I am often reminded of some of the common questions that I hear – and some more that I wish I heard more often – from corporate marketers facing a website redesign. The answers to these questions can have a huge impact on not only the process and final outcome of the project, but also on the long-term success of the site and the company behind it. We help our clients and prospects work through these issues at the very start of their website engagement to avoid complications and confusion down the road.

Your website will be read by multiple audiences with a wide array of needs. It is smart to avoid web copy with overtly technical language or jargon. Instead, concentrate on writing concise, declarative statements that highlight the value and benefits you offer to your audience

 Welcome to a new branding world order: make a unique form work for multiple functions. For a long time, the concept of the logo as a sacred and untouchable mark has reigned supreme, but the scalability/interactivity/changability of online marketing provides the perfect opportunity to shake up this old-school paradigm. The web demands (and is defined by) frequent content updates – your logo is no exception to the rule. Changes in a logo’s context and aesthetic treatment can empower your brand without eclipsing your brand standards.

Social media is an important networking tool for many industry professionals. In an age where it’s easy to feel connected by merely increasing Twitter followers or Facebook friends, Silverscape wants to remind you of the importance of in-person social networking. In that spirit, we cordially invite you to one rowdy corporate networking party: our St. Patrick’s Day Lucky Bastards Green Tie event.

A little bit of video on the web can go a long way in telling a company’s unique story. Presenting a moving narrative on your website, even a minimal one, allows for an emotional connection between your brand and your audience. Instead of telling them, why not show them?

The most striking change on the web in the last few years is the increased usage of video. According to Nielsen, in March of 2005, approximately 55% of internet users had broadband or high speed access in their homes. Compare that to November of 2009 where that percentage had grown to over 90% in the United States.

The traditional website architecture paradigm in some applications is on the way out. It is less important for content to exist in a strict tree structure or to be found in only one category. Content can be loosely organized in multiple categories providing many logical click-through paths.

By popular demand, here is a checklist of best practices for consumer-targeted, highly technical websites.

JS Libraries are a powerful, customizable way to create interactive and dynamic interfaces for your homepage, features or portfolio pieces.

Forget favicons. In a world ruled by smart phones, the power of an iPhone website bookmark icon is becoming more recognized and utilized. Custom-designed iPhone icons are a valuable opportunity for brand exposure and a well-designed icon can earn you a coveted top spot in your user's palm. So, don’t have one? Want to make yours better? Here are some ideas.

When it comes to successful marketing strategies and validating our efforts, we all know that metrics are important. When it comes to designing your digital campaign, the abundance of accessible global metrics and benchmark data can be a vital asset for outlining the core strategy.But, if you want to really hit a home run, it’s important to refine your strategy to focus on the needs and interests of your specific audience.

HTML emails are an invaluable and sustainable tool for keeping up with current clients and for getting your name out to prospects. Especially when an HTML email can be a prospect’s first impression of your company, it’s essential to make sure that first impression is a great one; here are some tips to help...

At Silverscape, we keep a close eye on the results of our website (and our client sites) and we love to teach others how to read the Ouija Board of Google Analytics. It’s certainly not breaking news that a website is a key part of any successful business today. What does tend to be overlooked is how much information is available to monitoring the success or weaknesses of your company’s website.

There are many ways you, my reader, could’ve found your way to this article – our website, web search, RSS reader, Technorati, or perhaps a caring friend. One of my favorites…Twitter.

Here's what I find sexy: The perfect red lip and a complex e-commerce system with an extensive product catalog and zillions of SKUs! Lately, I've found myself really applauding the brand Sephora for the fantastic and cohesive user experience offered to their customers through multiple mediums on the web.

We’ve all heard the line ‘If you build it they will come.’ In a Hollywood flick about baseball, maybe, but don’t be fooled: in marketing this isn't the case. It takes more than a well-designed website to drive brand recognition and ongoing increases in sales for your firm.

We make some pretty nice looking websites – our designers are pretty awesome at what they do. They create a plethora of custom art for every site that we the developers have to use to produce the site. Even though high bandwidth connection availability and internet connection speeds have rapidly increased in the last few years, no one wants to wait around for pages to load.

From last-minute Christmas shopping on amazon.com to working on design for DRIFIRE's webstore, our 2009 was chock-full of e-commerce. Here’s a rundown of the five most interesting and innovative ecomm site features of '09, from both inside the studio and out.

This is a continuation of my last post, Your Corporate Blog: Why to have it and How to maintain it (Part 1 of 2)! In the first part of this post, I discussed the advantages of integrating a corporate, or business blog into your company’s web presence. Now that we’ve thought about why we need one, it’s time to think about how to manage it.

At Silverscape, we love blogs. One of the areas where we’ve been innovating and seeing success is in the world of corporate blogs, or business blogs – blogs that represent the views of an organization or key individual within that organization.
 

You may have noticed the New Year is upon us in full swing. This year’s troubled economy brings understandably scaled-back holiday marketing efforts; the thought of sounding too cheery or boastful has led clients to seek out a more tempered tone in comparison to that of holidays past.