Using Brand Archetypes to create unique digital Experiences: Meet Herdl

When you begin to suspect "the way things are" in your industry is no longer serving you or your customers, do you keep your head down -- or buck the current?

Co-founding Herdl just over five years ago. Here's what co-founder Gareth Morgans had to say about the importance of productivity, brand archetypes, WordPress, and .

What was the Web Agency current status you wanted to contest?

Ged (co-founder) and myself were both working for one of the biggest web design companies in Leicestershire, U.K. Even though everything seemed polished on the surface however, the reality in the back of the room was dire. There were issues across each department, but the underlying problem was that projects weren't correctly estimated and resulted in the sales team slashing prices to secure projects. Projects were late, they were not of high quality and the clients were not happy.

The digital marketing industry is very a competitive space. We understand that not every agency operates exactly the same way and there's a lot of them that make big promises to win the work they cannot realistically deliver. The standards you find across agencies are vastly different because there is a barrier to entry very low. For clients, it can be difficult to find the right agency for the solution they require.

The issue quickly became clear that there was a better way to approach this.

We're a small agency in design. This allows us to control the standard of work we produce. Being free of the burden of expenses for staff allows us to choose carefully which assignments we accept and also the firms we collaborate with. We've put together an elite team of professionals, and every member is a multi-faceted, interconnected capabilities that provide a distinct perspective to each task. We don't have any non-productive members of staff or senior positions, so when that clients contact us, they're directly speaking to the people actually doing the work. We're confident about working with larger agencies in the future, and our track record proves that we can -and have been able to succeed.

There is not acceptable for companies to simply have an online presence. Let us know more about your thinking.

How we use the web has changed dramatically over the past few years. Numerous companies will justify having the need for a website with "we require an internet presence" because they thought that getting online was enough. The time was when this was the case -- to a certain degree.

Today, customers demand a truly exceptional online experience across all devices. Businesses, retailers, and even local businesses need be thinking about ways they can provide customers with the information they're seeking swiftly and efficiently. Not everyone requires a big fancy website, but there are standards that each website must meet. We're customers too, and we are extremely disappointed to see websites that do not work for mobile devices! The other elements that are often overlooked along with responsive design are accessibility, analytics and site performance.

Archetypes are crucial to your brand's strategy process. What exactly are they, and how can you make use of them?

These elements are distilled into a number of brands archetypes that consumers can align themselves with:

For example, Two Chimps approached us at a very early stage and had lots of thoughts on how they could design their brand and what services they could provide. The brand archetype was used to give the project a clear direction and help us filter through all the different options available. Picking an archetype for the brand that would appeal to the target audience enabled us to separate out one's personal preferences and preferences, developing a unique personality of the brand as an entity.

For Two Chimps, we all agreed to use The Explorer. After that, we developed an information sheet to be with us through the entire process all the way from concept to content integration and testing. This is something that we always refer to. Our sheet contained details such as what we thought was the reason for choosing this particular archetype, our purpose and vision statements as well as the value proposition and the brand essence, along with guidance regarding personality and tone of voice.

Another instance of one of the 12 archetypes associated with brands can be The Outlaw. Objective: To break the law and challenge authority. Characteristics are: Iconoclastic, rebellious wild, and paving the way to changes. Drawback is that it can go too far and be seen in a negative way. marketing niche: Agent of changes, advocates for the disenfranchised, allow people to speak out or break with conventions. Example: Harley-Davidson, Virgin (Richard Branson).

What makes WordPress the preferred platform?

Our bottom-line reason for choosing WordPress is the simplicity of using it for customers managing their own websites. As a content management system that is easy to use, WordPress provides a simple, intuitive interface which allows us to customize it for each project on a per-project basis.

We've developed our own flavor of WordPress by incorporating workflow ideas from communities like Roots as well as third-party plugins such Advanced Custom Fields and Gravity Forms in addition to custom enhancements. It's given us the flexibility that we require to create and develop bespoke experience for our customers.

