One of our all time favorite clients is Ausley Algert Robertson & Flores, LLP, the best family law practice in Austin. We redesigned and launched their website in Drupal this summer and really enjoyed the collaboration. Then they they were kind enough to mention us in their first blog post:
” … The folks at Entermedia are professional, patient, creative, and helpful beyond anything we could have expected. If you need website help, we highly recommend Entermedia…”
Wow! Probably the best testimonial we could ask for, but we swear we didn’t ask. We are very grateful.
The scramble format proved hospitable for Ethan and Ryan’s amazing talents (another client of ours, Cuatro Groos, and his friend Matt Haney were the other two members of this fearsome foursome). A respectable third place finish was attained.
Here’s Ethan and Ryan at the ENTERMEDIA hole we sponsored:
On our first full day yesterday, we had (##) subscriptions.(Our old website averaged (#) per day.)
It’s clear that the new design and graphics have been a complete home run.
Thanks again for all your help!
Mike
Check out this Google Analytics graphic showing the impact of the new design on their subscription page traffic :
In the busy professional world, good work is simply expected and praise can be infrequently found. We always strive to make our clients happy, but it feels really good when they are moved to express their enthusiasm about the finished product. Hats off to Bryan and Ethan, who solved this redesign project in a minimum of hours and apparently to great effect.
Putting customer testimonials on your website is a time-worn practice and generally a good idea, but there is some debate over their efficacy. One argument in their favor is ‘your users want to know you have them’…like some kind of a credibility benchmark. This is not to say that they will pay any attention to them. Why? Because testimonials are generally so complimentary by their very nature as to be perceived as embellished. They are not “reviews”…so what informational value do they offer? Again, maybe just the simple fact that you can get your current customers to say nice things about you is the entire point.
It’s also possible that users might have a different bias against them…whether or not they are real. Who would know if they are or are true accounts or complete fiction? In our experience, we have sadly come across some fabricated testimonials, that go a little something like this:
“[So and so] is the only [some kind of company] in the [blank industry] that I trust to deliver [x] [with all the trimmings].”
- Kenny S. from Alabama
Thanks for that, Kenny S! Rest assured, all of EM’s testimonials are genuine. (They need to be updated to reflect more of our latest work and clients, but that’s a different issue.)
Recently, one of our clients came up with a great way to present customer testimonials in a way that is genuine, informational, and compelling. Cuatro from CuatroBenefits invited some of his representative clients into his office the other morning and shot a quick video asking them some pointed questions about their experience interacting with his service. Full disclosure, Ethan and Ryan were invited and filmed.
Anyway, we think this is a wonderful and persuasive marketing play in the age of easy YouTube style video sharing. This is going to drive business leads for CuatroBenefits. We recommend this way of presenting testimonials for similar service-oriented clients.
ENTERMEDIA cofounder Ethan Worrel and our Head Drupal Chef Nick Lewis will be the speakers tonight at the July meeting of the Austin Drupal Meetup on the interrelated topics of UX, The Client, The Project, and Drupal.
The meetup will run from 7-10p and held at UT’s ACTLab (4th Floor CMB, Studio B, corner of Guadalupe and Dean Keeton). Ethan and Nick will take turns presenting their brief remarks and then open the floor for questions and comments.
Without giving too much away, here’s a sampling of what you can expect to hear tonight from two of our own most thoroughly enlightening and well-mannered professionals:
UX:
Fully leverage everything the user already knows
Display the most valuable data…let users dig for the fine detail
Make decisions so your users don’t have to
The Client:
Guide them to think in terms of page types
Demand supporting content early and often
Most of the time, you are the client
The Project:
Making tough choices that pay off in the long run for both parties
How to use the Website Price Estimator 5000
Drupal:
Clients can figure out how taxonomy works well enough, but how taxonomy fits into the concept of view arguments? That’s a different story…
[pause for laughter...the audience will think its funny...]
A few years ago, we built a simple brochure website for an Austin-based client in the construction business. At that time, we created a geo-targeted Google Adwords campaign aimed at driving qualified leads to the site and converting them into online contacts.
This pay-per-click campaign was quite successful. For a scant few hundreds of dollars per month the client paid Google for ad clicks, he received enough good leads submitted through the website that the first year, annual revenue jumped from low six-figures to mid six-figures. In the second year, the client broke seven figures for the first time ever.
