Technology is always changing the newest trend in marketing is the QR Code.  You create a code that is unique to whatever promotion you are doing or to point someone to your website.   You can add it to your business card to become a v-card that the person who receives it can scan into their contacts. 

This is an example of a QR Code that will take you right to the contact us page on this website. You can easily create a QR Code for free – this website BeQRious Allows you to create all kinds of QR Codes for free. All that is needed for it to be used is a smartphone that can scan or take a picture of the code and it is automatically activated. Try it out and let us know what you think?

WordPress has many great plugins here are a few we have recently used in projects and thought they were worth highlighting.

YouTube with Style

This plugin allows you to grab your videos and their descriptions right from you tube with just a username and password. You can format them in a widget to appear on your sidebar or in the content of your website. The great thing about this plugin is it will dynamically load your youtube videos without the user having to write any special code making it easy for the novice website user to maintain their own website youtube content. Brighten Your View used this plugin on Dave Calabrese’s Voice-over website. Working with Out-source Communications to implement the design using WordPress.

Cforms

This plugin allows you to create custom forms to be embedded in a website page. You can choose to have the information stored in the database for tracking the use of each form you create. It is very flexible and allows the end-user to upload files to your website if needed. Brighten Your View has used this plugin extensively. A recent example is Diagnostic Radiology Associates. Two different forms were created to request an examination and request your xrays to be send to the patient. Brighten Your View worked with Out-Source Communications to implement the design using WordPress.

Platinum SEO Pack

This plugin allows for meta-tags and title tags and meta descriptions to be created for each page and post created. This allows the user to create unique title tags and meta data per page and easily change it if necessary without having to change an entire template. Brighten Your View uses this plugin on all websites we implement.

You have to be careful to understand what you want your website to do for you and the key to that is having a professional guide you in the right direction.

When searching for a website designer make sure they ask you the right questions.

These are typical questions I ask my prospective clients

• Do you have a Mission Statement for this new website?
• What is the audience for the website?
• What words would you use to describe the website?
• What are the primary goals of the website? i.e. sell products online, increase sales through reaching more clients, etc
• Do you have any color scheme in mind for the website or a logo?
• Do you have any websites you have seen that you don’t like that are similar to your business model?
• Do you have any other websites you have seen that you do like that are similar to your business model?
• Do you currently have a brochure or other marketing materials?
• Do you envision a need for online payment transactions secure (login) information?
• Write a paragraph describing your business.

Work with your website professional to create a website for you that attains your goals and that can grow with your business.

Remember that your website is an extension of your business and must be constantly maintained and updated. Your website will not accomplish anything for you if its purpose was just to say my website can be found at http://www.xyz.com. You and your website professional have to create an internet identity.

If you would like to learn more please contact us at info@brightenyourview.com

Website Analytics provide information about the traffic to your website.  They allow you to see what browsers your traffic is coming from and what type of connection is being used to access your website (T1, Cable Modem, etc).  They also show you which page of your website attract the most visitors.  How long the average visit to your website lasts.  They also allow you to view the source of your website traffic- Did your visitor come by directly typing your url or via search or perhaps from a link to your website from another website.

Why are they important?

Analytics are a vital part of your website.  They allow you to track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns whether web based or mail based.  You can track goals in your analytics.  For example, a goal might be a visitor making a purchase from your website.  You can create custom definitions in your analytics to show a path to obtaining the goal and how many visitors start the process and actually complete it. 

Analytics can also provide you with information on how effective a Google Adwords campaign has been.  Helping you to refine your target market.

The important thing to remember is to utilize the information analytics provide you.  It is not enough to view the information, you have to analyze it and refine your process so that  you get the most out of your website presence.

Free Analytic Services

There are free analytic services out there for you to investigate to decide which best suits your needs or your hosting provider may include analytics in your hosting contract.  Here is a link regarding Google Analytics and important elements Google offers in their analytics.  Here is another link to the best free website analytic tools.

I have visited many websites and wondered where is the favicon? 

What is a Favicon?

Its that tiny graphic that appears by the url of your website and in bookmarks for your website.  Click Here for an Interesting Article about Favicon FAQs.

Why Do I Need a Favicon?

At Brighten Your View, we feel a favicon is just a polishing step that is an attention to detail item for your website. It says to the internet community, your website presentation wants to show the world that your company pays attention to all the details even something as small as a favicon.

What can a Favicon Be?

A favicon can be a graphic of anything you want to represent your company. Most times it is a smaller version of your company logo.

How Does A Favicon Get Created?

Favicons can be generated from existing graphic files. There are many websites that will generate a favicon for you based upon a file you upload to them.  Click on the links below to Visit Favicon Generator Sites.

• Dynamic Drive
• Favicon Generator
• Favicon Generator
• Dagon Design

Best Regards,

Beth Bucciferro Owner, Brighten Your View

On the World Wide Web there are so many different technologies to choose from here at Brighten Your View, we have chosen to concentrate our development efforts with Open Source Technology mainly Drupal and WordPress.

Open Source Technology – what does that mean?

Basically it means that a community of developers have created these Content Management Systems and maintain them for the global community to use.  The platforms as they are called can be downloaded free of charge to be installed on your Web Hosting Account.   Some web hosts even will install them of you one such Host is GoDaddy. 

In choosing to focus our web development with Drupal and WordPress, we provide our clients with the ability to easier maintain their own website once the customize and requirements they need have been completed.  Each Platform provides a WYSIWYG editor much like MS Word to allow for easy editing of content.

Because Drupal and WordPress are maintained by a community of developers, there are many add-on features that can significantly reduce the cost of your website, so the requirements may be met by an existing add-on module.

Why Did Brighten Your View choose to Concentrate Website Development in Drupal and WordPress?

The most common factor we have heard from clients is we want to be able to maintain our own website.  The world is constantly changing we have to keep our website fresh to compete and we don’t want to pay monthly fees for website maintenance.  Drupal and WordPress make sense because they are so easy to maintain and have great flexibility to allow for new features to be easily added on as the clients needs change.

WordPress Vs. Drupal - How do We Decide Which to Use?

WordPress is traditionally known as a blogging software but it can combine blogging with regular website features or stand on its own as a website development tool.  WordPress has 100s of free themes to choose from if you are looking to have a foundation look to build on that can help you lower the costs of your website vision. 

Drupal is a very flexible platform that offers a lot of standard features such as blogs, forums, polls, etc. 

Once we meet with you to discuss your website needs, we make a recommendation on which platform is best and in some cases clients chose to stay with HTML and CSS rather than a CMS platform. 

Factors we use to determine the best platform for your website:

• • Number of pages in your website.
• • Different content types you may require to categorize your information.
• • Who is your target audience?
• • What is the mission of your website?
• • Flexibility required in how the content appears and can be modified by you.