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Custom Packaging Design

Posted on June 29, 2012 by Daniel Arriola

You’re at the grocery store looking for laundry detergent, and your go to brand is sold out. There are two comparable substitutes sitting side-by-side on a shelf, but you’re not familiar with either. Which one do you buy? More likely than not, the one that does the best job conveying both quality and value. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably thinking that you’re going to be stuck with whichever one you decide to buy for the next couple of months, so you might end up focusing more on mitigating your opportunity cost than finding something you love.

Whether you realize it or not, packaging gives form. And like any other marketing medium, its function is to help move consumers further along in the buying cycle by shaping perception, working as a tool for differentiation and, in the end, reassuring buyers that their purchase decision is the right one at both the point of sale and every time the product is used afterwards. Though prospective buyers might not know it, they want to be motivated because most, if not all, of their buying decisions are based on information sought out actively and passively.

The process begins with our perception of external stimuli. Marketers and retailers understand that perception can influence our behavior without our conscious knowledge, so they create products and stores, specifically, to maximize consumer spending. To learn more about this aspect of retail, check out our entry on “The Psychology of Advertising” here.

In order for us to efficiently function in this crowded environment, we choose to perceive certain stimuli while ignoring others. This is called “selectivity.” Selectivity lets us focus our attention on cues that provide meaning, while filtering out noise, so as not to waste our finite resources processing irrelevant information. “Thin slicing” is a term psychologists use to describe our capacity to make decisions quickly with minimal information. By and large, thinking is unanimously described as a conscious effort. Thin slicing more closely represents an instinctive behavior.

When faced with a new buying situation, a consumer will typically form a decision for choosing a product based on the information on or around the product, as well as the packaging itself, somewhere in the ballpark of two to four seconds. Generally speaking, shopping is a low-involvement, low-priority event that requires little or no mental or emotional investment, so packaging design should serve to connect the dots between a problem, or want, and a solution.

So what should you do to make your abbreviated sales pitch more memorable?

Consider how you might highlight your product’s image. What qualities set it apart from its competitors? What qualities make it better than any of its countless substitutes? Additional considerations should include your consumer’s involvement level, any possible time constraints and/or characteristics that spread across the aggregate.

Your packaging isn’t any different than a full-page advertisement for your company, more so for that particular product. It’s the vehicle that converts your brand’s identity, its positioning and your company’s culture into something tangible. So yes, it should be taken pretty seriously because a high-quality product coupled with high-quality packaging design conveys excellence, which translates into value in your buyer’s mind.

If you don’t know where to start, consider contacting a professional. As it happens, Bravo Design, Inc. does custom packaging design and has a proven track record doing so for entertainment and consumer packaged goods. Packaging is your first interaction with a customer. We recommend you put your best foot forward.

Photo credit: Kitsune Noir, Jesse Kirsch

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Actionable Metrics vs. Vanity Metrics

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Daniel Arriola

Throughout advertising’s history, drawing a line from a traditional asset to a sale has been notoriously difficult, but the Internet changed that. Early on, it offered a distinct advantage over its older, offline predecessors: measurability. But despite the enormous progress made, measurement is still one of the major challenges facing both the industry and business owners. Unfortunately, the majority of data made readily available by analytics packages are vanity metrics that scrutinize at a superficial level. They’re useful in the right context and will tell you if your site is engaging or not and how visitors interact with it. But vanity metrics don’t necessarily correlate to more important numbers like cost of new customers acquisition, lifetime value, revenues and profits nor do they affect overall marketing or business goals. Vanity metrics are only focused on because they look great in press releases. The analytics that entrepreneurs should be more concerned with are actionable metrics that help them make decisions.

Think about your most recent website traffic report. What have you done with that? Do you know what drove those visitors to your page? Do you know what actions to take next or how to leverage that traffic? A business that only cares about its daily hit count is the same as a store that only cares about the number of people who come through its doors but not necessarily that they purchase anything. Generally speaking, marketers and advertisers tend to believe that whatever they were working on that immediately precedes a spike in traffic (i.e., new products, promotions or policy) probably caused it. We infer causation from correlation. We aren’t, however, quick to jump on the sword when the numbers go back down. The reality is that a response to a marketing program may often be the result of the cumulative effects of an entire campaign rather than a response to a single advertisement or promotion.

Moving forward, goals should be reoriented not just to validate that you’ve built something people want but also to confirm that your efforts to grow your business are fruitful and paying dividends. This is where you establish and define your product’s unique value proposition. So what should you be focus on instead? Listed below are ways to finding metrics you can act on that will impact your bottom line.

Not everyone who comes to your website will make a purchase or complete your designated call-to-action. That’s a given. Conversion funnels reveal when or where visitors drop-off and are used to mitigate this on a page-by-page basis. An analysis of visitor flow path diagnoses the problems that derail conversion, leading to improved usability and/or the implementation of more effective calls-to-action at each step of the way. Remember that users will almost always opt for the path of least resistance so make it easier by simplifying the process for them. The only problem is that they don’t track long lifecycle events, and almost all of them use a reporting period where events generated in that period are aggregated across all users skewing numbers at the fringes of the funnel.

That’s where cohort analysis comes in. This involves segmenting your users into smaller groups, using shared common characteristics or experiences within a defined period, to compare against one another. As an example, let’s say that you’re wanting to increase sales on an application on the Android Market. To do so, you group together users who download the free demo on week one, those on week two, those on week three and so forth. From there, you might find that of the first group, X% went on to purchase the application. Of the second group, Y% made purchases. Of the third group, Z% went on to make theirs. At that point, you’re able to evaluate any changes made which correlate back to your results and fine tune from there. This prevents influxes in traffic due to blog updates, PR/advertising, your competitors or extraneous variables from skewing your numbers.

In A/B split-tests, you have two versions of an element and a metric that defines success. To determine which is better, say it’s a new homepage layout, you randomly split your website traffic between two groups and measure their performance based on visitor flow, bounce rate and/or whether or nor your designated call-to-action is satisfied. At the end of testing, you can select the version that performs best for real-life use. Split testing is effective because it definitively confirms or denies if changes in layout, copy, design, etc. are beneficial not.

Figuring out which metrics to use, and which ones to discard, is difficult because every business is different, and the process is one that iterates itself over and over again. The best solution for you is the one that works best for your customers and/or users so don’t assume too much upfront. Measure what matters. It’s easy to think that more reports is better, but it’s not. The key is to have as few as possible. When in doubt, remember that users seek out sites in a goal-oriented fashion (e.g., to learn more about a company, to sign up for a newsletter and/or to shop). Provide a great first experience, and they might just come back and make a purchase.

If you have questions or comments, please feel free to leave them in the fields below. To learn more about how Bravo Design, Inc. can contribute to your growing business, click here or fill out a contact form by here.

Photo credit: Doug Savage of www.savagechickens.com

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Klout

Posted on May 3, 2012 by skulkaew

First and foremost, to those of you who have been checking this blog regularly over the course of the last few months, we want to say thank you. It’s been a goal of ours to provide resources that help small to mid-sized business owners, marketers and designers run their businesses as best as they can. If you think we’ve been successful there, do us a favor and let us know. Conversely, if there are things we can improve on, feel free to drop us a line. We’d like to hear what you have to say.

Last spring, Sam Fiorella interviewed at a marketing agency in Toronto. With 15 years of experience consulting for major brands like AOL, Ford and Kraft, Fiorella was confident in his qualifications. But during the interview, he was caught by surprise when he was asked about his Klout score. Fiorella initially hesitated before eventually confessing that he didn’t know what a Klout score was. The person conducting the interview pulled up the webpage for the service, that purports to measure users’ online influence on a scale from 1 to 100 based on “the ability to drive action,” and turned the monitor so that Fiorella could see the result for himself. His score was a modest 34. While the average score is at or around 20, the company ultimately ended up hiring someone with a score of 67.

Klout is an algorithmic system that purports itself as the “standard for influence.” It’s calculated using variables that includes follower count, frequency of updates, the Klout scores of your friends and followers as well as the number of likes and shares your updates receive. And if you have a public Twitter account, you’ve been assigned a Klout score. That is unless you’ve opted out on the website.

Before you start worrying, Klout might not be the accurate representation it’s hyped up to be, and it can be manipulated. To put the scoring distribution into perspective, Warren Buffett has a 34. President Obama has a 93, and Justin Bieber is the one person with the full-score of 100. By Klout’s measure, the Oracle from Omaha and the leader of the free world each have less influence than the 18-year-old pop star, which can’t be right.

But maybe more importantly, outside of marketers, most people probably don’t know what Klout is. And for those who do, many of them just don’t care. When it comes down to it, if a prospective employer is reluctant or unwilling to hire you because of your score, you probably don’t want to work there anyway.

So if it’s not everything and making major decisions solely on it is silly, why mention it at all?

Because we all benefit from ranking signals. PageRank helps us find better data by tallying inbound hyperlinks that act as votes of confidence. AuthorRank carries attributes based on trust and authority. Trending subjects reveal the most talked about topics in real time. None of these social graphs, Klout included, is perfect, but they do help us make sense out of all the noise around us.

Additionally, businesses can use Klout Perks to measure their social media success. Klout and its partners offer rewards, better known as perks, for third party products and services based on score, expertise, location, etc. This most often takes shape in gift cards and free samples. Brands like Virgin America, Audi, Red Bull, along with 3,000 some odd applications and partners, use the program to prioritize, segment and engage influencers who will subsequently create thousands of pieces of user-generated content and millions of impressions for a brand’s new product, initiative or campaign. They do so conceptually at least.

So should you use Klout? It’s really up to you. Everyone uses and leverages social media differently. Some have a larger reach than others, and each has varying degrees of authority on disparate topics. If you do decide to, remember to take it with a grain of salt.

