1. Patience
We all want results and we want them now, darn it. If you want to find yourself on the first page of the search results overnight, there are two ways to go about it: buy space in the “related ads” section, or follow certain unethical SEO practices. Customers have been shown to lack confidence in the first, and the second may get you to the top fast, but could also get you completely blacklisted from results after your initial fifteen minutes of fame. The real and lasting way to achieve the results you want and maintain them over the long run, is to have patience. It could take a few months to work your way to the first page. A good SEO company knows this and will not try to lure you with promises of overnight success.

2. Considered Decisions
You know that keywords — and maybe more aptly, key phrases — are the key to your success, but are the keywords you choose, really the right words to bring you the sales and inquiries you are looking for? Sure, you might be able to rank in the top three of a given keyword, but is that really the word that the customers you want are searching for? A good SEO company will work with you to see and understand the overall picture to help ensure that the keywords you want to rank high on are truly the ones to enhance your business.

3. Get Real When it Comes to Budget
We hate to throw the “you get what you pay for,” line at you, but this is as true with SEO as it is with any other service or product — probably much like your own. Certainly you can find good value for your money and a good SEO company will help you to choose a package that will work with your budget, but your expectations should be realistic. A company that promises to take you to the moon for the price of a bus trip downtown is probably not giving you the whole picture.

4. Well Targeted Keywords
Any good SEO expert worth his salt knows that not every keyword that looks good actually gets the kind of traffic you are looking for. You should also be aware of this and take it into consideration when working with your SEO service in selecting your keywords.

5. Monitor Your Results
Of course a good SEO company will monitor your traffic and rankings, but this does not absolve you of responsibility. You are the one who knows your business best and you are in the best position to determine if rankings and traffic are actually translating to increased inquiries and sales. If they are not, you need to let your SEO company know so things can be changed up appropriately. At Id Est Productions, we give you the tools to monitor your performance and show you how to use them.

We understand the importance of all of these factors that make up an effective SEO strategy. Our primary concern is getting you the results you need to enhance your business and perform well on the web. In addition, this is a field that is always growing and changing. We like to stay on top of these changes and we are always looking for new opportunities to help you grow your business. Please contact us for further information on how we can help you to implement a successful SEO campaign.

At Id Est Productions we’re known for designing, developing and promoting web sites for the stone and tile industry—specifically for Stone and Tile PRO Partners of Stone and Tile PROS, Inc. 

Over the years we have developed, polished, and continually refined a robust web solution for our stone and tile clients. We’ve factored in suggestions, had a few epiphanies, not to mention some moments of sheer genius…. We integrated the latest technologies and even created some of our own, which altogether culminated in what is today a robust web solution rich with all the right bells and whistles.

Then it occurred to us… Why let the stone and tile companies keep this all to themselves? (Well, we do have a commitment to them that we will not develop or promote stone and tile companies that are not Stone and Tile PRO Partners, but there is no reason in the world we can’t make our web solution available to other non-stone-and-tile businesses.)

So, we’re having a SPECIAL PROMOTION to introduce ourselves to small to mid-sized companies.

What’s included?

A custom designed HTML5 website designed to promote you and your branding that is

Flexible

Scalable

Surprisingly Affordable

Designed for smart phones and hand-helds

All for a great price and special terms

What your site visitors will see…

• Beautiful home page with stunning animated spotlight
• Links to your FACEBOOK, TWITTER and GOOGLE+ pages (we’ll design those, too!)
• Your service pages…. (note we said pages… plural… very important. And, we’ll give you great suggestions for maximizing impact and value)
• Your interactive galleries – even a very cool before and after gallery tool if that suits you
• Searchable FAQ’s
• Random testimonials and/or tips displaying throughout your site (genuine testimonials are gold!)
• Several contact forms
• General Contact (with interactive map if customers come to you)
• Quick Contact
• Request an Estimate
• Customer Feedback
• Downloadable forms and documents as needed
• About Us page (really, really important page)
• Tips and Articles (or blog)
• Employment page
• Privacy
• Site Map
• Custom Error Page

 Other things we can put on…

• Newsletter sign up forms
• RSS button to make it easy for your readers to subscribe
• and more!

