Archive for the 'Everything' Category
Written by bsterzenbach | December 24, 2011 10:40 am
While not a new technology, NFC is gaining popularity through adoption in more devices. In addition to the organic buzz that comes with any tech, NFC got a recent pub-push through Apple’s apparent snub of the technology in the 4s. Apple will certainly be including NFC in upcoming devices, but the recent disappointment brought the technology back in the spotlight.
NFC is essentially Bluetooth without the pairing process. You could also say it’s two-way RFID. Yes, these are over-generalizations, so if you want more info, you know where to find it.
What do You Need to Know About NFC?
It’s going to enable more “wallet” technologies and enable quick and easy sharing of “light” data. It’s a relatively slow technology, so only suitable for transactional exchanges such as contact info, purchases, notifications, etc – but it’s real power will be in its “a stranger is just a friend I’ve never met” perspective on communications.
Cool Uses for NFC
Tagging deals at storefronts. You could have your deals setup as NFC tags and passers-by could wave their devices to see any deals you’re offering. More sophisticated technology will emerge to allow you to see only deals that might interest you of course. No, I won’t be making the Minority Report reference, so you can stop watching for it.
Why Pay Attention Now?
I’m pretty sure we’ll be seeing Near Field in the iPhone5. With this will come new apps that exploit the technology in ways we haven’t yet imagined. My suggestion – start imagining now.
Written by bsterzenbach | December 7, 2011 12:23 pm
What is Responsive Design?
Responsive design is more a philosophy or a methodology than a “thing”. It’s the approach that says “I want to build my site & respresent my brand in a way that it just naturally looks great on all devices”. Responsive design places the responsibility on your agency to build interactive systems that adapt to the visitors medium.
What Does Responsive Design Look Like?
How do you know when you’re on a site that has been built using a responsive design approach? You’ll be able to tell in a few ways:
- The URL of the site does not change based on the device you are using. This means that www.oxiem.com is your URL for the desktop and www.oxiem.com is the URL for the mobile version.
- The images and layout adjust to reflect the device you are using. You may notice some images move or disappear entirely when you change devices. This is the site adjusting to your medium.
- Menus may change based on your device. Certain types of content may not be appropriate for very small or very large devices. With responsive design we may limit menus to only display optimal navigation for the device being used.
What are the Benefits of Responsive Design?
Search Engine Friendliness. As companies realize the importance of responsive design for cleaner design and more deliberate treatment of their brand, it’s becoming apparent that they overlook one of the most critical benefits of this display methodology – search engine friendliness. Without responsive design you may be accidentally duplicating content (mobile.oxiem.com/about-us.html vs www.oxiem.com/about-us.html). This can confuse the search engines and create a negative impact on your ability to rank well in the search engines. The beauty of responsive design is that the search engines do not need to make determinations as to the intent of your pages – you handle that by creating only ONE page and rendering it to fit the device requesting the page.
Treatment of your Brand. Often critical brand decisions are relegated to a technology person when it comes to the “mobile version” of a website. This is a risky approach. Sites should be designed with the common display types account for from the outset keeping the treatment of your brand in the hands of your marketing team rather than a technology-based decision made late in the game.
Not only allowing, but encouraging mobile use. Your site should encourage the use of mobile technologies. Too many sites today simply tolerate the use of mobile technologies. This is clearly not the direction to take. Mobile is becoming the new normal, and should be treated as such.
Allows your site to be device agnostic. This not only applies to mobile devices, but also to print, projector, screen readers, and other devices that may be getting too little attention. Responsive design says “Meet the visitor where they are – really”.
Don’t Be Late to the Party
Remember the old days of “This site is best displayed in Netscape Navigator 4x”? Saying “click here for the mobile version” or worse “click here for the full site” is rapidly becoming the new “best displayed in” faux pas. Start planning today to get all of your “versions” under one roof. We can help of course.
Written by bsterzenbach | December 4, 2011 11:25 am
Beyond Interactive – Evaluating a Lead Generation Company
I see a lot of questions about selecting a good lead gen partner on LinkedIn and other business networking sites. Usually the responses are from folks in the business and they go something like this: “I can get you leads, email me now at someguy@someleadgenservice.com”. Nothing wrong with this at all, but I think most people are looking for the best way to evaluate a lead gen partner.
So let’s get into it.
