This week I completed a new website for JM Photography at www.joshuamarokphotography.com. Thanks to Mr. Joshua Marok, the owner of JM Photography, for choosing Foothill Web Design.

For this project, we selected RocketTheme's Chromatophore template with the Monochrome preset. I added several enhancements to the base Joomla CMS (content management system) including custom logo, photo gallery, WYSIWYG editor, slideshow, statistics, social networking links, AddThis toolbar, custom contact page with captcha (anti-spam), backup utility and file manager.

It was a pleasure working with JM Photography's owner, Mr. Joshua Marok. Josh insisted on providing the best visual quality for all his photo images. We used high-resolution photos for the slideshow and photo gallery, with a cool lightbox effect in the gallery. You can see an example of it here:

http://joshuamarokphotography.com/gallery

I like the idea of using the website to create a virtual business card. Although we took a minimalist approach to the site (there are only three pages), a lot of information is presented to the visitor through use of slideshow and galleries of high-res photos.

JoshuaMarokPhotography.com lets visitors see high-quality images and easily contact the site owner. The site owner is protected from spam by the built-in captcha on the contact form.

It's been a busy week at Foothill Web Design. I completed a website refurbish for Ganado Feed store in San Jose. Thanks for choosing Foothill Web Design! You can view the site, which is now being maintained by Ganado Feed, at www.ganadofeed.com. I'm learning the ropes at Twitter to see how the social networking site can be used for online marketing. I'll be writing some articles about Twitter. You can read the first installment here. I've also added Herdboy's fantastic TweetMe plugin (based on TweetMeme) to this website. You've seen similar plugins on many Web logs. It's fantastic. Just click on the little green icon at the top of this article to see Tweet Me in action.

This week the new San Jose Painting (www.sanjosepaints.com) website went online. Thanks to John Alatorre, owner of San Jose Painting, for choosing Foothill Web Design. Some features on the new San Jose Painting website include:

• Custom Contact Us page with reCaptcha (anti-spam) and Google Map
• Lightbox for enhanced photo display
• Wrapper for displaying the Sherwin-Williams Color Tool (customer request)
• AddThis toolbar
• Slideshow of company photos
• Custom website icon (favicon)

When John logs in as an administrator, the home page also displays:

• A multi-user calendar
• Sticky notes utility
• Twitter message board
• Customizable MP3 player!

San Jose Painting is the first client hosted by Foothill Web Design. For this project I worked closely with Mr. John Alatorre, owner of San Jose Painting. We chose a teal collar look and feel for the site with RocketTheme's Affinity template. The teal and orange colors match the San Jose Sharks hockey team. (Go Sharks!) At John's suggestion we avoided stock photography and put a slideshow of company photos on the home page instead. Some of the photos required cleaning up in Photoshop. The slow fade on the slideshow matches the underwater look. I'll update the slideshow as more job pictures become available!

In addition to website development, I created Google Analytics and Yelp accounts for San Jose Painting. Google Analytics is a free site statistics service from Google. Yelp is a consumer review website for local businesses. Yelp offers free promotion for small businesses and is a good way to develop positive word of mouth advertising.

Like most contractors, John Alatorre runs his business via a Blackberry phone. To take advantage of the Blackberry, I created a Twitter account for John (@sanjosepainting). Twitter allows users to easily stay in touch with their favorite networks of friends and associates. John can choose to have favorite "tweets" sent directly to his cell phone; for example, latest product availability messages from suppliers. The latest tweets are also visible on the website when he logs in as an administrator. I'll continue to work with John to develop a useful Twitter marketing strategy for San Jose Painting.

Please visit the San Jose Painting website for more design ideas.

It's been a busy week at Foothill Web Design. I'm exploring marketing options via social networks, starting with Facebook. You can see my Facebook page where I've added a couple of apps to promote my business. First is the Blog RSS Reader which imports my blog entries direct to Facebook. I also put in a custom HTML box with a graphic and link to my website. If you are the social butterfly type, Facebook can be a great way to build customer lists and increase sales.

Looking for a simple bookmark utility? Check out the AddThis toolbar which you can see on the home page of this website. AddThis allows customers to easily bookmark your site, send a link to a friend via email, or send a link to various social networking and bookmark sites. AddThis is used on many corporate websites. Happily, it's available for free from www.addthis.com. I like this little app so much it will definitely be a standard component in all FWD websites.

I'm also testing a new module for Joomla which imports entries from Craigslist right to your Joomla website. The Craiglist Latest is a way-cool module with many possible applications. I'll put together a mockup soon so you can see it in action.

eBay Campus in San Jose, CA

There's an interesting discussion at AuctionBytes about a feature eBay snuck in with the new cross-merchandising. Sellers who visited eBay with their cookies turned off reported seeing other sellers' ads running alongside their products in the new eBay/Google search landing pages.

According to eBay seller Gail, in this letter to AuctionBytes, landing pages looked different with cookies turned off. Gail's example shows a seller's product being used to promote a competitor's items. eBay seller Rich responds in this letter to AuctionBytes, that eBay members may opt out of the new promotion.

One issue is eBay's use of Google search results to promote sellers of eBay's own choosing. Since the seller is driving the traffic to eBay (via a Google search) it would be good customer relations to showcase the seller's other items, and not the seller's competitor's items.

Another is eBay's apparent use of two versions of the search results page. One for the seller, another for everyone else. The seller thinks his items are getting more exposure than they really are.

While I'm on the subject, kudos once again to Ina Steiner for the new AuctionBytes survey on customer "ownership." This is a very important subject for all online sellers, especially those who sell on eBay/Amazon and need to create their own online brand. You'll want to read the article for yourself at http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y209/m11/abu0251/s02 (what's up with that URL?). It's surprising how many sellers believe that eBay or Amazon bring the customers. The comments by marketplace spokespeople are also very revealing. All the marketplaces discourage off-site transactions.

Business and marketing on the Internet are relatively new phenomena. The World Wide Web has only been around for about 10 years. So there's little real emarketing advice available. One good source is Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine and author of the books "The Long Tail" and "Free."

A 30-page manifesto of "The Long Tail" is available for download from ChangeThis. The book "Free" is available as a download from Chris Anderson's blog at www.thelongtail.com. Both these books discuss new ideas that harness the natural power of the Internet to promote business.

America's Finest Aftermarket Automotive auto parts store is online at http://www.afaautomotive.com. Thanks to Mr. Nam Ly for choosing Foothill Web Design. It was a pleasure working with Mr. Ly. Thanks also to Mr. Randy Boe of Heartland Payment Systems for help with setup.

For AFA's website we chose RocketTheme's Mynxx template with a nice showcase photo on the home page. I'd like to develop the photo a bit more, by adding a title. There's also a bottom menu that links to a privacy policy, as required by new California law.

Kudos to Mr. Ly for hiring a professional photographer for product photos. The photos and lightbox effect really make the website pop! The automobile radiator is a public domain photo that came from Wikimedia. Work in progress.