Is your website still working hard for you?

Recently I was channel surfing and stumbled upon an infomercial for a rotisserie style chicken cooker just in time to hear the audience cheerfully shouting out the catchy tag line – “Just set it and forget it."

It reminded me that while that approach might work for chickens, not so much for websites!

I am often surprised by how many small businesses shortchange their marketing efforts by taking a “set it and forget it” attitude when it comes to their very own “innovative, time saving” marketing device--their very own website.

These days a corporate website is a fairly standard item in your marketing toolbox and for many it is at the core of their company’s online  presence.

With that in mind why would anyone be surprised to learn that, unlike rotisserie ovens, you can’t simply build it and ‘forget it’.

Building a company website is a costly process, it usually takes a lot of time and manpower. This means your corporate website is much more than just a great marketing tool, it is also a significant financial investment and needs to be treated as such!

Regular maintenance, upgrades and content reviews are critical to ensure that your website continues to work hard for your company.

Here are a few suggestions to help you check in on your company website and ensure it is still working at peak capacity for your business.

• Is your website more than 2-3 years old? If it is it is then it probably contains some outdated html or other outdated code. That needs to be updated or revised.

• Is it Flash Based? Sure it looks cool but if your current site uses flash - .fla or .swf file that means that no Apple devices can read your site and given the crazy popularity of the iPhone and iPad, your site may be ignoring a significant chunk of your audience. 

• Is your site trying to hard? Websites are no longer expected to provide every piece of information about your company, your business, your product and your people. Today your site should be focused on key business goals, and provide information accordingly. Ask yourself, why does our company have a website? What is the single most important thing it should do? Now take a look at your site and see if it does that, if not it is time to rethink things!

• Does your site have spelling mistakes and broken links? Your website is an extension of you and your company and credibility is crucial even the best-designed site in the world won’t sell if your customers don’t believe in your professionalism and expertise. How can you turn visitors into customers if your site is full of errors and links to nowhere?

• Does your website still match your corporate brand? Your website is one of the most public examples of your brand and brand consistency is extremely important in the online environment. You are building your company’s brand so don’t confuse your consumers with inconsistent font styles, colors or old logos. Your website should reflect your most recent style guide and branding and logo development. 

• Does anybody hear you? Has anyone engaged with your site in the last month? In the last 6-months? Has anyone left a comment or filled out a form? Is there a simple way for website viewers to connect with you? If the answer is no it is time to revisit your website. Interaction is critical online, your site should be user friendly allowing easy sharing of your web content through some of the most popular Social Media Platforms? Have you built in quick, simple to find links to your own SM sites and are you using SM to drive traffic back to your website?

• Is your site mobile friendly? How does your website look and operate on an smart phone, on a tablet? Mobile use is on the rise and if your site is not optimized to be responsive to mobile devices it is only doing half the job, half of the time.  Does your website use GPS coordinates to allow mobile users access to directions and maps to locate your business? 

Give your website new life with a redesign by Francomedia. We create functional inviting websites that support your business and engage your customers. If you would like to review your current site or talk to us about a the development of a new site - you can reach us online at www.francomedia.com or connect via email

Attack of the Floating Head!

Hey folks, Ryan here. This post sees me returning to the theme of graphic design in film promotion, but I swear there is an underlying message that can be applied to all design.

That message: Trends become stale and unappealing, and fast.

The biggest example of this that I can think of is the "floating head" movie poster. You've all seen them. Every other poster that lines the theater walls shows giant, disembodied heads of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise on top of some abstract blurry colors with a small explosion or car chase in the bottom right corner. It may have worked for the first few films, but it is painfully clear that these are uninspired and lazy.

The floating head poster has no doubt already solidified it's place in the internet meme hall-of-fame alongside lolcats, chocolate rain and the winnebago man. And yet here we are, 2009, and the floating heads continue to barrage this designer's eyeballs when he visits the local multiplex or purchase a blu-ray. Well, a lot could be said about the correlation between film-marketing and film-quality, but that's an entirely different post; and as I pointed out in my previous article on movie posters, there still is eye-popping design coming out to this day, though few and far between. So what makes this design approach sustainable? How does this appeal to audiences. What is it about these horrid, conservative designs that still aid in getting a man or woman to plunk down their hard-earned $12 to go see that screening?

Here, kids, lies the trouble with trend.