1. Expect to spend some cash on each partner you try. I’d say that you’ll need to to set aside $2k to evaluate each partner. Why? Because you can’t learn what you need to learn from 5 leads. Depending on the type of leads you want and the price-point of your product, you’ll need lots of leads to do a fair assessment of the partner, and each lead comes at a price. I try to evaluate 400 leads before I make a judgement.
2. Do NOT get started with a lead gen company without checking out their references. Look on the BBB, call their references, and check out their client list. Since you will need to spend some money to evaluate them, you MUST do your homework first. I can tell you from experience that there are a lot of terrible leadgen companies out there making some wild but believable promises.
3. Start with the most inexpensive lead type. If you have a choice between “exclusive” and “shared” leads – go with shared. Remember, you’re just evaluating the leads in this first stage, so you don’t necessary need to land the work – you just want to see what sort of leads they will send. Trust me, if you find a quality lead gen partner, it’s worth the initial investment.
3. Understand the methodology the partner uses to acquire the leads. If it’s shady, move on. You don’t want to be associated with anything that might damage your reputation
4. Understand the guarantee. Generally lead gen companies speak in terms of “lead replacement”. If they guaranteed to replace “bad leads”, get the definition of a bad lead in writing. Usually a bad lead is a phone number that doesn’t answer or that is a wrong number. The better lead gen partners offer much more relief to the bad lead picture. I look for companies that are fair. In the first round of leads I reject a lot of leads to see how they react. The better partners offer replacement based on geo, category, ability to reach, and a small subjective factor (if you just hate the lead, the good ones will replace it – in moderation of course).
5. Understand the billing model. Some of the shadier companies will continue to hit your credit card repeatedly until you complete some previously unknown step. Know exactly what you’re being charged and when. WATCH YOUR CARD STATEMENT.
6. Target local leads if possible. Your conversion rate is going to be better with folks you can connect with on any level. We have much better luck with Ohio leads than with Nebraska leads.
7. Ask for the typical close rate & price point. Every company I’ve worked with could tell me a typical close rate and price point of sale. This is critical for your early development of the leads.
8. Work with a partner in your niche if possible. Find a lead gen partner that specializes in your vertical. They are out there.
Please add your ideas, this could be a great resource for folks looking into this service
Written by jswayze | November 28, 2011 3:39 pm
The Oxiem team is giving a healthy shout out to our client/friends/ heroes at the Dayton Public Schools! This month, the Sunshine Review revealed the results of their national review of government websites… and Dayton Public Schools nabbed an A+, ranking it among the best websites in the nation. 
The Sunshine Review, a national nonprofit organization working to encourage open government and public oversight, judged more than 1,560 school district websites across the nation on information transparency and accessibility.
Our key client contact and content champion, Melissa Fowler, Communications Specialist and Webmaster with Dayton Public Schools, deserves a boatload of accolades for her tenacious approach to keeping the district informed through fresh, relevant web content.
The Oxiem/DPS relationship began more than a year ago, when Oxiem undertook the project of designing and developing the district and individual school site system. Built on our proprietary O2 Content Management System, every web feature is designed to make sharing information with staff, students, parents and public as quick and seamless as possible.
What’s O2? It’s Oxiem’s Content Management System that allows our clients to manage their websites with total control. DPS chose Oxiem for the job when they understood how O2’s simple interface and powerful organizing and monitoring features could help the district communicate effectively with all of their audiences.
“One of our top priorities in creating and maintaining this website has been to provide as much information as possible for families and other users. Thanks to Oxiem’s terrific content management system, it’s been an easy process to keep our site updated and fresh. We’re also thankful for the terrific Oxiem staff, who are always wonderful to work with and on top of any concerns or additional development ideas we have,” said Melissa Fowler of DPS.
Read the full Dayton Daily News story about the award.
Written by billyfischer | November 16, 2011 5:15 pm
Oxiem Interactive received three awards last night for web work completed in 2011 on behalf of two great clients. Honored by the Columbus AMA‘s “Achievement in Marketing” awards, we’re thankful for the recognition and proud of our team. We’re not in this for awards, but it never hurts!
In the category of Best Website, our work on the Superior Beverage Group website redesign won top honors. This was a really great project for us not only because of the beer, but because of all the really cool bells and whistles included in the site. Check out the “Get Social” section for a taste.
