As you may remember from our post back in September “Atlantic BT Acquires Stake in Crabtree Partners and New Larger Headquarters” this new space  is located at the intersection of Creedmoor Road and Glenwood Avenue,  across from the Crabtree Valley Mall, and just down the street from our old office.

Our New Address

4509 Creedmoor Road, 3rd Floor
Raleigh, North Carolina 27612

Our phone number has not changed, so if you need more information or help with directions just call 919.518.0670.

While we’ll share the building with other businesses on the 1st and 2nd floors, the 3rd  floor is completely Atlantic BT territory. I wonder how our new neighbors will feel about us dropping eggs off of the roof and launching pumpkins across the parking lot?

Take a Look Around

While the office wasn’t always so fabulous, we saw potential. And after 4 months of renovations, we can barely recall the 70s decor that previously adorned the space. While renovations are still going on inside and out, we have successfully given this building new life with modern furniture, the latest technologies and a few people who are way ahead of their time.

The best part? The new space offers our team a more collaborative work environment with endless windows and sunshine. Take a look at some photos of our new digs:

Atlantic BT Center sign located in main entrance

Come on in!

Our formal conference room

The East Wing of the New Office

The West Wing of the New Office

New Spaces for New Faces

We started out 2010 with 27 employees and now have now grown to 41.  Aside from adding more depth in familiar areas such as web design, custom software, and web hosting, we’ve added usability/user experience and expert web copywriting to our service offerings.

We Wish You a Safe & Prosperous New Year

To all of our customers, thank you for making Atlantic BT Raleigh’s top choice for web development, design and marketing. We look forward to building bigger, better and more awesome websites in 2011.  Keep watching our blog for more news and tips!

The 2K10 PumpKing

Last Friday, we hosted the first ever ABT Pumpking Party that started with an award ceremony followed promptly by chucking the pumpkins across the parking lot.  Check out our pumpking page to view pictures from the event! We all agreed that my Justin Beiber pumpkin should be the first to get sentenced to the trebuchet and you don’t want to miss those pictures.

Visit www.atlanticbt.com/pumpking to view all of this years pumpkins and the winners of each category including Best Unlit Pumpkin, Scariest Pumpkin, Funniest Pumpkin and more!

This post concludes our 2K10 Halloween celebration which means that Thanksgiving and Christmas are quickly approaching. We’ve got more ABT Culture Club events planned and we’ll be moving to our new office,  so be sure to stayed tuned to our blog for updates.

Thanks again to everyone who helped with this year’s Pumpking Carving and for our family, friends and clients that came to check out the trebuchet in action! We look forward to getting the trebuchet back out sometime soon…  How does everyone feel about a little Extreme Gift Giving? We could only keep the present if we catch it!

For those who are interested, you can still view last year’s pumpkins at www.atlanticbt.com/pumpking2009.

On Tuesday, we stayed after work and carved our pumpkins for this year’s contest. Like last year, we’ll be awarding the following prizes:

Instead of letting the pumpkins rot in the breakroom for a few days… we’ve decided to chunk them across the parking lot using a custom built trebuchet. If you’d like to see the pumpkin smashing, please join us this Friday at 5:00PM. We will begin the festivities with an awards ceremony to crown the Pumpking, then proceed to smash the pumpkins into oblivion.

We’ll be posting the winning pumpkins and photos of the event later this week, so stay tuned to our blog for more information.

If you’re here wondering what I’m talking about,  here are some helpful resources.

About World Statistics Day

The celebration of the World Statistics Day will acknowledge the service provided by the global statistical system at national and international level, and hope to help strengthen the awareness and trust of the public in official statistics. It serves as an advocacy tool to further support the work of statisticians across different settings, cultures and domains.

Other World Statistics Day Resources:

• WSD Website
• WSD Twitter
• WSD Facebook
• Jim Goodnight Message to U.N. Commemorating World Statistics Day

How’s This for a Statistic…

The International Telecommunication Union recently published The World in 2010: ICT Facts and Figures that revealed that the number of Internet users worldwide doubled in the past five years and will surpass the two billion mark in 2010. That’s 30% of the world’s population!

