A few times a year I find the need to post a job opening, and it’s always an education for me. I found an amazing designer recently on Creative Hotlist (which is free), and I’ve also had luck posting on AIGA’s job board (which is expensive). Below, a list of dos and please don’ts if you’re looking for a job in design (and especially if you’re looking for a job with me). (more…)

Your computer’s hard drive is a piece of hardware that can stop working at any time. Have you backed up your hard drive lately? Are you confident that you have back up copies of your most important files? If you lost your hard drive today, would you be devastated?

Please go back up your computer. Right now. Copy your important files somewhere — removable drive, CDs, your web site. If you can, leave a copy of the backup somewhere where your main drive is not.

I’m sure you can imagine why I’m writing this post so urgently. Back up RIGHT NOW. I wish I had…

“Do you check your web site statistics?”

I ask this question of every web site redesign client I have. And 19 times out of 20, the answer is no. There are lots of reasons, including

1. I don’t think my web site has that.
2. I know I have web stats, but I don’t know how to access them.
3. I’ve tried to look at my stats, but I don’t understand them.
4. I don’t have time to look at them.

If you have a web site, and you don’t look at your stats, you’re missing a huge opportunity. Your stats will tell you:

1. How many unique visitors you have.
   This means: people who visit your web site from a unique computer address. It’s not 100% accurate — public computers, for example your local library computer, will only count as one unique visitor, even though it could be several different users — but it’s a good gauge of how many different people are coming to your site.
2. How many visits you get.
   This means: How many times those unique computer addresses come to your web site. This is a good way to track repeat traffic. Google cares a lot of about #1 and #2 when it comes to assigning you your search engine result rankings.
3. Which pages are being visited.
   A great example of why this should matter to you is happening on a site that I’m working with right now for my local Chamber of Commerce. We thought that the most visited pages of the site were related to our membership activities, but after looking at our stats, I realized that the most visited pages are actually about the towns we serve. What does this mean to us? Two things. One, we need to beef up our Membership pages in order to get more traffic there. Two, we need to add more content to the towns pages. Since people are looking for that information on our site, we need to either provide it, or take those pages down. Having weak pages that don’t include what a visitor is looking for is not the way to make an excellent site.
4. Referring sites
   This means: The sites that have a link to you. Visitors are coming to your site through those links. Google cares A LOT about this.
5. Search words and phrases
   This means: The words and phrases that are being typed into a search engine. You’ve come up as a result, and were clicked on. You should be ranking highly for your company name — that’s kind of a no-brainer. But if you sell t-shirts and your search phrases don’t even include that, or it’s at the bottom of the list, you need to do some web site revamping.
6. Your visits by day
   Why should you care about this? Have you run an ad recently? Done some networking? Gotten some press? Find out if it’s resulting in more web traffic.

Your stats options

Most web hosts offer a web stats program of some kind. I recommend BlueHost — they offer two different stats options: AWStats (which is my favorite — click here for a sample) and Webalizer, along with an exceptional package and great support. I’ve been very happy with them.

Google Analytics is a free program from the masters of all things web related. It’s more complicated to set up — you have to add a script to all of the pages on your site that you want to track. How hard that is depends on how you have your site set up. However, it works in conjunction with the Google Ad Words program if you want it to, which can be very helpful if you’re going that route.

There are other options as well, but these are the ones I recommend most highly.

Check your stats! You’ll be amazed,

This happened again today. I was sending an email to someone I work with. I know this person has a web site for his company (I’ve actually visited it), yet his email address isn’t joeschmo@hiscompany.com but joeschmo@aol.com. What a missed opportunity for him! Having your email come from your company domain name is like free advertising for your web site. Using an AOL email address is like free advertising for AOL. It’s very nice of Joe to get AOLs name out there…

If you do this, and your reason is “But I’ve had my email address forever, and everyone I know emails me there”, read on.

With most web hosts, it’s very easy to forward your email from your domain to an email address of your choice (say, aol.com or verizon.net). That way your “official” email address is smarty@yourcompany.com and you can still use your old freebie email account. Want to know how to do this? Email me, and I’ll tell you.

I am a professional graphic designer. I design a lot of web sites. One piece of advice I consistently give my clients is “Think about including a blog on your site. Google loves blogs.” So where’s my blog, you ask?

Ta da!

I love what I do. One might say that I can get a little obsessed (if one had witnessed an “ugly font” tirade or a “pointless splash page” rant). I think graphic design is the best career out there, and I’m lucky I’ve been doing it for the past 14 years. This blog is my attempt to share what I know, what I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way), beautiful things I’ve seen, design abominations and more. Thanks for checking it out.

Next up, a newsletter sign up! Know how, know why, just need to find the time…