by Kristina Parker | Mar 31, 2014 | Interactive, Latest
Designing digital properties is more important than ever for business, and no matter what industry you are working in you should make sure that you understand it and know how to work with it. This is especially true if you are designing digital products because you need to know how to create those products in a way that will make them intuitive to use and good to look at. Designing digital properties such as blogs, websites or any online presence if you want to make the most of your marketing initiatives. In an age where every business is fighting for attention online and through other forms of media, creating an attractive and communicative design that is also technologically sound is one of the most effective ways to stand out.
Designing digital properties takes the right tech and the right approach
If your business is not intrinsically a design company though, then chances are, you may struggle when getting started and creating your layouts.Whether you are designing digital products or designing digital properties for your business, you’ll need to understand the digital space is key. Read on and we’ll look at some of the best ways you can give yourself the edge.
The Right Hardware and Software
The first piece of advice for new companies that want to improve their online digital design work, is to make sure to invest in the very best hardware and software. Software wise, big organizations will of course be able to afford more cutting edge programs that come at a premium, and these can potentially give them the edge if you’re still working with MS Paint. Fortunately though, if you know where to look you’ll find a lot of free software out there that is in many cases just as capable – or even more powerful – than the ‘originals’.
A great example of this is GiMP. GiMP is a piece of photo/image editing software that takes a similar approach to PhotoShop and that can do most of the same things that the famous Adobe offering can. The only real difference? It’s free! Likewise ‘Open Office’ will give you Microsoft Office functionality with no fee, while Blender lets you create 3D files for a fraction of the cost.
Hardware wise it’s worth looking into which devices can give you the edge and help your designs to look more professional while saving you money. For instance, rather than use an expensive graphics tablet to input hand-drawn images, many companies can get by simply using a touchscreen hybrid slate computer with a stylus. This way you can draw straight onto the screen using software like SketchBook Pro.
Likewise why not look into getting a 3D CAD scanner? This way you can save hours building 3D models by instead scanning real objects in and getting the files automatically. Anything you can think to scan can that way become a 3D image for your designs.
The Right Approach
While you evaluate and decide which software and what hardware to purchase, you also need to think about how you approach designing your digital properties, and here the right attitudes can make a huge difference.
When it comes to designing digital properties such as web design, or design for marketing material, remember that less is very often more. Minimalism is very in vogue at the moment – particularly on the net – and the good news for you is that this decreases the amount of work you can do. Instead of looking for design flourishes you can add to your pages and layouts, instead think about the design elements you can remove to create a cleaner and more modern looking page and to save yourself time!
This is something that ‘indie game’ developers do very well. They can’t compete with the 3D graphics of blockbuster games, so instead they choose quirky and minimalist graphics styles – working all in one colour, or using silhouettes, or going for a purposefully ‘retro’ appearance. It’s easier for them, but actually just as eye-catching.
Finally, don’t be afraid to outsource. While it’s nice to do things yourself where possible, think about the time factor and obviously the end result. If there is an outside resource that designs digital properties more efficiently, at a value cost, then it’s only vanity to do it yourself.
by Kristina Parker | Mar 24, 2014 | Interactive, Latest
Web design doesn’t only mean website design. If you’re creating any digital product, be that a website, an app or even an eBook, then you may find that the temptation is there to rush out your final product and to ‘make do’ with work that doesn’t represent your very best. The problem is that it’s all too easy to create these products thanks to the wealth of great tools that take a lot of the grunt work out of our hands. With WordPress it’s a simple matter to create a web design for your website by just tweaking a couple of settings, which can make it all-too-easy to just settle for whatever look you stumble on first.
But if that’s your attitude then you need to be careful. When it comes to making a great impression online, the devil is very much in the details. Cutting corners on our web design can have a big impact on the overall appearance of your site while tweaking even the tiniest factor can make everything look more professional and more impressive – which translates as more visitors, more sales and more profit.
If you want to make your digital product look its very best with just a few minor web design tweaks, here are some of the things that you should consider first…
Animation
If you have a website or an app then it may have some basic animations for opening new pages or closing elements etc. If you’ve implemented animations like this at all then congratulations – you’re already one step ahead of much of the competition.
At the same time though, if you’ve just settled for a stock animation then this might not be making the very most of what you could potentially do. Case in point – have you considered an ‘ease-in’ or an ‘ease-out’? These describe slight changes to animations in which the objects accelerate and decelerate at the start and end of the movement. There’s another aspect to consider too called the ‘overshoot’ in which the object will travel slightly too fast – almost excitedly – and then be forced to ‘bounce back’ into the correct position. While these changes may seem almost imperceptible, they can actually make a massive difference to the overall sheen of the app or website by giving it that professional polish and lending your elements almost a ‘personality’ of their own.You can add more elements to an animation too. Why fade in or come in from the left when you can do both?
Orientation
Here’s something you’ve probably never considered: which way are the images on your website facing? In other words, if your image had a face, would it be looking in at the text, or away off to the edge? You might not realize this, but if you look at professional sites and magazines it’s always the former: all elements point in towards the content which has the effect of bringing the viewers’ eyes in that way too. Again, you probably wouldn’t think it would make that much difference, but now that we’ve been trained to expect this setup, your site will look less professional unless it features it.
Rounded Edges
Here’s a brilliant example of a very small design element having a big difference – rounding the edges of your boxes. Even doing this ever-so-slightly will again show attention to detail and give your app, website or book the appearance of being customized by a professional team and not just created in a ‘cookie cutter’ conveyor belt type manner. Add custom edges to your CSS elements and you’ll notice instantly how much better everything looks.
