We had the fun of designing some interpretive signs for the City of Darien, GA – Butler Island Dairy Barn Nature Walk. Here’s a link to the low-resolution version of these signs. Expand your web browser as large as you can, and scroll down to see the “next-and-back” controls.

>> Click here to view the signs

In addition to constantly updating the graphical user interface in our own products like Magic-Call-Button.com, a new client, IntelaSystems Inc, has us busy and focused on user interface enhancements to their software-as-a-service products, and designing the websites for their buying club and identity theft products. In addition, we’ll be turning our attention to helping design the advertising and promotion of these products to a popular cable network television show. We’ll keep everyone posted!

5 Tips for Good User Interface Design

1. Consistently-used graphics and fonts: colors, lines, shapes, objects, styles, text size and spacing, and placement of elements on the page.

2. Separation of “steps” within the presentation using graphical elements such as lines or colors.

3. Use of guides/grid to place graphical elements and text. Vertical and horizontal elements should line up.

4. Matching navigation elements similarly positioned from page to page (without conflicting, look-alike navigation links nearby). There should be no question about what to click next.

5. Instructions should be clear—but don’t get too wordy! Often, “less is more” when it comes to displaying instructions on the page.

It’s insightful to see how the largest, most successful companies have resolved/evolved their user interface design. Study the layouts of websites like PayPal, Ebay, Google, and others. They tend to exclude or minimize elements that are not absolutely required (or confusing).

Wow—can’t believe how fast the summer is going! We’ve completed some new projects recently, such as a website and blog for political candidate and former Mayor of Darien, Georgia, Kelly Spratt (www.SprattForChange.com). We’ve also completely revamped the billing interface for Magic-Call-Button.com, our own proprietary product.

In addition, we’re in the planning stages of our new Gateway To The Golden Isles publication, and creating a 100% dynamic website for AltheaDx.com. We completed phase I of this custom, mostly static site back in the spring of 2010, and will morph to a customized Joomla content management system in phase II.

Add to all this a new e-commerce project, Wild Hearts Pet and Seed, a site with the objective to offer top quality bird seed and specialty pet food.

Meanwhile, Gateway To Sedona (GatewayToSedona.com) is enjoying excellent traffic and search engine position, although we can see first hand how real estate there continues to suffer, along with some shocking bankruptcies among top players in the tourism industry.

At Trade Winds Advertising, we believe it’s essential that businesses not only have a solid online presence with good search engine optimization, but they must also reach out in meaningful ways to their target audience on a regular basis. That means revving up their social media presence and connecting with  customers and visitors in a way that appeals to THEIR direct interests.

Here’s a tip: if you do business online, second-guess your email marketing plan from time to time, and pay attention to personalization and segmentation options (i.e., don’t always send the same email to your entire list).  Choosing email software that allows links to be tagged using Google Analytics tracking code is also a very good idea. Here is a fairly complete list of web-based email marketing programs:

http://www.softwareshortlist.com/software/email_marketing_directory.html

Here’s wishing everyone a very happy Fourth of July, 2010!

Last month, we launched a new website for the San Diego Biotech company, AltheaDx.com.

A custom design through and through, we topped off the home page with a brief Flash intro using Flash CS4 (Actionscript 3).

Simplicity is intentional, and designed to help the user find information quickly, either by using the site-wide collapsible navigation or the background-matching Google search.

The contact form uses our Magic Call Button form technology, and delivers geo-location and other user information.

About 8 years ago, we had the idea to launch an auction website to connect to our travel portal, GatewayToSedona.com. It was called “SedonaYardSale.com,” inspired by the popularity of real yard sales held  every weekend around the town of Sedona, Arizona. We set up every category we could think of, from books and music, electronics, clothing, real estate, to… you name it.

