It seems just like yesterday I was frantically calling the office on my way in for my first day at HMG.  I think I passed the office building about three times before I actually realized that was where I needed to be.  Ha, what a newbie!  After a friendly greeting, these eager beavers put my straight to work, which has been the best part of my internship—there was always plenty of work to be done.  No matter how big or small, there was always something I could be doing and no, it actually didn’t require me to make a coffee run!  There are many more aspects I loved about being an HMG Creative Intern that I’d like to share with you in one of my final blog posts.

I was more than an intern. Yep, you heard that right.  Although you might assume I was just a coffee-running, copy-making, good-for-nothing but the grunt-work college student, I am very proud to say…you’re WRONG.  My work was so far from this definition and half of the time I actually was referred to as a the HMG Social Media and Marketing “Coordinator.”  Every member of the HMG team treated me with the utmost respect and as a true employee, something that is very rare to find at any internship and was truly appreciated!

They even used my ideas! I was always encouraged to present my personal opinions and insight.  I was often invited to team meetings where I was asked to contribute my thoughts and ideas and I even took charge on two of our major campaigns.  This has left me with great experience and the confidence to embark on my future careers.

Fun atmosphere. Coming into HMG office every week was always a joyful experience.  The close-knit team welcomed me every day with a warm hello and provided me with plenty of laughter throughout the day.  The atmosphere around the office was laid back and one of the best aspects of working here (in my opinion) was getting to wear jeans whenever I wanted!  Who doesn’t love that?!

Gained a wide variety of experience. From social media and blogging to learning the foreign concepts of website development, I can truly say I have learned a vast amount of knowledge that I feel confident will carry me into this new chapter of my life as I start the search for a real career!

All in all, I couldn’t be more grateful for my time at HMG Creative.  I truly appreciate all of the opportunities and responsibilities given to me as the Social Media and Marketing Intern and I can only hope that I will be remembered as a great intern.  So as you can see, an HMG Internship is one of a kind, so my advice to you college students is: be on the look out for the next internship opportunity available and maybe you too can be as lucky as I was to experience it!

“Stop Pestering Me!”
I’ve seen brands do some pretty obnoxious things, from pelting the news feed with multiple posts every day to posting political nonsense that has nothing to do with their company. According to this enlightening infographic by market research company Lab42, people most often unlike brands for these annoying habits (which ones are you guilty of?):

• Posting too frequently
• Posting irrelevant content
• Posting overt religious or political content
• Bad customer service and communication

Respect Your Fans and Give Them What They Want
At the end of the day, your fans want to hear from you or they wouldn’t have liked you in the first place. Most Facebook users like brands because they feel more connected, they want to receive special offers or discounts, or they want to stay up-to-date on new products. Encourage them to stick around by resolving to:

• Post less frequently—Pay attention to how often you’re posting. If necessary, ask fans for feedback on how often they’d like to hear from you.
• Post relevant, valuable content—Make sure your fans receive top priority when it comes to notification of sales, coupon offers, giveaways, and other deals. Avoid topics that have nothing whatsoever to do with your brand (although it’s fine to let your personality shine through).
• Encourage fans to manage notification frequency rather than unliking—Facebook allows users to change their notification preferences by hovering over the “Like” button on a brand’s fan page.
• Let fans know they can hide a like—If your company has embarrassment potential (you sell diet products or certain medications, for example) fans can hide the fact that they’ve liked your page from their friends. Don’t be distraught by this. Just be thankful they’re still receiving your information, even if all their friends don’t know it.

Maintaining a healthy Facebook fan page is all about building relationships. Learn what your customers want and give it to them. Keep the conversation fresh. And pay attention to the likes and dislikes of your target market. It’s the only way to stay on top of your game in an increasingly competitive social market.

1.     Choose a Theme
The sky is the limit when it comes to WordPress themes, but keep a couple of points in mind:

• Choose a theme that meets your needs—The theme should reflect the personality of your company. It should also include any essential elements you need to present the type of content you have. Spend some time researching available theme options before you just pick one that strikes your fancy.
• Consider your willingness to dabble in the code—If you are familiar with coding and enjoy tweaking things, you can choose a theme you love even if it has a few elements you’re not really happy with. If you’re the type of person who gets nervous just looking at a block of code, stick with a theme that meets your needs as is.

