Leanne Nelson+ by | Jan 13, 2014 | Gallery, Websites
Mortlake, in South West Victoria, will celebrate the Australia Day weekend with a true blue Aussie show featuring locals of the two and four legged variety. The biennial Mortlake Muster brings together the community in a celebration all that is rural Australia to raise funds for local emergency services organisations. The event has grown steadily over the years and the committee decided it was high time for a website to promote the Mortlake Muster. I created a basic informational site that heavily features photographs from previous events. Keep an eye out for more photos from this year’s event! This type of marketing material (after all, that’s what a website is!) is ideal as it can be updated over time with news, pictures, contact details and details of upcoming events. It’s quite acceptable to start simple. With a framework such as WordPress, more complexity such as calendars, online ticket sales, and so on can be added as and when the need arises. If you’re at a loose end this Australia Day weekend, take a trip to Mortlake and enjoy the...
Leanne Nelson+ by | Oct 29, 2013 | Gallery, Websites
My latest website design project went live recently. It is an informational site for a local Geelong company, Showerline Industries. Showerline supplies freestanding baths, shower bases and shower screens to the wholesale market from their manufacturing facility in North Geelong. Showerline wanted to update their existing site to showcase their product range in a fresh way, putting particular emphasis on their Australian made credentials and commitment to environmental sustainability. The redesigned site has a clean design with beautiful, fresh colours that compliment the Showerline logo. A full screen background image has been utilised reflecting the company’s environmental awareness. The site showcases Showerline’s entire product range in an easy to navigate way with a feature image and description of each product as well as an image gallery. The product pages also include technical drawings for each variation available. I migrated Showerline’s website to WordPress as I find this is the most client friendly option. It gives companies the opportunity to manage their own content with minimal training, thus saving time and money in website maintenance. WordPress is also a very flexible option from a designers point of view. Win-win! Congratulations on the launch of your new website, Showerline...
Leanne Nelson+ by | Oct 22, 2013 | Content marketing
Keeping in touch with your existing and potential clients is an important part of business. However it can be time consuming and expensive to reach everyone regularly. An email newsletter is a fantastic option for communicating with your customer base. Web applications make creating and sending email newsletters a flexible choice. Apps offer template layouts for your newsletters, they can pull content or extracts from your blog posts and can include links to your website. Become the expert If you haven’t thought about sending regular newsletters consider this. A well put together, regular newsletter can brand you as an expert in your field. You are the one your customer sees providing the information. A newsletter can help build a relationship and trust with your potential clients. It can hold the attention of your current clients. By regularly supplying useful information to your clients inbox you remain at the forefront of their mind. Where to get newsletter content So where can you get content for your newsletter? Most likely, you already have plenty of information on hand. Existing content can be repurposed, such as blog post extracts mentioned above. My previous post on content marketing has some more ideas on where you can find content for your newsletters. Newsletters are a great tool for providing special offers to your clients. These can be subscriber only offers, or news of a company-wide promotion. When to send a newsletter How often you send a newsletter depends on a number of factors: how regularly do you have newsworthy information what frequency do your clients prefer Weekly or monthly seem to work quite well. Any more...
Leanne Nelson+ by | Sep 17, 2013 | Websites
You’ve decided it’s time to update (or create) your website. Congratulations on taking this step into the online world. So now what happens? As you probably know, it’s more than a quick chat with a designer or sitting yourself down with the laptop one night to knock something up. If you’re thinking of having your website created or updated (or doing it yourself) there’s a number of steps that should be carried out ensure the end product is functional and meets your goals (you do have goals for your website, right?). Of course, every project is different so the steps will vary slightly from project to project. But there’s there’s a basic structure they will have in common. Generally there will lots of discussion about goals and requirements, quite a bit of research on the part of the designer, various design iterations and reviews, artwork production, coding and testing. The infographic below is a great visualisation of the process (click on the image to view/download a pdf version). Ultimately, it’s about working closely with your designer and keeping the lines of communication open. It’s going to take time and needs considered decisions to be made. However, by following this basic process (even loosely), you’ll end up with a website that meets the goals of both you and your customers. If you’d like to learn more about getting your business online, I’d love to help! Check my contact page for how to get in touch, or connect...
Leanne Nelson+ by | Sep 10, 2013 | Content marketing
One of the more popular phrases when it comes to the online presence of businesses lately is content marketing. “You should focus on content marketing”; “Content marketing is the best way to increase your exposure”; “How to create epic content marketing” and variations of the theme are all over the place. All very well, but what is content marketing? First ask, “What is content?” Perhaps firstly we should think about what “content” is. Content is information. Blog posts, news, photos, presentations, infographics and so on are all content. There’s plenty of it around. Useful content is something that someone is interested in consuming. Someone that is in your market. So what is content marketing then? The key is to produce useful content and present it to your market in an interesting, accessible way all the while keeping your marketing goals in mind. Content marketing falls under that beast called internet marketing. Ugh. Dodgy brothers, right? Well, yes and no. Unfortunately there is no shortage of scammers that will willingly take your dollars in the name of internet marketing. But on the other hand, it is a legitimate and effective form of marketing. The key is to produce useful content and present it to your market in an interesting, accessible way all the while keeping your marketing goals in mind. Why would I bother? The internet gives everyone a voice. It gives your competitors a voice. It gives you a cost-effective way to reach a potentially unlimited number of customers. But you need to be in it to win it, so to speak. Simply having a website isn’t enough. Search...
Leanne Nelson+ by | Aug 26, 2013 | Business
Today I read a newspaper story about one man’s experience hiring off-shore virtual assistants. It wasn’t pretty. A virtual assistant is supposed to save you time and give you peace of mind that your business is being properly taken care of. Instead, this man found himself spending mental energy sifting through his workload to find the most mundane work that he felt he could pass on, because his VA had demonstrated that was all he could be trusted with. He wasted money by prepaying for a service that didn’t deliver. Ouch! So what went wrong? This man fell for the much hyped message that a $7/hour VA from India (for example) would be the answer to all his prayers. He also failed to do some basic due diligence. The unfortunate thing is a virtual assistant can be a great benefit to you and your business. Your virtual assistant can handle items that are unpleasant or difficult for you, or things that you don’t have the expertise to do yourself. Finding the right VA Finding the right VA for you can (and should) take a little research: do they have experience in the tasks you’re seeking assistance with do they have the tools and resources to do the job correctly do they understand you and your business what are their contract arrangements and payment terms are they a good fit for your working style You could ask for references or initially hire a VA for a smaller, easier job to determine these issues. No matter how attractive that $7/hour rate seems, you should consider if language is going to be...
