Web Design Firm Maryland

In Fine-Tune PPC Keyword Selection with Google Insights for Search (Part 1), we started to look at some of the actionable insights that the Insights for Search tool helps you formulate about your keywords. This time, we’ll take our examples a few steps further to explore additional features of the tool.

Setting the Stage
Recall that for the sake of our examples, you own a plumbing, heating and air conditioning company in Maryland that serves the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Some of the keywords you target include

• hot water heater
• gas water heater
• electric water heater
• tankless water heater

Last time, we explored the search volume pattern for these terms from January 2004–present (remember “tankless water heater” came out on top?), and we took a look at the top related searches and rising searches for the “tankless” term. Last, we compared the long-term data with that from the most recent 12 months. Now let’s explore what happens when we filter the search data on geographic location and see what kinds of additional insights we get.

Filtering Data by Geographic Location
Filtering by geographic location lets you see search data from specific regions you serve vs. the whole nation (or world). The only drawback in using this feature is sometimes Insights for Search doesn’t have enough data to analyze, and you don’t get any results. So to see how this feature works, let’s compare results from the past 12 months for the more general term “water heater” for the Washington, D.C. subregion vs. the nation at large. Here are the results.







Top searches seem to be fairly consistent for DC and the nation, but Rising searches are notably different. Local rising searches center on Rinnai, while nationwide, there’s growing interest in Navien, hybrid, vertex and thermocouple water heaters. So you can use this information to see what’s hot today for your region and what might become hot down the road.

To decide whether to add “navien water heater” to your keyword list, you can use Insights for Search to find out where in the U.S. the interest is high. To do that, you can use the tool to produce a heat map of the U.S. for the “navien water heater” term, which uses color to indicate relative search volumes for each state: Darker colors indicate higher relative search volume. Here’s the heat map that Insights for Search generates for “navien water heater.”



Because neighboring Virginia shows a high search volume index for “navien water heater,” you might decide to add the keyword to your PPC campaign and test how it performs over the next few months. Similarly, you could check out some of the other terms in the national list to see whether they might be good options for your region as well.

Add Insights for Search to Your Keyword Research Toolkit
Insights for Search is a powerful tool for analyzing your keyword selections, and the examples we’ve looked at in this post and the last really only hint at how useful the tool can be. Like most other keyword research tools, the more time you spend using it, the easier and more valuable it will become. Try it today and see what actionable insights you discover about your keywords. Be prepared, though, it can be addictive!

At the heart of any PPC advertising campaign are keywords, and finding the most relevant and productive keywords for your customer base needs to be an ongoing process for your business to ensure that your ads get in front of the people most interested in seeing them—and at the most opportune time.

But search habits and patterns can change over time, and keywords that performed successfully for you last year might not produce the same results today. Likewise, effective keywords in one region you serve might return lackluster results in another. Fortunately, help is at hand to make staying on top of your keyword strategy easier. Google Adwords’ powerful (and free) keyword research tool, Google Insights for Search, provides valuable data to help you analyze, refine and grow your keyword lists.

In this post, we’ll look at what kind of tool Insights for Search is and introduce an example to see how it works. Next time, we’ll look at additional features of the tool.

What Is Insights for Search?
Insights for Search is a tool that analyzes Google search data to compute the popularity of search terms relative to the total number of Google searches over time. The tool lets you see trends, top searches, related searches and searches that are rapidly gaining in popularity. You also can compare search trends across multiple terms, vertical markets (categories), geographic locations and time ranges. Let’s look at a few simple examples to see how you can use the tool to refine your keyword strategy.

What Can Insights for Search Help You Do?
Suppose that you own a plumbing, heating and air conditioning company in Maryland that serves the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Some of the keywords in one of your “plumbing” PPC campaigns include

• hot water heater
• gas water heater
• electric water heater
• tankless water heater

Interest over time. First, let’s check the search interest in these keywords over time. Insights for Search data goes back as far as January 2004, and is updated daily. Here are the results showing US interest in the keywords since January 2004.



Interest in the keywords has stayed fairly consistent over time, with “tankless water heater” and “hot water heater” showing higher search volume than “gas” or “electric.” You can also see that interest in “tankless” took off in December 2005 (where the dots are), and is continuing to grow. If Insights for Search has enough data, it will include a future prediction for the term. The dashed lines on the right end of the graph show predicted interest for next year for the four terms.

Top related searches and rising searches. Next, let’s view the top search terms related to “tankless water heater” to see whether we find other popular terms that we need to add to our “tankless” keyword set. Scrolling down the page and selecting “tankless water heater” from the Search terms drop-down menu brings up two lists: Top searches and Rising searches from January 2004 to the present.



The Top searches list displays the most popular terms related to “tankless water heater.” These are terms that also have experienced a significant level of interest from “tankless water heater” searchers. You can scan this list to find keywords you might be missing, and you can drill down into each term to find additional suggestions.

Rising searches highlights terms that are growing in popularity at a fast pace (compared to a previous time period). These terms will give you an idea about what might get the highest volume of searches in the future, so you’ll also want to consider adding these terms to your keyword list. In this example, because we looked at the January 2004–present time period, we might not be getting the most up-to-date trending data for “right now,” so let’s see what happens when we look at the data from just the past 12 months.



The most notable difference in this current data is the appearance of the Rinnai keywords in the Top searches list. Likewise, in the Rising searches list, Navien is exhibiting rapid growth over the past 12 months compared with the preceding 12-month period. So, filtering on time really provides better information about which terms are hot right now that you might want to consider for your PPC campaign.

