Atlanta Web Design – DoubleDome Web Technologies

Ecommerce introduces a whole new element into marketing and sales. The playing field, of course, is global in just about every sector of the business world these days. If you’re a business that does most of its business in Georgia, whether it’s in Atlanta or in the surrounding areas, you can actually use this to your advantage. The Internet also has tremendous potential for businesses that sell mostly in their local areas and this can be used to your advantage if you have the sort of good web design that emphasizes your local connections.

When you’re trying to play up local connections on an e-commerce website, you’ll want to start with the design. This means having region-specific content on your site. This can be anything from a simple picture of the Atlanta skyline or of rural Georgia, or it can be something truly sophisticated, such as multimedia elements added to the page. If you want to give people an idea of who you are, it’s generally not hard for a web design company to add a blog section to your page. This offers readers a way to get to know who’s behind the company, whether it’s one person or 100 employees.

You can also include advertisements from other local businesses that don’t compete with you directly. For example, an Atlanta business could offer ad space to businesses that compliment what the site owner offers and a business in greater Georgia could take advertisements all over the state. This offers another revenue stream for your site, of course, and a way to increase profitability while still offering something legitimate to your visitors. Balancing these two concerns is one of the basic elements of good web design and it makes your site seem a lot more professional and useful.

DoubleDome Web Technologies is an Atlanta web design company that provides a full range of Internet Marketing services including Web Design, E-commerce Development, Mobile Web Design, Flash Design, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Email Marketing, Website Support, and Web Hosting. DoubleDome is a single point-of-contact for all Internet marketing services for corporate websites, Ad Agency Outsourcing, Business web design and retail e-commerce across the country. For more information about DoubleDome, please visit their website: www.doubledome.com.

NEW YORK U.S. retail e-commerce sales (excluding travel) will total nearly $132 billion in 2009, down about 0.4 percent from 2008. Assuming the recession ends this year, as many economists have predicted, eMarketer forecasts that online sales will begin to rebound in 2010 and hit full stride in 2011.

Web research has become a priority for value shoppers in today’s recession. Currently, 86 percent of Web users are shoppers who browse, research and compare products on the Internet, but they do not necessarily buy online. Often ignored, store sales influenced by online research are three times higher than e-commerce sales.

Many consumers opt to buy online for convenience, price and broad product selection. About 81 percent of Web shoppers are also online buyers. Web consumers who refrain from buying online often get hung up on security and privacy concerns or the inability to touch and feel products. Web retailers are adding new content and features to lower these hurdles.

The recession has hit the retail industry from all angles. U.S. retail e-commerce sales will shrink from $133.6 billion in 2008 to $133.1 billion in 2009. EMarketer estimates online sales will be relatively flat in 2009, with some signs of recovery beginning in 2010. As disappointing as sales were online, offline figures were even more lackluster in 2008. Sales shrank 0.6% for the year and each quarter showed less growth than in the e-commerce channel. Affluent online buyers were a major reason e-commerce sales fared better than retail industry sales. Affluent Internet users are more active than ever, on PCs and mobile devices, and their numbers continue to grow, even in a severe recession.

Web design goes hand in hand with integrated marketing strategies.? People focus so much on the web interface of their company that they sometimes lose sight of the bigger picture.? Creating a consistent company image is key when establishing a brand name in the market place.? This can be tough for amateurs, so many people turn to professional design firms to get the best results.? If you are developing an outreach strategy, do not forget about integrated marketing as you set your marketing budget.

Integrated marketing is an approach that relies on consistency and systematic strategy.? It is important to establish consistent images, content, and tone as you create and deliver marketing messages and materials.? A brand can generate greater sustainability over time by doing this.? Establishing consistency between various media and points of distribution will really pay off in the long run.? Aside from a company’s web design and presence on the internet, there are also other media outlets to address.? Print, radio, and television campaigns are very effective for marketing.? However, the effectiveness of all these campaigns depends largely on the integration of each element.

A professional web design company can help in this regard.? You see, it is all about getting the lion’s share while dealing with fewer metrics on performance and lowering overall costs.? Most companies have limited budgets, and that means there is a need to focus on the expenditure of dollars and other resources.? When you create an integrated marketing campaign, the results multiply.? It is possible to set up an outreach strategy that benefits from past messages and builds on that momentum for new marketing messages.

Once of the most prominent examples of this concept is logo design.? Think about some of the most powerful and lasting logos out there.? McDonald’s and Pepsi come to mind as iconic logos that have stood the test of time.? Consistency and long term application is important for a brand logo.? Skillful design sets the foundation.? A web design firm can work to integrate logos for all forms of media.? Developing a sleek logo that can be used in various marketing settings is crucial.? The same is true for other design details.? Marketing materials must flow together across different types of media.? You get better results when you project the same tone and message in your web, print, radio, and TV campaigns.? This is how you build brand recognition and establish a positive image.

Technorati Profile

A new study by the nonprofit Online Trust Alliance suggests that marketers are doing too little to protect the reputation of their brands online, with only 37% of Fortune 500 companies taking robust security measures to safeguard against cyber-fraud. And phishing — fake e-mails often sent under the guise of well-known, trusted brands, usually to obtain credit-card numbers — is on the rise.

A Gartner study released last week said in the 12 months ended September 2008, more than 5 million U.S. consumers — 40% more than in the same period a year ago — lost money to phishing attacks. These well-publicized e-mail scams have made consumers wary of opening commercial e-mails. And perhaps no one feels the pain more than financial services companies, a prime target of scammers.

The OTA study said the overwhelming majority of Fortune 500 brands, including huge marketers such as AT&T, Procter & Gamble, Sears and MetLife, have not taken the two key steps to reinforcing online security: implementing website-security certificates and authenticate e-mails sent from their corporate domains.

What does that mean? E-mail authentication means a marketer provides information — digital signatures, IP addresses or domain names from which legitimate e-mails will come — to the ISPs, such as Earthlink or Comcast, or e-mail vendors, such as Yahoo or AOL, that helps them determine that this is truly from the company it claims be from. For example, XYZ company can declare to the ISP that it only sends e-mails from the domain www.bigbookseller.com. Thus, if the ISP sees e-mails purporting to come from XYZ but that are sent from any other domain, it should block them.

OTA Chairman Craig Spiezle said third-party e-mail marketers are adopting authentication at a rate of 85%, but brands themselves are not protecting their corporate domain names. That means third-party vendors sending e-mails on their client’s behalf often authenticate the domain they have set up to control the campaign. For example, an e-mail marketer sending promotional e-mails on behalf of XYZ might use the authenticated e.bigbookseller.com domain, but bigbookseller.com itself is not authenticated. Thus, it becomes easy for someone to forge e-mail that appears to be coming from bigbookseller.com.