SpeyerGraphix Branding Blog

Very good point. As a designer, myself I have become painfully aware that good SEO coupled with on site marketing and off site marketing is essential for successful web design and web presence. Please read on

By Kalena Jordan (c) 2008

If I was to ask you right now “Are you absolutely certain that your web site is optimized for high visibility in search engines?”, what would you say?

What if I was to ask “What position in the major search engines does your site appear in for your target search terms?” Or how about “Does each page of your site have tailored Title and META Tags?”

If you would answer “No” or “I don’t know” to any of these questions, you would be amongst the 60% of web site owners whose web sites are missing out on traffic because they are not designed for search engine compatibility. Has your web designer optimized YOUR site for your target keywords? Have they made sure it is visible in Google and the other major search engines? More than likely, you don’t know because they haven’t told you. Ask them today! More

A very good article. This addresses issues that no one ever talks about but certainly knows about. We all have to go through this at some point or another if we want to get noticed.

by Lisa Barone, August 15, 2008

Conference networking is one of the most compelling reasons for professionals to attend events in their niche. However, for introverts, the only difference between conferences and your horrifying experience as a 13-year-old in P.E. is that you wasted a considerable amount of money to feel tortured and uncomfortable.

You shell out $1,500 to attend your industry’s premier conference, go through the hassle of coordinating time off work and accept that you will be paying out the nose in travel, eating and lodging expenses. Then, when you get there, you don’t speak to anyone in the sessions and spend the afterhours hidden away in your hotel room flipping through the same nine television channels. For three days, you avoid the Birds of a Feather lunches, hold up the walls during social functions and effectively meet no one. Read more.

I just came across this great article in “Better Explained”.  GZIP is a great tool to optimize your site and boy we can always use all the help we can get. Read on.

How To Optimize Your Site With GZIP Compression

Compression is a simple, effective way to save bandwidth and speed up your site. I hesitated when recommending gzip compression when speeding up your javascript because of problems in older browsers.

But it’s 2007. Most of my traffic comes from modern browsers, and quite frankly, most of my users are fairly tech-savvy. I don’t want to slow everyone else down because somebody is chugging along on IE 4.0 on Windows 95. Google and Yahoo use gzip compression. A modern browser is needed to enjoy modern web content and modern web speed — so gzip encoding it is. Here’s how to set it up. Read more.

by Bill Kennedy

Recently, a client of mine asked if I could start running ads for her house in the local newspaper.  I explained to her that my internet advertising was much more effective, and cited the numerous studies that have proven such.  It got me thinking, though… how much of a dinosaur is print marketing?

I think that it all depends on the TYPE of marketing that you do.  If you’re just running image ads, or ads with no direct response marketing aspect, then the ad is basically pointless.  On the other hand, direct response marketing still has a place in the print ads. Read more

You can never have enough information while building a website. I came across this helpful e-book by Ian Lloyd. Download a free sample at: http://www.sitepoint.com/books/html1/. In a nutshell, here is a summary:

“Learning HTML and CSS has never been so much fun!”

• Build a fully-featured web site from scratch using HTML
• Use CSS to add style to your website and help you with page layout
• Learn the tricks to creating graphics especially for the web
• Make your web site interactive with forms!
• Find how easy it is to get your web site online
• Keep people updated by adding a blog to your site

THE CONSUMER’S MIND IS MORE THAN A CLUTTERED SPACE.
IT’S A WAR ZONE!

Successful brands are those that occupy a special place in the hearts and minds of their customers. Standing out by standing for something. Something unique, something relevant, something compelling to their loyalists.

http://www.brandhaus.com.au/brandhaus.aspx

Have you ever come across a site that is so irritating to look at that you wish you could blacklist it from the Internet? There are a few sites out there that are just plain repulsive because they are not user friendly, ugly, take too long to load and a variety of other reasons. In order to make a site successful and have high viewer response, there are a few basic web design ideas to avoid like the plague!

Crummy Content

Content is by far one of the most important parts of a website. It can help a business gain traffic as well as increase sales and viewer interest. Ignoring your content is website suicide. This does not mean posting a ton of links instead of tangible articles on your resource page. Create or edit articles and information that is attention getting and newsworthy. Also, do not link every word on your article to an off- or on-page; it is distracting and unnecessary. When writing fresh content, leave the jokes to the comedians. People may not understand your humor and can even be offended by it. This will most certainly drive viewers away from your site.

