Website Design

Do you have a Web Marketing Strategy?  In today’s web-centric world, where information is easy to come by, if you haven’t addressed how the Internet has changed the way you market and thus sell to your clients, you may not survive.

The truth is, most buyers; whether they are a C-level executive, a consumer, a patient, or some other form of customer, are turning to the web to find and learn all about your product or service before anyone (especially you) ever knows they are in the market for your service or product.  There is no longer a need for a sales person to walk them through the education process.  Today’s client is pretty educated about us before they ever meet us face-to-face; that is if we have a website.  So, back to the question, do you have a web marketing strategy or are you just “winging it”?  A great web marketing strategy will address three things; what we here at Red Rocket call “The Three Imperatives.”

• Get people to the site (SEO and SEM)
• Get people to stay at the site (Content is and will remain KING)
• Get people to return to the site (People rarely purchase online or even face-to-face on the first visit)

Your web marketing strategy needs to touch on each of these three things in some form or fashion to  realize any amount of success.  For instance, if you get people to your site through stellar SEO but the site stinks, what good is it?  Likewise, if you offer great content on your site but no one can find your site when they need you; what good is it?

For more on creating a sound web marketing strategy, tune in each day to our blog.  We will be sharing different tools to help make your website a strong asset for your company versus the obligatory “must have.”

We have been talking a lot within our office lately about web marketing. One of the conversation starters was from an email from Aaron Brown asking each of us for our picks for the “5 Best Investments for Your Marketing Budget.” It was interesting to here the responses to that question. Not surprisingly, with my passion for design, my answers were weighted heavily in favor of investing your web marketing in design. Chadd’s responses understandably emphasized SEO. I jokingly told him, “Design isn’t in your top 5? That sounds like a fatal mistake to me.”

I know firsthand that Chadd definitely does value good design. His answer wasn’t a putdown to design, but rather an understanding of how people invest their money. Whey you have X amount of money in your website marketing plan you have to prioritize and rationalize how every dollar gets spent. You have to convince yourself that after your website marketing money is spent you can look back and see concrete results that are equal or greater than the initial investment. Design is notoriously hard to measure concretely and that makes it a tough thing to convince people to invest in. But allow me to try…

Believe it or not it is possible to measure and evaluate the ROI of design just as concretely as you can with seemingly less nebulous areas such as keyword research, SEO, analytics, and publicity. While design as a whole can seem like an abstract and fuzzy concept to invest in, it gets easier when you can assign goals to the project. For example, spending $5,000 to improve the design of your website has the feeling of being subjective and arbitrary. It might feel like you are just sprucing up a site that has grown stale. While some designers do take this “jazz it up” approach, we think about design much more strategically here at Red Rocket Media Group. At the heart of good design is a problem solving mentality. Instead of asking “how does this looK?” we design with a more valuable question in mind: “What impact will these changes have on the effectiveness of the site?”

Once you look at design as a way to solve specific problems it becomes much easier to justify budgeting for design in your web marketing plan. So instead of using the broad term of “design,” try to add real goals to describe outcome you would like to achieve with your website. By addressing actual problems that you want to solve you take design out of the subjective realm and into the practical world.

In the next few weeks I am going to address some of the practical ways that design can solve real issues for your website. Specifically I am going to address how:

1. Good design can increase your conversion rates.

2. Good design can improve the credibility of your company.

3. Good design can increase the quality of your products.

As you finalize your website marketing plan I hope that you aren’t too quick to dismiss design as something worthy of your investment. With so many people cutting back on their web marketing budgets, investing in design could be just the edge you need to stand out from your competition.

There is a temptation when website budgets are tight to use one of the cheap design companies found online. A Google search will yield many bargain website template options, but you should be very careful before pursuing them. Here are some questions to ask before you purchase a cheap $500 website design template.

How many other companies use this template?
A pre-designed template will most likely be used by many other sites. Having a unique site is important, so be aware that there will be many other people with sites that look identical to yours.

