Think clearly. Think creatively. Think Blue.

We’re very excited to welcome Eric Gilseth, the newest member of our team, who brings a great deal of strategic thought-leadership to his role as a Senior Account Executive. His career has led him to work with clients such as Visa, MasterCard, Meta Payment Systems and the National Marrow Donor Program and we’re thrilled to have him on board.

Google Analytics currently offers analytics for new and returning visitors but none relating to customers unless advanced segments are applied.

Defining customer loyalty as the retainment of customers, it is possible to create an advanced segment to identify the number of new or returning visitors who make a purchase. This will make it easier to gauge how well a site attracts its customers back to the site. 

The countdown continues to the Minnesota chapter of the American Market Association's Annual Conference, occuring Tuesday, November 10th at the St. Paul River Centre.

Azul 7 launched a new website in late September. The website is only one manifestation of the growth in staff and clients that we have been fortunate to experience. Most recently, Eric Gilseth joined the team. Even more rewarding has been the opportunity to contribute to and see our clients' growth. To provide Azul 7 friends with a glimpse into our evolution over the past two years, Leah and I put our intern-heads together to compile a short video.

These memories were a lot of fun to compile since—both of us being new to Azul 7—we got to see how everything started. And even more fun (for us anyway), we saw how Chris’s hair color showed an inverse relationship with the company’s growth. (Just teasing, Chris!). Hope you enjoy the video.

Thanks to Jim Poole and the staff at the James J. Hill for hosting us this morning as part of their social media series.

Thanks to everyone who attended for great questions and feedback.

Every year, the MN AMA (Minnesota chapter of the American Marketing Association) Annual Conference brings together over 300 marketing professionals from around the Twin Cities and beyond. This year's event, on Tuesday, November 10th at the RiverCentre in St. Paul, provides an outstanding opportunity to network with other marketing professionals, participate in small-group breakout sessions and learn from exclusive keynote speakers. If you haven't already registered, visit the conference website to 'get in the game'.

As a part of the CareerOneStop website team, Azul 7 is proud to announce winning a 2009 Tekne Award in the IT-Software & Hardware, Communications and Infrastructure category.

Lisa Helminiak, partner at Azul 7, will present on online social media business success on November 4th at the JJ Hill Library. Helminiak will explain the shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content caused by social media. Click here to register. 

Yes, why is that? This question was prompted after reading a Smashing Magazine blog post about usability and web design. One of the suggestions was to “follow conventions” by placing website features in similar locations or presenting them in a similar manner to enable visitors to predict and access content easier. An example given was highlighting links in blue, or at the least, displaying them in a contrasting color from the font surrounding it. This is all well and good, but returning to the main question, during one of my many wanderings on the internet, I went to see if there is indeed a story behind this internet norm.

It turns out that blue was likely first used since it was the darkest color next to black that was available on early versions of browsers…I was expecting something more significant too…

It is intriguing though to think about what motivates our daily actions and whether those actions makes sense. In this case, by default links were initially blue, and now taking into consideration usability, most—if not all—links will continue to be that color. (It could have been worse, though, like the color of mustard after it has been mixed with ketchup…)

Information on the origin of blue links can be credited to a blog post by professor Anders Fagerjord.

The Smashing Magazine blog post can be viewed here.