Here are some other notable statistics from the report:

The number of people having access to the Internet at home has increased from 1.4 billion in 2009 to almost 1.6 billion in 2010.

162 million of the 226 million new Internet users in 2010 will be from developing countries, where Internet users grow at a higher rate.

By the end of 2010, 71% of the population in developed countries will be online compared to 21% of the population in developing countries.

While in developed countries 65% of people have access to the Internet at home, this is the case for only 13.5% of people in developing countries where Internet access in schools, at work and public locations is critical.

Regional differences are significant: 65% of Europeans are on the Internet, compared to only 9.6% of Africans.

You can read the full article online at http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2010/39.aspx.

It’s no wonder that many of them haven’t decided whether try to find new customers through social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

These online destinations don’t do a great job of allowing for direct marketing opportunities (although Facebook does offer its own advertising service), and they often seem dominated by Fortune 500 competitors, celebrity self-promoters, and a small army of men and women who spend their days immersed in online marketing. So, does social media really matter to small businesses?

Our answer would be that social media especially matters to small businesses.

The reason is simple: from marketing perspective, the advantage of using social networking sites is that you get a chance to cut through the clutter – that is, the normal course of “corporate speak” that so many people have gotten to be so tired of. People don’t go to social networking sites to read ads or press releases; they want to stay in touch with friends, make contact with vendors and professionals who can help them one-on-one, and just be entertained. These are all areas where small businesses have enormous competitive advantages over their corporate counterparts.

If you have yet to make social networking a part of your small businesses marketing strategy, here are a few tips to help you get started, and to compete with the bigger players:

Be people, not organizations. Lots of people want to be friends with you, but few are interested in joining up with a faceless organization. Make sure your social profiles emphasize the people in your company and encourage customers to get to know them. You’ll be able to make a lot more progress if users feel like they’re reaching another human, not a marketing or customer service department.

Develop a brand and voice. Really, this comes down to fun. If what you say, post, and share is entertaining, people are going to come back. Make a habit of finding something funny, or at least offering a message with some insight. Pretty soon, these will become a part of your brand, a voice that other social media users will look forward to hearing.

Start slowly, but move consistently. There’s no reason to turn your company upside down if you just want to dip your toe in the social networking tool. There’s nothing wrong with setting up a few profiles, devoting 10 minutes a day to making contacts and updating messages, and seeing what happens. Just make sure that you get started, and don’t let your activity drop off completely. Social networking sites thrive on going conversations, so don’t go long stretches without saying anything.

Whisper your marketing message. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are no places to go shouting about your low, low prices or some other special. Instead, use these forums to have a little fun, share some insight and advice, and ever so quietly mention once in a while that you or your products are available. If the rest of what you have to say is interesting enough, people will take notice and respond accordingly.

Integrate social media into your overall marketing plan. One of the biggest social media marketing mistakes we see – in companies of all sizes – is using those sites in a vacuum. There’s nothing wrong with hoping your online profiles and messages will bring you new customers and clients; but make sure that what you’re doing and saying this supporting other things you have going on, as well. If you frequently have sales at your retail locations, mention them online (but again, without resorting to straight advertising.) Or, if your normal way of finding business is through business journal columns, be sure to mention them on social networking sites. The point is that everything you do, online and off, should be pointing in the same direction.

Social media sites are one of those places where small businesses have a distinct advantage over large ones. Follow these tips, use your online profiles and messages to support your other activities, and you’ll soon begin to see why.

But, given that the photographs on your website can play such an important role in a customer’s decision whether to buy or to move on – as much as the layout and text itself – it makes sense to take a closer look at the best ways to use them.

Here are five ways to get the most out of the product shots on your website:

Sell with pictures. It goes without saying that if you can show a picture of what you sell, you should include quality photographs. Studies show that an overwhelming number of people think, learn, and even buy visually. In other words, they are more moved by photos and videos than they are by text or audio, so using pictures can dramatically improve sales right away.

Remember that higher production equals higher sales. It’s simple: the better your pictures, the more you are going to sell from your website. This principle holds true because the more of your products visitors can see, the more comfortable they are purchasing them. There’s also a more subtle effect. Customers perceive better looking websites and photos with higher quality; they assume that a business that has gone through the time and trouble of having their merchandise professionally photographed is likely to be more reliable – and they are usually right.

