updates

Jenna Dee and Client Agreement

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 00:41:21 +0100

The website client (an individual or the whole team representing the client company) agrees that:

I’ve thought through the most important messages that my website must communicate to my company’s clients.
I will not use my competitors’ websites as my measure of content direction and design success. Nor will I commission a site imitation.
I will be clear in my design preferences and content selection.
My changes in design and content preferences will be accompanied with a change in scope.
I will emphasizing the content (text, photo selection, providing logo) instead of tweaking the site design.
I will think about my business from my site visitors’ point of view instead of the business owner’s point of view.
I will list key words and search terms, because I am the only one who can think of the words that clients are using to find my company. I will do so early in the website development.
I will not depend solely on Jenna Dee’s e-mail and phone contact for information about my website or e-mail. I will stay current with payment to the domain registrar and with my website host.
I will not bring in design, content, site organization decision makers after the initial commission without increasing website scope.

Jenna Dee (and any other website development group members) agrees that:

I’m bringing my experience in website building and design with your company’s brand development in mind.
I’m aiming for a higher design, more perfect fit for your company’s online presence; we’re thinking about your clients’ visiting experience.
I will be clear in my meetings and correspondence.
I will quote an accurate price range for each component of the website design and build.
I will produce a professional design that emphasizes the desired look of the business.
I will assist the client in implementing text and words that could help searchers find and navigate the site.
I will advise the client on best practices for search engine optimization and will implement the key words in strategic places on the site.
In addition to being available to clients in a timely manner, I will provide clear and complete information to equip clients with questions that can easily be answered by web searches, visits to forums, information in past e-mails.
I will respond quickly and efficiently to the client’s design and content decisions and will not stall in the website design process.

Congratulations to Liliane Hershkowitz

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:49:24 +0100

Liliane Hershkowitz has been in practice since 1984 and now she has a beautiful website to inform potential and existing clients about her work!

We included design elements that signified exploration and respect for the past, rendering a Secret Garden feeling. Liliane loves warm colors and has carefully crafted an environment in her office that feels welcoming and comfortable. Visiting her space online and off feels like the living room of a longtime friend.

Liliane Zeff Hershkowitz, M.A. boasts a new domain name, professional e-mail address, a slick contact form, an admin section for ease of website updates and an updated listing with google maps. Now, more than ever, she's ready for business!

How to Best Use your Web Designer

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 22:34:11 +0100

Know what you are paying for when you work with your website designer.

"Most important of all, don't pay a website designer thousands of dollars to build you a website. You wouldn't pay $30 for a gallon of milk, so don't pay a website designer ten times what they're worth. Building a website isn't about technology or aesthetics, it's about content, and the only person who can create that content is you."

The insightful quotes in this post are from Morris Rosenthal at fornerbooks.com, who speaks straight to the heart of many website overpayment and failed projects.

As a website designer, I've rescued too many clients as they leave behind a website and a design relationship that cost them tens of thousands of dollars and months of frustration. They find me because I'm recommended as an advocate or a consultant, and they're eager to get something online. They're shocked to find their small business website through thebestwebdesigngroupever.com weigh in at $900 to $4,000 of work. They're surprised to see every hour of work logged in invoices. It's incredibly empowering to the client when they present a new idea to me, I bid the additional work, and we get it online.

When I work with clients, I've found it best to meet and work together with them on their specific needs instead of fitting them into a general, preset plan. I know what the content housing needs actually are, my clients know what content they need to produce.

Know what you need to communicate online when you work with your website designer.

"A website designer who builds a pretty site and then asks you for some content to "populate" the pages with has done it all backwards, even if you had a dozen meetings to get to that point. It has to start with the content, around which you can design, or grow, a website."

A veritable expert on internet book marketing and self publishing, Rosenthal notes that he has "written a lot about search engine optimization and website design for publishers in the past, and it continues to come down to a couple basic principles. Write and publish high quality content and get relevant links."

This is the magic. Let's review the deep truth that Rosenthal espouses. Both website design and SEO efforts hinge on:

quality material
the housing and organization of the material
relating to other such material online via inbound and outbound links

Do not think that this requires the client to write their material themselves. Writers abound. Clients can have their website successfully built via phone interviews and digestible reviews of the content produced. They run their business, someone else writes about it. The client controls the material without the time commitment to pen it themselves. I have access to many writers and love facilitating the generation of quality material.

Resist the temptation of being distracted from your business when you work with your website designer.

One of the tasks clients unknowingly pick up with "get company website online" is to "learn everything about the internet" and it's overwhelmingly daunting. The very best thing a client can do to prepare for website construction is to know their business and to learn about their clients.

Some distractions include:

thinking like a business owner instead of an actual website visitor
how to appear on the first page of google
coming up with the best website design ever
coming up with the best website redesign ever (oh yes)
coming up with the most website features ever
making sure the site "has" SEO
dreaming up what the company will do instead of communicating what it does now
deciding to write all the website content in house (often a 6 month delay)
polling non-critical decision makers and miring the entire website construction process
social not working social networking

"So what can a professional SEO company actually do for a publisher? For starters, it depends on how bad a job you've done for yourself. If you've published your website with a content management system or web authoring package that doesn't take search engine visibility into account, they can point that out to you and help you migrate your website to a different platform. Of course, you can figure that out for yourself as well by just checking if your pages appear in Google and looking at your page titles. An SEO professional can certainly point out if you or your designer has done things that search engines consider bad practice, and which get you penalized. But some SEO professionals follow bad practices themselves, to get their clients a short lived bump in the search rankings and prove that they've "earned" their pay.... after getting your content right, it's all about the links."

