Posted On June 13th, 2013 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Business Development, Coding & Application Development, Branding & Web Design, Internet Marketing, User-Experience,
We work with a lot of companies and organizations at Headspace. For many of them, the process goes like this:
- find a budget to re-design the website
- put out an RFP
- hire the right company for the job
- Work with said company and launch the site
- Ignore the relaunched website for another 3-5 years until they get another budget to re-design.
Sadly, this is the way economics work for these organizations.
But there's a better way.
Instead of blowing your entire budget on just the website relaunch, spend 50% of it. Then spread the other 50% evenly across the next 3 years so that by the time the 3 years are up, your website isn't in too bad shape.
This leaves many website owners left wondering: What the heck do I do after the website is launched? Here's a check list:
Measure
There's a ton of stuff you can be measuring every day or every week. Google Analytics contains a wealth of information about your website traffic. Don't just focus on traffic alone, although this is an indicator of how your website is performing. Look at…
Posted On April 15th, 2013 Author Amy Wheaton
Filed Under Business Development, Internet Marketing, News,
The following post is guest content provided by the team at Software Advice, who hosted a recent discussion with Lean Analytics author Alistair Croll at SXSW in Austin.
When launching a new company or marketing campaign, your major concern shouldn't bewhether or not you can execute on the plan. It should be whether the idea is worth investing in at all.
This was the major theme behind a discussion my company hosted recently with “Lean Analytics” author Alistair Croll. He suggests that instead of believing the mantra “if you build it, they will come,” companies should instead say, “if they would come, you should build it.” Fortunately, today we have access to enormous amounts of behavioral data that can answer this latter assertion. I regularly review and write about technology that analyzes such data from social media, so I wanted to know more about strategizing around such insights.
We shot the video during this year's SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. Croll was in town leading a workshop called “Advanced Social Media Monitoring.” We discussed how companies can use data to test the riskiest…
Posted On March 7th, 2013 Author Amy Wheaton
Filed Under Branding & Web Design, Internet Marketing,
Kickoff meetings with our clients are crucial for helping us get to know each other. They get to meet the team that will be working on their new website, app, or strategy. We get an in-depth view of their business, their website objectives, and perhaps most importantly, how they want their brand to be portrayed.
We always like to ask clients to put a face on their brand, a personality. We ask them things like:
- If your brand were writing a profile for a dating website, what would he/she say about themselves?
- What kind of car do they drive?
- What's their favourite outfit?
- Where do they like to go for dinner?
- What do they do on the weekend?
Putting a face on your brand - not your customers or your target market, but your actual brand - is an interesting exercise. So often, clients will say that their brand is cool, casual, friendly, and approachable. And then we look at their current website, advertising materials, and collateral they've been using, and often discover that it's none of those things.
No…
Posted On January 7th, 2013 Author Amy Wheaton
Filed Under Business Development, Internet Marketing,
One week into 2013, it's prime time for New Year's resolutions. Just walk into any gym in North America for proof. Of course, three weeks from now it'll be a very different story. It's easy to go out on January 1 with guns a-blazing only to crash and burn by the end of the month.
As marketers, designers, and developers, no doubt there are tons of goals we could be setting for ourselves, but trying to do too much too quickly is often our downfall. Here are five resolutions for 2013 that are actually doable and can help yield rewards throughout the new year and beyond:
1. Resolve to add value. Clients love working with agencies and design firms. Believe it or not, clients get excited about meeting with their agency team. Quite often it's the most fun part of their day. They get to look at new designs or concepts, ask questions, give feedback, and make decisions. But clients should be looking forward to working with you for other reasons, too. What value do you offer them? Are you regurgitating the same marketing plans over and over with a different client name in…
Posted On November 14th, 2012 Author Amy Wheaton
Filed Under Branding & Web Design, Internet Marketing,
On Monday, Coca-Cola rolled out its new website design, which aims to be more of an online magazine than a brand mouthpiece. Called "The Coca-Cola Journey", the new site is named for a magazine that was published for the company's employees during the 80s and 90s. It features articles, interviews, opinion pieces, videos, and blogs about a variety of topics: sports, history, health, environment.
Sure, it's impossible not to notice that this is indeed a Coca-Cola website, with frequent references to the brand and a subjective favourable slant, but material is presented in a way that's interesting, engaging, relevant and consumer-facing.
Coca-Cola is just the latest corporation to shift their web presence to be more about sharing a story than flat-out hawking a brand. In a New York Times interview, Ashley Brown, director for digital communications and social media with Coca-Cola, explains that his team now operates similarly to an editorial team at a magazine.
