As the Web world continues to evolve every day, Astek moves right along with it. While we offer a wealth of services related to newer Web strategies and tools such as social media, good old fashioned websites are still alive and strong.

Sometimes it can be hard to know where to begin if you’ve been given the task of redesigning your company’s website. Having been through this process numerous times, I’ve shared some of my own thoughts and good articles I’ve read recently that can help you through the earliest stages of redesigning your website.

Write your Website Redesign RFP (Request for Proposal)

Like most shopping expeditions, you will find the best product or service for you if you know what you’re looking for ahead of time. This starts by drafting a document of your requirements, which are unique to you. This will help you define your objectives and come to the table with a clear roadmap.

I’ve sometimes found myself in the position of helping prospective clients write their RFPs, whether or not we get the work in the end. I’ve been on both sides of this, and find that working through the RFP with someone who has been through it before can help you immensely.

The most important thing your RFP should do is clearly outline all the parameters of the project to structure it for your vendors so that you can align the format of the proposals you receive. The more specific your requirements, the easier it will be for you to compare quotes. Comparing apples to apples will help ensure you’re picking the right vendor for the right reasons.

RFPs take on numerous forms, but the basics should include project overview, goals, services requested, key roles, expected formats, special requirements, technical requirements, existing integration points, submission details and timelines. For extra credit, you can also create a site map, which is a bullet list or flow chart of the expected pages on your website.

Read more about creating a Web RFP from MarketingProfs. (Free account required for full article)

Read Seven Tips for Improving Your Website from Entrepreneur.com’s Daily Dose.

Illustration by Matthias Pfluegner

Choose the Right Partner for You

Not all Web vendors are the same. They range from individuals to large agencies. With so many options, it’s less a distinction of good and bad and more a matter of alignment with your culture, goals, work style, capabilities, and budget. Some Web professionals focus purely on design. Others do design and development and perhaps hosting. As agencies grow larger they tend to offer more services such as strategic marketing and ongoing campaign development. Full-service boutique agencies like Astek are rarer.

Your RFP will help align the formats of the proposals you receive, which will make them easier to compare. If you didn’t get very far with your RFP, never fear. A good Web consulting firm will be able to guide you through the process. It just might take a little longer to get there. Most websites don’t tend to do a whole lot on their own, so you should consider how this will fold into your overall marketing strategy.

Like anything, you’re better off with a firm that is really good at a couple things than okay at a lot of things. Many Web firms have their own content management systems (CMS), like Webany, so you should specify if you want a proprietary or open source CMS. Mobile is becoming essential for websites, along with SEO and social media, where it can be difficult to determine the true level of experience being sold. Ideally you will find all these disciplines under one roof to reduce the amount of time you’ll spend managing multiple vendors.

Always be sure to ask for references with whom you can speak and examples of past work.

Read tips from Scott Robinson about choosing the right web developer.

Read about tips for keeping up with the digital revolution and getting unstuck.

If you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to drop us a line. Good luck!

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Andy Swindler Categories: How To, Marketing, Web

This month we’re writing about things that inspire us. In our digital world there are countless innovations, so I’m often inspired by new approaches to old problems.

I’ve noticed a shift in how local services are supplied to consumers and businesses. Until recently, websites vying for the holy grail of bringing local customers and service providers together used classified- or forum-type websites that allow service providers to post what they do generically. Customers were expected to sift through these listings or post what they needed and hope for the best. This paradigm is being uprooted due to rapid advances in Web and mobile technology that put the customer in charge.

The bottleneck of traditional marketing forced companies to create products and services they believed people need or want. Or in some extreme cases, companies created products they knew people didn’t need, and simply used their marketing prowess to convince people to buy their products anyway.

Small or independent service providers have largely followed suit, mimicking the marketing strategies and tactics that have restricted corporations to a limited number of products and services that can’t possibly cater to every daily need of billions of unique individuals.

Innovative local marketplaces now enable consumers to articulate exactly what they want or need at any given moment, typically via a GPS-enabled smartphone, and then leave it up to the service providers to find them and in some cases even duke it out for their business.

