Can you not update your own website? (Issue #2 of 8)

By Tim Priebe on February 3, 2012 at 9:59 am in General,Maintenance,WordPress

If your website was not made in the last couple years, chances are good that you need special software to update your website. And if you have more than one person updating your site, you have to pay for a copy of the software for each of them. And you may all still need knowledge of HTML and other web programming languages.

Get a new look and edit your site…whenever you want

T&S decided a long time ago to do things differently. Our clients in Edmond, Oklahoma City, and around the world can go to any computer, log into their own website, and update their own website. We use a content management system (CMS) called WordPress, which allows our clients to…

  • Edit the text on pages
  • Upload new pictures and remove existing ones
  • Delete pages when needed
  • Add new pages, and insert those into their menu
  • Blog

We install the WordPress software for you, along with a few plugins we’ve found and developed that make WordPress even easier to use.

Keep the same look and gain editing capabilities

You may be saying to yourself, “That’s great, but I don’t need a whole new website. I’m actually pretty happy with how my site looks, I just need to be able to edit it.”

Great news, we can still help! We can actually take your current site and convert it to use WordPress. Typically there are very minor tweaks here and there so your site is compatible WordPress. But once we’re done, you have basically the same site (with just a bit more consistency throughout), and you can log in and edit the site on your own.

If you need to be able to edit your site on your own, contact us at info@tandswebdesign.com or by calling us at 405-285-0348. If you’re in the Oklahoma City metro area, we’d love to meet with you in person to discuss your options. And if you’re elsewhere, we’d be just as happy to set up a phone meeting.

Check out our next blog post where we discuss a solution to Issue #3 – trouble finding your website on Google and other search engines.

Issue #1 of 8 – Your website needs a facelift

By Tim Priebe on January 11, 2012 at 11:50 am in Design,General

Sound familiar?

This is a common issue our clients have before their first meeting with us here at T&S Web Design. Luckily, we have some fantastically creative designers who will know exactly how to beef up your new website. Of course, the pretty websites wouldn’t function without our super talented programmers.

In some ways, it doesn’t matter whether you choose our Premium, Standard or Starter website package. Any of the three website packages can greatly improve the look of your site.

Premium Package

Our Premium Website Package is for those wanting a new, top-of-the-line look. This type of site is essential for companies that need to convey that their product or service is worth paying extra for.

Brent Fuchs – Premium Website

MIDCON Data – Premium Website

Standard Package

Our Standard Website Package is great for someone who wants a completely custom website, and wants full control over how that site looks. This site is perfect for any business that plans to use the internet and their website as a major marketing tool.

Harding School of Theology – Standard Website

Summit – Standard Website

Land Roofing – Standard Website

 

Starter Package

Finally, even our Starter Website Package will often be a great improvement over your current site. Like building with a certain type of interlocking block (you know the bricks I’m talking about), there are some limitations, but our design team at T&S can still deliver extremely creative, original solutions.

Cuppie Cakes of Edmond – Starter Website

Oklahoma CattleWomen, Inc. – Starter Website

The Nephesh Nuevo Project – Starter Website


Ready to find out which website package fits your business?

Contact us today at info@tandswebdesign.com or by calling us at 405-285-0348.

We love helping companies get ahead of their competition by having an updated, user-friendly website. If you’re a nonprofit, remember that our Starter Website Package is available to you on a pay-what-you-can basis.

Stay tuned for the remaining posts of this series! We will cover many other issues you may have with your website and/or social media.

 

Issues before working with T&S Web Design

By Tim Priebe on December 20, 2011 at 9:00 am in General

At T&S Web Design, we get to hear all sorts of issues clients have had in the past with their website, social media, etc. Whether the client is local to us in the Oklahoma City metro, or they’re a remote client, they usually come to us with a specific issue, problem or need.

We do get clients in who are just forming businesses and therefore getting a website for the first time. But the majority of the businesses and nonprofits we meet with already have a website, or at least some sort of web presence. Therefore, the reason they’re meeting with us is most often because they’re not happy with something about their current website or current social media presence.

