June 15, 200917 yr Hi My name is Debbie and I have just found this forum. I have started my own web design company A1 IT Web Design. As well as consultant websites, I am on a personal crusade to convince the window cleaner, the carpenter, the landscape gardener etc., that they need to come to terms with the fact that having a website is inevitable if they want to survive in the our technically driven world. I have been in a corporate environment for many years and have designed numerous websites for very large and globally based divisions but always using in-house software. Now I am trying to do it using grown up tools and coding for the first time. I am a great believer that a picture says a thousand words and try to be visual in my creations. I am hoping that this forum will assist me in advancing my programming language skills and be a hive for new ideas. I would like to thank each and every one of you now for the help and inspiration I am sure you will provide me.
June 15, 200917 yr Hi Debbie. I'm new here also. So I'm not entirely sure if im entitled to say welcome - but welcome anyways! I have looked at your site and I'm incredibly impressed for a first try coding! Do you mind me asking what tools you use? No doubt this is one of the best places to be if you want to learn. Being only 18 and self taught in web design I've found that the best way to learn is to completely surround yourself with designers & coders and just keep making websites! So yes, hello! - And I wish you the best of luck in picking things up! (I'm sure you wont have too much of a problem!)
June 16, 200917 yr Hi Debbie, welcome to the forum. I have to dissagree with you on some of this. A window cleaner has 2 options: 1) he knocks on everydoor, and hands out leaflets (£110 for 10,000) to try and increase his sales, goes direct to the customer, or lets word of mouth/people see him around get him the work. Budget: £110 2) he has a flash new website built, has to pay for 3 months off-page SEO, and then has to hope people search online for window cleaner (in my experience, for that sort of thing, people will check yellow pages or yell.com, not google) Budget: £250 for a cheap website. £750 for half decent SEO - total budget: £1000 So is he better off targeting 10,000 people in there home, for 1/10 of the price? The only exception to this for me, would be if it was a nationwide company. Doesnt mean i wont take the job if they came to me asking me to do it, i just feel that it is almost a waste of his money, and would recommend we work with him on a different campaign to help him achieve better results. Reaper PS: Paul - nice to see your already being active. no limits on being a new person, so dont worry about that. The rules here are quite nice and fair, part of the reason we all tend to get along and have a good laugh.
June 16, 200917 yr Author Paul thank you for your kind words. The web site was eventually produced using SharePoint Designer. However it started life in a application called Web Studio". However Web Studio does not confrm to standards or to be kind is not up to date, all the code for instance is in CAPITALS. So I pretty much started from sractch in SP Designer, once I had formed the idea. I am now starting the process using PowerPoint as I find it quite powerful for my design ideas and actaully very good for creating clean graphics which is my preference. I may have to wait of the rumoured ban on leaflet distribution as a green measure to get the window cleaner or maybe his own conscience but I'll continue working on the others. Again thank you , you're words were most encouraging and I wish you well
June 16, 200917 yr Hi Debbie and welcome to the forum, once again I disagree with you a little that all people need websites, but that's okay!!! I think many individuals out there don't have websites when they could definitely do with one, or if they do have one a re-design would be a good idea and I'm all for convincing these individuals or businesses that they need sites, but people like window cleaners, street performers etc simply do not need websites, because nobody ever searches for them on Google.
June 16, 200917 yr I'm eating my words, in the past month locally, 40,500 searches for the phrase 'window cleaners' has taken place, whether domestic or not I don't know, but I'm shocked.
June 16, 200917 yr Paul thank you for your kind words. The web site was eventually produced using SharePoint Designer. However it started life in a application called Web Studio". However Web Studio does not confrm to standards or to be kind is not up to date, all the code for instance is in CAPITALS. So I pretty much started from sractch in SP Designer, once I had formed the idea. I am now starting the process using PowerPoint as I find it quite powerful for my design ideas and actaully very good for creating clean graphics which is my preference. Can I point you in the direction of possibly better software? You might want to look at a program called Notepad++ for your coding and a program called GIMP (Ignore the funny sounding name for the program) for your graphics. Both are free applications and are extremely good for the price. If you do have a budget then you might want to get Adobe Dreamweaver (for your coding) and Adobe Photoshop for your graphics. Photoshop can be very expensive however - and you might actually be alright with Photoshop Express to start off with. Ofcourse, these are just suggestions - but I feel you might be better off with these more industry standard programs. You deserve a medal for designing websites in PowerPoint! Once again, welcome to the forums! - Hope your time here is a good one and filled with learning!
June 16, 200917 yr Author I'm eating my words, in the past month locally, 40,500 searches for the phrase 'window cleaners' has taken place, whether domestic or not I don't know, but I'm shocked. It was probably me seeing what sites I could find Any hoo those searches are made by people like me who now start their search for anything using the web and only open the local newpaper to spread it on the floor for the puppy. Where/ how did you arrive at your figure of 45,000, The availability of that data would really help me Thanks in advance
June 16, 200917 yr Im not 100% sure on the figure of 45,000 but google trends can give an interesting insight into web searches: http://www.google.com/trends
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