L&S Unscripted

One of my favorite courses in the Computer Science program at DSU was titled “Programming Languages”. As the title suggests, this class was devoted to learning about not just different programming languages but the differences between programming languages. The class was just a semester long, and it only covered a basic overview of what there is to know about programming languages. (For more on programming languages, visit your local library.)

Knowing that there are multiple programming languages (I just told you so, remember?), one reasonably wonders, “Why not just one programming language?” My brother wondered the very same thing in an email to me, which inspired this post. As children often do, his question revealed to me a greater query that I hadn’t stopped to think about before: why NOT just one programming language? (The joke here is that my brother is in his mid-twenties.)

One reason why there isn’t just one computer language is that there isn’t just one type of computer; there are thousands of different types of computers. Computers all speak a language called “machine language“. This, essentially, is the 1s and 0s of binary. Jotting down 1s and 0s would be a terribly ineffective way of communicating with a computer, so programming languages were devised.

The different programming languages came to solve different problems. The C language, for instance, was created as a systems language. It’s goal, as a language, was to build servers and operating systems. Prolog, on the other hand, is a logic language, designed for use in artificial intelligence. SQL makes it easy to manage data in a database management system. None of these languages are useful for creating webpages easily. That’s why we have Ruby, Java, PHP, ASP.Net, and CFML (ColdFusion).

Sometimes, a programmer will like the concepts of one language, but they’ll want the syntax of another. So, they create a new language. Some languages only exist as proof that a concept is possible. Some languages are specific to the platform for which they are written. For instance, a mobile phone might have it’s own simple operating system with a special programming language used to write the cell phone’s applications, or a social networking site might develop a language in their API for developers to use to get data from that social networking site.

Perhaps an analogy is in order. Programming languages are like tools. When you’re trying to hang a painting, a hammer is better for driving a nail than a mallet. A mallet will do the job, but that’s not quite what it’s supposed to be used for. And, most importantly, you couldn’t do everything you needed to do with just a hammer. You could do a lot, and get close to almost all of it, but in the end it’s nice to have other tools in the box.

Another analogy is out of order, but I’m just that crazy. Programming languages are not like natural languages. People hear PHP, Ruby and ColdFusion, and they think of German, French, and English. RESIST THAT URGE. Programming languages are not at all equivalent to natural languages. The main reason for this is that natural languages sprang up from a human need to express the scope of intellectual thought and the breadth of expression capable in their speakers; computer languages just make computers do stuff and junk.

Using the programming language criteria above, are a French-speaking person and an English-speaking person so fundamentally different that they require different languages? Of course not. A French-speaking person is just as capable of learning English as an English-speaking person. Similarly, French doesn’t solve any problem that English can’t solve. You might be inclined to say that French poetry is much easier on the ears, or that English is a much better business language, but these aren’t properties of the language per se. English might be considered a better business tool because of its wide adoption, and French… well, I guess it IS easier on the ears, but that’s not the reason French was created.

At L&S, I usually find myself playing in ColdFusion (CFML), HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but I’ve also played with PHP, Java, Python, and Classic ASP. On a recent project, I found myself using ASP.Net and C# for one half and CFML for the second half. In my personal time, I’ve played with Rubyand Google’s Go, among others. I’m not listing this all out to impress you, but let’s be honest; some of you are really impressed. I’m listing these languages to show just how varied the Internet landscape is right now. In fact, looking at this list, I think my list of languages might be light for a web programmer these days. No Perl? No Clojure? No Scala? No Processing?

As servers get better at deploying (and virtualizing) the ability to utilize these languages in an integrated environment, web developers are getting more interested in picking the right tool for the job. Better server performance means giving developers more tools to play with and utilize. That, in turn, means faster, more efficient websites and, regrettably, a whole lot of developer ego.

Those guys can get pretty insufferable. Trust me.

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The best practices for designing, developing and deploying next-generation web, mobile and enterprise solutions were on display recently at Adobe Max in Los Angeles, CA. Among those attending was Eric Cross, Senior Interactive Developer at Lawrence & Schiller.

