The world is connected in so many ways you’d think reaching your audience would be a no-brainer, right?

On one hand, it is. Blog links get posted on Facebook, G+, Twitter and Linked In. Fans and followers subscribe to your automated newsletter or RSS feed and get your message delivered right into their inboxes.

But it’s also more difficult. There’s a lot of noise out there. After a while, everyone starts to sound the same. Readers ignore the links and delete the newsletters without opening them up. No one comments on your blog. You start wondering if anyone is listening at all.

With the rise of communications, small business owners spreading their messages have to find a way that makes them stand above the clogged interwebs.

The Circle of Life

This weekend a good friend of ours, Deb Ng, mentioned she wanted to start a blog for fun. Another friend of ours, John Hewitt, recently put his Poe War site on haitus to pursue lighter writings. Wendi and I announced the launch of our new newsletter, Fiction Fridays.

All of us began our blogging/online businesses roughly the same time. We had all discovered how powerful a blog could be as a tool for launching a business. This means of reaching new clients on a more personal level was The Way. It was the new, unique voice rising above the static websites and lengthy sales pages.

We had large communities and our blogs’ comment sections always had over a hundred comments by day’s end.

Now, ten or fifteen years later, the market is flooded again. We’ve gone from “talking to” potential clients, to “talking at”. Information is great, but too much of it becomes boring. We take ourselves too seriously. We lose the connection.

It’s time for the pendulum to swing back the other way. We need some fun.

Hi, My Name Is…

What better way to have fun than go to a party, right? When you go to a party, you go to meet old friends and make new ones.

Reaching your audience and getting a response from them is no different. The worst thing you could do is come out of the gate, waving fistfuls of business cards and shouting “Buy my product!”

Nobody likes that.

Think about a more realistic scenario. What usually happens when you go to a party? You start by connecting with your old friends. You talk for a bit, get caught up on old times, then they spot someone else they know. They wave them over and introduce you. A new conversation begins.

Or you may find yourself standing by the buffet. The person makes a comment about how much he loves shrimp, and what a coincidence—you do too! A conversation starts up and you find you both have more in common. The more you talk, the more you discover both of your businesses could benefit from one another.

The same methods work online. Nobody likes the obnoxious member in any group or forum whose only means of conversation is “Buy my latest widget!”.

True, the social approach takes longer, but taking your time getting to know the people you’re connecting with makes for a much more enriching experience for everyone involved. People learn to trust you, you build credibility. They want to know more about you. They realize, oh, hey, this person has a service I need, let me ask them about what they can do for me.

It’s part business, part friendship. It’s the connection that builds strong client bases, keeps the clients returning and makes them feel good about referring you out to their friends.

The next time you find yourself frustrated and wondering why no one is paying attention to your message, ask yourself if you’re putting forth enough effort to make a connection first. Are you talking at or talking to?

A luxury vacation destination deserves a luxury presence on the web and if you want to see a good example of this, visit Wendy Schneider’s Saba on the Rocks.

But the interesting thing about Wendy’s Saba is what it isn’t.

Wendy and Dan took their vacation home and turned it into a business. It’s not a huge, professional resort, but one look at the site gives the impression that it could be. Talk about an ambitious goal! I’ll tell you what, though, one look at their website gets me interested.

First, the site’s theme is done on the Genesis framework. She’s using one of the child themes called Crystal. This is a straight, off the rack, plug and play theme. It works beautifully. The airiness of the theme lends itself well to creating that sense of constantly sweeping trade-winds, white sand beaches, and tropical tranquility. Aside from adding the Saba logo and text to the banner in the header, Wendy had very little customizing to do.

Her real work was in laying out the theme’s widgeted options. In Genesis, so much of the themes incorporate widgets. You can drag and drop nearly anything on your home page and sidebars. This is a HUGE improvement over the early days when making changes like that required massive amounts of re-coding.

