The recent passing of musician Vic Chesnutt prompted me to visit the itunes store to complete my collection of his work. As I browsed his albums, I began to think about how his album covers reflect his music. That led me to muse about how successful websites visually reflect the work and spirit of companies.

What kind of “music” does your company make?  Does it strike the bold chords of a Beethoven piano concerto? Or mirror the serenity of Handel’s Water Music? Is it a multi-layered, Hüsker Dü wall of sound? Does it dance to the mellow, lilting reggae beat of Bob Marley?  Perhaps it’s a bit of Frank Sinatra – confident, smooth and cool?  Maybe it’s even Elvis Presley in a glittering, sequined Vegas performance – replete with gyrating hips?

Your website should show the world who you are with more than just a tagline — the layout, photos, fonts and colors you choose should reflect who your company is — not simply what it is. In order for your website to do just that, it’s essential to reflect on your company and culture. Is your corporate culture loved more by the management or the people they lead? In what ways does your company give back to the community?  How do your goods or services make a difference in the lives of others? How do your future plans apply to the above questions?

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If you like the idea of New Year’s resolutions, but hate the thought of putting the pressure on yourself personally, make your company the focus of change in 2010. Here’s a short list of brand resolutions you may want to consider before the end of the week.

In 2010, I resolve to:

Help my brand lose that extra weight. It might be time to streamline your brand. Time to make it simpler to understand the unique value it offers your customers. Trim down your messaging to focus only on those that communicate the value of your brand. Create a three to five word phrase that becomes your 2010 “mantra.”

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Retailers, it’s time to help out those of us who still have presents to buy. How? Social media. It’s the fastest, most direct way to let me know what sales you’re running, text me special offers and allow me to contact you directly to find out if the gift I want is in stock.

In a survey conducted by Harris Interactive, 33 percent of cell phone owners ages 35 to 44 are interested in receiving alerts about sales from their favorite establishments. Among 18- to 34-year-olds, that percentage jumps to 42. And yet, only 1 percent of cell phone owners currently receive alerts from retailers. With consumers so willing, retailers need to respond. A retail “Field of Dreams”: If you alert them, they will shop.

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Within the last year we have moved away from a custom content management system and made the decision to use an open source CMS called MODx. The decision to change development software is always a difficult one to make. We’re a PHP / MySql development shop here at TMA+Peritus so as part of our search we stopped in at http://php.opensourcecms.com/ to take a look at the myriad of CMS’s available. The choices are somewhat overwhelming to say the least.

To narrow down our choices I decided to only review CMS’s with a rating of 4 or more stars. I also wanted a web page oriented CMS. Our clients think of websites as a group of web pages and if the management of the site isn’t managed by web pages they get lost.

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Careful pre-planning is essential to ensure that your website functions well, has the desired content, and looks great when you go live — and a wireframe helps you do just that.

A wireframe is a series of diagrams that serve as a virtual road map of your website. Sorting out the details in the wireframe stage helps to prevent cost overruns because changes at this early stage are generally very quick and easy to make.  However, changes can be costly if they’re made after the developers have already started to build the site.

Every detail of your site can be addressed with wireframes including: (more…)

News flash: People waste time at work. According to salary.com the average worker wastes 2.09 hours in a typical day, nearly half of it surfing the Internet. Believe it or not, Wisconsin ranks No. 4 in the country for most time wasted. So the desire to combat lost productivity by blocking Facebook access for your employees is completely understandable. But it’s also shortsighted.

For starters, the problem isn’t Facebook. Wasting time at work is as old as the caveman who sat around drawing pictures in the mud with a stick while everyone else was busy hunting and gathering. During the pre-Internet era (shortly after the caveman era), I worked at an advertising agency with a guy who spent at least three hours of every day on the phone chatting with his friends.

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We’re all guilty of it. Using what David Meerman Scott calls “gobbledlygook adjectives” — those repetitive, nonsensical, fluff phrases on our Web sites, press releases, brochure copy, posts and the like.

“Ach,” you say, “we’re not like that. We’re pretty straightforward.”

Really? Then do me a favor –pull up your Web site, glance at your boilerplate or browse through a recent press release and tell me how many times phrases such as the following are used: innovative, leading-edge, quality customer service, friendly staff, sustainable, turnkey, cutting-edge, easy-to-use, user-friendly.

Cringing yet?

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