Sandhill Website Design

6 Things To Think About Before Building a Website

Anne — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 23:26:42 +0000

One of the first concerns of small business owners about taking their business online is how it will benefit the business. The basic idea and crux of the matter, though, is whether you want your business and brand to have more exposure or not. Taking your business to the next level and building a website around your products and services certainly gives your business additional exposure. Having a website also increases the likelihood that you’ll garner more sales, resulting in a larger bottom line. However, before you build a website take your business to the “next level,” you need to plan your goals and think about a few issues.

1. What are your Business Goals?

Perhaps the number one question that needs answered is what your goals are. Building a website just for the sake of building a website doesn’t make sense. Create definite goals for your business so that your online expansion will pay off and have clear direction. For example, do you want increase your sales by 10% to 20% over the next year? Do you want more customers or more “leads?” Do you want a more automated process for selling so that you can eventually close your brick-and-mortar store? These are just a few ideas to get your brain started thinking, but coming up with a few concrete goals is needed before you build a website.

2. What Types of Products and Services will you Sell?

For small business owners in retail, the answer to this question may be a no-brainer. Still, you need to think about whether you’ll be selling your full line of products and services online and in what form you’ll sell them. For example, a plumber certainly cannot sell his plumbing services over the internet (even selling them to local customers online may pose difficulties), but he can sell digital e-books that discuss plumbing, garner more local “leads” for his business and possibly advance the retail-side of his business selling plumbing-related products.

3. How Many Products do you want to Sell?

Figuring out how many products you need to sell on your website can tell you how large (or small) you need your website to be. A business that only has one or two products may only need a simple, four or five-page website. However, a small business owner that offers hundreds of products in its brick-and-mortar store and who wants to transfer his inventory online may need a larger, more sophisticated, database-driven shopping cart and online ordering solution.

4. Do you have a Domain and Web Hosting?

A domain name and website hosting subscription are the two crucial things you need to start your website. Registering your business name as your domain is one of the first steps you should take if you haven’t already so that other business owners or individuals don’t snatch it up. In addition, when considering your hosting account, you’ll need to figure out how much space and bandwidth you’ll need. Many small business owners will need a medium-sized package to be able to accommodate products and services pages as well as thousands of monthly visitors.

5. Will you Maintain the Website Yourself?

Thinking about the answer to this question can help you decide on the type of website you need to build. Do you have a website designer and tech all ready to go to build and maintain the website? Alternatively, are you going to update the site on a regular basis by yourself? Do you need static, typical HTML-coded pages or do you need a blog-based website? Whether you are doing the updating of the website yourself or someone else is, you need to consider using a content management system, such as WordPress or Joomla. These systems contain user-intuitive tools and interfaces to create, update and maintain your website no matter the level of techy-experience you have.

6. Do you have a Marketing Plan?

One of the most important items on your list to think about is whether you have a marketing plan and how you’ll create one and integrate your website with the marketing plan. Many small business owners–whether through a lack of time or understanding–don’t engage the full realm and possibilities of creating an internet presence and using the website as a marketing tool to the fullest extent. Websites can and should be integrated with pay-per-click advertising programs, article marketing, social media advertising, press releases as well as traditional advertising outlets like radio and television advertising. If you don’t have a plan-of-action to integrate your website then you may need to consider hiring outside help to figure it all out.

These are just a few important issues to think about before building a website for your small business. By pre-planning, evaluating at what stage your small business is currently in and identifying the needs and reasons for a website, you can clearly set a path for future success with your website and integrated marketing solutions.

Mechanical Turk for Market Research

Anne — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 16:05:02 +0000

Have you heard of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk? It’s been around awhile, actually since the end of 2005. It’s one of the service platforms offered by Amazon Web Services.

Mturk (the shorthand version on the name) is a great way to access the intelligence of real humans to perform small tasks that are impractical or expensive (or impossible) to do with computers. The task you create can be as small as having someone look at an image on a web page and asking them to assign adjectives to it. Or it can be as large as writing a thorough review of a website or document of some length.

My latest project is to create a print brochure for my business. I figured it was high time to have something in print, besides my business card, to hand to people at networking events or mail to prospects.

After 2 weeks of continually creating, editing, and tweaking a design– and asking for feedback from family (which was immensely helpful), I realized I had a perfect venue at my disposal to ask many more people for their input. Enter Mturk. I’ve used Mturk to gather feedback (aka, market research) on other project, so why not the brochure design.

