Why Creating Original Content
is Crucial in Your Website Redesign
“If you build it, they will come.”
Unfortunately, this statement doesn’t apply to websites the same way it does to baseball fields. In order to redesign your website to truly work for your business, it needs to actively reach out to potential customers by appearing in their Google searches and showing up in their social media networks. To do this, your site needs continuously updated and original content that connects with your customers’ interests as well as the keywords they are already using for web searches.
If your current website doesn’t include a blog or other pages to incorporate on-going content publishing, then this need has to be addressed in your redesign planning. Read the rest of this entry »
Design Studios and Marketing Agencies Should Use Their Empathy.
A great post from Jim Carroll, Chairman of BBH London, reminded me of one of my core beliefs—a designer’s most powerful tool is their empathy. In Jim’s post, I Feel For You, he reminded me that empathy also applies to the whole sphere of marketing and communications.
We, Hero Design, are an Inbound Marketing Agency. We work very hard to measure and qualify the results we produce for our clients. Everything we do has some type of analytic attached. We use those analytics to make decisions on what’s working, what needs improvement and what tactics should be killed. Even with all of this data-based clarity, I sometimes feel, in my gut, that we need to zig, even though the data shows a zag is the next logical step. My designerly self just can’t shake what my empathy is telling me.
I always rely on my empathy when concepting, designing and writing. If something doesn’t feel right, I try a different approach. Jim’s post reminds me not to leave my empathy, my feelings, out of the on-going marketing choices we make throughout a campaign. Even though the creative is done, empathy is still needed. We often try to analyze our way to success, but maybe we should feel our way instead.
Read Jim Carroll’s post here: I Feel For You.
Create Every Page as a
Homepage In a Website Redesign
When you create a marketing-focused, lead generating website you need to understand that any page may act as a home page. Visitors will find you through searches that might bring them to a blog post, a landing page, a services page or sometimes even your actual home page. Is your site fully optimized? Read the rest of this entry »
Oh, So Responsive Design.
If it’s not responsive, it’s crap!
(Say it with a Scottish accent)
A great site put together by James Mellers of THISMANSLIFE.COM solves a problem we’ve already run into, how to explain responsive design to your client.
“Resize your browser to reveal just a handful of the kind of devices you should expect web pages to be viewed on. Each device illustration is rendered using the same basic HTML which adapts its appearance to the changing viewport size, representing different devices accordingly. This is achieved using media queries to apply different CSS rules for different sizes. This experiment is intended to illustrate the basic premise of responsive web design and the power of CSS to tackle it.” Read the rest of this entry »
Don’t Push Messages Out, Pull Customers In With Inbound Marketing
As small business owners, we should all focus each day on how we can make our marketing strategy better. The Internet has entirely repositioned traditional marketing, making print advertising essentially obsolete. We’re constantly faced with bettering our online presence and, to be frank, there exists no better way to do so than to optimize business through the return that can come from inbound marketing.
Read the rest of this entry »
2012 is Expected to Be the
Year of Quality Content Creation
The idea of quality control in online content shouldn’t be intimidating. Think of it as a challenge to write better, make better graphics and better weave your keywords into each of your blog posts, social media posts and image tags. Think of it as a way to test your skills and, hey, you may even learn something new. Hard work and organization will pay off, especially if you’re a small business competing against the marketing and advertising budgets of the big guys. Content creation is a great way to build a place for yourself on the web as you create a unique voice for your small business. Read the rest of this entry »
Making Sure Your Assets are
In Order in a Website Redesign
Though your current site needs improvement, that doesn’t mean it has no value. And before you undertake major changes you need to ensure that your current site’s assets are captured and preserved. You’ve most likely invested quite a bit of time in creating this content, so it’s important to know what to keep and what to toss. Read the rest of this entry »
Is a Website Redesign Right for You?
Should you scrap your current website design, structure and content and create an entirely new one? Or, should you focus on strategic improvements to your current site instead? When faced with the question of website redesign, it’s difficult to figure out what to save and what to toss; which content is valuable and worth saving and which has seen better days. There are right reasons for launching a website redesign and there are wrong reasons. The right reasons serve specific, measurable marketing goals while the wrong reasons do not. Are you designing for the right reasons? Read the rest of this entry »
Our Interest in Pinterest
A pin-board to “pin” your “interests.” It’s as simple as that.
Getting your business on Pinterest, even if you aren’t selling a product that caters to the crafty people on Etsy, is something to think about if you are curious about new ways to share your business interests (more specifically, the curation interests of your staff) with others in your industry. Being a design firm, we’ve decided to get on Pinterest to share our work and inspirations. Read the rest of this entry »
4 Useful Tools for Finding
the Right Keywords For You
If you’re not experiencing the web traffic you’d hoped for, your keywords may be to blame. Keywords play such a critical role in SEO that they can literally make or break your presence online. Thankfully, there are some easy ways to find the right words to define your business–it’s simply a matter of using the right keyword research tools for the job.
Read the rest of this entry »
