If You Build It They Will Not Come.

Another common driver of change is current customers’ comments and feedback on the look, feel, and functionality of a website. While this is crucial to the design process, it is too easy to focus solely on your existing customer base and lose sight entirely of growing that base. In most cases, you don’t know what you don’t know;  while you may see an increase in site conversions, you won’t see an increase in traffic by making it look pretty. This initial bump is often caused by excitement and buzz about the “new” site, yet the buzz (and business) quickly fade back to previous levels.

The Seeds of Change

All of a sudden (or seemingly so) we’re noticing more businesses inquiring about optimizing their existing websites themselves or paying a firm like ours to optimize it for them (rather than redesigning it first). Somehow, it seems as if a collective conscious awakening has occurred and businesses are recognizing that driving new site traffic from search will lead to more business. The problem here, again, is, you don’t know what you don’t know. These sites are often years old (many times built by inexperienced “developers” or agencies more focused on looks than results), have no backlinks or PageRank built up over time, have no mechanism for getting fresh content onto the website let alone a CMS. Also, in many instances, a company’s expectation of SEO is way off base – expecting to score well for competitive terms in a very short timeframe. What gets me is how people make the assumption that by merely saying they are engaging in SEO they’ll displace hundreds or even thousands of websites for particular keywords or phrases is possible because they essentially “willed it to be so.”  As with so much in life, you need to have the right tools, the right content, and the right level of ongoing attention (SEO is never past tense) and WORK – remember, SEO revolves around content and building authority both of which require resources. Of course, this all starts with a strategy to get from where you are today to where you want to be, bringing the right resources to bear (time/money/effort), and executing the plan.  Once there is a plan in place, then look at what visitors experience when they arrive at the website (imagery, look, feel) and focus on improvements – not the other way around.

If you’re on the fence about what direction to take your Web presence, ask yourself (or your team) what the difference between H1, H2, H3, etc., tags means to search engine placement – or not. Ask them what Caffeine did for your Google search engine results. You trust an expert to do your broadcast marketing, print work (in many cases your invoices and letterhead), maybe even your on-hold message, so why would you not trust a professional to work in a space that you are inherently not familiar with? Give us a call, and let’s have a frank and open conversation about your Web presence and what it’ll take to achieve your goals. Now, what you do with that information…

I’ve heard people refer to Cirrus ABS as “a Fort Wayne Web Design Company”, and while local online marketing solutions and web design is a core focus, it hardly represents the totality of work we do.

Cirrus ABS has created many unique technology solutions over the years including this recently developed remotely updateable kiosk solution to display NAWCWD award recipients. This .NET application utilizes our eBusiness Suite content management system (CMS) for remote, network, or onsite (via the kiosk) management of the content and uses Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) for the dual display presentation (kiosk + large display). This allows for navigation presentation styles in line with current mobile platforms like hand gestures. The application includes configurable recipeint pages with the option to add up to two additional pages in singular or dual column formats. The system also creates daily backups.

Read more about our custom software development services.

Just don’t do it!

Does the size of your logo on your site matter?  It matters a little…in that your logo should be there.  But it shouldn’t be the focus on the page.  Do you want me to come to your website and just stare at your logo and not read any content?  No, doubt it…the point of your website is to drive me to an action, to pick up the phone, to learn more about you or to buy something.  Not to be hypnotized by your logo!

I’m only going to say this once…please, listen!  YOUR LOGO IS NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ON YOUR WEBSITE!  If you didn’t catch it the first time, re-read that…and again…and again…and again.

Why am I harping on this enough that I’m writing an entire blog dedicated to it?  Because one of the most common requests we hear as web designers is, “Can you make my logo bigger?”  Yep, we can.  No, you shouldn’t.  It does not “need to stand out,” in fact, it shouldn’t—at least not as the most important thing on the page.   It does not “need to draw extra attention,” again, it shouldn’t.   A giant logo on the page does not need to re-reinforce “who you are,” they already know who you are.  They came to you, remember?

Who is your logo most important to?  You.  That being said—your logo IS important.  A good solid logo goes a long way to good solid branding.  A few tips on logos:

• It should be on your website.  It does not need to be the focus on your website, nor repeated over and over again on your website, other than in places like the header and footer.
• It should be on everything else—your business cards, marketing pieces, company clothing, etc.  (on that note, if you do have a website, your website address should also be on every piece of marketing, emails, business cards and clothing—you name it, as well)
• It should always be the same.  The colors shouldn’t change with the seasons.  You should not re-brand every other quarter because you’re bored with your logo and you just want to spruce it up.  It should always be the same aspect ratio…meaning your logo proportions should be consistent.  You will obviously have different sized logos; that is fine as long as the shape is the same.  You should not size a logo down for something and decide to reshape it to make it fit somewhere better than its normal shape would.  If you saw the Nike logo and it was a really short, fat swoosh, you’d probably wonder if you were buying Nike or a knock-off Niko.
• If you do rebrand, because let’s face it, it does happen: be consistent.  Don’t keep some things with the old logo and some with the new.
• Your logo should be visible. Don’t tuck it into a corner and make it invisible–it SHOULD be seen because it is important.

