I can’t believe I did not post for such a long time. Shame on me! But it is all for a good cause — for our wonderful clients who need us more than we apparently need ourselves. Does that make sense? I actually appreciated a site I ran into the other day by a design firm. It was basically a nice “under construction” page with a note saying that the fact that they did not yet build their own site was simply a sign of just how dedicated they are to their customers - where they put their real efforts. Of course, I did not make any further effort to get to know that particular company, but I appreciated the spin on the situation.

Anyway, on the way home from a meeting with a client, we were talking about the two architects we are considering for designing our new office. One bid is 3 times more than the other. We were trying to decide what could possibly make one 3 times better/worthwhile than the other. They are both good but no doubt, we like the work of the more expensive one better. Dror commented that at the end of the day, both will get the job done - we will have a roof and 4 walls surrounding us. But the question, is how important is the quality, the thought into each detail. Will things flow and work together like they should? This is going to be a place where we spend so much time - we don’t know how explain exactly what we want, but she appears to have the ability to pull that out of her clients and translate it into functional and aesthetic design.

Well, I am sure you already guessed where this is leading. We realized that we are playing a similar role for many of our clients. They have a site that needs renovation or are building a new site. They know they want it to work, they know they want it to be beautiful and special and they know what they want the end results to be (leads, sales, etc.). The smart ones, are smart enough to realize that this is not simple - and is getting more challenging by the day– and that professional help will greatly improve the chances that they will reach their goals. I look around at friends who have tried to reduce expenses in building their homes — they pay for it in aggravation while building and later in dissatisfaction when the house they sunk all their money into, is not exactly (or even close to) what they were dreaming about. And I have seen it in companies whose website were not constructed properly, was not thought out to include what they truly need and has left them with headaches and unsatisfactory results.

We happily see a trend of more companies realizing that they need to take their online presence more seriously and they recognize that the kind of expertise that is required is not usually found in-house. I think that businesses also have begun to realize that “web design” companies are not business consultants and relying on a designer or web programmer to define your business for you, can lead to many problems. Keep in mind that today, both the Internet and online customers are moving targets. Keeping up with what is going on and what needs to be done is more than a full-time job — it is not another task for the Marcom director anymore! It is understanding how business gets done online — and it is very involved.

 We are in the midst of a huge site makeover for a well-known company. They had the guts to admit that the site they built a few years ago is just not taking them to where they want to go. And they admit that it was their lack of involvement and knowledge that led them to that point. We are analyzing their market and determining what their business requires to succeed online — once that process is done, we will build the plan (the spec) that will guide the designers and engineers to build the site of their dreams - a site that presents the right image, contains all of the features and functionality that their customer require and delivers results.

I’ll tell you more about that project when we launch in a few months . . . But meanwhile, feel free to contact us with any questions you have about your own site.