In addition to the “January 2004–present” and “Last 12 months” date-range filters, Insights for Search lets you filter on the past 7, 30 and 90 days and any of the calendar years 2004–2009. You also can set up custom date ranges to fit a particular situation.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the numbers you see on the Insights for Search graphs are not absolute search volume numbers. The numbers, which have been normalized and scaled, reflect how many searches have been done for a particular term, relative to the total number of searches on Google over time.

But Wait, There’s More!
Insights for Search also provides the capability to download your data as a CSV file so that you can access the data via a spreadsheet. When you download to a CSV, you get an expanded list of top and rising searches, so it’s well worth doing.

Had enough for one sitting? Next time, we’ll take the examples a few steps further to find out other nuggets of information that Insights for Search has to offer.

ca ter vi.  to supply what is required or desired

“Technology is changing your customer, and your customer will change your company,” reports Forrester Research CEO George Colony in a recent blog post. “The 2009 customer is unrecognizable from the 1999 customer. … If your business looks the same now as it did in 1999, you are risking irrelevancy.”

How different is your business today than it was in 1999? And more specifically, how different is your Web site now than a decade ago? Because online technologies and consumer use of them has grown rapidly in the past several years, if your Web site looks and acts the same as it did even just a few years ago, you might not be supplying what your customers require—or what they desire—to do business with you. It’s a good time to revisit exactly how well you’re catering to your customers online.

What Customers Require
You might be tempted to think that what customers require from a Web site today isn’t much different than what they required 10 years ago—but that’s certainly not the case! The development and adoption of new (and superior) Web technologies since 1999 has escalated customer expectations—and often customers are quick to reject a business that doesn’t provide the functionality that they’re accustomed to using.

Here’s a short list of requirements that today’s customers expect a business Web site to deliver:

• Easy “findability” through search
• Valuable content that presents objective information to help with purchasing decisions
• A direct and clear path for completing specific tasks and actions as quickly and painlessly as possible
• A secure, easy-to-use interface for online purchases
• Interaction with you and others in brand-based and industry communities
• Experiences (e.g., authoritative content, authentic engagement) that build trust
• Compatibility with major browsers (e.g., Chrome, FireFox, IE, Safari)
• Accessibility in all screen resolutions
• Consistent messaging and seamless experience with offline channels
• Easy accessibility to your presence in social networks

What Customers Desire
Desirable Web site features are many and frequently focus on factors that help customers save time. Some desirables, though, are unique to specific types of businesses or industries. For example, if you’re an online retailer (think Amazon.com), customers might desire a custom, “smart” checkout system that takes advantage of personalization and past-purchase history over a basic shopping-cart system.

With that in mind, here are typical desirables that customers want today’s business Web sites to deliver:

• Readable text (e.g., large font size, dark text on light background)
• Professional design that supports and enhances task completion
• Easy-to-find information (e.g., onsite search functionality)
• Familiar, intuitive navigation
• Quickly scannable content (e.g., short paragraphs, bulleted lists)
• Obvious access to a corporate blog and social networks (e.g., large, easy-to-find tabs, links, buttons)
• Fast-loading pages
• Content and features (e.g., blog, tool, game) that spark and sustain interest and encourage exploration, engagement and visitor contributions
• Enhancements for mobile accessibility

Become a Caterer
So, how well does your Web site cater to today’s customers? If you’re like most businesses, on close inspection you’ll likely find there’s room for improvement. Perhaps you’re very good at meeting basic customer requirements, and for that reason, you’ve been content to maintain the status quo. But keep in mind that if you’re not taking strides to evolve with your customers online—and your competitors are—you won’t retain or grow your market share. Take time to determine how your Web site can better serve your customers. They—and you—will be glad you did.

Over the past decade, the most notable change in business marketing has been the emergence of the company Web site in a starring role, from its humble beginnings as part of the supporting cast. The evidence is staggering:

• 92% of technology buyers turn to vendor Web sites for information (MarketingSherpa)
• 89% of US Internet users go online to research (Ruder Finn); 71% of consumers research a business online before making a purchase
• 85% of B2B buyers go online at some point during the purchasing cycle; 83% go online specifically to find a vendor (Enquiro Research)
• US online sales will reach $145 billion in 2010 (eMarketer)
• Online or offline, vendor Web sites are the single most influential factor for B2B buyers in making a purchasing decision (Enquiro Research)

With such a spotlight on your corporate Web site, what do you have to lose if you don’t redesign it and keep it up to date? In a nutshell: plenty.

An outdated Web site creates many problems for a business and its prospects and customers. Slow-loading pages, difficult navigation, error pages, buried content, accessibility issues and barriers to completing desired actions all cause visitors to move on to more desirable sites—like those of your competition. Here are 8 ways an outdated Web site can affect your business.

1. Your target audience can’t find you.
Small Business Brief reports that 80% of online purchases begin with search. If your site hasn’t yet been optimized for the search engines, you’re missing out on important traffic to your site. You need to help your target audience find you, and that means appearing in the first couple of pages of search results, which takes some special tactics (SEO). Older sites often aren’t easy for search engines to traverse and index their Web pages, which makes it even harder for searchers to find you compared with updated, optimized sites.

