Fridge vs Avocado Green, Stainless Steel, White…

Running Car vs Paint Colour, Shape window tints….

3 bedroom home plans vs spacial environment and finishes inside and out

Having worked in the construction industry for years before taking the design career by the horns has helped a lot in web design. A single building is drawn by an architect,  many engineers and a designer. The architectural drawings describe how it’s built, the engineering describes what size pipes, wiring, supporting walls etc. And the design drawing give the finishes. They almost always all work together at some point in the planning process.

Creating a web site can be just as complicated as house construction.

The web developer is like the architect. If there is no final wire frame (plan) in mind then that becomes part of the solution. The developer must create a website that allows for the design to be altered by the user.

The web designer brands, colours and re-shapes the functioning website.

If you hire a designer to develop your site, hopefully they will contract out the hard coding parts and not attempt to do it themsleves.

If you hire a developer to design and brand your site, hope fully the same will apply as above.

Very rarely do both co-exist in one person with any degree of success. It’s a simple fact of left brain right brain thinking.

No where in this post is SEO mentioned. That’s because SEO not just part of website construction alone and has nothing to do with branding and design. If SEO is important to the website owner (and who wouldn’t), it get’s built in as part of the development. It is then taught to the owner on how to use it, what content to write and where to put it. If SEO is the most important thing on your website list, don’t ask for it last.

Think of it this way:

A website is a bricks and mortar storefront, (Really it is the new store front of today but that’s entirely another post). How easy the door swings open is how easy it is for search engines to index. But here’s the kicker, (and a big giant ass kicker to some), if there is nothing inside your store worth going in for, then no one will go in, including search engines. It’s not that simple but close.

More and more people who understand this concept are winning the SEO battle. They treat their websites like a real store on a real street. They make it look good, inviting, social and interesting to the niche they want to attract. They change it up, keep it clean and easy to get around. The more people who visit the website, or should I say: The more crowded the inside of that store becomes the more popular it becomes – to search engines too. Go figure: it’s just . like . real . life.

If you see a crowd of people in a store, you go in, even if the door is a little hard to open. You are going to find your way in.

Not a believer yet?

Why then do I come up 2nd or third on a Google Search typing in the words BC Ferries Assured Boarding? Because it’s more interesting than the boring static government regulated website. People comment here creating more activity. You go there because you have to, you come here because you want to.

I found a great article that lists the importance of SEO techniques and other factors considered when everyone else is trying to shoehorn a site into search engine existence. The highest ranking factor is popularity among other things. but here are some of the things I found listed low on the SEO importance list that you may find interesting.

HTML Validation to W3C Standards is of minimal importance (a good thing for this site – let me tell you)
Server/Hosting Uptime minimal importance
Use of XML Sitemap(s) 29% minimal importance
Social Media/Social Graph Based Ranking Factors minimal importance

Surprisingly

Geographic Location of the Host IP Address of the Domain 57% high importance (wouldn’t have thunk it)

Check it out yourself at http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors/

How much does it cost is a common question for a design business’s email inbox supplying websites to Realtors. Of course no one minds answering. It’s what we signed up for in this line of work. But there is no easy short answer to the how much question because everyone is different – or are they?

Almost all inquiries about how much a website cost to design and build are coming from people without any branding what-so-ever. It seems a common trait in the real estate niche but for a small few. In any other business there is a plan in place but in real estate the end result is the plan and most web designers working in this real estate niche are creating the visual branding as part of the web-design and including it in their price.

“My web guy designed my logo” is a pretty common thing to hear when a sign guy needs the printable artwork to work with or a printshop is trying to put together the business cards and all they have to work with are crappy web graphics.

So the question how much is a website isn’t the really the question.

This is a week filled with meetings. Meetings with people who are in the business of designing for real estate. Together we will work to discover the true nature of the problem and come up with a unique solution – or two.

logo

Starting a new business? Think you can design your own logo?

