Space will be limited, so serious students should enroll early.  One objective beyond the tutorial sessions will be to identify top students who are considering careers in web development as candidates for paid work as outsourced talent for our web development projects.

Curriculum will include:

• Website concept design using Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator
• Web Design Best Practices
• Hand-coded CSS/XHTML
• PSD to XHTML/CSS conversion (slicing and coding)

• Form processing and data validation
• AJAX
• SEO (search engine optimization) prinicples
• Social media integration

• Content Management using WordPress
• PHP, MySQL and dynamic content
• jQuery/Javascript
• Custom blog development

• Extreme WordPress hacking
• Google API integration (Google Maps, Feeds)
• Web application development using PHP/MySQL/AJAX
• Custom theme development for WordPress (or WordPress skinning)

… and more.

Class sessions are offered for three levels of current experience, Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced.  Through some quick questions I can help you identify the level that would be most beneficial to you.

Right now is a great time to enhance your skills and knowledge, set yourself apart from the competition and earn more money!

Head on over to the Web Design Courses page to learn more.

Knowing and understanding your client is key to the creative process and will enable you to proceed confidently toward a design solution. The real test in gauging customer satisfaction is how your client feels over time, not just at the end of the creative process.

Multiple Solutions – Provide your clients with multiple solutions, each including research to assist with understanding how each creative decision was reached.

Refining – Work with your client to refine the solution in an openly free environment for exchange of ideas. This will address those inevitable issues unanticipated at the outset, but which invariably occur during the process.

Final Product – Your finished product must satisfy your client and measure up to your own highest professional standards. Your client’s industry expertise combined with the talents you bring to the process, together will result in a piece that conveys the right message, while making certain the product is delivered on time.

Admittedly, the prospect of expanding sales using an e-commerce site is compelling.  But a word of caution: keep in mind that most of these successful online businesses are backed by huge investment, both in time and money.

If you have a small business and you’ve been sold on the idea that you can expand your sales using a nicely designed e-commerce website, before taking that plunge, investing the substantial money and human resources necessary to support this move, it’s useful to consider whether or not you really can compete in this arena.

As a small to medium sized business you may be very successful in your local market, because you’ve worked hard building your business and developing a fine reputation with your customers.  Consider though, how much investment companies like Amazon, Apple, Buy.com, Wal-Mart and a host of others have made to get to where they are as online powerhouses.  Sure, there are companies that sell fully managed e-commerce sites, but this won’t necessarily translate into more sales and profits for your business.

Sometimes it’s better not to try to compete in the multiple markets reachable with a website, because you don’t enjoy the same advantages you have in your local market, with the personalized service and close customer contact which have contributed to your success.

We’re not saying you shouldn’t expand your business, just don’t be duped into thinking all you have to do is toss-up a website with shopping carts and credit cards, and “that’s when the big bucks start rolling in.”

If you do decide to make the investment, make certain you go in with your eyes wide open, not expecting to be an overnight success. Whatever you do, don’t place at risk what got you the measure of success you’ve enjoyed in your local market.

Again, most e-commerce success stories have had to weather a lot of start-up costs, pouring big dollars into marketing and advertising.  Most have had years of uncertainty, and have had to raise capital on more than one occasion before becoming profitable.  There’s a lot more to building wealth from doing business on the web than having a great looking e-commerce website, which is only the first step on a long journey to success.

If there’s one thing seasoned web designers dislike, it’s rank amateurs representing themselves as professionals, only to give their industry a black eye.  Victims of these masqueraders usually wind up abandoning any plans they may have had for an online marketing strategy, because the experience demonstrated websites do little, if anything, to generate more business.

So before you plant that entrepreneurial stake in the ground and launch your new web design business, you might want to get answers to some questions that run a little deeper than uploading a few cool looking web pages:

Have you developed an approach for learning enough about your clients’ business to create and implement an effective online marketing strategy?

Do you understand the client’s target audience enough to know what resources and practices to apply to the site in order to make it effective?

Have you learned best practices for search engine optimization and content development, so it might have a chance to be found a little sooner than on page twenty of a Google search?

Have you familiarized yourself with some analytical tools for continuous evaluation of your maintenance strategies?

Are you prepared to support your client’s online acceptance of debit and credit cards?

Does your client have a back-end database to be queried for customers or other users of the site?  Oops.

Frankly, these are only a few fundamental questions for which you should find answers long before hanging out that shingle and potentially mucking up the industry with more victims.  Unfortunately, many small business owners don’t know enough about an effective online marketing strategy to properly evaluate a proposal.  That’s not a slam on the owners.  It’s just a fact.  Most are too busy running their businesses to garner enough expertise for recognizing the genuine article.  All the more reason that as a web design guru you should be equipped with knowledge and skills that at a minimum address the aforementioned issues, so you can do a credible job.

Thanks for listening!