Medeo Designs made an appearance here as one of the many vendors for this huge event.  We had lots of fun, gained some potential clients, and made some new friends.  Big thanks to everyone who entered Medeo’s drawing to win a free website!  The turnout was more than we expected!

Brandon and I, eating fresh.

A modest booth, but you should have seen our setup on the first day.  x__x

The brains and brawn of our design team (from left): Robert Vernatt, Brandon Webb, David Stanley.

Maybe we’ll be back next year!

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Here at Medeo, we strive to create fun and interesting sites that people are drawn to. Only a few seconds count when making a first impression.

This post is intended to show you new and interesting things that web designers are using in today’s market to attract positive attention from their prospects.

There are many techniques being used, many of which we do here at Medeo.

Let’s now take a look at some recent examples of striking, memorable design types.

Responsive Web Design – fluid grids, flexible images, and CSS media queries are used to create more adaptive layouts and hence more elegant user experiences. These designs can adapt to the browser’s viewport, completely changing the layout or the overall design of the page altogether, to fit the available space.

Elegant, Dark Layout – A good example of this would be http://www.hardysapplianceandfurniture.com/ The rich tones in the wood, and the colors in the slide show really make the site pop! Elegant and memorable.

Vintage layout – A vintage feel in the graphics, fonts and textures can really make a site fun and “groovy.”

Bookplate Graphics, Rainbow Textures and Grunge – With grungy textures, plenty of bold, contrasting color and deep dark shadows, this type of site is certainly “epic.”

Interactive Theme – A lot of our sites fall into this category. A good connotative theme can really suck the potential client in. Some examples would be: http://www.ncsweetpotatofestival.com,

http://www.originalbeach1.com, or

http://rivermontbaptist.org/youth/index.html

Large navigation buttons – A large in your face navigation is sure to grab your attention. Some examples of sites like this are http://www.hardysapplianceandfurniture.com, and Greene Regional Home Health.

When creating a memorable website, the more personal and creative you appear, the better your chances of being remembered.

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If you think about Google like a social network, the similarities are clear. As a Google “publisher” your goal is to be listed and get the attention of others. When successful, your content is shared via syndication and links. As a Google “user” you’re there to find information, through search. When you find something you like, you might link to that website, bookmark the page or subscribe to the site’s RSS feed or e-mail newsletter. In other words, you become a “follower” of that website. But imagine if you were to “friend” every website as the result of a search … you would quickly become overwhelmed. Now take all of that and apply it to Twitter. It’s not much different.

But the real kicker is Twitter’s new advertising system of sponsored trending topics and searches. Now, when you visit Twitter you will see a sponsored trending topic at the bottom of that section (at right). And when you search Twitter, you’ll find sponsored tweets at the top. Sound familiar?

Right now, it’s rumored that these sponsorships cost in the tens of thousands of dollars. You can bet that with that kind of money, advertisers are going to do everything they can to get their money’s worth. That will result in heavy promotion of Twitter search – bringing more clicks to the advertiser and big bucks to Twitter. Twitter search is ready for prime time.

While sponsored trends and tweets might not be attainable for the average business yet it’s difficult to imagine that, after some initial testing, not every business will be invited to take part. When that happens, Twitter could take another page from Google’s master playbook – a bidding system of keywords and phrases for top positions on Twitter search.

Take note of this development. And in the mean times, start optimizing your Tweets. Use keywords and phrases (and trending topic terms when appropriate), hashtags, aim for retweets and make influential friends. The more you can brand your Twitter account and keywords with users, the better prepared you will be when competitors start buying your keywords for Twitter search. Also, have a look at the image below. The top result is a sponsored tweet. The third result is not, but marked as a “Top Tweet.” Why? Because the advertisement has been picked up and spread as a non-paid tweet – with one click – by thousands of other users. That’s something Google doesn’t do.

Taken from Website Magazine

Now when you tweet for your business, use as many keywords as possible. The more keywords you can use the better chance your business will be listed in the searches of others. Also build up your friends with as many influential people as possible, this will help your tweets spread throughout the world.

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For $25 per month, local businesses in these cities can incorporate photos, coupons or other information for customers into yellow tags that are highlighted on their listings on Google and Google Maps. A Google representative said that the company is anticipating quick feedback on the product while it works on new features.

One of those features is said to be an additional tag enabling local businesses to further highlight timely events and limited-time offers in customized messages that will appear on the listings. Google also plans to be expanding tag advertising to new locations in the near future. Businesses in the cities listed can join the program through their Google Places accounts.

(Article taken from www.websitemagazine.com)

Now you can post coupons, photos, upcoming events, and more on Google’s local business listings. This is a great way to get more people to visit your website for more information or even visit your place of business.

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Many marketing managers did not learn the power of using new media in school. The lecturers were usually more familiar with traditional marketing media like live action TV commercials and paper adverts because when they were younger, that’s all they had. But nowadays, there’s the internet as a new media. Internet marketing is a whole different knowledge all by itself and that’s not being taught in most schools. And most certainly most marketing courses do not teach how to use multimedia and animation to help sell a product or a service. So they rely on boring powerpoints and paper hand-outs. Yawn.

If animation is used effectively, it can help demonstrate a product’s or engineered system’s full potential, far beyond what a powerpoint or hand-outs can achieve. I’ve listed some of the benefits and applications below:

Benefits

- Demonstrate how your product works without having to set it up or lug it about

- Create an upmarket feel of the product or service and justify a premium price

- Make a product or service more attractive, sexier and dynamic looking, and enhance its perceived value

- Give a boring system a visual boost through exciting graphics and animation

- Dramatize boring information and data

- Make anything look cutting edge and state of the art

- Create something that can never be achieved through live shots

Applications

- Show how your product or service can be applied to a problem

- Show the internal components of a complex product

- Bring the client on a tour of a facility or property using 3D animation

- Show how a product interacts with its customers

- Show how a very complex system works through animated sequences and diagrams

- Showcase a product or facility that has not yet been built

- Show several consecutive operations of a system or assembly line

- Show various negative scenarios that can be resolved through the use of your product or service

- Zoom into a microscopic detail of a product or its component

- Show each stage of a planned development clearly

- Show how something like a medical device interacts with the human body

If you are looking for a way to enhance the presentation for your product or service, using animation is the way to go.

Smart companies are using it to secure major contracts in their fields, and you should too.

(Excerpt taken from http://www.squidoo.com/animation-services)

If you have a vision, Medeo Designs can help you bring it into reality.

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Used as a marketing tool as well as a learning tool, it will be interesting to see what YouTube’s new integration of captions does to the way businesses use streaming video.”
Website Magazine

WOW!! Just think of the opportunities to market your business now. You can videotape a short commercial or ad about your business and services and when they are searched for on Google or YouTube, your video will show up in the exact spot that your said the keyword. This is a great way to bring in more business and customers for all kinds of companies. Who knows what’s next with Google?

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These changes could be the foundation for the internet of tomorrow. However, Facebook would become a dominant role in the search engine community and could bring an end to the super-giant, Google. With its recommended searches and adds, the internet could also be less traveled and more “one-sided.”

I personally find these changes exciting and predict them as a milestone in internet history.

I will continue to follow the progress on this issue. If my prediction comes true and facebook’s tool bar is released. I will make sure that every website we design here at Medeo will have it in its footer. Maybe one day, Facebook’s 400 million+ users will be able to recommend your website to their friends!

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• share:
• Recommend on Facebook
• Share via MySpace
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• Tell a friend