Facebooks Business Pages Welcome Tab

Those of you who frequent Facebook and like certain brand pages have probably come across a Welcome tab or a promotion tab when you first visit the page. Sometimes these pages are just static images and sometimes they're embedded HTML pages within Facebook.

This is something many pages are doing nowadays and it's a great way to add a unique look to your Facebook business page. I'm sure many of you have seen my post about Facebook Page Profile Picture Full Size, but this takes that a step further. As you can see on my Windsor Web Design page, I've added an animated GIF, which will be the starting tab for anyone who hasn't liked my Facebook page yet.

This gives me the ability to promote my latest service, contest or basically anything to gain more "Likes" and eventually gain more business. If you're interested in having a unique Facebook page created for your small business, please contact me.

The Blackberry page is one of the Facebook brand pages I think is very well done.

BlackBerry

Google+ Reaches 20 Million Users

Over the weekend, I read a few articles about Google+ that really made me think. The first was an article claiming that Google Plus had already hit a user base of 20 million members. The other was an article talking about how Google plans on creating a similar celebrity atmosphere to Twitter's where celebrities will gain "Verified Account" status.

Let's tackle the idea that its a big deal that Google Plus already has 20 million members. Why is this so surprising or astonishing to people? The site probably has over a billion page views worldwide everyday and Google+ is the cool new thing for all the tech bloggers and Google lovers to check out. Just because they've reached 20 million members in 3 weeks isn't all the surprising, even if they're only in "invite only mode" right now.

The second article about Google possibly adding a verified account status to celebs who actually sign up for Google's new social network also isn't much of a surprise. Those of you who frequent my blog may remember a post I wrote back in March about how Google/YouTube were planning some time of celebrity option. Of course they'd love it if celebs joined their social network. This is exactly how Twitter became popular in the early days. I personally don't think celebs would be willing to jump on Google+. The reasons Twitter is so intriguing to celebs is the idea that they can gain thousands of followers by typing out 140 character messages whenever they want. It's quick, it's easy and it's another way for them to market themselves to a global audience.... right Kim Kardashain?

I think everyone needs to settle down on the Google+ reporting. Yes, I know it's the newest thing and yes I know everyone wants to see if anyone can topple Facebook, but Google+ is still in its infancy, lets talk about it more in a year or so.

Windsor News Websites (Other Than The Star)

Most of you who go online for their news on Windsor are probably going to the Windsor Star. I actually enjoy the Windsor Star website and visit it on a regular basis myself, however every now and again I like to check out one of these other Windsor news websites.

Info Windsor - One of my favorite new destinations for Windsor Ontario news and information has to be Info Windsor. Not only do they have news and information about our city, but they always do giveaways and restaurant reviews.

Our Windsor - If you're into stories about the citizens of this fine city, than Our Windsor would be a spot you'd really like. They update about 5 times a day with well written stories about events and people in Windsor.

Windsorite - I find that this site is geared toward a younger crowd. If you're between the ages of 15-34, you'll probably find this site very appealing.

Windsor Ontario News - Even though I visit it on a regular basis, I'd probably say that this is my least favorite of the online news sites. The graphics and style of the site feel old and the stories aren't updated nearly enough.

As I stated in the opening, there is nothing wrong with the Windsor Star or their website. I just feel that sometimes it's nice to get a different perspective on different stories happening in the area.

My Web Design: Windsor Squash & Fitness

Those of you who know me, know that I've been working out at the Windsor Squash & Fitness club for the last few years. Walking in and out of that place on a daily basis you get to know pretty much everyone behind the front desk. As I was leaving one day I had a chat with Brian Porter, the general manager of the gym. We got on the subject of his website and began discussing a re-design. A few weeks later, I had completed a fresh web design for his fantastic Windsor gym!

