Web Strategies

In a recent post I promised a lot more information on one of Intero Design Group’s core competencies: Awesome web design for the real estate industry.  To get things started down this road, I’m going to generally touch on the most important aspect of your organization’s digital presence - delivering on your customer’s expectations.

All small business marketing on the web is about delivering on a customer’s expectations and being able to capture their attention based upon that delivery.  The challenging thing about real estate on the web is that the customer’s expectation is continually evolving in an area of increasingly advanced technology - it’s hard to keep up.  To a certain extent, this could be said for any business, so let’s explore that a little further:

2000 Customer Expectations:

• Fortune 500 Companies - You need a website.  Nothing fancy, but I want to be able to see some updated news and find out a little more about your products.
• Real Estate Agents/Brokerages - You have a website?  Fantastic!  I get to see your photo plastered on (yet) another place so I can feel good about what a hot shot my hot shot agent really is.
• Dentists, Doctors and Veterinarians - Sounds risky mixing my health and my computer.  I probably can’t trust health information online, but I guess that WebMD site did recently launch…
• Car Dealerships - You should probably invest your internet marketing dollars in text-based classified ads on Trader.com.
• E-Commerce Stores - Give me a decent selection, these great prices I hear about and please don’t come through my computer and steal my identity.
• Restaurants - Why would I need to look at your website?  We have one computer and we don’t eat at the computer in this household.
• General and Other Small Businesses (Accountants, Mechanical Contractors, B2B Outfits, etc.) - You have a website?  Huh.  I’m a little impressed - you must be big time.

2008 Customer Expectations:

• Fortune 500 Companies - I don’t want to just read about your company anymore, I want to experience and explore it on my terms.  I want to get a feel for the culture.  I expect to find a well stocked PR department with the “official line” about what you’re doing, area offices and lcoations, your stock price and financials, videos, career openings and a blog maintained by the head cheese - your CEO.
• Real Estate Agents/Brokerages - I want the biggest and most photos, the fastest search and maps of where my future dream home is located.  I want to access this information from your website, from my home or office and from my cell phone while driving around for hours looking at houses.  I want demographic information tied to the homes and neighborhoods I’m interested in.
• Dentists, Doctors and Veterinarians - I want information and I need it now!  My child feels warm, can I chat with a nurse in a secure, real-time environment?  I work a 9-5, make it easy for me to schedule my next appointment online or track my pet’s immunization history.
• Car Dealerships - Real time inventory and pricing.  I want to cross reference the year, make and model I’m interested in with recent customer reviews and information from Edmunds, KBB, etc.  I want to make you an offer and hear back within an hour.
• E-Commerce Stores - Cross-referenced and timely inventory.  I’m looking at books on marketing my small business, show me books on forming an LLC without me asking for it.  Update me when my item ships and give me a way to track my order.  Invite me back via timely email correspondence tailored to my previous purchases.
• Restaurants - What’s cookin’?  Let me see the full menu, photos, rotating specials and make a reservation.  If you hold events, I’d like to be notified via email and/or text message.
• General and Other Small Businesses (Accountants, Mechanical Contractors, B2B Outfits, etc.) - I want to get in touch, schedule a maintenance request, manage my account and pay my bill online.  Anticipate my needs and make your website useful for me to do business with you!

In my next post, I’ll delve more in to the specifics of what’s up in real estate and engage in some shameless self promotion on how Intero Design Group is helping keep small real brokerages and individual agents on the cusp.

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So we just wrapped up our second website for an Indianapolis-based restaurant and night life entertainment holding company - AES Group.  For those of your familiar with the market, AES Group is the proud owner of Lulu’s Restaurant & Cocktails on Indianapolis northside and has just opened a club in the Broad Ripple area called Buckwildz.  Intero Design Group is their proud web designer!

You can check out their new site online at http://www.Buckwildz.com/, and we welcome your feedback.

