Nelson & Co. News

Marketing Campaign: 2013 Shell Houston Open

admin — Wed, 01 May 2013 14:00:46 +0000

Nelson & Co., LLC (N&C) has had a very exciting year so far in 2013. Among other great projects we have successfully completed, we were also very fortunate to participate, for the ninth consecutive year, with the Houston Golf Association as a marketing partner for the Shell Houston Open, a PGA TOUR tournament held every year for the benefit of Houston area youth. Our participation includes the following items:

Print Ads
Billboards
Sales literature
72-page Souvenir Program
40-page Spectator Guide
4-page Tee Time pairing sheet
24-page 2012 Year in Review
Event photography
On-site web content management during the event

Web graphics and back-end services on the Adjutant content management system created by Abis Consulting Group.

We are proud to know that our involvement contributed to a very successful event participation of over 100,000 people, a record Friday attendance, major donations to Houston area youth programs, and over 500,000 web site visitors.

Should you have a need for similar products & services, large or small, please contact us at (832) 532-7220, or by email to damien@nelsonandco.net.

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Nelson & Co. is a Sugar Land, Texas based graphic design firm serving the Greater Houston area with turn-key print and web design projects coupled with smart web marketing practices since 2002 and is proud to be listed in the Houston Business Journal’s Book of Lists as a Top 25 Graphic Design Firm serving corporate, mid-sized and even start-up businesses alike with powerful branding and marketing tools. For more information on Nelson & Co. visit www.nelsonandco.net or contact us at (832) 532-7220

Turn-key Branding Campaign: enCode-360

admin — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 21:08:05 +0000

Nelson & Co., LLC (N&C) has been very busy so far this year and I am proud to share this recent branding campaign with you. enCode-360 is a software product developed by Kendig Keast for a specific niche market. They came to us with a request to build a brand around this software product that both tied in with the Kendig Keast identity while also standing out on its own. The target date was a tradeshow in early April. The components of the final brand are outlined to the right (CLICK FOR PDF) and were successfully created in time for the tradeshow launch and with much praise by the folks at Kendig Keast and the patrons at their tradeshow booth. Components of the Branding Campaign include:

•Logo development with variations

•Icons for software versions

•Brochure

•Postcard

•POS form

•Website

•Business cards

•Tradeshow display

We are very grateful for opportunity to be a part of this new company and in working with their staff to create this brand. N&C has increasingly taken part in brand development for new companies as well as rebranding for existing ones. We continually seek a opportunities to continue such branding activities, whether in full or in part by way of print or web based design products. Should you have a need for similar products, please contact us at (832) 532-7220, or by email to damien@nelsonandco.net.

We hope that you will consider us when your company, or any of your referred associates, have the need for print and web design services. We are very proud of the work we are doing, and look forward to future opportunities.

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Secure Your WordPress

admin — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:16:29 +0000

WordPress is a great CMS system, but it also has its vulnerabilities. Luckily the folks at WordPress and those that develop their plugins are constantly improving their software to address security concerns, improve functionality and add features. Take advantage of these improvements with Nelson & Co.’s monthly back-up and WordPress update services. Features of this package:

Security suite install
Weekly off-server back-ups to a secure location
Quarterly WordPress updates including testing and repairs caused by the update
Up to five Quarterly plugin updates including testing and repairs caused by the update

Don’t wait until your site gets hacked or breaks and end up spending much more for repairs. Preventative maintenance and improvements cost only $50 a month.

Challenger.org – A Site Reborn

admin — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 18:39:36 +0000

I wanted to share with you this recently launched WordPress website build. We recently reconstructed a beautiful site for a strategic marketing partner, Griffin Communications, after which they put us onto an opportunity for the website rebuild of challenger.org. We jumped at the opportunity and successfully constructed this site with a high page count and some fun challenges for our creative and development team.

The existing Challenger.org website had hundreds of pages, including dynamic pages generated for (click item to view page):

1. Each of their 48 Learning Centers spread throughout the world

2. An extensive library of teaching resources

3. News, webcasts, podcasts and events

To address this, we turned towards WordPress for the main platform, and to Google for mapping the Learning Centers in a dynamic, creative and useful way as well as use of the Google Fusion Tables tool for providing the client with a convenient place to maintain their Learning Center database. The information is also used to populate individual Learning Center pages within Challenger.org.

The site also pulls data from their social feeds, and pushes information out to their Facebook and Twitter accounts thus increasing their marketing reach.

One aesthetic feature we added employs the concept of Parallax. Through custom coding, we were able to hang an astronaut and harvest moon off either side of the page and make them scroll vertically at a rate different than the page in front of them and the page background behind them. This added depth to the site without getting too carried away with multiple animations…particularly on the home page.

A dynamic and content rich home page blended with a CMS system and all of these features makes this site one of our favorite builds. Hopefully, some of these features will provide inspiration for your next website build. Let us know what you think of the site!

Sincerely,
Damien Nelson

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Understand How Your Website Works and How Visitors Can Find It

admin — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:10:53 +0000

A website needs two accounts to run; a Registrar and Hosting account. When building a new website, taking over maintenance of a website or doing search engine optimization (SEO) for a website, our staff will typically need to create or acquire login access to one or both of these account.

