With the start of New Year, many people aim to live a better life and set higher goals. Being a graphic designer, what are your resolutions for the New Year? It’s time to ponder over your career and decide about what you want to change. To jumpstart your reflection process, here are ten New Year Resolutions for our design community.

1. I Will Stay Focused – Scattered Attention Is No Good!

Focus. Focus. Focus. This is what many designers lack. Unless you give proper attention to each project, you will not create good designs. Remember, graphic designing is all about creativity and creativity comes best when you focus on one particular project rather than scattered on multiple projects.

2. I Will Be Organized – No More Frustrations

Make sure you save the following:  All records of conversations with a client, first drafts, images, templates and PSD layers.  Be sure to organize each in respective folders. Many designers admit that staying organized has helped them save a lot of time, making their work a bit easier.

3. I Will Not Copy, Cheat or Create a Derivative – The New Creative Me!

Inspirations are necessary, but copying and cheating from someone’s design (while thinking that no one would know) is the worst thing that you can possibly do. If you don’t have the mental energy to be creative then don’t take up another project. Relax. Get on it the next day but never copy.

4. I Will Stay Physically Fit – Get Up and Move!

Take out time for physical activity, exercise, sports or just take a walk every day. Not only will this refresh your mind, but will also increase your stamina. With a good half an hour spent on physical activity, you will feel energized and energetic about working on tough projects.

5. I Will Learn New Things – Say No To Laziness!

Stay updated if you want to get ahead in your field. With the Internet being one of the most powerful tools for information, you don’t even have to break a sweat to stay updated. Read a new article or watch a new video tutorial every day. Try your hands on a new design concept and you just might surprise yourself.

6. I Will Not Avoid Tough Clients – Difficulty Scares Me Not

There are clients who are very picky and demand constant changes. If you have been avoiding these clients during the last year because you were afraid of taking up a challenge, then it’s time to change that! Just know that a client is paying good money for his brand image and put yourself in his/her shoes to understand why they might be so fussy. You will gradually start seeing a positive change in your attitude.

7. I Will Do Something New – Stop Being a Trend Follower

Trends tend come and go. Do not be a trend follower! Clients may demand that you follow a trend just because they are too afraid to try anything new. However, here is where you should use your aesthetic, marketing and convincing powers. Show the clients the disadvantages of being just another design in the market. Show them the advantage of creating something unique and how it can help them stand out from the crowd.

8. I Will Aim Higher – Out Of My Comfort Zone

Take on new, diversified challenges that will give you an experience and will build an impressive portfolio. You may be an excellent logo designer, but don’t limit yourself to just being a logo designer. Take on website designing or graphic designing. Get out of your comfort zone, learn new things and become well-rounded.

9. I Will Not Take Criticism Personally – It’s Just An Opinion

Do not take criticism to heart; don’t be hard on yourself if you make a mistake. There are times when you don’t seem to win projects even though you worked hard or times when clients can turn fussy. Instead of reacting by being self critical, take it easy and just let it pass as a bad day.

10. I Will Work Smart – Hard Is Not Enough!

You need to bring in efficient communication and analytical skills as well as a good understanding of handling projects when it comes to building a career. Don’t sell yourself short and don’t work too hard for the wrong type of client.

Hope these resolutions have given you enough food for thought. Drop us a line about your New Year resolutions. We would love to know what you have promised yourself this year 

In the past few years, it seemed the trend for cell phone development has always been, the smaller, the better. It was such a joke that even the popular movie, Zoolander, mocked the concept with a tiny, thimble sized cell phone. Once smartphones arrived, the idea of flatter, larger phones became the better choice, with touch screens, of course. Ideas are always progressing, and it seems Apple starts most of them. With Apple’s new release of the iPad, handheld devices have taken on a new look, a new style and a new size.

The iPad seems to work as an iPhone, iPod, Kindle, and MacBook all in one. This sounds like a great concept, except for its kinks. The device does not allow you to multitask, using the iPhone’s OS as opposed to the Mac’s OS X. It is a little too large to shove in a pocket, but smaller than carrying a laptop around due to the lack of extra accessories like a keyboard or mouse. It’s different, yet the same since most of the things it does have already been around. The product targets a larger audience since it has something for everyone, but seems more a toy than a useful product for small businesses.

Apple has always been trying to get involved in the corporate world by selling Macs to any interested business. With the release of the iPhone OS 2.0, Apple clearly attempted to create products to fit the needs of corporations. Apple hardened the iPhone’s security profile, added Exchange support, and created mass configuration and deployment tools for the previously released device.

