With all of the recent changes to Facebook, including the timeline, it is a good idea to hire a professional to take care of your Facebook Page – that way, you can spend your time doing what you do best – building your business.

The easiest way to do this is to add the web professional as an ADMIN on your Facebook page. This is easier than giving someone your login (not to mention safer). Facebook has quite a few security features in place so that it’s very difficult for someone new to login to your page.

So, to add someone as an Admin to your Facebook page, there are basically TWO METHODS:

Method One: Add an existing FRIEND as Admin on your Facebook Page

1. The new Admin must be on your friend’s list. Be sure to get the web professional’s personal Facebook page and ‘friend’ them.
2. Go to your Facebook page and click on ADMIN PANEL.
   
3. Your Admin Panel will slide open. Click on MANAGE – EDIT PAGE
4. Click on MANAGE ADMINS on the left side navigation menu
5. You will see a list of your existing Admin(s) and a box to add another Admin. Start typing in the professional’s name and it should pop up. REMEMBER: The new Admin must be on your friends list to be added as an Admin to your page.
6. You may need to confirm the change by entering your Facebook password again.
7. Once you’ve added the new Admin, they will be able to make changes to your Facebook page.
8. If you want to remove that person as Admin, simply repeat the steps but click the X on the right side of the Admin list.

Method Two: Add a person who has LIKED your Facebook page as Admin

1. Go to your Facebook page and click on ADMIN PANEL.
2. Click on the SEE ALL in the LIKES section on your Admin Panel
3. A complete list of the people who have liked your page will open. On the right side of each name, you will see a button to ADD AS ADMIN

That’s all there is to it!

Questions? Just post them in the comments and I’ll get right back with you!

Why get a website? It’s very very important in business to make your customer feel comfortable with you; that’s how you get them to trust and then purchase from you. A website is an important part of the current trust relationship.

Why?

Build credibility

Having a website to send potential customers to, even if you don’t sell retail items on your site, but instead sell your services, builds credibility and makes your business seem professional and worthy of trust. Likewise, having domain-specific email builds trust, as well. Also, it makes it clear that your business intends to stick around.

Online brand

Think of your domain name and your website as your online storefront. It’s your virtual location and should be considered an extension of your brand – to mesh nicely with your other marketing materials.

Traffic

With a large percentage of potential customers searching online for products and/or services BEFORE making a purchase, an effectively built, relevant website is extremely important. Traffic from type in traffic, search engine results pages, referring websites or even from Pay Per Click marketing is an excellent way to help increase your reach.

Is this important? YES! Think of your domain name as your online calling card, your go-to location, your i-Home. It’s the place where potential customers will gather to check out what you have to offer. Some things to think about:

• Pick something people can remember.
• I can’t stress this enough. If someone remembers your domain name, they’re more likely to come back.
• If you can, pick your domain name based on your business name. That way, they’re tied together in the visitor’s mind.

If you can’t pick your domain name based on your business name, stick with something memorable. For example, if your business name is Big Tech Web Hosting and your first choice, www.BigTechWebHosting.com is taken, think about something that will both represent your business as well as stick in someone’s mind.

Maybe something like www.HostAtBigTech.com or www.GetBigTech.com. The point is to find something catchy that is both easy to remember and still represents your company.

• Short and sweet.

In other words, make it short and easy to spell because people are going to misspell it if they can.

Try for keywords, but ONLY if they directly relate to your business and it makes sense to have those keywords. For the most part, a domain that contains keywords is going to rank higher for THAT keyword than another domain name will.

Example: www.WEBSITE.com is going to rank higher for the keyword WEBSITE than www.DesignersDream.com simply because the keyword is in the domain name. USUALLY.

There are exceptions. And given the fact that getting a domain name with keywords is fast becoming almost impossible, it’s not a HAVE TO DO type of thing. If you can, do it; if not, don’t sweat it.

There’s the main points on buying a domain name. I’m rerunning this today because I think it’s still a pretty valid, helpful article…any other ideas when it comes to getting that domain name?

Client: Sheri McConnell / Stacie Cole

Skills: WordPress, Splash Page, HTML/CSS

Built: 2012

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Inside View of Website

This site design was a lot of fun to work on. The client, Stacie, is a wonderful person and she understands the value of lists to help move a project along.

Stacie wanted a beautiful, healthy, spa-like WordPress Theme that incorporated her amazing new logo! I wish I could claim that as my own, but I think it’s very striking anyway.

