CRE Loaded Catalog Images

Posted on August 7, 2007
Filed Under Design, Portfolio, Products, Real Estate News, Template Design Kit | 1 Comment

CRE Loaded Thumbnail Generator

Nothing is more annoying than seeing or hearing about the frustration end users and site owners have with their site after spending a lofty chunk on its development. Although some things are certain to surface almost routinely, many things can be avoided by taking the time to draft well written and clear documentation.

In CRE Loaded projects I almost always provide site owners with a style guide if I have the slightest idea that he / she intend on using the content page features in the cart. Now, all though CRE Loaded comes with a WYSIWYG editor for product listings, it does not come with a logical explanation on how to use it effectively and therein lies the problem I face quite frequently with end users.

CRE Loaded unlike osCommerce provides a way for store owners to add content in a more rich and controlled format, thats the good part. But Its been my long held suggestion to end users to do their publishing of content offline in a professional html editor (commercial or not) primarily because online editors fill your drafts with countless inline elements that can break a layout. In every single one of my commercial sites, I draft the content in MS Word so I can port a version of my article to a PDF and MS Reader for downloads and then I copy that article into Dreamweaver, clean up the messy MS Word markup, validating the structure, then pasting it into the WYSIWYG editor in HTML format. As you can guess my blog is NOT one of those places I do this at. Nothing here validates. (proof positive on another experiment I’ll tell you about later)

Pictures and Content Break My Layout!

So, in CRE Loaded projects and templates I’ve always provided the client with a simple one page sheet on the correct image sizes and a small collection of examples among other things for the editor. In the last month alone I’ve seen only 1 person use a CRE Loaded design I’ve built correctly. Thumbnail images are consistent in size, the popup images are all the same size and product images are all the same size. Its when people try to upload these gigantic images in hopes that they will be sized correctly that problems begin.

Because of this I’ve had the php guy build me three little CRE Loaded generators that I’m publishing free of charge for your use. The main one is a simple image generator that takes the product photo and produces three output sizes based on user variables for either width or height. It will add a nice little user defined prefix to the image and provide some other features that will help CRE store owners to quickly generate consistent photo sizes without the lengthy process of producing them in photoshop.

I’ll write more on this generator and the content validation generators later in the week. Until then, blog like a mad man.

Web Design Pricing Revisited

Posted on July 26, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | 1 Comment

Real Estate Site Design

I knew I’d get emails from my post yesterday about design pricing for Open Realty. It seems I need to stand corrected a bit as my argument that selling templates for $2,000 is in someway unethical.

I have to concede after reading 3 emails in particular that it is true that a designer or webmaster can charge or command any price he / she feels they could get away with and do so without being called a fraud or deceptive. My argument yesterday was the issue of telling your client that a design is exclusive or custom when in fact its not.

Anyway so if any of my blog visitors were offended by that I stand corrected. It is ok to charge whatever you feel your services are worth.

Open Realty Commercial Templates

Posted on July 25, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | 2 Comments

The difference between commercial and entry level Open Realty Templates

For the longest time I’ve noticed how frequently people still download the same old designs from my old file location and it amazes me at how often the designs get used. In the past 4 years I’ve been designing Open Realty templates following the same pattern as every other in the past until recently. Designs shift from year to year in features, color schemes and even general layout for the most part. I slap myself for not following this higher standard of design for Open Realty as I should have been.

A major role in a designers final result has a great deal to do with MONEY. Now I may get emails pointing out how presumptuous or outright wrong I am about that but I’m operating from a perspective of a freelance designer. PRICE DOES EFFECT QUALITY! The difference between an entry level $150 design and a commercial grade $1,200 design is light years apart. The time and energy spent, the quality, the detail and all the layout features are generally exponentially better. Granted there are the unethical bunch that charge $1,200 to an un suspecting client for a $100 design which is tragic and worthy of revealing something about this later.