2. Bounce rate is high—few leads.
Visitors take just a few seconds to decide whether to spend time on your site. In fact, Carleton University's HOT Lab (Ottawa) reported that human brains can make flash judgments about visual appeal of a Web page in as little as 50 milliseconds (about 1/20th of a second). Furthermore, these initial impressions carry over to other characteristics of your Web site and your company (e.g., credibility, trustworthiness) via a “halo effect.” A high bounce rate with little time spent on your site resulting from a lack of appeal and functionality that your target audience expects means few leads and, subsequently, fewer conversions.

3. Conversions are subpar.
Web sites that have grown uncontrollably, are poorly organized, are hard to navigate, bury their content, have non-specific landing pages or have no clear conversion path are destined to drive visitors away from completing a desired action. Their solution? Escape to another site that’s easier and less frustrating to navigate.

4. Customer retention declines.
Internet users today seek valuable, relevant information on an ongoing basis from sources they trust to help them solve problems or make decisions. They will choose to engage with you on a continuing basis if you provide fresh content that objectively informs, helps them and is easy to find in all the ways they like to receive and interact with that information. A site with static, outdated content, no support for RSS or social media platforms and a lack of vibrancy and “life” sends the unfortunate message that you don’t care enough about customers to provide what they expect and need. Customers will look elsewhere.

5. You lose business to your competitors.
If your site isn’t optimized for search and a competitor’s is, you’ll lose traffic and potential business. If your site loads too slowly, searchers and visitors will jump ship—perhaps again to your competitors. If your competitors offer opportunities for your target audience to engage and interact with them in a variety of ways (e.g., through forums, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, LinkedIn) and you don’t, you’ll likely lose their interest. In short, today’s company Web sites and online presence need to work hand-in-hand to better serve customers and prospects than their competition does. Taking the lead and ensuring that your site is attractive, up-to-date, search-friendly and socially savvy is more important than ever.

6. Can’t “grow” your authority in the industry.
The best way to become more of an authority in your industry is to provide meaningful content that gets read and virally promoted (authentically) on a regular basis. Authority doesn’t “happen overnight,” and unless you’re able to easily add content to your site on a regular basis (e.g., via a content management system), you’ve got an uphill battle. By redesigning your site, you can add capabilities to make it easy to publish new information—and notify interested parties—to help establish a presence in your industry.

7. Your brand is at risk.
Your brand is more than your logo, and your Web site sends a loud-and-clear message of how you value and respect your visitors, prospects and customers (not to mention your company). Many sites were previously designed to serve the company rather than the customer. Build your brand by providing a Web site experience that your target audience will recognize, value, promote and come back to again and again.

8. Profitability declines as Web site maintenance expands.
Web sites cost money, and as they become more and more complex over time, the cost of maintaining them creeps up and up. Fortunately, a Web site redesign can turn that trend around. With today’s technologies and tools, you’ll find you often spend less on basic maintenance—with better results—and keep your site easy to upgrade in the future. Yes, you probably will still need a Web master for implementing the greater variety of functionality on your site, but that person won’t be spending time making minor changes and updates that your staff can handle. Efficiency and a well-designed “back end” go a long way to saving money in the long term.

Do You Need to Update Your Web Site?
Now more than ever, you need to send a strong, clear message about your company and brand to build confidence and trust and to show where you’re heading in 2010 and beyond. How better to take center stage away from your competition and put the spotlight on you than through a redesigned Web site that awesomely serves your target audience and demonstrates your leadership moving forward?

Let me know how ACS Creative can help you.

So It's been a couple weeks since Part 1, so just-in-case you need a refresh....check out Part 1 here

Okay, so as I stated in Part 1, Social Media Marketing and Viral Marketing can be very effective marketing strategies...BUT, effective execution and implementation can vary from company-to-company. Let's take a look at a couple examples:

---
    Company: Higher-End Manufacturer Car-Dealership

        Key Facts:
            - Currently they do NOT participate (not active) in any form of social marketing and/or viral marketing
            - Have an existing customer base of around 5,000
            - Roughly 25% of existing customers use their service department for recommended tune-ups
       
After initial analysis, their desired marketing-breakdown is as follows:

        Horizon 1: GOAL = To Increase Yearly Revenue
        Horizon 2: OBJECTIVES =
                    A) To Increase # of Cars Sold (Used & New)
                    B) To Increase the # of Customers Utilizing the Dealerships Service
                    Department for Scheduled Tune-ups
        Horizon 3: STRATEGY = Hmm, let's see...

Given the scenario above, what strategy(s) would better support their goals and objects:
            (A) Social Media Marketing?
            (B) Viral Marketing Campaign?
            (C) Both?
            (D) None of the Above? (....bet you're thinking right now; "man I miss school" :) )

---

Although many-professionals could prove to you that all-4 are correct...however, within the context of this discussion, I like (A); Social Media Marketing the best!

Here's why...

--

Without a doubt, offline marketing channels—TV, radio, newspapers and magazines, billboards, direct mail, catalogs, word-of-mouth—highly influence purchasing decisions, whether a customer actually makes the purchase online via your website or offline via a call center or a local store. But if a purchase is made online, how can you determine the offline channels’ marketing contribution to the transaction?

Fortunately, with a little advance preparation and coordination, you can track the effectiveness of your offline campaigns in driving online conversions.

Customize URLs and Landing Pages
To measure the effect of an offline campaign, incorporate custom URLs and landing pages into your marketing tactics, then use your Web analytics tool (e.g., Google Analytics) to track the online activity resulting from the offline channel. For example, let’s say you decide to run a campaign for a cool new gadget you’re introducing through TV, radio and magazine ads in addition to your online marketing efforts. Where do you begin?

