The Ocean Agency

Our agency is proud to present a new web presence for Douglas Allergy Relief Source, a well-known seller of allergy relief products in Highland Park, IL. Douglas Kritz, a highly esteemed contributor in the purification and allergy control industries, has been focused on his customers since 1963, and his new website notes absolutely no departure from his tradition of the highest level of customer service.

Happy Friday!

To get your weekend started here are some links that have our office buzzing this week.

1) Mashable highlights the importance of appearing generous in one’s online strategy. This does not necessarily mean giving things away, but rather having an open brand that rewards interaction. This generosity needs to be expressed by celebrating your customers and sharing more about yourself. 

This goes for web design as well, having a clean and user friendly interface definitely makes brands appear more generous and inviting. Rounded logos and bright color schemes definitely portray generosity as well. A great example designed by Ocean: Earth Mate Lighting. 

2) Another from Mashable, CrowdEye is looking to challenge Twitter in real time search. For us SEO geeks, this means paying more attention to real time information as more web traffic finds websites from real time conversation, rather than more traditional web channels. 

3) From the Econsultancy blog, Bing’s traffic has been rising steadily since its inception two weeks ago. Microsoft has placed a lot of capital into a television marketing campaign that definitely seems to be generating buzz. With the rise of both real time search and Bing, Google’s exclusive hold on the search market may be eroding slowly. Knowing Google however, innovation to squash its competitors should be on the way. 

4) Another post from the Econsultancy blog, looks at the redesign of a furniture website and how it has translated in to an extreme bump in sales. Great example of how good web design can improve your business exponentially. 

Alright enjoy your weekend, and feel free to share your thoughts on the linked articles!

Happy Friday all!

It has been a busy week here at the Ocean Agency. Here are some interesting creative web design links that our web design firm will be thinking about this (hopefully) sunny weekend.

It was widely speculated that Microsoft would unveil their new search engine, Bing today. Alas, they have been completely overshadowed by Google who unveiled the first looks at their “Wave” platform today.

Wave will combine email, instant messaging, live editing of documents and online photo and video sharing all on one platform. This has the potential to really shake up the internet world. This is a developing story that is definitely worth following. TechCrunch has a full analysis and interviews from the Google developer conference. A preview of wave can be viewed here.

Beyond this huge news in the internet world, here are some interesting links that deal with creative web design:

1) Darren Rowse, who runs problogger.com, writes on SitePoint about sneeze pages for you blogs. Most blog posts go unnoticed once they leave the front page or recent stories tab. A sneeze page is a great way to show off your archives.

2) From PSD/Tuts (Photoshop tutorials),  has 45 step by step photoshop tutorials to create interesting websites. While you should always leave web design to the expert design firms, these tutorials are great for creating simple individual web pages, or to give you or your business ideas of how you want you web page to look.

3) For those developers out there, here is a great article on SixRevisions.com about how to speed up web page response times. Really helpful tips.

4) From Designer-Daily, 11 ways to increase your RSS feed subscribers. Great suggestions to increase your visibility as a blogger, writer or designer.

5) Lastly, for those who enjoy Hulu, but want a more television like experience, TechCrunch reports that Hulu is launching a desktop application. This means that you can now browse hulu with you computer remote. I recommend hooking up your laptop to your TV with an HDMI cable and enjoying hulu on the big screen. A new labs section also launched on Hulu today, so be sure to check out the new features as they go live.

Enjoy your weekend!

Our web design company is proud to present one of our most recent projects, the rejuvenation of MagellanSells.com. In addition to their Chicago apartments website, Magellan needed an easy to use and pleasing site where customers could find all the information they needed on buying a condo or townhome in one of Magellan’s many developments.

Now, it’s easy for potential customers to find what they need– the properties are easily searchable by development, location, price or other attributes. The new site has extensive photos and videos, so users can really experience the property, too.

The Magellan experience has also been refocused on the online community of Magellan owners, renters and potential buyers. You can read the blog of Magellan’s Senior Vice President of Sales, Leila Zammatta, or see what’s going on from the Magellan side of things by checking out the News blog. You can catch up with the Magellan team on Twitter and Facebook, right from the homepage of Magellan Sells. If you’re interested about what’s going on in Chicago, take a look at the Chicago Life section of the site, where you can find events and entertainment throughout the city.

To make information easily accessible for potential buyers and current clients, Magellan invested in a renewal for their web presence, and our web design company was proud to be involved with the largest development company in Chicago.

Our web design firm would like to formally introduce our most recent launch: MedicareSupplementsForYou.com. The new site for this supplemental insurance vendor features a clean design and very simple to use navigation– perfect for anyone who needs information but isn’t entirely web-savvy.

For senior citizens in Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Illinois, you can visit the new site to get the information you may need about your medicare supplement plans. As the Medicare and insurance markets change with the administration, Medicare Supplements For You can help you understand the changing policies and choose which plan is best for you.  With one simple step of filling out a contact form, you start the ball rolling. Medicare Supplements For You will find and compare the best options for your supplemental plan, and supply with a quote of the lowest rates available.

Once again, our web design firm brings you links to what’s inspiring us this week!

First off, Smashing Magazine came in with two convincing and helpful articles– one on how to increase conversions, and one on how to publicize your content. Combine the two, and you could have a very successful website!

A List Apart reminds us that a huge part of a creative web design being well-received is communicating with your clients. Set clear goals, stay organized, and finish on time are some of the tips they give.

Web Designer Wall shows all the great uses of hover– it’s not just for changing text color anymore.

Graphic design is still the basis of great web design– check out this video of the design process from Think Vitamin.

