So you say to yourself why would you need the services of a trained web designer, if you can get it done on your own.

Sooner or later, it gets to the point where you need your business website to reflect your commitment to your business.

Do not think that the well informed potential client would have a positive impression when they view your website as “homemade”.

Here are some of the assumptions that they will form:

• You are new in business: Being new in business should not be perceived as negative but truth be told, people would be reluctant to want to buy from a person that is just starting out. You should not blatantly promote that a potential client would be your first client. You should promote your expertise and previous experience.
• Your business isn’t making any money: If people see a “Free website by Blah Blah” on the footer of your website, they would think “Can’t afford a paid-for website”.
• You don’t have clients and/or customers: People want to deal with businesses that have a proven track record.
• You are not committed to the business: This means that you can pack up shop tomorrow and not finish their project or provide after sale care.

Did you know that these conclusions would be drawn in less than a minute? All of these assumptions would take them to your competitors, period.

These are some of the reasons to hire a professional web designer:

• Many are business owners themselves
• They understand what gives a positive or negative impression
• They provide more than just web design
• Many are trained not only in web design but web development, search engine optimization, internet marketing and more; and have in depth knowledge and experience in these areas
• Many don’t charge an arm and a leg, they have affordable services packages to meet the needs and budget of a potential client

A very important thing that I continue to see in successful business owners and I’m privileged to continue to connect with many; is that they delegate to experts in fields that they don’t have the a background or in depth experience in.

Remember, First Impress Counts! and Anything Worth Doing is Worth Doing Well!

It’s our 3rd year anniversary today! Its been an interesting journey thus far. I’ve cried, laughed, being frustrated, worked through the day and night, looked like someone whose just getting out of bed at 3pm…but I’ve loved every minute of it.

I want to say a huge thank you to my husband, whose been a tremendous support and I truly appreciate his mad IT skills; My girls (9 and 5) who have become such young ladies and have made this journey easier; My team members for all their hard work and awesome clients for trusting me with their businesses.

Most of all, I’m thankful to my heavenly Father who has made this possible. I’m truly humbled.

WordPress fans and in my books, champs:) are working tirelessly, coming up with plugins that would protect our content and networks. And one such amazing platform developed for social networking is called BuddyPress. BuddyPress is a very powerful extension for WordPress that is comparable to some of the major social networking site.

Now you can have your own self-hosted social network and not worry about ever losing your data which is worth more than gold.

Have you been thinking about having your very own social networking website, which you’ll have 100% control over and not be in fear of losing your connections and data? Aslo one that is directly connected to your primary website? Contact us, we’ll love to make this a reality for you.

Below is our 3rd WordPress/BuddyPress based social networking project, for Women Business Owners Community.

Platform: WordPress
Social Network Program: BuddyPress
Website: Women Business Owners(WBO)
Includes: Blog & Members Blogs, Members Page, Activity Page, Forum, Chat, etc

And if you haven’t started using email marketing in your business, now is the time to start. It definitely is for me, as I’ve finally just sent off my first email newsletter blast to my mailing list. Yes, it’s taken me this long…3 years! The funny thing is I do this for clients regularly. I design their newsletter templates, input their content and send out blasts via their email marketing clients, but never for myself. My excuse..too busy doing for others. Doesn’t this sound familiar.

These are the things to take into consideration when planning your email marketing strategies.

• Have a custom designed newsletter template to complement your brand.
• Keep your message simple, clear and speak directly to your audience.
• Personalize your message, include your recipients name where ever possible.
• Ensure your content will be of value to your readers
• Include a call to action.
• Keep your newsletter clutter free.
• Include the capability for readers to have access to past issues.
• Use a reputable email marketing client.
• If you can’t manage your newsletter activities, DELEGATE it!

Here is a link to my first newsletter. I do two versions of the newsletter, one that goes into the email marketing services and a second one, a web page for people who don’t have html enabled email services and also for the purpose of having an archive of past issues.

Don’t hesitate to contact me for your business newsletter design and management needs.