 

As you can see from the image above, it's a very open concept website. What I mean by that is, the site is constricted within a box like my Montessori Early Years design. This allowed me to overlap different aspects of the site with the background and really get creative. Along with the web design, I also did on-site search engine optimization, site administration and I incorporated their Facebook page with the website. One thing that Brian really loved about the site is the potential "leads" that can be acquired through the "free email signup" at the top of the page. I also did a bit of work on their Facebook page by creating a longer and more creative Facebook profile page image.

Working with Brian and everyone else at the Windsor Squash and Fitness club was a great pleasure. I look forward to working with them on updating the site and creating a real social experience for his members. Keep an eye out for the mobile version of the website coming soon!

Facebook Business Pages in Windsor I Like

As most of you know, I recently set up a Facebook fan/business page for my freelance Windsor Web Design work. You can read more about my Facebook page experience here.  Before I started it, I spent a month or two checking out a few other Facebook business pages in the area to see what worked and what didn't. I kept note of which ones I liked so that I could give them a little love on my blog one day, that day has come!

Eyes On Windsor

I really like the "Welcome" page on this site. Anytime you can signal people to "Like" your page, in a descriptive way is a good thing. Eyes On Windsor also has a nice Facebook profile image which signals people to click the Wall or Info.

Caesars Windsor

Not surprising that a BIG business like Caesars Windsor has a fantastic Facebook page. They update it regularly (daily) with fresh info about what's going on at the Casino. They also run contests and have giveaways on a regular basis.

There are a bunch of other pages I like, but I don't want to make this post incredibly long by adding picture after picture, so I'll just list the others here; Windsor Stars Soccer, Windsor Squash & Fitness, & Perfect Shutter.

Many small businesses in Windsor are really catching on, on how to generate business through Facebook. If you're interested in having a Facebook fan page designed, please contact me!

New Square Sized Web Advertisements

In the last couple of weeks, I've created a couple of square web ads that I wanted to share with everyone. I've been thinking about purchasing ad space on several websites that are Windsor related and I'd really love your opinions.

If you've visited this Windsor web design blog in the past month, chances are you've seen the first ad. It's a square 290x290px ad with several different shades of blue. It's an animated GIF that rotates between a few of my latest web designs.

The second web advertisement I created is also square sized. This time a bit smaller at 250x250px. This square ad has a bit of a "lighter" feel to it. Not as cold or dark as the first one. Again, this one displays a few of my latest works, only this time they don't rotate. The animation is now at the base of the add and is rotating through a few different lines of text.

I think both of these are fairly well done. If I had to choose which is my favorite, I'd probably go with the smaller ad because I feel that it's a bit cleaner and more eye catching.

All comments, suggestions and criticisms are welcome! Thanks!

Web Design Review - SummerFestWindsor.org

With the Windsor Ontario Summer Fest (previously known as Freedom Festival), right around the corner, I figured I'd give everyone a quick review of their web design. Overall the site isn't too bad. It's easy on the eyes, informative and very clean however, there are a few things about it that I would probably changed had I done the web design.

  

Judging by the copyright, the general look and feel of the site was designed back in 2009. It's been updated each year according to the dates and events of the Summer Fest however the main design of the site is unchanged. I really like the header of the site. The image rotates between a few different images every 10 seconds or so. What I don't like about the header is the fact that the summer fest logo wasn't saved in a high resolution. Just cheapens the site a bit. I also don't like the navigation links. My next big criticism would have to be the navigation links. Using images as navigation links is fine as long as all the images are saved in high resolution. The images are clearly saved in a low resolution and the white text is sometimes hard to read on the burgundy background.

As far as the details and information on the site. I'd probably have a daily schedule of what's happening. They have a list of general information that's coming up. I'd probably have a calendar on the homepage where each date is a link that opens to a new window with information about what's gin on that day.

My last two problems are the links for the OLG website and the Facebook group. First of all, I understand that the OLG is probably a big sponsor, but to have a link to their website in the main content section of the Summer Fest website just doesn't seem right. As for the Facebook group, why not change that to a Facebook page? Also, instead of having a link that says "Follow us on Facebook", why not add a "like" button to the site or possibly use one of Facebook's many cool ad-ons.

