Copyright © 2012 blacklab94. All rights reserved.

An article entitled, “Why Do Websites Cost So Much Money?“, by Christine Anderssen (Tailormade4you), which appeared on January 10, on GOARTICLES.com(1), very succinctly summarizes the reasons why reputable web design and development firms charge more for their work, even to their smaller business clients/emerging enterprises.

Anderssen makes clear, simple and effective statements about the value of using professional interactive agencies: “Frankly, building a website so that it works in all browsers, has a good design and presents all the information about the company in a pleasing, eye-catching and user-friendly fashion takes proficiency, and this costs money.” More importantly, she adds that when you utilize a good firm, you are “paying for the advice, the support and the long term relationship.” We at MITRA CREATIVE agree—-these are some of the key factors in deciding to engage an experienced agency. There is value added through working with professionals who can see your brand from an external perspective and can translate your business requirements, messages and calls-to-action into engaging, highly web-usable designs instead of “just” designing websites. It is equally critical to work with visionary design agencies that continue to innovate within their discipline, but that also know your business and its culture well enough, and stay with it long enough, to maintain the consistency of, and to grow, your brand.

Most critical is brand. Simply put, design firms that truly understand business in addition to art and technology elevate brands by giving them credibility and respect and by making the appearance of companies forward-thinking. They do so using today’s most impactful, powerful and pervasive medium: namely, visuals on the web. A picture is now worth a billion words… everywhere.

(Article Copyright © 2010 Jayde Online, Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

Yahoo! News published an article today that nicely summarizes the impact of collaborative digital communications platforms in the first decade of the 2000s.

The article’s author, Laura E. Davis, quotes Professor Paul Levinson of Fordham University who states in his book “New New Media”: “In particular, what makes these newer media so important is that it turns the consumers into producers.”

READ THE ARTICLE HERE.

At long last, after highly contentious prior negotiations, Microsoft® and Yahoo!®, have come to terms on an Internet search and advertising partnership. This is meant to boost Microsoft’s new, already-praised “Decision Engine,” Bing, to rival search goliath, Google®.

Read the article from today’s New York Times by reporter, Steve Lohr.

(Copyright © 2009 The New York Times Company. All rights reserved.)

An eMarketer article published today is a telling study of the increased use of Digital Marketing techniques. According to the article, the “2009 Promo Interactive Marketing Survey” from PROMO magazine” exposes that: “More than one-third of marketers surveyed believed that interactive marketing ROI would be more profitable than traditional marketing…”

READ THE ARTICLE HERE

Among the interesting statistics found in the article, among respondents to the PROMO survey, are a 25.3% increase in SEO marketing, 15.% increase in Corporate Blog marketing, 12.4% increase in Viral marketing, and 8.8% increase in Video marketing between 2007 and 2009. Questions still arise about measurability but this demonstrates a powerful shift in the methods used, and the focus on, Interactive, Web 2.0 and Video-based marketing in only two years. For example, while overall statstics in the survey remain high for the use of Email marketing (over 70%) — one of the focal points of many marketing campaigns over the past decade — the increase in use of Email marketing in two years is, says the survey respondents, only 1.8%.

The Web 2.0, social media/socal community, sharing/Widget/bookmarking, Digital Video marketing universe is, undoubtedly, here to stay!