When developing a piece of marketing whether it is a brochure, billboard, flyer, or even a web site. We as a society read on an 8th grade level. Which lets us know that as a society we are very visual. So when designing a web site the more pictures you can use the more constructive story you can relate to your visitors.

In developing a web site; I always start out with a two hour meeting where we go through a creative strategy process where we ask the client a great deal of probing questions; such as, what colors do you like, what type of feel are you going for on your website, are you selling a product, and so on. (More to come on Creative Strategy in my next article) Once I have gathered this information I then go on and construct a light-box of images whether the images are from the client, a photographer, stock photography web site or a combination of the aforementioned sources.

So when you begin developing a web site for a client it is very helpful to start out by presenting them with light-box of images. This is a great way to spawn ideas for the development of the site as well as get additional direction from the client. This allows you to develop a visual story for the client and will help visually layout the site with the images you have chosen. For you newbie’s out there I am sure you are wondering by now what is a light-box? Well, here is the official definition: “A folder used on stock photography site to allow a user to organize digital photos.”

When picking photos for a light-box there are several great stock photography sites out there; such as, www.istockphoto.com, www.bigstockphoto.com, www.shutterstock.com, www.rubberball.com, www.jupiterimages.com. I personally use www.istockphoto.com because the image quality is superior and the price is very reasonable when purchasing photos. Istockphoto.com also has a built in light-box which you can create for a specific client and then send the client a link to that light-box so they can review the images that you have chosen.

Here is an example of one of the light-boxes that I created for a client. Click Here

When purchasing photos make sure to keep a copy of all photos not only for the client that you have purchased them for but also to keep a copy for yourself. I have done this for the last 10 years and I have built up quite a collection of photos for my own library of images. I use these photos as my go too photos for clients before I purchase any additional.

Once the client has chosen the images that he/she wishes to use for construction of their web site I begin designing a Mood Board for their website. “What is a Mood Board you ask?” Well here is a link to the article that gave me the insight on Mood Boards.

Best of Luck in designing and developing your own web sites, please feel free to email me at dwerne@mojoe.net for any questions or comments in regard to this article.

Well, you know how it goes. The customer went and got pricing from other web developers and web designers. Of course all of the quotes that came back at a lower cost than ours. So the customer ask, the Million Dollar Question, “What’s the Difference?”

So I explained to the customer that not all web developers / web designers are created equal nor do they provide an apple to apple comparison and most likely that most of other developers that he received quotes from left quite few things out in their proposals. So the customer asked if I would write a list of all the questions that he could then asked the other developers to see if we were comparing apples to apples or apples to oranges. After about 2 weeks of waiting I finally received a call back from the client and some of the developers had answered all of the questions. Not to my surprise, all of their quotes had gone up considerably and we ended up being the more reasonably priced.

Due to this client interaction we have developed a new page for our web site called Questions where we answer all of the questions that we proposed to the other web developers / designers. We have made this page so that other potential clients whom probably have some of these same questions can get answers straight from our web site.

“Stuff We’re Diggin’ ”

1. Web Designer Depot

2. DaFont

3. Web Page Design for Designers Resources

We have recently just released our version of our site for the iPhone. The site is completely compatible with the iPhone; you can instantly call us, SMS us, or even email us through the iPhone mobile versions of our site. The site is completely compliant with the built-in safari web browser. The site also even inter-acts with YouTube, and with Google Maps.

The site is also  shares information about Mojoe.net, our services, and some of  our web sites, as well as has a contact form for immediate assistance.

RipCode’s CEO says his special on-demand transcoder will work at the source, where a website is hosted. It detects if someone is using one of Apple’s non-flash devices, immediately transcoding that video into an iPhone/iPod/iPad-compatible format.

That might take care of Flash video, but still doesn’t address all those Flash games and graphics that populate much of the Web. So maybe Adobe will still need to smack Apple with that rumored lawsuit. Meanwhile, we users humbly wish for the day when we can play any content, anytime, anyplace, on any device — and pay for it just once, if at all.