Why this site rocks:

1. Thematically on the nose.  The owners and management of AES Group came to us with a vision that dictated a tastefully raunchy, free spirited honkytonk look and feel.  Note the small attention to detail like the denim look and jean rivets in the menu bar, splattered paint and hardwood floors that match that found in the actual bar.
2. Pliable.  We built in our easy to use, content management system and trained the staff at Buckwildz on how to add photos, change the menu and generally perform all routine maintenance to the site in a matter of minutes per week.  Now they can have an up to date, good looking website without paying loads per month in costly management and maintenance or waiting around for things to be changed on their behalf.
3. Leads.  Shh!  Don’t tell the users, but we knew (from past experience) that the #1 destination on this site would be the photo galleries - chock full of tell all images from the night before.  We decided to tie this with a very short, very simple registration form that allows management to communicate with their raving fans and die hard party goers whenever they see fit.  We’re capturing names, email addresses, cell phone numbers and city/state on an opt-in basis.  Next up: An email and SMS text messaging marketing campaign.

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In my last two posts, I’ve covered the importance of quality and consistent site navigation as well as color.  Today, I’d like to spend a little time on the single most important part of any organization’s website - your user.  Ultimately, you’re putting together a website hiring a web design companyfor a reason.  There’s someone you’re trying to reach out to.  Whether it’s to share information within your organization, to reach out to current customers or find new ones, your site will have a user base.

One of the biggest mistakes many organizations make is designing a website with their organization in mind and not with their customer or user in mind.  Like any good in-person sales call, your site shouldn’t focus on what it is that you do or can do, but rather on what kinds of problems your user might be looking to solve and then how you can help solve those problems.

I, as a user of your company’s website, should be able to have a general idea of what it is that you do within about 10 seconds of landing on your site.  Within about 30 seconds, I should be able to figure out what exactly you’re offering and how it can solve my problems.  If you can’t deliver on that, I’ve already hit the back button and your competition is vying for my business.

In everything your site offers, think about who your user is and what it is that they anticipate to get out of a visit to your website.  Do you want a website for college aged kids to buy a retail product, a site for business owners to explore long term relationships with your firm, or perhaps you making a website to deliver information to people already in your organization’s fold just to deliver information?  In all that you do, make sure that you’re projecting the right image and the right information with that user in mind.

I’ll close by saying that I frequently meet with small business owners that are in wholesale trades, manufacturing or other business-to-business work.  More times than not, these business owners express that they don’t really need a site that looks as “good” or “flashy” as people in retail because their customers are all just business owners and their site probably won’t get very much traffic anyway.  To the contrary, all purchase decisions (whether business-to-business or retail) are rooted in the same, emotional context.  People buy on emotion, not logic.  People run businesses and make the buying decisions for those businesses.  Business owning buyers are often more discerning than retail customers can be.  While most Americans are willing to wait in 20 minute lines at a Wal*Mart, the guy that will be making the buying decision on the $20 million widget your firm manufactures, isn’t quite as patient.

Here are some examples of great business-to-business design our Indianapolis web design company, Intero Design Group, has had the privilege of being involved in:

• http://www.artecenvironmental.com/ - ARTEC Environmental (Indianapolis, Indiana)
• http://www.landmarkpropertiesinc.com/ - Landmark Properties, Inc. (Indianapolis, Indiana)
• http://www.boilers-online.com/ - MG Sales (Indianapolis, Indiana)

Thanks for reading!  We always appreciate your feedback, and let us know if you have any questions!

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In my last post, I kicked off a three part series on why good design matters when it comes to your company or organization’s web presence.  We started the topic off properly by talking about everyone’s biggest pet peeve in poor web design: bad navigation.  Take a read if you’re so inclined.

Today, I’m going to talk with you about the importance and use of color.  I know it might seem cliche, but color should be one of your first concerns when it comes time to design your company’s website.  It’s certainly the first thing that jumps off the page to the user - before word one has been read or the navigation mechanism has even been located, the user’s brain reacts to the colors you’ve presented.  Are the loud and aggressive, are they soft and subtle, do they suggest the type of business you might be in?  All of this is subconsciously considered.