Moral of the story?  You need to have a logo on your website.  It is not the focus of your site.  Think about even going to Google and doing a search.  You probably barely acknowledge the logo there—you already know who they are—you went to THEIR site…so the logo just kind of blends in as part of the page.  You would probably notice if it wasn’t there, but the size of it would not be a big deal…their logo is not what makes you go back to their site…and a bigger logo is unlikely to convert your site users into “business.”

I’ll stop you on the argument you’re probably posing already, “Yeah, exactly Google does it!  They change their logo with holidays and seasons and days of the week and colors, etc.”  Are you Google?  When you have the brand recognition of Google, go to town.  We won’t stop you.  In fact, do you want us to help design the different logo versions?  Otherwise, until you have the kind of brand power (or budget) Google or Nike has, “just don’t do it.”

If you have six minutes of your life to waste…watch this video on YouTube—at least the beginning!  Make My Logo Bigger Cream.  It’s a spoof sales video, exaggerating a common misconception that the bigger the logo, the better.

Hilton Kramer, an art critic for the The New York Times in the late 1960s once said, “The more minimal the art, the more maximum the explanation” and that quote rings true to the fundamentals of design itself. The more modern we get with our web design approach, the more minimal we want things to become. The more we want our small expressions to be conceived as larger explanations. In short, a clear and concise message throughout web design is ultimately the foreseeable interpretation to what we call “modern” design.

A brief history of web design thought -

If you remember anything about the Internet in the late 1990’s, you will remember personal web pages. The various culprits of this period were Tripod, Angelfire, AOL, and Yahoo. When personal web pages hit the scales of popularity, web design changed for good. Before that, we were used to getting our web sites delivered in white on black page schemes with as little graphical elements as needed.

But after this explosion of personal web pages, Internet users were bombarded with animated gifs, flashy text, and color schemes that would make even the most artistic of users cry out for a “less is more” approach. We became inundated with web design that turned everything “up to eleven,” and for that I guess we owe a little gratitude.

The creative spark of all those personal web page creators, while a bit misguided in terms of delivering a clear message, showed that we Internet users crave a little creativity in what we find on the web. What happened then as a larger movement during the late 1990’s? Businesses gave away to old HTML, to the white and black backgrounds, revamped content and design with streamlined graphical elements and added content that was reflective of an overarching company message—for example, AOL’s revamped message was “AOL Anytime, Anywhere.”

Gone were the days of simple links, text and pages. Now websites were integrating complex frameworks of html, or java menu systems combined with text, and additional graphical elements included in logos, headers, and footers. If you are interested in examples of this change, check out archive.org, search for Microsoft’s website, and look for the changes over time. In addition, look at how AOL redesigned their website in the 2000’s; how those changes are reflective of this larger movement towards a graphical, more concise, and modern approach to web design.

Modern Web Design -

Coming from this movement in the early 2000’s we have once again faced a revamp of the fundamentals of web design. Now with the inclusion of social media, and the draw of industry-related hot topics like embeddable type, web 3.0, xhtml and a slew of other catchy phrases, we are meeting up with our “modern” version of web design more frequently—we find many examples nowadays of what this is.

What many business, personal and blog sites are doing is emphasizing the need for a high-quality message, superior content, and using web design to fit those goals. With the introduction of newer HTML technologies, doors are opened to the designer’s creative powers much more. Designers are becoming less limited in what they can do, graphically or otherwise for a websites design.

We are not only bringing a larger approach and message to the websites of the 2010’s, but we are analyzing and improving everything else. From one-page layouts, typography, artistically merited logos, hand-drawn designs, typefaces, interactive approaches and to intuitive design advances, the model for web design has changed significantly since the inception.

The Minimalistic –

Throwing “old school” methods out the window, many websites feature an emphasizing design message that centers on what the artist would call “negative space,” or the empty space that surrounds a design. Textual elements, conceptual design choices, and an approach of simplicity will highlight this approach and reign supreme in terms of what is featured on so-called “modern” designed websites; for examples of these minimalistic designs check out typographica.org, pixelcraft.ie, or uxmag.com.

