Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 | Business
Will you drop Groupon for Google Offers? Google hopes so! Tomorrow Google will officially launch Google Offers, a direct competitor of the popular “daily deal” website, which has already seen its share of competitors, such as LivingSocial and local Knoxville-owned FlutterToday. A neat feature they are adding to the mix is Google Wallet, which allows you to view offers from local companies on Google Offers. In the future, you will be able to store loyalty cards, gift cards, receipts, boarding passes and tickets, all on your phone. Don’t get too excited right now, though, unless you live on the West Coast or NYC, and you also own an Android smartphone. Google will be rolling out the service to different cities throughout the rest of the year, but you can subscribe to get notified at http://www.google.com/offers. Just click on the city drop-down menu, then click “Sign up” at the bottom.
Sunday, May 8th, 2011 | Business
Websites have really become the hub of all other marketing activities. Print, radio, TV and many traditional forms of media are now being used primarily to direct people to a website where they can learn more about a business.
Aside from having lots of valuable information about their company, a modern business website has a specific call-to-action instructing visitors to fill out a contact or quote request form, called a conversion form. Since many businesses aren’t available by phone 24/7, an online form allows a prospective customer to reach out and start a conversation any time at their convenience.
In recent years, social media has become a very important part of an overall internet marketing strategy. There again, the website is a destination point for traffic originating from social networks, where the owner hopes to convert that traffic into leads. It’s also a common trend for business websites to link to all of the social networks they’re part of so people can learn more about their customers, employees and corporate culture.
We recently created Slamdot Circle, a free Facebook-driven application that helps small businesses connect with each other and spread buzz about their companies through recommendations. Businesses are promoted on the Facebook Wall of the person who recommends them, so all of their friends can see. We developed this application to help our local customers connect and do business with each other.
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 | Business
It’s always exciting to have new people join the Slamdot family, so it’s our privilege to bring Melissa Fagan on board as a new project manager and web developer! We’re thrilled to have her as part of the team here, and look forward to her being a part of our continued successes.
Melissa has worked on projects with us in the past, so she’s familiar with Slamdot, which will make her transition extremely smooth. She has also been trained directly by Elaine Frank, who recently switched careers to pursue her dream of event planning with the city. We’ll all miss Elaine, and have enjoyed her being a part of Slamdot’s growth. She has contributed significantly to our success over the last couple of years, and wish her the best as she moves on!
Friday, March 26th, 2010 | Business
We’ve already had an incredible year…and we’re still just getting started. Bragging aside, our Slamdot Retail Store has really taken off, and has impacted our business in a lot of ways, mostly positive. We’ve been experiencing tremendous growth since our grand opening in December, and coping with that growth has been somewhat of a challenge during this period.
We have a very strong reputation for customer service, and we work hard to maintain that reputation. In fact, our greatest competitive advantage has always been our customer service, and it continues to be why we do well, especially locally.
Due to our recent surge in business, we’ve had a harder time being proactive about keeping up with our customers. It’s easy to work on active projects, where customers are attentive and engaged, but it’s just as important to followup with customers who aren’t staying as involved. I think this is one of the biggest challenges we web designers face. Keeping customers engaged becomes more and more difficult with each additional project.
Although it may be easier to pass the buck and blame the customer, the reality is, it’s our fault. It doesn’t matter if we asked the customer for something and they never got back with us. We dropped the ball, because we didn’t follow back up to find out why. If a project goes stale, it’s our fault. That’s the only way to ensure we maintain a strong relationship with our customers, and lately, we haven’t been doing a good enough job.
So, here’s the deal. We’ve hired two more people, Nicole and Elizabeth. They’re trained up and ready for action. We’ve improved our processes and we’ve implemented some new ones. If you haven’t heard from us in a while, you’ll be hearing from us next week.
Starting Monday, we’ll be providing telephone technical support during our store hours of 8am until 5pm, Monday through Friday. You can also stop by the Slamdot Store for one-on-one service. Of course, email support is always available, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Growth is a good thing, but it all depends on how you handle it. We’ll be back on top of our game again next week. Thanks for sticking with us.
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 | Business
We’ve gotten a lot of emails in response to our recent photos of the new office from people interested in seeing our business cards.
So, here’s a closeup…
Kale designed the cards, and we got them printed at OvernightPrints.com. We’ve had nothing but great service from OvernightPrints.com (they even helped with the Spot UV coating for the logo area) and we’re happy to recommend them.
Sunday, October 28th, 2007 | Business
Well, we’re all settled in now! It’s been a long couple of days, moving and hauling furniture around, but we’ve made it! We’ll be working out of the new office starting tomorrow.
Here are some new pictures of the place.
Thursday, October 25th, 2007 | Business
We’ve just leased a new office in downtown Knoxville! The building has a really cool feel to it, and there is a fondue restaurant – The Melting Pot – on the bottom floor, and a bar/cafe just above it on the second floor. Our neighbors are friendly and we’re excited to be moving in to the new space. Here are some pictures of the new Slamdot headquarters:
We’ll keep posting more pictures as things progress. We have quite a bit of work to do, but we’re looking forward to working out of the new location.
Friday, March 9th, 2007 | Business
To have a successful company, we needed a couple of things. One being a name, otherwise people would walk around referring to us as “that super-awesome, ridiculously-cool hosting company,” or something similar. Secondly, we needed a logo. These were both necessary to begin building our brand identity.
Our brand represents integration. Therefore, Slamdot conveys our brand as integrating, or slamming together, all the pieces, or dots, of a web presence. It’s all things good (short, powerful, fun and meaningful) and no things evil, so what’s not to love?
Next was the logo, which needed to be a visual representation of the name. We sketched out a few ideas and then contacted our good friend, Kale Purdue to give it some love. He created a sweet logo that was bold, simple, and truly said Slamdot, with the “s” and dot forming a sort of modified exclamation point. The rounded square block is reminiscent of classic video games like Super Mario World. And thus, we have something unique and memorable that reinforces our mission – to integrate for simplicity’s sake.