The first thing I’d like to stress is an obvious concern of color - consistency with your brand image.  If you’re a RE/MAX REALTOR and you’re using the RE/MAX balloon on your mailers, business cards, post cards, local cable TV ads, bumper stickers and more, then your website needs to remain true to that color scheme.  Your print and web marketing materials can be matched up through the use of a specialized color numbering system developed and owned by a company named Pantone.  Almost any shade of any color that can be produced on a computer monitor can be linked to a very specific PMS (Pantone Matching System) shade of color.  For example, the McDonald’s yellow is the McDonald’s yellow regardless if it’s on their website, TV commercials, in-store menu boards or the famous golden arches that sit outside each store.  That color is Pantone 123.  Bottom line: define your brand and keep is consistent.

The next thing to consider when deciding on a color scheme for your website is readability and avoiding over use of colors that are simply too “loud” for use on the web.  If your entire site is fire engine red and bright yellow, you’ve got problems, call me.  While we all want to stand out and that color strategy might work when creating signs for your next garage sale or to let people know that a train is crossing, most of your site’s visitors have been working at a computer terminal for several hours and likely have several more to go.  If you’d like them to stick around and interact with your site for very long, it’s important that you present a color scheme that is both easily read (eg: no gray fonts on black backgrounds) and easily looked at for long periods of time (again, try to avoid that fluorescent yellow).

I’m sure I could go on and on and spend the entire morning writing about color, but we’ll leave it at that for now!

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In my next three posts, I plan to talk with you about why quality of design counts when it comes to having an effective web strategy.  The things I’m going to talk about include:

1. Having a consistent site navigation structure (menu)
2. The importance of color
3. How to anticipate your user’s needs and measure their actions

So, for today, I’d like to stick with having a consistent site navigation structure.  To kick things off, I’d like to share a few links of websites that I’ve stumbled across that offer no clear or consistent navigation structure:

• http://www.mhmanufacturing.com/ - This is a Chinese based manufacturer that’s trying to reach out to a global audience of buyers with three very specific products.  They’ve done a nice job at least getting images of those three key products in to place, but they’re lost after that.  Try finding the sames types of information about the company or their products from within any product-specific section of the site.  Right - not happening.
• http://www.lanyardsupply.com/ - This company based out of Walnut, California sells wholesale lanyards and promotional items.  They have a major web crisis on their hands.  It seems like that have a decent product, and a quick Google search indicates that they’re competivly priced, but their poor design loses all credibility with the user right away.  I’d pay twice as much to feel like I’m working with a professional firm - clearly illustrating that good design and trust go hand-in-hand on the web.

Clear, consistent navigation is important so that your site’s user can quickly find the information they’re looking for, digest it and, most importantly, act on it.  Having this navigation in place will also help you, the site or company owner, to better focus your information in to manageable chunks that are worth sharing with the public on the web.

If you think it’s cool to have buttons that move around from page to page or are animated to follow the cursor wherever the user moves, then you need to have a serious talk with your web design companyabout how to most effectively implement your company’s web presence.

Some examples of sites with quality, consistent navigation are featured to the right in our limited “Client Portfolio” snippet.  Let me know if you’d like some more examples!

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This week, I want to intoduce a not so new concept that’s finally taking hold - CSS.  CSS is Short for Cascading Style Sheets, a new feature being added to HTML that gives both Web Site Developers and users more control over how pages are displayed.  With CSS, designers and users can create “style sheets” that define how different elements, such as headers and links on your website appear.  These style sheets can then be applied to any Web page.

The term cascading derives from the fact that multiple style sheets can be applied to the same Web page.

Style sheets are a very powerful tool for the web site developer and owner.  They give you the chance to be completely consistent with the look and feel of your pages, while giving you much more control over the layout and design than straight HTML ever did.  Invented in 1997, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are just now starting to be widely used among browsers and Web developers are learning to be more comfortable with them.  They are eventually going to take the place of tags such as <FONT>, which have been deprecated in HTML 4.0.A few benefits of CSS:

• make your pages load faster
• lower your hosting costs
• make your designs and redesigns more efficient and less expensive
• help you maintain visual consistency throughout your sites
• get you better search engine results
• make your sites more accessible to all viewers and user agents
• give competitive edge as more of the world moves to using Web standards

When you’re consulting with a professional web development company, be sure and ask about CSS!