If you don’t have high-quality photos of your products available, then why not take advantage of the opportunity that a new website provides and have your design team either take new photographs, or refer you to someone who can? Compared to the investment of a new site or extensive redesign, the cost of updated product shots is pretty low… especially when you consider how much it can help your future online sales.

Dream in color. If the products offered on your website are available in different colors and sizes, then try to feature each of them. Although it makes sense to assume your customers can imagine what they want in a different hue, that’s no substitute for actually tempting them with it right before their very eyes. Don’t count on their mind’s eye – provide high-quality product shots for every color you have available.

As an added benefit, the more colors you show online, the greater your sales will be, and the fewer your returns. That’s because, when people don’t see a sample of their color provided, they are forced to make a guess as to exactly what kind of red, blue, or other color you are going to provide. Some of the time, that means they’ll skip buying altogether; on other occasions, it might mean they’ll purchase something they end up not wanting – which costs you money in customer service, restocking expenses, and other small cuts to the bottom line.

Get with the times. One thing you’ll definitely want to avoid is outdated pictures. If you no longer sell what’s being shown, or offer a different version, color, or variation, get a new picture as quickly as possible. At best, a photo that isn’t current can be an annoyance to customers and employees alike; at worst, it can put your business in violation of advertising laws, since it could paint an inaccurate picture of what customers are getting for their money.

Build your brand. If you’re going to do the hard work of finding and producing high quality photographs your website, then take the action step and make sure visitors know where they’re coming from. Unfortunately, piracy remains an enormous problem online, and the last thing you want is your competitors treating your product shots as their own. If what you sell is also offered on different websites, be sure to watermark your images or otherwise designate them in a way that leads people back to you. It might not stop people from trying to steal them altogether, but it is better than simply giving them away.

For all of the thought and planning that goes into different web layouts and platforms, getting the most out of product photographs is often an afterthought. Follow these tips, though, and you might begin to see how a small change in an area lots of marketers take for granted can lead to enormous results.

Perhaps it’s because usability sounds a little boring; or, it could be that business owners and marketers have simply gotten tired of the almost never-ending stream of buzz words and ideas that seem to come from those of us who spend our days thinking about the online world of business. Either way, the question so many of them seem to want to put to us, even if they don’t express in words, is this: who cares about usability?

Here’s the short answer – your clients.

Simply put, the people who buy from you, or choose not to, care very much about your website’s usability. To see why, you need to understand what usability is really about. Although there are entire books and websites devoted to the topic, in a nutshell it basically refers to how easy it is for people to do what they want to do when they are on your company’s website. If they can find what they’re looking for easily, or get to where they want to go, your site ranks highly in terms of usability; if they can’t, then it doesn’t.

That probably sounds like a pretty straightforward concept, so why has it become such a big topic now? The Internet has become a lot more complex place – with billions more destinations, and hundreds of features and design tools that didn’t exist even a few years ago. With all of those choices, design firms and their clients have let their imaginations run wild… in fact, maybe a little too wild. It’s not always as easy to find information, prices, and new resources as it was just a few years ago.

And so, even though they aren’t asking for it by name, customers are demanding usability. If you won’t make it easy for them, they’ll take their business and attention elsewhere.

Since keeping people happily navigating their way through your company’s website is one of the first steps toward online profitability, here are four ways you can improve your website’s usability right away:

Think destinations. When visitors arrive at your company’s website, what is it they are likely to be searching for? Whatever that is, make sure it’s easily accessible, not only from the homepage, but from anywhere else and interested customer might find themselves looking around. Clear navigation is one of the quickest and easiest steps toward a great usability.

Tone down the special effects. You might think that all the videos, sound effects, pop-up images and other features you paid so much to have installed on your website are fun, and they very well could be. But, if they prevent buyers from reaching the pages you ultimately want them to find, what’s the use? This doesn’t mean you have to strip down your site to nothing, just that it makes sense to remove the obstacles preventing your customers from doing what you want them to.