The featured section on the main page showcases the destination perfectly. One thing we would suggest here is adding a little more space between the lines on that header (Note to Wendy: if you’d like help with that, let me know. It’s really easy).

Another suggestion we have for the main page is make the featured images and content in the lower widget blocks more uniform. Keep each featured image with the same dimensions; either make the Kitchen and Unwind pictures shorter in height, or make the Bedrooms shot more square to match the other two.

For the excerpts, make them all the same number of lines. Each of those widgets should have a “Content character limit” if you’re using one of the Genesis Featured widgets. If you’re using a Text widget, then edit your copy accordingly to get the same amount of lines for each one.

Evening out those lower boxes will give the main page a touch more balance.

Wendy also deserves a big gold star for having a booking widget right there on the main page. It’s handy, easy to find and looks easy to use. Let us know how you like it as an administrator, Wendy. I had the opportunity to check out the developer’s site for the plugin and it looks like they offer a basic version for booking just about anything. This could come in handy for many of us who rely on scheduling appointments with clients.

Checking out the rest of the site, everything seems to be in good order. Wendy, you’ve done a lovely job of creating a site that conveys the essence of Saba and living the kind of life so many of us dream about.

************

About Saba on the Rocks:

Dan and Wendy Schneider fell in love, with Saba. Nothing new there, it happens every day on this wonderful island in the Dutch Caribbean.

We wanted more. We believed that Saba could be the answer for us, and possibly for others as well. With that in mind, we set about building a home away from home. Over the past four years we put our plan into action and now Saba On The Rocks is a reality and available for your enjoyment. Choose to rent our home on Saba, in the Dutch Caribbean and you won’t be disappointed. It may even become part of your plan.

• Those who don’t want to be bothered with tech stuff
• Those who are all about Do It Yourself (DIY)
• And those who thought they could do it themselves and ended up way over their heads.

The people in the first group will usually hire a professional right from the start. They know their limits, they understand what is and isn’t their genius work. Doing some things for themselves is really not the best use of their time.

The second group is the most adventurous. They have the confidence to roll forward and tackle the project on their own. For them, it’s usually more of a learning experience than wanting to save on the budget. They already know that DIY doesn’t always come cheap and they may end up spending just a little bit more in time and effort than they would if they went the route of hiring someone else to do it for them.

The last group is the one I want to address today. This group is definitely trying to save some money by attempting to do it themselves. They’ll look at the project and declare a hearty “How hard can that be?” and jump in.

I think all DIYs start out in the “I think I can” category. But when the sticking point rears its ugly head, the ITYCDIY folk falter. They try to fix what’s gone wrong, only to find the fix doesn’t work as well as they thought it would, then everything starts to get worse. Eventually, more money is poured into the project to fix it. And when that still doesn’t work, they hand the whole mess over to a pro, who either has to untangle the massive pile of knots or scrap it and start over clean.

And that’s not for free, either.

How Not To Become an “I Thought I Could” and Be an “I KNOW I Can!”

Do Your Homework First. Not everything is as easy as it looks. A professional is a pro for a reason, they’ve been doing this particular work for a very long time. They know where the problems will arise and how to avoid them when they do. Before jumping feet first into a new project, research it. Learn as much as you can about the tools and techniques so you have some idea of what you’re getting into.

Know Your Limits. Everyone has limits. Even the pros. The moment you feel the project is going wrong, stop. Pushing through out of sheer frustration won’t help you and can only make things worse. You’ve reached your limit when you start to feel like that. Either put the project aside and come back to it later with fresh eyes, or take some time to do a little more learning to get past the sticking point. Ask a pro for advice, you’ll be surprised that many won’t mind giving you a quick tip or two — as long as you ask nicely.

DON’T RUSH! The need for speed will kill your project before you get out of the gate. This isn’t a race. Or it shouldn’t be. Not if you took the time to plan well enough in advance. Give yourself plenty of time to complete each phase. Baby steps! If you take each portion of the project in a timely manner, you’ll make less mistakes and give yourself plenty of breathing room for when you do.