Here are some important elements to having a website:

• Your website is your storefront and should be attractive and easy to use
• Your website is your presence online 24/7
• Your website provides a convenient way to keep in touch with existing customers and keep them informed of developments in your business
• A website maximizes your marketing investment
• The exposure of your company with a website is far greater than traditional forms of advertising
• A website can give a small business, a well deserved presence in the marketplace

Creativity and Connectivity comes into play:

• Your website allows you to be creative with how you present your information/products/services
• When a potential customer hears about you, they turn to the web to locate your contact information & to learn more about what you do and a direct point of contact to you.
• If your site is e-commerce enabled, your products are ready & waiting to be sold

Allowing Expansion/Growth:

• Your website opens the door to a wider market of potential customers
• Even if your product or services are generally sold or performed locally, there is still potential for expansion

You become a Competitor:

• Your website is your shop window & you are on equal footing to compete with much larger companies
• Your site is a means of providing information to those who do online research before buying
• Your website is a powerful tool for sustainable development of sales opportunities
• Your website will offer your company the opportunity for thousands of potential customers
• Simply put, to be competitive in your market you have to have a website

We are interested in knowing how having a website has made a difference in your business or how investing more in your website has made a difference. I can confidently say that having a website has made a significant difference in my business.

1. SEO Pack

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

“ONLY plugin to provide SEO Integration for WP e-Commerce sites”

“Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines”

“Generates META tags automatically”

“For beginners, you don’t even have to look at the options, it works out-of-the-box. Just install.”

2. Twitter-tools

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools/

“Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.”

3. WP-db-backup

http://austinmatzko.com/wordpress-plugins/wp-db-backup/

“When having the database backup emailed or sent to your browser for immediate download, the backup file will be deleted from the server when the transfer is finished. Only if you select delivery method “Save to server” will the backup file remain on your server.”

4. Featured Content Gallery

http://www.featuredcontentgallery.com/

“Featured Content Gallery is a WordPress plugin by iePlexus that creates an automated rotating image gallery of your posts or pages for use anywhere within your theme.”

“Choose to automate the plugin and simply add a custom field to each post or page you want to display and the gallery will show the image, an auto-generated thumbnail in the upper carousel, and the title and first few lines of page/post text. Advanced options allow inclusion of custom thumbnail images, text, gallery styles and transitions.”

5. Members Only

http://www.memberwing.com/software/wordpress-membership-site-plugin-memberwing/

“SEO (Search Engine) Optimized from the ground up. Allows you to use teasers (short snippets of text) visible to anyone, including search engines, while keeping your main contents protected and accessible only to members. This feature helps your membership site to be found by prospects on all search engines.”

“Digital Content Download Protection. Protects your files against unauthorized downloads due to link sharing and link “guessing”. No more problems with link sharing!”

“No site redesign or any changes are necessary – you may add it to already existing blog or brand new site.”

6. WordPress File Monitor

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-file-monitor/

“Monitors your WordPress installation for added/deleted/changed files. When a change is detected an email alert can be sent to a specified address.”

7. PageMash

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pagemash/

“Customise the order your pages are listed in and manage the parent structure with this simple ajax drag-and-drop administrative interface with an option to toggle the page to be hidden from output. Great tool to quickly re-arrange your page menus.”

8. Simple Press Forum

http://simple-press.com/

“Simple:Press is a feature rich forum plugin for WordPress. It fully integrates into your WP based site utilising the same user records and database and displaying on a single WP page.” “Through it’s powerful and flexible permissions system it is suitable for those who wish to run private, specialist forums with invited members but is equally able to accommodate open, public forums that allow guest posting.”

9. BuddyPress

http://buddypress.org/

“BuddyPress was conceived in 2008 while working to add social networking features to a WordPress MU powered site. The first official stable release was in May 2009. The platform has grown and morphed considerably since then, into the dynamic, easily extensible package you see today.”

“Just like its parent project WordPress, BuddyPress is a completely open source endeavor. Everything from the core code, to the documentation, themes and plugin extensions are all built by the BuddyPress community. This means anyone can help the project by contributing their time and knowledge.”  Source: http://buddypress.org/about/story/

10. Contact Form 7

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/

“Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.”

In web design, getting the right combination of colors is important and many factors come into play, for example: the business focus, target market, and your personality as the brand and business owner.