Lets me ask you a question! Who do you think Open Realty is used by for the most part? How about this one; Are Open Realty users (those that download it and install it) professional Realtors? Well I’ve asked those questions many times over the years and generally what I notice is that most users are people building sites for Realtors and Open Realty fits the bill quite well for features and easy of management.

Many designers bid on jobs hoping the low bid will win not thinking about how little motive there is in $150 to do a great job. A good job should always be done regardless or you simply don’t bid, right? Well, I noticed that a few years ago and I decided to solve that messy business of bidding against the low dollar designers. What I did was created a core foundation of super high quality template sets that could be easily modified to deliver HIGH QUALITY at prices just above dirt cheap. The presence of that very mentality among designers keeps the industry jam packed with hacks and toss through designs that end up doing more harm than good to the end user, the visitors of your sites. Where am I going with this? Stay tuned because I’m going to articulate something about commercial and entry level design in a way that may shock you as much as it did me.

What to expect in a commercial Open Realty Design

Well here is a short list of things I always include in my designs without revealing my competitive inventory of features.

If you pay more than chicken scratch for a design you should at least expect the following elements and design features;

The Master Design PSD
A zip file of all working files
Favicon
Realtor Image Masters
Custom Error Pages (or logical ways of handling such)
Customized HTACCESS to handle canonical URL’s among other things
Compliant and validating template and CSS
Error free javascript (so often overlooked)
blank index.php or index.html file in all open folders (htaccess can handle this too)
Commercial or at least royalty free images (not google image search stolen ones)
Professional Web Site Style Guide
User Guide if a complex design (all my commercial designs now have this)
SEF and SEO features are a MUST
A CRON backup utility (many free ones so there is no excuse for not adding it)

You see, the difference is in the details and if at least part of that short list isn’t present in your design then you just purchased an entry level template and I certainly hope you didn’t pay for commercial.

Cost of Open Realty Templates - Unethical Designers and Unethical Pricing

Everything I wrote above I wrote because I received an email this morning from a woman that was so pissed off she paid $2,000 for one of my free templates (which had been modified), that she had the audacity to ask me for a partial refund. The problem is, I didn’t sell it to her. I quickly pointed out that I released about a dozen free templates and I have no control over who uses them or what they use them for. That includes people who take them, modify them, and sell them for $2,000.

Now I’ve witnessed this only a half dozen or so times in the past 7 years, but what always amazes me is the fact that the designer always gets found out and someone points out that the design is either jacked, copied or from a template club of sorts. I’ve seen where clients of mine come to me full of pride that they have paid as much as $2,000 for a design they were told was exclusive to them only to later discover the designer purchased it from Template Monster for $65 and changed a few files. What do I say to these people that will make a difference? “Umm sir, I’m sorry, but that design you asked me to turn into a Joomla template is worth about $65; thankfully my work is 10% of what you paid for it.” Well maybe I just don’t say anything because after bad news like that maybe they will change their mind about the $200 for the conversion. Shaking my head laughing; it’s a tragic event that nails everyone in that case.

Look, in the art world a guy can sneeze on a painting and raise the value tens of thousands of dollars simply because his status is such that all his work is considered a masterpiece (filled with snot or not). In the world we are forced to live in, reality isn’t as eccentric, that simply doesn’t happen ethically in the web design business. Taking a free template or $65 template and selling it for $2,000 isn’t a smart business idea its fraud in the first degree, period!

Open Realty Template Monster Templates - It’s a matter of trust

Now onto a side note about templates that are commercialized and not commercial. I can’t count how many times I’ve been hired to take a template club template or a template from Template Monster and apply it to Joomla or Open Realty. People send me an email, “Jared I bought this template and need it to work with Open Realty” yeah, okay, well its $100 for my time, send me the files and login details. I promise I’m not dictating price but what in that is worthy of $2k? I mean honestly! I did the same thing with a vBulletin site that the client had a commercial layout he paid $30 for and hired me for $150 to customize it. Thats fair! Right? But in each of these instances the client KNEW up front what that they would be getting, no deception, no lies, no fraud, no frills.