Beyond the metrics, the goal of building, or optimizing, a web presence should be to complement existing marketing and sales efforts. James Howe may have summarized it best when he said, “Popularity may mean someone has influence, but you definitely don’t need to be popular to have influence. Connecting with one person or a small group can change a neighborhood, a community or go a long way to make our world a better place to live.”

If you are still totally and unequivocally against it, you should check out Klouchebag.

Photo Credit: Klout, Rework Engine

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Brand Attraction

Posted on April 25, 2012 by skulkaew

By and large, people buy goods and services for two reasons. One, to get rid of a problem they have and don’t want. Or two, to create a result they want but don’t have. By doing so, they believe it will improve their lives in some way, shape or form. And since any decision affecting your life is largely an emotional one, marketers, advertisers and/or sellers need to appeal to prospective customers on an emotional level.

Traditionally, the retail value equation was predicated on offering the best features at the lowest price. But because features can be, and usually are, copied shortly after introduction, cutthroat pricing dictated consumer behavior. When you take into account the evolution of the global competitive landscape and the shift in consumer priorities, you realize a new equation is mandatory. That much is evident from the rise of startups and the decline of retail giants whose business models were either unsustainable or are unable to compete in an ever-changing marketplace. The new equation should take into account quality and customer service, where expense takes a back seat to appeal, and arrives at a competitive price. It might not be the lowest price, but it needs to feel appropriate to the customer. Because in their most basic form, brands are extensions of belief systems. Their promise is a succinct expression that states what customers can come to expect when interacting with brands whether that be online or at the store. How can you ramp up your brand attraction? By dressing it up and maximizing its appeal. That doesn’t mean stop improving your product, customer service and/or the overall experience. That process is never ending. What it means is that you get to cast the light on your business in the most favorable way. Here are a few considerations to make when playing to your strengths.

Presence creates potential. How your marketing collateral and website look will determine how the public perceives you and your business and can decide how successful future marketing campaigns will do. Design is an essential part of any marketing campaign, and a necessity to compete in a media driven world, and it’s one of the easiest ways to separate your business from the competition. It’s the difference in a 40% bounce rate on your landing page and one that hovers around 10,000%. That’s actually not possible but rest assured that you are being judged at every single touch point by the very people you’re targeting.

Genuine interaction is key to building deeper relationships, but spamming out quasi-useless information won’t help you on this front. I included this in our entry on New Year Resolutions, but it’s worth repeating. More important than tweeting a frazillion times a day is having something compelling to say. One of the many upsides to social media is that it’s another platform for your prospects to touch base with you and vice versa. Thoughtful engagement will catalyze the development in a relationship that might otherwise take months or years to form.

Exude positivity in your messaging tempered with real-world insight. If your collateral contains brazen claims with little or no information, your prospects are likely to grow suspicious. Conversely, if you sound like a wet towel when it comes to your own business, those very same prospects might assume that you’re offering an inferior product. It’s a necessity that you and your brand instill confidence, all while building awareness and encouraging engagement. Being real and down-to-earth can help you build trust with your prospects who are likely to be skeptical.

Your reputation is the lifeblood of your brand so make sure your brand stays true to what you’re offering while producing great results. A group of brand champions can enhance a brand’s image in the same way a group of unhappy customers can tarnish it. If you don’t already know, you’ll soon find that brand development is an ongoing process that iterates over and over again. The goal is to eventually move past attraction and engage with fans, followers and prospects, so that they become customers. From there, you can make the shift from acquisition to retention. Knowing your consumers and what’s important to them as well as being able to align that with your advertising efforts is the key to creating value for them and for your company.

Photo credit: Melificent.com

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The Psychology of Advertising

Posted on April 16, 2012 by skulkaew

Most of our supermarket purchases are habitual. From a consumer’s point of view, a trip to the grocery store is pretty straightforward. We don’t tend to put a lot of cognitive effort into most of our purchases, and we typically choose the same brands week after week. So to convert potential consumers, supermarkets create dissonance.

Retailers employ different varieties of stimuli (e.g., color, smells, music, etc.) to affect consumer behavior. Color has been considered to be the most salient, resonant and affective feature seen in human vision. It contributes to the appreciation of and preference for products and plays an essential communication role, improves the efficacy of messages and may increase the likelihood of a purchase. The olfactory sense, or the sense of smell, has been the subject of study in several papers published in the marketing field. In an experiment performed exposing individuals to 26 different ambient scents of varying intensity, as well as a neutral control group, subjects in the scented condition perceived that they had spent less time in the store. Those in the no scent condition perceived having spent significantly more time in the store than they actually did (Spangenberg, Crowley, and Henderson, 1996). Surprisingly, whether the scent was pleasing or not had no effect. Neither did intensity. One of the most famous research studies in marketing (Gorn, 1982) used classical conditioning and illustrated that hearing well-liked music versus disliked music, while being exposed to a product, can directly affect product preferences as measured by product choice.

Going back to the supermarket, entryway placement and layout have a significant effect on how people shop and how much they spend. Generally speaking, items with the highest profit margins are placed on shelves that are at shoppers’ eye level. Less profitable brands will be stocked at the top of a shelf or near your feet. Contrary to intuition, shoppers don’t walk up and down aisles. Research of movement patterns using GPS trackers show that people tend to travel in select aisles, using the perimeter of the shop as the main thoroughfare, and rarely in a systematic up and down pattern. People, who do venture into the center of aisles, tend to spend more time in the shop but not necessarily more money. What this means is that key products, ones with the higher profit margins, will typically be placed at the ends of aisles in end cap displays. Familiar household brands will also be placed here to serve as a psychological “welcome mat,” which results in increased traffic.

Despite the fact that consumers generally indicate that they make rational purchasing decisions based on considerations like price, selection or convenience, subconscious forces, involving emotion and memories, are clearly also at work. Scientists used to assume that emotion and rationality were opposed to each other, but Antonio Damasio, now professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, has found that people who lose the ability to perceive or experience emotions as the result of a brain injury find it hard or impossible to make any decisions at all.

Perception involves the process of categorization and extends to selection and interpretation, as well as gauging risk and opportunity cost(s), to produce meaning. In the process, buyers make use of cues as they’re bombarded with stimulation at all times of the day. However, only parts are successfully transferred and categorized as information. The consumer chooses what information to factor in, as well as what to dismiss. This differentiation between stimulation and information sets a distinction between two types of cues individuals are faced with. A stimulus cue is a conspicuous stimulus somewhere in the sensory field toward which attention can be drawn or directed, whereas an information cue is a bit of information about a marketing stimulus. Not only do advertisers need to draw the attention of consumers, they need to simultaneously argue the case for their product. Between marketing, advertising and design, each discipline recognizes that a psychological component should be taken into consideration at every point of engagement. Behavioral factors are also carefully taken into account because, ultimately, an advertisement isn’t meant to just attract attention, but to actually influence consumers to buy products. Generally speaking, advertising may be one of the most carefully constructed of all human communication as it is certainly one of the most costly.

Brand development and maintenance demands a combination of functional, operational and psychological elements to create a unique entity that has a lasting personality, which will build retail brand awareness with existing and potential customers. When a brand has a well-defined personality, consumers interact with it and develop a relationship that can influence individual attitudes and behaviors in terms of how consumers perceive and react to a brand. A successful retail brand will help to build long-term demand, add some perceived value and ultimately improve sales. Consumers will be willing to pay more for a brand if there is added actual, or perceived, value from their experience of using the product or service. Because ultimately, they’re purchasing a total experience consisting not only of the physical item but also the packaging, after sales services, promotions and image.

Advertising is a ubiquitous and powerful force that lulls consumers into buying wanted, and sometimes unwanted, products that can change lifestyles for better or worse. The impact of advertising is often subtle and implicit but, sometimes, booming and impossible to overlook. Messaging aims to convince, or pair, target audiences with solutions to problems they may, or may not, know they have which may lead to a potential purchase or impulse buy. By and large, studies show that the effectiveness of psychological application will continue to impact advertising in a huge way, both online and off, as methodology is fine-tuned and studies unearth the motivations that compel consumers to make specific purchases.

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Author Rank

Posted on April 3, 2012 by skulkaew

The SEO community has been buzzing with speculation over Author Rank, Google’s biggest rollout since Panda that pairs authors and their content together regardless as to where the latter resides on the Web. Author Rank serves two purposes. First, it establishes the author is a real, living, breathing human being. Second, it allows Google to compile and rate the quality of content that author is providing.

Listed below is the specific language from the patent application.

Assuming that a given agent has a high reputational score, representing an established reputation for authoring valuable content, then additional content authored and signed by that agent will be promoted relative to unsigned content or content from less reputable agents in search results.

Similarly, if the signer has a large reputational score due to the agent having an established reputation for providing accurate reviews, the rank of the referenced content can be raised accordingly. Agents whose content receives consistently strong endorsements can gain reputation. In either implementation, the agent’s reputation ultimately depends on the quality of the content which they sign.

From the looks of it, Author Rank won’t replace Page Rank. The implementation of Author Rank means that the social graph, the global mapping of everybody and how they’re related, suddenly carries an additional attribute based on trust and authority. The higher the Author Rank, the better the ranking. Conceptually, this might reduce or eliminate the impact of manufactured link building efforts that manipulate ranking on Google search engine result pages (SERP).