While there's definitely a Coke-friendly "point of view" to the content, they're striving to be a credible source, open to things such as accepting opinion columns that don't necessarily jibe with the views of the company. Coca-Cola's…
Posted On June 23rd, 2012 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Business Development, Internet Marketing,
It used to be that the average person thought of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as a series of tricks that a professional expert used to trick Google into ranking their site above a competitors'.
And for the most part, that was true. There's the old definition of a SEO being either black hat, someone employing cheap nasty tricks that got huge results for the short term, and white hat, someone focusing on quality content and link building which takes longer but gets long-term results.
In 2011 Google made black hats pretty well redundant for good, and even some strategies that the quality SEO's utilized has become less relevant. Google has updated their search algorithms with something called "Panda" which takes into account ratings from real human beings visiting a website. More than ever, this means that Google's criteria for ranking a website is based off of the following:
- How trustworthy does the site feel?
- How easy is it to use and navigate?
- How engaging is the content?
What has become much less important are things like meta tags, headings and other technical tricks that…
Posted On January 23rd, 2012 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Business Development, Branding & Web Design, Internet Marketing, News,
Yesterday I attended Podcamp Halifax, which is a great annual, free event full of presentations about the web and social media. It's a great place to connect with people face-to-face that you know from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and learn new things that can help you with your business.
Much kudo's to the folks who put it on including Craig Moore from Spider Video. To those who came, it was great meeting you and I hope to you next year (or sooner)
I was privileged to put on a presentation based on Aarron Walter's book, Designing For Emotion. It attracted a good sized crowd and seemed to resonate with the people in attendance. Here were some mentions on Twitter:
HarmonicDev Harmonic Internet
GREAT talks yesterday by @brightwhite @kyleracki @SpiderVideo and keynote speaker @julien #podcamphfx and big kudos to the event organizers!
…
Posted On November 3rd, 2011 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Business Development, Internet Marketing,
I was looking at a website today and noticed a link to an online application for payroll. Great, I thought. An alternative to ADP. I reviewed their site and found the sign up form to learn about a special offer.
I took the time to fill out the form, which included fields asking how many employees I have, and what I currently use for payroll, and within 30 seconds I received a call from the sales agent. Everything okay so far. But he made several mistakes that lost him the sale in the end:
Uncomfortable Silence
The sales agent seemed like he wanted me to start the conversation when he was the one who called me. After some ums, ahs, and stutters, he asked me what I wanted. He should have already known what I wanted since I filled out a form to learn about a special offer!
Making me repeat myself
The rep then asked how many employees I had and what I currently use for payroll. It wasn’t hard for me to repeat what I already typed in the form, but the point is that I already told them and…
Posted On May 18th, 2011 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Business Development, Internet Marketing,
I was recently doing business in the US when a potential client for a large organization asked about the value of social media. He said a prominent person posted something on Twitter akin to “Wow, the sun finally came out today. I want to get to some long overdue gardening”. His point was, who cares and why should his followers be subjected to such pointless drivel?
I’m going to use two examples to illustrate the value of needless information in social media:
Celebrity Magazines
It always astounds me how celebrity gossip magazines/blogs stay in business. But they do because there are millions of people out there who care what Brangelina ate today, where they went, what they bought at the store. And when a celebrity starts a twitter account, look out! Millions of followers are ready and willing to read when their last bowel movements were.
Advertising
How many of us look forward to Super Bowl ads? Have you ever noticed that some of the best ads that we enjoy watching do not sell with information or logic? They often sell with emotion and humor - two powerful weapons of any marketer. We don’t enjoy them because they gave us…
Posted On March 30th, 2011 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Business Development, Internet Marketing,
You’ve come up with the perfect idea for a website! A social-media application that let’s users (insert brilliant idea here). You’ve secured the funding, and have done your due-diligence to find, interview and ultimately assemble a dream team of talented designers and developers to make your ingenious idea a reality.
When you’re asked how much traffic and revenue you expect from the site, you modestly predict that within the first month alone, you’ll get anywhere between 10,000 - 100,000 unique visits. Sure, during that first month, you only expect to cover your overhead and break even. But two months after launch? Heck, you’ll already be preparing for early retirement! The ad revenue alone is going to top the $1 million mark, and that’s not even taking into account the third month, when you sell the website to the highest bidder (they’re naturally going to be clawing at each other to become the lucky buyer of your fortune 500 enterprise).
I realize that this is coming across as sarcastic and condescending — so I digress…
This exaggerated scenario resembles how some entrepreneurs approach a new internet business venture. It’s exciting to come up with an idea that has legs, and even…
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