Using social media channels is a great way to promote your business. But a lot of companies view social media only as a means to an end – as a way to push people to their own website.

From my perspective, these companies are missing a key point about social media: the fact that most people don’t want to be redirected. They’re on Facebook or Twitter or YouTube for a reason. They want to be entertained. To catch up on the news. To interact, comment, get in on the conversation.

With that in mind, smart companies are focusing less on getting people away from social media sites – and more on establishing a strong brand presence within them.

Here are some great ways to do that.

• Facebook. Facebook pages aren’t fully customizable, but they do have some strong features. You can create custom tabs on your Facebook page and sell things using PayPal. You can also create custom landing pages. If you search for “Starbucks” on FB, for example, you’ll go straight to their Starbucks Card tab, rather than their Wall. All of this customization is done using FBML, Facebook’s proprietary markup language.

  And although this isn’t exactly customization, some companies are using FB as a customer service portal. Look at the posts and comments on Best Buy’s page, for example. Best Buy is resolving customer complains within FB – not wasting time redirecting customers to its home page. What a great concept.

• Twitter. Like Facebook, Twitter also lets you customize your page to reflect your brand. Atomic’s Twitter page, for example, is decked out with our logo, contact information, and brand colors. We’ve also included with headshots of our staff and their Twitter handles.
• YouTube. YouTube allows for elaborate customization – look how Coca-Cola has designed its YouTube channel to reflect its current “Celebration” campaign. Dr Pepper hasn’t done quite as much work – its “I’m a doctor” campaign videos run on a standard Dr Pepper background. But still, the channel is customized. That means you don’t have to go to these companies’ websites to experience their brand; they’ve brought their brand to you.

Here at Atomic, we’ve been helping lots of companies take their website presence and apply it to social media sites. Ready to do the same?

As a web designer at Atomic, I’ve found that more and more of our customers are turning to us not just to manage their websites, but also to manage their email marketing. That’s great news, because email marketing software is more powerful than it’s ever been.

Here are some of the reasons I’m excited about email marketing, and where I see it really helping our customers succeed.

• It’s measurable. If you create an email campaign using the right software, you can track all kinds of detail. You can see who opens your mail and what stories they click on. You can see how many people forward it, and how many people unsubscribe, bounce out, or mark it as spam. You can even see which email client your readers prefer – so you can tweak your design accordingly. Having this level of detail helps you see what’s working for your readers – and what’s turning them off.
• It has great ROI. Multiple studies have shown that email marketing has the highest return on investment of any form of advertising – as high as $43.62 for each dollar spent. Moreover, many email marketing systems are set up so that you only pay when you send – giving you complete control of how much you spend, and when.
• It reinforces your brand. The days of text-based email marketing are pretty much over. Today’s software lets you design great-looking email templates that reinforce your brand identity every time you send a message. And, the best software out there lets you import your own designs, in your own software, with the click of a button—meaning you don’t have to waste time and money re-creating your branding elements in awkward WYSIWYG editors.
• It’s personal. Again, with the right software, you can personalize your email messaging to the max. You can include your client’s name or the last product they purchased right in the email. You can make sure it’s delivered to them at the right time according to their time zone. You can segment your mailing list and send targeted campaigns to distinct groups of subscribers, or even change the way the signup or opt-out process looks for different types of viewers.

A few months ago, we contemplated whether email marketing was dying. Honestly, at this point, it seems to me that it’s just getting better and better.

Each year, the Greater Dayton Advertising Association and the American Advertising Federation honors creative excellence in advertising by inviting accomplished advertising and design firms to take part in the Hermes award competition.

There are three levels of Hermes awards: Gold, Silver and Bronze. Recipients of the Gold award are publicly recognized at an annual banquet, given the opportunity to say a few words of acceptance and gratitude among their creative peers and, most importantly, given a life-size bust of Hermes himself.

This year, Atomic Interactive was honored to receive its first Gold Hermes Award for excellent creative design in the Public Service category. It is rare for a company as young as Atomic Interactive to be honored with a Gold Hermes Award. We at Atomic showed our appreciation and excitement with the nomination and eventual award when every employee of Atomic, along with our significant others, attended the awards ceremony at the Dayton Masonic Temple.

Atomic was presented with a Gold Hermes Award for creating a website for GetUp Montgomery County, an initiative to encourage the children of Montgomery County to lead healthier lives. Atomic founder and owner Ian Lawson and Atomic employees Anthony Wartinger and Alexis Branham created a beautiful, fun site that appeals to both adults and children alike.

At Atomic, creating an excellent website relies on establishing a functional and pleasant relationship with each client, which is precisely what happened when Atomic collaborated with GetUp. We were more than pleased to work with Lorraine Russel, Chris Schlorman and Jim Gross, Montgomery County Healthy Commissioner. Each of these members of the GetUp team played an integral part in the development of their award winning website. We feel grateful any time we get to work with a client who is receptive to our creative vision and GetUp displayed a great amount of confidence in our abilities as a design team.