The only people who is going to keep unethical designers honest is you and me by exposing them in posts like this. I wont name people because that alone is unethical to do.

Conclusion: Any design downloaded from any of my domains FREELY is FREE and if you pay for modification then please know what you are getting before assuming anything. Customization not done by me simply isn’t my responsibility.

Open Realty Template Design Competition

Posted on July 25, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | Leave a Comment

XHTML Compliant Template - Open Realty 2.4.1

Forum member pbflash (Paul) has started a competition for designs that will eventually be part of the distribution in future releases of Open-Realty.

His requirements were that the design feature an XHTML Strict layout that would validate without error. Additional requirements involve the use of all stock open-realty template tags and features with no modifications, customization, or addons required for the layout.

Is XHTML Strict Possible with Open Realty

After learning about the competition I decided to look at open realty using very basic no frills template to test the core code compatibility. It came as no surprise when I discovered that the core rendering of elements such as tables, css and images were actually non compliant.

Four months ago when I considered repackaging Open Realty in an XHTML format, I actually went through Open Realty and replaced all the missing or non compliant code with compliant code. As usual with core modifications the danger in modification of the core is that so very much is in need of an overhaul, changes from one version to to the next would be a daunting task to maintain. In addition simple things like the breaks and even the old method of styling for bold or italics are ever present throughout the code. To change this on a per version release basis is or should be done by the developers of Open Realty.

Had I not been banned from the forums for providing a link to my blog (still baffles me to this day) I’d contribute willingly to this endeavor along with a compliant template. But politics and vindictiveness aside, Open Realty is in desperate need of fixing its core rendered code first before entertaining the possibility of distributing a compliant layout.

Free Open Realty 2.4.1 Templates

I’ve worked like a mad man the past two days to wrap up dozens of small projects and client packages that have been in limbo and the inventory I now have for Open Realty will validate outside of Open Realty. What I mean by that is my templates as stand alone designs will validate as fully XHTML and CSS, I guarantee. The dozens of my converted templates drop right into Open Realty without core modifications or hacks to the Open Realty core for proper template rendering but validation is tossed and Javascript errors are things that require a professional to modify in the core itself.

I wish them luck on the templates and know that Paul’s intentions are understandably warranted. When you consider that the old design originated from a former (interestingly enough banned member) FROBN who designed the stock template almost three years ago.

Open Realty is NOT JOOMLA

As long as we are on the subject of compliance and compatibility its important to know that Open Realty isn’t Joomla and there fore the standards are much lower. Lower doesn’t mean bad things in this case as I mention lower standards to be MORE FORGIVING to designers than Joomla or even applications like CRE Loaded. The code standards in Open Realty allow for lose coding styles that generally will not break the layout which is in many regards a good thing. Most designs I’ve looked at tend to run in quirks mode while still being able to render a design well enough as to be browser compatible.

Its been my experience that the majority of Open Realty users are Realtors themselves whom of which are rarely designers. Open Realty could tighten up the quality of code in a relatively short period of time but laughingly I must admit I’ve only witnessed that the developers don’t take hints very well and usually take offense before change takes place. Truly unfortunate.

Regardless we wish the project well as well as PBFLASH’s competition.

Nancy Etcoff - Survival of the Prettiest

Posted on July 11, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | Leave a Comment

Appearance is Golden!

I keep a handful of only 5 or 6 books I like to re read over time in order to gain new perspectives on subjects related to this industry of web design. One book in particular stood out recently as I begin to dig back in and evaluate the subject of Beauty and its power to motivate and influence. As you may already know or understand, beauty by itself has the power to influence without any assistance what soever.

Worthy of reading time and again, the well thought out exploratory examinations of beauty in Nancy Etcoff’s book “Survival of the Prettiest” reveals many insights applicable to those in web design. Unlike similar books that boast superficial ideologies about beauty, Nancy Etcoff’s book explores the subject from a psychological as well as social aspect fully articulating the history and influence beauty has on people.

