Impressions of an Intern

“Anyone can cook, even a mouse”
–Auguste Gusteau, the chef guy, in Disney/Pixar’s Ratatouille

Well, I’m pretty sure the same concept works for web design. This is my third summer as an intern at Executionists, I’ve learned a lot from the experience. Just like cooking, it takes a lot of ingredients, all mixed together in the right amounts to make a good web site. Here are a couple of things I’ve learned about the gritty details of web design.

1. Web design is about communication
To the untrained eye, web design is making text and images look pretty. Except, what that’s really saying is that web design is about communicating content from businesses to clients. I’m always amazed at how much time the people at Executionists take to work with clients to ensure their content is presented perfectly. At the end of the day, if your website is empty, nobody will want to look at it.

2. Experience matters
I used to think that anyone could wake up and declare themselves a web designer. Heck, I sure did. Maybe anyone can, but the difference between a good web designer and a great one is experience. An experienced web designer knows when to avoid silly little trends or gimmicks and when to accept and implement important new standards. The team at Executionists has been creating web sites for 12+ years, and designing print for more, and it shows.

3. Balance is important
The team at Executionists has three types of people: managerial types, artistic types and coding types. I work mostly as a coding type, and it is really nice to be able to focus almost entirely on the task at hand. The system that Executionists have developed is effective and helps us crank out web pages quickly. It really shows that the Executionists know what they’re doing.

Executionists definitely has the right mix of skills to make your website work. Richard and Co. have really refined their methods and skills and I now know so much more about the web design industry than I did when I started. It’s a great place to intern, and an even better place to learn.

-Zach Margolis
Executionists Intern

Small Businesses Strategies for Internet Advertising

Here at Executionists, we work with just about any type of business you can think of (large or small). Many of the larger companies or corporations tend to have a set marketing plan or strategy dictated by their “in-house” marketing departments, or outsourced marketing companies. In these cases, we tend to cater and customize our creative web solutions to expound on their existing formats. Most of our clients in the Small Business sector seem to have a broad scope as to what they are trying to accomplish via the internet, but are confused by the complexity and various options of strategic internet advertising. Lot’s of our small business clients spend an enormous amount of time (and money) on the aesthetics and presentation of their sites, but then have a hard time grasping marketing ideas to reach out to their prospective client base. Here at Executionists, we pride ourselves in assisting small businesses with web solutions beyond what we refer to as “Phase I”.

Example: You’ve signed off on the website we’ve created for you. We’ve completed all the navigation and aesthetic revisions, all of your content is uploaded, interactive forms completed, etc. The client’s website is finally “Live”. Congrats; you’ve completed “Phase I”. Now it’s time to roll up your sleeves. This is when strategic internet marketing & advertising comes to play. Welcome to “Phase II”. How are you spreading the word about your company and it’s fabulous new site? One of my favorite marketing strategist wrote “Without online advertising strategies, your site will be like the proverbial tree in the forest, falling with no one to hear”. Unfortunately, this is true. However, Internet advertising can help you reach millions of people at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing techniques.

Before you panic in frustration, let us help you with “Phase II”. The first thing that any business owner should factor in as a fixed business expense is an advertising budget. Just because you don’t have the funding for a large campaign doesn’t mean you should not have a campaign at all. There are many online advertising options that are inexpensive and effective. “But where should I place my ads?” is the next question we get often. Depending on the type of service or product you sell, research and buy ads on sites that offer complementary products or services that tie in with what you sell. In addition to complementary sites, General Interest web sites would be the best place to start an online campaign.

Three of the most popular online advertising strategies are Link Exchanges, Newsletter advertising and Budgeted advertising (this also goes into SEOs, but we’ll save those details for another day). Here are the definitions and strategies of these online strategies:

1) Link exchanges can be great, especially if your advertising budget is limited (or nonexistent). Find merchants that sell complementary products, and offer to trade text links or ads with them. If you’re just starting out and your site doesn’t get a lot of traffic, you may not get a one-to-one trade. Prepare yourself to make concessions, at least until you have a track record and traffic to point to. That said, most companies won’t turn down an opportunity for more exposure, so you’ll probably find a few willing to exchange links with you.

2) Newsletter advertising is a great way to reach select groups of consumers. For example, if you sell health products, you could advertise in a newsletter that offers health tips and advice. Because newsletter advertising is targeted, it can be expensive. If your budget is tight, you can always start your own newsletter campaign. Constant Contact e-newsletter sites are helpful as well.

3) Budgeted advertising, such as “GoogleAdWords”, provides a purchased a set of keywords, your option to set a limit on how much you want to spend, and have your ad display until that limit is reached. This is a positive way to track your campaign success.

