Category: news

Looking Back at 2023, Looking Forward to 2024

Posted on by Stephen

Illustration created for Johnny B Painting

Looking Back at 2023

2023 was personally, and for Schildbach Design, a great year. With the COVID pandemic behind us, and having spent my first full year living in a rural environment in decades, I’m able to focus more on my business and creative projects. Half way through the year, I developed a clearer picture of what my clients were needing. I’ll explain this with a percentage breakdown of what kind of work Schildbach Design did last year, including some personal work projects.

46% Web Design

WordPress sites continue to be what my clients need, or they are flexible and agree that because it is my specialty, I should build and design within a framework I know well. Almost half of my time at work is building websites, redesigning old sites, or adding additions to old sites.

19% Administration

Anyone who runs their own business knows how much administrative work is required. Almost 1/5th of my time is email, cleaning and organizing my computer and office, digital paperwork, record keeping, taxes, estimates, applications, and invoicing. All of this mundane work is essential for running my business.

17% Illustration

Partially separate from Schildbach Design, is my previous career of being an illustrator. Website illustration is an alternative to stock art if you have the budget. Unrelated to my client websites, I also create product illustration, children’s book illustrations, and editorial illustration part time.

8% Fine Art

Entirely separate from Schildbach Design is my fine art. Occasionally, I have art patrons who will commission me to create a painting for them. Or, I occasionally will create drawings for group gallery shows. In keeping with my attention to client work, the percentage of time I put toward these creative endeavors is small.

4% Graphic Design

I’ve been doing graphic design professionally for 30 years but there was very little request for it in 2023. The hardest part about this digital download economy we live in is fields like graphic design have been replaced by templates and downloading existing designs. Starting in 2023, AI has replaced creatives by typing a command line to create a logo. I am deeply saddened by this. I miss the times of David Carson and Milton Glaser, two graphic designers who taught me to think creatively and take risks.

4% Photography

It is quite laughable that I did as much architectural photography as I did graphic design considering I’m not a photographer. But, one of my web design clients needed architectural photography for his website portfolio, and I have a camera that can do wide angle shots for home interior photography.

1% Videography

Occasionally I will do videography for my clients. They are simple videos for social media and YouTube posts. I shoot the videos with my mirrorless camera, and do editing in Adobe Premiere.

1% Marketing Schildbach Design

Most of my clients are referrals and repeat clients, so I don’t need to market Schildbach Design very much. Marketing includes SEO, social media, newsletters, and print and online advertising I do to attract new clients. I’m grateful to my clients for all the referrals and repeat work!

Looking forward to 2024

Starting today, January 3rd, 2024, my rates for hourly work is going up from $75 an hour to $80 an hour. I will still offer the same web maintenance packages at 5% and 10% off my hourly rate.

About half way through 2023, I made a change to my business strategy that I will be continuing through 2024. Prior to July of 2023, I was putting a lot of energy into trying to get graphic design, illustration assignments, and new website builds because these are the most creative projects. I’ve become more of a realist in that I’m focusing more on what my clients need. The most important things I’ve found that my clients need is consulting, web maintenance, systems administration (hosting, domain, and email setup), production (posting site content), and increasing their visibility (SEO, newletters, social media). So, in 2024, I’m focusing on cleaning up existing websites and working on the peripheral tasks associated with a website (like search engine optimization), and utilizing the best tools to serve my clients.

Happy New Year!

I look forward to working with you in 2024.

Upgrading to Google Analytics 4

Posted on by Stephen

Do you need help upgrading to Google Analytics 4? Contact me.

Upgrading to Google Analytics 4 is necessary for most of us. Google will stop processing data through Universal Analytics (Google Analytics 3) and has been sending email reminders to anyone using UA to upgrade to Google Analytics 4. UA will be replaced by GA4 on July 1, 2023 (less than a month from now). The shock to many is that UA data does NOT import into the new GA4 system. You will only be able to access your old UA dashboard for about 6 months after July 1, 2023 and then some time after December 2023, your UA data will be deleted! I’m here to remind you, and you have options.

If you decide to do it yourself, here is “a how to” from a web designer. There are several ways to do this, I’m showing the approach that works for small businesses needing simple analytics to track their website traffic.

Exporting Universal Analytics

The good news is that you can export and backup data from Universal Analytics, but the bad news is you can’t import it into Google Analytics 4. All instructions are best applied while on a desktop.