What were the biggest surprises? The biggest takeaways? And how can a conference like Max help L&S clients? Eric shares his thoughts in this episode of The Extra Minute.

Three days learning about new products, sneak peeks of emerging technologies and networking with over 5000 of your peers and industry experts. The annual event, held last week in Los Angeles, brings all of these elements together to give attendees an unparalleled conference experience. From the general sessions to the workshops and labs attendees are exposed to the tools that they need to get the job done.

To start the conference off on the right note Adobe released ColdFusion 9 the night before the first general session. This release contains new features and enhancements that make developing, maintaining and managing CF apps easier than ever. More on the features and benefits of ColdFusion 9, and ColdFusion in general, will be coming in a future post.

General Session #1

“Our goal is to help you and all of your clients reinvent their businesses in this digital age. To be more effective, more profitable and more agile.” Shantanu Narayen, President and CEO – Adobe Systems Inc.

The kickoff session was about using all of the available tools to create a uniform experience across multiple platforms and mediums. Development is no longer just about making sure your application works on a PC and a MAC, but that it looks and functions the same on all web enabled devices (web browsers, desktops, smart phones, web enabled TVs)

Flash 10.1 which will start rolling out on computers, netbooks and mobile devices in early 2010 will eliminate the need to build different versions for multiple devices and allow developers to build and maintain one codebase. The notable exception is the iPhone (and iTouch) which will support pre-compiled flash apps, but not web based flash through the built in Safari browser.

With Adobe’s pending acquisition of Omniture, it will become easier than ever to allow developers to gain access to analytics for rich internet applications.

The first session was closed out with a exclusive sneak peak of the upcoming film Avatar introduced by producer Jon Landau. He explained how they used Adobe products to solve real life production issues and throughout the entire production process. 3D technology has definitely come a long way!

General Session #2

The second general session focused on real life applications built using Adobe technologies. 

FedEx has developed a real-time tracking application with Flex and LiveCycle Data Services that allows them to monitor the location and status of their delivery vehicles. It can also track trending and send alerts when it detects problems with equipment or delivery delays. History is also stored and can be used to replay the route for review.

The crowd was shown a demonstration about a truck with a failing refrigeration unit and a package that needed to remain between a  certain temperature range. When a sensor started showing a rise in temperature over a relatively short period of time staff was alerted and immediately began to look for a service location on the current route. The truck was re-routed and the delivery times were updated to display the new delivery time. Within 20 minutes the vehicle was fixed and the driver back on to the destination. Once the vehicle was within 30 minutes of the destination a delivery alert was sent to the recipient and the package was delivered on time. In this case, the application helped FedEx prevent delivery of a spoiled product and the liability of replacing the item as well as meeting the customers’ expectations. (http://www.youtube.com/?v=Tqn2iXsqQ44)

The U.S. Postal Service Augmented Reality demo was by far the most practical AR application that I have seen to date. The premise is o place the item you would like to ship in front of the camera and a virtual box appears around it. This allows the user to select the correct size box for shipping. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpS3LeCiCtc)

John Mayer Augmented Reality demo – http://max.adobe.com/johnmayer/

Sneak Peeks – These live demonstrations showcase features that Adobe is working on to make their products better.  Among the fan favorites were Hierarchical Undo, Content Aware filling, ROME, server side actionscript and the Flash CS5 physics engine. These features, while still in early beta, are impressive to say the least and promise to help designers and developers to spend less time working and more time on innovation.

The conference provided valuable information about all of Adobe’s products. While I tailored my sessions to focus mainly to Cold Fusion, most of them also detailed how the different products work together seamlessly to provide the best solution for the end user.

Additional information and links to the general and individual sessions can be found at http://max.adobe.com

Given the rainy temperament of Mother Nature lately, it’s only fitting that Lawrence & Schiller is now sharing its website umbrella with our friends at L&S TeleServices. Our offices may be across town, but our philosophies are the same—go 5280 for our clients every day. The new section is modeled after our travel industry segment and highlights L&S’s expertise in call center services.