In essence, designers are cultivating, and shaping web site design with many more tools than they had in previous times. In the 2010’s and beyond, we are entering a time when web site design is becoming centralized on the “artistic implication,” combined with the visually stunning elements of the design itself—

In essence, the emphasizing of a “less is more” approach mixed with the advent of new technology, which creates all new spheres of web design methods and approaches.

And for what we have done here at Cirrus ABS, check out our portfolio section for a sample of our design approaches and practices that emphasize a modern style of web design.

Business to Business (B2B) lead generation has confounded many a sales director and CEO for some time.  A recent survey by global business information company OneSource shows that while direct outbound prospecting (the dreaded cold call) still accounts for the most qualified leads, your company’s website provides the next most qualified source (followed by inbound calls, email campaigns, events and tradeshows, social networking sites, direct mail, and finally webinars).  This study shows us that in B2B lead generation creating urgency (or a need) still remains a strong and viable lead generation tool beating out other direct (outbound) outreach methods like email and direct mail by 30% and 43% respectively.

Full eMarketer.com article

For inbound marketing, you website is approximately 10% more likely to generate a qualified lead than an inbound telephone call.  Proper site construction (site paths, navigational elements, calls to action, etc) should help site visitors self qualify and choose to engage.  This high level of intent is key and making sure you get in front of as many searchers as possible will increase your odds of generating highly qualified leads through your site.  Proper site construction will increase your lead conversion and strong search position will allow more searchers to find you. 

For more information about what Cirrus ABS can do to help your B2B Lead Generation, read more about our NetCentered Business Strategy, our Push Marketing programs, and our Web Development. Or contact us for a free needs assessment.

You picked your current web designer for a couple of reasons. Their portfolio looked flashy – they had some unique looking sites and great designs. Oh, and they were cheap; actually very cheap in comparison to some better known competitors. But do they have a business strategy behind their design? Do they understand web best practices? Do they have multiple departments specializing in areas such as search engine optimization, research and development, and business analysis or did you hire Bob from church, your nephew who is going to college for web design, or a 2 person show working out of a spare bedroom in their mom’s house? Or better yet did you just have your IT guy set up the site because he knows all about that “computer stuff” and he’s already on your payroll?  Now ask yourself these questions – would you let your nephew do the taxes or bookkeeping for your business? Is your IT guy well versed in online marketing or just tech savvy? Why do you let your website, your public face to the internet world, have any less importance to you than other aspects of your business? After all, research has shown we spend more time as a society on the internet than doing anything else, well, besides sleeping.

Here are 5 signs that your penny pinching may be costing you money in the long run in lost business.

Roadblocks

Do you have an “enter” page or a flash introduction to your website? If so, you might be deterring potential customers from ever finding out what it is that you do. As a consumer I want efficiency. I am lazy and when I want information, I want it now. When you put up an obstacle, another hoop for me to jump through, I get frustrated which makes me leave. Although you think that video intro is awesome, I could care less. Oh and that music you have in the background, it’s giving me a headache.

The Yuck Factor

Your site looks like it was designed around the birth of the internet. It very well might be because Bob, in fact, did design it and it looks just as bad as that mustard stain on his button down shirt.  The color scheme, pictures, and technology are outdated and hideous. Plus, unlike that Member’s Only jacket from the 80s that you have hanging in your closet, website design doesn’t come back into style. At least the internet hasn’t been around long enough for that to happen. Chances are if your website looks this way I’m either going to think that you’re no longer in business or that you’re a second-rate company that I don’t really want to deal with anyway. After all, the internet is all about image.

Huh? Your company does what?

I landed on your site because you came up on the search engines for what I was interested in. Plus your home page is sprinkled with some words and phrases that are hot buttons for me. Yet I can’t seem to figure out what it is exactly that you do. That and I don’t know what to do next because you haven’t told me. See as a consumer, I need to be told what to do. That’s why I pay $4 for a cup of burnt-tasting coffee at Starbucks and shop at Wal-Mart even though the grocery store down the street has a much better selection of produce. Proper communication is vital to my understanding and taking action. If you aren’t conveying your message appropriately or in a clear and concise manner then you’re probably doing yourself injustice and confusing me. With a less than powerful marketing message you’re falling short which means your website isn’t converting and I’m not buying.

Too Many Choices

Your homepage has way too many images, pictures, links, buttons, advertisements, banners, text, graphics, rotating flash, widgets, etc. You get the point. If your navigation is overly complex with an endless abundance of choices all you’re doing is confusing me. I don’t know what to pay attention to, what’s important, where to click next. Your site should guide me down an intuitive path of correct choices. Too much thinking causes indecisiveness and causes me, your potential customer, to lose focus; which equals you not getting the sale.

