Be sure to make a note on your calendars, iPhones, and what-have-you: Alberta Arts Days celebrations start on Sept. 17th in Grande Prairie! Programs and bookmarks to be distributed soon. Check out abartsdaysgp.ca for more info.

Interested in social media? You’ll love this 4 minute clip that explores social media & mobile statistics in fascinating bite-size bits.

Whether you’re a beginning, intermediate or advanced Firefox 3 (internet browser) user, Firefox offers a bunch of shortcuts and suggestions to help you get the most out of surfing the web. Here’s one I use all the time:

Tired of tiny text? Want to see an image a little more up close and personal? You can easily zoom in… and out of Web pages by holding the control key on your keyboard and the plus or minus keys.

For more tips and tricks, go to http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/tips/

At the start of a project, it is important to carefully examine your business and design project objectives to make sure you and the designer are on the same page throughout the creative process. Here are a few questions adapted from about.com to get you started:

Describe your company. What do  you do? What are your competitive advantages?

If storytelling is not your thing, demonstrate your product or service; bring a sample or anecdotes; give a compelling example of how it works. This will be a definite springboard for graphic inspiration.

Who is the target audience?

Find out who you are designing for. This will have a great impact on the style, content and message of the project. For example, a postcard aimed at new customers will be completely different from one aimed at existing customers. Some variables that can impact design include:

• Internal (i.e. employees of the company) or external customers
• Age
• Geographic location
• Gender
• Depending on the project, factors like economic status and religion may also come into play.

What is the message?

Consider what message you are trying to get across to the target audience. The overall message can be something as simple as thanking customers or announcing a new product. Once that is established, go beyond it to find out the “mood” of the piece. Is it excitement? Sadness? Compassion? Gather some keywords that will help with the overall style of the design.

If a group of people from your company will be involved in the design decision-making process, consider asking each person to come up with a few words that they think describe the mood of the message, and brainstorm from there.

What are the specs of the project?

You may already have an idea of specifications for a design, which is helpful for determining the time involved in the project, and therefore the cost. For example, a 12-page magazine will take much longer than a 4-page foldout. If you’re not sure what you are looking for, ask what the designer would recommend.

The amount of text content to use, the project’s budget, and the final use of the design may all affect these decisions. Before any design is started, determine:

• Dimensions
• Number of pages
• Black and white vs. 2-color vs. 4-color printing
• Paper stock
• Size of print run (the number of pieces to print)

What is the budget?

Maybe you don’t want to disclose this information to you designer up-front, or maybe you have no idea how much to set aside for the project you have in mind. That’s okay! Come in, ask as many questions and request as many quotes as you’d like, then go back to the drawing board to analyze your budget. This info will help to determine the scope of the project and helps you feel confident and focussed when discussing your vision with the designer.

Is there a specific deadline?

Does the job coincide with a product launch, or another important milestone?  Your creative team will often be juggling a variety of jobs from a variety of clients at one time, so if you know you will need a project completed by a certain date, it’s good practice to approach your designer well ahead of schedule to ensure they will have enough time to fit you in. If a spontanious project comes up, however, they will try their best to make it work and give you a realistic estimation of when it could be tackled.

As with budgets, timelines should be discussed prior to the start of the work so everyone involved is on the same page and there are no surprises.

Can you provide creative direction?

Whenever possible, it is helpful to give at least a little creative direction to your designer. Share your story and your enthusiasm. Your designer will be creating something new and unique for you, but some ideas will help them get started in the right direction. Are there are any designs, design elements or other cues you can provide, such as:

• Colors
• Fonts
• Works of art
• Other designs
• Websites

It is also important to let your designer know if there is an existing brand that you need to match. You may have a colour scheme, typefaces, logos or other elements that need to be incorporated into the design. This will help the working relationship and design process go smoothly.

Embrace these questions! They’re the point where your understanding of your business and your strategic plan reaches a creative team. Your answers become both a useful tool and inspiration for your designer.

Don’t get us wrong, it’s vital that your website be aesthetically pleasing and easy to use too. However, it is just as important that your website is useful to your audience. Quality content peppered with searchable key words results in higher search engine rankings and more happy customers.

