How To Make Your Web Site “Home Sweet Home”

Having a snazzy building in a bustling location is no longer what makes all the difference. Users from various walks of life spend tons of time on the Internet a week. This means that the chances of someone “visiting” your website and determining the status, success, and vibrancy of your business is much more likely than someone walking into your building establishment seeking more information. If your website is not walking the walk and talking the talk, then you have already lost the majority of your potential audience that you are marketing towards. It is no accident that consumers and other entrepreneurial business owners equate visiting a business with taking a tour of their web site.

There are three purposeful necessities that many business owners have expertly applied towards growing their physical business (and/or building their own home), but may have overlooked in regards to their digital property – the website:

1) Conceptualize – Brainstorm, envision, and plan what you want your digital property to accomplish.

2) Design – Convey your business’s desired personality and atmosphere, setting it apart from competition.

3) Develop – Execute your plans in a way that can be built upon or tweaked later if necessary.

So you might be saying to yourself, “Well, I hear what you’re saying, but I only have a few small ideas of where to begin.” Good! You are already started to “conceptualize.” Upon posing the following questions, designing and developing can be made less intimidating, while strengthening your preliminary concepts.

+ Does my website feel like home?:

In other words, if my web site could be a digital living space, would I feel comfortable residing in it or would I just want to visit it from time to time. If you don’t like where you live, you can bet that there are others who have thought the same and moved on to another business that has intently imbued tender, love, and care into their home.

+ Can I find everything around my home?:

Most of us might immediately shake our heads, thinking of all the stuff we have lying in storage. However, approach it from a more simplistic angle. That is, can I find the essentials of my home? Whether you answer yes or no, your web site should be able to be easily navigated through without having to search through all the useless stuff.

+ Has my home been retooled/remodeled since the new millennium?:

Almost every property that we have ever lived in has needed to be redone in some way, either after just getting everything together after moving in, or after living in it for an extensive period of time. Outward aspects of the home and the internal contents within become outdated as time passes. Your web site, in a similar regard, is the same. Chances are, if your site design (i.e. the outward aspects) and your site content (e.g. your appliances, worn-down walls, etc.) have not been optimized for the expectations of the “digital shift“, then you could very well be losing prospective customers as you read this entry.

+ Do you look for opportunities to invite guests over?:

I’m not implying that every day should be a frat party at your place, but more like an organized, social gala. Your guests should be able to live, move, and breathe comfortably within the space of your home, no matter how lavish or minimalist it may be. Engage your guests in an experience that will linger in their minds in that they will be waiting for the next event for weeks to come. Actually, scratch that; let them come knocking on YOUR door, seeking more reasons to utilize your business.

Whether your web site is your business or not, you need to be absolutely certain that your domain, which is your online home, is complying with not just your marketing scheme but properly delineates and conveys an accurate message coupled with a profound experience. In this way, your business’s web site will engage your target audience with succinct trust and a sophisticated, yet homey attitude.

If you are convinced that your “online home” has fallen behind in the times, you don’t have to go at it alone, nor should you. Seek out digital media experts who understand what it means for your business’s online image to be the lifeblood of what can make or break your marketing strategy in the long run. As for Image Cog, we agree that your Web site should be a closely integrated component of larger marketing strategy. However, we profess that your site is the most important component of that strategy.

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Web Design Meets Interior Design In Three Steps

Web Design Meets Interior Design In Three Steps

In a past article entitled Is Your Web Site Important To Your Marketing Strategy, we talked about how consumers can equate visiting a Web site domain with visiting a physical business. Conversely, a “physical business” can be referred to as an “internet property” or “internet real estate”. When you get right down to it, your Web site domain should not only be professional and insightful, but have a look and feel that can be comparable to the handiwork of an interior designer.

According to the Sheffield School of Interior Design, there exists an essential three-step method that is key for designing any good room:

1) A successful room is functional.
2) A successful room expresses a mood.
3) A successful room exhibits a sense of harmony.

We at Image Cog firmly believe that “just having a website is not enough.” Just like the three-step method in interior design, there requires a similar approach towards strategizing to creating and maintaining a Web site.

1) A successful Web site domain is functional:

Navigating should feel as natural as reclining back into a seat. All hyperlinks should be as reliable as placing a glass atop of a nearby table, knowing it will not fall over. In other words, your business’s Web site should compliment itself while making the interactive experience for a user streamlined so as to feel comfortable engaging in without thinking twice.

2) A successful Web site domain expresses a mood or tone:

This aspect of your Web site’s development can be dependant on two factors:

How the atmosphere within the company is on a daily basis.

