Our favorite place to work tends to be coffee shops and delicatessens.  In all of the chaos and varying conversations, we can get lost in the work at hand.   One particular place that we’ve come to enjoy more than most is the Atlanta Bread Company in Warrenville, Illinois.   Since this franchise is family run, the atmosphere is not only welcoming, but quite inclusive and friendly.  The kindness, the artistic fervor, and the immersion within a flowing sea of people coming and going actually makes for our most productive work environment.hidden links

The families that manage and own the store are some of the first people I met when moving to Illinois.  I have a large amount of gratitude for the kindness they showed me when arriving here and when we came back to Naperville this past spring.  They have welcomed us and our clients into their establishment and given us a warm environment to conduct our business meetings and web design presentations.

Artist tend to flock to the “Bread” as well.  On any given night there will be some form of artistic group that is having a meeting at their location.  There are women who stitch on one night, trading card women on another, painters discussing canvasses, and many other niche artisans who wish to meet and share their talents.  For those familiar with the area, Naperville and Warrenville aren’t exactly thought of as Art Mecca’s, but within the Atlanta Bread, there is an exception that is a pleasant change for the Chicago Suburbs.

Lastly, the absolute chaos of a busy lunch cycle completes our A.D.D. persona and elevates our productivity.  We tend to get more accomplished in a two hour rush at a coffee shop, than in eight hours of quiet within our on office.  we’re going to post a lot more on this in coming weeks.  There’s just an odd correlation between our better work performance and the amount of interactions taking place at the same time.  We’ll be posting more about our favorite working environments in the weeks to come, but at this moment Atlanta Bread is our favorite local coffee shop for web design and seo meetings and work.

Is your website at its optimum performance?
Does it bring you business and clients?

In Naperville, we have found a home and community that has been quite good to us.    In looking for ways to give back to the area(including Chicago and Aurora), we decided to offer web analysis to any business owner for free.  This special is being offered through the spring for any business located within Naperville, Aurora and the Chicago Metro Area.hidden links  We will evaluate your website and ensure that it is providing peak performance for your business.  Our staff will use their years of dedicated experience to measure how effective your web design, web traffic, and conversion rates; and ensure that they are in keeping with your business model.

We will conduct our evaluation in typical After Action Review standards.

Keep—–>Sustain         All aspects of your web presence that are positive

Lose——>Improve    Portions of your website that may require improvement.

Remember, the website, and your web design are supposed to “work for you”, not the other way around.  Our suggestions and rating system will enable your business to find the most beneficial and efficient way to increase your web presence, for the least amount of time and money.

We offer no charge and no pressure, only a desire to interact with our neighbors in the Naperville, Aurora, and Chicago Metro Area.  Feel free to submit your website to us for a free evaluation, and we’ll be glad to offer our free analysis to improve your web presence.

Today, Brett and I had a moment of clarity.  We’ve been learning and becoming strong with both design and structure of websites for some time now.  We’ve built for companies and friends, but haven’t had the chance to feel as though we’ve really given to our area as much as we’d wished.  Because of this, we’ve offered and will be working with two separate non-profit groups to donate a web design for a charitable cause.hidden links

As artist at heart, we have the urge to bring vision to the world through our talents and abilities.  In doing this, we are hoping that the groups will be able to have a greater reach to their audiences, and we gain the joy of giving back to our community.  We believe that given the opportunity, we can all come together with our varied talents to help others around our community.  For those in the Naperville, Aurora, and Chicago areas with suggestions for how to better use our talents to assist the community, we encourage your responses and correspondence.

“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But if that drop was not in the ocean, I think the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. I do not agree with the big way of doing things.”

-Mother Teresa-

While it may be small potatoes to some, Naper Design is now an officially recognized business in the eyes of the IRS.   We filed for and received our EIN today and will be submitting our Articles of Incorporation within the next month.  The new customers we have been receiving and the welcomed response to our product and work ethic have ensured that we are a business that will stand the test.hidden links

We’d like to especially thank all of our clients for the continued increase in business and networking.  The referal business is a testiment to the qualiity of clients that we have been continuing to enjoy.