Where to start

I agree with author Mark Silver when he says, “Great salespeople and marketers, the ones you feel good about and look up to instead of feeling slimed by, have this combination of confidence and humility, caring and willingness to deliver on their promises.” How can this be accomplished?

• First and foremost, you have to believe in your product or service.
• You need to respect your customer’s time and intelligence.
• You have to be in tune with your customers’ wants and needs and be ready to deliver on your promises.

Beyond ethics and sound motivation, you need clear objectives and measurable goals. Without them, how will you know your hard work has payed off?

Next steps

• Write and thoroughly edit your copy
• Speak to your audience
• Create meaningful headlines and subheads (not “clever” ones)
• Break up “walls of text” with lists, paragraph breaks, relevant graphics, and headlines
• Create useful links within your text to internal and external pages
• Incorporate a strong call to action on every page
• Summarize your main points

Write and edit your copy

Compile your text (based on a clear outline, of course), then be ruthless with editing.

“Because web users read only 18% of added verbiage,” usability guru Jacob Nielson explains, “cutting words is well worth the accusing squiggles that MS Word will throw at your sentence fragments.”

Be sure to only introduce one idea per paragraph to avoid overwhelming your readers, and use active verbs where possible.

Speak to your audience

Content will be more appealing to your customers if it speaks to them in terms like “you can,” “you will,” “yours,” “your,” and “you’re,” rather than self-centered terms like “ours,” “we’re,” “we will,” “we can,” etc.

Try to write to as specific an audience as possible. For example, imagine you’re trying to sell vitamins. You’d approach grandmothers differently than bodybuilders, right?
Try addressing common challenges your target audience will be able to overcome with your product or service.

Avoid sales-person type language. Be authentic. Reading your text out loud will help you identify any awkward spots.

Don’t just provide dry information and facts either. Make it lively and entertaining whenever possible.

Create meaningful headlines and subheads (not “clever” ones)

On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. Try these tactics from Copyblogger contributor Dean Rieck:

• State the big benefit [e.g. Copywrite Your Way to a Million Dollars]
• Announce exciting news [e.g. Earth From Space: Greenland Glacier Shrinks Overnight]
• Appeal to the “how-to” instinct [e.g. Prevent Memory Loss]
• Pose a provocative question [e.g. How do I know which mutual funds may be right for me?]
• Give a direct command [e.g. Call anyone, anywhere, without a phone line for FREE!]

Break up “walls of text” with lists, paragraph breaks, relevant graphics, and headlines.

Creating more white space will not only help users find what they’re looking for easily, but it will help your page look more proffessional.

Create useful links within your text to internal and external pages.

This makes your text easier to scan and your site easier to navigate. Your visitors will appreciate the good resources.

When creating links there are three main rules to remember:

• Use a relevant descriptive or contextual title that clearly illustrates the content of the link’s destination
• If it’s an internal link (one that directs your customer to another page within your site), it’s okay to have the new page open in the same browser window.
• If it’s an external link (one that leads the visitor outside of your site), then make sure it opens in a new browser tab or window.
  

Incorporate a strong call to action on every page.

A call to action is simply telling your customers what they need to do in order to receive whatever you are
offering. For example, “request a quote,” “donate now,” “sign up today,” etc.

To make things easy on your site’s visitors, link this text to your order page or subscription form.

Remember that before a user will complete a call to action, however, they have to recognize the need. Identify a problem and show the benefits of responding. Perhaps create extra incentive to participate by offering a discount or free gift.

Summarize

If an idea is worth saying, then it’s worth saying again. Be sure to summarize your main points so the reader has a “take-home message.”

As they say, content is king. By creating well organized, interesting, and useful content, you will improve your reputation and credibility with your customers and with search engines too. You will effectively remove the barriers to buying (or signing up, or donating, etc.).

Tackle it one paragraph at a time!

In our last post, we mentioned that one way to improve your website’s search engine ranking is by actively promoting  it. We’ve decided to create a basic checklist to help you spread the word:

Direct clients to your website with the marketing materials you already use (posters, brochures, radio ads), and give them a good reason to go there (industry tips, insider info, contests).

Being active in social media will often drive a lot of traffic to your site. Create a Facebook business page and Facebook ads, a quality business blog, interesting YouTube videos, or a business twitter account.

