The Las Vegas Web Worker

Design for Design

blog@kmjwebdesign.com (KMJ Web Design) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Considering my background in architecture, I figured it would only be a matter of time before KMJ Web Design was hired to build a website for a local Las Vegas architect, and sure enough, it happened. We're proud to announce the launch of our latest project for the firm Douglas G. Purvis Architects, Ltd.

My history with the owner goes back 15 years or so and I was honored when he approached me to build his first ever website. We tried to deliver something a little different with this project by keeping the entire websites content on one page. Using a system of layers to "show" or "hide" the content allowed us to provide a unique experience for the user all the while keeping it simple to navigate.

If you are in the market for a Custom Residential or Commercial architect, we highly recommend Douglas G. Purvis Architects, Ltd. When visiting the website, click on the Projects link to see what kind of work Doug and his staff can do for you!

We're on a roll with yet another website. This time it's for Jonathan Roberts and Anna Trebunskaya from DWTS!

blog@kmjwebdesign.com (KMJ Web Design) — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:59:00 +0000

Wow, so our fourth website in two weeks has launched and it was a fun one. For this project KMJ Web Design partnered together with the folks at Social Star Power, an up and coming social media management service for anyone who wants the freedom to enjoy the "social" element of social media with a hassle-free online experience.

Social Star Power caters to several celebrity clients and from within those circles, it came as no surprise that we were asked to assist them with a new website for professional dancers Jonathan Roberts and Anna Trebunskaya. Some of you will know this dancing duo from the ABC series Dancing with the Stars!

This project was all about social media and so we came up with a simple design to showboat Jonathan & Anna's social media environment. The entire left pane is devoted to Facebook, Personal Twitter feeds and a host of You Tube videos dedicated these talented dancers.

We invite anyone and everyone (especially fans of the show) to come check out Jonathan & Anna's new website. And if you like, feel free to post a comment below and tell us what you think.

A newly redesigned website for Advanced Management Group, LLC

blog@kmjwebdesign.com (KMJ Web Design) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:59:00 +0000

We recently launched a redesigned version of the Advanced Management Group Website. This company has been a client of KMJ Web Design since 2007 when they hired us to build their first website and assist them in growing their online presence. It wasn't long after... less than a year I think, when they called on us again to assist them in redesigning the site because they had already outgrown their first website. We were happy to oblige and with that, we established the current look and feel of the website back in 2008.

So here we are, two years later, when once again Advanced Management Group was looking to improve on their existing design to accommodate their continued growth. This time they wanted to keep the same basic look and feel of the site, so we provided a usability upgrade to the website in addition to new features to better serve their clientele. All together we were very happy with the final results.

We'd like to invite all of our readers to go check out the Advanced Management Group website and if you happen to be looking for a new place to live, their staff will be more than happy to assist you.

Check out the latest launches for David R. Fischer & Associates and ATOM Las Vegas

blog@kmjwebdesign.com (KMJ Web Design) — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 15:53:00 +0000

True to our form and admittedly not proud of it, we are making a far over due post to the Las Vegas Web Worker Blog. We're going to be talking about two new projects recently launched by KMJ Web Design and we would like to encourage all of our readers to check out these great services and be sure to tell them KMJ Web Design sent you!

The first website is for David R. Fischer & Associates, LLC. David and his staff are serious about making sure their clients get the legal advice they need. With services ranging from Personal Injury to Criminal Defense, David R. Fischer & Associates, LLC has what you need.

When we designed the website, we worked closely with the staff to help define their goals and then we came up with a strategy to assist them in achieving those goals. The website contains general information for potential clients and a variety of ways for clients to begin getting the assistance they need. Please consider David R. Fischer & Associates, LLC when seeking an attorney, they will be happy to assist you!

Next on the list, and on the opposite end of the spectrum of our wide range of clients, is the website for ATOM Las Vegas. This takes us back to our roots as KMJ Web Design has a rich background in web design for the entertainment industry. Our entertainment clients span the country, but this one is a local client for whom we built their first website back in 2004. Originally specializing in Murder Mystery Dinner Theater under the moniker A Touch Of Mystery, the owner decided they were going to expand their list of services bumping them into a whole new category. We were hired to create an "umbrella" website to house all the different aspects of the their services which include everything from interactive entertainment to full-fledged production shows. The owner, Jay Joseph, is more than happy to assist you in developing a custom designed team building exercise for your next corporate event. Check out ATOM Las Vegas today!

