For those of you who don’t know, Lucas Works is one of the top job recruitment agencies in all of SouthWestern Ontario. They’ve recently expanded to add offices in both London and Kitchener Ontario to go with their existing and main headquarters in Windsor.

Their old website, which was designed back in the mid 2000′s was fairly out-dated and somewhat difficult to navigate. The width of the site was no larger than 800px (most websites are now designed at 1024px) and the colors were dark, dreary and really unpleasant to the eye.

The refresh of the website looks amazing. They kept their branding and logo basically the same, however they went ahead and added a few different shades of green to their website as well as a very attractive looking orange color which instantly draws your eyes in. They’ve also added several fresh pages to the website which tell both clients and customers why they should choose LucasWorks with stats, numbers and charts.

I still haven’t even mentioned they also added a very simple but effective blog which offers tips, tricks and helpful information on searching for a job, interviewing, resume writing and much more!

All in all the redesign of the LucasWorks site has to be seen as a huge success and improvement when compared to their earlier version. Congrats on a great new design guys!

Party Hosts Can Browse Different Rental Options
The best thing about party rentals is you can browse different options and can find the party rentals that you feel are the best for the particular look and theme that host is aiming at. As the host browses the various options, he or she might discover new party ideas, such as a gorgeous fountain or a food machine.

Save on Space
What’s even better about party rentals is how they save on space. The party supplies are rented temporarily and are later taken back to the rental party place. In many cases, the party rental company will bring the supplies to the party and will haul them away when the party is over or the next day.

Using a Tent at a Party
Tents are often one of the most ideal places that people can throw a party. The tent allows party guests to get out of the sun and also can serve as insurance against a sudden downpour. The weather seems to change more frequently nowadays and many outdoor parties are put in jeopardy when rain clouds form out of nowhere.

Party guests can easily travel in between the tent and the outdoors for horseshoes and refreshments. There is also more flexibility in how the tent can be decorated.

Businesses That Offer Tent Rentals Often Offer Other Services
Another advantage of the party tent company is that it often has the other things that the host will need to run a successful party, including party chairs, tables and heaters. When the weather gets cold, the tent can be a place where guests can go to warm-up. Festival Tent & Party Rentals offers different party rental services.

Party Tents Come in Many Styles
Party tents range in the styles that are offered. Some are open tents that provide a covering to block the sun and rain. Other tents are full enclosures. The ideal tent type will depend on the nature of the event. Part of the tent purchasing process is visiting the tent rental place to inspect the types of tents that are available. Like with most party rentals, the tent rentals will often be set up and dismantled for the client.

One of my latest web designs was created for Forte Professional Services. They’re a small company serving clients in Windsor and Detroit on everything from utilizing tools such as fax all the way to web based applications.

When they initially contacted me about their new design, one of their main focuses was having a contact form and a custom professional looking design. Their original design was built using a do-it-yourself site builder on GoDaddy that served its purpose at the time, but became outdated in recent months.

They wanted their site simple, so I suggested 5 page site using the color of their logo mixed in with a bright green to attract people to their links and contact page. If a potential client or contact fills out the contact form, they will be notified right on site that their email was sent.

I also did some basic SEO work by editing their META tags and doing a bit of research on what their clients may be searching for when using search engines to find their business online.

My experience with Forte Professional Services was a huge success! I’d like to thank Karen and everyone at Forte for their help in building a site that I, and most importantly they love!

There are several ways for businesses both small and large in the Windsor Ontario area to enhance their Facebook page design. One of the first ways I always suggest to my clients is to create an extended profile banner. This is the first item required by Facebook when designing a page and is located in the top-left hand corner of your page. You can add basically any sized image in there and Facebook will re-size it to fit or you can have a web designer (like me) create an extended profile banner which is at most 180px (wide) x 540px (high). You can see examples of the profile banners I’ve designed below.

Another great way to enhance your fan page is to create a “welcome” tab. You can set this tab to be the first thing users see when they visit your Facebook page. This tab can be any size you want, however if you create one that is wider than 510px, chances are Facebook will add a scrollbar to the bottom of it by default. What’s nice about the welcome tab is that it can be created to give the user the illusion that they “must” Like your page before moving forward. Without a welcome page on your Facebook, users will automatically be directed to your Wall, where they can get all the information about your business without having to Like it first.

The last suggestion I usually make to my clients is that they add 5 images 98px (wide) x 68px (high) to an album titled “Profile Banner” or something along those lines. These images should be about the business in some way shape or form. For example, on my Facebook page, you’ll notice (if you’ve Liked it) I have 5 images across the top. These 5 images are of 5 web designs I’ve done over the past year. If you don’t add any images at all, people who have Liked you page will see blank images which is really just a waste of quality Facebook page space! (My apologies for the rhyme)

If you’re a business in Windsor and have a Facebook business page, you should definitely have at least 1 of the suggestions I’ve listed above. If you don’t, you could be missing out on potentially reaching thousands of new customers on a regular basis.

If you’re interested in having a Facebook page designed by me, please email me or call 519-995-7329. I have extensive experience in designing these pages and offer the most affordable rates in the city!

I figured today I’d write an accomplishment that I’m quite proud to have achieved. That accomplishment is getting my main portfolio site Sebastian Agosta in the top 10 search results for the term “Windsor web design” on both Google and Bing!

Considering the fact that the site is still less than a year old, I consider this type of ranking quite an accomplishment. As you’ll see in the images below, my website will show up in about the 5th or 6th spot for “Windsor web design” on Google and the 2nd or 3rd spot on Bing. Of course this varies depending on your location as well as which browser you’re using, but generally this is where I’ve placed! I’ve also placed for similar terms such as “Windsor web designer” and “Windsor online marketing”.

I achieved these results with a lot of hard work over the last 9 months which included; link trading, proper URL structure and plenty of useful and unique content that other blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts were happy to link to!

Here are a couple of the results I found when searching on Google and Bing earlier today.

“Windsor web design” – Result #5 – Google

“Windsor web design” – Result #2 – Bing

Neither of these results are guaranteed to be there forever, however I feel that the work I put it will help them both stay up in the top 10 for months to come. Of course my work here isn’t done either. My plan is to be in the #1 spot in both search engines within the next year!

*If you test these results yourself, you may see slightly different results. I was using Google Chrome and searching Google.ca and Bing.com without being logged in to either.

1) Don’t always try to sell yourself or your product – This is easily the thing I find most annoying about some of the people and businesses I follow on Twitter. They’re always trying to sell me on something. They never post any quality tips or hints about their product and each of their posts links to some type of online marketing strategy.

2) Don’t have all of your tweets auto-posted – A person or business who auto-posts all their tweets from their blog or Facebook couldn’t be more boring. Just tweet after tweet of links moving me to their blog or Facebook. If I wanted to get info from their blog or Facebook I’d follow their blog or Facebook.

3) Don’t tweet so much – I can’t stand logging into my Twitter account and having my timeline bombarded with 10 of the last 15 tweets from the same person. I understand that most Twitter users are following over 100 people, but I’m only following 15 and when you post 10 tweets in and hour, that’s basically all I see.

4) Tweet once in awhile – The opposite of what I just posted. I hate it when I follow someone who seems like they’re tweeting useful tweets and then all of the sudden it just stops. In the last week alone I’ve gone to follow certain people and then I realize they haven’t posted a tweet since 2010.

5) Don’t get too personal – I understand that many people create Twitter accounts for themselves and not businesses, but even then I don’t really need to know about your personal life. It’s great that you went out and drank 15 tequila shots on Saturday night, but that’s not something you should be tweeting to a mass audience. Especially if you run your own business.

So what annoys you on Twitter? Fill in a comment below and let me know!

As you can see, it’s a very clean design, which matches the color and link scheme of the main website. You can view the full version of the site online by visiting http://mobile.windsorsquash.ca or going to windsorsquash.ca on your iPhone, Android, Blackberry or basically any mobile device.

