Not Just Pretty | Building An Effective Small Business Brand

Is Your Website Like A Jungle?

The jungle is dark, humid and dense. Birds of all kinds sing and call, while other animals rustle through the underbrush. The adventurers hack through the plants with their machetes to blaze a passable trail. It’s hard work, and it had to be done so they have a clear path to get where they’re going.

Is your website like that jungle?

Recently, I met someone at a conference and wanted to learn more about them while following up. So, I carved out a few minutes to check out their website.

I was totally and completely unprepared for what I found there. 87 pages of information about their services. Not 10, not 20… 87.

This is a common mistake that small businesses make – they put all the information they possibly can about their businesses on their website, and make a mega-huge website!

They think that if they just make the information available, then maybe someone… anyone… will stumble upon it and hire them. That they have to put everything they have out there in order to get attention. 

And then they’re surprised when their mega-website doesn’t bring them a flood of clients. But here’s what happens: their site becomes dense and thick, and people who come to the site get overwhelmed by all of the information available.

They take one look at your menu – with all the pages and sub-pages (and sometimes even sub-pages) and then they have to make a decision. Will they start to hack their way through the jungle of your website, or will they click away from your site?

You don’t want your client to have to make that decision.

Like those adventurers in the jungle that we talked about earlier, your website visitors need a passable trail through your website. They need that clear path to get them into conversation with you.

When your visitors come to your site, they need to make the transition from finding you, to learning the information they need to know, to contacting you and connecting further. And you want to do this simply and quickly as possible… while keeping their desire and need to talk to you high.

Here are a few quick tips to clear a path through your website that will make it easier for people to go deeper with you:

• Create your website with your ideal clients’ questions and needs in mind – what do they most want to know when they arrive?
• Dedicate some time at least every 6 months to review and prune your site as needed – and to identify areas where you could improve what’s there.
• Remove old offerings that don’t apply to your current genius or your clients’ needs.
• Strive for relevance – don’t treat your website as a trophy case for all you’ve done and developed.
• Keep page counts low, and navigation simple.
• Test shorter-form sales pages against long ones and see what works better for your audience (short is working well these days).
• Swap long ebooks and dense copy for short and snappy video.
• Choose a first step that you’d like people to take in your business and direct the bulk of your website’s energy towards making that happen.
• Be discerning with your copy – if it’s not impactful and interesting, then ditch it (if you don’t want to delete it forever, you can switch the page to a “draft” in WordPress).
• Put only your best work in your blog and/or portfolio. Weed out the rest.
• Focus your efforts on getting visitors to sign up for your mailing list so you can take your conversations further there.

Which of these tips will you start using today to create more connection with your website visitors, and to clear their path to working with you?

Do this "One Thing" For Website Success

If the next person who visited your website could only do one thing there, what would you want that thing to be?
Having one main thing for your visitor to do on your website is a powerful strategy that will help you get better results for whatever is most important on your website.

It's easier for you to do "One Thing" well. Trying to write copy, design a marketing strategy and create a business strategy around way too many things is a lot of work - and if you're doing too many things, you can't do any of them as well as they need to be done.

It's easier to get your visitor to do "One Thing". If you're offering one clear choice of what to do next, then your visitor can see what they're supposed to do, how to do it, and make just one decision - instead of deciding between too many things.

It's easier to get people to talk about  "One Thing". You want people to help you spread the word about what you're doing, right? Giving them one clear thing to talk about can help get the word out farther, faster and to make sure the message that's going out from all of the people who are talking about you is consistent and clear.

And, focusing on one thing doesn't mean that they'll only do  "One Thing" with you. It simply gives them a starting point. You can still offer many things, and serve people in many ways - but you just don't confuse or overwhelm them with that up-front.

Here's an assessment to see if your site is well designed to harness the power of "One Thing".

                How clear is your website that you want them to do that "One Thing"?

                Does that "One Thing" get lost in the shuffle of everything else you're talking about and offering?

                Can they do that "One Thing" from every page of your site?

