We are proud to announce that ChateauSophie.com, one of our most recent e-commerce website designs with vintage inspired graphics has been accepted by the panel of judges over at Awwards.com, and is being considered by other like minded professional for a ‘Site of the Day‘ award.

We invite you to vote for the highest possible rating of 10, and please spread the word.

On March 30^th, Facebook will be implementing its new timeline layout on all fan pages. Some of the new features include a wide panoramic style cover image at the very top of the page.

This is a great opportunity to present an image that enriches your brand, but be careful with putting anything gimmicky to encourage users to ‘like’ your fan page, or an image advertising a promotion. Facebook recommends against that.

Another change to the layout is how applications (if you have any) are displayed on the new time line. They are now below the cover photo, and if you have multiple apps, you will need to click a button to reveal them all.  Businesses can select which custom tabs show on the timeline page.

You do however gain a much wider space to display your applications… about 810px instead of the previous 520 pixels.

There’s also a new ‘pinning’ feature, which allows businesses to highlight a post by putting it at the top of the feed for up to seven days or making it double wide on the timeline for extra visibility and exposure.

The new timeline is centered around the idea of telling a story. Businesses can now add opening days, special events and other milestones. This is a feature worth exploring to gain exposure to customers.

There’s also a new admin panel with notifications, new likes, insights and the new messages feature all in one place.

The new messages feature allows people to privately message you, and for you to respond privately to them. This may cut back on negative posts on business pages.

Overall, the new page layout is a welcomed change, but it may take everyone a while to get used to.

If your business is not ready for the change, and you need help adapting your brand to the new layout, contact Tenengo Design. We’ll create custom tabs and cover pages for your Facebook business page.

Edrian Thomidis is the owner of Tenengo Design, Inc and a professional Website Designer in West Palm Beach, Florida. Contact Tenengo for more information.

Not sure if your business needs a mobile website? First think about how much you’ve used your smart phone in the past year to navigate to different sites. Now think about how many times you found the experience frustrating because the text was too small or you couldn’t find what you were looking for? Your answer is probably many times. Now let’s look at some data:

Demographics:

• The numbers speak for themselves. Here’s a few statistics recently published by Go-Gulf.com:
• There are 91.4 million smart phones in the United States alone.
• Out of billion mobile phones in the world, 1.08 billion are smartphones
• 9 out of 10 smartphone users us their phones daily
• The most popular activity for smartphone users after texting is browsing and playing games
• 60% of smartphone users access Social Networking sites on their phones.
• People between the ages of 25 and 34 are more likely to own a smartphone (62%) than any other age group.

Mobile Performance Expectations

Our last post talked about how many smartphone users are disappointed with their mobile browsing expereince. You can strengthen your brand online simply by providing a well structured and designed mobile website.

Google Places and mobile websites

If you are on Google Places (all local businesses should be to maximize visibility), then when someone taps on your Google Places listing, your mobile website will load if you have it attached to Google Places.

When you are adding your business to Google Places you are able to add your website URL. This website address is what users click on when they have found you on a local search on Google.

Easy Call / Email Feature

To take it a step further, a properly built mobile website will give users the ability to call your business with one click. The same is true for emails.

A mobile site is not an app

Apps are great, but they are not the right solution for every business. One thing to understand is that an app resides on the phone’s operating system, while a mobiles site resides on the same server as your website. An app can have a lot more functionality, but it will be limited by the phone’s ability and you will need to develop multiple versions for each smartphone’s operating system. Developing and application and marketing it to have people download it can potentially involve a lot of money.

A mobile website however will load fast, securely and effectively on all smartphones, your users will have a pleasant experience.

Act now!

About 50% of small business owners have not checked how their site appears and functions on a smartphone. Most business owners don’t have the time or expertise to figure out how to make their website mobile friendly.  However, it is simpler than you think, and with a little expert advise, a mobile site may offer smartphone users more options than your current site.

For some expert advise or help building a mobile website, contact Tenengo Design. Or visit our  mobile website services to learn more.

Edrian Thomidis is the owner of Tenengo Design, Inc and a professional Website Designer in West Palm Beach, Florida. Contact Tenengo for more information.

