There’s more to a brand than just a cool design or image. A brand is a symbol of your company’s core values, culture, messaging and target audiences. It’s important to have a deep understanding of what your company is, who your competitors are and how you fit in or stand out in your industry.

A critical element in brand development, is understanding your customers — their wants, needs and beliefs that drive their attitudes and actions. If done well, your brand will convey the company’s benefits that meet those needs.

Once this important information is gathered, it’s time to clearly define your …

The Numbers

9% of all US web traffic comes through some sort of mobile device*
That’s more than a 10% growth of market share since this time last year.

Of that traffic:

• 40% used iOS (iPhone, iPad)
• 40% used Android
• 9% used iPod Touch
• 4% used BlackBerry
• 2% used Nokia
• 2% used Opera
• the remaining 3% com from assorted small name browsers

* figures provided by http://gs.statcounter.com/

Mobile Pitfalls

The mobile web has introduced new hazards that should be addressed immediately. Both of these ideas may once have seemed like good ideas, but they are now online poison.
Adobe Flash
Flash is dead …

Online quizzes are a great compliment to any digital presence.  They’re interactive, allow automated feedback, provide incentive for visitors to seek out what you have to offer, and give you further insight into your audience.

Here are 10 tricks to help you ace your first attempt at making an online quiz.
1 Hook Your Audience
Explain how the quiz helps them & make it easy to get started

Taking a quiz requires an investment of both information and time; two of the most valuable coins in the online world. People need a reason to make this investment, but keep it short and sweet. …

Website development starts with intense conversations about what the site should look like and what it should do to meet the desired goals. Typically several people on the client’s end are tasked with describing what the company’s needs are from each of their perspectives and to ensure nothing critical is missed by the web developer. At the other side of the table, the web development team will ask many, many questions first to understand the company’s needs and then to make sure the site’s functions are clearly defined. After these conversations, a site specifications document is drawn. The web developer …

Unless you have an e-commerce website where the action you want your visitors to take (buy now) happens within the site itself, you have to work a little harder on adding legitimate calls to action to your site without going over the top with “click here” buttons.

The idea is to guide the visitor to an action on each page of your website without being pushy. Most of us just want people to call. We know we can take it from there. But you need more than your phone number on the …

Let’s face it: the classic blog post is boring.

Barring the text and images, each one generally has the exact same layout. We see little originality from one post to the next. Of course, consistency and branding are extremely important to consider when designing a website or blog, but what about individuality? Does a blog post about kittens deserve the same layout as one about CSS hacks?

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That was one heck of an opening, and just the sort of thing mb/i has been looking for to explain the importance of building an engaging, well-branded WordPress presence.  Of course there’s a …

What is CMS software in the first place?
CMS stands for Content Management System, and for the purposes of this article we will be discussing website content management systems. Web CMS software allows you to easily and efficiently manage a website and all of the associated text, images, and other files without having the technical knowledge of web programming. That being said, as a person who does possess the technical skills of a web developer, I wouldn’t even consider foregoing the great benefits of a CMS for the nostalgic joys of manually managing a website and its content. …

Nowadays most business websites have a Content Management System driving them so their owners can make edits without having to go back to the original web developer. They have become sort of the norm and most business owners request such functionality when purchasing a new site.

If you hire the right web developer, the process of building such a site will be smooth with your having to make some key decisions along the way. However, regardless of how great your web developer is, he will eventually require content from you.

In the past, with static websites, content could be provided in simple …

It’s nearly impossible to make a modern website without first building a site map that serves as the basis for the navigational menu. In order to achieve the most user-friendly interface for an audience, a web designer first needs to understand the site’s purpose.  Here are four navigational models that can help match purpose to navigation.
Designing for the Shortest Path
Most websites are designed on the theory that visitors know where they want to go, and would prefer to get there in the fewest number of clicks possible. The best way to accomplish this is to construct a hierarchy for …

MB/I central has become a lively place over the past couple of months. By concentrating representatives from sales, administration, design, programming, and management in one location, Marissa has given us the chance to brainstorm, integrate efforts, and share broad design philosophies even as we work on specific projects.

My own focus, whether testing a new CMS or adding content to an existing site, tends to be on the ease and usability of our systems. The easier it is to find or change information, the more I tend to like a site. …