  1. To export UA data, start in the main UA dashboard. Click on Behavior > Site Content > All Pages in the left column.
  2. Change the Data Range in the upper right and corner to fit your needs, I suggest selecting the current year to have data for that year, then repeat this procedure to create a report for each of the preceding years.
  3. Scroll to the bottom of this data and choose the amount of Rows you want in the report.
  4. Now choose Export in the upper right hand corner, and the type of export. I’ll suggest Google Sheets, Excel, or CSV because you can clean up and modify the spreadsheet.
  5. There is so much more you can do customizing reports, there are several experts on Google Analytics you can refer to. I like Loves Data.

GA4 Migration and Setup

If you are still using Universal Analytics in June, 2023, you have less than a month to migrate to Google Analytics 4. Universal Analytics stops collecting data July 1, 2023. When going to Google Analytics, while in Universal Analytics, you will see a count down to the time remaining that UA collects data. You will have the option of “Go to setup assistant“, accepting the auto install of GA4 by clicking the button, or choosing “no thanks“. Either choice is fine, but I get far more articles I’ve read saying it is better to set it up yourself, so choose “no thanks“. The biggest reason I can come up confirming why so many articles suggest setting it up yourself is the auto setup uses your old Universal Analytics tag (script) on your website which has been known to cause problems loosing or reading certain kinds of data. One may never notice the problems, but I’m taking the advice from the experts. You want to have a new GA4 tag (script) on your site. Even better, you want to use Google Tag Manager to implement your tracking tag.

Using the Set Up Assistant

There are two ways to set up GA4. First, lets do this using the GA4 Set Up Assistant. Start in Universal Analytics. You know you are in Universal Analytics when there are 3 columns (GA4 has two).

  • Click on GA4 set up assistant in the top middle column.
  • Click on the Get Started button to create a new GA4 property.
  • Uncheck the “enable data collection...” button so that you have a new (and better) tag on your website. Whether you keep or remove the old UA tag on your website has no importance because data collection stops July 1st, 2023.
  • Click “create and continue“.
  • Select install manually and copy your new GA4 Google Tag (script).
  • Place this tag in all of your pages on your website in the <head> similarly as you did for Universal Analytics. Now, or after July 1, 2023, you can remove your old UA tag on your website pages.
  • While still looking at the Tag code in Google Analytics, click the “confirm” button in the upper right hand corner.
  • Then, click “Go to your GA4 property“, this takes you to the GA4 area of Google Analytics.
  • Select “Data Streams”. If you just have a website, you will see your one website data stream.
  • This completes the GA4 set up process using the assistant.

GA4 Setup Using the Google Tag Manager

  • While in your GA4 property, select the “data streams” tab in the second column.
  • Select the data stream that was created for us.
  • Copy the “measurement id“.
  • Go to Google Tag Manager (essentially a different site)
  • Click on “Tags” on the left
  • You will probably see a Universal Analytics tag. Whether you do or not, you will be creating a new tag. Click on the “new tag” button on the top right.
  • Name it “GA4 Tag” or whatever you plan on tracking.
  • Select “Tag Configuration“.
  • Choose “GA4 configuration” as the tag type.
  • Paste the measurement id we copied from our data stream in Google Analytics.
  • Select “Triggering” and choose the “initialization – all pages” trigger. this will fire the tag on all the pages of our website (as long as the new GA4 script successfully embeds on the website).
  • Save the tag.
  • You can “Preview” the tag to make sure all pages are firing on the the website.
  • Click “Submit“.
  • Give your update a name and click “Publish” changes.

GA4 Wrap Up and Clean Up

  • Head back to Google Analytics in the GA4 property.
  • In the data stream, look at enhanced measurement. This area has options worth researching and apply to the data stream. For example, select the configuration icon (the gear) in enhanced measurements. Enable features that apply to your tracking needs.
  • Save your enhanced measurements.
  • Go back to the set up assistant, and look through the Property Settings. This is another area that you could research and choose the settings that you need.
  • There is also an area to set up your connection to Google Ads.
  • There are so many options for customization and set up of GA4, that I recommend going to someone like Loves Data for a GA4 checklist.

Cleaning up the setup of GA4

  • Head back to Universal Analytics.
  • In the GA4 Setup Assistant, deselect “automatically set up a basic GA4 property“.
  • Head forward to GA4. In order to get the alert to be removed saying the setup is not complete (0/7 marked complete), mark all the items in the setup assistant as complete. Click the arrow of an item and mark as complete. Once you have marked all items complete, update warnings will be removed.

Conclusions about the separate GA4 Property

As we’ve mentioned Google can set up a GA4 property automatically for you, but most of my research from data experts says not to. You do not want to connect your new GA4 property with your old Universal Analytics tag. Google may have already created a GA4 property for you and connected it to your old UA tag. You may want to remove it, and start fresh. But, if you just look at page views and basic information from your data, the automatic setup Google does is fine. Most important is to know that these two options exist and to choose the best option for you and your business.

