Behind The Buttons
Posted by jbrodeur on 4/23/2008
Since February we here at Reynolds DeWalt have been engaged in the
process of creating a new web site for ourselves. After a few rounds of
design prototypes we decided on the layout of the site that you see
now. People from all areas of our company gave their input about what
the site should do, how it should look, and what content we needed to
keep/revise/trash.
I was given the responsibility of making sure
that the site moved from concept to reality. Luckily I had a secret
weapon: a team of creative, technical, and practical folks with the
talent and vision to make it happen.
Throughout the design and production phase we aimed to produce a
site that was customer-centric. We have had many discussions that
centered on color schemes, how our brand fits, and which background and
text scheme was better: dark background - white text or white
background - black text. We tossed the rationale around for which
scheme was better on the eyes, what our legacy customers would want,
and what marketing savvy customers would want.
The answer was apparent, let the customer decide what they want. We
chose to create a set of buttons on the header that allows the viewer
to change the contrast options for themselves. Instead of us forcing a
scheme down a user's throat we consciously chose to give them a say in
the matter. Go ahead try it out. Which one is better on your eyes?
Which one do you prefer?
We hope you enjoy our new web site. Come back often as we are planning on rolling out new content monthly.
-jb
Here comes mobile...
Posted by jbrodeur on 9/19/2007
On Tuesday, September 17th, Google began selling ad space on web pages via cell phone. AdSense for mobile is a big deal from a big company. With AdSense, Google is jockeying for position in a fledgling market. As noted in this New York Time's article, the mobile advertising market is currently small.
As an advertising sector I expect mobile to make a larger leap into the mainstream. With Google's AdSense going mobile, I'm apparently not the only one with these expectations. According to a report by Veronis Suhler Stevenson (which was released prior to the Google announcement), internet & mobile services will become the fastest-growing advertising channel, doubling to $61.98 billion from 2006 to 2001.
Make no bones about it. Mobile is coming. To some degree it's already here, think of all the people who have cell phones. The tiny plastic devices we started carrying around to make emergency calls have worked their way into our lives as technology we NEED to have. It's a logical place for the convergence of interpersonal communication tools (the phone, email), production tools (planners, calendars, memopads, password keepers, web browsers), and personal commerce (checking bank account balances, writing digital checks).
Why not advertise on mobile devices? Afterall, a recent study by iProspect and Jupiter Research says that offline influence on online search sites yields a 39% conversion rate. With that in mind, if I'm walking down the street with my Blackberry and see a billboard for a new restaurant. I can go onto my mobile phone - search out an online reservation service - make a reservation, or maybe put off the reservation for this restaurant in favor of another restaurant that Google might notify me about via AdSense mobile, or from a review I had seen on the reservation site. Either which way, I've gotta eat - so I literally feed into that 39% conversion rate.
-justin