Announcing the launch of the My LDS Cards website

blog@kmjwebdesign.com (KMJ Web Design) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:14:00 +0000

Today's entry is all about the latest project from KMJ Web Design, a website for the LDS community specializing it creative and witty greeting cards. My LDS Cards by Ann Christensen Publishing is based in Las Vegas, Nevada and is currently focused on greeting cards for missionaries who are away from home. Soon, the website will expand to include greeting cards for Baptism, Temple, Young Women, Holiday and General Greeting cards, as well as handouts for Young Women and Primary.

Ann created her first set of cards in 1996 and has continued growing her business to the point of starting her own publishing company in 1999. We really enjoyed the opportunity to work with Ann while learning a little about her as well as the LDS community in which she serves. We at KMJ Web Design wish her great luck in this newest venture for her publishing company.

If you are a member of the LDS community, we would like to encourage you to take a moment to visit Ann’s new website MyLDSCards.com and take advantage of her high quality products and FREE SHIPPING!

Announcing The Internal Press Website Launch

blog@kmjwebdesign.com (KMJ Web Design) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:05:00 +0000

Today's entry is to plug the latest project from KMJ Web Design, a website for The Internal Press providing professional, custom newsletters based in Henderson, Nevada. This project is particularly noteworthy because this site was based largely on the current KMJ Web Design website. Our client had liked the design, so much in fact, that they wanted to use it for their website. We couldn't have been happier to oblige. We have received lots of praise for over the years for this design and now that we are about to launch our new website and replace it, we're happy to know that someone else can benefit from the same praise we did. It's kind of sad really... as a designer you almost get the feeling of passing along something that's close to you, but oddly enough we feel the design actually works better for The Internal Press than it did for us.

We would like to encourage everyone to take a moment out of your busy schedules to visit the new The Internal Press website. Who knows, perhaps you or your company can benefit the professional services they provide.

"A professional newsletter provides an ideal solution for both internal and external communications in today’s business world. A high-quality and well-designed newsletter from The Internal Press will increase your brand awareness. The Internal Press develops consistent and strategically designed elements and graphics to expand your brand presence in the marketplace. The more your business image is promoted, the higher the percentage your product or service will be elevated within your industry" - The Internal Press

...And we couldn't agree more, check them out!

Everything but...

blog@kmjwebdesign.com (KMJ Web Design) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:29:00 +0000

It was just a few weeks ago that I became all "gung ho" about my blog again and promised to blog more often and start posting videos from time to time. Although I still plan to deliver on that promise, my available time has been lacking and it feels like I have been doing everything but the video updates.

It turns out its not too bad because we have managed to pull off a few other tasks in the meantime. One of those has been the announcement of our professional photography services by KMJ Web Design. Why would a web designer offer photography? Simple... websites need pictures and now we can offer a little more than the average stock photography options for our clients. If you have products your selling, we can be pivotal in making sure you have the professional images required for a great looking shopping cart. We are still deep in the midst of developing our photography portfolio, but we posted some teasers on our Facebook fan page. Check it our Photography Skillz and if you like what you see, become a fan if you haven't already :)

In addition to expanding our services, we're about to complete our long, long overdue new website. Although the full functionality won't be ready for another month or so, we plan to launch the core site shortly. Anyone who has visited our site recently knows that it's in a bad way and highly out of date, but that will soon be a thing of the past.

With all the great things planned for KMJ Web Design, I wanted to take a moment to post a shout out for Rachelle Maisner's new blog which is chock-full of the latest and greatest marketing and tech news which I highly recommend everyone subscribe to... especially if you like to be the first one to share news with your friends and colleagues.

