Even business cards aren’t dead in the age of the smartphone.

Over the years business people have become very sophisticated consumers of marketing materials. We all know what to expect out of sales materials: we expect to be sold to. We accept the direct, “marketing speak” of brochures.

But web site visitors expect something different. When a prospect visits your site they are looking to be informed, educated. They typically don’t react well to direct, in-you-face sales approaches.

Why is that? It’s about expectations and time.

A brochure is short, focused, and direct. When you pick one up you expect to glance at it and get the gist of why you should buy product X. That’s not how people use the web. When they recognize a problem, they search for solutions. They do not yet focus on a single solution. That’s why the brochure approach doesn’t work for web sites. The prospect doesn’t immediately want to know why your product or service is best, they want you to demonstrate that you understand their problem.

If your copy, the content of your web site is well written, the visitor will spend more time, read more, and seek out more information. The average brochure gets about thirty seconds of reader attention. Great web site content can get you five or ten minutes of visitor attention, an eternity from a marketing perspective.

Even better: great site content will cause a “new visitor” to become a “returning visitor”. The best site copy is informal, easy to read, highly informative, and very light on the sales speak. Great copy leads a prospect to the conclusion that they should buy your product or service.

The best sites, the ones that people return to time and again, publish new information frequently. They become a source of industry information. Their employees and staff become thought leaders about the subjects that customers care about. And the content encourages readership, viewership, and participation.

Yes, you still need brochures and direct sales materials and approaches. Just not on your website. It’s a different skill set, but one that can lead to sales success when integrated with your complete marketing program.

The web is the way new customers find you, and their first impressions are crucial. They look to you for information, or when they have a problem you can solve. Often times that means they are on the go, using a mobile phone or tablet. You simply can’t assume they’ll wait to visit your site once they finally sit down at a desktop.

Marketers who claim they “don’t need to worry about mobile yet,” are living in 2006. They may already have a mobile site, but the question is: does it deliver site visitors the best mobile experience? Responsive Design can help.

Responsive Design isn’t about technology. It’s about giving customers and prospects an optimal viewing experience regardless of their browser or device. That’s why Morrison is committed to this approach.

If you haven’t already, please take a moment to download our new Field Guide: How to Use Responsive Design to Create Effective Websites for Any Device. Once you’ve taken time to read it over, we’d be happy to chat with you further about how Responsive Design can help boost your business.

The site was designed and developed for Dunes Marketing Group in South Carolina. Our task was to not only redesign their site, with an enhanced focus on driving new leads through property searches, but to do so in a way that enhanced organic search traffic, and presented the site well across a variety of devices. Along the way, we also worked to create more than 60,000 words worth of new site content!

In the end, we delivered a site that not only builds our client’s business, but also sets them apart in a sea of online destinations for users looking to purchase a new home.

We’re proud of the work we’ve done for them, and are honored to have been recognized for it.

The Facebook app made news last week when it was re-released as a purely native app. Until this point it was pretty much a website in an app wrapper, and was criticized for being terribly slow. The transition to native has greatly improved the speed and overall experience of the app. (The Apple version, that is. The Android version is still horrible.)

As if by PR magic, Appcelerator released a whitepaper the same day arguing the case for native apps vs mobile websites. They have created a great framework for building mobile applications for iPhone, Android and Blackberry from a single codebase. When a native app is necessary, that’s what I prefer to use. But the key word here is necessary.

While native applications are more powerful and have access to more features than good ole’ websites (location services, camera use, and monetization just to name a few), it is easy to get caught up in the excitement of “We have an app on iTunes!!!” without considering the limitations and other cons of native apps.

• Barrier to entry: You have to download something
• Partial Market Saturation: While tools like Appcelerator help you create apps across several devices, you will only ever reach a few. Kindle? Nook? All of those god awful Android sizes? And whatever comes next?
• Misuse of App Store: We’ll get into this more in a sec, but you can’t put any old thing in the App Store.
• Cost: It just costs more and takes longer, especially during the Quality Assurance stage.