I posted the .jpg images of the front and back of the brochure on-line and referred them to these images. I figured a sample size of 10 would be good feedback.

The Takeaway

The results have been mixed. About half like the design, and half not. And half would take the initiative to contact the designer, and half not. The biggest takeaway I gained by asking these 10 people their opinion is that an eye-popping design would be much better to hook an emotional response in the viewer.

This makes sense, if you think about it. People buy on emotion (and justify it later with logic) 99% of the time. A good analogy is car buying. How many times have you looked at a car and thought : “Cool car, love the color/design/power. I’d love to drive that for awhile!” And how many times have you bought a car on “This model is highly fuel efficient and reliable… I’ll take it!”

So, back to the proverbial drawing board for spicing up the design for my brochure. More color, more pizazz, more “pop” please!

If Your Curious

If you’d like to take a look at the brochure…. Please feel free to leave you opinion, also! The more feedback I can get the better I can turn this design into something eye-catching and action-taking.

Side 1:
http://www.sandhillwebsitedesign.com/image-files/sandhill-brochure-side-1.jpg

Side 2:
http://www.sandhillwebsitedesign.com/image-files/sandhill-brochure-side-2.jpg

Further Reading

Wikipedia’s listing for Mechanical Turk

The Importance of Logo Testing

Anne — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 22:48:04 +0000

Right now I could kick myself! A few days ago I had a client comment to me, just in passing, that a seminar attendee commented on her new logo as looking rather… like it had a female part in it. My client was really un-phased and not really concerned about it, and just mentioned it to me because she thought it was kind of funny.

In a way it is a little funny. In looking at her logo you really have to stretch your imagination to see this female “part”. I certainly didn’t see it an any way during the development of the logo.

But, this really got me thinking out the importance of a logo for your business. Your logo, both the graphic part and the textual part, says a lot about your business. It can strongly convey a sense of credibility, trustworthiness, dependability… or not. And a logo with some hidden, embaressing element can start a sniggering-fest behind your back (ok, worst case scenario, but it can happen).

If we would’ve went through just a bit of logo testing we could’ve headed off this little embarrassment. It just didn’t occur to me. My deepest apologies to my client. Because now she faces the decision to not only change the logo, but all of her print material, too. A logo is easy to change on a website, but not so easy for print.

How To Market Test A Logo

I’ve known about and used Amazon Mechanical Turk for a few years now. M-Turk is a great place to hire out very small jobs.

In this case I wanted to hire about 15 people to give me their opinions on 10 new variations of the logo, plus asking them if they saw anything hidden in the current one. The only difference in the logo variations was really only their colors. Different colors in different combinations.

I asked them to pick a first and second choice, comment on the current logo, and add anything else they’d like to about any of the logos.

The Results, Please

Very interesting, to say the least. Only 1 in 14 respondents said they saw anything hidden in the picture, besides the obvious cat, dog, and human hand. But, that something that they saw was the female part aforementioned. Dang!

So, extrapolating this out, approximately 7% of people might potentially see this little gaffe in the logo design. In my opinion that’s too much. It should really be zero.

I’ve passed the test results on to my client for her consideration. Ultimately, it’s up to her to change the current logo or not. It is her business. I can only offer some informational research like this for her to think about.

Hindsight’s 20/20

You can bet that in the future when I have a client that wants a new or redesigned logo I’m going to do some basic market testing before launching it.

There are a few other places where you can go for simple testing like this:

Elance.com. You can hire out a lot of different jobs here, but the minimum fee/payment is $50. That can get pretty pricey for even a small sample size of 10. Check it out for other kinds of services.
RentaCoder.com. More than just hiring coding experts.
Odesk.com. This one I have no experience with, but it looks like a similar setup to Elance.
Mechanical Turk. The smallest payment you can give for a job is $.05. Yes, a nickle. You can get some very fast turn around times for a very reasonable investment. It’s really quite amazing.

Lesson learn? Test, test, test… before you launch.

Do You Really Need a Web Designer?

Anne — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 16:17:40 +0000

It is a hard decision to choose between building your own website or hiring it done, but I generally try to encourage people to do it themselves for a lot of reasons. It may save them a little money, it will be a great learning process, they’ll get to understand Internet marketing a little better, it satisfies a real need to “do it yourself”, etc.

