Nashville Web Design, Graphic and Logo Design

Internet Explorer's market share has been falling for several years now, while browsers like Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome are growing in popularity. From a web designer's perspective, This is a welcome migration. Internet Explorer (IE) has long been the bane of our existence due to its lack of support for web standards. For every site built, a designer or web developer must spend hours getting IE6 and IE7 to play nice with their code. IE8 has made many improvements but still doesn't natively allow for some of the simpler things like rounded corners or a decent drop shadow. Much of this is slated to change for IE with the introduction of IE9 which has decent HTML5 support and better support for CSS3 and other web standards.

Perhaps Microsoft is just finally waking up and smelling the reality of the web these days with their extensive enhancements to IE9. Or, perhaps this is all in an effort to gain back their dominating web browser market share, which was as high as 90%+ at it's peak.

In many situations, people will use what's readily available to them regardless of how well or how poorly it gets the job done. This is especially true in situations where users are less tech-savvy and don't feel comfortable, don't care or don't have the knowledge to change their browser's default search engine. I'm sure a very significant portion of web users fall into this category. All search engines are available in all browsers but some browsers come with a default search engine already set. Regardless of the reason for Internet Explorer's dominance in the past, that dominance is waning while Microsoft is taking part in a well-marketed battle with Google for a portion of the online search business. Could this desire to gain a foothold in the search market be the reason that Microsoft is implementing a bigger, bader (not bad meaning bad but bad meaning good) IE9? If Users migrate back to IE9, Microsoft's Bing search engine stands to cut into a significant portion of that valuable search business from Google. The great search wars are far from over but Google is obviously winning very big at this point. We'll have to wait and see over the next few years if Bing can hold it's own in a market where the other players are well embedded. Either way, at least we're getting some signs of a better IE.

In the first post of this series – Building an Online Presence – Part 1: The Website – I discussed the importance of having a well designed and user-friendly website as the first step in creating a solid online presence. In this post, I'll give you my thoughts on social media and how it can help build a brand that your target demographic will identify with.

Pick The Proper Vehicle For Your Message

If you own a small town butcher shop, you probably don't need to post on Twitter every 15 minutes. (I can see the gruesome tweets as we speak!) Your clientele has probably never heard of Twitter and they could probably care less about how many pounds of sausage you just ground anyway. On the other hand, your customers are probably much more likely to log on to the local newspaper's website to check the weather, classified ads or read the forums. Your valuable time would be much better spent focusing your advertising and marketing efforts on local business websites such as your local newspaper's website. Being an active member of the discussion forums on these sites will benefit you much more than Twitter and Facebook ever would. For instance if there's a cooking forum on a local online hot spot, you could answer meat related questions using the business as your username/identity. Just be sure to speak in a tone that is familiar and comfortable to your demographic. There are many different social vehicles to get your message across including, Linked In, blogging, message boards, Digg, YouTube, StumbleUpon and many many, more. Remember to pick the outlets that your users actually use.

Speak The Language of Your Target Demographic

Everyone and their brother is on Facebook these days and it's a great way to keep your brand in a potential customer's mind. However, you can't just throw up an Acme Widget Corp. facebook page, post once per month and expect to see results. Users want something of value and if they're going to spend five minutes interacting with your brand online, do you really want them reading irrelevant internal company news? nope. Ideally, potential customers would be engaged with the brand through an appropriate message that evokes the desired feelings and responses. For example, if you're running an animal rescue and targeting animal lovers (who are generally a kind-hearted folk), you'll want to tug at the heart strings a bit more. Post relevant content about the injustices happening in your town and stories about beating all odds. Another scenario would be that of a large company selling wholesale rubber gaskets. You can bet that your target demo is going to be a bit more responsive to blue-collar humor and they'll be looking for something to brighten their day (I can't imagine that the world of rubber gaskets is terribly exciting without a little help. Though everything is relative I suppose!). Perhaps in this situation, you might post a joke of the day or even tweet about how Doug just tried to use a 3/4″ gasket at the convenience store by mistake.

