Web marketing & development company

Even though the home page on any well designed website is usually the highlight of the site, its purpose is actually somewhat martyr-istic.

Think of it like a handshake. You can really get a good idea of a person based solely on their handshake. The 3 to 5 seconds your hands are clasped is all that is required to instill an impression of them, whether good or bad. After that, the handshake severely looses its purpose and is overtaken by the wave, the two-finger salute, and other welcoming hand gestures.

It is the same for the home page. It exists to create an instantaneous appealing impression onto your brain so that you are inclined to explore more of the site. Its generosity to its fellow pages is admirable, because once you take one step deeper into the site, the home page dies a little.

Basically, all that is showcased on the home page is reiterated in greater detail throughout the rest of the site. It is a collection of the best of what the site has to offer in a small and streamlined space. In other words, it’s a teaser of more good stuff to come.

I recently used ExpressionEngine to develop a web site for a client of ours. Here is what I thought of EE and what I discovered about its strengths and weaknesses.

Customization

ExpressionEngine's strength is in its flexibility. It can handle simple things like pages and blogs and you can also create custom content types to handle things like product cataglogues and business directories.

With this flexibility you lose a lot of automation that is found in other content management systems. Many simple things aren't automatic such as pagination and RSS. When things finally get working it is a beautiful moment, but be warned that there is a big learning curve.

Documentation

There is a very good documentation library on ExpressionEngine. There is a fairly large community following EE, and there are plenty of people working on plugins and add-ons. Devot-EE is a good website for EE plugins. In comparison to Joomla, EE lacks the depth and number of plugins and add-ons.

With today’s technological proliferation in many aspects of our daily lives, we can see a degeneration of our work ethic, creativity, and plain motivation. Now that we have computers and phones doing every nuance of our bidding, we’ve become, in a word, lazy.

As a day-to-day schmoe, this didn’t come to me as much of a shock, but as a designer this means that the very tools I use to create may actually be sapping the juice out of my imagination.

I realized all this when I stumbled upon an article called “The Dying Art of Design” from Smashing Magazine, which infers that modern designers rely too heavily on built-in program tools and effects, online freebies, and inspiration lists that what they end up designing becomes so diluted and generic due to the massive and immediate information transfer of the Internet. Trends spring up and designers pounce on them to gobble the best and brightest of visual elements until newer, cooler trends emerge.

This grabby reflex is most evident in web design, where the life or death of a website depends on the tenth of a second synapse snap from an online user. The site needs to be the latest and trendiest in order for it to survive for the next couple of years. It seems that the only easy solution is to just regurgitate the same trendy design over and over with some color changes here and a few slight variations there. As a web designer, this hurts. It makes it very difficult to avoid and overcome the parrot-follower bottleneck on the highway of good design. I admit that I have recognized some of this in my own work process, but many times projects end up creating themselves (eventually) with a guiding hand from myself. I see these trends and try to reach for something further. I want to create designs that shine through all the gunk in a Google search.

I know I’ve written about all these ideals, but I am still implementing them myself. My head buzzes with “Do this” and “Don’t do that” and “Try it this way”. I must keep in mind the client's needs, make sure the website looks amazing and functions well, rephrase this sentence so that they don’t misunderstand, explain why they should want ‘this’ instead of ‘that’, think Positive! Positive! Positive!

Despite this mantra talk, the most important standard that I’m still training myself to uphold is confidence in my ingenuity. I know I’m a great designer and I love my job, but after so many nit-picky criticisms from clients, however constructive, I noticed that I began to limit myself, decreasing the imagination and experimentation of my designs, unconsciously thinking that because they weren’t used before, they won’t be used in the future. Very wrong.

