We’re proud to announce the completion of our new website for midwest law firm Leizerman & Associates, LLC. The website features a design that’s web standards compliant, and it includes the tools our client needs to maintain and update the website almost entirely on their own: a MODX content management system, and WordPress blog integration.

Most law firm website designs are pretty bad. But this client is special to us. I wanted this client’s website to clearly differentiate them from other, lesser, law firm websites. I worked closely with our designer on the project, Amy Gallaher-Hall, as she came up with a way to incorporate the high-touch, human-centric character of this special law firm with a cutting edge design that perfectly represents the client’s corporate and community culture.

We’re very proud of the work, and the client is thrilled.

2011 was a fantastic year for our little digital agency. Our Los Angeles shop put out 4 television commercials, 2 high profile web and corporate video promotional films, and three award-winning new website designs. We brought home three Telly Awards for video production, and three IMAs for our interactive and website design work, on the digital/interactive strategy side of things.

I’m incredibly grateful to all our clients, for believing in us, and trusting us to help tell your stories.

2011 was a pivotal year, both in defining my company’s focus and in putting out quality work. I also  invested heavily in things like upgrading our RED cameras, getting a Steadicam and other high-end production tools, and creating a world-class post production pipeline, featuring daVinci Resolve color grading, Dreamcolor broadcast monitors, and some very nifty high end software that lets us compete with the majors for a fraction of the cost. It was a huge year for video production, here.

Just as importantly, I solidified partnerships with some outstanding, key members of our interactive team. We’re already working on a client project codenamed “PLATFORMPLUS” that will redefine how a whole industry works.

We have the team, the machine, and the know-how. I’m shooting for greatness in 2012. I hope you are, too.

Thank you, 2011.

This is our third IMA win for 2011.

For instance, there’s a competitor to one of our favorite clients here at PatrickOrtman, Inc., who’s running some really beautiful tv commercials. He’s clearly spent a lot of money on these ads, and they look great. But when you visit his website, it looks like he hasn’t touched his site since 1999. There’s broken links, bad text, and a really outdated design. All of the buzz that he’d generated by these slick tv commercials instantly vanished the moment I saw his website.

Likewise, one of our web design clients from a while back recently hired another company to do some video work for them. Unfortunately, they hired a filmschool student, and the project looks very amateurish. Seeing that video play on our client’s website makes me cringe, because all the hard work that we’d done to create a beautiful, professional image for them utterly vanishes once you hit “Play”.

I know it’s gotten harder to effectively market your business, whether you’re a multinational or a SMB. As a business owner, I know this firsthand. It’s not enough to have a good website, social presence, and video marketing. You need all three.

In other words, these days you need to have an overall multimedia campaign and you need to spend some time and a lot of thought towards how your customers may find and interact with you. If you don’t, you’re just shooting yourself in the foot.

We’re proud to announce the official launch of the rebranded truckaccidents.com website. The website follows web standards, uses an open source content management system, and positions our client as the industry leader for trucking law issues that he, in fact, is.

More information is available here.

This is another in our series of posts meant to demystify the process of how we work with a client to design a successful client website. Really, though, a lot of these principles could easily be applied to other creative and marketing projects. In the end, it’s all about listening to the client, learning all we can, and involving the client as much as possible during the process.

The first thing we do after being awarded a web design project is intense research. When we work with a client, I want to know all I can about their business, their competition, and their industry. Every client is different, and by learning all we can about them we really up our chances of designing a successful website for them.

With the competitive research, we make it clear to the client that we’re not learning about the competition in order to copy what they’re doing. If you go that route, you’ll end up with a website that ends up one step behind the competition. We prefer that our clients blow the competition away.

Much of this preproduction phase of working with a new client involves listening and learning. Once we’ve digested things, we start to create mood boards, and we come up with initial information architecture thoughts. It’s important to spend time thinking about the organization of information on the site, how it goes together, and how to appeal to the client’s multiple audiences.

If a major content revision is part of the website redesign, we begin rewriting the content in cooperation with the client right about here.

After signoff on these things, we’re on to wireframes. Wireframes are simple gray box designs that give us a tool to use when meeting with the client to help both of us visualize the organization of information and the functionality of the website.

Finally, after wireframes, we begin to work on the website design as it’ll eventually be seen online. Like every other part of the process, this is a collaboration between us and the client. Often, perhaps due to the intense groundwork we’ve laid, we nail it on the first go around. Sometimes we need a few cycles of design work to get to signoff.

On submitting the design: we don’t blindly email clients the design, we tend towards multimedia presentations that explain the context of the design. This helps our contact at the client company to more easily explain and show off the design to other stakeholders, if needed.

Once the design is finalized, we move on to development. A clean, well-organized backend is as important as a great design. We’re really into clean, web standards code that’ll help a client’s website last a long time. By following web standards, we also get a website that displays on mobile devices and tablets- and a website that’ll do well with SEO.

Almost all websites come with a content management system these days. In the end, it’s important to not only have a great website design, but to have a web platform that makes it easy for the client to update and maintain the site as much as possible on their own. Any modern web design company will have embraced the idea of a CMS years ago, because like using web standards it’s the right way to build websites. We tend towards robust, open source content management systems (one of our current favorites is MODx), as a way to protect our clients’ investment while allowing them to get the most out of their new website.

