If you follow any of our social media feeds you know that every day we post insights and meaningful information regarding consumer packaging design, mobile design, and branding.

We recently had an epiphany: We post all this great stuff to our social outlets, so why aren’t we posting about our clients more often?! So we asked our clients if they had interest in having us promote them, to which many agreed was a good idea.

Starting this month, May 2013, we will begin promoting exclusive deals and promotions from our clients to you.

Be on the lookout for these deals as they unfold. As of this writing we have May, June, and most of July filled up. Deals will be posted on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with the same deal from the same business for all three of those days.

If you’re thinking of hiring Brand Shepherd to work on your branding need, consider this, too: There’s no charge to our clients for what we’re doing. We are doing this because we genuinely care for businesses we work with, and consider their thriving success the highest goal that we can contribute to.

Here is a short list of our social media outlets – keep an eye open for upcoming deals!

• Facebook

• Google+

• Twitter

Note:  We purposely do not include social media feeds in sections of our website because we feel it’s redundant. We believe if you want to follow us on the social media of your choice, you’re a grown-up, and know what to do. These deals will only be available via our social media feeds – not here on this website, and each social media feed gets the same content. We don’t post different content to different social media, even though the gurus would say that’s a no-no (hey, what can we say…we believe in forgiveness over permission!)

Cheers!

Photo: Tom Sistak, MyWebTimes.com

UPDATE » April 30, 2013:  We donated a little time to creating a new Facebook cover for the City Of Marseilles’s page. It helps call out attention to the Donate button they now have for on line cash donations. Take a look.

UPDATE » April 29, 2013:  See below under “What Is Needed:” for recent happenings. I’m proud to be from Marseilles as I see this community pull together.

UPDATE » April 24, 2013:  CNN visited the Marseilles Elementary School, and published this video report. This is where I went to school…the band room in the opening scene is where I spent countless hours learning to play alto saxophone and percussion…those hallways were where I romped…and this school resides less than a block from the house I grew up, where my parents are now shoveling mud out of their living room. This flood is unprecedented. This area is not a flood plain. If you can help these people please do so via the links below.

UPDATE » April 23, 2013:  Fellow former Marseilles area resident Vanessa Douglas has set up a crowd-funded relief fund at GoFundMe.com. If you would like to donate cash to the flood victims, please donate here.

From Dan Crask, co-owner of Brand Shepherd:

This week my hometown of Marseilles, Illinois, and the house I grew up – where my parents live now – was devastated by flooding from the Illinois River. The Illinois governor has declared 30+ counties “disaster areas,” but I would like to draw attention to the small town of Marseilles, Illinois – my hometown – because it’s distance from the greater Chicago area will leave it out of the lime light for help.

What Is Needed:

• ACCOMPLISHED! Thanks for your help in making this happen Connections to anyone at Kroger or P&G (both are Cincy-based corporations) who assist in relief for disasters like this with their famous Tide trucks and wash areas.

• Cash donations::
  -  This GoFundMe.com fundraiser
  - NEW! Marseilles Bank is accepting cash donations for the Flood Relief Fund. Call 815-795-3900.

• ACCOMPLISHED! The Marseilles, Illinois Facebook page is posting daily updates on the massive amount of help coming in from corporations. Example: Walmart gave a $10,000 grant, The Home Depot has donated so much it’s impossible to calculate for a layman like me, Subway and Papa Johns have donated meals for the victims.  Connections to any other corporation that does relief work to help the people of my home town.

Over 1/5 of Marseilles’ population have been evacuated from their homes… including my parents. The flood waters have completely engulfed the Marseilles grade school and middle school campus, and people are not yet allowed back to their home to assess damages.

With flood waters expected to begin receding this weekend, people will begin the process of returning to their homes and seeing what’s left. The next week will be a time of great need for the people of Marseilles, Illinois.

And for what it’s worth, I recently learned that the old box factory in Marseilles used to (maybe still does?) make boxes for P&G – a Cincinnati tie to my hometown that I never knew about as I was raised there.

It’s surreal to see photos online of the neighborhood and house I grew up in as ground zero for this disaster.

If you have ties to resources that I am looking for, please get in touch with me. Your thoughts and prayers are appreciated as well.

In December 2007 I came back from lunch to a meeting where I learned that the parent company of the design firm I worked for was selling off the assets of the firm. It meant that my position would not exist as of January 1, 2008. Jolted, I left work early, drove home, and consulted with my wife, Andrea, who was enjoying life as a stay-at-home-mom with our then 2 month old son, Garrett.

