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To celebrate the town of Guilford’s 375th Anniversary, local digital ad agency mediaBOOM designed and developed a commemorative website that serves as a photographic journey through the town’s history. The website features stunning photography, courtesy of the Guilford Free Library’s Historical Room, spanning 140 years from the beginning of the 1860’s to the year 2000. Users can browse through the decades, learn about each photograph’s history, and share the images on social media.

Regarding the inspiration for creating this commemorative website, mediaBOOM President, Frank DePino, said, “I grew up in Guilford and have had my business here for over a decade, so to have the opportunity to be part of our town’s 375th anniversary was a great experience for our agency.”

Guilford ad agency mediaBOOM obtained all the images on the website from the Historical Room at the Guilford Free Library, with the help of Historical Room Specialist Patty Baldwin and Reference Librarian Rob McCole.

In addition to being a commemorative and educational website, “Portraits of Guilford” serves as a virtual hub for many of the library’s historical photographs. By converting the images from hard copies to digital files, these timeless photographs are now preserved and easily accessible for people to enjoy now and for generations to come.

View the website here: http://PortraitsOfGuilford.com

This week members of the mediaBOOM design team took a trip to Stamford, CT to visit Charter Communications. Charter Communications is the fourth-largest cable operation in the US that mediaBOOM has had the pleasure of working with as a client.

The mediaBOOM and Charter teams discussed future projects over lunch, and we are all excited to continue our partnership moving forward.

One of the most important marketing tools for hotels is a professional website that presents viewers with clear, concise information, and invites them to explore the site deeper. An effective hotel website will capture the attention of your audience, present the most important information in a clear and easily accessible manner, and leave a lasting impression on visitors after they leave the site. To achieve these objectives, consider these 5 tips:

 

1. Build a responsive website

With the dramatic increase in usage of smart phones and tablets, an effective hotel website must be responsive. This means, a website must be able to function and rearrange its layout to fit on all devices including desktops, tablets, and mobile devices.

In the case of your hotel website, it is important for users to be able to access the important information, such as booking info and room descriptions, in a simple and efficient manner on any device they choose to use. By creating a responsive website you are allowing the content to adjust its layout to be optimized across all devices, making it easy for users to find the information they are looking for.

 

2. Provide a user-friendly navigation 

The title of Steve Krug’s web usability book sums it up best with it’s title “Don’t Make Me Think”. The book’s premise is that a good website should let viewers accomplish their intended tasks as easily and directly as possible. Users don’t want to have to think about where to find the information they are looking for. Therefore, if your site’s navigation is complicated, it may frustrate or confuse the viewer, sending them off to the next hotel website in their search. To prevent this, it is important to have a clear and concise navigation that answers the main questions your viewers are searching for. For hotels this would include:

1) Where is the hotel located?

2) What does the hotel look like?

3) What type of rooms are available?

4) What are the room rates at the hotel?

5) What amenities does the hotel offer?

It is also crucial that the website have an interface where booking a reservation is quick and easy. The ability to do so must be available for viewers in the navigation at all times.

 

3. Create an emotional impact 

In order to create a memorable impression for visitors, your hotel’s website should have an emotional impact that connects with them personally. Your hotel website should tell a story and invite your audience to take part. This is done through an artful orchestration of design, imagery, and copy that captivates and draws emotion. Doing so will leave a lasting impact on your audience.

 

4. Separate yourself from your competition

A unique website will help your hotel stand out from the crowd in more ways than one. It is important that your hotel’s website looks polished and clean and presents an engaging user experience for your audience.  Utilizing professional photography, full screen video, sleek animations or transitions, and thoughtful design will give your website an edge over the competition. This edge turns a generic website into a memorable one.

 

5. Keep your content fresh and up-to-date

So the visitor has booked a reservation on your website, had their stay, and has now returned back home. What motivates them to visit your hotel website again, after they have already had their stay? Frequent updates are key to encouraging patrons to keep coming back to your website. Listing upcoming events, local news, promotions, and other timely information will keep people interested in returning to the website to check what’s new. This connection will strengthen the relationship you have with your hotel customers, and will encourage them to return to your hotel time and time again.

 

mediaBOOM is a Connecticut-based digital advertising and internet marketing agency with over a decade of experience designing and developing websites for the hotel and residential industries.
To schedule a consultation, email us at sales@mediaBOOM.com or call us at (203) 453-3537.

The 6 most common branding mistakes to avoid are listed below:

 

1. Not understanding your audience

In order to have an effective company brand, you must understand who your audience is. This means knowing more than just their age, gender, and location. What kind of person represents your target audience? What drives them to seek out products and services like yours? Where do they get their information? Who do they trust? It is critical that you understand your audience in a comprehensive way so that you can tailor your brand accordingly.

 

2. Not understanding the power of a brand

Your brand is more than just a logo; it is how your company is perceived by its customers. This perception is formed by everything that your company does, including customer service, advertising, and how your company presents itself with its branding campaign. It also directly influences the trust and loyalty your customers feel for your company. Therefore, a strong brand is incredibly advantageous for building a relationship with customers.

 

3. Picking a bad name

Your company name should describe who you are and how your customers perceive you. For example, the inexpensive retail centers Wal-Mart and K-Mart have names that reflect who they are and what they sell. The use of the word “mart” communicates the inexpensive and convenient nature of their products and stores, and appeals to their customers as such. On the other hand, Gucci and Louis Vuitton are both high end fashion retail companies, and their names give off a connotation of luxury and glamour.

In addition to communicating what you do, your company name should be unique and have personality. A boring name can easily be overlooked and forgotten.  A unique name will stand out among the group of generic company names, and your chances of finding an available domain name will be higher.

There are also a few factors you should consider to avoid creating unintentionally amusing names. For instance, WhoRepresents is a database of talent representatives, however their URL – Whorepresents.com – can be read in a completely different (and unintentionally inappropriate) manner. To avoid the issue of creating an unintentionally amusing company name, make sure that any adaptation or abbreviation of your desired name does not have another connotation or way of being read.

 

4. Forgetting to establish defined brand standards

As we mentioned above, creating a brand is more than just designing a logo. When creating a brand identity, you need to establish defined guidelines that cover all elements of the brand. Here are some elements to consider:

– Logo

– Colors

– Tag lines

– Fonts and typography

– Imagery

Depending on your brand, you may include other branding characteristics in this list. The main point is to have a defined system of elements to keep your brand consistent throughout all outlets (print, web, marketing, etc.), which will strengthen the integrity of your brand.

 

5. “Cheating” on your brand standards

So now that you have your brand guidelines in place, there may come a time when you want to use a color outside of your brand’s color palette. Or perhaps incorporate a new typeface into an ad campaign for a new product line. The option of “cheating” on your brand standards becomes very tempting, and you may think it is no big deal. However, keep in mind that every deviation from the defined system of brand standards diminishes the integrity of your brand and the strength of the association your customers would have to a more unified branding campaign.

 

6. Overcomplicating your brand

When beginning the branding process, it can be tempting to add as many variables into the brand standards as you can. However, trying to cram in seven colors, six individual graphic elements, and 9 typefaces is not necessary and will diminish the impact your brand has on its customers. Simplicity is key, as clean, simple elements are more likely to be recognized by consumers and remembered after the fact.

 

mediaBOOM is a Connecticut-based digital advertising and internet marketing agency with over a decade of experience developing brands for clients.

To schedule a brand consultation, email us at sales@mediaBOOM.com or call us at (203) 453-3537.