While this may just seem like conjecture, the evidence for a big move towards social within SEO is mounting. The fact that Google+ is built around circles means “sharing the right stuff with the right people shouldn’t be a hassle. Circles make it easy to put your friends from Saturday night in one circle, your parents in another, and your boss in a circle by himself, just like real life.” One of the upsides is that even if spammers invent hordes of Google+ users, they’re useless outside of your circle. To further elaborate on that point, Google writes:

Content recommended by friends and acquaintances is often more relevant than content from strangers. For example, a movie review from an expert is useful, but a movie review from a friend who shares your tastes can be even better. Because of this, +1’s from friends and contacts can be a useful signal to Google when determining the relevance of your page to a user’s query. This is just one of many signals Google may use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking, and we’re constantly tweaking and improving our algorithm to improve overall search quality. For +1’s, as with any new ranking signal, we are starting carefully and learning how those signals affect search quality.

Therefore, as Google+ picks up momentum, we expect to see the signals it creates reflected heavily in search results. Teddie Cowell, SEO Director at Guava, says, “The value of social signals actually depends heavily on user authentication, which is a complex problem often overlooked… Fundamentally, search engines need to more reliably tell who you are, whether you are real or not, and combine that with your activity online; or else even with all the hype, without authentication mechanisms social signals actually are nothing but noise and have negligible value.”

That’s where the rel=author markup comes into play. To pair authors with blogs, articles, etc., Google checks for a connection between the aforementioned as well as a Google+ profile. Authorship markup uses the rel attribute, part of the open HTML5 standard, in links to indicate the relationship between a content page and an author page. Think of it as a digital signature. A.J. Kohn of Blind Five Year Old, an online marketing firm, has a comprehensive guide on implementing the markup onto your website which you can find here. Google’s guide is listed here.

“What does this mean to me?” you ask. It means that the growth of Google+ and use of brand pages will become increasingly important for companies wanting to cross-pollinate search and social activity. It’s difficult to say when Author Rank will be rolled out in its entirety, but there are some things you can do in the meanwhile. These tips are listed in a Bravo Design, Inc. entry on “Sustainable SEO,” but they’re worth reiterating. First, markup pages for search engines. There are two guides listed above. One is by A.J. Kohn, and the other is by Google. You can also check out Schema.org for other miscellaneous content element tags. Second, develop quality content, build links and promote. This is self-explanatory, and it never changes.

If you’re not following Bravo Design, Inc. on Google+, you should do so ASAP.

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Providing Versus Promoting

Posted on March 28, 2012 by skulkaew

It’s difficult to say when and where marketing has its definitive roots, as people have been trading for thousands of years, but it took the shape we’re most familiar with some time during the Industrial Revolution. It was then that firms were able to ramp up production on a significantly larger scale for national and international markets due to the innovation and adoption of machines. As a result, consumption became dispersed over greater geographical distances, and producers no longer had immediate contact with their consumers.

To overcome this problem, forward thinking entrepreneurs started to plan their business operations in a marketing orientated manner. Their very survival was at stake. This demanded they be innovative and creative to stand apart. In order for producers to manufacture goods and services that would appeal and sell in widely disparate markets, it became necessary for them to carefully analyze and interpret the wants and needs of customers.

Fast forward to 2012, and we can see that firms are still being challenged to address those very same issues in segments that may be nearly impossible to breakthrough due to the sheer amount of competition or lack thereof. As marketing, as a whole, continues to evolve and be refined, companies are recognizing the increased strategic value of leveraging emerging technology, maintaining an optimized online presence, deploying content marketing, engaging with consumers before and after sales via social media and so on and so forth. Sadly enough, that recognition doesn’t necessarily translate into measureable success. The truth is, one of the primary reasons, new products fail is because companies fall short when it comes to providing a high-quality product or service or when it comes to effectively promoting it in the marketplace.

Today, expressing and delivering on your value proposition is one of the most important activities you and your business can engage in. It’s your promise of performance and value aimed at creating and occupying space in your prospective consumers’ minds as the best solution available.

When it comes to evaluating initiatives to launch and pursue, the simple fact of the matter is that most businesses aren’t aware they’re pursuing a bad idea. Let’s say that, hypothetically, you’ve come up with what you believe is a great idea, or product, as well as a business strategy to roll out alongside it. Maybe you already have. Because you’ve worked so close to it, and may have a teeny tiny amount of bias, it’s easy to get hunkered down in your own perspective and not see the bigger picture. In order to evaluate new ideas, you need to be dispassionate and fact-based. Not all bad products are total losses. Some just need tinkering. If you can change direction, or pull the plug early enough in the process, the downside risk can be mitigated. Of course, some ideas are destined to fail, so you have to ask yourself if you honestly believe it can succeed. If the answer is yes, can you find the due diligence to support that?

As a sidebar, failure isn’t a “bad” thing. It’s a learning experience, and it’s something we all inevitably come across. When Thomas Edison, one of the most prolific inventors in history, failed time and time again at improving the incandescent light bulb, he pressed forward only saying, “We now know a thousand ways not to build a light bulb.” He later prevailed.

From there, having a strong product or service doesn’t remove the need for promotion. It just increases the likelihood that your consumers and affiliates will do some of that for you. If your business doesn’t include marketing in determining which products to develop and pursue then, at best, it’s missing a big opportunity and, at worst, it’s setting itself up for failure. As a public relations major in school, my classmates and I analyzed case studies by using SWOT. That stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. By doing so, you can figure out how to leverage and capitalize while not overextending yourself in areas where you might not have depth. In a nutshell, the risk in making a bet is defined by its potential downside. That can be anything from time and money to the opportunity cost(s) associated with not following initiatives A, B and C. You’ll just have to discern which gambles will be best for you.

The most compelling value propositions address high priority concerns and reduce the risk and opportunity cost, for the consumer, associated with the purchase. They’re clear and concise, distinguish the value and provide evidence that substantiates those claims. Even more important is the fact that you deliberately act on it. That’s the difference between providing versus promoting. Promoting is saying that you’re better and unique for X, Y and Z reasons. Providing is proving it. Warren Buffett, the Oracle from Omaha, says, “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” What are your end consumers getting?

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Sustainable SEO

Posted on March 22, 2012 by skulkaew

If there’s one thing that’s certain when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), it’s probably the fact that search engines are in a constant state of flux, continually evolving to keep up with users’ needs. PageRank, used by Google, determines a page’s prominence by tallying inbound hyperlinks that act as votes of confidence. High-quality inbound links provide context about the subject matter of a page and serve as an indicator of its quality and popularity. The more votes cast for a page, the higher it rises on a search engine report page (SERP). While it isn’t the only factor used, PageRank continues to provide the basis for all of Google’s web search tools.

As long as this remains so, there will exist a market for purchasing inbound links that artificially inflate page ranking. There has been, and will likely always be, networks geared towards spinning out content and building hundreds, if not thousands, of links for this exact purpose. BuildMyRank.com (BMR), one of the more well known networks that offered thousand of low-quality links at a reasonable price, announced its closure this week after the “overwhelming majority of its networks” were removed from Google’s search index.

If you’re wondering whether using a network like this is in violation of Google’s terms of service, the answer is yes.

Companies seem to not mind or know about the risk/consequence associated with getting caught (e.g., devalued rankings, possible deindexing, etc.) or even acknowledge the fact that the originating site might have nothing to do with their own or, worse, be obscene. In the coming weeks and months, we’re likely to see additional closures as well as the collateral damage for sites that employed companies who peddle similar services. While it may have seemed like a viable strategy to optimize your search engine ranking, beforehand, companies that generate countless numbers of links for this singular purpose really aren’t providing a service of value to anyone. They create artificial online relationships for the sole purpose of optimizing said ranking. So while it may not explicitly be black hat in terms of the quality of the content, it’s definitely not creating value for search engine users. And while that may have worked well in the past, Google is quickly learning to find and remove these networks, their clients and their affiliates from its listings.

A more sustainable SEO strategy centers on using techniques that will survive the test of time regardless as to what criteria search engines change. Afterall, who wants to get delisted from any given SERP?

Develop Quality Content, Build Links and Promote
One of the best ways to improve your ranking, as well as shape your branding and how your audience your audience perceives your company, is to invest in unique and relevant content development. The more useful it is, the greater the chances are that a reader will share it. The easier it is to share, the better. As search engines work to more effectively incorporate an individual’s social graph into SERPs, the more heavily your social back links will weigh in. If you’re creating content in-house, whoever is developing content for the site should have a clear understanding of the business, its target audience and its goals and objectives. Before publishing content, ask, “Is this going to be beneficial for my page’s visitors?”

After publishing, promote it aggressively. Link building through traditional efforts like outreach, guest contributions, social media and leveraging partnerships is a great way to obtain SERP prominence. Focus on a few important social networks, rather than spreading yourself thin over too many, and engage and interact. Share your articles to your community by posting links of your important posts or content but try and avoid overwhelming your followers.

If you prioritize your users before your page ranking, the latter will follow in suit.

Markup Pages for Search Engines
Many sites are generated from structured data, which is often stored in databases. When this data is rendered into HTML, it becomes difficult to recover the original structured data. Search engines can benefit greatly on-page markups that enable them to more readily decipher information on web pages and provide richer search results in order to make it easier for users to find relevant information on the web.

Schema.org provides a collection of tags that webmasters can use to mark up content elements in ways recognized by major search engines, like Bing, Google and Yahoo!, that rely on markups to improve search results making it easier for people to find the right web pages. Additionally, there are geo-specific schema tags that can be leveraged to further send signals as to which audience the content is intended for including organization names, addresses, contact information, geo-coordinates, etc. Not only does this improve the user experience, but it also helps attract a searcher’s attention to your content and will likely increase click-through rates.

