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

Back in August Google first started piloting “Author information in search results” (Matt Cutts YouTube Videos 1 & 2) giving authors more prominence in SERPs

Here’s the how-to link – the original post by Google: Google Commandment #1,785,234,002

One of the final steps requires you to add the pubs you write for via the “Contributor to” link. The “Contributor to” link is not so easy to find so I embedded a screen grab of it here. Click the image for a larger version.

This should not take more than 15 minutes start to finish to set up.

It looks like Google is now also giving more favorable rankings to the Google+ profile accounts over other profile platforms in SERPs. More on that, a Techworld article expounding on a Danny Sullivan article.

To summarize all that – You need to get your profile up on Google+ ASAP!

After it’s set up with you’ve got your pic, pub links up, and your articles have your email address in them, (how that happens – see dev team) and Google waves their magic wand, your picture will pop up along side the search result, along with links to other articles you published, your Google+ profile, and social/sharing platforms, among other things.

Not only will you will be the coolest (and one of the most prominent) results in Google, but all your competing editors and authors will be very jealous. Do it for the bragging rights of increased traffic AND enhanced celebrity exposure.

You are going to have to get your email in your profile and that email address must appear in the post.  More spam – maybe. More web traffic – for sure.

There are other ways to comply but this might be the easiest for most companies. Either way you will need to involve your dev team.

And – You’ll need to get the dev teams on this soon so you are not the last one to the party.

How to Pitch Upper Management:
Push this deliverable hard with upper management as a high-value low-impact way to increase page views for existing and future website content. “Page views = sales boss!”

Get a meeting with the dev team, have them watch the Matt Cutts videos and read the full post on Google before.

How to Pitch the Dev Team:
You can tell the dev guys to think of Google as job security, if they don’t already realize this. “And our CMS should do this automatically so we are not bugging you every day to update our posts,” you’ll say to reinforce the benefit to prioritizing this project. Set a near-term deadline and make it happen.

Yes it’s just another thing that Google is making you do, but it is a must do – soon.

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Tom Lynch Categories: google, How To, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Web

As we entered the new year, one thing that most of us face is the overwhelming amount of information we dissect every day. As a community manager for several different clients, the amount is amplified.  While trying to find a way to continue to provide relative and useful information for our clients and their communities, I finally decided to check out Yahoo Pipes. I’ve heard people talk about Yahoo Pipes, even used programs and services that stated they used Yahoo Pipes, but I had never know exactly what they were.

According to Yahoo, “Pipes is a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web.” In plain language, you fetch information, add filters and produce specific content you desire. What is so nice about Pipes is it has drag and drop modules that requires no programming background. In addition to creating your own Pipes, you can also view Pipes that others have made. How about using Pipes as an eBay price watch for certain items?

So far, I’ve only created a simple RSS feed for search Twitter for Tweets using the #cmgr hashtag, but making sure it includes common keywords. This is then sent to my Google Reader as an RSS.

Have you used Yahoo Pipes? What ways are you finding to use them? Just hearing about Yahoo Pipes? How do you see them being useful?

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Tim McDonald Categories: General, How To, yahoo!

This month we are sharing things that inspire us. Personally, crafting is my passion and is a huge influence on my personal aesthetic. My work on various crafts has informed the way I look at form, function, materials and, yep, even web design.

And in the spirit of the season, I thought I’d share a simple craft project that is an olfactory delight – cloving oranges!

Over the weekend, we sat down to decorated some oranges with cloves for the Astek conference table. Now the whole office smells like Christmas! If you want to decorate your own oranges it is very easy. Here’s how we did it:

Simply take some oranges…

And a bowl of whole cloves (available with the spices in any grocery store)

Press the pointy end of the clove into the orange. Make patterns or images.

We couldn’t resist turning a green spot on one of the oranges into the Astek logo.

If you want to get really fancy you can take a zester or a tool like this v-shaped pumpkin carving tool and peel away just the top layer of skin for additional patterns and decor options.

Place in a pretty bowl and display where ever fragrant holiday cheer is appreciated. The best smells come for the first 48 hours, but display can be left for a week or more, though oranges may shrivel a bit after a few days. Enjoy!

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Katie Hawkey Categories: Fun, General, Green, How To

Inspiration for ideas comes in many different forms, including: Observations while walking down the street, discovering a new product at the store, or hearing about an unusual experience on the nightly news. Inspiration for blog posts can come from any of these, but more often than not, most won’t be related to your business goals or objectives.

One of the best sources of inspiration for a blog post comes from reading other blog posts. You may ask, how does this help me if someone else has already written it? There are several ways.

1. Can you expand on their idea?
2. Do you have a different viewpoint?
3. Have you experienced a situation you can use as a case study?
4. If examples were given, are there others that develop into another story?
5. Does it remind you of a book your read that you can review?

