Our thoughts from our unique blend of philosophers, artists, educators, musicians, scientists and poets

Looking for a new web development agency to take over the maintenance of your website? We'll leverage our technical expertise with content management systems (Drupal, Kentico) and service-oriented project management to ensure a smooth transition maintaining and supporting your site. We currently manage multiple national web site applications and global websites on a multi-year, annual retainer including monthly traffic and lead reporting, web site enhancements, search optimization, copy changes, security patches, module updates, and API adjustments – in multiple languages. We re-evaluate our clients' needs regularly to stay aligned and on target with their expectations, and we would take the same care with you.

Our clients come to us for our website maintenance services, technical know-how, web analytics reporting and insights, and UX expertise, but they stay for the timely and resourceful support. We love what we do, and it shows! We're not afraid to suggest ideas, and we're proactive when it comes to updates and security patches. 

To get started, our web developers will conduct a code review to understand the inner workings of your code, content management system, functionality, and identify any custom code sections or areas of risk. Most sites lack adequate documentation, so a code review is a good way for us to identify any immediate action items such as module updates or security patches, and gets us familiar with your content, taxonomy, site structure, and maintenance patterns. From here, we'll build a website maintenance package (a combination of flat fee and hourly) to align with your particular needs. 

Contact us about our website maintenance services!

We're curious creative problem solvers who love to plan! Thanks to strategy team who coined the phrase "thinker-doers" to best describe us. We not only think through your marketing strategy, but also how we would execute your marketing plan in alignment with your organization's business and marketing goals. As a result, our digital marketing plans often include creative ideas outside of marketing – we can't help ourselves.

So, how do we do it? It's through a combination of our coveted marketing workshop, in-depth user experience research, stakeholder interviews, competitive analysis, and secondary research. We help uncover your organization's untapped intrinsic value and reveal new digital marketing strategies, brand positioning, key messages, content marketing tactics to better demonstrate thought leadership, and untapped opportunities for your business to thrive. 

Let our agency help you transform your organization and leverage technology in new and innovative ways through an actionable digital marketing strategy. Request a proposal today.

We are starting 2010 with a bang by being featured in the business section of today's Chicago Tribune. The article, "Small Businesses See Good Omens for 2010," talks to small business owners anticipating new opportunities and significant growth in the coming year. In addition to a few key quotes, the Tribune also took a photo of us in the office during construction. I love that during this "economic time," the news is printing stories of hope, optimism, and growth. And I am honored to be a part of that story. Thank you Ann Meyer for such a great article!

It was a fun morning waking up to a series of emails from friends and family that had seen the paper before I did. And the best phone call was from my grandparents (ages 87 and 88) who not only had a copy for themselves, but asked all their neighbors for theirs so now they have a collection of their "famous granddaughter." I have an incredible family, and am so grateful that my grandparents have not only seen the birth of my two children, but the growth of Sandstorm as well. My grandma asked me today what we do at Sandstorm, so I explained that we build web sites and interactive web applications, then gave her an example of what an interactive web application is. After a few silent moments, she finally said "so you work on computers?"

Sometimes at Sandstorm your day at the office is nothing like your job description. Here's a few people that have contributed in big ways this week. I really appreciate that all of these things got done without a hitch. (deep sigh of pure appreciation for your random talents and strengths)

- Thank you Alma for stuffing, sorting, organizing our mailing list, buying stamps and mailing all of our holiday cards. And an extra thanks for going to IKEA with a fever and cold so we could get our furniture delivered this week!
- Thank you Zachary for building all of our IKEA furniture.
- Thank you Jon for moving all of the heavy bookshelves across the office floor.

I am positive that I miss opportunities to thank people every day, but I will work on that as a new year's resolution :)

Merry Christmas to all and to all a half day! The Chicago Tribune was here to shoot some photos of the office for an upcoming story in January, and the painters are finishing up some of the trim. They got some great shots of our sweeping plastic drape and cluttered space. We've got the holiday shopping spirit and are doing some group online shopping at IKEA to get new desks, conference room tables, and chairs.

Our plan is to take down the curtain on Monday to do our formal unveil of the new addition, and of course we'll have photos! We're taking a half day today to start the holiday weekend early, so Merry Christmas everyone!

Our new neighboring space was painted today (woo hoo!), and has such a creative, fun, lofty yet still marketing and interactive agency look to it. The old walls were gray and electric blue, which was interesting, but didn't have our more signature sandstorm look. Plus the gray made me sad, so I just love the new shade of blond that replaced it.

