Jungle Design Blog

1. Don’t think it’s finished

It’s a big mistake to think a website doesn’t need any more work once it has launched. This would be like settling on a single marketing strategy to last the life of the business. Instead, it should be treated as a constantly changing project.

Kind of like a diet…. if you lose all your weight and then forget about dieting and exercise, then all the hard work you put in was for nothing!

“These days, your site is in perpetual beta. It is forever evolving in line with audience needs and technology,” says Denise Shrivell of digital consultancy MediaScope.

“That’s a challenge for businesses these days who are developing a web-based business. Ten years ago, when you developed a website, you could pretty well sit on it until a redesign or relaunch. Now the challenge is determining that you need an ongoing budget to keep up with the ongoing demands of your audience.”

Visitors will expect different things of your website’s functionality and navigation in two years than they do today. This is why it’s crucial to continually test its effectiveness, and to allocate a portion of your marketing budget to its upkeep.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a protocol for enabling data encryption on the Internet and for helping web site users confirm the owner of the web site. SSL is most commonly used to protect communications between web browsers and servers.

However, it is increasingly used for server to server communications and for web-based applications. SSL Certificates help you keep your customers’ transactions secure with strong encryption, and you’ll speed through enrollment with automated domain control validation.

They are also used so that the web browser / visitor / customer to your website knows that your site is secure and can trust that their details will be safe.  This is especially important if you have a payment gateway, shopping cart or need to take credit card details for any online payments.

Take this one question quiz:

What should be the first step in developing a website?

1. Creating a design to use as a basis,

2. Deciding how the content needs to be integrated and managed,

3. Gathering content from corporate collateral,

4. Developing a strategic plan for your specific needs, or

5. Choose the most cost-effective hosting plan.

In just about any profession, your answer would be choice 4. After all, you couldn’t build a house without considering the layout, number of bathrooms, and features of the home. You wouldn’t create a design for a major advertisement and then plan the content and message of the ad. Yet, when it comes to website design, often the design comes first and the strategic plan for the site comes last.

Most design companies usually:

1. Create a design.

2. Add content. (most plans end here because there usually are no marketing goals for a site.)

3. Contact SEO firm who performs keyword research based on content of site.

4. SEO firm proposes keywords.

5. Site is optimized by SEO firm by editing original site to make it more SEO friendly.

6. Results vary.

7. Usually followed by redevelopment IF business doesn’t lose faith in the internet.

All the details are usually never dealt with because the average designer doesn’t know they exist.

I think the reason the internet world can get away with a backwards strategy is because the design portion is fun, is more tangible, and looks impressive. It gives a client the opportunity to suggest colors, logo position, interactive media, position of the navigation system and other elements. The process usually goes smooth because the developer gets the excitement from the client and the client is impressed by the nice design work. BUT… that’s also why over 99% of all internet businesses FAIL.

Because there is no quality infrastructure and strategic plan in place. Either the site is poorly marketed, keywords are unfocused, or it doesn’t fit into the overall business marketing plan. In most cases, this is where the business owner begins to think the internet is all hype and will not work for their particular business. They disregard stunning statistics, such at 65% of all Americans begin their search for local services on the internet FIRST. This is followed by a competitor leveraging the internet as a strategic advantage and ultimately leads to a loss of revenue by the disillusioned company. So What’s the CURE?

Your website needs to be planned. A thorough understanding of your expectations, target demographic, and geographic influences have to be considered. The proper research needs to be done to assure your internet marketing plan has the right infrastructure and architecture and then you can eat the “cake” (design).

This is why Jungle Design Studios always starts with a consultation where we fill in and go over our comprehensive website planner.  We do this prior to any design work so that we can strategically plan what your site needs to do and how to structure it.

BUT…

This is easier said than done for the following reasons:

* It’s more expensive to create the right plan.

* It’s not as fun to start off with planning, expectations, and realistic goals.

* A good team to create your plan has to understand design, marketing, social media, SEO/SEM, custom development, and customer service to get the job done.

* Most website developers mask their weaknesses. Some are good at design, others technical work, others SEO, but few are good at it all…

* College students and novices practically give away website design which is hard for the business to turn down.

* Consultants usually do not have a complete understanding of the entire process.

AND THE WORSE PART…

Is now the internet developing world has realized that cheaper, do-it-yourself systems sell better than a comprehensive plan. (See our article on “canned solutions.”) So companies like Intuit offer “simple solutions” (because it is high profit, low overhead), and the only one who ends up suffering is your business. Be Smart and Eat Your Vegetables First… Then have Dessert.