Here are some of the things we hear most often:

  • I can’t update my website.
  • My website can’t be found online.
  • My website doesn’t look good on my phone.
  • My website is ugly and outdated.
  • Facebook and Twitter aren’t working for me.
  • My current web company is terrible at communication.
  • I’m not getting enough online leads.

And finally, one we don’t actually hear directly from clients, but is still fairly common.

  • I’m not an internet expert, and don’t want to be taken advantage of.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to take a look at these issues to let you know how T&S can help. Be sure to check back, and/or feel free to email us if you have questions in the meantime!

 

 

Does your business really need a mobile website?

By Tim Priebe on November 3, 2011 at 8:56 am in Mobile Web

Mobile websites are the hot new thing, are they really necessary for the average small business?

Absolutely! Now that many Americans have smartphones, mobile websites more important than ever before. Let’s look at a few statistics on smartphones and the mobile web in general.

The research company Nielsen estimates that by the end of 2011, about 50% of Americans will have a smartphone. That’s up from about 20% in the end of 2009.

The analyst firm Gartner recently reported that in 2011, new handsets will be able to access the mobile web. And that doesn’t even include smartphones!

Desktop websites on mobile phones

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen performed a study to see how mobile websites performed versus desktop websites being viewed on a phone. While each website had a different goal, they were measurable goals, so Nielsen could see specifically if the goal of the website was accomplished or not.

The success rate of the mobile websites on touchscreen smartphones was 75%, much higher than the 53% that desktop websites scored.

The conclusion that Nielsen drew from the study was that it’s not enough for your website to just “work” on a phone. Your content, website navigation, and even website code needs to be optimized to perform well on mobile devices.

What people look for on websites

The most popular type of information being looked for on websites is an address, more information on a business in the area, and a phone number. These are being looked for by people on the go, and mobile websites can give these visitors exactly what they want.

So whether you go out and hire a web design company to build your website or try to do it yourself, you’ll need to keep one very important thing in mind: Your visitors have different goals when visiting your mobile site than they do when visiting your desktop site.

With the content on a mobile site, less is more. You’ll want less pages, less text and fewer images. You still need to have all those things, but just not as much as you have on your desktop site.

And some things will just operate differently. On your mobile website, a “Call us” button can actually dial your store. And a “Find us” can launch the visitor’s map program on their phone and even show them how close they are to your location.

Once it’s launched, your desktop website should automatically send mobile users over to your mobile website. And it should give them an option to switch back to the desktop site if they’d like, and vice versa.

So chances are half of your potential customers are using a smartphone. Make your website easier for them to use by getting a mobile website, and they’ll be that much more likely to buy from you.

*Illustration by Emily Spirek

 

How to make your background image as big as possible

By Tim Priebe on September 5, 2011 at 7:40 am in How-To,Technical

One example of a full-screen site

Hey, everyone! Time for a technical tip for those tweaking their website on their own. If that’s not you, feel free to skip this blog.

One cool way to use photography on your site is to have a photo set as the background image on your home page, and have it take up the whole background space, resizing to be bigger as you make your browser bigger (or smaller). Don’t trust me? Check out 75 cool websites using full screen photo backgrounds for yourself.

How is this accomplished? Well, traditionally there was some JavaScript hacking necessary. Fortunately, with CSS3, the solution is now much simpler. Here is some sample code:

body {
background-attachment: fixed;
background-image: url(my-background-image.jpg);
background-origin: content-box;
background-position: center center;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
-o-background-size: 100% 100%;
-moz-background-size: 100% 100%;
-webkit-background-size: 100% 100%;
background-size: 100% 100%;
}

Of course, this doesn’t work right in versions of Internet Explorer before 9, so if you want to support that as well, you’ll have to use some jQuery trickery.

Programming Intern Needed

By Tim Priebe on August 24, 2011 at 2:15 pm in General

It’s the marvelous fall season again, which means it’s time for a new intern here at T&S. Who doesn’t want to get everyone in the office coffee and make runs to Sonic during happy hour? Oh, and occasionally there’s actual programming involved.

This year we need one programming intern to work around 20 hours a week. As usual, we’re not too worried about experience level, but are most interested in someone who wants to learn.