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In my last post, I shared with you some great tips on why and how your small business can benefit from having a blog.  Today, I hate to scare anyone off, but I want to detail some reasons why it’s not entirely a cake walk and point out some mistakes that you can make when starting your small business, corporate or organizational blog.  So, in no particullar order, here are the top 7 mistakes you could make when starting your small business blog:

1. Not having your own domain name.
Your domain name is the first stop in your digital identity.  Having a blog (or any website for that matter) without a domain name is like trying to run a business without a phone number OR address.  With domain names costing a mere $10 / year, go ahead and stake out your digital real estate.  You’ll be glad you did.

2. No author biographies or photos.
Number 2 on the list here is a simple matter of establishing rapport and trust with your readers.  Who are you, what’s your background and what level of expertise do you bring to the table?  I’m Aaron Radez.  I’m the President of Indianapolis-based web design company, Intero Design Group.  I’ve been a web marketing consultant for 7 years.  See - don’t we have a better relationship already?  A photo of you will simply allow the user to feel more connected with whom they read the writings of.  Get your bio together and get writing.

3. Posting titles that lack decription and flare.
This is a matter of initial reaction.  With all of the content that’s produced on the web each and every day, we (as readers) have to carefully pick and choose what’s relevant and what isn’t.  Your posting titles can be your blog’s best friend - they can help with search engine optimization and then draw a user in to find out more.  Think carefully about what kind of message your posting titles send and whether or not they’re doing you any favors in terms of your site’s search engine placement.

4. Irregular publishing frequency.
Establishing and meeting your user’s expectations is a key element of any web presence, and this is especially true with the reliability and frequency of your blog schedule.  Even with emailed updates and RSS feeds, users still like to feel like they have some control over how often they should check back for updated information.  If you can’t stick to a daily schedule, then go for weekly or even monthly.  Just keep the information, fresh, timely and on schedule.

5. No clear focus or topic.
If you sell cars, then your blog needs to be about cars, not sports.  Within your organization, establish some norms and topics that your blog will be about, and stay on message.  The more focused your content, the more focuses your readers will be.  The web is all about finding a niche and dominating it, and if you publish on too wide a net of topics then you’re less likely to attract a loyal audience of high-value readers.

6. Forgetting who you’re writing for.
Think twice before posting!  Afterall, this message is going out to a potential global audience of billions of people.  Along the same vein, think about who your primary target audience is and what their needs are.  If all I did was write about website code and technical jargon then I wouldn’t be meeting my obligations to you, the small business owners.  Pick and audience and picture then whem you write.

7. Poor navigation and image.
Image, image, image.  The way you make a first impression on a sales call is to comb your hair and brush your teeth that morning.  The way you make a first impression on the web is to have a nice, graphically stimulating, clean and easy to navigate site.  Your blog (or website) should offer the user a clean, clear and obvious way to navigate the content and find what they’re looking for.  If you don’t have an eye for design, don’t hesitate to hire a professional to craft an image unique to your business that really portrays what you’re trying to convey.

In closing, don’t be affraid to try things out.  Afterall, one of the the beauties of blogging is is pliability.  Get in touch if you have any questions!

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Welcome to the corporate blog of Indianapolis web design company, Intero Design Group. Our global team in Indianapolis, Indiana and Surat, India is excited to share this blog with you, the small business owner, and shed some light on the ins and outs of small business marketing on the web.

In an ongoing, candid and constantly updated fashion, we’ll be covering a range of topics from quality web design to email marketing - even corporate blogging and why your business should be communicating with your prospects in this new, off-the-cuff manner.

Best of all, our entire staff has been invited to get in on the action! So you have at your disposal not one, but twenty something web design professionals from across the globe.

As President of Intero Design Group, I extend a warm welcome and look forward sharing our insights as we grow our company in the Indianapolis market and answering any questions you may have.

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