Web Design & web Development - Fitzroy, Brunswick, Northcote, Collingwood, Carlton, Melbourne
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Advanced Design Innovations
An innovative website for an innovative business. The clever design of this website combines the banner, navigation, and gallery slide show all in the same prominent space. This is a design solution unlike anything you will have seen on the web. The result is an area of central focus which demonstrates everything Advanced Design Innovations are about.
Blog
07
Jul
2008
Google regional search - act now
Here's an important opportunity for all businesses that offer a regional service. Google is rolling out its local business search – an additional service that Google is adding to their google maps application. They are looking to map businesses and services to their geographical location.
Why is this important? Because Google will display the first 10 local businesses listed on any regional search. Not only is this independent of organic google searches, but it is displayed high up on the page with a large visual weight. Its a very important way to gain traffic from Google.
I recommend that you get in early and don't be disappointed.
Just visit http://www.google.com/local/add/ and complete the application.
04
Jul
2008
Looking towards the phone revolution
With the launch of the iPhone in Australia later this month we will have moved a step closer to the point where phones are the preferred device for accessing the internet. This is already the case in Japan where internet content is almost universally accessed through phones.
The only question is how quickly Australian consumers will follow down the same path.
30
Jun
2008
you need a friendly (inter)face
We've all heard that term "web 2.0" recently, meaning the new wave of development, design and progress that has been made on the web in the last few years. It's a term that has ended up encompassing a number of trends, from the technological to the commercial.
One of those trends has been the acknowledgement of the importance of interfaces - if it is a web 2.0 application you can bet its got a clean, simple control panel. If its a 1.0 application, odds on you need an IT degree to work out how it all works.
This week has been a week for demonstrating how important this sort of thing is.
28
Jun
2008
Business Week's 10 commandments of web design
Business week just published its 10 commandments of web design.
22
Jun
2008
Do you want hyperbole with that?
One of the things that has always annoyed me about IT businesses, and some web companies, is their compulsion to give themselves such exaggerated futuristic names. It seems to me to be some nerdy boy compulsion, or an attempt to promote their business through technologically driven hyperbole.
Why can't people just stick to the basics??
20
Jun
2008
More IT madness
A friend of mine received a letter from their telecom company the other day. It said:
"Dear Jane Anne Smith,
We would like to advise that Jane Smith gained online access to Jane Anne Smith account details on xx Jun 2008.
This provides access to our online services using these account details.
If you have any questions regarding this letter, please visit xxxx online assistance or call us on xxx xxx xxx."
Jane accessed the online account because the company was promising to provide more environmentally sensitive invoices and reduced the amount of information on the printed account. Jane logged onto the web to access the information that was previously published on the older version of the invoice.
Then the telco sends her a printed letter specially to warn her that someone accessed her account. This seems pretty bizarre because:
- It kind of ruins the whole line about environmental concerns.
- It shows their system can't recognise that "Jane Smith" and "Jane Anne Smith" are probably the same person
- They haven't really explained how this "other" person gained access to the account if she wasn't recognised as its owner.
- In fact the whole letter is a bit ambiguous - does my friend need to contact the company, and if she did what would she ask them??
The common sense test
Like out of control bureaucracies IT policies and processes can become total madness. They separate action from simple common sense and they divorce anyone from taking responsibility for something which is clearly nuts.
At Acorn we recognise that its not always easy to avoid the nuts (if you will excuse the confusing pun). But we also know that a process isn't completed until it is nut free.
Creating good relationships
Business is all about relationships. We want to do business with people and businesses that we have relationships with - but it is expensive for a business to create a real relationship with all its customers. That is why mass media and mass marketing has become so important.
The telecom company would not have sent the letter out if that letter had to be handwritten and hand addressed. However it still needs to work to build a good relationship with the customer.
In this case a confusing and impersonal letter leaves the customer feeling unloved and doubting the efficiency and professionalism of the business that sent it. Its a lose-lose situation.
Everyone out there who is using technology like the web to send out communications should be looking twice at the affect their communications have on their customers. Are they helping their relationship or hindering?