Tag Archives: Website Design

How We Can Create Fun, Exciting and Customized Websites for Any Business

Posted on by
Lacey Welborn
Lacey and her brother Zeb Welborn founded Welborn Media. She has designed and launched websites, several projects, marketing materials, a podcast, a book and more. Her passions include her family, her friends, creating things and helping businesses grow.
Latest posts by Lacey Welborn (see all)

I recently got the opportunity to design the landing page for a magazine website. While working out the details of the assignment my client told me, “I just want to see what you put together without a ton of input from me. I want you to go ahead and design what you think would work best and we can go from there.”

This is a good news/bad news situation. The good news is I have complete freedom. The bad news is that without the back and forth and asking, do you want this or that? it’s hard to figure out what the client really wants.

We already run the Twitter account for this business. She was very happy with the Twitter background I created for their Twitter profile page and she wanted to see what I could do for her new website.

After doing some research I had some good ideas for this webpage but was having difficulty fitting ideas together. Then my client sent me a message, sort of an outline of their plans for this new website. It had a list of the different sections they wanted on their website, the type of content they wanted on their page, but nothing about what they wanted for a design.  However, at the end of the document there was a section titled Brand Personality with a list: Friendly, Fun Creative, Inspiring, Imaginative, Informational, Educational, Savvy, Good Clean Fun, Social.

I wrote this list down. After reading the words a couple of times I knew how I was going to design the site. I knew how it would look. I knew this because I now knew how the site should feel.

After spending a few days developing the design I submitted a first draft mock-up to my client. They had some minor changes for me, but overall they loved it. They really liked the overall layout I set up. They loved how I integrated social media. They loved the feel the design achieved, saying that it was friendly and warm and still clean and organized.

I got to talk to another employee, whom I’ll be working with to get the site live, and he shared with me the joy my client had for the design I put together.

Apparently, they formerly had a full-time graphic artist who’s esthetic didn’t match my client’s esthetic. It was hard for them to reach design solutions that made the client happy. After getting it right on the first attempt my client has a lot of faith in me and has hired me on to help get the site live.

It can be hard to tell what a client wants. By paying attention and putting myself in their shoes, I was able to get some good ideas. Then, with the help of a few simple words, I knew how I was going to put it all together. It’s a design that I’m proud of and that my client is stoked about.

Now it’s a mad dash to get the site up and running to stay on the schedule. It’s going to be a busy week!  Stay tuned for the finished product when the site goes live.

If you are interested in getting customized websites designed for your business, contact Lacey Welborn at (909) 973 – 9088.

The Top 11 Moments for Welborn Social Media in 2011

Posted on by
Lacey Welborn
Lacey and her brother Zeb Welborn founded Welborn Media. She has designed and launched websites, several projects, marketing materials, a podcast, a book and more. Her passions include her family, her friends, creating things and helping businesses grow.
Latest posts by Lacey Welborn (see all)

We founded Welborn Social Media in June 2011 and despite being open for business for roughly six months, we have many memorable moments.  The following is our top 11 moments for Welborn Social Media in 2011.  Thank you to our friends, family and the businesses who have used our services this year.  We are extremely optimistic about 2012 and can’t wait to see what the future has in store for Welborn Social Media and the people we interact with.

  1. We began the year by expanding our social media, graphic and website design knowledge by learning new ways to promote The Tutoring Solution.
  2. In June, Welborn Social Media got it’s start with our first client Scrapbook Expo.  We have been running the Scrapbook Expo Twitter Page ever since.
  3. In July, we started work on Los Serranos Country Club‘s blog, Facebook and Twitter pages and continue to run their social media presence.
  4. In August, we began working for WireSpeed Systems, a global supplier for new and refurbished networking equipment.  We run their Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages.
  5. In October, we started a Facebook and a blog for System 1 Interiors, Los Angeles’s best acoustic ceiling removal company.
  6. We launched the Welborn Social Media website and began developing our own social media presence.Welborn Social Media Online
  7. Attended the Arizona Business Growth Expo and began developing business relationships with wonderful people that will continue to help us as our business grows.
  8. As a result of our work, our client, WireSpeed Systems, was recognized by Cisco, the largest corporation in the networking industry, as their Facebook SuperFan. WireSpeed Systems has been featured in Cisco’s Facebook profile picture since the beginning of November.
  9. Hosted our first Twitter chat for our client Scrapbook Expo. It was a success and we’ve been hosting two Twitter chats a month ever since. Follow #ScrapChat at 6pm PT on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of each month to join in!
  10. Launched DLT Growers brand new website, built by Welborn Social Media.  DLT Growers sells ground cover to companies like Lowe’s and Home Depot.
  11. Helped the Women’s English National Football team’s starting goalkeeper, Karen Bardsley wish fans a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

