Website Navigation Then and Now

Posted on 30. Sep, 2009 by Smiley Cat: Christian Watson's Web Design Blog.

I recently came across a collection of website navigation bars from a few years ago. I couldn't help but wonder how those navbars looked today, and how the impact of site growth, redesigns, branding updates, etc. have affected them.Here's a comparison ...

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Does Your AdWords Suck – What can we do for you?

Posted on 28. Sep, 2009 by Dave.

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When it comes to traffic there are basically two ways to get targeted and interested buyers to go to your site. That is organic (search engines or writing articles), and yes like anything else with organic in the title this does require more time and rarely ever does it come with a guarantee, then there’s the alternative, which of course is pay per clicks (Google adWords and the like). And that is what I want to talk to you about – because once they realize that all you have to do to get an audience is to pay Google to get you traffic many make the huge mistake of thinking that just by creating an AdWords campaign their phone should start ringing off the hook. And that is never the case.

Think of it in terms of a blind date. A blind date occurs when the two persons going out on the date are meeting for the first time. Typically another person that knows both people helps initiate the date, however there’s never any guarantee you are going to meet Mr. right. Similarly in AdWords you can initiate a campaign and have interested individuals come to your site but nine out of ten if the landing page is vague, irrelevant or just plain boring – don’t really know how to tell you buddy, but don’t expect her to call for a second date.

Sadly though, people get desperate and despite how hysterically disastrous those blind dates were they still agree to go on other blind dates. Unfortunately for many would be marketers AdWords can be just the same – year after year millions spend thousands of dollars on stupendously unprofitable campaigns – is it because AdWords sucks? Well, maybe it does suck for them individually but it most certainly does not suck for millions of other marketers. So what’s their secret?

Well, the secret is not actually getting people to come to website it is in what you plan for them when they get there – so now I’m going to show you by example two of the biggest mistakes people make by not having the right landing page.

This one particular client had been running his campaign for a number of years, and he’d already spent a substantial amount of money on it, yet wasn’t seeing any real benefit – so what’s the problem here? The problem was that he was driving that traffic right to his home page, a home page that was a little vague to say the least, evidently because this is what he saw everyone else doing.

If someone told you to jump off a bridge would you do it? Don’t just do something with that traffic just because you see everyone else is doing it for all you know their campaign may not be making it either, nor do you know what they may or may not be trying to achieve.

A good marketing campaign begins by understanding what YOU’RE trying to achieve. And a custom-landing page is an integral part of every pay per click campaign. It helps to capture the visitor attention by defining what you want then to do, what you stand for and how your brand should be perceived.

Secondly, you want to capture that traffic and put it onto a newsletter list. Remember, people are going to need to see your offer more than once before they decide (that’s why we remember commercials), and the more expensive your item is the more times their going to need to see it before they decide to buy anything – so the landing page must have a way to collect information to put onto that list, so that later you can turn that list into profit.

So don’t just drive your traffic to an offer immediately expecting to win, but build a relationship with them first.

What can we do for you?

If you want to increase your return on investment and if your tired of the same old AdWords not getting you enough new business and your ready to increase your conversion rates – Then Foamers is ready to discuss your custom landing page or if you need a quote, or want us to built one, just get in touch.

We do all types of landing page for all kinds of businesses. That means that we can do a landing page with or without forms, with or without Flash or have it custom made to your requirements and we can link it right to your Google PPC campaign. Feel free to contact us now!

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My drawing for the Travelling Moleskines

Posted on 15. Sep, 2009 by veerle@duoh.com.

A while ago I received an invitation from Jon Hicks to join a project called the Travelling Moleskines. It immediately triggered my interest to accept the invite as I love to sketch… What's this Travelling Moleskines project? A few themed moleski...

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Make A Custom Craigslist Ad And Auto Post & Repost Ads on CL

Posted on 15. Sep, 2009 by Dave.

In the past you heard me mention our custom craigslist ad design service – basically with a custom craiglist ad we can change the look of your simple text ad into a flashy piece of advertisement using graphics.

Also what a custom craingslist ad can do for you is make your services stand out more and look more professional – people go from looking at the plain-text ads of your competitors to looking at a custom graphically rich advertisement and that makes a huge difference in getting you more responses.

Now I know after we design your ad you still have to post it on craigslist and not only post it but keep it posted and repost every so often so that the ad does not get stale and stays on top and I know that’s a pain in the ass. So today I’m writing to tell you about this new service I just found out about called CraigslistPoster.com.

Craigslist Poster is a tool you can use to automatically post and repost ads to craigslist. This is how it works. You create a campaign with them – they post and repost your ad to keep it on top – your ad get maximum exposure on CL…

And whether it is a current post or a future post, they make sure everything is in place to keep it posted for your duration and manage removing old posts and posting new ones to keep you on top.