In addition, we are introducing "the fishbowl". It's one of two new huddle rooms with tons of glass windows, with interior walls painted blue, so it kind of feels like you are in a fishbowl when you are working in it. It's going to be great to reduce the sound of the trains on conference calls, and is a great brainstorming room. Jon is donating some old floor lamps for ambiance. Thanks Jon!

And I can't forget our newest lunchroom. Ah... no more having to clean up the conference room or usability lab last minute because a group decided to grab lunch together, and leave random things behind. Now we have a large, bright space that will probably always have hot sauce packets on the table or tables - we haven't decided if we want a few smaller tables or one big one.

So right before Christmas we're going to get just the greatest gift... A new and improved, much larger space for 2010! Thank you to my fabulous and dedicated staff and to our clients for making this possible as we continue to grow as one of Chicago's emerging boutique interactive agencies. :)

Here at Sandstorm, we take being creative and interactive pretty seriously. Even our holiday party is interactive and ultra creative, but I don't mean the technically-savvy, online kind of interactive. We share tapas for hours, play "dirty santa" and have developed our own traditions... All staff and significant others are invited to a tapas feast at Cafe Ba Ba Reeba (open bar, open table of unlimited tapas - this year we had 8 plates of bacon wrapped dates . We get our own room now because we kind of need it so we don't bother the other patrons).

Anyone who wants to play buys a gift and wraps it up all fancy. My gift wrapping ability is poor, so I blamed it on my 3 year old son. Anyway, gifts are piled on a table while we sip sangria, scope out the size/shape/wrapping of the gifts, and prepare to draw numbers to see who gets to go first. Number 1 goes first, and gets to select any gift from the table. He/she opens it, and then the second person gets to either steal #1's gift, or make a new selection. This process of swapping and unwrapping goes until all the gifts are open. Then #1 gets to see everything and get the gift of their choice. Holly has some how been #1 two years in a row... hmm. 

Somehow along the way we all manage to eat hundreds of tapas, and still have room for desert. Due to everyone's schedules, we have our holiday party on a Sunday night. So we give everyone the day off that Monday. Yep, a free Monday during the holiday shopping season. This year we had it over Thanksgiving so everyone got 5 day weekends. And we might just add that to the tradition next year. The coolest part about being a small company is that we can build traditions, and we learn each year how to make them even better. Happy Holidays everyone! And to my staff, thank you for an incredible and memorable holiday party 2009!

It's a major breakthrough moment for us. The tenants next door to our office are moving out this month. This is pretty exciting. This is our chance! This is our moment... to break into that space and commit to our explosive growth. It's our opportunity to embrace change, and start to design the newly added space. (which is the really fun part). So I am printing out floor plans of our current loft office and of the office next door for all of the staff to draw up what kind of space they need as we continue to grow.

Do we finally need a full lunchroom? Do we need a game room? A creative brainstorm room outside of our kind of cool conference room. Someone mentioned huddle rooms? Do we need quiet rooms? Or maybe a nicer place for the fantastic contractors we know and love so they don't have to work so close to the microwave and micro their brain waves out...

When we moved into this space 2 years ago I always envisioned that we would knock out part of the wall and make a curved archway into the new space. But after visiting the layout, I think the entire wall is going to have to go to really break through. My friend Ron told me that companies are the most efficient after a move, I'll let him know how it goes.

We made the list - the top 21 list that is! We are so proud to be in Brill Street's Top 50 Generation Y Employers Chicago. Yep, we're #21 (hence the top 21 list). And they wrote a nice bio about our company on their site that really exemplifies who we are as a company, and what it's like to work with us, and for us. They even mentioned our guacamole contest! This recognition means a lot to me - and has easily become one of my favorite highlights of owning a business for the past 11 years. I am honored and proud that Sandstorm is a company and has a culture that people want to work for. That's why I started Sandstorm, to build a place that I would want to work at too.

The Client: National Association of REALTORS, Real Estate Buyer’s Agent Council (REBAC)

The Goal: Create a user-friendly web site that addresses the needs of multiple user groups.

The Solution: After conducting usability testing, user research, and establishing personas, we identified what type of information the different user groups required, and what features and functionality they were looking for. We designed a clean web site design and navigation that organized information by user group, and tested the navigation to ensure key tasks could be completed with ease. Important information and tasks were called to attention in the form of graphic callouts to engage users and ensure that they found what they were looking for. Cool blues and greens were added to round out their color palette, and subtle textures were incorporated throughout the design to add dimension. A coordinating advertising campaign, brochure, and tradeshow were launched in conjunction with the new site to drive traffic to the site and brand REBAC consistently across all mediums.