Playing Hide-N-Seek

Atlantis is supposedly the greatest civilization that has ever existed.  The problem is that nobody has ever been able to find it.  Your website could be the ultimate information and sales machine but if I’m not landing on it then it doesn’t really count for much. If you aren’t showing up on the first or second page of the search engines for keywords that I’m typing into Google or Yahoo, then what’s your site really worth?  You might as well be parked at the bottom of the ocean next to Atlantis because your company is just a myth. I have to be able to find your website in order for it to produce results.

If your website is suffering from any of these symptoms give us a call at 260-420-2222 or visit our site online at www.cirrusabs.com.  We can help you develop an effective website and strategy.

Web design, like any openly subjective field that uses the term “design”, is as fluid as it comes.  Trends, preferences, “best practices”, heck your mood all go into what YOU consider good website design.  The look, the feel, the message conveyed by the visuals are all personal – BUT, and this is a big but, you must project a professional image that is easily navigated and compels site visitors to engage – your web design must do this for you.

So what exactly am I talking about?  Let me start with negatives – Front Page is dead.  Burn those words from your vocabulary and anything that looks like it comes from the Front Page era.  If your web design looks like it’s from the 90’s, why on earth would I want to trust you with my business?  If you can’t update your website’s design in over a decade, how well do you take care of improving your products or services?

Next, don’t be afraid of the word “template” design – be afraid of BAD templates.  You need a professional image.  You dress well, you make your customer-facing employees dress well, why would you select a web design from some cheapie “build your own” site that looks as low-rent as the monthly payment?  Your business isn’t low-rent, is it?  A contemporary web design template that looks fresh, is professionally personalized to your business, has all the modern features like social networking feeds and icons, fresh site content feeds (news, events, blog summaries etc) is fine.  Just make sure the imagery and logo are up to snuff.  Nothing upsets me more than seeing a great web design let down by a low-res logo and imagery!

Next, do you want to trust your 5MP camera for all your brochures, packaging, or tradeshow collateral?  Sure you don’t, so why would you trust your aunt’s great nephew’s girlfriend’s brother to design your website?  Does he/she/it have any understanding of business processes, web best practices, or conversion paths?  If you want to be found on the web you need to forget about having a site trapped in Flash – it was cool 8 years ago, it’s annoying today.  You also need to forget about doorway pages or “enter” pages – they weren’t cool, ever.  Don’t stand in the way of your potential customer.  Your web design should funnel the site visitor to an action quickly and efficiently. Have diverse product offerings?  How you design the website is crucial to not alienating different market segments.  Your friend Bob who learned some basic HTML at the learning annex probably doesn’t quite get it, why would you trust your businesses future to Bob?

OK, now that the negatives are out of the way let me address the positives…

Sorry, it’s tough.  Web design is just too subjective.  I guess my closing advice is to make sure you are doing everything in your power to pay attention to market trends, what your competitors’ websites look like, what your analytics tell you about your conversion and bounce rates, etc.  Make sure you have budgeted some minor freshening each year, a website’s shelf life is not that long.  Your web design is probably stale, dated, or worse – at least make sure you’re site is built to 1024×768 resolution!  Nothing says old and cheap like 640×480 layout (that hasn’t been cool since what, Windows 95?). 

There, hope I gave you some things to think about.  Please note, I’m not a web designer, nor a developer – I’m a sales guy who has a beef with bad web design that impedes your ability to sell properly.  For more information on what our professional design team can do for you please read our general design page, our website design page, or contact us for more information.

We’ve all heard of the Dodo – the flightless, clumsy, and seemingly dim-witted bird that once inhabited the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. It is a classic case of extinction and, in fact, it’s the first-ever recorded instance of the removal of a species in modern civilization. This bird forever left the earth because it did not react fast enough to change. When humans started colonizing its home, bringing with them their dogs, pigs, and other livestock, the Dodo didn’t react, didn’t have any means of defense, and didn’t even recognize humans as a possible predator (although many accounts suggest that this bird wasn’t very tasty). Needless to say, the Dodo vanished as a result of its inability to evolve quickly enough to change in its environmental settings.

Today a new environmental condition is causing another species to become extinct. The culprit of this new wave of extinction is called the internet and it’s targeting companies with outdated business and marketing models. Large or small, Fortune 500 or mom-and-pop shop, no business is safe. The internet, like it or not, is the most powerful social and marketing tool that the world has ever seen. I see many businesses today that are trying not to acknowledge the fact that it exists or that its’ power doesn’t apply to their industry. It’s almost as if these companies are burying their heads in the sand pretending it’s not there and waiting for this “fad” to pass.

