DMR #32: Jeff White – Is it important for your content marketing to be beautiful?

David:    Is it important for your content marketing to be beautiful?  How does good design impact conversion rates?  Should most businesses be developing their own app?  Those are just three of the questions that I intend to ask today’s special guest, Jeff White.  Jeff, welcome to DMR.

Jeff White
Jeff White

Jeff:    Thanks very much for having me, David.

David:    Thanks for joining us.  Jeff is that odd dichotomy, a creative who could also think in code.  Nearly 11 years ago, Jeff founded Kula Partners, a boutique agency specializing in design, development, and inbound marketing.  Jeff, 11 years is a long time in digital marketing.  How much has your marketing ethos changed over that period?

Jeff:    I think everything has changed in that period since.  It’s quite incredible.  I originally got into building websites in 1994.

David:    Wow

Jeff:    The early era, pre-Netscape even.  Just to see the progression of what we’ve gone through and the development of web standards, mobile, and everything else, the whole thing has changed.  I think as I’ve matured and as our firm has matured over the last decade or so, we’ve really started to look at putting in place metrics, and measurement, and just getting a better understanding of what’s working, what’s not, and where we’re going to go from there, and also how we do things for our clients as well.

It’s a really different world even from five or six years ago when we were all just really excited to be getting on Twitter.  It’s a really different time now.  I think, these days, it’s not just a matter of being part of it or having a profile.  It’s a matter of what you’re doing with it and how are you helping your prospective customers, and bringing value to the internet as a whole, I guess.

David:    1994, were you actually designing websites for other people back then or were you just experimenting with things yourself?

Jeff:    No, I was actually a couple of years away from graduating from design school.  We had clients from other universities like engineering departments.  I think the first website that I ever built for somebody else was for a wind-powered car that a local university team was putting together to take to a competition.  We branded it and built the website for that, but yeah.  I still have it on a disc somewhere.