Category: Indigo Image Tips

Posted on

Elements of a good email signature

The New Year often give pause to thought on how you are conducting your business. Are you making the most of your opportunities, using your time efficiently, attracting the right sort of clients? It is a time for reviewing and updating and I have a number of things I will be updating over the next few weeks for my own business.

On the agenda today was  my email signature and as much of my business communication is done via email, it is an important little snippet at the bottom of every email I send. It essentially acts as an electronic business card.

What are the elements of a good email signature?

  • Your name
  • Email address
  • Telephone number
  • Fax Number
  • A very brief statement on what you do and offer
  • Link to company web site
  • Links to social media profiles such as Twitter and Facebook
  • Keeping the signature short and sweet

In my signature I also have my logo and also the word “Thanks” so I don’t have to type it out every time.  The signature can also be edited on a per email basis, so if I need to have a more formal finish I can easily delete “Thanks” and replace with something more appropriate. The same goes for adding my surname.

Here is how it looks.

Elements of an effective email signatureSetting up an email  signature in Outlook is easy and there are great instruction on how to do so here.

© 2012 Chicago Web Designer

Posted on

7 ways to increase the visibility of your small business website

Here is a list of 7 things you, as a small business owner, can do TODAY, to increase the visibility of your web site. The better visibility, the better rankings in the search engines . End result more site visitors.

website visibility

  1. Start a Blog
    Google’s blogger or WordPress.com are both good candidates for the novice blogger. They are easy to setup and require no technical knowledge .  Ideally your blog should be integrated into your web site and given the same look/ feel for a seamless branded image (we can definitely help you with this).  However having a standalone blog gives you a great platform to test the blogging waters and  find your voice.  Write regular blog posts relevant to your business expertise or product offering and make sure to create linksto your web site. Here are some articles on blogging which will help you get the most out of your blog.

  2. Comment on blog posts
    Commenting on blog posts is a great way to increase the visibility of your site.  A fitting comment and a relevant  link to your site where applicable can lead to considerable traffic. Tread carefully though and do not spam.
  3. Open a Twitter account
    Twitter is a micro blogging tool, each Tweet, or post can have a maximum of 140 characters.  Spend a little time setting up your profile which can include a picture, an all important link to your web site and a short bio.  Next find some people to follow using the tools offered on the Twitter web site, then tweet away.  The more you interact the more you will get of Twitter.
  4. Create a Facebook Fan Page for your business
    To get started with Facebook you first need to create a personal account. Then visit this page https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
    Select a good name and populate the info section of the profile with your business information.  You are now free to start sharing your thoughts, ideas, products, links, video and anything else you think is relevant to your business via the Facebook status window. You will need to build up your fan base so include a Facebook “like button” wherever you can e.g In your email signature, on your blog, on your web site.
  5. Get listed on YELP
    Yelp is a local directory allowing users to search for all sorts of  services, everything from hair dressers to website designers.  Once you are a member (free) you can post reviews on any listing.
    See our listing on Yelp
  6. Upload a video to YouTube
    YouTube is the world’s 2nd most popular search engine ( Google is the 1st) so it stands to reason a presence there is worth the time and effort.  Creating your free account is easy and uploading a video a breeze.
    See our videos on YouTube How to select a great Domain Name and How to add video to your Internet Marketing Mix
  7. Pin something on Pinterest
    If you have visually appealing images on your website particularly if they relate to your products or services e.g You are a landscaper and have a portfolio of completed landscape projects, Pinterest is a great place to share them. Pinterest is one of the newest and fastest growing social media platforms. It is a virtual pin board allowing you to organize and share all the fabulous images you find on the web.  Boards and images can be  shared and repined .
    Check out our profile on Pinterest
Posted on

Worst Internet passwords and 5 tips for strong passwords

Here is some interesting information from Splashdata. Are you using any of these passwords to log into your email, Facebook page or even you bank account?

  1. password
  2. 123456
  3. 12345678
  4. qwerty
  5. abc123
  6. monkey
  7. 1234567
  8. letmein
  9. trustno1
  10. dragon
  11. baseball
  12. 111111
  13. iloveyou
  14. master
  15. sunshine
  16. ashley
  17. bailey
  18. passwOrd (The “O” is a zero here)
  19. shadow
  20. 123123
  21. 654321
  22. superman
  23. qazwsx
  24. michael
  25. football

If so, it is probably time to upgrade to something more secure, you are likely to get hacked.

Here are 5 tips for strong passwords.

