The Samuel Field Y Day Camp offers a traditional outdoor camping experience that encompasses athletics, the arts, aquatics, while fostering Jewish values. For over 60 years they have provided a profound and memorable camp experience to thousands of children and young adults.
They recently adopted the Your Web Department platform and got a beautifully-designed website. It’s easy to navigate, right on message and with lots of information. The photographic material helps to convey the kind of work they do and the atmosphere they provide. Image galleries and content sliders are being used elegantly and effectively.
Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces. Flavio Mester on Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn
In 2012, instead of coming up with new answers, we changed the questions. We seriously asked ourselves “Who really needs us?”. We then investigated the ways in which we could actually help them.
We used to think that all businesses wanted a system in which they could create their websites by themselves. That’s true for some (including several of our clients) but what many really need is someone to help them do it. And frankly, more often than not, someone to just go ahead an do it for (or rather, with) them.
From that epiphany was born LiveBuild, where we build your business website – sharing all our years of strategy, marketing and design insights – while the you watches from your computer, make suggestions, etc. It’s taking off.
There is an alternative to good service: it’s called “kick-ass” service
Good features are cool and we have lots of them, but what people really want is someone on the other end that understands them and is able to help. Our team is small and we’re not perfect but we go the extra mile to solve our clients' problems. Really, we have an extraordinary bunch of people here working hard and long hours to make sure everything is running smoothly.
Whether it’s a small business having difficulties with their domain registrar or a designer who needs help designing a website for their own client using our platform, I can honestly say we care and try to do our best. And it’s starting to show, we get lots of positive feedback and word of mouth is making a difference.
No silver bullet
Social media is no panacea, yet it’s important. Let’s say you’re a professional runner; you need good running shoes. If yours are much heavier than your competitors and have a hole at the bottom you may still win, but it’s unlikely. Conversely, having the best running shoes in the world won’t make you beat Usain Bolt in the 100m dash.
But we decided to use our social media “shoes” more effectively since early in 2012, and have been following up on that ever since. By tweating and FB-ing about things that we believe matter to businesses and designers, we started to interact more frequently with them. By blogging more consistently we forced ourselves to research and be more up to date with the issues that are important not just for us but to our clients as well.
But that’s not enough. We also invested a lot of time in making our product and the services we provide much better and easier to use. By introducing YWD Looks we were able to significantly speed up the process of creating a professionally-designed website. By adding new tools to our Content Management System – Google Maps, Real Estate, 301 Redirects and many others – we made our CMS much more robust. And by being proactive in terms of our mobile-optimized offering we were able to satisfy an important need of our clients.
We are our clients
Your Web Department itself is a small company. We’ve been in business for a few years now and have many clients, and their numbers are growing. But we face competition, just like our clients do. We live in difficult economic times, and we understand how important it is for us that our clients succeed. And I hope they realize that too.
Honestly, there’s no better reward in our business when, through the website they have with us, clients are able to achieve their goals. Or when a designer gets new clients for themselves (and in many cases make a living) because they’re using our platform.
This happened several times in 2012 and we hope will happen even more in 2013.
And how about you?
I’d love to know from you – whether you’re one of our clients or not – if you think we’re on the right track. Visit our public website at www.yourwebdepartment.com and let us know if you like our message, our brand, our service. Please feel free to share your own stories here. And best of luck for you and your business in 2013!
Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces. Flavio Mester on Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn
YWD's latest addition lets you organize and list real estate properties. Interested people can request information about any property. Choose how you'd like to lay out the listings and the detailed view. Includes options to integrate Google Maps, YouTube videos, QR codes and more.
YWD's Real Estate tool is unique: unlike other real estate "solutions" out there, it integrates seamlessly with the rest of your website. This way you can include lots of information about yourself, the community, news, a blog and much more – all using YWD's incredibly easy to use tools. It can be designed to match your own personal brand, enabling you to stand out from the crowd. It's perfect for real estate agents targeting an upscale clientele.
Outstanding interactive features
Properties can be organized into categories for quick access. They can contain sexy Lightbox-based image galleries that let prospective buyers browse through photos and even 'Like' or tweet about them. They can also embed or link to Google Maps and YouTube videos, and you can generate a QR (Quick Response) code image on the fly and insert it into your flyers or signs, allowing people to can scan with their mobile phone and be taken directly to the specific property page.
Developed for real estate professionals
The tool was designed with real estate professionals in mind – not programmers. It makes it very easy to manage properties; adding, editing, activating/de-activating them is a breeze. You can also create lists of related properties, and interested people can submit a "Request for information" form that gets immediately emailed to you and is also stored in the YWD back-end.
Your website can be bilingual, and the Real Estate tool fully supports that.
Totally mobile-friendly
Chances are, a good portion of your audience will be accessing your website using a phone. The Real Estate tool can take advantage of the extensive support provided by YWD to mobile devices. If you have implemented a mobile-optimized version of your YWD website, it will automatically adjust the display to take into consideration the mobile device's small viewport.