I just thought you might enjoy it and it also complements our custom craigslist ad design services rather wall

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Redesigning the Mint.com Bugeting Screen

Posted on 12. Sep, 2009 by Smiley Cat: Christian Watson's Web Design Blog.

Not too long ago, Mint, a popular online service for managing your finances, redesigned a great feature which enables you to set a monthly budget and track your progress against it. My wife, who is the main Mint user in our household has been struggli...

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Which is Better Magento or osCommerce?

Posted on 11. Sep, 2009 by Dave.

As a freelance developer I must say that since they released Magento last year I’ve been really dreading the idea of making the switch over from osCommerce. To me it seemed like a no brainer – I thought osCommerce has been around a while and, as such, there is a very well established community whom are fairly responsive to any unfathomable problems you may have, should you post within their forums.

Plus there is a ton of “contribution” or “modules” to be found on the OS site. Need a CMS on your site? It’s there. Need to make and dispatch money off coupons? Sorted. Want the increasingly popular lightbox effect on your images? All doable.

Beside everything comes with clear instructions and, on the whole, are regularly updated with bug fixes so if you get one that’s a few months old, chances are it’ll work just fine.

However, what finally caught my attention about Magento was not all those great features, like coupons, specials, multiple checkout and shipping options, with all those option things start to get a little too complex, actually the one thing that really peaked my interest is that I learned that templatemonster was getting in on that action – so it is my pleasure to announce and present you our new Magento themes!

Everything you love about our templates and less of what you hate – they removed all the complexity and technical details so you don’t have to. Take a look at some of these samples while I tell you more about Magento.

Magento is an open source eCommerce web application that has a modular architecture and is extremely flexible. It comes with a number of online shop maintenance capabilities.

Magento is also simple to configure and easy to customize. And despite the fact that it was launched just a year ago, it has been gaining more and more popularity among Web designers and e-business owners.

Magento also has an innumerable amount of credentials in its pocket from some very big e-solution players. Magento Enterprise Edition, a commercial version aimed at larger companies, was launched this April. The CMS includes such advanced features as marketing, promotional and SEO tools; analytics and reporting; mobile commerce; catalog-management tools.

And now Magento users have the freedom to customize their store with new themes, templates and plug-ins…

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Rotating Text with CSS

Posted on 10. Sep, 2009 by Smiley Cat: Christian Watson's Web Design Blog.

If you look up you'll notice I made a small update to the way dates are presented in my headings. It's not a big change, but I wanted to include the year without increasing the height of the date stamp.Rotating text to the rescue! Following Jonathan Sn...

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EECI2009, the first ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter Conference

Posted on 07. Sep, 2009 by veerle@duoh.com.

In October I’ll be traveling to Leiden, The Netherlands. Never been there but apparently the city is famous for its almshouses, university, museums and glorious history - and the spirit of the Golden Age lives on here. This is a place where Rembr...

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Another Satisfied Template Customization Client

Posted on 04. Sep, 2009 by Dave.

While we may not run a huge operation like some of these other guys ( our main focus is fast and easy template customizations) once we finish a project our clients are typically very happy. Bernard Castro (MERCHANT LOGISTICS, LLC) signed up for our template customizations and we got this unsolicited letter from him today.

This letter comes to your organization to express my gratitude for the experience I had when designing my webpage with you. Thank you for making the entire process hassle free and convenient. I never had reason for concern or worry as to whether the website would meet my expectations, whatever I requested, your organization accomplished! You were very patient and professional; giving guidance and advice on how to best customize our website to make it effective, to be able to attract customers, and all the while using the content I formulated to describe what my company does. I was never made to feel as though I was a bother with countless requests and you were always happy to assist in any way possible.

I had webpage “brainstorms” about how I wanted to design my website & as soon as I called or emailed the ideas, they were implemented immediately! No waiting, no delays, done!

I think my website looks great and I proudly share my web address with anyone who asks for it!

I have no reservations, whatsoever, recommending FOAMERS.net to anyone seeking an excellent web page design service, which is offered at a terrific value. I look forward to a continued business relationship with FOAMERS.net as my organization’s webpage design needs continue to change and expand.

This letter comes with my deepest thanks & gratitude-

Thank you so much Bernie you are awesome to work with and I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to write a testimonial about our services. Should you wish to acquire more information about our template customization services simply get in touch (Hablamos español) and tell us what you think.

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Lawn Care Business Marketing – 3 Ways to Fight Customer Attrition

Posted on 03. Sep, 2009 by Chestin Salisbury - EzineArticles Expert Author.

One of the BIGGEST challenges of growing any successful lawn care or landscaping business is making sure your customers stay with you month after month and hopefully year after year. Because it's at least 5-10 times more expensive to land a brand new c...

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