As I said in the opening, overall the web design of the site isn't too bad. I'd just really like to see a calendar on the front page, removal of the OLG link from the main content of the site and more integrated Facebook options.

My SEO Skills: Tony Rauti Luxury Homes

Just wanted to write a quick post today talking about the search engine optimization work I did for my client Tony Rauti Luxury Homes. One of the first things they wanted to talk about in our initial meeting was how they could get better results in Google. I explained to them the ways in which I would try to get them better rankings. The first thing I asked them was which search terms they'd like to rank for. Initially they said generic terms like "custom home builder" or "luxury homes". I explained to them that since they're a local home builder that most of the people searching for those type of terms would most likely attach a city to the end of them. We collectively decided to go for the terms "custom home builders windsor" and "luxury homes windsor". I did both on-site and off-site search engine optimization for them and after just 5 months here are the results when searching on Google.com.

"Luxury Homes Windsor" - Result #2

"Custom Home Builders Windsor" - Result #5

I'm the first to admit; the competition for these two keyterms isn't as great as some of the more generic terms however, considering the fact that the domain is only 6 months old and the site is only 5 months old. I'd say I did a pretty good job optimizing this website.

Top 5 Google Apps & Services For Web Designers

There are plenty of reasons for webmasters, web designers and just people in general to love Google. They offer some of the best "free" services around and most of them are very user friendly. As a web designer, I find myself constantly using Google's services and apps in my everyday life as well as my work life. Here are my top 5 Google services and apps for web designers in no particular order;

Google Analyics - There is no free website statistics services better than Google Analytics and they keep making it better. They've just released a new version in Beta that allows for better dashboards and even more advanced segments.

GMail - The reason other email services like Yahoo and Hotmail are getting better is because of GMail. GMail makes it easy to organize all your mail, they offer the most free space and it's probably the most user friendly email service around.

Google Places - I've already used an entire post to discuss why Google Places is one of the best Google services for small businesses. You can read that post here.

Google Docs - I recently starting using Google Docs when I teamed up with other Windsor web designers to work on specific projects. The files are stored online and can be updated by anyone, anywhere using the Cloud.

Google Webmaster Tools - This one is specifically used by webmasters and web designers. This tool helps you see what type of errors Google gets when it crawls your site. They've also recently updated it to show you how many times your site shows up for certain keywords.

These Google services and apps are great for web designers, webmasters and even everyday people and the best part is... they're all free!

My Web Design: Montessori Early Years

As I've mentioned on this blog before, I'm a Windsor web designer who can pretty much do it all. Not only do I specialize in web design and development, I can also handle your site administration, web hosting, email hosting and search engine optimization. The full package is something I recently offered to the Montessori Early Years in LaSalle. Not only did they want me to re-design the old site I created for them, but they now wanted me to handle all the site administration as well. Here is what I came up with...

As you can probably tell from the preview image, one of the major features of this particular website is the "members only" section for the parents of the Montessori Early Years. In the members only section, parents can view recent pictures as well as grab newsletters and other important information that only they can see. All of the updates on the site are taken care of by me, including re-sizing and uploading the images.

The web design is very clean and informative. Parents are only one of two clicks away from all the information they may need about the day care facility. The main image in the header changes each time a page is refreshed which is all handled by a neat little Javascript code I created.

In the end, Montessori Early Years was very happy with the website design and I was too. It's been great working with them on the site. I look forward to handling any and all of their web needs in the years to come!

Sebastian Agosta Website Design Facebook Page

Those of you who frequently visit my blog probably noticed the advertisement to the right of this post, featuring my web design service Sebastian Agosta website design. I want to thank everyone who sent me an email telling me how much the like the clean and useful look of my website. I had such a positive response from that, that I decided to also start a Facebook page.

