In the world of the web, easy to manage and maintain websites are hard to find. I can’t tell you how many times we get Arizona web clients who simply need a website that they can understand. Web designers love to get creative, get complicated, and then refuse to let their clients, the actual owners of the websites, to have access to their own sites. It’s something that doesn’t make much sense to us here at Linwright Design.

So, when we design a site for you, Arizona, you get all passwords and usernames. You not only get complete access to us at anytime to ask questions about your site, you get complete access to your site itself. I know, it’s a concept that seems pretty simple, but time after time we come across clients who have been wronged by their designers and don’t even have access to their own sites.

At Linwright Design, we not only give you complete access to your site, we even walk you through how to maintain your site, add or delete content and images, even update shopping carts and pages. If you have a question about your site, Arizona, we’re always here available to answer. If you want to change a picture or a paragraph on your site, there’s no reason to call up your designer, wait a few weeks for the changes to be made, and then hold your breath for the bill. With our easy-to-use sites, you can do the changes yourself if you’d like.

Using a Wordpress platform to build your websites does so much more than give you the ease of access, it also makes building optimized web pages for SEO and rankings easy. If you have a site that has been designed by a creative mind, but is completely foreign to you, let us know. We’ll gladly redesign your site or transfer it to a platform that is easy for you to use.

The economy is changing, and that means that as a small businesses owner you must change as well. While we’ve been on this roller coaster of a financial mess these past few years, your marketing budget and gross income has no doubt taken a big hit. That’s something that as business people we can all relate to. Perhaps the time has come for you to step in a different direction.

Internet marketing was once about registering your sites with the big three, Google, MSN, and Yahoo. That was it. Then you’d do a little on-site optimization and work out a few relationships with some affiliate sites, and you were golden. Or so, at least that’s what they say. I’m not really speaking from experience. In those days I was still writing the great American novel and getting through school.

Today, internet marketing has many forms, and with the every changing economy and business landscape, so has web marketing changed. There’s a lot more that goes into it besides registering your site. Today, you have link marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, and many others. My favorite; content marketing.

Here’s the deal. This is where you, as a small business owner, has to make a decision. Do you pay the big SEO companies, the ones who make all those promises to get you to the top of Google for just a couple thousand a month, or do you turn to the little guy who could very well be your neighbor. In this economy, with our tight marketing budgets, I would go with the latter.

It’s not always about who is the most expensive and who promises the big results. I recently had a client tell me that he had heard it all from the big SEO companies. He heard all of the promises and shelled out all of the money, and saw nothing from it. Well, I told him that I don’t make promises. I do the work, I have the passion and the drive, and I work with the budget that you have. Within two months we’ve gotten his site to the second page of Google, and are very close to breaching page number one.

My point here is this; times are tough right now for everyone. Big and small businesses are struggling. What I can offer you is a different approach to marketing your business. I’m a writer. I write blogs, press releases, and articles to spread around your brand. I hit people up on Twitter and Facebook occasionally and direct them to your website. I work the language of the internet, feel out the trends and what people are talking about, and attract them with curiosity to check out what you have to offer.

I do this in two ways. The first is by working your website to the top with a lot of fresh content and SEO techniques. The second is to work the traffic to your site first, then worry about getting your page to the top second. Option number two is all about the blogs, and getting traffic to read the blogs. The more traffic hits the blogs, the more possibilities you have to get customers. Each visitor that reads a blog is a potential customer.

The economy is changing, and maybe your marketing ideas should be changing too.

Powerpoint is a wonder. I had a designer as me not too long ago what I used to build my images. “Powerpoint,” I told him. Needless to say, most people are a little shocked to see how much Powerpoint can really do. It’s a genius tool that can do just about anything, and it’s completely free, which is the best part.

Building web pages and images with Powerpoint is as easy as using Microsoft Word to write an essay. Sure, it takes a little practice and some experimentation with different effects, but you can do just about anything on Powerpoint that you can do on many other expensive image creating platforms.

