When someone uses their smartphone to browse your site, they want to feel like their are browsing on their phone, not fighting your existing desktop site.

There are a lot of ways to create a mobile site, including some that are extremely quick to implement. If your website is not mobile friendly, it should be.

4 Rookie Mobile Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Photograph by Enokson

I could not agree more with this post. If you are looking to increase overall page views, get visitors to return to your website regularly, and build your authority in what you do, writing on your website can help greatly.

Writing for your website is like a new workout routine: you don’t need to be amazing at it on the first day; you just need to build the routine. There are a lot of easy ways to get that routine going and build a simple, but strong, writing habit for your business, and that begins with being able to easily write on your site. We can help make it easier to add your new content to your website.

Why You should Blog for Your Small Business.

Photo by west.m

Some folks may be reluctant to put ANOTHER social media avenue in place, but I think this article makes some compelling arguments for starting a Google+ page.

I’m hoping in the near future, they will open up the API for Google+, allowing more application development. Having one application to manage Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ would be excellent.

5 Reasons Google+ Is Worth It For SMBs.

Photo by lisaschafferphoto

I’d like to start with 2011. It began with quite a big decision, which was to put PB&J Advertising on hold for a while and work with The Citren Group (known at the time as American Technology Systems) in Liberty Hill and their in-house web designer and developer. It was a great opportunity to work with the team there and learn a lot about process automation, which is something I really enjoy.

Toward the end of the past year, Citren became a victim of the economy (in spite of our best efforts) and I began to look at beginning work on PB&J again. I quickly realized that PB&J was more about overall marketing and advertising and that I was more focused on website design and development. That focus led me to C3 Design.

That brings me to 2012, where I start with no resolutions, only a focus: to deliver websites back to their owners. I’m constantly hearing stories of websites not updated and the reasons are as varied as the websites themselves. I want to change that beginning today.

How do you want to change your online presence this year? How will your part of the internet help your business grow?

What is the difference in sizes?

Sure, your camera can produce digital images that print beautiful 4×6 prints, but do you need all of that image information when you are showing that same image online? No. Your camera resolution refers to the number of pixels in an image. For example, an image that is 2048 pixels wide and 1536 pixels high contains 3,145,728 pixels, which is the same as saying 3.1 megapixels. And that size looks great when printed 4 inches x 6 inches, because your photo printer will most likely print out at 300 pixels per inch, which means the perfect image size is 1800 pixels by 1200 pixels. A computer monitor only uses 72 pixels per inch, so that same 3.1 megapixel image shows at (approximately, depending on monitor settings) 28 inches x 21 inches, which is most likely way too large for web viewing. So how can you take your original image and resize it to efficiently show on your website, but not lose any image quality? You’ll need to resize it.

Resizing Your Images

The first thing you will need to find out is the size you want it to be. Most image resizers will show you a preview of the new size, so you can get a good idea of your final size before you create the new image. If you already have an image in place on your site, you can usually right-click on the image and click “Properties” and it will show the image size. Different browsers have different ways of showing this information: some will say “Inspect Element” or “View Media Info”, but all should give you the final size of your image.

Once you have your correct final size written down, you can resize your image. If you have programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Google Picasa, or iPhoto available, you can use them to resize images easily. If not, here are a few online resizers you can try out:

http://www.picresize.com – will let you rotate and add simple effects to your photo
http://www.shrinkpictures.com – a little more limited, but very straightforward
http://www.resizr.com – will let you resize photos already online or from Facebook

Once you have your new resized images, replace your original image from the website using FTP or other uploading software (check with your webmaster for more details).

An Easier Way

Some newer websites that use content management systems (such as the ones we create) will take care of the resizing as you upload the image to your website. This can be a huge convenience, as you rarely have to think about the image size – just take your photos and throw them on the site and let the software do the work for you. After all, that is what technology is for, right?

Resizing your images to the correct size for your website helps give your site viewers a better experience and will help them focus on your site’s content, instead on it’s loading speed.

We came up with a specific schedule and compelling designs beginning in June of 2010, traditionally the beginning of their slowest time of year, and began sending out e-mail marketing every two weeks. We also came up with themes for each e-mail to increase audience attention to each communication. We also segmented the existing mailing list into categories by brand & total sales. This gave us target markets to which the e-mails were tailored.

By using a consistent approach with new messaging on each e-mail and targeting commercial and retail markets with different messaging, we saw an initial increase of sales by $30,000 within the first two months, netting an 8 times return on investment and an estimated increased profit of 25%.

An interesting side effect of the increased e-mail marketing was an increase in customer service requests and even purchases that were sent to the companies as replies to the initial sales e-mail. This allowed the Customer Service and Sales Departments to respond to customers who would not have otherwise contacted the company.

Consistent, compelling e-mail marketing allowed this client to deliver value-added messages to it’s existing customers, while keeping the costs to a minimum. This allowed for an increased return on their investment over traditional mass mailings and flexibility to increase or decrease their messaging cycle as sales and supply saw fit.