by Marcus Ledbetter | Oct 31, 2013 | Web Marketing, Website Design
I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to Derek Halpern’s Social Triggers podcast of late. Derek has shaped (and explains how he shapes) his own personal brand as “that marketing psychology guy”. I found him through Pat Flynn, who produces another great podcast.
Derek’s most recent podcast is an interview with Adam Alter, author of Drunk Tank Pink. The book and podcast cover how logos, colors, and sounds affect our behavior and how that plays into marketing.
Web Design Tips: Use Red For Slow Load Times
One part of the podcast touches on web design and conversions in particular. Derek does not provide a transcription of his podcasts (with good reason, he wants you to listen), but I thought this was very valuable information for those of us in the web industry, so I have taken the liberty of transcribing that section below.
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by Marcus Ledbetter | Jun 28, 2013 | One Week Website, Web Marketing, Website Design, Websites
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See the post below the website launch plan graphic for more details and links to examples of each item.
Are you working on a new website or a complete redesign of your current site? Let’s talk about the plan and how to build buzz around the launch.
- Set A Firm Date. The best thing you can do for yourself and your web design team is to make a hard deadline and publicize it. (If you don’t set a real deadline, the project will drag on and on. How long does it take to actually build a professional website for a small business? One Week. Contact us today for details on our One Week Website process.) Setting a firm date gets people excited and gives them a reason to put something on the calendar. Here’s what Pat Flynn has to say about setting dates to build buzz: “When people know what date something is going to happen, not only will people anticipate that specific date and get excited about it, but if you have a specific schedule you can follow leading up that launch date, you can better drop hints and generate excitement leading up to that date.”
- Post A 1-Page Landing Page. Here are a few great one-page WordPress themes with countdown clocks. Make sure and ask for email addresses, so you can contact them when the site goes live. Then follow up with more email marketing in the future. We can help with that through Inbound Marketing and The Gravity Strategy. Even if this is a redesign of your current site, you can do a one-page landing page that you can promote in the sidebar or home page of your current site. That lets folks know something better is coming. By now, you hate your current site and you want folks to know something better is right around the corner.
- Use A Test Group. You can send your test site out to a few influentials in your industry or a few of your favorite customers. Those folks will appreciate the trust you put in them and will help publicize the new site when it launches. It’s kind of the idea of scarcity that many big brands use to build buzz around new stuff.
- Make A Preview Video. If you have a big social media following or large email subscriber list or even a lot of general traffic on your current site, you can make a screencast video showing people around the new site before it launches. This is probably a week or less before you launch. “I’m going to go show you around the new site which we are launching on Tuesday.” Then they can’t wait to actually get on there and start using it on Tuesday. Here is a preview video I put together for a personal site I launched recently.
I used Screencast-O-Matic, a free easy-to-use tool, for the recording.
- Giveaways. We’re big on giveaways. We give something away in our monthly newsletters and in pretty much all of our marketing. Use the giveaway to entice email subscription opt-ins and give something away on launch day. “Subscribe to our email updates right now for a chance to win _________ when we launch the new site.”
- Post The Launch On An Event Website. I’m taking what Jay Baer said in his 7 Ways To Use Social Media To Create Buzz-Worthy Events and using it for a website launch in this instance. Use EventBrite, Facebook Events, or LinkedIn and create your event page. The incoming links from those sites won’t hurt your search rankings! (For a free link from us–a PageRank 4 site–see below.)
- Ask For Input. Do you have an existing customer base you can contact via social media or email? Ask them for input on some part of your new site. If there’s a logo redesign, throw three choices out there and ask for feedback. Tell them you are working on your new menu structure and ask what items they are most interested in. Crowdsourcing of this type builds ownership in the new site for your most devoted fans. We’d be glad to give you a little input as well. Leave your test site link in the comments below and we’ll give you some feedback!
- Schedule A Chamber Event. Are you a member of your local chamber? Many chambers have “Business After Hours” events you can host at your office. Again, you might get a good ole incoming link from your local chamber which usually has high authority in Google.
- Throw A Party. A few years back, I was about to launch a new website and business and used my own birthday as an excuse to throw a birthday/launch party. You don’t have to have an external event to build your launch party around. Folks will come for the free food no matter what.
- Write A Great First Post. (This is a bonus!) If your new site has a news or blog section, don’t leave it blank when you launch. And don’t just say “Welcome to the new website.” Do some screen captures of the cool new stuff and show folks around the new site. Don’t know what to write? We’ll do it for you! Seriously, no fees, no catches. Just contact us or leave a comment below and we’ll write your first blog post for you.
Sites That Have Used These Tips
Let us know if you put any of these tips into practice. Leave a comment below with your website address and we’ll link to it here. Yes, that’s a real link with real Google juice to boost your SEO!
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What are some other ways to generate buzz around a website launch or redesign? Have you ever used one of these strategies? Do you intend to? Let us know in the comments.
by Marcus Ledbetter | Jun 17, 2013 | Web Marketing, Website Design
So you’re thinking of hiring a web designer and you want to make sure you ask the right questions. Well, asking the right questions implies not asking the wrong questions. Here you go.
6 Ill-Advised Questions To Ask A Web Designer
- Can I get an animated logo? Animated graphics (other than imbedded video) went out of use about five years ago. As we mentioned in Small Business Web Design 2013: Webward Logos, the trend is heavily toward simplicity on logos. Less is more. This concept goes for those sliding ticker type messages that used to be big back in the dark (more…)
by Marcus Ledbetter | Feb 11, 2013 | Case Study, Portfolio, Projects, Website Design, Websites
“ITDi has gone above and beyond – and continues to do so – in making certain their product/our website is achieving the goals we collectively set for it. We love the ease of use, as well as the e-commerce options.” – Rob Cole, Operations Coordinator, Bays Mountain Park
Bays Mountain Park came to us via referral to solve their Kingsport web design needs. Most pressing among those needs were an updated design and a Content Management System (CMS) which made it easy for them to make updates.
Our design team put together a striking design including a new logo area which is based off of their angular entrance sign and exisiting logo. The colors and graphics on the home page portrayed the earthy tones of this woodland park and the state-of-the-art planetarium which is a huge regional draw. Bays Mountain is well-known for their wolf habitat, so we made prominent use of wolves in home page slider images as well as wolf footprints across the header.
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The site is set up on the WordPress CMS which allows multiple Bays Mountain Park staff to have separate back-end accounts and editing access. Ken Childress, Park Manager, wanted to make sure that the site stayed up-to-date with fresh information, so it was imperative that the CMS was easy to use. (more…)
by Marcus Ledbetter | Dec 4, 2012 | Consumer Trends, Website Design
Read Part 1: Tablet-Centric, Part 2: Shrunken Heads, Part 3: Spacing, and Part 4: Sidebars.
We’re continuing our analysis of the new USAToday site design and coming trends for small business web design. Today, we’re looking at trends in logo design. If you’re really pressed for time, just skip to the end of this post and we’ll show you an exercise to “2013” your logo.
As businesses move more and more web-ward, we’re seeing a trend toward simplicity and size reduction. Logo design used to begin with letterhead in mind. Now, logos are designed with the web in mind. The starting question is, How is the logo going to look and fit on the website?
Gone are the days of hi-resolution printed letter-head through which you could pull off nearly anything: multiple visual symbols, gradients, intricate artwork, fancy-schmancy type fonts, you get the idea. The trend in logo design is toward clean, simple, strong solid colors, and small. Our own logo is on the larger side, but it’s a simple design with a strong color impression. (We have a smaller, horizontal version which we use for some applications.)
Web-ward: USAToday exemplifies the trend
Very strong brands like USAToday can get away with over-simplification. The lined-blue globe has been reduced to a solid blue dot. Some brands are not even using their names on their websites. Look for the word “Twitter” or “Target” next to their logos on their sites right now and you will not find it. You will find that little bird and those red circles. Enough said. I could definitely see National Geographic going with that simple yellow rectangle and no words at all. Facebook doesn’t use any type of shape or symbol at all. They could get away with using that single “F” if they decided to. (more…)
by Marcus Ledbetter | Nov 30, 2012 | Web Marketing, Website Design
Read Part 1: Tablet Centric, Part 2: Shrunken Heads, and Part 3: Spacing
We have previously looked at how the new USAToday design is leading the way in web design, much as it revolutionized newspaper design in the 80s. In today’s post, we’ll look at their use of 2 sidebars and whether that is a good fit for small business web design.
The left sidebar stays static, no matter the browser size. The right sidebar collapses when the browser width is reduced to a little “Right Now” arrow.
That right sidebar is reminiscent of Facebook’s scrolling latest posts and chat bar which disappears completely on narrow browsers. (more…)
