Internet Age New Media – Vatican Agrees

How do we gain more exposure on the internet and help our online business?

The new digital age of the internet is changing how the world one step at a time at a fast pace. Pope Benedict and the Vatican has jumped into this new media. Now the Catholic Church has their own “YouTube” channel to reach their faithfuls all over the world and in different languages.

The businesses we meet have the same common question.

How do we gain more exposure on the internet and help our online business?

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Project Development Excitement & Business Networking.

NEW CLIENTS OF THE WEEK!

A new year arrived and so did new clients as they commit to their website goals in 2009. Congratulations to our new clients this week! I can feel the excitement in the air!

Foam Style Inc. - Specializing in foam molding for window trims, conices, window sills and columns.

Garo, owner of FoamStyle

Blue Skies Designs LLC – Specializing in large size shirts and sweaters. They also have a “State-of-the-Art” printing press and embroidery machines.

Joe, owner of Blue Skies Designs

Let’s Make Memories - 12 years of DJ/MC , photography and videography experience all bundled in one company that services from small parties to corporate events.

Sonoma Crisp - A highly reviewed and praised health food snack manufacturer, distributor and retailer to major food chains in the United States.

BUSINESS CONTACTS

We also did not stop there this week. My Web Design Source is a member of Business Networking International and so I reach out to other business owners and professionals to get to know them and their business. Our goal… to refer each other customers!

Meeting other business owners is a great way to form friendships and business relationships. Here are a few that I met this week and got to know their businesses background and services.

Julie Evidon ( www.jevidondesigns.com ) – Art Direction and Communications since 1999. Julie has extensive work in the health and beauty industry and specializes in art production of catalogs, billboard advertising, product packaging and a graphic designs of all sorts. Her portfolio was simply amazing! I’ll be using her soon to update our MWDS brochures and print advertising.

Jossette Murphy ( www.aboutspacestudios.com ) – About Space is about interior and architectural design. They are a personalized, highly professional and experienced design studio in El Segundo, CA dedicated to creating elegant and functional interiors. Jossette has 15 years of experience in her field and looking at her portfolio and what others have said about her, About Space is definitely in demand.

Jossette, owner of About Space Studios

Beth Damianakes ( www.aaa-calif.com ) – Membership and Insurance Specialist at AAA. Beth actually helped me in my membership at AAA and will be assisting me getting me better rates in my car insurance at AAA. Her extensive customer service earned her prestigious awards last year and with 9 years of experience at AAA, I will be going back and recommending my circle of friends and family.

Beth, So. Cal AAA

Sherry Marshall – Live, in person and my personal business coach! Sherry will be consulting with MWDS and will be helping us out in organizing our growing operations. Her years of experience in helping business owners such as myself will definitely give me insights in reaching MWDS’ and my business goals this year. My initial consultation with Sherry on this past Tuesday was awe inspiring and made me realize how much more I need to do to reach my 1, 5 and 10 year goals.

Sherry - Business Coach

Client Sample Presentation Jan 13th, 2009

I did a presentation today for a good size Architect firm with around 50 full time employees. A few of the partners where there as well as a several key staff involved in choosing a web designer to revamp their current site. To show the flexibility of WordPress, I posted the notes on my website instead of a typical “PowerPoint” presentation. I knew coming in that their website needed to be have some sort of Content Management capability.  Their site won’t be in WordPress for sure but instead be a hybrid of flash, javascript and custom made content management systems. Notice also that I did not stop at the web design aspect but also discussed the Search Engine Marketing efforts we can offer.

With all our potential clients, we do a “mock” or sample site for free at no obligation. This helps the client to determine if we are right fit for their project and beats out any of our competition! I won’t disclose the mock site we did as this project is still under development but all I can say is the turn around time for a full flash mock for them was around 3 days and we worked on it over one weekend. I like the client’s challenge, thus the extra effort in the “Free” mock Flash Site!

Here are my notes that usually applies to many of our new potential clients as well.

Why A Website?

1. Goals
2. Current
3. Expected Results
4. Budget

• who is your target audience
• features
• functions
• visitor experience
• future changes & updates
• marketing efforts

Current Web Development

• With all our potential clients, we do a “mock” or sample site for free at no obligation.