Creating an image in Powerpoint requires knowledge of what .jpeg, .jpg, .gif, and .png mean. Here’s the technical information that I found at www.webwitchery.com:

  GIFs
GIF was created by Compuserve as a machine independent file format. GIF files can contain one or more images with 256 colors or less. The images are compressed using LZW compression, reducing the file size by 30-50% or more. Gifs are flexible, and have capabilities that jpg doesn’t, such as animation ( GIF89a) and transparency. There are interlaced gifs that load gradually, allowing the user to see parts of the image while it’s loading. Interlaced files also take longer to decompress, and may actually take more time to download, although it may seem faster because the user has something to look at. It isn’t worth the decompression time for small files. GIFs can also have transparent backgrounds to show the underlying background color or image.

JPGs
Jpgs do not limit colors, making this format the preferred for photographs. Always save your original image in a format other than jpg so you can go back and make changes later. If you save a jpg as a jpg after altering it, you are compressing the image again, causing lots of icky (that’s a technical term things to happen. Your jpgs can be highly compressed for really small files, or just a little compressed for larger files. You should experiment and save the image with the most compression, while still maintaining an acceptable image. If you save a jpg in Photoshop, you will not see the effects of the compression until you close the image and reopen it.

When I create an image with Powerpoint, I honestly use the .png format about 90% of the time. This image format allows for me to save the Powerpoint image with a transparent background, and in many cases a transparent background is exactly what I need.

Ok, so onto the building of images with Powerpoint. The first thing you want to do is click layout, and scroll to the blank layout. Next, we’ll create the badge that you see below.

Insert a circle shape with a border. Make the shape the color of your choice, but create a gradient effect. After you create the circle, look to the top of your screen. Click on Drawing Tools, select color and then gradient. Next scroll to the bottom and selcect more gradients. You’ll want to make sure there are two gradient levels, and select the colors that you want your image to be.

Next, insert another circle. This one will be on off-white color, and you’ll want to soften the edges to create that glare effect. Select shape effects, then soft edges, and click on 10 point. Place the glare effect circle on either side of your badge circle.

Finally, we want to create the peel effect on the edge of the badge. This is the tricky part. You’ll want to insert a shape. Chord is the shape you’ll want to insert:

Reshape the chord to form a perfectly small half-circle. Next you’ll want to give it that foil effect. You’ll do this with the color gradient, more gradients, and select the present color that is titled chrome. This will give your badge peel that foil effect.

Finally, it’ll just take some resizing and placement to arrange the peel onto the badge in the right place. Arranging images is always easier if you select rotate from the top control bar, then scroll down to more rotation options. Here you can position your shapes exactly as you want to.

It’s that easy! Whether you’re creating a badge, a navigation button, or an advertisement, you can really do it all with Powerpoint. Remember that if you create an image with a transparent area, simply save it as a .png. If you do want the transparent background but don’t know how to get it, simply select the image or picture, click on picture tools, then recolor in the top left, and set transparent color. Then simply click on the area that you want to be transparent.

If you don’t need that transparent area and want the white background, select .jpg or .gif. To save your image as a picture, select the image, right click, scroll down to save as picture, and there you go.

My advice to you, before you go and spend hundreds on some fancy image creation tool or design tool, spend some time with Powerpoint. Place around with the picture and image effects, the shadows, 3D effects, and rotation. You can create just about anything with layering, shapes, and a little bit of imagination. Below are some examples of what Powerpoint can do. Everything that you see on this site, including the header and holiday advertisement, was created with Powerpoint.

Need more than a blog to show you how to do this on your own? Contact me and I’ll help you out!

I’m a small town girl. I was raised here in Gilbert, Arizona, graduated from Gilbert High School back when there were only two high schools in Gilbert and we rumbled like crazy, and got my BA from Arizona State University where I spent most of my time doing anything but school work until my very last semester. I love this place, and that’s why I love being able to help out the small businesses here make it through these rough economic times.

Every time I drive down Warner, past Recker on the way to my lil sis’ house, I remember the small town that Gilbert used to be. I remember learning how to drive a stick-shift out by William’s Air Force Base, and racing down the back-roads with a car full of basketball players. This is my small-town-USA, and I wouldn’t change a single thing about it. I left a few times, once after high school graduation and again a few months ago, but I’ve always come back realizing that there really is no place like home.

Web design for Gilbert, Mesa, Chandler, Queen Creek and Apache Junction offers the opportunity for small businesses to add an extra layer of advertising to their marketing scheme. A small businesses web page has the potential to bring in not only local Arizona traffic, but national traffic as well. There are hundreds of ways to target your audience, whether you are looking only to bring in residents from your small-town-Arizona, or whether you want to play with the big boys and take on the national crowd. It’s all possible.