On the back end (admin) you can…

• Edit your site content easily without knowing html
• Add pages as needed
• Post Articles
• Manage your galleries
• Edit your auto-reply messages for all your forms
• See a copy of all of your form submissions (the form data is also sent to your email as they come in but this is a great backup)
• Enter your testimonials

And to make sure you’re found on the web

• On-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & SEO support for one full year
• Submission to all the major search engines
• Geo site map for local marketing
• Submission to maps
• Social Media pages

What else is included….

• Logo design / cleanup
• Site  hosting and support for one full year
• Google Analytics installed on your site
• Cpanel — lots and lots of features available (If you aren’t familiar with Cpanel, we’ll get you oriented)
• Training and support on how to manage your new site

But, what if your needs go beyond this special promotion offering?

While the package we have put together offers a comprehensive solution that fits a majority, we understand there may be additional needs you would like for us to provide, and we’re happy to do so… at a reasonable hourly rate.

The following services are available, but not included in the package pricing:

Copy Writing. Many businesses already have copy suitable for populating their site, or prefer to write it themselves. However, if you do need help with this, one of our professional writers can work closely with you, interviewing you and writing or enhancing your site content at a reasonable hourly rate.

Design Changes After Your Site is Live. Of course we will support and fix broken things for the year included in your package at no additional cost. However, if you decide you want to add some features or functionality, we’re more than happy to do so, just not as part of the packaged price.

Other Services Available. Please feel free to acquaint yourself with the wide variety of services that Id Est Productions offers (www.idestproductions.com). We are a full service visual communications and design firm with a very talented and professional team. We would be happy to work with you in any of our service areas and our prices are very reasonable. Ask about our really great print prices.

How long will it take and how much?

Thought you’d never ask… Most of our small business sites take about 4-6 weeks. This of course can vary. We work hard to accommodate your timeline needs. The entire package, including one year hosting, support and SEO is yours for a down-payment of $599 and 11 monthly payments of $250 each. Feel free to look around — we’re confident that this is an exceptional value in apples to apples comparison!

So, how do you get started?

Give us a call. We’ll get the essential agreement and deposit out of the way, then jump right in by interviewing you, brainstorming with you and laying out all your input and ideas. We’ll then create a mockup of the design look and feel — including the site architecture and navigation. Once you approve it, we’ll create a sub-domain for the site on which we will start building your functional site. When it’s done, we’ll present it to you, make any necessary tweaks, fixes, etc., then give you a one-on-one tutorial and hand over the keys…  When you’re ready to take it live, just give us the word.

What happens after the one-year is up?

We can continue to host and support your site needs for a monthly fee. Depending on your needs at the time, our fees range from hosting/support only (starting at just $15 / month) to creating a support package designed just for you. Alternatively, you can always move your site.

Don’t be the last on your block to get your shiny new website…

This comprehensive Special Promotion Package offers exceptional bang for your buck, but it won’t be around forever. We encourage you to contact us right away so we can get started on creating or improving your web presence as soon as possible!

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a formatting language used to create documents on the Web. HTML5 is still in development and will be the next major revision of HTML, containing greater flexibility and functionality with the addition of new elements such as

Can you see me now?

Rules and characteristics vary between browsers, as well as between different versions of the same browser. Consequently, the rate of HTML5 adoption and support also varies. For example, Internet Explorer 8.0 is less than 30% ready to support HTML5, while Safari 4.0 is nearly 80% ready and Google Chrome 5.0 is more than 85% ready.

HTML5 vs. Flash

While HTML5 will provide some of the functionality that has traditionally been available primarily through Flash, this does not necessarily mean that Flash is destined to become obsolete. At least not for a while. Flash still has advanced effects which HTML5 does not offer. On the other hand, HTML5 will be accessible on the platforms where Flash is not, such as iPads and iPhones. Since HTML5 will not require plug-ins, where Flash does, its adoption will eventually be more global.