And if you’ve done all this and given it your best shot, but still haven’t gotten the results you wanted? Call in the pros, like us.

But if everything has gone well and you have a finished product you’re happy with, congratulations! You’ve just entered the ranks of the DIY!

I did a lot of searching and sent a few inquiry emails. Amy was the only one who answered. Her site was also a little better than most, at least I could navigate it and find the information I needed without getting lost. But I remember thinking how much better it could be and how much I wanted to be the one to redesign it.

The years went by and I kept in touch, every so often sending her pictures and updates on Lakota. Recently, we reconnected again on Facebook and that was when Amy realized I did website design.

The time had come for her to give LegendTales a facelift.

The Original Site

If you click on the image to the right, you’ll see the LegendTales site was functional, but a little cluttered and outdated. The Comic Sans in the header didn’t do anything for the brand, although the polydactyl pawprint works for a logo. Pixie-Bobs often have extra toes.

While the outside of this site was functional enough for visitors, the back end is what concerned me the most.

Amy wanted a site she could eventually manage on her own. Her previous webmaster had to leave and now she had no idea where to upload files, how to change the weekly kitten pictures, how to add pages or update copy. The whole site was built on HTML tables and required a decent amount of coding knowledge to maintain.

The primary goal was to take this site and convert it to a WordPress platform, which Amy would learn how to use herself.

Converting LegendTales to WordPress wasn’t difficult. Amy already had her own hosting and domain name. We were able to log into it and install WordPress.

For the theme, we chose to go with the Genesis framework and their Social Eyes child theme. What I liked about this child theme was the layers in the header. I could keep a little touch of the old site with the paw print laid in light on the background layer and then put the “LegendTales” and photo over the top of that.

Genesis also has great support and Brian’s coding is always up to date. I knew I could install this and have it look good across all browsers and mobile devices without having to fuss with bugs.

For the new look, we went with a natural color pallet. Shades of brown and russet, with a touch of cream and silvery gray echo the Pixie-Bob coloring. The neutral tones help show off the real stars of the site; the kittens and cats.

Overall, LegendTales is a very simple site. It’s easy for visitors to navigate and focuses on what Amy’s clients want to see the most; those lovely kittens.

Stop by and have a look around. And if you walk away with an extra, furry family member, I want to see pictures!

***

About LegendTales

LegendTales cattery is located in Lynnwood, Washington. We are a TICA Outstanding Cattery and are involved in the Voluntary Responsible breeder Program. We have an open door policy and encourage you to come visit any time! Our cats live in our home and are raised underfoot and overhead. We love to show off our cats and are very proud of them. The moms love to show off their kittens, often bringing them over for visitors to see.

If you’re set on making your own book cover, whether it’s for fiction or non-fiction, we have a few common mistakes to look out for and avoid.

Text too close to top/bottom/sides of book. This is the number one most common mistake we see. Many newbie cover designers seem to feel they need to fill up every available bit of space on the cover. The titles are often pushed way up close to the top, or expanded as far as they will go from side to side, and the author’s name or text down along the bottom.

Give your cover some breathing room. Keep all text at least a quarter inch away from top/bottom/sides. Too close and you risk the printer accidentally cutting off some of the edges, or the text seeping over the side of the spine. On a digital cover, the image ends up looking like a mistake, like you cropped it too closely.

Pixelated images. When I make a book cover, I use a lot of images from iStock. I never know what size they’re going to end up, so I always get a size larger than I think I’ll need. Remember, you can always shrink an image down and not lose resolution, but going larger breaks the image up. The edges lose their sharpness, they become jagged and blurry. This is called “pixelation”.

Poor font choices. Fonts are fun. I sometimes joke that I collect fonts like some other women collect shoes. In a way, fonts are like shoes, each one has a specific purpose. You wouldn’t wear a pair of Alexander McQueen’s platforms to run a 5K marathon, would you? Not unless you’re Lady Gaga. Even then, I wonder how well that would work out for her.