Tools are the same no matter the size of the business

By Laura Raines

For the AJC

12:13 p.m. Friday, April 9, 2010

“With all the virtual ways to do business — audio conferencing, Web conferencing, video conferencing and event conferencing — people don’t have to jump on an airplane these days,” said Jackie Yeaney, chief marketing officer for PGi, a market leader in meeting collaboration technology.

“With companies wanting to cut travel expenses, virtual meetings are growing and that’s helping to level the playing field for small business,” she said.

PGi counts 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies among its customers. It hosts 30 million global meetings a year. But in the past two years, the company has been courting the little guy. It now has about 30,000 small-business customers.

“I’m proud that we serve both. We offer them the same technology infrastructure and service, but we package it differently to fit the needs of small business. Our staff knows that small business owners are CEEs, ‘chief executives of everything.’ They don’t have the time to worry about how it works or if it will work, they just need the right technology at a price they can afford,” Yeaney said.

Technologies that allow virtual meetings; interactive Web sites; smart phones that let people work anywhere; cloud computing that greatly reduces the hardware and software costs; and the use of social media for business purposes (Linked In, Facebook, Twitter) are strong trends in the workplace that are likely to grow. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that Generation Y, the most collaborative and Internet-savvy generation, will make up 47 percent of the work force by 2014.

“The way the world is going offers great opportunities for small business,” said Yeaney. “Joe’s Pizza and Bank of America can use the same exact tools to make their presence felt in the market,” Yeaney said.

“Small companies can appear bigger than they are and make their voice heard. With an interactive Web site and online chat for sales and customer, small companies actually have an edge over large companies. They have the flexibility to adapt quickly to market changes.”

With virtual marketing and communications technology, it’s easier for companies to go global.

“You might need a representative on the ground, but you don’t need an actual office to do business in England anymore,” she said. Fifty-one percent of midsized organizations are actively entering new markets, Yeaney noted, according to an IBM Global CEO Study from 2008, titled “The Enterprise of the Future: Implications for Midsize Organizations.”

Entrepreneurs should consider their technology needs “right out of the gate, as they are launching their business,” Yeaney said. “It’s an important part of the business plan.”

An effective, interactive Web site that allows companies to discuss products and take orders, smart phones, offices that can be rented as needed and other tools can get a company up and running with less overhead. A blog, Constant Contact e-mail newsletters and free Webinars can also help sell products or services, because “customers want to touch you as a business and a person. It’s all about authenticity,” Yeaney said.

With so many tools and ways to communicate, “marketing has become less expensive, which is good for small companies, but also a lot more complicated. Small businesses need to take a thoughtful approach to what tools to use,” Yeaney said.

Entrepreneurs should look at their core business processes and then research what technology tools can manage them better. “My own internal sales team, for example, uses a Web cam to let prospects see them as they’re discussing business. The trust and rapport go up,” she said. Small-business owners can learn more about how technology can help them by talking to other companies in their industry, making use of association resources, reading reviews of products, and/or hiring an IT consultant.

Before selecting a vendor, Yeaney suggests owners look at its customer/client base to see if the company works regularly with small companies. “Choose a company that will give you choices and flexibility and one that will provide great service, because you probably aren’t going to have your own IT person on the payroll,” she said. Bundled services or pay-as-you-go plans may help small companies manage cash flow.

“Staying up-to-date on new technology can be a challenge for small businesses, but it can make a huge difference in the bottom line,” Yeaney said. “You may not need to spend a lot of money. You will need persistence and smarts.”

We are looking at taking a different approach to letting Google Fiber know why they should choose Greenville, South Carolina as one of the targeted sites for testing the new high speed fiber. We have a facebook page that is currently up at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Google-Fiber-for-Greenville-SC/111896178823116. Please check back often at www.greenvillegoogle.com to see when the site launches.

We will be posting more information on the blog on, HOW TO DO WEB DESIGN. We will be linking to local companies we like in our area which is Greenville South Carolina, and Alanta Georgia.

One topic that we have been asked to cover is CMS which stands for Content Mangement Systems. There are a number of CMS’s out there and they all range from the very good to the not so very good.  We will go in depth in our next post and highlight some CMS’s that we like and that we use. I will also let you know which ones we passed on becuase they where either complicated or too costly.

http://www.pickapets.com

http://www.kinequip.net

http://www.lindfastgrp.com

http://www.megametric.com

http://www.millenniumgrp.net

These sites utilize all of our skill sets from web site design, logo design, database development, programming, as well as search engine optimization and search engine registration. Each one of these web sites have been custom designed for our clients and is developed with the customer’s goals.

