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Content versus Design

Posted on by skulkaew

Design, it’s totally and completely inescapable and impossible to overlook.

In publishing eras past, it was an afterthought. Content was first and foremost and appearance a secondary or tertiary concern. If you’re shaking your head thinking, “Content is still king,” I’ll touch on that in a moment. But over the course of the last century or so, there’s been a shift in focus between the two, and that much is evident in the changes we’ve seen with newspapers, and how front page formatting has evolved over time. There are a lot of reasons as to why this his happened, but I’d like to focus on how reader demographics have changed, as have their reading habits, without oversimplifying everything else. Because we consume information significantly differently than we did five, ten and fifteen years ago, organization has been changed to facilitate and streamline that process. The slideshow below shows how The Los Angeles Times has changed since its first edition from a paper crammed to the brim with information to something more cogent and palpable for readers.


“The Los Angeles Times” Headlines from Bravo Design, Inc.

Online, a website’s design is just as important as its content, if not more so, and can be the difference between a visit and a pass or a qualified lead versus an unacceptable bounce rate. To be clear, when I say web design, I’m not just referring to its aesthetics. I also mean its usability. Yes, content will drive traffic and have visitors coming back for repeat visits, but most guests won’t stick around initially if your page is difficult to navigate through or you’ve used GeoCities to build your business page. That’s not actually possible since the service is defunct. And yes, there are always exceptions to the rule, but you know what I’m getting at. There’s a direct correlation in increased conversion with a well crafted website, even if it has its shortcomings, and subpar metrics with one that’s poorly designed. This tidbit of advice isn’t esoteric. It’s money in the bank with real world application.

So what do you do? You build better. Sure, you can use your site but can your guests? If you paused for even the smallest of moments before answering that question, listed below are web design considerations you should mull over.

First and foremost, consider your goal(s). I can’t stress this point enough. What do you want from your website? Are you looking to increase readership for your fratire blog or are you selling <insert anything> or just schooling the general public on your service offerings? In Alice in Wonderland, there’s an exchange between Alice and the Cheshire Cat that’s paraphrased: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” The quote is all-applicable to life, love and, most of all, your website. Figure it out and then plan accordingly, then plan some more and then execute.

Who’s going to be using your site and how will they be using it? Web content and print content are totally and entirely not the same, so you’re going to have to tailor your writing style to the demographic you’re targeting with their browsing habits in mind. Remember, no one (including marketers) likes marketese so try not to write that way. Next, ask yourself if you’re being engaging? Good design and substantial content will draw users in, which makes them want to connect with you. Without personality, your visitors aren’t going to feel compelled to stay, and this can be detrimental to your conversion rates in the long run.

Manage attention and try to not squander user patience. Two points to think about are lowering barriers to pave the path of least resistance and not providing too many options. The less action that’s required for a visitor to access your site, the better. First-time users who want to read an article or peruse through your site probably aren’t going to want to fill out contact forms or register accounts, and are apt to bounce when confronted with the like, so don’t make them do that. Second, if you’re offering way too many choices, your average user is going to have a difficult time making up their mind. That’s the difference between going to a restaurant that has what seems like an endless menu with samplings from each and every continent and going to one that serves three different kinds of hot dogs.

Last but not least, simplify. This point, though seemingly intuitive, is often the hardest to apply. The best designs speak for themselves, and as Dieter Rams said once upon a time are “as little as possible.” With minimal or no instruction, a child should be able to use it. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel here. You just need to focus on the essential while pruning away everything else.

If you’re still shaking your head, when it comes to content versus design, I’ll cede that they’re equally important, but that’s all. You can leave a comment below if you fervently disagree. If you’re thinking about shopping around for web development assistance, we have a write up listed in our design blog, which might help out in your search. When I initially wrote the entry, I forgot to include that the expert you hire should be SEO savvy, but you already know that. Just remember that the best designers are translators who can turn a vision into something tangible and that our portfolio is also pretty groovy.

If you’d like to download this entry in Word format, click here: Content versus Design.

Photo Credit: Tactile Design Group

 

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Curating and Sharing Content for Beginners

Posted on by skulkaew

Information Overload, Bravo DesignMush. That’s what my brain feels like after curating our Twitter and Facebook feeds, digging through Inbound.org, Hacker Network and a dozen other news sources for high-quality content on search engine optimization (SEO), advertising, graphic design and web development to share throughout the day. All of which is made significantly more difficult due to the fact that there’s so much information to sort through online, plenty of which is deficient in some way or another. According to MBAonline.com, every 24 hours, two million blog posts are written, and 864,000 hours worth of video are added to YouTube. All in all, about 168 million DVDs worth of information is consumed by Internet traffic every single day. As Mitchel Kapor, an entrepreneur and software developer, says: getting information off the Internet is like drinking via fire hydrant.

So why do we do it?

At the end of last year when I was going through the interview process here at Bravo Design, part of what was discussed was how the company could foster and grow its online presence. And since then, we’ve seen some real progress in terms of our web traffic, due to our improved search engine ranking, and in the increase in our social media fan base. Not everything has gone as planned, and progress has sputtered from time to time, but we’ve stayed steadfast in our commitment to write about current events and trends in the industry to position ourselves, so we can serve as a resource for both our visitors and our clients even if it’s just a random something to make them smile. With so much great information online, often in obscure places, it’s been a priority of ours to put our readers in touch with content and tools that have the potential to make their lives easier and/or run their businesses more efficiently. Up through now, it’s been a great learning experience. That being said, I really want to encourage you to start curating great content and sharing it with your friends and followers. If you want to read more on the subject before making the leap of faith, Michael Fern from Intigi has a great write up on the topic.

Listed below are a few considerations that will help you get started.

1. Determine what you want from this exercise by setting goals on the front end. Are you looking to monetize your site by driving sales or with ads and need to increase traffic and return visits? Are you looking to increase your readership? The sooner you know, the better prepared you’ll be to set milestones to gauge success along the way.

2. Know your audience, so you can share content they find useful or interesting. This means getting comfortable reading through your website’s analytics and tracking hits, click-through-rate, interaction and propagation. If you’re two steps ahead on that front, here’s an article on actionable and vanity metrics and measuring what matters.

3. The audience you’re reaching out to is likely widely disparate, so you might have to use different forms of media like podcasts, videos, white papers, infographics and so on to increase your brand’s exposure. That also means using different channels/platforms like social media, mobile as well as content curation and industry communities.

4. Each piece of content you share should serve as a stepping-stone that guides your audience from one interaction to the next. Of these considerations listed, adhering to this might be the most difficult. Just tacking on a URL isn’t good enough, and neither is simply adding contact information.

Curating and sharing content, like some of the other exercises we’ve detailed in the past, takes both time and patience. You might not get much feedback early on, but interaction with your audience will ramp up if you’re engaging and sharing solid pieces of content. If you’re not following us on Twitter or Facebook, you’re missing out. When you do, shoot us a message or leave a comment in the field below, so we can reciprocate the favor in kind.

Photo Credit: Mike Segar (Reuters) and Iloveseo.net

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Actionable Metrics vs. Vanity Metrics

Posted on 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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Brand Attraction

Posted on 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 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.

Psychology of Advertising, Bravo DesignDespite 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.

Psychology of Advertising, Bravo DesignBrand 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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Providing Versus Promoting

Posted on 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 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 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 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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Finding the Right Designer

Posted on by skulkaew

World Wide Digital, DesignerIf 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.