Article Prospect Experience Design Guest Post by Eric Holter: A Critique of Closerlook’s Website by Christopher Butler on August 25, 2009 Now that Eric, our former CEO, is off to new heights in his career, I've invited him to contribute a few guest blog posts. This is the fifth of several that he'll share in the coming months... Chicago agency Closerlook is a relationship marketing firm specializing in healthcare (pharmaceutical, health insurance, and health information technology). They have an excellent agency website that builds upon tight positioning with a significant content strategy. So let’s break it down... Read Now About
Article Synchronicity of Ideas in Contemporary Web Culture by Christopher Butler on August 21, 2009 In responding to a comment from @MaggieB on our May, 2009 newsletter, A Practical Guide to Social Media, who credited us for devising a "Newfangled" marketing method, I brought up the concept of "multiples," or the phenomenon of simultaneous discovery. Obviously, our approach was not even a "multiple" in this sense, but simply a practical response to the daily goings-on of our industry, or in other words, a result of being tuned in to the zeitgeist of the web. But the idea of multiples has stuck with me all the same- there is something about it that must apply to what we're experiencing today. Read Now About
Article The Long-Term Relationship is Where Things Really Get Interesting by Christopher Butler on August 21, 2009 This morning, I started reading a blog post by Joshua Porter called The Agency Problem, in which he asks why web projects continue to be done through agencies in one-off fashion. As I read this, I shouted in my mind, "Aha! That's why it's all about the long-term relationship!" A typical web project for us at Newfangled can take anywhere from 6-9 months, from initial consulting, through prototyping, design, build, design application, quality control, content entry and going live. It's a long, involved process during which we build a very close relationship with our clients. Why would we ever walk away from one another after go-live? We, as the web partner, are best positioned to know exactly how to assist in the continued use and growth of the client's website, not to mention their web marketing and content strategies as they evolve... Read Now About
Article The Importance of Listening to Your Client by Christopher Butler on August 20, 2009 Earlier this year, I read a business book called What Got You Here Won't Get You There, by Marshall Goldsmith, who, as a corporate coach, takes executives through what he calls "360 reviews," evaluating people from peer feedback and identifying bad habits and traits that hinder growth. He points out that these traits are often in place prior to the achievement of success; indeed, that many are often successful despite having some significant bad habits, yet continued success is hindered by them. I found myself wondering which of the 20 bad habits I didn't have, but was relieved when Goldsmith assures his readers that most people tend to only really have 2 of them in a significant sense... Read Now About
Article Email Marketing Browser Consistency and Popularity published on August 19, 2009 “How do I know my website will display properly on EVERY computer? Will it work correctly for ALL of my clients?” These are tough questions to answer, since every computer and every web browser is different. Browser inconsistencies cause slight variations on every site from browser to browser, and they can affect everything from formatting to functionality... Read Now About
Article Questioning the Value of Online Content by Christopher Butler on August 19, 2009 Consider this an echo to my post from July on "A Value-Based Content Strategy": I really enjoyed and appreciated Tad Toulis' Core77 post, "No more feeds please! How abundant information is making us fat," which definitely touches on something I think most people are sensing- the overload not just of available information, but also the individual compulsion to create and consume more information. Anyone working in a web-related field, not to mention news and entertainment media, likely spends the majority of their time with an anxiety fueled by trying to simply keep up. Toulis compares this economy of information with industrial food, which can be simplified to a law of more is less- more calories, less nutrition, or more content, less value... Read Now About
Article Guest Post by Eric Holter: The Sharp Axe of Positioning by Christopher Butler on August 18, 2009 Now that Eric, our former CEO, is off to new heights in his career, I've invited him to contribute a few guest blog posts. This is the fourth of several posts that we'll feature from Eric in the coming months... When I critique advertising agency websites the first aspect I evaluate is positioning. Positioning is a foundational element for an effective web strategy. Positioning is defined as “what you do,” “who you do it for,” and “what the benefit is to them.” For example the positioning for Newfangled would be broken down like this... Read Now About
Article Great Referral Traffic by Christopher Butler on August 14, 2009 On Wednesday, I noticed that Smashing Magazine had just updated their blog with a new post called "Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters." After reading it, I decided to post a message to them on Twitter, saying, "Great list of web newsletters, though you forgot ours ;-)" and included a link to our newsletter page. Shortly after, they messaged back to let me know that they'd added the Newfangled newsletter to their list. I was surprised! But the traffic we received from their link surprised me more... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Guest Post by Eric Holter: A Critique of Remedy’s Website by Christopher Butler on August 10, 2009 Now that Eric, our former CEO, is off to new heights in his career, I've invited him to contribute a few guest blog posts. This is the third of several that he'll contribute in the coming months... In the recent HOW magazine article, "Rock Your Website," Chicago-based Remedy was one of the featured website examples. Remedy is a good example of an agency website, but I’m not quite ready to push it into the "great" column. It’s on the edge though, and with a few adjustments I think it could become one of the great examples of an agency website... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Meet the new Village Fertility Pharmacy! published on August 7, 2009 I am pleased to announce one of the newest additions to the Newfangled family, the redesigned Village Fertility Pharmacy!This site, which went live on July 31, was a complete rebuild/redesign. The means that we went back to the drawing board prototyping and reimagined the entire site from the ground up. Justin designed it, Dave built , and the entire VFP team worked tirelessly to populate their new site with expanded and updated content. Read Now About
