With the popularity of the modern mobile web browser, does your business need a mobile web site? More than ever. The digital landscape is changing and more users are viewing the Internet on mobile devices. Depending on the source, it is believed that one in five Americans access the web from their phone every day. The number keeps growing, too. Google believes that 50% of Americans were carrying smart phones at the end of 2011.

“That’s great, Nerdmaster,” you say, “but that still doesn’t explain why I need to invest in a mobile site.”

Crowded on a mobile browser.

The desktop version of your site was designed to be seen on a large screen and navigated with a mouse, not your fingers. Take a moment to visit your website on your mobile right now. Is it easy to navigate and find your way around? How much zooming in did you have to do? How fast did it load? Could you find important information quickly and easily? Try putting yourself in your customer’s shoes so you can see what they see. You want to provide them with a smooth experience so not only will they come back, but also so they will recommend your services to others when asked.

Clean, fast, finger friendly.

An example of how a site will look on a mobile is a great site we just finished: Genesis Systems Group. A mobile site is particularly important if your primary site uses Flash. The most popular mobile devices don’t support Flash, and Adobe themselves will be discontinuing mobile Flash support. A redirect to a mobile site is a quick remedy to that problem, and lays the foundation for a future transition to a HTML5 site. (More about HTML5 in next week’s post.) On a desktop browser, the site flows well and is easy to navigate with drop-down menus and links in side bars. On a mobile, however, things start to get a little squished and hard to read. There will be a lot of pinch zooming and panning around. Not to fear, this is a Nerdwerx design so the transition to mobile was easy. The content was easily displayed in a complimentary mobile design with large branding and touch friendly navigation. Plus, with browser auto detect, it knows when you’ve gone mobile.

Artist's rendition of a Flash site on iOS.

A mobile site is particularly important if your primary site uses Flash. Some of the most popular mobile devices being sold today don’t support Flash, and Adobe themselves will be discontinuing mobile Flash support. A redirect to a mobile site is a quick remedy to that problem, and lays the foundation for a future transition to a HTML5 site. (More about HTML5 in next week’s post.)
Making navigation easy for mobile users drives traffic to your site and if you’re a retailer, traffic is sales potential. Businesses have seen of up to 85% increase in traffic with the addition of a mobile site.

Interested in what mobile can do for you? Contact Nerdwerx today for a free consultation!

Even the idea that the average person could update their website’s content easily and quickly was new. In response, many agencies developed their own bespoke (custom) content management systems as a way of providing an important additional service to clients. Great. What’s even more crazy is how many agencies and web design firms that are still trying to push these systems on their clients, because there’s simply no justification for doing so.

If an agency tries to tell you that you should use their in-house content management system today, they’re doing you a disservice. They’re taking advantage of you and your lack of web expertise by claiming that their system is a good deal for you.

In a world of widely available, top quality, open source and commercial content management systems, there’s no upside to using a bespoke system. All the advantages lie with the agency, not the client…which of course is why they try to sell them to you!

Open Source And Commercial Systems Offer Better Quality

I’ve experienced the pain of using proprietary content management systems developed by a single agency. They’re generally terrible. Difficult to use, they lack extensibility and flexibility, and can be clunky and primitive. A decade ago when there were few other options, they were a good deal. Many of them don’t appear to have moved on from that point. Clients are paying us to fix things in their bespoke CMS (created by someone else, of course) that should have been right in the first place.

In-house: a safe place to be?

Compare that to the widely available systems, both open source and commercial. These products are all fighting it out in a highly competitive market. That competition forces them to continually update and upgrade, improving functionality and usability. What’s more, they’re working with teams who are dedicated purely to the creation and improvement of a content management system, not a design or development agency that’s throwing something together as an additional “service”. These content management systems are stable, flexible and of sufficient quality that major corporate and government clients like Ford, Mattel, the US Army are happy to base their websites off these systems.

Still Not Convinced That A Bespoke System Is A Bad Deal?