Thank you, and we look forward to moving forward with the full marketing potential of Naperville SEO Inc,  Naper Design and Naperville Strategic Marketing

For years now, Intuit has been a shining star to many small businesses because of its highly acclaimed TurboTax, Quicken, and Quick-Books software.  I myself have been an avid user of their small business tools and have enjoyed the time it saves with handling budgets, bills and payrolls.

Recently, Intuit began a major push for their new website building software and I thought I’d give it a shot.  If it’s better than Go-Daddy’s horrid “Website Tonight” software,  that would be a great improvement for businesses beginning a web footprint.  I’ve decided to break down my critique of their builder into three basic categories for this assessment.  There are certainly other criteria that could be used, but I would likely write much more than anyone would be willing to read.   After discussing the criteria, we will make a founded assessment of the value vs cost of their development price.  The three categories we will discuss are for design structure, code development, and what SEO and SEM their builds enable a site with.  We’ll use a scoring method of 1 to 10 with 1 equaling Go Daddy’s Website Tonight and 10 equaling a Free WordPress Theme.

Design

Score= 4

First of all, their design structure, while a bit cliche, is one of the first autobuilder formats that has some decent design structure to their templates.  That being said, these are templates and will not move far.  Of the ~2000 templates they have, there are only about 100 that are really going to get peoples attention.  Of these 100 templates, take a guess at how many times each one will be recycled continuously across the internet.  On the positive side, the builder does allow you to tweak certain aspects and containers of each template to allow for some impression of originality on your site.  This will help to an extent, but eventually there will be repition of your site throughout your market and maybe even your direct competitors.  While far better than the templates that most autobuilders use, there’s still a lot to be desired here.

Code Development

Score= 7

Some of you familiar with their templates are going to be scratching your heads after seeing a score of 7 on this one.  Yes, it may be a little high for legacy HTML, but there is a good reason behind this thought.

They’re using Quality CSS and don’t have tons of tables being shot out at your browser.  If familiar with other autobuilders, you understand that the majority of their build are conducted in long and dirty table design.  The CSS in the Intuit sites are actually decent.  Anyone hoping to see PHP within their listings, hope you can find one, but after and hour of search and reading “index.html” as many times as I did, it was apparent that there are no PHP driven sites within their selection.  This means that there is less functionality available through these sites, but if you’re using them, you probably don’t even notice.  All in all though, the HTML is written well for template use and the CSS is clean enough to earn an 8 in this category.

SEO and SEM

Score=2

Ok, here is the category that hurts them.  While it was hard to find any sites built with this tool(besides spend money and make one), I was able to find a few that we could run through website. grader from Hubspot.  The sites saw a “Best Ranking” of 30. At no point in my life has a score of 30 been a passing grade.  The same occurred when running it through the tools on SEOmoz(know some of you hate them, but they have easy tools).   There’s simply no excuse for a website builder that will leave a client with a  site of  limited ability and still be published mainly through PPC style advertising.   If there is any suggestion for Intuit, or specifically people thinking of using there site builder, it would be that there needs to be more focus within the code structure to benefit the customer needs. If you are looking for a website that allows people to find your business and not just a vanity plate to put on a business card, avoid this builder as well.

Final Score= 4.3

While Some of my fellow designers will vehemently disagree with my assessment, I think it’s like to be the best summarized review that could be offered.  It should be mentioned as well, that this is only a grade of the Starter system, since that’s the one being offered for $4.99/month(while the only one with the tools needed for business cost $49.99/month).  The problem with the price is the “Bait and Switch”.  If we look at the pricing table, it becomes apparent that this is not the fantastic deal that they make it out to be in the commercial(imagine that happening).  Here are there price columns per service.