So when is the right time to create a native app? The simplest answer is this: When you are creating a product or utility. In a case like this you probably prefer a barrier to entry (so you can monetize or limit the number of devices you have to support) and you need the native features that become available.

On several occasions I’ve worked with clients that really wanted a native app, but simply ended up putting their website content into an app. A costly gamble, if you ask me. Android is more forgiving of cases like this, but iTunes will outright reject your app because it doesn’t add value. And if you do get it through by adding a few news feeds and convincing Apple it’s useful, will anyone download it? Have you created something meaningful enough that your customer base will hand over a dozen or so megabytes of their storage space for your app? (Just imagine if, instead of making the Morrison site mobile friendly, we tried to send you packing to the app store to download something to read this blog post. Your vision would immediately blur leaving nothing in focus but the CANCEL button!) And what about all those other devices?

Nine times out of ten, companies do not need a mobile app, they need a mobile presence. Your website can be slick, fast and gorgeous as a mobile website. And with responsive design, we can help make it so across every internet capable device, regardless (more or less) of device size and ability.

All with a single codebase.

Today, I’m happy to announce Landed has been approved, and is now available in the app store for download!

Using it couldn’t be simpler. Just select your airline, enter your flight number, and choose who to notify. When your flight lands, your friends will receive a fancy notification that you’ve safely arrived! It’s that simple.

Give it a try: download from the App Store today!

“In addition, at a time when Americans increasingly pay bills and buy tickets on mobile devices, Government services often are not optimized for smartphones or tablets, assuming the services are even available online.”

In short: Your customers are mobile, so you have to be mobile, too. Smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops. If they use it, you support it. We’ve talked about this need to transition to responsive design (device omnipresence, if you will) more than a little, but it’s nice to have the backup of the executive branch.

This directive is no surprise from the first president who campaigned with a fully responsive website. Resize the window! It still works and it’s a government website! (In fairness to Romney, his website works on mobile devices. But it loses points for being a separate mobile site rather than a single, responsive site.)

Whatever your political flavor, the lesson is the same. The web is changing, embrace it.

Websites Are Destinations

Unlike advertising, people are not randomly exposed to websites, so the rules of “being interruptive”, “breaking through the clutter”, “doing something wildly different to get attention”, etc. don’t necessarily apply. People come to websites with a purpose, whether it’s to shop, to buy, to learn, or to be entertained. They don’t just arrive, they are directed by some other communication – a tweet, an ad, a blog post, etc. Their visit is fueled by a purpose. Successful sites recognize that, and tailor the experience and content accordingly.

Content Is King

Optimizing a website for search so that content is also meaningful and useful to the end-user is a challenge, but well worth the effort. It starts with identifying which keywords and phrases will best allow potential visitors to find the site. It also requires identifying both business and organic search competitors and determining what words and phrases drive their success. Then carefully crafting content to contain the most relevant keywords in a way that is meaningful and relevant to users. Writing website content that increases site findability, while also being relevant to users, is an artform.

Success Is Driven By Users

Before assembling a site map and content outline, it is important to understand all the goals and business needs the site is required to achieve. It is also important to understand the goals users will have when they are on the site. Business and user goals will influence every site design/development decision from home page copy, to a simple contact form submissions, or the purchase of a product.

Accessibility Matters

You can have the slickest site on the web, but if users can’t access it, it doesn’t do anyone any good. For content to truly be king, the site needs to work whenever, wherever, regardless of device, or connection speed.

The Future is Unpredictable

Clean, flexible interfaces, that are designed in a way that is responsive to the user’s device, ensures that no matter how they access the site, they’ll be able to do so in a way that is both engaging and intuitive. Today’s ever-changing list of devices means website developers can’t think in the here and now, they have to be thinking in the then and there. They must acknowledge the unpredictable nature of the web, and embrace it fully.

