To our loyal customers and readers, we thank you for your business and wish you happy holidays!

What is a helpdesk?
For those not familiar with the term, a helpdesk is a software program that facilitates communication with support. A user or customer can submit “tickets” to open a conversation about an issue with our company. The helpdesk makes sure that all issues are handled in a timely fashion (giving special sensitivity to high priority issues), and follows up with the support desk team to make sure that no tickets are “lost through the cracks”

There are currently two ways for our customers to get access to our helpdesk. One is to create a login by registering at http://support.blacklotusweb.com. This control panel interface will give users an ability to see previous tickets, to escalate open tickets to higher priority, or to re-open previous issues in the case of recurring problems. Once a ticket has been submitted, our team of helpdesk workers is notified immediately — even if the program manager assigned to your project is not available.

The second way to access the helpdesk is through email. Once registered, users can send messages to support at (@) blacklotusweb dot com. The helpdesk will instantly convert the message in to a help ticket and open a conversation with the helpdesk.

This new feature enables us to handle 95% of customer problems within 1 business day (and often much more quickly). We are sure you will enjoy it, so please stop by to check it out. Again the address is

http://support.blacklotusweb.com

Cheers!

Dallin

Having worked both in the corporate world and as a freelancer, I find that in most situations there are dozens of reasons why you should hire a freelance or outsourced web designer rather than using someone on staff.

Web design is not your core competency
As a small business owner, I know that it’s easy to get distracted by things that aren’t your main business because you may know a little about it. The truth is that HTML is NOT that complicated, and being the industrious person you are, you could probably throw something together. I’ve seen people try this and have their work come out OK, but what they don’t realize is that they’ve lost valuable time that they could have used to focus on their business. There’s nothing wrong with saving a little money, but the truth is that using a freelance company is well worth the investment.

Web design is what freelancers do all day
When I worked for one company, I knew their website very, very well. The difference is that as a freelancer, I get to see trends in what website owners want and get to know “the best way to do it.” That’s a great value for website owners because they can rely on my (our) expertise and judgment.

Freelancers know about a variety of products
Long ago, I gave up on “writing websites from scratch.” There are literally hundreds of pre-built solutions out there just waiting to be “pieced” together by a freelance web developer. Taking advantage of them will both reduce your TCO and increase the quality of your site because often times, these software programs thought of something you didn’t. No need to re-invent the wheel.

Your project will end some day
The biggest problem I saw my company face when I worked for someone else was that when my projects ended, they either had to re-train me for something new or let me sit and twiddle my thumbs all day. I was pretty good at finding work to do, but the truth is that it’s much easier for a company to just “stop” hiring a freelancer when a project finishes than it is to “stop” paying an employee.

Freelancers are trying to build their portfolio
Many business owners are afraid to outsource their website because they aren’t able to sit and manage the freelance company like they would their own employee. True they may need some more communication up-front in creating a statement of work, a contract and a budget. However, most businesses owners don’t realize that the freelance web designer is trying to build his own portfolio that he can be proud of, so he will natrually be willing to work extra hard to make a good site that you are happy with.

You can use CMS systems to avoid over-paying a freelancer
Another big concern about freelancers for business owners is that they don’t want to have to pay the freelance company every time they want to re-vamp their website. For these customers, we highly recommend a content management system (CMS) that allows them to make simple text edits without paying our hourly rate. If you hire us, you will only need us again if you want something major done.

Cut through your company’s red tape
Inside your company, it can seem like you need an act of congress to get something done, right? When you hire a freelance company, we do all of the work and you just need to show it to your people. You take the credit if it’s good, we take the heat if it’s bad, get it?

There are many other reasons for using a freelance company. Check out our process to see how Black Lotus Web Design can make a solution for you! Contact us today!

Learn more about our process or get in touch with one of our representatives for a free estimate.

I can’t tell you how other website design firms do it, but let me tell you how we do it.

Collect information and provide a free, itemized estimate
Before we provide an estimate for your web project, we want to know all about your business. We believe that we will be much better marketers if we understand and believe in your product completely — that way we don’t have to pretend. We also want to make sure that you fully understand your problem. We have done this before, and we will ask difficult questions to make sure that the whole process is fully understood by both parties. In our experience we have come across dozens of products and solutions that will make building your website easier. There is no need to re-invent the wheel.

