ABnote.eu

“We want to move towards a content marketing strategy and need to integrate our UK, French and Czech payment card and applications businesses into one .EU website with a design that is easily translatable into all three languages – would you be interested in pitching for the business?”

Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?

This was our biggest project to date and we beat out a couple of European agencies to win the business.  We're in the process of translating the site into French and Czech and will be launching them under their own country top level domains in the next month.

The only thing the client gave us was the estalished pink ABnote logo and a confirmation that pink was actually a key color for them!  Working closely with the client side project manager we produced a loose mood board, site plan and ultimately a series of wireframes to arrive at a functional layout which we then turned into photoshop mock ups which were eventually approved by the clent technical executive.  Then it was a matter of installing WordPress and getting to work; in a nutshell:

• Custom icon set, driving the design feel of the entire site
• Heavily customised Thesis framework
• Frontpage Slidedeck
• Pop up contact forms
• Easily inserted call to action buttons for end user
• Client branded and customized WP login and dashboard

This is the fourth project we have delivered for the ABnote group in the last 6 months; after wining the project we also won pitches to provide an analysis of their global digital footprint, re-skin of a credit card customization and tracking portal as well as some nice graphic work that Alex knocked out of the park.

You can see more examples of Kilted Chaos work here.

Find out how we can help your business:

Casa Victoria

Casa Victoria is a funky furniture shop in the hip Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. With inventory ranging from 1930’s art deco pieces through to matching President Lincoln book ends – they have a lot of stuff to show off and were looking for an easy way to do it that didn’t involve trekking to a “web guy” every week.

The approach here was to make the site as image heavy as possible without slowing it down. Use of CSS image sprites add interest while keeping page loads light and a cunning twist on category management allows the owners to easily arrange their inventory while maximizing visibility.

To keep server space down, product images are stored on Flickr and to ensure maximum visibility have a creative commons license – increasing the possibility that Casa Victoria inventory will be seen on other sites. To add a new item the owners simple create a new blog post – paste in the id of the product image on Flickr and the Flickr product set into the shortcode and bam – a new product is listed within the right category – couldn’t be easier.

Add to that a simple styling job on the Casa Victoria Twitter and Facebook pages – hook everything together and you have a super easy to use and incredibly effective approach to promoting a local business.

• PLATFORM - Wordpress
• Theme - Thesis 1.6
• Key Plugins: Flickr Gallery (Easy images + added SEO)
• Price point of Site: $550

Your Music = Unique / Your Website = Derivative

Ask any band what they sound like and you can guarantee that they’ll tell you they’re unique. Sure they might give you qualifying reference points: Led Zeppelin meets the Eagles – Karen Carpenter on top of Diane Birch (Hmmmm!) but at the end of the day – when you listen to the band – there is no other soul on the planet that sounds like them.

So why would you want your band website to look like someone elses? I mean – you don’t dress like other bands do you?

There are loads of options for bands that are looking for a new site – companies are popping up every week with a new variation on the band theme template. However, when you look at the marketing that surrounds these solutions the one message that comes across very clearly is this:

“Spend your time writing and playing music and only spend a few minutes setting up your website – it’s Easy!”

Stop and think about that for a moment. Your website is your home – it is the place that the VAST majority of your fans will interact with you. Your website is international, no matter how many Volcanoes are hitting Europe. Do you really want the thing that differentiates you from the next band to be a different color background?

Here’s our view – your website is critical to your success and if you aren’t spending time learning how to use it and develop it then you may as well play your gigs onstage behind a black curtain. For every second that you spend on working out your stage plot, the set list – what the drummer’s going to wear…you need to double that on how you present on your website. We’re not saying that an awesome looking site is going to make up for lousy music – but a cool engaging site that screams who you are and makes it easy for a fan to interact with you and your music sure is going to help.

Now if you have the money – then you can skip that stage and hire us to come in and build a Kick Ass site for you – but we reckon that most bands starting out don’t have $550 lying around to blow on a website. But we reckon you do have time - learning tech is no different than learning an instrument – it all comes down to how many hours you put into it.

Kilted Chaos is working with DTF Works to build an affordable solution to this and yes – it involves you learning how to make shit work - more very soon.

Image Credit: Day 157 - Pasukaru76 on Flickr

Don't Call it a Blog...

Call it whatever you like!

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If you think of your website, you’ll need an about page where you talk about your business, what it is you do, where you are, etc, you’ll want a contact page – let people know where to find you and how to contact you and then you want an area that reflects the changing priorities and offers that you want to show your customers. You can call this anything you like – Promotions, Newsletter, Announcements, Current Specials, etc – you could even call it a blog!

When we think of the word “Blog” we think of left wing media, self-obsessed egotists and unreliable information – certainly having a “Blog” is not something that’s high up the list for a traditional small business – however…

Forget the name!

Think of the underlying principle! The reason there are so many blogs is that they are seriously easy to use. It’s just like using a word processor except you are doing it online and when you hit save, it is published to the Internet. If you, as a small business owner stop and think for a minute – this is a fantastic tool for you to promote your business. It makes sense to have an area on your site where you promote what is going on – it’s no different than if you are running a promotion in your store – you want to have signage that  tells the customers what is going on. If you are a restaurant, you need to have your Menu online, if you run Auto services, what about your pricing list?

When is a blog not a blog?

If you think of your website, you’ll need an about page where you talk about your business, what it is you do, where you are, etc, you’ll want a contact page – let people know where to find you and how to contact you and then you want an area that reflects the changing priorities and offers that you want to show your customers. You can call this anything you like – Promotions, Newsletter, Announcements, Current Specials, etc – you could even call it a blog!

Everyone’s different!

Some Small Business Owners will get addicted to writing on their website – comments from customers are like candy to a baby and writing a regular update can be rewarding to your bottom line. Other businesses may be content with writing up what this month’s specials are, the current promotion or service that they want to feature. The bottom line is: there's no right or wrong way to go about it, only the way that works for you and even more importantly - your customers!

Trading Up...

We think that once you get the hang of regularly updating your website you will want to move forward with other social media tools. Check out the Social Media Business package  for more details.