clevermethod’s Top 10 List of Web Tools for March 2012

Posted by - Monday, March 5th, 2012

our team lists top ten web-tools for march 2012

clevermethod team members are often tasked with projects that require a bit of forward and creative thinking, using both sides of the brain. We develop solutions for clients in an industry that is always changing, ever-evolving and improving.

We all have our little ‘secret weapons’, or favorite websites or online tools we love to use and can’t live without to do our daily jobs. Our team members divulged some of their favorites; industry standard apps, new web-based tools, as well as fun while useful websites.

Check back every month for more Top 10 lists on various topics in web development, online marketing, social media, programming, and much more!

1. Task Management & Collaboration:

http://do.com

“Free task management and collaboration. Made for desktop, iPhone, and iPad. Very well designed, beautiful URL.”
- Josh, Interactive Designer

2. RSS Reader: 

http://netvibes.com

“I use [Net Vibes] for a web based RSS reader. [It] allows you to create multiple tabs (news, design, sports, tech news).  [The] Layout is presented in 3 columns, also [giving] you the ability to drag and drop the feeds in any column/order you want.”
- Scott, Production Artist

3. HTML & CSS Debugging: 

http://getfirebug.com

“Firebug is a great tool to use for testing because it allows you to inspect and modify the style and layout of websites. Using this tool you can easily find paths to where images, HTML and CSS documents are located.  It’s also quite useful for detecting errors, if there’s an error on the website you’re inspecting it will very conveniently show up in red so that it’s easily spotted. Another nice perk of Firebug is that it allows you to find the size and name of files easily by just hovering the inspect arrow tool over the parts of the webpage you would like to know more about. Over all Firebug is a convenient and easy to use web development tool when it comes to testing, editing and debugging your websites.”

- Melissa, Production Artist

4. Blog Syndication: 

http://dlvr.it

“dlvr.it is a great tool for streamlining and simplifying blog publishing and their interaction with social networks. It instantly publishes to social networks you specify, has a unique analytics dashboard, and just makes integrating blogs into your social media presence very easy and professional.”

- Ed, Online Marketing & Support Analyst

5. Web-Based File Editing: 

http://advanced.aviary.com

“Free web based photo editing, Sound editing, Vector illustrator, and MUCH more.  Great for people without advanced tools or high end editing computers.”

- Dave, Interactive Developer

6. E-Mail Campaign Building: 

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/design-guidelines

“Building an email is not like building for the web. While web browsers continue their onward march towards standards, many email clients have stubbornly stayed put. (I just copied that from the article!)”

- Andrea, Production Artist

7, 8, 9 & 10. Mobile Tools, Page Publishing & Form Building:

Mobile: http://modality.com

Typography Tips, Tricks & Best Practices: http://sixrevisions.com/css/css-typography-02

Instant Page Publishing: http://pen.io

Custom Form Building: http://www.jformer.com

“…This is a running list of URLs I have kept for various reasons over time. Honestly, I need to run through and clean it up…so I thought the “brain dump” approach was better than nothing!”

- Bob, Manager of Web Development


Bonus! 

Browser Use Statistics: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

“This site is great at helping to explain to clients what browsers we support and why. It contains up to date stats on browser usage and helps us to determine when a browser is being utilized enough that we need to update our testing process to include new browsers, or possibly exclude older browsers from further testing (ex. IE 6).”

- Heather, Senior Project Manager

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KanJam Mobile Hits the iPhone App Store,
Android Market

Posted by - Thursday, June 30th, 2011

KanJam Mobile delivers official rules and scorekeeping capability, ending the “dinger” debate.

BUFFALO, NY – How much is a “dinger” worth?  How far apart do you place the “Goals?”  What happens when the flying disc goes in the front and out the top?  Even avid KanJam players have had a disagreement or two about the rules of the game, but the new KanJam Mobile app ends the debate!

KanJam Mobile

“We’ve often heard requests from players for a way to keep score and we constantly field questions about scoring and rules on our website and Facebook page,” said Mitch Rubin, partner and co-founder of Kan Jam LLC.  “The KanJam Mobile app will answer those questions and give our players a way to enhance their KanJam experience,” added Charles Sciandra, partner and co-founder.

KanJam partnered with web agency clevermethod to bring the mobile app to life.  The design, development and online marketing teams at clevermethod worked closely with KanJam to develop a simple app with features that would engage the user and promote the brand.  KanJam Mobile brings the bragging rights of the backyard to social media, too.  Integrating with Facebook, the app allows players to post scores and gloat about their game.

KanJam Mobile is available now in the Android Market and the iPhone App Store.

See the full Press Release.

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Lead Generation with Paid Search – Small Budget, Big Results

Posted by - Friday, June 17th, 2011
OTC Paid Search Ad and Landing Page

OTC Paid Search Ad and Landing Page

Our client On Track Creations (OTC) designs and builds motocross tracks nationwide. Last year we redesigned the OTC website making their blog the centerpiece of the site. The blog highlights their breadth of experience and the owner’s hands-on involvement with each project, two key selling points. If you read our earlier blog post on OTC , you know that the impact of the redesign was great, with increases in site traffic, pageviews, search traffic and leads generated.