While HTML5 poses a strategic threat to Adobe, Microsoft and Java with its greater flexibility, ultimately, this is not really an all or nothing choice. Developers will probably continue to use a combination of these tools depending on their specific requirements.

A majority of the images you will encounter are what is called “raster based.” This means that the images are made up of hundreds or thousands of little squares of color called pixels, laid out in rows and columns. The number of pixels in an image is determined by both the dimensions and the resolution of an image and these two terms are often confused for one another. While dimension and resolution are interrelated, they are two distinct properties and it is important to have an understanding of both, as well as how they influence each other.

A rose by any other name…

“Size” is one of the most confusing aspects of learning to work with raster based images, because the same word is often used to mean different things. For the sake of clarity, I will use the terms “dimension” (measured in pixels) and “size” (measured in inches). Like dimension and resolution, dimension and size are two distinct properties but often referred to by the term “size” — sometimes even in the same sentence. You can see why this gets a little confusing.

Dimension refers to the height and width of an image in pixels. For example, 600 pixels x 600 pixels or 600 x 600. Unless you “resample” your image (we’ll get to resampling later), this file will always be 600 pixels x 600 pixels in dimension, BUT it may not always be the same size (in inches).

Resolution refers to the number of pixels in an inch (ppi, also called “dots per inch” or dpi). The higher your ppi, the greater the quality of detail of your image. Note that I didn’t say anything about the size.

But it looked so much bigger on my monitor…

Now we’ll look at how dimension and resolution relate to each other and how this affects the way an image prints or displays. The preferred resolution for professional printing is 300 ppi or higher. Let’s call it 300 for the sake of easy math. At 300 ppi resolution, your 600 x 600 image will print at a size of 2 inches x 2 inches (300 pixels per inch x 2 inches = 600 pixels).

Some desktop printers will produce decent prints at only 150 ppi. At this resolution, your 600 x 600 image will print at a size of 4 inches x 4 inches (150 pixels per inch x 4 inches = 600 pixels). Fewer pixels per inch means more inches are needed to display the same number of pixels and the individual pixels will be bigger. This is one thing which creates those jagged stair step like edges in a poor quality image — too few pixels per inch, or “low resolution.”

Now, just to throw a little more confusion into the mix, monitors display at either 72 ppi (Mac) or 96 ppi (PCs). Yep, you guessed it — it looks bigger on the screen than it will actually print. Not only that, but a lower resolution file at the default zoom will look sharper on you monitor than it will look once you print it. This is why it is so important to know both the dimensions and the resolution of your file.

Wrong mushroom, Alice…

Ok — resampling. Resampling (upsampling or downsampling) is a way to change the dimensions and/or the resolution of your image. In upsampling, you are increasing either the dimensions or the resolution or both. There are a variety of ways to accomplish this, but the basic idea is this: the program either enlarges the pixels (increased dimensions, same resolution) or, based on the existing pixels, guesses what color pixels should be added and where (increased resolution, same dimensions) or both (increased dimensions and resolution). In downsampling, you are reducing either the dimensions by removing pixels or the resolution by reducing their size and cramming more of them into one inch or both.

Of all these processes, downsampling the dimensions is the most successful, quality-wise. Any of them can be work well or horribly, it really just depends how extreme a change you are trying to make.

Presto Change-o… Oh no!

One other thing to consider when working with images is proportion — the way that your height relates to your width. A common mistake made by people new to working with images is to not correctly maintain the proportions of an image.

Let’s say that your original image is a group photo of the people in your department. It is 4 inches tall and 8 inches wide. You want to fit this image into a space that is 4 inches wide. If you correctly maintain proportions by dividing both dimensions by the same amount, the new image will be 2 inches tall and 4 inches wide (4 divided by 2 is 2 and 8 divided by 2 is 4). If you change only the width so that your image becomes 4 inches tall by 4 inches wide, you will severely distort the image. Have you ever played with Silly Putty? Yeah, it’s like that. Suddenly everyone in your department looks like a strange alien being.

Maybe the change you make isn’t so drastic and they only look a little squished. Who’s going to notice, right? Wrong! Humans have an uncanny knack for recognizing distorted images, particularly of other humans. They might not be able to put their finger on what exactly is wrong when the distortion is subtle, but trust me, on some level the image will strike them as off and make them uncomfortable, even if only slightly. Why make that kind of impression when it’s so unnecessary?

In a nutshell…

The size (in inches) and quality of your images is determined by both the dimensions (in pixels) and the resolution (in ppi), so it is important to know the requirements for both. Because monitors display at a lower resolution than is appropriate for print, your images may look both larger and clearer on your monitor than when they are printed. In addition, a file which prints clearly on a home/desktop printer will require a higher resolution to come out clearly when professionally printed. And finally, maintaining the correct proportions when sizing your images may not seem like a big deal, but it can have an impact on the overall impression you make. There are, of course, other considerations to take into account when working with images, but you can go a long way by simply mastering these basic elements.

Unless you are a WWWW (that would be World Wide Web Wizard) the details of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) may seem about as understandable to you as Latin… Unless you know Latin, in which case, maybe… Russian? Unless you know Russian, too, then you’re just going to have to come up with your own analogy.

At it’s most basic, SEO is the utilization of a variety of methods to boost your website as far up in the relevant search result pages as you can get, thus driving more traffic to your site. Such elements include quality content, applicable keywords, good user interface design, quality inbound links and many more.

Notice I said “relevant.” Do you remember the commercial that depicted a search result as a room full of people that looked more or less like what that search was for, except there in the front row was a leather-clad, whip-bearing dominatrix? The comment was made, “Oh, there’s always at least one of those in every search.” This is much less true today.

The better mousetrap

Why? Because what started out as a search based primarily on information provided on the honor system by the webmasters themselves has become a search based on complex algorithmic calculations of a multitude of different factors designed to prevent the unscrupulous from gaming the system. You know — a better mousetrap. A mousetrap which is a lot more like the board game where you’re trapped by a Rube-Goldberg-esque chain of events than the standard wood and wire trap you may have in your attic. A mousetrap designed to keep all but the most relevant mice from getting the cheese of a high search result.

You can be sure that the major mousetrap builders — Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. — not only aren’t sharing more than a fraction of their building specs with the mice, but are also changing those specs all the time. So what’s a poor mouse to do?

“Here he comes to save the day…”

Well, unless SEO is your job or you’re simply fascinated by it and have a lot of time on your hands to keep up with the latest do’s and don’t’s, your best bet is probably to hire an SEO expert. They can help you to effectively navigate the twists and turns of SEO best practices such as unique, compelling meta descriptions, effective keywords, alt-text and descriptive file names for images, networks of cross-linked pages, and more. An ethical SEO expert can also help you to avoid so-called “black hat” practices, which often started out as legitimate SEO techniques but were so misused and abused they could now get you banned from or penalized by the search engines.

SEO isn’t just a gimmick. As search engines take into account more and more factors such as the quality of content, the social authority a site commands, and the user-friendliness of your design, effective SEO naturally becomes a vital tool in the development of the best website possible.

In other words, the effective use of SEO can not only help you avoid the traps, it can turn you into Mighty Mouse! Who wouldn’t want that?

No doubt you are aware of the importance of visual communication. It is widely understood that words, whether written or spoken, have a greater impact and are much more memorable when accompanied with strong supporting images. But are you aware of how many options today’s technology offers in this arena?

From the good ol’ standby of static printed or projected visual aides, to animated presentations, to full on video production or interactive training modules, visual communication can be utilized to promote, train, educate and entertain in a wide variety of ways.

Show me…

The designers at Id Est Productions are fully versed in a multitude of communication tools and are passionate about creative, out-of-the box thinking. Whatever your particular needs or objectives, we want to work with you to explore the vast possibilities at our disposal to come up with innovative solutions that are right for you!

Contact us to explore the choices that are available.

Life is too short not to take a moment to find some humor in it all…

When you need a momentary respite from the seriousness of it all, consider coming back to visit this page. We’ll keep it fresh with amusing anecdotes, real life (i.e. better than made up) funny stories, and the occassional joke or two.

Do you have a dream? Dream big!