For the iPad, it contains the same software foundation, so it includes those same features. The iPad uses iWork, its Office-compatible productivity suite, and is meant to be functional as a presentation tool. Although this may seem useful, the iPad’s functions are not powerful enough to keep up with corporate use. If anything, it would give employees reasons to be distracted throughout a workday.

Like the iPhone, the iPad works as a tool to support most daily activities in one compact device. It has the potential to be the turning point in the industry of phones, computers or music players, but also could be just another stepping-stone in Apple’s development. Overall, the product is lacking in most consumer wants and needs and an affordable laptop may have been a better way for Apple to go. Perhaps future versions will finally get it right. What do you think?

You finally have a great looking website for your business. You spent a lot of time designing, revising and selecting just the right photos. It’s both cool and professional, unique and original, a perfect expression of your business and its products or services.

But can anyone find it? Do you ever Google your business’ name to see where your business appears? Is it on the first page of the results, or do you have to go through page after page of results before you find your website?

If your business has a great website, and you want potential customers to find your business, then you MUST invest in Search Engine Optimization for your website.

Search Engine Optimization is the active method of analyzing, improving, and reconstructing a website’s internal and external features to increase traffic and improve your ranking on the web’s major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Not optimizing your site is like buying a high-end sports car, not putting any gas in the tank, and expecting it to take you anywhere you want to go. Optimization is the fuel that drives visitors, and more importantly—potential customers, to your site. It can be your most valuable marketing tool. Let’s look at some of the major benefits:

1. Visibility
You wouldn’t have an unlisted phone number or address for your business, so why should your most visible asset of your business be hidden from potential customers? Your customers are looking for your business! Make yourself easier to find. Search Engine Optimization helps move your website upward in search engine results for the keywords and phrases related to the services that your business provides. Search Engine Optimization brings customers that are already interested in you to your doorstep.

2. Affordability
Search Engine Optimization is one of the most inexpensive ways to market and advertise your business. Consider that Yellowbook and local print ads can run almost $2,000 dollars a month, and have a limited reach. Pay Per Click (PPC) rates and online banner advertising can cost up to $3,500 per month, and exist only for as long as your marketing budget does. However, Search Engine Optimization of your site offers a low–cost option (typically only $150-$600 per month) to promoting and advertising your business online. Remember, consumers are more likely to purchase from a high–ranking site rather than from one that has (obviously) sponsored ads.

3. Simplicity
Imagine going to bed each night knowing that if someone Googles “interior decorator California” or “Chicago accountant”, or “Philadelphia landscaper” your business will be right near the top, and you will have a new business opportunity waiting for you the next day. That is very possible with Search Engine Optimization. Take the work and the hassle out of finding new customers, and let your website do all the work.

Search Engine Optimization is a powerful marketing and advertising tool for any small business. By adding Search Engine Optimization to your professional web design , you will ensure that your business has at least one simple and cost–effective sales generating tool.

Economic times being what they are, we’re meeting a lot of people who are becoming self-employed for the first time. For many of them, the amount of “stuff” to deal with is overwhelming.

On one hand, you have the more exciting things like getting business cards, putting up a web site, starting to network and doing all that fun stuff that brings in the money. On the other hand, there’s all the overhead that comes with being a “business” in the eyes of local, state and federal government. I’m going to list out some of the most important ones to be aware of.

1. Estimated taxes, including self-employment tax

Now that you’re not drawing a paycheck, two big things change. One, nobody is withholding taxes for you and sending them to the government every few weeks. You need to do that 4 times a year, on April 15, June 15, September 15, and January 15. Two, not only do you have to pay income taxes every quarter, you also have to pay self employment tax. What’s self-employment tax? It’s your mandatory contributions to Social Security and Medicare. And the real kicker is that you have to pay the full Social Security contribution of 12.4% (up to the first $102,00 in 2008 earnings.) You employer used to pay half of that for you before. Now it’s all on you.

2. 1099 reporting requirements

Let’s say you’re going to design and build web sites for clients. Every once in a while, you may want to get some help from an independent contractor – say, a graphic illustrator. Hopefully you can mark up his or her time and earn a little extra profit. But, if you pay him or her more than $600 during the year, you are required to file a copy of form 1099MISC at the end of the year. In order to fill that out, you need to have the contractor fill out form W9 with the right contact information and tax identification (often a social security number.) Plus, there are multiple different deadlines – one (end of January) for the copy that has to go to the contractor, another (end of February) if you file by paper with the IRS, yet another (end of March) if you file electronically.

