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CSIT 155 assignment: Writea blog post outlining who your target market is. Begin to think about how knowing more about your perfect customer will help you in the coming weeks as we start to promote this business online.
Here is a really short article in case you need a little more step by step direction, but be sure you read your assignments before beginning.

http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Target-Market-Analysis

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Ok so I am going to take this step by step with the information provided.

1. Identify your target market

• List all potential consumers. Include individual buyers, as well as other businesses and middlemen who re-sell your product to others.
  Individual buyers
  
• Segment your audience. Split them up into different groups of consumers, such as small business owners, office supply stores, or young families.
  Families, singles. small businesses, bigger corporations, etc...
• Determine who will benefit from your product or service the most. This is your target audience. Though you do not exclude other potential consumers from your marketing, focus your marketing campaign on this group.
  I mainly want to focus on families and singles. My biggest product that I will be offering is photo-restoration and manipulation alongside with graphic design work.  They are my niche.
  

2. Describe your target market demographically. - Skipped -

• Demographic information can often be found online as a compilation of different reports the federal government runs. Check the Census Bureau and Commerce Department websites.
• For businesses, demographical information includes where the business is located, how many branches they have, their annual revenue, number of employees, industry, and how long the business has been running.

3. Describe your target market psycho-graphically. - Skipped -

• Psychographic information is often found through surveys or focus groups. Though you can set these up yourself, it would be beneficial to hire a marketing research firm to help you structure the surveys, word questions carefully, and engage with focus groups in an effective way.
• For businesses, psychographic information can include the company's values or motto, how they wish to be seen by their own customers, and how formal or informal their work environment is.

4. Describe your target market behavioristically.

• Determine how important brand or company loyalty is to your target market.
  My target market would think company loyalty is very important.  Not so much branding
  
• Find out if your audience most heavily values convenience, a good price, or quality.
  If I had to list them in order of what my target market values most it would be:
  1. Good price - It's tough times on families and others & prices must standout for them to want to use my services.
  2. Quality - People are handing me over their memories! I better do a good job or else
  3. Convenience - It is important to make things easy but in this target market it think it's in the lower end...
     
• Discover how your target market usually pays for your product or service via market surveys.
• Ask if your customers prefer face-to-face interaction or an online store.
  Again people are handing me their photos and precious memories.  If I can meet up with them in person to comfort them in that I will do so and I think that would mean alot to them.  Big corporations seem unfeeling and I wouldn't trust them with some of my photographs!

5. Compile your results.

• Consider using graphs to help your organization visualize different numbers and percentages.
  Families and single people play a big part of my target market and I need to always consider this in the future.  They are the one creating new memories and wanting to preserve/ restore old ones and those are my future clients that i want to reach out to.

Two Websites That I Can't Live Without

Just Kidding...

No seriously, in my class (CSIT 155) we were asked to add the url of two websites we use or visit frequently. Then Discuss:

1. Why are they effective? 
2. What specific principles of good design do they include and why?
3. What makes you come back again?
4. What could be improved?

The Six O'Clock Scramble: http://www.thescramble.com/
( I know I have brought them up before but I go to this website several times a week.  My Hubby and I are on a diet and I love getting meal plans and shopping lists for the week fro this place.  Everything is delicious and follows our diet. PLUS if you have allergies to some types of food you can tell them not to include those recipes.)  

1.  It's easy to navigate, friendly feeling, and bright happy colors!
2. Has contrast which makes the website pop and appealing. Repetition is good, navigation is always in the same area which makes it easy to navigate. Proximity is alright, everything isnt exactly spaced out in the same manner which makes it more appealing.  Good use of hierarchy, I think its easy to pick out what they are stressing to the viewer.  Easy to read typography. 
3. I often go back to look at other recipes, check my shopping list, and give reviews to recipes.  It's an awesome website that I like to participate in and help other people with reviews and telling people about the website.
4. The alignment can be improved just a smidge and it would make it look so much cleaner.

Pandora.com: http://www.thescramble.com/
(Everyone I bet has herd of Pandora by now.  I have been using them to listen to music since 2007!  Awesome website easy and love the look.  Hate it now that they have adds everywhere but who doesn't???)

1.  Fast free music. (Web version.)
2.  The color scheme has never changed but I think it's very easy going and clean looking with the different blue and metallic colors.  It's a flash program so everything is the same so nice use of repetition. Everything is well aligned giving it an open clean feel which I love!  Good use of proximity and hierarchy.  They exaggerate the album cover then use subtitles and headers to tell you about the artist, album, and song title. So easy to use everything is on one page so you are not directed all over the place.  They have a huge library of music for a wide variety of music.
3.  Its easy to access and if you create an account with them they will save your information on what you like and help show you music that is similar.
4.  Typography is clean and somewhat easy to read depending on the resolution of the viewer's computer.  My computer has very high resolution and so everything is supper small.  That's about it...