Once you’ve mastered these techniques (and if your marketing budget allows it) try reaching out to popular news services, Web-based email providers, and other sites that reach a large segment of the population. While this can prove very expensive, in return, you have the potential of reaching millions of new customers. No matter which road you decide to take, give serious thought to your “creative (the actual ad itself)”. Whether it’s just a text link, or whether it’s a complete banner-ad campaign, the “creative” can make or break your advertising initiative. Try several variations, track them, and see which ones perform best. This is just the beginning of your online advertising strategies and marketing solutions. As stated earlier, your online presence should extend past just being “online”.

Take your business beyond “Phase I”. We are here to help and ready to “execute” the next phases of your web solutions.

Until next time…..
Damon R. Howard
Marketing Operations Consultant
Executionists, Inc.

www.executionists.com

“We Get Web Done”

Brand Extension: Big Brother in the Web Marketing Family

Web presence is pretty much business standard nowadays, regardless of the size a company. From “Mom & Pop” boutiques to large Corporations, public information about your company and it’s products/services should be readily accessible via the internet. As this is common knowledge, most businesses establish some type of web presence, but tend to get lost in the competitive internet marketplace. How do you stand out amongst the rest in addition to building “the perfect” website? How well are you marketing your brand? In order to wrap your head around the various combinations of internet marketing, let’s take a basic look at the Web Marketing Family.

The basic family tree of Web Marketing comprises of these members: Corporate Domain, Search Marketing, Syndicated Web Marketing, Brand Extension, Community and Social Media Marketing, Virtual Worlds, Related Mediums, and lastly, Experimental Methods. These internet marketing strategies are all equally important and should be used to compliment your current online efforts. One of the “family members” that I tend to focus on is Brand Extension. The Brand Extension strategy is simple; wherever your market is, you should have brand placement. I’m sure this marketing strategy has been applied to your business in other physical forms, but it is also strongly applicable to your online presence. The basic forms of brand extension consists of the following: Web Advertising, Contextual Advertising, Sponsorship/Cross Branding, Social Advertisements, Widget Advertising and Affiliate Marketing. Check out the detailed info on these forms of brand extension below.

Web Advertising
I’m sure you’re all familiar with the banner, tile, or skyscraper advertising (IAB) model on websites. This age old strategy simply suggests that if there are eyeballs your brand should ‘impress’ upon the users. Click through rates are typically in the 1% or lower rate, sometimes success is measured by brand impressions, (visitation by traffic). These ads are static and do not change even if the content on the webpage changes.

Contextual Advertising
These targeted ads will be served up on the webpage depending on the content that’s on the page. This is a more ‘intelligent’ and therefore more relevant than Web Advertising, which may not be targeted at specific content. This form of advertising can be text, images, media or other form and are common on websites, blogs, and are now appearing on web based emails sites. (Submitted by David Berkowitz: Feb 13th. 2007)

Sponsorship and /Cross Branding
This is a method of promoting your brand with the right audience in which the property is rewarded for integrating your brand. This can occur on content sites, shows, media properties, blogs, podcasts, and just about everything else. This is expected to increase in 2007.

Social Advertisements
Having just appeared this year from Facebook, it uses contextual information from users who have become “Fans” of a brand, then ads are severed to their network, in an endorsement. This has been highly controversial, and the return on investment is not yet known.

Widget Advertising
Having just appeared this year from on containers like Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, and Friendster, widgets have proliferated at an amazing growth rate. Expect advertising networks to form over the next year, where a brand can purchase space on any number of widgets across different social networks and communities, groups such as: RockYou, Slide, Widgetbox, and Watercooler to start with. See all posts tagged Widget Strategy.

Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing programs compensate partners and alliances that bring referrals, leads, or sales. While it overlaps with other forms of web marketing, the goal is to provide the right content or products to the target demographic. Examples of this include placement on comparison shopping sites, loyalty sites, and product review sites.

As you can see, Brand Extension plays a very important role in the Web Marketing Family. These forms should be used in conjunction w/ the other Web Marketing family members to make a successful campaign for your business. Stay tuned for more information on the other web marketing “siblings”.

Damon R. Howard

Marketing Operations Consultant

Executionists, Inc.

Recently Launched!

We’re proud to announce some of our recently launched projects!