We also want customers to partner together with us so that they're satisfied with our work and not due to being tied into exclusive software. WordPress is open-source and gives clients the freedom to pick whoever they would like to manage and build their websites.

When it comes to eCommerce, what time and when should you make use of it ?

The project is managed from beginning until completion and even beyond. What are some of the key challenges at the outset of every work?

The process of securing a project in the initial inquiry phase is difficult. On the basis of a limited amount of information, we need to interpret the current and potential requirements and very quickly present our concepts. The majority of our websites are designed for our clients who go on to do marketing tasks, so knowing the larger context of their current activities, competitive trends and market conditionseverything that we must consider.

Our clients are closely supervised and collaborate in every phase. It's been our experience that despite every effort it's difficult to form a complete picture, so maintaining strong lines of communication, and incorporating specific checkpoints helps us to take feedback on board and improve our understanding.

You say that SEO must be at the heart of the overall digital marketing plan. What does that look like in Herdl's growth plan as well as for clients whom you collaborate with?

There are a variety of online marketing options available and a successful strategy must comprise a mixture of sources and techniques. Our experience has revealed an effective SEO strategy. SEO can be a very effective tool to generate leads and is essential for drawing fresh inquiries at an international level.

What are three of your top suggestions for an internal departmental eCommerce leader?

First, have a clear list of objectives. If you're the one who sets objectives or someone more senior within your organization does it, you need to have a clear idea of the goals you're looking to accomplish.

In the second, ensure you have accurate analytics that measure your results. It's important to keep track of your progress against the targets that you've established, and then you must analyze your measures to figure out why things are going well (so you're able to do better) or the reason why something isn't functioning (so you are able to alter them). It is essential to arm yourself with information when you report to your supervisor and, without an analysis in place then you'll operate in the dark.

Thirdly, work with other members of your organization. We often see internal teams who are solitary, operating in isolation. It's simple for anyone to work with his or her head down and also for data and information to become scattered across various areas. When you are sharing your knowledge will help you improve other areas of your organization and gain useful information in return.

It's not uncommon to hear " does not scale." You've built high-performing enterprise sites with Woo -- what's your comeback?

Performance of websites is an important consideration for us, since it has a significant impact on the work that we perform in marketing. There haven't been any issues with growing , and we do not see this as a limitation of the system.

Our recommendation? Do not be cheap when it comes to hosting and be sure to take your quality seriously! Our process of tuning performance involves various techniques including caching, image and file optimization, as well as a robust hosting infrastructure. We believe our experience in this particular area is what sets us apart from other design firms and is the reason for us to have won numerous design awards in the area of performance.

The performance tuning we do uses a variety of techniques including caching, image and file optimization as well as an efficient hosting infrastructure.

Do you have any WordPress plugins or extensions that you recommend?

We use of a select amount of plugins in our projects.

• Short Pixel is a great plugin to compress images and optimization. Images on eCommerce websites typically make the page size large, and we advise making them as efficient as feasible.
• Advanced Custom Fields is essential for any project, and helps us modify and simplify the administration process for our clients.
• We also use Yoast SEO to perform a significant portion of the on-page SEO work we perform. It also has a Yoast for premium add-on that's useful for optimizing product and page pages for categories.

What do you like most regarding digital commerce? what's the next step for Herdl?

We're always excited by a challenge, and our opinion is that the greatest difficulty for digital commerce right now is the mobile. Our team is devoted to developing websites that function across all platforms, and we enjoy applying our knowledge and expertise to craft beautiful shopping experiences for mobile devices.

It's been our experience that we've brought a lot more animation and frontend features into the projects we work on and think this is a direction we'd like to pursue further. In particular, SVG animation presents an possibility to become inventive with interactive loading effects that make our sites exciting and interesting.

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Our thanks to Gareth for taking the time on this interview. Be sure to keep an eye on Herdl.com for their new news, as well as success stories.