When choosing fonts for your cover consider the tone of your book and what font style fits. Legibility is also a major factor. That fancy script may look good on a printed version, but how does it reduce down for the thumbnail you’ll need for your digital version?

The Kitchen Sink Effect. Some new authors creating their own covers feel a need to squeeze in every single little bit of symbolism from their story into the space of a cover. They need the main character, the stormy background, the castle where the hero finds the maiden, the dragon circling the sky, the butterfly that flapped its wings somewhere near the coast of Brazil and the magical, sword-wielding wizard who saved them all.

STOP! You don’t need to dump a kitchen sink over your audience’s heads. Less is better. Leave something to the readers’ imagination.

Turns to mud during the Thumbnail Test. Your cover needs to look good in a variety of sizes. You’ll need the large versions for the printed covers, and smaller ones for your distributors (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.). When you make your cover, reduce it to a small thumbnail and see how the text holds up. Small sub-titles and thin fonts will get lost. Too much detail in the imagery will turn to mud. You want everything as clear as possible. Remember, the online lists of books are your virtual bookshelf. You still want that cover and title to stand out and be readable.

Poor choice of stock images. Sometimes stock image human models look too commercial or contrived. Other times, the image you choose may look great to you, but leaves your readers scratching their heads. Choose wisely.

Poor Photoshopping skills. Covers are often made up of many individual images put together. When done correctly by someone skilled in Photoshop, the final result is seamless and amazing. When done by someone without those skills, it’s painfully obvious.

Have you ever seen one of the old movies where you can see a definite edge around the actors as they were filmed in front of a green screen? Usually you see it when the actors are driving in a car and the background is whipping past outside the car windows. This happens in Photoshop too when images are cut from one image and pasted into another. The lighting is slightly off, the edges around the subject too sharp, the shadows on the ground don’t look right. If you’re not careful, your sexy leading man ends up looking like a cardboard cutout.

Too much copy. Sometimes authors have a lengthy title, a sub-title, sub-text, their name, a recent review, etc. all jammed onto that front cover. Go back to the Thumbnail Test. Reduced down, it’s a mess, and enlarged at normal print size, it’s a jumbled mass of chaos.

Bonus Tip: Big Name Author. Lately there’s been a trend for new authors to make their names larger than the book title. They got this idea from the bestsellers. Don’t do it. Save it for when you have a following.  Let the title of your book hold the spotlight for now.

How does your cover hold up? Are you making any of these common mistakes? Would you like your cover reviewed by us? Contact us and let us know, we’d love to hear from you.

“My rock chairs have been compared to something found on the set of the Flintstones, but great care is given to ensure they are both aesthetically pleasing and comfortable. The stone added to discarded steel results in functional furniture inspired by Mother Nature. They are not only weatherproof, but integrate easily into landscapes and city scapes without intruding on the surrounding beauty.”

His work is amazing. And if you think the stone furniture is something, you need to take a look at his metal sculptures too.

Recently, Dwayne’s wife Jill and asked us if we’d critique their Stone 2 Furniture site. What else could we say but “Yes!”

The first thing we notice when landing on the site doesn’t have anything to do with looks. Stone 2 Furniture is a little slow to load. It gets hung up even in Chrome. The fix for this is easy, the background tile (the stone texture behind everything) needs to go from the huge 1400 x 550 px to at least a quarter of that.

When you do reduce the size of the tile, make sure you create the new tile with seamless edges, or else you’ll get that hard line between them like you can see down by where the sidebar says “Wine Buddy”.

First Impressions

Stone is big. Stone is impressive. Stone makes a very strong statement. Unfortunately, this site doesn’t carry the same presence as the product.

The narrow width of the site and tabbed navigation buttons across the top give the site a dated look. That was fine in the mid-90s. Widths have increased to accommodate wider screens and navigation bars have become more streamlined. The bits of white poking out from between each rounded corner reduce the professionalism .