The wild increase in personal efficiency articulated by The New York Times is possible due to technology that enables people to tell companies what they want rather than the other way around. Now people of all walks of life make their own hours by doing exactly what people need when they need it for the amount they want to pay. This growing wave of independent providers avoid the waste and annoyance of casting wide nets with traditional marketing. This was a battle they’d never win against the corporations, so rather than keep trying they changed the rules of the game.

Here are a few that stand out:

Zaarly – Post what you want done and what you’re willing to pay. For instance, our own Tim McDonald who helped launch Zaarly tells the story of an Illinois man who needed help fishing his keys out of a storm sewer and got it done for $75.

TaskRabbit – “Do more. Live more. Be more.” People post what they need done and TaskRabbit-vetted service providers make offers to do the work, allowing the consumer to choose the best fit based on their criteria.

Agent Anything – Connects busy, hardworking people who need things done with college students looking to make money.

Will these resources help consumers focus on what they need rather than want? Not likely. It’s not hard to imagine dreaming up all kinds of random tasks you ask to have done, just to see if you can get them done for a small price. This is refreshing in a world over-crowded with group deals, coupons, and classified sites providing yet another place for service providers to sell their wares and creating confusion for consumers who don’t know where to begin.

This post was featured in epiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter |  Other epiphany Articles

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Mobile, Technology

As the whole world goes mobile (2,600% increase predicted by 2015), two main options have emerged for bringing your business to the party: build apps or optimize your website.

I want to focus on the second option, optimizing your website/HTML, which is becoming a more appealing option as HTML becomes more capable of doing the things we’ve typically needed apps to do.

Once HTML 5 can do anything an app can, I see only three major advantages to building an app:

• Push notifications (a common app feature that currently doesn’t work in HTML)

• Distribution (selling/downloading an app that lives on a phone versus saving a bookmark)

• Offline access (HTML 5 is already pushing this one off the list as it has built-in offline caching features)

Apps also still have a “cool” factor, but typically introduce more time and cost in development and maintenance.

A number of terms have emerged to describe Web optimization for mobile devices. I’m here to tell you they all essentially mean the same thing: delivering a reduced amount of content to your users in a logical fashion to create a more efficient mobile experience. Ideally your website will detect the user’s device and optimize it on the fly since there are so many different mobile devices and screen sizes.

• Mobile Optimize
• Mobile Format
• Mobile Template
• Mobile Versioning
• Multi-Siting
• Adaptive Content Rendering

I think “optimize” is the most logical and accurate. Whatever you want to call it, the effort is partly technical, but largely falls in the realm of content strategy. With less screen real estate to use for your message, you’ll need to make careful decisions about what’s most important to convey to your user.

Come to think of it, brevity might just not be such a bad thing for the future of digital content delivery.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Uncategorized

I checked in to Walgreens on Foursquare recently (yes I’m crazy like that), and noticed the first mostly altruistic business special I’ve seen to date. They are giving way a flu shot voucher to someone in need for every person who checks in.

I showed it to the pharmacists asking if I needed to do anything else. They exchanged inquisitive looks, but confirmed that they had fulfilled flu shots for a few people bringing in certificates from this program.

A bit more explanation on how to fulfill this would have helped, but I applaud Walgreens for leveraging Foursquare for social good.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Uncategorized

An old college friend who avoids social networks addressed an intriguing problem recently:

“I’ve just decided what it is I don’t like about Social Networking… it’s the idea that it, when push comes to shove, my people can bury your people… Please, tell me I’m wrong, that the end result doesn’t allow those with the most connections to dominate society further for their own benefit at the expense of those with the fewest connections. Much like the rich vs. the poor struggles of yesteryear, only now we can rise above money – look, it’s purely about fame and how well you’re liked.”

As an indirect middle finger to bullies of the past who gained advantage by physical body size, bullies in the social networking world are often the geeks! One of the reasons people are racing to Google+ is that it’s easier and more natural to organize friend groups based on the way humans naturally organize themselves rather than feeling like you’re a database admin trying to maximize the efficiency of a friend database.  

Somewhere deep within Facebook are the tools and settings to make sure the people you care about show up before the “bullies.” Also, perceptions are skewed when Facebook’s algorithm tends to give people exposure simply for talking more rather than saying something you’d necessarily care about. Google+ Circles seem to move this in the right direction by making it easier and more intuitive to share certain info with specific groups.