2.     Customize Your Theme
Do a quick Google search and you’ll come up with thousands of widgets and plug-ins for your WordPress site. They’re the best way to customize your theme, incorporating special capabilities such as social media buttons and other common website elements. Just about any WordPress web design goal can be accomplished with the right plug-in or widget, so take some time to familiarize yourself with what’s out there and how to make it work for you.

3.     Include Well-Chosen Images
We’ve all seen those mind-numbing, generic stock photos of people shaking hands or sitting at a computer in an office. Don’t be boring with your images. Choose something that directly supports the message you’re trying to communicate. If you can’t find something already out there, design your own graphic or snap some photos yourself.

4.     Consider a Blog
If your business lends itself to a blog, WordPress offers a great platform for including one on your website. WordPress web design makes blogging easy. Regular updates are the key to a great blog, so don’t commit to one if you’re only going to post every six months.

Like any new platform, WordPress web design takes some experimentation and research to learn. However, it’s also one of the easiest ways to quickly design and format content for a small website. Need more help creating a killer WordPress website? HMG Creative can help you make the most of the latest plug-ins, widgets, and themes to create the website of your dreams.

Zulily

Plenty of “deal-of-the-day” websites require you to register before you can see the actual deals, but Zulily’s home page gives you next to no information about what the site does. Here are the biggest design problems:

• You can find a bit of information about how the site works, but it’s buried at the bottom of the page under a banner that looks like advertising, making the viewer ignore everything below it.
• Links to “How Zulily Works,” “Brands We Love,” and “FAQ” appear in tiny type that doesn’t stand out from surrounding content.
• No secondary call to action if the visitor isn’t ready to register.

Bottom Line:  It’s too hard for non-registered users to learn about the site.

Carol House Furniture

Carol House makes visitors jump through multiple hoops in order to view their website—a surefire way to send customers scrambling for the back button. For starters:

• Gray type on white background = hard to read.
• After reaching the home page, you have to click an additional button to see any actual content.
• The home page has a long list of obsolete requirements you must meet before you can see their content (high speed internet, Flash player, disable pop-up blocker). Really? Who has to remind people they need high speed internet these days?

After clicking the Enter button, a new page opens where all browser controls have been disabled, a cheesy Flash video plays, music automatically starts, and the talking heads at the top of the page point out interesting links we might want to click (wait, I thought we were here to look at furniture…).

We also see lots of wasted space on either side with no clear call to action anywhere on the page.

Bottom Line: After making your visitors enter an alternate universe in order to see your site, don’t handcuff them in a desperate attempt to make them stick around.

Pure Ecommerce

I’ll keep this one short and sweet (which is opposite of Pure Ecommerce’s site).

We have to read through lengthy blocks of copy just to find out what the company offers. Once we click on the call to action, we’re directed to more copy. Not exactly a one-click, ready-to-go experience as promised.

Bottom Line: Too much copy and weak call to actions.

So, what’s the point?

Big business web design disasters keep us all humble.  If they can experience huge marketing fails, so can we.  Keep testing, keep tweaking, and keep converting!  Would you consider your online web presence a “disaster”?   If so, we’d love to chat with you… after all we’re only a phone call away.

1.  Logo – (Noun) “A symbol adopted by an organization to identify its products or services” We all know it’s never about what you have, it’s about how you use it that makes the difference! Since you’ve spent the time and/or money on this masterpiece called your “logo,” make sure it shows up everywhere including business cards, social media sites, and any other promotional materials. Your logo is your company’s identity in a picture and the more you show it off, the quicker your brand recognition will grow.

Does this really matter, you ask? Consider this… how likely are you to remember a random fast-food restaurant you visited when they use generic bags and soda cups versus the restaurant that brands every cup and bag with their logo? That garbage in your car becomes advertising and will make an impression every time you see it.

2.  Interact – Who knew this was a part of branding? Speak directly with your target and, even more importantly, with your clients. Share and respond to social media comments, answer your phone using your company name and/or slogan, and use interactive communication tools such as surveys and email marketing. Remember, everything you send and share should always include your logo and slogan.