The big downside to a business person doing their own website is time. To build and manage a site effectively can take an enormous amount of time, especially if you’re starting from knowing next to nothing. If you have some good basic knowledge about website design you’re starting ahead of the curve of most business people.

Also, trying your hand at building your own business website will give you a MUCH greater appreciation for what a good web master can do for your business.

I even was inspired to write a short article about it: Do You Really Need a Web Designer? and submitted it to Ezinearticles.

I love to use the analogy of a newspaper to designing websites. When you buy a newspaper all you really see is… paper, with a lot of words and pictures on it. Most people have NO CLUE about the workings of running the business of newspapers. All the people, all the equipment, all the TIME involved to put out even one issue.

A website is very similar. When you surf the Web you’re constantly exposed to all kinds of designs, colors, words, ads, moving images, videos, sound, etc. The Web is a much more multi-media experience than a newspaper or magazine every could be. But, still people just see the front end: whatever appears in their browser window. What you see in your browser is just the tip of the iceberg, to use a well-worn phrase. That front end functionality– and getting it into a first page placement in a search– takes a lot of time on the back end to develop. (And time equals money, more or less.)

So, next time you pick up a newspaper or surf the Web, just try to visualize all the people-hours that went into it, and you just might decide that hiring a professional webmaster might not be such a bad idea.

Using Analytics For Content Ideas

Anne — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:43:40 +0000

Today I met with a client to review the Google Analytics on her website. For a relatively new site (less than a month old at this point) it’s getting some decent traffic.

But, truth be told, a bit of that traffic comes from redirect traffic from her old domain name (about 10%). And, yes, I excluded my IP address from visitor traffic stats, so traffic from my computer wasn’t be factored in– something you want to avoid as the designer of a site that you visit repeatedly day after day.

I went over some of the statistics that were being tracked already. A bounce rate of 36% and an average time on site of almost 3:30 minutes are really good numbers to start with.

Then we looked at keywords that were bringing people to her site. No surprise that the large majority was coming from the keyword that is her name. I attribute that to her being in the business on writing and speaking of veterinary medicine issues (mostly human resources and compassion fatigue) for a few years now and has built up quite a bit of “brand awareness” for her name.

But, paging further down the list of keywords in Analytics revealed that there was a handful of keywords that lead to people immediately leaving the site. So, initially, Google ranked her site well (or good enough) on a particular keyword, but the person decided the page really didn’t have the information they were looking for.

Then, a light went on for me. (If someone else on the Net has proposed this idea I apologize for “stealing” it, but to my knowledge I don’t think I’ve read this anywhere. If this idea IS out there somewhere please leave a comment here and I’ll get back to you.)

These particular keywords would make great fodder for future content pages or blog posts. If someone was searching for something like “human resources management veterinary practice”, found her site, but immediately bounced, well that would make a pretty good keyword for future content.

Sure, so far only one person searched for the term “human resources management veterinary practice”, but her site is very young and there’s bound to be more people searching on related keywords in the coming months and years. So, getting that focused content written and on the site now will pay dividends down the road.

So, take a closer look at your traffic sources by keyword in your Analytics (you are running it the background, right?) and I’ll bet you can find a handful of these such keywords. Ones that produced a high bounce rate. You just found some great ideas for content!

Best Website Design Software

Anne — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:20:20 +0000

Saying what might be the best website design software is like picking the best football team. Everybody has their favorite. And everybody has a list of reasons why theirs is the best.

You should first ask yourself what you want your website to do. Let’s see if your reason might fit in here:

I’d like a website to get my business more customers (like a brick and mortar store).
I’d like to sell things with a website (like hard goods or digital products).
I need to promote my name [brand] and services (eg: speaker, writer, musician, photographer, artist, etc.
I’d like to keep my current clients and customers informed of what’s going on with my business and maintain relationships

Each one of these has a slightly different solution, but not vastly different. And the tool of choice to build that website will depend on what the designer is most comfortable with.

Two Classes of Website Builders

Generally there are two classes of website design software: 1) WYSIWYG (which stands for “what you see is what you get”) & source code editors (sometimes called HTML editors), and 2) content management systems (henceforth referred to as CMS). I have used both for different websites and generally prefer a CMS for added functionality, especially form processing.