I'd like to thank everyone who has "liked" the page so far and those of you who may like the page after reading this post. It's your basic Facebook page that I'll probably update once or twice a week with a few of my web designs as well as interesting tidbits from Windsor Ontario.

Thanks again for all the support!

Google Places A Big Help To Small Businesses

It's become very clear in the last couple of years that Google really wants to tailor their ads and search results to where you are in the world. One of the biggest signals of this is in their local search service called Google Places. If you have a Google account and you've added your location, chances are you've already seen these ads.

Anytime you see a little orange balloon type icon next to a result, it's Google Places. They even have an entire section devoted to Places. If you look in the left column, you'll find a link that says Places. This will give you all the place results in your area.

This is a big help to small businesses who have trouble optimizing their site for Google. After you submit your website to the Google Places, they send you a postcard in the mail with a code to insert to verify your Place. After that, you're good to go. Sometimes your result will show up in search results, which is a bonus, but it will always show up in a Places result.

The Google Places account I created for Tony Rauti Luxury Homes, showed up right away in the Places results. Eventually I optimized the site enough that I didn't really need the Places result, however it's always good for a small business to have.

Facebook Page Profile Picture Full Size & Samples

Even though I've been doing web design for awhile, I didn't get into building Facebook pages for small businesses until recently. One of my clients asked me to be an admin on their Facebook page and help them optimize the page so they could get the most out of it.

The first thing I looked into was how large the profile picture on a Facebook page could be. It turns our you can make them as large as 540px height x 180px width. I decided, why not make the most out of the page and use up all the space I could.

I decided to look around and see what other people were doing to get an idea of what should be in it. It didn't take me long to come up with the Windsor Squash and Fitness one you see below. I also added a few others samples from small businesses in the Windsor area for you to take a look at.

If you have any interest in having one of these Facebook page profile pictures created, please Contact Me.

My Web Design: Tony Rauti Luxury Homes

I've had a couple of requests lately by potential clients asking to see some of my recent web designs. I figured I'd start off with one the small business web designs I'm most proud of Tony Rauti Luxury Homes. They're a custom home builder in Windsor Ontario and the surrounding area. A friend of mine referred them to me and in a matter of days I was meeting with them to discuss potential ideas. Here's what we came up with after all was said and done:

This is a very elegant design done primarily with HTML and CSS. Showing off their recent works was something they were very interested in doing so I figured I'd make 60% of the homepage a content slider of the exterior and interior designs of their custom homes in Windsor. Along with the web design & development, I also did a bit of on-site search engine optimization, and social network marketing. I also implemented a beautiful photo gallery using Lightbox.

All in all it was a delight to work with the people at Tony Rauti Luxury Homes on their web design. I look forward to working with them in the future!

Does City Windsor Need A New Web Design?

The other day I was checking out which sites came up in the top ten results in Google when I typed in certain "Windsor" terms such as; "Windsor Ontario" and "Windsor Canada". I was just curious which sites were performing well when someone searched  for this great city of ours. Turns out one of the top results for most Windsor searches ended up being the city's homepage http://www.citywindsor.ca. After browsing around the site a bit I started to ask myself whether or not is should be updated with a fresh web design. Take a look at the homepage below.

At first glance the website design isn't all that terrible. I've seen far worse websites from other cities in Ontario, yet I still feel this site could be much better.

I would guess there are 3 different types of people searching for the city of Windsor; tourists, residents and potential residents. I think the homepage of the site should make 3 separate areas for these 3 different type sof traffic. I find that most of this site is geared only towards 1 type of traffic; residents.

I also think since this site is one of the top results for Windsor it should also put our great city on display. Add some type of content slider showing off everything we have to offer. Tourists attractions, parks, events etc. would all look amazing on a website about the city.

Again, the site overall isn't terrible, I just think it could be better. What does everyone think? Should cityofwindsor.ca be re-designed?