Proper planning is the only cure. Hiring an experienced company to help you is the only way you will truly have an opportunity to dominate your market online. It will cost a little more, it won’t be as fun up front, but it will be worth it in the end.

………..

thanks to John Carroll  founder of www.MaxWebGear.com for his article.

I’m sure you all have heard of facebook and myspace, twitter or even linkedin and konnects.
If you are reading this on one of these sites, then you are probably in the loop…
But what are they exactly?

They are social networking websites and they utilise social media.
Social Media is the new age of communication to build a solid brand and send referrals to your business.
“The amount of time people spend online has, for the first time ever, surpassed the amount of time spent watching television.”

The major attraction for a business to start building their “Social Brand” is:

• Creating brand connection by engaging with your visitors
• Creating sales opportunities without selling
• Increasing the popularity of your business amongst a targeted audience, resulting in building your brand
• Generating traffic to your website, thus creating new business opportunities
• Interacting with your community, providing you the opportunity to build business intelligence which will assist in refining your business offering

With their popularity only growing, it is important to leverage social sites as a platform to boost your business, through content and links that get exposed to the user community. In a rapidly transforming digital world, Social Media Marketing offers a new avenue in online marketing.

Do you need help getting your business noticed?
Do you realise that back links (links from other sites to yours) are the answer, but you don’t know how to get those links created?
Are you so busy building your business that you are overlooking the most powerful and cost effective marketing tool on the Internet today?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, then contact us today so we can help you.

As a professional graphic and web design company, we are always meeting and working with brand new businesses and start ups.

We all have to start somewhere right. As a new business owner, you can sometimes feel that pinch of

“i want to do it myself to save money but i want to look professional and experienced”.
That catch-22 makes it hard to get your new business up and running.

You must find a way to invest in your image, branding and identity. You need to look the part before people will accept you in the role.

Consider these two scenarios:

* Business A has a web site full of content, a professionally printed business card, and flyers from them come as professionally designed, colourful and attractive marketing piece.

* Business B has a web site “under construction”, a flimsy business card with clipart on it; and the brochure is a poorly made word document printed on cheap paper from a home printer.

Which is established? Which do you trust?

Branding is a series of small decisions and components that work together to create a consistent look for your company and sets the foundation for building a reputation that says “I’m for real”.

In the world of marketing, know me, like me, trust me is a critical sequence of events that many buyers go through before deciding to work with you. If you don’t have a consistent or unique brand, it’s difficult to become a known and liked entity. If you look like you just decided last week on a whim to go the amateur and cheap route by doing it yourself and buying a template or using clip art, it’s hard to trust you.

Consistent and unique branding, developed by a professional designer can leapfrog you forward in how established you look to your clients. Being established means the ability to
demand higher prices,
seek larger projects, and
work with other larger and more established entities.

Ever heard the saying “poor man pays twice”. By cutting corners in the beginning with something so important, you are setting yourself up for extra costs and will end up spending more than twice the money and having it all take twice as much time to get done. Do it right the first time. Dont lose credibility with substandard design. Potential clients and customers will see right through it and you will look cheap and unprofessional.

Get a professional designer to create your brand and your image.

Remember, your website is not an expense, its an investment.

We take great pride on customer service and superb quality.
I have very high standards for design so be assured that your design will be the absolute best!

It’s a word that gets thrown around the net a lot and a word that all professional designers hate… TEMPLATES.

Website templates are like off-the-shelf websites and are targeted at people who believe that launching their own, unique and differentiated website is costly and time consuming, which need not be the case.

Good designers delve deep to understand your business and online needs. we plan a logical, well organised and accessible information structure and use graphics that aid comprehension.

But what happens when you buy a website template or a wordpress theme?

You may be able to make some changes, like placing your own logo, but you are ultimately building an online presence that sums you up as: cookie-cutter; unoriginal; cheap; AND undifferentiated.  This is definitely bad advertising and that is something you should do your best to avoid.

Here’s Another thing to think about ….
Imagine a potential client or customer is looking up type of business on the web.  They look at your competition’s websites and find that they are using the same template as you!  How incredibly embarrassing.
or
They get to your website and realize that they’ve seen it somewhere before and it was for an entirely different type of business.

Stock templates can offer a nice window dressing, perhaps with a sexy flash slideshow or scripted gizmo, but will not guarantee your business will stand out.

At Jungle design studios, we develop custom-designed, custom-branded web sites. That means that every web site has a unique look and feel that is designed specifically for the client.