Stay Current and Competitive
This should be the most intuitive point but to be a serious contender, you have to stay current. Current is the minimum. Two steps ahead is better. Know what’s going on in your industry, on your own website and in the SEO community. Because the competitive landscape is constantly shifting, you’ll need to continually monitor and adapt your SEO strategy as problems arise so pay attention to your website metrics. If you’re using Google Analytics, you’ll know how many unique visitors are scoping out your site, how much time they’re spending on it, what content is most frequently being read, what keywords are being used to organically find your page and much, much more. If you’re not, you need to. Agility will help you turn on a dime but only if you can see where you’re going.

Yes, that requires a lot of time and energy or one intern. Just kidding. But there are a countless number of forums, articles and other free resources for SEO professionals to learn about more about the trade. If you’re managing your business’ SEO and marketing campaign(s), there’s no reason to not leverage this.

Lastly, focus on the long haul and decide where you’ll be one, five or ten years from now. Inevitably, there will be goals that can be further broken down into milestones that must be completed along the way to make progress. The purpose isn’t to create a concrete plan that will ensure your company’s passage into the coming century. It’s to address your strengths and weaknesses, so you can leverage and mitigate them respectively. As was the case with BMR, the problem is that short-term decisions have a habit of contaminating long-term success. One of the best ways to not only succeed, but to flourish, is to not shoot yourself in the foot.

Photo Credit: www.searchcowboys.com

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Breaking All the Rules

Posted on March 19, 2012 by skulkaew

Creating web design that’s intuitive and easy to navigate through are qualities that web developers continually strive towards in order to maximize traffic and increase usability as best as possible. Those qualities make overall use more enjoyable which, ultimately, plays a critical role in a website’s success. While there are generally accepted conventions, best practices and design trends. For every rule, there is always an exception. Let’s keep in mind that guidelines are not definitive answers. Listed below are rules to break (or at least consider breaking):

Usability should be directed at the “lowest common denominator.”
Web design is, and always will be, about problem solving. The constituency that comprises your user base will be widely disparate, and that’s a good thing. What that doesn’t mean is that the quality of the site and/or its content should be sacrificed in favor of tailoring to the “lowest common denominator.” Give your users some credit and treat them how you’d want to be treated. If it’s worth your users’ while, they’ll figure it out.

Information needs to go above the fold.
“Content is king.” I know. You know. You hear this 94 times a day. It’s the quality and usefulness of your site’s content that will determine the success of your site. While the layout plays a significant part in the effectiveness of your delivery, it doesn’t mean that information needs to be scaled back or, worse, crammed indiscernibly into a single frame. Books have pages that must be turned in order to move backwards and/or forwards, and websites have content that must be scrolled to on and off the screen.

Instructions have to be ultra specific.
I’m not really a Mac kind of guy. Outside of now, I’ve only had to use one once. Despite the lack of incredibly specific directions in the form of a manual, replaced with my sense of pride that renders me unable to ask my more tech savvy coworkers for help, it’s pretty easy to figure out. This same principle applies to the text deployed on a page. At the end of a short teaser for a blog article, there’s no need to have anchor text that reads: “Click here to read this full article.” Something as simple as “Read more” will suffice. There are going to be times where giving users some extra instruction is necessary, but you’ll be able to figure that out on a case by case basis.

Make Your Site’s Goal Obvious.
Something that really gets drilled into the minds of young designers is that a design should instantly tell viewers what they are looking at before they read any text. Brand recognition is important for large corporations, but the smaller guys sometimes need to approach the game differently to attract a viewer’s attention. Be mysterious every now and again. Holding back can intrigue the viewer into wanting to learn more. Applying this technique to web design can greatly increase the time that users stay on your site.

The point of this post is to think outside of the box. It’s not encouraging you to break rules just for the sake of breaking rules. If you do so for the wrong reasons, you’ll probably see mixed results at best. While unconventional design can be dangerous and even damaging to your reputation as a designer, standard convention should be used if there are no better alternatives. If, and when, you do come up with a better way to present something, the choice becomes obvious. So approach every new design with a question in mind, what is the best way to execute this element? Keep the user and their tasks in mind and if you think of a great and innovative way that will improve their user experience, go for it. Maybe your idea will become the next great design convention. If it fails, you can always fall back on what works for others. When it comes to breaking all the rules, as Robert Francis Kennedy famously said, “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”

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Logo & Corporate Identity Design

Posted on March 12, 2012 by skulkaew

Logos and corporate identity design are integral to a company’s branding. What does that mean exactly? Think of branding as shaping how a company will be perceived. It differentiates products and services in a positive way and may ultimately be a business’ most valuable asset. So why are logos so important? Well, think about it. As an individual, you want people to remember your face. Taking that line of reasoning one step further, what qualities would you want people to associate your face with? Kindness? Fairness? Trustworthiness?

Choosing the right logo can convey these qualities while cultivating a positive association in the mind of your consumer. Some logos hint at what the company does or sells. Others are teasers that pique a viewer’s interest. What’s certain is that a logo that’s well designed effectively represents your business, is timeless and looks good showing off on its own. Listed are points to consider when designing your next logo.

A simpler design is conducive for flexibility.

Envision every possible place your logo may appear and then think about how it will look in each format. Will it be on billboards? Online ads? Car wraps? Stationary? Each of these has technical requirements different than the next, but a strong logo will translate well across different mediums while maintaining its integrity. More importantly, it will need to effectively convey a message in a variety of contexts, possibly without copy, and reproduce well in black and white. For now, omit the tagline and company name in your master. You can integrate it as often as you’d like in collateral after.

Your logo is your brand so make it distinctive.

Nobody likes a copycat. It’s one thing to look at what your competitors are doing. It’s another to emulate or steal those ideas. When it comes to the actual execution, use this knowledge to make your design stand apart instead of mimicking what you see. You also don’t want your customers to confuse your logo with that of another company. Additionally, another error to avoid is using stock images in your logo. You run the risk of copyright infringement.

You want people to remember your logo.

You want your logo to be memorable, and the best way to achieve this is to avoid having to change it every couple of years. Avoid the temptation to latch on to the latest trend. Trends are fickle, and your logo can become very dated very quickly. Your logo is your business calling card. A bad one will cause people to ignore you, but a good one will not only get them to notice you. It will command attention. Treat your logo like you treat your own appearance and make it look good.

As a warning, a common error that often occurs is when a company underestimates the importance of defining its identity in its infancy. Some time down the line, that company may eventually outgrow and/or realize that the logo does little or nothing to enhance its image. From there, the company can either continue on with the subpar design or abandon it altogether, losing some or all of the recognition it had previously built. As a rule of thumb to live by: think twice, design once. Steve Jobs once called Paul Rand, “the greatest living graphic designer.” In his book, Design, Form, and Chaos, Rand says:

A logo is a flag, a signature, an escutcheon, a street sign.
A logo does not sell (directly), it identifies.
A logo is rarely a description of a business.
A logo derives meaning from the quality of the thing it symbolizes,
not the other way around. A logo is less important than the product it signifies;
what it represents is more important than what it looks like.

If you have questions or comments, please feel free to leave them in the fields below. To learn more about how Bravo Design, Inc. can contribute to your growing business, fill out a contact form by clicking here.

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Content Marketing

Posted on March 6, 2012 by skulkaew

People want solutions to their problems, plain and simple, and they’re willing to seek them out. What’s actually happening is that they’re becoming increasingly inundated by thousands of irrelevant marketing messages that attempt to pull them in different directions, which they typically ignore. As someone seeking to grow their business, you’ll have to do more than just create content. You’ll need to become both authoritative and engaging. It’s a necessity that you and your brand strongly communicate your story, instill confidence and trust, all while building awareness and encouraging engagement among prospects and customers. The potential exists not only to solidify your position but also to increase your market share.

Sound easy? It’s not.

The majority of organizations are set up to develop, produce and sell products and services not to create and deliver weekly editorials and/or seek out potential customers to interact with in cyberspace. That’s why content development seems so unnatural to most businesses. What this all comes down to is an opportunity to educate potential buyers about your product offerings, the industry at large as well as your company culture. Ultimately, the information you distribute should make it easier for your consumer to purchase your goods and/or services. For tips and considerations on improving your copy, click here.

As a sidebar, creating unique content might not be the appropriate goal for each and every business. Some companies should focus on engaging customers via social media sites and answering their questions as quickly as possible to spur them into action to quicken conversion and, ultimately, speed up the sales cycle. Remember, not every hit on your website is a potential customer. Think of it in the context of a department store. Of all the visitors who stop in, only some are in the market for actually making a purchase. Likewise, only some of you website traffic is considering purchasing goods/services offered. To leverage your online marketing efforts, you’ll have to discern where your business stands and which group of visitors you’re trying to reach out to (in this example, casual shoppers vs. the purpose driven).

Once you do have content, another hurdle that will inevitably present itself is placement. If you create content but aren’t effectively advertising it, you’re wasting your time. Successful content marketing requires a combination of interesting content combined with social networking, link building and public relations working together synergistically. Push your content through your social media pipeline and through your website. That doesn’t mean spam. You’re more likely to lose some, or all, of your following if you become too overbearing. At Bravo Design, Inc. networking with other professionals online has helped us nearly triple our Facebook following over the course of the last two or three months. Building genuine relationships with your end consumers along with professionals within your industry will help you gain the most out of your marketing efforts. It also helps improve the pipeline for expanded delivery options in the future.

Your ability to concisely define your brand and establish credibility, while standing apart from the crowd, will have a huge impact on your future success(es). If content is improperly targeted, your message is wasted on an audience that doesn’t care about you, your business or your news. Even worse is the possibility that if you use an affiliate website to host miscellaneous content, potential readers will be redirected there rather than to your own site. Not only do you lose that traffic, it devalues your news and your brand.