First, choose a unique, “friendly” URL (aka a vanity URL) for each offline channel in your campaign. A vanity URL needs to be easy for a viewer/listener/reader to remember (and spell), and you need to feature it prominently in the corresponding offline ad along with an enticing call to action. The vanity URL will redirect visitors (via a 301 permanent redirect—ask your Web master to set this up) to a custom, quick-to-load landing page on your website that will enable visitors to complete the action initiated by your ad. Although the messaging on the landing pages of the various media might be similar, each landing page needs to echo the specific look-and-feel, language and information of the ad designed for a particular medium.

For example, the vanity URL that appears prominently in your TV ad for the new gadget might be something as simple as www.coolgadget.com/tv. This URL will seamlessly redirect visitors to a page on your site identified by a lengthier “trackable” URL that includes campaign parameters that your Web analytics program can work with. (Google Analytics provides the URL Builder tool to help you generate this trackable URL.) You’ll be able to determine which visitors are coming to your landing page as a result of your TV ad because your analytics report will break out those who entered directly by typing the vanity URL into their Web browser vs. those who arrived via referrals/links from other websites (e.g., Twitter) that might mention your special URL. You can drill down further to find out other information about these visitors.

The corresponding landing page for your TV ad should immediately engage the visitor and reflect the precise information and offer expressed in the ad—with no distractions—to help the visitor find what he is looking for and complete the action he set out to do in response to your ad. Your goal is for the visitor to experience continuity and identity between what the ad portrayed and what appears on your landing page.

Bonus Advantage of Using This Technique
In addition to being able to track and monitor the influence of your offline campaigns on online conversions in the same way that you track your online campaigns, you can also determine your customers’ preference for different marketing channels. Over time, you’ll be able to collect specific data about the best target audience for certain types of offline messaging and communications channels, thus not only improving your customers’ experience but also providing better ROI on your integrated marketing campaigns.

 

1. Reinforces your brand image  

   I believe that a website should be designed around the brand identity and actually emphasize and draw attention to it (without just making it HUGE). 
    
2. User-friendly and easy to navigate 

   Navigation should be friendly and intuitive and should include pages that most web users have come to expect, including the Contact, About Us. 
    
3. Content is King 

   Provide useful, fresh information and update it frequently. Rich content, combined with an impressive presence will elevate your site above the myriad sites that offer nothing but regurgitated lists of stale information. 
    
4. Accessible 

   if visitors can’t access your website, then it’s not very useful. Some of the easiest ways to maximize your site’s accessibility is to make sure there are alt tags for every image, allow text to be resized by readers (and make a minimal amount of text graphic images) and by all means, avoid frames. 
    
5. Simple yet stunning design 

   Besides impressing your readers with fresh content, there’s also the subjective WOW factor that is rarely accomplished with an amateur-created site (if you know of any, please enlighten me)
    
6. Must display itself quickly 

   There are tons of sites out there competing for your viewers’ attention, and what is your reaction when your trying to view a site that’s taking a long time to download?
    
7. Well-organized and easy to read 

   Your site’s visitors will have varying reading styles and you need to cater to both the scanners (that’s me) and the “ravenous readers”.


    
8. Cross-platform compatible

   Your site must look great and perform well on a wide spectrum of screen sizes, resolutions and browsers, and a good web designer or developer will always test a new site thoroughly prior to launch.

 

7 Practical Uses of Advanced Search Operators
What makes the search operators quicker to use than the Advanced Search page is that you can type them directly into the search box. You can also combine them in creative ways to find very useful information. Furthermore, Twitter Search lets you create ongoing searches that deliver results to your RSS feed reader (e.g., Google Reader) for review at your convenience.

Here are seven ways to use the Advanced Search operators to help your business capture useful information from the Twittersphere. Have fun experimenting to see what works best for your business!

(Note: Twitter Search is not case sensitive—you can enter everything in the search box in lowercase. In the following examples, the use of upper- and lowercase is only to improve readability.)

1. Eliminate “noise” from your search results
Often when you do a simple word/phrase search, you get back so many tweets that you can’t find the ones that are most useful to you. Excluding retweets (when users resend another Twitter user’s message) can help eliminate a lot of duplication. Simply search on the word/phrase and append –rt to your query:

“Internet marketing Washington DC” –rt

This query will return a list of messages that contain the exact phrase “Internet marketing Washington DC” but not any retweets of messages that contain that phrase.

2. Use hashtags to enhance your search capability
Hashtags are words or strings of letters and numbers that are preceded with the # symbol. Twitter users include a hashtag in a tweet to indicate that the tweet pertains to a particular subject grouping. Hashtags make it easy for you to search for tweets that might be applicable to a particular topic. By searching on hashtags instead of a simple term, you eliminate any tweets that might include the term yet not be relevant to the exact topic you had in mind.

