King Creative Design

Ready, Set, Drive!; New owners checklist

michele — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 19:41:30 +0000

The experience of assuming a newly designed website is not dissimilar from a new car purchase. The minute you drive your new car off the lot it becomes your responsibility to maintain it! The same is true for a website. The future of your online success and resale value will depend greatly on the upkeep and effort you put into maintaining it. With that being said, once your new website is launched, it is up to you to educate yourself enough to know how to drive your new vehicle. Even if you hire someone to do the maintenance for you, it is up to you to supervise, as well as initiate the service calls.

Here is a helpful new owners check-list of things to know upon taking ownership of your new website:

Take possession of the Keys; Make sure you have the log-in information to your domain administrator and hosting accounts and that you are listed as the billing contact in the “My Account” section. This will insure that you will be notified directly when your account comes up for renewal.
Register the vehicle; It’s good practice to register/renew for multiple years (at least beyond the one year mark). This is an indicator to the search engines that you intend to be in business for a long time.
Service regularly; New “keyword rich” information being added to your site on an ongoing basis can improve your search engine ranking tremendously. Having a blog is an easy way to add fresh new content regularly.
Get insurance; Be sure to have all your files backed up on your hard drive. This step is especially important if your site is run on a database. Get into the practice of backing up your database often, especially before an upgrade. This will minimize the risk of losing important data.
Put yourself on the map; Tell people who you are and where to find you by signing up for local listings (free and/or otherwise) such as Yelp, City Search, Foursquare, etc. and be sure to include your website address (URL).

How much does logo design cost?

michele — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 04:46:10 +0000

For the design clients out there, let me ask you a question. Have you ever been frustrated when a graphic designer doesn’t tell you a project cost up-front? Perhaps you think they’re stalling, trying to figure out how much you can afford, but when you think about it, what good would that do? The designer is by no means guaranteed your business, so it makes a lot more sense to present a design quote as soon as possible. The issue lies here: No project is the same, and every client differs. A designer can’t provide an accurate quote until s/he knows exactly what the client needs. Because of which, those designers who offer a pre-defined “price list” can do so because of one or more of these factors: They’ll neglect vital research into your business, they’ll scrimp on the brainstorming/sketching stage and offer the first ideas they arrive at, they’re setting a fixed time limit on how much work they do, when the reality is that it’s impossible to tell just how many hours/days/weeks/months a design project will take to complete. A client should always expect a designer to ask a wide variety of questions about specific design needs before an accurate quote can be given.

via Logo Design Love

Content strategy; The role of a web designer vs. the role of the client

michele — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 19:36:38 +0000

It is clear that the importance of conveying the knowledge, history and tone of your business is a priority when handing over the task of creating a website to a design professional. The role of a web designer is to take that knowledge and create a vision for the site with you, develop a plan and facilitate it through to completion. But no matter how much you educate a designer about your company, you are still the one who is ultimately responsible for gathering, approving and delivering the content to the table.

Keep in mind that for best results, the content needs to be equally as strong as the design. If your budget permits, the scope of your project can include the copy writing and content strategy. Often clients are trying to keep cost down and feel capable of writing their own text, which if done well can be perfectly acceptable. Just go into it knowing that writing for the web is a specialty and can be a time consuming endeavor that requires research and planning.

Preparation is everything; What every new website owner should know

michele — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 02:37:39 +0000

“A winning effort begins with preparation.” Joe Gibbs

So you’re considering having a website built for your business? I highly recommend picking up the book; ‘Website Owners Manual’ by Paul Boag. It will arm you with helpful information that could improve your understanding of the process, organizing your content, choosing your designer and much more. It contains just about everything you should know before diving into a website development project. Remember, the more thoroughly you grasp the process the better your interactions with your website designer will be enabling him/her to produce a more successful product which is more likely to give you an advantage over your competition.

Amazon.com: Website Owner’s Manual by Paul Boag

Los Angeles Relationship Center Site Launch

michele — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:45:59 +0000

We’re pleased to hear that the Los Angeles Relationship Center is are already getting clients from the site that was just launched earlier this month.

New website added to our portfolio

michele — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:21:16 +0000

We’re proud to announce the launch of a beautiful new website for the Tap Room at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena. The client needed to be able to change their drink and appetizer menus and other information on a daily basis, so we created it with a Content Management System (CMS) for easy updating by the client.

Other websites we have created for the Langham Hotel are Langham Huntington Weddings and Huntington Spa.

Creating a big splash in 2012!

michele — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 21:30:52 +0000

King Creative Design is looking forward to making a BIG splash in 2012 (and the coming years), starting proudly with the introduction of our new website. Our designers have been working with clients for over 15 years. We do print design, logos, identity programs and custom websites for companies throughout the Los Angeles, Pasadena, other Southern California areas and nationwide. We welcome you to check out our site and invite your friends to do the same.