As you can see, there’s not much you’re getting for their advertised $4.99/month or even for their Cadillac Package that could legitimize this site build being used for a long period of time.  It is understandable that some businesses must use one of these auto builders to get started, but it should only be a temp fix. These should not be used over six months at max; otherwise, it becomes a money pit instead of a money producer.  A quality CMS system built for your business will save you money in the long-run, and will do more for your income as well…

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Here is another re-posting from an author at webdesignmo.com . I felt it would be nice to show more work from fellow designers and their thoughts.
Please enjoy this posting and a link to its author will be placed at the base.hidden links

Why Being A Freelance Designer Is Risky: 7 Business Strategies To Help You Succeed

One of the biggest problems with being a freelance designer is that the work can be challenging. No matter how clear you may be on the assignment and direction from the client, there are pitfalls to avoid. Here are seven tips to help your freelance business succeed.

1 – Craft a Contract

Before you begin work, it is critical to draft a contract that delineates the product to be delivered as well as the amount of revisions a client will get. And include what will NOT be included in your services; it covers all your bases. You do not want to be caught in a situation where you are doing countless revisions and not being paid for it.

2 – Confirm the Delivery Format

It is crucial to find out how a client wants the design delivered. You will want to know the application in which the design is being used and thus make sure that you deliver a format that will work for the CMS (or non CMS). This should also be specified in the contract.

3 – Ensure You Get Paid

When you are freelancer you will not have the security of a large design firm backing you up and collecting on your accounts. One smart thing to do is to place a watermark on the work or deliver it in a resolution that is too low to be used by the client. Once the work is paid in full you can deliver the artwork at full resolution with no watermark.

4 – You May Have to Start at the Bottom

There is always the lure of being freelance, you work the hours you want and take the projects you want to do right? Well you may find that it’s not quite like that especially in the beginning stages. You may need to take whatever work comes your way until you can market yourself and get a roster of clients that will give you enough work to support you and your new business.

5 – Set up an Arbitration Policy

If there is a discrepancy in the amount due or over the initial contract you drew up with the client, you need to make sure you are legally covered. When drafting the contract make sure that the client signs it and returns the original copy to you and understands the requirement of arbitration to end disputes. This will be critical if you should have to take them to small claims court. Always be as specific as possible.

6 – Spend Money where Necessary

You may not have all the latest equipment like you would at a design firm. Buying computers, software, pencils, watercolors, are all sunk costs to your new business. Keep your costs down by holding onto your laptop a few months extra and seek out discounts for software.

7 – Name Drop

Keep a detailed address file to stay on top of your professional contacts. Your contacts are your most important asset. You want to keep in touch with your clients even after you finished a job. Sending email updates, newsletters or promotions can be a good way to stay in touch.

Freelancing is a hard road. Not everyone is suited for a lifestyle. It takes brains, balls, and wit to stay above water. But we hope these seven tips will give you an edge to succeed.

Written by- Eva Vesper at WHS, a web host guide that provides reviews, articles, and tutorials. Got questions about hosting or domains? Check them out.

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Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I was always creative and loved to experiment with fabrics, paints or any medium I could use.  Decorating the house for holidays were the most exciting times.  As I got older my creativity took a back seat for while.  Then again, it took off after my marriage.  It was almost like I had the whole house as a canvas!   I started doing painting, embroidery and many other techniques.  I was looking for newer ways to decorate and that’s when I learned about glass painting.  I started experimenting and got good at it – at least that’s what my husband said!  I loved it so much that I started painting every glass or ceramic surface in my kitchen.  Finally, I had to stop before it got out of hands.  Around the same time, my friends started asking me to paint glasses as a gift for someone they knew.  That’s when I got the idea of doing it for everyone that wanted it.  Why not?

I have been getting great reviews and I am very excited to see where it takes me.  Eventually I plan on adding newer techniques like etching, frosting, etc.  The best yet, maybe I will come up with my own special technique!!   I believe that sky is the limit when it comes to creativity.  It gives me great satisfaction every time I create a piece for my client and they love it.  The whole point is for you to have a great experience.

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