What happens when you’re a designer designing your own logo? I found out nothing can end up happening. I sit staring at my thumbnail sketches tearing them apart with my critical mind. And I thought this was going to be the easiest part of developing a business.

Business planning done. Content written. Breakout business development tested and released. Website design nearly complete. Logo! – or not. I thought I knew what I wanted from the start. The concept was falling together so easily.

TribalYell: A  design and marketing tribe. Our difference? The health of our employees and the community we market to come first. If those two things prosper, so will the business.

This meant the logo was to be cave painted hand prints about the company name. Or some kind of stylized cave/hand print.

Well it’s not going to be a hand print now. The hand print concept falls down when you find out how used up this idea actually is. But I love what I’ve come up with. It’s just a pencil sketch right now.

BC Ferries

In normal circumstances the term reservation means you have a guaranteed spot on the plane, train or automobile. BC Ferries calls their Reserved Boarding Ticket a Guaranteed Travel Option on their Fare Info Page. But instead of rewarding a person for planning ahead and offering a ticket for less, BC Ferries charges a per diem for the privileged of arriving on time. This is not a reservation. Call it a “I don’t want to show up early tax”, “I’m richer than you and get more options surcharge” or call it anything but it’s not a reservation. Especially now that the fine print was activated this holiday weekend and people with Reserved Boarding tickets found themselves with the – ah-hum – rest of the unreserved riff-raff, the truth about BC Ferries’ reservations comes out.

If BC Ferries thought to do it right and correct, they would find it easier to run their entire system.

1 Reward people for thinking ahead and charge them less for reserving because then…

2 more people will think ahead and…

3 The entire system will have a better idea of how many are travelling on any given day

Whatever BC Ferries is doing now, it’s not a reservation and if any other private company advertised like that, there would be hell to pay.

Mobile listing solutions are going to take over as devices become more powerful, Connection speeds increase, displays more beautiful so websites don’t have to adjust to the scale as much. The term “mobile” might even become a word of the past (when describing online versions) as everything is expected to be online everywhere all the time. It’s just going to happen.

The future of the Realtor’s website will need to be more community driven. If their farm area is a certain location then they will be expected to have everything about that location on their website, listing every single business, every event, every listing and how about rentals? Oh, but there are community sites out there already doing this you say? Not really. It cost money and takes time to maintain a site like this. The paid links are not a good representation of what the community is. After all, paid links are what pay the bills.

A community site must be free to the community it serves. As more small business owners realize how important it is to have incoming links from outside sites pointing to them, they will look to a real community site that will list them for free and allow them to log in and list themselves for free, allow them to log in and post events, allow them to log in and take ownership of certain aspects of the community site and even guest post on the community blog. And yes, there will be real estate listings with walk scores, maps and much more. A successful Realtor will own this site.

A site like this is easier to maintain and keep current than most real estate sites are today, (those that do update their sites). It’s conceivable that a Realtor would hardly have to touch a site like this other than to confirm registrations (done through email) and farm the people who have logged in to get more information on the listings. They can go back to doing what they do best.

By providing this valuable resource to the community where a Realtor does business, their perception among those who live, work, play, list and purchase in the area can become a lot higher than it is now (below that of a used car salesman at the moment).

In summery a community site must have:

• Maps with walk scores
• Free organized listings of events and businesses
• Community blog for community postings
• A registration and login for the community
• A “mobile” version

Some Realtors are already starting this.

a. Scan your computers for viruses / malware, especially if unauthorized tweets continue to be posted in your accounts even after you’ve changed the password.

b. Use a password that you don’t use anywhere else and never use the former password on a compromised account. Create a new and difficult password unique to Twitter that consists of both letters and numbers

c. Check the Connections page at http://twitter.com/account/connections and revoke the access privileges of any third party applications that you do not recognize.

d. Avoid providing your username and/or e-mail and password to untrusted third-party sites. (Many are phishing sites offering more followers)

e. Remove any updates that you did not post personally; leaving these updates can result in your account being re-suspended.

