Address: http://array4life.com

Employer: Freelance

Array4Life is a financial management company specializing in small businesses and 1099 contractors. I am creating the new front end design as well as creating an entire new CMS and customer facing back end system using HTML, CSS, PHP, mySQL, and Javascript.

Address: http://thomashamrick.com

Employer: Freelance

This is a portfolio site for a good friend of mine who is also a web developer. I handled the design aspect of the project, while he programmed the theme. This site was designed using HTML, CSS, Javascript, Jquery, and PHP. It also uses WordPress as a CMS / blogging engine.

INC.COM October 22, 2011
Are You Bad at the Internet?
Eric Markowitz

A Kauff­man study released Thurs­day illu­mi­nates how small busi­ness­es are strug­gling with using the Web to con­vert sales, while a few unlike­ly indus­tries are find­ing suc­cess.

In the world of start-ups, a web­site is a com­pa­ny’s lifeblood.

But for the rest of small busi­ness own­ers in Amer­i­ca, it seems, hav­ing a vibrant web­site is some­times mere­ly an after­thought.

In a study released this morn­ing titled Cast­ing a Wide Net: Online Activ­i­ties of Small and New Busi­ness­es in the Unit­ed States, Kauff­man Foun­da­tion researchers com­pared data from the Cen­sus Bureau’s 2007 Sur­vey of Busi­ness Own­ers to a data set that fol­lowed near­ly 5,000 young firms that start­ed up in 2004. The study pro­vides one of the first in-depth looks at how small busi­ness­es—across indus­try sec­tors—are lever­ag­ing the Web to sell to cus­tomers.

Or, not lever­ag­ing the Web, as it may be. Accord­ing to gov­ern­ment data, as of 2007, only about a quar­ter of all small busi­ness­es in Amer­i­ca had a web­site. And with­in that fig­ure, only six per­cent report­ed online sales rev­enue.

Ali­cia Robb, the study’s co-auther and a senior research fel­low at the Kauff­man Foun­da­tion, says a par­tic­u­lar­ly unex­pect­ed find­ing was the rel­a­tive­ly low per­cent­age of Web sales with­in the retail cat­e­go­ry. In 2004, just 2.1 per­cent of over­all retail rev­enue was gen­er­at­ed on the Inter­net. By 2009, that per­cent­age hov­ered around 4 per­cent.

“It’s a tiny frac­tion of sales,” Robb says. “I was expect­ing some­thing larger.”

Man­u­fac­tur­ing, on the other hand, seems to be hit­ting its e-stride. In 2009, Web sales with­in man­u­fac­tur­ing rep­re­sent­ed 42 per­cent of over­all indus­try rev­enue.

And with­in near­ly every ver­ti­cal, Web sales are grow­ing at a much quick­er year­ly pace com­pared to indus­try rev­enues. Web sales in man­u­fac­tur­ing, for instance, grew 87 per­cent from 2004 to 2009—com­pared to a growth rate of just 3 per­cent of total man­u­fac­tur­ing sales.

“E-com­merce sales are grow­ing much faster than over­all sales.” —Ali­cia Robb, senior research fel­low at the Kauff­man Foun­da­tion

“E-com­merce sales are grow­ing much faster than over­all sales,” Robb says. “It’s going to be an increas­ing­ly instru­men­tal part of firms as they go for­ward, and they’ll have to have an online pres­ence to be competitive.”

Though it’s some­what of a no-brainer, the study con­firms an often-assumed idea: young com­pa­nies appre­ci­ate the need for a Web pres­ence, and they also are more adept at sell­ing online. Near­ly a quar­ter of small busi­ness­es found­ed in 2004 that sell online said that online sales account­ed for between 51 and 100 per­cent of their rev­enue, com­pared to just 13 per­cent of the rest of Amer­i­can small busi­ness­es.

Still, Robb says this study just scratch­es the sur­face of a sub­ject that will become a focal point point of eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy in the years to come.

“We hope this report will stim­u­late fur­ther research about these activ­i­ties and their influ­ence on our econ­o­my, as well as a seri­ous dis­cus­sion about how offi­cial sta­tis­tics can be improved to allow for the study of this grow­ing phenomenon,” Robb says.

Why Your Nephew Shouldn’t Build It

Future Web Designer?

Sure, there are many of you out there who are saying “My nephew/niece/son/daughter/etc. knows more about this web stuff than I ever will! What’s the harm?” It’s true. Today’s younger generation was born into a world built by the internet. They understand it on a level most people over the age of 40 can only aspire to – the same way the previous generations understood television and CD players. They are what my wife (who is a schoolteacher) likes to call “digital natives.”

An understanding of modern web technology is undoubtedly one of the most important things to consider when choosing someone to build your website, but here is something else to consider. What does your (insert family member here) do on an average day? School? Another job? Hanging out with friends? That’s great! Exactly as it should be. A professional web designer, on the other hand, spends at least eight hours a day (often in addition to obtaining a college degree) staying abreast of the most current web technologies and trends, trying new and different solutions, and generally getting better at their craft. Sounds like someone you’d like to have on your side, doesn’t it?

Why You Shouldn’t Build It

Don't Be Like Him.

You have enough on your plate. You could be a business owner, a department manager, or hold any number of other demanding positions. A simple website can take 40 hours or more to build, and that time can increase exponentially when the person building it is untrained. Can you afford to take that kind of time away from your business? Time is money, after all.

Even when dealing with so-called simple site builders the process can be a bit confusing, and the core code used by many site builders offered by some of the most popular providers is, at best, not optimal for getting your site noticed and highly ranked by search engines. The frustration, time, and distraction are usually not worth it.

In a situation like this, your web designer is like your lawyer: always a phone call away, and able to solve the problem. No muss, no fuss.

Why Pre-Made Templates Are A Bad Idea

Wouldn't you rather be the yellow ball?

There is a massive trap out there. I touched on it briefly in the previous section, but now it is time to examine the “simple site builder” more closely. It sounds like a great idea: quick, easy, visually appealing. At least that’s what they’d like you to think.

Its not quick. You can spend hours – almost as many as a skilled web designer will spend designing a site that is everything you want from scratch – putting together a website with the tools provided by these services. Not to mention, if your website has a large number of pages, the time spent creating them all can quickly spin out of control.

Its not easy. At least not as easy as they say it is. I once had a client that used a particular “drag and drop” site builder for his company website. He wanted to have one page for each product his company offered, but didn’t want an eCommerce solution. His biggest complaint was that every time he wanted to add a new product he had to manually create a new page and resize it, moving all the graphics around to fit in the new page size, based on the length of the content on each page. He spent hours not only working on this task, but learning how to do it. In the end, he asked me to redo the whole thing.

Its not visually appealing. Most site builder services allow you to choose from a group of pre-made templates. These templates are not customized in any way to fit the desired look and feel for your business. They are what they are, and without a good amount of training, there is little you can do to change that. Therefore, you are left with a generic website that looks exactly like a million others.

The Solution

The solution to all of these problems is to find a professional. You want to find a designer you will click with both personally and professionally, someone you could create a longstanding business relationship with, much like you would with a lawyer or doctor. This can ensure that you find someone that not only cares about your web presence, but has the time and skill to take it to the next level.

If you would like to talk to me about your website project, click here to contact me. I look forward to hearing from you.

Address: http://edensbliss.com

Employer: Freelance

This is the website for a skin care spa in Houston, TX. It was built from scratch using HTML, CSS and PHP. No content management framework was used to create this site.

Client: Oklahoma City Ghost Club

Client Site: http://okcgc.net/

Product: Business Card

Designed for a friend of mine who runs a Paranormal Investigation service in Oklahoma as part of a website/business card/logo combination. Designed using Photoshop and InDesign.