Written By: Patrick on November 30th, 2009
The holidays are almost upon us, so what better time to tune up your website design and marketing than the present? Speaking of presents, here are three things you can and should do to make sure you get the most bang for your buck when you start on your next website design project:
1. Consider your audience
It still amazes me when a client insists on a design that’s more fluff and corporate ego stroking than useful or entertaining to its customers. The worst of this phenomenon includes things like animated splash pages, spinning corporate logos, bizarre navigation interfaces, and so on.
It should be simple, and it may seem obvious but so many businesses don’t spend any time at all considering their audience. Please, before you spend any time working up designs, or anything really, think about who’s going to be using your website.
Good website design helps you tell your story in a way that connects with the people you’re trying to reach. Good website design is audience-centric, which is not necessarily the (more…)
Written By: Patrick on November 25th, 2009
From our families to yours- Happy Thanksgiving! We hope that this holiday brings each of you closer to the ones you care most about.
We have a lot to be thankful for around here. Our new studio opened up in Los Angeles, and we expanded our team by three great new members. Meanwhile, we’ve been fortunate enough to begin working with many new clients, and we’re thankful for the new work and continued relationships with a bunch of our existing clientele from years past.
We’re proud of the work we’ve done for everyone over the past twelve months- thank you for letting us be a part of your business family.
Written By: Patrick on November 24th, 2009
PACKT Publishing sent us a new MODx book, by author Antano Solar John, for review. The book’s called MODx Web Development. We’re excited to see more MODx books out there, since it’s our favorite CMS and probably the one we use the most next to WordPress for our web design clients.
We’re going through Antano’s book, and we’ll be posting our review of it here once we’ve had a chance to do so (it’s been really busy here over the past few weeks!).
And, um, yes this book is available in our Amazon Swag Store.
Written By: Patrick on November 21st, 2009
A long time ago in Atlanta, I met a guy named Charles Brewer. He had a vision for creating an Internet Service Provider business, and he told me why his company was going to be different than all the other ISPs out there. He showed me a piece of paper. On it, he’d written down what his company would stand for, and he told me it’d serve as the roadmap for his business.
Charles’ company, MindSpring, became a pretty big deal- arguably the biggest ISP in the Southern USA, with decent marketshare all over the country. Eventually he merged Mindspring with Earthlink. Looking back it’s clear that Charles was a pretty smart guy, and (more…)
Written By: Patrick on November 17th, 2009
Many of our readers are website design companies and social media consultants. I want to make sure that they come away with something from our blog, too. So, without further ado, here’s the latest installment in our Superhero series of posts.
Why Care About Getting Great Clients?
All things being equal, it’s very important to work primarily with clients you like, and who like you. In this business, quality counts, and it’s not possible to do great work for clients who don’t measure up. Over time, your company will be perceived as a bottom feeder if you work with clients who don’t respect your expertise and vision, or have the strength to take advantage of your creativity and drive. There was a great article in the Wall Street Journal about this last week. At the same time (more…)
Written By: MK on November 16th, 2009
Hello! I am Molli Kreuser, aka “the mk,” the newest member of the team for PatrickOrtman, Inc. My job is to help out with social media marketing campaigns, by finding new ways for you to get your message out. I come to you via the good ol’ Midwest, born and raised in Wisconsin Rapids, WI. After completing my Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication from the University of Wisconsin, I moved to Chicago to pursue my career in marketing, with an emphasis on online marketing for the entertainment industry. Starting in late November, my home base will be San Francisco.
In Chicago, I became immersed with the social media world, through many intense online guerilla marketing campaigns for bands, radio stations, and most recently, an art-house movie theatre and film distribution company. I live in social media, so I know how to use it to build your brand (more…)
Written By: Patrick on November 13th, 2009
Does your company have video online? If not, you should. And if you do, you should know this: YouTube and Vimeo have both announced new upgrades to their video offerings. YouTube will now offer true 1080p HD video, previously one was limited to 720p video. Vimeo has began re-encoding their video content so that it plays back on iPhones.
We got the email from Vimeo that our web series Couch Cases had been converted to iPhone format yesterday, which means that they’re rolling things out even faster than they’d promised. This is great news, we love Vimeo.
Web video is absolutely a must-have for companies and businesses of all sizes. The fact that the leading video sites now offer the ability to present professional quality video suggests that many businesses are starting to realize that their online video marketing materials need to look great, just like their television advertising and other corporate video.
If you want to look your best online, you need to plan for the future. We’ve done that with our RED One digital cinema camera system- it shoots in 4K, which is several times 1080p HD. This means that our clients’ videos will look stunning on YouTube as it transitions to 1080p. Yes, it costs more to shoot on a professional camera system with a professional video production crew, but now our clients are still thrilled, while other businesses are scrambling to catch up.