3. Solve – Your mission should be simple. Every business offers a product or service that offers results and/or a solution; and just because you know that, it does not mean your target market does. Leverage your interactive tools to share a clear, concise, and consistent solution that is unique to your brand identity. Remember, the process you use to help your clients may be complicated but your message should be simple enough to earn the trust and comfort of your clients.

Branding is more of an art than a science; it takes creativity, time, patience, and just like a painting, it will even go through an ugly stage. An initial brand launch should focus on creating awareness for your unique product or services. Luckily you have a friend in the industry- whether your current brand is sour or your business is brand new, HMG can help you too!

Everybody loves a good contest, right? For the customer, the contest is all about the prize; for your business, it’s all about the new contacts you make and future marketing opportunities. Let’s take a look at five steps to hitting the sweet spot for both parties.

Determine Your Goal
When the contest is over, what will you have to show for it? Potential goals might include growing your fan or follower base, increasing click-throughs to your website, boosting conversion rates, creating awareness of a new product, getting customer testimonials, and encouraging likes and shares on your Facebook page. Social media makes it possible to accomplish goals far beyond the contact-gathering efforts of the business-card-in-a-fishbowl, so think outside the box (bowl).

Create a Plan
Best Instagram photos, video testimonials, creative pictures of a product in use, and content creation for your website all make great social media contest ideas. If you’re looking to grow your contact list, a simple click-and-share contest may help you accomplish your goal. Make sure your idea will actually help you reach the goal you determined in Step One.

Make the Prize Desirable
The quality of the prize should be relative to the amount of effort participants had to exert. A musician I know is currently running a Facebook contest in which participants send in recordings of themselves and compete for a chance to win a CD recording session. That’s a great incentive designed to reach out to serious musicians. If he wanted to merely increase the number of likes on his Facebook page, he could run a contest with one of his own CDs as the prize. Smaller effort, smaller incentive.

Spread the Word
Social media creates the opportunity for your contest to go viral if you package it right. Offer the right prize and the right level of engagement, and people will want to share the chance to win with their friends. You can also include an option to share your link as part of the entry process. Promote the contest on as many social channels as possible, targeting your existing fans first.

Announce the Winner
Don’t forget to showcase the winner at the end of the contest. It’s not only a feather in the winner’s cap, but also another chance for you to interact with all those new contacts.

Social media contests should be easy to enter and easy to share. In order for your contest to go viral, you need a solid plan, a desirable incentive, and a plan for getting the word out. Oh, and if you’re giving away an iPad, be sure and send me an invite.

Parcely Paid, as the tagline “Real Friends Chip in” implies, is your personal platform to promote and raise cash to get the gift that you really want on your birthday. HMG Creative built out the membership-based site, enabled week-long campaigns leading up to a user’s birthday, integrated eConnect Email for email marketing and, of course, seamlessly set up PayPal for the ease of donating (and accepting) funds.

Make sure ugly sweaters, random gift cards and last season’s technology doesn’t happen to you. Move over Kickstarter, not everyone has an entrepreneurial venture, but we all have birthdays. Check out ParcelyPaid and the launch video here.

Website Screenshots

• Making Content Look Like Advertising
  Web users these days have developed “banner blindness.” Anything that looks like a banner ad or block ad will be ignored. Avoid the common web design mistake of putting essential information in a format that looks like advertising.

• Using Non-Intuitive Navigation
  If you have to explain how to navigate your site, you’ve done it wrong. Navigation should make sense to someone who has never seen your site before. Group similar links under headings and make it easy for visitors to find their way back to a previous page and to the home page.

• Automatic-Play Flash Videos
  No one wants to be held hostage while you play a 20-second introductory video before loading site content. Video is great, but make it optional by providing a play button for the user to click when he or she is ready.

• Not Listing Product Pricing
  What’s the point of having an ecommerce website if you make the visitor call, register, or start to checkout before he sees actual prices? This includes shipping rates as well. Provide estimates before checkout to reduce sticker shock during the sale.

• Unclear Call to Action
  Can visitors immediately see how to take action on your site? Your call to action should use descriptive, action-oriented language that clearly communicates what you want the visitor to do.