The client had so much new business in the pipeline, it was all he could do to keep up with demand. It that’s a problem, it’s a good one, right? Unfortunately though, amid all the activity he neglected to pay his $300 AdWords bill one month and, of course, Google turned his campaign off. The client figured: no worries…I’m so busy anyway…
Two years pass. The client came by our office last week and reports: business is dead…zero…we’ve got to update the website, buy some radio, tv ads, something…the recession’s taking me under!
Our reply was predictable. He could pay thousands on a radio spend but it’ll be expensive and hard to measure. Alternatively, we reminded him how well he was doing with his cost efficient pay-per-click campaign.
We told him: just pay your bill…turn your ads back on…it’s the epitome of low risk, high reward.
He took our advice. Over the weekend he got two good sales leads through the site within the first $45 spent. He’s undeniably great at what he does from there, we’re sure he’ll turn those new leads into business.
“Good Morning,” beamed the White House’s Web site in 1998. “Welcome to the White House.” (Whether this message changed as morning changed to afternoon and evening is unclear.) Beneath the cutting-edge waving flags and photo of the fountains outside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., a visitor to Whitehouse.gov in the late ‘90s could learn more about Bill Clinton and Al Gore: “Their accomplishments, their families, and how to send them electronic mail.
We are getting excited about Google Wave, coming later this year.
What is a wave? A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.
There will be a meetup tonight to discuss what this Google Wave thing might mean for Austin and our local tech community. Come join the discussion!
Went to buy a mattress from a local organic bed manufacturer/retailer this past weekend.Got a fair price, and the mattress and box spring set works great for the guestroom in question…but that is not what this post is about.
What was fun and unexpected during the final transaction was hearing the owner/operator enthuse about his store’s website and what it means for their small business success.
Here’s the back story.He asked us how we happened to hear of them initially, and we replied that we were just driving by the day before and stopped in to see some pricing.Later that night we visited their website and learned all about their business: how long they’d been around, how they make their mattresses individually to order, why that delivers a better value to their customers, the delivery process, etc.Standard website stuff, but competently done.This gave us a good impression and the next day we returned to the store to make a purchase.
So when the store owner heard we had checked out the website and this was a factor in our decision, the man actually pumped his fist like he had just holed a long birdie. He proceeded to share the following anecdotes about business before and after the site:
Before the “internet happened” they had to compete with everybody else trying to get on TV, radio, or newspapers for expensive advertising time.
Before, TV mattered most and good ROI was never a given…especially in a bad economy.
Now, they do no TV which saves them tens of thousands in marketing costs.
Now, they get qualified leads through organic search results and a well-maintained Google Adwords campaign (pay per click) who bring their undivided attention every day and all night.
Now, newspaper and radio have slashed their advertising rates and are almost begging them to come back.They’re not interested.
His dad, still an owner, has been selling beds for over 50 years, and has never known a game-changer like website traffic and pay-per-click advertising for small business.
70% of their annual business now comes from website traffic.
It was just really validating to hear this story offered up so freely and randomly…and that it would match so much of what we tell our small business clients about the value of having a strong web presence.I suspect that, for this savvy and adaptable business owner, having a website that converts has insulated his family’s small business from the worst effects of this recession at the very least. All I really know is there are about ten bed stores in the vicinity of this one, but the owner of this one was making an easy sale on a hot Sunday afternoon that the competition wasn’t making…and his website was a big reason why.
If you’ve ever started a business–and especially if you’ve ever used a laptop computer while starting this business–chances are you’ll appreciate Kirk Ladendorf’s interview with longtime Austin entrepreneur Gary Pankonien. He led the team that developed Compaq Computer Corp.’s industry-first notebook computer many years ago. He’s kept it moving since.
You have a range of experience in technology ranging from Compaq Computer to several small startups in Austin. How does that help you as CEO of this young company?
After you’ve ridden a few rides – and fallen in enough holes – you learn what to expect.
Many of the issues are second nature. You still have to develop the plan and solve the hard issues, but you learn how to anticipate the next moves. You learn very early that cash flow is almost more important than your mother.
What are the right traits for a technology entrepreneur? Is it technical knowledge, market savvy, organizational discipline or something else?
I think a major trait of being an entrepreneur is being able to wake up in the morning looking forward to the challenges of the day and not knowing if your business is going to live or die.
The unknown is always changing, and how you handle the change usually predicts success.
You have to process a lot of data, usually not a with a complete data set, and make decisions that will significantly impact your future.
What’s fun about running a startup?
The first time you open the mail and see the check from your first sale, it’s a good day.
I once was standing in a checkout line behind two ladies talking about this great company her husband was interviewing with and the future they were looking forward to. She eventually said who it was, and I realized that it was the company our team had built. Yes, we did hire her husband.
