The harsh reality is that this is never easy when it comes to building and designing websites that need to convert. Some of the common reasons are that it usually comes down to user behaviour and trends, and like the moods of all women, this is unpredictable and can change at any second. 

Here are a few enlightening ideas to help with taming this 500 pound gorilla.

Heat Map Software - Of course there are a few tools that you can use, like heat mapping software, which lets you see where most of the clicking activity takes place on your site, try some of these:

• http://www.crazyegg.com/
• http://www.clickdensity.com/
• http://www.labescape.com/
• http://www.fusioncharts.com/powercharts/charts/heat-map/
• http://www.virante.com/analytics/heat-mapping
• http://www.feng-gui.com/
• http://www.hitmap.com/
• http://www.clicktale.com/

Google Analytics – This is so useful that entire books could be written about how to use this advanced website tracking software platform. If you are not using this already, then you’re either a newbie internet marketer or a complete idiot.  Try some of these ideas:

• Set up some goal funnels within analytics to track and see where users are entering and exiting your website throughout the purchase process. Take note of which exit pages have the highest exit rates, and optimise them immediately by using tricks like “Calls-to-Action”, “easy sign up forms”, better content, and high quality “Trust branding”.
• See which pages keywords are driving the most traffic to your site and also to which pages. Armed with this info you can change your tactics and re-design those specific pages that are already receiving high amounts of traffic.
• Dig a little bit deeper and find which areas, countries and cities your biggest fans and visitors come from. Knowing this allows you to shift your focus on your customer demographics to better target your products to those areas, cities and countries.

Google Adwords/PPC – Also not something to miss in your arsenal for making sales online. If you don’t know what this is, then you definitely need to talk to one of our consultants or you need to find yourself an updated version of “PPC/Adwords for Dummies” – because you’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Try some of the following on for size:

• Use your AdGroup themes to set up your landing pages. When you’re using AdGroups, you’re already testing ad copy to see which ads and keywords work best, so why not use this information to optimise your conversions campaign.
• See which AdGroups convert best and export these. Design your new landing pages using the top 3 keywords per AdGroup that have the highest search volume (plug them in here to find your search volumes). Begin creating onsite copy for these landing pages using only these keywords while keeping the use of standard conversion basics in mind, like, opt-in forms, trust branding, etc…

Headlines – This is probably one of the most important focus points of your landing page so make it count and – try not to use any old and tasteless approaches like: “Hello, and Welcome to my Site Blah Blah Blah”. Get creative and get ideas by seeing what the best of the best in your niche are already doing and using. You can also use your Google’s Adwords Title Snippets, which you use for your PPC Ads that appear on the search listings in Google, as an indicator on which types of headlines work best.

Benefits- Emphasise these in a list format in the order of your product’s “value hierarchy” to your target market. Bullet points work well and make it easy for people to consume this type of information.

Testimonials – Consumer trust is so important – I can’t stress this point enough. If and where you can, try to use live testimonials recorded in video format and upload them onto your site via YouTube. Some of the biggest players are doing this very successfully. Alternatively, use quality images of your customer’s faces with relevant and clickable links, combined with their valued statement about your company. The more you can get from your customers, the better for your conversions.

In the end you need to take serious note that once you’ve set up a conversion campaign, you need to look at it, study it, and constantly tweak and re-asses your strategies from time to time. If this is too time consuming for you, then you need to consider another career, job, or business model. Keeping on top of this is not easy, but you only need to strike gold once to feel that the payoff was worth every second you spent.

Here are some very useful resources to peruse at your own leisure, and be sure to make notes and follow through:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/heat-map-tracking-do-you-feel-the-heat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_map
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/increase-landing-page-conversion-rates
http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/articles/101-google-website-optimizer-tips/
http://www.bplans.com/business_calculators/
https://gomockingbird.com/
http://searchengineland.com/how-to-build-multi-purpose-landing-pages-for-small-budget-advertising-84997

If you have an e-commerce site you’ll agree – receiving 500 visitors or 5000 is irrelevant – the most satisfying scenario will be the one which brings about the highest profit margin. It is thus vital that you review your Google Analytics data and shift your focus accordingly. By doing this, you can substantially increase your organic revenue generation.Reviewing certain elements in your Google Analytics account can help you make informed decisions around your online marketing efforts and you’re likely to be surprised by the outcome if the correct set of data is analysed.

Here’s my list of the Top 5 elements which should be analysed in order to ‘swing the bling’ your way organically…
*Keep in mind that feasible analysis can only be conducted if you have Google Analytics installed on your site for at least six months. You also need to have the correct e-commerce and goal tracking installed.

1. Top Profit Generating Keywords:
Determining which organic keywords drove traffic to your site and which of them have CONSISTENTLY converted over a long period of time will give you great insight into which keywords you should focus on in your online marketing efforts. The reason why I screamed out CONSISTENTLY is because some keywords might have only had a conversion spike for one day. You should make sure that the keywords performed consistently over a given period so that you know whether they are feasible to hunt down.

2. Top Profit Generating Pages
Check which of your pages are generating the most income and concentrate on making them more powerful, as this will surely drive more revenue your way. You’ll also see which of your main target pages are underperforming in terms of revenue generation so that you can improve them and bring them up to par with the rest of the site. The metric Google Analytics uses to calculate the profitability of pages is referred to as the property index ($index).

3. Top Profit Generating Geo Locations
Why focus your SEO efforts on ‘Kazakhstan’ when all they are “purchasing” on your website is bandwidth? Find out which region and cities are spending the most money on your site and concentrate on getting more visitors from that area. This way you will ensure that you attract legitimate money spenders which will drastically increase your conversion rate.

4. Top Internal Search Queries
If a user searches a general keyword, like ‘health supplements’, then lands on your site and uses your internal search box to find ‘Bach Rescue Remedy’ before moving on to convert, your organic keyword report in Google Analytics will accredit the conversion to ‘health supplements’ and not the actual phrase which brought in the money. These ‘internal searchers’ will essentially be invisible to you. It is thus extremely useful to activate the internal search function in order for you to have access to an additional report in Google Analytics which will outline what keywords were searched for on your site coupled with conversion rates for all the keywords.

5. Analyse your PPC Campaigns
This only applies if you are making use of paid advertising and if you have successfully linked your AdWords and Google Analytics accounts. Sure, you can get this data from your AdWords account but I always enjoy looking at the data through Google Analytics so that I can view both paid and organic conversion rates side by side. It is always interesting to see how the two differ and more importantly, it will allow you to see where you should tweak your organic efforts in order to pounce on the successes you are receiving through pay per click.

Fusing your Google Analytics analysis with your SEO efforts in today’s ever increasing struggle for organic domination is vital and will surely give you the edge over your competitors. It is important to remember though, that analysing the above without having a well structured roll-out plan is pointless. Without a solid plan you’ll simply be wasting time and resources – it could even be the cause of your competitors overtaking you and leaving you behind to choke on their cyber-dust.

You see, when you combine all three of these scientific digital systems the effect on your business can be astounding. Like pieces of an elaborate puzzle, all three of these factors fit perfectly into one another to compliment and execute the all important functions of turning your website visitors into buying customers – but not just one-time customers, no, you want these valuable customers to become loyal repeat customers that regularly visit and hang onto every word on every blog post. You also want them to open and read every email you send, and then after you’ve offered valuable high quality information and products, they must purchase from you again and again.

Why is it that many online entrepreneurs sometimes miss the plot when trying to create a start-up venture, and then slap together a 10-20 page website, put on a buy now button and wonder why they’re not making any sales? Well as some people say “the Devil is in the Details” and if you don’t carefully breakdown the specifics of the whole business model, website architecture and purpose beforehand, then you could very well end up with big problems and empty pockets.

Let’s start by defining the meanings behind these three principles.

Information Architecture –In laymen’s, this could be summed up as intelligent systems and software that are designed to effectively and accurately carry out their individually designed purpose, and offer an environment (like a website) that’s easy to use and simple to understand and navigate.

Conversion Funnels – This marketing phrase is used to describe the process whereby a visitor navigates through your e-commerce designed site to fulfil an order or purchase of a product.

Onsite SEO – This is the process whereby a website goes through a rigorous website check to improve its overall architecture so that the website is targeted for both search engines and targeted customers. To gain improved rankings, search engines are designed to look for various key factors which when crawled will help your website go up in the search results.

“The core focus point here is to establish the fact that no matter how much traffic you receive to your website, if it’s not properly designed and optimised for search engines and visitors you’re just simply not going to make as many sales as you’d like.”

Always do your research beforehand and discuss what you want your site to achieve and how you want the visitor to travel and navigate though your site. This will assist in helping them make their way to the purchase or order page.

A simple example of a conversion funnel is featured below. The whole point of optimising your conversion funnel is to see where most of your visitors are leaving at the “Exit “pages and optimise those pages based on keyword rich content, and also make them as relevant as possible to your visitors.


On that note, you can see how crucial it is to have a strong focus towards onsite optimisation in terms of not only SEO, but also create your information architecture to make it simple and easy for visitors to navigate through your site. Sign up to Google Analytics and set up goal and conversion funnels that empowers you to optimise your business model from the get go. Keep an eye on those exit pages and constantly see how you can improve those pages to make them convert your visitors into buyers more effectively.

Another important note to make on exit pages is to also have a focus on capturing your visitors email information so that if they don’t want to purchase something today, you can always market helpful and valuable information to them through email marketing and convert on that customer in the future.

Still think onsite SEO is fruitless or pointless? No? Didn’t think so. There’s an old saying that’s quite apt here: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Keep that in mind when you’re designing your new website or editing your existing one.

Some useful resources:
http://www.bloggingpro.com/archives/2010/07/26/the-complete-guide-to-search-engine-optimization-and-social-media-marketing/
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/site-architecture-for-seo
http://www.seobook.com/link-building-flowchart.pdf

When embarking on the launch of an e-commerce site many people do not realise that the difference between a successful site and an unsuccessful one can be the e-commerce platform you use. Some e-commerce platforms do not allow for the flexibility required to completely optimise your site and get it ranking well in the search engines.

Many a time, website owners find they are getting the traffic to their site but that it is not converting to sales. What is the cause behind this and how can it be rectified?

Choosing the right e-commerce platform

These days there are too many different content management systems (CMS’s) and e-commerce platforms, one can become confused with which one to choose. A lot of people end up choosing free or open source platforms as they do not want to invest in more expensive systems. When it comes to an e-commerce site, you need to do it right the first time. This means investing time and money into getting the structure and design right. Make sure you do some user experience testing to find out how people are interacting with your site before you launch it – do they find it easy to find the products they are looking for and is making a purchase simple?

From an SEO perspective, there are certain elements that need to be in place for your e-commerce site to not only rank well but also convert well.

1.    Clean URLs for product pages

Many e-commerce sites do not give you the type of control you need in order to optimise your URL structure. Ideally you want to ensure that your URL contains the name of your product. A good example of a CMS system that handles URL structure well is Joomla. Thanks to the SH404SEF module you can set your URLs to pull just the name of your product or you can manually rewrite the URL to be exactly the way you want it.

2.    Ability to Add Unique Meta Data on all pages

In order for your product pages to get indexed well you need to ensure that all your products have unique titles, descriptions and keyword tags. Some custom CMS solutions make use of a universal meta tag meaning that you need to ensure your developer has built in functionality for you to customise the meta data on all pages of your e-commerce site.

3.    XML and Static Sitemap

A common problem that many e-commerce site owners find is that their sites do not get indexed well. The site may contain 5000 pages but only 2000 of them are appearing in the Google index. In order to help Google index your site well you need to ensure that your site has an up to date XML and static sitemap. These days there are some great pieces of software which automate XML sitemaps. With e-commerce sites, products are being added and removed on a regular basis, hence you want to ensure that you always have an up to date sitemap. That, along with unique meta data, will really help your site get indexed better.

4.    Good Search Function

You want to make it as easy as possible for people to find what they are looking for on your site. An e-commerce site with a bad search function is bound to have a lower conversion rate. Make sure you test out your search function to ensure it is giving out accurate results before you launch your website.

5.    Site Speed

Some of the best e-commerce sites are successful due to the fact that it is quick and easy to make purchases. The point of online shopping was to make shopping a faster experience. Hence, if your e-commerce site is slow to load, you are not likely to get repeat customers. Make sure you test your site speed before you launch it. Externalise any JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and compress all images you have on the site. It is little things like this that can help make your site faster and more user friendly.

So there you have it, a few tips on what to look out for when building an e-commerce site. Remember that if you get the structure and design right the first time, it will save you a lot of money in the long run.

If you are thinking of starting an e-commerce site, we recommend you contact R.O.I Media for a full website design, conversion and SEO services.

It is two months since the 1st Conversion Optimisation seminar in Europe and what a success it was! The buzz is still around and the online community is raving about the Conversion Camp Summit held in Frankfurt, Germany on Thursday the 2nd of September 2010 (they even claim that the food was of the best they have ever eaten at a conference). The seminar covered topics such as website testing, website design, best practices i.t.o. usability, landing page optimisation, content optimisation, email marketing and many more.

Tickets were sold out well over a month before the event. There were +/-250 attendees witnessing presentations from 19 industry specialists in what was a full day program. The conference was held from 9am the morning until 7pm the evening. At 5pm 95% of the attendees were still present and at the end of the seminar 75% of people remained, which is an amazing statement of success for a ten hour conference.

When it concluded, the audience was asked whether they would like to see this conference return in 2011 and the response was phenomenal! They requested that Conversion Camp Summit 2011 be spread across two full days and to incorporate more speakers. The outcome? Wish granted! Conversion Camp Summit 2011 will be held on the 1st and 2nd of September, incorporating more guest speakers. Brian Eisenberg (leading expert in conversion optimisation who has a close business relationship with R.O.I. Media) will conduct the keynote address which will open the summit in 2011. R.O.I. Media will surely keep an eye on this event and who knows, maybe even attend ourselves.

Stay tuned for more detailed posts on some of the topics covered in the Conversion Camp Summit 2010.

Don’t guess internet behavior based on your own – you’re wrong!

Define a goal

Every website has a goal, a reason for existence. The times of just being there for the sake of it are over. Even more so, your website’s goal should be supporting your integrated business model. In the best case scenario, you should define a multitude of goals. Even though not every business is suitable for the internet, keeping your finger on the wrist never hurts.

What is your website’s goal? Do you have an E-commerce site? It’s clear you that should know your conversion rate (which influences website visitors becoming customers), sales funnel, drop out percentage and returning visitors… But even if you’re not running an online shop, there are several metrics you should be monitoring that will give you valuable info, at no cost whatsoever!

Tagging

Before we look at the key metrics, what can we measure? By default free reporting tools will have standard metrics that share a lot of information. But did you know that with a few easy tweaks this tool can go far beyond your expectations? Common reporting tools have a code that is added to each page. It collects data from the visitor, such as language, origin, computer compatibility, popular pages and other data.

You can extend your arsenal however – you might have fancy pdf files that you’re offering for download; product and service descriptions, pricelists or anything else. Imagine the capability of having an overview of document download rates, allowing you to define your most popular products. It tells you how engaging your site is as well.Do you have an enquiry e-mail address instead of an enquiry form? Add a code to measure the number of clicks on your ‘mailto:’ enquiry. Compare this to the actual emails you receive through that referral. See any discrepancy? Act on it. Check the number of views your 404 error page gets. That will tell you something about site quality.

Key metrics

In Google Analytics you can go to these reports and click the “add to dashboard” button which allows you to see these at first glance.

• Bounce rate
  This is one of the most important metrics for your site. A high bounce rate (over 50%) will tell you that there’s a huge gap between what your visitors expect to find on the site and what you offer. Maybe you’re running a PPC advertising or SEO campaign. If you have a high bounce rate (1 page/visit), you’re throwing money out the window. Identify the pages with the highest bounce rate and improve them. Every website is different though, so evaluate this according to your website.
• Average Time on Site
  How much time are visitors spending on your site? Are you offering your extensive expertise? You even might want to divide long articles onto different pages to see how many people go to page two. It will show you how engaging your content is and how much visitors read this content.
• Keywords
  Which keywords (PPC vs. SEO) are pulling in the bulk of visitors? Why stop there? Check that metric in perspective and look at it cross-linked to your goals. Which keywords are converting? And which aren’t? You’ve got work to do.
• Actions
  Downloads and clicks on email links are by default unknown. Add a sample code to the link and see how engaging (converting) your site is, usually between 2%-3%. Identify the weak pages that convert poorly and optimize them.
• Goal Abandonment Rate
  Did you define a goal? Splendid. Now, how is your funnel abandonment rate, plainly stated, how many people are leaving your store with their wallets drawn? Identify your weak funnel pages and optimise these ASAP because you are losing money!Did you know that you can even check the progress of each individual field of an enquiry form? See how many people almost send you an enquiry but don’t quite get there.
• Conversion Rate
  Conversion rates are like missionaries in early colonies; how many people were converted to their belief? How many of your visitors are converted into prospects, clients or any role you define?
• Map Overlay
  Where are your visitors coming from? You probably have a good idea locally. But in times of expansion do you know where to turn?

Add value

Throw in a value for each goal you define on your site and you’ll see what’s going on for real. Define a real site value by working backwards. Let’s say for every 100 completed enquiry forms you make 25 sales. Each sale has a $20 margin. So $20 x 25 = 500 ÷ 100 = $5. In theory, each completed enquiry form brings you $5.

Online business compared to real life offers a priceless source of information about your customers. You would be unwise not to take advantage of that. Take that step ahead over your competitors and get smarter today. But remember, reporting is not the goal itself. It’s merely a tool to achieve your goals. So spend time where it benefits most, and you will soon start seeing the results.

As the world’s leading conversion experts, there is simply no doubt that Bryan and Jeffery Eisenberg are the best of the best in the conversion field, and this is why R.O.I. Media are thrilled to bring this powerful duo on board to advise on conversion strategies. Clients will gain from their extensive experience and expertise, and with the powerful combination of R.O.I. Media’s solid online marketing skills and the Eisenbergs’ renowned conversion expertise, results are sure to skyrocket to infinity and beyond!

Those who endeavour to increase conversion and do research on the topic will find a slew of online references that tout everything from eye-tracking to hover-to-click-ratio as the ultimate answer to conversion-related worries. Sifting through this heap of information can be confusing and frustrating to say the least. So, before you throw out the baby with the proverbial bathwater and shell out your hard-earned cash for a complete website redesign, we recommend that you take a good, hard look at your current website to see if there are simple adjustments you can make.

Ask yourself: where do I lose my customer? At which point along the browsing-to-purchase timeline does my potential customer become so frustrated/disinterested that they abandon their shopping cart rather than proceeding to the checkout point? The very first thing you should be looking at is your Call to Action buttons. When you look at these buttons there are two very important questions you should be asking yourself:

1.    When a visitor clicks on this link, what exactly will they see next?
2.    Will what they see encourage/discourage them to take the action I want them to take (i.e. make a purchase)?

Here are a few examples of buttons that will have your potential customer heading for the hills:

• The ‘empty cart’ button. How often have you filled your real life shopping cart with groceries only to be tackled by a store assistant who grabs the contents of your cart and puts it back on the shelves? Never? Well, why then do we assume that putting an ‘empty cart’ (identical in every conceivable way to the ‘place order’ or ‘proceed to checkout’ button) next to the button we really want the customer to click is a good idea? Time is money, and if you waste your customers’ they will take their business elsewhere.

• The completely irrelevant link. A good example of an irrelevant link is the distracting (and actually extremely irritating) banner advertisements that some sites put on their shopping cart pages. You have just gotten your potential customer to the very place you wanted them from the start, why break their concentration now?

• The ‘reset form’ button. How many times have you gone through the time-consuming rigmarole of filling out an online  form with all your personal details only to find that you have accidentally filled out those of your deceased grandmother? If indeed you have you will be one of very few people on the planet who have found the ‘reset form’ button useful. Placing this button next to a ‘submit application’ button has the potential to cause confusion, evoke swearing and even lose you a customer.

These are just some of the simple mistakes that website owners make every day. There are a myriad more. Why not contact us and set up a meeting so we may discuss the easiest way of improving your online marketing?

In Part 1: Online Brand Communication, we discussed the best methods of online branding and how this relates to the online user’s experience of your brand and website. The next step in claiming the online user’s attention is through effective web usability and brand interaction which can lead to increased sales and brand loyalty. By following this outline of best usability practices, results will be certain to follow.

What is Web Usability?

In a nutshell, usability is the art of ensuring visitors to your website can easily find what they are looking for, reach the relevant pages and take the desired actions before getting frustrated, generating negative feelings towards your brand and leaving your site feeling unfulfilled, never to return. Here we will present only the basics to give an impression of what is involved in the best usability process.

Understanding the Online User

One must understand how users relate to the web, the content therein and the desired actions to be taken. Online users can be divided into 3 general groups:

Click focussed, Search focussed and those in-between. Click focussed users will always look for links or buttons in order to proceed through a site while those search focussed will instantly look for a search field. In-between users will initially look for links related to what they are looking for and if they cannot find something relevant they will revert to the search field.

Furthermore, these points about how users interact with the web should be taken into consideration:

• Users will take the first reasonable option. When navigating through a site, it is not always the optimal decision that is taken; rather the quickest and easiest action presented is the one taken.
• Users scan pages. A user will very rarely read a whole page when looking for a specific item. Through scanning, a user can quickly target the keywords that reflect what they are looking for and decide whether there is any value in continuing to stay on your website.
• Users will muddle through. A user will risk making mistakes and having to click the back button instead of taking the time to correctly go through a page or without fully understanding the process will risk taking an action that may not be the correct one.

There are many reasons why users work in such ways; the important thing however is in learning the best methods to deal with usability requirements by adhering to a basic set of principles. These points may seem obvious; however they are too often overlooked:

• Create a clear visual hierarchy. Correct text use for headers, sub headers & body content to be used as visual cues.
• Use existing conventions. They wouldn’t be conventions if they didn’t work!
• Clear page headings.
• Make links & buttons obvious as clickable items.
• Reduce clutter & unnecessary busyness on a page.
• Use of clear navigation elements such as tabs and breadcrumb navigation.
• Use of effective site branding and identification.
• Displaying relevant information to the user at all times.

Usability is a great set of guidelines focussed on obtaining results. It relates to many areas of our lives and influences decisions we make on a daily basis. It is a broad subject and cannot be summarised into a singular blog post. As such, the ideas proposed above are more like helpful hints than rules to take to heart and merely touch the surface of usability related issues.

Reach through NOW!

Should you wish to find out more about our approach to usability or more information on R.O.I.Media and our services offered, please visit www.roimedia.co.za

Today’s internet user is endlessly bombarded with a tumultuous flow of visual impressions. This persistent imagery lodges itself in the human psyche like a worm wriggling through the earth in search of fertile soil burrowing its perception and creating an awareness, subtle or gross, which in some way or another leaves its mark. In this information age where fingertips can guide the online user to a heady state of overload, how does one break through and create a positive impression given the limited amount of time the active online user allows us? What effective tools are available to online producers, designers, developers, bloggers, e-merchants, brands and businesses whose offerings and ideas are useful, informative and full of worldly promise?

The answer to these questions is fundamental and the ability to reach through the visual clutter and communicate directly with your target audience is crucial at all levels of marketing. At the online level, this statement rings, rattles and smacks of truth. The online universe offers many opportunities to introduce and develop; build and associate; communicate and extend your offering and brand with the multitudes of potential users out there in the digital market place. Reaching deep into the belly of human interaction, society, marketing, technology, commerce, design and functionality, the answers proposed in this series of blog posts have the ability to add perspectives to the how and the why of online design and development, offer new ideas and give readers a baseline from which to go forward and enlighten their audience.

Your Brand Online

The numerous facets encompassing user interaction and online visual design comprise of a multitude of expertise, approaches and solutions. Successful branding, understanding logo interaction and corporate identification is the first step to ensuring your web presence is felt and communicates the right positive message to the relevant target audience.

It is safe to say that brand creation and design in general has been deeply impacted by online trends and the requirement for the extension of visual media to the web platform has in itself become a driving force as pixels reign supreme in our ever-widening digital age.

The Brand Breakthrough

The constant re-enforcement of shapes, colours and word flow of a brand infiltrate our visual cortex, enforcing its ever-presence into our consciousness. Over time, the effectiveness of a brand will increase as it penetrates the market, however, an effective logo design will make its presence felt instantly as it communicates its message directly to the willing viewer.

Traditional logo design still has its place in today’s online market and has, more often than not, been successfully introduced to all forms of new media including the web. Nike, Coca-Cola, BMW, Microsoft, Apple Mac, Sony and Nokia have championed the breakthrough from traditional to web media by ensuring an enduring and effective web presence which has served to re-enforce their market shares. These well known brands have kept up with the latest online trends by relying on some of the top Interactive and Web Design Houses who work hard to ensure the latest brands keep up to date with the latest online trends.

A New Breeding Ground

As online culture has developed and infiltrated our societal structures, its impact has been felt at many levels. Designers, who have traditionally taken their influence from their own visual surroundings, are more often finding inspiration online. This in turn has a roundabout effect as, with the introduction of Web 2.0, the web itself has become a breeding ground, an open canvas expanse and a virtual source of visual creation and stimulation.

From ASCII to plain text to the experimental pixel-boom and the power of Flash animation to the latest Web 2.0 trends, the online age of technology advancement has meant a never-ceasing flow of transformation. And this tech revolution has undoubtedly influenced our brand interaction and therefore our brand creation. One only needs to look at the expanding field of digital media to see the extent with which this phenomenon is occurring.

Online brands such as eBay, Google, Yahoo!, Skype, Amazon.com and PartyPoker were created to exist on the web and have since grown and expanded their presence to print, television and 20 foot high interactive billboards. Their brand identities were created to exist online, to have a web friendly-first presence and yet they have seamlessly infiltrated our popular culture in an unfounded and dominant way.

Reach through NOW!

So, where does one turn to when the need arises for a successful online presence? What qualities make up this ever-changing area of expertise and how does one choose the best solution?

Here is a guide to ensuring you find the best company to take your brand to the next level of web prowess:

• Use referrals as a basis. Listen to other people’s experiences to gauge the overall effectiveness of an agency and how seamless their solution has been implemented.
• Keep it in good company! See what brands an agency has worked with as partners and as clients to determine their professional attitudes.
• Any self-respecting agency will have an online portfolio. Review their work to see the level of production.
• Read testimonials and do a Google search to find out some further background information.
• Cost is always a factor, get quotes from several agencies to see what the industry standard is.

By following these guidelines, an overall picture will reveal itself and allow for an easy decision to be made. For more information on R.O.I.Media and our services offered, please visit www.roimedia.co.za