Don’t let what you can achieve be limited by a low opinion of your own creative or technical skills. Id Est Productions has a multi-faceted group of skilled professionals at your disposal. We want to work with you to make your dreams for your graphic presence manifest. Our design professionals will brainstorm with you to come up with unique answers to your design questions. Don’t worry about how you get that nifty navigation trick to work, just tell us what you’d like it to do. Making it work is our job.

Need a website with a specific kind of interactivity?

Want to communicate to customers in a new and vibrant way?

Bring us your wild ideas, your pie in the sky hopes and we’ll brainstorm with you to discover the best way to bring them to life. We’re a unique one-stop-shop for all sorts of design needs, and we want to understand your character as well as your requirements. We want you to have a site or product that does what you want it to, not what we want it to. There may be some technical limitations, but our job is to work with those limitations and stretch them as far as we can to accomplish what you have requested. We’re not just technical experts, we’re creative visionaries.

Contact us to find out what we can do make your design desires a reality.

With all the bells and whistles available these days, how do you choose what kind of functionality your website should contain? Just about everyone has their own idea of what the most important things to include on your website are, and some of these conflict. Music, no music (the prevailing opinion is no music, by the way); flashy graphics, simple clean lines; eCommerce capability or contact info only… Ultimately, the possibilities are virtually endless and the final call is up to you.

“Oh, sure. Some help you are!”

I know, I know — if you knew what to include, you wouldn’t be asking. The thing is, you do know, or at least I would hope you do. You know your customers, right? What is it your customers need and expect from you? That’s what your website should include. I’m not talking about the customers that think every day should be free-give-away-day. I’m talking about the ones that really support and grow your business.

Are your major customers busy, tech savvy professionals, always on the go? Then you’d better make sure that your site translates well to a Smart Phone or Tablet format. And you’ll probably want them to be able to purchase straight from your site, since chances are they won’t have time to stop by your brick-and-board location. eCommerce capability, here we come, and let’s make it highly customizable while we’re at it.

Or do you appeal to a more low-tech crowd? The kind that may know how to Google you, but don’t want to be bothered with anything more complex. How about some kind of map widget that will make your physical location easy to find? Are you a restaurant? You want your menu on your site. Do you do a lot of take-out business? Maybe you want that menu to be interactive, so your customers can place their order online. You see what I’m getting at…

It’s all about you.

These days just about anyone can throw up a website. My cat could probably manage one with all the templates that are out there. But you don’t want to look like your cat made your site, do you? You want to stand out, you want to shine! You want to provide your customers with the functionality they need and expect. Sometimes that’s really hard to figure out on your own, especially if you’re not familiar with websites or design. So why not contact a professional to help you sort it out? They know design, you know your customers. What better way to end up with a site that is all about you and what you have to offer?

All the bells and whistles?… That’ll cost ya.
If you want a brand new electric car with automatic windows, a sun roof, MP3 stereo with amazing surround-sound speakers and an extended warranty, you’re going to be paying more than you would for some used, gas guzzling junker with a tape player and two roll-down windows. (Unless, of course, you count the cost of fuel, maintenance, replacement parts and the annoyance of having to constantly nurse the car along.) So, do you want to work with a professional design studio that offers the latest and greatest functionality, a beautiful design and a willingness to provide future updates and support as needed? Or would you rather go with the niece of your best friend’s next door neighbor’s second cousin who took one HTML class in high school, is going off to college next week and won’t have time to adequately finish, much less maintain your site? Bet you could get that one for a song!

The keys to determining how much your website will or should cost are planning and research. Plan out what you want your site to accomplish, what elements you would like it to have. Make a list. Do you want a gallery of images or products? How about e-commerce capabilities? Should your customers be able to email you from the site? Chat with you live? Store preferences from previous orders? Interactively design their own finished product? Once you have this list, do some research. Compare your list to what your prospective designer is offering. Check out their portfolio. Do they offer the tools you need? Do you like their work? If you base your decision solely on price, I’m afraid to say you might not even get what you paid for.

Contact us to discuss your website needs and obtain a quote.