious about maximizing your online potential through improving your customer response time. Make sure to get your free copy of the Form2Text Calculated Spreadsheet.
Which you can use to gain a full picture of how your speed-to-lead software is benefiting your business. Along with calculated graphs and charts that’ll track your speed-to-lead progress over time and an email checking counter.
It’s built with Form2Text in mind, but can be used with any speed-to-lead software solution.
Also, don’t forget to take the Lead Response Time Test to see how long it takes your business to respond to customer leads. It just takes one minute. Want to find out how much you are losing every minute you don’t respond to a customer query?
So let’s dive right in then. We’ll have a look at some of the best speed to lead software out there for WordPress.
Note: software that integrates with WordPress is generally called a plugin. So that’s what we’ll be calling these pieces of software in this blog post.
Form2Text Lead Response Software by Hahamarketing.com
1. Form2Text by Hahamarketing.com
Hahamarketing.com’s very own custom developed WordPress plugin (software). We developed this piece of lead response time software because we were tired of constantly missing out on leads that went to competitors that responded more quickly.
Form2Text works by sending an SMS message to your phone whenever someone submits a contact form on your WordPress website.
It also comes with a Math Spam Captcha to halt those nasty spam messages and save you time. It even features a privacy mode so your messages can stay off third party servers.
What’s more, it’s free to download and install. It comes with direct support. It’s easy to use. Bespoke rollout is available.
Live Call Callback Plugin
2. Live Call: Callback Plugin For WordPress.
Live Call is a plugin for WordPress that allows your customers/leads to contact you immediately by phone.
It works like this – a customer comes to your website. Enters his name in the Live Call widget. Then gets connected with someone on your sales team automatically by phone.
LiveCall also comes with a call back scheduler. An exit intent popup that’ll appear if a visitor to your site appears to be leaving your website.
Overall, if you have someone available to talk on an immediate basis. Then Live Call is definitely a good option. However if you do alot of international business and don’t have a 24/7 sales staff you might run into issues.
Chat Bot WordPress Software
3. ChatBot For WordPress.
ChatBot for WordPress is a simple, light-weight, programmable chatbot that won’t slow down your website. You can interact with your customers 24/7 using this plugin.
ChatBot is designed to be easy to use and doesn’t require any technical knowledge to use
However ChatBot, like any conversation bot. Does have its drawbacks. Some customers just don’t like talking to bots. Plus it can take some time to configure and finesse correctly for your customer interactions.
Real Time Statistics WordPress Plugin
4. Visitor Real Time Statistics
If you are a local business with local customers. Especially if you are a brick and mortar business with no online ecommerce facility. Then it’ll pay to know exactly where your customers are coming from.
Visitor Real Time Statistics can help you discover which of your customers come from your local area and doesn’t require the applied knowledge of a heavy weight tool like Google Analytics.
If however you sell internationally and have customers from other countries. Knowing which of your customers are locals won’t help much.
Also, it’s harder for systems such as these to track Desktop locations because many of the Internet Service Providers terminate the Internet connections far away from where the customers are actually living.
Appointment Hour Booking Software
5. Appointment Hour Booking WordPress Plugin.
The Appointment Hour Booking plugin for WordPress allows your customers to schedule an appointment to meet you or one of your sales staff at a time that suits both of you.
This plugin allows you to define opening hours, services type, price and duration and can come in handy if you are advertising to locals who want to see a real live person before making a purchasing decision.
The only problem is though unless you are specifically advertising and targeting local traffic. Or you are willing to travel great distances to sell your services. The Appointment Hour Booking software isn’t suitable.
HubSpot CRM Software For WordPress
6. HubSpot – CRM, Email Marketing, Live Chat, Forms & Analytics
Last but not least we come to the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) WordPress plugin from Hubspot. This tool is a one size fits all affair. Integrating your WordPress site with the Hubspot CRM.
It does email marketing, live video and text chat, web forms and even provides analytics. It’s free to download and install.
For businesses familiar with Hubspot, this plugin is essential for integrating the CRM with your businesses WordPress site. The only issue is however is that the tool can get expensive to users for certain essential features.
Although using a CRM is something we’d recommend for your business. The Hubspot charges can add up for a smaller enterprise.
Finally,
So there you have it. 6 of the best, free tools to use to dramatically improve your speed to lead response times from your WordPress site.
Do you have any experience with these tools? We’d be happy to hear your thoughts. Let us know how you handle customer response processes in your business. What is your average lead response time ?
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