Although beauty can be argued as superficial that characterization demeans the defining points almost to the point of cliche. Pickup a copy and examine it for yourself. I think you’ll be impressed with the content and writings.

Joomla Multi Sites Plugin

Posted on July 11, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | Leave a Comment

Multi Sites Review

Cruising through my list of articles I wanted to write this week, one in particular stood out that I wanted to drop a little blurb about.

A good majority of my clients are Realtors and or Real Estate related customers and time and time again I find the need of a way to manage multiple domains with a single utility. A great tool for this when using Joomla is the Multi Sites Pro plugin.

A few times in the past I’ve had Realtor clients that have wanted to publish many keyword targeted domains for their agency where the need to manage data of similar (NEVER IDENTICAL) content was essential. With the Multi Sites tool, not only can Realtors manage and or share, users across several domains; agencies have the ability to publish menus, resources, directories and quite literally anything within the Joomla environment to any number of domains for an added SEO boost.

I have a lofty article planned on some critical tips for SEO and SEF optimization in Real Estate sites and one of the features I’ll explore will be the use of Multi Sites in real estate related sites.

Open Realty Makes Design Powerful

Posted on July 3, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | 1 Comment

Designing for Realtor Web Sites

Since the release of Open Realty 2.4.1, an impressive arsenal of tools and features were cauterized (sear with a cautery) in ways that enhances design flexibility like never before.

Previous versions of Open Realty were such that impressive and effective design was possible largely through customization of core code or development of addons. This new version from Transparent Technologies greatly improves the tool set so to speak to provide more designer friendly template tags.

In working with the many dozens of real estate scripts available, Open Realty is fast approaching my #1 suggested solution largely because of the myriad of new features. Most of these new features are geared more toward the building good Realtor websites unlike previous versions. In the past, previous versions of Open Realty placed a little more emphasis on trivial characteristics more useful to hobby site owners which we are greatfull to see has changed.

I’ve spent a great deal of time in the past documenting and implementing all of the template tags into a Dreamweaver MXP snippet as things progressed and I think the time has come to maybe update that and look into some clean and clear documentation on the usage of Open Realty template design features.

Until then…..

A designers #1 mistake and how to fix it.

Posted on July 1, 2007
Filed Under Portfolio, Real Estate News | Leave a Comment

Website owners assume people care about them.

The first rule in all web design should be that the only person you will ever impress is the person you are designing for and maybe yourself. People do not visit sites because they care about you or your design; they visit your site to find a solution specific to their need and if you fail to provide that, then the rest is moot.

Much like writing a book, the creative and intuitive process can be broken down into steps that when followed will likely produce consistent and predictable results. Writing is said to be many things but more often than not its said to be an expression of thought. True the pen is mightier than the sword, writing has the power to influence to a great degree, the audience of its intent. Therein lies the key fundamental solution on how to fix a web designers #1 Mistake in design. The process of good design is all about being intuitive and you can expect predictable results when the entire process is followed from conception to delivery. But this in no way says that a designer should NOT make a web site attractive visually. Right? Lets keep things in perspective.

Think about this for a moment. Would you take a 30 gallon metal garbage can and put high grade European automotive paint on it? Why or why not? What exactly is wrong with having a nice looking garbage can? Maybe this isn’t the best way to articulate a point but then again if your site is a container for garbage, then no amount of expensive paint is going to change that.

You design for your audience

It is a bold statement to say that visitors to your site care less about you and your design than you would hope they do. But all to often site designers (and I’m guilty of it myself) focus more on the appearance than the content in hopes that the design will impress enough that someone will caress my ego with praise.

But good quality web design is not a one time $100 shot in the dark for an interface. I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked to simply provide attractive interfaces wherein some of the design specifications defy good marketability of the finished product. I’ve written on guided navigation and intuitive layouts in no fewer than a dozen forums and every time I do, the interaction and responses are so great in number that its clear to me its a subject not covered enough.

