Card One Concepts is happy to announce the launch of the new and improved website for Nanticoke Gardens!

Since 1973, Nanticoke Gardens has been the area’s premier grower of high quality bedding plants and poinsettias. As professional growers, they take pride in providing the largest selection of top quality plants in the Greater Binghamton and Broome County area.

Card One Concepts invites you to visit their newly designed website, you will be surprised at the quality and variety of their plants, flowers, vegetables, herbs and more.

Labels: card one concepts, clients, internet, Internet Marketing, Nanticoke Gardens, web design, web hosting, web site design

Card One Concepts, all it's existing and future clients websites, web hosting and email services now run on 100% wind power!

How It Works

Since generating wind energy on site isn't feasible, we're offsetting all of our electricity use with wind-generated Renewable Energy Certificates, which prevent the release of 2,660 metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere each year.

That figure is staggering when you consider the estimated yearly benefit to the environment is equivalent to any one of the following:

* planting approximately 2,390 acres of trees
* not driving 6.1 million miles
* removing 510 cars from the road

Labels: clients, Going Green, Green Business Practice, internet, online marketing, web hosting, web site design

Card One Concepts is happy to announce the release of a new website re-design for CR Hamilton out of Long Island, New York. With the fantastic leadership guidance and collaboration of Business Consultant Amy J. Stoddard, this project had many challenges that Amy gracefully overcame.

CR Hamilton has been in business for over 100 years and specialize in product management, storage solutions, warehouse and distribution and overall streamlining of the physical storage and movement of products, records and heavy equipment.

Congratulations to CR Hamilton for taking the initiative to put your best foot forward with an online presence, may your business thrive for another 100 years and beyond!

Labels: CR Hamilton, internet, web design, web hosting, web site design

Card One Concepts has been very busy this year working on several exciting projects with businesses all over the souther tiers area.

Schaefer's Gardens is a wholesale plant and flower grower and distributor located a half an hour south of Syracuse NY. As Schaefer's plants and flowers grow, owners Joan and George Schaefer realized that they needed help growing their online presence with a complete redesign of their old website.

Owner Joan Schaefer says:

"I can't begin to tell you how excited and pleased we are with our new site. We are getting lots of compliments...easy to maneuver, easy on the eye......You should bask in your success!"

Labels: card one concepts, clients, New Client, web design, web hosting, web maintenance, web site design

Card One Concepts is always privileged to be a part of projects involving education. Especially when music is involved.

Teen Rock Shop Loacted in Johnson City, NY. Provides a 12 week after school rock and roll workshop for students who are currently enrolled in music lessons and are between the ages of 7-17. Owners Jo and Mike Whitney needed a tool to market their growing business, while making it a flexible and interactive experience for students and faculty to communicate homework, concert dates and even post classified ads on the website.

Welcome to the world wide web!

Labels: card one concepts, Music, New Client, Teen Rock Shop, web design, web hosting, web maintenance, web site design

Card One Concepts is happy to announce the successful launch of the Discrimination Services of New York (DSofNY) website. The first business of its kind, Owner Caroline Bloodgood assists in professional response services and document preparation for her clients who have been discriminated against in New York State.

Congratulation to Caroline Bloodgood on your decision to improve your online presence and allow your business to grow.

Labels: card one concepts, clients, Discrimination Services of New York, domain name, DSofNY, marketing, New Client, online marketing, web design, web hosting, web maintenance, web site design

When clients hire Card One Concepts to design and develop a website we provide them with questions designed to help them determine what their web site needs and goals are. The feedback helps map out the foundation of the project and allows the client to really focus on the important details and helps them put into perspective the amount of work involved on their part.

If you are thinking of working with Card One Concepts on a website project you may find the following questions helpful to you before you request a free quote.

Background:

1. What is the nature of your business?
2. Who is your target audience?

Message:

1. What goals does your company intend to reach with a new web site?
2. What is the primary message you wish to convey to your audience with this site?

