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Don’t Get Dumped

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We live in a society that places an incredibly high level of importance on image. In this image-conscious, hyper-competitive business world we live and work in, using web design to effectively convey your company’s brand, corporate culture and values is essential for setting your business apart from your competitors. This makes your business’ website incredibly important, considering it’s the first place people go to learn about your company.

Is the design of your company’s website getting people excited about your products and services? If your website looks outdated, what message is being sent? Is the image your website is presenting accurate? When your potential customers, future employees or prospective investors visit your website, what is the design telling them about your brand?

Web design impacts not only your brand and how outsiders perceive your company, it also impacts how effectively your search engine optimization efforts will perform. You might be asking yourself what web design has to do with SEO. Well, Yahoo, Bing and the guys over at Google track how much time people spend visiting your site. So, when visitors land on your site and aren’t instantly engaged, they’ll hit the back button before they’ve even read a line of copy. Websites that can’t hold the attention of visitors, can’t hold the attention of search engines, either.

While the “love at first sight” factor is important, like any good relationship, you need to be engaging as well. Good design should have the end user in mind. A beautifully designed website that is easy to navigate and effortlessly promotes your brand attracts new customers and keeps them coming back. Quality web design could be the difference between building a new relationship and getting dumped.

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Social Media: 3 Tools, 3 Distinct Strategies

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One of our clients asked for advice on approaching different types of social media. She knew in theory that creating new content is good, but she wasn’t sure what content to put where.

“I have a blog, a Facebook fan page, and a Twitter account,” she asked us. “Should they all have different types of content? How often should I post on each one? Is there an easy way to replicate posts across different media?”

Starting from short content (Twitter) to longer content (blog posts), here’s our answer.

  • Twitter. There’s no real limit to how often you should post on Twitter. Things move quickly there, and it’s easy to miss people’s tweets, so posting frequently will give you a better chance of being seen and heard. In fact, it’s expected. If you’re not interacting pretty much every day, people will lose interest.Also, Twitter is supposed to be for socializing, so keep your posts conversational – people get pissed if you’re salesy. If you write business-related tweets, do it some 20% of the time, and make your tweets as un-pushy as possible.Because you want to tweet frequently, it’s fine to “push” your Facebook posts to Twitter (i.e., every comment you make on Facebook will show up on your Twitter account). However, it’s not a good idea to push your tweets to your Facebook page, because theoretically, you’ll have way too many posts. People get annoyed if you update your Facebook status 10 times a day – it’ll do you more
    harm than good.
  • Facebook. What you’re trying to do with Facebook is build a community around your brand. You want to start a conversation with your followers in the hopes that they’ll eventually use your page as a forum to talk about your company.To get the community started, about once a day, you can post thoughts, questions, polls, surveys, or anything that might get discussions started. If you can get to the point where you just monitor the page and chime in when questions are asked or problems arise, that’s ideal.
  • Blogs. Blogs are a great place to promote yourself and your company. The blog is on your site, and readers are expecting you to write about yourself. So you can be a little more salesy here.You should blog regularly –at least once a month, and ideally once every two weeks. Once a week is great if you have the time and content.Blogs can be used to answer FAQs, to talk about industry trends, or to announce new products, employees, or clients. Most importantly, blogs are great for letting your visitors and Google know that fresh content regularly appears on your site. If you have certain keyword phrases you’re going after, you can write entire articles about them, linking the phrases in the blog to the appropriate
    pages on your site.

    Pushing your blog articles to Facebook is a good idea. The content should be tied to the discussions on your Facebook page anyway, and the posts will sit on your page long enough to let multiple people see them. Pushing blog articles to Twitter is pretty much a waste of time –a one-time mention of a lengthy article will often be lost on Twitter users.

Overall, think of the different mediums as having different communication purposes. You can use Twitter and Facebook to interact with customers on a day-to-day basis, and then use your blog to talk less frequently, but more in depth, about issues that are important to them. With a good strategy in place and a little luck, you should soon have a strong following in each medium.

Search Engine Ninja Needed

Atomic Interactive, A Dayton, Ohio website design agency is seeking a Search Engine Ninja to join our marketing team. We’re a fast growing, energetic team who loves to develop powerful online business tools, applications and strategies for our wide range of fun clientele. We work in a casual environment located Downtown in the Firefly building. If your passionite about your craft, love a collaboritive team, and can appreciate a good game of ping pong we’d love to talk more.

The Search Engine Ninja will work with the Search Engine Marketing Manager and Internet Marketing Team to create and implement creative search strategies and track the effectiveness of new and existing campaigns.