If Jill and Dwayne were to upgrade, we would suggest a single navigation bar and consolidating the pages into parent and child pages. For example, they would have a single button for “Products” and when it’s moused over, a drop down menu appears with everything listed in the current bottom row of navigation.

The links on the top navigation section need adjusting. Clicking on a few of them opens a new tab for that page. The tabs add up fast and make the browser cluttered and confusing.

The Header

Small, small, small. This header does nothing to show off the grand designs of Dwayne’s work. We’d like to see the banner much wider (at least an average width of 960 px instead of the 700 px it is now) and make it taller, increasing the height from the current 80px to 200 or 250px at the very least.

The stone Dwayne uses, when polished, has so much texture and beautiful color hidden in it. Creating a new banner using that texture and pulling colors from it for the rest of the site’s color pallet would work wonders. We can see that stone as a background with a couple of product images on top of it.

The Sidebar

Size matters here too. Their most important items, the optin and the link to Metal 2 Sculpture are so tiny and difficult to read.

By increasing the width of the site as a whole, there will be more room in the sidebars to work with.  Give the sidebar some kind of background of it’s own or a vertical rule line to separate it from the content. Everything is floating now, so it ends up looking a little haphazard on the page. It’s most apparent at the top where the Wine Buddy is so close to the large patio image, and further down where the grouping of photos of varying sizes are posted.

The Content

We love your pictures. Your product is so unique and the shots of all these marvelous patios makes us want the same thing. But the way the images are arranged and displayed doesn’t do the site justice.

You have a very visual, physical product. Everything about the site needs to show off those images in the best way possible. A theme that caters to the images first and the copy second would work great for this.

It doesn’t look like you’re on a WordPress platform and your site is using straight HTML. You may want to consider doing a re-design and switching over to WordPress, or consider doing something similar to what you did with your Metal 2 Sculpture site. That site does a beautiful job of showcasing the sculptures. There’s no reason why you couldn’t do the same thing for Stone 2 Furniture.

We also noticed your Metal 2 Sculpture is already on WordPress. Bravo!

Also take a look at Brian Gardner’s Genesis Framework. He has several child themes that are geared specifically for photo galleries and plug into the main Genesis theme.

Continuing with the content, your galleries would benefit from the shadowboxes in WordPress. If you click on the image of the site in this post, you’ll see the screen darkens and expands. This would work beautifully with the various sets and pieces available.

Your images are what drive the site, people want to see them large and as up close as possible. With the shadowboxes, you can do that. You can still have a tasteful arrangement of thumbnails on the page, plus the ability for a magnified view without having to create a whole new page to house it on.

A site with a product like this has the potential to be so rich in visuals. We would absolutely recommend re-designing and upgrading to a platform like WordPress. Maybe even consider including a blog. We’d love to hear more about Dwayne’s process and his artistic insight.

***

Entrepreneurs Jill & Dwayne Cranford are devoted to creating sustainable, eco-friendly outdoor furniture. In addition Dwayne creates life-sized steel sculptures, business sculpture and fine art.

Pictured at left: The Cranford Family: Dwayne, Riely, Cailey & Jill

See, Wendi has this knack for attracting people who need help. Her light is so bright, those of us floundering on the rocks see it, and know if we follow it, we’ll find a safe harbor not too far away.

But her gift doesn’t stop at the light. Wendi works magic when it comes to unraveling tangled dreams. I’ve seen her do it countless times for our clients. She’ll take all the ideas that pour out of a person’s head, spread them on the table and organize them into something special.

She didn’t just do this for clients, she did it for me too three years ago.

That is why today I’d like to invite all of you to a celebration. Wendi’s birthday is later this week. But since we know everyone is going to be enjoying the lovely Spring weather over the weekend, we’re having a surprise birthday party for her on this Wednesday.

