The best answer is found by considering your own needs, knowledge of the process and available resources.  Still, because I hear this question so frequently, here’s my two cents in the hopes it helps you in your own researching phase.  Of course, I’m also always happy to guide you to a decision in person, as well!

How to choose an Agency

You’ve most likely realized that working with an agency brings the benefit of having a team of experts, each adept at their particular area and experienced at working with others to produce results no one could achieve on their own.  At this point, the choice should become less about price, and more about fit.  Here are a few questions to ask yourself as you begin the research phase:

Has the organization does this before?

Yes, your needs are unique, but the organization you work with should be able to provide comparable examples to the work you need under discussion. At a minimum, look for signs that the organization has skills that will be easily transferrable to your project!

Can the organization provide comprehensive strategic thinking?

Most agencies can throw together a website these days.  However, the recommendations provided must consider your long-term organizational goals.  If you’re not discussing the ways this strategy will provide a return on your investment, you’re likely missing the boat.  Also, make sure your team is bringing ideas, recommendations, and long term support as your needs or problems change.  A great article we’ve posted on in the past about digital vs. integrated marketing teams was written a few years ago by our own Topher Overstreet.

Are the recommendations provided scalable?  Do they integrate with your full plan?

Your team is responsible for ensuring your project meets your immediate needs, but should also be an advisor to keep you abreast of the latest trends and ideas to further enhance your business.  Additionally your agency should steer you in the right direction because a tool meets your needs, not because it’s something they like doing.  (A great read about custom Content Management Systems by Doug Karr can be found  here.)

Do you have an excellent rapport with the team you’ll be working with?

Expect to have a few bumps in the road.  Your agency team should be your advocate, and will occasionally need to ask difficult, challenging questions.  Ensure you’re comfortable that the team you’re working with will do so, and that when they do, you’ll be comfortable answering them honestly.   Do you feel like you’re interviewing these guys?  Run.  Like.  Hell.

Does the team have great references?

Most agencies have case studies of the work they’re proud of on their site.  If you’re happy with the look and feel on their portfolio, ask for references and ask about their satisfaction with the work throughout the process, and after the project was completed.   The number one question:  was it effective?   The number two question: was the process fun?

Making a choice about the organization to work does require research and a great deal of trust.  Above all, make sure you’re comfortable that the team you work with brings the right mix of skills to make your project both effective AND enjoyable.  I’d love to know – what research did you do when you chose a team to work with?   What other steps or questions would you recommend?

Mutt Strut, a dog walk around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, is the signature fundraising event for the Humane Society of Indianapolis (IndyHumane), bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars for the non-profit organization every year.

The 2011 IndyMuttStrut.org website

Several years ago, the event had only one section dedicated to it on IndyHumane’s website. For an event of this magnitude, this had to change. IndyHumane needed to raise more money at the event to support its services, and it needed to do that by sharing more info in better ways with its followers.

In 2009, IndyHumane chose xiik to design and develop Mutt Strut’s first dedicated website. In addition to giving Mutt Strut an enhanced brand experience for supporters, the site integrated the event registration system IndyHumane had successfully used in prior years. That year’s event broke previous fundraising and attendance records, attracting thousands of people and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In 2010, IndyHumane worked with xiik to redesign the site again, giving it a smoother interface, the ability to feature videos on the homepage, and a comprehensive FAQ section. The event broke its previous records again, in spite of a torrential day-long downpour.

This year, in addition to hiring xiik to develop the back-end of its newly redesigned website, IndyHumane again used xiik to redesign IndyMuttStrut.org, integrating design elements from the event’s new branding, photos from past events, and RSS feeds with updates on fundraising goals. The event raised more money than last year.

The success of the past several Mutt Struts have been due in part to IndyHumane’s ability to share the most pertinent information about such a big event in a simple yet effective way. How many times have you planned to go to a special event – a concert, fundraiser, fair, etc. – only to be frustrated by the lack of information online? A dedicated, easy-to- use website helps any event.