I want to add the risk involved adding third part sites to your Twitter account. Many of these sites promise more followers. Any account that asks for your password is probably phishing.

Here is a link to the Wikipedia.org article on it.

Have a great weekend!

Until it happens to me.

I have just had an account suspended from Twitter. The account was fairly new. The name aligned with my new business that I am getting ready to open. I started to add a few people as well as add a few people back, (blocked a “Brittney Naked” account) and uploaded a logo.

I had tweeted a few mundane things but not a lot. I think I had under 40 tweets. I didn’t want to draw too much attention as I am not ready for business yet. So why was I suspended? Twitter is just like Facebook in this regard: One complaint about you and your account is suspended. It’s up to you to beg and plead your innocence. There is no other recourse.

Keeping in mind the lack of activity from this account, it seems fairy obvious the account was shut down by someone who feels threatened by my business opening. Falsely accusing the account of something untoward is easy.

The new business is simply amazing. Community driven and 100% correct. A completely different “do-no-harm” business model that would scare any expanding waistline CEO competitor who is watching me and direct a minion or two to lodge a complaint.

I suppose I could ask my followers of @PaulMcEwan to complain to twitter about my business account being suspended. That might help by demonstrating authenticity but it’s no way to for a new business to enter the market, maybe if I had already been in business.

Twitter has played into the hands of Social Media Guerilla Marketing and that’s that.

At the rate we’re changing, the talk might have been called “Death of the Realtor”. The “Gutenberg phenomena” called the Internet will eventually change real estate so completely we won’t recognize it. Their commission structure have already been under fire for a long time as discussed in a stream on NPR here, read in the New York Times article “Endangered Species” and Maclean’s, “Money for Nothing, Lawn Sign for Free“.

The event he spoke at was a networking shin-dig sponsored by Ubertor and Reachd via Meet-up, and it was interesting, informative and for anyone who’s taken any marketing courses, re-informative. What I found more interesting and just as informative was the fact that a Realtor would act this transparent. I mean this in a ‘good for him’ way. It’s really refreshing to see a Realtor give out his “secrets”. He’s not the only participant at this event who thinks in this way. There is a following to this thinking. The topic of an online ustream.tv discussion I took part in was how the public listing tool realtor.ca was not very transparent and easy for the public to use.

The same technology that makes it easy to market product online, access information and inform the public will eventually have the public scratching their heads as to why the commissions are spread the way they are and if Realtors are willing to market and change then the change will come. I think it’s worth writing a bit about it so I did.

Whether the change is grass roots and forces the industry to change or self regulated is something someone else can speculate on. All I know is this: Those future earners who have never known the world without the Internet, who they choose to help them sell and purchase their homes could very well be a different type of person than today’s Realtor.

Google changes up their logo to match holidays and big events. The key to this is be consistent. It’s expected and there are no surprises when it happens. it’s seen as a ’step up’ and they were prepared to keep it up. What’s more is everyone knows the Google logo and can easily replace it in their mind when mashed up with some Christmas design. Look at Vanity Fair or Maclean’s Magazine the next time you’re in the grocery check out. The cover art, (usually a model or person) covers the Magazine’s name art. This is to get more real estate from the image and the image sells. This can be done because our minds know these brands well.

So how is this handled with personal branding? The answer is very carefully and once we start, we keep it up – forever.

One way is seasonal. It keeps the brand changes to four times a year. It’s authentic because we all change with the seasons, especially if you live in Vancouver. Don’t pull a Google mash up with your name if you’re dealing with personal branding. It’s a bad idea and you’ll end up in my Design Fail Category, (so please send it in if you do). Just be authentic and put yourself where your community is. Keep it real to your clients and you’ll end up with a successful and refreshing look and feel without killing the brand.

Happy Summer!