I knew from the time I was a teenager that I wanted to be a professional graphic designer, and I knew as early as the mid-90s that I would eventually own a design firm. I had mostly worked for small businesses, and had the itch to go out on my own one day. That itch was so strong that Andrea and I had begun planning the launch of our design firm, but our planning began only 2 weeks prior to learning that my position with my former employer was being disolved.

We had a plan, but it was not a 5-year or 2-year plan…it was a 2-week plan. After a lot of talking, prayer, listening, and consulting with professional peers and friends we decided to launch our startup, a little design firm called D&A Design. In early January 2008 we met with our attorney in our dining room, and formed our LLC.

The first year in business was incredible. People I enjoyed working with were finding and calling my personal home phone number to reconnect so we could work together, and by the time we launched D&A Design I was working in tandem with Westside Media on the Ross-Chillicothe Ohio CVB account. Together we were rebranding a historic Ohio county from the ground up. Westside Media is owned and operated by dear friends I know from our days at Judson University. A fellow husband/wife team, Westside Media brought us under their wing to include us on more and more projects. At the same time, I had reached out to pet product maker Dinovite, and had established a working relationship on a few of their products, which over time has become a template relationship on what the ideal client looks like to us. I also plugged into the Wyoming Ohio Business Association where I met and networked with Ken Saunders, owner of Search Engine Experts. Ken introduced me to Todd Levy and Paul Ghiz of Global Cloud, and after working with them, they in turn referred D&A Design to a few businesses. During this time I worked with my SCORE advisor, who was also referring D&A Design to other businesses.

By the end of our first year in business I realized we had something special. We didn’t spend one dollar on advertising: we were growing strictly by referral. It seemed that the approach we use for working with people, coupled with the quality of work we produce, resonates with people in a very positive way.

In 2010 I was inspired by our dog, Jake, a border collie to change our name to Brand Shepherd. You can read about that here. While the name D&A Design worked “on paper,” it presented a lot of challenges when speaking it over the phone, the URLs available for our website, and other obstacles that kept getting in the way of progress. Everything aligned for us to change our name to Brand Shepherd, and focus on what we were doing for our clients from the start – branding.

I can’t tell you how rewarding the experience is to wake up every day and work for our clients. It is so rewarding, in fact, that I often neglect to tell Brand Shepherd’s story in terms of what we’re doing. I am trying to get better at that.

Wrap Up

This blog post is the conclusion of our series this week where we have written 5 blog posts over 5 days to celebrate our 5th year in business. Again, we have to holler out a huge, loud Thank You! to every business, friend, supplier, etc. that has helped keep us going for 5 years. We are so thankful for you all.

The point is, goals change as the touch points change. But here’s a look at 5 goals we are aiming for over our next 5 years in business:

1. Stay open. While it is true that we grew during The Great Recession, it doesn’t take away from the fact that these are uncertain economic times for all businesses – ours included. The #1 goal for any business is to remain open for business. It’s obvious but not always easy. We believe that the key to staying open as a business is to take care of what we can control – be aware of trends, advise our clients on what makes sense to spend time and money on for the best ROI, and then create outstanding work. There are many factors we cannot control, and for those we have our faith. But our first goal as a business is to stay open because we love what we do.

2. Provide jobs for the parents who needs a flexible schedule. If you have talked with Andrea or me in private you’ve heard this goal of ours from the very beginning. We have a big heart for the person who loves being a parent, but also loves to do the work they are gifted at. The balance is difficult, requiring a schedule that is not 9-5, Monday thru Friday. When Andrea and I dream of what a Brand Shepherd office looks like years from now, it is a space for creating great work, and a space that includes an area for our employees’ young children. Maybe older kids, too, who have interest in being a professional in branding or the creative arts. Point is, Andrea and I see our role as parents as the most important, after that comes our careers: We are a family-owned and operated business. Balancing the two is challenging and rewarding. It is our goal to be more intentional about creating employment opportunities where other parents can enjoy what we enjoy.

