Heideldesign

Adding an E-Newsletter to your Marketing Toolbox

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:46:41 -0500

Why an email newsletter?
An E-Newsletter can be an effective online marketing strategy because it gives you an opportunity to forge a direct link between your company and your customers. Quality information and advice helps customers see you as an expert and a valuable resource in your field.

You can also offer special incentives that not only get your customers to come back to you, but reward them for being loyal to your business. The E-Newsletter provides many opportunities to link back to your website, which increases your web traffic and reminds people they can count on your site as a resource.

If your website utilizes Movable Type, you can use the system to create your newsletter with the added benefit of an automatic on-site archive. This gives new users access to previous editions, enhances your website content offerings, and is another way to drive more traffic to your site.

And finally, E-Newsletters are less expensive than traditional newsletters because there's no paper, printing or mailing involved.

What should be in my E-Newsletter?
Your E-Newsletter must be interesting and provide value to the customer, otherwise, it's not much better than spam. Don't just try to sell things through the E-Newsletter, because you may come across as too pushy. Instead, offer tips, advice and other insight into your field of expertise.

However, a few key discounts or special offers are a great way to entice customers to not only patronize your business, but stay on your mailing list too. Creative, personal writing is another big plus. Let your business' personality shine through, and your customers are likely to respond.

How will I know if my E-Newsletter is successful?
One of the keys to a successful email newsletter is having lots of subscribers. Enforce with your staff how important it is to get an email address whenever they have contact with a customer. Add a "register for our newsletter" form on your website as well. You may have a fantastic newsletter, but if no one is signed up, then you're wasting your time.

Once you have an acceptable number of subscribers, we recommend sending the newsletter through one of several campaign monitoring websites which can provide excellent feedback and reports. These reports can instantly show you everything from how many people opened the newsletter and when, to which links they clicked on most.

Let's Talk
Ready to find out if an E-Newsletter can benefit your business? At Heideldesign, we can walk you through the entire process, from developing your E-Newsletter's look and feel, to adding content, and then monitoring the campaign's success. Contact us today for a consultation.

Movable Type 4.2 Released

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:41:57 -0500

It Takes a Village to Raise a Website

Video Courtesy MovableType.com

The biggest update in 4.2 is Movable Type's inclusion of the "Community Pack" features into the newly christened Movable Type Pro. This allows websites of all sizes to actively solicit and collect information from site visitors in many different forms. This includes the obvious (commenting) and previously available (author blogs), but also introduces a whole new community atmosphere and environment that is conducive to expanding your website into a diverse content delivery system. It's now extremely easy to take a single-focus, sole-voice site and make it a community of like-minded authors and contributors. This means more content, more relevance, more "stickiness" and more interactivity. Visitors to your site go from passive readers to active participants in your content strategy.

Zoom!
Movable Type 4.2 is also significantly faster than its predecessors. How fast depends on your exact configuration and needs, but in some cases, we're talking 100 times faster with common tasks.

Spam Comments are so 2006
The new Typepad Antispam has also been added to the release. This update keeps junk-comments at bay and lets you focus on communicating with your readers.

Oh Yeah - It's Free
Did we mention that MT Pro is a free upgrade for personal users or licensed professional installations?

Let's Talk
We'd like to discuss how Movable Type Pro can help your business grow online. Contact us today for a consultation.

Heideldesign Recognized by Creators of Movable Type

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:53:20 -0500

Here at Heideldesign, we build websites with the content management system Movable Type because it's easy to use, powerful and extensible. In fact, we've become Movable Type experts over the years - but don't just take our word for it.

Six Apart, the makers of Movable Type, just highlighted Heideldesign as a case study of creative, innovative and successful MT application.

Here's what they're saying about us.

"Today, the firm uses Movable Type 4 to enable a range of content-rich web applications for a wide customer base, and continues to explore new creative territory on the Movable Type platform.

"Heideldesign has made it their mission to investigate innovative ways to publish and manage content with the goal of delivering creative solutions that fit the unique needs of each client."

Aw shucks!

Click here to read the entire profile, including a showcase of three of our clients.

CityTrex

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:12:50 -0500

Client: CityTrex.com
Website: http://citytrex.com

Project Synopsis: CityTrex uses Movable Type to publish all of their primary website content, from the blog (of course) to the downloads store. KickApps powers the community portion of the site, My CityTrex, with a customized theme and seamless integration.

Services Provided:
Website Design
Movable Type Development
KickApps Integration and Customization
Custom E-Commerce Solution
Paypal Integration
Podcasting Solution
iTunes Integration, Listing

HMMC

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:51:02 -0500

Client: Healthcare Manufacturers Management Council
Website: hmmc.com

Project Synopsis: The Healthcare Manufacturers Management Council brings together senior-level sales and marketing executives from medical products manufacturers to enhance their knowledge and skills. Their website serves as a hub for their community and a place to recruit new members and promote conferences.

