Recently we were contracted by Starla West International to improve and enhance their overall messaging and brand identity. One piece of this included a full website redesign.
Posts Tagged ‘website redesign’
July 18th, 2011
Behind the Redesign: BSALifeStructures.com
Miles Design was engaged by BSA LifeStructures, the largest architecture firm in Indiana and one of the top ten healthcare architects in the country, to redesign the BSA LifeStructures website.
Beyond the shift away from the previously mustard-themed design, this architecture firm’s website redesign is loaded with far more functionality. Below are the seven new elements we’re most excited about. (more…)
February 6th, 2011
Behind the Redesign: MilesDesign.com
Just before the New Year, I was thinking about all of the “little tweaks” I wanted to make to milesdesign.com. At that time, our current website design was only about eight months old. Although I didn’t intend to generally alter the look or feel of our site, I couldn’t help but see opportunities for improvement. A few hours later, those “little tweaks” turned into a full-scale redesign.
I moved into “rapid prototyping” mode, quickly exploring grid and layout options within the existing brand identity system, landing ultimately on a new 6-column grid.
Here’s a quick rundown of many of the design changes we made, why we made them, and some of the technical improvements achieved by redesigning our own website. (more…)
December 6th, 2010
4 Levels of Brand Engagement: Level 4–Keep Them Coming Back.
(The fourth article in a four-part series)
Now that your professional services website is attracting searchers, passing the two second test, and has valuable content, your next online engagement goal should be to encourage repeat visitors.
Think about the sites that you routinely visit. I’m guessing that seldom updated, bland, self-serving sites aren’t very high on your list. Most people only frequent sites that offer entertainment value, the opportunity to learn something new, or regular updates. Of course regular doesn’t have to be several times per day, but it helps to be consistent. Daily updates are difficult to maintain, but once a month may not be enough to encourage repeat visits. Find a pace that works best for you.
Blogs and other social media updates are often the easiest to keep up with on a regular basis, but let’s consider more than the type of content you post–let’s think about the other ways to remind visitors to return. RSS, email subscriptions, and social links are other great ways to notify your audience when your site has been updated.
Bonus: A Little Help From Your Friends.
Don’t feel like you have to do all of the work yourself. Social sharing features make it easier for your visitors to share your site with your friends as well. Consider using Like This, Share This, Send to a Friend, and ReTweet features in your next site update as well.
So there you have it. The four levels of engagement for your professional services website.
In case you missed one of the earlier articles, they’re linked below:
Level 1 – Be found.
Level 2 – Pass the Two-Second Test.
Level 3 – Provide Strong, Compelling Content.
Level 4 – Keep Them Coming Back.
What are the best methods you have used to foster engagement on your website?
December 3rd, 2010
4 Levels of Brand Engagement: Level 3–Provide Strong, Compelling Content.
(The third article in a four-part series)
Okay, so you’ve been successfully found, and your visitors are sticking around long enough to see what you’re all about. It’s too bad that passing the two-second test doesn’t necessarily mean your visitors are sticking around and digging deeper into your content.
A core measure of how engaging your site really is compares two key analytics: your bounce rate and the average time on your site. A bounce is any visitor who comes to your site, spends any length of time on the page, clicks on nothing, and then leaves. The lower your bounce rate, the better. In contrast, the longer your average visitor stays on your website, the better. If the average time on your website is only a few seconds, your visitors aren’t staying long enough to find anything more than contact information. If it’s a few minutes or more, you’re headed in the right direction.
So what helps some websites reduce bounces and retain visitors for longer periods of time? It all comes down to content. If your site is serving up the type of content that visitors are searching for (beyond the standard “our history” and “about us” content), you’ll begin to increase the average length of visits and reduce the likelihood of a bounce.
Types of content that encourage longer visits include anything demonstrating thought leadership, unique points of view, case studies, free downloads, white papers, and meaningful blog posts showing process, best practices, or how-to articles.
Unfortunately, good content alone isn’t enough. Your content has to be easy to find and friendly enough for your visitors to engage with.
How easy is it for your visitors to find your best content?
