I started using Amazon.com while I was in college to search for cheaper textbooks and sell them back. I continue to use the website to find cheaper books than the local book stores offer, but I have become addicted to shopping on it for everything now.

The reason for this new online shopping addiction? The new “Add to Wish List” button that Amazon.com has offered. I know Amazon.com does not offer every product I want to buy, so they made it so you can add products from other websites! Genius! And that is why I am addicted to Amazon’s wish list. It is very easy to do, I even showed my mother how to use it. Read how to use Amazon.com’s Wish List Toolbar or you can add a bookmark to any browser you use. And then you can notify your friends and family or they can search for your name for your wish list.

And of course, people will only buying me gifts a few times a year, but it is a great way to compare prices of different websites when you add the same product. Or just keep track of where I find things, so when I’m ready to buy it I know where to go. It’s so much fun because you feel like you are shopping without spending any money yet. I have 42 items and counting…

I’ve been gaining interest in learning more about how to better market business’s websites. Thought I would start with books I can find at the library first, after all they are free! I came across “Web Design and Marketing Solutions for Business Websites” by Kevin Potts. It was a quick read because most of the information in the book was just review. But he did have a few quotes I liked on how he could explain situations to someone that does not have to know much about web design.

Avoiding Corporate speak - about writing better copy for the web

Imaging walking into a pastry shop, asking for a Boston cream doughnut, and getting the following response from the shopkeeper: “That particular confection, with its falsely historical nomenclature of alternate-desert elements and synergistic relationship with first light beverages…” You would probably leave. As you walked down the street looking for a Dunkin’ Donuts, you’d wonder how that bakery ever stayed in business.

The goal of copy should be to open dialog with your target audience with plain language to not intimidate them.

Reading Level
I thought it was interesting that most TV shows are written at an eighth-grade reading level to appeal to everyone. “TV is written by professionals who know how to speak to a board demographic in a common language.” It is common to assume your audience is more educated than they really are. People do not want to think too hard when reading, especially on the web where it’s easy to just click somewhere else.

Corporate Blogging
I did not realize how popular corporate blogging has become, he recommended a few books and websites on the issue:

Blogging for Business: Everything You Need to Know and Why You Should Care

buisinessblogconsulting.com - Advice, tips and best practices for corporate blogs

Technorati.com - Recognized hub of all things blogging; tracks millions of blogs

RSS for the website
There can be multiple RSS feeds on a website, which I did not think about before. Places where a RSS fed could be helpful would be on the careers page, corporate news, e-commerce (promotions, sales, new additions), support, and of course the blog. Keeping readers completely up to date will only generate more and more sales.

I started reading another Sitepoint book, Online Marketing Inside Out. I always enjoy reading books and emails from Sitepoint.

Click to download an excerpt from the book “Online Marketing Inside Out” by Brandon Eley & Shayne Tilley.

Press Releases

I was intrigued to learn about press releases (on page 8). I wouldn’t have thought to send out press releases, I thought it was just a thing of the past. In the book it states, “Start now! You simply cannot write too many press releases.” There are many different opportunities to send out a press release, a new service/product to announce, case study on how you helped a client, won an award, customer testimonials, and many more. Adding hyperlinks, photos, audio, video and buttons to social media facilities will further take advantage of it being online and further attracting the audience.

Modern Monitoring of Press Coverage (page 27)

When other people are writing about your company, you would want to know about it right? Monitoring what is said on the web is like keyword research, things to consider tracking are: company name, key employees’ names and phrases you want to rank well in. You can use RSS feeds, Technorati (blog search engine), Google Alerts, Trackur (social media monitoring), Twitterverse (type a word and you’ll see every time it’s been mentioned) and many more mentioned in the book to monitor online press coverage.

To learn more about online marketing you will have to purchase the book on Sitepoint.

With some experience optimizing web pages for SEO under my belt, it was great to learn more about SEO from workshops at work at Lowe’s. A company called Resolution Media came in to share their knowledge and show us how to improve our site on many different types of pages.