If you’re interested in becoming an Orangite, give our job hotline a call at 237-8080. Be ready to leave a detailed message with the following information:

  1. Your name
  2. Your telephone number
  3. Your email address (please spell it out)
  4. Where you go to school
  5. Tell us why you think you would be perfect for this job

It’s okay if you get confused, just hang up and call back again. But try to do it before the tone sounds. We don’t need to hear a message with your heavy breathing on it.

Oh, and we’ll be taking applications through the job hotline until midnight September 11th. The internship will be for the duration of the 2011-2012 school year. Once again, the number is 237-8080.

A Day in the Life.

By Tim Priebe on June 6, 2011 at 4:48 pm in General

For this nerd-tastic blog entry, I thought I’d give a day in the life of Tim Priebe. As with most small business owners, I wear several hats. So in many respects, there is no typical day. I might spend a day doing business building, programming, sales, customer care, community service, Orangite morale building, spending time with the family, or (more likely) a combination of several of those.

For fun, we’ll look at April 20th, 2011. That was the day Josh, my oldest son, turned seven. And, lest I get in trouble, my sister’s birthday as well.

5:30     Woke up, showered and got dressed. Not necessarily in that order.

6:00     Checked email in the home office. Drank some coffee, started to slowly wake up.

6:20    Worked on my Webifiable column for The Business Times of Edmond. Lisa Shearer, my editor, is a slave-driver! Okay, not really.

6:50    Helped Josh finish getting ready for school. Fortunately, he’s old enough to get mostly ready on his own. I let him pick out his own clothes, but Leann doesn’t always like that.
JoshandSeven
7:10    Headed over to Whataburger for Josh’s birthday breakfast with dad. Eating out for breakfast is our annual tradition. The Whataburger staff let us take a picture with the number seven, since it was Josh’s seventh birthday.

8:10    Dropped Josh off at school. We listened to my iPod playlist titled “Kids and Dad.” It has music by Erick Alexander, the Beatles and others.

8:20    Arrived at the Edmond Chamber’s Morning Mingle at Tinker Federal Credit Union. Myron Pope did a great job presenting the sponsors. Got to chat with Barbe Renz and meet several new people. And Leann (my wife) got to go as well, so that’s always a plus.

9:25    Headed over to Starbucks to meet with Adam Potter, SEO link-builder extraordinaire. He described his process to me, which sounds like the least shady link-building technique I’ve ever heard of. Adam then became my favorite SEO link-builder.

10:30    Went over to Vintage Coffee and read a book on writing. I’m fairly sure it was How to Write & Sell Information for Fun and Profit, by Robert Bly. (Warning: That’s an affiliate link!) I highly recommend the book to anyone wanting to get into how-to writing. I liked the book enough that I’ve already lent it out to someone else.

11:00    Met with Mike Crandall with Sandler Training. Mike is a great guy, and really knows his stuff. We discussed sales, the growth his business was experiencing, and Leadership Edmond.

12:20    Head to the office and prepare for an employee review. Fortunately, we finally have our hiring process down well enough that these are usually a pleasure.

1:30    Sit down with two different employees for their reviews. Mostly praise, with just some minor course corrections.

2:30    Check email for the first time since 6am. Wow, I get a lot of email…

3:20    Work on writing an ebook. I spent another eight hours on it later to finish it up. The ebook, Easy Website Check-up, is available now for free at Webifiable.com by signing up for our email list.

6:30    Trouble-shooting my malfunctioning computer. Turned out it was two things: The router at the office and my hard drive. We replaced both later that week.

8:30    Heading home for dinner and relaxation. I can’t remember for sure what I ate or watched on television, but it was probably blackened fish to eat, and Smallville and Stargate Universe on television.

10:00    Off to bed. In seven hours or so, it will be time to start all over again!

Leave your clothes at T&S!

By Tim Priebe on March 30, 2011 at 9:51 am in non-profit
If your closet looks like this, you should definitely fill your car up with clothes and head over to T&S

If your closet looks like this, you should definitely donate to the drive.

To be clear, this is not about people stripping down in the T&S office. Rather, T&S is now a drop-off point for a clothing drive here in Edmond!