Whether you’re a for-profit business or a non-profit organization, you need a good web presence to promote your major efforts – it’s the easiest, fastest way to get the most important information out to the most valuable people.

Have you used a particularly great special-event website lately? Seen one in need of a touchup? Or do you know of a great event that doesn’t even have a web presence and is missing out on its potential? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

FMC looked to xiik to design and develop their new site, which recently helped them attract and register participants for their campaign-building town hall events — critical social opportunities to spread their message. The events promoted on the site also helped them garner national media attention.

In a featured article on the Huffington Post this week, FMC project director Daniel Heimpel writes about the education needs of children in foster care. He also describes their successful series of town hall events produced in May.

Driving attendance to FMC’s events was easier thanks to their website, where their content management system enabled them to incorporate a simple registration form alongside engaging program information — a vital interactive moment to compel people who are casually interested into confirmed event attendees. Additionally, the site’s ubiquitous social media integration allowed for attendees and community partners to share event content across their online networks, expanding FMC’s reach beyond their own resources.

The ease of use of FMC’s site is a tremendous benefit to them. And if you’re part of the typical non-profit — short on time, capital, and human resources — such a site could be immensely beneficial to your organization, too.

Unsatisfied with your current site’s capabilities to draw attention to your cause and loop people into your mission? Let us know in the comments section or contact us so we can help you reach your goals.

Today, we are determining what makes a holidayized website successful by comparing a few of this season’s examples: ThinkGeek, CGSociety, and Target.

ThinkGeek.com

ThinkGeek, a website that sells cool products for technophiles, geeks and the occasional monkey, went all out this season with their holiday theme. And it really isn’t until you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the footer before you fully experience the unique landscape they have created. In the header, we find the hint of Christmas from the red bulb peeking from behind the logo and large snowflakes scattered horizontally. The blue gradient background with subtle white snow throughout the entire background really helps connect the footer design with the rest of the site.

But, the most effective feature from this entire design can be found in the footer where the monkey on the left and even small, colored mini rockets appear when you scroll down to the bottom as if they were taking off from the ground plane with the trees. Even the presents and railway emerge from the ground — an intriguing effect. This is by far one of the best implemented and unique holiday designs I have seen. The site does a great job of borrowing the language of the holiday in a way that still makes sense for its brand.

The effect is stronger brand impression of ThinkGeek. Win-win.

CGSociety.org

As one of the websites I visit more frequently, I was excited to see CGSociety implement such an elegant take to holiday design. The CGSociety is the most respected and accessible global organization for creative digital artists. As you would image, they have digital artists on staff to design the print-worthy illustrations we find in the header and to program its snowfall effect. Though it is strikingly similar to that of WordPress.com’s falling snow optionit is nonetheless a delightful attention grabber.

CGSociety has even amended its usual logo image to include a wreath and changed the colors of the title text to green, a bold move for the sake of branding! My only critique on the design would be that the treetops, at certain points, actually are tall enough to disappear behind functional elements like the user log-in input fields. It is a slight distraction, but fortunately is not something that ruins the design.

Target.com

When searching for the examples I wanted to use for this post, Target.comwas one site I never expected to drop into my “not so good” bucket this year. Right off the bat, I felt overwhelmed with the Target red, which already dominates their website, even without the help of the sidebar decorations. Don’t get me wrong: the way Target has used subtle holiday hints throughout the rest of the site within images, fonts and ad decor is very effective and does a very good job of hinting the holidays. The sidebars, however, are complete overkill.

My suggestion would be to somehow introduce a new color or find a new way to use the red along the border of the website. Unfortunately, once you navigate to any internal page of Target’s site, these already distracting decorations start to animate and spin around, making them even more distracting than they were before! It is a very well illustrated holiday graphic, but steals focus from the shopping experience.