Resolution Media gave us a list of tips for 10 Design Best Practices for SEO, I thought it would be helpful to share. I’m sure some of this will just be overview for some of you out there.

10 Design Best Practices for SEO

1. Avoid Splash Pages because of slow loading time and no crawable text
2. Avoid Flash/Javascript menus because links aren’t crawable and they don’t pass on link popularity
3. Don’t overuse Flash, images, etc.
4. Change generic Anchor Text to be more descriptive
   • Click Here for Kitchen Appliances instead of just Click Here
5. Write informative Title Tags
   • Lowe’s Home Improvement: Buy Kitchen Cabinets, Paint, Appliances and Flooring instead of just Lowe’s Home Improvement
6. Describe images with detailed ALT tags
7. Use CSS to give spider cleaner code to crawl
8. Avoid embedding CSS/Javascript
9. Use Header Tags for
10. If you use Flash/Javascript, utilize Progressive Enhancement

Continuing on my review of The Graphic Design Business Book on information on proposals, clients, and pricing. I will start with proposals, Ted writes, “The most important factor in the success of a design project is the bid process.” Most clients will request for a proposal (RFP), a good proposal is made up of four parts. 1. Capabilities statement - Why your company is best suited, history and past experience. 2. Project overview - What you perceive to be the scope of the work (show some thinking on your part.) 3. Technical. 4. Cost - It’s a good idea of specify exactly how many concepts the client will get to cover your butt. On writing proposals, I thought this was an insightful and very true quote, “Write in a way that comes naturally. Omit needless words. Do not overstate. Do not explain too much. Do not inject opinion. Be clear.”

Talk in ways that the clients can understand, talk the talk. Read the business press, you should be comfortable discussing return on investments. Read the Wall Street Journal at least weekly, it is written very well and you’re be learning the lingo quicker than you think. Clients sometimes need hand-holding, pamper your clients, make them think they’re always number one. Keeping clients is important for returning business, three ways to lose a client are: printing messes up, typo (hire a proofreader for large projects), the client is not satisfied with the work.

Down to the costs. Every designer knows there will always be changes! If changes were not included in the original quote and the client requests changes, do them and yourself a favor, send the client a memo before they get the bill - explain that the work is additional and was not anticipated in the contract. You can also make it clear that the changes were not included in the original quote, but as a courtesy, they won’t be charged for the costs. However, any additional changes thereafter will need to be billed.

How do you configure your hourly rate can feel like a guessing game. Here is an easy comprehendable formula: First figure out your billable hours - 52 weeks x 40 hours = 2,080. You’ll need a vacation eventually, subtract 80. Allow for five days of sick time, subtract 40. Don’t forget our seven legal holidays, subtract 60, you’re now at 1,900 billable hours. Now no designer is in anyway billable for an actual forty hours a week. Time-consuming tasks such as running errands, backing up your system, cleaning up for a client visit can quickly add up to about an hour a day, subtract a painful 230 for downtime. Now we’re at 1670 of possible billable hours. An average salary for a graphic designer runs around $45,000 a year, divide by 1670, and get an hourly rate of $27. But remember, this rate does not cover expenses, most design firms have expenses averaging at 31% of the total. Multiply it to cover the overhead, and you’ll get $8 more an hour, equaling it to $35 an hour. We haven’t made allowances here for slow periods, a common percentage of profit is 15-25 percent. Let’s pick 20 percent, adding $7, making it $42 an hour. You must also incorporate experience into the equation, so starting at $42 an hour might be beneneath some designers’ expertise.

Hope you learned something from The Graphic Design Business Book. I would encourage you to purchase this book and read it cover to cover to learn more. There are also full contracts and forms on copyrights, taxes and lawsuits in the book.

Teaming up with eleven of the design industry’s leading experts, Ted Crawford shows beginning and seasoned professionals everything they need to know to start and run a successful business in the book, The Graphic Design Business Book. Never judge a book by it’s cover will definitely apply here, don’t let the poorly designed cover fool you!

