Chaos Contained: Hallaton Web Design

For our client Hallaton—a company that installs containment lining for landfills, excavations, and similar purposes—we wanted to contain the chaos of diverse elements into a web design that integrated their very identity.

The H Word

It began with a sketch. Strong vertical layers of soil framed “containers” of text to depict both literally and figuratively what Hallaton does. But the integration of containment and creativity had its finest moment when a horizontal bar connected the verticals into an H. The design of the home page now echoed the identity of the client. The logo became the design.

Earth Colors

Now that we had our structure, the next challenge was to choose identity-rich colors. The greens and blues of nature represent Hallaton’s commitment to protect the earth. The black design elements communicate power and strength.

Talking through Type

Fonts, too, have the power to reinforce a company’s identity and tell its story. These fonts possess strength and balance in their block-like structure, yet they are sleek and modern in their aesthetic. We used uppercase type to draw the eye to headers, menus, and page titles for user-friendly navigation.

Out of the Container

Good web design is a balance of creating containers and breaking boundaries. The site went live today. Let us know what you think.

Salon Make-over

Colours Salon and Day Spa is not simply giving make-overs—they’re receiving one. We transformed the old site from flat color to bold and beautiful, giving the site the same confidence customers have after visiting the salon.

Black is Back, Gold is Bold

The black background provides a solid foundation for the second color, gold. But why gold? “I wanted a color associated with wealth and power,” said Meghan. “This needed power and confidence. Power is bold.” A touch of swirls gave a feminine touch to match their primary customers. The boldness of gold and the elegance of swirls combined to provide confidence and beauty.

Type to the Rescue

Typography was next on the list, and the old website needed help. Cursive type can be hard to read, but we found a textured cursive font that was bold and still legible. Also, we complimented the flat black color with a combination of black and gold (brown) as the header color. And the second header is a deeper gold, which accented the black and brown really well.

Shine

It is now time to shine. The site went live today. Let us know what you think.

Family Dentistry Web Design

Feild Family Dentistry in Maryland

Announcing a new website for Feild Family Dentistry in Maryland. The site features:

Custom photography of team, patients, and office
Educational videos to inform patients about various dental topics
Online forms that save staff time and expedite the enrollment process
Professional graphics (e.g., dental implants) to illustrate the features and benefits of various dental options

If you know anyone whose website needs a facelift, contact us.

Custom Photography

Analytics: What To Do With Your Hits

5 things analytics teach you and what to do about them.

If you have a website, you have probably wondered how many people have visited your site, where they are coming from, and what pages are most popular. How do you find out? The answer is analytics. This article tells you what kind of information is available to you and what strategic marketing decisions you can make as a result. Click the graphics to enlarge.

1. Hits: Is this place popular?

Analytics tell you how many visitors came to your website, how many pages they visited, and how long they stayed on the site.

By themselves, these numbers are just useful for stroking your ego, but in comparison to other numbers, they can have strategic value.

What to do:

Look for patterns over time. Growing popularity of a site can indicate success in other marketing efforts like a newsletter, networking, and linking from other sites.
Look for relative popularity among websites. Knowing which of your websites is getting more visitors can help you determine your content strategy. Which sites need which kind of content? How can you leverage the popularity of one site to benefit another (generate some referral traffic)?

2. Demographics: Where are y’all from?

Demographics data reveal how much web traffic comes from where. This data can be analyzed by country, region, and city.

What to do:

Look for places with lots of visitors. Ask if there is any strategic advantage to catering more to this geographic area. Could you develop content specifically for this area?
Does popularity in an area indicate demand for more of a presence there? How can you best serve this expressed desire for the value your business brings?

Beware of false conclusions: One client recently noted a large amount of traffic coming from a distant state. This led to a discussion about catering more to this market until we discovered that the traffic was coming from visitors searching for a company with a similar name in that region. Before jumping to conclusions, check this data against other analytic measurements.

3. Content: So what’s good here?

Analytics tell you which pages are getting the most user attention. Most business owners are surprised how few pages get most of the traffic. In a recent sampling of our customers, we found that on a typical site about 50% of the traffic was generated by just 4–5 pages.

Knowing which pages are popular can also shape your content strategy. In a recent sampling of our customer websites, we discovered that certain types of pages are more popular than others. This chart shows that beyond the home page, most users want information about the people behind the company. This is good to know when you are deciding what content to develop and how prominently to feature certain navigation elements.

The Hidden Team

Recently a client told us they didn’t really want a page for the people at the company. They only had a few staff members, and they reasoned that revealing this would give the impression that they had very limited capacity. After discovering that users cared a lot about the people, they changed their strategy and included other ways of showing capacity, including linking to partners and affiliates.

What to do:

A popular section of your website indicates user interest. Make sure your content actually answers user questions. Explore what other information you can provide them. And make a clear path from these pages to the desired action step.

