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The One-Pager: Is It Worth It?

January 26th, 2011

Photoxpress_884226A very common question that comes from new small businesses is just how much do I need to put into my first website? Many companies that are just starting out often don’t have much of a budget for the web after their initial advertising and marketing is taken care of, so how can you go about creating a web presence that will be beneficial to your company and not break the bank?

To get back to the original question, you first need to ask yourself what you want your website to do for you. Do you want it to attract new leads through online searches? Do you want it to act as a landing page that people can visit after seeing your web address on a business card? Do you want to offer sales directly online? If you’re just looking to keep it as simple as possible to keep costs down then a simple one page website with a listing of your services, contact information and map to your location can be a useful stop gap until you can afford to direct more resources into it. At the very least, it allows you to get the necessities taken care of including purchasing a domain and finding a hosting package.

What to expect from a one-pager

It’s important not to expect too much from a one page website. Remember, they’re best used as a temporary solution until you can get a more defined solution under your domain. Search engine traffic will be at a minimum. Chances are your page will be mostly static, meaning that you’ll put up the content once and that’s it. Your temporary site will have a tough time gaining search engine brownie points if there’s nothing being done with the site and it remains stagnant. Your best option for generating traffic to your one-pager is to get your domain name out to people through self promotion. Put your domain in your email signatures, on your business cards, brochures and everywhere else your company name is seen.

If you’re not all that keen on promoting a website that is rather underwhelming, especially when you’ve got bigger plans down the road, then maybe you’d prefer to hold off on all of that flag waving until you’re officially ready to go. A one-pager can be a great little landing page tool for giving people a quick information session on your company with a number to call or an email form for questions. If you’re looking for more of a bang from your website then be prepared to devote some serious time and resources toward it and toward marketing your website.

Even if you have minimal content to work with, a one page website can be developed into more than just a static page without having to map out multiple pages. Contact Point Click Media to find out how your vision best fits into your website.

Posted in Tips and Tricks

Using Google Apps On Your Own Domain

January 12th, 2011

folder

photo credit: EvelynGiggles

Proper organization has become a business necessity that is increasingly crucial to success. In the past, organization didn’t involve a whole lot. You sat behind a stack of papers that busted through the ceiling tiles that are “to be filed” and you had a boss that came around a few times a day to make sure you were still working and not photocopying your family jewels on the company Xerox machine to send to the new girl in the HR department. Today’s business, though, is all about efficiency and employee productivity.   Google has a great network of free applications that allow your business to take all of your individual everyday programs and combine them into a great little package that can really increase efficiency throughout your business.

Email

No biggie, right? We all have our favourite email programs. But what happens when your computer crashes 10 minutes before your presentation to a major client and you can’t open the slideshow attachment from your project manager? Yeah, you look REAL efficient. Luckily Google stores everything securely online and can sync email to virtually any device you want.

Calendars

We know that most email programs have built in calendar features that allow us to book meetings and schedule tasks, etc. Google however, allows you to share calendars with other people and send reminders and invites to upcoming events, making sure everyone is always on the same page. Additionally, you can set calendars to private for internal use or to public for broader access, so if you operate a concert hall, for example, and want to put your scheduled performances on your website, you can embed a Google calendar right into it.

Documents

With Google Docs you don’t need to open Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint just to create a presentation for your board meeting. Google Docs allows you to create documents, spreadsheets and even slideshow presentations all from one place. Further more, you can also share these documents with other people in your office and allow them editing and revision rights. And you thought there was nothing easier than sorting through 14 revisions of attachments from an email discussion with your coworkers…

Now here’s the kicker. Google Apps is fully adaptable to your domain. That is, everything you do now with a half dozen programs can all be unified under one brand. Your brand. You now have the ability to organize all of the little things into one great cloud of information for your business all under your domain name. There are also loads of add-ons to make your life even easier.

Google Apps is free for businesses of up to 50 employees. We’ve really only scratched the surface of what Google Apps can offer your business, so for a look at the additional services that you can take advantage of check out the Google Apps for Business information page.

To get your business set up and running with Google Apps, contact Point.Click Media.

Posted in Web Tools

A Tribute to the Greatest Christmas Dads

December 22nd, 2010

Vancouver 2009 - 029

photo credit: Richard Faulder - This should be the cover of every Christmas comedy, ever.