• Long Blocks of Text
  Our attention span is short and even shorter online. No one has time to read through a long page of tiny text. Break copy up into smaller chunks using subheadings and bullets, and make the font bigger so content appears less intimidating.

• No Search or Bad Search
  Placing the search box in a difficult-to-find place (like halfway down the sidebar), not being able to handle misspellings, and not including search capabilities at all are common web design mistakes. Bad search can leave users frustrated and ready to bail.

• Links that Don’t Look Like Links
  Use color to designate clickable text, and change the color for links that have already been clicked. Don’t be too creative with this. Underlines, italics, bolding, and unusual colors may look cool, but users may not pick up on the fact that they can be clicked.

Do you happen to be guilty of any of these disastrous web design mistakes? If so, it’s time to start testing a new design that will make it easier for your customers to convert. Give us a call and we’d be happy to talk through this with you!

Local, as in—we’re from here, we work here and we employ here. As you already know, Austin is THE place to be; a thriving economy, a driven talent pool and all the BBQ, beer and live music you could ask for. Having our HQ here also helps connect us with some of the nation’s brightest entrepreneurs who are changing the way the Internet and its users operate. We’ve also had the pleasure to work with major staples in the local business community such as OneStar Foundation, WhaleShark Media and The State Bar of Texas.

When we say full-service we really mean it. We go past the web and focus on creating brands. We’re an extension of your business and work with you to create a lasting presence both on and off the Internet. From branding to email marketing to graphic design and printing, we have you covered.

Ten-year tenure. Say that ten times fast. Well, before you get caught up in a tongue twister, listen to this. We started in 2003 and haven’t looked back since. We’ve learned a lot from our successes but even more from our failures. These types of experiences can only be had over time and have been tried and proven over again. This is what we give you, a proven approach that has been molded and continues to mold with new technologies, new clients and new ways of thinking.

Okay, so we do branding, web and print. We’ve been blowing minds since ’03. We have a solid presence in the local community. But what does that mean to you, the business owner? It means nothing if we can’t deliver. Deliverability is the most important part of the process, because without it, we’d be out of business and you’d be pissed. So we avoid all of that by delivering a quality product that we stand by.

Coolness. Yes, I said it and yes, I meant it. We’re not only a happy bunch of creatives, developers, account executives, payroll administrators and interns; we are fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters. We are the person you saw during SXSW at the Dawes show singing every word of “When My Time Comes.” We are the person who bumped into you at Tacodeli who accidentally spilled the “roja” sauce on your shirt- sorry. We are the person who wears a legitimate fireman costume on Halloween and pranks co-workers on April Fool’s. We are the group of people who work late to deliver on a last-minute project. We are HMG Creative and we are your creative agency.

Entrée decision-making has now become much easier thanks to our awesome client, PrimoDish.  Based out of Austin, Texas, PrimoDish is an online company that provides information and ratings of the best, and worst, dishes at various restaurants and bars around the nation.

As a web-based company, PrimoDish came to us with extremely complex tasks that needed to be tackled.  In the kickoff meeting, we teamed up with our client to identify a list of critical factors and determined the desired target market to keep in mind throughout the re-development of the website.  By using storyboards, we were able to focus our attention on refining the overall user experience from the standpoint of an end-user.  From there, we constructed wireframe mock-ups that went through a series of revisions and additional enhancements.  Once the wireframes were solidified, we were able to build-out the GUI, or as I like to say, the “gooey.”  This is a graphical user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices using images rather than text commands.  Once our work was finalized, we handed over the front-end design (HTML, CSS and Javascript) to PrimoDish, where their dev team completed the implementation and successful launch of their new site!

Their website now provides visitors with a clean layout, accessible information and the these functional features:

• Restaurant / Dish Rating System
• Form Search using Google Maps (Auto Detect Location)
• Social Sharing
• Membership (Create Profile)
• Social Networking (Friend-ing, Bookmarking, Sharing, etc)
• Tagging
• Blog

Signing up is super easy– so if you’re already wondering what you’re next meal will be, I’d suggest taking a look at their new and improved website.  Just provide an email, password and username and you’re set to search for the best dish in town!

Hungry for more?  Give us a call today and we’d love to chat about your next website!

Wireframes

Design Mockups