Some background.
There have been 5 or 6 (maybe more) versions of the factor 1 site. Each design was often born out of boredom, disgust, or some need that wasnt being met. And to be honest, most lacked in creativity.

In the past, our methodology was pretty simple. We wanted a clean corporate feeling site, that would appeal to a business owner, non-profit director, church pastor, my mother, your mother, and the dog. We would often use safe images, typical content, and basically end up with something predictably average. Which is terrible considering we expect more input from our clients on their projects.  What hypocrites we where right?

Onto the new site
So we threw it all out, and found some core things to stand by. here they are.

1. We are fun. I, Matt, am a goofball. We love having fun, laughing and enjoy each others company here at factor1. Our site needed to reflect that.
2. We are not corporate. Jeans, Flip flops, and helmet hair are the norm for me. I rarely wear slacks. I only wear ties to funerals. Not even weddings (ask Shannon, I didn’t wear one to her’s either, but I did have on a suit). So corporate gibberish text was not us.
3. We are simple. No, not simple in thinking, just simple in a less is more, be clear, say what you mean kind of way.  Again, our past sites had tons of content that said nothing but corporate speak.
4. We are easy. No not that way, get your mind out of the gutter. We are easy in the sense that we dont want to over complicate things. Sure some contracts and proposals get long. At the end of the day, we wanted our users to find our site easy to use, read, and find what they need.
5. We are passionate about what we do here. One of the big reasons factor1 exists, is because we deeply care and love what we do. So passion, excitement, and love needed to show on our site.
6. While we would love to appeal to everyone, its just not possible. And the truth is that if we have to stretch to appeal to someone, it may be a hard relationship to maintain. So we want to make sure our site attracts people who want to work with a firm like us. If they dont, they dont. Good luck to them.

So our site was born. We went from 30+ pages, to 12. clean, clear and easy to use. And best of all, its way fun. To be 100% honest, this is the first site of our own that I have truly loved. Sad that it took 7 revisions over many years, but i think it took that long to work through the junk.

How can this help you?

• Find who you really are. Sure goals and projecting who you want you customers to see is a valid point, but dont loose site of who you REALLY are.
• Break things down to small chunks. Simple goals and bite sized pieces
• Pick your priorities.
• Let things simmer. Sometimes good ideas need to cook longer before they are ready.
• Break the mold. Just because its the norm, doesnt mean its for you.

I’d love to continue this conversation. I think this is a growth and exploring yourself  kind of exercise, that needs to be revisited often.

Here are some recent things I found.

Brain Water.

Y brain water is vitamin water for kids. $1.60 – $2 per 9 ounces of water. The key here is the great marketing & a fun package. Most city water has plenty of minerals, and if you ate a balanced diet, the extra vitamins are simply not needed.

Apple juice formulated for babies.

(I must be the father of baby boys, because im seeing a trend here.)

Ounce for ounce, this is 2x as expensive as normal apple juice. Im pretty sure your kid, nor my kids will be brain surgeons because they drank this.

Fancy pants dog food.

Seriously. They are dogs. They eat anything. This product is 100% marketed to the pet owner (well duh, dogs cant read). Its tugging on the owner to give their dog the best of the best. I do think that natural dog food with less filler junk is better for a dog, but some owners go to far. I’m glad to see Cesar Canine Cuisine is there to assist the owner in the disposal of extra income.

Silly Computer services

Geek squad (the best buy tech support team) will take your audio CD, and place the mp3 files on your ipod for $25 per cd. really?! They market the heck out of this service in their store. I know not everyone is tech savy, but thats a rip off!

I guess at the end of my rant, i will say, wow these are all GREAT marketing achievements! I wish just one of my past ideas were as big as any of these. Future ideas will trump all of the above. Im just saying.

Factor1Studios.com is a web, design and marketing agency that has just opened a West Seattle office. As part of our grand-opening introduction we are completely gifting the design and deployment of a custom website for a high-impact and critical non-profit in the West Seattle area.

West Seattle, Wa  (October 15, 2009) — Factor1Studios.com is now open in West Seattle, WA. We believe in positive change for our world, we believe in people, and we believe in leaders who sacrifice to make these things happen.