An essential part of being a successful designer is to lean so close the edge of trends that you’re always on the cusp of innovation, always one step ahead. I was sticking too close to the client's expectations instead of testing the limits and pushing the envelop of design. Sometimes I would even build a tentative template with wild and crazy designs just to get it out of my system, then hide it away before I began working on the real template. I forgot that usually the client has unclear or unspecific ideas about what they want and that it’s up to me to present to them all the limitless possibilities that their website can go towards. If the initial design you present is too experimental for them, then make something else that is more traditional. Don’t reject it before even allowing the client the chance to decide if they like it or not. It’s always better to have too much than not enough.

This has been a growing process for me. I started out as a green graphic designer, mostly working in print and harboring very little experience with web development. I learned quickly, bit by bit, eventually establishing myself as a talented designer. And although I continued to expand my knowledge of the field, I seemed to have peaked, my projects quietly plateaued, neither rising nor falling. The change was so steady that I hardly noticed it. I did finally notice however, and after practicing everything that I’ve written so far, I was able to step back, as if viewing the larger picture and confidently return to my original goal: design great, innovative websites. And now I’ll get back to it, ever rising.

Being a graphic/web designer for a small, cozy firm is miraculous, awesome and sometimes a little bit daunting. When we get a new client and the contracts are approved, everything comes down to me and the following obstacles: What is the new site going to look like? How will the content be organized for maximum clarity and usability? How will it function? What will it say? How will visitors respond?

Now, I do not have the final say in many of these aspects, but they all hinge on how I decide to design the site. Because I’m the design expert, and the client hired us—and me—to create a new website that encompasses everything they do, I am required to uphold their trust and prove to them that we can do what they want. Their first bit of investment is presented through me with the designs I create for them.

See what I mean about the ‘daunting’ part?

However, I am only one person, and if a client is unsatisfied with my designs, the company will not plummet headfast into Purgatory. On the contrary, by learning what the client doesn’t like, I am more able to produce something that they do like. Like the old adage says: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” And again and again.

Like all growing businesses, improvement and efficiency is absolutely necessary for a company to succeed into the future. And it is especially important with today’s economic trends.

As part of a growing web development business, I have recently been bombarded with advice, recommendations and solutions to help improve my processes and interactions with clients when it comes to designing websites. This may seem like I’ve done things all wrong before, but it’s not true (I promise). In order to grow we must learn, which is what I’ve been doing in abundance.

Coincidentally, I came across an interesting but perfect resource, a book called “A Fortune to Share” by Vash Young. Published in 1931, “A Fortune to Share” recounts the mental and emotional trials of a young insurance salesman trying to make a living during the disastrous Great Depression and the grand fortune he came to inherit. This wealth that he unexpectedly comes into is not money or gold or jewels, but a treasure that multiplies the more you divide it and give it away. It is optimism, courage, dominion over business worries, patience, generosity, sincerity and most of all, honesty.

Even though this book was published two generations before my own, Mr. Young’s ideas still ring true. By focusing on the negative, you will receive only the negative. It will get you nowhere, it won’t make you rich, it won’t make you successful in business. Instead, think of change and evaluation as an opportunity to improve and grow. I’ve always found it exciting, refreshing, energizing to continuously learn and try to make things better and flow smoothly.

I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to draw realistic-looking clouds in Photoshop. I didn’t want to just slap on a picture of some heavenly fluffiness and have to mess with cutting, pasting and arranging layer upon layer of duplicated images. Neither did I want to make Mickey Mouse cartoon clouds that any preschooler could scribble up. I wanted to create something from scratch and have it look simple, believable and fresh.

So I did some digging and got lucky. I found this wonderful blog on, you guessed it, making realistic clouds in Photoshop. I’ll go ahead and say thank you to Abduzeedo: Abducted by Design and their help. They’ve made it super simple. Here’s the link: Beautiful Fluffy Clouds in Photoshop – Christmas Tutorial. It was exactly what I was looking for, so if you’re looking for something like this, then hopefully I’ve shortened your search. Just in time for the holidays, too! I’ll only briefly go over the main parts and let you read the blog and follow to your hearts content.