Learn more about the customer care for which L&S TeleServices famous.

The best problem a website can have is too much success. Visitors flocking to your site in record numbers, orders coming in faster than you can process them, and advertising revenue is soaring. So why is this a problem?

With increased traffic comes greater  resource usage and higher hosting costs. In most dynamic applications, each requested page goes through a series of actions before the content is returned to the browser. Without getting into too much detail here are the steps of a basic request.

• A URL is entered into the web browser. (www.cnn.com)
• A DNS lookup is performed to locate the IP address of the server and the HTTP request is made
• The web server sees the request and begins processing the request.
  • If it is a static page the HTML content is returned to the browser
  • If the page is dynamic, processed at the time of request, the server calls the appropriate processor to generate the HTML to return to the browser.
• Once the browser has the HTML for the page it begins to render the content. More requests are made to the server to download the required page assets such as images, style sheets, Javascript, XML, videos, etc.

So what can be done to make sure your site is as lean as possible?

There are at least a hundred steps to planning, designing and developing a great looking, fully functional website and none of them should be overlooked. Unfortunately , this article is only going cover some of the best practices for development, but if you have questions about your site feel free to contact us.

HTML/CSS

HTML and CSS design are the building blocks of your website, they should be well planned before coding begins. The site should be well structured and allow for simple changes. Make sure to follow web standards, use a valid doctype, XHTML valid code is preferred (lowercase tags and attributes, close tags, etc.) and don’t forget about accessibility guidelines for disabled users. These options don’t do much for page weight, but a well formatted (X)HTML document will render better and faster in the browser than an invalid one will.

CSS should be used as much as possible and should be in an external file included in the <head> tag of your HTML. This allows the browser to cache the .css file and you can reuse the rules across the entire site without having them hard-coded in every page.

For example <p><strong><u>this text is bold and underlined</u></strong></p> should be re-written as <p class=”bold underline”> this text is bold and underlined </p> . This way if you want to change the color of the bold text to red you can update your .css rule in one place and it will update the entire site. .bold {font-weight:bold; color:#f00;}

CSS is not just used to control text size, color and decoration, it controls the look and feel of the entire site. (margins, padding, spacing, positioning, fonts, colors, sizes, backgrounds)

NOTE: Don’t forget to validate your HTML/CSS files. Failure to do so could lead to hours of wasted time debugging issues that could be nothing more than a typo.

Javascript

Javascript can be one of the simplest things to add to a site to increase user experience, it can also easily double the size of your document in a hurry.

If you are using a Javascript library (jQuery, YUI and MooTools come to mind) don’t just include it to look cool. If you are not going to use it, don’t include it. Also, if you are only going to use 1 feature of the entire library then maybe it is not your best option. All of the great functionality of a Javascript library and its associated plugins can come with a hefty download price, but the good news is javascript files are cached by the browser and should only need to be downloaded once.

Use external Javascript files – If you are not building your script on the fly, there is no reason to put the code directly in your page. Include it in the <head> and pay attention to load order. Again, combine files whenever possible. (Yes, there is debate over loading at the top of the page versus the bottom due to parallel download issues, but that also depends on what your script does and I’m a creature of habit)

Minify your files – The minification process removes comments and whitespace from Javascript files and can reduce the size by half.

NOTE: Don’t assume that everyone has Javascript enabled. Make use of the <noscript> tag.

Images

Watch your file sizes (Save for web is your friend) – I have seen many examples of users just hitting save on a file and including it in their code without ever looking at the size. Right click on an image and click properties. If the image is over 20KB it is too large.

File type is important – jpg, gif, png are not all the same, a 30KB jpg file might be a 5KB gif or vice-versa.

Use CSS whenever possible in place of images. Strategic use of Javascript and CSS can reduce the number of images your page uses.

