How to Regain the Confidence of 140 Million of your Customers in Only 30 Minutes

Posted on Feb 24, 2009 by Rick to Social Media

Wow, just writing this headline makes me feel like I’m selling some scummy ‘get rich quick’ product. Don’t worry, I’m not. Don’t have 140 million customers yet? That’s okay too. This will probably work even if you only have a few customers.

Inspired by a recent Facebook calamity, I though I’d talk about one of the fundamentals of social media marketing.

First, about the calamity: Facebook recently made an update to their Terms of Service (the little link at the bottom of the page that no one ever read, until now). To summarize, the change indicated that Facebook could now use information and content uploaded to the site for as long as they wanted to. Previously, this section stated that, upon canceling an account, users’ personal information and content would be removed. A swift and fierce backlash across the social web forced Facebook to quickly revert back to the old Terms of Service while they reconsidered this move.

From a social marketing perspective, it’s important to pay attention to what has happened here. First, Facebook made a change to a policy that almost no one pays attention to. Next, a detail-oriented blogger drew attention to the change causing word spread quickly and uncontrollably across the web. Outrage on the social Web forced Facebook to almost immediately reconsider the change in order to prevent ill-will towards their network. A simple post, which took all of 30 minutes to write, announced Facebook’s decision helped them to regain much of the confidence of their customers.

At this point in time, the social Web has responded well to the quick response on the part of Facebook to reconsider. While some damage has been done, it’s nothing compared to the alternative where users on a large scale could have potentially moved on to another network offering more privacy. Companies like Facebook clearly understand that the power of the social web and yield to its demands. Do you?

All companies are subject to the same elements that effect social networks just like Facebook is. Consumers are commenting, rating, blogging and discussing purchase decisions long before making them. The worst thing a company can do is to not be involved in the communities where its potential customers are active.

Most importantly, ignoring negative feedback on the Web can destroy a company or brand’s reputation. It’s not enough to ‘be aware’ of what consumers are saying. In the previous example, Facebook could have just ignored the comments and stuck to their guns. I can’t say for sure what would have happened, but I can that the effects would have been damaging.

It’s pretty amazing how many marketers still ‘put earmuffs on’ every time they find a negative comment on the web. Many still discount the negative comments and continue feel good about the positive ones. Unfortunately, consumers do not behave this way. A single negative comment can be enough to keep a consumer from buying a brand of car, booking a hotel room or eating at a restaurant. Responding to feedback, both positive and negative, is most often the best approach to establishing prescience and showing you care. A response allows you to express to that customer, and other consumers, that you’ve heard the complaint and intend to address it in order to make future experiences better.

Do know what you’re consumers are saying about you? More importantly, have you responded to let them know that you’re paying attention?

Tags: facebook, social media marketing

Why Wireframe Your Site?

Posted on Feb 19, 2009 by Damien to General, Web Design

Some of us tend to skip the wireframe stage of website development for a few reasons such as time constraints, client budget constraints yes even pure laziness. The truth of the matter is that wireframing is an extremely important step in the planning process of a website. Skimping here only makes it more difficult down the road to truly get the proper message across to the user.

Here are a few key reasons you should always wireframe:

• Allows you get a clear picture of what information will be needed on each page before design
• Allows you to spend time and really focus on what each page’s purpose is. Careful plannings is paramount.
• Allows you a fail-safe for uneducated clients who tend to change their minds during the design phase of the project. If the site is planned out properly in the wireframe stage the functionality of the individual pages shouldn’t change much.
• Allows you to set a fallback point. When a client signs off on a wireframe that means they agree to what’s on that page. Education of the client also plays an important role here as well as they need to know that changing items already signed off on the wireframe can and probably will bloat the budget.
• Allows you to have a clear look at how the site will react to various visitors without the clutter of color or design elements.
• Allows you to remove any clutter that may be added to to the site that may be unnecessary and detrimental to the site goal.
• They’re easily adjustable (pre-signoff) and easy to produce allowing the planning process to move along smoothly and efficiently.
• Reduces the chance of scope creep.
• Gives the designer a clear view of what needs to be designed
• Gets the client deeply involved in the planning process early and opens communication between both parties

Overall the sometimes forgotten wireframe can be a lifesaver. Proper planning of page elements, page goals and site objectives can make or break the overall project.

Water to Wine

Posted on Feb 17, 2009 by Neil to General

Lately, I’ve noticed a pattern in website design. Clients that come to us with a good logo and good photography end up with a great design while ones with a dated logo and bad images come up short. It sounds incredibly simple because it is. You cant turn water to wine – or can you?

At THAT Agency we specialize in miracle work and yes we can turn water to wine – as long as the client is flexible. Heres a few tactics when faced with a weak logo or poor photography.

Weak Logo:
The clients logo has colors that are unpleasant or its hard to read when reduced to a usable size.

