I can certainly understand the rationale; if I was going to be shelling out a good portion of my marketing budget I would really like to have some good data behind what I was doing. But how often do designers sit down with a nice stack of market research when they are ready to start their design sketches? Spreadsheets aren’t exactly the most creative catalysts (blatant blog plug). I can attest that while I will often read the market research and help develop the strategy before starting a project, the real driving force behind our designs is common sense and creativity, and that research has very limited impact once pencil hits paper.

That’s not to say that market research doesn’t have its value. It can serve several purposes. It can often identify hidden problems or advantages of a project very quickly, saving time up front by either avoiding or embracing a particular direction without much discussion. It can also serve as a litmus test for all creative concepts. “Does this stand up to the research?” If yes, continue; if not, back to the drawing board. It’s also a great way for outside firms such as ourselves to absorb a lot of detailed information about a client’s business or industry in a short period of time. But how often could those items have been identified simply through an informal focus group or internal discussion? If you’re working with smart, strategic, and creative thinkers, then my guess is more often than not.

My concern is when the research is performed only as a “Cover-Your-Rear” tactic. If the project ends up being a colossal failure, at least one can use the research as a fallback. It is in cases like these that the research can actually inhibit creativity by always dictating the “safe” road to take. Maybe I’m missing the mark here, but I can’t recall any successful marketing that ever simply played it safe. Please show me a successful campaign that was produced in a large part thanks to the market research, and you win a cookie. 

Successful brands are able to dictate public perception rather than vice-versa. That doesn’t mean they don’t crash and burn once in a while, but it seems to me that taking a few chances is how you pull ahead of the pack. It seems to me that spending some extra money and working with a smart, strategic design team would pay more dividends than combining market research with mediocre designers.

In the meantime, if clients ask for it, we’ll provide it, but I will at least throw in this topic for discussion when we do. I’m sure that there are varying opinions on the subject, so I’d love to hear your thoughts. 

It’s a great award, and we have so many great pieces we are working on that are gold-worthy for next year, so it’s nice to receive some recognition for all of our hard work! Stay tuned for a lot more as we keep rolling into 2008…

But just because Flash CAN do all those things, does that mean you should? That’s something that we as web designers struggle with on a regular basis: When and how do you use Flash effectively? What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Flash? Here’s our opinion, and feel free to chime in with one of your own.

Good Flash: Enhancing existing content without sacrificing the content itself. Using Flash to enhance your points through animation or interactivity is always a good thing. It brings the content to life.

Bad Flash: Building animations and interactive elements that distract from the content. Animations that look cool, but overshadow the actual content are usually more annoying than they are enhancing. What would you rather have a visitor take away from your site: That animated 3D effects are really cool, or that your product/service is what they need? Unless you specialize in Flash development want to show off your skills, probably the latter.

Good Flash: Improving a standard HTML user interface/functionality. Standard HTML elements and tags have their limitations, and Flash allows developers and designers to rewrite the rules for how some of those items should function. The key is to make sure that it is a step forward, not a step backwards or too much a departure from the norm for regular users.

Bad Flash: Creating confusing/eccentric user interfaces. We’ve all run into a few of these. Where do I click? How do I get back to where I was? While creative, unless you are 100% sure that your target audience will understand what you intended, you should probably rethink your UI. The point of using Flash is to enhance the user’s experience, not make it more difficult.

Good Flash: Blending multimedia elements to enhance a good concept. When you have a concept that hinges upon multimedia elements (video/audio/photos) that Flash is your best option. A good example of this is the Porsche Bloodlines mini-site.

Bad Flash: Injecting audio and video for no good reason. I won’t give any examples here, but I think we have all seen these as well.

Good Flash: Remembering SEO. Google can actually index Flash files, but it takes a bit of configuring on the development side to make sure that it sees it well. It may also be advisable to include non-Flash versions of your content as well.

The list could go on and on, but I’ll stop here for now. What are your thoughts?

So the debate began. Some designers jumped into the “I love CSS” camp, others the “I’ll stick with tables until CSS is totally cross-browser compliant” camp. Here we are, several years later and the debate rages on. CSS is still not 100% browser compliant (thanks to the bane of most designers’ existence: IE), but people still don’t want to rely on tables when CSS makes things so much easier to stylize.

Having been knee deep in both situations, there’s no doubt in my mind that the best course of action is still a healthy combo of both CSS stylization and old-fashioned table layouts. Basic table layouts guarantee cross-browser compatibility, while CSS makes site-wide styles very easy to update and control. Until IE gets its act together with CSS, it’s probably the only way to maintain the accuracy of how your site is displayed.

I’m also finding that a lot of clients like to be able to maintain their own websites without the need for developing a database-driven Content Management System, which are great but can be costly versus simple static HTML sites. I had mentioned Adobe Contribute in another post, and Contribute works best with a good combo of tables and CSS, so that’s another reason I can hand a site off to a client and trust that they should not have any problems maintaining it themselves…

I’d love to hear other designers’ experiences, one way or the other.. What is your opinion of the CSS vs. Tables debate?