3. See the tie between consumer products and the mobile web through to its next phase. If you follow any of our social media outlets you know that Brand Shepherd posts mostly about 2 topics: Consumer product branding and the mobile web. This website talks about our interests in these two areas as mutually exclusive brand touch points, but also as two touch points that are working more and more together. The thing is, we think there’s a lot more to this story, and it’s going to unfold in myriad ways over the next few years. We aim to be a part of what is taking place in that space as we work with our clients to tie product branding and mobile together. Right now the buzzword is “showrooming,” and we post a lot about that via social media, yet retailers and product makers are guessing – at best – as to how to curtail showrooming. Is it price-matching? How does augmented reality play into the process? How much longer can QR codes be viable (were they at all)? When a consumer has a product in-hand, and is about to scan it on their smartphone to see if a better deal awaits online, what could make that product’s packaging more sticky so the consumer buys in-store? We will be part of the unfolding story between product packaging and the mobile web.

4. Be a positive and constructive partner for the startups we work with. The Great Recession has served to spin off some great startup businesses. We are proud that many startups have hired us to help launch their ideas. In fact, we have been working with so many startups over the last 24 months that we created two branding packages for startups. These packages offer known overhead costs for setting up the essentials of branding a startup business. But our thinking goes beyond the startup phase. We believe these businesses have solid ideas that can weather market forces, and we are doing our part to tell their stories. One thing to note here is that of all the startups we’ve worked with, only one has been a purely tech startup. The rest make a tangible product.  We will be a positive and constructive partner to their success.

5. Give back, privately. There are a lot of overarching themes for businesses of all sizes; mantras like “Go Green” and “Be Lean” are popular. Yet one we encounter a lot is “Give back,” and it is used to encourage businesses to “give back” to their community, as well as by businesses who are “giving back” via donation or volunteering. Maybe it’s old fashioned to think the way we do, but where’s the modesty in loudly, publicly promoting “giving back”? We are unfortunately guilty of “giving back” publicly. In our startup days (which we’ll write about tomorrow) we donated time/resources to charities, and promoted the build-up to it and aftermath. But not lately. I’ve been so turned off by the “look how good we are!” sentiment that I have deliberately led Brand Shepherd to “give back” privately. No fan fare, no marketing. Just giving to an organization or cause that we want to see thrive. The thing is, it sure would make for some nice blog posts to announce how great we are for “giving back!” So a good goal for the next five years is to continue giving back, but to continue doing so privately.

Wrap Up

Those are our 5 goals for the next 5 years. They are all big picture goals because the minutia changes too rapidly to chart a course for the next 12 months, never mind the next 60 months! Tomorrow’s final post is the telling of our startup story.

There’s a fine line to walk when making these lists. On the failure side, I did not want to come across as morose, and on the success side, I don’t want to come across as prideful to the point of arrogance. So I offer these as works-in-progress, and as I said when I ended the failure blog, I remain open to correction.

Here we go!

1. The risk is worth it. Every bit of it. What I value most is working from my home office where I get to interact with my kids throughout the day. I began this journey when Garrett was just 2 months old; he’s now 5 years old. To make it more interesting, God blessed us with Charlie a little over a year ago. I love getting to be a present and available dad in between projects throughout every day. The boys are a great source of creative injection. I know of some big design firms that hire specialists to teach employees how to play. I have a 5 and 1 year old who demand playtime of me, and I do so gladly. To be clear: Any job at any office in the world would be a severe downgraded lifestyle from what I have now. I am grateful to have this perspective now. It is what defines “success” for me.

And that’s just the quality of life side of it. The business side of it is so much more rewarding than the positions I held leading up to running Brand Shepherd. Andrea and I have learned that everything is richer when it’s your business – the successes, the failures, the gains, the losses. When we work with a business on a project we have a keen understanding that the quality of work we produce not only communicates their brand and business, but it also speaks to our reputation as a business and as individuals. The risk of self-employment is worth all the stress, all the uncertainty at times, all of the “you should get a real job” conversations with friends and family…it’s worth it all.

2. Good work will always be the product of collaboration. As I wrote in this week’s first post about our team, the work we do is a collaboration of a small group of trusted people. The sparks to everything are the business owners, brand managers, and suppliers we work with who entrust us to help bring their ideas to life. I have learned that the creative professional who wants total credit for his/her portfolio is not yet fully aware of what makes good work in this profession.

I’d like to add the video snippet below to my point here: Charlie Rose interviewing Quentin Tarantino on the topic of the creative process, and how to utilize collaboration. In this specific segment, Tarantino talks about the process of how he exports a vision in his head out to the people he leads and collaborates with. It’s a great way of talking about the creative process, how it is a collaboration process used to get to the best results.

