Take Notice won a national award for developing a mobile website for Barnes Dennig, a Greater Cincinnati accounting firm. The Association for Accounting Marketing presented their national Marketing Achievement Awards on June 11, 2012 and recognized our work as the best in the Micro/Mini/Mobile Web site category. See the complete list of national winners.

In August, 2011, we were engaged to develop a simple mobile site to include phone number, email and location/map links for Barnes Dennig. Soon after the site was developed, the firm’s Marketing Director, Melissa Brogan, started noticing an increase in their mobile traffic. So without hesitation, she contacted us and we began working on improvements to the site that would enhance the visitor’s experience. “The mobile site was too simple initially and as our clients began requesting mobile registration for our seminars (we register approximately 2,300 individuals annually), I knew the experts at Take Notice would do it right,” Brogan stated.

The mobile site objectives were:

1. To develop a simple ‘contact us’ screen
2. Help clients and prospective clients quickly access our event schedule and register for seminars
3. Provide a user-friendly format for visitors coming to the site from smartphones
4. Promote the company’s blog
5. Encourage recruiting candidates to learn more about us
6. Showcase the industries we serve and services we provide with a short introduction to the firm

We worked closely with Melissa and Scott Priestle, Marketing Associate, to meet their objectives. We built upon the user’s experience and met the primary objective to register and capture information from site visitors. We made sure we didn’t overwhelm visitors with too much information but instead kept the content brief and easy to access – a must for busy smartphone users.

The latest mobile usage report from comScore (full report) revealed that ‘mobile usage increased 13% in the October 2011 – January 2012 period,’ and Barnes Dennig was experiencing even higher usage by their clients and prospective clients. In order to stay ahead of their competition, it is imperative that their communication methods and usage of technologies are advanced.

To learn more about how your company can build a cost-effective, yet valuable mobile website, contact us today!

If your company is planning to engage your audience through social media outlets, the first thing you need to do is devise a plan. Planning is the # 1 reason companies fail in the social media market. As with any “fad,”  companies tend to jump into the marketplace without doing thorough research and analysis on why they are investing. Social media may be an economical way to spread your message; however, not being a huge expense does not mean that you shouldn’t take the same innovative planning methods and implement them for success.

It is true that social media sites are greatly increasing the amount of traffic to websites. How, you may ask? With social media, updating and incorporating the right copy, utilizing keywords, and understanding the Google algorithms have become important and well worth the time expended. If your company cannot handle these items internally, contact us today and we’ll set up a meeting to discuss your company’s needs and the approach Take Notice has proven successful with our clients!

For additional guidance on the subject, a great resource is Brian Solis’s (@BrianSolis on Twitter)  recent post, “In Social Media, Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail.” He states the truth, backed up with statistics from eMarketer’s recently published report titled, “Social Media in the Marketing Mix: Budgeting for 2011”  with topics like budgeting, the power of integrating of SM into your current marketing mix and what measurements are necessary to “win” in the SM market.

Manufacturers expect to ship more than 450 million smartphones this year, but in a recent survey by Smartbrief for Entrepreneurs, only 20% of their audience has a website that has been formatted to work well with those devices. Of course, customers can find your “regular” website on a mobile device, but constant scrolling and resizing can be frustrating!

You could be losing up to 60% of consumers who replied that they are ‘less likely to return’ to a mobile website after a bad first experience. So, if your customers tend to be tech-savvy, active individuals, then do yourself a favor and get your site mobilized. Contact Us today, it might cost less than you think!

Something to consider: If your website was built with the open source programs, WordPress or Drupal, they can be optimized with installation of a simple plug-in, so don’t hesitate, get mobile ready today!

For additional information, enjoy the Google Webinar: Are You Mobile Ready?

A fast, easy, and free way to grow your contact list. Build your Constant Contact email list anywhere through mobile phones with Text-to-Join. Read the full article

Simply put, a tag cloud is a list of words – in most cases, the larger the font, the more important, the more traffic, the more emphasis or the more relevant a word/phrase/topic will be on a blog or website.
Benefits of Tag Clouds:

1. Showcasing relevant content, which in turn lifts your search rankings with Google, Yahoo and Bing.
2. Utilizing them within your social media efforts can also help with SEO, especially now that Google updated it’s algorithm to include finding more high-quality sites.
3. Directing your visitors to the areas of your site that are most profitable to your company.