(SURPRISE, WENDI!)

The party will be on the Life’s Little Inspirations fan page (click here to get there). If you haven’t “liked” the page yet, please do so, this is one celebration you don’t want to miss!

Starting at 8am PST (10 Central and 11 East Coast), we’ll begin our virtual scavenger hunt. Every two hours I’ll put up a topic for the kinds of images you’ll need to find. Link to the images in the post on Life’s Little Inspirations’ fan page. At the end of the two hours, we’ll choose three winners at random to receive one of the three prizes being offered for that time slot (except for the last time slot which only has two).

What better gift for Wendi than a whole bunch of new pictures of her favorite things to pin?

Here’s a schedule of the gifts and the generous party sponsors for each time slot:

• 8am PST. Sponsors: A book of poetry written by John Hewitt of Poe War, Pebbles in the Pond, featuring Dorit Sasson of Giving a Voice to the Voiceless, and a sampler of homemade chocolates from Mary McCann of From Me to You—Handmade Gifts and More.
• 10am. Sponsors: A free Intro to Tarot course and a Rider-Waite tarot deck from Eliza Fayle of Silver and Grace, a beautiful batik scarf from Joy Resor of Joy On Your Shoulders, and a children’s book from the talented storyteller, Riley Roam of Page Turner Adventures.
• 12pm. Sponsors: A custom pencil sketch from our resident fine artist Janice Cartier, season one of the digital serial hit Yesterday’s Gone by Sean Platt and David Wright and a 3 piece set of Living Naturally Wisdom audio/video casts by Rita Hickman of Inspired Massage.
• 2pm. Sponsors: From Wynn Godbold of Bee Sharp we have one Lesson Plan for Life for all the teachers (or teachers you may know) out there, Lani Harmon of Lani Harmon Photography is offering your choice of a free session OR two digital image files with stock photo release, and Jennifer McClannahan-Flint of Food On Our Table gives us a free one hour one-on-one meal planning strategy session along with a customized one week menu plan that includes recipes.
• 4pm. Sponsors: Deb Ng from Kommien gives us her new book Online Community Management for Dummies and Blue Sun Studio will create one customized Facebook Cover image for your personal or business fan page.

I’m so excited about this party, and so are all of our contributors. I have to give them a hand for keeping this a secret for the last month. Not an easy thing to do in our internet world.

So mark your calendars and come by Life’s Little Inspirations’ fan page on Facebook, Wednesday, April 11th any time between 8am to 4pm PST. Take part in the games or leave your birthday wishes for our birthday girl, Wendi.

And Wendi? From me to you, very happy birthday and this Irish birthday blessing:

May you live a long life
Full of gladness and health
With a pocket full of gold
As the least of your wealth
May the dreams you hold dearest
Be those which come true
May the kindness you spread,
Keep returning to you.

This week we have a very special and rare treat for all of you—a guest post. This one comes to us from Eliza Fayle of Silver & Grace. 

After reading last week’s post, Eliza reminded me how much Tarot is a creative tool and not just something reserved for the oracles on Mystic Row at the local Ren Faire, and offered to write a guest post for us. It’s been a while since I’ve read the cards myself and forgot how helpful they are in freeing up the mind and inviting in new ideas.

***

Deb was professionally discrete in her post The Power of Pictures, but I have no problem stating to the world that the client she refers to is me. I asked Deb if it was too early to create a cover for my upcoming book Darn Near 50! to which she responded “It is never too early for a book cover!”

In The Power of Pictures, Deb talks about the importance of creative visualization. Creating a book cover right up front, she explained to me, is a form of that. It helps anchor my focus.

Indeed, it has! I use a teaser of the book cover, the picture in this article, every single week in my Darn Near 50! blog posts. Each time I do, I become even more dedicated to my project. In fact, this is working so well for me, I have commissioned Deb to design the cover of another book I have in the works.