Good web design begins with…

So how then does a designer solve this self love and presumption that a visitor cares about his / her design? Simple! All of the above provides the introduction and the summary goes like this;

First lets restate the mistake;
Designing for you and your needs, operating under the belief that people care about your design. Big mistake!

Easy Solution!
When approaching good design, keep your audience always in mind and design for them, NOT YOU. Every facet from interface to content and typography is all for someone else and rarely for you. Good web design begins with a clear idea of who your target audience is before all else. It should be the first group of question a designer asks a client just prior to all other interview questions.

If you have to caress your ego, get a blog, it works wonders for mine.

Breakthrough Advertising “The Course”

Posted on July 1, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | 1 Comment

Making mad cash with the course that teaches it

Breakthrough Advertising, the money book, written by Eugene Schwartz. When time is of the essence and you need to turn your site into a cash register now, this is the book to have.

Most internet successes that rank do so because of the practice of following the techniques used by highly successful advertising copywriters. Breakthrough Advertising was called the Holy Grail of deep psychological insights that lead to breakthrough marketing campaigns.

The book however is exceptionally rare and considering that it had been listed on ebay just a year ago for $900 says a lot about its extreme value. Don’t believe me? Go try and check it out at your local library. Chances are its in the reference books area and isn’t available for checkout. It would quickly vanish if it were.

Well why go on about this when I can just cut to the chase? Years ago while at the college I witnessed the maintenance people tossing out old college binders into the dumpster and my curiosity (and sense of greed) prompted me to ask why they were tossing such nice three ring binders. Upon closer examination it was clear to see that these were supplemental course materials which sold in the book store from three years prior. The binders were in excellent condition as were most of the contents.

You know what happened. Jared went dumpster diving! I began by tossing as many binders (with course materials included) into the back seat of my car as fast as I could until I could carry no more. It should be obvious what I discovered by now, right? Of all 50+ three ring binders with contents I managed to gather up, 29 turned out to be the materials with a full reprint of Eugene Schwartz’s book Breakthrough Advertising. Apparently part of the marketing course at the college the contents also included an assortment of examples ads, guides on advertising analysis and many dozens of excerpts from seasoned professional copywriters.

Its funny almost. I’m writing about books and course material that I’ve had in boxes in my attic for more than 14 years. I still have the emails in archive that I sent to Michael Senoff asking for an appraisal of the materials. I think I’m going to post 20 of these up for sale after I add to the materials a few additional materials specific to marketing for the web. Price? Lets toss around the idea $250 per copy.

I ask this question. How many of your products do you need to sell to justify spending $250 on a course featuring Breakthrough Advertising which has made more direct marketing millionaires than any other book?

I’m not in the business of publishing and selling books! There is but one exception which is my Rapid Template Design Series, but that too is more of a course than a book per se. Yeah, lets explore this a bit more. EVERY SINGLE WEB SITE OWNER needs good copywriting and every blog would certainly benefit from the techniques that are tried true and tested discussed throughout this course.

I’ll leave it here for now….

Breakthrough Advertising

Posted on July 1, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | Leave a Comment

How to Write Ads That Shatter Traditions and Sales Records

For almost 12 years now I’ve been lucky to have obtained two copies of one of the most amazing books ever printed on the subject of advertising and marketing. So amazing in fact that two years ago when I considered selling a copy on ebay the going price at that point was about $900 per copy. I quickly realized that maybe it would be a good idea to put one in a safe deposit box “just in case”.

Well, this morning while going through my library of books, I dusted off the cover of my treasure and looked on Amazon.com to see what the current price range was; I was amazed to see that the book still fetches $350 on average with some poor quality and used copies as low as $200.