3. Coming up with contracts and written agreements

Whenever possible, you should get a written agreement in place with your customer or client. But lawyers are expensive and odds are you aren’t one. So one of the most common things we’ve seen is to simply “borrow” from other publicly available agreements and modify them to your needs. For example, you can find lots of sample agreements on Docstoc. And while having a written agreement won’t guarantee that you get paid, it definitely increases the likelihood that you’re compensated for your output.

4. Retirement options are non-obvious

Hopefully, you’ll be pulling in enough that you can choose to put away a little something for the future. But now that you’re on your own, you don’t really have traditional 401k or pension opportunities. You can look at a SEP-IRA (Simplified Employee Pension), a Keogh plan, or a Solo-401k, then also look at additional Roth IRA contributions on top of that. But you have to choose what works best for you and it takes effort to find companies to provide them.

In short, make sure you carve out at least some time to address these issues. It will pay off down the road. For the first two, you might try Outright.com – it’s free and super easy to use.

To everyone out there getting started on this exciting new journey – good luck!

About the Author

Kevin Reeth is CEO & Co-Founder of Outright.com, a dead-simple online bookkeeping application for self-employed individuals and very small businesses. He lives in Los Gatos, CA and is still on his journey from salaried job to self-employment to self-actualization.

Are you attracting a lot of “fish” to your small business website but not catching them? Think of your website as a fishing rod and online marketing (Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, online advertising, etc) as your bait. Online marketing attracts fish to bite your bait. But what reels them in? Leave that to page optimization or website conversion techniques.

What are conversions?  Conversions are the action of a random visitor “converting” to a lead, sale, phone call, or registration. Conversion rate is the metrics used to determine how often visitors turn into sales or leads.

Conversion rates vary in every industry, but typical conversion rates are between 0.5 and 8 percent, with the norm running between 0.5 and 2 percent. So, if you aren’t converting 50 percent of your traffic, don’t panic. No one is.

While your small business website that is not “Amazonian” in magnitude, you can still have a major impact on tracking and improving its performance, or “conversion rate,” of visitors once they come to your website.

The first step to catching these fish is observing them. There are two key ways to watch what people do on your site. The first is to ask people (friends or family) to go to your site, and observe what they do. What do they click on? Do they have a hard time finding the links or actions you want them to take? This will help you with any potential redesigns that may be necessary in order to increase conversions.

The next priority is to create a click stream analysis. A Click stream analysis allows you to determine what pages people are finding by conducting searches (entry pages), and where they go once they visit your website, and where they leave (exit pages). Google Analytics (a free tool from Google Inc.) is critical for small website owners to use and review to look at their site statistics. This will give you a huge amount of information to determine what pages people are finding, and where they are leaving.

You can then ask yourself, “Why do they leave once they get to my services page?” Then you can research and work on improving that page.

The second step to catching a lot of fish is to think like them. Get in the mind of your clients and try to figure out what they look for, what’s important to them, and what other sites they compare you to.

Does your site’s unique selling proposition (USP) stand out from your competition? Can they easily find testimonials? What do you want your prospect to do? Do you want them to register for your newsletter? Do you want them to purchase your product? Do you want them to call or fill out a lead form? As simple as it sounds, once you determine the best course of action that will lead to the most sales, then you can gear your website towards this objective.

If you want your clients to fill out a lead form, I’d recommend putting a simple lead form on every page. If you want them to purchase your product, lead them to the pages that show your product or service and show that you have the best pricing, service, and product. Be wary of trying to drive your customers directly to the order form. Just because they are online, doesn’t mean that they will buy without some research.

You must lead people to do what you want them to do, and it must be simple and easy to find. If someone has to look for more than 3 seconds to determine what you do, they’ll steal your bait and swim. A significant challenge for any company is balancing design aesthetics with functionality and conversion performance. Sometimes, a button may be ugly, but if people are clicking on it and converting, then it may be worth the distraction.

Here are some obvious, yet easily overlooked tips for every website:

1) Ensure your company’s phone number is prominently placed on every page. Our company underestimated the number of sales we drive via the phone. People want to talk to the companies they are about to give their business to.

2) Put a lead form on your home page. Be sure to capture the users name, email, phone and their interest.

3) Get to the point- let people know what you do, and how it will help them, and why you are better than your competition within the first 2 sentences on your website.

4) Include EXTRA buttons for the pages you want people to visit in addition to the navigation at the top or left. Give people multiple paths to go to the pages you want them to go to, and keep it above the fold.

5) Feature the items or services you want to sell.