I’m not 100% sold on Google generally, as it often behaves as one of the biggest bullies out there. I think all of this is perhaps the greatest social experiments we’ve ever witnessed, certainly the most public. And like all things, once our fascination with the technology wears off we can just get back to being people. Until then, I agree that human nature seems only to fight against the true potential of this technology: to bring us together and make people more efficient and benevolent. It unfortunately tends to provoke paranoia, greed, and ego as well.

Humans and other primates are intoxicated by celebrity. Social media has elevated many of us to a level of semi-celebrity, but still lends power to those with means and connections above the masses. I’m not sure this will ever change, as I do believe it’s part of our very nature, for better or worse. I share the dream of technology enabling collective good, but feel that we are quite far from fully realizing it.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

Office Blogmaster: “Sara- this month we’re focusing on QR codes, so make sure you include them in your next blog post”

Me: “Um, what’s a QR Code?”

That’s right.  I, Sara Gorsky, am the only person in the world apparently who doesn’t know what a QR code is.  It’s shocking.  However, thanks to this marvelous thing called the “internet” I was able to discover a whole new world of technology that I was looking at the whole time but could never see.  Just in case some other people out there are in the same boat as me, here is what I have learned…

What is a QR Code? In simplest terms, a QR Code is INFORMATION!   It could be any kind of information, and it’s in the form of a sort of modern bar code.

How can I access this “information”? QR codes are designed to be read by mobile devices with a camera.  In order to do this, you will have to download an app designed specifically for this purpose. There are a plethora of free apps out there that do this. I simply went to the app store on my iPhone did a search for “QR Reader” and up popped a free app called “QRReader“, which took a mere five seconds to install.  Once you have this app installed, open it up and scan the QR Code.  The app will read it and translate it into english and/or action.

Action? The most common information contained in a QR Code is a link to a website. For instance, a QR code on a movie advertisement might link directly to the official website for that film.

Might? Well, as I said before the QR Code could be any information.  That same movie poster QR Code could link to a special trailer that can only be viewed by people who scan it, or maybe a coupon for discounted movie tickets.

Coupons?! Yup.  More and more companies are using QR codes in this way.  As smart phone platforms expand, QR Codes could become the next circulars.  Some grocery stores are already swapping out those old coupon dispensers for a cleaner, more eco-friendly QR code (grocery stores have also starting posting recipes next to items.  How convenient!).

How Else are QR Codes Being Used? There is a new use for QR codes almost every day. Here are a few super cool ways they have been used so far…

• Tours and Museums: Historical tours, factory tours, museum tours, you name it- they are adding QR codes next to buildings, objects, artwork, display cases, etc…these QR Codes often will pull up a paragraph or two about the specific object and/or links to a webpage with this information.  Some of these codes even link directly to a wikipedia page, or a video of a historian discussing it’s significance. Soon those giant placards will be a thing of the past, too.
• In gardens: QR Codes have started popping up at gardens and often contain the detail about that specific plant. QR codes have also started showing up at nurseries, where they contain information about how to care for the plant (how much sunlight & water it needs, what time of year it blooms, etc…).
• On tags: Clothing designers have started using QR codes on their tags.  These QR codes often contain price, material type, and sometimes links to the designer’s website or online store. Social media gurus predict that soon we’ll be able to use QR codes to check if that piece comes in a different size!  AMAZING!
• At transit stops: A few cities have started posting QR codes at bus and train stops which will automatically pull up the next arrival time.
• In advertisements: These codes often contain coupons for the product they advertise or might link to that company’s online store where you can purchase the item.
• On business cards: Gone are the days of business cards being packed with information, one QR code can contain all the pertinent contact information as well as link directly to your website.
• On bottles of wine: Scanning one of these QR codes often pulls up information about that particular wine, what foods it pairs well with, how it was made, and information about it’s vineyard.
• There are hundreds and hundreds of other possibilities.  Check out a few more in this handy article.

This QR code links to a petition to save the gulf after the oil spill.

This edible QR code links to information about the origin of food being served.

Can I create my own QR Code? YES! It’s very simple. Some QR reader apps also have the ability to create them as well. My handy app will let me create a QR code for text, for a website, for my contact information, for a location, for an email address, and even for a phone number!  That’s right – I can create a QR code that will automatically call me from that person’s phone if they scan the code.  Whoa!