2023 Rebranding of Schildbach Design

Posted on by Stephen

At this time, Schildbach Design is a sole proprietorship. I, Stephen Schildbach, own and operate Schildbach Design. I do almost all the branding and marketing, and only outsource if I’m over booked or my client needs a skill I can’t provide. Those revisiting the site, you probably noticed a completely new design.

Schildbach Design’s Business Identity from 2015-2022

Rebranding my own business in 2023 had a couple of core reasons:

These are arguably more serious times, with our society going through many layers of change during what is hopefully the tail end to COVID. In my personal life, I enjoy iconoclastic imagery, but it hasn’t felt right these past couple of years for my business to project that personality. I also have a serious side, and have decided to match the present times and send out a more serious mood in my branding.

My new logo is clear and direct, yet still shows my love for unique design

The other reason for my rebranding is people want clarity. In the last decade, websites, and even businesses, could be design and art experiences in and of themselves with no clear portfolios or branding message. This was attractive to a certain client, but now, because of the increased instability in our day to day lives, this kind of elusive branding seems to confuse and turn off clients. More than ever we are image-saturated and time-deficient. People increasingly want clarity, with a “show me the work” attitude.

WordPress 6.1 in 2023

Posted on by Stephen

More than ever before, I would recommend WordPress as your platform of choice for most website solutions. As we all know, new technologies are continually rendering old technologies obsolete. For several years there was a time when I was thinking Squarespace would put WordPress out of business. I was concerned about Squarespace’s popularity because, as a designer, Squarespace takes all the design choices out of the equation, making the work nothing but sliding boxes around on the screen. WordPress had the accurate reputation for being “complicated”, while Squarespace’s drag and drop builder was easy to use by even novice web users. It also did not help that WordPress is a prime target of attack from hackers due to it’s popularity.

In 2022 I saw a shift where WordPress’ beta visual editor was “catching up” to the ease of use that Squarespace provides. And, plugins like Wordfence were doing an excellent job warding off hackers, and technologies like Google’s recaptcha was stopping spam.

In 2023, I was confirmed that I had made the right choice continuing to double down on WordPress. Their new user interface and editor allows me to design anything, while still making it easy for me to had the maintenance over to clients if they choose to do the maintenance themselves. More often than not, I’ve found it to be better for me to continue maintaining the site, because most of my clients are too busy with their own business to add web maintenance to their montly tasks.

The new core of WordPress comes with a theme that can essentially replace most any other theme. Even though I feel badly for all the designers who made themes for WordPress anticipating this to be a never ending source of income, I was finding that this saturation of theme options was missing the point of design entirely. You don’t need thousands of design options to pick from, you need a designer who with a few key choices builds a design from the same provided “theme”. The 2023 theme does just that. I will be able to use this theme to build any design. It is essentially the scaffolding for a house, of a skeleton theme. I’ve built my 2023 redesign with this theme.

See how Schildbach Design can design your new site with this theme.

The Seattle Series, Classical Music Performances in 2022

Posted on by Stephen

We all have made huge sacrifices living for two years during COVID. One of those sacrifices is seeing live music. For all of you who love music as much as I do, this has had an effect on my overall happiness. For this article, I’ll be focusing on what some of my clients do to make the world a better place, instead of writing about the web development and design behind the project. But, I will have more to say about the project from a technical standpoint in another article to come because of the new paths I’ve gone down as a web developer and some important tips for people who want to sell tickets on their website.

Chamber Music in Seattle

One of my favorite forms of classical music is smaller ensembles as experienced in chamber music. As stated on their website, “The Seattle Series is a chamber-festival-meets-recital series, featuring ad hoc combinations of awe-inspiring artists who perform together for one evening to create a magical moment in time.  Outstanding Seattle-based artists are given the opportunity to invite their colleagues from around the nation and globe to join them for a unique collaboration, unavailable elsewhere.” The location for this series in the intimate Women’s University Club located in downtown Seattle.

Efe Baltacigil, cello, and Anna Polonsky will be playing piano on Fri., February, 22, 2022, at 8pm. Dmitry Sinkovsky, violin, Meeka Quan DiLorenzo, cello, and Jonathan Oddie, harpsichord, will be playing Thurs., March 10, 2022 at 7pm. And, Demarre McGill, flute, will be playing Fri. May 6th, 8pm. All of these musicians are top players, some residing in Seattle some traveling internationally. See their amazing credentials on The Seattle Series Website.