For example, if your company runs a special event (e.g., the Virginia Web Designers Meet Up), you could start a hashtag (e.g., #VAdesignersMU) that everyone in the group can include in their tweets about your event. Then, to find all the comments pertaining to your group, you simply enter the hashtag in the Twitter Search box:

#VAdesignersMU

If you want to exclude any retweets, you enter

#VAdesignersMU –rt

If you just want to find comments (excluding retweets) from a certain date range, you can enter

#VAdesignersMU –rt since:2009-07-12 until:2009-07-16

3. Find tweets about your company
To find all the tweets that mention your company name, you might simply search as in the following example:

“ACS Creative” OR ACSCreative OR “Affordable Creative Services”

Using OR lets you check for several possibilities that people might use for your company name in their tweets. In this example, because acscreative is also our Twitter name, this type of search will return mentions as well as all the tweets we sent out and any replies to us. To find only the comments that mention your company and exclude those from you or to you, you can enter

“ACS Creative” OR ACSCreative OR “Affordable Creative Services” –from:acscreative –to:acscreative

4. View tweets to and from your competitor
If you want to monitor all the tweets to and from a competitor that’s on Twitter (e.g., Twitter name acmevisual), you can enter

to:acmevisual OR from:acmevisual


5. Find tweets that refer to both you and your competitor in the same tweet
If you want to find all the people who refer to your and your competitor’s Twitter name in the same post so that you can be sure to reply, you can search for

@acscreative @acmevisual

Note that when you enter terms consecutively in the search box separated by a space, Twitter Search returns all tweets that contain the first term and the second term (and so forth) somewhere within the tweet.


6. Start conversations with Twitter users who live near your business
Are you a local business that likes to connect with people in your community? Perhaps you’d like to invite newcomers to visit your business or even offer a special coupon or discount to new customers. Twitter Search provides two operators to help you discover Twitter users in your area to engage in conversation: near and within.

To see tweets from people in your area, you can enter something similar to the following phrase in the search box:

near:WashingtonDC within:25mi

Note that if your city name has two or more words, enter them without any spaces between words. You also can enter a zip code or airport code in place of the city name. Twitter bases its search on locality information provided by users in their profile.


7. Become a local resource
Twitter Search also lets you discover tweets that satisfy certain conditions—for example, tweets that ask a question, those that have a positive or negative tone and those that contain links. By answering questions in your industry area, you can engage current and potential customers, help your community and establish your business as a resource.

For example, we’ve found that people have lots of questions about pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Here’s one way we can find Twitter users in our locale who have questions that pertain to that particular topic:

near:DC within:25mi “PPC ads” ?

This search would return tweets that contain the exact phrase PPC ads and ask a question, from people within 25 miles of Washington, DC.

You can use a similar tactic to find people who might be having a problem that you can solve [if they indicate so by including a frowny :( symbol in their tweet]:

near:DC within:25mi “PPC ads” :(


So, it's easy to see how you can quickly build some interesting search queries with the Advanced Search operators. Be sure to drop me a line about your successes!

As a strategic graphic design and marketing agency, I get asked this question quite often by some of our best clients. And as someone who believes in the holistic approach towards online marketing / digital advertising...I tend to answer with the 'ol "well both...but like most marketing efforts, they have to be done with a purpose and they must be used correctly."

Let me expand a bit deeper....
First off - Yes, I'm one of those "your marketing needs to have a purpose" types. Whether collaboratively with those clients wanting to be involved (preferred method!!) or within our own creative group, I always start the marketing planning process by establishing (from the top-down) the:

Whether you decide to work with in-house staff or an outside design firm on your next Web design/redesign project, chances are you might not be familiar with some of the specialized language and terminology that designers and developers use when they discuss the project with you. Here’s a list of five types of down-to-earth, online resources to help you brush up—before or after the fact—on what they’re talking about.

1. Glossaries
One of the best ways to quickly learn about Web design concepts is to read a good glossary—that is, one with clear, concise definitions and descriptions of the terms and acronyms related to Web design. You can look up terms you’re not familiar with, or if the glossary is a short one, you might choose to skim all the entries for a quick overview. Here are several glossaries (the Web provides many to choose from—some good, some not so much) that you might find useful to cover all the bases:

• Web Design Glossary from Buzzle.com—A good short list of common terms and straightforward definitions—a really easy read
• Web Design Glossary from About.com—A longer list of terms, each of which links to a definition and additional resource articles from About.com
• The Motive Web Design Glossary—A very comprehensive, up-to-date list of terms, each of which links to a detailed definition, a list of related terms and additional information and references
• Web Design Industry Jargon: Glossary and Resources—From Smashing Magazine, this useful guide also provides links to in-depth information and additional resources from other authoritative sites (as a bonus, you might make a hit with your designer/developer by recommending this resource to them)

2. Wikipedia
No list of resources would be complete without mentioning Wikipedia. If you’re looking for an encyclopedic-type overview of Web design topics that leans toward the technical with lots of internal links to more detailed information, a bit of historical background and a huge list of references, then Wikipedia might be your best bet.

3. Web Design Reference Guide
Peachpit Press’s Web Design Reference Guide provides a “30,000-foot view of Web design topics.” It’s a collection of short articles (originally blog posts) that describe all things Web design–related, from Web basics to usability and accessibility to Web site optimization and what happens on the backend server. Although some of the articles date back to 2003 and 2004, the straightforward, conversational-style explanations of core concepts make it worth a browse.

4. Web Style Guide
Yale University Press’s Web Style Guide, 3rd edition: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites is a practical, non-technical book about designing Web sites. The book tells you what you need to know about Web design in plain language, with easy-to-understand examples and a great reference section. Now in its third edition (published January 2009), the Web Style Guide emphasizes fundamentals and contains all the latest information about Web design. And best of all, the book is viewable in its entirety online.

5. Smashing Magazine
Smashing Magazine launched in 2006 with the goal of providing useful and innovative information to Web designers and developers. You’re not a designer/developer, you say? No worries—the magazine provides information suitable for people with various levels of expertise, from non-designers to newcomers in the design field to seasoned experts. The glossary mentioned previously is a good example of the type of helpful information you can find on the site.