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Finding the Right Designer

Posted on February 28, 2012 by skulkaew

If you’re looking for a website designer, it’s probably because it’s outside your skill set or you lack the time to invest into building or modifying a website yourself. If you’re starting from scratch, you should know that you can’t create a website without spending some amount of money, even if that’s just buying and registering a domain. While that dollar amount depends on what kind of website you want to make and the goals you want to accomplish through that website, having a plan will help in mitigating cost as best as possible.

Remember, the mission is to build a business platform that your customers can utilize whether that be researching your products and/or services offerings or completing online transactions. The developer you hire will primarily be responsible for taking the vision you have for your business and its offerings and turning that into a website by incorporating the right elements to achieve the look, feel and functionality you want.

Between picking an agency or finding a freelancer, because there are so many options, finding the right designer is difficult more often than not. There are a few things that you will have to keep in mind while searching through the ranks. Freelance designers are usually cheaper to use in the short-term. The downside is that your project may extend beyond the scope of their abilities, which will ultimately lead to a parting in ways. When it comes to something as valuable as the perception of your company and future sales of your product or service, cutting corners should be the furthest thought from your mind. Compare pricing and check for guarantee(s) offered by vendor. The prices will vary from one designer to the next, but the focus should center on the quality of the work shown and whether you actually like it or not. Doing your research here will payoff down the road.

Check out potential designers’ personal websites. Portfolios showcase progress in a designer’s trade and are one of the best, if not the best, indicator for future success. 99.9% of the time his, her or their best work will be displayed here, and it will probably answer a lot of your initial questions.

Remember, it’s not enough that your website look cool. It needs to communicate a message effectively. An important consideration would be whether or not the designer’s styling is compatible with the vision you have for your website. A question to ask yourself is whether or not you actually like their work. Is it effective?

This question has been listed already, but I can’t overstate how important it is. Paying for an ineffective website is the rough equivalent of buying a broken <insert anything>. Sure, you could fix it, but you’d probably prefer to get it right the first time around. An additional question to ask yourself is whether the design is user friendly or not. If you haven’t read our blog on “Usability and Website Ergonomics,” make sure you do so. It’ll supply you with some additional considerations for website development.

Once you’ve compiled a list of candidates, interview. Check for reviews and/or client testimonials on search engine reports (e.g., Google Places) and on their website. These should serve to show how a designer performed professionally and whether or not the client was satisfied with the final product. Throughout the process, some of the prospects will take the time to send you questions about you and your business. This is important because a designer needs to be empathetic towards you, as well as your end user, and know as much about your business as possible for them to create a website that accurately reflects your vision.

An ideal candidate has the passion and curiosity to constantly learn more about how people interact with digital products. Like any other hiring process, finding the right person for the job is largely dictated by trial and error. Conceptually, like golf, it seems easy. The actual execution is a completely different story. The most important takeaway here is that this exercise is an investment in your company where the end goal lies in facilitating transactions and increasing overall revenue.

Bravo Design, Inc. has been in the business for over a decade and continues to surpass its clients’ expectations in an extraordinary way. With a wide range of service offerings including: new media development, logo, web, graphic and key art design for traditional and digital media as well as packaging and outdoor advertising, the staff here is committed to serving your needs.

We’ll take the time to learn more about you and your business and provide the tools necessary for you to forge genuine relationships with your consumer. To learn more about how Bravo Design, Inc. can contribute to your growing business, fill out a contact form by clicking here.

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Writing Copy

Posted on February 21, 2012 by skulkaew

E. St. Elmo Lewis, an American advertising and sales pioneer, said that “the mission of an advertisement is to attract a reader, so that he will look at the advertisement and start to read it; then to interest him, so that he will continue to read it; then to convince him, so that when he has read it he will believe it. If an advertisement contains these three qualities of success, it is a successful advertisement.”

Advertising and marketing professionals are finding that traditional media channels and one-way communications are losing their effectiveness. And as they, along with business owners, experiment in finding the right blend of traditional and digital strategy to adopt, one prerequisite for a successful advertising campaign that needs to be satisfied is that for quality copy. It serves as the backbone of a campaign by commanding attention. It highlights the main selling points of a particular product or service and conveys it clearly and concisely. It examines subjects from different perspectives and is empathetic to people’s problems and needs. So without further ado, here are a few tips on improving the copy you produce.

Do your homework.
Read everything you can get your hands on, ask questions and take notes. You won’t be able to clearly articulate a message if you don’t. Throughout the process, ask yourself what you’re trying to achieve with each bit of progress so as to stay on point. If you’re in a copyblogging role or writing online collateral, make sure all new copy supports the content strategy for the website.

Understand your audience.
Understanding the demographic that makes up your audience will help you find and utilize an appropriate tone as well as identify selling points to leverage in messaging. Before you lay any words down on the page, figure out who you’re speaking to and write with them in mind. Put yourself in a prospective customer’s pair of shoes and think about what might spur you to action.

Say more by writing less.
Each and every channel adopted has its own unique attributes. Writing for Twitter will be different than writing an e-mail to a client which is different than writing to a Facebook fan and so on. While microblogging to the tune of Twitter’s 140-character-limit might seem like a burden, it forces you to think outside of the box while being judicious with the content that does make the final cut. Studies show that the more words you add to a web page, the less time people spend reading it so your writing will have to intelligibly and simply state a message.

Be prepared to make revisions.
Copy is almost never embraced and loved instantly. More often than not, it will require tinkering and revising, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, so don’t expect to get it right on the first try. Be willing to change your copy to meet a goal. And if that doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to start over.

The war wages on.
Even if you do build a campaign that succeeds in marketing a product or service, with effective messaging, your work is far from over. History shows us that brands that have been successful, and continue to be, are constantly fighting to defend top spots. Give yourself a pat on the back and then move on. In the world of advertising, your work is never over.

If you have any questions as to how Bravo Design, Inc. might contribute to your growing business, please fill out a contact form listed here or leave a comment below, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Aside from the smashing design work and web development you’ll see throughout our portfolio, we write copy built to convert.

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Cross Channel Marketing

Posted on February 13, 2012 by skulkaew

Social media marketing has evolved into a global phenomenon as it continues to become an evermore important communication medium for businesses to promote brand awareness, customer engagement and enhanced service. This effort largely revolves around creating content that resonates with an organization’s target audience while encouraging readers to forward said content through their social networks. It’s advantageous on the grounds that it appears to come from a trustworthy, third party source, as opposed to a company itself. Improved customer relationship management (CRM) along with increased visibility, familiarity and credibility are all enhancement mechanisms connected to social media marketing. Additionally, it’s a relatively inexpensive medium that serves as a platform for organizations to build marketing campaigns. While it is a good way to knock on the door, it’s not the be-all and end-all of sales, marketing nor is it a one-stop shop that fixes businesses overnight at little or no cost. It requires a real time investment with a firm grounding in well thought out strategy. It’s important to remember that social media works by driving traffic to your website where it can be converted into a sale not the other way around. A survey done by Demandbase and Focus indicated that a company’s website was the top online source of new sales leads and seven times more effective than social media.

One medium that has become increasingly underestimated is outdoor advertising, an effective adjunct to advertising; especially, when coupled with other media. Unlike newspapers, TV, direct mail and/or online advertising, it doesn’t have to be invited into the home. It works at all hours of the day and night, seven days a week. People are exposed to it when they walk by or drive past and, whether they like it or not, they can’t turn it off or throw it out. It, literally, has a captured audience, and its messages work on the advertising principle of effective frequency. Since most messages stay in the same place for a month or longer, the multiple impressions made reinforce the presence of a product or company making it more memorable. Without a doubt, billboards will continue to be successful in the future. The simple reason for this is the very nature of them. They are large posters in public places that can’t really be avoided.

Every channel has unique communications attributes, and every customer his or her own profile, that marketers must be aware of in order to effectively present consistent and coordinated information to customers. Cross channel marketing involves tracking a user across multiple channels, listening and engaging with him or her at the right time and place. While some are quick to say that content or context is king, the fact of the matter is that opportunity resides in engagement. Content refers to a carefully crafted message. Context deals with all the details surrounding its deployment; especially, in regards to its timeliness. Cross channel marketing can lead to higher conversions and higher customer loyalty. Both are steppingstones towards generating more revenue, but the caveat here is integration. If there is dissonance in the message(s) delivered, goals are misaligned or it’s executed too early or too late, a campaign will fall into shambles. Over the next several years, making the move to true cross channel marketing will be more critical than ever before to a company’s success. A company’s capacity to integrate, manage and interchangeably use both traditional and emerging technologies will enable businesses to reach customers in motion and optimize the user experience from beginning to end. A strong advertising campaign will integrate as many of these channels as possible.

The introduction of the Internet has changed advertising and marketing. It has vastly altered the ways in which people view, use and interact with media. This has, in some ways, changed the effectiveness of certain techniques and channels, but it has also created new opportunities. While there is no doubt that the media landscape is moving towards a digital future, it doesn’t mean that print and digital are mutually exclusive. It doesn’t signal that traditional media is on the brink of extinction either because social media marketing is not a replacement for the traditional marketing framework but an extension of currently existing marketing strategies. Ultimately, businesses that have their finger on the pulse of what customers want will always have a competitive advantage.

If you have any questions as to how Bravo Design, Inc. might contribute to your growing business, please fill out a contact form listed here or leave a comment on this page, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

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Ergonomics and the User Experience

Posted on January 9, 2012 by skulkaew

While this should go without saying, your website has a huge impact on your sales and the number of clients you can, and will, close. How your website looks and performs will determine how the public perceives you and your business and can decide how successful a new marketing campaign can do post-implementation, so design is an essential part of any marketing campaign and a necessity to compete in a media driven world.

Furthermore, it will serve to develop your authority as a trusted provider. Whether you actually sell your products and services online or not, your website exists to initiate and catalyze visitor conversion. This might take the form of an actual checkout, the filling out of a subscription form or a free quote. In any case, conversions are taking place on your site.