For Atomic, the Hermes award ceremony was a tremendous success. Along with the Gold Award, we were also honored to receive three Silver Awards and three Bronze Awards. The Silver Hermes were for the design of Buckeye Business Solutions’ website in the category of Interactive Media; in the Public Service category for the design of a Digital Learning Portal website for the Public Health Department of Dayton & Montgomery County and for a Digital Storytelling website for the ThinkTV Network, also in the Public Service category. The Bronze Hermes were all awarded to Atomic for design in the category of Interactive Media for the following website designs: Bullen Ultrasonics, Siesta Key Vacation and MacTown.

Currently, our Hermes Head is proudly displayed in our Downtown Dayton office. It will serve as a reminder to all of our employees of the fun time had at the awards ceremony and as an incentive for creating websites in the future that are also deserving of the Hermes Gold Award.

If you’re a web developer and you’re not using jQuery, I have three words for you: get with it.

jQuery is a JavaScript library that makes working with JavaScript a lot easier. Basically, it helps you code more efficiently and more cleanly than you could using regular JavaScript code. It cuts out a lot of the mundane work that used to be required to add different types of animations and interactions to a page. In short, it helps you find whatever you want on a page, and make it do whatever you want.

If you’re not a web developer, the main thing you want to know about jQuery is that it can help make your website interface much more user-friendly. For example, you can use jQuery to …

• create calendars that let customers click on a date to make a reservation for an event
• create seating charts that let customers select a seat on a plane, or in a theater
• create forms and make sure that customers fill out forms properly
• let customers “rate” shopping items by clicking on a certain number of stars
• let customers magnify part of an image – such as the image of a product they’re thinking about buying

Having your developer use jQuery is also important because, frankly, it saves so much time. That means we can build more functionality and more interactivity into your site more quickly. That keeps development costs down and helps your project get done in a timely fashion.

I like to think of jQuery as a library of shortcuts for web developers … effects that we can pick up and plug in to your site without reinventing the wheel. Again, this saves you time and cost.

Nearly every site we build at Atomic uses jQuery in some form or fashion. A great example is our site for MacTown. We used jQuery to create a horizontal slider on the homepage to highlight different product categories. We also used it to create a shopping cart with drag-and-drop functionality, which simplifies the purchasing process. And who doesn’t want to make it easier for customers to buy stuff?

Interested in talking about how animation and interactivity can make your site more user friendly? Contact us anytime.

One of the things that we’re proud of at Atomic is that we’re not just a bunch of development geeks. We’re also … design geeks! And part of design is creating logos.

Sometimes we’re working with a new company that doesn’t have a logo yet. So we’re starting from scratch. Other times we’re working with an established company whose logo may be outdated, or just not as strong as it could be.

Whatever the case, we help our clients with logo development whenever it’s needed. A logo is the heart and soul of a company’s brand identity, and when someone’s building a great new website, they usually want to make sure a great logo is part of it.

Creating a logo isn’t easy. You have to blend a company’s products, personality, and presence together and somehow distill the mix into a single image. When I’m working on a logo design, here are some questions I ask to help determine whether or not the design is working.

1. Is it clear? This refers to both visual clarity and conceptual clarity. On the visual side, can a viewer tell what the logo represents? Can it be scaled larger and smaller and still be readable? Is the typeface legible? And on the conceptual side, what message is the logo supposed to convey? Will viewers clearly understand it?

2. Is it unique? How well does the logo create a unique identity for your company? Does it set you apart from your competitors? Does it help you stand out – but without being so off-the-wall that it confuses or offends viewers?

3. Is it clever? In a nutshell, does the design make you smile? Does it have a hidden image, like the arrow in the FedEx logo or the Golden Gate Bridge in the Cisco logo? Does it have a hidden message, like the sun inside the BP logo that suggests renewable energy?

Asking these questions isn’t a magic formula. Logo design is still more art than science. But it can help keep you on the right track, and help you spot weaknesses in a potential design.

Want to talk about your logo or site design? Contact us anytime.

We had the pleasure over the last three weeks of having Casey Spitnale, an intern from The School of Advertising Art join our team. Casey is an uber-talented young designer with a passion for interactive and motion design. We gave Casey a rough idea for a motion design piece that would show off the killer design work and not-so-serious environment of Atomic Interactive. Casey infused his creativity and technical knowledge to create a fun, professional looking piece that exceeded our expectations.

Back when I was just a wee young designer, I used to jump onto Photoshop the second I started a new design. The result was lots of rework, and lots of wasted time.

Over the past few years I’ve settled into a process that instead focuses on upfront preparation. I’ve found that spending a bit of time on prep saves a lot of time in the overall design. And, I get better results with a less stress.

