What users experience on your website is just the tip of the iceberg. The user is drawn into the beautiful user interface, engages with the intuitive navigation, devours the well-written content and the focused call-to-actions drive him complete your inquiry form - success! That perfect user experience journey is the result of hours of unnoticed work that happened below the surface.

We can grow tired of things pretty quickly. That pair of shoes you bought last summer, or the car you’ve been driving for several years. They become too familiar to us. The same is true of your website. We see or interact with it all the time and can grow tired of the way it looks, the navigation, the features, the content…etc. When you feel this happening in yourself or your organization, it is critical that you take a step back and assess the website from your audience’s point of view.

We often have the privilege of working with non-profits and are always energized by the process. The reason being, is that non-profits are driven by a cause bigger than themselves. One thing we have seen over and over is that a non-profit’s brand story can start to get hidden, tucked away under the daily grind. When this happens the non-profit’s long term goals and strategy starts to get blurry.

You wouldn’t build a house without looking over every detail on a blueprint. Similarly, when creating a custom website design here at Antistatic, we provide high fidelity or hi-fi wireframes. Why you ask? Because a website starts by giving structure to content.

Brand strategy, communications, and marketing are not one-time investments. They aren't tasks that live on your to-do list. In the life of your brand, business or organization you will need to continually evaluate and align your marketing and communication efforts with your vision, values, and goals. Once you've done this, you can measure your successes and failures, then evaluate what changes you need to make to keep moving towards your goals for your company. To help keep things on track, here are a few things to consider.

We sometimes hear people say ‘brand’ when they might really mean ‘logo.’ In the words of Inigo Montoya “I don’t think that word means what you think it means”. We’re guilty of it too. It’s easy to think of branding as the visual side of a company or organization but that’s only part of it.

At Antistatic we highly value realistic timelines. We strive to be honest about how long a project or task will take. In doing so we often hear things like “If the budget is 10 hours, why will it takes two weeks to finish?” or “My proposal says 4-6 weeks, can you be more specific?”. When you add in client scheduling conflicts, holidays, additional people with diverse opinions, and there can be numerous factors that add to a timeline being drawn out.

If you work with a team or have ever been part of a team, then you know how difficult it is to get a group consensus. One person has their own agenda, that person hates the color blue, and yet another person doesn’t like the photos that are being used as examples. Are you expecting a unanimous decision from a group? You may as well start an expedition for that magical unicorn.

Creating a consistent brand impression every time a customer or user interacts with you takes intentionality. After investing in a visual rebranding, many times companies skip the important work of outlining the brand guidelines, which help guide the brand’s implementation long term.

We are often asked “How long should my website last?” and it can be a difficult question as there are many factors to consider. Every business or organization wants to get the most value out of their investment and we consider one of our jobs as your partner to consider all of the options.