In contrast, many do-it-yourself web site tools offer web site templates that you can use.   Lots of companies on the internet offer packages for as little as $50, but many have hidden limitations, are hard to use and have ‘upgrade’ options that will blow out your costs.

They say that you can insert your logo, and choose a dominant color scheme, but the overall design—graphics, layout, typography, etc. is not branded for your business.

They will sell you the idea that they are “simple to use”, when in fact they are quite difficult and time consuming to use and you will need very expensive design programs to use them.

• do you have these programs that cost $1000’s of dollars?
• do you have the experience and knowledge to use these programs.
• do you know what do with it when your done?
• do you understand concepts such as resolution, pixels, compression, directories, ftp uploads and css
• and do you, with no design or programming experience, actually have the extensive amount of time it will take customise this template?
• And once your done ‘customising’ it… do you know what to do with it next?

Professional designers go to school and are educated for years to learn this stuff.  Do you think that a cheap online template will allow you to achieve the same thing in a short amount of time with no knowledge?

This is why templates are something that I counsel business owners to avoid. Choosing a stock template to build an online presence does not allow you to build your brand identity. It couldn’t possibly speak to your target audience — because it is, after all, stock content.  You’re building one of your most valuable branding elements with a look that may not be unique to you and you may not even own the rights to.

This is another major reason why you need to be careful of choosing a pre-fabricated template for your web site.

You will not own the copyright to that design.   Unless you pay for the exclusive rights to a web template for $1000’s of dollars (with which you could have a custom made website), you do not own it.

And… even if you do buy exclusive rights, you will still have everyone who bought the template before you still using it.

I’ve had this happen with several clients.

Before working with Jungle Design Studios, they used a free starter type of web site and used the hosting company’s templates and graphics to build their initial online presence. For many companies these days, their web site presence is their primary brand identity piece. So, by starting with a stock template, they’ve defaulted into a brand identity that is not their own and was probably designed by their web host (probably not the best designer!). Then, as they outgrew the limitations of the site they could not transfer the graphic look because they do not own the rights to it.  They couldn’t even switch hosting companies and take the website with them.  what a waste.  Now they have to go and start over and spend even more money doing it all again.

Also understand that templates and stock content will kill your chances for top search engine ranking someday. Search engines demote the value of websites with unoriginal content found elsewhere on the Web. And stock content, by its very definition, is normally found on multiple websites.

Ever heard the saying “poor man pays twice”.

By cutting corners in the beginning with something so important, you are setting yourself up for extra costs and will end up spending more than twice the money and having it all take twice as much time to get done.  Do it right the first time. Dont lose credibility with substandard design.  Potential clients and customers will see right through it and you will look cheap and unprofessional.

Get a  professional designer to create your brand, your image and your website.  If money is the issue, we do offer payment plans to make it easier for you.

Remember, your website is not an expense, its an investment.

We take great pride on customer service and superb quality.  I have very high standards for design so be assured that your design will be the absolute best!

At Jungle Design Studios we believe that… IMAGE IS EVERYTHING!

::Stephanie Zahalka – Jungle Design Studios::

today with so many (billions) of websites online, you must must must market your site.   i run into so many people who will pay a lot of money for a gorgeous new website, but not spend a penny on marketing it.

why?

that makes no sense.   why have a website that no one can see?  what is the point?  the point is to sell stuff or inform people or potential customers about your business.  if it sits there amongst the billions of websites not doing anything but sit there,  how will anyone find it?  they won’t!

the fact that you got a website in the first place is marketing.  you are using it as a tool to market your business. but you also need to market your website.   you must advertise your web address everywhere. on your business cards, flyers, brochures, ad campaigns etc…

then you need to optimise your site.  this takes time. you can do it yourself if you know what you are doing or do a bit of research and learn how.   if you try this, then you will be the first to understand why SEO is so expensive?

a lot of clients and business owners out there are always asking, “why does it cost so much?”   well, it costs so much because of the amount of time you have to spend doing it.

we spend hours and hours each week on a site, doing competitor research, keyword analysis, search engine submission, link building, content adjusting, working on the meta-tags and a whole heap of other things.   it takes time, and not just a bit of time, it takes a LOT of time.  that is why it costs $$$ to optimise your site.

but it is something that you have to do!  if you want to be found in the search engines for a specific thing, then you need to optimise your site for that specific thing. it doesnt do it by itself.

there are so many more ways to optimise your site… if you are interested in SEO for your website or learning more, then please contact us and we’ll get you found on the net!

