Outward Image Forum

Outward Image Web Design has announced that it will now start offering custom Facebook Portfolio pages with built in slide-show and custom contact form. The portfolios will allow artists, models, photographers, etc. a way to display their work in an intuitive, easy-to-use format, that will get their message across quickly and efficiently.

To see a demo of the Facebook Portfolio, click here.

Once a prospective client or employer clicks on the URL you provide for your portfolio, there will be nothing left form them to do, except hit the advance button on your portfolio slide show. If the prospect likes what they see, the contact form is there and ready for them to use. With Facebook Portfolios, you can be assured that you will be judged on your work, and not on some clumsy or improvised portfolio delivery system.

Facebook Portfolios are a less expensive alternative to a custom-designed Website, while offering many of the same features. Most often a Website is designed to show a portfolio, or group of them. Other FBML pages can be added to Facebook fan page to show different types of portfolios, as well. Furthermore, the pages can be set up links to each other. If you are on a budget, pages can be added one at a time, as funds are available. And at $99/page, you can’t beat the instant Web presence it provides, while providing an easy-to-use, intuitive interface for your prospective clients.

To see a demo of the Facebook Portfolio, click here.

It is also important to note that that each slide within the slideshow can be linked individually to larger representations of your work. While the Facebook FBML format is fairly ample, it is strictly limited to 520 pixels wide. This is large enough to offer a decent representation of the work, but it may not be enough to portray the fine detail of a work. The links will be set up so that the larger work opens in a new window, so that the user can easily return to the portfolio.

And there are certainly other uses for these type of slide shows. Any product that can be represented visually is candidate for the use of these slideshows. The slides can be any image, or combination of images and type that is required. In other words, each slide can have its own text description. Again, custom design is the key to a successful presentation, and Facebook Portfolios with the use of FBML pages is the answer.

Any business within the Detroit Metro areas is eligible to win 1 free custom-designed email Blast, compliments of Outward Image. Take a chance on this effective marketing device.

One of the most common mistakes I see business owners make is turning over the control of their domain name to someone else. This happens most often when a web design, webmaster, or media company purchases the domain name for the business in question. This happens because many business owners are completely oblivious to how domain names and websites really work together. They view it as just another part of the process, and for convenience, are willing to let someone else take full control of possible one of their business’ most valuable assets.

When people call me looking for a website, I am surprised by how many of them will rely on my to obtain their domain name for them. I am willing to help them find one that is available, but I always tell them to purchase and establish it themselves. Some are actually dismayed that I don’t want to perform this “service” for them, but I do it for their own protection. Since I am offering this advice, I am not someone who would hold a domain name hostage, but that is not the only thing that could happen. What happens if the webmaster were to die in a freak accident before sharing the account information with you? You might eventually be able obtain your account information, but the key word here is “eventually.”

Some Relationships Just Go Bad

The domain name issue may never reveal itself as a major problem, as long as the business owner and the Webmaster are getting along. But what happens if they don’t? What happens when the Webmaster does not update the site when required, or the owner is just unhappy with the site in general and wants to change designs, and designers?

The webmaster is obligated to turn over the appropriate information to the owner so that the owner can then redirect his/her domain to any server that he/she wishes. Getting the files from the original web designer is another, more complicated manner, but the important thing in the long run is that you will always be in control of your domain name, so that if you decide to completely redesign the site, users will be able to find the new site at the established domain name. This helps retain clients, and helps retain your established rankings and identity on the Web. Think of your domain as your business name. You certainly wouldn’t let anyone else control your business name, would you?

Registering a Domain is Easy

Anyone can register a domain name. There are many companies that sell them through ICANN registry of domains. It is usually as simple as searching to find an available name, and purchasing the rights to it for a specific period of time, in year increments. Sites like GoDaddy will try to get you to purchase many add-on features, but none of them or necessary. Just say “No Thanks” and proceed to checkout. Domain names can be bought usually for less than $15/year, and many times less than that, as long as they are available.

So there is no reason to ever let anyone else buy your domain name. Once a domain is bought, you never have to reveal the account information to the webmaster, or anyone else for that matter. If the webmaster is also hosting your site, you will need to adjust the nameservers within the domain account to point the domain to his/her server, but again, you can do that yourself. If you need help with this, the customer service where you bought the domain name can help you set these properly. Once this is done, so are you. And you will always have the peace of mind that if anything goes wrong, you in complete control of your own domain.