Users have high expectations when using their smartphones. A mobile site that is slow, or malfunctioning, negatively impacts revenue and damages brand equity. Most mobile users are only willing to wait 5 seconds or less for a single web page to load before leaving the site.

Smartphone users accessing your site are usually on the go and most likely are looking for very specific information. They want to find it quickly and easily. Users don’t have time to browse. Instant gratification is key. They want the most important details right away. Often smartphone users are looking for information such as contact information, pricing information, even details or directions. A properly designed mobile website is designed to provide this information quickly and efficiently.

Below is an infographic from Equation Research to show you how mobile websites disappoint users:

People are on the go more than ever before, and you need to create a website for your business that meets their needs. If you don’t offer a mobile version of your website, your customers may move on to someone who does.

Still not convinced you need a mobile site? Our next post will highlight the top reasons why your business needs a mobile website.

For some expert advise or help building a mobile website, contact Tenengo Design.

Edrian Thomidis is the owner of Tenengo Design, Inc and a professional Website Designer in West Palm Beach, Florida. Contact Tenengo for more information.

We all know when we see something special and say “WOW”!
The wow factor is easy to recognize but it is difficult to explain, and it is synonym with good web design. It is a series of attributes that combined cause us to remember that site.
It may be the content, an interesting layout, or a special snippet of technology that is used differently and engages the user positively. Those little details, make a big difference.

More companies are looking for the wow factor to create a lasting impression and set their brand apart in their industry. They understand that people browse hundreds of websites in one day and theirs needs to be a site that is remembered.

If many of your users are not experiencing the wow factor and you don’t hear “Wow!, who designed your website?” quite often, it may be time to consider a re-design.
Not sure if your site has a wow factor? Find a site that in your eyes has a wow factor. Compare it to your site, but make sure that both sites objectives don’t conflict with each other.

Below are some sites that we find have a WOW factor:

Eric Johansson > This site uses Flash to take the user down a specific path in a unique format.

Agent 8 Ball > This site uses HTML5 for a quick entertaining game.

Lost World’s Fairs > Is a site that uses Open Source Fonts. The typography is excellent!

Edrian Thomidis is the owner of Tenengo Design, Inc and a professional Website Designer in West Palm Beach, Florida. Contact Tenengo for more information.

Tenengo Design announced a strategic affiliation with Jill Coon, Inc. Tenengo Design, Inc provides brand design, web development services, social media design, and organic search engine optimization. Jill Coon provides social media brand management and monitoring, virtual assisting, and IT services. The teaming agreement between the two companies will provide for Jill Coon, Inc to offer Tenengo Design’s branding and design services to its client base, while Tenengo Design offers Jill Coon’s social media, virtual assisting and IT services to its own client base.
“This is a perfect fit.” Says Jill Coon, founder and president of Jill Coon, Inc. “Our clients need that polished image and message when seeking to increase connections and customer loyalty on the Internet, and part of doing that is your brand. That’s where Tenengo Design comes in. Of course, there’s more to a polished image if you want to grow your brand; it’s all about interacting with people and offering them a reason to connect with you and personalizing that interaction in this world of impersonal connections. That’s where our social media services come into play.”

Both companies see this agreement as an opportunity to streamline operations in their working relationship, while being able to increase service offerings and the caliber of services for their own clients, while sharing cross-marketing opportunities.

About Tenengo Design – http://www.tenengo.com
Tenengo Design is a custom website design and graphic design company in West Palm Beach, Florida. Their mission is to provide customized and usable print and web-based solutions that maximize their client’s return on investment. Tenengo Design’s work is driven by high standards and strong business ethics. Their services include Custom Web Design, eCommerce, Web Site Development, Mobile Websites, Social Media Design, Search Engine Optimization, Brand Development, Custom Logo Design, Brochure Design and other Collateral Materials.  For more information, contact Tenengo Design, Inc at 305.304.4400 or info@tenengo.com
About Jill Coon, Inc – http://www.jillcooninc.com
Jill Coon, Inc is a Social Media and Marketing Company based in West Palm Beach, Florida.  Their services include online marketing and representation via social media  and brand management, virtual assisting services,  web design, IT consulting , and search engine optimization  and marketing. Our team strives for perfection and continually stays one step ahead. We are on the cutting edge giving you, our clients the best possibilities to enhance your bottom line. For more information, contact Jill Coon at 561.319.4743 or jill@jillcoon.com

The initial part of the project involved designing a unique logo that could be used to brand the business online and on printed marketing materials. The logo needed to represent the company as tech savvy, reliable and friendly while clearly communicating the Social Media aspect of the business. “Tenengo Design Developed a logo that was exactly what I was looking for,” said Jill Coon president and founder.