If you’re considering a redesign, this blog should supply you with some of the considerations necessary to making the decisions that will facilitate an overhaul while positively impacting your overall profitability.

The usability and user experience (UX design) both affect the conversion rate of your site and will directly have an impact on revenue generated. Neither hinges completely on specific details like color theory or font selection as much as it does aspects like cross-browser and mobile compatibility, content management systems, site architecture and so forth. The scope of the UX is directed at affecting “all aspects of the user’s interaction with the product: how it is perceived, learned, and used” (Norman).

UX design begins by learning about a business, doing market research to understand its users and understanding how a service can be developed that would affect them in a meaningful way. Thus UX design has become a critical turning point in defining business strategy and provides a baseline for said decisions, but a UX driven process doesn’t end at implementation. Its focus extends into ongoing testing and continued development down the road. The easier potential clients find it to connect to you, the more likely they are to turn to you for their needs.

Moving forward, below are simple tips to better usability and UX.

1. This point should be the most intuitive. Critical elements; especially, those that aid navigation, should be emphasized. The site’s capabilities and limitations should be easy to discern. High contrast between text and any background used should increase legibility. That typically means using dark text against a light background.

2. While being unique and standing apart from the crowd is normally considered good, sometimes you have to follow conventional wisdom and do what everyone else is doing. Usage patterns, behavior developed from extended web use, expect that links be blue. It expects for navigation to be straightforward. Users should be able to find information quickly and easily despite the length of a document. This can be utilized with search functions, indexes, table of contents and so forth.

As a sidebar, Jakob Nielsen performed a usability study on search boxes. While this might not sound fascinating, it found that the average search box length is 18-characters wide, and that 27% of queries were too long for it. Extending it to 27-characters would accommodate 90% of queries.

3. White space, or negative space, improves comprehension and builds hierarchy between elements on a page. As information gets densely packed into a document, it can become difficult to comprehend and/or unreadable. What is a cipher eventually leads to abandonment. Employ margins, padding, scale and spacing. When repeatedly and effectively utilized, it helps develop an identity and rapport between you and your user.

4. Usability testing and diminishing marginal return tie in together on this point. A second study by Nielsen found that five test subjects would reveal around 85% of all problems with a website. It would take an additional ten testers to reveal the remaining quirks. In the smaller group studies, it was found that the first one or two users discovered the larger problems. The other testers would find smaller ones and confirm what the first one or two had already found. While the biggest delta is going from zero to one tester, any testing is better than no testing.

Michael Smythe, winner of the Designers Institute of New Zealand Outstanding Achievement Award, gives this definition for design, “Design is an integrative process that seeks resolution -not compromise- through cross-disciplinary teamwork. Design is intentional. Success by design simply means prospering on purpose.” In the long-run, effective design is an investment that increases the bottom line by capturing new market share and bolstering customer retention.

If you have any questions as to how Bravo Design, Inc. might contribute to your growing business, please visit us at http://www.bravodesigninc.com/contact/ or leave a comment on this page, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Donald Norman: Invisible Computer.
Jakob Nielsen & Hoa Loranger: Prioritizing Web Usability.
Jakob Nielsen: Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users.

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New Year’s Resolutions for 2012

Posted on December 29, 2011 by skulkaew

As 2011 comes to a close, it’s time to evaluate the initiatives that went well, those that ended in spectacular failure and that which needs to be done moving forward to have your marketing department running at full-tilt early in the new year.

1) This year, social media marketing continued to spread like a wildfire. While it is a good way to knock on the door, it’s not the be-all and end-all of sales, marketing and/or life. It’s important to remember that social media works for you by driving traffic to your website where it can be converted into a sale not from your website to your Facebook page. A recent survey by Demandbase and Focus indicated that a company’s website was the top online source of new sales leads and seven times more effective than social media.

2) More important than being “social” (i.e., tweeting a frazillion times a day) is having something compelling to say. At its core, you’re targeting audiences that don’t want to be pitched. They’re on social networking sites just to use social networking sites. Furthermore, the average attention span ten years ago was 12 minutes long. Today, it’s somewhere in the ballpark of five minutes and seven seconds. It saddens me to report that younger people have shorter attention spans than the elderly so use opportunities to engage judiciously.

3) Don’t shoot for the baseline or just hope to hold on. In the coming year, plan to grow your business. In a recent survey, TD Bank asked 300 small business owners to identify their top New Year’s resolution for the coming year. 26% said spending more time on sales and marketing would be their top resolution. Periodically evaluate what works and what doesn’t and make changes as needed. Dream big and then come up with a plan on getting from point A to point B. Any and all milestones plotted along the way should be specific, achievable and measurable.

In 2012, be exceptional. Deliver on your promise in distributing goods and/or services that you’re proud of. That single piece of advice has remained true since people were trading cowries. When everything else around you is changing, this should guide your focus. Take the time to mull out where you want to go next year not where you want to be. Commit as best as you can to your resolutions whether they be work goals or personal ones. Achieve some no matter what. As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe says, “What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.”

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WordCamp LA 2011 – Design, SEO and Selling WordPress

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Daniel Arriola

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to speak at Los Angeles’ WordCamp about my experience with WordPress and how we’ve developed countless websites for individuals and businesses using this amazing platform.

WordPress Design

While talking about design, I used one of the latest websites that Bravo Design, Inc. created for World Wide Digital Services, a film rental equipment company that commissioned a new website for their expanding entertainment industry connections. This website was used as an example of what WordPress can do and how it can break the mold of what people have come to expect from the open-source blogging CMS.

This WordPress theme was custom designed and developed by Bravo Design, Inc. starting from WordPress’ basic Twenty Ten theme.

“Oh, that’s like a blog isn’t it?” Yes, but that’d be like saying: “Wow, that’s a pretty nice Maserati… that’s like for running errands isn’t it?” There is much more to WordPress than the platform’s original blog functionality.

WordPress Search Engine Optimization

So we know that WordPress is ideal as a blogging platform, and it’s true that WordPress is already pretty optimized for search engines straight out of the box. So let’s just have a quick recap of what the search engines like, and what they like about WordPress, shall we?

Search Engines Love Keyword Relevance. Probably more than anything, search engines love finding people results that are extremely relevant to their search query. But the trick, well not really a trick, is finding how the search engines rate/rank relevance. So here’s a breakdown of where to put your keywords throughout your site.

Domain Name / Subdomain
URL of a webpage
Title of a webpage
Meta data of a webpage (description, keywords)
Tags on the webpage (h1, h2, a)

So while these are some good places to put a small and specific assortment of your keywords (usually no more than 5-6 per page), the search engines (primarily Google) place a greater importance on a website’s traffic, PageRank (the number of quality websites linking to it), and how frequently it’s updated. Important stuff to remember.

Using WordPress puts you in a great position to compete on the search engines: 1. Blog = Frequently Updateable 2. Keywords / Custom Themes = Great Keyword Placement / Usage 3. SEO = Great plugins for updating search engines about website changes. All that’s left is providing your website visitors with interesting and useful content they’ll enjoy and share with their friends (Traffic / PageRank; it’s not all easy but it doesn’t have to be hard).

Selling WordPress

Probably the greatest way to “selling” a client on WordPress is simply providing them with a demo. The biggest hurdle that a lot of young designers and new upstarts have trouble with is finding the right client. Selling WordPress should not be hard, finding the right client is what will take up your time.

I’m a fan of the soft sell when dealing with WordPress. Does the client need a new website? Does the client need a new design? How is the client competing on the search engines with other businesses in their industry and approximate location? Once these questions have been answered you can make your judgement on client. Not everyone needs a website (well, that’s not true, but not everyone realizes that they need a website) and trying to force a website on a client is counter-productive. Oftentimes, I’ll meet with a client, we’ll talk about websites and WordPress but they’ll pass on the job. Maybe a month will go by and the client will get back in contact with me ready to get a website going.

Plant the seed, give it a little water and let it grow into a stronger desire and understanding of websites and the internet environment. Provide them with resources to do more research on their own; be helpful; not forceful.

Finally, be nice. That’s it. Be patient with your clients. They don’t know as much as you (that’s why they are coming to you), and it’s your job to show them how they can improve their business with a customized and focused web presence. Your job is to help them, and convert them to the web way of life (sometimes easier said than done).

The slides from my WordCamp LA 2011 Presentation are available for download, here.

https://vimeo.com/bravodesignince

Social Network Promotion & Development

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Daniel Arriola

After developing a website, it is good practice to make use of the social network promotion to direct more traffic to your website and readily provide snippets of content to users browsing your social profiles on these sites.

Shortly after Bravo Design, Inc. develops a website for a client we consult on how to best use the social sites available (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, etc.). Furthermore, we also advise our clients on the best business directories to create profiles to further expand their organization’s web presence; most of which can be done at no additional cost.

The Most Important Thing to Remember About Social Networks: Bring Users To Your Website

While the social sites like Facebook and Twitter can be useful, sometimes clients place too much emphasis on their social profiles instead of their own branded website. Facebook is a great tool, but it is much more advantageous to use Facebook as a channel to direct users to your website, where they can be exposed to your brand experience and provide your domain with web traffic.

Twitter is a great way to make up-to-the-minute updates, and even Google has an active Twitter feed available for any given search made; found under “Realtime,” Here’s an example for the search “android”

As more consumers are using resources online to find and rate businesses, the use of business directories (Yelp, Manta, SuperPages, etc.) offers a challenge to small business owners looking to drive web users to their website and generate leads. One of the best ways to succeed in this new emerging business environment is by encouraging your current customers/clients to leave feedback (hopefully positive) on these websites.