Must Have's When Optimizing For Search Engines

The other day I was working on a web design for a client who had purchased my basic plan of search engine optimization as well. When they first approached me about designing their website, one of their concerns was being ranked highly for a specific local term when it was searched on Google. I explained to them the difference between my SEO packages and they agreed that the most they needed for now was on-site SEO.

There are several must have's when it comes to on-site search engine optimization. The first comes right at the top of your website. You have to have properly described <title></title> tags for each page on your website. When someone performs a search, this will be the title they see on Google. Another must have is the <meta description> tag. This should be a short paragraph consisting of no more than 150-160 characters. It should describe your website and/or your business. This is usually what Google pulls in search results under the title of your website. Check out the image below to see what I'm talking about.

Those two tags are absolute must have for every page of your site and each should be unique. They're both easy to add and will be a big help when it comes to search engine optimization.

My First Web Design That Was Put Online

Before I ever started doing freelance web design in the Windsor area, I designed a bunch of sites for school projects and just for fun. Most of those never saw the light of day, however one design I did for the Montessori School of Windsor actually did!

 It's somewhat embarrassing to even put this site on display, but since it's a site I did over 6 years ago, I can laugh at it now.

As you may be able to tell, the site was done using frames. I had a header, left content, right content and footer. The only thing that would change per page is the right content. I actually don't think the overall layout of the site is too bad, it's just the presentation of it that's terrible.

I'm not sure why I had two logo images on one page? I'm also not sure why the one links seems to be a different color than the rest?

All in all, I give my first web design that was ever put online about a 3 out of 10, however I'm sure when I first put it out, I thought it was at least an 8!

Most Frustrating Browser For A Web Designer Is....

With most of the major browsers coming out with new versions these past couple of weeks, I figured I'd write a quick post about the most frustrating browser for web designers like myself to code in. Drum roll please..... Internet Explorer 6! No big surprise there. I'm guessing if you polled 100 web designers on which browser they hate coding for the most, it'd be IE6.

IE6 is almost 10 years old now and it's still being used by 12% of all Internet Explorer users. You'd think now that IE7, 8 and 9 have been released most of those people would update, but that's just not the case. From the way it doesn't render transparent PNG's as transparent or the way it handles the general layout of CSS and DIV based designs IE6 is just awful.

Even Microsoft themselves are trying to get people off of IE6 starting this website about a month ago; http://ie6countdown.com/. If you're using IE6, please update to a newer version or better yet, jump over to Firefox or Chrome. They're better browsers anyway!

Google Looks Into Celebrities For YouTube

Before I went to sleep last night, I came across an article about Google that I found pretty interesting. The article was written in the New York Times and spoke about how Google is moving from a search advertising company to a media advertising company. You can find the article here; http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/business/media/21carr.html?_r=1&ref=technology.

The point I found most interesting was this; "There have also been reports that Google has set aside $100 million for incentives for well-known celebrities to program their own “channels” on YouTube to increase the amount of high-profile content on the platform."

I'm not sure why this hasn't been looked at more closely by people in the media business. I think this could be the key to YouTube gaining even more popularity (if that's even possible).

The reason Google has "set aside" 100 million for incentives for well-known celebrities is because Google understand what makes Twitter so successful. That's right, it's celebrities. Most of the people who sign up to Twitter sign up for two reasons; 1) to follow their favorite celebrities more closely or 2) promote their business, themselves or to do social marketing for another business.

No one signs up for Twitter to follow what their friends are saying or doing, that's what Facebook is for. No one signs up to get news either, Google, Yahoo, NYTimes and local online newspapers handle that. No my friends, the main reason Twitter ever took off was because of Ashton Kutcher and his celebrity friends.

What's my point? My point is, if Google/YouTube can somehow get celebrities posting home videos from their webcams, cell phones or HD recorders they'll strike gold. People will jump onto YouTube even more than they do now, and it's all because of the celebrities. Google will laugh all the way to the media advertising bank.

