Wild West's design and marketing blog
Seasons Greetings from Hardwicke
Our clients over at Hardwicke barristers are supporting leading homeless charity Shelter this Christmas. They are also sending this rather stylish ecard to their clients, which Wild West designed. We can only echo their sentiments and wish all of our many clients, friends and readers of this blog, a very Happy Christmas.
It must be Christmas soon.
We’ve just had our first brief for an electronic christmas card, which, like the first cuckoo, is a sure sign that the season is about to change.
A lot of our clients and friends like cards that can be emailed. They’re fun, they cost a whole lot less to deliver, they’re environmentally friendly and what’s more, companies can give some money to charity from the budget.
Gif animations can be delivered to pretty much any email box. Flash animations are trickier but there’s usually a way to get recipients to take a look at what a company has created. And if a card like this is done with a bit of flair, it can help underline a company’s position and credentials, and become an effective piece of marketing weaponry, without looking inappropriate.
So, with Christmas around the corner, what will you be sending this year?
Once upon a time, everyone loved Flash animations, and the thing to have was a big animated sequence on your home page to entice everyone into your site. (We did a wonderful one for Mezzanine Management – a floating and revolving logo on a black background – but it took a long time to load!)
Nowadays, businesses need to know that if someone just visits the home page of your site, there will be something there that tells them very quickly what the company does, who its products or services are designed for, and why someone in their target market might want to read further.
These days, its all about targetting and measurement, and if possible, having your clients and potential clients come back time after time, maybe by giving privileged access to certain information for key individuals.
They won’t do that if your web content is flat and uninteresting; if your news section hasn’t been updated for six months; if your contact information is out of date. Yet all of these things still happen.
A web site should be like a magazine, not an inscription on a stone. The content should change regularly, and be interesting too. Why should I read this page? Should be the first question you ask about your site. Why? Because that’s what every visitor will be asking too. (Inflexion – see the post below – is a great example).
Okana are a very specialised high-tech company. Using search technologies from Autonomy, they create tools and appliances that help companies to search electronic traffic well beyond the limitations of text and data. Okana asked us to provide animations that would help them show what they were able to do on their web site. These are what we came up with! See them live (and at the proper size!) at www.okana.com
Some companies are so innovative that they have a tough job explaining just how their products work.
Take Secerno for example. Conventional wisdom says that to protect valuable information resources, you have to build a wall around it. The trouble is that when you do, the resources lose their value simply because they aren’t easily accessible, and anyway, the people who want to damage your databases, or steal them, may not be outside your company. What about the disgruntled employee passed over for a pay rise? Or the sales rep who is going to work for a competitor?
Secerno’s database security product works by looking at ‘normal’ patterns of use. Then, when something odd happens (the sales rep tries to download all your customer data, for example), alarms are triggered and the potential damage can be stopped.
Now, that isn’t so easy to explain, but an animated diagram on the Secerno web site does it much better than we can do here, just using words. Take a look at http://www.secerno.com/howitworks/diags.html
Animations like this can help potential buyers to appreciate just what it is that your product or service is offering.
Christmas comes earlier and earlier doesn’t it? We love creating animated ecards for companies who don’t want to send another batch of cards showing St Paul’s in the snow. With the money they save on postage, they have the option to make a charity donation, which is perhaps a touch more Christmassy in spirit too. Animations like this need to be small enough to email as well, which does take a bit of thought and care, so please don’t leave it till the last minute!