Starting With “Training Wheels”

Even if you end up using a seamless WYSIWYG editor it’s really a good idea to start with a simple HTML editor. For quite awhile I used Arachnophilia because it was free. In the long run it really helped me understand code and the basics of how a website is put together.

You can also learn a lot about code and design from looking at the source code behind a website. You run across a site that has a particular element you like and you can generally figure out how they did it by looking at this code (and accessing their style sheet). How to do this is slightly different between browsers and operating systems, but generally when you’re on a website you want to look at simply click on View in the top menu bar, and then something like Source or Page Source.

Here’s a partial list of text and source code (HTML) editors (there’s a nice list at Wikipedia, here):

Notepad, the simple text editor that comes with Windows
TextEdit, the text editor for Mac
TED Edit
Scintilla
Notepad++
Arachnophila, mentioned before

WYSIWYG Editors

I’m a bit sheepish to admit that the very first website builder I used was Yahoo Sitebuilder. This tool made it seem deceptively simple to build a website. The code that is generates, though, is pretty bloated (maybe they’ve improved that since I last used it a few years ago).

Because I was frustrated with that first site not ranking for anything in a search I did some research on what that takes to get a website to rank better. In hindsight I think that was the beginning of an obsession for me (it’s just such a thrill to get a site to rank well). I eventually came across SiteBuildIt!, but more on that later.

Even with a WYSIWYG editor the upside is that, once you learn the rules and strategies for SEO (search engine optimization), you can use a simple site builder to create a site that ranks well for your target keywords

Adobe Dreamweaver, for many it’s the industry standard; pricey!
Kompozer
CoffeeCup
Sea Monkey
Amaya

And here’s a bunch more you may want to consider. Some are pretty expensive, and some are free. But, even something like CoffeeCup, even though not free, is pretty reasonable in price.

Content Management Systems

CMS’s, as they apply to web design, are basically software systems that take in the content for a website (text, images, movies, sound, etc.), keep it organized, and deliver it to the viewer through a web browser in a neat and orderly fashion, all in a consistent look & feel and navigation. They can make the building and rending of a website both a lot easier and a lot more complicated (managing add on plugins or modules can be a juggling act).

WordPress is sometimes touted as such a simple CMS that “anyone can build a website” with it and call themselves a “designer”. But, just like easy WYSIWYG builders the tool is only as good as the designer at the helm. The best oil paints and brushes won’t make you a Picasso. As for any art form (and web design can be seen as an art, I feel), it’s not the medium, but how you wield it and what you say with it (my other passion is painting so I know a tad about art).

For a dizzying list of CMS’s out there take a look here. Here’s some of the more common ones:

WordPress, a common blogging platform, but can be used to build a non-blog content rich site.
Movable Type, also used for blogging & straight content sites.
Drupal
Joomla

The Best Web Design Software?

In the end no one is really going to agree on what THE Best website design software is. Everybody has their favorite horse in the race. And, following that analogy, there are also a lot of “also ran” website building tools that you don’t hear talked about.

Maybe it would be better to look at a website builder that gives you the whole package of design help, keyword research tools, and internet marketing tutorials. Because, in the end, if you build a fancy website and it sits on page 20 of a search it’s as good as non-existent. Sure, there are other ways to get the word out about a website so that people come to visit it (print advertising, word of mouth, etc.), but if your site can’t be found in a search you’re leaving out a huge part of successfully marketing your business.

One in particular that I never hear talked about is SiteBuildIt! (also known as SBI!). Going through the tutorials and learning about the focus of building a business around a website, rather than building a website for your business, was such a great paradigm shift for me. Frankly, I think their course “Building A Business Using The Internet” should be offered with every tech school web design program.

Actually, I did go through getting the class listed with UW Fox Valley continuing education about a year ago, but unfortunately there weren’t enough people that signed up for it. I would really love to teach that course because there’s so much valuable information in it.

If the course description sounds interesting to you and you think you’d like to take it please contact me and I’ll talk to UW Fox Valley again about offering the course. Or, talk to Cathy Paynter about running the class again (she’s the director of the continuing ed program). It could be just the thing your need to get your business to take off.

Review of Linchpin

Anne — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:45:27 +0000

Ok, I couldn’t help myself. I had to start on page 101. The statement in Seth’s letter that he hoped we’d bookmark page 101 was just too tantalizing.

