It feels like people from my generation are the last of a dying breed - those who still use or make use of print.  Those of us who can still find “ink on our fingers,” so to speak. From news and advertising to everyday communication and commerce, it’s no secret that we have become a digitalized world of bloggers, e-vendors, and online media socialites.  For those of us that started out that way and who were born into the World Wide Web, well, the issue of what to do with all that paper that adds up over the years doesn’t even come about. So what about those people, whose livelihoods relied upon and were surrounded by the world of print?  How are they fairing in a world that runs along the digital highway and waits for no one?

The sad but true reality of the state of the print world is dismal. We’ve all read about the folding of major newspapers, magazines, and the demise of various other facets of the print world that have existed for almost a century. While many companies and technical savvy individuals have been able to keep up with the times and adopt the ways of the digital world or make that transition to the web, a small, yet important demographic still lags behind – that of the small business.

Small businesses, particularly successful, small businesses that have been around for years seem to have the most trouble with transitioning from print or pen and paper to the web.

Having worked with a number of clients that are small businesses looking to make this important transition, the following are just a few suggestions on how to properly make the leap from print to the web:

1. Setup a blog, a website or both. Whether you’re selling shoes are publicizing your latest book – creating a blog or website is key. For blogs, we suggest using Word Press. It’s much more flexible, you won’t have to advertise (like you have to advertise with blogger). With Word Press, you also have the option of setting up a content management system, which allows you to create multiple pages and an actual website with other pages. Making a website for your company allows for an endless amount of possibilities. You can start with a simple, 5 page web  site just to get your name out there, what you do and communicate with your target market faster and easier. Eventually, you can put more work into your site’s SEO and SEM for web advertising or setup e-commerce to start selling your products or services via the web.
2. Plan your Design. If you plan to use current publications or text there are a couple of things to consider when it comes to typography and images. When it comes to designing your website or blog, these two aspects of your web publication are the most important things to be aware of. The way something looks on paper will appear different on the computer screen. For this reason, you should familiarize yourself with how font type and size differentiate from print to digital. Also take into consideration various font colors and how they will appear best on whichever background you are looking to use on the web. Print best practices normally use a 10 or 11 point font. This size font is not legible on the web and should be increased to either 12 or 14 when using text on the web. Also consider using a sans-serif font as opposed to serif fonts – they are known to have a much higher readability level for most people viewing the text on a screen.It is also important to consider color and contrast of the text and its background when publishing on the web. For example – it is important to be careful to steer away from grey or light colored fonts that will be hard to read on a white background.Common problems with design transitions from print to web also include image size and dimension after compression. Things to consider are your images dpi (dots per inch), the document/image format – we recommend using either a JPEG or PNG.
3. Educate yourself on the best ways to market and advertise your website or blog. Things to consider are SEO, email marketing, RSS feeds or visitor/user subscriptions to any publications you might be offering the public.

The above are just a few of the significant things you should take into consideration when transitioning from print to web. While there is a great deal of information and things to watch out for during this process it has proven to be one that is well worth it. The best suggestion we can offer those of you looking to take the leap is to make use of the internet and all of the other information out there regarding this process.

At Black Rhino Marketing, we’ve had many clients/potential clients inquire about whether their website could include music. While the obvious answer is yes, of course websites can include music. The not so obvious answer pertains to whether your website should include music.

Adding music to your website can be very entertaining, however, there are a number of potential problems that come along with adding music to your websites. When clients approach us about the issue of whether or not to put music on their website, the following is our professional advisement:

1. Downloading a full song (normally between 2-5 minutes and anywhere between 4-8 MB) can take up a lot of time and use up a lot of resources. If your website already has numerous images or flash, you may want to stay away from adding music to the mix.

2. The alternative to downloading a full song is to use a 20-30 second clip of background music that plays on repeat. In my opinion, this type of audio presentation is redundant, boring, or just plain annoying for the website visitor. When I approach sites that have music like this, I either turn my sound off or leave the website altogether.

3. So what if your website isn’t flash and you have multiple pages? Someone might be jamming to your music, go to change to the about us page, and then automatically prompt the music to restart? Again, to me this is something that can be an irritating experience for visitors.