  1. Don’t use the same password for everything
  2. Don’t use anything obvious like your birthday, login name or a pets name – hackers can trawl through applications like Facebook looking for clues
  3. The longer the password the better, aim for at least 8 characters
  4. Mix up your character, use upper and lower case, numbers and special characters like ` ! ” ? $ ? % ^ & * ( ) _ – + = { [ } ] : ; @ ‘ ~ # | < , > . ? /
  5. Having trouble, generate a random password from a site like strongpasswordgenerator.com

Keeping track of all these unique passwords can be a challenge. Consider using a password manager, there is a great review of the top players here.

© 2011 Chicago Web Designer

Posted on

Coupons and money saving tricks for web designers.

Back in May I wrote a blog post “Extreme couponing for web designers” which listed FREE services and applications any web designer will appreciate. Today I am back with coupon codes and money saving tricks for domain names and web hosting.

Coupons for domain names

Without a doubt GoDaddy continues to offer the best prices for domain names and there are plenty of coupon codes out there to get an even better deal.  For example the code cjc749fat will get you a .com domain name for $7.49 . The deals/codes  changes on a regular basis but a good site with up to date information is  fatwallet.com

Web Hosting

Here are some ways to can save on web hosting

  1. What type of hosting account do you need for your web site? Most hosting companies offer a number of different packages and the more complex your website the more you will need from your hosting company. If you have a simple web site the basic hosting package will probably suffice… no need to upgrade for features and functionality you don’t need.
  2. Before opening a new hosting account always do a Google search to see if you can find any coupons, for the company you wish to host with or the type of hosting account you need.
  3. Committing to an initial 12 month contract as opposed to month to month, will generally give you a better rate and save you money in the long run.
  4. Set up a reseller account, many hosting companies will give you a discount on every site you host with them.

© 2011 Chicago web designer

Posted on

Tips for Going Paperless

Since moving to Chicago I have made a concerted effort to go completely paperless. It was driven by a sheer horror of the amount of paper work that had built up over 10 years in business and a huge desire not to pack it all into boxes,  transport it all and then never unpack it. Who’d have thought a web and graphic design business could result in so much paperwork? So I purged big time,  my recycling bin overfloweth,  my shredder over heated and eventually kicked the bucket.  I pared down my paperwork from a huge ugly filing cabinet/cupboard, to a single, well organized draw. I gave away the unsightly filing monster so I could not revert to my old ways. It was so ugly the only person who wanted it was a scrap metal merchant.

Now five months down the road I am sticking to my guns and feeling liberated. Here are some of the things I do to keep the paperless system in smooth running order

  1. Sign up for paperless statements and  billing.  From utility companies to telephone providers. This has saved me a ton of unwanted paper and some companies will actually give you a credit for going paperless. Setting up accounts is generally a simple process and most offer an archive of statements, billing history etc, so it is easy to find everything and look up past bills.
  2. Organization. Just as a paper filing system works best when maintained in well thought out folders, the same is true for a paperless  system. It takes very little time to set up computer folders but is essential to have an effective system. Setting up email folders is a great way to keep track of automatic payments and statement alerts.
  3. Don’t download everything. When I first started my paperless campaign I felt the need to download every statement/invoice etc and file them away in my carefully crafted computer folders. But what is the point of filling up my hard drive when I can quite easily access everything I need via the accounts I set up online. Now I only download and file what is absolutely necessary.
  4. Backup. I backup on an external hard drive.
  5. Don’t print anything out unless you absolutely have to.

© 2011 Chicago web designer

Posted on

Business Owners, are you using Google Offers?

Moving my web design company to Chicago a few months ago has kick started a re-optimization of my web site to better serve my new Chicago location.  I have also created my business  profile in a number of local business directories such as Yelp and Merchant Circle to build  a local reputation.

In my quest for relevant directories I came across Google Offers today,  a FREE marketing tool which works in conjunction with Google maps.  If you would like to take advantage of this, here is the Chicago web designer’s tip of the day.

  1. List your business on Google Places using your Google account login information. Company name, address, telephone, email and category are required fields. Optional fields include hours of operation, photo upload e.g logo,  description, and even a video upload.
  2. Verify your business. This is easily done by an automated phone system – the quick way or via a PIN sent to the business address. Once verified your business will appear on Google maps.
  3. On your main Google Places Dashboard click “Offers” and select +add  new offer
  4. Complete the offer form and hit submit.
  5. Once your offer is live you can edit, pause or delete it.

Here is the offer I created today: Free website review

Enjoy!

©2011 Chicago web designer

Posted on

Tips for using your Social Media Profiles for SEO

Do you have a Twiter,  Facebook,  LinkedIn, Google or any other social network profile? Are you getting the full SEO (search engine optimization) potential from these profiles? Here are a few tips to maximize the possibilities they offer.