Don’t use width and height to resize a large image. If you would like to display an 800×600 image as 80×60 create a new image. The thumbnail will download quicker and you are less likely to have image distortion.

Video

Video can be a real catch-22, you want your users to watch it, but when they do your bandwidth usage goes through the roof. Video codecs are getting better all the time so make sure you are using the right one. Finding the right with the right settings will give you high quality video at the best bit rate possible.

The other option is to use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). They will host your video and stream it using their bandwidth for a monthly fee.

Server/Application

Minimize HTTP requests – The fewer connections you need to make to the server the faster your page will load.

Cache settings – Use Expires or Cache-Control to keep objects in the local users cache. Not only does this reduce bandwidth usage, it will increase the users perceived speed of the site because it only needs to download new or changed items.

Use http compression on the server – it will decrease your HTML, CSS and Javascript files by up to 75%

Best Practices

Do your best to combine resources. You don’t need 5 different CSS files loaded into one page. You are only slowing down the page by creating more connections to the server.

Monitor files created and uploaded by 3^rd party processes – there are usually settings to control image quality and that could mean the difference between 100K images and 300K files. Believe me, on a high demand website this makes a world of difference in bandwidth usage.

Monitor your site statistics. They provide valuable information that can be vital to the success of your business.

Review your site frequently, technology changes quickly and it is quite possible that there are now better ways to accomplish something that was done months ago.

And last but not least, test your site in all major browsers. (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari)

Tools

Here are a few tools at your disposal to help evaluate your page validity and weight.

http://validator.w3.org/ – HTML Validation

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ – CSS Validation

http://www.netmechanic.com  – slightly outdated, but nice to see image sizes and load time

Firefox Plugins – FireBug, YSlow

Of course none of this makes any difference if your server side code and database isn’t optimized to handle the heavy traffic, but that is a post for another time.

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If you live in the small communities that make up Middle America, you are used to hearing about new technology… and not having it available in your area.  It’s the ultimate dangling carrot. The technology tease.

But not this time! Midcontinent Communications is bringing DOCSIS 3.0 to the heartland. In fact, West Fargo, ND is getting the high speed Internet network before Manhattan!

In this issue of The Extra Minute, hear how Midcontinent Communications is using digital public relations and social media tospread the word of this exciting technology advance.

Related Links
MidcoNews blog
Midcontinent Communications

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Which browsers are your website visitors using? Are they upgrading as new versions are released? And why should you care?

If you are responsible for your company’s website you should be able to quickly answer all three of these questions. The answers  tell you how visitors see your site and literally view your brand.

This edition of The Extra Minute discusses the marketing value of staying on top of the latest web browsers.

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As the number of cell phones capable of surfing the Internet grows, so does the need to deliver content that is optimized for mobile devices.

What does it take to develop a site that plays nice with mobile web? What should it include and what are some of the obstacles you make encounter along the way?

The Extra Minute has the story of Sanford Health and its move into mobile web.

Admittedly, we first have to ensure there is dialogue. If you participated in the third part of the L&S Social Media Boot Camp, then you know that we experienced a couple minor technical difficulties – but luckily @markmorgan was able to join the conversation for questions and answers at the end.  Thanks to @courtneylotzer who continued through like a champ and our participants who stayed with us during the bump and if you missed all the excitement, you can watch the updated version of the webinar here or use Twitter Search and query for #TheExtraMile.

Here’s a brief overview for those who missed Tuesday’s webinar.

Where to Start?  Listen. There are numerous tools and online resources to measure and listen to all sorts of conversations online. To start listening, to help filter all the noise, we suggested a few free tools that we find valuable.

• Trendrr
• Quarkbase
• SocialMention
• Technorati Search
• Google Alerts

These are all great tools for providing a snapshot of what people are saying in the online space. Trendrr is probably the most comprehensive (look beyond your initial confusion, just stick with it for awhileJ), Google the easiest and others are fun to play around with if your geeky like our team is!