4. Goals: Paving the desired path

Every web visit is a journey through the content. Some people just visit one page and leave (this is called a “bounce”). Others visit many pages before exiting, even spending a long time absorbing the material. And not everyone enters the site on the home page—many come to an interior page from a search engine link.

But the visit that pays the bills is the one that results in users taking a desired action step (called a “goal”).

What to do:

Create Goals : Setup clear goals for your website. Examples include signing up for an email series, ordering a product, downloading a free sample, etc.
Develop Content:  Create words and graphics that make the goal look like the obvious path to take.
Measure Results : Check analytics to find out how many users are reaching the goal.
Refine the Process : Test changes to the content to improve the success rate.

5. Technology: What’s everyone using these days?

Analytics provide a boat-load of data on user technology, including operating system, browser, screen resolution, service provider, and so on. This information can be helpful when deciding what technology to employ in your website.

Beware: Business Owner Bias

It’s common for business owners to want their website to look good on the devices they use themselves. IT folks often report getting a request to support a burgeoning technology or device as soon as the CEO gets a new toy. But just because the CEO has a device doesn’t mean that most users do. Analytics can neutralize the bias and help the team focus on what users are actually using.

What to do:

Notice trends in user behavior and anticipate what the users will want in the near future. Then optimize the site for them. In the last few years, the biggest trend we’ve seen is the rise of smart phones and tablets (primarily the iPad). We anticipate that these devices will soon be more popular for browsing the web than person computers—in fact in some markets they already are.
If your website doesn’t look good or work well on a popular platform then you might be shutting down that segment of the market from easily growing your business. Fix this by hiring someone to make your website work well on every device that’s important to users.

More Help with Analytics

These are just the first steps in using analytics. If this interests you, contact us to help you grow your business.

Ken Kinard on Creativity Coaching

Our creative team just put the finishing touches on a new video on creativity coaching. In the video, a team of improvising artists illustrate the value of coaching for bringing more creativity into your business, play, and life. It features Harpejji, electronic piano, percussion, photography, drawing, dance, a 1967 Ford 4000 tractor, and lots of free play.

Easy Content Development

help for business owners who need to develop website content

The biggest task in creating a website is not the strategy, design, or technology: it’s the content. Most business owners put it off and hate to do it because it demands focus, requires precision, and exercises a muscle that may not have been used in quite a while.

If you’re not a natural writer, here’s how to get it done faster with less frustration.

1. Get a Writer

Partner with a detail-oriented person who likes turning ideas into the right words.

When we create websites with clients, often we often play the role of writer for hire. It’s fun to bring clarity and focus to big ideas. But if a client already has an in-house writer, we act as the editor to make sure the content has a second or third pair of eyes before publishing.

Tip: Don’t stop here. You can’t just throw money at this and expect it to work. I remember working with a client who shopped around and found a cheap writer to do his content development for him. I checked back after several weeks to see how it was going. “She’s a good writer,” he said, “but she gets a lot of the facts wrong. I end up having to redo her work.” No wonder. The poor girl had no insight into the company, and little knowledge of the material. So…

2. Set the Vision

In a single meeting you can set the vision for what you are trying to accomplish with the content. Decide on the audience, the scope of the information (how detailed), and look at some references of what’s already out there.

We’ve found that this is what business owners do best. Spend your time in this space. Nobody else can do this better than you can, so dig in.

Tip: Don’t get caught up in the design. When checking websites or browsing brochures, it’s easy (and fun) to get distracted by the visual design, the technology, the images, etc. To avoid this, just copy the content into a text document and discuss it in that context. Remember, you’re after words here, not design. Separating the two makes your task much easier. Design comes later.

3. Generate Ideas

Your job is generating ideas, not selecting the right words. Make an outline and generate a bulleted list of ideas that need to go on each page.

Tip: We’ve created a worksheet to help clients with this. If you’d like a copy, email us and ask for the Web Content Worksheet.

4. Test It Out

Once the writer has a draft, read it as if you were a prospective customer. Show it around the office. How does it feel? Where is it too detailed? Where is it too vague? Where does it over-promise? Where does it make you want to roll your eyes? It is really you?

Tip: Most early drafts suffer from too many words about the obvious. Work with the writer to get right to the point so readers have less to wade through.

Stay Up High

The nice thing about running your business is that you can decide when to stay at the high level and when to dive into the details. If words are not your thing, no worries. Stay focused on the big picture and we’ll help you with the rest. You’ve got a business to run. Do the fun part and leave the rest to others you trust.

Design for Designer’s Sake

Interior Designer Website

Bobbie Dunn of B. Dunn Interiors has made a career of designing relaxing spaces for home and work. She needed a website that felt as professional and creative as her business.

