AustinontheRocks.com is live!  This brand new website is all about serving up search results for local happy hour and food/drink specials based on user submitted criteria.

Say you want to find a bar in North Austin that has a nice patio, beer and wine specials this Thursday night, a big TV to watch the big game, is “date worthy’, and allows a dog.  Austin on the Rocks will deliver the skinny.  (It won’t buy you a pitcher, root for your team, find you a date, or walk your dog.)  This unique site actually caters to Austin bar-goers and Austin bar/restaurant-proprietors alike, because it matches up the perfect customer with the perfect local food and drink establishment.  Bars can control and update their own entries on the site, too.  Design cues are simple, clean, and easy to navigate, so the user experience is smooth.

From concept to creation, ENTERMEDIA made it happen for this start up custom application-based web business built in Cake, including:

• brand and online strategy consulting
• creating the cool logo
• designing all interface and admin layers
• sussing out important content strategy and user-experience decisions
• setting up a database design that will allow Austin on the Rocks to scale gracefully

Our fantastic client Cathi Rustmann and her daughter Taylore Cunningham are the one-two punch signing up the hippest bars all over Austin to be a part of this.  Cathi and Taylore have big plans in store for Austin on the Rocks and really perform a great FREE service to local folks who want to find the best food and drink specials in town. Be sure to follow AusontheRocks on Twitter and become their facebook fan:  you’ll hear about unadvertised food/drink specials and “get ‘em while they last” promotions you won’t want to miss.  Cheers!

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.

A few weeks ago, ENTERMEDIA enjoyed playing in a charity golf tournament put together by our client Slaughter Investment Professionals.  The inaugural event raised $15,000 for local Austin charities Texas Parent to Parent, For the Love of Christi and CARY Council on At-Risk Youth.  Each received a check for $5,000. Thanks to Bob Tabor from Slaughter Investments for inviting us to participate.

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:

Last week we got a fantastic bit of client feedback on a recent redesign project we wrapped for his web-based business:

Hey guys,

I wanted to let you know that we have launched our new website:  http://www.yourteacher.com/

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.

Check out the video on the CuatroBenefits site:
Cuatro Benefits Blog | Video Testimonials:  Why our Clients Choose to Work With Us

Or check it out right here on YouTube: