We’re working with a client that manufactures and markets a speciality product in an industry with fairly large barriers to entry.  We’ve been working with them for years on a generalists mass market appeal model to move as many units as possible.

After some time, it’s gotten very expensive trying to be everything to everyone.  Time to switch gears and follow the advice I’ve had in my gut - edge here we come!

For more information on edges your business can explore, check out Seth Godin’s Free Prize Inside or Contact Intero Design Group today.

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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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The problem?  I’m interested!  Where can I find out more?  After spending a little over 5 minutes (an eternity on Google’s watch) searching for terms like zing, zing indianapolis, zing restaurant indianapolis, zing bar indianapolis - I come up empty handed.  A few blog posts here and there about the architectural renovations of 543 Indiana Avenue, a mention of their grand opening on Indy.com and that’s about it.  Anything of value?  Nothing, nada.    Where can I see photos, make a reservation, check out the menu, day dream about how great my next hot date at Zing is going to be and sign up to get updates of things happening at this awesome new place?

The lesson?  If you’re going to go in to business, you’ve got to get in the conversation and the conversation IS happening online.  If you don’t write about your brand, someone else will and it may not be the information you’d like to share.  So, c’mon, Zing, don’t be afraid - join the conversation!

For more on joining in, I’d turn you to Sarah “Intellagirl” Robbins’ recent blog post at Ubernoggin’ or get in touch and we can help!

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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 the coming posts, I’ll be back on the horse with more information on effective web design for Realtors and real estate professionals.  Intero Design Group serves literally hundreds in the real estate profession, and I have a thing or two to add to the conversation.  From mash-ups to Trulia, Google maps to mobile home search, we’re there and we’re going to be talking about it.

After that, I want to introduce you to our latest focus area - video production for the web.  Yeah, yeah, you’re thinking that we’re about 2 years behind YouTube, but the time has come for the small to medium sized organization to truly harness video on the web to tell their story, reach out to new prospects and convert.

 Stay tuned!

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Over the next few entries, I’m going to cover what you, as a REALTOR or real estate professional should look for in a website and web design company.  How can your site generate leads?  What’s the latest and greatest “must have” technology?  What’s just a fad and what’s powerful and meaningful to your customer?  If you already have a website, let’s open a dialogue and talk about what you’re doing that works and what you’re doing that needs to be revised or scrapped all together.

In the meantime, take a look at some of the firms we work in conjunction with:

• www.AgentSitesToGo.com - Template-based websites for REALTORS.
• www.SeeItOnYourCell.com - Mobile phone home search tools for cutting edge REALTORS.
• www.YourIDXLink.com - Map-based home search and lead generation.

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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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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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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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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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