You want to feature and sell your products online. Do you hire a web developer and/or web designer to do this for you or do you attempt this venture on your own?

If you are a logical and very patient individual, I would say, “Go for it.” However, if you have little experience with web design or coding, then I would say, “Leave it to the professionals.”

Case in point: The client approached Sheis Design, asking for an eCommerce site which would promote and sell their merchandise. This organization is a non-profit company, and hiring a firm to develop the database and design from the bottom up would have been cost prohibitive, as well as time consuming. After our consultation with The World Peace Prayer Society, we came to the conclusion that we would select for them the best eCommerce service who could handle their needs, and keep a sense of their design intact.

We chose the eCommerce solution based on their ability to sync with quick books, international credit card orders and their user friendly control panel. Certainly this was not just simply a template in which the client could just plug and play. Much had to be set up by our firm, such as the design of the template, setting up the merchandising accounts, on-site training, and programming specifics to their needs. This project even caused this designer to contact customer support on numerous occasions.

In addition to the setting up on the technical end, we were contracted though our Promotional Marketing department to handle their merchandising, which included product design, merchandising, vendor interface.

Creating an eCommerce site is not for the faint of heart, it is for the individual who possess knowledge, determination, and a degree of patience.

ShopPeace was launched with great success on October 20th, and to date has seen an unbelievable amount of visitors, as well as purchases.

The ShopPeace eCommerce site has just about paid for itself in less than 2 weeks.

Let’s start with a bit of a history lesson… Flash began as a simple thought in the mind of Jonathan Gay in the 1980’s – Actually while (I believe) he was still in high school. His mind evolved and he joined forces with Charlie Jackson and Michelle Welsh in 1993 and formed FutureWave Software where they developed their first program “SmartSketch,” which was simply a drawing application. In 1995, FutureWave modified SmartSketch by adding frame-by-frame animation and re-released it as FutureSplash Animator. The explosion actually hit when they offered it to Macromedia in December, 1996 and Flash 1.0 was born.

The point — Flash was never intended to be used as designing web sites. It’s intention was to be able to design frame by frame animations. Of course evolution and actionscripting has made this possible, and today we see beautiful and creative complete web sites designed in flash.

I love FLASH, I have been using flash since 1997 (a decade) and have create some amazing applications, web sites, animations and e-learning tools.

I will admit, that up until a few years ago, I solely depended on Flash for our web site. It is creative and it is beautiful — http://www.sheisdesign.com/flash — However, we really could not get a presence in the search engines with Flash alone. What to do?

I came across this video on YouTube. While this guy is certainly a bit VOCAL in his reasoning to not use flash solely, his points are valid and warranted. Please take two minute to watch this video.

Clearly he is correct in all he states. Flash cannot be read by those temperamental spiders, you can however add metatags to flash, create an xml file, and list yourself in numerous search engines. But, is this enough?

I obviously do not feel a flash site alone would have gained us the popularity it has, as we now have in place an html site, which leads to our flash site. Our static site — http://www.sheisdesign.com — may not offer the ingenuity and creativity of our flash site, but it has gained us a presence in the leading search engines.

We still get requests for Flash only sites from many of our clients, and we explain the ups and the downs of creating a site solely in flash. I like to suggest designing a static page, with a flash header or other animations on the page. Or for those who want a full flash site, I will also suggest creating an html site, which will lead to your flash site.

Ultimately, we want our clients to be happy. But will a full flash site make your client happy in the long run? For some yes, for others, they will be beating their brows, wondering why they are not being listed in the search engines.

You want to hold a press conference — yet, you do not have the means, the product or the celebrity status which would entice the press to swarm around you at this time. What to do?

Case in point. Sheis Design has a client in which we developed an interactive web site for, this client is a notable female comedian who has been televised, as well as being in motion pictures. First we designed and developed her web site, which allowed agents, event planners and the public to see her in action and learn more about who she is and what she is doing.

Susan Norfleet was ready to announce her web site, everthing was in place. Now, how to get the word out to those people who might not know she has a web presence, or even that she is back on the circuit after taking a sebatical.

Our task at hand was to create a folder which would house her resume, biography, sample stories and a dvd of her latest show.

There you have it, a press conference in print. Susan Norfleet can now easily send her press kit to her prospective clients, allowing them to have a visual presentation of who she is.

Be sure to visit Susan Norfleet’s web site.

When you are an individual who spends their life marketing and promoting others, you tend to forget yourself.

Not much different than a dentist. I remember going to the dentist recently and staring at his teeth — they were horrendous, and I thought, “He spends hours making my teeth beautiful.” Why do we spend our lives making the world beautiful, yet neglect ourselves?

The answer is fairly simple; there just aren’t enough hours in a day, and the mighty dollar prevents this from happening.

I for one made a conscious effort and have joined the ranks of our clients, by including Promotional Marketing materials to our press kit — Those same marketing tools our clients employ us for and profit from.

Now our clients can find our identity on mints, pens, calendars, calculators and soon we will have Chocolate Sheis Design Corporate and Executive Gifts.

One does not need to be a corporate giant to get in on this great marketing tool. Promotional Marketing is a tool which can benefit a sole proprietor, a restaurateur, physicians, blog writers and just about any industry with an idea or a product for sale.

If you are still unclear as to what Promotional Marketing is, here is a brief synopsis.

Promotional Marketing is intended to increase visibility, brand awareness and positive consumer action.  It’s about building brand awareness with advertising specialties tailored to your company or event.

Promotional items include apparel, custom calendars, imprinted pens, bags, computer accessories, novelties and so much more. From trade shows to company picnics.  Really, the list is endless.  There are thousands of promotional marketing items, which can be designed with your company identity or logo.

Be sure to visit Sheis Design Promotional Marketing for some ideas.