Finally, we launch. And then we do a post launch wrap with the client. After launch, we’re available on either a retainer or as-needed basis to make any changes needed that can’t be done by the client.

I love helping clients get the most out of their budgets, and we’re known for delivering high end work at a reasonable price for our website design, video, and interactive clients. That said, there’s smart ways and foolish ways to try to save money on a project. This post talks about the foolish side of things.

Foolish Mistake Number One: “I Don’t Need A Great Website”
Actually, you do. Here’s why- your online presence has long ago become the most frequent “first contact” your company has with a customer, client, or partner. Would you meet a new client wearing a crappy, ill-fitting suit that makes you look like a fool? No. You’d dress appropriately. Your website needs to be updated on a regular basis, and it needs to keep up with the times. It blows my mind that clients who spend huge amounts of money buying domain names, doing AdWords campaigns, and so forth happily fall down on this.

A corollary to this thought is your website really should stand out from the competition. By spending the time and money to make sure that it does, you instantly boost your credibility in the eyes of your audience. This part comes down to this: does your business compete solely on price? If so, go ahead and aspire to mediocrity. If not, spend some thought and money on your website.

Foolish Mistake Number Two: “I Don’t Need To Do Social Media”
Maybe it’s a simple campaign that consists of you updating your Facebook and Twitter accounts whenever your company does something cool. Maybe you need to have an involved campaign that really puts serious resources behind social media. But you need a social media plan, and it needs to be ongoing.

Foolish Mistake Number Three: “All I Need Is Facebook”
Businesses that put all their eggs in the Facebook basket will one day find that the policies of Facebook have changed and their hard work is gone. This has happened quite a lot, especially to bands and companies that have rivalries. All you have to do is get a copyright complaint against you, and you’re gone. Smart businesses use Facebook as one of the channels to get their message out and foster strong customer relations, not as their home base.

Foolish Mistake Number Four: “I Can Get A TV Commercial For $300″
And I can find you a website for $300, too. And a car for $300. Heck, if you want a free TV commercial call up your local cable company. If you advertise with them, they’ll make a commercial for you for free.

But it won’t help your business. It may even hurt your brand’s reputation. Why would you spend thousands of dollars airing a crummy tv commercial that makes you look like a fool? The best tv commercials created by the $300 guys are absolutely terrible, because they have to be: you’re part of an assembly line, and that means your video will look pretty much like everyone else’s.

The Bottom Line
No matter what marketing collateral you’re developing, the bottom line is quality still matters. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you so they can make a quick buck. By putting out crappy marketing, you’re attracting crappy clients and losing the opportunity to show off all the great reasons why people should do business with you. Mediocre, unimaginative marketing can make a great company fail. Great marketing can help a small organization compete and win against global behemoths.
(Awesome photo by Editor B)

The short answer is, “no”.

No, you should not fully entrust your virtual presence to another organization. If they go out of business, so do you. If they change how their system works, it’s possible that your business will suddenly become invisible. Don’t think that can happen? Well, recently Facebook did just that by tinkering with users’ newsfeed display options.

More importantly, you should always have direct access to your customers and clients. Don’t get me wrong- I like Facebook, and it should be a part of many companies’ digital marketing plans. Yes, use Facebook as a way to meet and cultivate new clients and for turning fans into evangelists for your brand. But you should always have your own company website, blog, and so forth that are completely under your control.

As always, your website is your company’s most important digital marketing asset. Going 100% Facebook is lazy, shortsighted, and stupid.

STUDIO CITY, CA — PatrickOrtman, Inc., PatrickOrtman, Inc., an award-winning digital and interactive agency located in Los Angeles, California, today announced that it has been awarded Outstanding Achievement in Website Development by the Interactive Media Awards™ for its work on the PatrickOrtman, Inc. Website. The honor recognizes that the website surpasses the standards of excellence that comprise the web’s most professional work. The site was honored specifically for excellence in Professional Services.

The judging consisted of various criteria, including design, usability, innovation in technical features, standards compliance and content. In order to win this award level, the site had to meet strict guidelines in each area — an achievement only a fraction of sites in the IMA competition earn each quarter.

Patrick Ortman, CEO of PatrickOrtman, Inc., said, “It’s an honor to have our work recognized by the Interactive Media Awards. We feel strongly that our projects are world-class examples of how the Internet can be used to enhance a company’s message and branding. This accolade is further proof of this fact, and I’d like to single out and thank our design team, especially Ryan McMaster, for their efforts on this project.”

About PatrickOrtman, Inc.
PatrickOrtman, Inc. is the digital agency founded by Internet/digital marketing pioneer Patrick Ortman. He brings over 17 years of experience creating some of the best online and digital marketing projects around, including the first major rock concert on the Internet, successful large-scale website design projects,  genre-defining mobile and web series productions, and promotional and commercial TV and online videos. His work has been featured in USA Today, The Toronto Star, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal, The St. Petersburg Times, Japan’s NHK network, and many others. He has worked with 8 Fortune 500 companies and hundreds of smaller businesses and organizations.

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We’re pleased that we’re one of the top 15 graphic/interactive design agencies in Los Angeles, according to Thumbtack.com. Hey, they even gave us this nifty badge. ‘Course, we’re a lot more than a design agency- but it’s nice to be recognized.