On the whole, trends can be great. Trends can prove to be progressive for technology and design and general public thought. That is, if the trend is embraced as a starting point or a status quo. A trend should not mean the apex of popularity or thought - that's when the snap bracelets start slitting wrists and Eddie Murphy's 30 foot swollen head tries to sell you on Nutty Professor IV: Forrest Klump. Trends, be it in print design or web, should be analyzed and inspiring, but never copied and continued. It's one of the trickiest dragons I battle with weekly, especially in the fickle land of web-design.

You see, print design has more room to breath, it's got more give. There's almost literally a blank canvas there for the designer to paint broad, colorful, masterful strokes, the bounds of the project very little in a lot of cases. Designing for the web can be equally as full of creative opportunity, but with a tighter pair of pants. Web-design is the Wooderson of creativity (think Matthew McConaughey, Dazed & Confused). My point is, web-design is very restrained, and that makes it incredibly easy to fall into a trend.

Let's do a little experiment. Open up a new tab in your browser (don't close this one!) and pull up the Google. Think of a letter in the alphabet, then think of a food or animal that starts with that letter. I chose 'B' and subsequently 'broccoli'. Enter that food or animal into the Google and hit search. Click on the first link that comes up in your search (one that isn't Wikipedia).

I will bet a hundred dollars that the page you made it to had most of the following:

• Logo, no bigger than 175px x 250px, in the top-left corner
• Colored background
• Centered content area no wider than 900px
• Arial or Times as the sole or secondary font throughout the entire site
• One of, if not both: Standard text links for navigation horizontally or vertically at the top and left of the content area, respectively

Cue the floating head poster.

The reason for that little experiment is self-referential really; of course the majority of web-sites follow this grid. What I'm asking myself, and other web-designers, is do we need to continue forcing ourselves into these tight, uncomfortable, acid-washed pants? What we need to do, as a community and as progressive-thinkers, is sit down and re-evaluate the logistics of where we start when we design a website.

The grid system we sketch out on paper is breaking and in turn the majority of websites are stale. The trends themselves are vanilla. But herein lies the problem, just like floating heads in the theater lobby, they still sell. Sure you could make the argument "that movie poster/website/packaging gets the consumer, the target, from point A to B", but I say nay. We'll get them to B alright, but let's not have them fall asleep on the ride as if their Dad had piped in Moody Blues for 6 hours without so much as an Archie Double Digest to keep you entertained.

So where do we, as web-designers, as creators, go from here? We can't very well break our top-left-centered-955px-verdana habit now can we? The web hasn't quite evolved yet. But what's taking it so long? Is it NETLOR, the terrifying beast that controls the internet and tells us when it's okay to go above and beyond what we've been doing for 10 years? Well I don't believe in NETLOR, and quite frankly the idea frightens me. It's the trend that's holding everything back. The trend dictates what everyone should do, thus creating the environment we operate in and its limitations.

If everyone were to use the trend as a starting point, a base you don't go below, working only to improve on that, I think the web as we know it would be incredibly different, and incredibly cool.

I don't know what it will take to rid our lives of those terrible floating head posters though.

Famous Business Cards

Chances are, that if you've met with any of our staff, you have one of our famous business cards. Maybe famous is stretching it, but they are certainly unique and on their way to being famous... or to some level of celebrity or cult status.

In April of this year, we won the Platinum Hermes Creative Award for the design and concept for these very creative business cards and ever since, we have been getting more notice and plenty of buzz about our cards.

The cards themselves are pretty clean and simple, save but a few creative features to each card that speaks to each employees individuality/ specialty. What really makes them remarkable is the complex process to create them - it's the final result and effect that makes them truly sui generis.

Earlier this week, our cards were featured on Card Observer, a site dedicated to creative and unique business cards. Shortly after our posting on that site, we received word that a blogger named Yanda out of Singapore wanted to cover the cards and feature them on their site as well.

It didn't take long for other web sites to pick up the information and start sharing the news about our cards. We have found a few different sites that are showing our cards such as this one and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one.

Needless to say, this has increased traffic to our site in a huge way.

When we look at the cost to produce our cards, compared to other business cards, some would say we're crazy for doing it, as each card comes close to $5. However, if you look at the fact that these cards have resulted in us getting international attention online and local press in two magazine articles, I would have to say that it was well worth the expense.

Everyone we hand these cards out to, comments on them and reacts positively. Well, except for one lady who asked about their longevity in a landfill to which I replied, "You're not supposed to throw them out!"

Doing something truly unique and creative will get you noticed... and that's what it's all about, right?