The simple fact is that these holiday designs may not be the most important aspect of visual hierarchy and can even at times (like Target.com) be distracting to the real intentions of the website. We have two very good examples of holidayizing and one that is not all bad, but just isn’t as effective as is it should be. Moral of the story is to further engage your audience with your new designs rather than distracting them. A holiday can be a great excuse to enhance your branding and roll out new designs that help attract more viewers or at least keep them on your site longer.

This year at xiik, we started arranging ways to get our own clients ready for the holiday season. Our long time friends over at Stiglmeier Sausage Co. have received great responses since a snowstorm came rolling by their website, leaving just enough snow to show it came by. We would love to see other great examples of companies deciding to holidayize their websites! If you have any in mind or stumble across exceptional examples, don’t be shy. Go ahead and leave a comment with them, so we can check them out for ourselves!

Our support didn’t end there. On the day of the Mutt Strut xiik launched the Web site for the 2011 Indianapolis Poster Pooch Contest, a contest that will determine which Indianapolis-area dog will be the face of next year’s Mutt Strut.  Dogs are voted on by their human companions, who can log onto the site to vote for their favorites. The winning dog will be decided by having the most votes when the site closes at midnight on Friday, July 9.

Indianapolis-area residents can submit photos of their adorable pooch that can be voted on by the public. To register your pooch, you must make a minimum $5 donation and each vote is a $1 donation. Be prepared to enlist your friends and family to vote for your dog – the current leader has more than 300 votes. Have no fear, though, because voting is still open for several more weeks so there is plenty of time to get a rousing campaign for your pooch going. You can even use the site to solicit support from your friends and family by sending emails encouraging them to vote for your pooch.

And if you don’t have a pooch, surely you know someone who does, or you enjoy looking at photos of cute pooches. Log on today and find your favorite – you’ll be helping provide a second chance to the animals at the Humane Society of Indianapolis who dream of one day being a poster pooch (or kitty!).

Whether you want to show off your pooch, or see others’ favorite pets, we hope you join us in supporting this great cause.

So, how does a company like xiik relate to an athlete like Shaun White?

Like him, there are some mad skillz here at xiik. Maybe not quite his snowboarding skills, but we’re pretty savvy when it comes to marketing. We have years of marketing experience, boat loads of creativity and the ability to execute those ideas through web, video and print. Every day we challenge ourselves and our clients to pull out the “big guns” and craft up a product that will be mind-blowing. If Shaun White needed an interactive website, video, marketing materials or anything else to sustain his brand, he could come to us and let us “put down tricks” in the form of interactive marketing.

If our team took a vacation to go take snowboarding lessons from Shuan White himself, I’m pretty sure none of us would be doubting what the pro instructed us to do. We would let the professional do his job because he has mastered his craft! Sure we can give our suggestions where we see fit, but at the end of the day we respect his gold medals. The same can be said for our company. We love getting input from our clients and should always be a part of the creative process, but our expertise helps us guide our clients down path safely and effectively. We might not be competing in Vancouver this winter, but for everyone here at xiik, a client’s success is our gold medal.

Read more about White’s accomplishments here. Read more about xiik’s here.

Everyone has heard of Netflix in some way or another by now. The ads are everywhere and the service has rapidly become a household staple for many.  I finally took the plunge myself and purchased a membership. Like me, most people used to drive to Blockbuster only to find that the movie they wanted to rent wasn’t in stock or was being rented by someone else. This obviously wasn’t cutting it for the “fast lane” society that, at the time, we were becoming. So a couple of dudes from California thought up and pitched a service that would allow customers to rent movies from a website on a pay-per-rental basis, and it eventually evolved into the flat monthly rate service it is today. So, how did this all come to be?

Since their launch, Netflix has encountered several other start-ups trying to sell the same service, but nobody has been able to do it as well as them. Wal-Mart and even Amazon (in Germany and the UK) have tried to release similar online services through their companies to their already loyal customers, but they eventually fizzled out. Wal-Mart now even has a cross-promotional agreement with Netflix! A partnership like that is huge — consider how pervasive Wal-Mart is and the comparatively tinier size that is and always will be Netflix. No offense to Netflix, we can’t all be Wal-Mart.

