Non-Profit Organizations Can Benefit Greatly from a Website

I have quite a few website clients who are non-profit organizations.  They need to communicate to their members (as well as to the general public) about their events and programs in order to generate the maximum funds to support their cause.  They also want to grow their membership in order to better serve their cause.

Recently, one of my clients had this to say after their first year using my services:

"You fixed many of our problems. Membership is increasing, participation in events is way up.  We had the best fundraiser event in many years, one of our highest attendances ever, and possibly our most profitable. We have more cash than in years, largely due to the website."

If you are part of a non-profit organization, I can help you with a website, as well as other technology tools.  I often do Access databases, email marketing, Powerpoint slides and Excel spreadsheets for my non-profit clients.  The board of directors of many non-profits may not have members with the right technology skills to help with certain tasks, and that is where I am able to assist them.

Please contact me for more information.

Small Business Websites

I am in the unique position of being a web developer and retail business owner at the same time.  Last year I started designing jewelry and selling it locally.  Since I know how to create websites, I created one for my jewelry business (I already have one for my website business).

I've learned a few things about myself and business in general since getting involved in selling retail items.

It is a LOT of work to create and maintain a website to sell physical items such as jewelry.  Each item that I create is unique, so if I want to sell it on my website, I have to take photos, insert it on the site, and set up payment buttons for buyers.

I'm currently using paypal buttons since I've used them in the past and they're easy to set up on a website.  The down side is that  I have to create a unique payment button for each item.  It takes a lot of little steps to add every single item that I've created to the website so that it can be sold.  I can easily spend an hour to add just a few new bracelets or earrings to my site.  Since I'm doing everything myself, that's a significant amount of time to spend.

I'm considering signing up to sell my jewelry at a small local craft show.  I am concerned about the amount of product that I'd need to make and the cost of the inventory involved.  I don't see this business as potentially creating a large income, it's really more of a hobby, so it puts me in a somewhat unique position.  Do I want to pursue the jewelry business and actually try to make a profit?  That is the question that I've been pondering.  I don't really have a lot of free time between my full time job, my family and my other hobbies.

For now, I'm enjoying the creative process without pushing myself to make it into a real business.  It's good for me to have experiences like this in order to understand the business needs of potential clients.

Making Travel Easier

I've recently made some travel plans on the Delta Airlines website and noticed that I can add my flights to my Google calendar directly from the Delta website.  Here's how:

• When I'm viewing my reservation, there's a few buttons at the top right - one is to print my intinerary, one creates a PDF, one emails it and one adds it to my calendar.  
• I clicked on the calendar button and it gave me options for Google, Yahoo, Outlook or Apple iCal.
• I clicked the button for Google, logged in with my primary Gmail account, and it added a nice little notice to my calendar for my outgoing and return flights.

I also love the online check in and using my phone as a boarding pass.  You simply open the reservation on your phone (I use the Delta app) and show the QR code to security when you arrive at the airport.  Then when you board your flight, you show the QR code to the gate agent, and you're golden.  I love having a truly paperless ticket now (instead of a paperless ticket with a printed boarding pass, like it was in the early days).

I love this kind of integration in tools, they save so much time and hassle.

Here's another thing that I like to do when planning a trip.  If I know I'm going to be doing several different activities, but I'm not sure when or which ones, I start a list in Excel.  As I look up each activity, I save the website link, phone numbers, hours of operation, ticket cost, etc. all in my spreadsheet.  I can easily find all of my information when I need it, and I can use the link to the website to check on anything else that I need.

Then as I start to figure out what I'm doing and on which days of my trip, I put the rows in the order of the dates of my trip.  Some activities have to be booked for a specific day while others don't, so that does allow some flexibility if the weather is bad or whatever.

I also try to book tickets for whatever I can online so that I won't have to stand in line when I arrive at every activity.  This saves a ton of time in line, which is a life saver when my two active kids are with me.

Some cities that have good public transportation options also allow purchase of transportation vouchers or passes online.  We bought Metro passes online when we went to Washington DC last summer and they were super convenient.  We each had one, and simply swiped our cards when we entered the station, and swiped them again when we left.  The system automatically deducted the appropriate fare from our prepaid balance of $30.  Of course my kids are too young to hold onto something like that themselves, so I kept all of them in my wallet.  Even my 9 year old found the subway experience to be fun and easy.

