Web Design

2nd Annual Regional Small Business Conference & Bootcamp

Don't miss out this Thursday, May 19, 2011 at the Anne Kolb Nature Center in Hollywood Florida.
From 8:00am - 2:30pm.

Registration is FREE

The Cities of Hollywood, Dania Beach, Miramar, Hallandale Beach and Pembroke Pines along with Broward County's Office of Economic and Small Business Development, South Florida Regional Planning Council, Greater Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, Greater Dania Beach Chamber of Commerce, Regions Bank and Liberia Economic and Social Development, Inc., have partnered to host the Second Annual Regional Small Business Conference and Bootcamp on May 19, 2011.

The event is FREE and seating is limited. To register, contact the City of Hollywood Office of Business & International Trade, 954.921.3388

At the March 2011 Chamber Breakfast, Steven Alig unveiled the new website for the Greater Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. Speaking in front of a crowd of 120 local business professionals and Chamber members, Steven outlined the specifics of the web re-design and the benefits of the website for the Chamber membership. Starting with a brief introduction of Inbound Marketing, to provide some context for using the online tools, Steven then went on to give an overview of the Chamber's Information Technology Committee and then a walk-thru of the website and many of its key features. He also explains why South Florida Web Studio was chosen to complete the project and the value we brought by using Drupal as our system for development.

Steven's presentation begins about 1 minute into the video.

Special thanks to Stephen Sarsfield of South Florida Multi-media Productions for capturing and producing the video for the Chamber.

 

I came across a great article in USA Today (in their fantastic Ipad app BTW), that discusses Small Business owners and their tech needs. While the majority of this discussion is related to typical IT services like networking, PC maintenance, server administration, etc... They do touch on social media (online marketing) and other 'Tech' services.

While they do not directly address 'web design' it is a component that many times is wrongly attributed solely with IT. The traditional web design (for your online presence) is more a mix of IT and Marketing. Probably leaning more toward marketing since you want get the most value for your dollars. However the tips they give for your Tech Needs definitely apply for web design also. One in particular really stood out to me:

Go with a pro: Don't hire a tech-savvy college kid, an IPad-loving brother-in-law or the receptionist's boyfriend to tackle tough IT needs, Clancy says. Those without formal training don't have the skills to help a company grow — and if the receptionist gets fired, the company may find itself with a bunch of deleted information, he says.

Several months ago, while driving to lunch, I spotted a sign near a warehouse area here in Hollywood Florida. It was one of these small signs that usually get posted illegally near a highway off-ramp and generally promote some of the following:

• Buy your old home
• Help you clean your credit
• Buy a new mattress
• Help you out of foreclosure
• Etc....

However, this particular sign was promoting cheap web site design. I took a snapshot with my camera and posted it to my Facebook page.

Today I came across another sign and this one was right outside of my building in the parking lot. And I can see how the competition is starting to get fierce since they are less than half of the price from the one I saw a few months ago. And these guys even added their URL to the bottom. Way to go, now that is what I call progressive thinking.

Can these companies really be serious?

I would love to see more of these if anyone has them, please add your photos to the comments below.

With the release of HTML 5 coming, the internet and its developers have reached the point of no return. Developers have logged extra hours, dealt with extra (unnecessary) headaches, and have had to continue to plan for the browser of the internet stone age (back when dinosaurs roomed the web in 2001). 
Well Twitter is buzzing and the internet community has rallied, IE6 is being caste out and battered.
Even major sites like Facebook, Digg, and Youtube have ended IE6 support.

This Christmas season is turning into the season of Android, with the mobile operating system reaching nearly 20 devices currently, and another half dozen expected to be released in the next few weeks. With Android now on all US mobile providers excluding AT&T, which has the iPhone, and Blackberry still as strong as ever in the business market, more and more websites need to consider their website on a mobile scale.

So many times we are told to just put a sign-up form on a website. No discussion about goals, required fields, actions, validations or anything whatsoever. Just "Put a newsletter sign up form on my website", is many times all we are told. Asking any questions from our team usually results in a futile lecture about web principles and usability that the client will never understand or retain. It's nice to know that there are some people out there who "get it". I came across this article several months ago. Although it is a year old (which is ages in Internet time) the principles are still true today and I can see them holding ground for the foreseeable future. Check out the Web Form Design Patterns Part 1 & Part 2 for a great read on all of the thought that goes into creating those "simple" sign-up forms.

With the slew of marketing emails I receive (and you too, I'm sure), I was recently taken off-guard by a sarcastic message that turned out to be quite humorous. While I do not use Rackspace and I in no way endorse them, I am, for some odd reason, on their mailing list (imagine that, an email from a company I didn't sign up with). The subject of the email was simple enough and caught my eye for a scan (rather than a quick delete) Helpful hints for maximizing your business budget The email was properly created, using images and text so that a quick scan would tell me what I need to know without downloading images. I saw the bullet points and then decided to download the images. It wasn't until a few moments when it actually sank in. At that point, I got the joke and had to read the rest of the email. 

Helpful Hints for Maximizing Your Business Budget

Over the past year I have read numerous articles and posts about a great website/web application to help track your tasks. Rememberthemilk.com has been praised as a new way of handling To-Do Lists. Being an avid Outlook fanatic, I never felt the need to stray from my existing system. Outlook has everything in one nice neat package: Email, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks & Notes. And it all syncs with my phone.
Recently with my new purchase of an IPhone, I realized that the Tasks & Notes did not synchronize. While I had to find a new way to track my shopping lists and other miscellaneous notes, it came to my attention that I never really did use the Task feature in Outlook. Maybe because it just doesn't work well. I did use the Notes feature to track shopping lists and other misc notes that I may need from time to time such as an IP address, CPR reminder, store shopping prices (which has been replaced with my camera phone) and others. Since my IPhone purchase several months ago, all of this has abruptly ended.

Nobody likes a pushy salesperson. And it doesn't matter if it's someone trying to sell you a car or someone blocking your way past a kiosk in the mall, these sales people have a commonality that is persistence and the belief that they can persuade you to buy anything and/or everything. Maybe they can fill your head with so many claims or talk fast enough that you will be convinced or at least moved enough to make a purchase. The internet is loaded with websites that follow this same belief. If they inundate their visitors with claims and boasts and incomprehensible numbers and figures, they'll persuade you that what they are offering is exactly what you need.  Has anyone ever seen a web hosting company that claims 99.9% uptime? Try asking them how this figure is calculated. Just like when you look at a store from the outside and you feel it might have something that you want inside, when you enter you realize that it is not what you want at all. You make a hasty retreat. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) practices work the same way. You can fool someone while they are searching, but once they enter, if it’s not what they are looking for, they are gone.