Just as a formal setting in a room might be designed with the intent to evoke a mood of conscious etiquette, your business’s Web site might, for example, want to display a sense of bourgeois and expertise through complementary imagery, a subdued color pallete, and a stringent, contextual tone if the atmosphere within the company is of the formal suit and tie attire. Remember that the physical atmosphere your company chose to set was a conscious decision made on what was most appropriate to help your company compete with in its industry. The design choices made on your site must be equally deliberate.

How you wish to present your company’s image to your target audience.

Just as a room is filled with bean bag chairs and an outside view of the ocean, depending on your audience, your company’s image might want to be portrayed as laid-back through a soft, yet vibrant color palette and a casual, contextual tone that retains that necessary level of experience and appeal that your target visitors are looking for. Your audience, target or best customer, should be your guide. Here again if you are conscious of what will be appealing in the physical setting, you should make every effort to be consistent in the virtual setting.

3) A successful Web site domain exhibits a sense of harmony:

Harmony is just as important for a business’s Web site design as it is in interior design. Just as Japanese interior design uses natural colors to minimize the feeling of clutter and serve as a simple background, matching color tones, and consistent layout design and font style must work together to create cohesive continuity between one another to convey the asthetics necessary for a pleasurable experience.

There is much more to the process of web design than many Web site domain owners would give it credit for. The similarities to interior design are also quite close-knit and worth examining further in future articles. Though, if after reading this article your Web site is suddenly conveying a different message to you than it was before, discuss this further with your webmaster or design firm to make sure your “internet property” is poised to be as successful and presentable as possible.

Is Your Web Site Important To Your Marketing Strategy?

At Image Cog, we agree that your Web site should be a closely integrated component of a larger marketing strategy. However, we boldly profess that your site is by far the most important component of that strategy. I’ll explain why.

When talking about Web sites people, commonly use verbiage like: “visit”, “go to”, and “at”. In effect, they are equating Web sites with actual brick and mortar businesses. Furthermore, we refer to one’s space on the internet as a “domain”, and to a domain as an “internet property” or “internet real estate”. We have “virtual tours”, “online stores”, “Home” and “landing” pages…the list goes on and on. For many businesses, the web site is their business. It is no accident that consumers and businesses equate visiting a Web site with visiting a physical business.

Other pieces of media — TV, Radio, Magazine Ads, etc. — enjoy a bit a separation. We have all had the experience of seeing a bad ad and thought, or actually verbalized, “Who was the ad wizard that came up with that?” A negative impression is never good, but we are willing to cut the business owner a little slack; we are cognizant that the creator of the ad was probably not the actual business owner. Web sites are a different story. With a Web site, a user’s experience is applied directly to their impression of the business in question. This is partially for reasons mentioned above, and partially because users chose to visit the site rather than having them forcibly injected into a particular choice medium. In many cases this will be the visitor’s first impression. Let’s hope it’s a good one.

Like physically walking into your lobby or store, visitors want to feel like they are in the right place. If your Web site is not poised to immediately invoke an experience geared to your business, then the many attempts of calling users to take action, sign up, subscribe, or purchase will not reach them in an effective manner. Why? Because they are already gone, seeking a site that is serious about impressing upon them a memorable and trustworthy experience — a site appropriate for them.

So for believers and skeptics alike, I have some strategic advice useful in planning this all-important piece of your marketing strategy:

1) Have a well conceived site.
Know your USP (unique selling proposal) and study your competition to get ideas on your overall message and positioning. Decide what you want users to do upon reaching your site, whether it be to make contact, buy, register, etc. Plan the content of the site and determine what the most important pieces are. Collect your copy and have it professionally edited or written from scratch. Look for opportunities to engage your users and plan to include the appropriate media (animation, video, virtual tour, etc).

2) Have a well designed site.
When approaching the design strategy, taking into mind presentation and aesthetics are essential aspects of the process. Your business image, conveyed through visuals, should be professional and appropriate for your industry, yet specific to the character of your business. Your site presentation, characterized by content copy, layout, and graphics, should be easy to read and navigate through. What will instinctively follow is having a memorable site that can be easily recalled by its defining design and poised presentation.

3) Have a well developed site.
Any web developer, among many considerations to be sensitive to, should be mindful of the needs of users on both sides of the coin by crafting a site that is stable for cross-browser & cross-platform user interaction. Site-wide functionality without broken or misdirected links should be a certainty. In addition, content should be optimized and/or updated for search engine performance.

4) Have a well maintained site.
This is critically important if you want users to come back, or if you want to stay relevant with search engines. Have a plan to update the site weekly or at least monthly, and plan to have content that requires this. Aside from updating general information, your site should be an outlet for press releases and news. In addition, if you can publish original articles to the site, you absolutely should.

If you happen to have a site in development or in your future plans, ask your Web guy/gal what their plan is on the points above and be certain you are comfortable with the answers you receive. Whether you do it in-house, or contract a firm to do it for you, use a professional. The impression your site makes for your business is simply too important to trust to amateurs.