Services Provided:
Website Design
Advertising Integration
Wordpress Development
Members-only Intranet
E-Commerce

Georgia Public Health Association

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:30:34 -0500

Client: Georgia Public Health Association
Website: http://gapha.org

Project Synopsis: GPHA is the largest group of public health professionals in the southeast. They contracted Heideldesign to create a new website environment to increase membership, further their legislative agenda, promote their members and receive conference registrations.

Services Provided:
Wordpress Development
Website Design
Public Relations Consulting
Print Design
Writing
Press Release Development
Membership Database Integration
E-Commerce

Liberty County

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:58:32 -0500

Client: Liberty County, GA
Website: http://www.libertycountyga.com

Services Provided:
Logo Design
Custom Joomla Template
Custom Joomla Modules
Training

Cool Mom Picks

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:11:53 -0500

Client: Cool Mom Picks
Website: http://www.coolmompicks.com

Project Synopsis:
CoolMomPicks.com is a shopping blog by moms for moms. The two women who created the site have lots of great ideas and advice to share with like-minded mamas, but as parents themselves, free time is in short supply. That's why they asked Heideldesign to develop a site dynamic enough to organize and display a lot of information, but simple to manage. The site is powered by Movable Type, which handles the main blog, a video blog, a comprehensive archive search feature, a shop, advertisements and more. The templating language of Movable Type makes it easier for Heideldesign to optimize the site for search engines, and the result is a website with a lot of traffic. CoolMomPicks.com receives 160,000 page views per month, and the creators have been featured in Time Magazine, the L.A. Times and the New York Times.

Services Provided:
Movable Type consulting
Server maintenance
Content archiving
Custom template creation
Advertising integration
Search Engine Optimization

Asset Management with Movable Type

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:23:23 -0500

In MT parlance, assets are files that you've uploaded to the web server using the Movable Type interface. For most of our clients, that means images: Photos, renderings and illustrations of all kinds. No matter how good your written content is, sometimes that extra push it needs to be noticed can only come from a visual stimulus. So, it's great that Movable Type makes uploading, categorizing and finding those visuals intuitive and easy.

Once you've uploaded a file (through the "Upload file" menu option or through the rich text editor when creating an entry) you can give your image a title, description and tags. Tags are one to two word short descriptions that best sum up the content. For a photograph of a landscape, your tags might be: photograph, color, landscape, grass, trees. Then, if you're looking for all of the images you've uploaded to your site that contain "trees", it's one click away.

But the best part of asset management with Movable Type 4 is using the auto-generated resizing options to create on-the-fly thumbnails and apply custom cropping to images directly from the templates. On a recent project for Lowcountry Exhibits, Heideldesign leveraged that power to make adding a multitude of different image sizes, crops and effects a one-step process for the client. All they have to do is upload a single photo once.

From there, Movable Type and the custom template set does the rest. On the home page, a custom template creates an XML feed for the scrolling Flash interface with auto-resized and cropped thumbnail images from the first asset on each entry in the "portfolio" category. On the Entry Listing templates, a different thumbnail is created on the fly. For the Entry templates, three different image sizes are created automatically: A medium thumbnail, a small thumbnail and a large javascript-triggered lightbox overlay.

And all the author has to do is upload one image into their Movable Type entry.

Not only is it a huge time saver for the author, it's a great solution for the designer and developer as well. They never have to worry about a design "breaking" due to a mis-sized image. Pixel-level control can be maintained throughout the templates.

If you have a graphic-intensive project and want to learn more about how Movable Type's asset management may be able to help you, contact Heideldesign today for a free consultation.

We're growing!

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:19:46 -0500

Heideldesign is pleased to announce the addition of Ginger Heidel to our staff as a full-time media consultant. We're still the small firm with big ideas you've worked with in the past, but now we can do even more for you and your business.

Ginger is a veteran of the broadcast and public relations industry, and mixes those experiences into one big pot of multimedia knowledge. Having trouble coming up with fresh content for your website (or the time to add it all)? Now we can help. Think your website might benefit from the addition of video clips? We can help there too.

With Ginger on board, we can now offer website maintenance packages. Let us take care of the small details to keep your site current and increase your search engine rankings, leaving you more time to - literally - take care of business.

Not sure if video is right for your site? Here's how some of our existing clients are using video to enhance their web offerings:

Savannah Plastic Surgery - this website features short introductory clips by all 6 surgeons, allowing potential clients to become familiar with a doctor before he/she even makes an appointment.