Breaking it down to its simplest form, this is what you can expect from Linwright Design. Below is an example of a search for flowers in Gilbert, Arizona. (flowers Gilbert Arizona). As you can see, Google provides a map of the area within the SERP (search engine results page), and there are 150,000 results. This means that if you want to rank without paying for it, you have to compete with 150,000 other websites for this search. The mapped area would be how you would target the local crowd, and the easiest way to do that is to simply register your website with Google local. See the diagram below for an overview of the SERP.

What I would suggest doing to target the local Gilbert, Chandler, Mesa, Queen Creek or Apache Junction area is to register with the local advertising sites. With Google it’s free to register your site. They will give you a call to verify your address and your business, and the rest is up to you. In order to rank well for Google local, it’s all about organic SEO (which basically means anything and everything that you do to get to the top without paying for it. AKA; link building campaign, content, blogging, social marketing).

If you have ever searched for batting cages in Gilbert, Arizona, you probably have come across Rip City Batting Cages, which is located at Freestone park. If you are considering doing a local marketing campaign for your small-town-Arizona area, take a look at these batting cages. They have completely saturated the SERPS. They almost have the entire first page of Google for this search term! Granted, there are only 43,000 competitors for batting cages in Gilbert, Arizona, which is a small number, but they have registered their site with every possible local firm.

It’s as simple as registering with City Search, User Instinct, Yelp, Yellowbot, Merchant Circle, Local Yahoo, Local Google, Insider Pages, and Yellow USA, among many other local platforms. Some of them are paid-per-advertising, some of them are completely free. But if you are considering building a website and marketing it towards local traffic, this would be the route to go.

On top of local SEO, Linwright Design would also integrate Facebook and Twitter into your website. In my personal opinion, it is almost pointless these days to build a website and not integrate social media into the mix somehow. Twitter and Facebook also allows you to engage your customers at a local level as well.

By using Twitter and Facebook you can target users who are from your local area. In every case, a person building a profile on these social networks will have to enter their home-town. If their hometown happens to be Gilbert, Chandler, Mesa, Queen Creek, or Apache Junction, then you add them to your list of followers and friends. It’s that simple, and that easy to let them know about upcoming promotions, specials, and local appreciation days.

Now, the actual web design is the best part. Designing a website for a small business involves taking inspiration from the business itself, the customers’ needs, and, of course, the area. In my opinion, how can you build a website about small-town-Arizona if you haven’t lived there for all of your life?

I won’t lie, I had to build a corporate website recently targeted to residents of Indiana. Now, I’ve never been to Indiana. I’m sure they’re proud of their Colts, but what else are they proud of? What would catch their attention? So, I did some research, found some pictures of Indiana, and tried to make it work. It’s difficult when you have to make a local website about a place that you’ve never been, but, of course, I made it work.

Building a website for a small business that targets the local traffic is one of my favorite things to do, especially for small-town-Arizona. Nearly everything about this state is beautiful, and I thoroughly enjoy creating a website to promote that as well as the small businesses and business-people behind the scenes.

Don’t forget to contact me for a free custom quote!

Building An Easy To Navigate Website For Your Customers

Website design used to be about flashy techniques and in-your-face designs, but left little room for easy navigation or quality content. Times have changed, based mainly on the way that the search engines rank websites, and building an affective website no longer involves showing off some crazy flash techniques that no one else can either do or understand.

 Today, building an affective website for your customers is all about easy navigation, easy to find information, and quality content. Now, don’t get me wrong, there will always be a great element of unique design and flair to step you apart from the competition, but the greatest thing that you can give your customers in a website is easy navigation.

So, how do you do that? Well, it’s pretty simple….just keep it simple. Your ‘landing page,’ or the first page of your website that visitor land on, should be creative and uncomplicated. A customer, in most cases, already knows what they want. They already know what they’re looking for, which is why they found you. Now, all you need to do it show it to them.

If you are running a local flower shop, show them your best products and greatest deals right there on the front page. If you coach the local little league team and want to promote them, show their picture and their winning record on the landing page. Whatever it is that people are searching for, give it to them on the landing page. That is what they’re there for, and if you do not deliver you will have a huge bounce rate (the rate at which people leave you site immediately).