It turned out to be the chapter entitled “The Resistance”. Essentially looking for the factor that leads to people resisting becoming real artists, game changers, linchpins in their businesses, visionaries… is a small, but very powerful part of your brain laid down a million years ago. (Actually, it was more like 300 million years ago when the reptiles evolved.) Does that give you a clue? Yep, that nasty little reptilian brain.

The lizard brain, which I agree with, prevents us from moving out of our comfort zone, trying new things, seeking to do anything that makes us stand out from the crowd. Some people may be born with a better ability to quiet that lizard brain and strike out to do things that get them noticed. But, for the majority of people, overcoming that little inner voice is just too difficult.

This book, overall, is amazing! Seth really hits the nail on the head about many things related to doing your work with art and passion, all while being able to pull the trigger and “ship it”. Those people that are able to step into a situation (business or otherwise) and create order from chaos in an artful, passionate, and skilled manner are ultimately the most valuable people. And you have to be one of them!

This book really gets you thinking about looking at your work in a different way… a very different way. He calls on us to wake up and do the “emotional work” of being an artist in whatever we do. To stop plodding around the office taking up space and expecting a paycheck.

When it comes time to make cuts, who do you think will be the first to go? Someone who does their job and nothing more, or someone who makes their own road map to excellence above and beyond their job description?

This is why it’s so fun and soul satisfying to be self employed! I get to make my own map every day and stand out with a great service that I feel passionate about (web design and seo). I’m definitely doing “the work”, a term Seth uses to describe an emotional and heartfelt involvement in what you do for a living (did I get that right, Seth?).

Ok, enough of this review. Just go buy the book! It may just change your life.

Bad Website Design

Anne — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:15:02 +0000

Illustration by Dean Proudfoot
at Idealog.*

You know it when you see it. Bad design. Whether it’s a house, or a dress, or a website, there’s just something about less-than-stellar design that can really stick out like a sore thumb.

But, sometimes, it’s really hard to put your finger on what exactly isn’t quite right. And when it comes to bad website design there are a lot of opinions on what makes a site not just good, but great.

There are, however, some very obvious things that stick out to clearly make a website distasteful (and please leave a comment at the end if you want to add to this list!).

Elements of Bad Website Design

1. Frames. These are the sections of a website that have their own scrolling areas. There’s really no need for frames. 2 reasons not to use them: 1) They’re annoying to visitors, 2) Some browsers have a hard time rendering them.

2. Sound. Unless you’re a musician I would strongly advise against using any kind of sound. If you really must, then have a way for the visitor to turn it off. The only time I’ve seen music done very well was on a photographer’s website. It was set to a very tasteful slideshow presentation of their photos. It added an emotional touch that made me want to pick up the phone and give her a call to hire her!

3. Flashing Animation. Animated gif’s are even worse. This is similar to the reason for not using sound. It forces a barrage of images on the visitor that can easily cause them to hit the back button. Flash animation must be very reserved and subtle. The only site I have Flash on is In Its Place. The header graphic gently scrolls through before and after pictures of client’s messy homes.

4. Flashing Background. ANY background has to be done carefully (ie. subtly). But, a flashing background is too strong visually to compete with the content of a site.

5. Obnoxious Colors. The topic of color for websites could be a whole site in itself. Selecting colors, and the psychology of colors, is a fascinating topic for me. So far this is the best resource I’ve found for helping pick the right colors for a website: Color Scheme Designer 3. Playing around with different combinations just makes my mouth water! I bet this tool could even be used for picking colors for interior design. Beautiful stuff.

6. Inconsistent Navigation. The same navigation scheme should really be on every page of a website. And the most easily read and used style of navigation is to place it vertically along the left hand side of the page. It’s also a good idea to have redundant navigation, meaning more places on your site for visitors to find information. Put a few important pages in a horizontal navigation near the top, and similar links to those pages at the bottom.

7. Difficult To Read Text. It seems to be very trendy right now to make the color of text a mid-level grey color. It’s jokingly referred to as the “devil’s color” because the hex code is #666. Making your text anything but black increases the difficulty with which it can be read, especially by the elderly and others with vision problems. Black text on a white, or nearly white, background (and a large enough font) will make it a lot easier for a visitor to read your information.