4. If your concerns are legal … This is a touchy area with music. Many people assume or don’t even realize that legal issues could be a problem when it comes to music because their website is small and relatively unnoticeable. Little does the public know, however, that there actually have been numerous cases where people have been fined for using other people’s music without the appropriate permission or license.

5. Another issue to consider is perception. People tend to be very judgmental when it comes to basically everything in life. Adding something like music to your website, that might not be suitable to someone else’s taste, gives your visitors another thing to judge you on. Lets use a hair dresser’s website for instance. Say someone likes to get their hair done to nice smooth music but because the hair dresser likes upbeat Spanish music, they put that on their website instead of soothing spa music. The visitor may get the wrong idea about this person’s hair salon based on their choice of music. For this reason, the hair dresser has now just lost a potential client. The more vague and interesting you keep your website the more people will be motivated to actually go to your shop or take action to learn or see more about what you have to offer.

I could go on about other potential pitfalls of putting music on websites, but I think you get the picture. Just a few others are public computers, browser compatibility, offending clients, playing over music that’s already playing on the clients computer, etc.

Obviously, there are exceptions to my suggestions about using music on your website. One exception of course, is if you are a musician or a band trying to showcase your music using your website. That’s a given!

Please feel free to comment !

Five years ago the world never could have imagined the places that Google’s search bar would take people.  In recent years, Google has set the bar so high for search engine technolgies that it doesn’t look like anyone will be exceeding their accomplishments in internet search anytime soon. The thing about Google is that it might have started with a simple search engine, however, today it has expanded into all various that help web designers with their websites.  The following are just a few of the exciting new capabilities Google has brought to the web.

1. Google has Web Master Tools that allow you to look at all your websites and see the top search queries for your site and who is linking to your site.  For instance we have 103 links to our Black Rhino index page - you can actually click and see who is linking to that particular page.  You can also see the most common key words Google sees.  Our top 5 is design, black, rhino, marketing, and logo. You can see where your website is linking to and how many people are subscribed to your website. You can also see  your site map and all the errors that exist within it. Furthermore, you can see crawler access, how often google has been crawling your site, how many pages per day, kilobytes downloaded per day, and time spent downloading a page.
2. Google also has Blogger which is a blogging system that people use. Most people are very familiar with Blogger so I’ll keep it short and sweet.  Basically, Blogger is a good addition to Google for web designers because blogging is a HUGE help with Search Engine Optimization.  By adding blogs to your website you not only make your website have more pages to be crawled by Google, but you also have more content for Google to connect users to. The more information you have on a topic and the more people you have going to your website the more important Google will think you are.
3. Feedburner is another important feature that Google has added.  Feedburner is a program that allows you to keep track of your subscribers. You can see who is subscribed to your blog, how they are subscribed, and which articles they are reading. It also has added tools to optimize, publicize, and monetize your site. In optimize you can make subscribing easier by applying clean visual format for your subscribers. You can also do SmartCast which makes podcasting much easier in feeds that normally cannot support it. It adds the elements that are required for a richer, more detailed listing in iTunes Directory. You also have SmartFeed which allows you to reach the widest possible audience while publishing a single feed on your blog. Publicize allows you to change your headliners, republish your blog on other sites, setup email subscriptions, and more. Monetize allows you to activate Google adsense for feeds and choose options that control how the ads are displayed in your feed.
4. Google Adsense is a program that allows you to sell advertising space for people’s ad’s on your website. These aren’t just any advertisements either, these are ads that Google chooses for you, but are completely relevant to your site’s content. It’s a free service by Google and you can earn money everytime someone clicks on one of your ads.
5. Google Analytics is an application that shows you how your customers found your site, how they explored your site, and how you can enhance your visitors experience. This will allow you to improve your overall site.
6. Then you have the Website Optimizer, which is Google’s free website testing and optimization tool. This tool allows you to increase the value of your exisiting websites and traffic by testing changes in your website content of your pages.
7. Then of course you have Google maps which I use on a majority of my sites. It allows you to put a map on your personal website of a location you want. It’s a nifty tool I must say!

Of course, there is much more … but I’ll leave that for you to Google.