eROI Days Email Agency

A couple of days ago, we launched our brand new homepage and we are all psyched with the way it turned out.  As usual for creative agencies, we are our own toughest client, trying to please lots of detail-oriented, savvy decision-makers from every department and aspect of the company. However, we truly followed our own highly-collaborative process, and while it may have taken longer than we wanted to fit this project into all of our client work as well, we were extremely happy with the end result. The user-centered design includes an element of flash which was integrated seamlessly and our production team made everything work like a charm. 

One of the most noticeable new features was the integration of tabs on the page.  There are 10 tabs in all that help the user easily navigate what we offer along with content from each of our five blogs.  At eROI, we drink our own Koolaid when it comes to online marketing.  We have a clear call-out to sign up for our newsletter in the bottom section of our page, we invite people to become a fan of eROI on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or see our profile on Linkedin and even our most recent tweets are displayed to the right of the page.

Please give us feedback in the form of a haiku – tell us if you love our new homepage or you hate it or something in between, but please please do NOT be boring. thx.

At eROI, we’re not always as disciplined as we should be about asking our customers what they think of us personally and the kind of work we do here. So, last week, we decided to ask a few customers (thru 1-to-1 email outreach) and here’s what we heard:

“eROI is what you look for in any business relationship: an expert partner who helps you realize your vision. The eROI team listened carefully to our needs, asked probing questions that helped us better understand the capabilities that would enable us to reach our goals, and communicated closely with us all the way to achieve success. The final product went above and beyond what we thought was possible. It was mindblowing.”
–Noah Glass, CEO, GoMobo

“Choosing eROI to help launch our magazine into the digital realm has been a great decision. The support from their web team has been incredible, making the scary transition from print to online- stress free. They provided structure, guidance and solutions to any minor hang up we experienced along the way.”
–Kaitlyn, CBS Watch Magazine (new site hasn’t been launched yet)

“Working with eROI to help with the development and launch of seven planet was key to company on many levels and will prove to be a critical positive impact on the brand. We began speaking with their team about 7 months prior to launching our virtual trading post (our ecommerce store/company site) with the intent to launch a site that was easy to navigate, that visually differentiated our brand and that helped our patrons effectively find out how the “mindful commerce” could work in their lives. In the end, they met all three of those criteria without question and in turn also were very patience with us in the process as we had scope revisions, content delays, support needs, etc. Finally, they proactively approached us after our launch with product review site upgrades, that would help improve the trading post and usability, without being asked to do so. Those upgrades are now implemented and we look forward to working with them consistently on making the seven planet site and our company newsletters as key to the brand and the vision of mindful commerce as our traditional green general stores.”
–John Friess, CEO, Seven Planet

Seven Planet is a viable, for-profit business with a do-good cause of building the brand to save the planet. The company has a vision of becoming the world’s first chain of green general stores with the backbone of its sales happening through its world-class website. Work on the site initially began on 7/7/2007 by several friends looking to produce a sustainable business. Similar to a Co-operative, the company is all about giving back to the community and for all who help Seven Planet further its cause. One entirely unique piece of its model is that it gives HALF of all profits to its constituents – Advisors, Store General Managers, Local Suppliers, Global Suppliers, and Patrons.

(more…)

Everyone has been referring to today as Black Friday, the first day that many retailers get into the black all year due to the increased buying for the holiday season.  Today was especially critical, given the economic conditions, and for consumers, all the amazing SALES that are happening.  But, for a growing trend of companies, today could be named GREEN FRIDAY as retailers, like eROI client, Seven Planet, are trying to educate people on mindful commerce of buying goods that are good for the planet as well as bringing in a little green money to sustain their business model.

Today was the first day of the soft launch of this green general store. eROI designed and produced this dynamic, search-engine-friendly, e-commerce site, so please check out the site (www.sevenplanet.com) and check back in to this blog for a more in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at what went into the thought process for the business model, website strategy, design, and development.

E-commerce site: http://www.sevenplanet.com

We launched our new site at www.eroi.com. I am filled with pride in my team and in the end result – a beautiful, easily navigated website of an email and interactive agency that has done great work. So, we decided to party like it was 1999 (in the Bay Area) in the dot com heyday. Well, maybe not THAT much partying, but we did break out the champagne and orange juice (mimosas) as 10am today. Enjoy the pictures below, but more importantly, please comment on this blog posting of what you think of our site. I’m especially interested in what you think of our Portfolio section and Resources Center. Thanks. You don’t have to say nice things (even after knowing that it took over a year to concept the design and ultimately build the entire site). Here are the pics:

Our lead programmer, Tore Gustafson, is going to talk about the challenges of building this site from scratch from a programming (not design) perspective:

Social networking sites at their core are really a collection of a lot of common and architecturally simple applications. What is a blog from a development standpoint? Really it’s just a few database columns including things like a date, an article and a title. Then all you need is the application framework to edit and display that information. A social networking site takes applications like a blog, like email, like adding a person to your personal network and builds a cohesive framework for all the pieces to play together.

Building matchpointcorp.com from scratch, however, is by no means a small task. Mapping the database architecture for a site that offers so many different capabilities was probably the most time-consuming task, not to mention building interfaces for both delivering content to the end user as well as an administration portal for Matchpoint managers to administer their users, companies and service provider and ultimately connect them.

Probably the most enjoyable aspect of developing sites like this is getting cool flash-like (and much more) effects working with plain old javascript. Javascript frameworks like prototype and the ensuing add-ons like mootools have made javascript not only more consistent across browsers, but actually fun to code in. If your a developer and still ignoring javascript, grab a copy of prototype and dig in!

Somewhere in the conferencing 101 handbook is a blurb about going out and meeting people at the conference sponsored events. That blurb also details how to drink at a conference, or how not to drink. There was an open bar at the place I went to and next thing you know things got a bit hazy.

So hazy in fact that I was supposed to call my girlfriend, and when I woke up in the morning I called her to apologize for not calling, and it turns out I did call her. Oops. Now she’s onto just how much I was drinking. You can take the kid out of Alaska, but you can’t take Alaska out of the kid.

The cool part about this whole SXSW thing is all the conversations that occur away from the event itself. I had no idea how much value would come from just meeting and talking to people. Last night I got to meet some of the people whom I respect and follow on the web. Welcome to Geek’s Paradise.

(more…)

After a late night at a Deerhoof concert, we all awoke fairly sleepy. I am surprised I have made it this far without a nap. Today was the first day of the SXSW panels. As with any conference, there are times slots and multiple panels available. Thankfully they release podcasts of each panel so that I still may get the information I missed out on.

There were five panels I attended. Each of them offered a different insight into the topic they were covering. More than anything they made me inspired, warm, and fuzzy. I think SXSW draws all of the rockstars in the industry and they do as good of job being in the audience as they do on their panels. It’s refreshing to know that they are still out there seeking knowledge from their peers.

(more…)

Diesel does a great job on the web. If you have not taken a moment to visit their website, you need to. It is updated so often in a complete overhaul that it will blow your mind. Now not only do they update the main site, but they create ornate micorsites for all of the product lines. My hat is off to them for the amount of time that they put into everything they do.

Now on topic, this lastest email was so large, that it would not even fit in a preview pane, let alone a browser window. You actually had to take the opposite action of scrolling sideways to see the whole image. I tried over and over to get a small enough resolution to share it, but it was imposssible.

If you are in retail, or just like good emails, sign up.

View image