New Logo? Things to think about before we get started

Friday, September 19th, 2008 | Business tips, Design, Great website tips | No Comments

Do you need to like your logo?

Yes, it’s important that you like your logo. But remember, this logo isn’t to help you fall in love with your business, it is a marketing tool to increase business from other people …so what really matters is that your potential customers respond to it positively.

If you have a children’s clothing company, it’s not always the best idea to use your own kids or your kids drawings in the marketing just because they mean something to YOU.

Let’s face it – your logo is the first impression many of your customers you see. It may be on your business card, signage, packaging, clothing or may other brand related items. If you potential customer doesn’t respond well to your logo, you may have lost them forever. For thsi reason it’s very important to know your target market well and market directly to them. Are they professionals, creative, young, old, rich, poor. Where do they eat? Shop? What music do they like? The moer you know the better we can target the identity design towards them

Logo Dimensions

Think about the dimensions of your logo. Do you want a tall thin logo? Also, what if you decide to print your logo onto pens?

How about if your logo appears next to a collection of others – i.e. as a list of sponsors. It may appear smaller than it’s neighbours and get lost in the crowd. Often your brand is given a maximum width or a square to fit into so make sure your logo will get as much exposure as possible in these circumstances. How about if you ever need to squeeze the logo into a small square such as on a poster or a favicon?

What’s the message?

What do you want your logo to “say” about your business? What kind of impression should it leave about your product or service? What kind of look do you want for your logo (ie, techie, contemporary, old-school, artsy, eco, corporate etc.)

Very often clients want their logo to tell a story. Where the business came from, what it does, who is behind it. Don’t make the mistake of trying to cram too much information into a logo. Remember it’s about creating an impression, a feeling. A logo that says “Caring, Vet service, based in Christchurch, run by 3 men who love gardening” is probably going too far!

You hope that people will see your logo and immediately know what you do. But this may be asking your logo to do too much. Perhaps just a feeling of “professional” or “caring” is enough, so keep it simple. Together we can develop a logo that can represent the values and ideas your business stands for.

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Tags: brand, Design, identity, logo

Mistakes to avoid when writing website copy

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 | Great website tips | 1 Comment

1. Using so much emphasis that NO ONE knows what you are trying to say.

Try to keep your bold, italic and caps to a minimum and save it for when you really need it.

2. Overuse of exclamation marks!!!!!!!! – One is enough unless you are writing a teenagers skating blog. OMG LMAO!!!!!

3. Underlining anything that isn’t a link – this is confusing for your audience. It’s commonly accepted that if a word or phrase is underlined it’s a hyperlink. So if it aint linking, keep it naked.

4. Try to avoid writing “Please feel free to look around”. No one needs permission to look at your website and it will make you appear amateur.

5. A main heading that says “Welcome to our website” is another overused, unneeded line. Search engines take notice of these H1 headings, so make them useful – use your keywords “Outstanding Real Estate in Christchurch”, make them inticing “Top tips for selling your house” or try some of these collected from CopyBlogger

1. The Secret of [neon lights]
2. Little Known Ways to [lose weight]
3. Get Rid of [viruses] Once and For All
4. What Everybody Ought to Know About [UV rays]
5. Warning: [Two Out of Every Three People in Your Industry Will be Out of Work in 5 Years].
6. How [this product] Made Me [a million bucks].
7. If You’re [a parent], You Can [save money on..].
8. [10] Ways to [gain muscle].
9. Give Me [a week] and I’ll Give You [a better complexion].
10. If You Don’t [eat right] Now, You’ll Hate Yourself Later.
11. The Lazy [woman's] Way to [beautiful skin].
12. Do You Recognize the [15] Early Warning Signs of [meltdown]?
13. See How Easily You Can [increase web traffic].
14. You Don’t Have to Be [superman] to be [good in bed].
15. Do You Make These [accountancy] Mistakes?

6. Pretentious drivel: Company X is dedicated to remaining fully committed to fulfilling your needs as pertaining to every project you summon our marketing assistance with.

7. Too much text – Write for skimmers. Online users scan the page looking for information they may want to read. Break up text into short paragraphs, use clear headings, bullet points and simple to-the-point text.

8. Apostrophe in the wrong place. It’s amazing how often people get these ones wrong. There are two situations where you use an apostrophe…

• For contractions – it’s is short for it is
• When something belongs to someone – New Media Design’s new blog – means the blog belongs to New Media Design

Copyblogger says

If still in doubt, leave the apostrophe out. It causes more reader confusion to insert an apostrophe where it doesn’t belong than it does to omit one. Plus, you can always plead the typo defense if you leave an apostrophe out, but you look unavoidably dumb when you stick one where it doesn’t belong.

Tags: copy, copywriting, text, website

How to get listed in Google

Thursday, August 21st, 2008 | Great website tips | 1 Comment

Clients are always asking about how to get their websites well listed in Google. There is no easy answer and as the google techies are constantly changing and updating the way google searches, it’s an ongoing challenge.

Firstly, here’s a very good point from Just Creative Design

Do Not Cheat. Period.

“If you walked into a room full of genius scientists with PHDs, do you think you could outsmart them all? No. Google has hundreds of rooms full of genius scientists with PHDs, and their job is to work 60 hours a week to make sure you can’t fool Google. You can’t outsmart them. Ever. Ignore any advice on trying to cheat the system and focus on making great web sites with great content, and your sites will show up fine in searches.”

Here’s a list I came across of the top 20 factors for Google SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

Read the full article here

Keyword Use Factors

The following components relate to the use of the user’s search query terms in determining the rank of a particular page.

1. Keyword use in Title tag – placing the targeted search term or phrase in the title tag of the web page’s HTML header
2. Keyword use in Body text – using the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page
3. Relationship of Body text Content to Keywords – topical relevance of text on the page compared to targeted keywords
4. Keyword use in H1 tag – creating an H1 tag with the targeted search term/phrase
5. Keyword use in domain name & page URL – including the targeted term/phrase in the registered domain name, i.e. keyword.com plus target terms in the webpage URL, i.e. seomoz.org/keyword-phrase.

Page Attributes

The following elements comprise how the Google interprets specific data about a webpage independent of keywords.

6. Link popularity within the site’s internal link structure – refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to the target page
7. Quality/relevance of links to external sites/pages – do links on the page point to high quality, topically-related pages?
8. Age of document – older pages may be perceived as more authoritative while newer pages may be more temporally relevant
9. Amount of indexable text content – refers to the literal quantity of visible HTML text on a page
10. Quality of the document content (as measured algorithmically) – assuming search engines can use text, visual or other analysis methods to determine the validity and value of content, this metric would provide some level of rating.

Site/Domain Attributes

The factors below contribute to Google’s rankings based on the site/domain on which a page resides.

11. Global link poopularity of site – the overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web (both link quality and quantity)
12. Age of site – not the date of original registration of the domain, but rather the launch of indexable content seen by the search engines (note that this can change if a domain switches ownership)
13. Topical relevance of inbound links to site – the subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword
14. Link popularity of site in topical community – the link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world
15. Rate of new inbound links to site – the frequency and timing of external sites linking in to the given domain

Inbound Link Attribute

These pieces affect Google’s weighting of links from external websites pointing to a page and ultimately will assist in the ranking of that page.

16. Anchor text of inbound link
17. Global link popularity of linking site
18. Topical relationship of linking page
19. Link popularity of site in topical community – the link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world
20. Age of link

Tags: google, keyword, links, optimisation, pagerank, search engine, seo, tags