Yelp.com is one of the more popular business rating websites, allowing users to post reviews about their experiences with businesses and the quality of product/service they received…

https://vimeo.com/bravodesignince

Google Apps – A Great Value for Small Businesses

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Daniel Arriola

So you’re a small business owner, and you’re looking to take advantage of the internet marketplace. Well hopefully you’ve already considered getting a website, and you’re at least familiar with the social networks like Facebook and Twitter. You’re also familiar with Google, and if you’re not I suggest you check out Wikipedia, it’s like an encyclopedia but made out of electricity instead of paper.

All joking aside, Google is an amazing resource and you won’t get a better service at their pricing. Google offers their Apps for free (up to 50 users) and they offer extended services for businesses at a rate of $50 per user per year (not even $0.14 a day). “But what if I don’t want to sign up for a bunch of services?” If that’s the case, then you probably shouldn’t be starting a website in the first place, and you really shouldn’t start a sentence with ‘But.’ Who are you? Robert W. Burchfield?

Here’s the beauty of Google, it’s pretty much all a one-stop-shop. Create your business Gmail account, mybusinessname@gmail.com, and you’ll be able use your Gmail account to gain access to a wide variety of Google’s products and functionality. Learn more about Gmail. Here are a few of the the biggies:

Google Analytics
Track your website traffic and visitors in a plethora of dimensions.
Google AdSense/AdWords
If you’re interested in search-engine marketing, whether you plan to advertise your business or offer space on your website to advertisers, you’ll need a Gmail account.
Recaptcha
Great service to link up to your website’s contact forms, to prevent unwanted spam feedback. Ever seen the crazy text blocks you have to re-enter at the bottom of a form? Chances are that’s Recaptcha.
Goo.gl
If you’re looking to post links on Twitter, you’ll need to shorten some URLs. Goo.gl will let you enter an impossibly long URL and it’ll spit out a cute short URL to post on Twitter without losing all your characters.

These are just a few of the services that Google offers free-of-charge. So back to Google Apps, you’ve just created your website and now you need to set up your email. Hold it! Before you go spending an unnecessary amount of money on an email account with your hosting provider, set up Google Apps for your site, Google Apps Free. You’ll need FTP access to your website, and/or access to your DNS (domain name servers) panel, and/or access to your web developer (just tell him/her you want Google Apps).

Better yet, Google offers their entire Docs system absolutely free (with Google Apps Free). You’re able to create, edit and print .doc, .xls, .ppt and .pdf files online from anywhere when logged into your Google Apps account. Look out Microsoft Office, Google’s gunning for you! So what’s the advantage if you’ve already purchased Microsoft Office for your computer (don’t curse the gods just yet)? All the files you create/upload in Google Docs are backed up and available online, and administrators (you’ll be one if you set up the apps account) are able to edit the permissions to decide which users are able to access which files. Learn more about Google Docs.

If you knew what DNS stood for before I parenthetically spelled it out, feel free to check out this great link walking you through setting up your email accounts through Google Apps. Just click on “Creating MX Records,” select your domain host from the list below and follow the steps to completion.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the Google Apps edition comparisons:

I hope I’ve helped sway your opinion, or at least provided you with a couple links to do some research of your own. There’s a reason why Google is the vanguard of the internet… they’re awesome.

https://vimeo.com/bravodesignince

HTML Basics For Beginners: Part Three Image Styling

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Daniel Arriola

In this series of tutorial articles, we’ve covered HTML basics like how to Embed Links In Your WordPress Website, and How To Style Text In Your WordPress Website. Now we’re taking a look at our <img> tags (for images).

WordPress allows us to simply upload and manage all our media content, but sometimes we need a little extra style thrown into the mix. We’ll be taking a look at how the <img> tag is used, and how we can make a few simple styling modifications on-the-fly.

So let’s first examine how WordPress inserts the <img> tag when an image is uploaded and Inserted Into The Post. Here is what the HTML will usually look like after “Insert Into Post” is selected after an image is uploaded. I have also chosen not to include a link, and the none option was selected for the alignment.

<img src="http://www.bravodesigninc.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/photo_helicopterbunny.jpg" alt="" title="photo_helicopterbunny" width="450" height="333" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-725" />

What will be
displayed:

If you’ve already read the previous two articles, one thing that may stand out about our <img> tag is that there is no </img>. This is because the <img> tag isn’t surrounding anything other than the attributes contained within the tag itself (i.e. href, width, height, title, alt and class). We will notice, however, that at the end of the tag there is a /> that closes the <img> tag specifically. Let’s mess around with some of the attributes to see how we can change the image…

<img src="http://www.bravodesigninc.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/photo_helicopterbunny.jpg" alt="" title="Cutest Bunny Ever" width="225" height="166" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-725" />

What will be
displayed:

Please take note of the changes made to the title, width and height attributes. The href was left the same, still linking to http://www.bravodesigninc.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/photo_helicopterbunny.jpg, but let’s make a change to a different (perhaps even cuter photo. Hit it!)

<img src="http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/11_03/RabbitKit2NSPA_468x316.jpg" alt="" title="A Bunny Under A Pile Of Kittens" width="468" height="316" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-725" />

What will be
displayed:

Here we see that I’ve changed the href attribute to link to another image that has not been uploaded on our server (hence, no http://www.bravodesigninc.com/… in our href attribute).

Most likely, you’ll be using your images around text in your WordPress posts and pages, so let’s see how we can have both displayed properly.

<img src="http://www.bravodesigninc.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/photo_helicopterbunny.jpg" alt="" title="Cutest Bunny Ever" width="225" height="166" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-725" /> Pardon my Greek, lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis placerat mauris ut sem auctor ut consequat nisl dignissim. Maecenas aliquet, nisi eu elementum porta, orci mauris porta urna, euismod condimentum urna ligula vel urna. Integer eu turpis ac ligula adipiscing bibendum ac ut sem. Aenean vestibulum felis lacinia augue laoreet congue. Phasellus ultricies convallis lacus, nec pharetra tortor commodo sit amet. Sed imperdiet, magna facilisis dignissim eleifend, mi felis sodales mi, et rhoncus turpis nulla a tortor. Integer pretium lacinia facilisis. Maecenas vitae tempus nulla. Duis hendrerit, nulla quis tristique fringilla, sapien odio convallis odio, eu hendrerit dui odio iaculis odio. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae.

What will be
displayed:

Pardon my Greek, lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis placerat mauris ut sem auctor ut consequat nisl dignissim. Maecenas aliquet, nisi eu elementum porta, orci mauris porta urna, euismod condimentum urna ligula vel urna. Integer eu turpis ac ligula adipiscing bibendum ac ut sem. Aenean vestibulum felis lacinia augue laoreet congue. Phasellus ultricies convallis lacus, nec pharetra tortor commodo sit amet. Sed imperdiet, magna facilisis dignissim eleifend, mi felis sodales mi, et rhoncus turpis nulla a tortor. Integer pretium lacinia facilisis. Maecenas vitae tempus nulla. Duis hendrerit, nulla quis tristique fringilla, sapien odio convallis odio, eu hendrerit dui odio iaculis odio. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae.

You’ll notice that the class attribute in my <img> is has ‘alignleft,’ the alignment option that I selected before I inserted the image into my post.

Let’s see what is displayed when I have my image in the middle of the text…

Pardon my Greek, lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis placerat mauris ut sem auctor ut consequat nisl dignissim. Maecenas aliquet, nisi eu elementum porta, orci mauris porta urna, euismod condimentum urna ligula vel urna. Integer eu turpis ac ligula adipiscing bibendum ac ut sem. <img src="http://www.bravodesigninc.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/photo_helicopterbunny.jpg" alt="" title="Cutest Bunny Ever" width="225" height="166" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-725" /> Aenean vestibulum felis lacinia augue laoreet congue. Phasellus ultricies convallis lacus, nec pharetra tortor commodo sit amet. Sed imperdiet, magna facilisis dignissim eleifend, mi felis sodales mi, et rhoncus turpis nulla a tortor. Integer pretium lacinia facilisis. Maecenas vitae tempus nulla. Duis hendrerit, nulla quis tristique fringilla, sapien odio convallis odio, eu hendrerit dui odio iaculis odio. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae.

What will be
displayed:

Aenean vestibulum felis lacinia augue laoreet congue. Phasellus ultricies convallis lacus, nec pharetra tortor commodo sit amet. Sed imperdiet, magna facilisis dignissim eleifend, mi felis sodales mi, et rhoncus turpis nulla a tortor. Integer pretium lacinia facilisis. Maecenas vitae tempus nulla. Duis hendrerit, nulla quis tristique fringilla, sapien odio convallis odio, eu hendrerit dui odio iaculis odio. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae.

So to sum up what we’ve covered, let’s take one more look at the <img> tag and it’s attributes:

<img src="http://www.bravodesigninc.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/photo_helicopterbunny.jpg" alt="" title="Cutest Bunny Ever" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-725" />

What will be
displayed:

The tag starts with: <img
src=”http://www.bravodesigninc.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/photo_helicopterbunny.jpg”, is the URL to the image file.
alt=””, alternate text visible if/when an image doesn’t load properly.
title=”Cutest Bunny Ever”, title that will appear when the user rolls over the image
width=”225″, width in pixels
height=”166″, height in pixels
class=”alignleft size-full wp-image-725″, the class that WordPress applies to your image based on your options selected before inserting into post. (e.g., alignleft, alignright, alignnone, etc.)
The tag ends with />

I hope this has been a helpful article regarding updating the images in your WordPress website. We’re always looking for ways to enhance our tutorials, so if you have an idea, or an issue let us know!

https://vimeo.com/bravodesignince

HTML Basics For Beginners: Part Two Text Styling

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Daniel Arriola

If you haven’t already, check out our first article in the “HTML Basics For WordPress Beginners” series, available here.