Search Engine Optimization Guide

Outward Image is offering a free Search Engine Optimization (SEO) guide for small businesses who want to make an impression on the Web. This brief guide will cut SEO down to size, so to speak. Once one understands what makes a Website attractive to a search engine, good SEO is much easier to understand, and it requires a long-term strategy, not a magical formula of content and keywords.

Meet Pat Eggleton, owner and operator of UNO Hair Design, in Clawson, Michigan.

unohairdesign.com

TRANSCRIPT:
Hello, I am Pat Eggleton, owner and operator of UNO Hair Design. Welcome to my salon. I have been following hair and style trends for 36 years. The last salon I owned was a traditional large salon in Troy that I owned for 10 years. Although I enjoyed it, I wanted to focus on personal one-on-one attention. I can concentrate on only you. I specialize in multi-dimensional hair color, where I look at the clients eye color, skin color, and natural hair color, and I do what I can to enhance it—by adding two to three different colors to the hair. I stay current by going to professional industry classes. I use a technique developed in Europe that I was lucky enough to learn. It uses paper that is inserted into the hair the same as foil, but it allows you to get closer to the scalp, so that your highlights will last longer, and instead of having to fold the foil and put cotton in between, you can actually fold this paper and get it an eighth of an inch away from the scalp, so that you get your new growth a lot closer than tradtional foil.

Many small businesses neglect to add a blog to their site. There are many reasons for this. One being that the business owner is unaware of the benefits of blogging is to his/her Website traffic. Another reason could be that the Website designer has neglected to inform the owner of those benefits. A third reason could just be a reluctant owner who doesn’t have time and/or desire to blog. But whatever the reason, if you are not blogging in relation to your Website, you are missing a big opportunity to drive more traffic to your site. It is hard to expect that the average business owner , especially if he/she is above the age of 45, may have some trouble with using computers, let alone understand the significance of blogging to your Website traffic. Therefore, I would never fault the business owner to neglecting to ask for a blog. It is clearly up to the Web designer to inform the client of what options are out there. It is imperative that the Web designer informs their clients that driving traffic to a Website is an ongoing project that never really ends. It doesn’t all have to cost money for the owner, however. In, fact, blogging is a perfect example of a method that the owner can engage and complete on their own, for free. A small yearly fee of $15-20 may be required to get styling similar to that of the main page, but in the world of advertising and marketing, this is minimal cost. The blog increases traffic to your Website as it grows, and is recognized as having a large amount of relative content, pertaining to the business, of course. The frequency of additional posts on your blog also makes a difference, as search engines like relevance to the subject, regularly changing content, and volume of content. Archives of the blog posts can also be housed on the main client site, also increasing its volume of relevant, changing content. So for adding relevant content to your site, it just makes sense to add a blog to your site. You can post an article once a week, once every two weeks, or once a month. Obviously the more you do the better, but it is more important to establish a regular schedule. Block out time specifically for this purpose, and it will get done. The articles to continue to accumulate on your blog and on your main site, beefing it up substantially in relative content to your business.

I would just to welcome any and all that would like to post to this blog. I will be writing occasionally about my road from the print graphic art world to designing Web sites. It has been a tough road, with many new technologies to master. I received a certificate in a Web design foundation course through Central Michigan University, though the actual school was the Sessions College of Professional Design, an online college. I found the education extremely enlightening, as it allowed me to learn how to implement common design practices into the Web page medium. Though good design principles cross many platforms, there are certain techniques that have been developed specifically for Web design that are sure to cause a lot less headaches down the road when changes need to made, or some new functionality needs to be introduced. And though some programming functions are beyond my capability, any site I design will be fundamentally solid enough to allow the appropriate programming functions to be introduced. I also learned some basic Flash, and can implement animation into my Web designs. Examples of this can be found on outwardimage.net, gatorssoccerclub.us, and unohairdesign.com. For UNO Hair Design, I teamed up with an old friend from my days at BBDO Detroit, Chicky Finn, to shoot a commercial. It came out great, and can be viewed here: http://unohairdesign.com/about.html Another important aspect of this business is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. I have become a student of the various techniques involved in getting a Web site to fare well in the search engines. Keywords, of course, but there are many other things, like conncections to social network pages like Facebook and Twitter, YouTube commercials, like the one for UNO. Articles, blogs, and the like are also important. There are many things that contribute, but nothing beats a lot of relevant content.