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

Well, it’s that time of year again. That time of year where all the dads on the block collectively try to out-do one another by igniting the transformer up the street while broadcasting an aurora borealis of holiday goodness into the night sky. No son, that’s not Rudolf tip-toeing across the roof with Kris Kringle in tow… it’s Daddy hanging upside down from the gutter by a string of LEDs.

So with Christmas being all about family we figure it’s time for a tribute to some of the best Christmas Dads to have ever shamefully signed on to be cast in an otherwise terrible Christmas movie:

Clark Griswold

How can any list of the best Christmas Dads not start off with Mr. Lampoon himself? Any man that can blow a cat clean through his living room floor or ride a flaming pizza pan down the side of a mountain at Mach 4 before crashing into a Walmart Back to the Future style all in the name of family just has to be the king of Christmas.

Peter McCallister

OK, so maybe a guy who leaves his kid at home and takes off with the rest of the family during the holidays isn’t the best dad per se… but Petey Mac gets Daddy Mac points for raising a kid that puts Homeland Security to shame on a shoestring budget. What 8-year-old do you know that can hardwire a blow torch to the back door AND remember the fabric softener? Every kid wanted to be Macaulay Culkin. I mean, without spending the night at Neverland Ranch.

Howard Langston

Although watching Jingle All The Way was as painful as swallowing a basket full of decorative Christmas pinecones, you have to appreciate a dad who straps on a rocket pack and has an all out brawl with Sinbad in the middle of a Christmas parade to get his kid a Turbo Man action figure. Now that’s parenting. To be fair though, no one needs an excuse to give Sinbad a beat down in public.

Tim Taylor

I know this one isn’t a movie, but at last who could forget the lovable Tim ‘The Tool Man’. The king of Home Improvement always had the most awesomely destructive Christmas displays ever. Not every nativity scene has a pneumatic manger than can fire baby Jesus the length of a warship.

It’s not easy being a Christmas movie dad, but with the constant electrocutions, snow bank face plants and flaming turkeys comes an unparalleled appreciation for family. We hope that you enjoy your family time just as much as we will during the holiday season.

Now, where’d I put that extension cord…

Posted in General News

Is Paypal the solution for your e-commerce?

December 15th, 2010

How to win two bucks

photo credit: lejoe

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

Back in the days when e-commerce was first starting to makes waves in gaining peoples trust about providing valuable credit card information online, one of the trusted sites that popped up to the forefront was PayPal. Not only was it a well known and secure system for processing payments, it was quick and easy for online vendors to implement into their websites and allowed merchants to accept major credit cards, checks and money transfers online.

This is pretty much still how PayPal operates today. It’s probably not a shocking development to learn that it is also owned by e-commerce king eBay. PayPal continues to allow online vendors to sell goods via a PayPal account and then request payment from PayPal itself once they’ve accumulated a certain level of earnings. This is a great feature for small businesses who don’t have the budget to implement full blown shopping software into their website. It’s something that they can do pretty much all by themselves. There are also no monthly fees or sales limitations.

The scalability of PayPal however, has always been in question. Although PayPal is quite easy to use from a vendor perspective, it’s really not designed to be a full-on free shopping cart software. You can hook PayPal up to just about any existing cart software but it comes at a price. If your small business is working off of a limited budget, PayPal can quickly outgrow its efficiency when adding large numbers of products to an account. It quickly becomes a chore to continuously set up new products and modify existing products from your account. Moreover, PayPal vendor protection also does not cover digital goods and there can be hefty fees for charge-backs.

Not everyone is keen on handing their credit card information over to PayPal either, and some avoid it at all costs. Due to the sheer size of PayPal and number of clients in its Rolodex, it is a popular target for fraud, spam and scams. Be wary of this before you begin accepting payments online.

Overall, PayPal is a handy tool that can be used to kick start your e-commerce project, but it is best used for a few simple products. If your business only has a handful of products or if you’re an aspiring author looking to sell your book online, then PayPal may be a perfect solution for you; but you don’t necessarily want to be selling magazine subscriptions or an online database for a major product line. At this point a more customized online shopping solution is likely your best bet. In any case, make sure you do your homework with any shopping cart software to know what you’re getting into beforehand.

If you’d like to chat about an e-commerce solution that fits your business, contact Point Click Media.

Posted in Product Reviews

Rebranding Reviews: MySpace

December 1st, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

Note: Point.Click Media was not involved with this project. This is merely a review for study purposes.