Deb listed four excellent creative visualization tools:

• Guided Tour
• Vision Boards
• Put It In Writing
• The Movies In Your Head

I would like to add one more that very few people think of, yet it is equally as powerful as the tools Deb described.

Reading Tarot.

That’s right. Reading Tarot cards to enhance your creativity.

I am sure you associate Tarot with personal and spiritual development. However, it is also an awesome tool for tapping into your innate creativity, zipping past blocks put in place by your pesky ego.

Tarot works by fast tracking you right through to your intuition. And how does your intuition work? Through the rich world of your imagination. Information is presented to you in words, feelings, even taste and smell. Entire scenarios can play out in your mind’s eye like a movie clip.

As a creative visualization tool, Tarot can help you:

• come up with innovative business plans
• develop story lines and character profiles
• write song lyrics
• paint inspired images

Add reading Tarot to the other visualization tools Deb suggested and there will be no end to your creativity!

Eliza Fayle, international intuitive mentor, is the founder of Silver & Grace. She is passionate about providing women with tools to tap into their intuitive creative potential.

She is pleased to offer Blue Sun Studio fans this free download of her Tarot & Oracle Card User Guide. Simply click here: Free User Guide. Eliza also invites you to explore the creative and inspired world of Tarot through her online Tarot courses.

If you already know what the book is about, there’s no reason why you can’t go ahead and have a cover made. We do it ourselves all the time. Before the Bonds of Blood & Spirit series had its first book written, we had all three covers designed. Why? Excitement for one. Aside from that, the images made that book more real in our heads.

During the writing of Loyalties, I had a book cover wallpaper up on my monitor with those wolf eyes and flames staring at me every day. Now, I’ve got the blue and gold of Uncivil Wars. I can’t wait until we change over to the third cover for Legacies.

Creative Visualization

Athletes and performers have used creative visualization for ages. Maybe you’ve heard the stories how an athlete, dancer, actor or musician will visualize his or her whole routine before they set foot into the arena or out on the stage. They go over every little detail in their mind’s eye, picturing every step and every move. They see it clearly and perfectly.

This kind of meditation isn’t just for performances, it’s for life as well. Why not envision your ideal business or throngs of ideal clients pouring through your front door bringing buckets of money with them? Or “seeing” your dream house a reality? Or bringing into being that trip to Maui you’ve always wanted?

It’s not magic. It’s not some kind of woo-woo wishing spell either. Make no mistake, you’ll have to do plenty of work to get where you want, none of this will happen by merely wishing on a star and hoping for the best while you sit back and relax.

Effective creative visualization works hand in hand with action. This is another tool to keep you focused and on track. So, how do you do it? Here are a few different ways people bring their dreams into reality:

• Guided Tour. Some people find it hard to relax and focus. Try recording your creative journey on CD. Find a time when you can relax and close your eyes, then play the CD while you let your mind drift. Think of it as recording yourself a personalized bed time story for success.
• Vision Boards. Nothing beats seeing what you want right in front of your face everyday. Vision boards are easy and fun to make. Just get a cork board or large piece of cardboard and start pasting images to it. Cut them out from magazines, print them from the web, take photos of them when you’re out shopping. It’s your visual wishlist. And if you don’t want a big old board taking up space? Try using Pinterest. Set up as many “boards” as you like and pin away!
• Put It In Writing. Words are as powerful as images. Keep a special journal for writing out your goals and dreams.
• The Movies in Your Head. Play the movie of your future success in your head. Do this as a set meditation time, before bed, or right before you get out of bed in the morning. Play your success movie any time you need a boost.

Remember, the human mind is a form of energy. We’re all connected to it, we can shape it, move it and change our realities. Creative visualization is a way of redirecting and focusing that energy on what we want. A saying in the Hawaiian spiritual philosophy of Huna says “Energy flows where attention goes”. Where is your energy flowing?