Lawrence and Schiller uses these tools in addition to our subscription based tool, Radian6. As a company we looked at many different options for our social media monitoring tool of choice.  We debated between Radian6 and Sentiment Metrics. We liked Sentiment Metrics because it automatically assigned sentiment to each post. After researching it further, we came to find out that statistically, the sentiment metric was only correct up to 40% of time, so we chose Radian6 because of its ease of use and functionality.

With the Radian6 measurement platform, you can find your brand on millions of blog posts, videos, reviews in forums, sharing of photos, twitter updates. It is real time monitoring of mentions about your company, product, issues and competitors, and has the ability to quickly find the most important relevant conversations.

Free tools are great for initial competitive review, building broad insights of topics from a general audience and checking your “gut” instincts.  We prefer to use an in-depth tool such as Radian6 for trend analysis and quantifiable ROI measurement.

I’ve listened. Now what? Define your goal, then the tool. We can’t say it enough. Social media should always start with understanding, and agreement, of what you are trying to accomplish with your overall marketing and/or communication efforts.  Measurement of social media is the same. Understanding your goal is the key to defining and selecting an accurate metric for ROI.

And finally, start engaging online and offline (use traditional marketing to promote your online efforts). If you don’t engage on behalf of your company, someone else will. If there is a void someone will step up and fill this role when there is a need for it.

Deserved or not deserved a single negative review or mention can taint a brand for a long time. It’s important to take a more proactive role in protecting your brand before it’s too late. You have the tools, now you can start monitoring the digital space for mentions of your brand, either positive or negative, and it’s the best way you can actually cultivate relationships, too.

We invite you to join our upcoming Social Media webinar series. We will focus on different social media topics each week for 8 weeks beginning Tuesday, April 14th.

Week One: Social + Media = What Exactly?
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
10:00 a.m. CST

Recent Nielsen findings stated that social networking is more popular than email. Are you a game changer or are you still wondering what social media is? Either way – you know that social media plays a major role in advertising and marketing to your audience. Join L&S for an in-depth discussion and web conference series. The L&S Social Media Boot Camp kicks off on Tuesday, April 14, 2009, with “Social Media Orientation: A Crash Course for Marketers.”

Digital Marketing Director, Robin Temple, and Billie Jo Waara, Account Planning & Research Director, will provide an initial overview of available tools and best-of-the-best showcases from across the country. Social media is inherently social; likewise your comments and questions will be included in the one hour online conversation.

Full schedule available at http://www.l-s.com/bootcamp/schedule.pdf

Register today at www.l-s.com/bootcamp

Our preferred Live Chat application, LivePerson, released a case study today stating that one of their online retailer clients experienced a 46% increase in sales over the holiday season due to live chat. http://solutions.liveperson.com/docs/casestudies/smb/SMB_Canvas_CS0209.pdf

We have experienced similar results. One of our tourism vacation clients, www.BlackHillsVacations.com, had 234 completed transactions in the second half of last year due to live chat, accounting for significant revenue – in fact a 112% return on investment on the cost of live chat. They were able to convert lookers into bookers by delivering customer service and sales assistance in the most convenient location for the web visitor.

We’re implementing live chat for many of our clients. And I can say that when I’m browsing a web site and have questions, live chat is the first point of contact that I utilize. It allows you to connect with experts for advice or assistance in real time and it continuously impresses me how responsive customer service agents are to live chat.

From a business standpoint, your customer service agents can only talk to one person at a time on the phone whereas they can chat with multiple people simultaneously via live chat and still deliver outstanding service. Using live chat, an agent can see the exact web page that the web visitor clicked from to enable live chat, where the visitor is located geographically and a web page history to alert the call center agent of up sell opportunities. And that’s just a few of the benefits.

They’re browsing their site; they’re often ready to buy. Are you there to close the sale?