These are just a few of the ideas that can come from reading someone else’s blog post. You should never copy someone else’s work. Always put your thoughts in your words. It’s ok to quote a piece of their content if you give proper attribution.  And if you do get direct inspiration from their blog, be sure to mention it in your blog post, including the authors name and title of the blog post with a link back to the original post.

What are some other sources of inspiration for blog content that you can think of? Did reading this post inspire a new idea for you?

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Tim McDonald Categories: General, How To

Whether you are publishing content or selling products, you need to make it as easy as possible for your customers to get to your goods on their terms. Mobile usage is growing exponentially and will be an increasingly essential part of your toolkit to keep your customers coming back for more.

But if you’re just starting to think about how to go mobile, it can be hard to know where to begin. Two of the key things you’ll need to research are what mobile devices your customers are using now and what they want to use in the future. This information will help you make the right decisions when planning how to allocate your valuable resources.

Review your analytics. You should have Web analytics running on your website. Google Analytics is a top-notch free tool that will tell you a lot about how people are accessing your content. While analytics are useful, they don’t tell you the whole story. You also want to know how people ideally would view your content, which isn’t completely revealed until you’ve created an optimized mobile experience.

Send a survey. The best way to find out what your customers want is to ask. There are numerous survey tools available, which you can use to send a Web-based survey to your email list. Regardless of how you deploy the survey, it’s important to keep it short to increase the number of responses. Here is a suggested set of questions to find out your customers’ mobile preferences:

1) What type(s) of mobile phone do you have?
        a) iPhone
        b) Android
        c) Blackberry
        d) Windows
        e) Palm
        f) Other

2) What type(s) of mobile phone do you expect to have 1 year from now?
        a) iPhone
        b) Android
        c) Blackberry
        d) Windows
        e) Palm
        f) Other

3) From where do you typically view our website?
        a) Work
        b) Home
        c) On the go

4) From what type of device would you prefer to view our website?
        a) Desktop computer
        b) Laptop
        c) Tablet
        d) Mobile Phone

5) On a mobile phone, how do you prefer to read content?
        a) Apps
        b) Mobile Web browser (e.g., Safari)
        c) RSS Reader

6) If you own a tablet, what kind?
        a) iPad
        b) Android
        c) Windows
        d) Blackberry
        e) I don’t own a tablet

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Andy Swindler Categories: Gadget, How To, Marketing, Mobile, Technology

Like so many other people out there, I subscribe to probably 100 more RSS feeds than I need to. However, I just love the idea that everything I may or may not be interested in is at least is one place. It stands for “Real Simple Syndication” for  a reason right? Unfortunately, sometimes organizing can lead more towards organized chaos versus simplicity. Therefore earlier this year I decided to make a commitment to not only organize my RSS feeds, but to do so through apps that made reading them not only enjoyable, but simple!

So I started with my MacBook. I admit I mostly use my RSS reader on my Mac to find relevant articles on specific topics for either our company or for clients. With that being said, I think NetNewsWire is quite literally, the bomb. You can download it to your computer and it synchronizes with your reader (in my case, I synch it with Google Reader).

The selling feature to me is the Smart List functionality. It’s a similar set-up to iTunes, in which you can create Smart Lists with keywords and phrases that automatically gather in these folders to show all the content in your feeds that contain these keywords. It’s perfect for finding those articles mentioning B2B news or highlighting competition mentions. And don’t worry PC users, you can use FeedDemon similarly with tags versus smart lists for finding those keywords.

The other feature I like about NetNewsWire is that it synchs with Instapaper. So if I’m reading something interesting, and I want to save it to tweet about later, write a blog post about, or actually finish reading the article, it’s a click of a button and POOF! It’s saved in my Instapaper feed. And yes, I do have many-a folder in my Instapaper account with titles such as “Facebook Posts”, “Tweets”, “Newsletter Links”, etc. for both Astek and clients. That way I don’t have to worry about a back-log of links in my Instapaper account. But that’s a whole other blog post.

Now, to my iPad. Personally, I am a newspaper kind of girl. I have a degree in Journalism, and there’s something about reading a real newspaper…you know, one with ink. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a digital subscription to the New York Times (I do). It does mean that I scoured the App Store for an RSS reader that made reading my RSS feeds an actually pleasant experience. Lo and behold, Early Edition. Now, no matter how many RSS feeds I have, they will always look pretty on my reader. Just add a cup of coffee and it’s almost as Sunday-morning-esque as a real newspaper.

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Rachel Yeomans Categories: ePiphany Featured Story, How To, Technology

Have you ever painted a room to find that the color looks dated just a few months later? Or have you ever tried to put together a spring look, something fresh and bursting with color and just a twist of sophistication, but when you put all your pieces and accessories together you looked like a kid’s carnival ride instead?

I LOVE color, but I’m not always awesome at pulling together a pallet that evokes the response I’m looking for. I’ve been so daunted by the need to pick color before, that I’ve abandoned projects (and outfits) over it. This is why I am SO excited to find Colourlovers.com (Note: that’s colour with the British “o-u-r“ spelling).