The successful candidate will have strong analytic capabilities with specific knowledge of online marketing analytics. The Search Engine Ninja is expected to produce daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly reporting; assigned analytic projects; and produce independent analysis to help search engine strategy.

Essential Functions:

Provide support and analysis for the Search Engine marketing team including:

  • Monitor, track, and report on paid search metrics, including trend analysis.
  • Provide support for search engine optimization recommendations.
  • Interact with copywriter and web service manager to optimize copy and landing pages for Search Engine Marketing.
  • Provide ad-hoc support for the Search Engine Marketing team including:
    1. Set up of new campaigns
    2. QA creative
    3. Assist in Keyword discovery and expansion
    4. Top keywords raking by category
    5. ROI by Campaign, Site, and Category
    6. Research and analyze competitor advertising links
    7. Back link strategy and implementation
    8. Directory submissions and revisions
    9. Internal link optimization
    10. SEO technical analysis and evaluation
    11. Website remediation
    12. Key phrase research
    13. META optimization
    14. Stay up to date on the latest industry developments

Job Qualifications:

  • 1+ years previous online marketing experience. Ad agency or online direct marketing background a plus.
  • Self motivated, detail oriented and able to prioritize daily work efficiently.
  • Exceptional communication skills. Show superior judgment and professionalism when corresponding with partners and team members.
  • Demonstrate a proactive work ethic when managing numerous competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.
  • Proven ability to accommodate evolving responsibilities and last minute changes.
  • Able to analyze metric data and convey recommendations appropriately to supervisors.
  • Proficient in MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Please email your resume to [email protected]. No phone calls please.

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Why 10 Heads Are Better Than 1

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Internet marketing means more than just having a website, more than just having a fan page, it involves having what we refer to as a web presence. Developing a web presence requires a precise measurement much like a good suit…because one size does not fit all. This is also the reason why so many single-man operations cannot achieve the ROI that customers expect. As an example, think of an attorney. One attorney being proficient in all types of law is virtually impossible, there are simply too many variables at play; corporate law and personal injury law are altogether two different animals. To achieve proficiency in all types of law, law firms are assembled. Internet marketing is much the same.

Experienced web designers are needed to design navigation-friendly websites. Properly writing clean code requires highly skilled developers. Creating search engine friendly/user friendly text requires the skill set of a trained web-based copywriter. Developing a social media campaign that people will relate to demands the attention of someone with a strong marketing background. Also, having a project manager oversee all aspects of a fully integrated internet marketing campaign, ensuring that it reflects a given organization’s brand, is vital to success. While it’s possible that someone could go to school for 2 years of design, 2 years of IT, 2 years of copywriting and editing, and 2 years of marketing; it is impossible that a single person could stay up to date with the changes.

The internet changes everyday, some would argue every second or even nanosecond. Staying relevant in design, coding, search engine optimization, and social media trends requires a continuing education in each facet. It’s simply too much for any one person to handle…it’s also the reason why, as a team, Atomic has been able to create so much success for our clients. As we like to say, “The proof is in the pudding.” So, we encourage you to search for “dayton web design” or even “ohio web design.” As a 3 year old company competing in a 20+ year old business, we’re proud of the results we’ve created for ourselves, but more proud of the results our team has created for our clients.

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Iconic Thinking

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Does anyone surfing the web these days see a blue bird or a chubby aqua “T” and not think of Twitter?

Icons—pictorial representations of brands, products, or people—can be powerful tools to help you stand out in the cyber crowd.

A customized icon set—a group of similarly styled icons, much like a family of fonts—takes iconic branding to the next level by helping you:

  • Differentiate one product, application, or blogger from another.
  • Organize products into like groups—without sacrificing the consistent elements of your brand.
  • Streamline the back-end functionality of your content management system, which makes it easier for staff to navigate and to train new staff on how to use it.
  • Provide a consistent theme for graphic, product, app, and other designers to use for creating new icons.

Here at Atomic, my process for developing icon sets is pretty straightforward. It focuses on upfront preparation, which conserves your time, cuts down on costs, and ensures that we get the best results.

  • Brainstorm. First, I’ll brainstorm with you to learn who and what the icon set is for. What message, position, feeling do you hope to convey? I might just listen to how you talk about your products or brand, take notes, and then jot down some ideas to see what creative concepts emerge.
  • Research. Often, these early brainstorming sessions are augmented with additional research. I want to know what your competition is doing. I also like to check out how other sites use icon sets and to what effect.
  • Sketch. Next, I’ll sketch out some more concrete ideas for you to review—including color schemes that bring the concepts to life. I’ll typically present ideas from a variety of different angles to see which ones you think work best for your goals. And I’ll provide my two cents to help you decide.
  • Refine. Once I get more feedback, I can refine the sketches to create full, polished illustrations.