8. Broken Links. Isn’t it annoying when you try to follow a link from a site and it goes nowhere? Keep up-to-date on your links by checking them with a link checker.

9. Broken Pictures. Either the background coding is wrong in referencing where the picture lives, or the webmaster didn’t upload it to the right folder on the site. And if an image is referenced off-site to a now-nonexistent picture then the link needs to be taken down.

10. Image Files Too Large. Most digital cameras now take pictures that are several megabytes large. That’s great for printing out a large hard copy image, but it doesn’t work for a website. Especially now that search engines will be factoring in how fast a page loads. Those big images are really going to handicap your site, not to mention really annoy anyone with a dial-up connection.

The rule of thumb for images on any website is to keep the file size under 100k, and to size the image to exactly how you want to display it on your site. Don’t rely on setting the height and width in your code to render the image the way you want, do that in your image editing software first.

11. Splash Page. Who is really going to be convinced to buy from your company solely on a flashy splash or entry page? They are annoying, and an invitation to hit the back button. A visitor comes to your site to solve a problem, not be impressed by your theatrics.

When I set off to write this post I thought this would be a fairly simple article. I’ve ended up doing much more research on this topic than I intended. Which is a good thing! You can never learn too much about web design.

Designing a website for best usability and conversions (convincing browsers to become buyers/clients) is a never ending game. You learn from every website project you create and manage, and hopefully apply those lessons to improve your future websites and make your current ones better.

That’s one of the wonderful things about building a website… it’s an ever-changing entity that needs to be tended, much like a garden, for best results in the end.

Other’s Opinions of Bad Website Design

The classic resource for finding badly designed web sites is Web Pages The Suck. They’ve been around for a very long time (close to 15 years now). Vincent Flanders, the guy that runs the site, offers 2 very long checklists for redesigning your site. Very helpful and insightful.

Just going through the examples gives you a really good idea of what doesn’t work. Sometimes there’s no accounting for taste, as they say.

The biggest point Flanders makes is to ask yourself “does my site talk about how great my company is, or does it talk about how I can solve my customer’s problems?”. That’s part of the reason I don’t have my resume on this site. Why should you care about my past work history? I put forth samples of my work, and talk about how I can build your business a great website that brings in customers for you (and give you a roadmap if you want to do it yourself!).

A couple other good resources are Bad Design by, of all people, the United Nations (no kidding). Another one is Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design by Jakob Nielsen, the guru of web usability.

In the end if you don’t really learn anything from every website you build, then what’s the point? Sure, every site has some issues, which will hopefully be corrected over time. That’s the beauty of web design… a website is such a fluid entity that it’s fairly easy to modify what doesn’t work.

As my Dad sometimes says: “Some people can serve as a horrible example.” Same goes for website design.

Update 2/11/10. After talking to a friend I think there’s another item that could be added to this list:

12. Call To Action Make it easy for people to buy your product or contact you. Don’t make them hunt for that kind of information. Whether it’s an “add to cart” button or a “contact us” link it needs to be made obvious.

*From Idealog magazine, New Zealand.

Web Designers in Appleton

Anne — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:05:52 +0000

The business of web designers trying to get their own sites to rank well can be a cut throat competition.

Do a web search in any major city for “web designer XYZ” (insert your city for XYZ) and you’ll come up with some pretty interesting results. These people are, after all, pros at getting their clients’ site to rank well (if the design firm touts itself as an expert in search engine optimization). Get your site on the first page of Google for that search term and you have a much greater chance of snagging a customer.

Web designers in Appleton are no different. Appleton, WI, is a fairly large metro area. If you take into consideration the extended urban communities (Little Chute, Kaukauna, Darboy, Kimberly, Grand Chute, Neenah, Menasha, etc.) it’s probably the 3rd or 4th largest collection of urbanites in Wisconsin. That’s a lot of people, a lot of businesses, and a lot of web design firms.

But, when you step back to consider your particular needs in building a website for your business you’re well advised to use other methods in addition to the Internet to find them. Doing an Internet search may start you on some good leads, but you ultimately have to consider many more criteria.

Some things to consider in choosing a web design person or team is to ask what their specialty is. Ultimately web designers can’t be everything to everyone. There are so many routes to diversify in the field of web design it’s really quite mind boggling. Be wary of any designer that says they’ll take on any job.

