Gone are the days

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Read this great article describing the success of online coupons and think about adding online coupons to your website!

If you have any questions about adding coupons or anything web related, remember:  “XMG Online, from concept to creation let us to be your guide”.

It is your web designer’s job to take your thoughts and create them into a website you will love, but they cannot do this unless you provide them good direction. Before your first meeting with a designer, write down what your website needs to accomplish. Jot down any design cues, visit websites you like, reference the sites and make notes about what you like on the site. If you like the feel of a site, the layout of another website site, the colors of yet another site, all of this information will help guide the designer to deliver the best product for you.

Never assume, never be afraid to ask. Make sure you know what you are getting, if you tell a designer you like the functionality of Amazon with the depth of eBay, ask your designer if they can accomplish this on your budget. Almost everything is possible on the web, but do you want to invest in it? The worst thing you can do is assume the designers know what you want. Have conversations, be honest, and get the best site for your needs and budget. Make sure you do not have caviar taste on fish egg budget.

The more information that is shared and clarified at the beginning of the project will help the rest of the project run more smoothly. Typically, the more the designer has to go back and redo work later on in the project will eat away at the hours they built into the agreement. The fewer hours they have remaining could mean less quality work later or an increased bill at the end of the project.
The morale of the article is “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” keep this in mind throughout your project, especially in first meetings, and your site will meet your desires and your project will run smoothly.

From Concept to Creation,
Let XMG Online be your Guide.

TR

If you have been looking for a website for your company, club, group, or self, you might have noticed the overwhelming amount of options and price ranges to choose from.  The choices can be overwhelming and you need to make the best, (design, functionality, and cost) decision.

For arguments sake, we will group the different choices into these main categories:  DIY (free), Freelancers (College Students or Individual Professionals), Web Design Boutiques, Web Design Firms, Outsourcing.  Over the next several posts, we will go over the pros and cons of each group in an effort to help you make a more informed decision on where you should be looking for help.

But before we tell you about the different levels, we need you to take an honest look at what you are trying to do with your site and what you need in the people or organization doing the site.  It is not all a matter of budget but also of involvement and flexibility.

• Do you want to answer questions about the site daily?
• Are you (person or company) going to put resources into the project?
• Do you want to check on the progress or just be notified when it is done?
• Do you have a timeline (is it firm or flexible)?
• Is your site just a couple of pages on the web?
• Do you need a database, ecommerce, chat forums, or highly customizable elements to your site?
• What factors are most important to you, when getting this project completed?

And be honest. Honesty with yourself is the best first step in building a website.  If you want a site up and you do not care about your personal touch, than that is fine but you need to know.  If budget is the BIGGEST concern (over design and function) than know that about your project.  Find out what your major objectives in your project are and beware that they will affect different aspects of the project.

Subscribe to the blog and return to the website often for the next iteration of the series.

XMG Online, from concept to creation, let us guide you.

There are hundreds if not thousands of posts on how to grow your twitter following, many of them includes things like:

• Follow People who you know will follow you back
• ReTweet (RT) other people
• Ask people to ReTweet your Tweets to share with your friends

XMG Online disagrees with the underlining principle of these statements.

They make it sound like it is extremely easy to quickly and without much effort grow your twitter following.  The post would leave you to believe that it is quick and easy to grow your twitter following without effort.  Honestly, growing your twitter audience is not the easiest thing, with the exceptions of @charliesheen and his #biwinning ways. Just because growing a large audience is not easy it is not impossible.

There are things that you can do to grow your twitter audience but first start by answering this question: Why? Saying that 1,000 people following me on Twitter sounds nice but why? Why do you want to have people follow you on twitter? What value are you going to provide to their lives? From a business point of view, what will having a larger audience follow you do for your organization? List the goals of your twitter strategy.

XMG Online believes that the most important reason to have followers is summed in a five little words, “because it is for them.” The responsibility is yours to provide valued tweets, information, content, links; to those that follow you so their organization can become more prosperous. The more you focus on, “Will this benefit my followers?”, the more followers you will have. They realize you actually care and are posting content for them, not for yourself.

Sure, you could have Guy Kawasaki follow you (he follows everyone that follows him) but let us be honest, what is the chance he is even going to read your tweets. Instead, focus on those who you are engaged with and provide the best content you can and we promise you will grow.

The article shows it is possible for someone to establish a website and sell B2C (Business to Consumer) through non-traditional means. We believe, as well, that social media outlets can be a great source of income for a business, large or small.  When deciding on a website, it is critical to focus on where your clients are located in order to increase sales and gain recommendations, therefore always take time to plan out how to best represent yourself.

When planning out “Is it time for a website?”, take time to really think about where your future customers are and what they will think of you without a website. Often times, even a small website of 5 pages would be better than no website, this way potential clients can find you not only on a social networking website but throughout the web.

When deciding on a web presence, it is not the size but the quality of the website. It is very important to focus on the return of your web presence, whether the presence is on Facebook, LinkedIn, or your own website.

We are looking for professionals in transition to take on a commission only role to gauge market response.  The position is designed to be part time, but if market response is good, it could move to permanent employment.  Given the nature of this company test run, we accept the fact that the new staff would continually look for permanent work.

Our philosophy for this run is “We can teach you what we do, but we cannot teach you how to sell.”  We are looking for people with a background in sales, who can go out and find new business.

If you are interested please contact Tom Nisbet via: tom@xmgonline.com or 336.310.9648.

Here is a list of 24 tips for making yourself more self confident.

Lets be honest, we love to be around confident people and confident people are successful people. When you are around someone that is confident the whole atmosphere changes. You want to be that person because people want to be around confident people!

Here are just a few of favorites from the list:

1. Ask yourself: What’s the worst that could happen?

• This was first on the list and rightly so. We live in a fear based society and because of it we automatically play the worse case scenarios in our minds and we trick ourselves out of self confidence. We must stand firm and really think, really what is the worse and then operate from a position of confidence of how we would handle that worse case situation. Once you have dealt with it mentally you can deal with physically!

20. Keep a positive crowd.

• It is so key to surround yourself with like-minded people that will pick you up when you are down. When feeling down, it is not the time to surround yourself with those “life suckers” (the suck the life out of you). You know exactly who they are and now you know when to avoid them!

24. Redefine failure.

• This is something that is so important for all of us. Many times we see failure as the end all say all. If you are still alive and kicking you have not failed in life. You may have failed at one thing but the beautiful thing is that in life there is no time clock that says that you have to achieve a certain step or the game is over. Pick yourself back up, dust yourself off and get back in the game!

I really could go through line by line because there are so many great things but then there would be no point in reading the list! So enjoy and be encouraged!

Why Do I Love This Software:

• Because I do not have to use Visio to make a wireframe when Visio is far from cost effective.
• It takes far less time to make a wireframe, you can go from making it in an hour to under 20 minutes.
• It works on Windows/Mac
• It allows multiple ways to export the wireframe (images, web pages, etc.)
• Allows collabortaion – I can invite others to comment on what I have done so I do not have to hold extra meetings.
• It allows you to group your wireframes by projects so as you create multiple wire frames they will not get confused with other projects

Extras:

• Now, I do my project management in another tool but if you are looking for a project management tool as well, this program comes with a basic project management tool. Especially for individuals that are stronger in design then in project management this would be great for them.

The pricing is great, ranging from FREE! to $495 for 10 users. I mean, it really doesn’t get any better than this. This program has become the default for my company to do web layouts and wireframes.

Also they company is based near where I am from in VA (I am from MD), so they can’t be a bad group of guys.