To Cringe or Not to Cringe Now That is the Question

For a class assignment we were told: Choose two of the following websites and identify at least three potential problems for visitors. What could be improved on this website and why? Choose two and identify what they have done right. How do design, aesthetics and branding impact your reaction to the websites?

1. http://tectorch.com
2. http://www.swagelok.com/
3. http://www.gforceracecars.com/
4. http://www.richsoil.com/raising-chickens.jsp
5. http://apple.com
6. http://www.ford.com/
7. http://www.toyota.com/ 

http://tectorch.com
I wasn't planning on choosing the first website to go first but when I opened it up I literally cringed!   Not only is there NO social media links located on the webpage but (this coming from  a Web Designer point of view) it was created in TABLES!  That is so old school plus I bet it was created in either Microsoft Publisher or Front page.  Which they did the trick maybe in the late 90's early 00's but not now.  The website is very bland and hard to navigate it needs a facelift LoL


http://www.swagelok.com/
This site is Way cleaner and more appealing to the eye than the previously discussed website.  Because of this cleaner look I feel as though this business is more professional because they care about their public internet appearance.  Easier to navigate but again no social media which is sad.  They probably would see an increase in website visits if they had.  

http://apple.com
Ah apple!  I LOVE their website.  So clean so easy to navigate.  I love that clean professional look.  Sad though because I KNOW they have social media (I'm subscribe to a few of them...) so I am surprised that they havent made them easily acceptable.  Strange.  Add your social media to your website Apple!

http://www.ford.com 
The Ford website isn't to bad.  If there was a car or truck I knew of, that I wanted to look at I could find it pretty easily.  It is almost overwhelming though for someone just wanting to breeze through a few different models to get ideas for their next vehicle.  The "Ford Social" link is at the top which is nice kinda hard to see because the white text is lost in the background image.  I do like their little pop-up in the bottom left hand corner which gets the user more interested because its a little interactive.  I used to have a Ford F-150 and loved that truck, it said grab a badge.  So I tried it and there was a I Love Ford badge. I clicked it, and then it asked if I wanted to share it.  So i said sure.  Here it is!

 

Five Websites That Use Visable Social Media

1. MiraCosta - http://miracosta.edu/index.html

2. The Six Oclock Scramble (Amazing site!!!) - http://www.thescramble.com/

3. Think Geek ( Yes I am one and this site has cool stuff!) - http://www.thinkgeek.com/

4. M&Ms - http://www.m-ms.com/us/

5. Coca-Cola - http://us.coca-cola.com/#

I Wish I Knew About Social Media Then...

I know I'm not the only one who Bank of America has made them reach their boiling point. (To put it nicely)  A few years back I had bought some royalty free images.  The company double charged my account making my go into the red.  

First, I had to talk to paypal, to make sure that company would never get money from me again.  Then I had to go back and forth between Bank of America and the company I bought the images from.  Neither wanted to fix the problem.  

This was an ongoing process for about two weeks.  Well, Bank of America charged me $30 every other day for having negative funds!  That made me lose it! I threatened to tell everyone I know how they no longer help their clients, bad customer service, and so on and so forth...  Just the threat of telling everyone I know through social media I was transferred to some head honcho manager who took me seriously and told me to go to my local bank fillout some form which would look into the original double charge and he removed all the negative balances charges.

It's amazing how sometimes just mentioning telling other people you are dissatisfied with some company's performance most times you'll be taken more seriously.  But also include that you will post it onto Facebook and Twitter and then they go into a tizzy! Lots of businesses know that social media is very powerful and that it could damage their reputation by posting nasty comments onto their Facebook page.  I wonder if I thought of that back then maybe I would have been talked to sooner and the problem would have been fixed sooner???

Which should be used for which?

Business:
1. Facebook: Used to be geared towards personal but now it is a great way for businesses to be able to have a two way communication relationship with their customers.
2. LinkedIn: this is a great tool to find jobs, employees, and to get connected with other professionals.

Personal
1. Pinterest: Visual bookmarks what a great idea! At first I didn't get what all the fuss was about until I really immersed myself into it. Now I visit it everyday and find new DIY projects and design inspirations that normally I wouldn't have access to.
2. flickr: Great way to share images with family and friends.
3. Instagram: Take pictures of the world around you and share with friends, family, and your followers.

Who I am and Why Am I Taking This Class???

Hey Everyone!!!

My name is Amber Bibeau and I'm very excited that i was able to pop in last minute and still register for this coarse.

I am a previous student of Claudia's and wanted to check this class out.  I'm very interested into how to incorporate social media into business websites.  I think i know some basics but I know with a little help I'll know more and be able to update even my business website.

I chose this template because it was simple and because knowing me I'll want to snaze it up in the future.  I think its almost expected of me to update it since I went through the whole Graphic & Web design programs at Mira Costa. LoL

I know i have some interesting sites with information that I think will pertain to our class so when I find them again in my mass amount of bookmarks, I'll be more than happy to share with you all.

Looking forward to discussing with you all here in the future ;)

~ Amber B.