• CSS Layout: We spent some time developing a nice CSS layout that we were happy with. We still use tables in a few instances, but we spent some extra time going through the stylesheets so that our next website refresh will be even easier. It’s something that we put a focus on in our clients’ sites, so we’re glad to have it implemented on ours as well!
• SEO Galore: We’ve been doing so much SEO for our client sites lately that we decided to put some of our best techniques into practice. See if you can find some of them on the site!
• AJAX Fun: We’ve been having some fun with AJAX and some Google Widgets for our clients, so we decided to make use of it on our site as well.
• Flash Video: We’ve been doing a lot of Flash video lately as well, so we figured why not drop some on our own site! Check out the home page for an example of how Flash let’s you integrate quick-loading video with animations.
• Easy editing: We use Dreamweaver to create all of our sites, but we like to recommend Adobe Contribute to our clients who like to manage their sites on their own. We used the same techniques to make out sites nicely templated, which means an easy-to-update interface that separates the content from the layout. Translation: we’ll probably have a lot more recent work more frequently!

That’s it for now! We’re very excited for 2008… We have a newly redesigned office space that we’re getting settled into and are looking forward to big things this year… Check back and see what we’re up to!

The good news? We’ve got a lot of great work to show for it, and a lot more in the pipeline. We even have a total redesign to OUR website coming up in the next month or so… I hope you’ll like it and we look forward to your feedback. There are a lot of things I want to touch on in the world of marketing, graphic design and web design and I hope that we’ll get to do just that very soon…

I also wanted to welcome Danielle Carriveau to the staff. Danielle joins us as a graphic designer with a great sense for color, and we’re expecting great things.

Keep an eye out for our new website very soon, and here’s a sampling of some recent websites we designed and launched recently to tide you over until we re-vamp the recent work section… And this doesn’t even include all the great print work we’ve been doing…. Enjoy!

http://www.mrsid.com
http://www.boosttechnologies.net
http://www.tnrglobal.com
http://www.dbdesignbuild.com
http://beta.internano.org/

More to come!!

How will your customers feel about your product or service when they visit your website? You’d be surprised how many are out there that barely consider the end-user. Maybe you should take a step back and look. Have you done everything you can to prepare them for every type of situation and answer every question they might have? Even if you have, that’s fantastic, but chances are there are still ways it could be improved. If you haven’t, then maybe it’s time to update your site with some fresh content and think about how to better inform your visitors. When you arm your customers with the right information to make them feel confident that your product or service, whether it be through your website, your collateral materials, or your own sales pitch, then you’re that much closer to a sale.

I have the good fortune of working with many clients who know and appreciate the benefits of well-spent marketing budgets. However, I still come across business owners who neglect doing simple marketing activities that could offer a much needed boost to their bottom lines. Their biggest fear? Usually it all comes down to cost, or rather perception of cost. For these people “marketing” is usually synonymous with big fat dollar $$$igns. But I can show you a few simple ways to save some money that can start to make marketing more approachable and affordable.

Cost Saver #1 - Online Printing - Have a great offer or promotion running and need to get the word out? Think that printing and mailing costs are beyond your reach? There are a number of low-cost online printers that are able to offer cheaper rates because they “gang” many different jobs onto one print run, which lowers the costs for everyone. My personal favorite is 48hourprint.com, and no, I don’t work for them. They make it easy to upload your digital files and receive and online proof of your job. Online printers are great for low-run, quick turnaround jobs where price is of the essence. However, I don’t recommend using online printers for jobs where consistent quality is stressed, especially for high-run jobs. I’m talking about pieces with either folds, die-cuts, Pantone-matched colors, binding, spot varnishes, etc. — stick with a reliable offset printer or talk to a print broker. They can give the best advice to achieving the highest quality piece. But if it’s flat and you need it fast & cheap, online printing is hard to touch.

Cost Saver #2 - Email Marketing - Want an even cheaper & quicker way to get in touch with your customer base? Email them your promotion and save on postage. If you have a website, you can start by getting customers to “opt-in” to your email newsletter program. This usually involves setting up an account with an email marketing service provider. Again, my personal favorite is constantcontact.com, but there are many available with many pricing plans that are likely dependent on the amount of people in your list. They will also likely provide you with a snippet of an HTML form that allows visitors to sign up for your newsletter and auto-add them to your subscriber list. From here, you can choose from many pre-designed forms or create your own custom template, then blast it out to them! It’s a great way to keep in touch, send out promotions, announce new products, etc., all for usually under $100. Just make sure that you’re getting all your subscribers’ OK first. You don’t want to be labeled a spammer.

Cost Saver #3 - Do it yourself web editing - If you have a straight HTML website (which means that your pages usually end in “.html” and not “.php” or “.aspx”) then you are in luck. Adobe makes a very simple and inexpensive product called Contribute ($150) that allows people with zero web-editing experience to dive in and make edits to their pages. It looks and functions just like a web-browser, only with a button labeled “edit” that transforms the page into editable text and images. All you need to do is provide your server’s FTP information, edit, and then click “save” to have your changes automatically uploaded to your site. It’s a great alternative to expensive monthly maintenance charges for simple updates.

