What we did

Headstand Media created and executed a plan to bring a more strategic, improved and memorable user experience to the Magenium Solutions website. During the discovery phase we identified content for key target audiences, developed a search strategy, created in-depth wireframes that outlined all page types and created an updated site/content architecture.

In the following creative design phase we designed an updated user interface and experience for the website that incorporated a modern look with specific action-oriented call-outs. Headstand then converted the final approved interface designs into HTML/CSS/Javascript templates.

These master design template files were then integrated into Magenium’s Sitecore content management system my Magenium developers.

Project goals

• Increase the number of new business leads and inquiries
• Create a more remarkable and effective user experience
• Provide more in-depth content and information around the solutions and technology that Magenium offers

Do you need help developing a customized digital strategy for your company? Contact Headstand Media to learn how we can help.

What we did

Throughout this project, it was our goal create a new website for Heritage that would look great, be easy to navigate and that would drive more patient referrals to their office. To accomplish this we updated the entire user interface, developed a more intuitive content organization plan, build the site with search engine optimization best practices and gave Heritage the ability to create regular and timely site content with a new blog.

Moving their site from a static framework into a CMS (WordPress) has empowered them to edit and add content to their site in a strategic and timely manner.

Custom staff filter

One UI challenge we faced was how to help users find the right staff member with a set of expertise that fits their needs in a location that is convenient to them. To solve this problem, we created a dynamic custom staff filter using Javascript jQuery that allows each visitor to select an area of focus (i.e. Addiction, Family Therapy, PTSD) and their desired location. You can view how this staff filter works here.

Looking forward

We are very excited about the potential improvements Heritage Professional Associates will experience in new client referrals due to the many improvements on this site. We are monitoring their site analytics and anticipate being able to report significant contributions to the practice as a result of their improved search engine performance. Although it is too early to make any final assessments, it is encouraging to note that in the first week of the new site, it received 40 more Google search referrals that their average weekly Google referral rate from all of 2012.

The Question

Thanks go to Tom Martin for writing this great blog post - How Much Should A Digital Marketing Strategy Cost? - and articulating a thought-provoking and assumption-challenging response to this question.

Tom writes that when he is confronted with this question, he asks a simple question back:

“How long does it take to think a thought?”

This question puts the questioner in the position of having to think about the assumptions in their question.

The Problem

We live in a world where more and more elements of it are being measured, analyzed and bottom-lined. Yet, the creative and artistic process cannot be valued in these kinds of equations.

Tom is right in asserting:

“Great Marketing Is Built On Great Thought”

Or as I would rephrase it in our business context:

Great digital strategy is built on great thinking.

In the last section of his blog post, Tom asks,

“What Kind Of Thought Would You Like Today?”

When it all boils down, clients don’t want half-baked, small, limited, uninformed, average thinking from their digital strategy partner. They want creative, grand, custom, unique and exciting ideas that will add value to their business or organization.

“The innovative marketing idea that drives a 20% increase in sales is just as valuable to the client if thought of in five minutes or five days.” – Tom Martin

So true.

The Answer

It seems to me that a digital strategy should cost the customer an amount that is fair based upon its worth to their business, organization or brand. This view is my underlying philosophy when communicating about this topic with clients and prospects.

So, thanks again to Tom Martin for this great blog post! I now have some better thoughts and language with which to engage with our customers and prospects around the value of our digital strategy services.

For the first 12 weeks in 2013, we will be engaged in helping one of our larger corporate customers to assess a section of their company intranet that serves approximately 30,000 employees. The goal of this first phase project is to determine the best way to reorganize the content to reflect the company’s new enterprise level business structure, and make the intranet a more effective business tool for its users.

