T&S Web Design

Sometimes I find the best way to concentrate on my work and get a lot done is to just put on some headphones and work in my own little world. This (hopefully) will decrease outside distractions and allow me to not only get work done, but get it done well. I find that music is is one of (if not the best) way to get some creative juices flowing. These are the main reasons I have decided to buy some new headphones!

All this being said, I first wanted to find some headphones that were comfy. If I’m going to be wearing them all day, I don’t want my ears to hurt. Also, I want them to be easily removable in case I need to take them off and put them back on a lot. For these reasons, I decided that over the ear headphones would be best. Currently, I have a pair of Sony MDR-V150 which are decent, but after a couple hours they kind of hurt because they are a tight fit. In looking for a new pair, I know Bose makes nice headphones, so that’s where I started. I actually listened to a pair of Bose around-ear headphones at Target, and they sounded awesome, but after some research, I found out that Sennheiser makes some of the best headphones out there.

After some more reasearch on Amazon.com and Headphone.com (which by the way has excellent reviews) I decided to go with a pair of Sennheiser HD 280 Pro headphones. I have to say that these are the best headphones I have ever used. They sound even better than the Bose around-ear headphones and are extremely comfortable. I got these $200 headphones off Amazon.com for about $75.

If you are in the market for some headphones of any type, I would recommend starting your search at Headphone.com, they know their stuff. I actually used this article that recommended the best headphones to use with an iPod, which is how I ultimately made my decision.

Happy new year, everyone! Making any new year’s resolutions? Wondering if your business could benefit from a resolution for you to start blogging? Here’s a few questions to ask yourself.

Can I write once a week?

If you can’t blog at least once a week, don’t bother. One thing worse than no blog at all is a blog that hasn’t been updated in months. After all, if the last blog entry someone sees is six months old, how do they even know your business is still around?

Keep in mind that you can write several blog entries at once, then schedule them to be published once a week, or more often even.

Do I have something interesting to say?

You can write every day for a whole year, but if you aren’t interesting to your current and potential customers, there’s not much point. The ultimate point is to keep current customers and/or get new ones. So if they aren’t interested, don’t bother.

Can I stick with it with no encouragement whatsoever?

So you’re writing once a week and have some interesting things to say. But you’re getting no feedback. No one is posting comments, no one is emailing you to tell you they loved your latest blog post.

Cry me a river.

The general rule of thumb is that 1% of visitors to a website will be an active participant in some way. So you may have 99 readers, but no one is commenting. You may have 99 readers, but no one is telling you that they loved your great blog post. Just because you’re not getting many comments does not mean you should stop posting.

And when you do get that first comment or first email, celebrate! That means there are probably 99 other people thouroughly enjoying your blog posts that just haven’t bothered to tell you so.

So if you can write something interesting at least once a week and stick with it, you should be blogging for your business! It will allow your website visitors to feel like they know you, making them that much more likely to do business with you.

The design conference is sponsored by HOW Magazine, which is an excellent source for either businesses or individuals. They provide “essential business information, up-to-date technological tips, the creative whys and hows behind noteworthy projects, and profiles of professionals who are influencing design.”

The HOW Design Conference launched in 1991 and also focuses on the three design elements of creativity, business, and technology. Every year, over 45 speakers are recruited to well-known design cities such as, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, etc. It is an amazing environment, filled with 2,000+ designers that are all looking for the same creative inspirations. The conference is a life-changing experience and one that every designer should encounter.

Visit http://www.howconference.com for more details on the conference

or http://www.howdesign.com for the magazine website.

I haven’t plugged my book since we launched our new blog here, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to do so.

Finally, we’re going to talk about the best way for a website to turn a profit, and that’s making actual money.

There are a many, many ways for a website to make money, and we’ll talk about a few of those.

First, you can sell advertising on your website, either directly or through a broker like Google AdSense, where they find the advertisers for you and automatically place them on your site. Direct selling of advertising on your site cuts out the middle-man and can, therefore, be more profitable. However, Google makes it very easy to set up AdSense on your website. AdSense scans the content of your site and links to relevant sponsors that pay Google when someone clicks on those links. Then Google pays you when someone clicks on the links, taking a cut off the top. The ads can be placed anywhere on your website. You can see in the screenshot to the left where ads were placed at the top of the website.

A website can be a lead-generating tool. You can find people who are possibly interested in your product by offering an e-book or report on a topic related to your business that potential clients and customers would find interesting. Just ask for very basic contact information and have your website automatically email them the report for free.

You generate leads similarily with giveaways, newsletters, or even with a simple “Get a Quote” form. Anything that collects very basic contact information and offers a benefit can help you to capture leads with your website. And the less information you request, the more likely people will be to sign up.

When you link to any such form, make sure the link is prominent on your website. It needs to be one of the first things that visitors to the website see. Website visitors tend to start looking at the top right of the page, then they look to the right, then down the page. So towards the top is generally a good place for the button. You can see good button placement on the website screenshot to the right.

The last method for making money on your website is probably the one people think of the most, and that is selling product directly on your site.

The key with selling anything on your website is to make it as easy as possible for people to buy. While there are both free and paid shopping cart solutions you can install on your website, those are often not necessary if you only have a few items. PayPal and Google Checkout both offer easy to integrate shopping carts. All you do is create an account with them, copy their code for “Add to cart” buttons and your website is ecommerce capable.

Of course, it helps if you also have items in your store that are appealing and easy to ship. While you may not want to list all of your available inventory online, your best bet is small items that are $20-$50 dollars. People are generally pretty comfortable buying something online in that price range, and will be that much more likely to impulse buy.

