Jenn Mears Web Design

Site Launch: Michael McCarthy Law

Michael McCarthy Law has been in development for a while now and readers will soon find that it was worth the wait!

Meant to be much more than a simple “shingle site” for a Personal Injury and Estate Handling firm, MML is aimed at educating both current and potential clients, an approach that more and more businesses are finding to be beneficial to both parties. Creating this site was an exercise in conditional tags, one of Wordpress’s most powerful site architecture tools. Certain pages were designated by the client to live in the top navigational bar, while pages dealing with the various areas of practice were to have their own listing in the left sidebar. The theme is a customized version of CognoBlue 1.0 by BlogsDNA, which was a pleasure to work with, clean, flexible and consistent across browsers. Feel free to stop by Michaelmccarthylaw.com and take the grand tour!

A Guide to Web Color-

-right in your own (Wordpress) backyard! I was ready to do a search for a good online hexadecimal color guide for a client, when I realized that they have one right there in the Editing window! Continue Reading…

Getting Your Company Listed with Bing.com

Bing.com is a new search engine that is being touted as the next big thing, at least that’s what Microsoft is hoping. They’ve pumped metric tons of money into marketing it as Google’s new competitor, but the jury still seems to be deliberating about that. Still, as Bing buzz builds, it couldn’t hurt to get listed on their local listings right?

I’ve talked a few clients through the process of registering their business with Google and, based on that experience, the idea of talking someone through the same process on Bing is a little more daunting, but doable. Here’s a comparison of the user experience for each site:

Google’s Home Page:

The process:

Step 1. Get a Google Account, if you don’t have one already.
Step 2. Go to Google.com and click on “Business Solutions” below the search terms window.
Step 3. On the next page, click on “Local Business Center” in the bottom half of the page.

Now you are all set to start listing your business with Google. One precaution: Make sure you are near your business phone so you can verify your listing with Google’s automated call to your business phone. They will call with a PIN that you will need to verify that this is actually your business.

Bing.com’s Home Page:

The Process:

Step 1: If you haven’t already, sign up for a Windows Live account (click on “Windows Live” in the top left corner of the page to get started)
Step 2: With your Windows Live email and password on hand, go to Bing’s home page and select “Maps” from the search options listed under the main search field.
Step 3: In the Maps page search field, enter either your business name or your location and business category.

Step 4: In the listing of search results, scroll all the way down until you see the words “local listing center” in page gray and click on that to get started with your listing.

Now for the real way to do this.
Go to: https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx
-and sign up from there.
I only listed these steps out to illustrate the fact that Bing’s method is; 4 (non-intuitive) steps as opposed to Google’s 2 somewhat obvious ones and that trying to explain this to a client over the phone is not high on my list of fun and easy activities. The only bright spot in all this is that, at the end of the sign-up process, Bing.com promises to send you a letter for verification about your listing as opposed to a phone call that can take some people by surprise.

How to Use Wordpress: Part 1

I feel like I haven’t posted anything new in forever! Mainly it’s because I’ve been really busy with new clients and now the result it that I have been to quite a few client meetings to tutor people on how to use their new Wordpress site effectively. So, rather than keep writing the same emails over and over, here’s a rough guide to using the new Wordpress dashboard. Enjoy! Continue Reading…