As always, we would really like to hear from our readers so please feel free to share any of your ideas, thoughts, criticisms, etc…

Possible Turn Of Events?

blog@kmjwebdesign.com (KMJ Web Design) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:21:00 +0000

It’s been a long time since I have posted anything on this blog. It’s hard to believe that it’s going on 8 months since I last posted anything. But I kept promising to come back and post something more. Well the truth is I have just been busy… real busy, but I guess that’s a good thing. However, for the sake of my business I need to bump this up on the priority list.

So here’s the deal… most of you know that I run this small company with my wife Rachelle, and the two of us have been working hard trying to build this into something significant. In the process we have come up with some really cool ideas that we plan to expand on and eventually share here with all of you. But then it dawned on me the other day that aside from our ideas, the experiences we go through on a daily basis as entrepreneurs might be interesting to some and maybe even hilarious to others. With that said, I have decided that I want to start posting videos of some of our daily activities as small business owners. But don’t worry, we plan to keep it simple and stick to the interesting stuff. After all, I wouldn’t expect anyone to take an interest in watching me code for minutes at a time. Most of the videos will be of just me since Rachelle has another full time job in addition to the business.

I suspect my next posting will contain such a video so keep your fingers crossed that this so called project that I call a blog won’t take another 8 months before it gets updated again. We would really like to get feedback from our readers so please feel free to share any of your ideas, thoughts, criticisms, etc…

Before I wrap this up, I want to take a moment to thank all of you who follow us on Twitter and/or who have become fans on Facebook. With your help, we reached our first goal of 100 fans in August which allowed us to secure our Facebook username. Now you can find our page by visiting http://www.facebook.com/KMJWebDesign. We plan to add plenty of interesting content so stay tuned!

The Web Workers Role In Advertising

blog@kmjwebdesign.com (KMJ Web Design) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:55:00 +0000

So I posted my last blog several months ago when things weren't going so well for my web design business. It was getting to the point to where I even considered looking for a web design "day job" to help make ends meet. I have to admit finances weren't great but they were good enough for me to hold out longer then expected... and I'm glad I did.

When the New Year rolled around something completely unexpected happened. I started getting a ton of phone calls from people looking to either start a new website or revise the one they already have. As always, I am more then happy to help anyone with whatever their goal might be, but the whole thing caught me off guard and ultimately it spawned a small curiosity as to why it happened at all.

For those of you who don't know, my future wife is a digital marketing rock star and she is a huge inspiration for me. This also ties well into my future goals of adding digital marketing to the list of services we will offer our client base. So where am I going with all this? Good question... It makes a lot of sense that web design be interwoven into the digital marketing realm and because of this obvious relationship my business is busier then ever. Perhaps because of tax reason or maybe simply due to a New Year's resolution, business owners have decided to take the bull by the horns and do what they can to help their business survive in the current economic climate. All they need to do is convince people to buy their product and services and the way to do that is ADVERTISE.

As most do, I have learned a lot about different aspects of running my business as I introduce new concepts and procedures to improve the way we do business. Knowing my goal of offering marketing services is just around the corner; I feel lucky in a sense that I have sort of been tossed into the marketing efforts of my clients and really forced to see what I do from a different perspective. I guess I have always known websites were a form of advertising for small businesses, but I never felt the need to put such emphasis on it like we have to do now. After all, current internet advertising trends have demonstrated that traditional forms of offline marketing (television, newspapers and magazines) are going to lose market share to online advertising efforts over the next few years. By some estimations, online advertising is expected to hold as much as 10% of the global advertising market share in 2009 and keep growing. By the way, this is also some interesting reading on the subject (by iMedia Connection - "Be Careful What You Ask For").

So as it turns out, some industries really have an opportunity to prosper even when things are tough for so many people. Given the fact that my work load (and profits) have increased, I am still looking forward to the day that everything returns to normal.

One last note however... for anyone who wishes to keep closer, not so interesting, tabs on me during my large blogging gaps, you're always welcome to follow me on http://www.twitter.com/kmjwebdesign. I hope to see all of you there!

Are web workers reliable professionals?

blog@kmjwebdesign.com (KMJ Web Design) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:43:00 +0000

It’s been a while since I made my first post and that’s largely due to having too many things going on all at once. But I suppose that is a good thing otherwise life would be really boring for me. Today I just want to talk a little about the perception of web workers as professionals. Why isn’t there any prestige that comes with the title Web Developer?