We will then take all of our recommendations and provide an itemized quote for you. The choice is yours which items you will do initially, which ones you will leave for later, and which ones you want to scratch all together. The final quote price will then be easily estimated.

Start with a template
The majority of our websites come from templates or pre-made designs. We find that it’s easier for most people to pick and choose what they want from a template site and then pay us only to customize it (even if it’s changed extensively) to create the kind of design they want. In cases where no customization is needed, you can save a bundle of money by using a pre-built solution by a professional graphic artist.

If you’ve already got a design in mind, we can work with that too. Our graphic artist can listen to your requests and provide mock-up designs based on what you want.

Add functionality
Once the design is solidified, the next step in website development is to add functionality. We will discuss the regions of your page that you would like to have special functionality — web forms, message boards, interaction, flash, etc. — and we will take care of the programming to make it happen.

Focus on internet marketing from the beginning
Internet marketing cannot be an afterthought. After all, your website is useless to you unless it makes you money. Before agreeing to an internet marketing job, we perform extensive keyword research to find out exactly what the competition is like. That way, we can sculpt your content in such a way to achieve maximum search engine rankings.

Final walkthrough
Your quote will also give you a timeframe for the project. You will receive periodic updates throughout the process (along with necessary communication), and will be given the opportunity to do a final walkthrough before your site goes live. All of our sites are built in a secret development area which you will have access to, and during the final walkthrough you will be able to inspect every facet of the project and insure that it is what you had in mind. Once the page is approved, we will help get the code transfered to your live server for all to see.

Continued relationship
We’ve been in business long enough to learn that even project based work doesn’t end when the project ends. We aim to develop an on-going relationship with our clients so that they can feel comfortable asking us questions and using our services in the future. If you stand still, your competition will pass you by and that’s why having a powerful internet marketing partner is so important.

If you’d like a free quote, give us a call or fill out our online contact form.

We look forward to working with you!

Dallin

The advent of the Internet is changing the way the world does business at an alarming rate. Staying on top of it is a challenge even for the experts, let alone for business owners. Black Lotus Web Design aims to make the process simple and profitable by consulting these business owners and helping them build their online presence.

Our Process
Black Lotus Web Design is different from other web design firms. Our goal is to make your project a success. We understand that a beautiful and powerful website will do nothing for you unless someone sees it. That’s why we build all of our websites from the ground up with the visitor in mind. Our pages are more likely to be found on search engines and to be visited by more visitors.

The first step in our process is to provide a comprehensive, free estimate. We ask lots of questions to make sure we understand your website’s purpose and your business’ problems correctly, then we go to work and provide you with a quote you can hold us to. The quote will be an itemized list of everything we’re recommending, along with a proposed time line.

Next, we consult with you to make design recommendations based on our expertise and what you’ve already got in mind. This is an important step to us not only because we want your site to look good for your visitors but because we want to build a portfolio for ourselves that we can be proud of.

The next step is to decide on functionality. We look at the current and future needs of your business and design a website that will support those needs. With our vast knowledge of products available on the internet, we are often able to make recommendations that will save you headaches in the future and keep cost down from the get-go.

Finally, we will construct your website on a private domain where you can constantly check up on our progress and give important feedback. Once the site is finished, you will have an opportunity to do a “final walkthrough” and make any changes to the site that you wish. We will then make those edits, and you will have a final product uploaded to your “live” webserver.

Internet Marketing
At Black Lotus, internet marketing is not an “afterthought.” In many cases, web design companies leave search optimization to other firms believing that their “focus” is on good design and not necessarily on getting noticed. We believe that these two elements are inseparable, and that internet marketing needs to be taken very seriously from the beginning.

Black Lotus Web Design focuses on both on- and off-page factors when working on an internet marketing campaign. All of our pages are standards-compliant, complete with optimized title, meta keyword and meta description tags as well as other tiny details that make a big difference on search engines. For off page factors, we offer monthly services to “stir the pot” and get your site noticed on a number of social media sites relevant to your industry.

