Volume 2 - Issue 1

A Bit of This & That...

Goodbye 2009 - Hello 2010!

It's not only a new year, it's a new decade. This seems to bring a sense of hope and a renewed spirit for us all. The past few years have been very tough for small businesses, but many have come up with inventive ways to still expand and grow. If you have been surviving these difficult economic times, give yourself a nice pat on the back. We are looking forward to a dynamic new year. If you are looking to take some positive steps this new year, perhaps these tips will help:

Have a Business Plan: A business plan can be simple or complex, but basically it is a list of your goals and how to achieve them through the year. This is where you evaluate your products or services and plan how they can rise above your competition. Say you want to increase your sales by 20% in 2010. How would you plan to do this? Do you need better marketing? Maybe this is the year to dive into social networking such as Facebook and Linked In. Your goals will be as unique as your business. If you need a bit of help, do a Google search for "how to write a business plan" and you fill find a lot of valuable resources.

Get Organized: It's time to organize that paperwork and your computer files. Whether your office is tucked away in a spare room or in a high-rise office suite, having data where you can easily find it is important. For your computer, make sure you back up your data! External hard drives are inexpensive and will ensure your valuable files aren't lost in case of a computer crash. Archive old emails, weed out old papers, file away bills and receipts, etc. (Hint: Keep losing those business receipts amid the clutter of your home office? Try using an old shoebox or one of those divided expandable files and just toss in receipts for the year! Makes tax time less of a chore.)

Clean House: Each year we take time to clean up our little home on the web. We delete old files, plan on what needs to be added, and what should be rewritten. We backup our database regularly, but this is the time of year we can delete the older copies that are no longer needed. If you haven't read last year's article, it's still a good check-list of things to do. Read more...

What's New...

Edgy or Confusing?

We've made a few, small changes to our site navigation by moving the links to our template catalog out of the drop-down menu and positioning them in the sidebar area of each page. While we assumed that having all of our links in one area would be easy, it seemed to be a bit confusing for some. Hopefully this will be a better system for our visitors and make our template catalog easier to find and navigate.

New Templates on the Way...

Mini-Sites are Here: We get a lot of requests for easy, simple templates without all of the bells and whistles. Often we're asked for just a one-page site. So we deleted all of our old mini-site templates and started over with some new, very easy and basic templates. Look for our one-page template selection to grow rapidly over the next several months.

Expression Web Templates: We've also got a lot of new Expression Web templates on the drawing board. We're now adding a "rating" of basic, intermediate, or advanced to our new selections. This should help our customers who sometimes can be frustrated with a template that is beyond their skill level. (Of course, we're still here to help you work over any rough spots or problems!)

Pro-Stores Templates: Since rolling out our new templates for the ProStores ecommerce platform in early November, we've gotten a lot of positive feedback as well as some nice suggestions for what our customers want. It makes the hard work, training, and testing well worth the effort. We have some great new templates that will be added to our catalog soon.

Surf's Up...

When Bad Websites Happen to Good People

We see a lot of websites! Some are remarkable, but far too many are just forgettable. For years I've been advising that "just because you can, doesn't mean you should!" This is a great article for everyone. Read more...

Some Interesting Reads:

- Stop Using Stock Photography Clichés
- Great Free Icons

Our Help Center

Need a bit of help learning how to use Expression Web or how to accomplish something on your site? We have an extensive help center with dozens of step-by-step tutorials. From how to download and unzip your template to the finer points of CSS, you'll find a lot of information on our Help Center.

Affiliate Program

Last year we introduced our affiliate program. It's been well received. You have the opportunity, at no cost, to earn 20% on sales made through a link to us from your site. If your site compliments ours (webmasters, web developers, hosting providers, web graphics, etc.), then our affiliate program will suit your needs perfectly. It's as easy as filling out a simple form and setting up the link.

From Our customers...

About a week after you purchase one of our templates, you'll receive a follow-up email. We want to make sure you haven't run into any problems and ask that you submit any feedback. We love the emails we get, especially those who send along links to their new sites.

Want us to feature your site in our next newsletter?

If you would like for us to feature your site in our newsletter, just send us an email. Be sure to state the URL of your site, any comments you wish for us to include, and your name. Send your email to kareycummins@rtbwizards.com. Note: This is for customers who are using one of our purchased templates. You must include a valid email address and URL for us to verify your site. Thank you.