The drive benefits EARC, a non-profit here in Edmond, and is running from now until mid-April. Leadership Edmond Class XVII (the best class ever) is organizing the drive.

All donations must be at the T&S office by close of business Thursday, April 14th. On Friday, April 15th, T&S will help get those clothes over to EARC.

Help out by bringing any clothing you have to the T&S Web Design office. Thanks!

Big Winner of Google Maps Contest

By Tim Priebe on March 16, 2011 at 1:34 pm in freebies

Congrats to Andy Moore, the winner of our Google Maps Contest. Here was his winning entry:

andymooreAt first I thought myself fortunate to find a wormhole in the space/time continuum just a few miles from my home. I mean, seriously, a website developer who can also travel through space AND time – I might even transfer my hosting to them for if they’d let me hop in the wormhole once or twice. Alas, I was saddened to learn that the Google Maps marker was simply in the wrong place. Guess I’ll head back to my basement for another round of Klingon language-acquisition flash cards.

Thanks to everyone who entered. Google did call us last week, but sadly they have not yet moved our listing.

If you like free stuff (and who doesn’t), be sure to check out our Facebook Page this week for a series of giveaways celebrating our 1,000 fans milestone.

Be funny, win money* (money is actually an iTunes gift card)

By Tim Priebe on March 7, 2011 at 9:30 am in General

tandsmapPicture a poor Google engineer, locked away in his Google dungeon, having to read problem report after problem report of bad locations on Google. Boring!

Let’s brighten up his day with some funny (but accurate) problem reports! And we’ll give the funniest entry a free $15 iTunes gift card.

Google Maps has our business in the wrong location. So if a lot of people report a problem, we think we’ll have a decent chance of (finally) getting it fixed. And we can cheer up a severely bored (we assume) Google employee’s day.

The following should just take a minute or too, although that depends on how much time you need to warm up your funny bone. We and the Google engineer would greatly appreciate it.

  1. Go to this link
  2. Before you start, make sure Google still has the location wrong. If the “A” marker is still up on Covell (it should be on Memorial), keep going.
  3. Click on the marker labeled “A”
  4. Click on the “More” drop-down in the bottom right of the box that just popped up
  5. Click on “Report a problem”
  6. Select “Listing contains incorrect information or spam” (should be the first option)
  7. Under “What information is incorrect?” select “Marker Location”
  8. Fill out the comment (for funny and hilarious suggestions, see below).
  9. Copy and paste your comment, THEN click the Report Problem button.
  10. Navigate back to our blog page to enter in your funny comment (more details below).

Now we’re to the part where you need to convey that the marker is wrong. Basically, the marker is up on Covell, and should be down on Memorial, where the address is actually located. We want you to convey that information, but make it funny. Here are examples:

Boring comment:

Marker location is in the wrong position. It’s on the wrong side of town, and should be where the address is actually located.

Funny comment (relatively speaking):

Unless a tornado picked up T&S Web Design and moved them (and that is possible in Oklahoma), their marker is on the wrong location. It says it’s at 2801 E Memorial Road, which is correct, but for some reason the marker is not in the right place.

Hilarious comment:

Hello. I would like to report an inaccuracy in the location of T&S Web Design in Edmond, Oklahoma. When I drove to the location indicated in Google Maps, I arrived in a residential neighborhood. When I knocked on the door of one of the houses, instead of a web designer answering, a rather curious old man answered. He invited me in for tea. The next few minutes are rather blurry. I remember something about a straitjacket, a magician and a locked trunk. When I came to, it was three days later, my wallet was gone, and I was in the middle of a field. And, of course, I still didn’t have a website. Later I learned that while the address on the Google Maps location is correct, the marker is in the wrong location.

Of course, your comment does not have to be that long.

**Before you submit your comment, make sure you copy it and paste it as a comment at the bottom of this blog entry, or on this blog’s post on our Facebook page.

We’ll select the winner on Monday, March 14th and announce it on the blog and our Facebook page. Let us know if you have any problems, otherwise good luck, and we and the Google engineer thank you!

EDIT 2011-03-12: PG or tamer responses only, please.

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