To their credit, I believe that many business leaders out there understand the internet’s power – they’re using their computers at work to check their bank accounts and pay bills or using the Fandango App on their Android phones to look up movie times and purchase tickets, yet they aren’t able to equate this to their own businesses; especially if these businesses don’t have products that can be sold with an online shopping cart.  It’s at this point that I’m going to share an enlightening fact with everyone: We are a research-based society and, as such, we turn to the easiest source of information which, at this point in time, happens to be the web. The product or service we want information on is irrelevant and ranges from everyday items to major purchases. Why would I waste my time looking for a phone book or sifting through a large directory when I can type “Chinese food” into a Google search when I’m feeling hungry? And truth be told, if you don’t come up on my Google search then you’ve probably just eliminated yourself from my short list of places to eat.

Many of today’s businesses don’t understand the powerful, cost-effective tool that they have in front of them. Instead they throw their effort and advertising dollars into things like untargeted direct mail or radio commercials in the hopes that someone who cares is both paying attention and will actually remember who they are and how to get their product or service. Forget the fact that there are 3000 people searching for [insert your product or service here] on Google each month. Smart business leaders today are raising their hands and stepping in front of these qualified lines instead of hoping to accidentally bump into someone that needs them through shotgun strategies. I’m not saying that other forms of advertising aren’t important. You just have to look at your objectives and ROI. So my advice to business leaders – adapt to the times and embrace the internet; it is cost-effective, has a targeted audience, and chances are that your competitors already have. After all, businesses at times do go the way of the Dodo. It’s just that we never hear about it because they weren’t marketing correctly in the first place.

The Auto Industry’s use of Twitter to shave costs and guide product development

I know, I know, you’ve heard enough about General Motors in recent months but the company has recently done something so outrageous that it has to be discussed.  Historically, GM has shaved product development costs through a process known as “badge engineering” or simply offering the same product under different brands with minor updates to content, style, and, well, badging.  You may be familiar with this strategy in classics such as the Chevy Camaro / Pontiac Firebird, the Chevy Cavalier/Pontiac Sunbird/Cadillac Cimarron (dubbed one of the worst cars of all time by Time magazine) and more recently with the Chevy Traverse, Saturn Outlook, GMC Acadia, and Buick Enclave SUVs.  While this strategy worked for many years, eventually the product becomes so dilute the savings in engineering costs are outweighed by the lack of consumer interest.

Flash forward to “Now”.  GM has recently exited bankruptcy with a new focus on its 4 core brands (Chevy, Buick, Cadillac and GMC), selling off Saturn, Pontiac, and Hummer to the highest bidder.  The Buick brand, oft positioned as a “luxury” nameplate but only finding traction with the Bingo crowd, is being repositioned as “hip” and “contemporary” in an attempt to decrease the core demographic by several decades.  Only problem with Buick is it doesn’t offer the latest “hot product”—a small crossover utility vehicle (CUV).  Now, GM offers the Chevy Equinox, Cadillac SRX, and the yet to be released GMC Terrain all based off the same platform as the soon-to-be retired Saturn Vue.  But the Vue offers a hybrid powertrain option which will resonate with the “hip” and “contemporary”… Viola!  Buick’s answer in the form of, you guessed it, badge engineering.

So how does this relate to product planning, branding, and the web?  Well you see, GM announced the new Buick CUV at the Center for Automotive Research’s Management Briefing Seminars in Traverse City, MI and within a week of the announcement, the once giant of the automotive industry was lambasted on just about every online blog, forum, and media outlet for reverting to its old ways and pulled the plug on the whole program!

“It does show that GM is now agile enough to kill a future product this quickly,” says IHS Global Insight analyst Aaron Bragman. “Or you can look at it as GM has not quite gotten its house in order. This thing should never have been released.”

Put another way, GM, is now using the web to speak directly with customers, industry analysts, and the general public through the blogosphere and social-media sites like Twitter.  Christopher Barger, GM’s director of social media asserted the company reacted based on customer input on Twitter and other means. “Lots of feedback played into Buick crossover cancellation, but it does show that you CAN change the world w/140 chars or less,” Barger tweeted and that about says it all. 

Is social media the preferred media of your customers, prospects, and contacts?  I can’t say for certain but I can say that “breaking the mold” and using the transparency of the web to communicate with your target audience, specifically allowing your “target audience” to communicate with you will lead to far more harmonious outcomes at a much higher rate of return than any method in history.