I always enjoy purchasing new books to get further educated on my career in graphic design. But with being laid-off my budget doesn’t really allow for that. So I thought I’d give the library a try and see what they had. Most of them were a tad outdated, but I was lucky to find this insightful book to learn more about the business side of graphic design. I wanted so share some of the things that I learned from this book.

In Chapter 8, Bringing in clients, Ted talks about how you have to think about what the client wants to hear,

You call clients to see if you can help. So think “How can I help you?” instead of “Do you want to buy?”

Your purpose is to help them with their communication problem, solving problems is a valuable service and a worthwhile endeavor.

So where can you find clients? A good place to start is ad agencies and design studios to offer design, production, photographic enhancement for their overflow projects. Along with publishers and printers for getting artwork printer ready, typesetting and production. Look for potential business everywhere you go. You may be at the doctor’s office and having a hard time understanding a procedure, think could he use a brochure to explain it clearer? Someone writes down contact information for you, could they use a business card? Or if you’re handed a poorly designed business card could a newly designed card increase their business? Ted states, “You’re not selling a service so much as you’re solving communication problems… Businesses all want to improve their visibility and profitability.” Getting leads and networking to find new clients is a good way to start.

Promoting yourself to get new business is essential. It can take on many forms, a web site, creative directories, sending out mailers or brochures, mailing lists, and pro-bono work. With a mailer you could state, “I got you to notice this direct-mail piece and consider hiring me. I could help you be noticed by your prospective clients.” I would put in examples with descriptions, along with testimonials.

I will continue my book review onto the next post with information on proposals, clients, and pricing. I would definitely recommend purchasing The Graphic Design Business Book by Tad Crawford.

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Tricky questions are just known to come up in interviews. I was recently asked, “What do you want in a job?” I took a quick moment to think and responded, “To be able to create artwork and continue to better myself and learn along the way.” After the interview, I thought more about the question. I wanted to add, “To be able to be creative.”

Being a creative thinker is what makes me who I am and my work. Creative thinking allows me to think outside the box and put existing ideas together for a new idea. Internal motivation also fuels the fire underneath me for my need to be creative. Together with my knowledge and experience allows me to be a creative graphic designer.

I also want to work with other people, I think the best ideas come from when you can bounce ideas off each other. Be inspired by others or get constructive criticism, to really push your design that much further. Design is really about a collaboration. Whether it with a client or a co-worker.

That’s how I wanted to answer the question. So next time I’m asked, I will be ready to respond.

In February… North Carolina came in fourth with an unemployment rate of 10.7 percent. I was laid off on February 28th, due to the budget being affected by the economy. At first I was in complete and utter shock. First thing that raced into my mind was fear. Fear of not being able to make my recently new mortgage payment. After speaking with my mother, I learned about unemployment benefits. I just had to simply fill out a form online and update my status weekly. It’s a very easy paycheck and keeping me from having to pickup a crap part-time job while I search for a job. It’s not as much as I was making, but it’s definitely better than nothing.

I never thought I would be laid off, I thought it was the sort of thing that only happened to factory workers. I know searching for a job is rough, at least in my field. It can become very emotional, I will get excited about the jobs that are being advertised on Careerbuilder, Monster, SimplyHired, and Craigslist. Problem is, I know there’s so much competition out there. On a previous interview, I asked how many applicants they had apply while they were advertising Careerbuilder. I was shocked to hear the number 350+! Made me feel excited just to get to the interview! Then waiting starts to get to me and I start to question myself. Am I not good enough? Did I just waste my time in school? And then I will get confirmation that I am good enough when I get a call for an interview and they rave about how great my portfolio is.

And then I’m waiting for a phone call again. It’s such a rollercoaster. I try to distance myself and not get too excited until I get an offer, but it’s hard. I just hope I to get a good job with a good company and good people, with an acceptable salary in the not too distance future. There’s only so much yard work and house work to keep me out of boredom.

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