Using a wide open, minimal design, I pulled together this nice theme in shades of green and just a hint of grey (my personal fav #424243) and a lot of white space. I think the end result is perfect for her new venture. Would LOVE your comments!

WordPress theme template for the International Association of Business Organizing / Sherry Borsheim. This project was completed for Sheri McConnell and the Smart Women Team.

Client: SmartWomenTeam.com

Skills: WordPress, Splash Page, HTML/CSS

Built: 2011

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Extras:

WordPress theme template for the Global Institute of Small Business Marketing / Karen Dodd. This project was completed for Sheri McConnell and the Smart Women Team.

Client: SmartWomenTeam.com

Skills: WordPress, Splash Page, HTML/CSS

Built: 2011

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Extras:

Social: Let Karen know what you think! Tweet Here!

Client: WPBlogsites.com

Skills: WordPress, Splash Page, HTML/CSS

Built: 2011

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Extras:

HTML website created for Westland Mall, in Columbus Ohio.

Client: Westland Mall

Skills: HTML/CSS

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People have emotional reactions to colors; that in turn, can make or break the visitor’s feelings about your website, your brand, your company and ultimately your entire business. Keep in mind that a lot of these reactions happen on the ‘gut’ level, meaning that people don’t even know they are having these reactions!

Also, just like scents, color reactions aren’t the same in every single person, but when you’re dealing with the internet, first impressions (and other people’s first impressions) count a lot!

Let’s take a look at colors and what they ‘mean’:

White – purity, virginity, cleanliness, hope.

Gray - conservative, reliable, maybe a tad boring. Gray is a standard in business clothing.

Blue – calm, trustworthy. Blue is used very often in the financial and health care markets.

Red – anger, violence, lust. Red is a great color to attract attention but should be used sparingly.

Yellow - warm, happy. Has a relationship to eating (McDonald’s arches aren’t yellow for nothing).

Brown – earth, nature. Can also be seen as dirty or unclean.

Black – power. On the internet, black is too often used on pornographic sites, or other sites that are ‘dark’ in nature.

Orange - halloween. Works well and is often used with the soothing power of blue.

Pink – a pale cousin of red, most often associated with feminine pursuits.

Green - money and wealth.

Purple – creativity to a point. Too much becomes garish and dated.

Colors Online

All monitors will display colors differently. There are 216 web-safe colors. If exact colors are important, look into web-safe colors.

Things to consider with colors and website design

• Text – do not use colors or white text on black backgrounds; it’s extremely hard on the eye. Likewise, other light colors on dark backgrounds are very distracting. Unless there is a good reason not to, always stick to dark text on a light background.
• Consistency – colors should be used sparingly and in a consistent manner across a website. For example, if your navigation is black text on a creme background on the home page, it should be the same or a complimentary variation throughout the site. Discordant colors are jarring and leave the visitor feeling ‘unsettled’.
• Bright colors, such as red, yellow, orange, etc., should be used to make points and should not be the main ‘theme’ of a site.
• White is good – white space should ALWAYS be used as a design element. It helps line everything up to the eye, as well as giving the eye ‘resting’ points so that it can fully enjoy the colors in other locations

Bottom line: color is EXTREMELY important, both in attracting a visitor to your site, keeping them there, and making the sale.

What do you think? Do you have the same reactions to colors as I listed above or are your experiences different?  Do you ever use color to make a statement? I’d love to hear your comments.

Her style was clear – clean, simple lines; bright colors; coffee cup. She is a bit of a coffee lover.

So, starting on the basis of a coffee cup, I took warm, rich, coffee-ish colors and created a logo that she immediately loved! In fact, there were no edits to this logo at all; it was a ‘GO’ right from the beginning.

Let me know what you think:

Recently, I’ve created 2 separate sites for Lorrie Janeczko for Sheri McConnell & Smart Women Web Design.

The first project is for the Women’s International Network for Health & Wellness. To begin with, a logo. Lorrie wanted to use greens and a bright pink to convey the health theme. While we had a few rounds of edits, the original design was very close to the final design we came up with:

After that, I started creating a custom design to be used on their WordPress backend. The design they were after was very clean and open – minimalistic. After a theme was chosen, I custom coded it for WordPress (yes, custom – my own code). Adding in some very useful plugins finished it up:

You can see the final work at http://www.winhw.com/