Now you’ve seen how websites can give you a great return on your investment when you set them up to save time, save money and make money. You should not be satisified with a simple brochure website that gives you an “online presence.” Instead, the website needs to be actively contributing to the bottom line of your business, or it’s not worth the money you spent on it.

< Back to part 3

Many designers come up with amazing concepts while brainstorming for a project, and everything appears to be perfect up until the actual design starts. Many times, the artwork doesn’t always emphasize the potential of the original idea. One of the biggest problems is the wrong use of typefaces. Something every designer should understand is the importance of typography and how using the correct typeface will solve many problems. Many professionals will choose a top 20 typefaces and only use those: the fewer, the better. Here is a common list of typefaces:

• Centaur
• Jenson
• Bembo
• (Adobe) Garamond
• Minion
• Times New Roman
• Baskerville
• Mrs. Eaves
• Bauer Bodoni
• Didot
• Clarendon
• Rockwell
• Serifa
• Franklin Gothic
• News Gothic
• Helvetica Neue
• Univers
• Futura
• Fruitger
• Copperplate Gothic

The right typeface can make all the difference in the world and change the feel of the design. Businesses need to convey their identity through their logo, and the typeface can make or break this communication. Here is an example (to the right), showing how a typeface can change the logo. The correct logo on the bottom displays a more professional feel, where the top logo feels more playful and doesn’t suit the company.

Now that we’ve talked about saving time, let’s talk about saving money. This one is actually pretty easy to see from several standpoints.

First, the flexibility of a website can save money over traditional marketing materials. Let’s say you have some marketing material printed up. 5,000 brochures, 5,000 business cards and 5,000 fliers. As is common with small businesses, things change. Maybe it’s an email address, maybe a phone number, maybe even a service or product you offer. All of a sudden, you’re out over $1,000 dollars.

With a website, it’s different. You don’t have to spend tons of money to reprint brochures, business cards and fliers. Instead, you just go online, tweak your website’s text, and you’re good to go.

Another method was brought to our attention by one of our earliest clients, Cactus Jack’s Family Fun Center. One of the reasons they wanted a website was to save money on an ongoing basis with advertising. The fact that you can fit plenty of information in a website means you’re not paying to cram all that info into a phone book ad or into a television spot. Instead, you put just enough information to whet the appetite of your potential customer, then send them to your website for more in depth information.

While ads in the phone book, newspapers and magazines are still helpful, you don’t have to sell the product right there. You do still need to have eye-catching and memorable ads, but you can do the actual sales pitch on the website.

Finally, some websites simply save money on postage and gas. While musicians like The Herndons and Devin Derrick could mail out sample CDs to get their music out there, why not put a website up and include samples on the site instead? Sure, photographers like Beautiful Bride Photography and Colette Staats could drive around showing potential clients their portfolios, but why not point them to their websites?

I think you get the idea.

< Back to part 2 On to part 4 >

Tessa McGee contacted us several weeks ago about donating something to Oklahoma Christian University’s auction for Tony’s Alley. We were happy to donate logo design with four logo choices. Today we discovered that Tessa tied for Freshman Seminar Auction Contest For Most Creative Donation.

Congrats, Tessa! Tessa is on the right in the picture to the right.

This week, let’s talk about saving time with a website. After all, time is money, so saving yourself a few minutes here and a few minutes there will end up saving (and making) you money as well.

One of the most common ways to save time is to simply answer the most common questions on your website. This should be questions that you find yourself answering again and again in the course of an average business day or week.

One of our clients who has done a good job of this is Daisy Exchange, a trendy clothing exchange store in the Oklahoma City area. On their website, they tell how the buying and reselling process works, different brands and items they buy, and even mention job opportunities.

Another way to save time is to put videos online. Before their website was online, midwestmedia and marketing had to go to a bit of trouble to show potential clients samples of their videography. They either had to show them in person or burn a DVD and mail it to them. Now, all they have to do is direct potential clients to their website to see how great their video skills are.

A third way to save time is to move processes to the website. Tinker and the Primes is a yearly event that helps connect small businesses with government contracts and sub-contracts. Registration for the thousands of attendees used to be a time-consuming, unwieldy process for the staff. Now, with online registration, the process is much simpler. The registrants sign up on the website and receive automatic emails with reminders. The staff just has to log into the website to get up-to-date numbers and view spreadsheets and reports.

These few examples should provide some insight into the different ways websites can save your business time, therefore making your website actually turn a profit. Next week we’ll be looking at how your website can save you money.

< Back to part 1    On to part 3 >

While it’s certainly important that your website looks good, the real goal for your business’s website should be for it to benefit you financially. There are three main ways this can be done.

1. Save time
2. Save money
3. Make money

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be writing about each of these categories, and some ways different clients of ours have accomplished these goals. But let’s take a quick look at all three of them right now.

Save time

If you’re like many small business owners and dedicated employees, you’re spending plenty of time on your business. For some, the only real way they can make more money is if they can save time somewhere. A website can be a huge help in this area. At the least, it can be marketing for you day and night. But realistically, every single business has something process or task that can be sped up with the help of a website.

Save money

A website can actually save you money as well. I can’t count the number of people we’ve sold websites to that made their money back within a year just by cutting back or eliminating other forms of advertising.

Make money

Done well, a website has the possibility of being a money making machine. While this can, of course, vary greatly based on your industry, there are few who can’t actually make money with their website.

Stay tuned over the next few weeks as we go into more details about turning a profit with your website.

On to part 2 >