Solutions:
In order to get around this one you have to get creative. There are a few things you can do. If the client logo colors are orange and green and you dont want to set orange type on a green background (ouch)……maybe you should downplay the corporate colors …  go with more subtle colors for your layout and save the loud corporate colors for limited usage elsewhere. Try using the green only for your clickable items then run the phone number in orange.

If the logo or slogan becomes non legible when reduced to a usable size it may be time to show the client some options.  You dont want to change their logo too much but if you demonstrate ways that can look better they’ll be open to suggestions. Often if the logo has a slogan when you reduce it to fit on the page you can no longer read it. In this case you can reset the type in the slogan with a more readable font or take it out and use the slogan somewhere else where you have room. As the designer you have freedom to explore options and the client will thank you for showing them solutions rather than presenting them with problems.

Another option is to redesign the logo. Who knows – maybe this is a perfect chance to create a fresh web friendly logo.

Poor Photography:
The company wants a site but they have no photos and need the design tomorrow or they have photos but they are questionable.

Solutions:
A great photo to me is critical to making a site look good. Basically without a stunning photo or great illustration its hard to make a page  come to life. If the client has no images – find them some! Head over to a stock agency like istock or getty and purchase a few. Having even one great photo will make your job much easier.

If they have photos but they arent the best maybe you can suggest supplementing their existing ones with new ones. Or maybe you hire a local photographer to get some fresh images. Another option would be too take what they have and improve on them using photoshop. Take the grey sky image of their building and put a sunset behind it. If you want a great looking site you need great photos – so do whatever it takes to get them before you start.

Conclusion
The bottom line is dont let things prevent you from doing great work. Work with what you have and present the client with positive solutions rather than problems.   This keeps  you in control of the design process. Once you allow the client to suggest solutions you run into problems. While clients generally have good suggestions they arent always good at visualising the end result. Additionally, try to come up with reasons for why you took the approach you did.  This will help the client to feel comfortable that your solution was done for a reason and they will trust your judgement.

That Agency Launches Gran Melia Victoria Hotel

Posted on Feb 16, 2009 by Damien to Projects

That Agency successfully captured the essence of sophistication and beauty of Gran Melia Vicotoria Hotel located in Plam de Majorca, Spain. By harmonizing design and functionality the site successfully conveys the atmosphere and elegance of this resort. The site caters to both English and Spanish speaking guests allowing users to find necessary items with ease.

Gran-melia-victoria.com also boasts an extensive photo gallery and the means to easily and efficiently book a hotel stay online.

The site uses a wide array of That Agency’s skills arsenal. Built entirely in PHP using table-less CSS it’s construction methods are at the very forefront of resort web design and construction. Gran-melia-victoria.com uses a wide variety of other online tools such as Flash and Prototype Framework Script.aculo.us making it cross browser compatible, search engine friendly and most of all, user friendly, informational and entertaining.

Tags: Gran Melia Hotel, web design

Google dependency

Posted on Feb 3, 2009 by Nicole to General

On January 31st the world stopped for an entire hour! For about an hour on Saturday morning, Google listed every site on the Internet as malware. Users would click on a link, and recieve a Warning message instead of the page that was requested.

“Human Error” was Google’s excuse.

This “human error” shut down Google for everyone in the entire world.

So the question is, “Are we too dependant on Google?”

What would happen to your business, rankings, searches, email, calendars, phones? Would you lose business because people could not find out about you? Would the economy sink into a deeper recession?

Personally I use Google every single day. I use it for email, I have two accounts. I admit to not memorizing url’s, I can do a quick search on Google and the site I want comes up first. I use Google maps and images. If Google left my work environment world, it would be a lot harder to get anything done.

As a business, Google offers top rankings, key words and advertising. Google is an important SEO tool to draw attention to a site. In the dark ages, the only way to do this was take out a Yellowpages ad.

I guess another massive search engine would evolve, Microsoft probably has one in the works already.

Google though is known as “The Cloud” with their News, Email, Calendars, Phones, Search Engine, and the anticipated Google GDrive.

We are too dependent on Google, but with good reason.

Up and Down slider using JQuery

Posted on Feb 2, 2009 by Rich to Web Development

To tell you the truth, I wish I could remember where I originally found this example because I would like to give credit where credit is due, but I really dont remember. Anyhow, this person’s example was a cool slider effect that stuck to the top of the page. Well I decided to take that and turn into into the same basic concept; only this time coded in JQuery. Oh Yes. I love JQuery.

The examle is pretty straight forward. So if you have any comments or concerns, definitley drop me a comment and I will try my best to answer them.

Here are the screen shots:

Slider in the "Off" Position

Slider in the "On" Position

I kept the same colors and such from the other example so if anyone knows where the original was from, please let me know.

Click Here to see this example in action.

Want to download the code? Of course you do, click here.

Originally seen @ (Antonio Lupetti’s moo-tools example)

Tags: DOM, Javascript, jQuery, jQuery examples, jQuery Slider, jQuery Toggle, jQuery tutorial, toggle