Lorely's blog

Our 1st corporate website design was a complete success, chosen from among the millions of websites that now populate the web to be featured in many web design showcase galleries.

When we decided to replace our corporate site with a more advanced, functional interface for our clients we hoped that the new functionality didn't get in the way of our outstanding design. Our fears were unfounded. Once more, our site continues to be picked as an example of some of the best website designs out there. Check out our listing in www.cssice.com, a CSS web gallery whose mission is to showcase the "most beautiful designs in the web".

Less than a month after our corporate website was showcased in several design sites among the top favorites, we decided to launch a new version of greenliteweb.com. While it'd be easy to question the rationale behind putting a new design out there just when our 1st one was gaining recognition, our team just sees it as a chance to innovate further in the design realm.

The goal behind our project was to redesign our website to better serve our audience and its needs, while continuing to push forward our graphic design capabilities. We have applied some of the concepts we constantly advocate for in web design: simplicity, usability and consistency. The new website also puts control back in the hands of the customer through an interactive quoting system. This allows site visitors to easily determine the type of budget they'll require for a new website based on their needs.

We embarked on this project in the same manner we go about our clients' projects: with  business and marketing goals driving the web development strategy. We are really proud of the final product.

We hope all our fans out there are too!

The design for our corporate site, greenliteweb.com, has been chosen the Editor's Favorite AND the Best Rated website by cmsdesign.org, an organization that evaluates and ranks designs from several open source content management systems.

The GreenLite website was choosen as the top Drupal CMS design, outranking much larger and better-known websites including American Idol Music and the Wine Institute.

We are happy that our passion for high-quality and innovative design has been recognized by our peers.

Go GreenLite!

While the ROI for all commercial, non-email related online marketing is about $20.19 (according to the DMA study "The Power of Direct"), email marketing's ROI averages about $45.65. Although profitable, the problem is not many people like receiving commercial email....8 out 10 broadband users say they delete most of it without even reading it and 6 out of 10 say that most commercial email offers nothing of interest.

So how to use B2B email effectively? A few simple best practices can help:

• Use your company name in the "from" field or better still, ensure that is coming from someone who matters in the company.
• Personalize content as much as possible by segmenting the email's content
• Include something of value or unique: perks, white papers, reports, etc.
• Make it short and focused. Respect your audience's time.
• Try to engage the audience with interactive polls, quizzes or by other means. Heavy text is not very appealing.
• Make it easier for the mobile users: have a "click here to read on your mobile phone " feature.
• Beware of the frequency. I believe receiving too frequent communications is probably what causes most people to get annoyed with b2b email.

The Justin M Dart Foundation needed a website design which would better support its philanthropic goal of providing free online English language courses. The design features clean and simple elements that are meant to enhance the foundations’ message. In this case we worked collaboratively with the organizations's chairman to implement his vision for the site based on his own sketches and design ideas.

We’re proud to be part of this project and its goals!

Marketing for small businesses can be quite challenging: There is no large budget allocated for research or promotion and there’s usually a very reduced or non-existing marketing staff.

Having worked at both Fortune 500 companies and smaller, privately-owned firms, I have come to realize that at the end it all goes back to the basics: who’s your target market or audience? How well does your marketing mix meet their needs and wants?

In my line of work, I meet a lot of people who are starting their business yet can’t really answer those two important questions. I’ve heard: “my target market is whoever wants to buy my product”. However, if you don’t know who those people are, where they might be or how would you reach them, your task of marketing to them will be nearly impossible and any money you put towards marketing will be wasted.

The other critical element is the marketing mix. This is your product, your promotion, your distribution place and your pricing (the famous 4P’s of marketing). Any business decision you make in those 4 dimensions must revolve around your target market. Would they need or want your product? Will they respond to your promotions? Will they buy at the place you are selling at? Do your prices reflect your audience income and the perception they’ll have about your product?

Success for small businesses (or any business, for that matter) depends largely on a good understanding of these marketing basics. And for that, you don’t need a large budget.

A recent survey on small businesses across 19 industries conducted by Netflare revealed that:

23% of websites have not been updated since they were launched about 4 years ago

As a small business, you need all the advantages that you can get over larger players. The Internet is an ideal place to even the playing field….as long as you are actually in the game. This means you must not only have a website to begin with, but you must have one that is updated, relevant and consistent with your brand image. If you are among that group that hasn’t done any updates to your website since it was launched, you are canceling out any advantages that you gained by setting it up. The website is the first element of your business that people interact with and whatever impression they get from it, will probably transfer to your business as well. An old, unprofessional-looking website with outdated content is almost worse than no website at all. All good web development companies use some kind of Content Management System, which allows you to easily update the website without any special technical or programming skills or software.

The fact that only 8% of small businesses have some kind of e-commerce capability on their website is even more astounding. As a business owner you would want people to have access to your products in as many places as possible. The Internet is the most convenient for clients, and cost effective for you, of all!

Setting up a simple e-commerce site can be relatively inexpensive, especially when you take into account the benefits that it can bring. GreenLite’s pricing for e-commerce hovers around $5,600. In exchange for this investment, you allow consumers access to your products when they are actively looking for them. So rather than having to “push” a sale, you allow them to “pull” it from you, a much easier sales strategy.

The lesson to learn here is that: 1) having a website is the minimum you have to do in order to be in the same playing field as everyone else. 2) Having a good, updated website with relevant content and professional graphic design can at least give you the chance of being seriously considered by potential clients, and lastly, providing a convenient way for customers to buy or sign in for your products and services online can be a very cost-efficient way of generating sales.