Hanee Designs

What color is your screen?

janey — Thu, 17 May 2012 19:10:17 +0000

One challenge when designing websites is the color variations on people’s computer monitors. The below graphic has 3 squares. One is completely white, one is completely black and the middle one is 50% black. Make a web designer happy and adjust your monitor colors to be sure that there are no tinges of color in the squares.

Communicating With Video

janey — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:10:22 +0000

A picture may say a thousand words but a video communicates volumes. A well produced video can do so much for your organization — especially if it is worth sharing on social networks.

We helped WatchDox create this video to explain how and why to use their product.

The video was directed and animated by Dave Brick www.dbrickmedia.com. We provided the illustration. We highly recommend working with Dave.

TopDown Consulting

janey — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:01:38 +0000

TopDown Consulting wanted a refresh of their existing website. We created this wordpress site that features a large homepage image slider with feeds of their events, downloads and recent articles.

iLevel Solutions

janey — Fri, 11 May 2012 18:58:34 +0000

iLevel Solutions provides a revolutionary private equity software solution for alternative asset managers and investors . The software integrates directly with Microsoft Excel.

We provided a clean website design for iLevel with a 3 panel homepage slider.

Domain Authority

janey — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:36:08 +0000

We get a lot of calls from clients and potential clients who are often surprised that they do not come up in the top three for a particular search term. The client usually feels that they are entitled to high ranking because they are the leader in their particular field or that they are larger than company X that comes up before them.

Google and the search engines do not care about which company is best or first. Their rankings are based on other criteria.

Lets take the site http://www.band-aid.com/ as an example.

We all know that Band-Aid is the market leader. But when you search for the term “bandage” (as on 4/30/12), they come up as #5 in Google.

The reason why wikipedia, amazon.com and thefreedictionary.com rank highly is obvious. They are sites with a lot of traffic, inbound links and content. While your company might be the leader in your category, these sites are leaders on the internet as a whole. So lets talk about #4, Bacon Bandages.

If you click on the link, you will see that this is a novelty item. Over 11,000 people have “liked” it on facebook. They have over 400 inbound links from various websites. These things together combine to give the page a high domain authority. The site is more popular than Band-Aid.com. According to Google’s logic, the bacon bandage is more interesting to web users than Band-aid.com — and thus, it gets a higher rank.

If you are in a similar situation, I recommend that you install MozBar. This tool allows you to view the domain authority of the websites that rank higher than yours. Figure out what domain authority your site has and the domain authority of your competitors. This will help you to formulate a plan to move your ranking upwards.

Promoting your site with QR Codes

janey — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:44:43 +0000

We recently worked with Drew and Rogers to create a QR code promotion for Farmland Daries. Drew and Rogers created a tag that hangs on milk cartons with a QR code. The code directs the user to a site where they can enter to win a prize.

To try this out, make sure that your smartphone has a QR code reader app (Android, Blackberry, iOS). Then scan this image right off your screen.

You will be redirected to the site that we designed and coded to enter to win an iPad.

To create your own QR code, go to http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ to generate an image. Then place the image in your promotional materials.

If you do not have the design or coding skills to create your own promotions, have a look at pbSmart Codes by our client, Pitney Bowes. They offer a service that will create a code, print the promo item and even setup the website landing page for you.

Essential WordPress Plugins

janey — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:08:32 +0000

One of the best things about WordPress is the amazing repository of plugins. Here are some plugins that we find ourselves turning to over and over again.

Quick Page/Post Redirect Plugin

This plugin is great for migrations from an old site. You can redirect any url to a new URL on your wordpress site. You can also do great things like redirect your posts and pages to pages on or off your site.

Backup Buddy

This is a paid plugin but well worth the money. The plugin backs up your database and files on a schedule. Your can have it place your backups off your server for an extra level of security.

Yoast

This plugin allows you to customize your site’s title tags, meta tags and descriptions for SEO. It also allows you to create sitemap.xml for google and other search engines.

Viper’s Video Quicktags

We find that users have a hard time inserting video embed code. Also, the visual editor sometimes strips the embed code out. This plugin makes it easy. Just click the video source and paste in the URL.

Website Defender

This is a plugin and a service that scans your site and alerts to you to security changes that should be made. The service also tells you if your site is down, if your theme files have been modified and more.

Facebook Timeline

janey — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 15:45:30 +0000

Do you have this message up on your Facebook page?

Coming Soon: New Facebook Pages

On March 30, 2012, all Facebook Pages will get a new design. Preview your page now to see what it looks like and try out the new features.

Facebook will be changing the look of your page whether you like it or not tomorrow. To beautify your new page, you might need a new profile image and also a new cover image.

The cover image should be 940×360 pixels. The profile image should be 180 pixels square.

Below are some timeline pages that we created for our clients. If you want to upgrade yours, please get in touch with us!

WatchDox

janey — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 18:51:34 +0000

WatchDox enables organizations to access, share and control their critical documents wherever they go: on any tablet, smartphone, or PC, even those beyond the IT department’s control.

We designed the logo and also their wordpress based website. The site has a homepage slider, prominent placement for videos and also interior sliders.

We also provided animations for this amazing video.

Straight from the horse’s mouth

janey — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:15:01 +0000

Many people tell us that they have no idea what to post on their Facebook pages. If you are struggling with ideas for engaging Facebook posts then you should read the guide that was recently posted to the Facebook website.
Here are their top 10 tips:

Post succinct content – Your fans’ News Feeds contain a lot of information. And they have limited time to read it.
Post photos and videos – Rich media tends to draw attention more than simple text
Post regularly – Your fans will be more likely to engage with your content if you remain top of mind.
Ask for your fans’ opinion – Your Page should a be a place for conversations between you and your fans
Ask questions – With our Questions product, you can ask your fans for ideas and feedback about how to improve your business.
Try posting “fill in the blank” posts – If you want to give your fans a very simple way to engage with your post, ask them to finish your sentence
Give your fans access to exclusive information – As a reward for liking your Page, give fans access to exclusive, behind-the-scenes information to make them feel special.
Reward your fans with deals and perks – You should not only promote your existing deals via your Page, but use it to offer specific deals or perks only to your fans.
Be timely – Your audience will be more likely to engage with your posts if you are talking about topics that are already top of mind for them.
Localize your posts if they’re only relevant to a specific audience – Some of your posts might only be relevant for a subset of your fans

Download the PDF here.

Don’t be afraid of Facebook! Dive in and give it a go.