Will the design hurt my brand?
Your brand is what makes you different from your competition. If you have invested in building a unique identity then a website template is not going to match the rest of your brand. If your brochures and business cards don’t match your website there will be a major disconnect in your customers minds.

Are there hidden costs?
Sometimes cheap websites don’t tell you all the fees associated with your purchase. Does the cost include customization? Will you need to hire a developer to deploy the site? What about hosting? Make sure you know what you are getting into before you fall for a “too good to be true” sales pitch.

Is the content unique?
Some pre-designed websites sell content as well as the design. You can pick and choose from the articles and pre-written text to fit your needs. This is a major no-no if you want to be found by search engines. Google rewards unique content and penalizes sites that aren’t authentic.

What are the long-term costs?
Think about what will happen a year from now when you realize that your bargain website is completely unusable. Consider the money lost throughout the year and the additional burden of starting from scratch now that you see recognize your mistake.

Purchasing a pre-designed website template is definitely a website budgeting mistake. Luckily, there are affordable alternatives that result in high quality templates. Give us a call and we will show you how budgeting for your website doesn’t mean you have to end up with a low quality product.

You might find yourself in a situation where you can’t afford a much needed website redesign. Your website budget is tight and you need to make your money stretch. Here are some ideas to help you prioritize your web needs so that you can get the most out of your website design dollars.

Priority 1: Analytics
If you aren’t tracking the effectiveness of your website, this should be your first priority. If you don’t know what is working and what fails, then you won’t know what to budget for in your website. If you aren’t tracking your traffic, or don’t understand how to read your analytics reports, then budget for this first.

Priority 2: Identify Big Issues
Armed with website statistics of traffic and the browsing patterns of your users you can identify the big issues that need to be addressed on your website. An example of a big issue would be something like converting your table-based site to a css site. Another example would be overhauling your shopping cart to increase conversion rates.

Priority 3: Simple Fixes
In evaluating your site you will find small adjustments that might have big impacts. These relatively inexpensive adjustments can have a large return on investment. Example of small changes would be fixing broken links, updating homepage text, or updating your header with your new logo.

Prioritizing your website needs is the best way to make your website budget stretch. We hope you keep Red Rocket Media Group in mind as you finalize your website budget this year. Stay tuned for my post next Wednesday when I will talk about one of the biggest website budget mistakes.

When you are looking for ways to trim your website budget, design is one of the things that often gets cut. You probably feel like “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.” That may be true, but I would encourage you to spend a little time evaluating your website design, before you completely dismiss a redesign from your budget. Full website audits can be time consuming and costly, but there are some simple questions that you can ask to get a sense of whether or not you need to invest in website design next year. Open up your website and ask yourself the following questions:

What is your first impression?
It can be hard to look at your site without some personal bias, but think of what a new visitor will think when they land on your homepage? Does your design foster trust? Is it immediately apparent what your company does and what you offer? Is your site uniquely different from your competition? Does your site look dated? If your first impression could be improved then you should probably include design in your website budget.

How easy is your site to use?
You can navigate your site quickly because you use it daily, but what about someone who has never seen your site? Find someone who has never seen your site and ask them if you can watch them as they interact with there site. Give them a simple task, like finding a certain product. Watch them fill out forms. You may be surprised where people get confused or stuck. If you see this person struggling to use your site then you should probably include design in your website budget.

When was the last time you added fresh content to your site?
If you can’t tell the difference between your website now and a year ago then you should probably include design in your website budget. Not only will search engines reward you for fresh content, but your visitors will, too. If your site is constantly changing people are more likely to bookmark your site and come back for more.

Chances are, you probably will see some areas of your site that could use some design attention. This doesn’t have to break the bank, and there are probably affordable solutions that can fit into your web design budget. The next step is prioritizing your needs, which I will cover in my post next Monday. Thanks for reading!

