Nate Covington

If you're running a business, you probably use good ole' stamps and envelopes for a variety of purposes: checks, invoices, direct mail, letters, etc.  The last time I sent out a direct mail piece, it consisted of a personal letter, a small trifold brochure, and a business card.  I sent 1000 of them, which translated into two boxes of 500 envelopes from Staples.  The cost, just for envelopes?  About $70.

Article: If you're a sole-proprietor or small business and need to get your name out, and anything like me, you've spent a considerable amount of time building and pruning your personal and business contacts.  In marketing terms, this may be your most valuable asset: your customer base.  These people know you already, and are (probably) the most likely to refer others to your and your business.

Rather than writing an article that dissects each CMS platform, I've decided to discuss the similarities between Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, and ExpressionEngine.  Combined, these 4 platforms power more than 20% of all websites, so let's not choose sides just yet.

"I had the pleasure of working with Nate and Covington Creations during a complete redesign of our website. Nate was very prompt in addressing any changes that we required; and provided excellent training so we could effectively content manage our site once it was up and running. Nate also provided us with solutions to problems that we hadn’t even realized. That attention to detail and helpfulness has continued even now that our site is completely up and running. I know if I have questions, need additional training or his input, Nate will get back to me in a few hours. It has truly been a pleasure to work with Covington Creations."
- Jennifer Malloy, Marketing Coordinator, Indian Creek Foundation

“Covington Creations has been creative, professional, timely and flexible in preparing our new website.  Working with Nate has been a pleasure!” - Phil Schlosser, President

1. Claim your Google Listing (also, keep an eye out for feedback and reviews that others may have posted about you by creating a Google Alert!)
2. Update your site's footer (e.g. © 2003 Your Company, LLC)
3. Mobile Device Check: Check your site from an iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, etc...
4. Check for broken links, broken search boxes, etc... test everything!
5. Visitor Tracking: Check your Google Analytics reports - find out what's working and what's not. Also, schedule monthly report delivery via email if you haven't already!

Domain Registration -> Hosting & Email -> Framework, Content, Updates

As a business owner, the thought of not having control of your website is is most likely frightful.  I've experienced a handful of situations where a client hired a different web developer previously, hire me to re-engineer the site, then come to find out that their prior developer has more control of the site than they do...

I've had some requests for me to put together some sort of a "guide" to show how I organize all of my "work stuff" on the computer - client files and folders, notes, leads, invoices, to-do's, bills, etc... this is one writing assignment that I put off for a while.  Luckily, clients are keeping us busy.  The other issue is the non-disclosure agreements I've signed, so I'm not able to include screenshots or provide helpful examples of my actual data.  Moving on...

Choosing a font is vital to your site's performance.  If you choose a common font like Arial or Trebuchet (see list below), your site will load more quickly because there is less scripting involved:

• This is Arial Font
• This is Courier New Font
• This is Georgia Font
• This is Tahoma Font
• This is Times New Roman Font
• This is Trebuchet Font
• This is Verdana Font

There are also options for loading a custom font on your site. You don't want to embed your text in images, because the search engines cannot read it. The alternative is to use a little bit of javascript, we can inject the custom font onto your site dynamically.

Google Fonts

If you are using Google Fonts for your site, be sure to include the "display: swap" command in your CSS!

Don't Make Me Think - by Steve Krug
A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability