blogs: key to the dynamic website

We often recommend the use of blogs for businesses when approaching a website for them. That might seem a little odd if you think of blogs as i used to, that they are personal free-association online journals. Yes, there are those that have personal blogs that do divulge just about anything on their mind, but that isn't really what i am referring to here.

A blog can simply be the free avenue in which a dynamic website can exist while still being professional. Moreover, a company can be more free to show more personality, flavor and experience through a blog than a website. When it comes down to it, a website needs to have a level of professionalism that can win over potential clients. Coupled with this website should (not always, but often) be a blog that also supports your brand to win over potential clients. Both of them working together can give a broader-reaching response to question of "who is your company".

Recently, we helped Closeknit Clothing setup a blog. With their focus on fashion within an urban market, this sort of avenue is perfect medium for their intended audience. We branded their blog to match the look of their already-existing website so that both of them complement each other and further the brand of Closeknit Clothing.

We also added in the capability for visitors to subcribe to future blog posts. Then, when Closeknit updates their blog, subscribers will automatically get e-mailed and therefore this can be treated as an ongoing e-mail newsletter.

Click here to view their blog.

new website - sneak peek

We have done what about 30 other companies have done and hired ourselves to re-design our own website, wolcreative.com. With dynamic navigation, RSS feeds, JAVSCRIPT, AJAX, forms, client login, HTML optimization...etc, it is going to be sweet (completely objective observation there).

the sneak peek is below but here's the best part...the preview is absolutely free! (what can i say, shameless marketer here)

in the works

Even though we haven't shown current projects that are in the works, i think that now is the time to show you what we are working on. I am particularly excited about some new websites that we are working on currently.

One example of a website that we have begun production on is for Brach Design, a contemporary salt lake city architecture firm. As you can see, this site has been designed to reflect the clean lines and impressive spaces that the architecture itself conveys. The compliment of the web design to the actual architecture is meant to drive the site visitor's curiosity as well as confidence in Brach Design.

Enjoy.

welcome winter sports school in park city

Wold Creative would like to officially welcome the Winter Sports School in Park City! This unique school focuses on a quality private education for competitive high school winter sports athletes. With school alumni winning gold medals in the 2002 olympics as well as a high collegiate acceptance into competitive schools, they certainly know what they are doing.

Wold Creative Group will be working with the Winter Sports School in Park City on the their branding, brochures and with a complete overhaul to their website. We are excited to be working with the school to help them to grow within the education and winter sports training industries.

A big welcome to Powder Mountain!

As avid skiers (though there is a snowboarder among us), we are very proud to welcome Powder Mountain to the Wold Creative team. Working with some web development, branding and marketing strategies for Powder Mountain, Wold Creative Group is assisting with the guidance of growth of the ski resort so that it grows appropriately while still appealing its current customer-base.

We are very excited to be assisting Powder Mountain with its web development and marketing. If we must also have meetings on the slopes periodically this winter, then that is just a sacrifice that we are willing to make.

Here are a couple of Powder Mountain pics from this summer.

- jeremy

Marketing metrics

Marketing has traditionally had the black eye of never really knowing the efficacy of a marketing initiative. For instance, if someone were to run a newspaper AD, send out direct mail and run a radio AD campaign, all that could be determined from this is the overall number of people that walked through your businesses doors and purchased something.

Of course, there are ways of capturing the data of where people heard of you, but those surveys are often cumbersome and sometimes are not an accurate tally of how effective each marketing initiative that you did.

TIP: One easy way to run ads and still know exactly how effective they are is by increasing the amount of ads on the web. This should be done anyways in today’s market, but it this case, you can fully be aware of exactly where your website traffic is coming from, how many pages they view, and if they purchase something online or not. This is done using Google’s free tool called Analytics. This is something that Wold Creative Group puts on every webpage that we design, but you don’t have to have us do it for you. Check it out at Google.com/analytics.

-jeremy

visuals, visuals, visuals

It must be important if it is repeated 3 times. You could have the best product or service in the world but if people cannot picture it or somehow identify with it then you will have one heck of a time trying to sell it. We are a culture that wants to the “kick the tires” before we drive it off the lot.

TIP: In other words, show off your product and/or service to the world in the best possible light. Like it has been stated before, this does not mean to show absolutely everything, it just means that in order to hook people in to actually see your product or service for what it is, you need to let give people a taste of it through good photography or other visuals.

Generally speaking, the first thing people notice in a marketing piece is a photo/design/colors/layout and the second thing they notice is what it actually says. Both components of the marketing piece are equally important but the visuals will either cause the viewer to pause long enough to read the text or, if ineffective, will cause the marketing to not be noticed at all.

-jeremy

denver

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting with Southwest Counseling Associates in Denver, CO which I believe is the largest non-profit firm in Colorado that just focuses on counseling. With a wide variety of expertise that they offer, i really hope that more people seek out help from organizations like this one in order to help them with issues that they are dealing with. Counseling should not have any negative connotations because, in reality, we all are dealing with things in our lives that just need to be discussed with someone.

Wold Creative Group is assisting Southwest Counseling Associates with a new website in order to help further their reach and effectiveness within the greater Denver area. This is a project that we are really excited about because of the potential for Wold Creative to help a cause that can help others. Here is a photo of the cabin-like entrance of SCA.

-jeremy

st. john's

a beautiful church and school in California, St. John’s is growing and needs our help. Taking on a building project in California is quite a task, especially for a non-profit. In this case, Wold Creative Group is going be helping the church and the school to update their online presence to help communicate with a broader audience and help them to truly be the center point of the new community development that they are building in.

With the addition of an online donation section, not only will they be able to receive their normal donation from patrons but also additional support that will be specific to the building fund.

-jeremy

print vs. web

OK, so I could write a book about this and still not fully resolve this debate but the short answer is “preb”, my lame attempt to combine both print and web into one word. If you think that just online marketing or just print marketing is what your business needs, then you are absolutely looking at this the wrong way and potentially missing some potential customers.

TIP: do not look at marketing and advertising through a particular medium (print, web, environmental, tv, radio, etc.), look at marketing through all appropriate mediums. This is what the industry calls a “media mix” where the campaign and your company’s messaging is the most important piece of the puzzle rather than the particular medium.

A simple example of this would be if you were promoting a “special” at your store and you decided to send direct mail, ran online ads on appropriate sites and each of these ads (print and online) directed people to your website that highlights the “special” on the homepage. This is just one small example how thinking across media boundaries can exponentially increase the efficacy of a marketing campaign.

-jeremy

google yourself

We have all typed our own names in at some point to see what comes up in a search engine. OK, maybe I’m the only one, but anyways, it is interesting to try this with your business as well. First type in your business name to see what comes up and then try searching by the services you provide.

If you have a hard time finding your business online through typing in what it is you do, most likely potential clients are having the same issue. This issue of being “found” within web searches is often referred to as SEO (search engine optimization). Both the design of your site (that’s where we come in) and the placement of your website’s URL on other sites (we can help there too) determine how easy it is for people to find you online. We will be discussing this in more detail soon, but here is the first tip that every business, particularly businesses that are just starting, should do to help their online exposure.

TIP: Put your URL (www.yourname.com) on as many reputable free sites as you can. This would include local/national listings of businesses, associations, business networks, partner companies…etc. If these websites are credible, not only will putting a link on their site help you through direct links from that site, it will also increase your listing within the search engines.

-jeremy