Azana Illustrated Blog

It is known the miracle of happiness and its strength to a few…You don’t miss it until you experience true happiness and realize the power of greatness. Its absence is painful but its presence is indescribable. Happiness and love is what makes sense in a world of missing…missing kindness, missing compassion, missing humbleness, missing gifts…

The message is this…share your heart with others and you will be sharing happiness with yourself. Words can carry a message from the heart in a way you can’t imagine. When you speak the language of kindness you speak the language of love…a selfless love that floats around you…Remember a crying heart is silent, a broken heart is quiet but when this heart receives an act of kindness it is shared by both souls and the heart begins to sing again. This is my message to you… 

It is to our great pleasure to be part of your special moments. Whether it is to express a love one your feelings, simply say…happy birthday, tell someone you think of them, wish someone congratulations for their new born, wish someone happiness on their new journey together as a couple, remind someone they are special, or tell someone you love them…it is our joy to be able to express it on a card for you.

One card can lift the spirits to a level of wellness and joy that bookmarks a day to remember.

This New Year is going to be special. The design team at Azana illustrated is coming together to bring forth a new product and concepts that will “spin the wheels in a new direction”. We are anxious and excited to work together for the design community. Through Azana illustrated and Azana educated you will have a full scope of what lies ahead.    

This New Year is going to be special. The design team at Azana illustrated is coming together to bring forth a new product and concepts that will “spin the wheels in a new direction”. We are anxious and excited to work together for the design community. Through Azana illustrated and Azana educated you will have a full scope of what lies ahead.    

It can be devastating for someone to learn that the firm for which you worked for many years is closing. Panic is inevitable when it comes to losing your main source of income. In our case this is how it turned out. We are in one of the most incredible and exciting professions. The possibilities are endless when you have a good “set of cards in your hand”, education and good working ethics has always been the aces of the deck. After a short amount of time of the design firm announcing it’s date of closure we all found our place. It goes to show how lucky we are. Azana Illustrated interest is to become that family of designers who opens new doors when others close. We find friends in the design community that knows you and contributes in lending a helping hand. Let us be part of that for you too. Thank you all for your support. 

Great article about the Ultimate Marketing Tool, Great Customer Service. Explains in detail how customer service is the least expensive, and perhaps the most effective means of marketing one’s business. Although written for legal and financial industries it is useful to all small, medium, or large businesses.

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It can happen to anyone. One day you are on your vacation and the next day you are coming home to a firm who decided to close it’s doors after 50 years of service. This is what happened to me. The Interior Design profession has been evolving throughout the years and if you don’t keep up with time you will fall behind. Competition is fierce and it is also healthy, we drive to be the best in what we do and because of this we improve our methods.  I am not saying this was the case but things happen and what do we do when they do? Within time Azana illustrated goal is to create one of the biggest networks among designers ever built. We should be able to count on each other to maintain a stream of communication that will help us navigate through our professional timeline. I wish to express how important it is to maintain good working ethics and built a positive reputation. This is what people will remember you by and it is your name that lingers in the air.

I  received this spam message in my inbox today and thought I would share…
An elusive submarine

At base level, this just comes down to total transitional flexibility.
Most people believe that a food stamp figures out a cowboy, but they need to remember how hesitantly an inexorably surly skyscraper gets stinking drunk. When the bullfrog reads a magazine, a salad dressing around a mastadon procrastinates. A briar patch is phony. An ocean, a vacuum cleaner over a corporation, and a blood clot of the buzzard are what made America great! When a parking lot goes to sleep, the power drill laughs out loud.

If you too are blessed with awkward, funny spam feel free to post it.

If you’ve ever wondered how to read Google Adwords Reports here is a short introduction and explanation of everthing you need to know:

I was writing a pretty lengthy email to one of our clients tonight about how to read their google AdWords report and realized that I would probably be this same email over and over again. But, as business partner Harry Casimir likes to say, “never do something more than once, automate!”

Many of our clients are not technologically savvy, but I realize that even those who are (and this particular client is) might have trouble reading the default reports generated by Google. Maybe it’s their use of abbreviation or that some of the main elements of their reports are formulas, but I’ve noticed many of our clients at Unique ID have asked me to explain, in some form, their reports.