Part Two: Styling Our Text With Tags

In our first lesson, we covered how to use the <a> tag to embed links on our webpage. Now we’ll be looking at some quick and easy ways to style our text on the fly. Let’s dive right in…

This text is about to be bold.

What will be
displayed:

This text is about to be bold.

We just made use of the tag that will make our text elements bolder and help them stand out. Again, like the <a> tag we reviewed, there is an opening tag: () and a closing tag (). Let’s try out making something italic

This text is about to be italicized.

What will be
displayed:

This text is about to be italicized.

Again, we can see the effect that our tags have on the text that they are surrounding (as always, being sure we use both the and tags to wrap around the text to which we want to apply our italic style. Now let’s underline some text…

This text is about to be underlined.

What will be
displayed:

This text is about to be underlined.

We are able to underline text using the tag. I’m sure that by now you are seeing a pattern of how our tags, wrapped around our text elements, are creating the various styles we’ve seen so far. Just as I did in the previous article, I’ll emphasize how important it is to close our tags (i.e. , ).

Let’s take a look at all our styles in one line:

I'm important, while I'm sarcastic, and I should be remembered.

What will be
displayed:

I’m important, while I’m sarcastic, and I should be remembered.

So what if we want some text to be bold and italic? Calm down, I’ll show you right now…

This text isbold and italic.

What will be
displayed:

This text is bold and italic.

Notice how the tags are nested within the tags. Imagine that the tags represent a box, and each style is its own box. We are putting our text into our italic box () and then taking our text in the italic box and placing it in the bold box (). Now let’s have a look at the tag…

This text isred.

What will be
displayed:

This text is red.

Ok, so if you’ve had very limited exposure to HTML, you’re probably asking yourself “What exactly does #FF0000 mean?” First things first, looking at the tag we see that similar to our <a> tags we have an attribute (color) with a value of #FF0000. #FF0000 is a hexadecimal color value that all browsers will recognize (and yes, the # sign is important). For more information about HTML colors, check out: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_colornames.asp; it’s a great resource.

We’ll also find that we’re able to use actual color names as well, like ‘blue’, ‘red’, ‘green’ and ‘honeydew.’ Again, the full list of color names and their HEX values is available at: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_colornames.asp; definitely worth clicking into and browsing for a minute. Let’s try some colors out.

All the colors of the rainbow: &#60font color="red"&#62Red&#60/font&#62, &#60font color="orange"&#62Orange&#60/font&#62, &#60font color="yellow"&#62Yellow&#60/font&#62, &#60font color="green"&#62Green&#60/font&#62, &#60font color="blue"&#62Blue&#60/font&#62, &#60font color="indigo"&#62Indigo&#60/font&#62 and &#60font color="violet"&#62Violet&#60/font&#62

What will be
displayed:

All the colors of the rainbow Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet

Don't matter if you're Black or White

What will be
displayed:

Don’t matter if you’re Black or White

What's the difference between <font color="greenyellow">Green Yellow</font> and <font color="yellowgreen">Yellow Green</font>?

What will be
displayed:

What’s the difference between Green Yellow and Yellow Green?

So now you have acquired a great deal of power from learning about the tag, but with great power comes great responsibility. Do Not Abuse These Tags on your website. Color styles are neat, but you don’t need your professional website looking like the Rainbow Connection. So please, as a professional web designer I am asking (maybe even begging) you not to overuse these tags. Practice moderation in life and design. That being said, have fun!

https://vimeo.com/bravodesignince

HTML Basics For Beginners: Part One Embedding Links

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Daniel Arriola

If you’re reading this post, chances are you were referred to it by the Bravo Design team regarding your new WordPress CMS website. I’d just like to take a moment and emphasize, probably again, how incredible the WordPress CMS platform is. Faster load times when compared to Joomla and Drupal, and optimized more efficiently than any other CMS right out of the box. Bravo Design Inc. primarily uses WordPress for all of our website commissions because we are all about empowering our clients. So how can we empower our clients further? By showing them some quick and easy HTML basics for making their websites easier to update and keeping them looking great.

Part One: Using The <a> Tag To Embed Links

Let’s get started with the HTML tags you’ll be using the most, starting with the <a> tag. Every time you’d like to insert a link in your post, you’ll be using the <a> tag.

Let’s take a look at how a link is coded in HTML, don’t worry this’ll be painless.

<a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a>

What will be
displayed:

Google

So we see that the only thing visible is the text that is surrounded by the <a> and </a> tags. This is a fundamental concept of HTML; making sure you always close your tags. Forgetting to do so can have some pretty hairy results.

Let’s take a look at an example where a client has forgotten to close their <a> tag.

One of my favorite websites that I use to search the internet is <a href="http://www.google.com">Google. I use it all the time, and I definitely prefer it to using <a href="http://www.bing.com">Bing</a>.

What will be
displayed:

One of my favorite websites that I use to search the internet is Google. I use it all the time, and I definitely prefer it to using Bing .

You’ll notice that the link for http://www.google.com is active for all the text until the next <a> tag is called around the word “Bing.” So we see how forgetting to close our tags can have a drastically adverse effect on our code, so if you take one lesson from this series: Remember to close your tags!

We’ve covered how to use the <a> tag, so let’s take it a step further and make a link open in a new window. Take a deep breath, it’s only an additional 15 characters.

<a href="http://www.google.com" target="_blank">Google</a>

What will be
displayed:

Google

The output looks exactly like our first example, but when we click on the link (go ahead, click it) the link opens in a new window (or tab, depending on how you have your browser configured). The extra snippet of code, target=“_blank” tells the browser that this link should be opened in a new window. By default, the target attribute equals “_self”, meaning that the link will open in the same window that you are browsing.

A good practice is having links within your website (i.e. http://www.mysite.com/services, http://www.mysite.com/about) open in the same window, and having links that lead off of your site (i.e. http://www.google.com, http://www.bing.com) open in a new window.

By now you’re feeling pretty confident about putting links into your website, so I’ll show you just one more cool feature before we move on. What if we’d like to show some more information for our links without taking up more room on our web page? We can do this easily, with use of the “title” attribute in our <a> tag. Let’s try it out.

<a href="http://www.google.com" target="_blank" title="The internet's most used search engine">Google</a>

What will be
displayed:

Google

Doesn’t really look like much, until we roll over the link with our cursor. After holding the cursor still over the link for a moment, we’ll see the title that we entered in our code. So this is a cool way to add some extra information to our links without taking up too much space on our web page.

https://vimeo.com/bravodesignince

Identify Your Fonts With Ease

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Daniel Arriola

This article applies to anyone who has been given the daunting task of finding a specific font.

The old way, you’d bust out a massive font book and start flipping pages based on some simple schema (serif vs. sans). Maybe you were a little more internet-savvy so you’d high-tail it to dafont.com or fontfile.com and browse a huge catalog online with a slightly better taxonomy (Fancy, Old School, Script, Destorted, etc.).

Until now…

Thankfully the powers that be, at MyFonts.com, engineered the incredible and incredibly useful “What The Font!”

No more time wasted browsing countless pages of font families with no end in sight. Now it’s as simple as taking a screenshot and uploading the image to put a name to the typeface. MyFonts provides some key points to using their font identifier effectively. Namely, ensuring contrast between the type and background (figure/ground), trying to maintain space between the characters (a lowercase “L” and a lowercase “O” sure looks like a lowercase “B” to me), and keeping the text as horizontal as possible.

And, if by some fluke, you aren’t able to identify your fonts using What The Font, they have a great community to discuss font-finding techniques and get font ID feedback from the typographically-sensitive masses.

https://vimeo.com/bravodesignince

VLC, the Only Video Player You’ll Ever Need

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Daniel Arriola

The internet is filled with a lot of junk.

If you haven’t been presented with some shady online media player demanding that you download some Xvid codec to watch a water-skiing squirrel video, chances are you’re a n00b. And if that’s the case, there’s an even better chance that you’ll actually download the shady Xvid codec only to realize that it’s some crappy virus or spyware designed to steal all your passwords while a bouncing Charlie Sheen head laughs hysterically and verbally mocks you.

VLC player to the rescue! If you’ve already downloaded and installed the VLC player feel free to pat yourself on the back and grab an ice cream. Those of you who have yet to experience the empowering glory of the VLC player, brace yourselves.

Multi-platform (Mac OSX, Windows, GNU/Linux and many more), open-source sweetness engineered to eliminate the need to download countless codecs and juggle multiple media players (sorry, Divx, Quicktime and Windows Media Player). Since downloading VLC player in 2007, I’ve played every video format that I’ve come across: .mpg, .avi, .mkv, .flv, .f4v, .mov, .ogg, .3gg, and a few others that escape me at the moment. If VLC doesn’t play it, you probably shouldn’t be trying to watch it in the first place (“why isn’t TRON_LEGACY.docx playing?!”).

Developed by our friends at the non-profit Video LAN Organization, VLC player has brought about a new standard for watching videos on your computer.

Go ahead, check it out and download the free program that will only make your life easier.*

*Your life may actually get harder depending on the amount of time spent watching videos on your computer instead of focusing on work and responsibilities.

Bravo Design, Inc.

Design Studio in Los Angeles, CA

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WordCamp LA 2011 – Design, SEO and Selling WordPress

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HTML Basics For Beginners: Part Three Image Styling

HTML Basics For Beginners: Part Two Text Styling

Part Two: Styling Our Text With Tags

HTML Basics For Beginners: Part One Embedding Links

Part One: Using The <a> Tag To Embed Links

Identify Your Fonts With Ease

VLC, the Only Video Player You’ll Ever Need