Posted by: morktron
on Jan 4, 2010
Tagged in: Untagged
I recently came across a new site that offers professional online photo effects for your digital piccies. Seeing as though I'm a regular Photoshop user I thought 'what's the point of this? - I could do this myself in a jiffy'
Now after a quick test I must say I'm impressed and pleasantly surprised! The site is very simple to use, just choose your effect, upload your image and download it upon completion. The whole process took less than two minutes and I've never done it before.
There is no loss of image quality, in fact my image came back slightly larger in file size than it was before.
Posted by: morktron
on Dec 18, 2009
Tagged in: Untagged
Designing a website isn't what it used to be back in the 90's when companies would ask someones niece or Uncle Bob to whip something up and slap it on the web. Gone are those day! thankfully. This post isn't about how to choose your website designer there are plenty of those around already. This is about how how to get the most out of your website designer from the start of your project to your ongoing relationship as your website, your business and technology grows and evolves.
I am writing this for those who are employing a single freelance website designer (such as my good self!) or a small company. If your are paying big bucks to a big company many of these points may not apply.
- Be prepared to work
- Give them content
- Be honest
- Be enthusiastic
- Pay them
- Listen to them and trust them
- Be realistic
- Be professional
- Sing their praises
- Be timely
- Respond
- Enjoy!
1. Be prepared to work
There is misconception amongst people when getting a website made. Unfortunately you can't just ask for a website, get your designer to punch some esoteric codes into a computer and out pops a website just perfect for your business!
No, no, no a real website that will benefit your business needs a lot of input from you. There are many things the website designer will require of you and some of them will be needed before even the estimate stage. I won't go into all the details here but basically you will need to get across to your website designer:
- how your business works
- who your target audience is
- what are your websites goals, their 'call to actions' in order of importance
- who your competitors are
- how best to structure your navigation according to your content
- what features do you want
- what features do you actually need
- what future features are you expecting to add later
- most important of all is content
2. Give them content
Without content web designers float alone in the vast void of space with no direction home. Content is the most important thing for any website by far. You could have a pure text website with no graphics at all and still get business from it. If you don't give your web designer any content they can at best make an educated guess about what you want and fill the void with Latin.
Posted by: morktron
on Jul 6, 2009
Tagged in: Untagged
In the last two weeks I've noticed an emerging trend amongst professional businesses looking to be online for a low budget. In a bid to save money could it be said that they are compromising their professionalism and reducing the potential number of clients?
Of course I could be wrong as I'm biased in the extreme as a professional website designer and developer providing websites to small businesses! I wonder if this is really a threat to my business / industry or if these types of clients are not desirable anyway?
What are they doing then? well they are using cheap or even free website building and / or hosting solutions. Basically they choose from a limited number of templates what their website will look like. Then enter their content, maybe change a bit of styling then launch their website.
Posted by: morktron
on Jul 6, 2009
Tagged in: Untagged
There is nothing more torturous for a visually creative person than having to do accounting. So to put off doing my accounts for a short while longer I devised a 'digiflip client of the fiscal year award'. This would allow me to create a silly graphic and play around with a drop shadow for a while.
Posted by: morktron
on Jun 26, 2009
Tagged in: Untagged
As a Joomla obsessed website designer and developer I like to keep a very close eye on Joomla developments. The best way to do this is of course Twitter. This is how I got to help test the new JRD - Joomla Resources Directory.