The most important reason that a bespoke content management system is a bad deal is because it ties the client to the agency that provided the original service. It locks the client in, and reduces their options…

How do you fix a problem?

You’re probably going to have to talk to the original agency, even if you no longer have a working relationship. They developed the content management system, they’re probably the only people who are going to be able to fix it quickly. Your alternative is going to be paying developers who have no prior knowledge of the code, to try and identify and fix a system they haven’t seen before. We do this all the time…

Difficult to escape, and how do you implement new functionality?

You’ve realized the importance of social networking to your business, so you want to add a Twitter feed to your site. Perhaps you’d like to add some video functionality, or a blog. Widely available content management systems, whether open source or commercial, respond to demand. That means there’s probably a “plugin” that adds that functionality to your site quickly and easily. Not the case with a bespoke content management system; you’re stuck until the agency that owns it decides to take the time to implement the functionality (…if they ever do!).

You’re Locked In

You’re trapped by a bespoke content management system in a number of ways. You’re trapped with your original agency for your future web design and development needs. That’s probably why they provided you with the system in the first place, it forces long term repeat business that’s good for them.

It’s not just the agency you’re stuck with though. What happens when you need to replace your own webmaster? There’s not likely to be many people out there who are familiar with your content management system. If you were using a widely acknowledged system, however, there’d be a huge pool of talent. People experienced and skilled with administering, designing and developing for both open source and commercial alternatives. A bespoke system doesn’t just tie you to an agency, it massively limits your own talent pool.

Bespoke Systems Should Simply Be Avoided

Any PROFESSIONAL design agency you work with should be able to offer you a widely available content management system, whether open source or commercial. A good designer or developer should be comfortable working with several different systems, so they can offer a solution that’s best suited to your particular needs.

But…I have custom needs!

Even if you have *very* specialized requirements, commonly available content management systems are the best option. You’re far better having a developer create a custom component for a well known content management system. That’s assuming that there isn’t already a component out there that you can simply plug into your content management system; with such a large community of developers, open source software has hundreds of such plugins.

Whenever a design agency insists that their own in-house content management system is the best option for you, query that claim. With such a scope of available options that are widely supported, there’s no justification for offering a bespoke option that’s agency specific.

Want some professional help from passionate Web Nerds? We want to help you out of your custom CMS!

Ready for a great content management system? We’ll demo one for free, integrate and implement it, and support you in the future. Check out Nerdwerx or call (877) 505-6373.

Bob Ross is art. Your web design isn't.

Art is about personal expression. It is about the life, the emotions, the thoughts and ideas of the artist. It matters very little what observers do, their activity is not required, only their appreciation. The practice of Art doesn’t require them. It is a necessary activity for the artist, and the artist alone.

Design, on the other hand, is about use. We as designers need someone to use (not only appreciate) what we create. Design doesn’t serve its purpose without people to use it. Design helps solve human problems. The highest accolade we can bestow on a design is not that it is beautiful, but that it is well-used. Design is always contextual. It matters when a design was created because of the context of its use: what problem is it supposed to solve? And for whom? At what point in time? This is why design is so related to technology, because technology changes so quickly, so must our designs. A design that worked ten years ago might not even be worth considering today. History is littered with wonderful designs that are no longer necessary.

The litmus test. When people enjoy Art, they say “I like that”. When people enjoy Design, they say “That works well”. This is not by accident. Good Design is something that works well.

Great Web Design is Invisible.
An interesting property of great design is that it is taken for granted. It works so well that we forget that creative effort was involved to bring it about. Sometimes, like with the lowly spoon, the object is so simplistic that it seems obvious, and we disregard that at one point in history it wasn’t. Other times, like with the automobile, the object is so sophisticated yet easy-to-use that we’re blinded to the fact that millions and millions of human-hours went into getting it to this point. That’s a shame…every great design has a rich history. And every design has behind it a designer or designers who tried to make the world a better place by solving some problem or another.

Bad design is obvious because it hurts to use. It is awkward, difficult, and complex. In a great irony of the world, bad design is much easier to see than good design. Because of its success, great web design is often invisible.

Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication.
As Saint Exupery said, “In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.”

Simplicity is treading a line: knowing what to keep and what to throw away…it comes across as magic when it works, because none of the complexity is transferred to users…only simplicity.

Think we’re cool? Check out the Nerdwerx Portfolio and call us at (877) 505-NERD.

Flippin' cards baby!

In the 1960s, business executives marveled at their new organization tool – the Rolodex. This clever contraption made it easy to find an associate’s or customer’s phone number and add or delete contacts in just a few minutes, spinning cards around on its wheel alphabetically. The Rolodex became an essential tool for communication, taking us through the next two decades and into the computer era.

Once personal computers began to populate office desks, electronic mail ensued and business professionals discovered an even smarter way to connect with their customers and foster long-term relationships – email.

Today, electronic communication has become far more prevalent in customer relationship management than the old fashioned phone call or direct mailer due to several key benefits:

* the freedom to review and respond at one’s leisure
* the ability to include supportive documents and hyperlinks
* the ability to carefully plan and fine-tune a message prior to delivery
* the ability to communicate with a larger audience faster and more cost-effectively
* the ability to easily document and archive correspondence

Using Email Marketing to Enhance Customer Relationships

From professional services to manufacturing firms and everything in between, companies depend on email marketing more and more as their primary means for building and sustaining strong relationships with current and prospective customers. Companies may use email newsletters, automated messages and value-added email promotions to enhance customer relationships. Email marketing is effectively used with customers to:

Email Marketing Can Reinforce Your Brand.

Promote your business image, unique selling proposition, corporate philosophy and values using targeted email marketing messages delivered at a frequency most comfortable for your audience members. After repeated exposure, recipients will automatically think of your company’s image and message when they need the products, services or solutions offered.

Use Email Marketing to Share Topic Expertise.

Don’t just advertise your industry expertise. Demonstrate your knowledge by sending regular email newsletters with relevant articles that set your products or services apart. Offer tips and strategies that your readers can use to improve their own lives, work or productivity. Increase customer demand by suggesting creative ways readers can use your company’s products or services. For example, a financial consultant may send email newsletters complete with personal finance articles or strategies for higher education or retirement planning.

Email Marketing Can Build Trust and Loyalty.

Email marketing offers an effective means for fostering interaction with your customers. For instance, companies may implement automated triggers that send valuable and appreciated messages to customers immediately following a sale to recommend similar products or other relevant content. They could also send a message a few weeks following service to gather valuable customer feedback through an online survey or poll. Marketing and sales departments also use scheduled birthday and anniversary messages to make their customers feel more appreciated.

Optimizing Your Customer Relations Email Campaign

Investing some time and effort to develop a customer relations email campaign can pay off handsomely in the long run. Email marketing provides an efficient means for message delivery, tracking, assessment and analysis. A permission-based email marketing solution helps companies manage their lists of prospective, current and past customers in the most cost-efficient manner possible.

When launching an email campaign to optimize relationships, you’ll first want to develop a strategy that pushes relevant, timely and value-added news and information to your contacts on a consistent basis. This content might include featured and guest articles, Q&As, product reviews or recommendations, special promotions, news or other company announcements. You can get to know your audience and their preferences by implementing a web-based survey or assessing purchasing habits.

Do you really know how to do this without professionals (or that awesome sweater)?

Welcome recipients to your list right away, establishing expectations and describing your company’s trouble-free email opt-out processes. Interact with your readers by encouraging comments and feedback. Stay mindful of your goal in building long-term customer relationships and brand awareness, avoiding the natural inclination to push a hard sell. Keep messages brief and interesting, with new installments delivered on a regular and predictable schedule.

List segmentation and targeting tools can take campaign relevance to a completely new level, offering the means to present communications based on the recipient’s location, interests or behaviors. Companies are able to design sub-lists based on age, geographic location, purchasing habits, customer need or location within the sales funnel. Segmentation capabilities also help email marketers better understand their customer’s behavior. As results are analyzed, marketers can fine-tune messages and delivery schedules to align with their readers responses. Like segmentation, message personalization further cultivates rapport and lets readers know you care.

