Articles

How should you review a marketing proposal to get the most value for your budget? Marketing proposals can be either thin or robust. Is one better than the other? CEO & Creative Director, Stephanie Kuhla shares some tips from her years in advertising and personal experience in the development process of writing a comprehensive and thoughtful proposal.

If you’ve ever watched Ghost Hunters, or any other paranormal investigation show, you’ve seen the “hunters” use a hand-held device called a thermal camera. These thermal cameras are scientific instruments used to visualize temperature changes in the environment. In the shows, the temperature changes are caused by the presence of ghosts… or so they say.

“Let’s eat grandma!”

“Let’s eat, grandma!”

Looking at the two sentences above, the only visible difference is the addition of one little comma. But forgetting that one little comma drastically changes the meaning from an untimely demise for grandma, to an invitation extended towards grandma to eat.

While keywords and long-tail keyword phrases are not the be all, end all of website content, they can become the foundation of your user experience. When you provide for an excellent user experience, you are building your site’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Researching effective keywords are a fundamental part of SEO.

A “long-tail keyword” is at least a three- or four-keyword phrase used in quality content creation for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to help search engines bring interested visitors to your website. Long-tail keywords that are used in combination with shorter, single keywords and phrases can help improve your website’s SEO. Long-tail keywords focus on a more specific visitor and tend to support a strong ROI (Return on Investment) over a longer term.

We all know that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, and that nothing rhymes with orange (except for a hill in Wales named Blorenge). Comparing apples to oranges, and doctors to mountains, is about the same as comparing a web development company to an advertising agency. Advanta had our Office Manager, Charlie, create a list of questions for you to consider when choosing the right company to design and develop your website, and here’s what she had to say:

Confused about search engine marketing? With all the ways you are now able to market yourself online, Advanta wanted to give a brief overview of the different terms you might come across, in order to help make better informed decisions about your next advertising adventure. We had our SEO Analyst, Darcy, give us a rundown of the differences between SEM, PPC, SEO, and other acronyms related to your digital marketing options.

Would a design by any other agency be just as memorable?

We thought it’d be interesting to have our Senior Graphic Designer, Brian, weigh in on what it’s like to create logos from scratch. From the concept stage to the final product, what goes into designing a logo? Or how can digital marketing designers capture an organization’s mission and personality into a single, simple, relevant image, especially when they aren’t a part of the organization themselves?

User experience design (UX, UXD, UED or XD) is the process of enhancing user satisfaction by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction between the user and the product.

“5% of users will uncover approximately 80% of all problems” – Nielsen Norman Group

Wouldn’t it be nice if your website designed itself? Well, it can, but it’s not as easy as you’d think – and, unfortunately, our review of The Grid’s claims finds the desired results aren’t achieved.

In the ever-evolving field of website design, you now have the option of having artificial intelligence (AI) design your website via a site called The Grid. However, the process is tedious and far from intuitive.