Project Insider: Bishop Beale from Covenant Communications on Vimeo.

A locally owned and operated commercial real estate advisory firm, BishopBeale specializes in the Central Florida market, offering its clients decades of local experience and honest advice.

Why they came:

Combining 40 years of experience, Billy Bishop and Mike Beale joined forces last year to offer Orlando local expertise, unrivaled customer service, and successful strategies to take their clients’ commercial investments to the next level. But they needed a marketing partner who could help them do the same for their own business. Enter Covenant. As a full-service marketing firm, we set to work, scoping out the details of a marketing plan that would develop their brand, message and website, and the individual elements of each that would be used to best deliver them to their target audience.

What we did for them:

We kicked off the project by meeting with Mike, Billy and their marketing director, Caroline Miller. We asked them thought-provoking questions to determine what they were looking to accomplish, how they planned to do it and how they wanted to be perceived by the public. They wanted a logo and brand identity design that would establish them as the one-stop shop for all of their clients’ realty needs. Although they wanted to maintain their strong local roots, they also wanted to show that they have the expertise to branch out on a national level. So we set out to do just that through the development of the following:

• Brand Identity: Before beginning the project, we asked Mike and Billy to fill out a creative brief, with a series of questions that would help us narrow in on what they were looking for. They wanted something contemporary and current, but that would still look professional. We met with them in person to discuss their answers and to make sure we were heading in the right direction. From there, we were able to present them with 20 logo concepts, from which they chose one to make revisions to. After arriving on a final logo, we incorporated it into a brand board, so that the client could see how it would look built out into several of their key pieces, like a brochure or a realty sign. Next, we built out stationery and e-signatures, so that the look and feel of the brand would be used consistently in everything they sent out to the public. We then outlined all of these pieces in a brand book, to assure that the brand rules are followed company wide and put everyone on the same page.
• Message: Now that we had the look and feel of the brand established, we still needed to nail down a message that would explain clearly and concisely who they are and what they do. And who better to answer those questions than the principals of the company themselves? So we conducted interviews with Mike and Billy, asking them questions that would define why BishopBeale isn’t just a real estate advisory firm in Orlando. It is the real estate advisory firm in Orlando. After coming up with a clear message that everyone was happy with, we turned this basic information into a one-page sales sheet that they could hand out to current or potential clients.
• Web: We started by thinking through the navigation, and creating a blueprint of what we thought the architecture of the site should look like. We reorganized the content, placing the “Properties” page first, since selling and leasing properties is the driving force behind their business. For each property, users can view an image, description, PDF, and a map of where it’s located. Putting ourselves in the shoes of the user, we wanted to put all of the information they’d be looking for right at their fingertips. Since a homepage is the doorway to any website, we wanted to set a good first impression right from the start. So we created cool features and effects, like making the “b” icon in the logo bounce when you mouse over it. Or adding a “b” symbol in the navigation that indicates which page you’re on. And, to make sure the content never gets stale, we added a featured property and testimonial section that would generate new content every time you hit refresh.

To solidify BishopBeale as a leader in its industry, we wanted to take things one step further. So we created a map that could be viewed from the homepage to show users the location of every available property by category. It even gives users a short description of each when you click on a pinpoint.

Check out the live site at http://www.bishopbeale.com

Design

Serenity Towers turned to Covenant Communications to create a custom website design to market its 55+ residential community overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. We wanted to incorporate the warm, inviting flavors of the beach and the Florida lifestyle to the site while also ensuring that relevant information was easy to find. The Serenity brand has great colors and a great style, and we wanted to incorporate various aspects of the brand identity into the site design. Additionally we wanted to incorporate a typeface that meshed with the overal look and feel, and chose the Neutra type family which is both contemporary and formal.

Our initial two comps were very different, one which was very open and featured lots of beach elements, and another which featured more “island” elements. The client appreciated both styles but chose the first concept because it displayed more of the Serenity brand elements and brand ideas. We went through a couple of rounds of revisions, and worked to simplify content and elements as much as possible to ensure optimal usability and visual design.

User Experience

The Serenity Towers website serves as both a marketing tool and information resource for its residents. We paid special attention to the user-experience for this older audience, providing plenty of visual space so that information was easy to read and easy to access. We wanted to ensure that the client’s target market was able to experience life at Serenity Towers while also having enough information to make an informed decision.

Marketing for Results

At Covenant, we design websites from a marketing perspective. So through visual design and through optimizing user experience, Covenant’s goal was to help Serenity Towers bring affordable living to more seniors while increasing occupancy and profitability for Elevation Financial Group. Care was given to incorporate strategic keywords and tags for search engine optimization. And, the installation and monitoring of Google Analytics equips the King brothers to get daily views of their return on investment.

Covenant Project Insider: Serenity Towers Web from Covenant Communications on Vimeo.

Project Info

Creative Director: Justin Ramb
Account Executive: Kristin Davis
Lead Designer: Jason VanLue

However, “new” sites only stay “new” for so long. And with the start of the New Year, we decided it was time for Imagine to make some big changes. We brainstormed ways to not only make the design more contemporary, but to also make it more user-friendly. Within just a few clicks, we wanted users to be able to find the tour information they wanted, from itineraries and what to pack to pricing and departure dates. We also created pages just for tour hosts, and another for individuals, providing them with a quick snapshot of everything they need to know before venturing on their journey.