Don't Tweet Too Much, But Don't Let Things Get Stagnant

There's a fine line between being active with social media and being obsessed. Conversely, if you're only updating your status or engaging in forums once every two months, you loose customer/user interaction and interest. Some users will update their Twitter status or their facebook photos every 15 minutes. I have to wonder how much a person can get done while constantly thinking about and looking for their next tweet or kitschy photo status update. On the other hand if you're too busy to interact with social media on at least a semi-regular basis, then perhaps you should focus your marketing efforts elsewhere or hire someone to help out. There are many freelance copywriters and social media experts who will help out on an hourly basis.

The ROI of Social Media

Return on Investment (ROI) of social media is often a hard metric to track. You may spend 20 hours per month focusing on social marketing and not see a single lead. The key thing to remember is that your brand is in front of people and when those people need your services, you'll at least have a portion of their mind share. You can always track click throughs and keep track of referring sites that lead users to your website and ultimately to your goal whether that is an online purchase, user education or anything else. Having proper analytics running with assigned goals is a crucial part of measuring the ROI of your social media marketing efforts.

Keeping all of these things in mind when working with social media in your marketing plan will help you successfully market your brand to your target demographic in a very valuable and personal manner.

Up next: Building an Online Presence – Part 3: Knowing The Competition. Subscribe to the RSS feed or signup for spam-free email updates to get notified about new posts immediately.

In an effort to better aggregate fresh Nashville Interactive content (and stay on top of the latest technologies for content feeds), We're now using Feedburner to handle all RSS content. This Google-provided service allows website owners access great data on their site's feed usage. Also, feedburner now updates your twitter page with your latest posts and integrates effortlessly with Google Analytics and AdWords too. Exciting stuff for content people.

Please enjoy, let us know if you love it or hate it and SUBSCRIBE TO THE RSS FEED of course.

If you're interested in using feedburner for your site's feed here's a few good links:
- http://feedburner.google.com/ (obviously!)
- http://adsenseforfeeds.blogspot.com/

Nashville Interactive recently completed a custom Flash design project for the world-renown Gaylord Entertainment. The client wanted a Flash-based landing page that was tied in with email marketing campaigns. The end product was a completely customizable experience that included a photo slideshow with accompanying text for each image. The all-Flash landing pages are easily "re-skinned" with xml and image replacement making them extremely flexible and quickly edited. While I've become an advocate of more "traditional" methods for web development, I always enjoy diving into some custom Flash Design.

Because I want your clients basically. Good customer service in web design seems to be some sort of elusive creature that few people get to see in their lives. A majority of people who contact me about web development or design, often tell stories of how their last guy took forever and the final website wasn't what they were expecting and he or she wasn't very professional etc. Well I'm here to let all of you non-web people out there know that it's not always like that and you don't have to put up with slack, unresponsive designers.

I've worked a lot of different jobs over the years: caddie, mason's assitant, shoe salesman, waiter and so so many others. One thing you learn from all that "real-world" experience is that you need to treat the customer with respect or they'll go else where. (except for the masonry job. There, you just watch out for falling bricks and try not to die of heat stroke) Website design should be no different. Although you need to have a good, open dialog with your designer, in the end, the client is always right (as long as the check clears).

On the other side of the coin is the fact that most of the time you're hiring a professional for his or her experience and that experience should not be taken for granted. Hopefully your website designer and developer is professionally trained and has at least several years of experience dealing with and acheiving client needs and goals. I've often argued my design choices until I'm blue in the face but to no avail. So the bottom line is, if the logo needs to be bigger, then the logo needs to be bigger

Everyone has been hit hard by the economy lately. With lean budgets, people want to get more out of their advertising and marketing dollars. What better way to do this than with online advertising and a great web presence. I don't have to tell you that the Internet is really hot these days. (this website uses the Internet as a matter of fact). Although online advertising and marketing efforts overall have pulled back a bit, the web is still a great place to sell your brand. With resources like Google it's very easy to thoroughly track your efforts and perform A – B testing to see what's working and what's not. When used in the proper manner, Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization will help achieve your goals and are very cost effective.

Having a strong web presence coupled with your online marketing efforts is also a key to successful advertising in a recession. Getting people to read your ad is only half the battle. Potential customers need a comfortable place to land when they click through. A well architectured and designed landing page is the part of the equation that really seals the deal. Having a savvy website designer who knows the turf, is well worth the money. Mostly because you can tell exactly how effective your advertising efforts are.

So what I'm trying to say is, don't pass up the opportunity to monetize your web presence in these tough times through quality web design and online marketing.