That’s all we have this week! Keep your eye on the design until next week.

With a little sun at the end of this week, our Chicago web design firm is feeling hopeful about the real arrival of Spring. And about time, too–it’s the middle of April! Here are some of the best links of the week that we’ll we taking with us into the new season. 

Smashing Magazine gave us 8 tips to convert more users, then 7 more, for a total of 15 tips to convert more users!

My coworker suggested I include this article as useful link this week. I don’t totally understand it, but I’m sure coders will relate to it.

Websites that are too flash-heavy drive us crazy. Here are some strategies to integrate flash in a useful way.

Want to know what’s really important to web designers and users? Check this survey out.

WSJ talks about typefaces and throws out some good jokes. Comic Sans walks into a bar, bartender says, ‘We don’t serve your type.” We love it.

That’s it for this week!

At the risk of sounding immodest, we make some great websites here at The Ocean Agency. But it’s one thing for a company to claim they’re great. Every web design firm will say they do the best work in the industry. However, looking at this article  regarding successful web designs, you can see that comparing the writer’s exacting criteria to our own web design firm’s portfolio, that The Ocean Group produces websites that are both effective and aesthetically pleasing.

Good Spacing

When websites are too cluttered and lack enough space, the end result is a website that is disorientating and causes potential clients to navigate elsewhere. Well-made websites allow the eyes to “breathe” and let the brain process the web content that is vital to keeping a visitor’s attention. See the use of space on Marketing Werks and note that the amount of empty area balances out the website nicely.

Pixel Perfect Detail

Details, details, details. Attention to detail is the hallmark of a quality product. For a web design firm, the details on the pixel level can make a so-so website really jump out and get someone’s attention. Note A&L Remodeling and how the pixels on the edge of the photographs and business card add a real depth to the site, making something that could look flat and boring pop out right off the page.

Well Thought Out Typography

Typography enhances websites in ways that probably aren’t apparent to the untrained eye. Typography must convey a mood, it must be tastefully sized, balanced, well spaced. In other words, the text must gracefully blend into the site’s motif and content. See IncWorx Consulting and notice how the typography is straightforward and business like, yet still has a polished edge to it, a certain flair. This balance between professionalism and panache perfectly mirrors the site’s intended marketing strategy.

Organization of Elements

Keeping your website organized and logical is one of the most important elements a web design firm can focus on. If a user can’t figure out where to navigate, or is confused by the site, you aren’t going to have an effective marketing tool. Our site for The Medicare Supplement Shop has an easily navigated layout, designed specifically for a clientele that may or may not be computer savvy.

Restraint and Subtlety

Subtlety divides great web design firms from good ones. A small graphic, a delicate shading, an added touch of flair here or there… these subtleties have a subconscious effect on a visitor to your site and can really impress. Take a look at our fantastic work for Majestic Star Casinos and notice the symmetry between the five uniquely branded websites, each having their own individual color schemes and graphics, which are similar in style but different in content.

Using Color to its Full Potential

Just because something is colorful and vibrant doesn’t mean it has to be tacky or unprofessional. Colors please the eye and grab attention and keep potential clients intrigued. Our work for Dr. Aoife Lyons is playful, vibrant and fun, which seems to be a strange choice for a clinical psychologist. But instead of being sterile and medical, the site conveys a comfortable feeling of healthiness. What could be more suiting for someone whose goal in life is the happiness of children?

It really speaks to the quality of a firm when an industry specialist writes such an in-depth article, and you can examine your own web design firm’s work and see all the outlined principles being fulfilled through natural talent and taste alone.

Regular readers of this creative web design blog will know that we give a lot of advice. We recommend many “dos” and admonish many “don’ts”, but here is the most important advice of all: Once you know the rules, break the rules. Our web design company believes that progress is created by knowing what makes a website a traditional success, and then by smashing expectations and providing the consumer with something new, different, but above all better.

We don’t discard traditions for any reason. We use strategies that are proven successes and integrate them with innovative experiences to make a memorable and useful tool for your users.

You must know the basics to be able to innovate. Assessing how people communicate, what design elements they respond to, and what ultimately converts them from users to customers gives our innovation a foundation in success. While exactly following an already successful template can give you a reliable site, the marketing prospects for an inventive site are unlimited. We want to portray your brand message articulately and intuitively, but more importantly, we want to portray it individually.

The Ocean Agency creates; we don’t copy. Your strategy and design should be unique, and through innovation, we’ll give you a distinct web presence that functions with all the usability of tradition.

This article about value came across our desk today, and it got us thinking about what we value, and how to portray value, in creative web design. For our web design company, value is best communicated in simplicity and ease of use. And of course, we value our ability to help you communicate your message. What does your company value, and is it being portrayed correctly in the forefront of your web presence?

Value, like the article points out, “is not just price. Valuable-ness comes from relevance to the consumer’s needs.” It is not simply a number. And creating a website that accurately portrays your company’s values isn’t an expense– it’s an investment. We help you choose how to communicate with your visitors, through design, messaging and copy; the tone of your website, once decided, is embodied in each aspect of your online representation.   

What message of value will your users respond to best, and what is the proper way to get it across to them through a website? Since your website is often the first experience a user can have with your brand or company, your website should deliver your company’s message and create the right expectations for your users from the get go. From the perfect typeface to an intuitive structure, your users should understand your offerings without even realizing that they are learning about them.

In this economy, when consumers aren’t looking for the next trend but rather for a good investment, demonstations of value encourage your web visitors to convert into customers. A well-designed website is often your first impression. Investing in a web design company that understands and can execute an accurate vision of your company can be your first step toward enhancing your company’s value.