Studio DNA Salon
www.studiodnasalon.com
November, 2007

 

 

The Million Lights Project
www.millionlightsproject.org
November, 2007

 

The Festival of New American Musicals
www.lafestival.org
November, 2007

 

 

Discrimination Attorney
www.discriminationattorney.com
October, 2007

 

The Safe Sippy
www.thesafesippy.com
September, 2007

Content, Content, Content

As a project manager at Executionists, Inc., I view website development in three phases: pre-production, production, and post-production. (Can you tell we’re Los Angeles-based?) The quality of the pre-production phase will generally establish how quickly a client’s site will be completed. Clients love to help, sometimes to the detriment of the project (see: Executionists Take on Dogbert). However, this is the stage of the process where client input is crucial and greatly appreciated.

Meaning: content, content, content. The most important way a client can help us help them is by being prepared with content for all sections of the website. During our initial meeting with a client, we will establish a content checklist, complete with a listing of all the approved navigation within the site. While we do our job designing the site based on this navigation, we expect the client to do their job by providing all content that will eventually be placed on our neatly designed pages.

The consequences of not having content ready or sending it to the web designer in pieces could be significant both for the client’s pocketbook and the development timeline. It takes more time to put the content on the site piece by piece than all at once. Additions of new content after the site design has begun can lead to issues with navigation and page layout.

It’s also important for me to note that we, are not copywriters. Nor are we grammatical experts. When the client does have all content ready to go, we strongly recommend hiring a professional editor/proofreader (we can recommend some). In grade school we learn that editing is the most important part of writing. Don’t give a web developer any content that is less than web-ready. The more typos and misspellings there are, the more it eats into the budget originally established for design and technical development.

Want more information about pre-production? See our Kick-off Questions. If you can answer all of these, content writing will be easier. All that’s left to do is to have us make your website.
Julie Dwyer
Project Manager

Everything but the Kitchen Sink

Illustration: Dave Abston (www.graphicsbydave.com)

Scope Creep (also called requirement creep, feature creep, and sometimes kitchen sink syndrome) in project management refers to uncontrolled changes in a project’s scope. This phenomenon can occur when the scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, or controlled. It is generally considered a negative occurrence to be avoided.

Typically, the scope increase consists of either new products or new features of already approved product designs, without corresponding increases in resources, schedule, or budget. As a result, the project team risks drifting away from its original purpose and scope on unplanned additions. As the scope of a project grows, more tasks must be completed within the budget and schedule originally designed for a smaller set of tasks. Thus Scope Creep can also result in a project team overrunning its original budget and schedule. If budget or schedule are increased along with scope, the change is usually considered an acceptable addition to the project, and the term ‘Scope Creep’ not used.

Scope Creep can also be thought of as a process of trial and error for clients to discover what they really want…

Symptoms
• Projects that have been going on for a long time
• Clients who are picky and tend to change their minds often
• Scattered content and pieces for the website

Scope Creep Example
We took on a OS Commerce shopping cart project about a year ago. In my opinion, the client is one of the sweetest clients I’ve ever dealt with. The initial projections looked profitable; the budget and scope were optimistic. We all thought it was going to be a great addition to our portfolio. However as the project progressed, things started to change, and before you know it, we were over budget! What happened?

She found her own graphic designer, so our initial comps went to the graveyard…
A new photo shoot came around, we waited for a month…
The simple “portfolio” became a Flash portfolio with it’s own Scope Creep issues…
Content edits kept changing due to time sensitive information/press pieces…

Just when we thought we could wrap things up, the client became frustrated with the look and feel of the shopping cart. The graphic designer came back with a complete redesign of the cart including new headers, styles, color palettes and additional images that required detailed cropping and instructions. Mega Scope Creep alert! We became very aware that the project was slowly draining our resources.

When faced with this scenario, we can ask ourselves 2 questions: 1) What could we have done to prevent this from happening? 2) How can we make this a win-win situation? We informed the client of the issue and tried to wrap up the website with one final round of changes. The client understood that we were trying our best to deliver the shopping cart that she had envisioned. As of this writing the project still isn’t complete but we remain optimistic that it will launch soon.

The reality is that in this industry, some amount of scope creep is inevitable. It’s not only a process of trial and error for clients to discover what they really want, it’s also a process of learning how we as designers/developers can mitigate similar situations in the future. As a project manager, I definitely learned a valuable lesson: always be aware of the budget, set client expectations and clearly define the scope ahead of time!

-Temy Gu
Project Manager

Executionist’s Take on Dogbert

For all of our competition: please follow this Dogbert tech support scenario (credit to, Scott Adams).

Tech: Help desk, what’s your issue?
Caller: My computer won’t….
Tech: Shut up and reboot.
Caller: Hey! It worked!
Tech: Shut up and hang up. (My call time is improving!)

