Everyone knows that the foundation of your business is your company’s brand—it will be posted on everything from business cards to the corporate website, company letterhead to marketing campaigns. Without a strong foundation who will identify you over your competitors? 

Large companies like Apple and BMW know the role a solid brand plays in the attainment of business success. I have had the pleasure to work for companies like Sears and Remax, both of which put serious efforts behind their brands and subsequently found success in their respective industries. 

But I also have worked for companies that have not branded themselves or have failed to settle on one coherent brand direction. Those companies are still the same size if not smaller today. Companies that have formed a solid brand are much stronger with their customer relations and their employee foundations. Below are some objections I have heard over time and some solutions to branding your company’s foundation to reinforce your solid business plan.
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There’s been some discussion in the blogosphere recently about the importance of wireframes and how they should be handled within interactive agencies. Going by a recent post by Sarah Harrison and reiteration by Paul Boag of the Boagworld podcast, there seems to be a disconnect between information architects (IAs) and the designers that they work with in relation to the position of wireframes within the overall website development process. The basic caveat as introduced by Sarah is that wireframes, even if they are meant to be lo-fidelity representations of a final website that contain no true graphical direction, colors, or themes, still focus on physical information layout, something that is generally handled by designers in lieu of the IA (in a perfect world.) Sarah suggests a novel document known as the Page Description Diagram, as introduced by Dan Brown in his excellent work Communicating Design, as the perfect solution to this impasse. The Page Description Diagram  lists the elements of a page in a standard three-column format with the most important information featured in the left column with less important aspects listed in the center and right columns. The standard horizontal structure of the document keeps it layout-neutral in a design sense and leaves placement completely up to the designer. (more…)

Certain people have a keen way of just saying what they mean and others insist on guiding you through a crafted journey that ultimately persuades the same conclusion. At Rise, we’re the latter. We thrive on the journey the user takes and we feed off our ability to provide well crafted ethical persuasions. At heart, we side with our form in the proverbial debate that is: content vs. form. On a long day of code munching and laffy taffy use, knowing that our well tailored path (or form) is the ultimate contributor in a successful conversion, truly makes the invasive sugary goo in the back of our mouths that much sweeter.

But how do we really do it?

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In a world of e-revolution, where electronic store fronts are taking a competitive marketing approach, your organic internet search placement is becoming crucial for success. A normal query on a search engine often turns up hundreds if not thousands of matching web pages and only ten matches are displayed on the first page — are you in the top ten?

If you’re not in position one on the first page, third or fourth can be just as beneficial. Of course the higher your site is positioned, the higher its exposure and opportunities for capturing visits from engaged customers. Top ranking gets an estimated 56% of the clicks from searches. Second and third place get about 14% and 12% respectively. It pays to be number one.

As we all know, there is no Search Engine Optimization (SEO) formula for placement, just methods to follow to beat out your competition and obtain higher rankings.

Steps to Success in Search Engines

There are many steps to getting top placement online. 

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June 13, 2008, (Orlando, FL) Rise Creative Group announces the site launch of The Real Estate Concierge, a unique customer service-based company focussed on destination real estate. Affiliated with Stirling Sotheby’s International Realty, the Real Estate Concierge is dedicated to providing exemplary service for second/vacation home seekers, retirees and investors searching for high-end, pre-construction destination real estate. Rise Creative Group provided identity design and web development services on the project.

Rise Creative Group is a high-end integrated design and marketing firm that serves companies in need of Orlando website design. For more information, log on to the web site at www.risecreativegroup.com or call 407-965-0689.

We’re delighted to be contracted to build a new website portal for the hospitality industry called HospitalitySteward.com.

We’ll be building the brand identity, web design and custom web application programming to bring the entire site to life.

Consider the time and dedication NASA puts toward preparing the space shuttle for its next mission. Months of research, planning, and prep to get all the details in place for a flawless launch. It’s launch day and the countdown is on…5…4…3…2..LIFTOFF!

You can hear the hi-five’s sparking all around the control center. Then the director announces over the loud speaker, “Okay everyone, great job…have a good night!”

Say what? 
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Proper visual and structural design is a crucial step in building a site that won’t kill you.

Design gets a bad rap sometimes. It’s expensive, time consuming, not needed—designers create answers that nobody wants to problems that don’t exist…yikes!

We’ve talked with many companies over the years. They’ve ranged from shoestring startups to some big names. No matter what size of company it is, many times there is someone there unwilling to make the investment on design and usability. The main complaint is that the payoff in those areas are not worth the investment.

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As acclimated consumers of the information age, we’ve come a long way from understanding how the blips and lights of the modern personal computer work. We have migrated into an all-encompassing online social grid that seeks to craft the new manner by which we consume, experience, and react to web content. Knowing this about the web, however, is not enough to fill the minds and wallets of those organizations who seek profits today and tomorrow – it takes a larger leap of faith. The key to success for any organization, to sustain a promising future in this post-modern territory, is to manage their website for optimal ROI. How, you may be asking?

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There’s an excellent post up over at Signal vs. Noise by Roby Fitzhenry concerning user paths in web navigation design. The basic argument is that website designers should think beyond the common, top-down hierarchical structure present in most websites since it may not necessarily match up with users’ desired paths. In this case, a “path” is the series of steps (pages viewed, actions taken, etc.) a user undertakes to meet an end goal, whatever that may be from finding applicable information to making a purchase. Here’s Roby’s own words explaining the concept: (more…)