Perception:

1. Use adjectives to describe how you want your site to be perceived by the user. (Examples: conservative, progressive, friendly, formal, casual, serious, experts, humorous, service-oriented, professional, etc)
2. How is your company currently perceived? Do you wish to carry through the same kind of message through your web site?
3. What web sites do you find compelling? What do you find the most interesting about these sites?What do you find the least interesting or annoying about these sites?Please provide at least 3 website addresses for reference.
4. Are there other web sites you've seen that have functionality that you would like to have on your site? Due to differences in server operating systems, not all functionality you see on the web may be available on your site.

Style:

1. Do you have company colors or a color scheme you want us to use?
2. Describe any visual elements or styles that can be utilized from existing marketing materials or collateral.
3. If we are providing graphics, what style would you like them to be in: photography, illustration, cartoon, etc?

Content:

1. Will this site use existing content? If not, will you be creating content in-house or using an outside provider?
2. What is the basic structure of the content, and how is it organized?
3. Will you need to request any sensitive information on your site (social security numbers, credit card numbers)? If so, you will need to acquire a security certificate.

Commerce Sites:

1. How many products do you plan to sell on your web site? Will the products change often?
2. Do your products have any variations? If so, do they apply to all the products? Does each product have different variations? List variations.
3. What is your shipping model (flat rate, by total dollar amount, by piece)?
4. Will you be charging Sales Tax? If so, which state(s) will be charged? What percentage?
5. Are there any special pricing rules we need to know about (Ex: purchase 12 of our product and receive a 10% discount.)?
6. Which credit cards do you accept?
7. Do you need online credit card authorization (Paypal or Google Checkout)?
8. Do you want to accept checks or purchase orders?
9. Review the commerce options we have and see if one fits your needs best. Our sales representatives will be able to help you with this.

Marketing / Updating:

1. What are your short-term marketing goals (in the next two years)?
2. How will this web site help to meet your goals?
3. Do you have an existing or planned marketing strategy in mind to promote this site? If so, please describe.
4. What do you feel is your number one business problem? (Examples: change image, increase customers, promote company, etc.)
5. What methods of distributing the URL already exist within the company?
6. Do you intend on keeping the site updated? If so, how often? Who is responsible for updating and providing content?
7. What are your budget limitations? Can this project be broken in a phased manner to help you meet your goals?

Labels: advertising, card one concepts, clients, Internet Marketing, New Client, online marketing, tutorial, web design, web hosting, web maintenance, web site design

Great news to all Card One Concept clients and future clients -- we'll soon be unveiling vDeck 3.0! This new version of our control panel will give you access to additional tools and services and make it easier than ever to manage your web hosting account.

MORE TOOLS AND SERVICES
To give you an idea of the scope of this new control panel, the current version of vDeck incorporates 75 different tools and services--vDeck 3.0 will raise that number to more than 200!

EASIER ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT
In addition, vDeck 3.0 will be even more deeply integrated into our platform than the current version, and it will offer:

* Online access to our support ticketing system.
* Online access to our new improved Knowledgebase.
* Online access to comprehensive tutorials to get you up to speed.
* Customizable user by user web hosting control panel.
* Useful and customizable widgets.
* New and improved Webmail system.
* And much much more!


INCREASED SECURITY AND RELIABILITY
We're revamping our hosting infrastructure, moving from our current distributed, box-by-box deployment to a unified, load-balanced architecture--which will provide greater redundancy for your Web site and e-mail.

UPGRADE PROCESS BEGINS THIS FALL
Card One Concepts is really looking forward to rolling out the new version of vDeck, but we realize that it represents a change. We appreciate your support and patience during this process.

Clients now have the ability to login to their vDeck right from Card One Concepts website by clicking the link labeled "Client Login" at the bottom of any page. We are also working to add vDeck login capabilities to your own website on request for free.

If you have any questions, please ask! As always, you can call us at 607-785-5817 or E-mail us if you have any problems logging in to your vDeck Control Panel.

Labels: domain name, internet, New Client, web design, web hosting, web maintenance, web site design

If you are new to online advertising and you are looking for the most cost effective way to get a good head start with your online business venture or even to improve your existing sales. Pay Per Click Advertising is the best option available to target your product or service to a specific audience, quickly and with the profitable results you are looking for.

In Card One Concepts opinion, no other online advertising solution can compare to the results you can achieve with Google Adwords PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising. Traditional advertising methods seem a waist of time and money in comparison to Google Adwords once you understand how it works. The vast amount of control and power you have at your fingertips to present your product or service to the world is amazing.

