I’d like to wish everyone a wonderful 4th of July!
I know this year’s Independence Day will have significant meaning to me, as I celebrate my own new found freedom!
Wishing all of the Daddy’s and Daddies-To-Be a very Happy Father’s Day!
I hope you are able to kick back and relax with your family today!
Wishing everyone a Happy Memorial Day!
More significant than this just being an extended weekend - today is a day to remember those who have lost their lives defending our country.
My thoughts and prayers are with everyone mourning a loved one today.
From one Mom to another, I would like to wish all of the Mommy’s and Mommies-To-Be out there a very Happy Mother’s Day!
I hope you’re able to take some time to yourself today for a little bit of rest and relaxation. Try to get some pampering in there, if you can, too!
Hug your babies tight today… and don’t forget to call your Mom! 
Last week, Naomi over at Itty Biz posed a thoughtful question to her readers: Let’s Play a Game - What’s Your Home Business?
Some might call this a meme, but she doesen’t specifically call anyone out to answer, so it’s NOT a meme, LOL.
Naomi received a question from one of her regular readers, asking what she actually does for a living.
“So what do you actually do for a living?”
This can be somewhat shocking to hear that a regular reader doesn’t quite understand what you do… If a regular reader doesn’t get it - how are new visitors you your site or blog supposed to know?
Enter the What’s Your Home Business Game! Naomi posted several questions that will help clarify exactly what it is that you do for a living. Sounds like a fun and completely useful game. It’s my turn now, so here goes…
The quick answer - I design web sites.
iDesign Studios creates custom web sites
that help you stand out from the crowd.
My full personal and business speil’s are hopefully pretty obvious, and are placed up at the top of this blog and on the main business site.
Basically speaking, though, I design and develop web sites, from concept to completion. I’ll discuss your business needs with you, see where you are headed, come up with a plan and design a web site that will help your business grow. More on that process here.
Once we’ve finalized the design, I will develop it into a functional web site, using valid, W3C standards compliant code. If you like, I am also more than happy to continue working with you to update the content on your web site, adding new features, etc. - basically helping your web site grow along with your business.
I design and develop web sites because it’s what I love to do!
I have always been artistic, and was lucky to have a very early exposure to computers. My Dad got his first computer - a TRS-80 - way back when I was 3 years old. So maybe there is a tiny bit of “creepy knack” in there.
But, it’s more than just having a “creepy knack” because I actually enjoy it.
While I like the design phase - especially when you get in the “zone” - what I love the most is the development stage. The point of taking something that I designed and turning it into a functional web site.
I especially love learning new techniques. As a front-end web developer, you have to face challenges such as creating code that not only validates, but also looks good on a variety of web browsers. There are often several obstacles you come across in accomplishing this, while also maintaining the design that you created for a web site.
It’s when you surpass those obstacles - often times learning a new trick in the process - that I find to be the most exciting. This is a huge part of what I like the most about being a web designer / front-end web developer, and what makes me look forward to developing the next web site.
It’s a never ending learning process, one that I greatly enjoy!
My clients are a mix of small to medium sized businesses, with the occasional larger organization thrown into the mix. However, the majority of my clients are small businesses - one man/woman shows, or small family run businesses.
Working with a wide range of businesses, industries
and organizations throughout the United States,
my primary goal is to help other small businesses
succeed in their endeavors.
I find that I especially enjoy working for very small companies - primarily those who are establishing themselves on the internet for the first time. It’s nice to be able to introduce them to a whole new world of business marketing.
When a company decides they want to create a web site for the first time, it helps push their business to a whole new level. They are able to reach a much larger audience that they can market their business too.
I often also work with companies that have already gotten their feet wet with one (or several) web sites in the past. But those sites were either un-successful, or have just run their course. It is nice to work with them to help them establish a whole new identity to step their online presence up a notch.
My USP (Unique Selling Proposition) is that I will give you a unique, professional, custom design that you can be sure no-one else out there will have. I will give you full attention to detail, and a good quality web site. Those “other losers” aren’t necessarily going to give you that.