Stay tuned for Level 4–Keep Them Coming Back…
December 1st, 2010
4 Levels of Brand Engagement: Level 2–Pass the Two-Second Test.
(The second article in a four-part series)
If you’re doing well in the search arena, congratulations. You’re definitely headed in the right direction. Moving forward, the second level of engagement requires passing the two-second test with your visitors.
In my rather un-scientific experience, if a searcher finds your website, they will give you approximately two seconds to determine if your site is legit. Their search engine of choice may have listed your site in their results, and they may have clicked on your hyperlink. Now they will have to decide if they have truly found, as U2 would say, what they were looking for.
You’ve done this before. You were probably searching for something like “cool cuff links” or “funky shoes.” And while the link you clicked on was called something like “The coolest cuff links in Indianapolis,” when you clicked on the link, it took you to a spammy-looking landing page.
One… Two… Window Closed.
On to the next search.
Armed with this fresh perspective, take another look at your website. If you were stumbling upon your website for the first time, how long would it take you to determine what it is about?
Stay tuned for Level 3 – Strong Compelling Content…
November 29th, 2010
4 Levels of Brand Engagement for Professional Services Websites
(The first article in a four-part series)
Professional services websites primarily exist to serve two purposes: to further legitimize the firm and to generate leads for their professional service. There are added benefits if your website elevates someone in your firm as a thought leader or sells books, apps, or other services online. However, most of these features exist ultimately to either lend credibility to your firm or generate new leads.
So how can your website do a better job of generating traffic, attracting business, and legitimizing your firm as a contender?
The secret is that brand engagement on your website isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. There are four levels of engagement that your site must surpass before it can truly begin to convert traffic to prospects.
Level 1 – Be found.
This may be obvious, but it’s usually the most overlooked. At the most basic level, you either need to send traffic to your website (via ads, social media, or other linking strategies) or help searchers find your site on their own.
If the most content-rich website doesn’t have any visitors, it is much like the tree that falls in the forest with nobody there to hear it fall.
To send more traffic to your site, be sure your email signature, social media profiles, guest blog posts, and any other websites are all linking successfully to your website.
Next, find out how you’re performing in search. Do a Google search for your primary professional service offering and your geographic location, such as “Design Indianapolis.” If you’re not in the top five, or at least on the first page, there’s a very poor chance that you’ll be found by searchers.
Now try doing a search for your firm, by name.
Are you the top search result? If not, you’ve got some work to do.
Stay tuned for Level 2 – The Two-Second Test…
May 4th, 2010
Professional Services Website Emergencies
The Top 10 Mistakes Professional Services Firms Make Online
and How to Avoid Them.
I was honored to lead a breakout session at SMPS Heartland last week on website design best practices. Building upon our previous entry entitled Website Emergency, we pulled out the top ten website design issues we see in the AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction) industry.
We discussed web design best practices, reviewed writing for the web, explored the basics of SEO (search engine optimization), and much more. Our attendees all received a free website emergency checklist. If you’d like your very own, let us know.
We broke the emergencies down into three categories: content, design and SEO:
// Content Emergencies //
When was the last time you visited a site to read their mission statement?
1. It’s all about us.
Does your site inspire visitors with compelling messages and fantastic photography? Does it offer them what they’re looking for, or does it focus on your firm’s history and go on about your mission statement? Yawn.
March 23rd, 2010
Marketing Emergency: Website Design
Our design firm sees its fair share of branding and marketing emergencies. The running joke is that our conference room becomes a make-shift triage for marketing patients. And for a variety of reasons, websites seem to be the most common marketing emergency that our design firm encounters.
In fact, if I asked 100 professional services firms if their websites were “under the weather” or worse, I’d be willing to bet over two-thirds of them would say, “Yes!”
An ill-performing website (more often than not) is the symptom of a larger marketing and positioning problem, rather than the problem itself. But that doesn’t change the fact that these websites are presenting with some serious symptoms.
Does your firm’s website qualify as a
marketing emergency?
If you’re unsure, you can try your hand at a little self-diagnosis. Here’s a simple three-step check up:
RSS
Subscribe: Blog updates in your inbox