In 2010 Square introduced, and I do not use this word lightly, a gamechanger. Download their app, sign up, and plug in in the little card reader they send you for free. You can now accept credit cards anywhere from anyone.

The app itself is pretty minimal. You type in a price and a description, swipe a card and let the customer sign with their finger. Square keeps a record of the transaction, takes a 2.75% cut for their trouble (less for non-profits), and deposits to your bank the next day.

Selling flowers at a Farmer’s Market? Done. Tutoring around town? Swipety-swipe-swipe. I was introduced to Square last year through a friend’s community theatre company. The plays they produce are free to attend, so they use Square to sell concessions and take donations from the lawn of an historic home. Square has really opened up the possibilities for small companies and freelancers in an increasingly cashless society.

Square was satisfied with this for about a year before they released another – yes I’m going to say it – gamechanger. Square Register combines the original square app with the ability to add and manage products as well as get detailed analytics about each transaction. Customers can then create their order, add a tip if they like, and get their receipt all from an iPad screen.

How amazing is that?! The answer is “Very.”

Square is an integral part of the larger trend of making powerful business tools available to small businesses or individuals who have no budget for large fees or setup costs. Don’t want to buy Microsoft Office? Use Google Docs. Need help collecting startup capitol? Use a site like Kickstarter. And now, accept credit card payments from anywhere with Square. The market is opening up to anyone brave enough to get into it.

UPDATE: PayPal has released their Square competitor, PayPal Here. It is very slightly cheaper with a 2.7% cut instead of Square’s 2.75. It also lets you add products on the iPhone version, which Square doesn’t support yet. That being said, you have to deal with PayPal, who are infamous for freezing accounts. No thanks!

Data is the new soil

I’m not a designer, but I keep a copy of David McCandless’s book, The Visual Miscellaneum, on my desk. Because it is beautiful. In his TED talk McCandless referred to data the “the new soil”, and that by “visualizing information, we turn it into a landscape that you can explore with your eyes.” Pie charts and Venn diagrams aren’t cutting it anymore. Not when visualizing the efficacy of popular dietary supplements or a cultural and commercial breakdown of Pinterest users.

Data is the new history

Jer Thorp, also a TED speaker, talks about how data visualization was used to understand the history of the New York Times (where he is, true story, the Data Artist in Residence). By taking a full year’s worth of news, Thorp shows the importance and connections among the several tens of thousands of pieces of content the New York Times created. With later projects he showed how a single story is shared over time, providing a way to map it’s effect on the Twittersphere.

Google Analytics is a great everyday example of this. A tool that remembers every visitor to a website – where they came from, where they go, how they interact, and where they drop off – and presents it to you in an easily digestible format. And what makes it easily digestible? The design. The time and effort put into creating something visual out of something analytical.

Data is the new competitive edge

The more we know, the more we can do, but only if we understand the information we’re given. Data visualization, like a flash card, gives us a quick and memorable birds-eye-view of what mountains of data can tell us. And the more that becomes available, the people (or clients, or users, or visitors) want it. Infographics have become popular because people want to know! They want transparency into their social networks, their governments, and the companies they do business with. Open data means more trust, more clarity, and more possibility for positive change. So when I say data is the new competitive edge, I don’t just mean having it. I mean giving it.

Open up the coffers and let your users in.

Brands that are on the list include Best Buy, McDonald’s, Whole Foods Market, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Century 21, The Cheesecake Factory, Dell, FedEx Office, FTD, Gulf, H&M, Seamless.com, Sports Authority, Ticketmaster, Virgin America and Zappos.

We can argue over whether or not this is a great idea, but you can’t fault AmEx for trying here. They’re doing a great job leveraging social services to connect with their customer base, and to engage with them in a way that their customers are already comfortable with.

The intriguing thing here will be to see what analytics look like on this in a few months, and how well it does – or doesn’t – catch on.

I’m a big fan of this effort, and have already jumped on board to give it a shot. How about you?