Not everyone is going to give you a custom design. Unfortunately many web designers utilize template services for this, which means there could be 5, 10, 50 or more companies out there with the same exact web design as you. That’s not going to make your business stand out from the crowd!
There are a lot of designers out there that don’t have a unique design style, either. Many will give you a so-so design. Or will develop it with old web standards (using old-school html tables or even worse a site that doesn’t validate, or that doesn’t display properly across a variety of web browsers - thereby limiting your web audience).
When you hire me to design your web site, you can be sure that I am going to sit down and design something from scratch, with you completely in mind. I have a unique design style - typically a “less is more” “clean” style that I will apply to your web site to give it a good professional look (or a funky look if that’s what you’re going for, lol).
Bottom line - I will give you a uniquely styled and well coded web site that will help your business grow. Simply put, I’ll help you stand out from the crowd.
The big plan at the moment is to expand upon my core services.
Right now, I primarily design and develop static web sites. However, I’ve dipped my feet into the wonderful world of WordPress, and am loving it! WordPress is a powerful tool, that can be utilized not only as a blogging platform, but also as a light CMS (Content Management System).
I’ve actually got my first client WordPress web site launching later this week, which I am very excited about! This will be doing double-duty for me, as I plan to use this as an opportunity to officially announce new WordPress Theme development services - which I plan to start offering through my online store before the end of the month.
I can’t end a post like this without linking you to additional information on my main business web site, LOL.
You can learn more about my company, iDesign Studios here, as well as read testimonials from happy clients. I also hope you’ll take a look at my web design portfolio, as well as my list of services (which links to an online shopping cart with complete details on exactly what is included when you purchase any of my web site design, development and hosting services).
If you have any questions, you might find the answer over in the Frequently Asked Questions. If not - please do feel free to contact me. I look forward to hearing from you!
So what about you? What’s your small business?
If someone went to your web site, would they immediately know exactly what you do? You’d be surprised how blatantly obvious you might think the answer is… but there is always that one reader (or ten) who don’t quite get it.
Help them out by participating! Tell everyone what your business game is, and link to or comment on the original article over on Itty Biz. I’d love for you to make a comment below, too!
Wishing everyone a very Happy Easter!
I’m getting ready for an Easter egg hunt with my little one. I’m looking forward to her excitement over it! She’s had a great time so far this morning, with all of the surprises the Easter Bunny left for her this morning.
I hope your day is equally as fun!
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
May the luck of the Irish be with you!
No, I’m not Irish, but I could use all the luck I can get, too…
Here’s to a great day for all! Don’t drink too much green beer. 
Welcome to my new blog… well, not so much new, but re-invented!
This is still unofficial - let’s just call it a soft launch. I’m very happy with it overall, but I realized this morning that there are some display issues with Safari on the PC, and apparently also on just about everything on a Mac.
Thanks Jon for pointing out the Mac issue as well! I’ve got a temporary fix, but it interferes with the footer. That’s secondary, though, so that will have to wait until tomorrow…
I’m pretty sure that I’ll end up spending a good amount of time troubleshooting that over the weekend. Hopefully it is a quicker fix than expected, though. It’s so strange… I’m used to IE being the one to cause me trouble.
Aside from the footer issue, there are a few minor design tweaks (font and spacing issues) that I’ll be updating over the weekend, as well. I’ve ported over many of the posts from the original blog, but still have a few more that I want to add to the mix, too. Overall, though, this is mostly finished.
So, long story short, what I did was essentially merge all of my sites into one.
It was a bit much to keep up with three entirely separate web sites - the business web site vs personal web site vs personal blog. By the way… you can check out the new iDesign Studios web site here, and can read the announcement here.
Now, this blog is still technically separate from the main company web site that officially launched this morning. While the main site and blog share the same domain name, and the blog links back to the web site… the web site does not yet link to the blog.
I’ve actually been flip-flopping on whether I should link the main site to the blog or not. Certainly not while I’m having the browser compatibility issues, lol, but even afterwards, I haven’t made a final decision yet.
