HaNNaH West
Simple Effective Websites...with Style
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2010 began and ended with the launch of large projects and continued with the introduction of a number of smaller new sites throughout the year, all of which I am very proud. I'm deeply grateful for the ongoing business of many previously established clients, as well as the new clients who have redefined my business over the past year:
- The Southern Oregon Artists Resource and its companion blog, Art Matters! (launched in March 2010) are my labor-of-love contributions to the promotion of the fabulous art community of Southern Oregon. They had a great maiden year with 50+ listings by artists, galleries and art organizations, numerous monthly updates on gallery exhibits and the introduction of the syndication of member blogs. The results - visits from over 50 countries and heavy traffic from coast to coast, including art centers Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Portland and Seattle among the top sources of traffic! Many members have reported opportunities that have come their way via their directory listings during the course of the year. I hope more members of our arts community will take advantage of this opportunity to participate in a unified online presentation of Southern Oregon's wide-ranging community of fine artists and artisans in 2011.
- In February I completed the major redesign of Rokanimart.com, the website of amazing atelier Danièle Proner. A French native who's worked and lived around the world and mastered many mediums and techniques, she's now long established in the San Francisco Bay Area, producing beautiful oils on canvas and lifelike pet portaits on beach stones with a unique process which gives them a rich visual depth and durability. With this site I continue to marvel at how well working together from a distance can accomplish an appealing, effective website. Of course, Danièle's magnificent art made that pretty easy!
- Maggie's Place, a new website, was an introduction to the art of promoting lodging & accomodations, this one in lovely Ashland, Oregon, home of the famous Shakespeare Festival.
- Shosha Yoga was another foray into promoting a business unlike those I have worked with in the past. Also a major redesign of an existing site, Shosha's project resulted in a clean, yet warm and inviting presentation, much like Shosha herself. This is another example of an effective long-distance working relationship.
- A new website designed for Barb Wallgren of Cowboy Flowers represents another new type of business to design for, and an opportunity to serve another neighbor. Her flower shop is located in lovely Ruch, Oregon. Her site and its companion blog get lots of compliments from her customers.
- Over the summer a new business opened in my town, and I was fortunate to begin my working relationship with its owner, Bobbi Ferguson, by finalizing the design of her sign for printing as well as designing a template for the ads she publishes in the Jacksonville Review, a local monthly newspaper. From there we moved on to a new website for the LodeStar Bar, then redesigned the existing website for her ongoing business in Gold Beach, the SeaStar Bar. She's gotten huge amounts of positive feedback on both sites, and people jumped in to share comments faster than I had ever seen before! Of course, her wonderful writing and the beautiful interior of the bar helped a lot, as did the Oregon wines, organic spirits produced locally, and the incredible tapas menu created by her chef, Tony. We now enjoy a wonderful friendship between our two families, and wish her new business the best that 2011 has to offer!
- My involvement with the Southern Oregon arts community through SOAR opened the door for me to help the Southern Oregon Historical Society with the call to artists and online promotion of their first annual benefit art show, "Legacy." Keeping a close eye on the stats for their facebook page as the reception neared, I watched as their fans nearly doubled and visit to/interactions with the page increased by over 35,000%! No joke - the numbers were real - over 40 artists donated more than 100 pieces of art, and the turnout for the event was fantastic!
- Closing the year strong, the Jacksonville Review Online Edition gave me an opportunity to contribute to the promotion of my home town, Jacksonville, Oregon, with an interactive site where the publishers of the Jacksonville Review's monthly print edition can release important news on a more timely basis and a forum where community members can participate with their own contributions, from uploading photos to discussing the latest news items and community issues together online. I watched their facebook page's fans increase to 200 from just over 130 as the site was launched, with page visit and interaction stats increasing nearly 400%.
I thank everyone for the challenges they presented me in 2010, which expanded my abilities and portfolio of serices to include WordPress blogs with hefty functionality, facebook setup and integration, and other social media marketing strategies. Networking is now the name of the game and I'm now fully up to speed and getting great results for my clients!
I would also like to thank the many people who came to me for tutoring to improve their computer skills this year. I plan to continue offering this service, and will expand it by offering workshops at my office in Jacksonville, which has the space to accommodate several people and their computers. More on that soon!
Artists: If you don't have a website yet and having one designed is beyond you right now, please consider a listing at SOAR - it's only 25.00 for a year. If you already have a website, you know that any means of directing visitors to your online gallery is important and good search engine rankings are priceless - SOAR is designed to assist your business on both fronts. Please visit the Resource, have a look around to get an idea of where we're headed, and review our listing form. If you decide to go for it, give it a moment after submitting the form and you will be redirected to a secure page at soartists.com where you can either submit a payment via PayPal or make a note of our mailing address where you can send a check.
Are you a facebook member? Like SOAR's facebook page to read our posts on your News feed and share with your art & culture-loving friends!
Promote Your Page Too
It's essential to have a website that promotes you and your work, provides a hub of communication between you and your clients, and gives visitors from outside your established sphere of influence an opportunity to learn about your products and services. Increasingly the first impression a potential customer has of you is through your website. Let's establish your online presence now so you can plug in to this increasingly dominant form of promotion and commerce. One client, an artist with an established local business selling prints and teaching classes, made sales directly from her new website before the sun set on the DAY HER WEBSITE LAUNCHED! Another client received a sizable commission for an original work of art through her site within a week of its launch. Within the first year, this client was also contacted by a writer who had chosen her from among thousands of glass art websites, asking if she would like her work included in a book covering 100 artists in her field. Less than two years from her website's launch, the book was on the shelf! While I can't guarantee these fantastic results for everyone, I certainly will give your site the same care and attention to detail that made theirs so effective.
Personal and Professional
Though she really wanted an online presence, one client waited several years before having her website built. The reason? The inquiries she made were answered gruffly, leaving the impression that these "professionals" were too busy to answer questions from a prospective client. I believe in service. I want to help you create a website that's a reflection of your own personality, one that portrays your art, special talents and the products and services you offer in a manner that's appealing to your visitors and produces results for your business. To that end, I like to work closely with my clients -local and remote- in my effort to produce from code the design you envision and the functionality that suits the needs of your own endeavor. Don't worry if you know next to nothing about computers or websites! I've been there and understand completely; I've done the work of learning how to do this so you don't have to. I can help you secure a domain name and a reputable hosting service and organize your thoughts and resources so the process of building your site is as painless as possible. Whether the site you need is complex or compact, we'll be in close contact as we design and build; you'll be able to review your pages as they progress and make adjustments as we go.
Website Maintenance and Updates
Once you launch your completed website and begin emailing friends and business contacts to announce it, making changes could be the last thing on your mind. But as time goes on you may want to update your site. Styling with css techniques makes most design updates very cost-effective, and in some cases makes things possible that once were only in our dreams!