Tenengo Design also created the new site. Each aspect of the design was taken into consideration to make sure it aligned with the creative and marketing goals of the business. For instance, to brighten the website’s appearance, the background color was set to white bringing a cleaner look and feel to the site.  A special photo shoot was arranged to capture the right lighting and mood for the Jill’s pictures.  The colors, page layout and navigation make the pages easy to read and navigate. The information was also arranged in an easy to find format with emphasis on the key services Jill Coon offers, which focus on Social Media, Brand Management, Search Engine Optimization and Virtual Assisting in addition to Design and IT. As part of the new website, Tenengo Design incorporated a blog to give Jill Coon the flexibility to stay connected to readers, as well as, rotating snippets of success stories throughout the site to improve visitors’ trust.  The new site captures all that Jill Coon, Inc represents. To explore the new website, visit www.jillcooninc.com.

To complete the project, Tenengo Design updated Jill Coon’s brand throughout social media pages such as Facebook, Twitter and You Tube by creating custom backgrounds and sidebar graphics. In addition, Tenengo Design also implemented Jill Coon’s SEO strategy to improve their Organic Search results ranking.

Edrian Thomidis is the owner of Tenengo Design, Inc and a professional Website Designer in West Palm Beach, Florida. Contact Tenengo for more information.

The latest Social Media craze everyone is talking about is Google’s +1 feature. There’s a lot of buzz on the Internet about whether or not the +1 can improve rankings for SEO.

How Google’s +1 will affect rankings is unclear right now, but as Google confirmed in an email to Wired “Google will study the clicks on +1 buttons as a signal that influences the ranking and appearance of websites in search results. The purpose of any ranking signal is to improve overall search quality. For +1’s and other social ranking signals, as with any new ranking signal, we’ll be starting carefully and learning how those signals are related to quality.”

At first Google introduced the +1 button as a way for people to show that they liked certain content, but recently the +1 button’s abilities were upgraded to act like the ‘share’ button on Facebook. Now people can post stories to friends and followers on Google+. It is only a matter of time before all that data of what people are liking and sharing online is put to some good use to rearrange search results accordingly.

So make sure your Social Media Strategy includes the Google +1 if you don’t want your website traffic to have a potential negative impact. At least that’s the buzz for now!

Edrian Thomidis is the owner of Tenengo Design, Inc and a professional Website Designer in West Palm Beach, Florida. Contact Tenengo for more information.

The Florida based company decided to trust Tenengo Design, Inc with their corporate website redesign. Tenengo Design is responsible for building a whole new look for Hartzell’s Painting Division and Construction Division under the umbrella of MyHartzell.com.

Hartzell has been in business for over 45 years in South Florida.  The construction company provides residential and commercial construction and renovation services and the painting division provides commercial and residential exterior painting and pressure cleaning services. They have been involved in countless projects throughout South Florida and have gained reputation for their prompt, high quality and reliable services.

The launch of the redesigned site makes it possible for prospective customers to gather information about the company and some of the projects it has been involved in. The project gallery, client list and testimonials provide proof of the company’s high quality and reliable services. The user-friendly site makes it convenient for the customer to contact their sales team.

Whether you are looking to remodel your kitchen, or your association is looking to find a reputable company to paint your building, Hartzell Construction and Hartzell Painting will treat you right. They are committed to providing you with a range of experience required to fully understand the scope of work from the smallest detail to the most detailed project and unsurpassed customer satisfaction.

Edrian Thomidis is the owner of Tenengo Design, Inc and a professional Website Designer in West Palm Beach, Florida. Contact Tenengo for more information.