New E-Commerce Website Launched for Syl’s Art – Sylvester Peebles

Several months ago, the most important client of my life asked me to design a website to showcase his art collection. It was my hero, my father! How could I say no? My dad, Sylvester Peebles, has been drawing and painting for as long as I’ve been alive. He has had artwork showcased in the St. Louis Art Museum and won first place in several art shows over the past few decades. One funny story he shared with me was the time he and my sister entered the same contest for art, (I think it was the Creve Coeur Days art show) and he said that he won second place and my sister (who would have been about 7 years-old) won first place. The only issue with that was first place won $100 and second place won a ribbon. My sister was crying because she did not want money; she wanted the ribbon. Ah to be young again.

Back to the original point of this post. My dad asked me to design

How Do You Measure Your Website?

I was talking to a prospect the other day about their very well designed website. I asked them how was their traffic doing on their website. They could not answer me. I asked them what pages were most visited? They did not know. I said, “Well what analytics software do you have loaded on your website?” and guess what? They said

Creating great copy for websites is easy!

Websites need to have a focus and a clear definition from all parties that are involved so that the branding remains in tact.  Objectives may include, product advertising, promotion, sales, fulfillment, service, data collection, relationship building, investor relations, public relations, press relations, recruiting, product development and more.  Think of your site as a

Designing your website content in 4 seconds

When designing your web page for content, you need to try to communicate who you are in the first 4 seconds.  You need to express why a user should do business with you and tell how you make their life better.  You should not just say “We do this and we do that”.  You need to sell to the needs and personality of the visitor and provide action-benefit language and links.  It is critical to appeal to

When is the right time to get a website?

I have spoken with many people about when the right time to have a website built is. Well, if you ask me, I think the best time to get a site is early on. The reason I say this is because in order to be found by clients, you need to reach a wide variety of people. The best way to do this is over the world wide web of course. So who do you hire to make one if you don’t know HTML? Well, I have a few places I know of that are referred to as CMS systems (content management systems) where you don’t need to have any knowledge of HTML code.  All you need is a pc to be able to upload your content. Now, when you do this, you might want to have someone set up the initial design (shameless plug for meJ) Or you can attempt it on your own.  There is a site called coffecup.com or you can look for others. I have about 10 different suppliers I refer clients to (another shameless plug), so just email me if you need help.

The most important thing, is to get your site up and running.  If you still don’t have the cash to get it started, consider a blog. WordPress, Blogger, and others are free. A blog is intended to be used to be a platform to alert others that you are an expert in your industry, so if you start it, be prepared to post a new article at least once a week. To be a great blogger, you should really do it more often. You can have multiple authors of your article posts though and that will alleviate some of the burden on you.

Good luck, and remember, a website is a description of who you are and what services you can provide. Make sure your content is accurate and use good keywords so that you will be found by search engines.  Examples of your work should be posted as well. You can do it though, because lets face it, if you are in business then its probably because you are passionate about what you do. You will probably become addicted to the writing of your content…or else you will be passionate about your agency that you hire (another shameless plug)!