Tag Archives: Ives Development Inc.

About 4374 days ago E-Commerce

Hiring a Web Designer: Advice from Award-Winning Sites

We spoke to Inc. Web Award winners to learn how they chose designers for their exceptional sites. Maggie Smith spent three months researching what she wanted to do with her Web site before she hired the designer she met through a networking group. Surfing the Net and reviewing other sites enabled her to present her designer with a list of 25 sites she liked the look of — graphics, type, icons, design, visual appeal — and 25 she liked the functionality of. “Designers know Web design, but not your industry,” said Smith, whose company ArtSource (1999 Inc. Web Award winner, Design) supplies artwork for corporate settings. The industry is traditionally tied to paper catalogs, and she expected having a hard time transitioning customers to Web sales. “I know how my customers want to buy. Virtually no one uses credit cards,” she said. ArtSource.com doesn’t take online payments or list prices online. Smith couldn’t have relied on a designer to make that decision. “Define your business in a solid sentence and present that to your designer,” recommends Raymond K. Lemire. In 1995, when he launched his mail order and online pasta business Flying Noodle (2000 Inc. Web Award winner, 2nd place, Marketing), he called everyone he knew and asked them to recommend designers. “I wanted someone who understood selling; it’s a selling site,” he said. When he met with the designer, he brought instructions — to make using the site as easy as using a print catalog. He also wanted a designer with a sense of humor, and believes that personal rapport is very important. “Who you choose to put together your site depends on how you like to work. We wanted someone who could create a site that was fun, whimsical, and not take it too seriously.” A couple of final words from Lemire: No matter how big or small your budget is, save room for redesign work because it’s bound to happen. The best way to find a designer is to marry one, joked Tom Carr and his wife and partner Elizabeth Gray Carr. In 1996, the then full-time information services manager at a local bank armed himself with books on Web design and spent his weekends designing the real estate site callelizabeth.com (2000 Inc. Web Award winner, 1st place, Marketing). Carr also looked at other sites and culled lessons from WebPagesThatSuck.com. He determined what he didn’t want — flash and animation — and what he did want — virtual tours and an unlimited number of pictures. Understanding the user base of home-sellers and buyers was critical. Carr knew they weren’t necessarily Web savvy, and pictured them as passing through this site — maybe once — at a particular period of time in their lives. This helped him create the right site to meet his customers’ and the business’s needs. “I needed a lot of work done and needed to give it to somebody I could trust.” That was the bottom line for Brad Luebker, director of marketing for software company Ives Development Inc. So he hired one of the first graphic designers he’d ever worked with to do a visual redesign of the site, teamstudio.com (2000 Inc. Web Award winner, 2nd place, Customer Service). The redesign was done about two years ago when it was determined the company wanted a brighter, more open and friendlier look for the site than it had originally. The back end of the site, including the navigation, was done by another company, and again, Luebker knew what he wanted — based on employee and customer comments — before he brought in that team. Six weeks after Charley Biggs, COO of ecamps.com (1999 Inc. Web Award winner, Design and Return on Investment), hired a large design firm, he realized it was not a good fit. Neither the work nor the communication was terrific, and he said a lot of money got wasted. So he stopped the work and put the word out that he was looking for someone who wanted to take a break from their full-time job to do something on their own. He contracted with an individual with a background in engineering to do the site programming. “We had a good idea of what we wanted and he came up with a lot of good things on his own,” Biggs said. The pros of working with an individual contractor, says Biggs, is that they had access to him 24 hours a day and had more control over costs. The experiences of these Inc. Web Awards winners can be summarized with this checklist: Do Your Homework Surf the Internet and look at sites both in and out of your industry. Note what you like and don’t like in terms of the look and functionality of other sites. Online go to WebPagesThatSuck.com, “Where you can learn good design by looking at bad design.” Know Your Industry Define your business in one solid sentence and present that to your designer. Understand how your business will translate to the Web. Know how your customer base operates. Look at your competition to see what they’re doing on the Web, and determine if you’d do it the same or differently. Network to Get Recommendations Work with someone you trust. Assess your designer’s experience. Make sure you can communicate well with the designer. Phone references and ask about timelines. What did the designer do well and not so well? Did the designer stick to the plan? Look for someone whose personality reflects the type of site you’d like to present. Copyright © 2001 inc.com LLC Related resources at inc.com:A Web Tale: Site Development, Spam and Search Engines