Areas of Specialty

Some areas of specialty in web design include Flash animation, video production, e-commerce development, content management systems, content writing, search engine optimization, social media campaign management, Adwords management, and link builders. I’m sure I’m forgetting some… probably many. But, these are the most common.

Currently web designers and Internet users are becoming less enamored of using/seeing Flash animation. Don’t get me wrong, Flash can be an effective tool to catch and keep a visitor’s attention if done in the wright way (which usually means VERY sparingly and subtly). Personally, I don’t do Flash. I’d rather subcontract that out then to take the time to become an expert in that particular software.

Good video production probably has much more power in converting browsers to buyers. Video and film is a powerful media to tap into people’s emotions. But great video takes not only years of being behind a camera and then analyzing hours of “footage” (maybe it should be called “pixelage” now?) to develop an eye for creativity in that media, it also takes some pretty pricey equipment. It’s my opinion that good video is generally a better investment than Flash.

The next biggest area of specialty is search engine optimization. It’s a bandwagon that’s hard to resist jumping in on. And why not? Making yourself an expert in how to get a site to rank well is a good card to play in convincing a potential client.

And the up-and-coming star is social media. Knowing the ever changing social media landscape and how to best use it for marketing purposes is a tough specialty to keep current on. For those designers that naturally gravitate to using social media sites for their own personal lives it may seems like the media is a natural gold mine for customers. The downside of social media is that the crowd can quickly turn on your business for the slightest infraction of on-line social etiquette. It’s an arena that’s not for the faint of heart.

Word of Mouth

Word of mouth referrals are the time tested way, in any field, of securing new relationships with customers and clients. Personally, despite my love on the Internet and computers, I feel it’s THE best way to find your next gig.

Ask your friends and family that have hired a website done how they like it, how they like getting along with the designer or design team, how they feel about the follow up customer service they got. Their feedback to you is one of your best tools for hunting down a good designer.

Check Out Your Competition

Your strategy here? Pull up the websites of your business neighbors. You can usually find a link at the very bottom as to who designed and built the site. Follow that link back to the designer’s own website. Tour around their own site and see what you think.

But first, ask yourself 2 things before you pick up the phone. Do you like their site? And, can you find it on the first or second page of a search for their particular field (eg. “florist appleton”)? Then it’s probably safe to jump in and make a call of inquiry to the designer.

Face to Face

In the end a face to face meeting will give you a fantastic idea if this person is appropriate for the web design project you have in mind.

Do they ask a lot of questions of your business, like where your current clients are coming from and what vision YOU see for your website. Can they really grasp the nature of your business? Can they see that your business is your life blood, your vital source of income and respect the depth of commitment you have to nurturing your baby? Or do they blast you with techno-jargon and their grand idea for a website?

Your gut reaction will probably lead you down the right path in hiring them or not.

Finding the Right Fit

My final advice is to keep in mind that your least expensive proposal for a website should not be your only criteria for selecting a designer. You may end up paying more in the end when your cut-rate designer spends 6, 8, 12 months on a project that could’ve taken a more seasoned pro a week or 2. And all that time you were missing so many potential customer that could have found you through a Web search.

There are many web designers in Appleton to pick from. Take your time, do your research, and then trust your instinct as to who will be the best fit for your project.

Overcoming Writer’s Block

Anne — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:00:07 +0000

Writer’s block stinks. There’s no two ways about it.

Get SOMETHING on paper!

You know you have to produce something for an approaching deadline, but you just can’t manage to tease it out of your head and onto paper (or a computer screen). And there’s not a problem with lack of knowledge in your field. You’re the expert, after all. But your wealth of experience and knowledge just sits there, mocking you from within the recessing of your brain.

And there’s the key. It’s your brain, or more specifically your lizard brain, that’s taunting you into believing that whatever you write won’t be good enough. I’m currently in the process of reading the pre-release of Seth Godin’s “Linchpin, Are You Indispensible?”, where he talks about the nasty lizard brain that keeps us all down, telling us we can’t possibly be good enough (stay in line and be a cog for your own survival sake, it says).

There is a place for the lizard brain. Like when you’re truly in a survival situation. It is absolutely superlative at demanding super-human feats of strength and endurance when being chased by a bear, or having to walk to the nearest neighbor in a blizzard when your car breaks down, or finding yourself lost in the backwoods. That is, if you have some control over it going completely beserk with fear.