Happy New Year!

How to Get Started With Google Analytics for the Small Business Owner

michele — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:39:42 +0000

This post is for beginners, so if you’ve been around for awhile this stuff isn’t going to be new. You’ve probably heard the term Web Analytics used and you likely validated one to track data on your website. I’m going with the assumption that you used Google Analytics, because it’s free and robust. It can be difficult running a small business and having the time to set up and pull out the data that really impacts your online business. Below I’ll cover a few cursory topics of what you should look for when getting familiar with Google Analytics.

Make Sure you Set up a Master Account

You’re going to want to set up and test a decent amount of items with Google Analytics. The thing is that you’re not always going to do them correctly, trust me. By setting up a master account you can rest assured that your data will never be skewed while you use other accounts to test out filters, funnels, goals, etc.

Make sure you set up filters

Filters allow you to direct traffic in a way that gives you a more realistic scope of the traffic and conversions happening on your site. I wrote a nice little post entitled Four Google Analytics Filters You Should Be Using. By setting up filters you’ll have a nice start and may be surprised by what you thought your traffic was compared to what it really is after filtering out useless or repetitive data.

Use Google Analytics to Monitor Organic Keyword

You may have already provided on-site optimization to your site. The real benefit from this area is realized when you can’t always keep up with keyword research. Google Analytics will allow you to see the terms visitors used before selecting your site. Looking for anomalies of terms not often associated, or never thought about, with your site can be a way to focus a new page or product towards these individuals. Further research should be taken before committing to making changes, though. Still, you can grab a list generated by GA and it takes some guess work out of the equation.

Check Your Stats in a Regimented Time Frame

I suggest looking at your data weekly and compiling that information into a spreadsheet to help you see rising or declining trends in a number of areas. If you haphazardly look at the data GA provides it becomes meaningless again. By generating several months worth of data it will allow you to make decisive actions and to combat any specific problems that may occur.

The key is to not rush it. Take your time and learn at your own pace. You’ll have a master account set up to combat any mishaps that you might cause while changing settings, filters to provide you more reliable data, a greater grasp on your organic key phrase traffic, and a growing complied list of data to help you make decision in the future.

via The Website Owner’s Manual

Let’s Get Truthful About Social Media for SEO

michele — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:51:25 +0000

So it isn’t surprising news that the Google overlords will be looking at social media signals. What a lot of people took away from that is that Google has been looking at social media for quite some time and all those links really do mean something in terms of SEO. So as an SMB you may have a static Facebook page and a Twitter with one tweet that is two years old. It’s now time to rethink how you use your social media.

Retweet That Link Up

This one should be pretty self-explanatory. You need to start focusing on when the best time to send out a tweet with a relevant link is for your demographic. I’m following the understanding that you’ve already created a decent amount of relevant followers. Now you need to know when they are most active on Twitter. This may take some time to figure out but then make sure your content is Tweeted out during those times. Asking for a retweet usually nets more retweets than not asking for one as well. Also concise wording allowing for ease of retweeting is another factor you have to think about.

Don’t Write Fluff

You can probably name some big name in your field. I’ll bet you they have created some great content. It is one thing to hash out some fluff, but an entirely different proposition to take the time and research to make excellent informative pieces. Additionally, if the person is able to keep a solid rhythm of up-to-date content you’ll be a step ahead. If you’ve already got that part down the next step is really integrating the same kind of content from your blog onto social media sites. Take the time to respond to followers on Twitter, release informative links and content on Facebook, take the time to post and answer questions on Quora. These should be natural extensions of your site and should reflect the same kind of standard you have on your site.

Flesh Out Your Profiles

The more you actively create a fleshed out profile the more human you’ll seem out on Social Media networks. That personalization is the thing that separates you from all the other individuals out there. You, usually, have very little space to tell people about yourself, or your company, so pick your wording carefully. I also see a decent number of people that forget to put links in their profiles. Before hand I mentioned that these Social Networks are an extension of you and your site, why wouldn’t you want that SM traffic the ability to go to your site where you have more freedom and space to truly tell people about yourself and your services? Lastly, I recommend sticking with the same photo across all SM platforms. As your reputation rises in your field that photo will become synonymous with who you are and what you represent.

Don’t Worry What The Cool Kids Think (Reputation across SM outlets)

Not too long ago people would judge certain people across SM outlets by the number of followers, or likes, a person had. Trust me it might be great to have 100,000 people following you, but if the majority of those people are spam bots or irrelevant to your business that number is pretty worthless. Focusing on providing great insight, being conversational with individuals that are leaders in your industry, and following/interacting with a core group of people is the key to success. Instead of worrying about your Klout score when starting out, worry about putting hard work into providing information to your demographic and distributing properly. The more work you put into that aspect the easier it will be to generate a great reputation on SM networks.

via The Website Owner’s Manual