We are so very excited to announce our success in bringing three GHBA Houston's Best Awards to our clients! Poetic Systems' dedication to web marketing in the Real Estate industry in conjunction with Boe Creative Services has aided Friendswood Development Company and Houston Newcomer Guides in becoming some of Houston's Best. We are proud to have helped bring in: 

• Houston's Best Internet Marketing Campaign - Developer - Friendswood Development Company and Boe Creative Services
• Houston's Best Website - Developer - FriendswoodDevelopment.com
• Houston's Best Website - Associate or Supplier - HoustonNewcomerGuides.com

 We would love to thank and congratulate our clients for their patience, trust, and skill.

We would also like to congratulate a few of our friends in the Real Estate industry, including Caldwell Companies,  Partners in Building, L.P., and Bridgeland, L..P., all for being some of Houston's Best as well!

This particular post is directed toward guests that attended the Friendswood Development Company Social Media Event today.

We intend for this to be a more detailed outline of instructions for a few of the social networks and tools we mentioned in our keynote. Let's get started:

Facebook

1. Create an account at Facebook.com. If you don’t know how, your child or young friend does.
2. Fill up your profile with specific information about yourself. DO NOT only fill out work material – this is YOUR profile, not your company’s. It is important not to create a profile filled with fluff about your business, as visitors may be wary and see your intentions. Facebook can be fun on your own time too!
3. Look for and befriend your friends. Try to find people you’ve lost touch with. Find colleagues. Have fun!
4. Create a Page for your company/product. Fill in all of your company’s information. Remember to make the Page live when you’re done (look for a red link).
5. Upload pictures pertaining to your company/product – staff, events, etc. Add upcoming events if you have any.
6. If your company has a blog or news section on its website, feed posts from the website through the “Notes” section on the Page via RSS. Again, ask a friend or give us a call for help with this if you’re lost.
7. Become a fan of your Page and encourage your close friends to (if they don’t on their own). Keep your Page up-to-date with events and info about your company/product.

Twitterfeed

1. Sign up for an account TwitterFeed.com/users/new. You can either make a brand new account or sign in with OpenID by using one of your current accounts at Google, Flickr, Yahoo, Blogger, and so on (if you have one).
2. Add your Twitter account/s and the RSS address to your blog post. Often, simply the url of the page your blog is on will work. The process is very straightforward and takes you step-by-step through the process.
3. Track your progress! TwitterFeed allows you to see how many people are clicking on your link to your blog - the perfect way to measure its effectiveness.

Gravatar

1. Sign up for an account at en.Gravatar.com. (Super simple - just a few fields to fill out).
2. Add all of your email addresses.
3. Add pictures or one picture to each of your email addresses.
4.  Now when you comment on someone's blog that supports Gravatar, your picture will show up.

Resources/Further Reading

• Presentation Slides
• Social Media Basics by Daphne Hager
• Social Media for Real Estate 101

Tomorrow, Poetic Systems is taking a trip to the Lodge at the Heritage at Towne Lake for Friendswood Development Company's Social Media Event. There, Matt and I will talk about how Social Media, New Media... whatever you want to call it, will benefit those in the Real Estate industry if used effectively.

With over 500 Real Estate professionals planning to attend, we hope to spread the "good news" to a good chunk of the Houston Realtor community. We plan to discuss the concept of community on the Web and how being an active community member can only benefit your business. We will highlight the impressive growth in social networks and their usage and how it is arguably vital to Realtors' businesses to jump on the bandwagon. From Twitter to ActiveRain to their personal Websites (our specialty), we intend to provide substantial food for thought. Afterwards, some of our staff will be on hand to answer questions and guide guests online through the Social Media madness.

The event will also have some other great perks like food, a martini bar, a candy bar, a band & dancing, a showcase by Stubbs Cycles and Northside Lexus, and a giveaway of 20 flipcams.

View the event on Facebook.