Clean & Tidy Workspace - DTS Internet Solutions

I follow a few designers and companies by means of Facebook and Twitter, Blogs and their websites. It's a great way to learn new things and watch how others work maybe gain some inspiration whilst browsing, treat clients and keep up to date with new services and trends.  I especially take an interest in the workspace in which they work. 

I think it's incredibly important what surrounds you ie, mess and clutter. I can't think clearly when surrounded by mess and even though no clients see my workspace in real-life, it's me that works here for 12+ hours a day.

I sometimes assume that when I tell people 'I work from home', they sometimes create thoughts of dirty, cluttered bedrooms and cramped conditions.  When in fact its the complete opposite, my room is the same size as a small office and is cleaned everyday meaning my working environment is clean and tidy.

The other common question is music vs no music. With me this is purely dependent on mood and what i'm doing. Writing/admin jobs = music generally - no questions asked. Very few things to distract me and generally these are done outside of work hours.
When designing it can vary, if i'm creating something new then silence or the radio in the background can help think clearly.

If i'm working on something not so new, then music it is, usually my iTunes library which is packed with varied genres including pop/rock/blues - varying artists from Lady GaGa to Gary Moore and ACDC to Thin Lizzy, I pick my music to match my mood.

I bought a set of Dr Dre Studio Headphones after a friend recommended them to me for comfort, quality and sound you get from these (see pic). They are generally classed as one of the best sets of headphones you can buy.  As I work 10-12 hours a day, music can't be played loudly all day/night. So even if I wore these 5 hours a day on average, over a year that's 1500 hours + of use. The batteries are my only concern!

Photos of my desk:

Updating our Search Engine Optimisation

Last week Daniel spent a few hours out of each working day watching and learning off an online course we were recommended to by a friend.  Each course was relevant to business and online marketing as well as website design ideas and tips/tricks. 

We paid special attention to learning some new services we could potentially offer to customers and after learning the new stuff we are currently testing them on our own website.  Daniel watched some of the following courses: Facebook and Twitter for businesses, Search Engine Optimisation and also Google AdWords.

Currently Daniel has tested the Twitter methods and we have increased our followers by 100 in a few days and 'tweeted' and interacted with other business better and more efficiently.  The Facebook part of the course taught him how to create custom apps for 'business pages' so we took our DTS Business Page and created our own custom app which can be found on the 'welcome' tab on the left.

The Google AdWords course taught us about the importance of the ad writing and how to be more efficient with bidding and setting budgets etc.  We have added this new knowledge to our current CPC campaign and noticed with the newly written ad campaigns we are getting found for more and more keywords we have set up, this has boosted our impressions and clicks by a lot and also had 1 or 2 enquires because of it!

The final part of the course he watched was all about SEO and how it has changed over the years and all the regulation you have to follow currently and how many designers do not think about SEO during the design stage and it is only an after thought.  Well Daniel took the newly acquired information on how important header tags, Meta tags and the internal/external links were and he has totally reworded our meta tags to match regulations and tweaked our home page to match as well.  He also edited all headers and sub heading to match the 'proper' weighted tags so that search bots can read what keywords are more important.  This work was finished today(Sunday 17th July 2011) so hopefully Google will cache our website soon and we can report back on the newly add work.

Google AdWords - new cost per click marketing campaign

About a week ago I decided I was going to try promote DTS through one of the services we offer here and so I set up a Cost Per Click(Google AdWords) campaign.  In the first day or two we saw results and our advert was appearing towards the top of the first page of Google amongst a couple of other website designers.

We are now going into our second week and we have had a few clicks off this campaign.  The campaign is set up for search terms such as 'Website Design Darlington' and 'Website Design Stockton' as we are covering the areas surrounding our office.

Our CPC campaigns for customers start from as little as £350+ which is a start up cost and it includes your first month worth of clicks FREE and all the work done so we don't waste your money(so you dont spend more than a set limit a day) and the campaign runs smoothly to gain you extra clicks and hopefully generating you more business.  You then pay a monthly free of £30+ depending on what your search terms are and how much they cost to bid on the first page of Google.

Check out our website for some more information: www.dtsinternetsolutions.co.uk

 

Social Side of DTS Internet Solutions

Here at DTS Internet Solutions we pride ourselves on our customer care and work but we also push our social side, keeping in touch with clients and friends on social sites such as twitter and facebook.

Currently we have 217 followers on twitter and 68 likes on our facebook group in which we promote offers and new project information on for people to read about as well as this blog.  If you wish to help us out then please follow us on this link Twitter and if you would 'like' us on facebook you can find us here: Facebook 

DTS Internet Solutions - Our goal as a freelance company

With DTS Internet Solutions being a freelance website design and on-line marketing company we work from home, we are a very small company of just 1 employee.  That one employee is Daniel, he has a passion for design and the internet and after finishing college and working for a website design company he decided he would leave and set up on his own.

Daniel thought he would be better off giving a personal service to his customers and being able to meet with them and give them free advice rather than a sales team harass them for a sale of a new website and being given empty promises.  The website designer then would do his job only to find out the customer did not want anything like it and was promised more than can be done, thus making the customer angry and the relationship between the business and customer being ruined.

DTS's main aim was to provide great customer service before, during and after working with the customer, keeping in regular contact with them and just being polite.  This means a great relationship between DTS and its customer's.  We accept that not everyone can be happy with everything and no-one/nothing is perfect and sometimes mistakes can be made but we do try!

"To love what you do and feel that it matters - how could anything be more fun?"
Katherine Graham

If you ever need some advice on anything to do with websites or internet advertising then please feel free to get in touch with us here at DTS Internet Solutions:

Telephone: 0191 645 1380(calls are charged at local rates) | Email: info@dtsintersolutions.co.uk

Facebook: facebook.com/DTSInternetSolutions | Twitter: | http://twitter.com/dtsnetsolutions

New Media Advertising - QR Codes

Here at DTS Internet Solutions we are always looking at new ways of advertising and keeping up to date with technology.  We discovered a new and very fast growing item, it is called a QR code. 

"A QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response code) is a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) that is readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera telephones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded may be text, URL, or other data."
source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code


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