The magazine also specializes in presenting the latest trends and techniques in Web design. For example, Web Design Trends for 2009 lets you get up to speed quickly on some of the new design features your Web designer might suggest for your site. Whether or not you understand all the technical details, the examples give you plenty of ways to see new features in action.

Raise Your Web Design IQ
Regardless of your role in your company, if you’re involved in a Web design project at any level, it’s advantageous to arm yourself with the basic knowledge you’ll need to understand and communicate effectively with your designers/developers. If you don’t find the information you need from the suggested resources in this post, or you simply want to chat further about Web design, please don’t hesitate to contact us at ACS Creative—we're more than happy to help.

99.9999% of internet users are familiar with the Google Logo; in fact, it's probably the most recognized logo on the web.

The notable thing about the Google logo is that Google is constantly changing it —but NOT changing it. Even when letters are omitted completely, colors are changed, or images are added, it's still the Google logo.

It begs the question: How far can you deviate from a visual concept while maintaining a solid brand identity? Google had the good judgement to represent itself with a colorful palette on a simple white backdrop, and refer to itself only by its simple six-letter name, making it flexible enough to work symbolic representations of current events and other visual messages into.

So when it was announced a few months ago that Affordable Creative Services was about to go through a metamorphosis, reemerging rebranded as "ACS Creative," we all got kinda excited. The Sterling office played the biggest role in the new brand development, but we all pitched in our ideas and concepts for the new ACS Creative, Inc. company logo.

This is the one we've been using for a long time:

Eventually, after months of comps, and revisions, and more comps, and more revisions, Russell, our President and founder, made the selection of our new logo: 

I think our previous logo had two powerful elements to it; one was the red swoosh. The other was the word "Affordable" on top, which appealed to small businesses and thrifty clients. I'd say the Creative part was important too, but if people were searching for a graphic design or marketing firm, they probably already understood that message.

During the new logo creation process I was strongly in favor of keeping the red swoosh intact for brand recognition. However, after taking the new logo in for a while I realized that the floating red glyph could be viewed as a different opportunity— could it be a sign that we should test out the Google deviation theory on our own brand? By itself, a triangular shape doesn't relate to our previous branding, and emphasis on the "A" character isn't completely necessary since the 'Affordable' part has been absorbed by the initials A-C-S. What it does have is the potential be a clean slate for our new brand to develop, and a way to showcase the "Creative" part of the acronym...

So a group of designers here did some focus testing on a recent afternoon. We tasked ourselves with quickly creating images out of the glyph. Granted we weren't wholly concentrating on relating the visuals to the brand at first. Sometimes it's necessary to take a thing to its limit before scaling it back. Not to mention it was really fun and we liked doing it.

And as Google has taught us, sometimes it's more important to show than tell when designing a brand identity.

 

Aaaaah … summertime, the season of sun, fun and easy livin’! A three-month breather from business-as-usual before you ramp up to full steam again in the fall, right? For most businesses, summertime also means people out on vacation, days off for holidays and perhaps a shortened work week or early closings due to “summer hours.” What’s the best way to handle your corporate blog during these atypical summer months?

With a little foresight and planning, you can ensure that your blog will continue to provide valuable content to your readers throughout the summer—regardless of who might be posting. Here’s a list of a dozen ideas for blog posts that you can use to create a simple content plan or editorial calendar to take you through the summer.

1. Lists
One of the easiest types of posts to write is a list-based post (like this one). You can highlight the best books related to your industry, top Web sites that customers can use as resources, best practices for using your products—you get the idea. Be creative and specific to make your list-based post one that readers will want to bookmark and pass along to others.

2. Data presentations
Presenting juicy data about your industry or market is another good strategy for a post. With so many research groups providing study results or executive summaries on the Web, it’s relatively easy to find interesting data to talk about. Search the Web, check for research that professional organizations in your industry have published, review trade magazines or browse the archives of research companies such as Forrester, Gartner or Nielsen. Not only can the data itself be fascinating to your readers, they’ll also appreciate your perspective and interpretation of the data.

3. How-to articles
Explaining step by step how to do something related to your products and services creates a valuable blog post. And the topic doesn’t even have to be complicated—just useful to your audience. For example, a garden center might explain how to clean out a backyard pond, an accounting firm might outline steps to set up a small business account in QuickBooks, a full-service marketing firm (like ACS Creative) might explain how to go about choosing a graphic designer.

4. Tips
Like lists and how-to articles, tips that make a customer’s life easier also make good blog posts. Perhaps you can provide 10 ways to optimize your product, 5 ways to improve customer service, a dozen ways to generate more sales leads, 20 ways to save energy in your customer’s business. And if your tips are seasonal-specific, all the better: Now your post is timely as well as relevant.

5. Interviews
It’s now easier than ever to interview someone and publish the results in your blog, and readers enjoy the personal connection from this type of article. Certainly consider interviewing someone in your company—the CEO, a product evangelist, a customer service representative—whom your customers would like to hear from and know more about. It’s a chance to put a human face on your company.

You also might consider interviewing an outside expert within your industry—simply pull together a list of questions and ask the person to respond to them via email. Lots of people might not make time for a face-to-face or phone interview, but they might agree to answer a few questions at their leisure.

6. Answers to customer questions
Chances are, you already support one or more ways for customers to ask questions about your company, your products and services or the industry at large. Gather up all those questions and use them as starting points for blog posts. Even if you have a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section on your Web site, you can answer the question in more detail or with more examples in your blog and link to your FAQ.

