Now that the dust is settling on the Information Era of the Internet, I see a tremendous amount of effort being put into the ‘User Experience’.  No longer does the user go to a computer, sit down and type up a few things and check their email using the web. Today, total immersion is becoming a necessity for both the website owner and the user that spends time visiting the site.

Advanced Web Design is the idea that designers and developers are now confronted with 2 major issues.

1. Feedback.
2. Measurement.

Today’s web designers must be able to produce an environment; not a landing page.  The functionality of a landing page is target marketing.  User A arrives and does either Action 1 or 2. This is easy. We can measure the success by how many times a single action occurs. That measuring stick is soooo last year.

At Stand And Stretch, we are always experimenting with different technologies to make sure the User Experience is the sum of feedback and measurement. It just so happens that the more feedback we receive from the website visitor means better that we can plan and make better decisions to increase the quality of the user experience.

There are three major areas we’ve been focusing on in the past 6 months and I’d like to share.  Google Analytics is alway important but the metrics below are advanced and are returning major results.

1. User Movement and Click Monitoring
2. Content Specialization
3. Cloud DNS

User Movement and Click Monitoring

We started using Experiment.ly to determine the amount of clicks and where they were happening the most. Now we have heat map access to the users who visit our site and we’re taking the time to review. What we’ve uncovered is that our user experience started and stopped with our menu, images and footer area.  Our last web design including a very robust footer.  Just take a look!  We are providing the user with a full environment including images of the team (‘Meet The Team’) and our Flickr stream at the bottom to keep the User immersed.

Experiment.ly Report for Stand And Stretch

Content Specialization

Our SEO is now matched with a content strategy that is bringing better results from Google without buying traffic. We’ve built our specific type of content and started using bits and pieces through out our entire site to bring our keywords and phrasing to the priority level while staying consistent with our branding and messaging.  Big things come out of site diagramming and content work-flow charts.  Ask us how we can help your website.  Our content is precise and targeted to help the User along the way.

Cloud DNS

Nothing is scarier than a compromised site or seeing blacklisted IPs come across our monitors.  The greatest inclusion into the arsenal of high speed optimization is Cloud DNS.  Technically, it creates a cached site in the Cloud.  Scary?  Nah.  It’s an old trick but it is being made popular because software companies like CloudFlare are putting big metrics upfront for us to measure.  Imagine a site that loads within 3 seconds, saves your bandwidth and auto scans for intruders keeping your site fase and sound.  Would YOU like to visit that site?

CloudFlare Dashboard

Even though these ideas are not a full approach to web design, these additions can take your site to the next level.  It should be considered that your Users are important and if you have all your clicks below the fold, horrible content and shaky site speed…you may want to give your site users the experience that will keep them coming back.

As always, let us know if we can help.

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There is a point when we all take a moment and look around at the mess of ideas and look at how the process and growth has developed into a culture. This culture surrounds the very nature of our creative flow and provides our clients with the best possible solutions with the smartest ideas in the area.

You see. We don’t just build websites, we build communities. And we build them smartly. We spent the past couple of years learning about Columbus and surrounding areas and what is expected from online businesses in our area. We live in a remarkable town that is hungry for innovate solutions that are cost efficient.

Instead of going on and on about our growth, let’s talk about goals achieved for 2012 and what we are looking at for 2013.  Here are the big ones.

Benefits Galore

It’s more a 2013 item but let me tell you, I worked for 4 months on providing the right packages and budget for our benefit program. Since Jan 1, 2013, our team members have 100% of their health, vision, dental and life paid for through Stand And Stretch. It’s a feat I am most proud to offer our team of professionals.

Client Scaping

2012 we thrived on client feedback and put forth new process and procedures that are making us most efficient and increasing our quality. We introduced Stand And Stretch to large clients like Under Armour, Gildan and Delta Apparel in which combined with our local work gives our client base a broad sense of accomplishment.

Our First Addy

As we remember the fight, it is nice to be recognized by local professionals for our work. We are honored to have been selected to receive our first 2012 Addy award for Web Design. Cheers!

Interactive Museum Grant

I announced midway 2012 that we were successful in providing the Columbus Museum with the technical jargon to receive a very sizable grant to produce a community changing, interactive website. We are proud to be a part of this enthusiastic project and mostly giving the community something they can use and learn about art and culture.