There is a statistic that I use quite often that measures the time it takes a person to evaluate your website. Studies show that website users decide the credibility of your site in the first 50 milliseconds that they see your site. While this is a widely accepted fact there are relatively few places online that really dig into this research and make connections between actual design elements and their split second consequences. One of the best pieces I have read was recently published on A List Apart in an article called “Visual Decision Making.” I encourage you to read the article if you have any interest in the impact of good design on the success of a website.

Design often is gets categorized wrongly as an art. Understandably, when design is looked at as an embellishment or a luxury, business owners are hesitant to invest money in it, especially in tough economic times. I like the way that A List Apart defines design in their Visual Decision Making article. It says, “Smart graphic design is always some balance of current expressive trends, information architecture, classical layout aesthetics, and detailed research on user preferences and motivations.”

If you are considering designing your website yourself or cutting corners with the design of your website I hope you reconsider. Amateur design is easily spotted and the visitors to your site will sense the lack of professionalism immediately. With so much at stake it makes sense to hire an experienced web design company. Give us a call and let us show you how much more successful your site will be with great design.

I know I promised that I’d be publishing my groundbreaking blog post on marketing in a recession today but I just have to work on it for a little while longer.  The more I discover about how people’s preferences change during a recession, the more I know we need to dedicate a serious effort to the topic.  I’ll keep you posted.  Hopefully we’ll have the research pulled together soon.  Until then, keep doing your homework and don’t neglect your marketing in a recession.

Marketing in a slow economy shouldn’t really be any different than marketing in a boom.  Doesn’t it seem counter-intuitive to scale back your marketing when sales begin to slow down?  After all, when should you be marketing?  When you have a lot of sales or when you really need more sales?  So then, why are so many business owners cutting their marketing budgets right now?  Maybe it’s because it’s easier to cut marketing than cutting salaries?  Or maybe because everyone else is doing it?  Well, just because everyone is doing it, doesn’t make it a smart idea.

Since marketing in a slow economy seems to be such an important topic, I’ve been working on great report that I’ll be revealing in the next couple days.  This is going to be a real eye-opener.  I’ve been looking at how preferences tend to change depending on the economy and have compiled a huge list of things to consider before launching your next marketing campaign.

So, I began this post by saying that…

marketing in a slow economy shouldn’t be any different than in a boom, but I was wrong.  The more I look into this topic of preferences and how they change depending on the economic outlook, the more I see the need for modifications to your marketing campaigns.

Here are a couple things I’ll be highlighting:

Did you know that men find different types of women attractive depending on the economy?  If you know which type of women men prefer right now, images of those types of women are guaranteed to convert better than the wrong type.  Do you know which type of image to choose next time?

Do you know which products are guaranteed to sell better in a slow economy?

Did you know that people eat foods with less water content in a slow economy?  Find out why.

These are just a couple of the questions that I’ll answer in my revealing blog post later this week.  You won’t want to miss this one.  Until then…

Chadd Bryant

About a month and a half ago, Chadd wrote a post about the demise of the Rocky Mountain News. Like Chadd, I wasn’t too sad to see the paper go. Actually, if I hadn’t read his post I may not have even notice that the paper went under. Like so many others, I had pretty much written off the newspaper industry as irrelevant and dying. This evening I changed my point of view.

Most of my posts so far on this blog have had a common theme, that good design is good business. I believe that an investment in design will make you money. If design is really that powerful, could good design save they dying newspaper industry? Watch the video below and see if this short video of Jacek Utko changes your mind:

The results that Jacek Utko is able to achieve in his newspaper redesigns is remarkable. In an industry where newspapers are going out of business all over the world, the newspapers that Jacek redesigns are gaining readers! The redesigned newspapers are increasing their circulation by up to 100%. What is going on here?

It’s important to emphasize that Jacek’s redesigns aren’t just graphic makeovers. Saving a newspaper would require more than a new font and logo. “Reinvented” may be a better word than “redesigned.” There is an important slide in his presentation that equates “form and function” with “design and content.” Not only does the newspaper look great, the content is captivating and fresh. In order to survive, a newspaper needs to become something other than a grid of text. It needs to be an experience. That’s what good design does. It can transform an obsolete piece of paper into something as captivating as the internet or the iPhone.