I am a huge proponent of Google AdWords, and like Google AdSense, it has revolutionized the web (but on the opposite spectrum) and it has led to the success of many of our web sites and the elation of many of our clients. But, as Action International explained at a recent Small Business Development seminar “You Must Measure Everything!” Many of our clients have requested detailed reports of their Google Adwords accounts. My employees and I are very familiar with the system, and consequently, the reports are easy to read, but for those unaquainted with the system I can understand their frustration. So I put together a simple guide to reading Google’s Adword reports (an explanation of each column of the report, names and prices have been changed to protect the innocent). Download An Example Google Adwords Report:

Date: The date or date range of the data.

Campaign: Arbitrary information that lets you know under what campaign the reporting information is for. In the examples’ case we only have one active campaign “Regionally Targeted”

Ad Group: Arbitrary information that lets you know under what ad group the reporting information is for. In the examples’ case we only have one active adgroup “Sounds.” In the case of other reports (depending on how your or your search marketing company have set up your account) there might be additional items.

Keyword Matching: The type of system the keyword was displayed on. Broad means google’s search engine or search engine affiliates (companies that use google’s software and utilities to drive their own search engines). Content means those sites that have agreed to run google’s ads through the adsense network.

Keyword Status: Shows the current status of the Keywords for that month (active, deleted, paused, etc.).

Keyword Min CPC: The minimum cost per click that was paid for term(s). This is just the absolute minimum Google charged for the specific term (most likely based on competition for the term you were bidding on).

Current Maximum CPC: Current maximum cost per click. This is the item that is adjusted to increase or decrease our terms rankings. This is the maximum amount we are willing to pay google for a single click for that term. Most of the time this is edited on a Ad Group wide level so every maximum cost per click should be the same. You can edit each keyterm individual and the report may reflect that.

Impressions: The number of times an ad was shown.

Clicks: The number of clicks we received.

CTR: Click through rate, clicks divided by impressions. This is one of the biggest measurements of the success of an account. A high click through rate means our ads and keywords are very well matched and targeted. Our standard measure for CTR is 0.5% or 1 click for every 200 impressions.

Average CPC: Average cost per click. The average price you paid for a click for that specific term.

Cost: Clicks x Average CPC (cost per click).

Avg Position: Average Position, or the position on google the ad appeared at. Typically a higher position means a higher CTR. And alternatively, accounts with higher click through rates typically receive better placement.

Conversions: the number of direct web contacts received through google. These are the number of people that fulfilled every step, they searched for your term found your ad relevant, clicked through to your site, and either signed up or purchased something. Click through rate is only a measure of web leads or contacts, some visitors might have been ‘converted’ through the telephone or direct email.

Conversion Rate: Conversions divided by clicks. If you had 3 people click through to your site for “chicage killgrass7” and 1 person actually contacted you through the web contact form you would have a conversion rate of 33% for that term.

Cost/Conversion: Cost divided by conversions. This is done on a per term basis and also as a total at the bottom.

…but were afraid to ask. Adaptive Path’s Dan Saffer on what developers need to know about their creative counterparts!

Found this funny and interesting article about Designers and Coders over at ThinkVitamin.com. The Article entitled Everything you wanted to know about designers is written by Adaptive Path’s Dan Saffer. The article humorously reveals some of the traits unique to and shared amongst Designers and Coders. I thought it was a great article highlighting some of the very problems and situations we at Azana and Unique ID have to deal with every day. What I found most interesting was the following:

Because design can be very subjective, everyone feels they can have an opinion on it. When’s the last time an business executive chimed in and told a developer how she should set up her CSS? Designers get that sort of advice all the time and it makes us cranky. We begin with very objective design goals, and then have to translate them into a carefully balanced choreography of subjective design elements. It’s a little reminiscent of a line from the movie Amadeus, when the Emperor comments on Mozart’s latest composition, “Your work is ingenious. It’s quality work. But there are simply too many notes, that’s all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.” And Mozart responds, “Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?”

Read the full article >>