February 9, 2010 – 1:42 am

Introducing The Web Farm

Hi. I know I’ve been quiet for a while, but I’ve been working on somehing BIG. It’s this, my new business: The Web Farm. Yes, in addition to LimeRed Studio… that’s still here!

Keidra Chaney and I launched The Web Farm last month. We’re teaching the tools the big guys have had access to for a while now—things like web analytics, user testing, social media planning, and more.

Here’s our pitch: http://www.thewebfarmers.com/what-we-do/

We’re doing things like: giving 2-hour after work trainings on web analytics, home page redesigns, landing page testing and social media metrics. We’re giving a Saturday workshop soon on website planning, too. And guess what? It’s NOT EXPENSIVE! And the tools are mostly free and available for you to start using right now.

The problem is: no one has time to dig around and find the documentation to learn the stuff. And there’s a lot of planning that needs to happen first. Well, good thing Keidra and I have been doing that very thing for years now and we’re ready to teach you so YOU have the keys to your own site. And you know how to use the tools well.

So get ready. This is going to be HUGE.

Oh, and please come to our next After Work Special. It’s only $20 and there will be lots of wine.

By Emily | Posted in EVERYTHING ELSE, ONLINE PROJECTS | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)
January 19, 2010 – 12:11 am

I’m speaking at OfficePort on Jan 28

And it’s FREE! Event details:

REGISTER HERE

You’ve Got The Look: Branding and PR for Small Business
January 28, 2010, OfficePort Chicago, 9 W. Washington, just west of State. 6-9 pm.

Emily Lonigro, founder of design firm LimeRed Studio, and Sally O’Dowd, founder of Sally On Media, an integrated marketing company, will discuss how small-business owners can get recognized for what they do best.

Drawing from her Small-Business Branding Tool Kit, Emily will review the steps that businesspeople should take when planning a branding strategy, website, logo, and color palate. Sally will discuss ways to develop your company’s unique story, messaging and newsworthy content (twitter-worthy, too).  Join us for this interactive, visual session–and get ready to spread the news about your company in 2010!

Attendees will learn how to:
  • identify the visuals and logo that tell their company story
  • identify a color palate
  • think in terms of their clients’ success, and how to express that visually
  • develop the basics of a PR plan and identify what’s newsworthy
  • develop a unique brand positioning and messaging
  • integrate search and site optimization into PR campaigns
Emily has a degree in journalism and mass communication from Drake University and has spent the last 10 years designing for everything from nonprofits to large international consumer brands. LimeRed Studio, the company Emily founded in 2004, specializes in online and offline branding and design for small businesses.

Sally has a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University and has 17 years of communications and marketing experience. Prior to opening Sally On Media, Sally was global PR director at Razorfish, one of the largest digital ad agencies in the world.  She has also worked with numerous Chicago start-ups and enterprises. twitter @sallyodowd.
By Emily | Posted in UNCATEGORIZED | Comments (0)
December 28, 2009 – 10:51 pm

Sports & Spirit Signs Ecommerce website is live

Untitled-5

Did you know LimeRed Studio can set up Ecommerce websites? Well, we can. Thanks to the wild west of online software development, we have plenty of options to chose from. And some of them are well-priced and give you tons of options, like order tracking, inventory management, newsletter subscriptions, custom coupons and so much more.

You know: this is more than graphic design, folks. You have to get eyebrow-deep in someone’s business to be able to do this right. We ran into questions ranging from how to accept payment, whether to use FedEx, UPS or USPS, how to deal with shipping, to whether or not to collect sales tax. Luckily, I’ve done these things before and helped many a small business get the ball running.

Picture-1

The basic rules to designing for e-commerce are:

1. Make it totally intuitive. You shop online all the time and probably have two or three favorite sites. Copy those. They work.

2. REMOVE ALL OBSTACLES. The minute people have to think to find what they want (unless they really want it) you run the risk of losing them. I’m not saying people are dumb, but you are competing with everyone for the same dollars. So get it right.

3. Get rid of all of your extra junk. Each page should have ONE MISSION: Sell something on one page, get them to sign up for something on another page. if you need to do more things, make more pages! You can add more elements, sure, but you wouldn’t want to snowboard down the whole mountain before you learned how to navigate the bunny hill. It’s dangerous.

I designed and set up this site with some help from my ever-amazing developer, Nathan. (Thanks!)

Let you area schools know about this terrific fundraising opportunity or just buy a sign for yourself. It’s so cute. And there are signs for the nerds, too. I was on the yearbook staff in highschool and I would have totally stuck a yearbook sign in my front yard!

This site is a work in progress. They are making new signs all the time and will be adding more details about school fundraising opportunities, so check back soon.

By Emily | Posted in ONLINE PROJECTS | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)
November 19, 2009 – 12:45 am

Wealth Strategist Partners website is live!

wsp_blog1

Go check out Wealth Strategist Partner’s new site.

Here’s how this site came to be:
 I was asked to redesign Wealth Strategist Partner’s site to make it less about their book, Wealth, and more about their core business—consulting, courses and recommended readings. Great, I thought: easy-peasy. But let’s all remember that good sites begin with good content. And a pretty site without intuitive architecture and relevant, easily-accessed content is a major waste of money. Right? Right.

Conclusion: This site needed a complete overhaul.

wsp_wireframe

A redesign is rarely a mere reskinning. What almost always needs to happen is: re-imagination of content and how USERS will access and use the site. Here’s what we did to reach this goal, while keeping the site’s users needs in the front of our brains at all times:

  1. We created a huge wireframe document that outline the content on each page, where it came from and where it would go if clicked. (see above)
  2. We remapped the structure of the site so the content would make sense in groups.
  3. We added landing pages, places for timely content, audio, video, lists of outside sources and more.
  4. We worked with an SEO specialist to gather keyword research, suggest page descriptions and titles, and review all of the copy for optimization.
  5. Then we developed the site.

And launched it today!

Oh, and we applied the existing branding graphics to the page designs with some small updates and upgrades. See? Not a whole lot of actual design work here. This project was mostly about content and usability. Design helps to visually communicate that content. Design is incredibly important to create a brand image, to portray a personality, to cue content, etc. but it only supports the overall mission: to communicate the company’s messages.

Now, LimeRed Studio and friends are going to develop a Spanish language version of the site, add some premium member content and rejigger a little of the content and how it displays. All in all, this was a HUGE accomplishment for us! We love this client and many many many thanks to Nathan Hiemstra, my hugely talented developer.

More to come soon; we have some big projects underway right now.

By Emily | Posted in ONLINE PROJECTS | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)