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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder It isn’t always easy to design for multiple clients, especially when they have tastes that aren’t always parallel to your own. I strive to give my clients the perfect website for their business, even if it isn’t something that I personally consider attractive. Beauty is in the eye of…
As I mentioned in a couple of posts last week, and for anyone who visited our site or any of our clients sites during this time, you may have known we had something of an outage. But more and more details are emerging about what really happened. Our web hosting company (our OLD web hosting company)…
If you read yesterday’s blog post, you know we had a bit of a hosting catastrophe this week. An honest mistake went awry, followed by what I believe were not honest mistakes, basically making this website, along with more than 100 of my clients’ sites, show up as spam sites. It was not a banner…
Do you keep all your eggs in one basket when it comes to your online needs? Email, web hosting, domain names all in one stop? A lot of people do. Why? Because it’s easy. Hey look, I can login here and get everything I need! Not so fast. You might think it’s a good idea…
Every small business has something to offer which is unique to their brand. Branding builds trust because it creates consistency. Businesses that are solely based online have often don’t take the time to properly brand their products and style. If your small business has a weak brand, or perhaps you don’t even have a brand, try experimenting with…
I’m proud to say this month Sumy Designs turns nine. Less than 50% of small business make it past the age of four, so nine is a good indication we are doing things right. There are many components to our success, so I thought I’d list a few of the reasons Sumy Designs is amazing. We…
Awhile back, I wrote a blog post about how Google would be notifying site owners who use webmaster tools if their site wasn’t mobile-friendly. This has been happening, I’ve seen a number of these. (Full disclosure, when we started building websites, smart phones didn’t exist so doing responsive sites was not on our radar. So…
Write to inspire Good blog posts should trigger the sharing of ideas. And, if your small business has a blog, then you have a great marketing tool because you know more about your business than anyone else. Write posts about your business that will inspire clients to keep reading. Focus on your target audience Try and write about…
I actually get this question a lot. When you spend all day everyday in WordPress, you sometimes forget that a task you think is super easy can be scary and daunting to someone with less experience. So let me set your mind at ease! Changing your navigation menu is easy. Have no fear. Here is…
Is your website in need of some stock photography? Most websites could use some great imagery, but many can’t afford to hire a professional photographer or purchase quality stock photographs. Have no fear; your days of stealing photos from Google searches are over. Images add visual appeal because they make your article seem more attractive.…
Don’t you hate it when you go to load a website and it takes forever? Nobody is going to wait for that wheel to stop spinning if it takes more than 10 seconds. In fact, more than four seconds and you are losing people. Is your site slow? There can be many possibilities, but here’s…
We get a lot of quote requests at Sumy Designs. One of the first questions we ask is this: What is your budget for this project? Lately it seems that many people who inquire are reluctant to give us this information. I understand the rationale, you don’t want to give the company free reign to…
Fonts are funny, we love them yet if we use them without restraint they look out of control and unprofessional. Combining fonts successfully isn’t hard if you follow a few simple rules: Thick and Thin Stick with the same font but use a thin version and a bold version to separate the header from the…
Professionals in all fields have tools. As a homeowner, there’s a good chance you own a plunger. But do you have a drain snake? Why not? Would it be cheating if a plumber came to your house and used a drain snake instead of reaching down the drain by hand? Would it be cheating if…
We’ve done a lot of sites for clients, and usually we set up Google Webmaster Tools for them, because there are a lot of good, useful tools there. If you have a website and use webmaster tools, and your site isn’t mobile-friendly, then expect to get a notice from Google sooner rather than later. Here’s…
No, not the tasty little hamburgers. I’m talking about the slideshows on a website that rotate through a series of photos. There are thousands of different slider plugins out there, and it seems that every site has caught onto this trend like a viral infection. Everyone seems to want one, but let me ask you this…