Once OTC’s owner, Jesse Milley, saw how well the site was converting, it made sense to invest in driving more traffic. OTC had run banner ads before but had not seen great results, so Jesse was reluctant to invest in the up-front costs without knowing how effective the ads would be. clevermethod analysis showed that although a number of other vendors were competing for the top organic rankings, there was relatively little paid search activity in the industry. A paid search campaign was a perfect fit for OTC since it allowed us to make real-time adjustments in keywords, ad copy and even landing pages as we observed performance trends. At the same time we could tightly manage the budget. It was also a cost-effective way for OTC to reach potential customers outside the WNY region, a key growth strategy for the company.

We setup several Ad Groups, keeping each tightly focused around keyword groupings (ie., motocross, supercross, RC tracks). We also added a Click-to-Call phone extension that would be displayed to users who viewed the ads on their smartphone. Finally, we optimized a page on the site to serve as an effective landing page for the ads, adding a list of services to mirror the keywords as well as links to key site content.

Right out of the gate we saw a jump in site traffic, with more than double the average number of site visits in the first month. We were closely watching performance on the Adwords side (Impressions, Clickthroughs, etc) and also setup a custom report on the Google Analytics side. This made it easy to compare the value of the Adwords traffic other traffic sources, based on metrics like Bounce Rate, Time On Site and Contact Forms submitted. The Adwords paid search traffic has been out-performing all other site traffic across all these metrics.

But here’s the exciting part – the ads have been steadily generating phone and web leads since the first week. Jesse has seen a significant increase in requests for proposals, and a number of leads from outside WNY.

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The Youngest iPhone User Community

Posted by - Monday, March 7th, 2011

Fisher-Price recently came out with three new Laugh & Learn™ apps specifically for babies.   You can read more about them here: http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=2340&e=app.  My son who is just over 16 months already had quite a few of the Laugh & Learn™ products, so I  was interested to see what he thought of these new apps.  As I watched him play I was first proud that he immediately knew how to play them and that he started repeating the words in the ‘Animal Sounds’ app.  After a few minutes though, I started thinking about what great marketing this was.  So many companies now are recognizing this younger generation – there are apps for literally ever stage of their life.  From pregnancy apps that help you track kicks and measurements, to apps for newborns that allow you to log naps, feedings and diapers, to toddler apps that teach your child about counting and the alphabet.   But few companies are developing apps for babies, that already have their attention.  The Laugh & Learn™ brand has 33 products available (http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=2340&e=thumb&pcat=BUlnl), so developing branded apps with characters that babies are already familiar with is a great way to promote brand awareness.  It’s also great because consistency and repetition are both key for development at this stage.  Hearing the same voices and seeing the same characters help babies to learn and remember.  So as both a parent and as someone in the marketing industry, I say Kudos to Fisher-Price for a job well done.

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ASPDNSFv9 Tip #71 – Handling XML Packages

Posted by - Thursday, November 18th, 2010

When customizing XML packages in ASPDNSFv9 (the e-commerce platform we develop sites on), I find it helpful to create a copy of the package I am about to customize, (i.e. entity.simpleproductlist.xml.config).

In this case, I am going to customize a category listing page. I’ll call it “entity.saleitems.productductlist.xml.config”. Here I am going to jazz up the Sale Items landing page layout!  Continue reading “ASPDNSFv9 Tip #71 – Handling XML Packages” »

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Welcome Carl Edholm!

Posted by - Monday, November 15th, 2010

We are thrilled to welcome Carl Edholm to our team in the role of Creative Services Manager. Carl is a web biz veteran and brings expert level oversight to our team in all forms of interactive strategy, design and implementation.

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ASPDNSFv9 Tip #102 – Utilizing the Full Text Search functionality

Posted by - Friday, November 12th, 2010

Here is a quick tip regarding Full Text Searching on ASPDNSFv9 platform.

When creating an ASPDNSF database from the SQL scripts provided in the source code distribution (vs. the consumer level installer), you’ll need to run through the Full Text Search feature installation wizard in order to truly enable it. You’ll see that the database SQL script does not include the scalar function definitions for “KeyWordSearch” or “GetValidSearchString”, these are defined in the AspDotNetStorefrontCore assembly as inline SQL strings. Continue reading “ASPDNSFv9 Tip #102 – Utilizing the Full Text Search functionality” »

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“Always two there are, a master and an apprentice.”

Posted by - Thursday, November 4th, 2010

Far, far away in Elma, NY, we were busy at work in our dramatically lit clevermethod photo studio (we have a photo studio at the clevermethod office where we take professional product shots, in case you were wondering!). But this was not our usual photo shoot.

The Thursday before Halloween, we were putting “clevermethod babies”, West and Ella, in their Star Wars costumes, so that their nerdy cuteness could be exploited. Continue reading ““Always two there are, a master and an apprentice.”” »

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Our Best Facebook Fan Interaction Moments

Posted by - Thursday, October 7th, 2010

Now that clevermethod is nearing photo #300 of its Profile Pic du Jour Campaign on Facebook, we have taken this opportunity to review the performance of our photos to see what has generated the most fan interaction. To get these results, we used Facebook’s built in analytics tool called Insights. These reports are invaluable, since it allows us to  monitor page growth and fan engagement.

Without further ado, here is our top 5 list of most interactions (likes and comments) for our Profile Pic du Jour series: Continue reading “Our Best Facebook Fan Interaction Moments” »

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Drive Search Traffic with Google Places

Posted by - Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

Google PLaces Business ListingPeople search for businesses online more than anywhere else, so it’s critical to make sure your business listing can be easily found on Google.com and Google Maps, which remains the most popular search engine. With Google Places, creating a great listing takes just a few minutes and doesn’t cost a thing.

Continue reading “Drive Search Traffic with Google Places” »

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