Sometimes web designers forget that not everyone understands websites like they do. I’m to blame for that on certain occasions, when my creativity gets a bit carried away. For example, the other day I was in a meeting with some ladies who sell health related products. Basically, they wanted nothing more than a very small website that would act as a ‘brochure.’ They wanted no marketing, nothing flashy, just something that they could put on their business cards and flyers to give customers another option.

Well, my mind began racing with all of the possibilities for their website. I started pointing out different design ideas, different marketing tactics, and many different social aspects that could be added to the site to make it more interactive. The ladies just looked at me and laughed.

“Listen hon, I just don’t have the time for that. I have no idea how any of that works, and it’s far too much going on. We just want to keep it simple,” one of them said.

For the rest of the meeting I reeled in all of my notions of social marketing and engagement, and kept it simple. Sometimes, nothing beats simplicity.

My point is this: whether you do make it engaging and interactive, featuring many different social aspects and marketing tactics, keep the main idea simple. Sure, you can do both at once. It is entirely possible to have a website that is simple, with the main message or product right there on the landing page, but also have a few social aspects integrated into the design in a professional and trouble-free way.

So, when you’re designing your website strictly for your customers, think about what they want, what they’re looking for, and how you can give that to them. Wordpress is a great tool for keeping things organized and simple, yet creative and beautiful.

Have a question about wordpress web design? Don’t hesitate to contact me, or look me up on Twitter (@LinwrightDesign) or Facebook.

Web design equals first impression, which can easily lead to potential customer or complete failure. The key is to design with many factors in the back of your mind as you pull it all together. It’s for these reasons that I find Wordpress the best web design platform out there.

“Wordpress?” you’re probably thinking. “I thought Wordpress was strictly for blogging.” Well, you’re partially right, which is why as a writer and web marketer I absolutely love this platform. In web design, you have to not only think about the client and the customer, but the search engines and what works for search engine optimization and marketing. I can’t think of another platform that offers more opportunities for ranking then Wordpress.

Web design involves the best of all worlds, which is why I love it so much. There is no shortage of inspiration or creativity out there, and stepping outside of the box is almost a requirement these days. Of course, the corporate site (brochure website) that simply conveys information is sort of a staple in this business, but the ones that jump off the page, so to speak, are the ones that garner attention and customers.

With new flash, widgets, and featured content opportunities within the realm of a Wordpress website, there really are no boundaries to what you can do. To be affective, however, takes the entire process to a different level.

There are some keys to designing a website that entices your customers and members to engage.

In web design, content quality is a crucial factor. Much like reading the paper on a relaxing Sunday morning, you usually will scan through the images and headlines until something pops out at you. Then you stop and take a second to read it. Visitors view a website much in the same way, but on a website they are looking for a bit more interaction and engagement then the newspaper.

 As a journalist, the facts were absolutely everything, and the content ranked right up there as well. Web design isn’t much different. Content ranks at the top of the list in web design, which is why you will sometimes see sites that were developed and designed poorly rank at the top and get a lot of traffic. Content truly is king.

Ever notice how a homepage will be broken up into different sections and headlines? This goes straight to the fact that we all scan for the important stuff, and the easier a designer makes it for a viewer to find what’s important, the better.

Making it simple is another factor in web design that often gets overlooked. Your customer shouldn’t have to think. I know it sounds a bit foolish, but the site should easily guide them exactly where you want them to go, without selling them or pushing. Every visitor will catch on to that in an instant. The website should be easily navigated.

While many designers will veer from the featured content approach to designing a page, it truly is an effective way to direct your visitors. Having a featured area on the home page with easily navigated icons and buttons really works, and your visitors will appreciate your transparency.

Go big, or go small. There really is no go big or go home because a lot of simple sites with great content rank very well on the search engines. There is no shame in using a template that has been proven to work well, as long as you keep it unique to your business.

One aspect of web design that I love to incorporate into every site that I work on is social interaction through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, and many others. Engagement and interaction are the names of the game, and social media brings so many aspects of customer involvement to your website. Whether it’s a corporate site or a small business site, I would always suggest implementing some social tools.