I've done a travel spreadsheet for several of our trips now, including Paris, Washington DC and a Caribbean cruise.  I'm now going to create one for our trip to Alaska later this year, to keep track of our cruise reservations for excursions at each port.

Gmail App for iPhone

Recently I downloaded the Gmail app for my iPhone, in spite of some bad reviews on it.  So far, I've found it to be a really nice alternative to the native email application on  my phone.

I can view my both of my Gmail accounts and I can choose to get notifications for only the ones that I want to see.  I use one as a spam catch all, so I definitely don't want to see notices pop up all day long for a bunch of emails on sales at my favorite store, or whatever.

It works much better with deleting - when I use the built in email tool on my iPhone, it doesn't really "delete" things from my Gmail, so then I have to delete them all again the next time I'm online.  I've always found that to be annoying, since I like to keep my inbox pretty empty.

I can easily flag emails as "important" or "starred" using the Gmail tool on my phone.  I use the "important" flag for personal items and I use the "starred" flag for business items.  It helps me to filter my view when I want to find something, even if I've labeled it and moved it out of my inbox.

Overall, I'd recommend the Gmail app to anyone with an iPhone.  I find it much better to use for Gmail than the native iPhone email app.

If you have the Gmail app on an Android or Windows phone and would like to share your experiences, for the good or bad, please feel free to comment.

Organizing Your Email Inbox (Outlook 2007 & Gmail)

Years ago, in the days when server storage space was expensive and small, I was forced to get into the habit of ruthlessly filing all of my emails out of my Outlook inbox and into personal folders which were stored on my hard drive.

Fortunately, storage capability has increased and cost has decreased over the years, so it's no longer necessary for your IT department to dole out email storage space like Ebeneezer Scrooge.  My habit of filing email has served me well, however, so I've stuck with it and refined it a bit over the years.

I create a folder for each project or client, sometimes with multiple subfolders under it for various major topics.  As I receive new emails, I read them, then if they don't require action from me, I file them in the appropriate folder.

For any items that I might need to reference later, I color code them by client/project so that they can be found in a "categorized mail" search folder that I've created.  I only leave items in my inbox that are essentially my "to do" list.  I color code the items in my inbox as well, so that I can see all of the ones I might need for a particular project at once in the "categorized mail" folder.

If I need to find an old email, I go to the folder for that client or project, or I search from the top level (inbox) and find it.  I don't like to keep hundreds of emails in my inbox, I just don't function well with it.  I don't like to have a lot of papers on my desk for the same reason (and I file those just as ruthlessly).  I find the clutter of papers or an overly full inbox to be distracting.

I can also color code my meetings on my calendar by the same categories, so my emails and my meetings for the same client/project are the same color.  This makes it easy to see at a glance where I'll be spending my time for the week (this also is helpful when reporting time).   Unfortunately, Outlook 2010  is a little tricky to set up with categories, at least in my experience.

I also use Gmail, which has categories, but they work more like labels than an actual folder.  Any item that I mark with a category will still appear in the "all mail" view.  They all still basically reside in the same location, but the views like "starred" or "important" allow you to see different subsets.

Protect Yourself from Identity Theft

I've noticed a lot of news stories lately about data thefts, identity theft and other similar issues.  Personally I have been lucky to never experience anything more than a few invalid charges on a credit card which have been noticed immediately.  I try to be smart about keeping my information private and not clicking on links in emails from strangers, all of the obvious stuff.

As a general rule, I try to follow these common sense guidelines:

1. It's never a good idea to use the same password for everything that you do online.
2. It's also not a good idea to use obvious passwords such as birthdays, the names of family members, etc. - these are too easy to guess or to find through a little light social mining on your facebook page.
3. It's good practice to change your important passwords occasionally.
4. Make your life easier when it comes to passwords and invest in a password manager like Roboform.  It will remember your passwords for you and keep them encrypted.  See roboform.com for more information.  This is one tool that I've used for a long time and I've recommended to a lot of people because I use it personally, it's easy and inexpensive.
5. Don't carry your social security card in your wallet.
6. Use a  password on your mobile devices like your tablet and cell phone.  Also, if available, set up the app for "where's my iphone" as appropriate for your device.  It will locate a lost or stolen device for you and also you enable to wipe its data remotely if necessary.
7. Never try to put electronic devices like phones, tablets or laptops in checked luggage when you fly.  This may seem obvious but some people do still try to do it and it never ends well.
8. When using public wifi hotspots, try to avoid doing anything sensitive such as banking, just in case someone nearby is monitoring the wifi and capturing information from it.
9. Use a password on your home wifi network.  This prevents anyone from using your connection and it also gives one line of defense against someone who tries to pick up your data from it (see #7).
10. If you receive any offers for credit in the mail, you should shred them before throwing them away.
11. You should check on your own credit report periodically, or at least annually, to confirm that there is nothing fraudulent on there.

