The plans are in this R2 unit...Well, they were. We put them in a podcast for you, just click! Turn your website into your own secret weapon!

Below are blueprints of sorts, the beginning of how exactly to turn your website into your secret weapon. Now you probably think, hey, they will give us a little snippet of something good and then make us pay to get to the good stuff. No way, you’re getting everything. Below is a little bit from Synotac’s podcast done for E-Myth Worldwide, but it’s just the beginning!

Check out the 5 steps to turning your website from zero to hero and then click to the podcast for the details, in-depth information, free tools to help you accomplish these things, and practical advice from an industry expert.

1. Define Success: What does it mean for your website to be successful? What is it that you want people to do once they get to your site? Is it signing up for a newsletter? Selling a product? Filling out a contact form? Whatever it is, define it clearly and be ready to measure it.
2. Know your visitors: Do whatever it takes to get in the mind of your visitors. Think how they think, use the site as they do. Talk to your frequent visitors and find out how you can make their experience better. A website built around your visitors is a huge key to better conversions! You don’t want people leaving because they can’t find what they want or had an issue navigating it.
3. Give them something of value: If you provide something useful to your potential clients even when they aren’t actively searching for your services, you are still building your reputation, potential for word of mouth and referrals, and keeping your site on the minds of potential customers that look to you for things they need online. What can you provide, exactly?
4. Use many roads to get traffic: Building a site, even an awesome one isn’t enough to get people to come to it anymore. The sheer number of sites is astounding and your potential clients are bombarded with all kinds of links, offers, and ads constantly. To get to them effectively, you’ll have to explore multiple ways of capturing their attention.
5. Track: What is working? What isn’t? Where are people coming from? Where should you focus your efforts? What kind of people are you succeeding with? Who is ignoring you? This one is all about analytics; numbers, numbers, numbers.

Remember, this is just from the first 5 minutes! Listen to the podcast for all the juicy details, it’s free right here! Included are 3 Basic Tools To Improve Website Performance, the 4 Most Common Website Mistakes and much, much more.

1. Do you have examples you can show me of projects you have done that had similar goals and needs to my own? A firm that has experience in your field or with meeting the types of demands you have is probably more likely to succeed with your site than a firm charting new territory with your site as guinea pig.
2. How dedicated are you to the usability of the site? They should have something to say about keeping the focus on the visitor at all times. The visitor is the most important thing to your success and as your website design team, it should be their focus as well.
3. Can I meet everyone? If they say yes, the work isn’t all outsourced and they are more likely to have experience working together on projects. Keep probing to find out how they work together and if they bring in outsiders or not. You want a tight knit and experienced team working for you.
4. How do I make changes later? Most likely, it isn’t going to be perfect the first time. This is why it is important to see what the relationship is going to be like after the product is delivered. It should be a continuing one with a team that is willing to keep adjusting and serving your needs during the life of the site.
5. How will we know if it’s working? It is important to decide on success factors and critical numbers on your own first and then see if their answer lines up. The answer might be technical, but they should have some things to say about traffic, bounce, usability, and conversion at the very least.

If you happen to be looking for a web design team of your own, start by checking out our portfolio and please feel free to give us a call or drop us an email to schedule a meeting with our team, you can ask us all the questions you can think of.

In fact, their new website is so great, the International Davey Awards have taken notice, earning Synotac a Davey in the automotive category. Davey’s are awarded to companies that display exceptional creativity in design across a variety of mediums, one of which is websites.

The new inventory system and separately branded Audi and Porsche sections have resulted in a site that is easier for people, meaning potential car buyers and clients for Sunset, to browse, research, and find specials and other valuable information.

We have talked about Stanford’s Web Credibility Guidelines before and web credibility couldn’t be more important to a site like Sunset Import’s, whose information and performance need to be near perfect. People aren’t going to buy a $100,000 car from a place whose website has bad information, an inventory system with mistakes in it, or that just doesn’t seem credible.