7. Polls
All types of free software and services (e.g., PollDaddy, MicroPoll) exist today to help you conduct simple Web polls. And even though these polls aren’t “scientific,” it doesn’t mean that they’re not interesting to your customers. People love to know what other people think, do, need and so forth. You also can ask questions on social platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter to get data on a specific topic. With so many opportunities available, why not plan one or a series of polls and discuss the results in an upcoming blog post?

8. Opinion pieces
In most industries, there are compelling topics that evoke differing points of view and opinions that customers need clarification on. How does your company stand on these issues? An opinion piece is a great way to educate customers and provides another opportunity to humanize your company—not to mention giving readers an opportunity to add their opinions, too.

9. Expansions of a previous post
Perhaps you really didn’t have the time or space the first time around to fully explore a topic with as much detail as you would have liked. Now is your chance to revisit the topic on a different level, with a link back to the original post.

Or, perhaps you’ve updated a product or service and can revise your best practices article. Or, maybe you did a “best of” article in 2008 and can update that for 2009. Lots of research is conducted on an annual basis, so you can expand on a series of posts by looking at the trends over time.

10. Product reviews
Your current and potential customers expect you to be an industry expert who can provide sound advice about the products and services in the marketplace. Take the opportunity to review—or at least to summarize the uses, pros and cons—of those products and services to help your customers make a sound purchasing decision.

11. Audio or video posts
Really, it’s not hard to do! And so many topics that you might write about are much more interesting when you present them as a short podcast or video. Incorporating audio or video files in your post is a great way to show a different side of your company. Several of the ideas we’ve already discussed make good candidates for audio or video treatment: data presentations, how-to articles, interviews, opinion pieces, expansions of previous articles. Or, offer a video take on an industry trade show to give nonattenders a glimpse of the happenings. Here’s a chance to be really creative in putting together a unique blog post.

12. Industry news and developments
Finally, providing regular updates of key industry news, trends and developments is extremely useful to your customers. As is the case with product reviews, your customers look to you for this type of information. Often, you can expand this type of article in another post that’s an opinion piece or a comparison of products and services. Again, all you need to do is a little research on the Web (e.g., Google News is an option), check trade magazines and professional organizations, search Twitter or check local and national news sources to aggregate up-to-date news for your customers.

And here it goes...my first blog! This should be interesting. I honestly have no idea what to write about. I'm not a writer, I'm a graphic designer! Maybe I can tell you a little about myself...

Before graphic design came into my world, even from when I was little, I always knew I wanted to do something creative in life, but back then, I had no idea what my options were. I was also lucky to have parents that were supportive and not set on me becoming a doctor or engineer (seemed to be the hopes of a lot of my family members for their kids).

Once I got into the art program at Virginia Commonwealth University, I got a taste of all the different creative fields out there. I narrowed my interest into three: architecture, interior design & graphic design. In the end, I felt graphic design would allow the flexibility in creativity that I was looking for. Till this day, I have not regretted my decision :)

As I said before, I am not a writer, but I do think I am a "visual writer". I have to be able to say, visually, anything and everything about a client, what they represent, what they are trying to portray, displaying a certain mood, all with color and graphics...which can be very challenging at times. It would be easier to write, "I'm professional laundry service but different from others because i have a coffee shop and bar downstairs" vs. coming up with a logo that would portray all that.

Here at ACS Creative, I never know what kind of project I am going to be working on and/or what kind of industry the client is in. There is always something new. This helps keep design fresh and challenging. Keeps the mind working! :)

Wow! I wrote a lot. I guess this blogging stuff isn't so bad ;)

continued from part 1....

So I left the last post stating that the tools that marketing and sales need to be effective is where professional graphic design comes in. Allow me to go expand....

Effective Graphic Design conveys your marketing efforts in a clear, concise, and pleasing manner to its viewer (i.e. customer, investor, employees, industry, etc..).

Effective Graphic Design links your companies strategic mission to your audience. Whether it's your online marketing (or digital marketing) or more traditonal marketing methods, it will deliver YOUR solution in a way that best fits your audience.

Effective Graphic Design helps your salesforce deliver value-creating materials, insight, and thought to your potential customers.

And finally, Effective Graphic Design helps to establish your companies credibility, value, and trust with your customer.

Don't let all of your valuable time spent on strategic marketing and sales efforts go to waste, by poorly designed communication tools.

As one of our Creative Director's here a ACS Creative, I get to talk to clients a lot about marketing, sales, graphic design, and how they all fit together. More specifically sometimes, the important role graphic design plays in their marketing and sales efforts.

(I like to keep things simple, so excuse my rather "simplistic" definitions)

Marketing tactics (both online/digital and traditional) should help a company position itself to the marketplace. It should identify WHO it helps, WHAT problem it solves, and HOW it will benefit you....which, if done effectively, will help build awareness to the marketplace and hopefully create leads for its sales force.

Sales tactics should help position the companies product or service to the specific customer. It should help provide awareness to potential problems (known or unknown by the client) that your product or service helps to solve.