Hosting
Black Lotus takes the headache out of web hosting by partnering with United Hosting, a web host that we’ve found after years of research to be one of the most solid in the industry. With their solutions, we are able to offer near 100% uptime for our customers, 4-times daily backup and quick answers to support tickets. Black Lotus adds value by taking care of the setup and maintenance of your website so that you only have to think about running your business.

For our customers in Surprise, Arizona and throughout the greater Phoenix metro area, working with a local designer has been important. Much work can be done over the internet, but many times (at least with the tools available now) it is more effective to sit down with a local designer and plan out a project.

Surprise is now a bustling community of nearly 90,000 people. It is now the second fastest growing community near Phoenix (after Gilbert) and many new businesses have opened shop in the last year. Black Lotus Web Design is proud to provide web design and development services for our customers in Surprise, Arizona and around the globe.

This is especially true in virtual web design groups.

At Black Lotus Web Design, we take full advantage of every tool we can sink our teeth in to that promotes online collaboration. We use Google Calendar for planning out our timeline. We use Google Docs and Zoho for real-time, shared document editing. We have used E-groupware for project management and time reporting, and are currently giving Zoho projects and Zoho invoicing a try. It seems that with each release, these programs are making it just as easy for people to work together from across the country as it is for those who sit two cubicles apart!

Creating websites through virtual groups keeps costs down
Perhaps the biggest reason we take advantage of collaboration software to create websites is that it keeps costs down. Gas is expensive, but our team does the majority of our work from home and never has to commute! That also allows us to get an earlier start in the morning and often finish early or at least get more done because we spend our time and efforts working — not commuting! Because of this, we haven’t had to invest in an expensive office or any of the expenses that come with it. We wouldn’t use them! The same is true for office supplies, fees, etc.

Creating websites through virtual groups provides a better finished product for the customer
The real benefit of collaborating online through virtual groups is that it creates a better finished product for the customer. Because costs are down and communication is up, we are able to put a lot more effort in to our websites for the same price or cheaper than other firms. Not to mention the fact that being online all day exposes us to thousands of websites and we are often among the first to see new trends or hear about new ways to do business.

Virtual web design groups free up time to do what we want
Don’t get me wrong one of my favorite things to do is web design. But as you would probably agree, looking at a computer screen starts to hurt your brain after a while. Working in virtual groups lets us get our work done quickly so we can move on to spending time with the family, improving ourselves, exercising, thinking, organizing, etc. which, at least for me, is a huge benefit.

Virtual web design allows us to work when we feel like it
There are a lot if interests that vie for my time, and one of the things I appreciate most about online collaboration is that it allows me to work when I want. When I was in school, I was able to spend mornings in class and afternoons in study groups, letting all of my work pile up online during the day and then hammering it out at night.

Whatever evidence or reason there may be to avoid online collaboration is slowly fading away. As software applications become more powerful, there is every reason to switch to an online environment. It will give you the competitive edge over the other guys. It will help you live a better quality of life. It will help you produce better work which will in turn benefit society as a whole!

Dallin

These advancements, coupled with everything the internet has to offer on top of that, provide a powerful opportunity for business owners and individuals looking to get themselves or their product/service noticed by a massive and diverse audience. Internet marketing is the key to a successful business in our day. By overlooking the tremendous opportunity to market a business to millions of viewers everyday, one is basically saying to himself/herself that they are not concerned with establishing a successful business.

However, simply having a website is one thing. Having a GOOD website is a completely different story and can mean all the difference in the success of a business. As a search engine optimizer I often get asked a number of different questions from clients. Most of these questions revolve somewhere along the lines of, “How can I get my site to come up number one on Google?,” “What keywords should I use to optimize my website?,” or “How can I drive more traffic to my site?” All of these are good questions. However, I think sometimes business owners don’t understand that the answer to each of these questions is more simple than complex. We hear often about different strategies to “trick” google or yahoo into ranking our site higher or giving us a better score. There is a popular belief that google has some sort of underlying code that optimizers can crack and therefore automatically boost any website to the top of a the ranks for any keyword. This is simply not the case. Though there are a number of different techniques that can be utilized to help optimize a sight and make it more user friendly, relevant, and thus more “google” friendly, the ultimate deciding factor in how a website is ranked by google is relevancy. in other words, if you want google to think you have a good site, you have to HAVE a good site. No matter what you do for optimization, if it’s a bad site, chances are it will still be bad even after a heavy and steady dosage of SEO and SEM.

