Red Kite Creative

Getting Help

Operate as if You'll be in Business Tomorrow

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I read a great quote this morning that just came to mind again, triggered by an email I just received.

It was from a Fort Collins landscape maintenance company that we’ve used for a couple of years. Back in March we received a flyer from them about spring cleanup specials. I called and spoke to someone in the office and waited for someone to call me back about an appointment, but no one ever did. 

Later in the spring I called and emailed them asking for an appointment for aeration and weed help. I couldn’t get an answer by phone, and never got a reply to email either. I assumed they must either be out of business or too busy to get back to me.

The email I just received was very congenial, letting me know they were ready to schedule me for a sprinkler blowout on October 14th between 1 and 2:00 pm. I asked them to remove me from their mailing list.

The quote this morning was from Richard Branson and is right on the mark: “Let’s do business like there is a tomorrow.”

Even if you’re so busy you can’t think, always remember that nurturing an existing client relationship is much easier than building a new one. Even an email or call that takes 30 seconds can make the difference between a happy client and one who’s left for a competitor.

The Importance of Cross-browser Checks

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I got a comment on my (personal) blog this morning from another Colorado web designer, stating how annoying she thought my dropdown menus were. Well – to each his or her own!

I took a look at her site just for kicks, and discovered that the fonts for headlines and some other prominent text are cut off so that only the top halves of the letters are visible. I, for one, find that pretty annoying…

The simple fact is, the site wasn’t checked in Chrome, which is the most-used browser at this time (52.1% of browser usage in June 2013). This is a serious bit of oversight, and it’s a lot more important than a personal preference in menu styles. Make sure that your web designer or developer tests your new website in all the major browsers, not just one or two!

Freelancers for Hire

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Need help on a project, or just for getting things done around the office? An online freelance site may have just the worker you’re looking to hire. The larger sites include Elance, oDesk and Guru. 

Elance and oDesk are large – each has over 1 million registered workers ready to go. Both are world-focused, meaning they have workers from all around the globe. Both offer hourly time tracking, which can be important if it’s hard to guess how much time your job might take.

Guru is more US-focused, with about 350,000 registered workers. Guru offers pricing by the project, but it looks like they’ve recently added hourly time tracking too.

You can join these sites as  a client or contractor for free, then (as a client) post jobs and have contractors contact you for interviews. All three of these sites have nice user interfaces and are pretty intuitive to use for a new client.

What can online freelancers do for you?

Much more than you probably realize! Here are just a few of the many types of workers you typically find on a major freelance site: [Read more…] about Freelancers for Hire

WordPress consulting

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Not really a ‘new’ service, since I do it all the time… but a different way to package it.

WordPress is free and is easy to use out of the box – but it’s also very flexible. You probably want to do more than just edit and add pages and posts, but how exactly do you get more out of it?

There are thousands of plugins and themes available for free (and some for pay) and it can be very confusing to the untrained eye. How do you pick the right plugin when there are half a dozen available for the exact feature you need to provide? And what if you need something that you can’t find a plugin for at all?

I can help. I provide guidance on the most efficient way to accomplish your goals, using freely available plugins or in some cases, custom programming. Contact Red Kite for more information and let me get that new feature working on your site.

Why a proprietary CMS is rarely a good investment for small and medium businesses

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Hands tied

You’re looking for a new website – and a new design/development company. As you’re interviewing potential companies, many of them will probably talk to you about content management systems (CMS).

Most companies will probably talk to you about open source CMS – these are the popular platforms like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and many other less-well-known solutions. Most of them are free, and all of them are highly flexible and customizable. With the right designer/developer, you can get a wonderful tool for your business in the form of an expandable, search engine-friendly and custom website.

Open source content management systems are great for many small and medium business owners because they:

  • Give you freedom to grow your site, in the form of additions to existing pages, new pages, or blog posts.
  • Are great for search engines, because you can add fresh content (which Google loves) without relying on a web designer’s help.
  • Give you control over your own website management.
  • Can go with you to the host of your choosing – they’re portable.
  • They have large user bases – you’ll always be able to find support for your open source CMS no matter how much your business grows or where it takes you.
  • There are a lot of developers and vendors making free and low-cost addons every day. What you can do with your site is nearly limitless.

However, you might find a few shops that have built their own proprietary CMS. This means they have their own custom CMS platform, usually running on their own servers. There are definitely some drawbacks to going this route… [Read more…] about Why a proprietary CMS is rarely a good investment for small and medium businesses

New website consulting services

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Red Kite’s added two targeted consulting services to its menu – the Website Evaluation and the Quick SEO Audit.

The Website Evaluation is perfect for the business owner who is considering a redesign, but doesn’t know where to start. We’ll do a review of your site’s design, navigation, general usability, content and conversion methods and provide a report with specific recommendations that can be implemented by us, or by your own web developer.

The Quick SEO Audit is a website review designed to identify major problems with optimization. We’ll look at your home page, category pages, content pages, navigation, links, code quality and search engine inclusion. As with the Website Evaluation, we’ll provide a report with action items that we can take care of for you, or that you can have your own web developer handle.

Both of these services are designed to give you quick results – important when you’re unsure of what needs to come next. For more information about either service, email or call (970) 372-2125, we’ll be happy to chat with you.