Auction Orange came to us with no data on how visitors were reaching or interacting within the online space. We worked to design and program a new site, equipped with full tracking, including a usability analysis featured to the left. However, our contribution didn’t stop at the design. We worked to understand the overall goal of the website redesign.

The client wanted an easy way to update and provide information to their target audience. We recommended they design an email template that could be sent to their database of customers, and then create landing pages for each event to help measure the success.

The client uses our Fetch Content Management and Mail system. Both tools are incredibly user-friendly when making updates to a website and marketing to clients via email. Action Orange Fetch email template design featured to the right.

With these tools at their fingertips, the Auction Orange website has received ~20K in page visits since launching in February. The most impressive success Auction Orange has experienced is engaging this audience. The click through rate on most emails is 60%, double the industry average of ~30%. You can follow the email schedule by the analytics graph below charting visits to the site.

Congrats on your success Auction Orange. Keep up the good work. For more information on successes beyond the design, visit our portfolio of work at http://www.wilmingtondesignco.com/our-work.

The post Toot Your Horn Auction Orange appeared first on Wilmington Design Company Blog.

We welcome you to visit the new standalone web site designed for Red Door Homes based out of Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Red Door Homes experienced success with a tactic tested using pay per click advertising. We proposed targeting an audience searching for modular or mobile homes online and educating them on the benefits of the Red Door Home product.

Through this success the marketing team at Red Door Homes, under the guidance of our creative team, developed a content strategy and a new site for the Fayetteville location. The updated pages include a wealth of knowledge for prospective buyers and includes information specific to Red Door’s Fayetteville home base and North Carolina buyers.

Red Door homes welcomes you to browse their new site by visiting, http://www.reddoorhomesnc.com. View additional web design and search marketing strategies by visiting, http://www.wilmingtondesignco.com.

The post Welcome to the New Red Door appeared first on Wilmington Design Company Blog.

Conceptualized after reviewing website analytics and discovering visitors were downloading coupons from each stores unique webpage, the creative team approached the shopping center marketing team with the My Mayfaire recommendation.

Designed, built and programmed to extend the shopping center brand and consistently reach customers with relevant store savings, the tool launched with much fanfare. Within hours of being available to the public, hundreds of users registered and started taking advantage of store savings.

To start your own My Mayfaire experience, visit http://www.mayfairetown.com, sign up, select your favorite stores and you’ll receive customized emails with savings from your personalized store selections.? The best part of all

The post Whose Mayfaire? My Mayfaire appeared first on Wilmington Design Company Blog.

As topics were brainstormed to kick off our regularly scheduled blogging, we realized formal introductions had not been made. We are excited to announce that we are filling our office space with awesome new talent, AKA “The newbies.”

If you’ve been in the office recently you may have already met the fabulous Amy Miller. Seasoned in the art of graphics, she joined our team as a designer in February. We’ve kept her very busy creating original design solutions for many of our clients. And along the way learned she’s had 25 different addresses. Sketchy.

Get to know Amy…

Then there’s the newest “newbie”, Melissa Yelverton. Hired just over a month ago as an Internet Marketing Coordinator, she’s helping execute search marketing strategies and learning she has mad analytical skills. She’s been quoted as saying she loves pay per click and classic rock around the office. We double checked her birth date at the door.

Get to know Melissa…

That’s the biggest internal news we’ve got to share for now. If you miss seeing the rest of our smiling faces you can always visit us (or our alter egos) at http://www.wilmingtondesignco.com/our-company

The post The Newbies… appeared first on Wilmington Design Company Blog.

“The Internet should be approached as part of an overall marketing strategy.”

The prominent trends focus on comprehensive strategies, sophisticated measurement and a shift in the perception of search. Below is a summary of what we’ve found to be hot trends, including our down-to-earth commentary on how clients should approach these topics.

Rankings are NOT dead
Unless Google has changed the terminology of positions within a SERP (Search Engine Result Page), rankings are still a measurable part of an online marketing program. However, tactics to achieve rank, our perception of success and measurement has evolved.

Analytics programs provide sophisticated tools to measure organic traffic, which allows for deeper analysis of online strategies, as well as the ability for marketers to review unique visitors, bounce rate, time on site. Concurrently, search engine algorithms that determine rank, have evolved to incorporate various off page elements and social triggers as major influencers.

Marketers are trending to measure success on more than rankings, but are not abandoning the practice altogether. A ranking report is a handy reference when explaining increases in traffic and justifying recommendations.

SMI (Search Marketing Integration)
Search is advancing towards strategy driving tactics as opposed to earlier years when tactics trumped strategy. Engines continue to refine their ability to recognize and reward natural marketing elements executed online including brand sentiment, relevance and authority. The growing emphasis on these triggers overlaps areas of marketing, including branding, public relations, social and video.

Social Search Marketing
As mentioned above, social networks are considered a major influencer of organic rank. However, more interesting is the announcement of social channels introducing revamped interface search functions. Google+ incorporated local results into their social presence by dissolving “Places” this past year. Meanwhile, Facebook announced the social graph, which takes the social search feature to a new level leveraging location, friends’ check-in’s and recommendations to return personalized results.

It cannot go unmentioned that Google+ was reported as surpassing Twitter as the second most used social network.

Video Influences Traffic
Typical measurement of video is user engagement. Marketers count video views and set up events to track opens and plays. When results are not what expected, the strategy is deemed a failure.

It often goes unnoticed that site pages which feature a video rank higher. Recent SERP results have also shown video to outrank organic listings, especially when on long tail keywords. Video has a large influence in organic search and, when measured using a strategy, can be successful.

“Big Data”
I recently read an article on Search Engine Land by Scott Brinkler that claimed marketers should focus on big testing versus “big data.” For most small to medium size businesses, this large sample of data is impossible to obtain. Smaller marketing programs can take advantage of this online trend by creating a sample through conducting tests and filtering those results throughout an entire marketing plan. An example of this would be testing offers in paid search and then using those results to create a compelling billboard or radio ad.

Mobile Trending Upward
Prior to dedicating marketing dollars toward mobile app and website creation, we recommend reviewing mobile site traffic at a granular level. Presently, most analytics applications group tablets and mobile devices together when reporting. Once segments are divided, a more accurate number can be used to measure the wealth of this tactic.

At Wilmington Design Company, we place a large emphasis on your overall marketing strategies to discover how SEM can benefit your end goal. Our integrated search program goes beyond tactics to drive traffic to your site.

The post 2013 Search Marketing Trends appeared first on Wilmington Design Company Blog.

Did I mention it’s bigger? We are tripling the size of our current office space, to almost 5,000 sq. ft. Anyone want to join us for cart wheels? We have the room. The space features new individual offices for all of the creative and sales team, an expanded server room, as well as a formal and informal conference room.

The space is perfect for our current team with room to hire additional talent. The building we purchased is the former Bradley Barns Construction office, which was custom built in 2001. All we had to do was put our own little touch of design into the space. Just to be clear: Interior Design (not Graphic Design).

The renovations began by removing wallpaper from nearly every room and laying down hard wood floors. Evident in the before and after photos below, it was a lot of hard work. We then covered the walls with a fresh coat of paint, rolled out some new carpets and voila! We now have a clean, new office to settle right into.

We invite you to stop by soon. Our new address is… 3517 Wrightsville Ave. Wilmington, NC. If you get lost, give us a call at 910-395-9997 (our number hasn’t changed).

View Our Facebook Photo Gallery with more pictures of our new office.

http://on.fb.me/VlDBhp

The post Our New Digs appeared first on Wilmington Design Company Blog.

As Christmas rapidly approached, our newest client realized that his look was out of date. The team at Wilmington Design Company took on an exciting challenge to rebrand Santa. With a combined 100-year knowledge of the client and careful tactics, the team began to craft a new image, coining the phrase, “We’re not just wooden toys anymore.”

Having last revamped his image in the mid-90′s, Santa approached WDC after receiving lists from his demographic with more sophisticated toys. “Kids are no longer asking for Super Soakers, Koosh Balls, Rollerblades and Beanie Babies. Every request I’ve gotten this year seems to start with an ‘i’: i-computers, i-tablets, i-mobile devices… It’s all digital these days, and I knew I had to enter a new era,” mentioned Santa in our kick-off meeting.

The WDC team became immersed in the research phrase, creating mood boards, hanging seasonal decor in the office and munching on candy canes, all while brainstorming a full service approach to the client’s needs. The designers began the creative process by revamping the logo and ensuring Santa’s signature red matched the current Pantone color guide.

Working as a cohesive team, the designers passed creative concepts off to programmers who were tasked with creating an up-to-date website with modern features. The most popular application thus far is the “Naughty or Nice” section where children and adults can submit names to retrieve results from Santa’s master list. This feature fulfilled our client’s demographic by providing instant feedback.

As our project neared completion, it was then passed off to our Internet Marketing team to address the obvious spike in traffic that occurred leading up to Christmas. The team devised various ways to keep children interested in Santa year round, including a “Summer in July” Facebook contest, Pay Per Click campaign to sell Santa’s brand in the off-season and map optimization.

To view the final website, visit: SantaRules.com

See more work we did for Santa >>

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It’s important to plan ahead for mobile, when designing or redesigning your company’s website. It may be more money upfront, but in the long run, it’ll be well worth having a leg up on your competition.

Google’s study found that nearly all consumers — at one time or another — have come across sites that were not designed well for mobile devices. This made them likely to not return to the site. However, 74% of the people in the study said that they would be more likely to return to a site that was designed well for mobile.

So, what sorts of features constitute a well-designed mobile site? Here are just a few tips:

1. Enlarge buttons.
   The average width of an index finger is about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch for most adults. This converts to around 40 – 55 pixels. Although buttons only need to account for the width of a finger’s pad, if the finger covers the visibility of a tiny button, it takes more precision to hit it. And if you want to account for a thumb pad, it would need even more space.
2. Simplify navigation and content.
   The size of the typical smartphone screen is perfect for a one-column layout. Navigation may work best in a vertical layout, and only the most important pages to your mobile users should be easily accessible.
3. Give an option to see the main site
   Most often, it’s just not effective or practical to try and fit your entire website into a mobile version. But you should still allow your user to have access to your main site, in case they want to locate additional information and tools.
4. Use the phone’s built-in functionality.
   Have your phone number clickable, and make it easy for your users to locate you by a map.
5. Don’t forget screen orientation.
   How will your mobile site look when flipped horizontally?

The post No mobile site? No customer! appeared first on Wilmington Design Company Blog.

The Alive-After-Five Committee was looking for unique, original artwork that captures the “magic and feel” of the summer concert series experience. The individual designs were entered by graphic artist from across the region. Our own graphic designer, Carolyn Pikoulas, created the winning design selected by the committee. The new design will be used to help promote the Alive-After-Five concert series in 2013. The graphic design will be featured on posters, billboards and t-shirts and more!

In addition Wilmington Design will be listed as a Patron Sponsor for the 2013 Alive After Five concert season! Congratulations to Carolyn and the WDC team.

Clinton NC and the Sampson Arts Council selected our T Shirt Graphic Design for the 2013 Alive after Five celebration.

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