Blog On

Would you say your clients get what they pay for from your company? Well, it's the same with any Columbus web design firm.

Before you decide on any Columbus web designer, here are five questions/requests to any Columbus web design firm:

• What content management system (CMS) do you use? Getting a CMS is like getting a car, or spouse. It's always good to “test drive” the CMS. If it’s not low-maintenance, it’ll always be more work than it needs to be.
• Show me your experience with search engine optimization (SEO). See if the web designer's website is on page 1 of a Google search. It's safe to say if they can’t get their own site on page 1 of Google, they can’t do it for you.
• Design style. If the web designer’s site looks like it’s a template, you’ll get the same for your site. Templates make your site look cookie cutter, and don't show that your organization is unique.
  
• Show me a responsive website you've done. Responsive sites let your website work on a smart phone like a mobile site. You'll lose customers if your site doesn't format itself for a smart phone.
  
• Make sure they have a marketing perspective. If a web designer's site is all about them, opposed to what they do to make your marketing better, they're probably IT folks, not marketers. Marketing-focused website isn't about you: it's about what you do for your customers.
  

Your website is your main marketing tool, and IT folks are not marketers. Remember: no one wants to hear how good you think you are: they want to hear what you can do to make their lives better. Everyone want to know "what's in this for me?"

So when you're looking at a Columbus web designer, make sure they have good answers to the questions above.

_______________________________________________________________

Responsive web design is what allows your main website to intuitively know whether someone is looking at your site on a laptop, iPad or smart phone, and re-sizes the graphics to fit their screen.

How important is that? In 2012, more than half of all searches were done on a mobile device. And you know how awful it is to view a regular website on a mobile phone!

Now think about this: your customer is on their iPhone searching for exactly what you do. Of the results that show up on Google, your site is not set up to be a responsive site, while that pesky competitor of yours does have a responsive/mobile site. Which company's website do you think that mobile phone user is going to want to look at?

Responsive web design isn't just something you can "tack on" to an existing website: it has to be part of your website's code and built in from the website's beginning.

Check out these links to two recent websites we've built as responsive sites: Orthoneuro.com, TravelDogNetwork.com.

Viewing a responsive website, site, use the lower right corner of your browser window and make the browser window the approximate size of:

• a horizontal iPad screen, then
• a vertical iPad screen, then
• an iPhone screen

See how the elements instantly change? That, my friend, is a responsive website!

So when you talk with a Columbus web design firm, be sure their Columbus web designers know how to build responsive sites.

Click this link to see to our other website designs.
_______________________________________________________________

As a Columbus web design and marketing firm, we still like print.

And even though we're mostly a Columbus web designer firm, we also do a lot of advertising and direct mail as well. Anyway, when we ran across this cool billboard in a French train station, we wanted to share it.

To check out a larger version of the billboard, click here.

The folks who created this series had the foresight to do something more interesting than a single banner, and it's paying off for the Skoda car company by showing up around the globe.

But the bigger point of this is that your marketing has to be memorable. Being safe with your marketing is really wasting your company's money. We believe we help our clients create memorable marketing. We appreciate they allow us to execute cool ideas that get noticed and remembered.

• this website we did for Greenes Consulting,
• these ads for National Door & Trim and Westport Homes, and
• direct mail pieces for Bob Boyd Lincoln Mercury.

Because not every Columbus web design firm has a marketing background, we believe not all Columbus web designers can do this type of work.

If you're looking for someone to help make your marketing memorable, lets talk!

_____________________________________________________________