About 4586 days ago E-Commerce

Web Awards 2000: Customer Service

First place Sumerset Custom Houseboats (See ” Web Awards 2000: General Excellence.”) Second place Help Yourself Company: Ives Development Inc. Web address: www.teamstudio.com Why it won: Robust personal-account management treats each customer as an individual. Company revenues: $7 million Site-launch cost: $75,000 Judge’s view: “This software company has developed innovative, cost-effective ways for getting upgrades to clients and performing complex customer service.” –Evan Schwartz Individual preference is the order of the day at Teamstudio.com, the Web site for Ives Development Inc., a software vendor in Beverly, Mass. Users of Ives’s software-engineering tools can elect to serve themselves in a variety of ways. Customers can send E-mail queries or get free telephone support. They can also search the Ives KnowledgeBase or post a question to one of two discussion forums, where peers as well as tech-support staffers answer questions. Customers appreciate those options — which many software-company sites offer today — although Ives CEO Nigel Cheshire, 41, ruefully admits that most users tend to pick up the phone the minute they have a problem. Human nature being what it is, Ives may never succeed in training its customers to fully help themselves with support issues. So the company has managed to slash costs in other ways. All Ives software is available for downloading on the site, which dramatically reduces CD production and distribution expenses. And customers get an automatic E-mail message when new releases of their products are available, which eliminates snail-mail costs. Personal-account management is by far the best self-service feature on the site. Customers can manage their accounts online, seeing at a glance which products they have licenses for, how many licenses they’ve bought, and when the maintenance agreements on their licenses are due to expire. “In the near future, our customers will be able to link to a page within an E-mail message and renew all their agreements in one place,” says Cheshire. Anything to make life easier for a beleaguered software developer. –Lauren Gibbons Paul Third place PostNet International Franchise Corp. (See ” Web Awards 2000: Community.”) Conversation with Martha Rogers Judge: Customer Service There’s nothing Martha Rogers hates more than being treated like everyone else. And that unfortunately is how most companies treat their customers — like peas in a pod. Ask Rogers for examples of companies that treat her differently from other customers, and she cites American Airlines, which “remembers” what she tells the airline every time she calls or logs on to its Web site. Consequently, American offers her individualized information — not just what a flight to Reno costs this week. “They know my zip code and what school system I’m in, and as a result, they send a message that says, ‘Welcome back, Martha, we’d like to offer your family a vacation package for spring break.’ This is customer service on steroids,” declares Rogers, who is a partner at the Peppers and Rogers Group. How can a company that’s a fraction of the size of American Airlines reach such a lofty standard? Rogers offers these pointers: Identify your customers individually. “If I can’t remember the problem you had six months ago, or I don’t learn from this transaction a way that will help me consistently serve you better in the future, then it’s an isolated incident,” says Rogers. “That’s better than nothing, but it’s far from building a relationship. So the first thing I need to be able to do is identify you as you every time you come in, through any channel.” Determine the value of your customers and treat them accordingly. “This means I recognize that you are of greater value than Martha is, and therefore I’m going to make different offers to you or spend more resources on you.” Get your customers to interact with you. “If I can learn something from you, I can give you what’s best for you and give your next-door neighbor what’s best for your next-door neighbor.” Use that information to customize your site. “I’d like to see these sites go beyond ‘Welcome back, Martha.’ I’d like them to pull together an automated message that’s relevant to me based on information I’ve given them, not based on everything that’s true about my demographic group,” says Rogers. –Elaine Appleton Grant Annual Web Awards 2000 General Excellence Marketing Customer Service ROI Innovation Community Judges Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.