In this online community, people with a real passion and talent for color put together hundreds of pallets and patterns for you to browse through and give them fun names like ”Valiant“ or ”Viking Invasion“ or ”Lovers Cry at Movies“. They even have a Business section that is specifically colors that are trending in the corporate world.

They also take images of objects from trending websites and pull color pallets right from the images.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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I definitely would encourage you to check it out! It’s very inspirational!

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Katie Hawkey Categories: How To, Marketing, Web

Social media was created by individuals for individuals. Let’s make that clear up front. As far as businesses are concerned, they have done some fantastic things with social media to connect with their client base via customer service, engagement, charity, or just seeming “cool”. The businesses who have done this well are looked upon as models to other businesses to the point of some saying, “We need to do what they did and we’ll be successful!” I hate to burst your bubble, but that’s not necessarily true.

If you are a business and say, “We need to be social.” I ask you this: “Why?” Granted, social media is fun. I would tweet all day if I wanted to! But so many businesses start with feeling they need to get on specific platforms – mainly Facebook and Twitter. However, as a business, you may not be appropriate for social media. In the financial sector, most companies only allow their personnel to be on LinkedIn. You may run a manufacturing facility – not sure if Facebook is really the best platform for you.

So before you get all platform-crazy and want to be on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Hulu, YouTube, Vimeo, Quora, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google+…. take a step back and answer the question, why do you want to be on social media? What is the business goal here? Most of the time, it’s to gain more clients and increase business. Or it’s to engage with existing clients and maintain them. Or it’s to just know everything that’s being said about you and your competitors to gauge where the market is going so you can model marketing plans around the consumer voice. Whatever it is, figure it out. Then we can talk about platforms.

Now, the next huge debacle – do you have the resources to manage these presences? If you want to create a presence on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, you better make sure you have a plan on who is going to be creating that content and when. And whoever is responsible, make sure that person or group of people is knowledgeable on appropriate community management skills.

Does the person running your social media communication know that there should be a generic company Facebook profile (i.e. mine is Rachel at Astek) to manage your company Facebook page so his/her personal profile is kept personal? Does he/she know that the you should always have more people following you on Twitter than you following – and that you actually need to engage on Twitter at least 12-15 times a day (and those are in conversations, not just status updates)? And finally, whoever is managing your social media presence, does he/she call him/herself an expert? If so, find someone else!

The term “expert” in social media land is almost the equivalent of a four-letter word. Those of us who make our careers off of social media and innovative technologies know that whatever we do know, there is twice as much stuff that we don’t know. Pride is not a good feature in a community manager. Make sure this person is innovative, creative, and always reading and trying to learn on what’s going out there in that scary land many call a “cloud”. For example, Google+ brand pages are just around the corner. Do you have a plan in place for when that happens – whether that plan includes engaging in that platform or focusing on something else?

Now we enter into that precarious zone of agency management. Many businesses stat that they want to be active on social media but don’t have the time. So they want someone to do it for them. And no, don’t hire an intern to manage your social media. Going back the qualifications of a community manger, you need to make sure that a certain skill set is present in this individual – plus you need to make sure he/she knows your brand, is trustworthy in protecting and representing it, and if he/she leaves, you’re not left going, “Now what?”

Therefore, if you do hire an agency or someone externally to help you launch a social media presence, fantastic! Have at it! But I would strongly suggest that messaging and content creation come from someone internally, and just have the agency train you on appropriate messaging and to set expectation on what level of engagement is realist for the company to maintain. Because if the agency can send out 15 tweets a day, that’s great, but if your internal bandwidth is only 5 per day, then you have a problem. It is perfectly reasonable to hire an agency to take over social discussions on a one-off basis such as for an event, conference, Twitter chat, etc. But full-time ownership should be created internally unless that agency is almost grandfathered into your business or if they give you a clear exit strategy so you know how to keep up with the presence they created for you after they’ve left to go to the next client.

Social media is not a buzzword, and it is and will continue to grow into being vital for business successes. You should not ignore it, but just like any other business decision, make sure you have a plan on how to use it and why you are using it in the first place. Have questions? Do you have good examples/case studies? Please share as we easily could’ve missed it on our Twitter feed!

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Rachel Yeomans Categories: Entrepreneurship, How To, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

Emma, the EPS Astek sends all our emails out through, had a truly excellent round up of mobile-friendly-email design and programming guidelines.  Really great nuts and bolts stuff for all of us.  For the designers, things like recommended pixel sizes for links, fonts, email layout and landing pages widths and more.  For the programmers, actual code snippets for forcing certain behaviors to keep emails and landing pages sized for readability and interaction.

http://myemma.com/blog/2011/07/27/anna-yeamans-6-mobile-design-tips/

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Katie Hawkey Categories: How To, Marketing, Web