My thoughts on this are in reference to how a semi-personal/semi-business blog will look in the eyes to some clients or potential clients who find me through the main site, rather than through the blog.
While some people DO want to get to know the person behind a company - such as through a blog and other social networking means - not everyone might feel the same way. Not that I give out too many personal details on here, but from time to time, I’ll share a cute story about my daughter, for example. Some people might want nothing to do with that, and might look down upon me for it because all they wanted was someone who is 100% business all of the time.
The fact that this is actually a side business might turn off potential clients, as well. Not that this being a side business makes me any less professional or less dedicated. I am a web designer and developer in my full time job as well - which goes to show how much I love what I do. It just means that I have different hours than most (though I think my hours are very similar to those of many bloggers that I follow, or readers to this blog, etc.)
Most likely, I’m over thinking things and am overly concerned for nothing… I’m just having a tough time with fully integrating my business-self with my personal-self.
LOL, even on this blog, I’ve got a category for iDesign Studios News which is written in my business tone of voice - as opposed to a post like this one which is clearly me rambling off the top of my head… That’s why I decided to use the “posted by” tag on these posts, so you can see which of my personalities is writing, lol.
Gee, that didn’t make me sound just a bit bizarre did it?
Of course, it’s not like someone couldn’t Google my name and find this blog (not yet of course, as it’s brand spankin’ new… but once I do some SEO…). This is fine, of course - it is publicly available after all - I just notice that I get a completely different type of visitor to the business site vs the blog. It all depends on what someone is searching for when they find me.
So anyway, that being said, welcome again to the soft launch of my new blog! I will still be doing the link posts where I highlight great web sites, blogs and other resources that I come across when surfing the web. I won’t be posting on a schedule, which will be nice! I’ll just post as I find anything interesting that I think would be helpful to my readers.
I do also plan to write more original / quality posts this time around, as well. Initially, I will say at least 1-2 really good posts a month, though I would like it to be more frequent, at least once a week. We’ll see how that goes. You might just end up with a lot of rambly posts like this one for a while.
Overall, though, this blog will focus on topics relating to:
With a few posts with news and updates about my company, and some cute family stories thrown in for fun, every once in a while:
So, I have to say thank you for checking out my new web site and blog!
Please do let me know what you think of it all - both in terms of the design and layout, as well as content, etc. All feedback is greatly appreciated.
Yes, both positive and/or negative comments welcome!
I’m also curious on your thoughts as to whether or not the main web site should link back to this blog or not? What do you do for your own web site(s)?
With this being an introductory post to the new blog - and me currently being my only subscriber, LOL - I have to ask… if you followed me on the old blog, or just like what you see here so far, please Subscribe!
FREE subscriptions to this blog come in two lovely varieties:
And as an added bonus, you can also:
LOL, you can’t blame a girl for trying, right?
Wishing you all a very Happy Valentine’s Day - I hope your day is filled with love and happiness!
As for me, I’ve got two amazingly wonderful sweetie pies! My daughter is now saying “Happy Vines Day”, and my husband gave me the most delicious looking box of chocolates - actually, it looks just like the one in the picture above. I can’t wait to devour them, lol.
Joshua Clanton recently asked me to submit a haiku on productivity, for his blog.
I’m honored that he asked me, as I am in great company - including Naomi from IttyBiz, both Shane and Peter from the Shane and Peter Blog, Skellie from Skelliewag / Anywired, and Leo from Zen Habits (who inspired the post), as well as many more amazing bloggers!
Although I write a lot on this blog, I’m NOT a writer per-se. And poetry (in this case haiku) does not come easily for me. I’m quite indecisive, to boot, so I ended up with four little poems to submit. I was finally able to narrow it down to two, though.
My husband even made his writing debut in this post, lol. He wrote a haiku just for the heck of it, not expecting it to make the cut. He sure got a kick out of seeing his words online!
You can check out both of our submissions, as well as those of all the other amazing bloggers, on Joshua’s blog here:
Thanks Joshua!
