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The New SmithandSmithAttorneysAugusta.com

Smith & Smith Attorneys came to PowerServe through a referral from one of our clients. They were informed that if anyone can design an atypical lawyer website it was us. We wanted to avoid the typical cliches: Lady Justice, scales, gavels, etc. The ladies at Smith & Smith gave us the creative latitude to be unorthodox and adventurous with the design – “chic” was a word heard often – but it still needed to be professional.

Family Law is a very sensitive practice area. Smith & Smith Attorneys often come to know their clients during one of the most difficult times of their lives – the end of their marriage. PowerServe decided to focus on the personality of the law firm rather than the particular aspect of the law that they practiced. The atmosphere of the firm is really very different; a warm and inviting environment designed to make clients feel comfortable and at ease. The challenge for PowerServe was that the website needed to reflect the character of the Smith & Smith practice. The jury is in and they’ve ruled in our favor!

I would certainly say that your company was able to capture the essence of who we are as a firm and to convey that message to potential clients who will view our site. We wanted a non-traditional site that would express our personalities and show who we are both as people and as professionals. Your company provided consultation with us to understand our message and recommended a photographer who was able to capture our personalities on film. We could not be more happy with the services we received. Thank you for a job well done.Beth Ann Smith, Smith & Smith Attorneys

Visit Smith & Smith Attorneys at http://smithandsmithattorneysaugusta.com

The New SuperheatFGH.com

Superheat FGH is the premier industrial heat treatment service provider in North America. As PowerServe worked with Superheat we began to realize that rather than being a high-tech welding company, they are actually a technology company that deploys its expertise in the construction industry. Needless to say PowerServe discovered a kindred spirit Superheat right away.

Doing business with the likes of Bechtel, Fluor, Chevron Texaco, ExxonMobile, and many others, as well as having plans to expand into Europe, Superheat FGH needed a professional site that reflected the innovative nature of their process and company. Their previous site wasn’t meeting their needs, and they wanted a solution where they could easily edit content in-house. By creating a custom design and setting them up on our WebSite Accelerator CMS, we enabled them to manage everything on their site without having to know markup.

Gary Lewis, Superheat’s website project lead and Business Development Manager, had this to say about the project:

PowerServe was tremendous to work with. Their creative energy and design expertise allowed us to expand on our brand with a fresh, progressive, comprehensive, and very professional looking website. It was important that the site maintain functional simplicity yet incorporate more advanced technical capability for seamless visitor interaction, routine updates, improvements and navigability to important related sites as a resource to our employees and those on the outside wishing to expand their knowledge base.Gary Lewis, Business Development Manager, Superheat FGH

The site was launched in March 2009, in conjunction with a cover story about Superheat FGH in Business and Industry Connection magazine. We’re glad to have played a part in improving Superheat FGH’s web presence. We always enjoy working with a client that understands the value of a strong Internet presence and the role it plays for helping to acquire world-class clients.

Visit Superheat FGH at http://www.superheatfgh.com

Welcome to Social Networking 101. This is the first of a multi-part series covering social networking from a business perspective. Subsequent posts will tackle individual networks, how to use them, what tools to use, and more.

Social networks are online communities of people who share common interests. While most social networks are designed to be used by individuals to communicate with friends and family, share pictures, movies, and more, your business can use them to engage existing customers or to reach out to potential customers.

Why should I be using social networks?

In short, you should be using social networks because you need to be wherever your customers are. But here are a few of the main reasons you should be social networking:

• Brand Awareness – Having a presence on social networks is one way to keep your brand fresh in the mind of new and existing customers. Make sure existing customers know you have a presence on social networks. Encourage them to tell your friends. Track mentions of your company name, product and/or service. Show those people that you and your company care about what the public thinks of them.
• Brand Tracking – Sites like Twitter Search make it super-easy to track mentions of your company, products, and services. Pepsi recently introduced Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback and monitored use of the hashtag “#throwback” as well as specific mentions of “Pepsi Throwback” and “Mountain Dew Throwback”
• Public Relations/Information Sharing – You control the flow of information and you can target it more effectively. The people that you’ve connected with on social networks are likely to be more interested in what you have to say.
• Search Engine Optimization – One of the side benefits of social networking is that it can potentially aid your SEO efforts. Share links to your website content with friends and followers. Those links could potentially get reposted (or, in Twitter lingo, “retweeted”) driving additional traffic to your site.
• Support – If customers know you’re monitoring Twitter or Facebook, they may be more apt to contact you there rather than calling or emailing.
• Damage Control - Companies such as Comcast are using Twitter to proactively contact frustrated customers who might be experiencing outages, having issues with phone support. People will vent their frustrations about companies quite openly on Twitter. Doing what you can to assist these sorts of customers can help mitigate any damage it might cause if left unresolved.