I wish I could post more.  There were so many achievements for 2012 I will have to start keeping a list.

Cheers!

The post Reflection On 2012 – Here Are The Big Things We Got Right appeared first on Web Design, Interactive and Mobile Marketing in Columbus, Georgia - Stand And Stretch.

Passion propels our team forward every step of the way. We are constantly searching, learning, solving and creating each and every day – not because we have to, but because we want to. In fact, we are compelled to. We feel it in our core, in our bones, in our DNA. And it drives us forward, gives us purpose and ignites our souls.

Our CEO once said, “We don’t build websites. We build communities.” And the same can be said about our company. We’ve built our team into our own community of shared passion, and we have built that community with care – much like we do with our clients.

It’s that same passion we are looking for in you as a Sales Associate for Stand and Stretch.

Working as a Sales Associate, you have the opportunity to immerse yourself in all things web. Not only do you have the opportunity to learn how to be an effective sales associate from the ground up, but you can also gain valuable insight within the web design and social media arena with our team’s expertise.

So, are you compelled to learn more?

The post A Penchant for Passion appeared first on Web Design, Interactive and Mobile Marketing in Columbus, Georgia - Stand And Stretch.

According to a recent whitepaper, The Power of Like: How Social Marketing Works, by comScore, Inc., a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital business analytics, “Concentrated social media campaigns, such as those performed during important marketing promotions can significantly amplify the reach of earned media exposure.” In short, to move past the acquisition-of-fans stage in your social media venture, you need to utilize this social space for more than just merely individual postings with seemingly no continuity.

You may be wondering— where do I start? Ask yourself, what draws my fans to my product? After all, this is your business’ social community, and a prosperous community is both cultivated and maintained. In regard to social community, comScore’s whitepaper, The Power of Like states “The ability to model Fans can help brands deliver ad campaigns at scale for those who have the greatest likelihood of strong brand affinity and purchasing power.” In short, learn your fans and model your marketing campaign around those fans. Brainstorm a campaign concept that you think will appeal to your business’ demographic. Modeling a campaign around fans and friends of fans can really deliver something palpable to the right audience at the right time, if planned and executed correctly.

People, groups and communities crave structure and consistency. And developing and integrating a marketing plan and set of marketing campaigns throughout the year can really provide that structure and consistency needed within the social sphere. In terms of integrated social media marketing campaigns, The Power of the Like states that “Concentrated social media campaigns, such as those performed during important marketing promotions can significantly amplify the reach of earned media exposure.” Instead of merely having a spattering of posts, you have a plan to reach people on a consistent basis with an underlying marketing objective. This will not only provide more exposure but will also provide a static framework and structure for your fans to consistently engage – pushing not only fans to your business’ page, but also drawing in friends of fans. Remember, you are building a community and structure is needed for fan anticipation, expectation and consistent engagement.

According to comScore, Inc., the full breadth of social media “is still in its nascent stages” and has not been fully realized. Taking your business’ social media to the next level with a fully formalized marketing plan could be the next step for your business in the social media arena. So, create a marketing theme, plan and start scheduling posts because integrating your marketing campaign into your business’ social media can really amplify the exposure of your business, not only increasing brand impression but also providing a consistent marketing channel that your business’ community can truly rely on.

The post Social Media: Make Your Fan Base, A Campaign Base appeared first on Web Design, Interactive and Mobile Marketing in Columbus, Georgia - Stand And Stretch.

But as a data maniac, I wanted to see what that meant for our personal time.  YouTube.com self-admittedly doesn’t release how they score a video ‘view’ for purposes of the count but for the sake of the argument let’s propose that a count is a complete viewing of the video.

Since July 15, 2012, the video stats above state that just in the past 6 months this video has gone over a billion views.  It’s an amazing feat,but let’s look at the numbers.

If you assume that the entire video at 4 minutes and 13 seconds (or 253 seconds) was viewed one billion times in it’s entirety, this is how it measures up.

253 seconds * 1,000,000,000 = 253,000,000,000 seconds

253,000,000,000 seconds = 4,216,666,666 minutes

4,216,666,666 minutes = 70,277,777 hours

253,000,000,000 seconds = ~2,928,240 days

2,928,240.74074074 days = ~418,320 weeks

418,320.105820106 weeks = ~96,207 months

96,207.0893723932 months = ~8,017 Years

Ok, so don’t hold back the gasps.  Let me generalize one last time.

In summary, the world-wide audience spent more than 8000 years worth of time in the past six months watching this video.  It’s like the conversation about the speed of light.  The concept of time is relative and often needs to compared to something linear like the time live in.  For example, take each video view and tie it end to end.

It would take one person 8,000 years to get to the end of it.

Maybe one day we will produce a video with this much weight.  I look forward to watching this video milestone of one billion views being broken in a shorter amount of time but couldn’t even imagine what would be better than a dance style video that I can’t even understand the words.  Yet, I have watched it several times myself.

Here is a list of Top 6 Videos on YouTube.com of All Time (as of 12/21/2012).  Justin Bieber seems to be popular too.

The post 1 Billion Views On YouTube.com And What Gangnam Style Did With Our Time. appeared first on Web Design, Interactive and Mobile Marketing in Columbus, Georgia - Stand And Stretch.

Mitchell Body Shop in Phenix City, AL was a great first project.  Taking a 25 year old business and providing it with an online business solution is going to make a difference in today’s commerce.  We had no problem working with the knowledge of this well-known business.  With the photography from Pixeleyes Photography we were able to put together a great layout and put that phone number right on top.  Did you know almost 46% of websites don’t have their phone number on the home page?  We also completely customized the Search Engine Optimization to put his business in line with the other businesses in the area. Through our research, we built a content strategy to get his site priority over his competitors.

The first project means a lot to those in involved.  Read more here about how we partnered with Pixeleyes Photography creating a relationship for future work.

Thanks to everyone involved with ProjectSocial.org.  Cheers!

We moved the needle to $2,500 before 2013!

The post ProjectSocial.org Launches its First Project: And We Were a Part of It! appeared first on Web Design, Interactive and Mobile Marketing in Columbus, Georgia - Stand And Stretch.

LinkedIn has over 187 million users and contains a solid set of professionals who may or may not want to do business with you.

This Webinar is geared towards informing you about the new layout, making connections with customers/clients and keyword strategy and recruiting ideas. Students, Business Owners, Recruitment Firms, Marketing Groups and anyone seeking employment will benefit from this webinar.

Lucas Shaffer will focus on profile strategy including marketing content about yourself, Pro Tips and personal experience in order to build a professional online persona that will precede you.

Subscribe to our Channel to get updates when the Webinars are ready!  Visit us here:  http://www.youtube.com/user/StandAndStretch

The post LinkedIn – Utilizing Connections to Succeed – Sit And Learn Webinar appeared first on Web Design, Interactive and Mobile Marketing in Columbus, Georgia - Stand And Stretch.

Here is my opinion. MySpace didn’t have any good rules. You could call yourself anything you wanted and wreak havoc on those who simply wanted to connect. I consider MySpace my ‘Goth’ phase. And no disrespect to Goth but I had a dark MySpace page. It had what ever song I thought inflicted the most transient journey and blah blah blah. It was soon that my MySpace persona clearly did not reflect my actual personality.

And maybe that’s what anonymity does. It causes us to build fake barriers based on fake stimuli all while wasting real time. And this is where I believe MySpace failed the most. Outside of putting a music player on everyones page, allowing avatar-esque connections allowed sites like Facebook to grow due to genuine personal validation. MySpace was a mask while Facebook was your real-life story.

As I mentioned, if it had not put the music player on the home page it would likely have not kept the ‘music’ communities going and therefore failing completely. Before SoundCloud and other popular music upload sites, MySpace was one of the only places you could go to hear un-produced, un-published bands before torrents muddied the waters for all music.  The music player is both the cause and effect of what New MySpace represents today.

All that aside, I like the new MySpace. But then again I like music. And when you make my interaction with music elegant and modern…I may be swayed to hang out. It’s not like MySpace has been out of the game. They’ve been doing well considering they rank 203rd of all other sites ranked on the web, according to Alexa.

The current MySpace, dare I say old MySpace, looks nice too.  25 millions users before going to the new platform still has some power behind it.

Current MySpace

So, here we are.  I’ve spent a couple hours trying to find people.  Almost impossible.  I have found some great music.  That’s a plus.  In 2005, NewsCorp purchased MySpace for $580m.  Nice.  In June, 2011, MySpace sold to its current owners for $35m.  Ouch.  Will Facebook find this same fate?  Who knows.

My prediction about MySpace’s return to excellence is centered around the interface. It’s horizontal slider gives it a jukebox appeal and the interior design is simple and modern.  Almost too simple.  It has new icons to recognize like the connect icon.  New verbs, new counters… New MySpace.  Like ‘New’ York.  Get it?

The player on the bottom is just like Grooveshark and I love Grooveshark.

MySpace Queue

Grooveshark Queue

As I listen to my Queue right now, I think MySpace may be going after the MTV-type takeover of streaming music by using customized playlists and social connections to grow your list.  Pandora’s lack of playlist feature and Groovesharks lawsuit troubles bring MySpace to the top of my mind when I think of anyone who could do it successfully.  (these songs are going to need a ‘share to Facebook’ button!)

I believe MySpace will reign supreme for the future of online streaming music.  It may not get the totality of daily life activities but it will get my attention if I can listen to music for free and share these tunes with my friends.

Connect with me at https://new.myspace.com/lucaslshaffer

Connect with my @lucaslshaffer

The post The New MySpace Is Back. And Why I Think it Will Succeed. appeared first on Web Design, Interactive and Mobile Marketing in Columbus, Georgia - Stand And Stretch.

Everyday we get up, check our phone, shower and brush our teeth, check our tablet, check the battery charge and head out the door. It doesn’t end there…

Today’s world is digital and this webinar is here to prepare you with the tools to optimize your life using tablet and smartphone technology.

Follow me as I walk through the consumer habits, including stats, of mobile devices with relevance to businesses trying to adapt to these trends. I will also examine my own habits in an effort to transform your smartphone or tablet into the most productive tool in your daily home and work life.

The post Mobile Technology Today: How To Optimize Your Use of Smartphones and Tablets – Sit And Learn Webinar appeared first on Web Design, Interactive and Mobile Marketing in Columbus, Georgia - Stand And Stretch.

Please share this post with your significant other now.

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Now begins my statement to all the men that read this blog post.  If you are in a relationship, married or any other gift scenario you will find what I have to say next more of a neat trick than a dog house repellent.  But I must get this message out to all the men who need help this year.

You see, ladies all over the world have signed up to this popular website and have begun ‘pinning’ hundreds of items found on websites and organizing them into very simple groups.  Groups like ‘Products I Love’, ‘For The Home’ and ‘Favorite Places and Spaces’ carry tens of hundreds of items that have been previously selected by your loved one.  This is just the beginning.

If you are paying close enough attention to this post, the obvious may be setting in.  In the near future, Christmas will bring the urgency of what to buy to put under the tree.  It may be easy for some but for the rest of us…it is complicated.  Well, before Pinterest…

My gift to you is very simple.  Follow these 3 steps and find the items your significant other wants instead of guessing at a years worth of name dropping and commercial commentary.

Three Easy Steps To Gift Selection for Your Relationship

1)  Visit Pinterest.com and Join.  If it’s a pride thing, just don’t friend anyone.  Joining Pinterest gets you access to a few options and removes that pesky reminder in the middle of the page.  You can do the next steps without joining.

2)  Search for your wife/girlfriend/significant other in the Top Left Search box.  This can be tricky.  Does she have a private board you can’t see?  Do you know any nicknames?  Keep trying.  About 9/10 women have a Pinterest account (maybe it just seems like that!).

3)  Locate The Correct Board.  You may see anything from 8 to 108 boards.  It may take a moment but I sure you can get a very specific gift in mind for your shopping needs and maybe even one for the anniversary.

You’re welcome.

—-

This year my wife and I are experimenting with a new type of ‘gift list’ for Santa. We’ve created our own private boards, a new feature to Pinterest, and have already begun our buying.

Pinterest has become a favorite social media site for the female demographic from 18 to 65.  If you have a business and your customers fit that span then you will find much success in this platform.

Are you already using Pinterest to shop for loved ones?

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