When considering tag clouds for your blog, be sure you have focused content on the most profitable sectors of your business… Then the search engines will definitely drive the right traffic to your site. For assistance in adding tag clouds contact us today!

Bounce rates are the data relating to the length of time visitors spend on each page of your website. If the bounce rate is a high number, then your visitors are finding you, but are not engaged in staying to learn more about you. Ask yourself, “What are the visitors coming to this page to find?” For example, if you promote a service offering ways to attract butterflies to your garden, the page should clearly offer up how you can do this.

If you don’t know whether your visitor’s needs are being met, you will need to talk to your web designer about installing an application or providing you with analytical tools, like Google Analytics, to track and measure your site’s traffic. An analytics tool gives you a clear understanding of your web traffic (for more, read Benefits of Adding Google Analytics to your Website [LINK TO BLOG POST]). With a clear understanding of analytics and understanding that there are additional ways to improve organic search results, you can improve your web traffic without too much time/effort to get the results you need.

Take Notice now offers one-on-one training sessions for your professionals. Once a web site is developed, be sure your team clearly understands the capabilities and power of the CMS system that you have adopted. The capabilities of WordPress are evolving and upgraded frequently, so have the professionals of Take Notice monitor updates for you and train your staff to save your company money and time. Contact us today to set up your session!

MobileMarketer.com reports that fourth quarter of 2010 showed a 600% increases in mobile advertising spending, is your company prepared to add this to your marketing mix? If not, ask yourself the following questions… And, if you are still not ready, contact us and let’s discuss what you need to do to prepare and capitalize on this buying power!

• Is my website mobile-ready? Mobile sales of virtual goods alone are estimated to have increased more than 400% in 2010.
• Can visitors buy, with ease, on my site? The new generations have limited attention spans, can they find what they need and buy in less than three clicks?
• Are my products graphics and descriptions easy to understand? If you have an e-commerce site, it must be easy-to-use and depicted in a clean manner… Making it easy to buy now!

As you evaluate your preparedness for the mobile / Gen Y buyer revolution, contact us to discuss modifications that will work for your company. Not all companies need a new, fully-equipped mobile-ready site. Take Notice can help evaluate your need to ensure, as Emmy Award winning consumer reporter, John Matarese states, you “Don’t Waste Your Money!“

When your company focuses on keywords and inbound links to your website, you are focusing on areas that will improve your search engine rankings. But with Google’s recent press regarding an algorithm change, they are now more focused on YOU as the resource to enhance your SEO rankings!

Google has altered its once-very-technical algorithm to a more personal content assessment tool – making YOU and the content you generate the key components in the equation. It will evaluate more holistically for content and link relevancy, instead of putting emphasis on the keywords and inbound links. Keywords and links are still valuable parts of your SEO plan, but now the content YOU provide will be measured.

Not only will additional page content be evaluated, but social media marketing efforts will also be engaged in this algorithm. When the 2011 Marketing Sherpa Report was released, it showed that 64% of marketers have integrated social media into their search efforts. And there is good reason to do so! Social media has evolved into an easy way to develop content for YOU – quickly and effectively.

If your company needs to get noticed with Google or needs to enhance an already working system, contact us today and we’ll devise a plan that will not only incorporate your current efforts, but will build upon your relationship with Google to ensure you are remaining great friends!

ArtsWave has released a very cool app for the iPhone (Android coming soon) called iSpyArt. The app shares your pictures of “art-all-around-us.” How it works: every other week, ArtsWave will commission a show with a new theme, giving you a chance to share the art you see with friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, and everyone else. Check out this week’s Surprise Art entries! Download the app now to share your art or art that you encounter!

You may be asking yourself, why is Take Notice promoting this app? Well, ArtsWave is a client of ours and with our collaboration partner, Centogram, we brought this app to life.  It took both technical competency and website know-how to make it work seamlessly. All this, so YOU can share your artistic encounters quickly and easily!