The Ocean Agency

Here’s our web design agency’s round up of the best design-related links of the week. 

First off, Web Design wall shows the power of simplicity with 50 functional, beautiful, minimal websites.

A website’s copy is just as imporant as its creative web design: Web Designer Wall and AIGA give tips and advice about how to write better copy. 

Back to design. Smashing Magazine shows you how to dramatically enhance your designs  with simple techniques. 

Keeping your blog current with redesigns is key– and promoting your redesign to the fullest potential makes a redesign even more worthwhile. Blog Design Blog shows you how.

Structure, balance and color can make a blog great– Pro Design Blog suggests some other design elements that can increase your readership and your authority in blogging.

And that’s it for this week. We’ll be back Monday after some Ocean teambuilding and a relaxing weekend!

The unemployment of this economy, combined with Twitter, has bred a new race of the self-employed: social media experts. There are many kinds, and they have their uses, but when considering building a community for your own company’s website, special attention to the social area of your online marketing is important. Don’t take a purported expert’s word as law.

Needless to say, many of the “experts” who have thousands of friends and followers on social media networks don’t actually know how to maintain a positive social media image. Or, as Open Press Wire so nicely put it: “If you weren’t aware already, most of these experts are just idiots that have found a stool to stand on and shout their garbled rehashed crap they read from TwiTips.com and rewrote it on their own “pretty” blog.”

Oftentimes, the person running your campaign from your online marketing company may be a better bet for taking social media tips from. They’ll know how to integrate your social media and online marketing campaigns so that they mutually benefit each other. They will understand the importance of mutual participation in social media– those who solely self promote on Twitter or Facebook quickly lose the interest of their followers and friends. And an online marketer will know how to create good long-form content on your blog to accentuate the short form material you create on social media networks. The overall tone of your web presence should be easily accessible in your social media, too; using trite social media strategies will drown your indiviual voice.

While joining and participating in social media is good, drinking the kool-aid is not. You can always learn from so-called social media experts, but sometimes the best thing to learn is how to avoid being like them.

Passion is necessity in design. That’s why it is The Ocean Agency’s pleasure to announce that today, we are abandoning creative web design and reopening our doors as a haute couture men’s atelier. We want to bring the most current men’s fashions to the Chicago area, starting with a Spring 2010 collection showing at Chicago’s Fashion Focus. 

Here are some of the major inspirations for our line. We’d describe it as chic, modern and frankly groundbreaking.

Every high fashion men’s line has a corresponding underwear line. Calvin Klein, Hugo Boss, Armani and now… Ocean.

After our foundations, we love accessories. Yes, men can wear high fashion accessories, too!

Functionality is almost as imporant as aesthetics. That’s why we provide functional gear like mantyhose.

Although formal wear and business attire are important for the modern man, casual wear is the basis of the Ocean line.

Like we said, it’s gonna be groundbreaking. Yep, totally unique.

So this April 1st has a special importance for us at Ocean as we embark on our new fashion endeavor. We’re really excited to make this big leap and use this economy to take risks and make changes… Ehh, who are we kidding. Happy April Fools’ Day!

Creative web design benefits different industries in a variety of ways, as each niche has its own individual set of web design needs and uses. Lawyers’ websites and the websites of law firms, for instance, need to show an impressive level of experience, trustworthiness and credibility. Web design for lawyers must impeccable– professionally crafted and seamlessly functional. 

At our web design firm, we add individuality to the designs of our legal clients. Although many law firms may think that they will benefit from a familiar layout or traditional feel, undervaluing the importance of an individual or company brand on your website is detrimental for a legal web presence. Highlighting you or your firm’s particular experience, specialties or history can make you stand out for a client, and such individual touches will also further your online business development when expanded to aspects of your web presence.

As a lawyer, you need to position yourself as the simple answer to your users’ complex problems with your web presence. Simplicity of content and contact is essential. Avoid legal jargon in your copy that might pose confusing, and make the contact page or form easy to find and to the forefront of the site. Ask questions in your contact form that ascertain important information and prompt users to respond fully. 

When picking a web design firm, look for a company that has experience in your niche, or address the unique issues of your industry through creative web design solutions.

Our web design agency offers web hosting, too– and we highly suggest that for any website, you have a quality host to back up your beautiful design. A good web hosting service is necessary, but maintaining a good relationship with your web host is extremely helpful as well. 

Smashing Magazine gives some great tips in this article about how to find the right web host and how to maintain a good relationship with that company. First of all, realize that the cheapest plan might not be the best deal, especially if you expect your website to grow. Things like hosting multiple domains or having daily backups might not be automatically included in a cheaper plan– check to make sure all of your necessary needs are reflected in your plan if you find a “steal” web hosting rate.

Similarly, the larger web hosting services may not be the best for you. While they are well known and generally trusted, they may not be as quick or consistent at customer service because of their many, many accounts. Using your web design company’s hosting provider can give you access to a much higher level of customer service, resulting in less downtime for your website over the years. 

Reputation, uptime and size are all significant things to consider. Good customer service may ease your experience over the years. Check out the other tips Smashing Magazine has, and make sure to put careful thought into choosing a web hosting provider at the beginning of or during your creative web design process. Most importantly, treat your contacts at the provider with the same respect you demand, and your resulting good relationship will prevent tons of headaches for you as your website grows.