You may want to participate in a social bookmarking community to promote viral marketing. Some of the most popular communities include Google Bookmarks,  Digg, StumbleUpon, and Delicious. Search engines spider these sites looking for links to new and relevant info. Be sure to make a genuine contribution though: No spam.

Create incentive for people to visit – Have you considered a twitter contest or exclusive online specials? How about offering a free service or tool?

Use a call to action. Ask visitors to bookmark your site, sign up for a newsletter, or send a link to their friends.

Consider purchasing Google adwords that match keywords people use to search for your services. You would create simple text ads, and when web users google your keywords your ad may appear next to the search results. In this way, you’re targeting an already interested audience.

Make sure you claim your business on Google and add it to Yahoo! Local. Your business will show up on a map when people do a local search.

Post your contact info including  your site’s URL to your e-mail “signature” at the end of each message you send. This will help recipients reach your site and contact you easily.

Once we’ve designed your site and turned the content management over to you, we recommend you maintain it using these 4 tips to ensure it attracts attention and ranks high in search engines.

1) Take advantage of keywords and phrases

Crawler-based search engines, like Google, create their listings automatically. The engine “crawls” or “spiders” the web for key terms or phrases you enter then lists the results for you to scan.

It’s helpful to understand how keyword phrases help with searches, so check out the article Tips for Searching Effectively with Google.

What would you search for if you were looking for your company’s site or service? More importantly, what would your target audience search for?

Use these words and phrases within your site, but don’t overdo it. Compelling content is what you’re going for, not a list of repeated terms (which could actually get you banned from search engines).

Page titles, body copy and site organization all count.

2) Use links to your advantage

Another measure of how important or relevant your web page is how many quality websites link to your website.

If you have affiliates with quality sites of their own, by all means ask if they would like to yours. The best way to get more links, however, is to ensure your web pages are pumped full of relevant and well written info. In this way, other site administrators will link to your pages without you needing to ask.

Besides attracting repeat visitors and links with stellar content, consider rewarding online customer referrals or giving special offers on your website. As well, social media marketing sites like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, and Stubleupon are all great free tools to generate links to your site and connect with your audience.

In addition, don’t forget to create links that point visitors to other parts of your site. Internal linking helps because it easily allows web crawlers navigate a site. This is especially important when a website is new and has few incoming links.

3) Let people know about your site

Print advertising, business networking, and email/social media marketing are all great ways to spread the word. Get creative!

Don’t expect changes overnight, but if you follow these steps and are persistent, look forward to seeing improvements in your search engine rankings within 4-6 weeks or less.

We just received Crosslink Leaseholds’ varnished folders and business cards back from the print shop, and they look fantastic! It’s amazing how a little well-placed shine helps grab your attention. Have you considered using this printing technique on any of your promotional materials?

Varnishes can provide a matte, glossy, or satin finish, and they are often used on select parts of a graphic to emphasize certain page elements.

Just as varnish protects wood and gives it a quality finished look, the varnish used in graphic design enhances the appearance and durability of print projects.

What Varnish can do for your next print project:

• Adds visual interest and ups the “wow” factor of any piece
• Makes your colours pop
• Adds texture
• Protects from smudges and wear
• Maximizes the contrast between matte and gloss surfaces

Give our office a call if you would like to know more about this stunning effect.

After lots of planning and hard work, we’ve launched our new website just in time for our tenth anniversary! We’ve been encouraging our clients to use their companies’ sites, blogs, and social media pages to connect with their audience in a more personal way; now it’s our turn.

We’re proud to offer you an updated Image Design look with loads of useful content ranging from an outline of our web design packages to this shiny new blog.

Our goals are to help you stay informed on the latest design and marketing trends, provide advice, demystify the inner workings of our office and work flow, and generally stay in touch.

Do you like what you see? Would you like us to cover a certain topic in our blog? We’d love to hear your comments, questions, or suggestions! Email info@imagedesignpros.com.

Attentional all artists! Image Design can now handle your Giclée and photo printing needs! We’re also proud to offer our customers wide format printing on vinyl, artist canvas, acid-free photo and watercolour paper. Check out our wide-format printing services page for rates and other info.