Pemaquid Communications

Pemaquid Communications has scored three nominations for techMaine’s annual Best of the Web Awards. Pemaquid tied for the most nominations of any Maine Web design studio. The nominees are…

annie|catherine.com
Best e-Commerce Site

The site features exquisite stationery for any occasion, along with fine art prints, calendars and something racy called Go-Go Wrap! The company manages over 200 product listings in more than a dozen categories, along with order tracking and fulfillment, through a custom version of Pemaquid’s Commerce Manager.

More about annie|catherine »

MidcoastMaine.com
(Southern Midcoast Maine Chamber)
Best Non-Profit Site

This site draws out the visually appealing nature of this part of the Maine Coast. For many Internet searchers, the site is a tourist gateway to the region and it was very important to the Chamber that the site, through its look and feel, compare favorably to similar sites for more well-known Downeast destinations.

More about MidcoastMaine.com »

The Big Easy - www.bigeasyportland.com
Best Arts & Entertainment Site

The Big Easy is Portland, Maine’s premier night spot. The club wanted a new Web site that rocks as loud as they do. The Content Manager allows easy-self-publishing of upcoming events as well as multiple Photo Galleries of local bands in action on its stage. The design really makes you want to be there!

More about The Big Easy »

Best of the Web award winners will be announced at techMaine’s Gala, taking place May 20th @ the Eastland Park Hotel Ballroom.

Would you ever call an apparel retailer like L.L. Bean and ask for a pizza? Even if you did, would you expect them to assist you? Well, that’s just what a customer service rep at Zappos.com did, according to company CEO Tony Hsieh, who led a discussion on Top Ten Lessons Learned in e-commerce at SXSW Interactive.

Hsieh recounted the time when (at a different) conference, someone couldn’t get a late night pizza from room service, he jokingly suggested they ring his call center. Zappos, he said, focuses its branding on providing superlative customer service. The rep came through, providing the names of 5 pizza joints in the vicinity of the hotel.

Zappos sells apparel (primarily shoes) but Hsieh said that delivering exceptionally great customer service is key to their branding strategy - and their success. He said it may be more expensive to do that - Zappos provides free shipping and staffs its call center so that the average hold time is only 15 seconds - but its viewed as an investment, not an expense.

Hsieh says that important because when it comes to e-commerce, customer loyalty, repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals are very important to developing a successful business.

Here’s Hsieh’s Top Ten Lessons Learned in e-commerce:

1. e-commerce is built on repeat customers
2. word-of-mouth really works online
3. don’t compete on price
4. make sure Web site inventory is 10% accurate
5. centrally locate your distribution
6. customer service is an investment, not an expense
7. start small, stay focused
8. don’t be secretive; don’t worry about competitors
9. actively manage your company culture
10. be wary of so-called “experts”

Here’s a link to Hsieh’s presentation.

We’ve always had this crazy idea - what if we remade someone’s e-commerce Web site from the ground up, the way they remodel those houses on that TV show?

Well, we put out the word and the response was truly overwhelming - we received requests from roughly 50 Maine businesses who were looking for a makeover. We want to thank them all for their interest. We feel lucky to have had so many worthy candidates to choose from!

We’ve made a selection, and we expect to launch the site in late spring. We’ll be receiving input from students of an e-commerce and marketing class at the University of Southern Maine.

In selecting our Makeover candidate, our first stop was the existing Web site. Then we spoke with some of the business owners to get a sense of their online sales goals. Other things we considered in finding the best fit:

Variety of products. Some candidates sell only one product, and while it’s great to do one thing well, we were looking for a Maine business with several different products in a number of different categories.

Well-defined brand. With our Extreme Makeover, we wanted to focus squarely on the Web site redesign; we didn’t want to spend a lot of time remaking a small business’ image. The brand had to be clearly defined - our job will be to execute the brand strategy through the Web site design.

Existing e-commerce system. Some businesses we considered were locked into an existing e-commerce framework that would have been expensive or time-consuming to rework. The ideal candidate would have more flexibility in terms of the e-commerce systems we wanted to deploy.

We want to tip our cap to the Maine Products Marketing Program for helping put out the word to the hundreds of small Maine businesses who are members of their program.

So who’s the lucky winner of Extreme Makeover? Sorry to keep you in suspense, but we’re going to keep that under wraps for now. Stay tuned to this space for more details as the project unfolds.

Is it just me or did the Internet (not) seem a little sluggish today from all the excess traffic?

Today is Cyber Monday, the Monday immediately following Black Friday and supposedly the day when e-tailers’ online sales surge like the rush for a Blue Light Special.

Only trouble is, The Legend of Cyber Monday is just that - a myth, concocted by marketing consultants to spur their Clients into Web site upgrades to prepare for a virtual tsunami.

Cyber Monday historically has not been the most popular online shopping day. In fact, according to Business Week, it’s only the 12th biggest sales day online.

That’s not to say your Maine Web site shouldn’t be ready for business today. It’s just important to remember that your site should be ready for business every day.

Naturally, good Web design should be the most important part of your Web strategy, this Monday and every Monday. That’s right, even more important than your search engine marketing plan. Because today - or any day - it’s not going to matter if you’re the #1 result in Google if people click on over and find that your site is hard to use.

See you on Cyber Tuesday….

Pemaquid Communications recently designed and relaunched a Web site for annie|catherine, a dynamic duo that produces designer stationery and related accesories from their studio in the Dana Warp Mill in Westbrook, Maine.

Their products include cards for most important occasions - birthdays, holidays, thank yous and other note cards - as well as calendars, picture frames, wrapping paper and prints of the amazing and colorful paintings of Catherine Breer (she’s the “catherine”).

Working with Catherine and her partner, Annie Darling - graphic artists every bit as talented as our own design team - made for an interesting project. Our challenge was to translate the very clear vision they had for the look of the site into something that would be pixel perfect across all browsers.

That’s why making sure the xHTML and CSS was valid was so important. That’s also why we used a “sIFR” (Flash image replacement) javascript to render the page titles in the specific font requested by the Client.

A custom version of our Pemaquid Commerce content management system for e-commerce allows annie|catherine to easily update product images, prices and descriptions, review and process orders and update other site content including Store Locations, Reps, News and Events. They can also create custom promotional pages.

Finally, we developed an easy-to-use e-newsletter manager that allows a|c to send email promotions at will using a simple yet elegant template Pemaquid designed for them.

If you’re looking for great looking designer stationery or fun holiday cards in advance of the holiday season (Gosh! Is it that time of year already?), you definitely ought to surf on over and have a look.

annie|catherine is graciously offering readers of this blog a 20% discount if they enter the promotional code “adcb” at checkout (good through October 31).

We’re excited to announce that a Pemaquid site, MaineLobsterFestival.com, has been nominated Best e-commerce Web Site by MESDA, the Maine Software and IT Industry Association. The Maine Lobster Festival’s Web site was redesigned by Pemaquid in 2006.

The online store is a custom-built version of the Pemaquid Commerce Manager, and allows Festival organizers to self-publish product imagery and data as well as access order information for fulfillment. The Commerce Manager is just one piece of a larger CMS, the Pemaquid Content Manager, that makes it easy for non-technical people to keep the Web site up to date.

The MLF Web site is one of three finalists for the award, which will be presented on Friday at Geeks in Black, MESDA’s annual gala; it’ll be held at the Portland Marriott at Sable Oaks. (Looks like I’ll be going…)

We’re really jazzed that a Web site that was such fun for us to design is up for this award!