If you find yourself in an industry that is struggling to survive, or a company that people have written off as obsolete, I challenge you to be like one of Jacek Utko’s newspaper redesigns. Design isn’t rocket science, but it does take courage to differentiate yourself. Give us a call and maybe we can help you with your redesign.

The return on investment for design is a difficult number to calculate. How do you quantify the effect that a good design has on the success of a product? It seems like an impossible task to attach dollar amounts to seemingly arbitrary aesthetic decisions. It is. Fortunately, design is not the same thing as “arbitrary aesthetic decisions.” Design (when done well) is an intentional plan that results in a better product. That is something that can be tested and measured. Good design is effective. Bad design has a neutral or negative effect. The recent Tropicana packaging redesign is an amazing example of how bad design resulted in the loss of millions of dollars. If they had done some simple testing of their designs, they could have avoided catastrophe.

If you missed the recent news story about Tropicana’s redesign of their orange juice packaging there is a good summary at AdAge. The redesign was a major failure and was pulled from the shelves when sales for the orange juice plummeted as a direct result of the redesign. It is estimated that Tropicana lost $33 million in sales in less than two months because the packaging was so ineffective. But what is it that made the design so bad?

Look at the packages side-by-side and see if you can see the design mistake that the new package on the right makes. Do you see it? Aesthetically, the new design is modern, professional and attractive. It looks pretty good. So what’s the problem? The mistake the package designers made was that they eliminated the recognizable elements of the design. The result is an unfamiliar design that consumers either didn’t recognize. The equity that their old design had built up over the years was thrown out the window just so they could have a “modern” looking product.

Some analysis of the Tropicana design comes to the wrong conclusion that consumers didn’t like the new design. The AdAge article says that Tropicana “would bow to consumer demand and scrap the new packaging.” The reality is that the consumer didn’t see the new design. They really don’t care about the design of the product, they just want to know that what they are purchasing is the product that meets their expectations. The average grocery shopper doesn’t take time to appreciate the packaging of the items they are buying. They either look for their favorite brand or they shop by price. Tropicana has spent years training consumers to look for the “orange with a straw” graphic and the strong green Tropicana logo. The redesign eliminated both these elements and as a result their product became generic. Since the new packaging didn’t come with a price cut, the now generic product gets passed over by the price conscious shopper. The result is a loss of $33 million!

How could this design mistake have been avoided? The answer is something that you probably don’t associate with design. The answer is research and testing. It is hard to estimate how much it would have cost Tropicana to test the new packaging, but it I am sure it is less than 1% of the revenue Tropicana lost.

The other lesson that you can learn from the Tropicana story has to do with the company responsible for the redesign, the Arnell Group. Take a look at this video of Peter Arnell, the company’s CEO talking about the redesign. He sort of sounds like he knows what he is talking about, but I couldn’t follow his thought process and I am used to hearing the “marketing jargon” that often gets passed as rational explanation. Regardless, he was able to fool Tropicana into believing that his redesign was an improvement over the old packaging. Listening to him speak, however, makes it pretty obvious that there was little or no testing of the new design before the launch. In fact, he says, “Emotionally it was very very difficult, and it still remains difficult for everyone to grasp the importance of that change because it’s so dramatic.” If there had been testing done of the design, it wouldn’t have been so difficult. Research and facts make it very easy to convince people that a design will be effective. He is blaming the consumer and Tropicana decision makers for not being enlightened enough to appreciate the beauty of the new design! Does that sound like the kind of attitude you want to have leading a redesign where millions of dollars are at stake?

In a tough economy, you can’t afford to make costly design mistakes. Design is an investment that can dramatically increase or decrease your profit. As you consider which design company in northern Colorado to invest your money with, Red Rocket Media Group is the only company that can help you measure the ROI of your design investment. Give us a call and let us help you create more effectively designed products.