In conclusion- soon Star Trek will be real life.

This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter |  Other ePiphany Articles

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Sara Gorsky Categories: ePiphany Featured Story, General

After recently attending SXSW Interactive in Austin, TX, and the CoreNet Global Midwest Summit in Chicago, I was struck by the major distinctions between the trade show floors and technology usage.

Leave it to a corporate real estate association (CoreNet) to know how to make incredibly inviting spaces that made me want to sit down and stay awhile, and even get a bit of work done. Placing lunch tables behind the trade show floor created multiple motivations to move through the space and discover new companies.

Leave is to the ultimate geek conference (#SXSWi) to treat the trade show floor in the most traditional, and in my opinion unappealing, format — rows upon rows of standard booths, with only a couple of premium players creating spacial environments. But even these were typically focused around a stage of some sort rather than a space inviting people to stay awhile.

On the technology side, I’ve never seen such focused and practical usage of cutting-edge technologies like Twitter and Foursquare as I did at SXSW. In this environment, it seemed strange not to look at a piece of technology regularly, whether at lunch or in a session. At CoreNet, a more traditional environment, I was the odd man out to have my phone visible during a session.

Next time I’ll get pictures!

This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter |  Other ePiphany Articles

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, General, How To, Marketing, Technology

While I’m a frequent traveler to Austin, TX, for music events and family, this was my first time at South By Southwest Interactive (#SXSWi). SXSW is divided into Interactive, Film, and Music festivals, each world-renowned for the quality of talent, content, and fun.

SXSWi is the height of Tech geekery, mostly focused around Web and mobile apps related to social media, such as Foursquare or Twitter. This is my crowd, for sure, and our social media guru Rachel Yeomans was even more plugged in than me due to her incessant and productive use of Twitter.

I dusted off my Twitter account just for the occasion. While I was one of the first people on it three years ago, I’ve found it difficult to keep up, which is a common issue for our clients to which I can relate! I’m glad I brought it out, though, as much of SXSW takes place on Twitter. This isn’t a surprise considering that Twitter essentially launched at SXSW years ago, but what did surprise me was the advanced and consistent use of hash tags to create interactive audience feedback for every session. Moderators would monitor the Twitter traffic for that session and involve the audience as they could.

Most of the big tech brands were present, as were most of the geek celebrities. A highlight for me was getting to meet a childhood geek hero, Guy Kawasaki, who was there supporting his new book, Enchantment. I fondly remember reading Guy’s column in MacUser magazine in the early 90s. As Chief Evangelist for the Mac when it was first released in 1984, he was there right at the beginning. Now he turns much of his attention to helping entrepreneurs, writing, speaking, and VC’ing. I got to meet him at his book signing, pictured below!

The learning, networking, funning, eating, and yes… drinking, all made for a dense and highly worthwhile experience, starting with legos. When we first arrived at the conference center, I found three huge tables full of legos, which immediately put me in a five-year-old state of mind. Perfect! No, we didn’t spend the whole time there, but it was a good way to get the juices flowing.

Me and my amazing creation…

And our friend Miguel Cano, from JSH&A, working on his own…

Presenter highlights included Chicago friend Jenni Prokopy (ChronicBabe) talking about building better health communities. An interview with publisher Tim O’Reilly gave us a glimpse into the future of digital. I learned about everything from social media metrics to text donations for nonprofits to web typography to mobile optimization to user experience process and more. I did make it one film event — a panel with Rainn Wilson for his new movie, Super. And somewhere in there we even made it to a couple of parties!

The food trucks are a highlight of Austin, particularly in the downtown area. Rachel, Miguel, and I walked until we found one with a short line — Turf N’ Surf Poboys. Yum…

Major sponsor and Foursquare competitor Gowalla was heavily represented, though I stuck to Foursquare personally. And vowel-challenged startup SCVNGR had everyone running around finding things for various types of rewards. All this served as real world preview of what is being largely hailed as the “next big thing” — the gamification of pretty much everything. What’s that? Well, it basically means that technologies with built-in game mechanics are more successful at getting people to actually use the technology. The best app in the world is useless if nobody uses it.