I just had to re-post this cool article about colors that I’d read at websitemagazine.com, especially as I eagerly approve of the characteristics of my favorite colors and how it ties with web design.

I would like to hear what your favorite colors are and if they are part of your website colors combination.

I’ve just started working on a new WordPress custom design project and these are the colors combo that I would be using. Can’t wait to see the finished product.

Enjoy the article!

Trust and the Theory Behind Color

by Peter A. Prestipino

Trust is defined* as, “the reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc. of a person or thing.” In relation to Web design, it involves honesty and competence, and a subtle, yet powerful way to achieve that elusive trust factor is through the use of color.

Color theory is a set of principles used to create harmonious color combinations, or color schemes. When determining which color is right for a website, you are not just choosing one color (e.g. make it blue). Your designer will actually be choosing and applying an entire color scheme to a website. Knowing the types of classic color schemes is essential when influencing an end-product.

Monochromatic color schemes use variations in lightness and saturation of a single color, whereas analogous color schemes use colors that are adjacent to each other on the “color wheel.” There are many types of classic color schemes (complimentary and split-complimentary, triadic and tetradic) so let’s instead look at the basics of the colors themselves and how they are perceived by end-users.

Red is considered to be an emotionally intense color. While red is commonly associated with danger, it is also used to stimulate people to make quick decisions. Red is highly visible, so using it to bring text and images to the forefront makes it a perfect color for “buy now” or “add-to-cart” buttons.

While not as aggressive as red, orange is also a highly visible color, ideal for calling attention to or highlighting the most important elements of a design, without causing stress.

Yellow produces a warming effect, arouses cheerfulness, stimulates mental activity, and generates muscle energy. Use yellow to evoke pleasant, uplifting feelings. You can choose yellow to promote children’s products and items related to leisure. Use yellow carefully however, as a dul yellow represents caution.

Green is the color of nature — symbolizing growth, harmony, and fertility. Green has a strong emotional link with safety and is considered to be the most restful color for the human eye. Green suggests stability and endurance, making it a perfect fit for finance-related design, but is also used to indicate safety, making it a viable choice for medical-related design.

Blue, often associated with stability, symbolizes trust, wisdom and confidence. Blue has been shown to produce a calming effect and is often used to promote products and services related to cleanliness. More accepted by males than females, it is a preferred color for corporate America.

Black typically carries a negative connotation but carries with it a feeling of perspective and depth. Strength and authority are also attributed to black. Although black backgrounds diminish readability, combined with other intense colors such as red, they remain aggressive and unique, good for attracting a risk-taking mindset.

Interactivity

Flash’s Action script opens up a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and designers have used Flash to create interactive features ranging from very lively feedback forms to attractive Flash-based games. This whole new level of interactivity will always leave visitors coming back for more.

A standardized site

With Flash, you do not have to worry about cross-browser compatibility. No more woes over how a certain css code displays differently in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. When you position your site elements in Flash, they will always appear as they are as long as the user has Flash Player installed.

Better expression through animation

In Flash, one can make use of its animating features to convey a message in a much more efficient and effective way. Flash is a lightweight option for animation because it is vector based (and hence smaller file sizes) as opposed to real “movie files” that are raster based and hence much larger in size.

 
The not so good:

The Flash player

People have to download the Flash player in advance before they can view Flash movies, so by using Flash your visitor range will decrease considerably because not everyone will be willing to download the Flash player just to view your site. You’ll also have to put in additional work in redirecting the user to the Flash download page if he or she doesn’t have the player installed.

Site optimization

If your content was presented in Flash, most search engines wouldn’t be able to index your content as well as a HTML website. Hence, you might not be able to rank as well in search engines and there could be less traffic heading to your site.

Loading time

Users have to wait longer than usual to load Flash content compared to regular text and images, and some visitors might just lose their patience and click the Back button. The longer your Flash takes to load, the more you risk losing visitors.

The best way to go is to use Flash only when you absolutely need the interactivity and motion that comes with it. Otherwise, use a mixture of Flash and HTML or use pure text if your site is purely to present simple textual and graphical information.

 
A few tips on using Flash: