Web Design & Online Marketing News Recap: May 31, 2014

Now that Memorial Day weekend has come and gone, it’s feeling a lot like summer. For owners of some ecommerce businesses, this is the busiest time of the year, while others are enjoying a little downtime. Whether you’re gearing up for a busy and successful season or taking advantage of some long-anticipated quiet time by tweaking your website and adjusting your social media activity, it’s always smart to stay on top of what’s happening in the overlapping worlds of web design and online marketing. We’re on top of the game with nifty information from Design M.ag and Mashable. Check it out!

The Relationship Between Storytelling and Website Design (Jake Rocheleau, Design M.ag)

As you know, one of the things we’re most passionate about here is beautiful web design—the kind that makes users want to return to your ecommerce website again and again. This week, web professional Jake Rocheleau has an interesting take on how website design best practices can help to tell the story of your business and brand. He has outlined The Relationship Between Storytelling and Website Design for Design M.ag, highlighting concepts like creating a unifying flow between discrete pages and making the written and visual content feel personal for a greatly enhanced user experience. What story do you want your website to tell, and how can you tailor your web design strategy to accomplish that? Check out this smart article for ideas and inspiration … and get designing!

The Danger of Neglecting Your Brand Strategy on Social Media (Bryan Eisenberg, Mashable)

Earlier this week, we discussed Social Media Strategy & Success, giving you some insider tips on how to run the best social media campaigns for your business. Yesterday, Mashable published an article by Bryan Eisenberg entitled The Danger of Neglecting Your Brand Strategy on Social Media, and it serves as a perfect companion piece to our blog post. Eisenberg has some serious complaints about the response times of Maytag’s customer service division—his own Maytag refrigerator has broken 3 or 4 times since he purchased it, and recently, he waited 18 hours to hear a reply from a customer service representative after tweeting to the company to ask for help. His frustrating experience definitely doesn’t match Maytag’s famous “lonely repairman” branding strategy, which depicts a despondent refrigerator repairman with nothing to fix and no problems to solve. Here, Eisenberg provides some sound advice on how to make sure your branding and business practices—like making yourself available to customers on social media and following through on your promises—are perfectly in line.

What’s the takeaway this week? You could summarize it as brand message consistency: being sure your web site and your social media activities are consistent with what you’re trying to communicate. Take a good look at what you’re putting in front of users and ask yourself whether it all conveys the same strong, positive message. We’ll be back next week with more ways to help you brainstorm and evaluate. Stay tuned!

 

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  • By Dennis Consorte
  • Published on May 31st, 2014