Not your everyday design house

Often times, a small business realizes that they need a website (or that they need to completely revamp the one they've got) but they have no idea where to turn. These experts, who often understand their business, their message, their market, and everything that a good business manager should, are clueless about who to turn to and how much to pay to to get a quality small-scale website up and running.

After lots of discovery and research into what exactly they're looking , the business will often find a firm who specializes in design or development and provide an explanation of exactly what they want. When the contracted work is complete, it will go live... and the business wait until the need is urgent before beginning the process all over again.

At the Alynn Group, that's not how we work. Far from a design or development shop, we operate our business around the concept of complete guidance. Sure, we design websites. We build websites. We edit websites that others have created. But the value that we strive to bring ot our clients is so much more.

Our goal is to become the primary, well-trusted web strategist for every client with whom we do business. As your go-to, we'll make sure you don't have to understand or deal with the back end. You don't have to know exactly what you want your user experience to be like - just explain to us your goals, and your target user's mindset, and we'll work with you to create a web experience that bridges the gap. Our clients feel comfortable calling and emailing us personally with questions, thoughts, and ideas at any hour because most client relationships become more than business partnerships -- they are also friendships.

We consult on much more than websites. We offer advice and implementation on lead collection opportunities, natural "Google" search, paid search and online advertising, your HTML emails, blogs, and optimal marketing landing pages. We report on site statistics and help our clients interpret the metrics we collect regarding their online presence. We manage brands by creating logos, style guides, and more. We get excited about the ideas our clients are passionate about and we advise honestly if we feel an idea could hinder the online or brand efforts.

For a small business looking for minor edits to an old website or a once-and-done, get-it-live project, we're probably not the best match. But if you're in the market for someone who you can partner with to evolve your organization's online presence now and into the future, we're you're group. Contact us today to schedule a consultation.

What size should my site be?

A question we commonly get involves the best size at which to build a website. What size will allow most users to see it without appearing tiny to users with larger screens?

At this time, we recommend building a site 1 of 2 ways:

1) Target 1024x768. At this time, around 50% of users user browsers at this resolution, and nearly 40% use browsers at larger resolutions - which will display fine. Fewer than 10% of users are on screens smaller than this.

2) Go Elastic. An elastic site stretches to the width of the user's browsers. These sites take considerably longer to build as great pains must be taken to ensure that all sizes flow correctly... but for some sites, it may be worth your while.

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.

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.

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.

ever notice that ikea rhymes with idea?

Doing some competitive research today for a project I'm working on for JCPenney, I noticed something simple yet innovative on the Ikea site.

The problem with large feature graphic/promotional banner spaces on top level pages is always sacrificing that kind of real estate for something 'pretty' that usually contributes very little in terms of click thrus and transactions. But nobody in an organization ever wants to sacrifice a big, pretty, impressive photograph.

This Ikea feature graphic does what everything on the web should do - it takes advantage of the interactivity of the web as a medium. Furthermore, it seems that it'd be relatively simple to throw together and templatize in Flash, if the organization had the photography necessary to pull it off.

Screen captures.

so true...

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. - Kurt Vonnegut

flash navigation

Late last week, I was contacted by a client and friend with whom I've been in touch with recently. We'll call him John. He was building his own site, but wanted some fancy motion effects on the navigation. See below for our correspondence.

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On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 9:29 PM, John wrote:

Erin,

I am attaching two PNG graphics of our the new "structure" of our new website that I am building out right now. I need to sets of flash buttons. One, for the home page is 1024X50. If we need to make the height a little smaller, that is fine. The other pages will need a file that is 750X50. If you adjust the height on the Home page, please adjust it for the other page as well.

You will see the index page that will take you to what will be our new home page. What do you think will be the best look for the Flash buttons? I am thinking some time of metallic gray when one scrolls over the button or maybe a brush stroke of color (the paint brush we are using on the home page made me think of this).

Ultimately, we want an elegant set of buttons that fit the minimalist website we are designing. If you need us to create the buttons graphically, I can do so.

Something you can handle?

John

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 10:08 AM, Erin wrote:

Dear John,

Time for some advice. Typically, navigation shouldn't be flash.

One reason is flash is 'invisible' to search engines - the words in it can't be read by the crawlers. And the words on your nav, as well as the pages to which they link, are very important.

Another reason is in Internet Explorer and some other browsers, security features make users click on Flash elements 1 time to 'activate' the interactivity before they can interact with them. On a Flash game or interactive presentation, its less awkward because there's a lot of focus and interaction on/with the piece. For navigation, it can create an awkward experience, as some users may click once and not realize that they need to click again. They may assume your site is broken. As you probably realize, users do not devote much time to figuring little things out.

You can accomplish many 'hover' effects with CSS alone, or with CSS and javascript. Both of these are preferred methods and could occur within the HTML rather than as separate files.

If you do need Flash to accomplish the effect you're looking for, you should offer a plain text version of the global navigation in the footer of the page.

We can help you build either.

Erin

should video autoplay?

a debate we're having on one of my current projects hinges on whether or not video embedded on websites should autoplay. my gut belief is that it shouldn't, but often times, designers and clients feel differently. as marketers, we want to be as in-your-face as possible... but does it annoy?

i remember reading somewhere that video should never autoplay, but i can't recall the source. i'm thinking it may have been the marketing sherpa's landing page handbook.

a discussion on linkedin today reminded me of the debate: as people answered the question of whether video raises conversions on websites, many respondents mentioned the same thing. do not autoplay.

• "video that starts to play, most of the times accompanied by a irritatingly high volume of sound, is one thing that makes me close the browser window immediately"
• "As long as the movie is clicked as an option and does not automatically load you won't run into any problems with people being scared off."
• "I agree you must take care not to make it annoying - I would never set a video to auto play without muting the sound at the same time. "
• "Of course, do NOT have the video audio autoplay. That's just annoying."

this set of users seemed to have some strong feelings about video that autoplays, but how could we be sure?

A/B testing and a few simple metrics could probably give us some insight. randomly alternate between 2 versions of a particular page: one on which the video autoplays, and another on which the video's start is controlled by the user. analyze the exit rates for each. look specifically at the average time spent on the page amongst visitors who exited. compare conversions from the page (or, at a simpler level, measure clickthroughs to your desired next step). what can you learn?

until further notice, I vote no on video autoplay-- particularly if the video includes sound. as far as whether i can convince my clients and designers of that... we'll see.

any thoughts/research on the issue?