Here are a few of the features of the Real Estate estate tool when viewed on a mobile:
Layout: Because the mobile screen is so narrow, the list view will always "stack" the properties i.e. each one will be displayed on its own row, thus optimizing the display.
Images: Auto-resize on the fly to fit within the device's viewport.
Image galleries: If you have assigned an image gallery to a property, YWD will switch to a gesture-based style of gallery designed specifically for mobile. It allows people to use a swipe gesture to easily browse through the pictures in the gallery.
Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces. Flavio Mester on Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn
Ever wonder why some people’s faces are showing up in search results?
For instance, if I search for that blog post I wrote a while ago, the result looks like this:
Stands out, doesn’t it? It’s more prominent and more credible (despite my silly face staring at nowhere, got to remember to change that)
How you can do it
1. Signing up for Google Authorship
If your email address (for example, mary@abcmary.com) on the same domain as your content (abcmary.com), you can follow the steps below. If not, you can still link your posts to your Google+ profile using a new feature within the Your Web Department platform (see item 2).
Assuming you already have a Google+ account, edit your profile and click the “About” button. Scroll down to “Contributor to” and click on it. Add the name and URL of the blog/website you’d like to link to your Google+ account. In my case, I added this blog i.e. blog.yourwebdepartment.com.
You need to have a good, recognizable headshot as your profile photo.
After a few days, you should receive an email from the “Google Authorship Program” asking you for verification. It will look similar to the one on the right. Click on the link they provide to verify your email, and afetr a few more days, your search results should start displaying your photo and the link to your profile.
2. Adding a footer to your blog posts
Don't have an email address on the same domain as your content? With YWD you can now insert a footer at the bottom of all the author's posts, including your short bio and links to your personal pages on Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
My own blog footer looks like this: (you can see it at the bottom of all my posts, including this one)
If you are a site Administrator, you can enter the footer in your User Information. Or you can do that for people who are just blog contributors – but do not have access to the website’s back-end – by editing their user info in the Blogs Manager tool.
Make sure you add a text link to your Google+ profile page and that it includes your name. In my case, it reads “Flavio Mester on Google+”.
Now, add this piece of text to the link to your Google+ page:
Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces. Flavio Mester on Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn
The Web is always evolving, isn’t it? So are we at Your Web Department. Whether you’re a business owner or a designer, here are just a few things we’re busy working on right now, which we’ll be releasing over the next days.
New Real Estate tool
Are you a real estate broker or do you design websites for them? This tool will let you organize and list real estate properties, so interested people can request information about any property. Choose how you'd like to lay out the listings and the individual property view. Includes options to integrate Google Maps, YouTube videos, QR codes and more. Extensive formatting capabilities and seamless and robust support for mobile devices.
Revamped Assets Uploader
A new uploader for clients using Firefox, Safari or Chrome which won't require the Flash plugin anymore. Will also include drag-and-drop functionality and other benefits. Long overdue, we know.
Author info for blogs
Do you write your own blog posts on a Your Web Department website? You’ll be able to freely edit and display your personal information, which will then appear automatically as a footer on all your posts. It can include links to your own Google+, Facebook, Twitter pages, for instance.
New Vimeo tool
Embed a playable Vimeo video into any page, using Vimeo’s configuration options. Similar to our YouTube tool but specifically designed for the popular – and sleek – Vimeo player.
As you can see, we're constantly incorporating new features into the YWD platform. Our updates are driven primarily from the feedback we get from our clients, but even if you're not one of them yet please feel free to use this space to make suggestions – we always welcome them!
Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces. Flavio Mester on Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn
We have introduced a new option for the "Lightbox, launched by initial image" image gallery style that allows you to launch a lightbox gallery using an image that’s not on the gallery itself.
Sounds confusing? Then go to this page of our Help to see an example. The initial image is part of the gallery internally, but when you click on it, the image itself doesn’t appear on the Lightbox -- only the other images.
This way you can have an image that’s used simply to launch the lightbox; it can be completely different from the other images that make up the gallery. The option is selected in the content block. By default, the initial image is included in the gallery, but you can now change that if you want.
Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces. Flavio Mester on Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn
Properties can be organized into categories for quick access. They can contain sexy Lightbox-based image galleries that let prospective buyers browse through photos and even 'Like' or tweet about them. They can also embed or link to Google Maps and YouTube videos, and you can generate a QR (Quick Response) code image on the fly and insert it into your flyers or signs, allowing people to can scan with their mobile phone and be taken directly to the specific property page.
If your email address (for example, mary@abcmary.com) on the same domain as your content (abcmary.com), you can follow the steps below. If not, you can still link your posts to your Google+ profile using a new feature within the 
Now, add this piece of text to the link to your Google+ page:
YWD™ Referral Program
YWD™ Search Engine Optimization
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