SEO and SEM stand for “Search Engine Optimization” and “Search Engine Marketing” not “Search Engine Overpowering” and “Search Engine Manipulation.” Basically what I’m saying is you’re probably tricking yourself if you think you can trick Google. The technology provided by this one company is revolutionizing the world as we speak. They are developing new and innovative internet tools faster than most can even keep up with. There’s just no sense in trying to find a loop hole. That said, given the length of this post already, I want to quickly list my top three pieces of advice for businesses thinking of building a new website or simply optimizing an existing website.

1. Content Content Content! Content is the Key! If you wish to rank high for “door bells,” there had better be information on your site about doors bells. If you want to see what you’re up against, type “door bells” in the google search bar and visit the top three or four sites and see how much information they provide about “door bells.” If you want to outrank them you’ll need to have more, and, if not more, better content than these top competitors.

2. Relevancy! This goes along the same lines as content but is a bit more in depth and technical. For example, if you’re trying to market “sunglasses,” your content should have words like, “sunny, summer, UV rays, sun protection, lenses, frames…etc. These words, “theme” words, should be interspersed throughout the entire site and especially on the homepage.

3. Blogging! Having a blog for you site is huge because search engines love to provide people with the latest breaking news in all topics. Search engines know that blogs provide the fastest means to market an idea or a story. Thus, when new content is posted on a blog the search engine detects new and exciting content and will quickly give the article a high ranking for keywords that show up often in that particular article. People want the latest news and this is what search engines are giving the people by giving fast high rankings to blog posts. Most blogs, especially wordpress based blogs, have built in pinging devices that notify top search engines and blog engines the moment an article is published which brings a web crawler from that search engine to the blog immediately to crawl if for content. The power of blogging is not limited to simply having your own blog, it is also helpful to actively participate on other blogs and forums that are relevent to your site. This can not only provide opportunities to create quality links to your site, but also gets you noticed by the members of those blogs and forums who then tell others they know about your services. AWeee the beauty of networking.

So there you have it. My top three SEO and SEM tips I utilize on a daily basis. While these are very important there are still a number of other techniques that are essential in optimizing a website and driving increased amounts of traffic to it. There will be more talk of these other techniques in later posts, but for now I hope this helps spark the attention of anyone thinking of optimizing an existing site or building a new website.

-Joe

That’s right, I was so excited about finishing it that I went ahead and pulled an all nighter. I think it really paid off! I’ll go ahead and walk you through some of the features.

Home Page
The home page (and every page in the site) is fully content-managed which means we can make simple text changes or even fairly complex image changes all from a Wordpress backend. This is a great value to customers because without a CMS system, they would be calling their web design company constantly which can get to be quite expensive.

The home page also features recent posts from our blog (which was a simple wordpress plugin) and NexGen gallery which has an impressive “lightbox” function to show off our latest work. Go ahead, check it out!

About Us
Not much to say here, though it is another content-managed page. Can you see John’s wife in the picture I had to crop him out of?

Folio
This page has the most “ooh” and “aah.” It features Tiltviewer which is a free program for wordpress and I think it’s rather snazzy. It’s pretty simple on our end to upload new pictures and project details and have them instantly shown in our portfolio. For some, it’s almost like a video game! You can use the arrows to navigate and hit “f” to flip the card and see project details. Very cool.

Services
This is where people find out that there is a charge for awesomeness and attractiveness (lame Kung Fu Panda reference).

Contacts
This page is special because of the contact form. It’s a true AJAX form (Thanks Contact Form 7 plugin) which means that if you mess it up, it doesn’t have to wait for the server to validate (go ahead, try leaving your name blank and submitting!) very cool. Of course, this is all stuff that we know how to do but the amazing thing about wordpress is that much of this work has already been done before.

Blog
You’re looking at it! The true capabilities of wordpress are in the blog engine. We hope that the content we write and the discussion we start about web design here will be a big source of traffic and business for our firm.

So there you have it! Have a look around, leave any comments, and by all means, pass it on to your friends and business associates!

Dallin