Direct Links

On just about every social networking site, when setting up your profile you will have the opportunity to link to at least one external web site. Make sure you fill out those sections and test then once your profile is live.  Links you may want to consider adding are your company web site, blog or links to your other social profiles.

social profiles links

Search Engine Page Results (SERP)
Building a robust profile and not just  completing the “bare minimum”  can really help dominate the search engine page results. The more information you can add to your profile the better, you are building authority. It is also important to not just build your profile but participate within the network too.  Here is a simple example of a Google search on my name, the social networks dominate the return of the search.

Brand Awareness
Present yourself in a consistent way across all social media networks so there is no emotional disconnect for users visiting more than one of your social network profiles and getting confused brand message.  Make sure your web site has links to all your social media platforms.

Drive Traffic
When participating in social media promote links in posts or tweets. The more useful the information you share the more others will re tweet or share which can build considerable traffic to targeted pages on your site.

Content
Delivery top quality content on your web site is so important for getting it to rank well in the search engines. Conversations, comments and ideas generated within your social media network can be great inspiration for blog posts or site content in general and help keep your content fresh and up to date.

©: 2010 Chicago Web Designer

Posted on

A to Z of a Great Website

CHICAGO WEB DESIGNER

A is for Architecture
A great website starts out with a well thought out information architecture. This is best done with pencil and paper before a pixel ever hits the screen.

B is for Blogging
The benefits of blogging are many. A blog offers a great platform for quick updates, got a new product, won and award, got a great testimonial, blog about it. Interact and build relationships with your visitors through comments. What’s more the search engines love blogs, content is king and fresh content rules the roost.

C is for CMS
CMS stands for content management system and is an application which allows clients to update  sites themselves. If you are looking to make regular updates to your site it is wise to have your site built on CMS application and this is something your web designer will need to know up front. There are many CMS systems out there, WordPress, Joomla, Dot Net Nuke, Drupal to name a few.

D is for Domain Name
Yourcompany.com,  gone are the days when it was easy to get a domain name of your choosing as so many are already in use or have been “reserved”.  Select your domain name carefully.

DO

  • Pick one that is short and sweet
  • Get the .com version
  • Protect yourself, purchase the same domain name with additional extension such as .org, .net, .biz etc. the last thing you want is someone else using the same domain name for a similar business.
  • Try and get a domain name that includes one of your most important key words or phrases. This is what I have done with my Eye of the Chicago web designer blog http://www.ichicagowebdesigner.com

Don’t

  • Select a very long winded domain name
  • Use hyphens

E is for Email
Many times people visiting your web site are much more comfortable contacting via email than picking up the phone, so it is important to offer an easy to find contact email on a site. Don’t use a personal yourname@aol.com type email,  it looks unprofessional. Make  use of that carefully selected domain name, something generic like info@yourcompany.com work best.

F is for Facebook
Facebook has become a very popular platform for social networking. If it is a tool you intend to use as part of your marketing strategy make sure visitors to your site can connect to your Facebook profile directly from your site.

G is for Google
Lets face it Google is the mother of all search engines but Google offers a wealth of tools useful to both surfer and website owner alike. e.g Google Analytics is an excellent web statistics application which provides information of the number of visitors to your web site, which pages they are visiting, what key word or phrase they used to get there etc. All it requires is a small snippet of code added to a site.

H is for Hosting
Having a good reliable hosting company with which to host your site is crucial. The last thing you want is your site to be down because something has gone pear shaped at the hosting company. We are big fans of CrystalTech.

I is for Internet marketing
Internet marketing is the process of essentially “getting your site out there” and driving traffic to it. Listing it with the search engines, managing pay per click campaigns, email blast campaigns, setting up social networking profiles, advertising via banner ads. etc.

J is for Junk
It almost goes without saying that if you have a web site then you are going to get junk email. Spamming  is a monumental pain in the rear end. However there are steps you can take to minimize its invasive nature.

  • Make sure your email account has a junk or spam folder. These can be easily set set up on at the webmail level and with careful filtering ( usually recommended by the web hosting company) a junk folder can filter out a large amount of spam. Do make sure you check it occasionally as sometimes genuine emails do get stuck there. To minimize this set up a trusted sender list so their emails will never go to the junk folder.
  • A lot of spammy junk can come through contact forms. If this is a problem on your site a CAPTCHA  element and script can be added to verify the sender is a human and not a spam bot. A CAPTCHA element is a small image string you have to type in before submitting the form.

K is for Keywords
Key words or phrases are those words that you want to trigger the listing of your site within the search engines. To work best, key words will be woven into the code and within the copy of your site. Phrases work better than single words as words can be too generic and produce such an abundance of listed sites your site will be lost.

L is for Links
Got links? The more sites link to you the better your standing within the search engines, but they have to be quality links from reputable sites to count. One way to built quality links to your site is to comment on blogs with links to your products, services, relevant information. Don’t be spammy though or you are just wating your time.

