We are well underway with the creation of a new website for hardscapeSTL.com. It is due for launch early in the new year and will be a great resource for home owners in the St Louis area looking to upgrade their hardscape – a new patio, wall, walkway, driveway or maybe even an outdoor kitchen.
Here is a sneak peak at the new logo.
2009 © St Louis Web Designer
If you, are like me, and read a lot of blogs, it is not a good use of time to visit your favorite blogs every day just on the off chance there is something new to enjoy. A far more effective way is to subscribe to the blog and have new content delivered to you as and when it is published.
For those of us who have been blogging for many years this may seem like second nature but there are plenty of people out there for this is a whole new arena.
On a well designed blog there will be a button looking something like this
which is the universal icon for RSS feeds – a file associated with your blog.
Clicking the button will lead you to a page like this
Once on this page you are offered an abundance of ways to receive the content from the blog. One of my favorite is Google reader, which sends the new content of all your subscribed blogs to a single page – you can visit this page or set up a simple widget on your Google home page which allows you to read your content from there.
If you prefer you can subscribe to receive content from your favorite blogs via email.
The St Louis Web Designer’s tip of the day!
2009 © St Louis Web Designer
Last month I wrote “Can twitter help my business?” this month question is
“Can blogging help my business?”
Visibility
Blogging regularly about topics relevant to your business and target audience is a fabulous way to increase your visibility among the search engines. Over the last year the client web sites I have launched with blogs, get listed faster and rank higher with the major search engines. For search engines, content is king and blogs, by their very nature, rule the day with their fresh new content.
Reputation
Whatever your area of business blogging is a great platform on which to build your authority and reputation. Write about issues relevant to your services, use your blog to pose questions to your readers, offer solutions to problems. Your expertise will show through.
Interaction
Engage with your readers through blog comments and don’t worry about your blog being blighted by spam. All good blog platforms have the ability to moderate comments, they can be configured so you can see the comments and approve them before they appear on your site.
If you can commit to writing a post at least once a week then a blog can definitely help your business.
2009 © St Louis Web Designer
Selecting a web designer to work on your project can be a daunting task. Where to start?
A Google search? The phrase “St Louis web designer” yields a whopping 2,270,000 returns. Clicking through and visiting the sites on just the first pages can be overwhelming (as a result of excellent SEO we do feature on that page!) Once on the sites you can check out the portfolio, evaluate the skill set of the company but often the most telling way to get a feel if they are a company you’d feel comfortable working with is to see if there are any client testimonials.
Here is glowing testimonial from St Louis celebrant, Ruth Hasser, www.ruthellenhasser.com which really speaks volumes about how we can help clients with their projects.
“Zoe Feast worked with me every step of the way to design and optimize my first website. She listened to me, understood what I was going for, was wonderfully patient with my inexperience, and delivered what I needed in a professional and timely manner. As a result I get regular compliments on my website and, more importantly, customers are finding me! I will continue to rely on her expertise and thoughtful support. Thanks so much, Zoe.”
Thanks Ruth for taking the time to write this!
Interested in more client testimonials ?
© St Louis web designer
Suffering from creative block? Try color sampling a photograph you are drawn to. The result, a color palette which may kick start your web design process.
St Louis web designer tip of the day.
© 2009 St Louis Web Designer
On the whole I love the applications offered by Google but they have recently launched one that stops me in my tracks and makes me ask “why?”. I am talking about Google Sidewiki.
Google Sidewiki can be downloaded with Google tool bar and enables anyone with a Google profile (if you use gmail you have one) to write comments on any web page they visit. The results of anyone who has commented on the page show up in a sidebar which is layered above the page.
Google has essentially introduced a comments forum for every web site on the internet. You can gets comments on your site for the whole world to see whether you like it or not.
As the owner of a Google Validated site (which is achieved using Google Webmaster tools) you get the chance to have “first say” with a comment which will always feature as the first post. But as far as being able to control what visitors see in the Sidewiki, the buck stops there. As a webmaster there is no easy option to turn off the Sidewiki and no functionality to moderate the comments. If you get a spam or a detrimental comment there appears to be be very little you can do about it. Also there is no functionality to let webmasters know they have new comments. The only way to find out is to visit each and every page of your site. How useful is that?
I have put in a complaint to Google and hope that if they continue with Sidewiki they address these problems soon.
© 2009 St Louis Web Designer
We have just won the contract to create an exciting new web site to assist users looking to beautify their yard with a new patio, retaining wall or any other Hardscape feature.
The site will be targeted for the St Louis market and will launch early 2010, in conjunction with TV and radio campaigns.
© 2009 St Louis Web Designer
As a graphic and website designer sometimes my design tool of choice is simply a piece of paper and a pencil. This is especially so when a web site calls for custom cartoon illustrations, these work really well on websites targeted towards kids. The result is a very original feel to the graphics of the final site.
Here are some examples of custom illustrations I created for children’s author Cynthia Reeg. I let my pencil flow freely, scanned the drawings and imported them into Adobe Photoshop. Then they were brought to life with the magic of color.
The graphics for Cynthia’s site are incorporated into the template of the page, used as navigational elements and add interest to sections of the site. Although all different they have a very branded feel due to the hand drawn and colorization techniques used.
Are you looking for custom illustrations for your new or existing web site? We can help
© 2009 St Louis Web Designer
There is something so tactile about a carpet of moss, which is abundance in St Louis at the moment after our recent abundance of rain.
I love the variation of textures in this photograph, the simplest of pictures often serve as a great inspiration source when designing new websites.
© 2009 St Louis Web Designer
You have just heard from your web designer that all the changes you wanted made to your web site have been made. You visit your site to check things over and nothing appears to have changed. Does that sound familiar?
If so, the most probable cause is that you are looking at a cached version of your web site. The solution is easy – simply refresh your browser.
If you are using one of the more common browsers, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari or Google Chrome, it is as easy as clicking on the refresh button and to make it even easier we have put together a set of graphics below to show you the location of each button
Internet Explorer
Firefox
Safari
Google Chrome
The St Louis Web Designer’s tip of the day
© 2009 St Louis Web Designer
