Chronicles
Design advice, web trends, and inspiration
Black-Owned Marketing Agencies
At Ruby Slipper, we are committed to supporting and promoting Black-owned businesses and organizations. Here we showcase Black-owned marketing agencies from across the United States that are helping clients boost their community presence. KSW Social Media...
15 Non-Profits We Absolutely Love
Here at Ruby Slipper we love to use our powers to deliver exceptional web design and marketing services for non-profits who are making a positive change in the world! There’s no better feeling than helping an organization further its goals by inspiring audiences to...
Tips for Improving Your Mailchimp Delivery to Gmail
Mailchimp is an amazing tool for creating marketing emails that promote your organization and engage with fans and supporters. But so often, those beautifully-designed emails land in the spam folder in Gmail. Why? Gmail does a great job of filtering emails to its...
Ruby Slipper Wins Five Website Design Awards
We are clicking our ruby heels with excitement over our recent web design awards for the Health Care Coalition of Southern Oregon (HCCSO) website! This shiny new site, launched in January 2021, and has won five design awards since launch: Bronze in the 2021 Indigo...
Taking the Leap into Entrepreneurship
This is the companion article to the 2021 Women's Leadership Conference of Southern Oregon speech "Taking the Leap into Entrepreneurship." Erin O'Kelley Muck spoke with women who dream of starting their own businesses. Here, she shares advice for budding...
Using Canva & PicMonkey for Quick & Easy Image Editing
A picture (or an infographic, or a logo) is worth 1,000+ words… Stunning visuals can help capture your audience’s attention, support your written content, communicate your value and solidify your brand. Masterfully crafted graphics, icons and overlays are incredibly...
Why Hire a Full-Service Marketing Agency?
If you feel like marketing is overwhelming, you’re not alone! There are TONS of ways to promote your business: your website, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, email campaigns, Google and Facebook ads, search engine optimization, brochures,...
Designing for Emotion
Designing for Emotion - 1st Edition By Aaron Walter As designers, we want our work to rise above the sea of sameness. To be remarkable. Memorable. To make a lasting impression. This only happens when we achieve delight. In this quintessential book, written in 2011 and...
10 Best Web Design Practices
The secret ingredients! Use this handy checklist of the best web design practices to make sure your site is working hard for your business... 1. Immediately Communicate What You Offer People make up their minds about a site in 5 seconds or less. Make sure that they...
Our Favorite Websites
Design that inspires! We track our favorite websites that beam as shining examples of eye-catching engagement. Here are some current faves... National Park Foundation www.nationalparks.org Gracious, where to begin? Dreamy photos, creative color tinting, the...
Southern Oregon Wildfire Relief
A Windstorm & Spark of Fire... On September 8, 2020, a ferocious fire tore through our valley, decimating north Ashland and the towns of Talent and Phoenix. 2500 homes were lost, countless businesses, and thousands of families displaced. 40% of families with...
Zoom Video Tutorial
Want to learn how to use Zoom video conferencing? This video walks you through how to: start a meeting and invite a person mute start / stop the video view in speaker or gallery view (the Brady Bunch view!) share your screen give mouse control to another person chat...
Making A Corporate Video
Buckle up buttercup! In early 2019, we hired Nickolas Alexander to create a video about Ruby Slipper. WOW — massive undertaking! Here are the steps and what we learned about making a corporate video. 1. Initial Discovery After interviewing Nickolas and really liking...
Photo Resources & Advice
As you fly about the web in these fast-paced days, what is one way a site can immediately convey an idea? Photography. Yes, it is worth a thousand words. Your eyeballs understand a photo in a microsecond. As such, it is imperative to find the right photos for your...
Life Changing Business Books
SO much of what we read these days is web-based, but nothing beats a classic business book. Here are a handful of Ruby Slipper's fave business books... Building A Story Brand By Donald Miller Every day, most business leaders make a mistake that costs them money: they...
Leadership in Action
"We do not need magic to change the world, we all carry the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better." - J.K. Rowling On May 10, 2019, The Women's Leadership Conference of Southern Oregon held their 6th annual conference. The theme...
Web Design Resources
These are the places we go to when we need to figure out something in a pinch! Here's our list of top web design resources... Best Buy eWaste Recycling SO grateful to Best Buy for offering this program — the take TONS of stuff! Spent ink cartridges, old hard drives,...
StoryBrand
Does your website pass the grunt test? Can a customer look at your website and in under 5 seconds answer these questions? What do you offer? How will it make my life better? What do I need to do to buy it? Donald Miller of StoryBrand calls this passing the grunt test....
Erin’s Story
I am a self-taught website designer, someone Malcolm Gladwell would peg at the right time in history. For me, that was the fledgling web-tech era… In 1994, I was a college student at CU Denver. A friend pulled me into a computer lab, her eyes shiny. Erin, you have GOT...