Just in case you haven’t been following the evolution chart of social media, let me fill you in. In the beginning there were forums. Forums are a place where users can group together and discuss their favourite topics, everything from collective bargaining agreements to collecting belly button lint. Today, we have Facebook and Twitter to eat up 85% of our workday. But sandwiched in between the evolution of forums and Facebook is an interesting transition phase that is the subject of our study.

Evolution

MySpace launched in 2003, and quickly became the place for stylin’ and profilin’ by allowing users to customize their own little corner of web. Users could design their own profile by adding virtually anything they wanted to it, from color schemes and photos to video to music. Basically, MySpace allowed anyone to swipe and plagiarize anything they could get their hands on to show off their individualism. However, in 2008, MySpace was quickly left to pick up the pieces of their shattered empire and suck in the dusty desert air after being slammed by that Mac truck that is Facebook.

But to their credit, instead of folding up like a cheap tent, MySpace has stuck it out and begun to make strides in winning back their clan. They’ve started with a swift facelift.

myspace

Now, contrary to popular belief or as this wordmark may have you believe, MySpace is not flat lining. MySpace is not dead. What they’ve done is taken an incredibly bold risk in allowing you to interpret the concept behind MySpace by making it whatever you want it to be. Although the above image is now the official corporate logo, there is also an accompanying wordmark that contains the full MySpace name, so for those of us who just don’t get it, there’s still a secondary logo to fall back on. There’s a lot that can be done with this logo, and I believe that’s what MySpace wants.

Although this rebranding makes me wonder about the endless amount of mockery that could fall on MySpace with that open ended logo… kudos to MySpace. They’ve taken a huge risk in adopting a logo and brand that can easily be misunderstood or misread. It’s a huge gamble, but they did it anyway. Sometimes big risk comes with a big payoff.

Let us know what you think.

Posted in Branding Reviews, General News

Transitioning Your Printed Materials to the Web – Part 5: Don’t Go Overboard

November 24th, 2010

Star Wars pimpin'

photo credit: popculturegeek.com - "Hey baby, I'm a website. Check me out! I'm totally pimped to the max with animated graphics, starburst effects, page wipes and text so bright you can't even read it! Cost me almost as much as my gold tooth!"

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

The following is Part 5 of our series on transitioning your business materials to the web. To review the past articles visit the following links:

Part 1: Layouts
Part 2: Images, Resolution & Color Profiling
Part 3: Web Safe Fonts
Part 4: Dealing With Navigation

Over the past 5 weeks we’ve taken you through some of the thought process that goes into taking printed materials and bringing them to the web. Now that you understand some of the challenges that web designers and developers have to face and some of the limitations that the web imposes in different areas, it’s important not to go overboard in trying to make up for certain shortcomings.

Make no mistake, the web is one of the best marketing tools at your disposal. But just because you CAN do just about anything you want with your website, doesn’t mean you SHOULD or HAVE to. Often, businesses see the web as an opportunity to really clang the bells and toot the whistles with all kind of flashy gimmicks and animated graphics to fill out their websites. While effective if used properly, animation serves a functional purpose to enhance web content and not necessarily to turn your website into the command center of the Star Ship Enterprise. You stand a much better chance of winning over your audience by keeping it tasteful. It’s kind of like those fashion models who drone out along the runway wearing an outrageously designed $200,000 gown made of recycled car batteries. After the shock value (no pun intended), there’s really not much use for it.

Remember that your content is what people come for. A great website shouldn’t have to rely on such extreme tactics to get the point across. By utilizing some of these ideas that we’ve brought forth during this series, it’s our hope that your designs will be easily adaptable to the web. Just keep in mind that for all the technological restrictions that the internet may have, it’s still very flexible. No matter what your design problem may be there is likely a solution for it.

If you’re having problems translating some of your printed materials to the web, Point Click Media can help with providing feedback and recommendations on getting the job done right.

This concludes our 5 part series on transitioning your printed materials to the web.

Posted in Tips and Tricks

Transitioning Your Printed Materials to the Web – Part 4: Dealing with Navigation

November 17th, 2010

IMG_0034

photo credit: KF

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

The following is Part 4 of our series on transitioning your business materials to the web. To review the past articles visit the following links:

Part 1: Layouts
Part 2: Images, Resolution & Color Profiling
Part 3: Web Safe Fonts

Dealing with Navigation

Navigation in printed media is fairly simple. You flip to the table of contents, find out where you want to go and flip pages again until you get there. A table of contents is essentially one big listing of everything held within the material you’re holding or reading. Although websites can have these types of listings as well (commonly called site maps), navigating through a website can become much more complex than simply clicking a link or flipping a page.