Soon enough, your customized icon set is ready to be deployed.

Now that’s iconic thinking for your brand and your business.

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Customizing Social Media

Custom Social Media

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?

Good News Dayton!

We kept getting comments last week about a great radio commentary about Atomic on the local radio station WHIO from friends and family. Much to our surprise it was true. Our internal private eye Richard Kaiser tracked down the clip to share all our atomic fans.

WHIO Radio – Good News Dayton

Thanks Grunder Landscaping!

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Why Email Marketing Rocks

Email Marketing Campaign

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.

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Three Easy Steps to Improving Your AdWords Campaign

Pay Per Click Ohio

A few months ago we talked about deciding if a pay-per-click campaign is right for your company. I thought I’d back up today and review how pay-per-click works, as well as explain some strategies we use to help pay-per-click pay off for our clients.

So … let’s start with the basics. Pay-per-click campaigns are created using Google AdWords. You create an ad using keywords related to your business. When someone searches for those keywords, your ad pops up on their screen. That’s called an “impression.” When someone clicks on your ad and is sent to your website, that’s called a “clickthrough.”

With AdWords, you typically pay not for the number of impressions you get – but for the number of clickthroughs. Thus the name “pay-per-click.”

Creating a successful AdWords campaign isn’t a one-time deal. You don’t create an ad, throw it on Google, and leave it there forever. Instead, it’s a process of constantly refining your ads to find out which ones bring the most business.

Here’s how it works:

  • Step 1 – Create. Write two or more ads for your business using the same keywords. (For example, if your keyword is “golf shoes,” one ad might read, “Try the season’s hottest golf shoes”; the other might read “Try our top-performing golf shoes.”)
  • Step 2 – Evaluate. Run both ads simultaneously. After a set period of time – usually 1 to 3 weeks – assess which ad is working better. Then delete the worst-performing ad and replace it with a new one. If you’re using more than one set of keywords in each ad (like “golf shoes” vs. “golfing shoes”), delete the worst-performing keywords and replace them with new ones.
  • Step 3 – Rinse and repeat. You can repeat this cycle almost indefinitely – constantly trying out new ads and new keywords, keeping the good ones in play, and removing the scrubs. The goal is to constantly increase your conversion rate – the number of clickthroughs compared to the number of impressions.

Increasing your conversion rate does two things: first, it gets more customers to your site. Second, it gets you a better position on Google, for less money per click. Having each click cost less can make a big difference in your ad spend over time.

Of course, the ultimate goal isn’t just a high conversion rate – it’s what customers do once they get to your site. If you have a high conversion rate and high online sales, you’re golden. But if you have a high conversion rate and low online sales, there’s probably a disconnect between your ads and your website content.

And that’s a topic for another day’s blog.

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Six Key Questions about E-Commerce

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So… you want to make money online? Putting a few items on Ebay is one thing. But building a successful online store is another. Whether you’re selling products, services, or information, careful planning is essential for success.

Here are a few questions to consider before getting started:

Inventory

  • Do you have a brick-and-mortar store that will share products with your online store? If so, what would happen if you sold a product online and in the store at the same time? Would one of your customers have a bad experience?
  • How will you track your inventory online? Some store owners use the web; some use Quickbooks and sync the store and the ecommerce site together. Whatever method you choose, create a process and follow it diligently.

Software

  • Is there existing ecommerce software system that you can use?
  • If so, is it the best solution for your customers? Would they have a better experience with a website ecommerce design that was custom-built to their needs? A custom Magento solution, for example, might pay off in the long run if it makes the buying process easier for your customers.

Handling payment

  • How will customers pay for your product or service? You’ll need to select a merchant account and gateway to get started.
  • PayPal is an affordable option – but they aren’t a bank and don’t have to obey the same legalities that banks do.
  • Authorize.net might work with your business banking account.
  • Your bank might have a custom solution, or your inventory management system might have a built-in system.

Shipping

  • Will you offer free shipping? If so, how will that cost be built into your business model?
  • What vendor will be most convenient and cost-effective: UPS, USPS, or Fedex?
  • Are your products large enough to require freight shipping? Can your vendor handle that? What will the handling fee be?

Marketing

  • How will you market your website? Customers won’t find you automatically – you need a plan for getting their attention and moving them to your site.
  • Are you familiar with the ins-and-outs of website marketing—from search engine optimization to analytics? Or would it save money in the long run to work with a trusted advisor to market your ecommerce site?

Figuring out the best ecommerce system for your products and your customers may take some time. Remember that time you spend upfront in planning will save headache down the line — and that custom development, if it helps convert interest to sales, can be worth its weight in gold.