Also a winner was our most recent work for Ohio Hi-Point Career Center, including the Ohio Hi-Point Pathfinder interactive experience and Hi-Point Commons, a private-but-still-social student intranet (so members-only that we can’t even show you it live!). The quiz and resulting Pathfinder career display page is powered by content streaming from the student-authored and previously awarded Hi-Point Journeys collaborative blog.
This series of web properties and online campaigns won for Best Online Marketing and was recognized as one of the top three entries in the overall Online Marketing category! Our work for Ohio Hi-Point is a consistent award winner, thanks to a great partnership with the leaders of that organization. A big shout out to Shane Haggerty of Great Heights (and our former client at Hi-Point) as well as Tom Williams of Innogage , whose InnoBlogs platform helps fuel the Hi-Point blogging program.
Thanks to our wonderful clients for the opportunity to do great work!
Written by bsterzenbach | October 30, 2011 8:56 am
So, Google is terminating unlimited API queries to their maps. This essentially means that products/sites that use the Google Maps API will need to pay for usage above a certain limit. To be fair, Google gave the geo development community a 6 month heads up on this one. It’s only news now because the change hit in October. This will not have an impact on companies that use Google places in any way that I can see.
What’s an API?
API stands for Application Programming Interface. An API is essentially a “back door” that programmers can use to access the features of a piece of software. So in essence, API’s allow programmers to leverage features from other applications within their product.
How does this affect the world?
I try to be judicious in my use of the expression “chilling effect”, but it will have a chilling effect on geo developers that have relied on Google products to fuel their creativity in the past. Essentially, coders will begin to shy away from Google tools for fear that they will lose access once their product becomes popular to become useful. I don’t know if there would be a financial impact for most developers, but there is something sexy about “free” to the development community. And this time I mean free as in free beer, not free as in free speech.
How will this affect you?
Probably not much. If you are using a wildly popular app that utilizes Google Maps API, the app developer will either pay for the additional access, remove the access, or ask you to pay a small fee for the use of the app. Either way, I don’t expect you will find the change “tweetable”.
More info from Google:
http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2011/10/introduction-of-usage-limits-to-maps.html
Written by bsterzenbach | October 19, 2011 9:40 am
Today Google announced their new “privacy” protection feature. Essentially, if a user is logged in to Google and they search for a phrase that leads them to your site, you will no longer have access to view the phrase that they typed to get to your site. This will of course not apply to paid search traffic.
Who Wins & Who Loses? The Rundown
Winners:
The Searcher. Wins. Why? If you are logged in to Google, you get personalized search results. This could potentially mean that you will see a site you like when you search for “Men who like soft bunnies” a site that Google knows you prefer could show up. Are you searching for that? Maybe – I don’t know. Now, assuming the current method is in place, that full search phrase is reported to the site you visit, and the site can easily track that phrase to a purchase – where you would enter your identity information. I don’t see a huge risk here, but for those of us “men who love bunnies,” it could save us some embarrassment. Please comment below if you are one of these men – solidarity man – together we are stronger.
The Searcher – again: This will help to eliminate a lot of content farms that are just cranking out nonsense to attract searchers. Many are automated based on search phrases that Google gives them when visitors are referred to their sites. This could potentially clean up search results. My feeling is that this is really the responsibility of Google’s algorithm, but I have to acknowledge the upsite to the searcher all the same.
The Google: They reinforce the position that they protect the searcher above all else. They drive more advertisers to paid search. The further tighten their grip on the linkage between their tools.
Losers:
The Advertisers: I know, boo hoo the poor advertisers, always getting abused by “the man.” Remember, however, a lot of what you experience on a site has been crafted by advertisers, and often this makes sites much better for the visitor. By losing critical search intelligence, advertisers will no longer be able to craft the experience in the same way. Not a huge deal, but a deal all the same.
The Searcher: Yes, the searcher also loses in that their experience could be negatively affected by the loss of the search data to the publishers.
Biggest Loser – the publishers: Search queries are the food that drives a good content site. You may think content is the food, but alas – content is the muscle, context is the food. Look at ANY great content site – it’s the context that drives relevant content, and you don’t get better context than “what were they searching for?”
My opinion? Google’s gonna have to “pull a Hasting” (see the Netflix reversal). I can’t believe that the astounding number of Analytics users will tolerate this change. Does Google care about the users of their free tool? Probably somewhat, but more importantly, this change will not be viewed well by publishers, and if the stormy romance between Google and publishers was already strained, this puts the relationship into “counseling needed” territory. We’re talking sleeping on the couch, one-word answers, no coffee in the morning, wrath of God type stuff here.