M is for Metadata
Meta tags such as Title, content, keywords, description are included in the code of your site and can be used by the search engines when it comes to ranking your site.  Google uses the title meta tag information to return results for a particular search.

N is for Navigation
The navigation for a web site should be intuitive and employ the “don’t make me think ” principle.  Text navigation is much better that an image based navigation as the search engines can “read” it and it is easier to update.

O is for Optimizing
Search engine optimization is the art/science of tweaking a website to maximize it’s potential, generally in relation to key words and phrases. e.g if one of your key phrases is “coffee cup cakes” it is much better to name the file related to your product “coffee-cup-cakes.html”  rather than just “cakes.html” The same principle applies to name image files.

P is for Passwords
Make sure you use good strong passwords to access anything you need to log in to. Add numbers, characters upper and lower case letters. Don’t use the same password for everything or anything obvious such as “password1”

Q is for quality
Quality counts, does the design of your web site look professional,  is the copy well written and concise?

R is for RSS
Got a blog? then you have a RSS feed ( Really Simple Syndication) which enables your content to be easily distributed via blog readers such as Google reader or even delivered to readers via email. You can subscribe to this blog here .

S is for Search engines
The one we all know and love is of course Google , Yahoo and Bing are the other two biggies. It is important your site be listed with these three But there are plenty of other search engines out there and the more search engines with which your site is listed the better.

T is for Twitter
Twitter is a micro blogging platform and another great social networking application to add to your marketing mix. Use it to build relationships, interact with your site visitors, announce news, new blog posts etc. Twitter is free and your Twitter home page can be customized to match your brand image. Follow us on Twitter

U is for URL
URL or “Uniform Resource Locator” is the address of your web site on the world wide web e.g https://www.indigoimage.com/index.html

  • http://:  type of file
  • domain name:  location of the file’s web server is at indigoimage.com.
  • backslash,then file name /index.html

V is for Visitors
Your site needs to offer the best experience for your visitors as possible.

  • Is it compatible for all browsers and platforms?
  • Is it fast loading? – you have just a few seconds to make an impression or your visitors will be hitting that back button
  • Is it free of technical errors, broken links, missing images, scripts that don’t run?
  • Are there call to actions?

W is for Webmaster
A webmaster will help you manage your site to keep it at optimum performance and up to date.

X is for XML
OK X was a bit of a challenge for this list. XML is a Extensible Markup Language; a flexible text format for creating structured computer documents. We use XML on a regular basis for submitting sitemaps to Google.

Y is for Youtube
Video is a fabulous way to add an extra dimension to your marketing mix and while there are lots of video sharing sites out there the most popular is YouTube. You can set up your own channel ( follow us here) upload your videos and embed them within your site.

Z is for Zoe Feast
A great web site starts with a great website designer, contact me,  Zoe Feast, to see how I can help you today.
Telephone: 847 607 8679

2010 © Chicago Web Designer

Posted on

A web designer’s best design tools

I blogged about my best design tool over on Eye of the Chicago Web Designer blog this morning and it got me thinking in general about the tools I value most when it comes to creating web sites.

  1. My Eyes
    An obvious and basic choice but without my eye sight no other design tools would matter
  2. A Pencil and Paper
    When it comes to planning a web site I like the good old fashioned approach of a pencil and paper.  From drafting out an architecture, to a rough sketch of the look and feel. The paper and pencil stage is also great for a first pass at usability issues. Some web sites really call out for hand drawn elements see these hand drawn cartoons for example, where pencil and paper are the tools to make this happen.
  3. A well oiled computer and rock solid internet connection
    Speaks for itself
  4. A cordless mouse
    Being physically uncomfortable while working is a sure way to cramp creativity.  Using a corded mouse is not only irritating but very uncomfortable too.
  5. Adobe Photoshop
    The Queen of the Pixel. From designing look and feel to slicing graphical elements of a web site and optimizing for fastest download. There is an industry trend to always have the latest and greatest version of any software but this approach does not make you a better designer. A good designer can produce great work with outdated software.
  6. Abobe Illustrator
  7. The King of the Vector, while Photoshop does offer vector capabilities I always turn to Illustrator when design elements need to be created as vectors. It is also sometime much easier and faster to use illustrator to produce certain web elements..then import them into photoshop.
  8. Dreamweaver
    The Emperor of Coding,  while I can code by hand this is a great application to speed up the whole process.
  9. Google
    A script for a site, the perfect stock photograph?inIf I need to find anything Google is my initial go to tool. I particularly like the iGoogle application where everything I need on a day to day basis is right there on one page.

2010 ©  Chicago web designer