Building your own customer relationships with email has never been easier. Nerdwerx can help bring your creative ideas to life and allow you to communicate in a meaningful way with thousands of customers, without spinning the wheels of the Rolodex. The possibilities are virtually unlimited — but call the professionals.

First, though, let me clear up a misconception or two. By email marketing, I do not mean SPAM. In fact, i mean the opposite of SPAM. Rather than send email about things they don’t want to people who do not want to be emailed, we will talk about sending email to people who asked to get email from us. This is called opt-in email, and properly used, it is extremely powerful. Savvy marketers have seen the value in building a list of opt-in subscribers who have raised their hand and said “market to me”.

Imagine how much easier your life as a marketer would be if instead of marketing to the Internet at large you had a list of 5000 people who knew you, liked you and wanted to buy what you sell. Impossible, you say? Not at all.

If you did nothing more but put a form on your web site to collect the addresses of those who came by and asked to be on your mailing list, you would be ahead of the game. Email marketing is push based marketing, as opposed to more trendy pull based options. With pull marketing, you post content on a blog, you build a widget, people come by and see it and talk about it. With email, you are sending them the marketing message, when you want them to see it, in a format you control.

Over the past ten years email marketing has been an effective way of delivering a message directly to a selected audience. Over time however other seemingly more measurable channels have become available.

Reports of low conversations and poor open rates have tainted that once effective direct marketing tool.

Apart from conversions, how do you measure an effective email campaign?

Delivery Rate
How many emails were sent out to the list?

Open Rate
How many emails were read?

Click Through Rate (CTR)
How many readers then clicked through from the email message to a landing page?

These metrics can be skewed however. Open rates are often measured by the amount of times a tracking image is loaded, however most email clients by default don’t load images. Some subscribers also choose to receive text emails, this again makes it difficult to measure as it’s not possible to embedded an image into a text-only email.

Recent studies by eMarketer and Epsilon shows that email marketing is still viable. Top level figures report that with a correct creative and a clean targeted list you can achieve very good results from a email marketing campaign.

“Q1 2009 Email Trends and Benchmarks”

1. Delivery Rate 94.1%
2. Open Rate 22.1%
3. Click Through Rate 6.1%

Whatever your business, there is no doubt that adding email marketing to your marketing mix can help you achieve your business goals faster. Savvy marketers have been doing it for years. The question is, will you get on the bus, or are you going to be left at the station?

None of these things lead directly to conversions but they do lead to higher company awareness and the good old fashioned warm and fuzzies we get when we know that that we are valued as a customer. Most times we are probably not even be aware of these things on a conscious level. But the effect shows as we have a tendency to patron these companies more frequently than the other alternatives.

Branding is a viable marketing strategy

Businesses worldwide invest millions of dollars in branding campaigns each year. In fact, let’s put aside pure branding campaigns. If you think about it, providing good customer service is branding too. The quality of customer service a company provides (good or bad), causes an image of that company to be branded into the consumers mind. Over time, a little here and a little there builds up into a solid perception of that company. Whether they like it or not they have established a recognizable brand by doing little more than going about their business.

When it comes to realizing the benefits of branding, most companies will tell you that it is valuable. Increases in sales can rarely be traced back to a single customer service or branding event. But that doesn’t negate the value or stop companies from investing their money into these types of campaigns. The lack of trackable ROI on a per-sale level doesn’t make branding (or good customer service) an unnecessary expense. In fact I don’t think any consumer would argue against the necessity of excellent customer service.

So what’s all this have to do with social media? Social media is branding.

Over time Target may see an increase in brand awareness and overall sales due to their clever TV commercials that do little more than show people dancing around a red target symbol, but I doubt they can trace any sales increase to a single commercial spot. I’m sure Wal-Mart can’t track a single purchase to the addition of the elderly employee standing at the entrance greeting customers. But when we walk through those doors, we feel that Wal-Mart cares just a little bit more about me, the customer. So goes social media.

