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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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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We’re excited to be contracted by online pool filters and supplies company DadsPool.com to redesign the current e-commerce site.

The new strategy will take aim to increase online sales conversion through the refinement of site navigation, structure, and their customers’ online buying process.

We’re also implementing a search marketing strategy focused on search engine optimization to pull in visitors looking for pool filters and supplies on a national level.

We’ll keep you posted on the before and after case study for this project.

Website? Check. Traffic? Not sure. Conversions? Huh?

You must learn how to market your site to bring customers that convert.

GETTING STARTED:

Getting started, you need to have a plan in place, a web site marketing strategy. Without planning you have no direction to follow. So think about WHO you are wanting to target. WHAT their needs are once they get to your site. WHEN and how often will they need what your company has to offer them. And HOW you can get them to convert into a sale or a qualified business lead!

Promotional strategies will help narrow down what works for your company, don’t be afraid to try several at once, this will help you narrow down what is working and what isn’t. With the popularity of the internet you have so many ways you can test market what your company is selling; i.e. search engine campaigns, email marketing campaigns, forums, pay-per-click campaigns, web site optimization, writing press releases, social networks, blogging, etc.

YOU’RE HALF WAY THERE:
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You’ve seen it before, the common day-to-day unfolding of most organizations. They start somewhere between a second serving of coffee and a verbal rehash of yesterday’s news. Between the foreseeable dehydration and irrelevant debate, few decisions are made about the state of their web presence. What is far more daunting is that when the website is considered a topic of discussion, nothing profound or progressive pushes the rhetoric further than the aesthetic of the website.

Granted, to those involved in filling a 9 to 5 block, it may seem like time well spent picking pretty colors and finding more reasons for the website to “Pop!”. Unfortunately, these sorts of discussions are not sufficient in understanding the impact of an organizations website. Those in charge of making big decisions must come to terms with the idea that their website is an investment and should be cared for with the same amount of discipline. To those in the know, such accusations may come off as unsound or irrelevant due to the adoption rate of the internet. However, the affects of the internet along with simply having a website do not guarantee results.

I challenge you to examine your next company meeting and see if John-Doe from marketing is determine to send out his polished mailers or Jane from sales is set on buying more leads. If the latter describes your organization’s current state of investment, loosely, then I invite you to read on. On the other hand, if you’re fortunate and your company’s adoption characteristic in conversions is what Geoffrey Moore describes as pre-chasm(early adopters and or visionaries) in his book “Crossing the Chasm”, then we commend you and invite you to read for leisure. For those of us in the early majority, let me focus on the opportunity of converting a return on investment through the explorations in Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus’ book “Web Design for ROI.” (more…)

When approaching the development of a new website, project managers, designers, and application developers initially have little data to inform their design decisions and must rely upon research in order to construct successful user experiences. Research, however, is completely invalidated if the decisions it suggests end up being ineffective after a project launches. The fail safe for avoiding such an outcome is extensive usability testing, a portion of the development process many organizations sometimes wish to avoid due to perceived associative costs and resource drain. Usability testing, though, does not have to be expensive or take a prohibitive amount of time, and the changes that will come about due to interacting directly with users will reap benefits that far outweigh any costs in capital or time that is accrued throughout the process.

Keeping usability testing light and cost effective is key, and here are five quick tips on how to do just that:

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Sensible concepts for those ready to expand their website and search engine marketing.

1) Content will always be king…make sure your content is top notch and don’t just focus on the pretty pictures, you’re visitors aren’t. Wether it’s copy, audio or video, invest as much as needed to get it right. If you’re trying to convince someone to believe or do something, then always test your content and keep working to one-up the current set. Refine and grow.

2) Brand loyalty is tough to come by on the web. When I say loyalty, I mean, for the most part, no one will suffer through a site just because it has a logo they know on it. Only a handful of sites have extremely loyal customers. Make sure your site is relevant, easy to use, and gives visitors what they’re looking for. Poor site design and usability sends me looking elsewhere. Why waste time trying to figure a website out when I can find the company who did this for me and buy from them?

3) Web design is much more than colors, font selection and creative juxtaposition. Good design determines how easy a site is to use (intuitive), builds trust (almost instantly) and serves as a guide for visitors. Great design takes online marketing into consideration in the planning phases to create maximum customer conversions.

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