But, the lizard brain is very counterproductive when it comes to functions of creativity, leadership, or standing out from the crowd. That’s when your higher brain function, ie. your cerebrum, need to ignore the lizard. But, after a lifetime of listening to the lizard it can be extremely difficult to counteract. Like anything in life it takes practice and a few helpful tools to get you in the right direction.

Some Tools for Overcoming Writer’s Block

Here are a few things that help me. They may not work for everyone. It may take some time and several tries to find the “secret sauce” that works for you.

1. Just write something… anything. Whether you type at a computer or write on paper get something “on the page”. Start with a shopping list, a household to-do list, a description of the clothes you’re wearing, a description of your car or house, your thoughts about the news you heard this morning.

I would stay away from hateful writing here, though– bringing out a laundry list of what you can’t stand about your partner or boss or kids, etc. It will just put you in a negative vibe that’s hard to get out of. Hateful writing is a version of the lizard coming out. Let’s not feed the lizard.

2. Use a different vehicle, or medium, for your communication. If you usually compose on the computer then take out a notebook and pen. If you usually write on paper then try speaking into a recorder of some kind. If you usually squirrel yourself away in your office then call or sit down with a friend to talk. Shifting to a slightly different medium for communication will nudge your creative juices a bit.

3. Pretend you’re talking to a friend about what you do. Then with your screen or notebook in front of you simply record that imaginary dialogue you’re carrying on. So what if it’s not Grapes of Wrath material. No judgments here.

4. Get out! Don’t chain yourself to your desk until you’ve produced you’re finest work. Another lizard tactic. Step away from your usual writing spot and change your perspective, literally. Go for a walk, run, ski, hike, swim. Moving your muscles and blood flow could be just the trick to quiet the lizard. Pesky fellow, isn’t it?

5. Pretend and visualize. Do a form of meditation and bring into your mind’s eye a picture of yourself writing, sitting in a chair composing. Then submitting your work to a publisher or editor, with smiles on both your faces. Then having a wonderful conversation about what a great writer you are. Then holding the book or magazine or newspaper or e-reader in your hand and seeing your words on the page. You may even go a step further and visualize yourself getting calls from other writers to interview you. What you can imagine will flow into your reality easier.

6. No excuses. Yes, everyone has bills to pay, grass to mow, sidewalks to shovel, cars to fix, families to make dinner for, parties to go to (well, not literally everyone, but you get my point). There will always be some sort of excuse to put off the important work of creativity. Get down to your writing and life will go on without you. After you get in a few hours of writing then you can go take out the garbage.

7. Read. Reading other people’s work is a great way to get some writing juices flowing. This one is my favorite, actually. One venue that’s always been a winner, in terms of stimulating my own writing, is reading Scientific American. No kidding. I’m kind of a science geek at heart and love to think about all the intricacies of the universe. So reading on the topics you find there is very nourishing to my higher creative/intellectual/cerebral side. I get in that vibe after reading an article or 2 there. Find your favorite genre and read, read, read.

8. Set your work in a “cooler”. My final piece of advice is to set your piece of writing in a place where it can cool off and age a bit. Much like a fine wine. After you’ve tapped into your inner guru (and, yes, everyone does have one) then step away from your work for awhile– but, not for too long. It can be a few hours, it can be a couple days. Coming back a month or year later may make it more difficult to pick up the thread you set aside.

Even if you’re blogging it’s a good idea to hit “save draft”, walk away from your computer for awhile, and then re-read what you’ve written. It is very tempting to hit “publish” as soon as you feel you’ve come to the end of your piece. Resist.

9. One more thing: throw out your style manual! Style manuals are for the “tighty whities” in the world. Just my opinion

Give these a try. Sometimes one method will work a whole lot better than another depending on your state of mind. No judgment. Squash the lizard. Or at least lock it away in an airtight glass box for awhile.

You’re The One Who Holds The Key

In the end it’s up to you to get the ball rolling. Now go write something! Overcoming writer’s block takes a leap of faith to try something different.

And thank you, dear reader, for reading this! Producing this post has helped me to define some great ways that help me to quiet that reptile brain. The act of writing this out is therapeutic for me, too. Hope my list helps you!

Other sources to unlock your creativity:

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life by Julian Cameron
Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg
On Writing by Stephen King