The site’s design also underwent a major facelift, but we still kept the focus on its biggest selling point: Its breathtaking photographs. We took a landscape picture of Greece and faded it in the background of the homepage, and added rotating images on top of it with fun facts about each country where the picture was taken. We also added rotating flash World clocks on the homepage, which tell you what time it is in Los Angeles, Chicago, Athens and Israel … in case you were wondering. And for those that like to be their own personal tour guide, we added the capability to watch video clips taken on the tours, as well as to enjoy photo galleries from each tour.

The Imagine site is the second best way to get acclimated with a country, second only to visiting it yourself. Imagine riding in your own personal gondola underneath the bridges of Venice, taking in the sights, sounds and scents. But you don’t have to imagine it. Bring your own travel experience to life by visiting ittworld.com.

With 270 million cell phone users in the U.S., brands and advertisers can no longer wait to engage their consumers by going mobile. The speed at which M technology is evolving is impressive. Yes, we admit you will need a glossary to do some research and understand the insider lingo. But then again, that’s what you have us for!

Ultimately the hope is to have more web-like experiences for the consumer on their mobile devices. The best mobile marketing efforts provide consumers with value, whether for fun or need. We think the best mobile apps are the simplest ones to use. Like Barnes and Noble providing consumers with the ability to snap a photo of a book cover with their phone (perhaps from a friend’s bookcase) and upload for photo recognition and voila – an online purchase is completed (before dinner is even served). It doesn’t have to be transactional in nature, think of all those relational connections that can be made when your prospective client is in the mood and has the technology at their fingertips.

Currently, Covenant is developing a mobile site for our longtime client Interlachen Pediatrics.  Oh yeah, M is a good thing!

Arguably the most noticeable change will be in the markup itself. Rather than rely on div tags for basic site framework, HTML 5 will introduce tags such as header, footer, nav, section and aside, among others. While not a huge advance from an end-product standpoint, these tags will offer much cleaner semantic markup and aid search engine crawlers in correctly indexing a site.

While most online media players rely on a proprietary third-party technology such as Flash or Silverlight, HTML 5 is working to create standardized video and audio tags for this content. While there is no set codec as of yet (the major browsers have been unable to reach consensus), an example is available for HTML 5 capable browsers at www.youtube.com/html5.

Other notable features on the horizon include native drag and drop, self-validating user input and forms, and a much smaller doctype declaration.

Although new elements haven’t been implemented evenly across all modern browsers, some sites are getting a jump start on the new markup: html5gallery.com

Other Resources:
HTML 5 Working Draft
What a site in CSS 3 and HTML 5 will look like

Orlando Health is one of Florida’s most comprehensive healthcare networks and they’re also one of our super cool clients. Their facilities are comprised of Orlando Regional Medical Center, Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center Orlando, Dr. P. Phillips Hospital and South Seminole Hospital. Orlando Health works hard to stay on the cutting-edge of medicine and they work with us to keep them on the cutting-edge of web technology.

Last year, we were given the privilege of assisting Orlando Regional Healthcare in making the transition to their new name, Orlando Health. We updated each of the facilities’ logos, color schemes, photos, text and Flash mastheads. This year we were honored to help them establish a more permanent and sustainable web presence as Orlando Health.

Each of the 6 facilities’ sites, the main Orlando Health site and the Media site, were given a complete overhaul on the front-end (the side the user sees) and the back-end (the side the administrator uses to maintain the front-end).

On the front-end, the sites were upgraded from a screen resolution of 800×600 to 1024×768. This change opened up the layout and instantly made the pages feel less cluttered. Imagine keeping the furniture in your living room, but increasing the space by about 30 percent. That’s essentially what we did. Each website kept the content from the previous site, but was arranged in a bigger and more open space. We also created all new Flash mastheads to fit the new, wider pages. Each of the facilities has their own masthead to set the tone for that site. All of the banner ads, footers, and other design elements were updated as well.

Most users won’t be able to put their finger on some of the other front-end changes, but they’re reaping the benefits. Search results are more tailored. Sub-navigation is easily recognizable, expandable and collapsible. Important news and features are displayed more prominently. Users can access the other facilities’ sites from multiple locations. In a word, the new sites are just plain… friendly.

On the back-end, the content management system was created from the ground up with the latest and greatest platform. Pages can be easily updated, sent for internal review and approved. Banner ads can be set to expire and auto-filled with the next banner ad in cue. Navigation can be reordered with the click of a mouse. The content management system was custom-built to suit the needs of Orlando Health now and grow with them as they grow.

Can you do all that iPhone 3G S? I didn’t think so. (but for a phone, you’re pretty rad, so I’ll keep ya around)

A few ways we helped spiff up their site was we took their current content and reorganized it to make it more user-friendly while also updating their content management system. We modernized the look of the site and even used pictures of some of their patients for the Flash homepage banner. We feel like, as Covenant Communications has grown and matured through the years, Interlachen has been right there with us. We are proud to unveil their newly updated Web site and hope you’ll be seeing more Interlachen/Covenant collaborations in the future.

www.intpeds.com

www.ferran-services.com

The purpose of the site is to be a place where pastors can come for inspiration, encouragement, fellowship, practical help, tools and resources for growing a healthy church.

The site was in beta testing while icons and color schemes were pinned down and analysis was completed. It is now officially launched and we couldn’t be prouder.

Saddleback team, thanks for letting us take a part in the great work you’re doing! Oh, and thanks for the conference calls that left us with sore cheeks from so much laughter. Is it still called “work” if you enjoy every minute of it?