There are many elements of digital strategy that still apply to a corporate intranet:

• User experience / creative visual design
• Content organization / navigation systems
• Search feature capabilities (within the private intranet, not public Google)
• Social media-like features such as internal blogs, discussion/commenting, content tagging, rankings and ratings of content by users, video, etc.
• User generated content
• Personalization of content
• Workflow, business procedures and standards
• Document and resource libraries
• Digital asset management
• Mobile access and apps

Headstand Media will be applying these and other digital strategy principles as we study the existing intranet and make recommendations for its redesign and reorganization.

These early 2009 conversations lead to Patrick hiring Headstand Media to repurpose his static HTML site into WordPress, adding features that allowed him to add, edit and delete content, and implement a website content strategy that we educated him about and described for him to follow. This he did, and did very well. He treated us like a valued business partner, calling and emailing questions and ideas in a free flowing collaborative manner.

Digital Strategy Results

The results in that first year were amazing. By 2010 his site traffic had more than tripled, and many of those unique visitors made an inquiry, which lead to a new client relationship, which grew his practice. After making additional changes and implementing even more fine tuned strategies that we suggested, in the following year the site traffic almost doubled with similar conversion to new business.

In 2011, Headstand Media launched a second generation website design with more fine tuned adjustments and changes to the site search strategy. Included in the new strategy are client testimonials and videos, syndicated on YouTube, giving Richards Patent Law a presence in this important content channel. The user experience for the site visitor has been greatly enhanced with upgraded professional photography by an award-winning Chicago Tribune photographer, and a cleaner and easier to understand navigation system.

Google Search Results

Keyword Phrases and Google Search Results as of the date of this post:

• Chicago Patent Law = #1
• Chicago Patent Lawyer = #1
• Chicago Patent Lawyers = #1
• Chicago Patent Attorney = #1
• Chicago Patent Attorneys = #2

Depending on your location, Richards Patent Law will also be #1 for more generic terms like patent law, patent lawyer, and patent attorney.

The Big Question

Can a digital strategy really make a difference to a business or organization? The answer for Richards Patent Law is a resounding Yes! Can it make a difference for you? The answer is the same if the following key conditions are met:

• An openness and commitment to educating oneself about the foundational principles communicated by Headstand Media.
• A willingness to change internal culture and ways of thinking and doing business for the sake of growing your business or organization.
• The wisdom and perseverance to invest time, resources and money in implementing the strategy and giving it a chance to work.
• An experimental attitude that collaborates with Headstand Media to measure the data, interpret the results and make continual and gradual changes over an adequate and reasonable period of time.

Need help with your digital strategy?

If you’d like to learn more about how a targeted digital strategy can help you or your business, please contact Headstand Media today. We’d love to talk to you.

Our task is to convert these disconnected and widespread procedures into a web based application that the staff can use on a daily basis to increase their management productivity and efficiency.

The first phase of the project was to gather deeper information about these processes and refine a functional flow chart that describes what the application needs to do. Our programmers spent time with the staff asking questions and interviewing them about the process. Additions, alterations and improvements were made along the way.

A development site has now been set up at Heroku, and rapid development is being aided by using the Twitter bootstrap graphics library.

We plan to share more insight and experiences on the Ruby on Rails development framework and platform as we complete the project.

Photography

One of Spot’s stated goals was to have fresh new imagery that communicated who they are and could be used for both web and print. To meet this need, Headstand planned and executed a day-long photo shoot at Spot’s state-of-the-art facility in downtown Chicago; included in the process was creative direction, collaboration, and post-production work. We were really happy with the results, which were able to highlight Spot’s great space, people, and culture.

Web design and implementation

Central to Spot’s new digital strategy was a brand new website. Based on the scope and requirements of the project, we recommended and built the new website using the WordPress CMS. Our creative team worked closely with the Spot team during the Discovery process and delivered multiple web design concepts, which were then tweaked and honed down into a final design.

Once the design concept was finalized, Headstand moved forward with production and built the custom WordPress theme. We also managed the successful testing and launch of the new website.