In order to understand the benefits of using Google Adwords you must grasp the idea behind PPC advertising. Some of you reading this may already know about Google Adwords or what pay per click advertising is all about. But for the sake of those who don't this article will assume you are new to the idea.

PPC Advertising is just that you pay per click on your advertisement. Now you may wonder what are the pros and cons of paying per click. Well think of more traditional advertising methods if you will for a moment. Lets say you are in the business of Web Hosting for example, naturally you are going to want to develop a print ad to go into an industry specific magazine like "Wired" or "Information Weekly." So you pay a small fortune for your ad and it goes into print and maybe that magazine has a shelf life of 6 months. And maybe you decided to go with a full page color ad with your website address in big bold letters so nobody will over look it. So you sit and wait and check your traffic statistics and maybe your traffic does go up, and maybe you even start selling some Web Hosting. But how do you know those sales were a direct result of your magazine ad? Simply put you don't and so you are stuck aimlessly reaching in the dark for your target audience to find your website.

PPC Advertising really is the most cost effective way to advertise especially if your on a shoestring budget. First and foremost as far as Google Adwords goes you have a worldwide network hosted by the most popular and widely used search engine network the world has ever seen. The ability to test and track your advertising campaigns and to tweak them on the fly is priceless to the growth and ever changing market demands. The best part of the PPC advertising concept is that you are only paying for advertising when it is demanded from a potential customer who is specifically looking for what you are selling. You have the ability to target your audience in many ways. Whether it is demographically down to a 300 ft radius anywhere in the world or an entire city, state or country. You have the ability to choose whether your ads show up when some one only does a search through the Google search network or you can have your ads specifically target a website within the Google publishers network. Google even makes it easy for you to set up a budget for your campaign so you don't break the bank. You can even schedule the time of day your ads are displayed. You can create ad variations for the same keyword and gauge which one works the best. You can even ad a tracking code to your pages to find out exactly how much it is costing you before you make a sale, this is known as the cost of conversion, or how many paid clicks it took to make a profit.

I could go on and on about all the features Adwords can do, but by the time you read this there may even be more tools at your fingertips to use. I guess the best part is you really don't need to have a PHD to use the Adwords service because it is very user friendly.

Imagine if your target customer sits down at his computer and goes to Google to search, as millions of people do worldwide every single day. Naturally that potential customer is going to type in "Web Hosting" if they are looking for web hosting companies and click on the first link that he or she deems the most relevant to there search and there needs, and they usually click on the first page. Now the chances of your brand new web hosting website coming up in the top 5 search results is very slim. However with some hard work, patience, research and plenty of time on your hands you may eventually get there. These kinds of search results are also known as organic search results and if you do find your site in these top keyword positions you will almost be guaranteed to have plenty of traffic and profits.

For the rest of us buried in the organic search results, there is little hope of gaining large volumes of targeted traffic without a costly major advertising campaign that most of us cannot afford to pay and you usually have to pay up front and with no guarantee of success. This is where Google Adwords comes into the picture. You know that little area to the right of every page of search results on Google that is labeled "Sponsored Link." Or that text ad you see on your favorite websites with the little corner label "Ads by Google," Well that is Google Adwords at it's very best. You literally can have your website listing up on page one of Google search results in minutes.

So give it a try you have nothing to lose except a potential paying customer.

Labels: advertising, adwords, Google, online marketing, pay per click, PPC, web hosting

Card One Concepts is proud to announce the launch of our newest clients website www.moghulcuisine.com

Moghul Cuisine is a fine Indian Cuisine Restaurant & Tapas Bar located in the University Plaza at 4700 Vestal Parkway East, Vestal, NY 13850

Their food is delicious and the atmosphere is very relaxing, which compliments the restaurants excellent service.

So please visit the website and take a look at their menu.

Welcome to the World Wide Web Moghul Cuisine!

Labels: Moghul cuisine, New Client, web design, web hosting, web site design

So you created a web site but it is only on your computer and no one can see it there - right. You need to learn about web hosting. This ... all » video takes you through your options from turning your computer into a web server to free hosting to paid hosting.