We’re now in the process of creating the majority of our sites in DNN, and we eagerly await the release of DNN 5. That being said we’ve converted some of our previous sites into DNN skins.

http://www.kinequip.net

http://www.kinequip.com

We’re also converting JB Lacher and Elmo Rietschle.

There are two types of web designers, the designer that is truly an artistic designer, then you have the designer that is a programmer.  I think that every artistic designer longs to be a programmer and every programmer longs to be an artistic designer.  I believe that being a developer with both skills sets makes you the best web designer you can be for your clients.  You can have a very functional web site that looks horrible with bright neon colors, blurred pictures,  improper text, and distorted layout.  On the other hand you can have a beautifully designed web site that has bad function; such as, no hyper-links, forms that don;t work, no deep-links, no alt tags, no title tags, and no SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or SER ( Search Engine Registration).

When we develop a web site, we strive to make sure it has the best of both worlds, both design and function. We create each web site as a one of a kind web site. We don’t use templates … ever!

We blend design and function by using certain resources to help deliver the perfect web site for you the client.  Here is part of our process for providing you the perfect web site. We design your site initially in Adobe Photoshop, once the design is completed we will use Adobe Dreamweaver for back-end coding, we also will create a custom CSS page that will control the look and feel of your site. Then we might use Adobe Flash to add some animation to the navigation, animate a logo or we will add a animated intro.  Once this part is concluded we will make sure that all pages are linked and that all the code is validated. We then check your site in all browsers to make sure that the site will function properly so we can eliminate errors. One final thing that we do is make customer error pages that will help trap visiting customers in a page that will allow them to navigate to another page if they have an error.

We finish up by doing the SEO and SER, which alot of web site designers forget to include.  As Kevin Costner’s character in “Field of Dreams” is famously told, “if you build it they will come.” Well, when building a web site if you don’t do SEO or SER your site, then no one will come.

That’s all for now. We’ll be back soon with more thoughts on Web design. And now for the good stuff!

Stuff We’re Diggin’:

Color Scheme Designer
Browers Shots
Browser Compatability

So just like any fledgling publication, I’m sure the content of this blog will go through some growing pains. However, our aim is clear. We want our posts to be meaningful and not aimless rants. So every post will deal in some way with Web design and development. And we’ll try to conclude each post with four or five links that we’ve found helpful, which we’ll call “Stuff We’re Diggin’. ”

So let’s get to it, shall we?

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For the longest time I’ve been a Firefox devotee. I was first introduced to the browser in about 2004. Since then I’ve been in love with it, but I’ve found a new love: Opera. Yes, yes, I know, Opera, the often revered and rarely used standards-compliant browser. I downloaded it about a month ago just out of curiosity and because I wanted to design for it and to add it to my repertoire. From the first time I laid eyes on it and started click on the menu options to the first time I saw the favorite sites windows that show up when you first open the browser, I loved it. It’s one of the few browser’s that has ever gotten me very excited, and I would love nothing more than to see it gain prominence in the browser world. Perhaps this may only happen in some Web design-specific utopian universe, but nonetheless, I can dream can’t I?

Another site I’ve really been loving lately is Typesites. It brings out the graphic design geek in me! As its site description says Typesites is “a critical look at sites featuring interesting typography.” Typesites’ featured sites are typography-driven Web sites or sites with superb typographic layout.  One of my favorite sites on there is for a New Zealand wine maker called Black Estate. I love their use of animated javascript, and it’s inspired me to use the scrolling text effect on some of our upcoming projects.

So those are just two of the things I’ve really been getting  into. Thanks for reading and come back soon to read more about what Mojoe.Net is doing.

“Stuff We’re Diggin’ ”

1. Opera

2. Typesites

3. ThemeForest’s WordPress for Designers series

4. ThemeForest’s Diving into PHP screencast series

5. jQuery ScrollTo plugin