Ultima’s existing site had grown stale and was no longer an accurate reflection of the company’s high standards and precision. Ultima asked CFX to bring a more scientific feel to the site and increase the site’s flow and Search Engine Optimization.  We also wanted to better track the site’s traffic, so we installed Google Analytics to allow the client to better track the effectiveness of their marketing and SEO efforts.

We designed the new site with a prominent graphic of a medical report graph and used the company’s signature orange sparingly to draw attention to important information on the site.

The site is built in WordPress, with full content management capabilities, allowing the client to easily update content on their web site within an easy-to-use web-based administration dashboard.

Visit the new Ultima Health Assessments web site and let us know what you think!

Good job, folks! Hope you take home a win on March 29th!

Learn more about the criteria for choosing winners at the Successful You Awards.

So, I set out to find out if the 2010 version of Outlook was any more flexible. At first glance, it seemed that it was similar to 2007 – you could paste an HTML file inside the stationery folder on the hard drive and you could then use that from within the list of “themes” shown. Still, our replies and forwards were left out in the cold, so a solution had to be found.

After a little tinkering around, I discovered that you can trick Outlook 2010 into using an existing HTML file as a “Signature” that can be applied to both new messages, as well as replies and forwarded messages. Follow the steps below to use this workaround to apply consistent look/feel and formatting to your messages in Outlook 2010.  This presumes that you already have a fabulously-designed HTML email stationery template like the ones we create for our clients…

Here are the locations on the hard drive where Outlook places files for signatures on Vista/Windows 7 and Windows XP machines:

Windows 7 and Windows Vista
drive:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\
Microsoft\Signatures

Windows XP
drive:\Documents and Settings\username\
Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures

SETTING UP A NEW CUSTOM HTML SIGNATURE IN OUTLOOK 2010

1. Go to File –> Options –> Mail and click on “Signatures”
2. Click “New” to have Outlook create a new signature and give it a name.
3. Then, go to the appropriate folder on the hard drive where your Signatures are found (per above).
4. Right-click on the .HTM file with the name you gave your new signature and open it with Notepad.
5. Paste in the HTML from your custom email template and save.
6. To modify the rich-text and plain-text options for your signature, open your HTML file in a browser window and copy the text of your signature. Open the .rtf and .txt versions of your signature, paste in the text you copied from the browser window and save.
7. In Outlook, go to File –> Options –> Mail –> Signatures, set it to use your new Signature for both New Messages and Replies/Forwards. This will ensure consistent application of your template on all messages.

Voila!

Local Sexual Health Educator and Clinical Hypnotherapist Jane Langton came to CFX looking for help designing a new logo, business card and splash page for her workshops.

Right away, the company name – A Juicy Life – conjured up images of ripe, juicy apples. Add to that the fact that the company is focused on education and it made even more sense. But, we didn’t want to get too literal and gave some thought to notion of approaching sexual health from a loving, embracing perspective.

The end result is a logo that combines the shapes of a heart and apple and features a bit out of one side, a nod to the idea of taking a bite out of life.

Jane was thrilled with the results and has told us many times since that she’s received consistently positive feedback on the logo.

For more information on the services A Juicy Life offers, visit their site at: www.ajuicylife.com

The login link was found easily enough, but once logged in, tracking down the link to edit account details was like finding a needle in a haystack. All the usual areas were searched – at the top of the page near the Logout and shopping cart buttons, on the right side, at the bottom of the page where site map links are located. No luck. Finally, I had to call someone else over to the screen and after another minute of both searching the screen, there sits the My Account button, all but invisible on the main navigation because it’s next to a bunch of other buttons listing main product categories on the site. Needless to say, you don’t expect to see an account-related button alongside a list of product categories.

Next up was trying to get the login to work for the rewards card number. For some reason, the account and rewards logins are two separate areas of the site, which, again, seems to make no usability sense whatsoever.

The final nail in the usability coffin on the Staples.ca site was trying to figure out how to use a Staples account to pay for the order, rather than paying with a credit card. In the end, customer service was called and I was told to select “Staples Enterprise Card” in the card type and was given information to plug into the expiration date and security code fields. I was left wondering why the option to use an account felt more like a workaround than an actual, legitimate payment option.

My experience with the Staples site today underscores the reasons that usability in web site design is so important. When the layout of a site leaves a visitor searching for common site links, it’s an unnecessary waste of time and, given another option, many will opt to leave your site and find another that’s easier – and quicker – to use.

Keep visitors on your site and complete sales by ensuring that your site’s layout is user-friendly, like content links are grouped – product categories, shopping cart/account logins, etc. – and that information is given clear hierarchy using colour, type size and weight to distinguish primary, secondary and tertiary levels of navigation and content.

Check out the BOOST Social Media web site and let us know what you think: www.gimmeaboost.com

Already plugged into social media? Let’s connect! Become a fan of BOOST on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

In addition to graphic design, corporate identity/branding and web site design/development, we’re expanding our service offering to include the following:

- Social media strategy, planning & management
- Social media profile setup
- Corporate blogging
- Event live-blogging
- Search engine optimization
- Search engine marketing

Want to get your business connected with social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Flickr and YouTube? Contact Us today for a free consultation.