At first glance, Deb’s site has an editorial appeal. The text, colors and layout remind us a little of a newspaper or magazine. The softly textured background is gentle and appealing to the eyes. Her banner is simple and the earthy color palette offers the right amount of tranquility without being boring.

Deb also has some very nice professional portraits of herself sprinkled throughout the site, which invite you in and make you want to get to know her and work with her.

Overall, it’s not a bad start. But as with all the sites we review, there’s room for improvement.

Starting At The Top

Let’s begin with the header area. Deb’s image works well up there and it’s simplicity is in keeping with the rest of the site. The tagline could use some work: “…it’s all about falling in love with your life”.

Many people think they have to write in full sentences when creating a tagline. The purpose of a tagline is to have something short and sweet that adds a bit of punch to your main title. Using “Fall In Love With Your Life” is much stronger and also serves as a little call to action.

On the right of the banner we have a block of text with a date, a headline and a smaller title beneath that. Not every visitor will understand that’s a link to the most recent post.

The eye path is good. There’s a zig-zag flow that leads visitors from the upper left, down through the navigation, to the sidebar and to the content.

Font Issues

The biggest flaw in this site is the fonts. Small serif fonts, such as the Times Roman/Georgia family used here, is spindly and difficult to read. In general, using serif fonts like this for your content makes on-screen reading tiring. We do like the drop-cap (a starting capital letter that “drops” into the lines below) and think it will still work if Deb were to change her content font to a sans serif like Verdana, Tahoma or Arial.

When we click on a link to one of the posts, the font issues get worse. We have the big, clear sans serif headline and below that in the content, a mishmash of different font styles and sizes. This kind of style is great for a poster, but not so much when you’re trying to read an article.

The larger fonts in the article make us want to skim and just read what we can focus on easily. The smaller serif fonts get glossed over—and we could be missing good stuff in there!

Navigation

Navigation is clean and clear. Still too small and too light in color, though. Debra has all the basics there…except for one very important button.

Home.

Many visitors won’t think to click on the banner to get back to the main home page.

The Sidebar

Deb’s sidebar is well organized. She has the important stuff above the fold. Her social networking and opt-in are right there at the top where visitors will see it before having to scroll down.

However, the smallness continues. The social networking icons are tiny, and so is the copy around it. Deb has plenty of room to fit a 64×64 size icon instead of the 32×32 she has there now.

Her freebie digital cover image is appealing, but once again, everything is too small. The image itself is a good size. The title and text inside of it, not so much. When creating a cover for an ebook or print book, you have to keep in mind its readability when it’s shrunk down to thumbnail size.

The information in the sign up form is also too small. Think about your audience. If they’re older, some of them may not be able to read such small text. A younger crowd with good eyes? Maybe.

We do like the big, bold heart in her ad for her Complimentary Discovery Session. It’s a clear call to action and when a visitor clicks on it, it takes them right to a scheduler.

The Footer

Way down at the bottom of the page we have an area for more widgets in the footer area. The two Deb has there now, Recent Posts and Archives, are wasted real estate. If her theme allows, having a block with a recent post excerpt would work better.

Another trend is to have a small Contact form in the footer. This can be created with the Gravity Forms plugin for WordPress.

If she still wants to have Recent Posts, only list the latest five. Any more than that, and it begins to look cluttered.

An archive is best done on a page of it’s own and put in the Navigation bar. Your archive is going to grow over time and will make your sidebar or footer long and crowded. Keep it on a page where it can have room to expand.

Debra has the foundation for a good, solid site. Sometimes it’s the “little” things that make the biggest impact.

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About Debra Smouse: “I’m a native Texan now living in Ohio, and I hold a Bachelor of Science in Communications and certificates in Project Management (PMP) and ISO 9000 Quality Management. I’m an ENTJ according to MBTI and my Enneagram Type is 2.  I love cooking, good wine, and stimulating conversations.

When I’m not coaching, I spend as much time on the golf course as possible, always striving to bring my A game.

And I’d be honored to help you bring yours.”