Watch out!

Since we work primarily with small business and organizations, one of clients' key concerns is search engine optimization. Sites that show up in Google are at a distinct advantage compared to those who don't.

At low price points, I've seen design companies comp entire sites, then just slice them up into block images and piece them together with minimal HTML, creating sites with little system text that are basically collections of .gifs.

At the higher end, I've known clients who worked with designers who upsold them or encourages them to go with sites build entirely in Flash, likely to get more billable hours or stay within a technology that they felt comfortable with. Clients generally love the fancy hover states and the exciting impressions that motion graphics can provide, and are led to believe that the costs are in line with what is to be expected

Unfortunately, neither type of takes into consideration best practices around searchability. Uninformed clients can easily end up paying way more than they should for what they receive.

A preliminary guideline, when analyzing the searchability of a firm's work, is to visit their live sites and to try and select body text to see if you can copy & paste it. If embedded in an image or in flash, it cannot be highlighted and often cannot be read by search engines.

For some more high-level information about how to optimize for search, check out my favorite quick-start guide: http://www.webconfs.com/15-minute-seo.php

Eden Rock Communications new website launch

We recently told you about an informational site that we built for MediaCast Systems, a company that provides secure online HD media distribution.

In tandem with that project, we also built a site for Eden Rock Communications.

Eden Rock, located in Bothell, Washington, was also working with a partnering firm to launch a unified brand presence. In addition to a new logo, style guide, and brochure, they needed an urgent turnaround on an accompanying website.

Our partnering firm brought us the content the client had provided, their style guide, and site goals. The Alynn Group quickly designed and developed this basic site in HTML and CSS.

As the site build progressed, the client decided to rework their content a bit, adding additional information and polished taglines, etc. Those revisions, as well as the last-minute addition of the flash chart on the left side of the screen, added a bit of time to the end of the project.

Who is Eden Rock Communications?

Eden Rock Communications is a leading provider of technology and services to the wireless industry and specializes in OFDM wireless solutions for LTE and WiMAX.

Latest pet peeve

Had a usability debate today at work about linking. A site we're working on involved several pages with a large number of paragraphs /sentences with linked text in context.

I talked to the team about how linked text in normal writing can create an awkward experience, as users are torn between clicking through and finishing what they’re already reading.

A best practice for site with a lot of links is to on message in the the main content and suggest next steps in groupings, so that users are expecting them and not torn between activities.

A user experience is enhanced ever more when the site gives prominence to 1 or 2 highly recommended links to make it easier for users to choose a next step, rather than providing a laundry list of potential options that the user has to analyze.

Some of you may want to call us out on this - the previous post includes linked text throughout. Yeah, well... our goals with this site are two-fold. On one hand, we want to share insights and work for our prospective and current clients. On the other, we want to make sure our clients get all the 'inlinks' they can to enhance their search rank. :)

Year-end review: CBPrepcourse.com

It has almost been a year since the launch of the new and improved cbprepcourse.com.

The Customs Broker Exam Prep Course is a business that is somewhat self-explanatory in its title - a course to help people prepare for the U.S. Customs Broker Exam. The grueling test is something that every potential Customs Broker must pass in order to become certified. Tom O'Leary, the course's instructor, delivers live classes as well as various options for the individual who wants to studying at home. He has holds private lessons for companies looking to train groups of potential customs brokers.

It's been an impressive year overall for the website, which has brought in large, corporate opportunities that have converted to business as well as offering a continuing stream of individual online registrations.

The 7,000+ visits to the site are an impressive number for such a niche product with a meager budget for outbound marketing. The CB Prep Course website was built carefully according to all best practices for maximum searchability, which results in traffic of 55% new visitors from all over the country.

Of those new visitors, only 36% immediately bounce -- a very impressive number to those who benchmark that sort of data. In fact, the average new visitor spends over 3 minutes on the page and views over 4 pages. These numbers may seem small to some of you, but they're actually phenomenal. Most sites see upwards of 70% of search traffic bouncing immediately without clicking a single time.

The Customs Broker Exam Prep Course is a good business that helps empower people like Dave to pursue their dreams by passing the rigorous exam. We're proud to be a partner on this successful site.

www.croixfinancial.com went live!

Tonight, we finally get to celebrate the go-live of a simple site that's been a long time in the works.

CroixFinancial.com is a website we created for J.J. Croix, a financial advisor & friend of my family in El Campo, TX. This simple site serves as an entry point for several resources provided by LPL Financial, the company he works through.

We started work on this site back in October, but JJ is very busy at work active in the El Campo community so the project moved on a leisurely timeline.

JJ, congratulations on the go-live! You've a pleasure to work with, and we look forward to helping your site grow along with Croix Finanical over the coming years.

walk of shame

Working in creative design, we're always on the lookout for good ad campaigns. Here are some recent favorites.

www.walkofnoshame.com
www.orangeunderground.com

www.mediacastsystems.com launched.....hooray!

The Alynn Group recently completed an informational site for a company that provides of secure online HD media distribution.

MediaCast Systems, located in Redmond, Washington, was working with a partnering form to launch a unified brand presence, which included a new logo and corporate style guide as well as a print collateral. They needed an urgent turnaround on the accompanying website, so our partnering firm brought us the content the client had provided, style guide, and site goals. The Alynn Group quickly designed and developed this basic site in HTML and CSS.

The clean code helped the site to be immediately sensed by search engines, and the site is already high in the results for several keywords.

One compromise that we did have to make in build the site was the use of image-based headers and titles instead of HTML copy. Our partnering firm wanted to maintain a consistent brand across all media types, and the font that they wanted to use for the headers was not web-safe. Ideally, we would have preferred to use image replacement to drop headers in over HTML copy, but time and budget didn't allow for it.

About MediaCast - Secure online HD media distribution

MediaCast provides a media distribution middle ware platform enables highly scalable, ultra low cost distribution of high quality media such as movies, TV, electronic games and personal media to consumers regardless of broadband connection speed and with no new set top box or equipment costs. Their technology excess network capacity and traffic shaping techniques to deliver HD media transparently over broadband networks regardless of connection speed. See them at www.mediacastsystems.com.

zoom zoom zoom

An ethnographer I've been working with recently spent time meeting with a series of web users in their natural habitats to observe their behaviors as they research products and shop online.

Of all the things he noticed, one thing that surprised him most was the importance of the zoom functionality on product pages.

We got into a discussion about the use of intense zoom as a replacement for touch when shopping online, and several useful examples surfaced from within the team of very well done zoom functionality.

One example users liked was a Northface.com product page.

My favorite discussion from the day was around shopping by outfit. An awesome example of this, which was done with some inexpensive video, lives on Martinandosa.com. From this page, select a different filter to see more motion.

Another site that really caught my fancy in this regard was Madewell1937.com. Great use of video throughout, which all seems to have been shot in real time as they photographed the clothes.

Information {Doodle} Designer

Earlier this year, I remember reading several articles about the Information Designer who created visual meeting minutes for the events at SXSW Interactive. Turns out, she's actually from Austin.

Colorful doodles and block letters were what I lived for in middle school and high school. Maybe I'm in the wrong profession? 'Information Architect' isn't too far from Information Designer.

Her website: http://www.eyescience.blogspot.com/