This week, our web design agency is bringing you the best links for inspiration this week. Designers, copywriters and online marketers have to tap endless amounts of creativity to do their job– if your creativity is drained, check these out!

On A List Apart, David Sherwin shows us why it’s okay to be imperfect, and why imperfection might make your design better.

Think Vitamin tells us their 44 favored web designers to follow on Twitter. In a jam for inspiration? Maybe one of the 44 will save you with 140 characters.

Web Designer Wall tells us what kills their creativity and how to avoid it. (Example: take off the pajamas and don’t work from home!)

And finally, Smashing Apps just straight up lists their favorite places to find inspiriation across the web. From resources to trends, they’ll give you something to get the ball rolling.

And that’s it for us this week!

Building a community has become key to online business development, online marketing and customer service in this age of social media competition. Beyond your social media presence, your company’s own website must be designed and presented in a way that encourages participation, in forums, comment sections or customer response forms. Additionally, content must drive the customer to join the community– it must be relevant, but also intriguiging and  engaging. A constant stream of good content is worthless if it just sits there. Your users have to want to respond to what you’re providing!

A List Apart gives great advice on how to cultivate a community. A community starts with a website that is current and usable, but the communicativeness of your copy and content also directly affects whether a user feels welcome or not. In addition to your creative web design, users need to relate to your community to want to join it; the engaging copy you provide must make a user identify with your brand and community. Information about your company needs to be accessible and interesting. 

Encouraging participation through design is, of course, important as well. If your main community-building source is your blog area, the main place users will participate is the comment form. You must spur a user to comment with engaging content– then make them feel confident to respond with a well designed comment form. Blog Design Blog shows us a ton of ways to make your comment section look. The main consideration is, will your users provide feedback through that form?

Building a community can create new customers and keep the old ones, through allowing your users and customers to relate to each other and your brand. They can better your business if you can ascertain what they’re feeling and how they’re responding to your website and company. By writing creative copy to engage your users, and designing your site to best encourage them to participate, you can start building your community immediately.

Our web design agency has noticed, along with HubSpot, that social media has become important for companies of all sizes and in all industries. As social media gains influence as a credible marketing tool, more and more companies implement Twitter and Facebook to represent themselves online. Even Skittles has foregone the usual branded website for a redirection that shows you straight to their social media presence. 

Don’t get us wrong– we love social media. But for any business that isn’t quite as recognizable as Skittles, you have to have the authority to back up your social media presence. Starting with great creative web design, and continuing with fresh, relevant content, your web site has to reflect the quality that your web presence suggests. 

HubSpot suggests that a key element to backing up your short form social media content is long form content back on your site. Populating your site with extended content that actually proves your authority in the field you are dominating in social media seems like common sense, but since its easier to get tons of Twitter followers by providing only short, pithy and funny microblogs, many companies skimp on the meaty stuff. Originality, relevance and quality of new content will convert more users than a high friend count on Facebook. 

So, yes, go social media crazy! Just make sure you’re spending time backing up your reputation that you’re working so hard to develop. A highly functioning, well designed website combined with clean copy and consistent, new content will take your social media campaign miles farther than simple activity on the newest social media site.

Here are the articles that came to our web design agency’s attention this week! Read about creative web design, how to make it better, and how make sure people see it.

The Social Path’s David Griner confronts fear and loathing in social media, in this presentation.

The Skittles brand foregoes a traditional web site in favor of directing you to all the different facets of their web presence. Clearly, they’re not afraid of social media!

Smashing Magazine helps you navigate Adsense, so skip the trial and error.

Sometimes, the sitemap and footer of a web site get overlooked– here are some modern ones from Web Designer Wall.

Six Revisions show us how to use illustrated elements in our designs, without getting too cheesy.

And that’s it for us this week!

Obviously, you probably know to look at a web design company’s previous performance when evaluating them for your website design or redesign project. Viewing a creative web design portfolio is probably one of the first things you do when checking out a potential partner. But what should you look for in their portfolio, other than well designed websites? It might help to find clients in a company’s portfolio that are similar to your company.

The first step is isolating the particular problems that your company or your industry has on the web. For instance, this article highlights the unique issues that restaurants have with their websites– the ones that immediately turn users away, like problems finding the hours, extensive flash intros or poor usability. Understand your own industry’s usability issues, and see if the portfolio you’re viewing has solutions to offer.

You may find that a potential web design company has served other companies in your industry. This experience could be very valuable, if they can confront your situation with accumulated knowledge and research. Sometimes, the only way to isolate and solve problems within your web design is through trial-and-error. By previously working in your industry, a web design company may have already been through the trials so that you can benefit from their experience.

Additionally, you may find the solutions to your problems, even if a certain web design company hasn’t served your industry. Check and see if they have had to confront the issues that plague your user experience. Have other designs failed to capture your company’s character because they were generic? Look for creative web design in a portfolio. Has organization or usability been a problem? Actually go to the company’s designs– don’t just look at screen shots. If you have a problem navigating their sites, your users may, too.

Finding the right web design company for your company and for you industry can be an extensive process, but knowing your own shortcomings before you start looking can aid and quicken your search.