NALH also wanted to incorporate social media into their marketing efforts, so we set up profiles for them on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Plaxo, as well as incorporating a WordPress-powered blog into their site.

The result is a much more robust, information-driven site with better search engine optimization. The NALH site ranks on the first page of Google for all their major keywords, so we’re obviously doing something right!

Check out the new site and let us know what you think! www.nalh.ca

Check out the new site and let us know what you think! www.intricateglass.com

Kemp discussed the idea that using tags and symbols in your messages – particularly those employed by seasoned Twitter users – on sites where they’re not typically used can result in alienation of the audience on other sites.  In this case, cross-posting would negate your efforts to reach more audience in less time.

Have you ever seen an @ or # symbol in someone’s Facebook or LinkedIn status? What does RT mean anyway?  Kemp had a great point in stating that not everyone is familiar with these symbols and abbreviations. Furthermore, no one likes to feel like they’re out of the loop. So, in the interest of education, let’s examine what these cryptic Twitter symbols and terms mean:

TWEET OR (less commonly) TWIT
A message sent via Twitter, consisting of 140 characters or less.

@ OR @USERNAME
In the Twitter world, the @ symbol precedes a person’s Twitter username. The @username of a person is used anytime you want to send a public message to a specific user or you want to reference that person in a Tweet. An @username can be used in a couple of ways, referred to as “mentions” or “@reply”.

EXAMPLE: @cfxcreative

MENTIONS
A “mention” is just that – an instance in which someone makes reference to your @username within their tweet, usually to attribute content to you or to share your Twitter profile with others. Keeping watch on mentions of your @username is the easiest way to monitor when someone is talking about you on Twitter.

EXAMPLE: Just read an interesting blog post by @cfxcreative

@REPLIES
An “@reply” is when someone sends a public tweet specifically addressed to you. In this case, the @username will appear at the very beginning of the tweet. @replies are used to either initiate a question or conversation with a specific user or to reply to or comment on something that user has tweeted.

EXAMPLE: @cfxcreative Just read your newest blog post. Great info!

DIRECT MESSAGES
Different from an @reply is a “direct message” or DM. These types of messages are private messages exchanged between users on Twitter. In order to send a DM to someone, you have to be following them and they also need to be following you. This prevents users from using direct messages as a way to spam others. The syntax of a DM is a little different than using an @username, as the @ symbol is not included. In this case, the tweet begins with a lowercase letter D and a space, then the username, sans @ symbol.

EXAMPLE: d cfxcreative Can you forward the link to the site we discussed at our meeting earlier?

# OR HASHTAG
You may have seen someone cross-post a message on Twitter and Facebook that has words with the # symbol in front of them. In the case of Twitter, the # symbol is placed before a word or phrase that is intended to be used like a keyword within the tweet. Hashtags make it easy for users to search for tweets that mention specific topics or keywords. Many people set up automatic searches for specific hashtags to monitor conversations on that topic without performing a manual search each time they log in.

EXAMPLE:  Just read a great blog post from @cfxcreative on #business in #vancouver.

Twitter etiquette dictates that a maximum of one or two hashtags be used in any tweet. This ensures that the hashtags that are included in a message mark it for the most relevant category for its content. In the example above, anyone searching on the terms “business” or “vancouver” would likely find this tweet in their search results.

RT OR RE-TWEETS
Think of re-tweets as the Twitter equivalent of forwarding an email. Let’s say you see a tweet with a link to an article you think would be interesting or useful to your Twitter followers. This is when you would re-tweet a message posted on Twitter by another user. For re-tweets – aka RTs – the letters RT appear before the @username of the original sender, followed by the content of their message. You typically want to keep the message as close to its original form as possible. However, adding a short comment before the RT or shortening the original message to fit within the 140 character limit are acceptable edits.

EXAMPLE: Great info here, folks! RT @cfxcreative Check our new blog post on the Value of Design.

URL SHORTENERS
If you’ve ever seen a weird-looking URL in a Twitter or Facebook message that looks something like this:
http://ht.ly/1Oul7 you may be wondering whether or not it’s a legitimate link or to what site the poster is sending you. Given the 140-character size limit on tweets, you want to save as many of those characters as possible for your actual message. URLs can be quite long, so there are a number of sites – www.bit.ly, www.tinyurl.com and tons of others – that offer URL shortening services. On these sites – and on Twitter – you can paste in your original URL and the site will shrink it down to a reasonable length for use in a tweet.

EXAMPLE: http://cfxcreative.com/blog/2009/09/the-value-of-design/ becomes http://ht.ly/1Oul7 after shortening.

While there’s always more to learn as social media sites and tools grow and evolve, here’s hoping that you’re at least a little better equipped to take on the world of Twitter – or at least understand what all those @ and # symbols are doing in your friends’ Facebook and LinkedIn status updates.

Are you on LinkedIn? If so, feel free to add us to your LinkedIn network.

Visit the Mashable web site to read the full article on making the most of your LinkedIn experience.