Many Small Businesses Missing Out On Mobile

Does your small business have a website? Does that website get a lot of traffic from mobile web devices? And the most important question of all, is your site optimized for a mobile web device?

From the research I've done on most of the small businesses in Windsor Ontario that have websites, I've found that less than 15% of them had a site that was optimized for mobile. That could potentially mean big losses for those companies because the mobile users aren't able to view your site on their iPhone, Blackberry, Android phone etc.

Most web designers will build you a website without ever thinking about what it looks like on a mobile phone. Chances are if you go to your website right now on a mobile device, you'll get frustrated and leave.

With so many people surfing the web with their phones nowadays, it's silly not to have a web designer build you a mobile version of your site. A mobile version is usually a much easier to navigate, with larger text and links. When I build mobile web designs, I usually tell my clients to put only the most important info on the mobile version. I've found that many mobile web users are only on the site for less than 5 minutes. They login to your site, they get the info they need and they're gone. They aren't sitting in front of a PC for 20 minutes at a time surfing through all the pages of your site. They want it quickly and easily, without having to zoom in or zoom out to view content.

If you're interested in having a mobile web design built for your small business, please contact me. I'll gladly set you up with a free quote which rarely ever exceeds $500.00

Web Design Review - ArcheryBuff.com

I had lunch with a friend of mine who I went to college with last week and we started talking about what we've been doing lately. He told me he's moved on from being a web programmer to being someone who designs Blackberry themes. He mentioned that he had started a site a couple years ago about archery and he asked me to check it out and give it a review. Keep in mind that my friend is more of a web developer than a designer!

As far as the design goes, I'm really not a fan of this site at all. The good news for my friend is that he's one of the few Windsor web designers who'd focused on archery so the site does fairly well traffic wise.

When I wrote him back this week about the site, I told him I thought it could be much better. I thought he should get a cleaner, less busy logo and header. I also think the site should be a different color, I've never been crazy about that color brown for a site. I understand he was going for a forest/nature look, but there are ways to do that without making the site look so dark.

I would make his links a different color than the text (both are black right now, could get confusing) and lastly I'd make the Adsense ads blend in with the rest of the site.

He may have me re-do the design of the site while he works on the web development side of it, so if that happens I'll update this post!

Google's Latest Algorithm Change

I'm beginning to really wonder what effect, if any, this latest Google algorithm change had on their search results. Since I'm a web designer who is into search engine optimization, I try to keep a close eye on what happens when major changes are made to the search algorithm.

I had read reports that cheap article sites like eHow.com had been hurt by the latest change, but then I did a search today for "hamburger patty recipes" and the first result was a lame article from eHow. The link was titled exactly what I had typed in. I was actually fairly surprised to see that it was still there, so I clicked the link to see if the information was useful. NOPE. Not at all. Just another article listing about nothing. You can clearly tell this site was optimized for the search engines and not end-users like myself.

I guess it may still be early to tell, but it seems to me that Google needs to continue to work on getting these content farms out of the top 10 of their results. As a website designer, it's always frustrating to see a clients site pushed down because of some crummy written search engine only optimized article.

Welcome To My Windsor Web Design Blog!

I wanted to make my first post to welcome everyone to my Windsor Web Design blog. My name is Sebastian and I've been a web designer in Windsor Ontario Canada for almost 10 years.

I decided to start this blog for a few reasons. One reason was I heard Blogger was a great platform to get yourself or your business out there. Another was because I've always been a Wordpress guy and I wanted to see what Blogger was all about. Lastly, I thought it'd be a great way to share ideas, thoughts and information about web design, search engine optimization, mobile web design and much more.

Free free to comment on my blog and share your ideas. If you don't like my ideas or think I'm way off base, tell me and we can have a discussion about it!

I love learning new things about web development and design and I'm always open to working with new people. I look forward to hearing from fellow web designers!