“So, what do I blog about each time?” is a question I often get from clients. To keep your blog active and healthy, I recommend blogging at least 3 times per week. However, that notion is overwhelming for many. Even though you may be an expert in a topic, your mind may go completely blank when it comes time to blog, and then at other times when you’re not blogging, your idea cup runneth over.

The primary thing to remember is that blog posts don’t have to be long and complicated. You’re not writing an article, a report or a thesis. Many times a blog post is only a paragraph consisting of a few sentences that contain your thoughts about something. Now, doesn’t that sound easier than composing a 600-word post each time you sit down to blog?
Here are 20 ideas you can use to help you create a blog post when you’re stuck for an idea:

1. Current events. Can you link what you do in your business to a current event? Open up your daily newspaper or your RSS news reader and see what’s happening in the world, your country, your state, or your city. Give your opinion about the event and a solution, if you have it, and relate that to your business if you can.

2. Trends in your industry. When you blog about the trend, put your unique perspective on it, or write a rebuttal post, disagreeing with the relevance of the trend.

3. Get personal. Tell a story about what’s happening in your life or in your business that would be useful or instructive for your readers.  One key to successful blogging is getting personal with your readers. The more “real” you are with your readers, the better your reader gets to know you and begins to like and trust you. You become a “real, live” human being to them who faces similar issues that they face.

4. Top 10. Most of my writing is in the form of a Top 10 list because it’s an easy way for me to outline the points I want to make and then go back and fill in the details for each point. In this case, each of your points for a topic can become an individual blog post, and when all the points are complete, you can compile the full list for an article for your ezine or website.

5. Frequently asked questions. If you’ve been in business for awhile, you know the questions that clients and prospective clients ask you to answer over and over again. Instead of repeatedly responding to the same questions, write a series of blog posts that answer your target market’s most frequently asked questions.
6. How you helped a client solve a problem. Clients hire you to solve a specific problem they’re having, whether they do that when they buy your service or your product. List 3-5 most recent problems that you have helped your clients solve. Create a post that talks about the problem and the solution you provided (either with your client’s permission, or by making it generic enough to hide the client’s identity) that becomes a learning experience for your readers.

7. Interview an expert. What people do you know and admire in your industry? If you admire them, chances are that members of your target market do, as well. Contact them for a short email or recorded interview and ask them 3-5 questions that you’d like to hear them answer about their lives, their businesses, industry trends, or how to solve a particular problem. Publish the interviews as blog posts, adding audio and graphics if you have them.

8. Solicit and answer questions. Ask your blog readers to ask you their most pressing question related to what you do. I do this and get questions for 1-2 blog posts per week, and it helps me stay in touch with the needs of my readers, as well.

9. Review something. Read a good book lately related to your industry? Just purchased a product to help you solve a problem? Reviews aren’t limited to the critics at the New York Times. Blog about your experience with a product, book, or service, highlighting both the high points and low points, and whether you would recommend that others use or purchase it.

10. Read other blogs. Go to Google’s Blog Search or Technorati and find other blogs related to your industry or your target market. Add those to your blog reader and take an hour or two each week to read the posts on those blogs. Do you agree or disagree with the post? Have another point of view? Think the blogger was on target but you want to expand on her point of view? Reading other blogs is a great way to generate ideas for your own blog.

11. Keep an idea file. Sometimes a blogging idea or concept will strike you when you don’t need (or want) to blog. Begin a blog idea file by creating a document or spreadsheet to track your ideas and thoughts. If you’re in the zone, go ahead and write the post, and then you can post it to your blog on a day when the idea well is dry.

12. Create a tutorial. There’s always something you can tell your target market how to do. Create a written, audio, or video tutorial of the process as your blog post. Depending on the complexity of the tasks, the tutorial may need to created in multiple parts, like Part 1, Part 2, etc., which would make for multiple posts to your blog.

13. Share a positive/negative email. I often share exceptionally positive or negative emails I receive from people (without names to protect their identity as appropriate) either to celebrate kudos I’ve received or to demonstrate how I responded to a particularly nasty or upsetting comment. I get the most mileage out of the negative emails, and I often ask for feedback about how my readers might respond to the situation.

14. Take a tour. Take a self-made in-person or virtual tour of something useful to your readers. For example, if you’re a dating coach, tour the top 5 online dating sites and report your experiences as a client in each. If you’re a restaurant consultant, visit 3 local restaurants and evaluate what’s often overlooked in staff training based on your experience as a customer.

