Just like a storefront or a handshake, your website’s homepage is the first impression that you give to a potential client. A great homepage experience will draw visitors into the world of your business. And a mediocre homepage will leave viewers cold, regardless of how great the content on the inner pages is. Designing a captivating homepage is not just about aesthetics; it’s about creating an immersive experience that engages users and compels them to dive deeper into your website. After more than a decade designing and developing all kinds of websites, we’ve learned a few things about how t ..read more

Congrats! You’re thinking of undertaking a website redesign project. This is a great opportunity to put your best foot forward while increasing the visibility and profitability of your business. You’ll be learning a lot as you go through this process. Today, we want to talk about one important aspect of the redesign process: that is, managing stakeholders. Undertaking a website redesign project is a major endeavor for a business, and it involves numerous stakeholders. Managing these stakeholders effectively is crucial and it’s often one of the more overlooked aspects of the overall project. St ..read more

Collaboration and Alchemy: Developing Web Designs For The Next Era of the Web Recently, we’ve been lucky to be developing websites that were designed by some of the leading web design firms in the country. This process has led us to reflect on the qualities that go into a great collaboration–-that sense of alchemy when the creative energy of the designer and the technical proficiency of the developer gel together to create something greater than what either had imagined. As Chicago-based web developers, we’re lucky to have some of the great design firms right here in our backyard. Here’s a bit ..read more

Crafting an Effective Call to Action: Taking the Step From Visitor to Client So, you’re driving a significant amount of traffic to your website through good rankings and SEO. Great! But visitors aren’t getting in touch. What’s the problem here? It might be that you have a CTA problem. Crafting a compelling Call to Action (CTA) is a crucial part of increasing engagement, generating leads, and ultimately converting visitors into customers on a Business-to-Business (B2B) website. A well-designed and strategically placed CTA can significantly impact the success of your online presence. Here’s an i ..read more

Ten Steps To Digitally Market Your Local Business And Succeed Online.   Congrats. You’ve built a new local business and you want to spread the word. Time to start bringing the customers in! But how do you most effectively reach them? Where do you find them and how do you inform them that you’re the new business to check out? A successful digital marketing campaign for your local business can make a huge difference in how your business gets its footing and flourishes. Taking a bit of time to devote to marketing activities as you get started will pay back in spades when the customers start ..read more

Crafting an Engaging “About Us” Page for Your Website   In its best form, a well-crafted “About Us” page is a huge asset to your website. It gives visitors the opportunity to emotionally connect with your business, to learn what drives it, and to create a lasting impression. But, an “About Us” page that is poorly and hastily written will have the opposite effect – it will leave potential customers cold and unconnected. Your website’s “About Us” page is often the first place visitors turn to learn more about you, your brand, and your mission. It’s a pivotal element in establishing trust, b ..read more

How To Write Content For A Successful B2B Website   If we had to make a list of the most important problems that impede otherwise well-designed and -developed websites, there’s one problem that would certainly top the list. That would be: not understanding your audience. For us, understanding who your audience is and why they have come to your site is the most crucial part of understanding how to serve them. One of the ways that this often rears its head is when we see B2B sites that are created with more of a B2C approach. In this article, we’re going to talk about some of the steps to m ..read more

How Chat GPT and Other Generative AI is Changing Search   You’ve probably heard about Chat GPT and other large-language-model generative AI that has been all over the news recently. Depending on what business sector you are in, this may or may not be something you’re actively discussing at work. But one thing seems certain: with its ability to understand and generate human-like text, these AI tools will have huge impacts on nearly every business in the coming years. This is a technology with a very large potential to change the way we interact with the world. One aspect of life where AI s ..read more

Wouldn’t it be great if every one of the people who came to your website became a client? This process of visitors turning into clients is called the “conversion funnel” in the online marketing world. While it’s unlikely to turn every last one of your visitors into clients, optimizing your conversion funnel is essential for maximizing the business that you can get from your website. In this article, we will delve into the concept of the conversion funnel, explore its various stages, and discuss effective strategies to optimize each step along the way. At the end, we’ll pose a few questions tha ..read more

Increasing Engagement with Web Animation   When you see something move, your brain is hardwired to notice it. Our ability to react to movement that we see in the corner of our eye could mean the difference between life and death in the bush. The fight or flight response that naturally kicks in also sends adrenaline to your brain, energizing you and focusing your attention. People working in marketing know this and they use movement to encourage you to pay attention to their messages. Moving images grace billboards, the sides of buses, and advertisements around the world. Our eye is drawn ..read more