What social networks should I use?

This is a fairly loaded question. But here are two that are growing at a phenomenal rate:

Twitter – At it’s most basic level, Twitter asks the question “What are you doing?” Users post updates (140 characters or less) to friends and followers, ranging from the mundane (”I watered my plants after eating a bowl of cereal.”) to the informative. Businesses use Twitter to share news about their company, provide customer service, and much more.

Facebook – Though primarily used by individuals, companies can create Pages that allow them to share links, news items, photos, videos and more with their “Fans”. Whenever a “Fan” interacts with your company on Facebook, their friends see it as well.

What’s next?

While Twitter and Facebook are two of the fastest growing networks online, you’ll have to be the judge of where you feel having a presence will have the most impact. Our next article in this series will cover Twitter. It will focus on how to get started on it, how to use it, some of the terminology you’ll encounter on the service and how you can get more out of it. Future posts will cover Facebook, LinkedIn, Upcoming, Yelp, and a few other sites in much the same way. Stay tuned!

It seems like every day the web is becoming more engaging. Video, which was not long ago a new concept for engaging a visitor’s attention, has now become the new standard for content delivery. Many of PowerServe’s clients are looking to appeal to just such a content-hungry audience. Sure, folks can come to your website and scroll through page after page of “About Us,” “What We Do,” “Our Mission,” “Our Vision,” and so forth. But have you ever thought about distilling your organization’s “elevator pitch” into a two-minute video? If you have a video posted to your website, studies show that most people will actually click the “play” button just out of curiosity. (Similarly they also click the “stop” button when they see it’s 95 minutes long, so be warned.) We’re a visual culture and we love to be entertained!

PowerServe recently launched a new video project for a client who wisely decided that their story could best be told with pictures – motion pictures to be precise. P.U.R.E Ministry Project is an organization that creates awareness in the church community and provides education about how to better minister to special needs people and their families. Not only did PowerServe develop an awesome new website for P.U.R.E Ministry Project, we were also able to reach into the client’s imagination, capture their vision for how to tell their story with images, and produce a touching introductory video.

Videos online aren’t just for your “elevator pitch” either. Consider producing a short video to demonstrate a product or service you offer or take people on a guided tour of your facilities. Do your projects generally take months to finish? Consider taking a daily photograph from the same angle and same time of day. Then, when the project is completed, we can put them all together into a seamless progression video, complete with background music and narration. Or perhaps present a few of your customers giving a powerful video testimonial. Want more ideas? Come talk to us.

Not sure where to start? Leave everything to us! PowerServe can arrange all of the filming, write the script, handle editing, and take care of production. Or we can create what we call an Impact Movie where we use stock footage and/or quality still photography enhanced with motion graphics and audio. Video adds a new level of engagement that your site simply does not have without it.

Visit http://www.powerserve.net to see more of our website design, software development work, and video production services.

PowerServe has been active in the American Advertising Federation of Augusta for several years. The annual ADDY Awards is an event that is always fun, entertaining, and enlightening. The Augusta ADDY Awards is the first of a three-tiered national competition. Across the globe, local entrants vie for recognition as the very best in their markets. Local winners then compete against other winners within their regions in one of fourteen district competitions. District winners move on to the National ADDY Awards competition. Entry in the Augusta ADDY Awards competition is the first step towards winning a District or National ADDY.

PowerServe was pleased to have received three ADDY awards for client design work.

• Silver ADDY – Opera Performance Program, The Company of Job – Don Harris
• Bronze ADDY – Terri Thomas, SellingAugusta.net – Chris Harrison
• Bronze ADDY – Summerville Shutter Company – Chris Harrison

Photos from the ADDY Awards show

Let’s face it, login forms are boring. They have a critical purpose, but are often times at the end of a designer’s punch list. This is why I created the FancyLogin jQuery plugin. Out of the box, it adds a level of customization that your users will find useful and eye catching.

FancyLogin uses the jQuery Javascript Framework to stylize form inputs based on whether or not they contain content. If the form input is empty, it adds a “blank” class; if it contains content, it removes the “blank” class. This allows you to stylize the inputs with only CSS, requiring no inline javascript.

View a demo | Download