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Should a designer tell his medical clients to jump into social media?

By Dennis Guten on January 29, 2012 No Comments

A meeting I had this morning with a web design client brings up an interesting question for my company, GushinDesigns, and for me also to ponder. 

Yelp

My client is pretty tech savvy on some fronts. He has a MacBook Pro, iPad and iPhone after all and seems at ease using the technology. 

I’m redesigning his website for his business. He is an eye doctor and the site is for his medical practice which is in a standalone office nearby. 

The doctor, while technically knowledgeable, is not well versed in social media. He has been given advice that his website and his practice should be using social media to attract the younger affluent clients the office is seeking. He was advised to start using a Facebook business page, Twitter, Foursquare and Yelp.

So far I have added these four social media icons to the design, but we have only gone forward with the Yelp account, which consisted of “claiming” his business and creating a free business Yelp account.

We discussed the other three today and have ruled out Foursquare as something that just was not relevant enough for a doctor’s office. There is a large staff in the office and someone will be relegated the duties of preparing Twitter and Facebook business page updates on a regular basis, as well as checking Yelp to see if there would be any responses needed for reviews. The doctor does not plan on being involved directly with the accounts.

That’s all fine and I will get it all set-up for the site. The thing I wonder is this: For this type of a business, how needed are these social media accounts, given that they will mostly be used as broadcast accounts to post info about the business and tidbits about the profession? I doubt any real interaction will take place and isn’t that what social media is all about in the first place? Also, what will happen if the one employee that lands this duty leaves the business? 

That’s on top of the other issue of whether it is wise for doctors to be using these tools in the first place. My wife, and business partner in GushinDesigns found this interesting article about this issue: Some doctors try to squelch online reviews (Washington Post).

 I’d appreciate it if any other web designers or social media people would chime in and give me an opinion on this subject.

Categories : Internet, Social Media, Web Client, Web Design, WordPress
Tags : Web Design

My purchase of the Headway Themes WordPress template

By Dennis Guten on January 23, 2011 1 Comments

I did some research into paid WordPress template frameworks and finally decided to purchase the Headway Themes template recently.

The templates I looked at for WordPress were: Headway Themes, Thesis and Genesis. Of course there are others, but these are the three WordPress premium themes I zeroed my choice down to.

Headway Themes won out because of its’ excellent visual editor feature, which let’s you see the changes as you choose them instead of having to save the options then having to refresh your blog. There are a gazillion customization options and I really wanted to see what I could get done with it.

They offer two choices, Headway Personal for $87, which allows you to use the template on two sites or Headway Developer for $164, which allows unlimited use of the template. Either option gives you unlimited upgrades for life and support for whichever option you choose. I did the Headway personal option and found a 10% online discount coupon. I still have the option to upgrade to the Developer option for $77.

It looks like I just missed the 30% off discount coupons floating around in late December for Headway, oh well.

This site, which used to use the free Curious WordPress template, which I really liked, was my first test of Headway. I just wanted to see what I could do in a few hours of messing around with it and what you see is the result. The image below shows the before and after.

I went in and quickly created a custom header, all the nav colors and threw in what they call an image rotator leaf, which is the rotating slide show near the top. For the image rotator leaf all you do is upload some images and point to the URL of each image. You can tell it how long to display each and which transition you will use. It was super easy to create as long as you made each image the same size it worked like a charm.

These leafs, which I really think of as Divs, can easily be moved all over the layout by just dragging and dropping. That’s very cool.

I have not finished with customization of AloneOnTheWeb yet. I want to see what I can make the theme do. I am planning on using the second license I purchased for a freelance website I am in the early stages of redesigning for a freelance client. The site will have lots of photography and video so it should be a real good test of the capabilities of the Headway Themes template.

Has anyone else used the Headway Themes template for WordPress recently and have any comments?

Categories : Freelance, Headway Themes, Software, Web Design, WordPress
Tags : Freelance, Headway Themes, Template, Web Design, WordPress

Fairly involved freelance bid

By Dennis Guten on December 7, 2010 No Comments

Tonight I finally had to sit down and write out a complicated estimate for a freelance web design job I am bidding on.

It might be the first freelance job I have done using WordPress. The site is for an eye doctor that I have not even met yet.

I have been dealing with a good friend of the eye doctor’s that I met at a local civic group Ruthie and I have been attending. He is doing the legwork for the doctor.

I hope to present it tomorrow and get a decision soon after. It should be a nice job in the $1,500 – $2,500 range.

Categories : Freelance, Web Design, WordPress
Tags : Freelance, Web Design, WordPress
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