Deep, rich colors make a strong impression
Stylish typography gives a distinctive look
Photos demonstrate the quality of her work

We also created the logo.

Writer’s Corner

I Should Write More (insert guilt)

If you are responsible for marketing, then you need to write. Website copy, blog entries, newsletters, email campaigns, brochures, articles for publication…the list goes on. But writing is hard work. It requires focus. It demands full attention. Frankly, it’s not a great fit for a multi-tasking, interruption prone, hyper-connected, go-go world like ours.

And if you are in a small business, you wear so many hats that the number of potential interruptions is huge. Every person, every event, every email, every phone call another interruption that breaks your flow. And breaking flow kills writing (just ask John Cleese at 4:05).

And if you manage to conquer all of that, you are still left with the mental chatter that goes in when you sit down to write. You go into explore mode, brainstorming and mind-mapping, only to discover that someone accidentally invited Editor and he shows up to “just check in” and ends up criticizing everything before you even have it half-baked.

Protected Space for Writing

That’s why we started Writer’s Corner, a simple way to protect the space for writers. It’s simple and cheap.

Gather with a few other folks in a quiet space.
Sit down.
Write.

Then if you want some feedback, fresh perspective, or coaching, you can get that too. Bonus.

Even if you don’t write for your company, but writing is something you need more time to do, this could give you some accountability (and overcome some of that guilt).

If the idea resonates with you, and you’re in the Baltimore area, contact me and we’ll talk details.

Focus 50

The Mantra

I talk to business owners every day. “How do you market your business?” I ask. “Word-of-mouth is the most cost effective form of marketing,” they say. And I agree.

The Squirm

So I ask them what their strategy is for developing referrals. That’s when they start to squirm. Usually they talk about a networking event they attended, or the value of good customer service, or maybe a rewards program for customer referrals. Some are even pretty disciplined about attending a weekly networking group. But rarely do they seem confident about their strategy.

It’s Complicated

Strategy can be hard because of the many possibilities—so many ways to connect with people. You can get friends on Facebook. You can acquire Twitter followers. You can link with colleagues on LinkedIn. Feels like so much progress. But then what?

Making thousands of acquaintances doesn’t always pay the bills, especially if a referral to your kind of business requires a high degree of trust. Trust takes time. You have to earn it. And you need lots of touches, lots of little risks that pay off, lots of relational dimensions.

Stretched Too Thin

How many close relationships can a person’s network have? After about 100 or so, it gets difficult to maintain a relationship of any strength. (I have trouble even remembering that many names.) So let’s see if we can turn this truth into an effective marketing strategy.

Focus 50

Take a look at your database of networking contacts. Include clients, friends, consultants, coaches, and family. Pick your Top 50 and put them in a list. (Use your intuition here.) This is the core of your network. This is where you will focus your energy.

[You may want to experiment with this number. Some business thrive on a few strong relationships. Others make a living from many connections where the strength of each one is not so important. Knowing your business really helps make this decision. A pizza shop may benefit from a large loose network, but an attorney, accountant or psychologist may benefit more from a small concentrated core.]

The Work of Networking

Now that you have your Focus 50, your job is to:

Listen
Find out what’s going on in their world and what problems they are facing right now.
Help
Help them by offering your expertise, referring someone in your network, or suggesting a resource that can solve their business problems.
Inform
Educate them on what’s going on in your business, who receives the most value from your expertise, and what challenges you are experiencing. Invite them to follow you online and subscribe to your newsletter.
Ask
Let them know that you work by referrals. Ask who they know that might be a good fit for you.
Thank
Warmly thank them for supporting you and your business. Find a creative way to let them know they really matter to you.

The key is that you are helping them. When they experience you as a good resource, they do your marketing for you.

Eliminate and Concentrate

The strategy works because you concentrate your time and energy on the relationships that matter most. At the end of 2012 you could have 50 people who see you as a valuable person to help them grow in 2013.

Creative Christmas

Have a Creative Christmas and a Productive New Year, from the creative team at Accent Interactive!

Holiday tips for boosting your creativity in the new year:

Strengthen a relationship with someone you don’t see very often. Find what values you have in common. Ask what their unique perspective might contribute to your project.
Read a lot. Come to the new year with fresh ideas.
Give your slow cooker something to play with during your time off.
Go to bed early and wake up in the middle of the night to write 1 page about what’s on your mind. (If this gets exciting, try morning pages.)
Pick something you have been responsible for in 2011 and give the responsibility to someone else. You will need more space for creativity in 2012.
Imagine it’s this time next year. What do you hope to be celebrating then? What will it take to make it happen?
Collaborate. Find someone who can team up with you to do something that’s hard but really important to accomplish.
Take a walk every day. Notice things. Enjoy them. Breathe.
Spend time with beauty. It has it’s own intrinsic rewards.
Love someone more. Then even more.