The Date
We’ll end on a really easy one: if your copyright notice still has the date from two years ago on it, then it’s pretty important that you fix that to show your site hasn’t been forgotten. Otherwise the money you spend on those ad slots will be wasted. Would you buy from a site that couldn’t be bothered to update its copyright notice to the right year?
by Belinda Lui | Jan 26, 2014 | Interactive, Latest
When a business embarks on a site refresh or re-design, one of the key factors to consider is whether search optimization has been implemented in the content that lives on each page. Is the website complicated and busy? Is it intuitive and easy to navigate? While there are many elements to successfully creating a site with search optimization, this post will focus on “busy-ness” and how that may affect your sales:
Using less will give you more when it comes to search optimization.
Consider this as an example:
A recent test was done on MECLABS’ online retail Research Partners and how the team was able to achieve a 10% lift in checkout completion rate by simply removing distracting elements.
The MECLABS team recently ran a test within the checkout pages for an online retailer. The goal of the test was to increase the checkout completion rate. The team identified a number of elements causing friction within the checkout pages and likely distracting visitors from completing the checkout process. The most drastic change was removing the static navigation bars (left and top navigation) from the checkout pages.
This removed visually distracting elements from the pages as well as deleted possible exit points for visitors, keeping visitors focused on proceeding through the checkout process.
The team also took out a page within the checkout process that was simply confirming the visitor had created an account.
This step was unnecessary and forced visitors to make one extra click to proceed through the funnel, giving them an additional opportunity to abandon the funnel, and again, distracted them from the goal of the checkout pages.
By simply removing friction-causing elements from the checkout pages, the team was able to increase the checkout completion rate by 10%, which turned out to be a 19.95% increase in revenue per visit to the checkout process.
When implementing search optimization to your website, you should evaluate each page element and consider whether it is helping the goal of your site or distracting visitors. Any potentially distracting element is an opportunity to test how your pages perform with those elements removed.
Always remember that less is more when it comes to your website. Keep your pages focused and remove any elements that prevent visitors from completing your goals for the site, such as completing a checkout.
by Belinda Lui | Nov 27, 2013 | Latest, Social Media
Facebook last reported having 1.1 billion active users a month and since its inception in February 2004, it can unanimously be agreed upon that it is one of the most successful social networking sites ever created. It isn’t just successful in the sense that it can connect old friends, lovers, and family – but it can also connect businesses to consumers. Facebook Marketing was dimly understood when the opportunity to place advertisements on the site was first implemented. In recent years, they have developed an interface that is much easier to navigate and much easier to assess.
It may seem intimidating at first, but here are a few things you might want to look out for before you post your first Facebook Marketing activation:
1. Demographic and more:
You will notice as you choose a certain age range, countries, gender, marital status, etc. that the number of possible reach will increase/decrease. Be specific about exactly who you’re targeting: you don’t want to pay for impressions that are not in your target market. Niche marketing is where it is at, so if you want to speak to a certain segment of your primary target, you can do that too. Facebook enables you to target Women, who are interested in food and dining, and who are parents….etc… It’s not only demographics but psychographics as well.
2. Bids:
This is how much you’re willing to pay per click, impression, or like. You can customize your Facebook Marketing campaign so that you only pay when a user clicks on the advertisement (or simply sees it). You can also choose the option to only pay if the user ends up liking the page that the advertisement was made to promote. Your choice should depend on the purpose of your campaign.
3. Tracking:
You can easily manage your ads in the “Ads Manager” button on your Facebook page. The data will be sorted by impressions (organic and paid) as well as the demographics that the advertisement is really appealing to. Like any project, it isn’t effective if you aren’t going to learn from it – figure out what worked, what didn’t, and how you can make it even better next time.
Unlike renting space to place an ad, without real quantifiable statistics on how well the advertisement has done, placing an advertisement on Facebook can be measured accurately and in real-time. It can also be customized based on how much you want to spend and who you want to reach, specifically. Facebook Marketing is an effective and affordable way to maximize reach for your brand or campaign.
What has been your experience when using Facebook marketing? Share them here.
by Belinda Lui | Nov 22, 2013 | Latest, Social Media
In light of all the Rob Ford news that has gone viral (making international headlines), I thought it would be a good opportunity to shed light on some videos/stories that have also gained international traction on today’s post. Viral Marketing campaigns usually involve a story or cause that has the effect of evoking emotion or that the mass community can relate to. This can be beneficial to your business if the emotion evoked is a positive one – consequently reflecting well on your brand.
Here are a few examples of videos that spread a great message:
1. Dove:
Dove’s Beauty Campaign is one of my favourites. They started their campaign with using real women to model for their advertisements, suggesting that beauty can come in all shapes and sizes. This year, they launched a video called “Beauty Sketches” that spoke to women and the, often misguided, way we see ourselves.
2. Pharell Williams: “Happy”
The U.S. musician/producer/fashion icon released a 24-hour music video that promotes being happy and has gained close to 1M views. Now, that’s something to be cheerful of.
3. The Right To Love:
In March, the Human Rights Campaign had a redesign of their logo and encouraged users on Facebook to change their profile picture to support it. It is a red square box with two thick pink horizontal lines and was used among the online community as a way to support the right to same-sex marriage.
These are just a few ways that companies and people have used viral marketing to increase awareness of a cause or their brand. In some ways, viral marketing campaigns are an excellent tool in comparison to traditional forms of advertising. This method is measurable with social metrics, regardless of which platform you choose to use.
What are some of the viral marketing campaigns that you liked most this year?
