Looking for a Career in Web? Check Out the Local Employment Agencies

Regardless of where you live and what your profession is, finding a job these days isn't easy. I count my blessings on a daily basis that I've been fortunate enough to be employed full time. Before I found my current position, which I've been at for nearly 2 years now, I was unemployed for nearly a year.

It was between 2010-2011 and nobody was hiring web developers. I searched high and low for jobs, even going as far as hand delivering my resumes to local web agencies and had no luck. I then expanded my search to areas around Windsor including Detroit Michigan and London Ontario and still came up empty. I met with a couple of my college professors one day asking them if they had any leads on a career in web. They personally didn't have any but they told me that I should check out the local employment agencies to see if they could potentially place me in a job.

I searched the web for any and all agencies in the area, never really thinking that any of these “temp” agencies would have any “career” positions I was looking for… wow was I sorely mistaken. Not only did I find local employment firms listing office jobs like “Web Developer” and “Graphic Designer” I actually applied and interviewed for two positions with two different agencies.

The process was smooth and simple and because I wasn't going directly to the web agencies themselves for an interview, I felt a bit more comfortable. The other positive was the fact that when it came time to interview with the web agencies themselves, they helped prepare me for them offering me tips, resume suggestions and more.

The employment agency I found the most helpful was Lucas Works. They’re fairly well known through the area as a temp agency who help place manufacturing workers, however they've expanded in the past 5 years to offer their services to both office and professional career placements as well.

There are several other agencies similar to Lucas Works in the area including Job Shoppe, Impact Staffing, Personnel by Elsie and many more.

 I just did a quick scan of each and found the following positions listed in their “jobs” area:

• Graphic Designer 
• Web Designer
• Marketing Assistant
• Marketing Coordinator 

Whether it’s friends, family, alumni, Monster.com, Indeed.ca or these local employment agencies, be sure to use all the resources you can in finding a job in the web/marketing field. There aren't man, so jump on them quickly!

Wicked Cool Interactive Digital Brochures

As most of you know who follow my blog, I’m big on researching and keeping up-to-date with the latest trends in web design, online marketing, SEO and more. The other day while doing my weekly research, I came across a company who had just built what they called an “interactive digital brochure” for a company called Landau Gage which supplies gages and data collection systems. When I first read the title of their post, I thought to myself, “Hmm a gage company with an interactive brochure? Seems a bit odd.” So I clicked the post and was quickly blown away by what I saw.

The image above doesn’t quite do it justice. To really understand how cool this digital brochure is, you have to click the image and run though it yourself.

Basically what it is, is a brochure for gages. Which at first seems completely boring and uninteresting, but once you start clicking through it, you start to actually get interested in what you’re seeing. Why? It’s simple, because of the interactivity. Each page of the brochure has some level of click interactivity, meaning the user has to click something in order to view more information. The cool aspect comes in on where and what appears once you click. It’s not just a simple link to another page on the website, it’s an animated jQuery effect which pops a new window right on top of what you’re reading.

To understand what I’m talking about check out the products page featuring all their gages. Click one of the products like Variable Data Gaging, see what happened? Now click one of the gages from that list like Electronic Gages. POOF! Even more information thanks to a cool animation.

The entire brochure functions exactly like that with each page having the ability to show a new animation.

So how could this possibly be done, it has to be flash right? WRONG! The entire digital brochure is code using HTML, CSS and jQuery. That means the brochure can work across multiple browsers including Internet Explorer and Firefox as well as multiple devices such as the iPad and Android smart phones.

This is a great idea and a fantastic way to entice users to click and read more about products. I would imagine most brochure, print or otherwise, in the manufacturing business are fairly boring, and not something most people would be interested in. A cool interactive digital brochure like this though, that’s something anyone would want to click through.

Summit Mobility Products Web Marketing Recommendations

It's been quite awhile since I updated my blogspot with a post, but I've just been so busy with work, family and other responsibilities lately, that I just haven't had the time. In fact, it's been so long since I posted here that I literally had to figure out how to use this new interface to post again!

Anyway, I wanted to come on and talk about one of the many projects I've been working on lately. The company is called Summit Mobility Products. They are a durable medical equipment supplier located in Michigan. They sell new & used mobility scooters, ceiling track lifts, bath aids and much more to the elderly, disabled or really anyone who is in need of durable medical supplies.

When they came to me asking for web marketing recommendations, I suggested several things to help increase their online sales; 1) Proper Use of Google Adwords, 2) An SEO Plan and 3) Improvements to the User Experience. Each recommendation came with a formal right up which I won't share with you here, however I will give you a brief overview of what I suggested.

1) Proper Use of Google AdWords
They had dabbled in Google AdWords themselves for months and weren't achieving the results they'd like. I suggested pulling back on the amount of money they were spending daily on ads and try to focus more on SEO. With the little money they were still spending on ads, I made suggestion on which keywords would be worth buying and which weren't. There were even some situations where they were ranking organically for results, and still buying those keywords.

2) An SEO Plan
I put in a basic SEO plan which helped improved their on-site content as well as their META information. We selected several keywords to focus on and a few longer tail keywords as well. I optimized as many of the header tags as I could and then created a plan to update the site regularly with fresh content. As you can see from the homepage, we've also added quite a bit more text to each page.

3) Improvements to the User Experience
One of the biggest flaws in their plan was in their "Cart" execution. This is still something they're improving upon. As you can see when you try to buy one of these new or used mobility scooters, the cart process is a bit tedious and long. Not to mention the fact that the "Add to Cart" section is located at the very bottom of the page.

So far, it's been about a month and we're already seeing a vast improvement on last month's sales. The Google AdWords click through rate is a lot better and people are starting to find the Summit Easy website through organic results.

I will be back with another update in a month or two with progress reports.

Thanks for reading!

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.