3. Asking for honest feedback is a must to be successful. In the first post this week I mentioned a survey that we sent out to get feedback on how we are doing as a business. One thing I heard loud and clear was that the message of what we do had become diluted. To paraphrase one response: I am no longer sure what Brand Shepherd actually does…is it graphic design…social media…blogging…WordPress…what do you do these days?! Wow. Instantly I realized that the fruit of genuine efforts to provide the services our clients were/are asking for had yielded a message that we were the stereotypical “jack of all trades, master of none.” So we spent the summer honing in on what we love to do, and narrowed it down to 3 things: Brand Identity, Consumer Packaging, Websites (mobile-friendly is now assumed). These three things not only are what we love to create, but they happen to work together in ways that are very important to how people are discovering and buying right now. Keeping our message simple is something I now give a lot of attention to. We are working on this every week to try and make sure the message of what Brand Shepherd does is complete and clear. The benefit of this work is that it makes us better, successful communicators on for our clients.

4. Our choice to be self-funded remains a solid decision. No bank investment. No angels. No seed money. No spouse supplying the benefits and fallback income. 100% self-funded, truly bootstrapping makes everything a richer experience.

5. It’s good to be old fashioned. Even though technology supposedly connects us in ways like never before, my most successful relationships and experiences are with phone calls, in-person meetings, conversations over coffee, and to not be selling all the time. We have learned that treating the people we work with as we would want to be treated is a solid recipe for success. Don’t get me wrong – I’m a tech geek, but these first five years in business have taught me that when it comes to building solid business relationships, the “old fashioned” way of communicating is still the most successful way to do business.

Wrap Up

That concludes our list of lessons learned from successes and failures from these first five years in business. The next five are sure to teach more lessons – hopefully not the same lessons, though.

Tomorrow’s blog post deals with our future: 5 Goals For The Next 5 Years.

Here are 5 lessons learned from failure. I actually came up with 10, and I’ve listed those after the Top 5 list. These are offered in a spirit of contribution to the conversation of what it means to be a small business owner and leader. If these spark a conversation please head over to our contact page where you can either shoot us a message, or find the social media outlet of your liking to post comments there.

Let’s go!

1. Listen to intuition. Whether it’s about taking on projects, time needed for operations tasks, loss leader prospects, and the people I hire, I’ve learned the hard way that intuition exists for a reason.

2. There will be solitude. I have learned not to wait for a peer or friend to understand where I am going with my business plans. When going after the goal in my head, I have learned that waiting for the encouragement and validation from others as motivation is a complete waste of time. I have learned to press ahead, and others will understand later.

3. Help. I have learned to ask for help, even when it means the laying down of my ego.

4. Be smart, reasonable, and firm about payment and terms. Payment plans like 1/3–1/3–1/3 or 1/2–1/2 are not sustainable. I have learned to ask for an upfront deposit, then invoice every 30 days. I have also learned the value of communicating simple terms and conditions for all projects in every proposal we write. After learning from a few projects that went on for years, we now have things in place like an exit clause in the project terms when there has been no activity for more than 30 days. We also have in place plain-spoken terms on what penalties exist for late payment. The key is to be reasonable yet firm about how we want to conduct business.

5. Social media is a shiny object. Social media management is not what we do. It’s a shiny object, a really attractive friend of visual branding, but it’s not a primary vehicle for our clients yet. We are content creators, in the visual sense. We are exceptionally good at creating the stuff social media followers see and share – such as Facebook, Google+, and Twitter image covers, avatars, and sharable images. But in terms of managing a business’ social media? No. That’s not Brand Shepherd work.

Honorable mentions that didn’t make the Top 5 list:

• I work for money. I need to be less shy about where that leads. There’s a positive form of being shrewd.

• Say “no” more often to volunteer opportunities that don’t gel with my profession.

• Make a lot more phone calls instead of sending email. Saves time, gives tone to voice, and makes stronger connections.

• Starting work earlier in the day always leads to more productivity. Working at night is usually fraught with time wasters. Setting meeting time windows and being forward about it is good. I very rarely do morning meetings. Mornings are for billable time on projects. Afternoons are for meetings. That’s my law. Being self-disciplined is a positive attribute.

That’s our list of things learned from 5 years in business. It will be interesting to revisit this list at 10 and 15 years, and see if I was wrong about any of these. I am certainly open to correction, and to see what new lessons failure can teach me.

Tomorrow’s blog post is all about success: 5 Lessons Learned From Success.