The book I’m referring to is one called “Breakthrough Advertising” and its written by direct marketing mail order genius Eugene Schwartz. This book has made more mail order millionaires than any other book of its type. Its sold more copies than any TV Get Rich Guru junk and is more coveted by professionals than any classic of its genera. The book, originally published in the 60’s features principles and wisdom that are as fresh and accurate today as they were almost 50 years ago. Why? because fundamentals never die and Eugene Schwartz did an amazing job of taking the wisdom of professionals and actual successes and outlines fundamental so simple that the bold and arrogant, more often than not educated ivy league types generally disregard the wisdom recklessly.

But is the book all hype and moot. When you consider that many books have been written that have been full of hype and just as equally full of crap it begs the question. Take the mega successful book titled “The Secret” for example. Here is a book filled with more garbage and deception than any other self help book of its type. After going through the book I always felt that a punch line was about to show up that said “you believe this crap don’t you, GOTCHA!” Still, it was easy to notice that every single page is filled with content so generalized that if you did succeed by following its useless suggestions, you could easily attribute your success to the books pseudo wisdoms. But then again if you frequently bet 50/50 on anything for your decision making in life then you can really only expect happenstance results that are more coincidence than science. You could bet the same fate on garnering wisdom from a comic book with equal results.

Unlike “The Secret”, Breakthrough Advertising isn’t just another book packed with generalizations and unfounded science and theories. Although any book can be made suspect in light of exuberant bold claims of wealth and riches, Breakthrough Advertising is one that is profound yet simple enough that not many can make real bottom line results claims like those being portrayed about it. Its so profound that its worthy of some serious blog posts in my opinion. Because of this, I’ve dusted off the cover of this well preserved classic and have added a few post subjects to my list for further exploration. But how to approach it from a designers, Real Estate, internet business perspective?

Fearful of projecting the GRQ (Get Rich Quick) mindset so often played out in online products that claim to foster great success, the approach in writing about this book and its subjects must be handled intelligently. Following the conventional wisdom of professional guru’s like Jay Abraham or David Bendah (Lion Publishing), I’m motivated to write a weekly post on marketing websites and internet products because so much can be clarified by these authors. Please stay tuned.

So what makes this book so valuable

Well, fundamentals for one! The wisdom in Breakthrough Advertising is such that when long time professional mail order marketer Bob Stone and Michael Senoff suggest it as a must read, it quckly takes on compounding value. Both of these experts among many others all agree that no single book is as profound in principle as this one for the mail order or direct advertising marketer.

The book is so valuable because its very hard to find, in high enough demand by professionals that want results and its so easy to follow that a 10 year old could apply its principles. Thats why its so valuable. If you ever wanted to just start selling your products now, without all the trial and error, this book becomes very valuable then. I mean seriously, how much is a costly advertising campaign really worth to you if it fails? Certainly more than the value of this book.

But enough about how great the book is. I’ll simply say that this post serves as an introduction to future posts as I examine, adapt and write about principles in my blog on a per chapter basis.

Effective Inspirational Motivating Copy Writing

Its the direction I’m going in future posts. Appearance is golden but content is “king”! No truer words could ever be said. Search engines don’t index sites based on the beauty factor they do so based in part from content. If you could learn how to write well articulated and effective content, would that be of value to you? Consider before you answer, if web sites are indexed, linked to, discussed, and used, its because of your content and not you or your site. Its bold arrogance to believe anyone cares about you, your design and your websites features if it doesn’t provide people what they are after.

People could care less for the most part how your site looks. Although that sounds like a self contradiction considering the business I’m in; I’m fully capable of keeping it real as I convey to people with frequency that design is very important only after…..? After “Content”, because its content that gives sites their utility value, all the rest is window dressing and presentation.

So if its interesting to you to read about copywriting, I’m going to explore many of the fundamentals in good copy writing by simply sharing conventional wisdom and tried and true fundamentals in future posts. Breakthrough Advertising will be foundation in my writings on the subject.

Until then….

« go back — keep looking »