Print design

Spot’s company brochure plays an important role in recruiting and communications, and was in need of a redesign. In a similar process as the website designing, Headstand developed multiple brochure concepts and worked with Spot to finalize a new direction for the brochure. One of the most important aspects of the new brochure was that it needed to complement and draw inspiration from the new web design in its look and feel. In today’s technology-centered marketplace, it is critical that print design follow web design and not the other way around.

Writing for the web

Working on a new website and brochure means going through a lot of written content. Spot looked to Headstand Media to both learn its business and create new web and print copy based on Spot’s existing resources. We streamlined and refreshed its core messaging and provided copy-writing and editing throughout the entire project.

More about Spot Trading, LLC

Spot Trading is a technology-focused, proprietary option trading firm specializing in listed derivatives. They understand option pricing and analytics, but also have the experience and infrastructure to maintain a fundamental understanding of the equity markets. Spot excels at both the art—the fundamental analysis—and the science—the quantitative analysis—of trading. To learn more, visit Spot on the web at spottradingllc.com.

With the official announcement of the Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform for Customer Experience Management in June, you may be confused with updated product terminology and wonder how and where the Day CQ products you may currently use fit in the new platform.  To better understand this, let’s take a step back and review how Adobe is evolving the platform.

In a world of always connected, multi-channel, multi-touchpoint consumers, the ability to deliver rich, immersive digital interactions across the many devices they may use to connect to that content has been paramount to any organizations success.  Day Software’s web content management system (WCMS), CQ5 has always been known as a leader in delivering this type of flexibility and functionality.  The integration with the broader Adobe enterprise product set took the CQ5 JCR content repository and made it the core of the new Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform (ADEP), replacing the existing LiveCycle repository.  ADEP also uses the existing Day web applications (now called Web Experience Management) and collaboration tools and extends the functionality significantly by integrating the Adobe Flash, Flex Framework and the powerful Online Marketing Suite powered by Omniture.

So the good news is that as an existing Day CQ5 customer, you will be very familiar with the core tool set as very little has changed for you.  The biggest change comes in how Adobe will package and license the capabilities going forward.

For additional information, you can read:

• Adobe Web Experience Management Solution Brief
• Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform Solution Brief
• Blog post by Tim Anderson, ITWriting.com

What was the Day Software Ignite Conference has now been folded into the Adobe Digital Enterprise Summit. Headstand Media is proud to be a Silver sponsor of this inaugural conference, scheduled to be held October 3-4, 2011 in Los Angeles, California.

Join us at the Adobe Digital Enterprise Summit 2011 and:

• See the future of optimized customer experience across all digital channels.
• Discover innovative new approaches and gain competitive advantage for your organization.
• Learn directly from your peers and industry thought leaders, and get inspired.
• Get a sneak peek of Adobe product and solution road-maps

The conference is designed for business and technical leaders who are driving customer experience initiatives within their organizations. From the customer’s point of view, Adobe and their partners will explore how to start  to define and deliver the ideal customer journey. You will leave with the knowledge of how to gain competitive advantage in the new digital world. There will be inspiring keynotes and informative breakout sessions where you will hear from Adobe customers and partners who are behind some of the world’s best customer experiences. Learn more about Adobe CQ5.

If you are already planning on attending this summit, or are interested in joining us, please let us know!

Headstand Media is pleased to announce the launch of a brand new website for True North Venture Partners.  True North Venture Partners is an early stage venture capital company that focuses in early stage companies with disruptive innovations that can reshape socially important industries such as energy, water, agriculture and waste.

True North wanted the website to reflect the essence of the clean technology sectors they are investing in.  Headstand Media provided True North Venture Partners with a new web solution that could also be leveraged for other future portfolio company additions: a design and structure that is easily maintained and scalable as well.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

The new site, designed and built by Headstand Media, uses WordPress content management software to deliver a custom themed look & feel that reflects the nature of the True North business.

Visit www.truenorthvp.com