6) Keep your website fresh. Give people a reason to come back and visit regularly. Think BLOG!

This is our final article of three covering basic internet strategies for small and local businesses. The first article discussed building your website, the second article covered the basics of search engine optimization, and this article we discusses way to increase conversions once someone has visited your website.

Joe Witte is a partner at Logo Design Guru and WebbyGuru, and has successfully started 3 small businesses including CentricSource and Travel Ad Network.

In today’s world, the internet is just as important as electricity, heat, AC, food, and water when it comes to running any kind of business. The size of your business ultimately affects how you shop for an ISP (Internet Service Provider). Now keep in mind that there are several different kinds, sizes, and shapes of businesses so I am going to have to keep this topic broad. Let’s break our business categories into 3 different choices, small, medium and large businesses.

The first option to review is small business which could be run out of an office or a home office. If you are running a home-based business, as I know many people are today, you are probably running under your home internet connection, which most of the time is either a cable or DSL connection to the internet.

Of course you have many options with DSL carriers just like you would with home telephone service. Cable providers are usually limited to your particular municipalities’ cable franchise agreement. One more option I forgot to add is the recent option of Verizon FIOS. Either one of these options are no problem for a home based business. If you are running dial up please give up on fighting with your computer because it isn’t going to get any better. Pay the extra few dollars a month and save yourself a lot of hassle and aggravation. If you are running a small or medium business but have an office outside of your home then you must get the business upgrades that are offered by your Cable, DSL, or FIOS providers.

Keep in mind that the business rates for any one of these options are more expensive than your home options due to the fact that the internet providers usually have a different internet connection system for business clients as well as the option to add STATIC IP addresses for server or remote access needs. When I say the word STATIC, I mean an internet address that does not ever change. You can buy these IP addresses usually for five ($5.00) or more dollars per address on top of your internet fees.

For the medium size businesses and large companies you have all of the above options for small and medium business but you can now add T1, T3, and so on. These services are offered through a phone company such as Verizon, Paetec, Cavalier, AT&T and the list on this could go on for days.

What is the advantage when going with one of the higher end options like T1, T3, and beyond? Well, it would be that you have a dedicated connection to the internet and you are not sharing your internet line with anyone else that may be nearby as well as steady bandwidth rates. These higher end options have been the standard for years in the industry but are starting to lose out to the more inexpensive options listed below.

Now why is this an important decision if you are a business? Usually when you chose an ISP you are married to them like you would be in a cell phone contract. Questions to ask when looking for an ISP: What is your turn around time from when I sign to when your service will be installed? Do I need to run any lines or are you, the ISP, responsible for this? How do I contact support and what is the response time if there would be an issue? What is the cancellation fee if I chose not to continue service before my contract is over? Is there any setup or installation fees? What should I be expecting in terms of my speed or bandwidth?

Your IT department or person, or consultant should help you evaluate how much bandwidth or speed your business requires based on what kind of equipment you are running in your office or location. I personally have seen a lot of companies drop off of the more expensive solutions such as T1 for internet because the cost is a lot higher and the speed is a lot lower. For example, T1 speed will get maximum 1.5 MB bandwidth up and down at somewhere between $350.00 to $600.00 per month depending on your provider.

If a company was faced with the above option and a cable, FIOS, or DSL connection at 30 – 10 MB down and 1 – 2.5 MB up for around $99.99 a month to $149.99 a month you can see the cost savings and speed upgrade you would receive by going the other direction.

Even if the speeds on cable, FIOS, or DSL are not guaranteed how badly could the speed be cut down? Even if it were to be a bad day and your speed would be cut by half it still would not come close to the 1.5 MB speed a T1 provides, for the most part. The only thing that could be a determining issue is the up-time or reliability of cable, FIOS, or DSL versus a dedicated line such as a T1. There would probably be a 2 to 1 odds of your connection going down when you go to one of the 3 options to T1, T3, and up. So what would you do for more mission critical based companies that can’t afford to be down at all not even for a few hours? Some companies in that situation would have two separate internet connections in the event one would go down the other one would be available so that the company would not be down.

This should get the conversation started on this topic. There are other things that I didn’t have enough space to discuss however I touched on most of the major points and hopefully this should give you a good handle on what you are looking at in terms of an internet provider and what the potential price versus speed options are for you out there. Keep your eyes open however because within the next 24-36 months you will see a major increase in speed and bandwidth options that will be available to you!

George Bardissi is the President and Owner of  Bardissi Enterprises, a Managed Information Technology solutions company, providing IT services to small and medium sized businesses.

