Things to ask before you redo your website

Seth's blog is an excellent quick read every morning, and by quick I really mean quick. No more than two paragraphs of great knowledge for anyone wanting to improve their communications or marketing.

This one below relates to the revamping of web sites. Something that many people ask us about every week.

• What is the goal of the site?
• In other words, when it's working great, what specific outcomes will occur?
• Who are we trying to please? If it's the boss, what does she want? Is impressing a certain kind of person important? Which kind?
• How many people on your team have to be involved? At what level?
• Who are we trying to reach? Is it everyone? Our customers? A certain kind of prospect?
• What are the sites that this group has demonstrated they enjoy interacting with?
• Are we trying to close sales?
• Are we telling a story?
• Are we earning permission to follow up?
• Are we hoping that people will watch or learn?
• Do we need people to spread the word using various social media tools?
• Are we building a tribe of people who will use the site to connect with each other?
• Do people find the site via word of mouth? Are they looking to answer a specific question?
• Is there ongoing news and updates that need to be presented to people?
• Is the site part of a larger suite of places online where people can find out about us, or is this our one sign post?
• Is that information high in bandwidth or just little bits of data?
• Do we want people to call us?
• How many times a month would we like people to come by? For how long?
• Who needs to update this site? How often?
• How often can we afford to overhaul this site?
• Does showing up in the search engines matter? If so, for what terms? At what cost? Will we be willing to compromise any of the things above in order to achieve this goal?
• Will the site need to be universally accessible? Do issues of disability or language or browser come into it?
• How much money do we have to spend? How much time?

And finally,

• Does the organisation understand that 'everything' is not an option?

Seth's Blog - 18 September 2009

5% really not good enough.

Well I think a reduction in Australia's Greenhouse gas emissions by between between 5% and 15% by 2020, from 2000 levels really isn't good enough. It is yet another example of how the political process tends to dilute bold and necessary action in the name of balance. Which it really isn't. Our economic demands have overwhelmed the environment and it is time to really re-balance "competing economic and environmental demands".

Australia missed another opportunity to not only illustrate our understanding of the seriousness of climate protection, we are after all suffering from a worsening drought, but to also excite the business community with the opportunities to be made in a new Green economy.

The one thing that struck me in Europe recently was how the environmental attitudes of the people were strongly reflected in not only in Government policy but also in business. When I was in Zurich I visited a shop (Freitarg) selling bags made out of recycled Lorry tarpaulins and seat belts, the shop itself is made from Shipping containers. It is very success full and the bags themselves are beautifully designed. Specialist rubbish bins are everywhere separating paper, plastic, glass, foodscraps and lastly non recycled waste. When you visiting a supermarket you are overwhelmed by the importance on local produce, every item has carbon miles labels the other popular trend seems to be Free Trade products. They areeverywhere.

It is great to see Nokia and now Apple accepting back their products people no longer need.

Below are my favourite D&AD award winners

Get The Glass
The iMac
The National Gallery
The Guns
Lest we forget
Play Doh

We're Ten!

Well I cannot quite believe it but Idaho Design & Communication has finally made it to Ten! People I have told, are very congratulatory so I suppose that is quite good. I am never too sure whether these milestones are of any real significance, so the reaction of others is always quite nice.

I remember that when we started I wanted a business credit card and when I applied, was told that my business needed to be at least 3 years old. I thought at the time how far away that was. Ten years on I still don't have that credit card although I am now inundated with offers from the bank offering the card.

As usual we started small, from a newly room in my house, and over the years slowly grew both. Tim (one of my business partners) and I are terrified of debt so we grew the business without a loan, which I am proud to say is the case today. We've had our share of cash flow problems which contributed greatly to my ever reducing hairline and of clients not paying their bills, but we persevered. I guess if you were to pop in you'd be somewhat surprised at how small we are, I would be. Being little does have its advantages though; we all know one another well, it is easy to communicate what is going on within the office and we don't need to use the phone to talk to one another or tell jokes.

In terms of a company birthday present we've decided to let everyone know what we are thinking about. Idaho has continually promoted blogging as an important communication tool providing a way to 'get you out there', so it made sense that if were going to recommend it to our clients we thought we should have one too. There will be several authors, not just me (which, having read this I am sure you'll be pleased to hear). One is Jacqui (my other business partner) who is our Communication specialist and the other, Alicia who is our Senior Designer. In addition we will occasionally invite friends from within the industry to provide their view point on things were thinking about.

Each of us have different interests, so we hope to provide varied and interesting topics. A bit like a  sack of potatoes, I guess. Hey, that's not a bad title!

Finally if you want to see the 10 year celebration please take a look at our site introduction. We all remember it well, its surprising how wet the office carpet still is.

Happy birthday Idaho!

Our home town.

This is a video David made.

How to fix the environment and your local economy in two simple steps

The title sounds rather conceited doesn't it, but the thing is I think it might work.

Step one.
The government passes a law making companies responsible for the disposal of any product they have sold or manufactured.
Step Two.
Apply a levy on the disposal of hard waste payable by the person or company disposing of the waste.

This will allow customers to return any purchased product to either the retailer or manufacturer when they have finished with it. Imaging the changes in manufacturing, retail and purchasing.