The 7th Guideline from Stanford stresses that the site be easy to use and useful. This doesn’t necessarily mean using all the latest and greatest technology or packing everything you can imagine into a site. It means that it be simple and intuitive and there shouldn’t be a learning curve with a website–the way it works should be clear and easy to execute. Sites that are easy to use are perceived as more credible and people are less likely to leave frustrated. You only get one chance to make a good first impression and build trust, if your site is doing both, you’re sure to have happy customers and lots of them.

If you have checked out Patrick’s work, you know that he has an eye for the cool and creative. What he found at Synotac was not only the people he felt were capable of designing what he wanted, but also a place where there would be an opportunity for real collaboration during the process.

He said that going into the Synotac offices for the first time confirmed the feeling of accessibility and openness he felt he was going to experience during the project. “I felt a part of it, not just like someone else.” He said that the open and productive relationship continued through the 10 months they worked together to make the site just right. Deadlines that were given to him were always beat, he never had to prod for an update, and when he referenced the final product he used the word ‘perfect’.

Patrick isn’t the only one who thinks his site is outstanding, in fact, the International Davey Awards awarded Synotac the Gold Davey for patrickeggert.com in the category of film/movies. The final product was a result of a great relationship and a willingness to adjust and communicate. Patrick has a site that his customers love and that is the perfect way to deliver his work and Synotac has a shiny new award and another great site to add to an already ‘cool’ portfolio. Great relationships makes for great results.

Creating a web page that simply looks professional is easy, making one that fits the personality of your business and supports the functional needs in one beautiful package is where it’s really at. Tapping into emotion is the best way to start figuring out how your site should look and feel.

Think of your website in two parts, the user experience (UX) and the user interface (UI). The user interface is the technical side of the website; it is how a user physically interacts with elements on the page and uses its functionalities. The user experience side is the emotional component, the ‘it’ factor that draws people back to the site over and over again. Understanding what is effective and appropriate for your site rests here.

If you run a chain of fun pizza places aimed at children, you wouldn’t want a straight-laced, resume’ style page with big words and pictures of executives with brief cases. It just wouldn’t fit even though it may be the epitome of ‘professional’ in terms of look. Instead you want to find what is best for the design of your site by looking at your company, how you operate, and who your customers are. A site with bright colors and lollipops all over it very well could be the most appropriate thing depending on your business.

When you set out, carefully consider the goals, values, vision, mission, and story of your business. Whatever comes out of the design project should reflect all of these things and the needs and wants of your customers. If the end product is aligned with your company’s values, customers that identify with that personality will feel comfortable with the site and trust in it, thus giving it credibility.

Then add a custom, human-centered interface that makes sense for how people will interact with your site as well as the emotional element found in the core of your mission and values. The result is a web site design that not only works, but tells your story in the most credible way possible and keeps people coming back.

Stay tuned for Synotac’s upcoming webinar on more of Stanford’s Credibility Guidelines and how they can help you! ]]> http://www.synotac.com/blog/advice/how-to-build-professional-credibility-through-your-website/feed/ 0 http://www.synotac.com/blog/advice/highlighting-services-to-build-web-credibility/ http://www.synotac.com/blog/advice/highlighting-services-to-build-web-credibility/#comments Tue, 26 Oct 2010 12:00:00 +0000 Cameron Madill http://www.synotac.com/?p=682

“This was the first time since having a website that the Board of Directors admitted to being proud of it.” This what Martha Wright ofFriendly House, an organization that provides many critical services to families and individuals in need, had to say about the work Synotac web design in Portland, OR did for their website.

She also said that after the launch of the new website, employees of Friendly House were significantly more engaged and participated on the site more than in the past, an effect that has led to better service for their patrons.

At Synotac, when we’re working with a client, we spend a amount of time in the define stage where we get to know our clients and their businesses so that we can create a custom solution for their web design needs. Sometimes that means understanding how a company or individual wants to be seen or understood by their customers, while other times that means understanding a manufacturing, advertising, selling or even shipping process so that we can communicate that clearly through their website.

