Services offered by Simon Dyer Web Design
Complete Websites - Photoshop Work - Movies - Podcasting
Complete Websites:
This is my main activity. I can create a complete website for you from scratch, including advising you about planning the site and the amount of pages we will need, designing the overall look, creating the pages themselves and all image preperation, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), and any other matter that arises. This is where my long experience really counts.
I can also advise on such matters as cost effective hosting, domain names, a suitable policy regarding links to and from other sites etc.
All in all I can take your idea for a website and turn it into reality, along the way ensuring maximum exposure in search engines and a high quality result.
Statistics & Search Engine Optimisation:
All sites I create have Statistics provided by Statcounter. The information this provides enables us to optimise your pages for the search engines by showing what keywords were used to find the site or where visitors came from. These stats also provide a general indication of visitor location, time spent on site; repeat visits etc. This information is only accessible to the site owner and myself - your stats are valuable commercial information and should not be shared with anyone.
The general information these stats provide are of themselves interesting, but their main benefit is allowing the pages to be written in such a way as to target visitors by search engine optimisation techniques.
As an example try a Google search for Tetbury Antiques or Mechanical Music to see how my clients benefit from these techniques. Their high rankings on Page 1 of the Google results are not an accident.
Photoshop Work:
This covers the enhancement, preperation and resizing of your images for the site. Many mistakes are made at this stage - I have years of experience in both the internet and print industries to carry out this work effectively.
As an example (this is covered in more depth on the case study page), here is the photo for this site as it came out of the camera (I've resized the photos to 640 x 480). Here is the enhanced photo, which involved layers, blending modes and colour enhancement in Photoshop. What you see at the top of this page is the image cropped and resized to work with this site.
I also take photos myself for clients' sites.
Movies:
If you want you can spice your site up with a movie. (These examples work with Quicktime).
You might also want to consider making a movie out of individual photos, for example of your products, and adding commentary. Here is an example of one I did with photos taken on a trip to The States, with music instead of a commentary. This example is humorous, but the same technique of panning and zooming can be applied to photos of your products or to illustrate your services.
Movies are a great way to achieve a more personal contact with your clients or prospective clients. Why not get your staff involved? Highlight your USP - this needn't be expensive. We are talking small, snappy movies, not Hollywood. Of course, if you have the resources for high quality video production so much the better, but the example I've done here was simply done with a laptop, free software and a little bit of know-how.
Or how about a Quicktime VR Panorama? This will give viewers a 3D look at your factory or whatever else you want it to which they can zoom in and zoom out, traverse etc. Here's one I made for Cirencester Rugby Club. click and drag with the mouse or use the arrow keys to pan. Use the shift and control keys to zoom in and out or use the plus and minus signs in the controls below the image.
Podcasting:
This is the next big thing, and if you aren't thinking about starting a podcast now, you soon will be. If you don't know what a podcast is, the nearest equivalent is a radio show - but with an important difference. Potential customers can "Subscribe" to your podcast, and automatically be notified of updates via an "RSS Feed".
What better way of keeping your customers informed of your latest products, your services or any thing at all that is relevant to your business?
What's more, your own podcast is incredibly easy to set up - all that is required is that you have the time to record a regular message (or not regular if you wish - remember your listeners are subscribed and can automatically access updates). You must also have a means of recording the audio digitally - these days most computers come with a microphone and recording software. You just have to produce that file, send it to me via email or a service such as yousendit.com, and I can do the rest.
As an example, I run my own political podcast. I have set up a blog, which is just a series of links to the audio files which have been uploaded to a server. The feed will pick up any audio files linked from this blog page. Subscribers can then use software such as iTunes to subscribe to the feed by clicking on the iTunes button or clicking the RSS icon and using any software they choose, or use online services such as Bloglines among others, to subscribe.
Try it! If you have iTunes installed on your computer click on this button:
iTunes will be opened and you will be invited to subscribe to my podcast.
Or click on the RSS button below and you are presented with a range of methods for subscribing to my podcast:
The same buttons can appear on your site and auomatically subscribe your potential clients to your podcast. You can use the podcast to highlight whatever you want - new goods or services, praise for existing products, absolutely anything. The only limit is your imagination. At a small cost you can also get statistics on who is subscribing and where they are.
You can also do video podcasts - called vodcasts - which people can again subsribe to in the normal way.
It's the subscription element that makes this such a powerful marketing tool. If a potential client takes the trouble to subscribe to your podcast they are obviously more than interested. The podcast can be used to turn them into actual customers.
Soon everyone's going to be podcasting, so the time to act is now!
In addition RSS feeds can be used to syndicate virtually anything. For example here is my feed for my wallpaper photos:
Conclusion:
Simon Dyer Web Design offers the complete solution to your requirements: Complete Websites, Movies, Photoshop work and Podcasting are all services I either provide or help you set up.