Conveniently chatting,

Robin

As I dig out, literally and figuratively, from the big snow storm that hit western South Dakota and Wyoming earlier this week, I reflect on how technology has enabled us to become extremely efficient and information-centric, yet when the lights go out and weather blocks our doors, our technically-savvy culture is literally halted.

This storm blew in earlier than predicted which caught me stuck out of town due to the Interstate 90 closure. I spent the snowstorm with a couple of friends with drifts surrounding the house ranging from 4-6 feet in the open areas with higher drifts against the buildings.

Many people would’ve just relaxed and enjoyed the snow days, but my workaholic nature made me crazy trying to find a way to get some work done. I had my laptop, but no power cord (not that it would’ve helped when the power was out). My friend had a computer, but no Internet so I couldn’t access our network files. I was reliant solely on my Blackberry. Its amazing how much we really can accomplish from the palm of our hand, but I was unable to access many of our campaign-related, web-based applications due to Blackberry browser issues and cell service was very spotty so I found myself using the Verizon tagline, “can you hear me now,” all too often. At several points, I cracked out the old pen and paper to sketch some things out, which was actually quite refreshing.

The snow won’t catch me unwired next time. My technology survival kit/checklist is in place:

1.       Power cord ALWAYS – this was my dumb mistake – I may need to ditch the small, stylish laptop bag, for a larger one to fit all of the essentials

2.       Blackberry with tweening cord to use as a modem for my laptop when necessary

3.       Car adaptor, in case there’s no power

4.       Blackberry attachment software in place to handle all normal file types

5.       Road report and weather bookmarks in my Blackberry browser

6.       Text message road alert service activated

All’s well now… I’ve been back in the office all day and have a new appreciation for my laptop and Internet connection. It was a good reality check as to how reliant I am on technology. Are you winter storm survival ready, technically speaking?

Digging digital,

Robin

Dinner conversation has really changed.  A few days ago a group of friends and co-workers sat down for a nice meal after a long day’s work. As soon as the beverages were ordered, most of us (myself included) had our phones out… checking basketball scores, Facebook and Twitter.

Our mothers would not approve.

We are not, however, alone. comScore recently released research showing the number of people daily surfing the web on their cellphones has doubled since January 2008.  All together daily mobile web users now total 22.4 million!

Top categories include:

• News, weather, maps & other information = up 107%
• Social networking site or blog = up 427%
• Financial accounts = up 188%
• Movie information = up 185%
• Business directories = up 161%

And it isn’t just high-end iPhones and Blackberries.  According to comScore, 70 percent of the people accessing mobile web are doing so on lower cost feature phones (any phone that isn’t a smartphone or PDA phone).

My question to marketers is, what information on your website might people want or need to access while on the go? Is it available in a mobile-friendly format? If not, what are you waiting for?

It’s amazing to think about how we used to make web site decisions. What looks good? What colors do you think the audience will best respond to? And eventually, after launch, we would dig through the analytics to see how visitors were engaging and converting on site.

NOW, we make intelligent decisions based on A/B tests. We recently launched an A/B test for a new web design for one of our e-commerce clients. We labeled the original design “A” and labeled the new site design “B”. We asked 20+ people and they all thought that design “B” was more visually appealing and that site visitors would convert at a higher rate. After a two-week A/B test, sending 10% of the site traffic to the new design, the results came in. And to our surprise, the old-school, very simple design outperformed the new, fresh design. The numbers speak for themselves.

So what’s next? We continue to tweak design and retest to deliver optimal results.

Eliminate the guesswork. Bring in the science.

Testing and tallying,

Robin

The Sanford Project 2009 (http://www.sanfordproject.org)

Occasionally, we get the chance to work on projects that don’t just promote a product, a service, or a company but also hope, promise, and potential. Nothing better embodies that then The Sanford Project (http://www.sanfordproject.org/). For the unfamiliar, The Sanford Project is devoted to finding a cure for type 1 diabetes, also known as diabetes mellitus or juvenile diabetes. This type of diabetes affects between 500,000 and 1 million people in the United States, which makes finding a cure a big deal.