That’s it for now… Be sure and check back soon for some more great tips that will help you turn out great marketing materials for less. And don’t forget that while these tips will save you money on the physical materials, you receive an even bigger return when you add in smart design and strategic thinking.

By being consistent in your approach, you begin to develop powerful associations between your product/service and the look/feel you want to achieve. It doesn’t happen overnight, however. It took many years for Nike to be able to use the “swoosh” by itself, and it took a consistent use of the logo by repeatedly tying it into the consumer perception that they were looking to achieve. Their logo is so simple, and yet somehow they have managed to get us to associate a few curved lines into something that almost looks like a fast, stylish and powerful sneaker itself. That is the power of something that has been consistently relayed into the collective psyche of consumers.

The best part is, you don’t even need an elaborate logo to be successful at branding. It just needs to be memorable, so that the next time you see it something lights up in your brain. When they get repeated over and over again, that connection becomes stronger. There are even brands with poorly-designed logos that manage to be successful through consistent use – think about your local news shows as an example. I bet you can name nearly all of your local news channel’s numbers if you had to. I have 22-News, FOX-61, and ABC-40 in my area. None of their logos are particularly attractive, but I know their brands because I have them drilled into my head 100 times a day. The silly part is that none of those numbers even indicate the correct channel on my cable lineup, but that’s a whole different story altogether.

So what is the lesson for marketers? No matter how much you spend on your new logo, the real bang for your buck is when you use it consistently and often. Make sure that your logo is on EVERYTHING that could possibly go to potential customers. Use it as a signature in your emails. Make sure it is on faxes, memos, letterhead, business cards, and envelopes. Get that logo on every proposal you send out. And make sure that it is used consistently on each medium according to the branding you want to portray. It may take a while, but a small repeated investment will have major rewards.

Relevant information, strategically placed, updated frequently, and gaining in popularity.

What does that all mean? Relevant information is your content. A good website will have content that is well written and peppered with selected key search terms upon which you would like to be found. Take this site for example—some of the keywords that you will notice are “western mass graphic design“, “western mass advertising“, “western mass website design“, etc. throughout the site. Try those searches on Google or other search engines and usually winanscreative.com appears near the top 10, although it’s tough to hit them all. That’s because those are specific enough search terms to define a geographic area, and there’s not a whole lot of competition for those terms, at least not as much as “boston graphic design” (although it is good to see my former agency in Boston still in the top 10 on Google for that specifc term, where I did the SEO). Anyhow, you want to have good strong content and lots of it. And I know that there’s some of you who may be considering creating a bunch of “invisible type” with your search terms and repeating them hundreds of times throughout your site. The search engines are on to you, and the rouse won’t work, or at least not for long. It’s okay to be a little bit redundant in your copy, however… As long as it’s not TOO redundant. You’ll know when it starts to sound stupid.

So now you’ve got this great content, but that alone doesn’t guarantee SEO success. It’s where and how you place it in your site that can make a difference as well. Make sure to use very accurate descriptions in your Title Tags (the stuff at the top of your web-browser) and your Meta-Desciption Tags (the tag in the of your HTML that lists a 1-2 sentence description of your page). Both these places can be easily overlooked in a website design but they are essential for search engine relevance. You can usually tell by browsing through a site as to whether there has been SEO work done by glancing at the title tags. If they seem strategic, it’s because they are. Also, be sure that your page design allows for your content to be as high on the page as it can be, and that it isn’t embedded in Flash movies or graphics. If it is, the search engines won’t even see it.

Updating your content frequently is self-explanatory. Search engines don’t like to see that you’ve had the same information unchanged for the last 5 years, because the web has a very short shelf life. You don’t need to update every page in your entire site every week, but updating a few key pages once a month or so is enough for most simple web-presences. If you have the means to update it more frequently, then by all means, do it. A blog is a great way to do it, as is a “news”, “press”, or “what’s happening” section. However you decide to do it, search engines like to see that your site is a place to get fresh info.

Search engines also like to see that your site is getting more popular.That means they like to see more people linking to your site and visiting from searches. You can accomplish this in many ways. First is to join relevant directories, such as a Chamber of Commerce directory or any membership-related directory that you belong to, and then try to get into geographic ones as well. Google Maps is a good example. Basically any legitimate directory that you can be listed under is beneficial. However, beware of “link-farms” and some directories who will list your business in exchange for a reciprocal link or a fee… Some of these are OK but most frowned upon by Google and hurt more than they help. If there isn’t a legitimate reason to be on there, you’re better off not taking the risk. Once you are listed everywhere, start publicizing your site! Get your web address out there on everything you send out and get more people looking for you. As long as people keep looking for you or your product, the search engine gods will smile upon you.

Granted, often it’s not all that simple. In fact, everything I just mentioned is more involved than what most people are willing to take on. In competitive spaces where there a lot of sites aiming for the top spots it will often take an even bigger push and a lot more strategic thinking, as well. That’s where a good SEO partner can help. I hope this was enough to at least take some of the mystery out of SEO… Until next time!