Rise is pleased to sign CNS Healthcare as a new client. CNS healthcare is a leading research organization in psychiatric and neurological treatments. 

CNS health care mission is to develop safe and effective pharmaceutical treatments for those suffering from psychiatric and neurological illnesses. Their main goal for their new website is to display information and educate their visitors to funnel them into their office. They also wanted to increase word of mouth and exposure for their company across their online marketing channels. 

Rise is very excited to sign CNS Healthcare. Keep checking back for the website re-design launch of www.CNSHealthcare.com

Rise is pleased to announce the website launch of Luxe and Liberty, an e-commerce site that offers American-made home furnishings that are beautifully designed and crafted with premium-quality materials.

Luxe and Liberty CEO, Rebecca Orrel, was referred to Rise, looking to construct a website that was clean, user friendly and geared to promote high quality, American-made products. Luxe and Liberty strives to be the first and only destination for American-made home furnishings by offering a compelling combination of value, selection, service and convenience.

Rise was excited to partner with Luxe & Liberty to create a unique on-line boutique for American made furnishings. Please check out Luxe & Liberty to purchase high quality products and support our domestic economy.

Thanks, Smashing Magazine, for adding The Real Estate Concierge to your 30 Beautiful Real Estate Websites post! This site was also awarded a spot in their Top 100 Designs of 2008 by Nerd Business.

I’m a big fan of Seth Godin’s books and blog posts. He wrote today about rapid change, citing the newspaper industry as an example of going sixty to zero overnight.

One prediction in his blog post that stood out to me was “Prediction: 90% of your sales will come from word of mouth or digital promotion by 2011. How do you change what you’re doing today to be ready for that?”

Two years isn’t long. Businesses that are able to grab hold of digital promotion and social media are going to soar.

Seth Godin’s message: don’t try to preserve a dying way of business. Invest in your future. Here, here.

Rise has signed American Top Team in Orlando. American Top Team offers a high level of Mixed Martial Art programs, structured curriculum and individual attention for a great workout. 

American Top Team (ATT) came to Rise to develop an online presence for their locations throughout central Florida. Their over all goal is to create a professional online presence which drives traffic and attention to their services structured for all ages. They also wanted to ensure the visitor that they will not only get a good work out but they will also have fun!

Stay tuned for the website launched of Orlando’s American Top Team!

Rise has signed Hello USA, a destination management company, as a new client. 

Hello USA is a full service destination management company serving meeting professionals in Florida, Arizona, and Las Vegas, Nevada. Hello USA’s management team came to Rise with two immediate needs: application development and a full website re-design. With a mission to always “go above and beyond” to ensure customer satisfaction, the Hello USA team wanted an application that could send performance surveys to clients, record feedback, and generate reports based on an extensive set of criteria. Rise also created an aesthetic design for the application to match the site re-design and ensure brand cohesiveness.

Keep checking back for the launch of the redesigned Hello-USA.com!

Rise is pleased to announce that the FNGLA phase I application development project has been launched. The Florida Nursery, Growers and Landscape Association (FNGLA) is an organization for horticulture industry segments including allied, foliage, floriculture, garden center, landscape, and woody and citrus nursery specialists.

FNGLA contracted Rise for the application’s development, looking to create a streamlined, simple-to-use online tool for both consumers and FNGLA members that allowed for searchable product and plant listings and a banner advertising system. A powerful administration system was also developed, making it simple for the FNGLA to track and view reports on their extensive member database. Rise polished the application’s look and feel with a visual layer that integrates into the existing FNGLA site while re-enforcing the application’s ease-of-use.

Rise is currently working on phase II of the project, as well as a complete redesign of the existing site. Please check out the Locator at FNGLA Locator and stay tuned for more great stuff to come at FNGLA.

Seth Godin posts on “The first question every web site designer must ask” where his hypothesis is that most sites (except for musicians, artists and web 2.0 companies) need to focus on the message and action they want their website users to take, instead of drasticing website users with “cutting edge, clever or slick” design.

The intent of this idea couldn’t be more correct, though I feel more importance needs to be placed on how interaction design serves your website users. Your website design (or interaction design) can’t be divorced from your message. Both, combined, produce a belief or emotion to elicit an action.

First impressions are best made when the details of design are carefully weighed and measured. When the right pieces of the puzzle are placed in the right places and emphasized with the right lines, textures and colors, all conveying unity, strength and clarity, your site can reach a balance where it just plain works.

Great design is invisible because website users only notice the message. Great design builds an image and prepares the website user to receive the message, almost instantly. This takes a great deal of skill and restraint. Though it goes without saying, unless you take care of your message, great design can’t happen. Great design makes websites easier, not harder.

Our own Rise website realignment launched at the end of 2008 provides an over 500% increase in new business requests from our old site. Our message didn’t change greatly, though our new site offers clarity, direction and a hierarchy of information, all delivered in a design that ties the message together—and, admittedly we still have miles to go on our site! Testing is the only way to gauge how great design will affect your website performance.

What results have you experienced when great design was applied to your website strategy?

The web is the king of first impressions, though we hear from business-minded people often about the high costs of professional design. If you want to make the most of your company’s first impression, invest everything you can in your company image.

That’s not to say a quality image is a complex looking one. No, simple can be fantastically effective. Though when the details of your brand all sing in harmony, those first impressions will be stellar. Many times the details take time, hence the investment. But it will pay dividends by establishing a first impression people will remember.

In reading What Client’s Love by Harry Beckwith, I’ve discovered research proving what designers have always believed—snap judgments stick.

The research is based on a study by Harvard psychologist Nalini Ambady, who showed college students a 2 second clip of a professor then asked the students to give an evaluation of the professor. The assessments showed that the first impression stayed consistent, no matter how long the students interacted with the professor after their first impression—2 seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds or the entire semester.

From Ambady’s research Malcolm Gladwell observed first impressions become self fulfilling prophecies. We make immediate judgments about people and businesses and from there we fit everything we see to conform to our snap judgment.

Your website is no different. Design, message, and the website user’s next action all need to be clear and on point. The first few seconds are make or break. The performance of your website depends on making an excellent first impression.

Master the first seconds of your website visitor’s experience because first impressions last an eternity.