You must be so relieved. You FINALLY have a website. It looks hip. You’re getting lots of compliments and the content that took your spouse over a year to write is pretty good. So why isn’t your phone ringing? Well, first of all, your website is NOT the field of dreams. Remember the movie where the ghost whispers, “Build it, they will come.” A better title for your website would be “Build it, and it will get lost amongst 2 billion other websites.” But don’t get frustrated, because getting targeted traffic to your website may not be as overwhelming (or expensive) as you might think. But it does take some time and discipline.

So, what can you do? Well, one of the most important factors in achieving rankings naturally (verses purchasing pay per click ads) in Google, Yahoo! and MSN.com, is the content you have on your website. Now don’t get defensive. I know that your spouse worked very hard on your content, and it’s written at a college graduate level, but it may not have the keyword density necessary to get the attention of Google. Don’t know what keyword density is? Read on.

What is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization? It’s the action of manipulating your website through your content, linking with other websites, and basic html coding techniques in order to achieve higher rankings in search engines.

Well written, SEO friendly content can do great things. After all, if someone conducts a search for a specific keyword, and that keyword is not on your website, the odds are slim that your website will appear in the search engine results.

Now, when it comes to placing the content on your website, DO NOT put the text in flash, and don’t embed it in an image (like a Gif or Jpg)- this is critical. Otherwise, the search engines can’t read it.

Now, with all this techie/SEO talk, don’t forget the basic rules of writing professional, enticing content for your audience. Here are a couple of basic writing tips that are far too often ignored:

* Capture the user’s attention! Get to the point. The readers should know in title or the first two sentences what your company does and the benefits of your service.
* Consider your target audience, and write in a way that will make sense to them (avoid jargon; it’s ok to be funny, unless you are a mortician or engineer or the like).    Mention the benefits of your products and services, not just the features.
* Use spell check! You can quickly lose credibility with poor grammar or spelling.
* Limit your copy to 2 or 3 paragraphs per page. If the user has to scroll down too far, you’ll lose them.

However, SEO writing adds a new twist to traditional business writing. You’ll need to incorporate the key words that someone would typically type in when searching for your business online. For example, let’s say you own a moving company, some primary keywords that someone would search for would be: movers, moving company, residential movers, Pennsylvania movers, Philadelphia moving company, expert movers, etc. Then, take these keywords and plug them in to Google’s Keyword Research Tool at  https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal . This will help develop an extensive keyword list. From this extensive list, pick the words that fit your business, and that you can realistically get ranked on. (For example, if you are local moving company based out of Philadelphia, don’t expect to get ranked for the keyword “movers” after rewriting your content. Focus on less competitive, and more targeted keywords such as “Philadelphia movers”, or “Philadelphia moving company” with an emphasis on surrounding towns and counties and “long tail keywords”).

However, SEO writing adds a new twist to traditional business writing. You’ll need to incorporate the key words that someone would typically type in when searching for your business online.  For example, let’s say you own a moving company, some primary keywords that someone would search for would be: movers, moving company, residential movers, Pennsylvania movers, Philadelphia moving company, expert movers, etc. Then, take these keywords and plug them in to Google’s Keyword Research Tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal . This will help develop an extensive keyword list.  From this extensive list, pick the words that fit your business, and that you can realistically get ranked on. (For example, if you are local moving company based out of Philadelphia, don’t expect to get ranked for the keyword “movers” after rewriting your content. Focus on less competitive, and more targeted keywords such as “Philadelphia movers”, or “Philadelphia moving company” with an emphasis on surrounding towns and counties and “long tail keywords”).

Now it’s time to integrate these primary keywords in to your content. A simple rule is to use the primary keywords around 3 to 5 times throughout your text. The number of times keywords are used through the text is called “keyword density”.  Over use of keywords is a flag to Google and you can actually get penalized.  As you write, be descriptive, and do your best to be natural. Ensure that the primary keywords appear early and often and include them in your titles.  Also be sure to hyperlink some of the keywords to the other pages on your website. The engines like this for whatever reason. Now, once you’re done, launch this page right away so that the search engine “spiders” can pick up the new keywords. Don’t worry about “submitting” your page our website to search engines; they will pick it up naturally.  After your new home page is launched, start working on the rest of your website. Try to add an article or white page every week or month. It may take months, but yes, “they will come” – and buy, hopefully.

Joe Witte is a partner at Logo Design Guru and WebbyGuru, and has successfully started 3 small businesses including CentricSource and Travel Ad Network.