Is Alice Cooper ringing in your ears? Kids are out now and that means camp, activities and anything I can find without a “screen” to keep them busy for the next couple of months.

What’s coming down the pipe? I have several projects on the go now and have been remiss to update the site to show new work. Some of the projects include some new offerings (not yet listed here) and I’ll be revealing those once this cluster of new sites are complete.

Stay tuned! And, enjoy the first days of summer.

Have you finally caved to the pressure and signed-up on facebook? How about twitter? Let me assure you social media can be much more than receiving farmville updates or tweets from your colleague about the great panini sandwich they had for lunch.

Social media can be much more than nuisance narcissistic posts if you choose to leverage it for your business — we’ll save that for another discussion but today, I want to rant a bit about this new market of (so-called) social media experts. First, let’s just be fair and say that my teenager (and/or yours) is probably more qualified to call themselves social media “expert” than most trying to sell this service. It’s not that mystical – really. Make sure any person/company provides you with clear, tangible goals. And get it in writing.

I love how brutal Zach Dunn is in his article “Social Media Bull$*#t” — a small snippet:

… let’s see an example of this. Suppose a client says they need to find a new way to survey customers. How could you respond?

• The Vague Answer: We’ll use social media.
• The Concrete Answer: We can set up a polling contest across Facebook and Twitter. Fans and followers can respond to the survey. Once a week three people will be randomly selected and given the featured prize.

Even though the concrete solution isn’t the most innovative, you hopefully get the point. Instead of offering a pseudo-answer by way of buzzword, a tangible example is given. Notice how the term “social media” doesn’t even need to appear.

Since getting our ProStores Designer Certification, we’ve continued to research clients who use ProStores to better understand their business. Interestingly enough, ProStores users always connected with eBay. While some ProStores useres are eBay Power Sellers or Platinum Sellers, some ProStores users clients don’t even use eBay as a marketing tool for their products. Result? ProStores users don’t have to be eBay-centric in order to take advantage of this popular ecommerce solution.

We are designing ProStores templates with the focus on basic ecommerce needs: getting you online with a solid ecommerce foundation without any major bells-and-whistles. We focus on the basics to get you through the starting gate as a “phase one” approach. You may have plans to extend efforts in phase two (and or three, and four) but we aim to get you going quickly and efficiently so that you can start earning money from your storefront. Then, come back and we’ll help you with phase two to reinvest som of your earnings into the cart itself.

What’s next? Stay tuned as we continue to build out our ProStores templates.

“The Best Things in Life Are Free” Sure. If we’re talking about hugs, a baby’s first smile, or even an adorable kitten – some *free* things are great….

Working with a client this week who wanted to use a free web hosting service, I noticed my cynical side searching to find the “catch” behind this too-good-to-be-true offer. Sadly, my instincts were right. Like Mom always said, if it seems too good to be true… it probably is. So here’s the deal – every free host my client found did have a “catch” to ensure they were required to upgrade the account to a paid account. In the end, they get you!

The cup is half full though! Better to know this upfront rather than later. Here’s some risks that may have occurred had they decided to use the free host:

• Customer Service – are you a customer if the service is free? It’s more like a favour, really. Why should they jump to help you when you’re not paying for the service?
• C R A S H – even paid servers experience the dreaded “down time” periods which leave visitors wondering if you’re out of business. What if the server crashes, or is down for a few hours, taking your site down with it. There’s nothing free about lost business due to unreliable service.
• Email – if your site is down – you’re also not getting email from your site. If you’ve set-up email on your domain (i.e. sally@yourcompany.com), your email service is also down when the site is down. Just think about it – no site – no email. How long will it take you to notice you’ve been cut off when nobody can even email you?

In summary, FREE means you’re not a priority customer, on their best server, and they’re not required to be responsive to you. In fact, it’s almost as if you owe them.

Not much is free. In fact, this effort was a time vampire.

I’m taking some time off during the holidays to celebrate Christmas and enjoy some time with the kids. Today was especially fun as I was able to take a guilt-free girls trip to Granville Island. A rare treat. We were so efficient, accomplishing all of our pre-christmas food shopping in record time so we ventured up to 4th Avenue to hit a couple of shops. We had lunch at Capers (now Whole Foods) and I was delighted to see our client’s product — in prime “shelf” real estate — the store. We bought the organic blend (my favourite) and took a pic to share with our friends at Mogiana. Coffee Rockstars! Happy Christmas Everyone ~ AT

Snow is in the air… the season is upon us… and so is a big pile of work! We have a several projects going at once right now and it’s super exciting. Being this busy is crazy (and fun) and this groovy gal is the only sneak peak we can give you at on of our new creations. What’s in the can? An engineering firm, an interior designer, a virtual assistant, and a non-profit for youth in need. Can you say variety?

We received our design certification for Prostores – the eBay ecommerce solution – yesterday and are now in the process of developing a series of ProStores templates. Designing ProStores templates requires developers knowledge of their unique code and all designers are required to pass the certification process before being approved as an expert.

And Prostores isn’t just for eBay users. It’s a full service ecommerce solution with built-in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools.

Stay tuned as we continue to develop for this growing market of ProStores Templates

It’s certainly a busy time for us! Here are a few things we’re working on -

• a few large PPC campaigns have launched in time for the holiday shopping season
• three new CMS projects are underway – pics to follow shortly
• ecommerce templates are being built for ProStores

This is always a busy time for us but we have taken some time to decorate for the  holidays and might even crank out some Christmas tunes this week (is it too early?)

My friend, Daryl Spencer, is about to launch his first gallery this month. A presentation of his black and white landscapes. Here’s an excerpt from Daryl’s email invitation –

Heading downtown Vancouver for a conference today and opted for a greener commute by hopping the new RAV line from the airport. So far so great!