Now to my favorite part: the website. Netflix’s usability is amazing – from recommending movies it thinks you would like, to letting you stream many of the popular movies straight onto your computer or X-Box 360, PS3 and soon, the Wii. As a new customer, it only took me a couple minutes to get used to the site and how it all worked. That is incredibly important to keep in mind when designing the functionality of your websites. You could have a beautiful design, but if the layout is jumbled or confusing, it will not keep the user engaged and you’ve just lost a visitor or potential customer.

Another thing I love about the Netflix site is the way everything is interconnected. As I’m browsing through the legions of movies in the Netflix database, I have the option of adding them to my DVD Queue or Instant Queue. The way the site is connected through your personal profile is by the rating system and movie recommendations. As you rate more and more movies, Netflix gets smarter and better at guessing what movies you would like. Just an FYI, my queue is already big enough to last me months!

Netflix is also changing the business plans of other similar companies. More and more Blockbusters are closing their doors and driving to the movie rental store on a Friday night may soon be obsolete. We’ve also seen other businesses pick up on the practices of Netflix. Gamefly is one example of this. They have a similar site as Netflix for video game rental. Most hardcore gamers hate leaving the couch, so having their next game delivered right to their front door changes everything. Genius!  Red Box is a bit different, but nevertheless changing the way we rent movies. You can find these in places like McDonalds or neighborhood grocery stores. Red Box is, quite literally, a red box that has several new release movies in stock. Just slide your credit card, choose your movie and the box pops out your DVD. Consider it a vending machine for movies. Movies are only one dollar per night, so you won’t have to worry about late fees.

The changing movie rental industry is easy to use, personalized and fun, which for me equals addictive. Entertainment is a booming business integral to our lives and culture, so there will always be new and classic films to watch and great services allowing you to do so. People will always be searching for the perfect movie for their next date or, for aspiring filmmakers like myself, research and inspiration for professional endeavors. Whatever the need, Netflix has really started a revolution in entertainment, putting practically any film and TV series at the tips of our fingers. Go check it out and consider the free 14 day trial. After all, it’s FREE! Do you already have a Netflix account? What are your thoughts on the service?

As the holiday season rolls around, lately we’ve been noticing some significant changes to websites that aim to spruce up marketing (no pun intended?) and maybe catch the attention of a few more customers. This comes as no surprise, though. Just as countless stores of all types redecorate their display windows for the holidays, the same concept applies for most websites, too. And it makes perfect sense! Why not, right? In this digital age, it becomes easier and easier for us to make purchases online within the comfort of our home. “Look ma, no waiting in lines!”

Most of the time, shopping online is your safest route because you can find discounted items simply because of the e-commerce system: These products don’t need to be shipped to individual retailers, but instead can be sold straight from the manufacturer; hence, cheaper costs for them and less of a hole burned in your wallet. I just love saving money while in my jammies.

Enough small talk, though: let’s get to some solid examples, shall we? Whether a company has completely revamped their site with a whole new theme or is just adding small flourishes here and there that add some holiday cheer, the act of change and keeping your branding fresh is a great way to engage new audiences or break expectations with repeat customers. All of this serves to keep viewers on your site for just a little longer. One site in particular stood out to me and actually inspired this post: WordPress. Yeah, not much of an obvious change at first, but if you stay on the page for an extra few seconds, you will see snow start to fall past your screen. To me, this is simple yet brilliant — an example of bringing a real world element with an emotional resonance into the digital sphere. And of course, after I looked into it, you can even make your blog snow if you have a WordPress account just by clicking a couple buttons.

Some other sites worth noting are Just Pop In, Target, Overstock.com, and even Ebay. As you can see, they didn’t require much at all to change the look and feel of these sites from their everyday standard to winter wonderlands. Consider branding yourself for the holiday season: add a new banner to your page header, throw some ribbon around that logo, or even add your own holiday gift browsing widget like Walmart created! Some efforts may be more trackable than others, but there’s no doubt that if done right, it’ll make everyone feel pretty good.