The BIG One
Here is my BIG concern. Google has limited access to query terms in the past. For example, you need to link your Adwords account to your Analytics account in order to see Adwords traffic properly in Analytics. Since this has happened, I can see a time when other Analytics tools will not have a methodology by which to track keyword data. This means that it could be possible that ONLY Google Analytics would have the data that publishers, advertisers and others would need. I don’t think Google would do this maliciously, but simply as part of a “suite of tools” policy. If this happened, then it wouldn’t matter what Google Analytics users think, because their data will be fine – it would be the Omniture users and users of other analytics tools that would suffer.
Written by Jerrod Swanton | October 6, 2011 11:03 am
I recently attended “Ohio Get Your Business Online with Google” — a Google-sponsored event all about running an online business and setting up a free website using Intuit products. I was curious to find out what Google has to say about running an online business and how the Intuit website set-up process works, so I signed up for the seminar in Dayton — one of five sessions in Ohio. Google divided the seminar into two segments: 1) running your business online and 2) setting up a free website … on the spot.
Hello, Google.
During the first session, presenters introduced Google Places, Google Analytics and SEO, Google+, Google Adwords [are we noticing a pattern, yet?] and a few other Google products. Though the speakers covered a lot of the basic information that you would need to run an online business, the pace of the hour-long session was break-neck. I sensed the room quieting as people began to fathom how vast the online frontier is.
I Just Got a Website.
With one session down, we turned to the main event — setting up our free websites. There were about 50 computers at the facility for attendees to use. After some brief instructions, the event broke from a lecture setting, and we were prompted to begin working individually while some employees roamed the room to help with questions and setup if needed. The setup was fast! In five minutes, I had completed the Intuit website wizard process, picked a theme and registered my domain name. The Google folks also announced that the setup, hosting and domain name were free for the first year. After the first year, my website will cost $6.99 per month — a.k.a., about as much money as I annually spend on gym socks.
Now What?
As the session wrapped up, I sat at my workstation and stared at my new online presence. I still had a few questions: What if I want to move my site in the future? Who owns my domain name? What if I eventually want to add more content to my website than that three-page Intuit limit will allow? I was reminded of an anology we often share with our web clients at Oxiem. Building a website is like having a baby. Just because the labor’s over doesn’t mean your work is done. In fact, it’s just beginning.
Did many small business owners at Google’s seminar just conquer one, major hurdle to getting their business online? Absolutely. But I can’t help but wonder: Are they all cognizant of the perpetual “care & feeding” this new web presence will require to be an asset to their business?
Written by admin | September 30, 2011 11:02 am
The Oxiem team is excited to announce the addition of Gretchen House to the Oxiem team.
Gretchen is an Account Coordinator, acting as a client liaison and managing websites, web projects and online marketing campaigns.
Prior to joining Oxiem, Gretchen worked in marketing for a software consulting firm in Chicago, and came to the team from Landor Associates, a large design agency in Cincinnati. She will bring her previous marketing and brand strategy experience to help clients create dazzling web experiences while ensuring great service.
“Gretchen is a bright new presence on our team, bringing her client service, technology and process-driven mentality to our account management team,” said owner Bill Sterzenbach. “We’re thrilled to welcome her to the team.”
Gretchen will work out of the Oxiem office in Dublin. She is a graduate of Miami University and holds a B.A. in English-Journalism.
You can reach her at ghouse@oxiem.com or tweet her @housegm.
Written by admin | September 22, 2011 11:55 am
Oxiem is seeking a junior or senior fall semester intern to work 15-20 hours a week for a paid internship. Must love technology and design, be self-motivated and a good communicator. We embrace your inner geek.
E-mail your resume and a note including three websites you like and why, and what your favorite kind of ice cream is to careers@oxiem.com. No boring cover letters allowed — we’d prefer casual and personality filled to standard.
Oh, you want to know what you’d actually be doing first? Ok, fine.
Internship could include but is not limited to:
- Hands on experience creating online experiences including everything from brainstorming to implementation
- Learning the website development process and opportunity to participate in projects from start to finish
- Training and experience using website CMS systems
- Blog strategy, writing and design
- Using social media for client campaigns, planning and strategy
- Search engine optimization reporting and Google Analytics training and experienc
We are open to helping a student achieve class credit in communications, marketing, advertising, technology or other related fields.
