Archive for August, 2007

Small business website designs that depend on uploading photographs for online stores or sites like real estate will be more effective with photograph optimization. Too often site owners upload original digital photos taken at high resolution, and then the load time is intolerable for visitors on dialup because of the file size. They won’t stick around waiting for pix to load.

Fact: More than 50% of USA internet users are on dialup. This number dwindles as high speed options become more affordable. Why disappoint half your visitors with slow loading photographs and increase the chance of losing a potential sale?

For this tutorial you may want to read the IrfanView photo edit freeware review previously posted on this blog. The owner of the recently launched e-commerce website for Mainstream Memorabilia downloaded IrfanView and learned this lesson in about 15 minutes total, and was very pleased with the ease of use. The online store is easier to manage, and IrfanView will be used on the Mainstream Memorabilia advice blog, also.

You should consider downloading the free software for this photograph optimization tutorial from IrfanView if you don’t already own it.

Once installed, go to any large photo in My Documents and right click on the file name and select “Open with…” and then select “IrfanView” from the menu list. Here’s a sample photo and screenshot of the open window.

In the main window menu (see top arrow) select “Image” and then “Resize/Resample” or use the shortcut keys by holding the CTRL button and pressing the letter R. The next window as shown below summarizes the file information, shows the current photo width in pixels, and the resolution in dots per inch, or dpi. Enter the desired width to match what you want on your site, and then select “OK”.

When you select “File” and then “Save as” a new window appears as shown below. The sliding bar controls the quality of the final photo, and may be adjusted from lowest to best with 100 being the highest quality. Experiment with the bar in this last step until you have the smallest file size which still displays well on your screen and use that on your website.

To summarize, the steps are as easy as 1-2-3 within IrfanView. Select image-resize/resample, enter the width before doing save-as jpg, and then experiment with the slide bar until the file size is reasonable. Anything less than 50Kb file size will display well on your small business website, so taking your 1 meg photos and reducing them may keep visitors on your site longer and help make more sales.

I finished another customized website and the launch took place today for Mainstream Memorabilia featuring current stars of film and television. The owner took over managing the site and is actively loading more great photographs including many autographed one of a kind.

The site features the animation shown below, and the effect was not done in flash, so the file size is small at 181Kb for a reasonable load time.:

Here’s an excerpt from their home page describing their business:

Our industry connections began during many years doing production work on movies and in television, so we have the insider advantage. Our direct contact with movie and television stars, and their agents, provides sources for new inventory that you may find difficult or impossible to locate anywhere else.

Besides being a fun project, the Mainstream Memorabilia e-commerce website provides excellent quality, great selections, and value for money, so visit their site today to learn more.

Here’s a free testing resource for small business website owners that deserves your attention. In most cases the need for this test will arise rarely, or never. At times clients will contact me about their website after one of their customers phones them to report the site is not online. In most cases I can view the website and when asked, my client can, too, so what’s going on? The internet is called the “web” for a reason.

Flawless site access depends on connected threads from numerous chains of computer systems and internet service providers that point visitors to pages on the hosting server. Sometimes a local thread can be broken. Before becoming alarmed that your website is missing in action, here’s some advice for how to test for broken threads.

My choice is using a proxy server like www.megaproxy.com. These online services can confirm the presence of pages of a given www domain on the hosting server, so you can find out immediately if your small business website is truly online.

Visit www.megaproxy.com and look for the try it free option and follow the link. Type your www domain and select the surf button and the megaproxy server will keep you on their site yet present the target web pages IF they are accessible. If your pages show on megaproxy, the site is online and connected, so the customer who reported the site offline has a local problem. The best advice is apologize, explain that your site is confirmed online, and ask that they try again later in the day.

If your site cannot be viewed through the megaproxy site, contact your designer or internet service provider for answers.

Last February I released free artwork of a 2007 business card calendar for the benefit of my small business clients. The 2008 version was released today.