Usually, the audience that we craft our sites towards is pretty cut and dried: our client’s customers. That can be easier if your client’s customers are people who bank in the Midwest or people who love flowers, but what if your client’s customers are as varied as people who have a body? Our challenge for the design of this site was to appeal to anyone touched by type 1 diabetes: patients, parents, physicians, and even researchers. A design like that has to say a lot to many people. Taking a cue from existing Sanford Health print materials, the design for the site is dark blue and technical, showcasing that serious medicine and research is behind this initiative.

Even if your life hasn’t been affected by type 1 diabetes, you can still find plenty of insightful and interesting content with regards to this monumental project. You can learn more on the Sanford Project page. Browse the Newsroom to see what latest Press Releases have gone out. Don’t forget the Video Library, where you can hear the stories and see the people who are helping make this cure a reality. For those feeling generous of time or money, you can easily Sign Up For Updates or Make A Gift Online.

A site like The Sanford Project is a good reminder that not everything a marketing and advertising agency does is about selling something to someone. Sometimes it’s about lending a helping hand to make the world a better place. Those are some of the best times.

A shot of the new Lawrence & Schiller website (http://www.l-s.com)

So as not to be forgotten in all this “refresh”, “redesign”, “rebranding” merriment, Lawrence & Schiller (http://www.l-s.com) has gotten a face lift.  Orange is the new black, as they say, but we’ve kept some of the old black as well.  This new design was aimed at making our agency seem more fun, because that’s what our clients said we were.  Once the flattery buzz wore off, we knew that we had a honey (pun) of a task ahead of us, and this website “refresh” was just a small part of that effort.

Talent from a number of teams was pooled, and extensive work was done on not only the web design and development but the SEO, copy, and information architecture as well.  We’ve added a new homepage flash that is more informative as well as being flashier (pun, again).  We’ve also created a Team Culture page to better showcase the habitat within which we work.  Not only that, but our client teams (Mint, Phoenix, Fuel, and Synergy) each get a page, giving clients a better idea of who it is they’re working with, even before they’re working with them!  We’ve also improved our What We Do section, better showcasing how we Understand, Plan, Implement, and Evaluate for our clients.

For the most part, the site is unchanged.  You can still read how we go 5280, view some of our work, and, of course, apply for a job (hint, hint).  Whatever your fancy, head on over and take it for a spin (pun, again – I’m awesome at this!).

A shot of the new Great Western Bank website (http://greatwesternbank.com)

The new Great Western Bank (http://www.greatwesternbank.com) does not want to be called a “redesign”, so we’ve dubbed it a “refresh”.  The jargon in web development can get pretty complicated, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for more.  We called this a refresh, because our strategy was about more than just updating the look; we knew that a website like Great Western Bank’s deserved comprehensive polish and care.

We utilized valuable analytics, client feedback, and an assortment of other metrics to help us work with the bank to direct their web presence into the future.  While the refresh certainly boasts a refreshingly lighter look and feel, the functionality behind the scenes has gotten a tune-up as well.  You can search for bank locations using the improved Location Finder, explore how GWB is working hard at Making Life Great, securely access your online banking straight from the homepage, and much more.

Now, that’s a website that makes you say, “Ahhhh…”

A shot of the new Acts of Nature website (http://actsofnature.com)

Acts of Nature (http://www.actsofnature.com) is not just another website for L&S; it’s more like a brother. Acts of Nature (or Acts, as we call it) is Paul Schiller’s fine art and photography website. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s one of our Agency’s founders.

This redesign and restructure of the Acts website has been a long time in coming; some design files date back to 2005! But don’t call the website old; it uses some of the newest features in ColdFusion, Flash, and JavaScript, all of which combine to produce a breath-taking web portal featuring some amazing photography.

Take a look around. Peruse the Photo Gallery. Read up on The Artist and The Installations, or recommend the website to a friend. As always, feel free to contact Acts of Nature with questions or comments.

Good work, team!