15. Write about a Twitter or Facebook update. You only get 140 characters in Twitter to write about something. If you need more space, or want to respond in greater length to someone’s Tweet or Facebook status update, do so in your blog. Thought-provoking questions are often asked on Twitter, and the answers may inspire you to blog.

16. Create a “Best of” list. What are the top 7 blogs to read in your industry? How about the top 5 people to watch? What about the 10 most useful online tools you use? Nothing attracts attention on a blog quicker than a list, so create one yourself or ask your readers to help you in the process.

17. Report from an event. Attending a professional trade show, conference, or networking event? You can report live about your experiences at the event on your blog. Talk about the workshops your attended, the vendors you met, the speaker you heard — the sky’s the limit!

18. Debunk a myth. Each industry is plagued with myths and fallacies about success/failure or what does/doesn’t work that the industry professionals would like to see vanquished once and for all. Use your blog to debunk some of the most common myths/preconceptions/notions in your industry and set the record straight.

19. Talk to newbies. Picture yourself as a newbie in your industry once again. What do you know now that you didn’t know then? What questions did you ask? What knowledge do you have that you think everyone knows? Getting back to the basics can help bring all of your blog readers up to speed.

20. Write about a client conversation. Many times I’m inspired to blog as an expansion or continuation of a conversation I had with a client. The blog post focuses on a topic of the conversation, not the conversation itself. Typically the strategy/idea/technique you’ve discussed with one client will benefit your blog readers as well.

This is just the tip of a very large iceberg of ideas for posts to your blog. Take a look around your life, your business, conversations with clients and colleagues, and what’s happening in the world around you. You’ll soon begin to see more potential for blog posts than you ever thought possible!

well, this is crazy….

i have heard quite a bit recently from friends, associates and collegues around the area and back in san diego about getty images takin it to them.

these people all have websites and have all gotten a letter from getty images demanding $1000’s of dollars for stolen image use.     some of these people purchased their website or got when they bought the business or found the images randomly on the net, not on a getty images website or had a chance to purchase.

getty does not allow for ignorance. you HAVE to pay up and remove the image.  very legal and scary.  they probably have a huge team of people that just troll websites looking for unlicensed image use, then send a letter demanding $1000’s of dollars.  very profitable part to the business i’d say.

i had a client contact me just last week with this problem. i designed her new website. the client sat here with me while i designed and searched for images etc..  well she got a letter saying one of the images was a getty stock photo and she had to give them proof of license or pay up $1200 AND take down the image.

i panicked of course because i always buy stock photos unless a client provides me with their own images which i am not responsible for.    thank god i did a little digging around and saved the whole entire old site that she used to have before i re-designed.  the image was from her previous site, designed by someone else.  when a client provides their own images, they are then responsible when it comes to ownership and copyright.   

what a relief it was.  i was freaking out.  but i know that i obey copyright issues, especially as a designer with my own work out there.  i always buy stock photos and make sure everything i use is owned and licensed.

you can get them to lower the price. never stick with or pay out the initial demand price. they usually will work with you and lower it a bit.  so fight it tooth and nail if you didn’t knowingly steal it.  you can’t get out of it legally, but you can get the cost reduced.

so, all of you out there with websites, please check your images for licensing etc…. even if you found it on google, it could still be owned by someone or getty who charges an absolute fortune for stock photos.  always buy your images or take them yourself.  its the safest thing to do and will also prevent a scary letter demanding $4000 for an image that you didn’t even know was stolen.

well, i finally just figured out this stuff!

it has taken a very large amount of hours of tweeking, customising, designing, setup, implementation and a whole heap of other technical words that normal people don’t understand….

blogging…. what is the world coming to?  should be fun and interesting if i can keep up with it and remember to actually blog.   how long does it take really?  4 minutes, half hour, few hours….  i suppose the goal is to be quick and interesting, provide good information at times and other times it can be a bit of a diary.

i do twitter every now and then too.  lots of peeps following me.  we shall see how this goes.
you can follow me on twitter at the link to the bottom right of the page or click here http://twitter.com/JungleDesign

keep an eye on this space as i will be putting up some good information for blogging and ideas and other web 2.0 techniques to help boost your site rankings, seo, marketing and more.

and will always be throwing up some good deals and specials on designs and services.  so definitely keep checking back.  or subscribe to my feed and get an email or notification when i post.  yes, thats a great idea. do it!    haha. wait, im serious!

well, happy blogging and until the next exciting post!

s

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