This free 2008 business card size calendar artwork in 300 dpi JPG is yours to download with no obligation. The file is in a zip folder (336kb) and the artwork is 3.625 inch x 2.125 inch to allow for trimming to the US standard 3.50 x 2.00 business card. You do not have to register or reveal your email address and may download immediately from this link:

Right click on card and “save target as” to download now.

If you need 2007, the free 2007 calendar artwork download is still here.

The coffee mug shown in the photograph below was in a surprise package received from Chris Knight of EzineArticles.com in recognition after they promoted me as a platinum author. I once mentioned this item to a client who said they’d love to see the mug and then suggested I post it on my website.

The customer is always right, so a smaller version of the photo is now featured on my Directory of Small Business Articles Published Online, and the graphic art tutorial that follows explains how the coffee mug was edited using Xara Xtreme to create the dynamic look and special effects.

By combining graphics and digital magic, this is how a photograph of a simple item like a coffee mug can be enhanced. The photo edit took less than an hour using Xara Xtreme which is perfect for creating professional illustrations for your small business website or advertising artwork for print.

The left photo (A) is just the mug held at arm’s length outdoors, and the center photo (B) was a recent Florida sunset that I snapped and chose to use for the background. I took each photograph with a Canon PowerShot A80 digital camera in auto mode. The right photo (C) shows the 6 elements that were combined as layers in Xara Xtreme, and then placed on top of the golden sunset photograph for the finished illustration. Here’s the tutorial showing how the 6 elements were created:

1. The coffee mug was precisely traced in Xara Xtreme and the background removed
2. The glass table top effect was done using a black rectangle overlay with 75% transparency
3. A clone of the coffee mug was cropped and flipped to create a partial mirror image
4. The shadow of the mug and handle was applied in Xara Xtreme at 38% black
5. The shadow under the mug was done as a black ellipse with 4.4px feathering
6. Part of the sunset photograph was cloned, cropped, and flipped to create the reflection

If you are interested in a cost effective vector graphics software program, Xara Xtreme is my choice for custom graphics and photo edits. Download a free 30 day trial of Xara Xtreme here.

UPDATE: Download this illustration as free desktop wallpaper here (250kb JPG zipped folder). Readers do not have to register or reveal their email address, so just right click the link and “save target as” for your copy.

Custom website design services have been expanded for clients interested in e-commerce websites, online stores, CMS Content Management Systems, and forums or message boards. Starting price for budgetary purposes for dynamic interactive sites are as follows:

$1000 to $5000  for a custom Forum or Message Board, custom CMS Content Management System, custom E-Commerce Online Store, or a custom Main Site with Online Store website design.

Price includes installation with a custom look and basic setup. The client will be given resources for learning how to load and manage their e-commerce website, content management system, or forum community message board.

These custom website packages allow customers to take over managing their website by adding or deleting content without knowing the details of HTML code. Most begin with a free open source template to save $1000′s in design fees, and each is customized for a unique look including custom graphics.

Small business owners don’t have to spend $5-10,000 or more for an online store, forum, or CMS website when affordable options are available from the Small Business Resource Center.

In addition, a custom integrated blog may be added to the package which allows easy publishing of advice and news. The benefits of adding fresh content often may be realized with any of these custom package dynamic website designs.

Most small business websites have the company logo or a header graphic near the top of each page, and a simple link on these will improve usability. For example, my site is actually two sections, the blog and the main site, and if you click on the header from any page it will take you to the home page.

Improved navigation by linking from the header is easy to do by making the graphic a hyperlink with a border value of zero. This is common practice yet it’s not universal, so if your website header or logo is not hyperlinked you may want to consider adding that feature to allow people the option to return quickly to your main page.

Every website has a learning curve for usability, so making your site navigation obvious could give you an edge over your competitors. Make a favorable first impression and then offer ease of navigation and you are more likely to keep visitors on your small business website longer.

Here’s some advice for do-it-yourself small business website design. Some search engine experts claim insider knowledge about how search engines work, and offer to reveal their secrets for a fee. Citing just one example, you may be surprised to learn that SEO optimized website file names are not really secret. Don’t expect them to give away search algorithms, but the major search engines do reveal design strategy that may help your small business website. Here’s more about website file names.