So here’s my process. Call it “Alexis’ secret for a stress-free design.“

• Start with an idea file. I start by researching my customer’s audience and competition. I try to figure out what works on different sites and what doesn’t. I also flip though website galleries and design annuals, looking for pieces of inspiration that fit with my customer’s goals and can start to spark a design.
• Move to sketches. Once I have a direction in mind, I start sketching. Often I’ll work on just one element of the site first — the header or the footer, or maybe the navigation. I like to get one component right, then build the rest of the layout around that.
• Choose a color palette. After I’ve got a basic layout, I start to think about color. Often I’m working with a client’s existing brand colors, but want to create a richer, complementary palette for the web. I sometimes visit sites like kuler.adobe.com as a jumping-off point for ideas.
• Head to Photoshop. Once I’ve got the building blocks of the site– the layout and color palette – I can jump onto Photoshop and create the final design. At that point, Photoshop is just a matter of executing the concept I already have – easy peasy.

It’s important to spread this process over two or three days. I get much better results if I have time to let the design concepts sink in, if I can sleep on them. Inspiration often strikes not when I’m plowing through a project, but when I take a moment to step away from it.

It’s also important to get feedback between every step in the process – an external perspective on whether I’m on the right track. That stops me from going too far down the road on a design if it’s not quite right for the customer. Saves me time, saves the customer money.

That’s what I call a win–win.

Changes.

Scope changes. Schedule changes. Software changes. You name it, I’ve seen it. In fact, it seems to me that no matter how carefully a project is planned, some level of changes are inevitable. That’s just what happens when a creative concept evolves into a reality.

So instead of closing my eyes and hoping that changes won’t happen, I’m always ready for them. Here are some of the strategies I use to keep our projects on track in the face of the unexpected.

• Talk openly about the impact of changes. Sometimes a client thinks of a new requirement or new idea partway through a project. We can always accommodate these requests, but it’s my job to make sure the client understands exactly how those changes would affect schedule and budget. That way the client can make an informed decision on whether to implement the changes or stick with the original plan.
• Be honest about delays. Every now and then, it takes us longer to execute a task than we thought it would. (Yes, it’s true – we do make mistakes!) In those situations, I always let our clients know right away that we need to bump our schedule back a couple of day. Clients appreciate this honesty, and it helps them to better plan their review cycles accordingly.
• Constantly monitor and adjust milestones. If we miss a milestone in our project schedule, we don’t just throw up our hands and say, “well, we’re sunk now.” Instead, I constantly readjust project milestones as needed. If we get behind on a deadline, I find out if we can expedite subsequent ones. And, if needed, I crack the whip and get our team really cranking to help us meet a deadline.

Of course, in my fondest dreams, all projects tick along perfectly, with every milestone met to the minute. I’ll keep hoping for that … but in the meantime, when changes come along, I’ll be ready for them.

Is email marketing dead?

We recently saw a post on this topic, and it made us stop and think. If you can get Twitter and Facebook updates from your favorite companies, do you really need to get email from them too?

We put our thinking caps on, and we thunk awhile, and we decided . . . yes, yes, you do need email marketing!

Here’s why.

• Email marketing reaches customers who haven’t jumped into social media. Plenty of boomers get email from their kids and shop online. But not all of them have started using Facebook, let alone Twitter. Email remains a useful way to stay in touch with them and let them know about sales and promotions.
• It’s a way to establish expertise. Many companies send out email newsletters just like this one on a regular basis. These newsletters aren’t pushing direct sales. Instead, they share information about topics that are important to your customers. This knowledge-sharing can help establish you as an expert in your field – whether you’re a catering firm writing about how to host a great event, or a golf pro offering weekly tips on improving your stroke.
• It’s a way to get the word out about sales and specials. It’s no big news that putting products on sale is one of the most effect calls to action available. That’s why mega-retailers like J. Crew and Land’s End have aggressive email marketing campaigns. Each company promotes a wide variety of sales throughout the year – sometimes it’s free shipping, sometimes it’s end-of-season discounts, sometimes percent discounts. But the sales are regular, and the emails announcing them can come weekly or even daily.

The rules of conduct governing email marketing are rigorous, and there’s no better way to ruin your reputation and get onto server blacklists than to violate them. But if you follow the rules, email can be a great part of your interactive marketing campaign.

Want to talk about your email strategy? Contact us today.

So we take planning and project management seriously. One critical step in those efforts is creating a wireframe for any new website.

What’s a wireframe? A wireframe is very simple design that lays out the essential elements that go on each of your web pages. A wireframe for a common webpage, for example, might include placeholders for a header, navigation, body copy, an image, a search function, a “call to action” box, and “contact us” information.

It would look something like this:

Why are wireframes so important?

• Wireframes save time because they give web designers clear direction on what needs to go on each page of the site. With a creative brief in one hand and an approved wireframe in the other, a designer  begin developing a great visual image for your site – without having to worry that he might be leaving a critical functionality off of one of the pages. Too many web projects jump straight from creating a sitemap to beginning design, without creating a wireframe in between—and too much information falls in the gap in between.
• Wireframes also save money because the basic elements of the site have been determined and approved before the creative design process ever begins. So there’s much less chance that a design will have to be torn apart and done over—which can drive costs up quickly.

Even though we’re a newfangled interactive firm, I guess we believe in the old-fashioned principle of “doing things right the first time.” We know that’s the right thing for our customers.

Want to learn more about wireframes and Atomic’s project management strategy? Contact us anytime.