Our hope is that our new community will participate in selecting the recipient of our website gift. This is no gimmick. There are no strings attached.  Our hope is to be a integral part of the fabric of our new community. A critical requirement in making an impact is communicating effectively and creatively with many people on a consistent basis. An effective web presence can be a powerful asset in accomplishing this objective. Help us say ‘hello’ in fine fashion. For details, see http://www.factor1studios.com/nonprofit-gift

Sincerely,
Ryan Russell
Co-owner, Factor1Studios.com – West Seattle
206.659.7959

About Factor1Studios.com

Factor1 is a team of creative individuals who passionately believe that great service and good design work always win. Founded in 2004, Factor1 has grown to a small staff of 4 based in Maricopa, AZ and a new office in Seattle, WA. We have created hundreds of websites across the US, and internationally in Canada, UK, and Australia. Factor1 has primarily grown by word of mouth and continues to rely on their great reputation. Matt Adams is the president and creative director in the day-to-day operations of Factor1. In 2008, long time friend and business strategist, Ryan Russell joined Factor1 to enhance the impact and breadth of the company’s influence for positive contributions in the world through non-profits, churches and good business.

I think this may be our third year participating in blog action day. Here at factor1, we have been pretty green and believe that change isnt as hard as everyone makes it out to be.

So i thought i would share some tips we use often here in the office, and personally in our own home. I’ll try and keep them light and easy, but I may toss in a few hard core hippie tips.

• Shut off the lights. Really. We hardly ever turn on lights in our offices. Natural light is the best!
• Print only if you absolutely have to. Check out Evernote to save items important, but dont need printed. I LOOOVE evernote.
• Let your computers and printers sleep when not in use. They use a ton less power. And no screen savers either. a sleeping LCD is super quick to wake up.
• Shut down your computer at night. I swear I know people who leave their towers on for weeks at a time. for no reason.
• Clean. seriously. dust bunnies on the back of your computer make it run hotter. This will keep your computer lasting longer too.
• Recycle. Seriously. We share office space with a realtor who thinks recycling papers is hard. i dont understand how.

Some Super hippy tips:

• Ride your bike to work. I do this probably 95% of the year, and love it.
• Compost. its really easy these days. You generate less trash at the curb, plus you get nice dirt for your garden. I promise it doesnt smell much either.
• Garden. Fresh veggies are the best. Organic, pesticide free, and as close to local as you can get.
• Shower every other day. Unless you get all sweaty, every other day is perfectly acceptable in my book. And no one has to know. Well i guess now you know i skip a few showers a week.
• Dr Bronners Bar soap can replace your shampoo, and body wash. 100x less packaging, no plastic, and eco friendly.
• Eat less meat. Not a vegan / vegetarian my self, I enjoy a well balanced diet of natural foods with as little processing as possible. To grow, and process meat of all kinds is an amazing waste of water, oil, land, and other resources. Tons of stats on this, but most research shows our bodies were NOT meant to consume meat 7 days a week. We probably have meat once or twice a week in our home, and its usually local, grass fed, free range, organic stuff.

I could go on and on, but i wont.

So go, change the world, cut back on the resources you use.

Recently, network solutions had a major security leak in their ecommerce systems. Right about the time we placed an online order with Sigg. Sigg uses that system. Uh Oh. Network Solutions gave us a free credit monitoring service for 1 year. That was nice, but probably required of them legally somewhere.

So thats not the reason for this post. What really blew us away, was that Sigg sent us a free bottle, and an apology letter. How cool is that. A typical Sigg is $20. So I was really impressed when they went out of their way to make up for an issue they had no control over. Very cool.

The top 3 reasons to buy a Sigg

1. Sigg clearly cares about their customers
2. re-usable bottles never looked so good
3. a Sigg will last you 10 years at least. (My dad has one used for camping that is older than I)

Some highlights (and geek talk)

• Super clean html & css files
• jquery portfolio system to preload all images, and navigate between items
• wufoo forms!
• an ie6 redirect to make ie6 users aware of the errors in their ways (factor1studios.com/ie6.php)
• mobile friendly (we are still fine tuning, but it works great overall)
• Funny content for all ages.

We hope you like it.

Share your feedback!

General Design Stuff
Smashing Magazine
DesignM.ag
PSDtuts
Training Sessions at Gangplank with Forty

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CSS-Tricks
Nettuts
Noupe

Branding
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Website Inspiration
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Other Awesome Stuff
The Dieline
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Where are your favorite places to go for inspiration or learning new techniques?

What should we do to celebrate?

Google has always eluded to the fact that they ignore them, but today google shares a great blog post and video on the subject.

Q: Does Google ever use the “keywords” meta tag in its web search ranking?
A: In a word, no. Google does sell a Google Search Appliance, and that product has the ability to match meta tags, which could include the keywords meta tag. But that’s an enterprise search appliance that is completely separate from our main web search. Our web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don’t have any effect in our search ranking at present.

The Full article can be seen here: googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com

“I highly recommend using the web design services of Factor1Studios. The firm is very professional, artistic, economic and very easy to work with. A Godsend to non-profits looking to build up-to-date websites.”

Esau Lolis
The International Foundation for Education and Self Help

www.IFESH.org