However, I believe that dealing with problem customers is an art form that should be handled with tact and duplicity diplomacy.

It has been my experience that allowing a client to have access to the hosting control panel before the site is finished and goes live, can continually cause problems. There can be miscommunications which slow down the process or can potentially stop it altogether.

Just the other day, a client changed the FTP password without relating it to me. Unfortunately, this becomes a problem for your web designer when he/she wants to go in and continue building your website. I politely asked the client to please refrain from making any changes during development and instead ask me to do so for them.

The fact of the matter is that I don’t want clients to feel I am prohibiting their involvement in the development process or taking control of the hosting account they are paying for. However, a clients’ help and involvement in technical development generally slows down the process. In order to streamline development, it is best to keep all technical parts of the project in the hands of your technical developer. (Kids, keep your hands and feet in the car at all times during the ride.)

While it would be easiest to imitate Dogbert’s behavior, keep in mind that clients usually just want to help. Paradoxically, their “help” can make the web designer’s job harder. Let the developer do everything and the client will have helped in the easiest way possible.

Phil Cady
Technical Director
“If a pretty picture and cheap sentiment is enough to motivate you, you have a very easy job. One that will be done by robots in the future.”

Who’s going to write your blog?

So you’ve spent XX amount of hours of your time or paid someone $X to do it for you and now you are the proud owner of a blog. (Lucky you! Congratulations!)

Now the real work begins, because no matter how eloquent and topical we think we are, making a commitment to write blog content on a regular basis is… well… a commitment. In our office, we had the bright idea to rotate blog writing duties among our staff of talented project managers, designers and coders, but here it is “blog deadline” and nothing’s been submitted by the designated blogger. So here I am, stuck with the posting duties again.

Don’t get me wrong, a blog has been a valuable asset to our online presence. In our experience, benefits of updating your blog include:

1) Increased exposure for your company on the web, adding credibility.
2) Improved SEO power! If you search for “executionists” on the web you’ll see many of the results come from our blog.
3) A chance to showcase a personal side to your company and its employees.
4) Opportunities to showcase your witty and extremely clever rhetoric on topical issues plaguing your industry today.
5) A place to have a dialog/network with your Blog readers by responding to their comments on your posts.

In conclusion, a blog is a helpful, fun and powerful marketing tool, but take heed of our warning: it takes time and concerted effort. Not much, but effort nonetheless. Hope you read, enjoy, and take to heart this week’s valuable insight.

2007 WebAward Winner!

We are proud to announce that we are the recipient of a 2007 WebAward for
Outstanding Achievement in Website Development
presented by the Web Marketing Association!

Our award was presented in recognition of our work on the Christopher Laue Productions site.

 

Christopher Laue
Executionists, Inc.
Events Standard of Excellence

Creative Director: Richard Parr
Senior Designer: Kaoru Wood
Flash Designer: Conrad Julian
Project Manager: Temy Gu

 

 

Our overall scores:

 

We are thrilled and grateful to be recognized!

Kickoff questions

Here are some key issues to think about when commissioning a web design company to make or remake your website.

1. What is your intended launch date for the new site?

2. What shortcomings existed with the previous site?

3. What are the main reasons you are redesigning your site (new business model, outdated site, expanded services, different audience)?

4. What are your primary online business objectives with the site redesign? (Examples include increased sales, marketing/branding awareness) Please discuss both long- and short-term goals.

5. Describe a typical site visitor. How often are they online, and what do they generally use the web for? Give basic demographics: age, occupation, income level.

6. What is the primary “action” the site visitor should take when coming to your site?

7. What are the key reasons why the target audience chooses your company’s products and/or services (cost, service, value)?

8. Use a few adjectives to describe how your site visitor should perceive the new site.

9. How does your company differentiate itself from competitors? Do you think your current audience differentiates you from your competition? Please list competitor URLs.

10. List the URLs of any sites you find compelling. What specifically do you like about these sites?

11. Will this site use existing content from the previous site? If so, what is the source, who is responsible for approval? If not, will you be creating content in-house or using an outside provider?

12. What is the basic structure of the content, and how is it organized? Is it a complete overhaul of the previous site or an expansion? Do you already have a sitemap or outline for the proposed redesign?

13. What is your target platform and browser? Are there specific technologies (Flash, AJAX, JavaScript, DHTML, etc.) that you would like to use in the site?

14. Briefly, what are your short-term marketing plans (specifically, for the site redesign and the 6 to 12 months following launch)?

If you can quickly and succinctly answer all of these questions, you’re well on your way to creating a great website. Knowing your target audience and exactly how you wish your site to function will help us help you expand your business.