G Squared Studios Blog

The Easy Way To Create a Favicon From Your Logo

The Easy Way To Create a Favicon From Your Logo

First Off, What Is a Favicon? A Favicon is the icon that shows up in the browser tab when you visit a site. It is an important little icon that people like to see when they visit your site. It’s useful for a number of reasons. The main one is for when people have multiple browser tabs open, it makes it easier to find your site’s tab again when they want to come back to it. I’ll show you the quick and easy way to create a favicon from your logo. First, you’ll need a logo file. If you’re not a designer, you may want to ask your designer to create your logo in a square format. This works best, because that is the format of the favicon, and you won’t have to deal with issues in terms of stretching and distortion. The shot above is the text for the logo, but the image below is a more symbolic version I created for square applications. Next, you’ll want to consider the file format you’ll be using. If you want a favicon with transparency, you’ll want a PNG file with a transparent background. If not, and you just want a white […]

read more
Why You Should Use WooCommerce To Build Your Online Store

Why You Should Use WooCommerce To Build Your Online Store

Why You Should Use WooCommerce Instead of Magento Creating your own online store is a big step in running your own business online. Whether you’re selling physical products, or digital downloads, you want the process to be as easy as possible. I personally love WooCommerce and use it all of the time, so I know the ease and success you’ll experience from using it. WooCommerce WooCommerce was meant to be used with WordPress. In fact, The owners of WordPress have recently purchased WooCommerce, so you can expect even more powerful integration between the two. WooCommerce is easy to integrate with any WordPress theme. They even give you a step by step guide on how to enable WooCommerce with any WordPress theme. There are a lot of themes out there that are already WooCommerce ready, so all you have to do is install the plugin and set it up. Magento Where do I even begin? A lot of big businesses use Magento, which is perfectly fine, but to use it, you almost need to be a developer to be successful. The average website owner or business owner wouldn’t know how to even get started. Magento is an industry standard for big […]

read more
Things To Do Before Launching a Website

Things To Do Before Launching a Website

There’s a Lot of Prep Work Before Launching a Website It’s always been wishful thinking that you could throw up a great website and people would come to it in droves. A lot of people have the misconception that if you have a website, people will instantly flock to it. Unfortunately, there’s a lot that goes into a successful website. A lot goes into a website before you even launch it. Here are some things you may want to look at before launching a website. Nail Down a Good Hosting Company Believe me, hosting can make all of the difference. I started out with a terrible hosting company for one of my main sites, and I am convinced that held my business back for quite a while. My site constantly went down, and people couldn’t even access it. Another problem is that when I needed something, that company didn’t help at all with support for my site. I ended up switching to Bluehost, and all of my problems went away. Do your research, because hosting can make all of the difference. Implement a Good CDN A CDN, or a content delivery network, can speed up your website and make it […]

read more
3 Quick Ways You Can Improve Search Engine Results

3 Quick Ways You Can Improve Search Engine Results

Improve Search Engine Results If you’re a business owner, you have to balance everything. If you’re just starting out, you’re probably doing everything by yourself. Even if you’ve been around a while, you still likely oversee everything personally. You have to maximize your efforts for the amount of time you spend on each task. If you’ve built your own website, or you paid to have it built but SEO services in Knoxville TN weren’t in the budget, you want to do what you can quickly to make the most impact. Let’s take a look at 3 quick ways you can improve search engine results. Title Tags The title tags of each page on your website are extremely important. It basically tells not only the browser, but the search engine indexing your site what the title of each page is. This determines how relevant your content is to the search engine. If Your website was an army, your title tags would be your generals. Good On Page SEO Title tags end up in the preview on search engines. It’s important to use primary and secondary keywords in your title tags to help search engines to understand what that page is about. […]

read more
Tips For Finding the Right Web Designer For You

Tips For Finding the Right Web Designer For You

How to Find The Right Web Designer Whether you’re starting your own business, or you’ve had one for a few years, a website is an important aspect of your business. It’s also an important and scary step. Whether your business is well-established, or you’re looking to grow your business and get found, it can be an overwhelming experience. You’ll have a million questions, and that’s okay. The right web designer will be glad to answer them and walk you through the process. Let’s look at how to find the right web designer to help you with your business Bigger Isn’t Always Better Sure, you can hire a big web design firm, but you’ll definitely pay for it. You’re not necessarily getting anything more from them than you would from a lone designer or developer. You’re likely paying for a lot of overhead. Don’t get me wrong, independent designers & consultants have expenses, but they are usually proportional to the level of their business. However, consultants aren’t paying for multiple employees’ health insurance, salaries, vacations, sick days, etc. Also, large design firms usually rent entire buildings. Someone has to pay to keep the lights on. That someone is you. The Right […]

read more
7 Ways Templates Can Decrease Our Productivity

7 Ways Templates Can Decrease Our Productivity

Templates can decrease your productivity I don’t know about you, but as a web designer in Knoxville, a graphic designer, and an author all rolled into one, I work really hard. I tend to put in long hours each day to get my work done. Some would say that I am overly ambitious. The truth is, I have a lot of goals that I would like to achieve. Any time that you can save yourself some time on a project, it’s worth it. Some designers would say that using templates to start your projects can save you a lot of time. While this may work in rare cases, I’ve found that templates tend to decrease your productivity and a number of ways. Let’s take a look at the ways templates can decrease your productivity. Difficult to Edit Whenever you download a template on the web, whether it’s a print design template, or it’s a template for a website, you are taking a gamble. You have no idea how the template is made, and there’s no way to tell beforehand how skilled the designer was at crafting it. If you’ve ever had to go in behind another designer and edit a […]

read more
One Of The Most Important Design Business Qualities

One Of The Most Important Design Business Qualities

A Design Business – A Service Industry Owning your own design business means that you will be working with all sorts of clients. Some of them will be right there with you on technical issues, and you can both shoot jargon back and forth to each other like you’re in a paintball war. Other times, you’ll work with clients that don’t know a thing about computers or how the web works, and they’ll need you to handle everything. It shouldn’t matter who you’re working with, because one of the most important qualities of a great design business is the ability to guide your client through the process. Not Everyone Knows Design Sometimes we forget that not everyone knows how the web works. They know the basics, such as how they can go online and search on Google, Bing, or Yahoo to find the information they are looking for. The fact is, some people are just not technically minded. It might just be their lifestyle or personality that has kept them from learning. For example, maybe a business owner is more of a face-to-face business owner who handles things in an old-school fashion. Maybe they have staff that handles all of […]

read more
3 Reasons Not to Use a Website Template

3 Reasons Not to Use a Website Template

Using a Website Template? Avoid Being Generic Whеn starting your business’s wеbѕіtе, уоu might bе tеmрtеd tо uѕе а сhеар website tеmрlаtе that you can find online. Mаnу wеb hosting соmраnіеѕ рrоvіdе cookie-cutter tеmрlаtеѕ, which аrе рrеmаdе wеbѕіtе designs that саn...

read more