Labels: internet, web hosting, web site design

Adam Trickett talks about setting up and running your own web server and creating content for it. This is a beginner level talk. See http://www.hantslug.org.uk/cgi-bin/wiki.pl TechTalks for more details and copies of the presentation that accompanied the talk. This talk was given at the Hampshire Linux User Group (HantsLUG) meeting on 2nd December 2006 at Southampton University, UK.

Labels: domain name, how to design, web design, web hosting, web maintenance, web site design

These questions are designed to help you as a designer or business owner to focus on what the needs of the web site project are.

Background:

1. What is the nature of your business?
2. Who is your target audience?


Message:

1. What goals does your company intend to reach with a new web site?
2. What is the primary message you wish to convey to your audience with this site?


Perception:

1. Use adjectives to describe how you want your site to be perceived by the user. (Examples: conservative, progressive, friendly, formal, casual, serious, experts, humorous, service-oriented, professional, etc)
2. How is your company currently perceived? Do you wish to carry through the same kind of message through your web site?
3. What web sites do you find compelling? What do you find the most interesting about these sites?
4. Are there other web sites you've seen that have functionality that you would like to have on your site? Due to differences in server operating systems, not all functionality you see on the web may be available on your site.


Style:

1. Do you have company colors or a color scheme you want us to use?
2. Describe any visual elements or styles that can be utilized from existing marketing materials or collateral.
3. If we are providing graphics, what style would you like them to be in: photography, illustration, cartoon, etc?


Content:

1. Will this site use existing content? If not, will you be creating content in-house or using an outside provider?
2. What is the basic structure of the content, and how is it organized?
3. Will you need to request any sensitive information on your site (social security numbers, credit card numbers)? If so, you will need to acquire a security certificate.


Commerce Sites:

1. How many products do you plan to sell on your web site? Will the products change often?
2. Do your products have any variations? If so, do they apply to all the products? Does each product have different variations? List variations.
3. What is your shipping model (flat rate, by total dollar amount, by piece)?
4. Will you be charging Sales Tax? If so, which state(s) will be charged? What percentage?
5. Are there any special pricing rules we need to know about (Ex: purchase 12 of our product and receive a 10% discount.)?
6. Which credit cards do you accept?
7. Do you need online credit card authorization (Cybercash or ATS)?
8. Do you want to accept checks or purchase orders?
9. Review the commerce options we have and see if one fits your needs best. Our sales representatives will be able to help you with this.


Marketing / Updating:

1. What are your short-term marketing goals (in the next two years)?
2. How will this web site help to meet your goals?
3. Do you have an existing or planned marketing strategy in mind to promote this site? If so, please describe.
4. What do you feel is your number one business problem? (Examples: change image, increase customers, promote company, etc.)
5. What methods of distributing the URL already exist within the company?
6. Do you intend on keeping the site updated? If so, how often? Who is responsible for updating and providing content?
7. What are your budget limitations? Can this project be broken in a phased manner to help you meet your goals?

Labels: domain name, e-commerce, marketing, web design, web hosting, web maintenance, web site design

Most of my clients think that a domain name is the same thing as web hosting, and that when they register a domain name they are ready to let the world see their website. However this is not the case and the following explanation will hopefully clarify the difference between web hosting and registering a domain name.

The easiest way to explain web hosting is to think of your web site as a traditional store with shelves displaying products or services, with a cash register and even employees.

Web hosting essentially is like a virtual online building or store front you rent or lease for everyone to stop in and buy something or even inquire about your services. Your domain name is the like the sign you hang on your virtual store front for customers to get an idea of what your business is and how to find you in a sea of competition.

Card One Concepts offers quality web hosting for small or large business needs. You can view all the features our web hosting packages come with by clicking here.

Labels: domain name, web design, web hosting, web site design

Hello,

My name is Brandon Cardone. I am the owner and art director for Card One Concepts. I have been in the graphics community for several years and hope to see this blog grow into a very useful resource for anyone interested in the graphics and web design world.

Please subscribe to this blog and come back soon for new and informative information related to graphic design, web design, web hosting, online marketing, search engine optimization and more.

Sincerely,
Brandon Cardone

Labels: domain name, graphic design, how to design, tutorial, web design, web hosting, web site design