It’s been a truly memorable year. The most exciting part of this year is the possibilities for next year. In the past few weeks we’ve been talking with a variety of businesses about enhancing their brand with our social media services. We already have some exciting things in store for 2012 and can’t wait to write the year in review at the end of next year, it’s bound to be packed with even more memorable moments.

Happy New Year!

We Launched a Brand New Website for DLT Growers

Posted on by
Lacey Welborn
Lacey and her brother Zeb Welborn founded Welborn Media. She has designed and launched websites, several projects, marketing materials, a podcast, a book and more. Her passions include her family, her friends, creating things and helping businesses grow.
Latest posts by Lacey Welborn (see all)

On December 1st we launched a new website for one of our clients. The website can be found at www.dltgrowers.com. Initial response to the website has been great!

“It looks amazing. You did an amazing job Lacey. As far as I can see, everything looks great.”
-Cindy De La Torre from DLT Growers

“Love the opening photo montage on the main page. It’s a good speed and it’s not jarring. Colours are fantastic, the products page with the flowers wreathing the links is very creative without distracting the eye, everything is organized and very user friendly. GREAT WORK, gorgeous as usual!!!”
-James Fraser

“That looks fantastic Lacey you always put together really cool looking stuff the site flows great.”
-Rocky Welborn

“Awesome!!”
-Shannon Barker

DLT Growers Home Page

DLT Growers is a nursery in Southern California that specializes in wholesale ground cover. Ground cover is the plants that grow to cover a large area of ground. It includes certain vines, shrubs, and grasses. When creating the design for this website I wanted to feature the beautiful flowers and make it easy for website visitors to find contact information.

Almost all the gorgeous photos on the site were taken by a member of the De La Torre family. Those photos were the greatest resource for designing the DLT Growers website. To make the color rich photos stand out I used muted colors for the background. I chose green and brown for the text and kept it delicate by using mostly serif fonts.

 

My favorite part of the design is the products page. The links for the different plant types are in a list and I was able to display one plant from each variety in an interesting and creative way.

Plant Types on the Products Page

To make it easy to get in contact with DLT Growers I parked their contact info into the header of the page so that it is always easy to find. There is also a contact page with more detailed contact info and a contact form.

Design is one of the many services we provide for our clients. Most of our design work is directly related to our Social Media efforts (e.g., signs to display physical locations and emails that share businesses social media profiles), but once in a while we get to build an entire website to help establish an online presence for a company like DLT Growers.

Please let me know what you think of the DLT Growers website by leaving a comment.

If you have any design questions for your business please contact us! Lacey Welborn can be reached at (909) 973-9088.

Designing Welborn Social Media

Posted on by
Lacey Welborn
Lacey and her brother Zeb Welborn founded Welborn Media. She has designed and launched websites, several projects, marketing materials, a podcast, a book and more. Her passions include her family, her friends, creating things and helping businesses grow.
Latest posts by Lacey Welborn (see all)

I’m Lacey Welborn, Zeb’s younger sister and co-owner of Welborn Social Media. I represent the creative side of Welborn Social Media. My tasks consist of graphic design and website design as well as everyday Social Media activities. My most recent project was designing Welborn Social Media.

