June 15, 2011

How do you share?

Sharing is important, or so my parents have told me. In our current era where social networks are exceeding 500 million users, sharing is once again a term being pressed upon on. Interestingly, we now share less for the benefit of others and more for the promotion of content and products which we associate with. That's not to say people don't pass along useful bits of information sometimes, but just the nature of what "sharing" means has in many ways changed. Oppose to sharing a ball with a friend, or sharing a book with someone who you think will like it, the way we now share lends it's self to pushing links to articles/photos/movies to hundreds of people at a time. Chances are, many of whom couldn't care less, and may even find your link to some obscure YouTube video to be an item of clutter in their feed. Some may love it, and many may never even see the post. Kinda sounds like traditional marketing, push a message out to many, a small group of which will buy in, while many will disregard the message. So when you're jamming content in front of your friends, colleagues, and people you barley know but have found yourself in a network with, how do you share?

May 16, 2011

** Admittedly, the following topic comes as a result of our recent absence from our own blog. After spending much time coaching clients on proper blog protocol, we've inadvertently neglected our own responsibilities!

Avoid Not Blogging

Level8 makes a lot of websites, and more and more of those websites now contain a blog. With a blog comes basic blog counseling, the purpose of which is to make sure a blog is going to be a good fit for the site administrator. The follow are a few questions asked:

1) Are you aware of the commitment a blog represents? It's cute at first but can become ugly overtime without proper attention.
2) Are you willing to dedicate a minimum of an hour a week to using your blog?
3) Do you have a plan for who's going to take care of your blog in case you go away for a week?

March 22, 2011

HTML5: A brief overview of whats to come

HTML5 is pretty rad, so let's start with a little visual stimulus to get this post started off right, and then we will briefly go over some of the more technical aspects which is enabling the capabilities you will see.

1) NIKE Better World
2) Klowds
3) Canvas Cycle
4) Particle Animation
5) Canvas 3D

March 17, 2011

Mobile vs Desktop: How are people browsing your site?

Trends

When considering internet trends, it is best to consider both global and local patterns. There are many sources to evaluate global trends, perhaps the most current and relevant source for considering mobile web usage can be found in an 87 page document authored by Morgan Stanley. Luckily, the friendly folk over at Smashing Magazine have published some cliff notes so we can get right to the juicy parts. We will be referencing these cliff notes as our source for global trends, and demonstrating how Google Analytics, when used effectively, can provide ample information regarding your local trends.

January 28, 2011

Level8 Website Design Process: Creating Custom Web Designs

Your Website: Designed to succeed

Your online presence is an important extension of your business, it should be planned and executed with purposeful intents to create a visually appealing, intuitive to navigate, informative and dynamic user expirence. Understanding that a website is more than just images ad text on a screen, we work to build an experience which reflects the company which is represents. We accomplish this is part through a design process we call, the 3-2-1.