Posts Tagged ‘graphic design’
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
Life has a comical way of illustrating points for us when we focus on them. Last week I blogged about creating a ”blueprint” for your website before you go to a web designer to create it. A day or two later, as I am helping a friend of mine create a website for her fitness company, I asked her about the content for her site. I wanted to show her how to upload and manipulate the content and place it into the site. This was her response - “I guess I haven’t put much thought into all of this. I just thought I could get a website and start writing and it would just magically appear the way I wanted it!”
Talk about a good belly laugh! This is exactly what I was getting at in my last post with how people approach their website projects, “I’ll have someone build it first and then I will start writing the content or thinking about what goes into it. ” And that may work in a limited amount of cases, but it would save you money and your designer time to have the content written and your must haves thought out and outlined beforehand.
As with just about everything in life, there is a trade-off. It’s called time or money, which one is more important to you?
If your time is more valuable, you can hire us to create a site complete with content. This way you are focusing on what you do best, your job and we will focus on what we do best, creating an aesthetically pleasing, easy-to-navigate, compelling website. BUT, and this is a big BUT, if you hire us to create the content, you will still have to give us direction and help us to understand your market.
If on the other hand, your money is more valuable, then I suggest sitting down and delving in . . . grab a pen and paper or your favorite word processing program and sketch out your content, what you want to convey to potential clients, images, quotes, and anything else that you have to have on your site.
Either way, the more information your designer knows about the project, the less it will cost you in both time and money and the happier you will be with the end result. In my next blog, I will provide you with some questions to consider and resources that will help guide you in building a content rich, relevant site.
Tags: business websites, content design, content writing, corporate websites, graphic design, website design
Posted in Web Site Information | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
I know that question seems pretty rudimentary, we are in business right? But I am astonished at how many small businesses that don’t REALLY know the answer.
Because we work on the web, we can’t help but look at websites . . . ALL day. And what we’ve been noticing is that while some of these websites are graphically fantastic, their content is truly lacking; lacking in pulling us in; lacking in seducing us and making us feel as if “I HAVE TO HAVE IT”!
Who are you marketing to? What is your solution to MY problem and WHY should I buy from you? How is what you are doing any better than the next Joe? These are questions that we as business owners have to ask ourselves frequently. Why? Why would anybody want to buy from me? What is it that makes MY PRODUCT stand out? And HOW on earth do I convey that to people searching for what I’ve got?
You start by asking the people . . . then REALLY listening to the answers. Find out what they love, what gets under their skin and use that information in your approach. Give the people what they want and they will come back for more!
You can have the best looking site on the web; get yourself out there with social media; have your website optimized and what’s that gonna get ya? A bit of business, perhaps, but more likely a huge headache as you beat your head against the wall trying to figure out what went wrong?
For some reason, people focus all their attention on the visual appeal, and don’t get me wrong, that’s a great start. . . but if you don’t have the “killer content” they ARE NOT going to stay or BUY!
In case you haven’t heard, we are in the INFORMATION AGE, we are bombarded with crap every time we get on the internet. The last thing we want to read is MORE CRAP. We want something that grabs us, pulls us in, and doesn’t let go; we want a connection. We want to be left with a FEELING, people a FEELING. Got it?
Good . . . now get going!
Tags: content writing, graphic design, SEO, Website
Posted in Web Site Information | 1 Comment »