The effective tools needed to assist (both marketing and sales) is where professional graphic design comes in......(Stay tuned for part 2, when I expand a bit more)

...continued from Part 1

How Your Company Benefits
Besides simply spreading out the writing workload, team blogging provides several other benefits to your company:

• High-quality/low-stress posts: Writers have more time—and less pressure—to deliver a steady supply of fresh perspectives and in-depth content
• Opportunities for non-writers: There’s more to producing a top-notch blog than just writing posts, and you can share all the other blog duties (design, planning, scheduling, commenting, promoting, project management) among non-writing members of your team to involve more people. I especially like this one as you really get to see the creative side of folks.
• Morale building: Being part of an important PR and marketing initiative that enhances your company image and delivers tangible results brings people together and builds camaraderie and morale through working toward a common purpose—and besides, it’s just fun
• Opportunities for press coverage: Especially when you start a blog to launch a new product, your posts build excitement and provide fodder for new press stories
• Flexibility: Depending on the size of your team, you can schedule bloggers for specific days of the week, month or quarter or make them responsible for a week at a time—whatever works best for your company and your team
• Coverage for vacations and illness: Rather than skipping a post (or two or three) when your writer is away from the office, you can schedule around vacations or illnesses and keep your blog alive and well, creating a seamless experience for your readers

Executed wisely, team blogging offers significant advantages to both your readers and your business. If you haven’t given it much thought up to now, you might find the team approach to blogging is a refreshing alternative for your readers and your staff. After all, summer vacations are just around the corner.

You might have noticed that several of my colleagues contributed posts to the ACS Creative blog over the past several weeks, and maybe that gave you an idea:

“Hey, we could do that and really spread the blogging workload around!”

While that’s certainly one benefit of team blogging, it only seems appropriate to highlight some of the many other pluses that come into play when you decide to give team blogging a try.

How Your Readers Benefit
First and foremost, you need to think about the benefits to your readers—presumably, your target audience of customers and prospects. How will their experience improve? Will your readers welcome a broad selection of writers and topics vs. a single voice? If you have a loyal following already, how will they handle the change? Fortunately, from a reader’s perspective, the benefits of team blogging usually outweigh any potential drawbacks.

One of the key reasons for writing a company blog is to reach out and build relationships with your target audience. And team blogging helps you do just that—in fact, many times over because the variety of personalities, perspectives, experiences and points of view that your blog can include will appeal to a wide variety of readers. For example, if your company produces technical products, some of your readers might be very interested in getting the inside scoop on the nitty-gritty, technical details and capabilities of a product, while others might seek basic how-to information about using the product, and still others might want only high-level news and updates. By including writers that regularly address these different viewpoints, you’ll attract and satisfy a broader audience than you might reach through one writer alone.

Another big plus of team blogging is that by involving numerous writers with specific strengths or specializations, your readers get the best knowledge and expertise your company has to offer.

Here at our Ad Agency we have many talented folks. Most all of the designers have formal training in graphic design and/or website design....however, most of the folks in our creative group have further nurtured their skill into becoming experts in digital advertising and online marketing. Sharing their knowledge, with their unique creative perspective is of priceless value for us and for some of our clients.

Another example would be, large companies that produce many product lines (e.g., Microsoft comes to mind) often organize their blogging efforts around a network of team blogs that address individual products or product families. The benefit to readers is in-depth knowledge from a team of passionate experts with a vested interest in the product they’re writing about.

Finally, using a team of writers means your blog will be updated more often, which results in a livelier, more dynamic experience for your followers (not to mention better traction with any of your online marketing and/or search engine efforts). Maybe your readers have requested more frequent posts from your company, but you don’t think your current blogger has the bandwidth to supply them and complete his “real” job as well. By taking a team approach, you can satisfy your customer wishes and inject additional energy into your blog without overwhelming any single member of your staff.

Stay tuned for Part 2 (where we explore further benefits for your company)

The #1 goal of our design firm is to make our clients look brilliant while also helping them keep their project costs under control, and I do mean that sincerely. I also believe that the single, most important way that you as a client can enhance their overall project project is to plan for the revisions and keep those those little buggers under control.

What is a Revision Cycle?
Let's look at the definition of “A Revision Cycle”, which is a set of requested client changes, including and resulting in editing time and presentation of a new comp or proof to the client.

Revisions are just a normal part of design projects, so we plan for a reasonable amount by including about 1-2 revision cycles in our estimates. Additional changes are billed at our hourly rate, in 15-minute increments. If requested changes fall outside of a project’s initial scope, we will provide you with a revised estimate for your approval.

Due to the nature of design projects, it’s almost always more cost efficient for client revisions to be made during one or two revision cycles, than it is to spread them out over multiple cycles. We totally understand that’s how you’re probably receiving input from your various team members, but excessive and unplanned revisions are the main cause for design projects to exceed their budgets.

Excessive and unplanned revisions are a common cause for project costs exceeding budgets.
You can prevent incidental changes by making critical decisions early in the life of a project, and by not proceeding without having finalized and accurate content.  It’s also very helpful to collect and consolidate all your revisions first, especially if you’re receiving input from multiple persons or groups.  There is also no substitute for thorough proofing and ensuring that all necessary parties are included in the reviews. But we will always guide you, and make helpful suggestions along the way. That's just how we are... always helpful.

Rushing a project may actually increase overall costs.
Over the 20+ years we’ve been in business, we’ve concluded that many rushed project timeliness actually end up over budget, due to some reactive decisions made along the way. If you allow the proper time for the creative process, you will be rewarded in the end with a tremendous product.

The creative process is energized through collaboration.
Creative projects thrive on client feedback and as much collaborative participation as they’re comfortable with. In the design projects that I get involved with, and particularly with web design projects, major revisions are usually minimized by a healthy collaborative relationship. (We'll discuss this in more detail with a future post.)

And we want nothing more than to make our clients shine.