Website designers 10 years ago did not give much thought to file names, and most web page names were single words followed by the htm extension. More recently search engine optimization, seo, has evolved into a science with web developers forming opinions about right and wrong. Today techniques for file naming website pages and graphics allows multiple words, and these words are commonly run together or separated by a space, hyphen, or underscore. Which is best?

Truth: Literal file names for pages or graphics offer nominal value for search engine optimization.

Google can separate words run together and spaces are okay, yet they prefer hyhens to underscores. Until recently underscores linked words into nonsensical words while spaces or hyphens were harmless because they are ignored. Some experts insist you must use hyphens, but even that is changing.

File names are not a major factor for SEO. Content is still what determines the value and relevance of your pages, so do not agonize over your file naming method. Words connected by underscores can now be separated by Google and they do a good job separating words run together. While the other major search engines should eventually catch up to indexing by ignoring the underscore, my advice is naming with hyphens for new page or graphic names if you want to optimize for SEO.

It is not necessary to rename existing files. Your content is the key for attracting visitors and search engine results.

My preference has been underscores because they are easier to read. This has not affected my ability to attract quality traffic based on more important search engine optimization techniques like quality content added often. For website visitors who hover over links to view the file name in the lower status bar before following the hyperlink, underscore separated words are easier for them to read, also, so you decide.

Promoting your small business website can be accomplished without paying a consultant. To learn more about proven zero cost SEO methods, view the free SEO PDF reports here, or read about SEO Advice to Feed Search Engines here. The only investment will be your time.

A consistent look in all media advertising is important for establishing branding and a familiar corporate identity.

Besides custom website design, my services include custom matching graphic artwork for print. Below is an example of a half page full color magazine ad designed for Roll Screen Solutions of Orlando, Florida. The ad will target high end homeowners next month in a home renovation magazine.

The image is smaller than actual size, and low resolution. In addition, I’ve designed client advertising including phone book and newspaper advertisements in full color, black and white, or 2-color. The design artwork in this example was half the price of the magazine’s art department rate, and matches the website, brochure, and business cards which I also created for Roll Screen Solutions.

A few years ago I created artwork for a highway billboard to match one client’s color scheme. In their case the advertising agency would have done artwork for free. After having me do their website, custom mailers, trifold brochure, newspaper ads, and business cards, the client preferred paying for billboard artwork to keep the consistent corporate identity.

Small business owners joining the internet with a new website often end up fixated on numbers that are meaningless. As each website owner gains experience, some are eventually drawn into concepts of search engine optimization as they learn new terms like Google PageRank. If you have the Google toolbar for IE or FireFox installed with the pagerank status bar showing current pagerank, mouse over the scale and you may have noticed their “PageRank is Google’s measure of the importance of this page” message.

Does that mean your website is unimportant if your pagerank is 1 or 2? Not necessarily.

In a reply to a request for advice a few months back I cautioned a website owner that his site needed a makeover. The first impression is critical to keeping visitors on any website, and having them eventually buy products or services. The text content he had was fine, yet the presentation looked like grade school graphics from 1995 which is inappropriate for a commercial site. Given a choice, most buyers will be drawn to an attractive website design.

In this case study, the person’s question involved a recent pagerank drop of his home page from 3 to 2, and he was more worried about that number than his bottom line. His service is local within 100 miles of the location of his business, so he’s not looking for worldwide clients. For key phrases that describe his services the website showed up on page one of Google results, so he should have been very happy.

Your small business website’s success is not measured in “importance” to visitors other than paying customers. If the small business owner in this scenario had put time and energy into improving the first impression for visitors, more would be inclined to buy rather than click to the next site in the search results. Success online is not about traffic. It is about converting traffic to paying customers, so be careful about being distracted by Google pagerank misconceptions.

Quality content added often will draw and keep both types of visitors… people with money and search engines. You may want to read an article I wrote and published in 2006 entitled My 5 Second Rule for Small Business Owners to understand more about first impressions in print and online.