There is the secret of SEO! Good content, well built sites, inbound and outbound links. Why is this such an internet secret? I think it's because it's a lot of work. And sneaky people make lots of money promising results without hard work.

"The [client's] challenge, when setting up a new website or embarking on a major redo of an existing website, is deciding what its purpose will be. A [client] who counts on a web designer to design a [client's] business website is a fool. What do web designers know about the [client's] business? It would be like a home building company hiring an interior decorator to build their model home. A professional designer might have some useful suggestions when it comes to tweaking the aesthetics or the usability, but the business structure and content of the website has to come from the [client]." *

My thoughts exactly, and much more well written than I could have attempted.

"Another problem I've seen [clients] run into is building a website based on their ideal business goals, rather than tying it in to the reality of their current business. Unfortunately, it's a lot easier to create a new website that looks like an ideal business model than to create a website that will actually generate business and profits. The aesthetics and the mission statements are the easy part. Attracting customers to buy [products and services] and the media attention that translates into free public relations is the hard part. Most [clients] rely on the opinions of their friends and of the very people they are paying to design the website." *

* Rosenthal writes for a book publishing audience and I've edited his industry references to reflect my client base - many from diverse industries.

Distractions abound. As a website designer, my efforts can only build on top of my client's Herculean feats. I cannot replace them in their critical business role any more than I can read their minds to discern their website visitor's needs. I do make the website construction process simple and affordable as a custom fit for each client.

Build a website with me. It is hard work - but it sure pays off in the end!

Congratulations to Cuisine

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:41:24 +0100

CuisineinHouston.com represents the delicious, ready to warm at home meals from Erik Songer's company, Cuisine. The shop is in a great central location to drop in and get the fresh frozen entrees home - near Houston's Second Baptist Church at Woodway and Voss.

To say that the Songers are enthusiastic about quality food would be a decided understatement. That love for fresh and healthful fare is evident in the new meals they produce each month as well as the excitement Erik conveys when he explains his careful selection of meats and his personal visits to Houston area Farmers Markets for produce.

Not only have I enjoyed several of their selections (I haven't tried them all, yet!), their low prices are hard to beat. Give them a try!

Congratulations to Julie Waters

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 23:13:20 +0100

Julie Waters is the founder of the organization Free the Captives, an anti human trafficking group based in Houston, Texas. She and I worked together to develop a simple and clear website for her organization. We used very little imagery and established a clean professional look, while still maintaining a human connection. This website represents a tough topic where information is key.

The homepage of Free the Captives

An interior page of the Free the Captives website

Julie and I also worked on a short video presentation that explains the pressing need for local and international action against human traffickers. The 6 minute clip also quickly introduces both Free the Captives and Julie Waters.

Free the Captives Houston from studio|detro on Vimeo.

Congratulations to LeighMcLeroy.com

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:47:42 +0100

Best wishes actually go to Leigh McLeroy of LeighMcLeroy.com, but I think the connection is pretty clear. Leigh authors books about personally connecting with God. She speaks at retreats and other events and has interesting interviews about her work that we posted as well.

She also maintains a website that dwells on discovering His presence in everyday and in special moments. The site is called WednesdayWords.com as the associated e-newsletter is always sent out on Wednesdays. We worked on the color scheme and created a new header for her longstanding blog site to meld it with her new look.

Interested in protecting her dear personal friends and family from the effects of her fame, or at least interested in not mixing the two groups indiscriminately, we established a Facebook Fan page for Leigh. It provides a great venue for readers to voice their encouragement for her thoughtful writing. And she's active in contributing more of the same witty writing at the page.

Best Wishes to Bob Thomas

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:05:26 +0100

Bob Thomas is a candidate for 270th Civil District Court Judge in the upcoming Democratic primary. Please check out his website at bobthomasforjudge.com and look over Bob's credentials and endorsements.

I love the footer design because it's an adaptation of his campaign logo. A man with two careers, Bob served on the HPD police force prior to attending law school, I like being able to use his sergeant's badge in the second logo.

Truly, best wishes to Bob Thomas and family as they hit the campaign trail!

Congratulations to AMTI

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:08:16 +0100

I have just wrapped up some maintenance work on Alloy Metals and Tubes International that was built in collaboration with John Magee Design.

Just like John Magee's design company, Alloy Metals and Tubes International is a family owned and family run business with a focus on polished & professional client centric interaction. These are people who deeply care for their clients. The quality of their work and interactions complement their friendly way of doing business.

Alloy Metals and Tubes International source tube, pipe, flange and fitting needs around the world. They free up their clients to focus on their own businesses and can handle supply chain needs from sourcing, machining, heat treating, testing, inventory control, to packing and shipping.

It has been a nice two years of work creating, optimizing and performing routine maintenance on the alloy-metals.com site, I wish them the best for the future.

Congratulations to Paths in Healing

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:08:26 +0100

Tim Janak Sr. and Tim Janak Jr. give ridiculous massages. And it's because they understand how the human body moves (or in the case of my poor shoulders, don't move). And they love what they do. So, go see them! And learn more about their massage company, Paths in Healing, by clicking here.

Congrats to Melody at psychsync.com

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:08:36 +0100

Melody Allen, MA begins her online classes today! Her website is up and clicking along, she'll be offering interactive online classes (anonymous group setting), individual sessions and group workshops as a counselor. Her primary focus is marriage counseling.

Her site is a neat collection of "how to get involved" information and resources for current and future clients.