The web programmer who worked with us at the time remarked, “I don’t see the point of trying to compete with Ebay.” I had not thought of it that way, but her statement nagged at me. We went ahead anyway, believing we still had a good idea. The site was launched, and then—other than a few postings—it sat, and sat, and sat with little to no activity for months on end. We realized we could do one of two things: either get on the phone and solicit for postings, or just let it go. With so many other projects in the works at that time, we had to concede and let it go.

Fast forward to 2010. We’ve just launched a custom, professional auction website narrowly focused on a niche market: the world of pigeon racing. This is perhaps the most complex website we’ve every produced, due to the many functions that must be performed flawlessly to make a top-of-the-line auction website work. But more than a generalized auction site, it appeals to a passionate segment of users. So far, we’re seeing registrations on a daily basis. Although it has been only 3 weeks, each week is seeing sales. Our business model allows for free posting, a small, optional pre-posting fee for “item featuring” like home page display, and a commission charged to the seller upon a successful sale.

For those of you with no knowledge of pigeon racing, it may surprise you to learn that top quality racing pigeons can sell for tens of thousands of dollars. The reason they are so highly valued is due to the prize money potential to race winners (examples are the Sun City Million Dollar race in South Africa, or the Vegas Classic). It’s a bit like horse racing, but not well known to the general public. That could all change when Animal Planet comes out with Taking on Tyson, a new reality show promising to bring audiences inside the “intensely competitive and bizarrely fascinating world” of pigeon racing. Read more in this USA Today article.

The other amazing thing about selling to a niche market is that email newsletters are opened and read at a surprising rate, with up to 25 % click throughs, not just opens.

To see our new auction website, visit www.pigeonracer.com.

Now, with our new elegant, unblockable popup forms, Magic Call Button offers one of the best solutions available today for communicating with your customers, whether using click-to-call, SMS (text messages), or email response forms.

These forms combine beauty, function, and ease of use. They can make a phone connection between you and your visitor instantly. They can email you with loads of information about your visitor too. You can even determine which pages on your site get the most results because this information is available in every report, for every call or contact form submitted.

The form borders can become any color you want…that, combined with total css control of the form really can make your form more fun to use by your visitors. In addition, there is so much more you can do. Combine your forms with special offers and get your customers to “Call You Now” to get the advantage. It really can make a huge difference to your bottom line when you can talk with your website visitors while they are on your site, and still interested in what you have to offer (before surfing on, to see what others offer).

Visit Magic-Call-Button.com and check out some of our latest samples, just to get a few ideas of how you can use forms on your website in a whole new way. Don’t miss our latest press release:
Magic Call Button Rolls Out Click-to-Call Business Intelligence Tools

Our custom click to call service can help you get more calls to your website. How? By using an attention-grabbing button with an automatically activated form that appears in the upper left corner of your web browser after a user-defined number of seconds. The website visitor has the option to enter his or her phone number into the form and seconds later, the phone will ring and the parties will be connected.

The business owner will simultaneously get an email showing the geo-location of the website visitor who is calling, in addition to other details.

Magic Call Button is a fully customizable service at a great price (only $10 per month). An easy-to-use wizard lets anyone make custom forms for almost any purpose. Visit magic-call-button.com to see examples and get started.

Don’t miss the latest newsletter on GatewayToSedona.com:

http://www.gatewaytosedona.com/news/newsletter110109.html

and the article about the WayBack Machine views of Gateway To Sedona in 2002. That was fun to see!

http://www.gatewaytosedona.com/article/id/2297/page/1

also, see this good article on the value of online article publishing:

http://www.gatewaytosedona.com/article/id/2298/page/1

After more than 10 years, “The Cats of Baseball,” an original character collection by veteran giftware product developers Chuck and Victoria Oldham (owners of Trade Winds Advertising), is now available for licensing to toy, gift, game, sports and apparel manufacturers. The characters currently exist as cartoon illustrations and hand-painted collectible figurines accompanied by a set of traditionally-styled baseball trading cards listing each cat’s batting or fielding statistics.

Read the entire press release.

Meet “The Cats” on the website.