June's 'Digital fact' - an introduction to Marketing Wheel

The introduction of the Internet & IT into the basic requirements for a successful marketing strategy means that today & tomorrow, businesses need to think about marketing in a different way. Many businesses think about the Internet as separate to traditional marketing and as a result, miss out on the true potential of the Internet AND traditional marketing approaches.

E-creation has developed the ‘marketing wheel’ as an easy and quick process of analysing a business’ overall marketing strategy and collateral. Using the ‘marketing wheel’, E-creation can isolate weak points in a businesses’ marketing – and provide clear, concrete examples of how the integration marketing & IT consistently proves a more successful approach than viewing the various elements such as brochures, websites, PR & IT strategy in isolation.

May's 'Digital fact' - taking the initial design brief

One of the most difficult element in digital projects is getting the design 'spot on'. Given the flexibility & opportunities that digital media such as CD-ROM and the web, during the design process, clients 'learn' what is possible and the final designs can be very different to initial concepts.

E-creation uses a three step process during the early stages of the design processes in order to generate the most creative & appropriate designs:

1. Project View
2. Self View
3. Market View

In the Project View step, we look at the project to define the boundaries of the work - is the projects really a website or infact an animation to be used on a website, etc. We demonstration previous projects that are relevent & brainstorm with the client potential concepts & the latest technological advances that might affect the scope of the project & design.

In the Self View step, we use a standard 'business analysis' document to record essential information about the company, how they perceive themselves & how they would like to be perceived. Within 25 questions, we have a clear view (both E-creation & the client) of what 'values' are essential to communicate within the design.

In the Market View step, we analyse the competitors & their design & marketing. This provides the context in which any designs are going to be seen. There are very few clients operating with an absence of competitors, so seeing what competitors are doing should factor into our design work.

March's 'Digital fact'

Easily updatable websites - with content playing such an important part in how opinions are formed, it is essential to ensure that your websites are designed & built on a 'component' basis. This means that visual assets, menus & text can be used in a variety of ways making the creation of addition pages easier & therefore more cost effective.

For example, the newsletter menu that you clicked on to access this article, is a very short HTML file that is 'pulled' into many pages automatically by code. This means that as we add new newsletters & online marketing elements, we can update one small file, which then propogates itself across many pages of the site - its quick, easy and effect - taking just a little bit of pre-thought when building the site.

Most designers incorporate content management systems into websites allowing clients to update content without technical expertise or to create a better environment for site maintenance & content updates. But 'pulled' pages do not require the same level of coding, time or cost.