Have any good tips to share?  Feel free to post in the comments.  Stay safe everyone.

Important Things to Consider When Choosing a Web Developer or Hosting Company

I've recently heard the term "refugee client" used to describe website clients that come to me from another provider, typically after a bad experience.  That got me thinking about what I would advise any small business owner when they are considering vendors to create them a new website, update an existing site, or host their site content.

When it comes to hiring a website developer, there are several issues to consider.

First, of all, as the owner of the business, you need to be SURE that you will OWN your website.  By that I mean, you need to be sure that you (or your company) own both the domain name and the contents of the site itself (all of the images, text, links, etc.).  I have had clients lose all of the content of their entire site because their former vendor "held it hostage" due to a billing or support dispute.  It is a very sad (and expensive) situation when a client has to start from scratch and have a totally new site created, all because they didn't know that their contract with their vendor did not give them ownership of their own website (or the domain name where it resides).

Secondly, be sure that you are clear on the pricing, timing and duration of the contract to develop a new site or update an existing site.  Is the pricing based on an hourly rate, and if so, does it have a cap at a maximum amount?  You wouldn't want to get an unexpected bill at the end of the project because the vendor couldn't create the site as easily as they thought.  You also wouldn't want to be waiting for months to get your site live on the internet.

Third, you as the business owner need to be involved in the project to develop or update a website for your business.  You'll need to collaborate with your vendor to find a design that appeals to you and is appropriate to your business.  You'll likely need to provide logos, photos or other images for your site.  You also may need to provide some or all of the textual content of the site.  Your vendor may be able to write some of it, but you'll need to review all of it at the very least.  You can't give total control to a vendor who does not know your business or you may not get the results you want.  The more that you are involved, the better your site will reflect and promote your business.  You'll also need to plan for periodic maintenance of the site, in order to keep it current, so make sure that you have a person at your company who is prepared to take this role.  Even if the vendor is going to make the changes, they'll need someone to tell them what to update on a regular basis, and also to provide new prices, photos, etc. as appropriate.

When you are looking for a hosting vendor, there several additional important things that a business owner needs to know.  Your hosting provider is essentially renting you "space" where the content of your site will reside so that it can be seen by internet users (like a rented storage unit).  Your site's domain name is linked to the specific location of the vendor's server where it resides.   This link is recorded with a company that keeps the record of your ownership, or registration, of the domain name (such as GoDaddy).  That company is called a domain registrar.  You will typically renew your ownership of the name on a periodic basis, typically annually.

In order to change from one hosting provider to another, there are two steps - you (or your website vendor) have to change the link where the domain name points to be the new location, and then you (or your website vendor must) move the contents of the site.  If both of these things are not done, your site will still be accessed by internet users on the old location, and it may be turned off by the old vendor if you stop paying the bill.  You could actually be paying for two different vendors without realizing it, or be paying the new vendor while your site still resides with the old vendor (or resides with both vendors).  Any of these scenarios can lead to losing your site and/or duplicate charges.

You need to either have a vendor who gives you the login credentials to your domain registrar, or have a strong enough trust in your vendor to know that they will take care of it for you.  It helps if you insist that the contact information for the domain name includes you (or your company) as the administrative contact and the vendor as the technical contact.  Then the domain name registrar company can contact you if needed (and not just your vendor).  You should always "own" your domain name, not your vendor.  If your contract with your vendor includes them renewing your domain name for you, make sure that it also says that you "own" the name itself.  Then if you leave that vendor, you hopefully could at least sue them to get your name back if needed.

Please feel free to contact Tepato Systems if you find yourself in any of these unfortunate scenarios.  I can try to help you to rescue your domain name and your website, even if you don't need my services for other website work.