We recently learned that longtime Brand Shepherd client, Wild Berry Incense, was featured on ION Television’s “World’s Greatest” program. Congrats to the owners and crew at Wild Berry for this great feature!

Brand Shepherd has worked with Wild Berry Incense on a number of projects including their Slim Packs and Happy Home Incense™.

• Today: Thank You + Meet The Team
• Tuesday: 5 Lessons Learned from Failure
• Wednesday: 5 Lessons Learned from Success
• Thursday: 5 Goals for the Next 5 Years
• Friday: Our Startup Story

Thank You

Before any of that gets started, though, we mark our 5th year in business with gratitude. For a lot of businesses the last five years have been very rocky, and some have had to close shop. The Great Recession provided uncertainty at best, and an unreasonable business environment at worst. Yet thanks to the people we work with, our little firm kept going, navigating our way around obstacles with loads of help from clients, peers, and friends.

So, thank you! To everyone who chose Brand Shepherd to work with, to everyone who referred us over and over, and to everyone who trusted us to build a brand shepherding relationship with your business: Thank you.

Andrea and I (Dan) are humbled when we think about it, and to be very honest with you, we thank God and pray for the people we work with and your businesses.

Meet The Team

In 2012 we sent out a survey to most of our clients and vendors to get a feel for how we are doing. The feedback was incredibly helpful. Thank you for everyone who took part in that survey.

One sentiment we heard several times was that a perception exists that Brand Shepherd is just me (Dan) with a company name for what I, alone, do. This couldn’t be further from reality, and it opened my eyes to a perception problem that I had created, since I am typically “the face” of the business. Given how hard we have worked to build a team of trusted and talented people over the years, fixing this perception became a top priority.

This website now features a page for our team, and on it you will see the four people who do the bulk of the work: John, Dylan, Andrea, and me. Brand Shepherd could not exist without these very valuable people working on everything we produce. While it’s true that I (Dan) am “the face” of the business, there’s a team working to produce great results. And in addition to these four, we have a few more designers, coders, and photographers whom we work with on many projects where a specialty skill or experience is needed.

The point is: Brand Shepherd is made up of a lot more than just me, and credit is due to the team that allows us to do what we do.

More!

Tomorrow’s blog in this series of 5 Blogs Over 5 Days To Mark 5 Years In Business (that’s a long title!) is all about failure.

If you’ve read this blog for a while you know failure is a topic I like to write about. How much an organization or person embraces and expects failure is a direct indicator of how much success will be embraced and expected. Tomorrow’s blog entitled “5 Lessons Learned From Failure” will cover what we’ve learned from our various failures so far.

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<a href=”http://thenounproject.com/noun/birthday-cake/#icon-No988″ target=”_blank”>Birthday Cake</a> designed by <a href=”http://thenounproject.com/grantwdesign” target=”_blank”>Grant Wilson</a> from The Noun Project

While WordPress has a solid base of functionality, everyone who uses it knows that plugins for WordPress make a decent website a great website.

A preface about our list:  The nature of plugins, like the web itself, is that they change. There is always a better shiny object being developed. The list below is our December 2012 roster of what we consider our must-have WordPress plugins. These are the plugins we install on nearly all websites we create. The next time we publish a WordPress plugins must-haves list, there will be new names, and possibly some replacements. We are not loyal to yesterday’s technology, so when something better comes along, we move on to the better solution. Thankfully, most of the plugins on this list know not to sit still too long, and are always improving. It’s part of the reason they made this list.

Website Security: Wordfence Security

Get it here.

As we’ve noted previously on this blog, our website had been hacked and infected with malware. If you talk with WordPress professionals you will hear that security is a hot topic. We like to create solutions for our clients that are huge success stories, but are also secure from hacks. A peer here in the Cincinnati area told us about Wordfence Security, and after looking through functionalities, we were very impressed. This plugin does everything we had been looking for and more. We were so impressed that we purchased a 5 seat license for our family of websites that we own, but the free version is great as-is. Tap or click the link above to see all of the features they include – too many to write here. Point is: If securing your website is a priority, this is the solution you may want.

Backups: WordPress Backup To Dropbox

Get it here.

“Why backup files for my website” you ask? It’s all about the big What If? Such as… what if my secure website is infected by something out of my control such as my hosting provider? What if that hosting provider has an outage? Smart people back up their stuff, and the stuff that makes up your website is worth backing up at regular intervals. This plugin takes two great technologies you’re using already (or should be), and makes them work together for your website’s benefit. At intervals you set, this plugin will back up all of your website files to a folder within your Dropbox setup. It. Is. Brilliant.