Have you stumbled across any good sites that are trying to jingle some bells or let it snow? Did they warm your heart like cocoa or leave you saying Bah humbug? Leave the link(s) in our comments section. We’d love to see them!

It’s because they aren’t doing anything to promote their website! It’s like having a phone, but not giving out the number.

There is a difference between a website and a web presence, and there are several things you can do to ensure that your site gains standing on the Internet. First off, you must have a plan for marketing once you have launched your site and be ready to bombard the users online with your brand and message. If there isn’t a well-formed plan, it will not be as effective. Here’s a basic checklist that can help you harness the capabilities of the web:

- Become active on Social Media websites, but be smart about this.
- Add the URL to business cards, postcards, holiday cards, etc.
- Write periodic newsletters to keep your site’s information current and provide additional value for your visitors.
- Send permission-based emails to your contact list and include a link back to your site.
- Fine tune your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
- Keep an eye on your traffic. Google analytics is a great, free resource for this.
- If your company has vehicles, decal them tastefully with your logo and URL.
- Throw a sweepstakes to promote your new launch.
- Place effectively targeted ads on other sites that your target audience is frequenting.
- Become involved in online discussion forums on sites that your target audience is frequenting.
- Audit all existing site content and update regularly to stay relevant.
- When you think you’re finished, don’t stop! This is an ongoing process.

It is easy to get lost in the tangled mess of websites that are out there these days. You have to become familiar with the successful websites with whom you are competing, but you also can’t completely disregard all of the amateur sites that flood the world wide web. Just be mindful that hundreds of thousands of other companies are attempting the exact same thing you are — trying to create an online presence — and it’s those things that you do uniquely that will set you apart. So, build it, promote it, get feedback, tweak it, fine tune it — and they will come.

Green integrated marketing offers new avenues for sustainability, efficiency and cost savings on a macro level. Cut down on energy-wasting and pollution-generating products like newspapers, magazines, brochures, business cards, flyers or even coupons and think more along the lines of internet-based marketing and advertising. This is not to say you can’t ever use those media, but rather to remind you that there are plenty of other possibilities out there to integrate into your marketing strategies. Heck, here at xiik we still use business cards and do quite a bit of print design and advertising, but the majority of our work is centered around interactive marketing, which tracks important data and offers more measurable results. The difference lies in how intelligently you proportion each marketing tactic. Use all media — but focus your use of natural resources to the most targeted audience possible. The result is a more finely tuned strategy, a more effective use of budget, and a quantifiable improvement in your company’s sustainability efforts.

So what are some ways to cut back on costs and efficiently run your business? There are plenty, but I’d like to highlight one that breaks into creativity I thought I’d never see — and it’s so simple! A firm from the Netherlands called SPRANQ developed the Ecofont, an eco-friendly font! Choosing this font when printing uses 20% less ink because the design employs the genius idea of cutting tiny holes out of each letter — thus reducing the printable area of each letter and also your ink costs. At the same time, there is no loss in readability since the letter outlines remain intact! Did I mention it’s free to download?!

Like the Ecofont, there are plenty of resources and creative techniques you can integrate into your current marketing and business processes. Turn a mailing campaign into an email blast or email your memos instead of printing them. Turn your standard brochure into an interactive online experience with video, slideshows, games, or other participatory activities — you’ll better engage your clients and reduce printing costs. Or send a well-designed print piece to a select audience and include a call-to-action in it that drives them to your website. At the pace the internet and online marketing is going, paper materials will continue to decline. Take the Amazon Kindle for instance — an electronic device that consumes a very low amount of energy to power downloadable books that you read right off the screen. The screen’s luminance has been designed to reduce usual eye strain and mimic paper. Apple is working on a similar tablet concept, rumored to be released in early 2010. So, join the bandwagon and start leveraging technology to cut back and be more efficient. Save mother earth. All the cool kids are doing it!