I added a PHP code to the top of the main Windsor Squash site, which reads which type of browser the visitor is using. If it reads a mobile web browser of any sort, it redirects the user to the mobile version of the site. The web design itself was created using an HTML DIV based design as well as plenty of clean coded CSS.

So far, the site is proving to be very worthwhile for the great people at Windsor Squash and Fitness. Since the mobile version was launched, they’ve seen an increase in mobile traffic as well as a decrease in the bounce rate on the mobile version. For those of you unfamiliar with bounce rate, “it represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who “bounce” away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site.” Basically, it means more people are staying on the mobile version of the site now that it is optimized for mobile viewing.

I encourage all my clients to create a mobile version of their site. Many of the websites online are not optimized for mobile devices and this could easily mean loss of traffic and more importantly, loss of sales. Mobile users want quick and easy access to a website without having to “pinch”, “pull” or “zoom” in and out. If you’re interested in having a mobile version of your site designed, please get in touch.

Again, I’d like to thank Brian and everyone at Windsor Squash and Fitness for giving me the opportunity to work with them on their mobile web design. I look forward to continuing work with them on their online marketing in the future!

The surge in the amount of these daily deal sites has forced GroupOn to evolve more quickly than they ever anticipated. Foes such as; LivingSocial, SwarmJam, WagJag and many more have kept GroupOn on its toes and GroupOn hasn’t missed a step.

In the past few months, they’ve gone from offering one deal a day in each city for 24 hours to offering several deals a day in a city and extending the period the deal is available from 24 hours to 48 or even 72. They made a deal with the location based social networking service Foursquare, which now allows them to offer up to the hour deals on locations you may be walking by. They also made a deal with the online travel booking website Expedia to offer what they call “Getaways” to various resorts, hotels and cities outside of your province, state, and even country.

Many of these new additions seem to working very well in the cities they’re available in. Because GroupOn is expected to have the largest user base of all the daily deals sites, it allows them to try new things and be the trendsetter when it comes to group coupon sites rather than be the follower.

Even with major sites like Facebook, Google and Amazon starting up their own versions of daily deal sites, GroupOn has managed to stay on top. Their ability to evolve with the market and their willingness to try new things has kept them one of the fastest growing companies ever and has stock market analysts drooling over a possible IPO. Stay tuned!

Over the last few months, I’ve collected a few transparent PNGs which I’ve had to use on my sites as well as my clients sites. I use the Facebook, Twitter and Linked In icons the most. Since I had some trouble finding some of these when I needed them I figured I’d add them all to my web design blog, that way if you ever need them, you know where to find them!

Rather than make this post extremely long by posting my 10 most used PNGs, I figured I’d put them in a ZIP file for you. Inside this zip file, you’ll find transparent PNG icons for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Blackberry. You will also find PNG logos for Apple, Windows, GroupOn, Google, Android and WordPress.

If there are any other transparent PNG logos or icons you’re having trouble finding, let me know and I’ll see if I can find it for you!

1) All in One SEO Pack – This one is pretty self explanatory, but a definite must have for anyone hoping to rank better in the search engines. This plugin allows you to create post specific titles and descriptions as well as create search engine friendly URL’s.

2) Configurable Tag Cloud – CTC takes all the tags you’ve used in your posts and allows you to make fancy tag clouds out of them. An example of this can be seen to your left. I’ve used the tag cloud to customize which tags I want bigger and which I want smaller.

3) WP-PostViews – WP-PostViews counts how many clicks each of your posts and pages have. You can then use this information to create widgets which you can add to your sidebar. This is great if you want to create a “Most Popular Posts” widget that allows people to see the most popular posts and how many views they have.

4) WP-Socializer – If you look at the bottom of each of my posts, you’ll find a bunch of icons that can be used by you to help promote or “like” my info. That’s exactly what this plugin does. They have over 100 icons from various social media sites around the web that you can use.

5) WP-reCAPTCHA – Tired of blog comment spam? Add this plugin to your WordPress and it will easily help cut out 90% of blog comment spam. As you can see from my comment section below, you have to put in a “human verification” code. This prevents “bots” from spamming your blog without actually visiting it.