Inner Circle Media

If you have a website or you sell your own software, you are probably familiar with the terms “usability testing” or “user testing.” But there’s a good chance that you haven’t embarked on testing your website or software in a meaningful way with actual users because user testing seems like such a complex and overwhelming task. Here are 6 easy tips to making user testing a little bit easier.

Search engine optimization, personalized web content, customer-focused branding, listening to the “voice of the customer” through social media – these are all buzz words and hot topics in today’s world of marketing. When choosing a marketing company make sure these items are on your check list!

Marketing is about customer relationships — not just initiating them but sustaining them. And like all relationships, every little thing you do and say matters.

“Form follows function – that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.”  – Frank Lloyd Wright Here’s a great blog post explaining that good design focuses on meeting the needs of the user not just decoration and aesthetics. Many highly successful websites today (Google, Craig’s List, Apple) have [...]

Here’s a great article for professional services companies – especially law and accounting firms – Pitching Your Law Firm: Skip the Hard Sell. Marketers and advertising experts were trained to help their clients find their Unique Selling Proposition, but this can be difficult when all law firms, all accounting firms, and all consulting firms seem [...]

Here’s a great post (from Webmaster Tips) about the top 10 reasons why you should seriously be considering Drupal for your SEO-based websites. Advanced URL Control — Unlike WordPress, Drupal gives you precise control over URL structure. Each item of content in Drupal (called a node) can be given a custom URL (called a URL [...]

Drupal is an open source content management platform. As a free open-source software package, Drupal is distributed under the GPL (“GNU General Public License”) and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers. At present there are millions of websites (7.19 million as of 19 July, 2010) that are powered [...]

Cameron Chapman wrote a great article about usability (the way people interact with and respond to websites) on the website Six Revisions. Through eye-tracking studies, website analytics, and user surveys, researchers tested many usability “rules” and standards that have persisted for over a decade. This article explains that while some “rules” are just common sense, [...]

Many marketing and advertising agencies talk about “integrated marketing communications” – which may sound like promotional jargon to folks who aren’t marketing gurus, so let’s clear up any confusion. Integrated marketing means that your marketing message and the tools used to deliver the message are fully considered, planned, and integrated, so the “campaign” or promotion [...]

In July, I wrote an AnnArbor.com article called “How can women-owned companies close the revenue gap?” The article discusses the fact that women start companies at twice the rate as men, but according to the Center for Women’s Business Research, men-owned firms are twice as likely as women-owned firms to earn more than $1 million [...]