South Georgia Center for Cancer Care - this new site will feature videos demonstrating some of the treatments performed in the office. The opportunity to see the equipment in action may help lessen the fears of patients who will soon be coming in for treatment.

Buckhead Builders - this new site will feature a product video showing potential buyers how easy it is to install one of their quality storm doors. Product descriptions are great, but sometimes seeing is believing.

Contact us today to find out more!

First Baptist Richmond Hill

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:47:20 -0500

The Client
First Baptist Church, Richmond Hill

Online
richmondhill.org

Goal
"The Church" at Richmond Hill needed a website refresh that put the power of publishing into the hands of their very talented and capable staff.

Site Features
Content Management System
- Staff can update the website

Media Management
- For organizing and playing audio and video, including podcast support

Easy File Upload and Storage
- For photos, PDFs, mp3s, video and more

In house CMS training with documentation.

Tools
This site runs on Movable Type, an easily customizable content management platform. Multiple staff members can quickly add to the site content with the push of a button.

Savannah Music Festival

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:56:21 -0500

The Client Savannah Music Festival Online savannahmusicfestival.org Goal The Savannah Music Festival was looking to start fresh for their 2008 series website. Using experience drawn from previous years and the work of competing festivals for inspiration, the latest website iteration has engaging, immersive and deep content. Heideldesign worked closely with staff designers to create the look and feel while utilizing advanced coding techniques to minimize clicks and make each page as useful as possible. Project Synopsis A world-class celebration of music needs a world-class website capable of serving an audience of more than 60,000 attendees. And as those thousands plan their festival experience, they rely on savannahmusicfestival.org to be their online tour guide. Heideldesign uses Movable Type to handle the deep content demands of this site, including an event calendar, artist profiles, pressroom, mailing lists, and media management such as audio, video and podcasting. Heideldesign also uses the "tags" feature in Movable Type for cross-referencing. Whether a user is searching for a particular artist, performer, genre, venue, or performance type, these tags give them a more dynamic and interactive web experience, and connect them with the information they need. Site Features Content Management System - Staff can update the website Media Management - For organizing and playing audio and video, including podcast support Easy File Upload and Storage - For photos, PDFs, mp3s, video and more Mailing Lists - Several one-way and all-way mailing lists to target special groups Online Store - E-commerce system for securely selling festival merchandise In house CMS training with full documentation. Tools This site runs on Movable Type, an easily customizable content management platform. Multiple staff members can quickly add to the site content with the push of a button.

Heideldesign Celebrates 10 Years

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:36:06 -0500

We certainly don't feel ten years older - but the fact is that Heideldesign has been enabling business, education and government clients to be successful on the web for a decade. Let's take a minute to explore what Heideldesign would be like if it were a child, instead of a web development firm - humor me... According to Pediatric Advisor, a ten year old:

is eager to learn and master new skills
is proud of doing things well
has internalized standards of right and wrong

Well, that applied more than I thought. The web has changed a lot since we first began splicing Photoshop images. The advent of web standards, the end (and resurrection) of the browser wars and designing for mobile devices have all been hot topics. We've had to remain well-versed in the latest coding techniques and design trends. And, we've always taken pride in our work. Whether it be a global site launch for an international brand or a small presence for a mom and pop store, we're proud of what we produce. The client's wants and needs are what we deliver every time. As far as right and wrong, we feel that our interaction with clients says it all. We price fairly and give quality, individual attention and service. That's why repeat business is not only a cornerstone of our business plan, it's also the reality of our business life. Thank you This milestone wouldn't be possible without the support of our clients and extended team. As our firm continues to grow, know that your success is our success and we look forward to serving you for another ten years.

Welcome, Elliot!

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 10:55:28 -0500

Relieved mama and proud papa are doing fine. Look at that sweet face! You can follow along with Anna's motherhood odyssey at her pop culture/mommy blog, Mother Popper. Also, be sure to subscribe to their very funny personal podcast, The Delta Park Project.

Chatham Emergency Management Agency

Sun, 02 Sep 2007 14:50:20 -0500

The Client Chatham Emergency Management Agency (CEMA) Online cema.chathamcounty.org Goal CEMA needed a new way to connect to area residents with critical emergency information. Their new website allows them to:

Quickly publish Web Alert items Communicate to different target groups with several mailing lists Publish training dates and community events Make safety guides available Archive emergency events ...and more

Site Features Content Management System - Staff can update the website Easy File Upload and Storage - For photos, PDFs and other downloadables Mailing Lists - Several one-way and all-way mailing lists to target special groups In house CMS training with full documentation. Tools This site runs on Movable Type, an easily customizable content management platform. Multiple staff members can quickly add to the site content with events, reviews or news items.