In fact, when you design online your first goal is to consider how users might come through your site. What do we want them to do first? Is there something they need to know right away? After all, if consumers are only going to read around 20% of your content, you want to give them the most important information right away.

That’s exactly what we did with BizQuest.com. We simplified their busy page and developed appropriate action-driven content to make it easier for people to complete key tasks. Our design pushes the eye in the right spot (dark blue for the most popular action), and the new header is more pleasant to the eye with a more intuitive taxonomy. Speaking of smart, the buttons that require action are all the same color, we removed the over-use of blue and, lastly, we chose fonts and weights that allow for critical spatial relations.

Success on this project was measured on conversion, and we’re on the upside. While we can’t divulge exact figures, the owner has expressed his pleasure.

New design:

Old design:

If you’re looking to buy or sell a business, please consider our partners, BizQuest. Great people to do business with (and the extra sales will always help prove our viable design even more).

“Wait, this slider isn’t working. I’m grabbing the art off the page. WTH?”

It would have been the bee’s knees to manipulate that sliding chart on the homepage, after all I was just there to get into our checking account. This was a nice distraction.

Except, I don’t want to click through, especially after you made me grab a slider that wasn’t. And I feel well within our right to think that, after all your button is all the way right and here in the English speaking world we always start in the upper left. Maybe I’m just dumb.

Next time I’ll click through.

Maybe.

Public perception might not matter to a super established brand like IBM – wait, no, they really want people to like their products and services too.

Mid-sized companies, they need it.
Same with the SMBs.

So how can you improve perception? How can you show yourself as a company that cares, a business that has a human side that makes prospects and competitors say out loud “you know what, I really like them.”

Try social media.

It can be tricky – there are a lot of rules to it. Your presence has to be fun and upfront, caring, compassionate and you’ll need to contribute to your community. Your product or service must be up-to-par and able to withstand criticism (sounds like a general rule to me).

But the end results far outweigh the budget – social media is cheap and should be apart of your marketing plan. Especially if you’d like to find brand advocates who tell their friends why they enjoy what you bring to the table.

It’s almost like FREE advertising.

Here are some additional tips:

• Track your campaigns. All major blogging software can provide results on FREE Google Analytics pages. Plus sites like LinkedIN, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter also have tracking or search available. You can even create links that people can share with others, and you can track the usage.

• Let people comment and talk about you. Think about cultivating, not controlling. Encourage discussions on this two-way street.

• Watch the goodwill spread. It will take some time – you won’t see immediate gains. But like any part of a campaign, it needs to blossom to help build your name and your brand.

Here’s one example using something we love, the bicycle. The companies involved are MASH, an innovative cycling products company, and Mellow Johnny’s, a bike shop in Austin owned by Lance Armstrong.

Yeah, that Lance.

We’re not sure who started this conversation, but somehow these two places got together and before you know it Lance is riding a fixed-geared bike all over the city of Austin with guys from MASH. The only real sign about the shop is his hat, but it’s in there.

And once the video was up, it spread like gangbusters. Blogs. Forums. Twitter. 25,000 people saw it on YouTube. Eventually people all ended up at MASH and probably said, “what is this company?”

Now they know. And they think it’s once cool place, that’s for sure. Who knows, they probably even bought an innovative new product or signed up for email alerts.

We swear – we’re not in bed with local agency news source, Adomatica.

But this is the second time we’ve won the Adomatica tagline contest this year. Must be that our copywriting prowess is just THAT good. (Ever hear of a writer who doesn’t think his writing is great?)

Right now we’re working on quite a few new branding and ID projects for our clients – logos, messaging and taglines. Here are a couple that we’ll post about again once the collateral is printed and/or goes live:

Klein Contruction
Building a future together

Vinaire
Living the wine life

Have a great 4th of July!

15 people took the day to celebrate a year of smart marketing and advertising with our crew. It was a good mixture of clients, cohorts and friends. We even saw a SOX 13-8 winner over the Pirates.

Good thing the SOX got that winning idea out of their system before the weekend Cubs series.

See you next year!

We met near the statue dedicated to the 2005 World Champs!

A new Stalelife tradition – wish organist Nancy Faust
a good game for good luck.

All eyes were on the board in the 3rd. Woot!

No doubt Kurt and Matt were discussing the finer points of editing video.
Matt’s recent creations all feature his newborn son, Rylan.

What a good looking crew. Missing a couple of folks from the
full roster in this one.

Stuck with driving duties…thanks, Sid!

We put it on the White Sox scoreboard, but here is
actual proof – our clients rock!

Like this one that came to Stalelife Austin:

It’s a news clipping in an OE with a Post-it note – not exactly new tactics.

Combined, however, is a different story. Especially when you add no sign of a return address, a unique handwriting font, a full-priced stamp and no printed barcode – suddenly this resembles the articles that Aunt Suzie mails.

We passed this one around, trying to figure out who sent it. “Who calls me Joseph? And lives in Santa Clara? What is this all about?”

In all, we held onto the package for a good three or four minutes – beating the pants off the known DM readership of two seconds.

Right out of the gate, a win. Sure the match mailing will cost a little more, but something tells us that the cost is recovered in new accounts for Grande.

Think fresh while looking through your samples – there’s a new idea in there somewhere.

Speaking of ideas generators, our friend Robert at Adomatica recently received the same mail and blogged about it, too. Great minds… His blog is a good source for industry news and quips.