Terrible Text and Bawdy Backgrounds

After you have some content, do not ruin it by making it unreadable. Avoid fancy scripts, centered text, flashing items and overuse of bold and italics. Pick a script that’s easy to read and bold/italicize only what’s important like subheads, keywords and focal points. Next pick a background that does not take away from the text. For example, white text on a black background, dark text on a dark background and light colored text on a white background is not appealing and sometimes difficult to read. You want to attract ever type of reader in every age group, therefore keep your text and backgrounds simple and neutral. Confusing text and background combinations highlights chaos and a lack of control. This is not the message you want to send to potential clients

Keep it Simple

The last thing your business needs is for Internet users to run away from your site for good. Make it easy on yourself and on your viewers by keeping your web design simple with a branded look and salivating content. Solid web design can help your business keep customers searching your content. Remember to just keep it simple.

SpeyerGraphix specializes in building and marketing strong and clear branding strategies that take full advantage of the latest developments on and offline. We have over 25 years of experience in helping businesses and corporations create branded images for products and services, helping to convert visitors into buyers. To learn more about branding and its benefits, log on to http://www.speyergraphix.com or email Bob Speyer at bob@speyergraphix.com

When I open my Gmail, the upper right hand side always has ads that are related to my mail. For example, if one of my clients sends me an article on glyconutrients, ads for vitamins and supplements appear. This type of marketing is known as behavioral targeting and will soon be sweeping the nation.

Knowing where people are searching or what articles they are reading can help you eliminate the guesswork and to plan your next marketing strategy. Instead of having your marketing team research and calculate what would work for certain demographics depending on psychology and location, you can have them look at people’s pathway data instead. This will help your team discover what people want. You can gear special offers, e-reports or product and service launches toward people who might actually be interested based on their online behavior. Take my client for example, if she finds out that more people are interested in phytonutrients, she could promote her services and offer a FREE phytonutrient sample for the next 50 people to sign-up.

Increase Your Brand Awareness

Behavioral targeting can also be used for online branding, leading people of all interests and geographical locations to your website. When you send out ads to people who are searching in your field of expertise, people will respond whether it is simply brand awareness or click to your site. If the people you are marketing to have been searching in your field of expertise, it is only a matter of time before your brand is established in their memories.

Although behavioral targeting is new, it is gaining popularity in becoming the next big thing in marketing. As with many brand new marketing strategies, inconsistencies arise. However, behavioral targeting when applied right can produce better results, increasing your click-through rate and exposing your brand.

Targeting the Right Solutions Get Results

SpeyerGraphix specializes in building and marketing strong and clear branding strategies that take full advantage of the latest developments on and offline. We have over 25 years of experience in helping businesses and corporations create branded images for products and services, helping to convert visitors into buyers. To learn more about branding and its benefits, log on to http://www.speyergraphix.com or email Bob Speyer at bob@speyergraphix.com

Blaise Aguera y Arcas leads a dazzling demo of Photosynth, software that could transform the way we look at digital images. Using still photos culled from the Web, Photosynth builds breathtaking dreamscapes and lets us navigate them.

Webpage design and branding are the two most important tools for online businesses that are starting out or reworking their image. However, there are many things to avoid when designing a new site or revamping and old one. Here are a few great tips that will help your site create more viewer interest.

Consistency
Being consistent with your design and brand is of utmost importance. Keep one branded design for all pages – including your blogs. Changing a brand look from page to page, can damage a company’s marketing strategy and confuse surfers. The idea is to keep everything consistent so that surfers create a memory of your company’s image. This means don’t change colors or branding images. If you have navigation buttons at the top of your homepage then keep them at the top for all the inside pages. You want everything on your homepage and inside pages to be clear, easy to use and consistent. Do not move around your navigation buttons from top to left or remove them from any inside page. This will confuse surfers and push them away from your site. To keep them searching your content, all links should be placed in the same order and in the same position on each page. If you have a lot of pages and want to more than six or seven navigation buttons, drop-down panels can be very effective and help to keep your site organized.

Simplicity
There is beauty in simplicity. That’s why millions of people vacate out of stressful and busy city life to areas with a more natural and calm feel. The same goes for a website. People do not respond well to flashy tricks, funky doo-dads, and swirling objects. Stay away from the unnecessary. Remember, content is what people will be looking for, not flare and moving images. This is not to say you can’t have video or audio on your site, which can help drive traffic, rather to keep your site as simple and stress-free as possible. Take Google for example. Its use of white space is what made it on of the lead search engine sites. Google users also have the option to personalize their Google for an easy to use experience. The simpler your site, the more likely surfers will stay.

With these two factors in mind, you can build a fresh website with consistent and simple formatting and well-branded content. The way to attract visitors and to keep them coming back for more is to create a positive company image. Surfers will remember your brand as long as you stay consistent and keep it simple.

SpeyerGraphix specializes in building and marketing strong and clear branding strategies that take full advantage of the latest developments on and offline. We have over 25 years of experience in helping businesses and corporations create branded images for products and services, helping to convert visitors into buyers. To learn more about branding and its benefits, log on to http://www.speyergraphix.com or email Bob Speyer at bob@speyergraphix.com