So Long 2008

As we make it through the last day of the year, I would like to say thank you to everyone that has stopped by. I have kind of been all over the place trying to manage multiple blogs and to craft content that is applicable to each. So, what I plan on doing is really making a point to keep it that way.

What do I mean by that? What I am talking about is keeping the personal stream of consciousness both here and paulpowered.com, baseball at AZ Hardball and project related summaries at a location to be named later. I know that it has been a while since I posted here but, I think that I will try to add this to some type of rotation.

2008 ended with a bang for me. I have met tons of new friends through networking, been able to keep the business profitable and maintained my health. What more can you ask for? I would like to say a special thank you to my family, who has been extremely patient with me over the last year. It has been a busy year for me and they have been extremely supportive.

Until next year, the very best to you and yours. Cheers, Paul

Internet Marketing for Small Businesses

As I preach to most of my clients, having a website is only a part of a complete interactive marketing campaign. There are many other contributing factors that go into a successful marketing venture on the web. There is tons of useful information on all of the vehicles that can be used for interactive marketing.

Although Creative Ops focuses primarily on web design, we also assist most of our clients with behind the scenes strategy. As with any service provider, we want to see our clients succeed and it helps being an integral part of that.

Think of your internet marketing campaign as a baseball season. There are several games and tons of competition. You can not have one player that hits nothing but home runs but, a well functioning team. The team must have solid defense, a good pitching staff, great management, excellent offense and an executable strategy to get through the long season... and do it again the following year.

For more insightful information visit CreativeOps.com and view our Digital Marketing for Small Businesses article. I promise there will be no baseball analogies there. Thanks for reading and remember to always practice excellence.

Fund-A-Stache, Growing a Moustache for Charity

With the month of May quickly approaching, it is time again to recruit brave men and women to unite in a glorious celebration of charity and facial hair. This refers, of course, to the annual esteemed Fund-A-Stache campaign.

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New Season - New Alliances

Creative Ops secures strategic alliance with AZ Sports Hub Blog Network. It has been a while since the last post for the Creative Ops team. We have been hard at work creating opportunity for both the firm and our clients. The new partnership allows additional opportunity for Creative Ops in that it increases the depth of the organization's functions by penetrating deeper into social networking areas. In addition, it allows the opportunity for our clients that are looking for ad placement.

The AZ Sports Hub Network is composed of several local sports related sites and a soon to be launched national site. These sites average over tens of thousands of page views per month and we are proud to be associated with the team at AZSportsHub.com. For additional information in regards to ad placement, contact Creative Ops for a media kit today.

Some of us at Creative Ops are huge baseball fans so it is only fitting that, as spring training winds down, and a new season begins, a new chapter starts for Creative Ops and our clients.

Your Website's Usability

Everyone is interested in a good looking website as well as driving traffic to it. That should go without saying. One of the other things to take into consideration is your website's usability.

The concept around web usability if primarily similar to that of software applications. Does the website provide an intuitive way to navigate throughout the content, or is it simply too hard to distinguish where one would go next? As part of our quality assurance process we allow others to take a look as the test site's pages and navigation in order to solicit feedback on whether or not it is too hard to get to where they intended on going. Since most users that land on your home page are simply scanning the content, one wants to make sure that they are more compelled to stick around and move deeper into the navigation.

Some of the following are some helpful tips in making sure that your website is more usable to your visitors:

• The home page should successfully describe the purpose of your site.
• Each individual page should be properly titled.
• Avoiding spelling mistakes and other errors.
• Taking into consideration how the page would look if printed.
• Using consistent styled for text and links throughout.
• Imagery that is distracting should be removed.
• Wording should be clear and understandable.

These are just some of the tips that can be applied to your current or future site. We keep these in mine when developing our clients', so feel free to drop us a line to see how we can help you.