by Joseph Graves | Mar 1, 2014 | Business
UPDATE:
Bandon Capital Management was acquired by Logan Circle Partners in late 2014. The beautiful website we spent months building was unceremoniously retired as part of the transaction.
Mutual Fund website design made easy
Publicly communicating anything in the investment world is difficult to do (but we know how to do it, more here), and creating a website that is both informative and visually stimulating the primary objective for our client. Bandon Capital Management is a pioneer in the investment (absolute return long – short bonds if you are wondering) world and they’ve taken that same approach to their website design. Eschewing stock photos and cliche images of old men in suits, they opted for a design that was fresh, modern, and full of custom graphics and images.
A few details
In addition to good design, they had a few other requirements to make their website compliant with FINRA. One of those was the ability to make certain content only accessible to financial professionals, but still be easy to use and maintain. To accomplish this we customized a lightweight membership plugin to keep it simple, yet still do the job. The other was a separate section for BandonFunds.com that used the same data base, but didn’t run afoul of the regulators (how we accomplished that was a challenge!)
Another interesting add on was a quiz to test visitors knowledge of Long – Short debt. It’s a fun and clever way to help educate people on what they do without being boring. A nice little add on is the ability to share results with your friends (or not if you didn’t do so well). Take the Long – Short Challenge.
Great clients make great projects
All in all it was a great project to work on. The team at Bandon is very knowledgeable, yet they allowed us to use our expertise to help communicate their message. We look forward to continuing our relationship as we move into an ongoing marketing role where we’ll help create content and continue to broadcast their message with the goal of attracting more investors in the fund. (If you are worried about the possibility of rising interest rates, give them a call or tell your broker to look at BANIX)
What do you think?
by Joseph Graves | Mar 1, 2014 | Workshed News
Social Media Makeover for WIN members
For the rest of March, we’re taking half off our social media makeover!
Social media is one of the first places new customers are going to “meet” you and your company. What will that first impression be? Make sure your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube profiles send the right message.
What’s Included?
Photography
If you are within 30 miles of our office, we’ll send Brady over with his fancy camera to take pictures! If you’ve ever had professional pictures taken, you know this is a screaming deal. If you are not within range of our visual arts master, we take what you have and work with it. If it’s rubbish, we’ll do something with graphics instead.
Facebook Page
Custom Profile Image
Custom Cover Photo
Google Plus Page
Custom Profile Image
Custom Cover Photo
YouTube Profile
Custom Profile Image
Custom Channel Art
[clear]
Twitter Profile
Custom Profile Image
Custom Background Image
Custom Header
LinkedIn Page
Custom Header Image
Custom Standard Logo
Custom Square Logo
Get Started
by Joseph Graves | Feb 19, 2014 | Articles, Business, Marketing, Technology, Workshed News
Well, you built a website or had someone build one, you added the url to your business card and now the online leads and sales are going to start rolling in, right? Well…not really. Many companies take the technological leap onto the Internet and don’t see the benefits. They get discouraged and this leads to a belief that you wasted time, money or both on a website. However, I am here to tell you that isn’t the case.
A website is successful when you take it from being two dimensional to three dimensional. You do this by giving your website a personality and realizing that you have customers out there, even if you can’t see them. Here are 3 things you can do to help get your website noticed!
#1 – Update Your Content
Many people don’t see immediate results from their website, so they neglect to keep their content relevant. Depending on the type of business you have, some ideas to keep your website up to date are text changes on your pages, adding products, updating your services, offering promotions or by creating blog posts. This not only tells people that you care about your business, it’s a great way to get noticed by the search engines as well, which helps your site move closer to the top of search results.
#2 – Promote Your Website In House
Making your website an interactive part of your business is essential to online success. Creating a steady stream of traffic will help drive your site to the top of the search engines. If you have services, have people schedule online for a small discount or offer other incentives to sign up for your service online. If you are selling goods, have sales that are website exclusive and promote this both IN store AND online so that people see that using your website can be a valuable resource and as a bonus, saves them money.
