Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

This video gets to the heart of what I want to discuss today.

When your firm or company hires a creative agency to design a website, advertisement or marketing materials to support your business goals, I hope you do so because they are professional, experienced, and knowledgeable.

Then, when you’ve selected your professionals, hopefully you’ve provided clear direction and then stepped back so they could “work their magic.” Unfortunately, those of us in the creative world all too often experience the dreaded “Design by Committee.” It can be either a challenge or a curse. Often what happens is the creative team brings back solid work that gets MUNGed (Messed With Until No Good) to death.

That adage came to mind today when reading the Smashing Magazine article on design by committee.

Dare to be different

Just last week we presented a concept to a client. The concept was designed to be different from his competitors. It incorporated a generous use of white space, and had an open feeling. It was elegant just as their product is elegant, but it was distinctively different from their competitors. Upon first viewing there was a resounding “We love it” and as we progressed through options for other aspects of the project, we were all feeling good. At the end of the meeting however, the client began second guessing himself and the open, unrestricted feeling of the concept. He said, it “didn’t look like a webpage.”  The client proceeded to point out how all his competitors had website pages that looked more like pages of paper lying on a surface. He then suggested that he might show it to a group of up to 20 people and get their input. Our questions and response, “Why would you do that? What would it achieve? We know you want to stand out, be interesting, be different. And we agree you also need to love your website. But you don’t need a committee to each add their 2¢ and MUNG the idea.”

Know what works

I champion usability research and understanding click patterns, heatmaps, gender differences, trends and other insights informing us how people behave when interacting with websites. We expect our clients to know their brand promise and we expect to bake that into our concept. We prefer not to have concepts chewed up and spit out of the mouth of a committee like so much chewing tobacco on the sidewalk.

Know that when your designer brings you an idea that they’ve torn up way more than you are seeing, that they’ve tested, vetted and destroyed the weak ones and have brought their very best professional recommendations.  And isn’t’ that why you hired them?

Are you using excuses to keep you from doing what needs to be done?

“You don’t have any idea of how much money you’re losing by not having a professionally designed website.” ~Mary Cantando

I’ve been receiving The Woman’s Advantage Newsletter and have really come to enjoy the words of wisdom from Mary Cantando. In her recent newsletter she referenced the video below and I found myself nodding in agreement.

I’ve been on all sides of this argument; as a client; as a representative of an agency and as an entrepreneur. Mary’s right. There are things on which you must spend money. One of them is professional website design.

Here is an excerpt from her video that she shared in her most recent newsletter. She urges us to stop making excuses for why are aren’t successful.

We can all make excuses as to why we don’t do the things that will help our businesses thrive, but really, there is just no excuse!

Recently Cheryl was a presenter to the Oakbrook Business Council of the Greater Dorchester Summerville Chamber of Commerce. Her presentation was about social media and how to use it to present your brand and reach customers.

The main point I made to those in attendance is that small business owners must understand what their brand is and must engage in some form of social media because that is where their customers are. Compelling stats from several sources allowed me to show precisely why.

Branding & Social Media is available for you to download.

You may use this presentation for your own information, and please link back to us if sharing.

CBS Web Designs recommends that all our clients have an easy to update website including a blog whose subject is your business expertise. While it's great to have a blog, it's best if it is not a free one from blogger or WordPress.com. Having your blog in your own domain means greater search results as well as the ability to demonstrate your business acumen and expertise.

In our development work, we use WordPress as it allows for very flexible integration between pages and posts (blog) and can be branded with your businesses' unique look and feel.

We also recommend that you update your website very regularly. I tell my clients that they must regularly update contents to achieve better results in  Google rankings.

In case you're wondering what other recommendations are important for you as a small business in 2010, this post in Small Business Trends is spot on.

If you have questions regardnig how to implement any of these items, give us a call. It's time your small business began benefiting from the 24/7 web.

Just spotted a great article over at Smashing Magazine on the realities of corporate blogging.

Great contrast between the corporations that “get it” and those that don’t. As we should all know by now, if you’re not having a conversation you’re probably talking to yourself.

Worthwhile read.