Almost all of the time, we find that our clients have very specific needs when it comes to how their website will function, and more importantly, how it will be updated using their content management system (in most cases, WordPress).  These are some of the ways that we help them to meet their needs.

Building a Better Back-End

It is one thing to build a beautiful web site and quite another thing to build it so that it is capable of being updated by a non-web-savvy client who does not know or care to know about HTML, CSS, PHP or any other web acronym.  We understand that, and as a result we have harnessed the power of WordPress to build custom plugins to cater to our clients specific problems and needs allowing them to update their site and the custom solutions we have come up for them quickly and easily.

Case Study: Sunset Imports

Sunset Imports is a Portland, Oregon Audi and Porsche dealership who came to us in need of a few custom solutions.  There are many things we could discuss about this project (how we provided a less templatey site with more of a local feel to it, or the custom car search application) but to try and keep things short and sweet, we’re going to only focus on one of those custom solutions.

The Specials Widget / Plugin

Sunset occasionally has a number of “specials” that they wanted to present on their website.  The specials were a very important piece of getting people to go to the website as well as to do business at Sunset.

Here is what we were able to come up with them in the design:

They also wanted complete control over how these specials were displayed, where they were displayed, and the ability to add, edit, and delete specials quickly and easily.

We decided that a custom WordPress plugin would do the trick.

When it comes to WordPress plugins, there are correct ways and very incorrect ways of doing them.  The best WordPress plugins integrate seamlessly into the WordPress framework and utilize it’s extensive suite of powerful tools.  The plugin that we came up with for the Sunset Imports Specials is a prime example of how WordPress can be expanded upon to fit many custom solutions.

Here are a few screenshots highlighting the Specials plugin we wrote for Sunset Imports:

The plugin fits seamlessly into the WordPress admin area.

Click to enlarge

The “Add Special” page consists of a form which adds the special to our custom specials database so that the specials can be organized and grouped together (as well as edited, turned on or off, and deleted).  There is also a preview of the special on the right hand side that gets updated in real time as you type in the various elements (title, description, and the image).  The images tap into WordPress’ built in media manager to utilize all of the image editing capabilities and media management power of WordPress.

Click to enlarge

The “Manage Specials” page consists of a top portion where Sunset Imports was able to organize and position their specials into four separate pages and multiple tabs on each page.  The way it works is that you choose the special you want to fit into the specific position and then click save order and those specials are locked in.

Click to enlarge

The bottom portion of the Manage Specials section contains the table listing of all the specials.  This table can be sorted by column, as well as filtered by section to make it easy for Sunset to find the specials they want to edit or delete.

More “KA-BANG” For Your Buck

It’s true that you may find “cheaper” options out there in the web design world for your next project or redesign.  But what Synotac can promise you is that it is well worth it for your web designer or web design company to understand your needs, like Synotac does, and to provide you with a tool that is not only powerful, but is easy to use and gives you the power to update your site whenever is needed.

When you are trying to communicate a specific message to your customers and craft something that is beautiful, informative, and functional, it takes time and expertise. Throwing something together does not yield happy results. For example, most of us know the pieces that make up a car. You have the wheels, the body, the engine, a steering wheel, some seats, etc. But if we were asked to put one together, most of us would have a hard time creating something that actually worked. (We might be able to make it look like it works, but try starting it and having it function and it all falls apart.)

The same is true in the world of website construction. So the Synotac team put our collective expertise together to carefully create a new site for CoreIP. The new site includes best practices in usability and visual design as well as a robust content management system that will let CoreIP staff update their content and post news on the fly.

The partners at CoreIP are smart folks with no doubt a lot of technical expertise between them. Maybe they could have pieced together a website, but they recognized that for their new site to be functional, usable, and easy on the eyes, calling on an expert team would pay off.

Jereme and Cameron were undeniably good partners in creating something original that can soak up hours of time and provides an impressive amount of information about Jereme’s film: A Moment On Earth. The mosaic contains 3,192 images taken from the film, all of which visitors are able to click on for more information about the image. To visit the mosaic and learn more about the film, visit Satellite Film’s website.