Is your company website saying what you want it to say? Is it different from your competitors? How does your industry as a whole fare in the corporate website realm? The answers probably depend on who you ask and when. Unlike a print ad, a TV spot or even your company's vision statement a website isn't something you make and then you're done. It's a living, breathing organism that needs to adapt to the rapidly changing environment around it. If it's not, it's probably dead in a year tops. Like that sturdy goldfish your kid has had forever, you do need to actually feed it once in awhile or it won't keep on going. And the fact that you've let it die is probably saying something about you that you don't want to be telling potential clients.
What brought this on? Yesterday I saw two completely different takes on agency and marketing websites. First, I saw probably the most innovative and fresh take I've ever seen in an agency web page. It was an agency that put it's whole website on YouTube. It consisted of a series of fun, interactive videos that were pretty edgy compared to the standard "business" fodder you see, even by ad agency standards. My favorite part was their agency vision, which was just a :30 video of a cat playing the keyboard. You can check it out here.
The second was a blog poston how all agencies are terrible at creating their own websites. It talked about the sea of sameness and lack of understanding of the digital realm. Some of her comments were dead on. Some were a bit off base. I caused a lively discussion in her comments section.
The truth is, in every industry, including ours, there's great websites, awful websites and a whole bunch in between. It's an area that you can't just do it once and forget about it. In our own case, we have multiple websites that accomplish this objective to varying degrees. The corporate websitewas created in the very early 2000's and although the look holds up well, it has many of the sins of websites who haven't been feed often enough. It's built in flash, so you can't find it well through search. It isn't easily updated and needs an overhaul. And we're in the process of taking away the dead body and building one we can sustain better. The microsites we created for Yaffe Directand a Yaffe Groupportal to it fare better. Our news and information site, Yaffe Tidbitswas created to be one we can feed often and fares much better. Our Yaffe/Deutsersite has a new version debuting soon.
How is your website faring? Have you created it so the care and feeding is easy? Do you feed it at all? To get the most out of it, you need to put something into it on a regular basis. I'd like to know how many of you have living, breathing sites and how many are on life support.
Mike McClure, Exec Creative Director
where there is a will, there is a way
How do I find out which affiliate prargoms will work in my state?I was thinking about starting about a blog, but I found a long list of affiliates that won’t deal with people in my state due to tax laws. Amazon and adsense are on it. Where can I find a list of affiliates who will deal With me? All I find by googling are affiliates that won’t.
I don’t know, Sheyla. What state are you in?