Say more with less. When most people think of usability, they think of navigational bars and big layout tools. But, it makes sense to consider the copy writing, too. While most of the design and marketing world has come to love long copy for its search engine friendly properties, the faster and more succinctly you can express yourself, the easier time customers will have finding the information and advice that matters to them.

Encourage feedback. When it comes to usability, there’s really no substitute from the actual human beings who spend time on your website. Encourage them to tell you what they like and what they don’t, as well as anything that might seem to them to be “in the way.” Occasionally, they’ll give you an insight that you or your design team might not have spotted because you are too close to the process.

Usability might be a newer buzzword in web design circles, but it relates directly to one of the oldest maxims in any kind of marketing or advertising: give your customers what they want, and make it easy for them to do the things you want them to do. With all the tools and tricks at our disposal today, it’s easy to overwhelm people and miss the point. Your customers care a great deal about usability, and you should, too.

In other words, there are times you should consider redesigning or relaunching any website… even one that’s still making money for you.

Obviously, knowing when that time should be isn’t easy, and we’ve had clients come into our offices and struggle with those choices. With any big change there are also risks: what if customers don’t like the new site? What if it they don’t respond to it like you hope they will? What if it turns out being a waste of time and money, or ends up losing you money?

Those are all good questions, and ones that shouldn’t be ignored. But there’s another one that’s just as important, and that sometimes gets lost when owners and marketers are fearful of making changes: is my site as profitable as it could be?

If it’s not, then you’re losing money anyway. And besides, being complacent tends to be a very bad way to compete online. No matter what you do, you can be sure your competitors are thinking of ways to improve. They’re not going to stand still, even if you decide to.

With that mind, here are a few signs it’s time to make some changes to a profitable website:

Your business has changed, or the industry has. The most obvious time to redesign or relaunch a website is when what you offer now is different than it was before, or when what your customers are looking for has shifted. In these instances, it doesn’t really matter how profitable you’ve been, since the change is likely to catch up with you very quickly. Being behind the times is going to cost you money, online or elsewhere, so be sure you aren’t caught watching from the outside in.

Sales are slipping. It’s not always easy to separate seasonal dips from real changes, but most owners and marketers have a gut instinct when business is starting to get away. Often, these aren’t big or dramatic moves, just a couple of percentage points here and there. Still, if sales are decreasing and you can’t pinpoint exactly why, that’s probably a good sign that it’s time to look at a new layout. It might be that what you have isn’t appealing to new customers, or that you are losing existing business because of changes in the competition. Speaking of which…

Your closest competitor made a move. Not every relaunch by a competitor should prompt you to go running to your web design firm. Still, if another vendor has come up with a look, layout, or set of functionalities that is clearly superior to yours, then it’s only a matter of time before the market responds. In that situation, you have two choices: either keep up, or figure out what you are going to do in your next career.

It looks old. The difference between old and familiar is a fine line, and there is actually a little bit of a risk with taking away what your current customers are already happy and comfortable with. But, at a certain point, a website starts to look past its prime – not because it changes of course, but because most other sites in the world have. When that’s the case, it tells prospective customers something important: that you have stopped growing and developing. When it comes to selling online, keeping up is important, if only to show people that you are.

If you find your company site meets one or more of these criteria, then the answer isn’t to move to a new design and layout as quickly as possible. Instead, make the move carefully, paying special attention to the parts of your current site that make it profitable the first place. In other words, don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater – you won’t change your site for the better by just moving things around for the sake of making them different.

Once you’ve done that, follow the Golden Rule of online marketing: test everything. You’ll soon discover what customers like and don’t like about your new design, and areas where you can improve even more. The great challenge, and opportunity, of marketing your business on the Internet is that it’s a constant evolution. Just as your last website didn’t last forever, neither will your next one, so keep track of what’s going on and be ready to make another move when the time comes.

• #1 Christmas Tree (11,100,000)
• #1 Christmas Music (11,100,000)
  
• #2 Santa Claus (6,120,000)
• #3 Christmas Cards (4,090,000)
• #4 Christmas Gifts (3,350,000)
• #5 Christmas Decorations (1,830,000)

Surprisingly, ‘regifting’ was not in the top five.

We were also surprised that ‘Aunt Vivian’s Fruitcake Recipe’ did not make the list either.