When we engage in social media and online social networking, we similarly don’t see any immediate, trackable results. But, like branding and customer service, we don’t need to in order to understand that it’s valuable. When companies engage in social media they can’t think of it as a traditional marketing expense with a return on investment that can be shown on paper. Results won’t be seen immediately, and usually only after a very long period of time, and you’ll not likely be able to pinpoint a single new sale or customer an a particular branding campaign.

But social media is still important. It provides a way for companies to get out there and get noticed. It’s an opportunity to go where the consumers are and create a presence. Like a TV ad, you don’t have to wait for consumers to find you, you go where they are. But instead of forcing yourself on them while they are watching their favorite TV show, social media let’s you actually hang out with them. You’re not the ad on the wall, you’re the guy holding the drink telling stories that your audience finds fascinating.

Social media is better than branding and customer service.

Because of the direct interaction social media affords the client with their customers, it truly is better than any branding campaign, including one-on-one customer service. Customer service means that the target consumer has to become a customer first (or at least be very close to becoming a customer) before you can make a good impression.

Social media, however allows you to brand yourself long before anyone becomes your customer. And it can often be the catalyst that brings them over. And why wouldn’t they? You’ve already become a part of the group. In fact, if you’ve done your social marketing right, you’ve already become their friend. This is interactive branding at work.

So don’t be afraid to participate in social media just because you don’t see the ROI. You’re not likely to, at least not immediately and not in a way you can pinpoint one event causing another. But over time, you can build your social reputation. This leads to credibility. And over time that credibility and awareness will very likely lead to an increase in your customer base.

About Nerdwerx

As a Quad City Web Design company, we develop awesome websites, design compelling graphics for the web, exceed at performing search engine optimization, and are social media marketing gurus. Whether you need to utilize our SEO services for your current website, develop a brand identity for your custom social networking site, or something in-between, we offer superior one-stop services as a web design company and SEO company in the Quad Cities. Tired of reading? Talk to us now: Call 877-505-NERD.

This is the first of a series of posts entitled “Ways To Make Your Website Useless”. You can probably tell from the tone I’m using that I don’t recommend doing anything on this list. Zip, ziltch, nada. 

Remember, bad website design ultimately costs more than good website design, regardless of the price tag. Lo varato sale caro. (The cheap comes out expensive) – translate to any language of your choice.

1. Mystery Meat Navigation

Yep, your navigation makes visitors sick.

In short, Mystery Meat Navigation that makes your website useless by preventing your visitors from easily getting to the other links in and pages on your site, and sometimes even figuring out what a link points to without putting the mouse cursor over it.

While the guy in the sales department in-house web expert thought it would be neato to make all your buttons a look like your logo, and force you to hover over them so they’ll show the destination, your users think otherwise. If you analyze your stats, I bet your Bounce Rate and Visit Duration are not so good. (More about those terms in another post.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wguO93zZd-U]

Lesson: Don’t use Mystery Meat Navigation. Clear, concise links will help your visitors get what they need…and it’s not so bad for search engines, either.

Up next: 3D Graphics

Is Your LinkedIn Account Incomplete

In a nutshell, Yes. Screaming from the top of my desk, YES! Now, before the guys with straightjackets come to pull me out of here; YES. Your profile is important and it should be complete – it speaks for you; and it’s someone’s first impression of you. It should give a good overview of you and what you do – this will help people determine if they want to be connected to you and if you have/are involved with something that can be of some value to them. LinkedIn is your branding tool for your career.

The Summary

If you’re looking for a job or the next contract, Summary matters. It is probably best to update it regularly, to ensure that others – such as hiring managers – notice you. Make sure to use enough keywords that your target audience is searching for — sounds a lot like SEO, doesn’t it? Your summary should reflect who you are. 

Hobbies?