Web Design Ideas

1. Jovaniusa.com Flash, Java Script, html text, css
2. CoastalTiles.com Picture Gallery
3. TruckerDeals.com Flash Print Catalog Pages

Search Engine Marketing & Beyond

• Google Adwords
• Organic Results – Blogging, Directory Submissions, Search Engine Optimization
• Marketing past, current and future clients.

Blog

Web 2.0

• Usability
• Participation
• Convergence
• Design
• Standardization
• Blogs
• Video, Audio
• Ajax
• Focus on Simplicity
• Recomendation

Why Blog?

There are many reasons why blog has become so popular in the internet media. The reason MWDS has chosen Wordpress to become the medium of its corporate site is to first of all become a resource for our current clients and second to reach out to our future clients. Having such a blog site gives our  articles, references and other resources instant access to thos who visit our website. We love making websites and our greatest joy is when we see our client smile and gleem to see their website “come to life.” At the same time, we don’t like to stop there. We strive to make sure we provide as much of our knowledge to jump start our clients’ website business and ultimately reach their goal financially or communicate to their online audience.

“The reason MWDS has chosen Wordpress to become the medium of its corporate site is to first of all become a resource for our current clients and second to reach out to our future clients.”

Comment and interact with us 24 hour a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Our website is always open!

Here is a great explanation online regarding blogs. One of my favorite shows in Youtube.com.

Source: The Common Craft Show

Content Management System

Often, I find really cool articles regarding a subject that I need to explain to new clients. Here is a great article I find very informative and well written.

Do you need a Content Management System?

Within the last 3 months, many of our clients have been coming to us wanting to be able to update their own website. Some clients are sick of waiting for days or even weeks on their “web guy” to make updates to their website. Others make changes so frequently they’d just rather do it themselves than pay someone the hourly fees. Here are some things to things to think about when considering if your website needs a content management system or not.

What is a Website Content Management System?

A Content Management System (CMS) is a web-based program or application that allows you to create, edit and manage your website content. A web designer can create a custom design for you and then integrate it as a “theme” or “template” for the CMS being used. Most of the data or content for your website is stored in a database instead of flat files (multiple HTML files linked together). A CMS website is sometimes called a “dynamic website” because the data is being stored in a database and not using flat files.

With a CMS comes more advanced functionality than a flat file website. Some typical features include a news/blogging tool, contact forms, simple file/image uploading, user roles or permissions, photo galleries, etc.

How a Website Content Management System can help

With a Content Management System, you as a client can make updates to your own website without the need to call a “web guy”. Usually we get clients who ask for a CMS because they have finally become tired of their web guy taking way too long to make simple text changes to their website. Another positive is that the cost to maintain your website goes down since you are doing the regular content maintenance. Instead of paying a web guy an hourly fee for updates, you make the updates yourself and they get published immediately. With the right CMS and the proper instruction from your web developer, your CMS should be very simple to use and make updates.

Which Website Content Management System is best?

Each website has unique requirements so not every CMS is right for every project. You first need to analyze your needs and what is most important for your website. With those requirements, a web developer should be able to select the proper solution for you. In our experience, we have found the open source community to be a great fit for most of our clients. When certain website requirements are very specific to a client’s needs, we will implement a custom solution. However, we have found that WordPress seems to be the one solution we come back to time and time again. I’ll be adding another blog post in the near future about our experiences with WordPress and why we always seem to choose it as the best solution for our clients.

So do you need a Website Content Management System?

Here is what we always ask our prospective clients when they ask us about a CMS:

• Are you planning on making updates more than once a month?
• Do you ever have time sensitive updates that require immediate publishing?
• Are you comfortable paying more upfront but saving money on hourly updates over time?

If you answer “yes” to any of these questions, than a CMS might be a great fit for you. If you only have a small, brochure type website with content that changes on a very infrequent basis then the additional cost to setup a CMS may not really be warranted.

Source: Derek Ashauer, AshWebStudio

Here is a great explanation as well from www.creativemediaweb.com

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