Foursquare, in my opinion, is the most successful example of merging game motivation with real-world advertising. While I’ve been using the mobile app for nearly two years, I’ve never seen such an intense concentration as I did at SXSW. People were checking in to everything, everywhere. Every room, event, party, and sometimes cars. I hit a new week record of 403 points! They released a big update to the app for SXSW, so it now tells you lots of good tidbits related to your own data, such as how long it’s been since you were at that location. This intrigues me since I purposefully choose not to broadcast my location to very many people.

The Foursquare people were everywhere as well. Forty of them came to SXSW, including co-founder Dennis Crowley, who I saw interviewed by Mashable SEO Pete Cashmore. In a particularly humbling moment for Dennis, an enormous print of his GAP ad was brought on stage and offered up to the audience member with the best question.

Dennis spoke about the future of Foursquare, and his vision to help you remember and find that coffee shop your friends were telling you to visit when you go to San Francisco, for instance. I also had a nice chat with Foursquare General Manager Evan Cohen after a smaller discussion he led with Lisa Bradner of Geomentum about the future of geo-related marketing and advertising.

Saving one of the most amazing moments for last, Rachel suggested we check out a live recording of The Nerdist with Chris Hardwick podcast at Esther’s Follies, a really fun local venue with lots of history. Fifteen minutes into the recording, Chris said it was time to bring out their special guest, who was none other than John Oliver from The Daily Show! Rach and I just about fell out of our chairs, as we’re both HUGE fans. We were treated to more than an hour of John hamming it up with the guys.

We’re looking forward to next year! Hope to see you there, too.

 This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter |  Other ePiphany Articles 

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Fun, Gadget, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

We’ve reached the end of a significant phase with eMainstay, a client with whom Astek has spent the last three years building the My25 web-based meal-planning software to improve health and reduce management costs for communities housing people with developmental disabilities.

In order to broaden the market for the software, which has proven highly successful in numerous USDA-funded studies, eMainstay approached Astek to develop a robust new My25 prototype for the software and online community development. We chose video as the form to convey our vision for the future of our software and a truly innovative approach to household-oriented meal planning.

The videos below say it better than words. Bon Appetit!

My25 Business Overview

My25 Online Toolkit Intro

Extra special thanks to Vin Design, Kathleen Ermitage, and Sedgwick Productions for their multiple contributions to the ongoing success of this project.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun, Marketing, Technology, Web

A couple months back, I spoke in Miami to members of the Specialized Information Publishing Association (SIPA) about publishing to mobile devices. These are typically niche publishers, each offering unique value to their readers and each with unique editorial and technology requirements. Mobile is an exploding market for content delivery, offering enormous possibilities and potential value.

One of the first major decisions you make when deciding to go mobile is App or Optimize. In other words, are you talking about building a mobile-friendly website that almost any smart device can display (optimize), or do you need apps on various mobile platforms (app)? Here are some tips to help you make the right decision, which will likely lead to better results for you and yours.

App Advantages

• Max control over brand, user experience, and rights management
• Expanded options for ad revenue
• Enhanced feature set for media-rich content
• Enhanced ability to view content offline (plane)
• “Cool” factor

App Disadvantages

• Typically higher production and maintenance cost and time
• Access is limited to devices you can afford to support
• Potentially more difficult to integrate with existing publishing solutions
• Reduced flexibility in a rapidly evolving industry

Mobile-Optimized Website Advantages

• Standard rich content formatting language for Web/Email
• Free, flexible and open – works on most devices
• Typically reduced production costs and time
• Typically easier to integrate directly with existing content management systems (Webany)
• Easier viral distribution and linking, with methods to deter unauthorized copying
• Control viewing access (rights management)

Mobile-Optimized Website Disadvantages

• Lack of complete control over brand and user experience (esp. with RSS)
• Fewer options for flexible rights management
• Fewer embedded/easy ad revenue options
• Reduced ability to add interactive features
• Reduced offline content access without additional software support

The recent iPhone release on Verizon is good timing for Apple since Android had been out-selling it in the last months of 2010. More choices of carriers should lead to an increase in sales.

I hope this was a helpful breakdown of some of the considerations. Our process has helped several clients make the right decisions when going mobile. Let me know if you have any questions.

 This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter |  Other ePiphany Articles 

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Marketing, Technology, Web