#3 – Use Social Media
On facebook, for every one person that likes your page – an average of 130 people see it, giving them a chance to like your page as well. The power of social media should not be underestimated and you can use this power for good. Think of creative ways to invite people to come to your website and conversely, offer people incentives to “like” your facebook page, follow you on twitter or connect with you on LinkedIn. By creating a greater web of contacts, you can reach more people with your promotions, your updates or…just to say hello.
by Joseph Graves | Feb 15, 2014 | Business
A Simple Question
What do we (Workshed) do? The imprecise answer is that we build websites and help businesses with marketing; it’s also an oversimplification of what’s really going on. The reality is that these are just outcomes – solutions to a challenge, but not really what we are actually doing. If you were to start asking why we do various things, you’d quickly realize that the why, is what Workshed is all about.
Why?
Asking this one question (why) over and over allows us to understand the core issues facing our clients; even if they don’t. In the day to day running of a business, it can be difficult to discern areas of inefficiency. Our objectivity allows us to observe operations without the biases that come from years of experience.
In addition to understanding the how’s and why’s of your business, we also have to acquaint ourselves with your customer. During this get-to-know, you phase of a project we are (among other things) seeking to understand your customers. Who are they, why do they buy, what need are they attempting to satisfy, and how you can optimally serve them (taking into account your own goals and values).
Now What?
Once we know what you do and whom you should be doing it for, we start to craft solutions to bring the two of you together. This is where the websites, social media, and marketing come in. They are specific methods crafted to connect you with your ideal client. The outcome is the focus, not the tool. We are solution agnostic.
When you’re a hammer, all you see is nails.
When the tool takes precedence over the objective (to sell stuff) it’s easy to waste time and money. If you start with a clearly defined objective, the probability of success is dramatically increased.
What’s the Difference?
It all boils down to perspective. You might be tempted to assume that because our process usually ends up in a website that our websites are just like that of any other web design firm.
You’d be wrong.
I Thought You Built Websites for Business
Workshed is a team of passionate problem solvers who help businesses succeed as a way of expressing that passion. Contrast what we do with the typical web design company who build websites as an expression of their interest in technology. The technology might be cool, but if it doesn’t attract paying customers it isn’t getting results.
We get results because we focus on them.
The Simple Answer
So what does Workshed do? We get you the right kind of customers and more of them!
How do we do it?
By focusing on the solution rather than the tool.
Do you need more ideal customers?
![Websites That Cost Nothing & Baking Pies]()
by Joseph Graves | Feb 6, 2014 | Articles, Marketing
What do you do?
Part of what we do at Workshed is help our clients distill their value to potential customers into bite-sized chunks that are easily understood. It’s a lot easier to do for other people than it has been for our own business. In truth, we do a bunch of different things that are all intended to do one main thing – make you more money (not in the Ebenezer Scrooge sense, but in a healthy, sustainable sense). Communicating that succinctly has been challenging.
In nearly all of our initial meetings, the question of the cost comes up. While this is perfectly normal question, it’s not very helpful in making a decision about retaining our services. In reality, we perform our services and build websites that cost nothing. No, we don’t work for free, but the additional revenue and cost savings we create more than pays for what we charge.
Enter the analogy
Imagine the revenue of your business as a delicious pie (or a pie chart if you have no imagination). To explore the cost issue in this scenario, we’d essentially be asking you to give us a slice of pie. For some businesses, $5-10k might be a significant chunk of that pie, and with pie being so delicious, they don’t want to share. We understand your aversion to pie sharing in this situation…we are businesses owner too and have been asked to share our pie many times. That’s why we became bakers.
Rather than ask for a piece of your existing pie, we help you bake a bigger one. A pie large enough to give us a slice and still have more leftover than the pie you started with.
We bake bigger pies
What’s our recipe? Simple, we focus on the result rather than just one or two ingredients like the flour or baking soda (which are not delicious on their own). We combine our ingredients (websites, design, photography, marketing, social media, video production) to bake a delicious pie for your customers.
Now you know what we do. Anyone hungry?
Order a Pie