Creating this website was the most difficult thing I’ve designed. It was difficult because of my own desire for it to be awesome. I so badly wanted it to be perfect, to express our company, to be the best thing I ever designed. Unfortunately, I don’t think it is. There are things I like very much about it, but there are other things that I’m not as confident in. I love my idea for the background; it’s Facebook and Twitter posts, tiled together, stylized and at an angle; a perfect backdrop for the Social Media work we do. I like the layout of the footer, it has links to 15 different things, but it’s clean, very clear, and easy to understand. There are a few design elements that I feel unsure about.

The thing I realized is that if I’m not designing for an art project, but for a very practical purpose, there are things that are more important than a perfect design. Like time. The truth is, it could take me months to create something that I feel is perfect (more likely, a lifetime). That would be wasted time. Our company has already started, we work on the web and we need a website. We need our own internet presence. Realizing that getting this website up ASAP was the number one priority meant that I’d have to let some things go. I decided that as long as the information was there and the message was clear, then it would make it to the next round of my design process, which is getting approval from friends and family. When I showed it to them, they all thought it was great. That and the knowledge that you can always make changes to a website helped calm my inner critic.

Designing Welborn Social Media was a difficult project and the realization that I couldn’t make our Welborn Social Media site perfect was tough to swallow, but it was necessary. I think all commercial designers have to learn the lesson that sometimes it can’t be perfect.

I still need to finish the design for the Our Clients page. I really really want that page to be perfect since it features the wonderful companies we work with, and the killer Social Media work we do for them. But, since the purpose is to share that information with the world wide web, I know it is more important to get that page up sooner rather than later.

Since this website has gone up, I’ve gotten more positive feedback. I feel a little better about the things that I felt unsure about. And, now we have a website! Yay!

Please comment and let me know what you think about the website. I would really appreciate more input.

The Story of Welborn Social Media

Posted on by
Zeb Welborn
The owner of Welborn Social Media and the founder of The Tutoring Solution.My goal is to help business owners share the passion they have for their business with as many potential customers as possible.By helping passionate people achieve their dreams I am helping to create a society of passionate leaders that will help inspire others to make their dreams a reality.
Latest posts by Zeb Welborn (see all)

My sister and I were unemployed and living at our parents home.  My life had completely changed, I had gone through a difficult divorce and left my full-time teaching job.  Lacey had been working an exhausting job as a video editor at a local news station when they cancelled her show.

Zeb and Lacey Welborn Barbecuing Our Turkey on Thanksgiving Day

In February 2009, I began tutoring my first student and found I really enjoyed the sense of accomplishment that came along with developing students in a one on one setting and experienced a lot of success.  Referrals came freely and my schedule became very full.  I decided to expand.

Lacey went back to school, taking graphic design classes and had been learning website design on her own.

I asked if she would help me with my business.  She created The Tutoring Solution logo and built a website. When the website went up, almost immediately, people began to find us online.

This was cool!

For months we added content to our website; using blogs, pictures and videos.  But, I also wanted to direct people to my website and needed to find an inexpensive way to do that.  Facebook and Twitter provided me with a free way to promote my business.

That’s when The Tutoring Solution took off.

My sister and I attributed our success to our efforts in Social Media. We did more research and began to attend classes, read articles, communicated with successful companies and kept up to date on best practices for Social Media.

Jennifer Davis from Scrapbook Expo was the first business owner we talked to about developing a Social Media campaign for their brand.  Jennifer was already active on Facebook and had generated a massive following.  I asked her if she would be willing to let me run a Twitter campaign for her company.  Welborn Social Media was born.

Many other companies began hearing about us through a variety of different avenues. Currently we do Social Media and graphic design work for the Creative Scrapbook Source, DLT Growers, Los Serranos Country Club, Scrapbook Expo, System 1, The Tutoring Solution and WireSpeed Systems.

Our story has only just begun.

Our mission is to build connections for our clients with potential customers and develop stronger relationships with current customers and to help their business grow.

If you’re looking to expand your business, schedule an appointment with us today.  We will work with you to create a personalized plan designed to help your business grow.

Schedule your free appointment today by contacting Zeb Welborn at (909) 973 – 9089 or WelbornSocialMedia@gmail.com