First, let’s look at how a book is typically structured. The contents of a book are usually sliced up into chapters and can often be divided up even more into sub-sections of each chapter. Chapters can go on for several pages at a time. This is where a table of contents comes in handy to find out where your desired information is located. On the web, that same chapter or section of information can be placed on one single page and be structured with the same sub-sections without the user having to flip pages continuously. Just visit any page on Wikipedia for a perfect example.

Navigation on the web is also about convenience. While when reading a novel you must return to the index or table of contents each time you want to find a new piece of information, a website typically has built-in navigation on every page so that a user can get where they are going in one click or minimal clicks. Web navigation can be quite elaborate with several drop-down menus or interactivity with animations and rollover effects. Your navigation is an extremely important piece of your website. The average website visitor doesn’t have the patience to search meticulously through an index of pages to find a piece of information, so your navigation needs to be prominent and easy to use.

The idea behind a table of contents is the same in print and web, but they are presented in very different ways. When transitioning your printed materials to the web be sure to plan your navigation properly and structure your content in a way that adapts itself to being found quickly and easily. You don’t want your users sifting through a menu of 1,000 links to find what they want.

In the final segment of this series, we’ll examine the consequences of going overboard with your website.

Posted in Tips and Tricks

Transitioning Your Printed Materials to the Web – Part 3: Web Safe Fonts

November 10th, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

The following is Part 3 of our series on transitioning your business materials to the web. To review the past articles visit the following links:

Part 1: Layouts
Part 2: Images, Resolution & Color profiling

Learning About Web Safe Fonts

Ah… fonts. Every designer’s best friend and secret love affair. Having access to great typefaces is bliss for us font freaks. We love them and cherish them. It’s a match made in heaven…

*Cue needle scratching across the record*

WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN’T USE THEM ON MY WEBSITE? SMASH! KILL! DESTROY!!!

You see, with printed materials you don’t ever need to worry about a lack of fonts. When the product is printed, that’s it.  It looks great!

“That Awesomesauce-Italic-Bold-Condensed really makes Bob’s fax number POP!“

“That Awesomesauce-Italic-Bold-Condensed really makes Bob’s fax number POP!“

Unfortunately the web is a lot more dynamic and not every computer on the planet has all of the same cool fonts installed that your designer has. Alas, the mighty designer is left with a short list of common fonts referred to as ‘web safe’ to spice things up.

There are only a handful of fonts that are considered web safe, all of which you’ve likely seen in every email you’ve ever received from your grandmother. Yeah, those ones. She thinks she’s being stylish and hip by using bright yellow Comic Sans at size 72 to remind you about the pancake supper at church this Sunday. Unfortunately you’ll be unable to attend as the medicinal eye drops you require after this seizure-inducing invitation won’t wear off until Labour Day. Maybe by then her shoes will match again.

Here’s an official list of web safe fonts. (Pretty uninspiring, I know)

Until now the most common way around this was to turn your fantastic fonts into images. The problem of course, is that now your text can’t be read by search engines. Designers then began building Flash websites with all of their fonts embedded for your viewing pleasure.

“I just sat through 14 hours of pre-loading and my daughter’s wedding to access this guy’s contact information, but it was worth it. Look at those fonts!”

Finally, after much protesting and castrating of internet overlords, the technology exists to embed fonts dynamically into web pages.

photo credit: superfem - "WE'RE SAVED!"

photo credit: superfem - "WE'RE SAVED!"

Not so fast, Pancho Villa. Embedded fonts still increase page load times, and this new technology doesn’t account for older browsers. Remember Comic Sans Granny? That Netscape 4 browser she’s using to explode your retinas has no chance of displaying your fonts correctly. Although web standards are improving by leaps and bounds every day, we still need to realize that it’s just too impractical to be pixel perfect to every last person in front of a computer screen. If you truly want to play it safe, sticking with web safe fonts may be your best bet.

Next week we’ll bring navigation into the equation.

Posted in General News, Tips and Tricks

Transitioning Your Printed Materials to the Web – Part 2: Images, Resolution and Colors, Oh My!