Two Main Accounts

1. Registrar – where you buy your domain (ie. http://nelsonandco.com). In our case, the registrar is Network Solutions. This is not proprietary information, as anyone can use a Who Is Lookup to find a registrar for a domain name and learn more about the domain such as when it expires, DNS/IP addresses, account admin and technical contact (if privacy not turned on).

2. Host – This is where you physically host your website. It’s a server where your website files are posted (uploaded) and where they are accessed by anyone trying to visit mhprop.com. The typical process for posting website files is FTP (File Transfer Protocol). FTP is setup through the Hosting company’s admin login, so the hosting company should have given you a webs, username, and password so you could go in and administer various aspects of your hosting account (Database, FTP and email for example).

Note: Most Registrars also offer hosting, so sometimes your Registrar and Host are the same company.

Other Considerations:

3. CMS – Many sites have a content management system (CMS) which gives login access to do things like edit text, create pages and post pictures, but it does not give access directly to the website file folder like FTP does, or to something like a database which the host account would do

4. DNS & IP – Domain Name Service (DNS) and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses work like phone numbers directing site visitors to the server, or server account, where your site files exist (at the Host). There are these server banks (nodes) around the U.S. (and world) that act as directories.

In Summary:

So, when someone types in a website address, this is what happens:

1. A Node looks up the registrar for that name (yours is Register.com)

2. The node asks Register.com for your DNS address (kind of a phone number for your host).

3. The node then pushes the request to that phone number (host).

4. The host has its own directory of phone numbers (IP address) that correspond to your specific account and file location and makes the final connection.

Note: Alternately, the registrar could have the IP address directly to your account

Tada, the person who entered your domain name, just saw your site

Prime Properties Identity Package

admin — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 19:53:21 +0000

Prime Properties is a newly formed Sugar Land based real estate company serving the Fort Bend County area of Southwest Houston, TX. They approached Nelson & Co. earlier this year (2012) in search of a full identity campaign. After consulting with them, Nelson & Co. came up with a color palette and general idea of the look they wanted to establish. Their goal was to present their realtors in a professional manner and separating the agents from other firms with a higher-end Texas agency image.

Developed items include logo, business cards, letterhead, multiple envelopes, thank you cards, yard signs, auto door magnets, working documents, a PowerPoint presentation and the primepropertiestx.com website.

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Google Quality Guidelines

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:35:54 +0000

Google is continuing to improve their search algorithm to weed out “black hat” SEO practices, or web spamming. Nelson & Co. strives to manage their SEO clients with a “white hat” strategy, which is to say that the marketing techniques improve the site’s readability and usability while following Google’s quality guidelines. If you have never read them, feel free to follow this link to learn more about them and how Google perceives web promotion.

Notes on Google Penguin Update

admin — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:58:02 +0000

Google did an update, named Penguin, which furthered there efforts to improve their ranking algorithm. Here are seven suggestions I received in an industry newsletter from Jag Infotech:

Do not Spam websites with meaningless keywords in the content.
If your website is displaying Ads on the top of the page, make sure they are accompanied with useful content.
Improve your social presence.
Work to increase time spent by users on the website and reduce bounce rate.
Incorporate a blog on the website and update it weekly. It would be beneficial if you have your latest posts linked on the home page.
Enrich your content with videos and pictures.
Submit your website to Webmaster Central and notice if there are any issues being reported by Google. If any, eliminate them.

There are no suggestions we haven’t been focused on already, but proved some clarification and definitely substantiate our strategy.

New Site is Born: RaginCajun.com

admin — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 21:04:06 +0000

Company: Ragin Cajun
Website: ragin-cajun.com
Birthday: Tuesday, April 10, 2012 at 2:30 P.M.

Description:

Ragin Cajun, a great Houston area cajun restuarant chain owned and operated by the Mandola family, approached Nelson & Co. (N&C) to construct a new website using the WordPress CMS system. This site required many standard features seen in other restaurant sites, but also needed to be two websites in one. Their catering business has taken off over the past few years and they chose to use a landing page that would feed visitors into one of two websites, the Ragin Cajun Restaurant or the Ragin Cajun Catering site. They have new properties coming online as well, including a very nice bar located next to the “Original” Ragin Cajun location, so this platform would allow them to expand as needed. Some of the site features include:

Image transitions on the home page
Logo and link presentation for their various properties and products
Connections to their Craw Club and Online Ordering
Ability to present special promotions, events and news on the home page
Search engine optimization tools
News & blogging features such as search, archive and rss feed
Connections to Facebook and Twitter
Breakdown of each store location with individualized expanding menus

N&C is proud to present this beautifully designed site with superb functionality, all in a complete CMS managed maintenance capabilities. Please view the new site at http://www.ragin-cajun.com!

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New Site is Born: Griffin Communications

admin — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 20:48:00 +0000

Company: Griffin Communications
Website: griffincg.com
Birthday: Monday, April 9, 2012 at 12:00 A.M.

Description:

Griffin Communications, an aerospace industry focused advertising firm and long-time partner to Nelson & Co. (N&C), recently approached us with a challenge to build their new site within the WordPress CMS system and do so in record time. Their site would require:

Image transitions on the home page
Some slight Parallax design functionality
Search engine optimization tools
News & blogging features such as search, archive and rss feed
Connections to Facebook and Twitter
Three custom forms
Various other custom enhancements

N&C was able to accomplish all of the above with a beautifully design site, superb functionality and complete CMS managed maintenance capabilities. Please view the new site at http://www.griffincommgroup.com!

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