This is something that has been on my mind for some time and I want to open up the discussion to anyone who happens to come across this posting. Why is it that professionals such as Attorneys, Architects and Engineers are looked at as real achievers, but the stigma of the professional Web Developer is often thought of as a flaky teenager who spends more time on MySpace then on their clients project? OK, I can admit that there are a lot of flaky web developers out there, but I could make the argument that a percentage of architects and engineers are equally as unreliable. However, in the end, those of us to take pride in our web working shouldn't have our integrity stripped because of the flakiness of others.

Due to current status of the economy, my web business has suffered more then I might like to admit. It’s not that the work isn’t out there, I just think it has more to do with the stigma of the web worker. Rather then taking a chance to hire an outsides firm, companies have turned to building an internal staff which I suppose has more to do with control then convenience. This in itself is a sign that some people do not trust web workers. After all, how many times have you heard of a company hiring their own in-house architect? This doesn’t really happen because architecture firms are trusted to do the job they are hired for.

So with the work load (and cash flow) diminishing, I have begun entertaining the idea of searching for a “bread & butter” job. You know.. something that I can do 9-5 and continue to run my business after hours. I was recently contacted by a small company that was looking to bring their services online for the first time (a little behind the times if you ask me). So here I am, an accomplished business owner with all the experience needed to come in an manage a department of developers. It was my optimistic belief that this company had already familiarized themselves with my accomplishments and had chosen me wisely out of a select few in order to see what I can do help them achieve their goals. This belief was further amplified when learning that I was scheduled to meet directly with the company’s V.P. and head of IT. I’m thinking this will be a great positive experience! What a disappointment that turned out to be. As it turns out, I ended up having to spend the majority of my time trying to defend myself against what I felt was a challenge of my competence. And for what reason did they feel it necessary to attack me? Well I presume it all comes down to the lack of credibility us web workers are destined to carry.

Alternately, I would argue that their interviewing process was poorly structured, and ultimately that will be responsible for a team of poor developers. Regardless of who's at fault, in their eyes I walked out of that meeting with a heavy weight on my shoulders weather I liked it or not.

Meanwhile, this Las Vegas Web Worker will look forward to other opportunities to help businesses that are far more open minded and savvy to the ways of the web worker.

If any one else has had similar experiences, I would like to hear about them. Visit my profile for my contact info.

Introduction

blog@kmjwebdesign.com (KMJ Web Design) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:40:00 +0000

Starting a blog has been on my list of things to do for a while. Finally after finding a few moments of free time, I felt it I should start sharing some of my thoughts about the web design industry. But I hope to focus specifically on web design in Las Vegas. Since this is my first posting, it will probably be a little longer than planned future postings.

A little about myself... I have been working as a freelancer and also running my own company since 1999. As I'm sure many designers did, I started without any type of formal education in the field. I stumbled across my newest passion after being asked to build a website for my employer. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to pursue it and several websites later, I opened my own business. Back in those days I was employed as a project manager and I have to say there are some striking similarities between the two jobs which made the transition to web design pretty easy.

Website design and development is an ever changing medium and still I find there is plenty of room for new ideas. The options are truly limitless and I suppose this is one reason that made me want to transition careers. The building industry is far less open to new things and the seemingly endless list of local and state bureaucracies make sure it stays that way.

Although the current economic forecast is not very "new business friendly," I felt it was time for a big change. Together with my partner we are taking the first leap in pursuit of our goals.

A little about our company... I mentioned my business partner who also happens to be my fiancé. Together we have exciting plans to take our company to the next level. Over the years, we were surprised to find many website owners are clueless to the potential their websites have. For most people, they spend the money getting the website built and then what? Aside from getting listed in some search engines, they typically have no real plan for their site. With our combined experience in every aspect digital marketing, we hope to educate our clients about the tremendous opportunities that they are likely overlooking. The website is only a small part of the first step. Helping our clients to develop a highly executable marketing plan is our primary goal.

Later postings will cover more in-depth topics on how you can utilize digital marketing to improve the performance of your website. I hope you find this informational and that you return for future installments.