November 3rd, 2010

You're CMYK'n Me Crazy

photo credit: bjornmeansbear

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

Last week we opened up a new topic that will hopefully help ease the transition of getting your business materials onto the web. To review last week’s opening article on layouts, click the following link:

Part 1: Layouts

We continue the theme this week by examining the differences in how images and content are displayed visually between print and web and the technology that binds them.

Learning About Images, Resolution & Color Profiling

Have you ever wondered why those photos you grabbed off of your friends’ Facebook page just don’t print out very well? They’re all blurry and pixelated… Well, the issue you’re facing when trying to print photographs from the web is that the web displays images at 72 dpi (dots per inch). This means that there are 72 dots of color defined within each inch of your image. Printed materials traditionally begin at 300 dpi and up. The higher the dpi on your images, the better quality and better definition your prints will have. Unfortunately for the web, 72 dpi is all we have to work with, which is fine for viewing on monitors or hanging up on your fridge at home, but don’t expect to be able to grab a photo off of the web and use it professionally to print a billboard advertisement.

Another thing to keep in mind when transitioning between the web and print is the difference in color profiling. The print world typically uses a four-color process to print your materials called the CMYK spectrum (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black). As you overlay each of these four color channels on top of each other, you’re essentially presented with a full color image. The web on the other hand utilizes the RGB spectrum (Red, Green, Blue) to view digital images. Monitors, televisions and other digital screens all use the RGB spectrum.

To learn more about how CMYK vs. RGB works, this article explains the differences quite well:

http://www.printernational.org/rgb-versus-cmyk.php

Due to the differences in the way the CMYK and RGB modes display colors, there are bound to be discrepancies when switching between them. Whether you’re attempting to convert printed materials to the web or vice versa, if your color modes are not adjusted properly, you’re likely to notice a difference in colors during the transition.

Finally, printers often use a numerical value to determine colors used in printed works to ensure that a color comes out properly.  While the web also has a numbering system to identify colors, it’s impossible to adjust the color balance of a user’s monitor. Colors will always vary from monitor to monitor, so if you’re set on getting that shade of red just right, let it be known that it will never be perfect for everyone.

Next up is every designer’s worst nightmare: Dealing with web safe fonts.

Posted in Tips and Tricks

Transitioning Your Printed Materials to the Web – Part 1: Layouts

October 27th, 2010

Erathic identity 2010

photo credit: Erathic Eric

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

If your business is looking to start leaving a footprint on the web, you should know that it’s not uncommon to start by using existing branding and materials to create a website. Let’s face it, we all have budgets and unless your business is brand spankin’ new or growing money on trees, doing an entire branding overhaul just to put together your first website can be overkill. Chances are there’s a lot of value in the materials that you already have, so transitioning those very items to the web makes sense.

There are some things to consider, though, when bringing printed literature to the web. In this series of articles we’ll look at 5 things you should keep in mind when crossing the print and web worlds.

Learning About Layouts

In print, the designers’ layout restrictions tend to be focused mostly on bleed and cut/fold lines. You have a predetermined canvas size to work with but as long as you follow your printer guidelines and keep readable texts a sufficient distance from any of the cut or fold areas you’re essentially free to do what you want with the canvas.

With the web however, there are many more restrictions to deal with. First, due to the variance in all of the different brands and sizes of computer monitors, you now have to deal with a slew of different canvas sizes all at once. In addition, since web pages are scrollable, you could have pages of text that go on for quite a while. Making sure the design of your website can accommodate these technological barriers is important for achieving brand unity.

Next, we have the issue of those pesky little things called ‘search engines’. You may or not be aware, but search engines are rather important. Whereas with printed brochures or business cards you can physically hand them out to people, on the web you rely on search engines to do that for you. Making sure that the content of your website is structured well enough to be able to be found by search engines is not necessarily as easy as it sounds either. The print world allows a designer to do all kinds of funky graphical layouts like using angled, curved, or overlapping text, etc., but on the web everything is read in good old fashioned straight lines. Keep in mind that all of the cool text effects that were done for your printed literature will either need to be stripped down or become part of your website’s imagery, and text found in imagery is not indexed by search engines.

Believe me, web designers have been pitchforking and torching their way through the streets of the internet for years trying to get these standards updated and we’re making progress, but new technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3 aren’t yet fully supported by all internet browsers. Until a technology is adopted universally there will always be hurdles to overcome in making web layouts more versatile. Web designers and developers still need to plan for browsers that don’t support these features.

Next week we’ll look at a reversal of roles, so to speak, and talk about resolutions.

Posted in Tips and Tricks

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