Hobbies help demonstrate diversity and give you a personal side. We don’t work our entire lives and it’s safe to say that most of us, if not all, enjoy a few hobbies in our personal time. These tidbits of information give the reader a piece of your overall life. If you’re concerned, leave out the “weird” hobbies, like duct tape art.  BBC Agrees.

What about my picture?

Your picture gives a face to the words on the screen, making a more personal connection. And, it can create familiarity if someone starts to see you in various places – familiarity is always good. Look at my mugshot – who can forget that?

Work Experience?

If you’re well into your career, it is probably safe to leave off the jobs you had in high school and early college. Working at a grocery store or fast food restaurant may not be applicable any longer, and while these jobs aren’t a point of pride to you now, they may still be relevant if you’re just getting started. In that case, leaving your previous jobs on this section demonstrates your ability get – and keep – a job. As your career develops, you can begin to prune them from your profile.

I recommend going back as far as your undergraduate — it gives the reader a scope of where you’ve been, as well as what you have been able to achieve. This choice really depends on the purpose: If you really want someone to be focused on your latest experiences, just list the last position, with details and results. A safe rule of thumb is the last 3 jobs or 15 years in the case of working for the same company with multiple jobs in the company. 

Should I join Groups?

Groups are great because they allow you to interact with large numbers of people and also allow you to get your message out to large numbers of people at once. I frequently post discussions and articles in various groups and generally get a decent response. By posting articles from my website and this blog, I get visitors and people are able to see the resources I make available, as well as become more familiar with me. 

You may find people in groups who want to connect with you, or people you want to connect with. But the key is to participate; just joining a group won’t do it. You need to be active so only join groups that really interest you/are relative to you and participate in them. You can find and share valuable resources within groups. Some groups even share job postings.

Lack of Experience and Track Record

The web hosting market is filled with thousands of companies who are just waiting to provide you with service.  One should also beware that some of these providers have not been in business very long.  Even worse, some do not have the manpower, knowledge and experience it takes to run a web hosting business.  Signing up with a host that is just hitting the scene and riding the learning curve might leave you with a lot of heartache when things to start to go wrong.  While everyone has to start somewhere, it is best to find a company that has a proven track record.  This is one that is most likely to provide you with the best service.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPaBD5tLxlU]
Check out this video of a web host flooding! Ouch! (It’s not us!)

Lousy Support

There are many web hosting providers that will cut back on every aspect they can in order to save money.  One of the most vital areas they sacrifice is support.  These are companies who make it next to impossible to get the help you need.  They may offer limited support by allowing you to only contact the staff via email.  Some will even advertise 24/7 support but fall short by taking forever to respond to your inquiries or simply not answering the phone.  This is why it is so important to make sure you sign up with a host that can provide quality support.  It is a good rule of thumb to test the company with an email or call during late night hours or over the weekend.  Whenever you need help, they should be able to step up and deliver.

SLA…or lack thereof.

The Service Level Agreement or SLA, is often overlooked but you should never disregard it.

The SLA is to entail how problems that the web host encounters will directly influence the customers experience.  This agreement needs to be read thoroughly before signing up with any web host.  If the company doesn’t offer one, move onto the next.  If the SLA does not clearly outline the level of service you are to receive and what will happen if is not upheld, you should probably find a company that offers something more comprehensive.

Beware of the Middleman

When running across a cheap hosting plan, there may be a chance that you are not dealing with a web hosting company at all, yet an agent selling packages on their behalf.  This is known as reseller hosting, a practice that allows entrepreneurs and small businesses to profit from web hosting.  Although reseller hosting isn’t necessarily a bad thing, you should keep in mind that you will have no direct contact with the web host, the company who is doing all the work and actually housing your data.

A Word of Advice…Host in Your Country

 Many major search engines give sites a relevancy boost if they are hosted in the same location as the local search market. In some locations, local hosting may not be economical, but if you are promoting a site primarily geared toward the U.K., you would want to host that site in the U.K.

Conclusion

If you’re unsure what to do about all this hosting stuff or if you have some questions, pick up the phone and dial (877) 505-NERD. We’ll lend you a hand.