Contact Forms: Ninja Forms

Get it here.

The one thing WordPress doesn’t have baked into it as a core functionality are contact forms. This surprises a lot of our clients, and understandably so. It would not be surprising if WordPress added contact forms soon, similar to how they improved menus not long ago. Until then we look to plugins to get the job done, and we really enjoy using Ninja Forms. We find the Ninja Forms Lite plugin to meet our needs, but the full version could be a very useful tool for businesses and organizations that need to collect a lot of data. The two things we like about this plugin are 1.) All messages sent through this plugin reach us, and 2.) The user interface was created for people who are not coders. The other thing we like is the absence of CAPTCHA – you know, those annoying and ugly boxes that scramble two words that you have to type in for security. Ninja Forms lets you set a security question and answer such as a simple math problem. This keeps the spambots away.

Custom Fonts: Google Fonts

Get it here.

Until recently we were tied down to the same dozen or so boring fonts for all websites. Sure, a savvy developer could bake in a custom font into your website, but developers are not designers so the end result was usually awkward unless you had a large-ish agency working with you to tie it all together. Along came Google with their collection of web fonts, and soon thereafter, a WordPress plugin emerged to use these fonts on WordPress websites. This plugin is very easy to use, and allows full access to Google’s font collection to really make your website stand out, communicating your brand more accurately.

Theme Upgrades: Easy Theme and Plugin Upgrades

Get it here.

There is a great deal of cost-efficiency in using pre-developed WordPress themes for a website that a designer can simply re-brand using your branding assets (logo, images, colors, fonts, etc.). The downside to themes is that as WordPress pushes out an updates to the platform, all themes and plugins do likewise, and for good reason: Most updates are to make websites more secure. If you don’t know your way around an FTP, backing up your WordPress website can be a hassle. Since it’s best that you back up your website before an upgrade to a theme, some businesses hire a coder to do this quick task for them. That is, until this plugin came along. This plugin backs up your website, places a zipped version of it in your Media folder, and the updates your theme and/or plugin(s) automatically. It’s a really handy plugin that saves time while getting your website updates so as to be secure.

And that’s our list…for now. Know that as this list evolves, we’ll post again to let you know what we are discovering to be the must-have WordPress plugins.

2012 Crask Family Holiday Portrait

Reminder: Unless otherwise noted, all blog posts are written by Dan Crask, creative director for Brand Shepherd.

Mid-to-late November in my home means that it’s time for a family Christmas photo. In years past we have done this candidly with a tripod and a lot of patience. This time last year we had a barely one-month old, and a four year old. So this year when we learned of a big box retailer’s free family photo session (plus free 8×10), we decided to check it out.

After a long afternoon of waiting for our turn with our 1 year and 5 year olds, we were anxious to see the photos after the boys were in bed for the night.

We plopped down on the couch with our tablet and smartphone, ready to see the photos on the retailer’s website. Our fatigue was met with frustration when, upon logging in, we saw that they did not have a tablet nor mobile optimized website, and they still use Flash for their galleries.

Turns out this retailer is part of the majority of retailers when it comes to not being tablet- and mobile-ready for their consumers.

MarketingLand.com has a very informative post about how a reportedly 7% of retailers have tablet-friendly websites. I advise anyone reading this to head over to that article and read the stats about conversions and average order value by device. It is beyond puzzling as to why so few retailers have not yet realized that this is not a trend – it’s an expectation.

In our case we ended up shelving the photo hunt until late afternoon of the following day, and by then we were not nearly as eager to buy photos. I can’t say for certain, but my hunch is that had we been met with a tablet-friendly website where we could view our photos, share them on social media, and order prints we would have loaded up.

According to the report we are fairly typical consumers:

According to Magento 79 percent (as of Q2) of large retailers don’t have mobile (including tablet) optimized sites. Consumers aren’t waiting around for retailers; if they encounter bad mobile (and tablet) experiences they’ll simply “move on.”

After being underwhelmed by the experience, then talking about it on social media, I learned that two of my local pals are photographers who are willing to shoot my family for free. We will still shop at the store where we had photos taken, but based on the photo experience I believe they lost my wife and I as photo customers.

It’s important that retailers stop waiting for the perfect storm, and get into the game by creating a simple and engaging web experience that consumers can have regardless of device.