                Is your offer for the "One Thing" compelling to your ideal client?

                Have you made your "One Thing" irresistible?

                Is the "One Thing" extremely obvious?

                Does the design around the "One Thing" make it stand out?

                Does the rest of the design on the page encourage the visitor's eye to move to your "One Thing"?

How easy do you make it for them to do that "One Thing"?

How To Sell Just One Product Online

If you're just starting to sell online,and you're selling a single class, workshop, ebook or product, setting up a whole online shopping cart and merchant account is not going to make a lot of financial sense. The set-up, start-up and ramp-up costs associated with most carts will be too high to make setting up your products online worthwhile.

Instead, set up your single-product cart through Paypal's business solutions. Sure, their transaction cost is a bit higher than the average merchant account. But their accounts don't have a sign-up fee, and setting up your products with Paypal is (relatively) simple - especially compared with the learning curve on some of the carts out there. Their site makes it easy to generate product order buttons that you (or your designer) can then copy and paste on to your website.

Of course, you'll also have to set up a Products page on your website, and it's a good idea to run a promotional campaign (send newsletters, run a teleclass, etc.) around your new product's launch. And don't forget the customized thank-you page that people will see after the transaction - telling them how to download their product, dial in for their teleclass, or where the workshop is and what to bring. 

Design Elements For Online Consistency

How do you create an online brand instead of just a web presence?

The answer is to create consistency across all of your online designs.

1. Header Graphics. Many online designs such as websites, blogs and newsletters have a header image across the top of the page. You should design a set of headers that meets the specifications for each application while still remaining consistent. For example, website headers are often 800 or more pixels wide, while newsletter headers are typically 600 pixels wide. And, your newsletter and website headers will likely have different text content and titles - but should look similar.

2. Logo. Your logo should appear on all of your online designs, with the exception of your Gravatar.

3. Visual Vocabulary. Your Visual Vocabulary consists of all of the visual elements and graphics aside from your logo that appear on your materials. In the case of online design, this includes the design of your navigation items, the page background, a promotional box treatment for the sidebar, stock photography, buttons, watermarks, illustrations, charts/graphs, table treatments, page borders... you get the idea. There are lots of opportunities for creating consistency here.

4. Fonts. Your fonts should be web-safe (available on all computers) and consistent across all of your online designs. For example, if you use Arial as the text font on your website, you should use that on your blog and newsletter as well. You won't always have control over this - for example, you can't change the text font on your Facebook fan page posts - but take advantage of this where you have the option.

5. Color palette. This is one of the widest-ranging options. You can even change your color palette on your YouTube page and Twitter sidebars. Select a color palette that's broad enough to allow you to specify all the options and work in different situations (for example, colors that work as backgrounds for black text, and others that work for white text). And, use a consistent hierarchy of colors if you can - for example, always using dark green as your navigation bar color - across all applications.

6. Headshot. Use the same headshot - or limited set of a few headshots - across all of your materials. This goes a long way towards establishing consistency through simple repetition.

Examples: You can use these elements to varying degrees and still create a unified look:

A brand with a unifying color palette:

 

A set of unified header images: 

 

A brand with unifying header images, color palettes, headshots and backgrounds:

 

A brand with unified headers, logos, rich Visual Vocabulary fonts, and color palettes 

 

4 Factors In Online Consistency

There are 4 major consistency factors that you have to take into account when designing your online brand:

1. Design: Take into account the design style, appropriateness to your business, cleanness of the design, and timelessness (you don't want to look dated - and have to start all over again - in a year). And, make sure the brand design of your online elements folds into and makes sense with your print design pieces and tells a unified brand story.

2. Cost: To design the original pieces, and to maintain the online brand in the future. Paying a bit more up front for a solid and flexible online brand might wind up saving you a lot in the long run.

Part of the cost portion of the equation is the ability for you to maintain your online presence yourself - you don't want to have to have your designer constantly making small updates. Plan to design your materials to enable you to do that from the beginning - and take the time to learn how.

3. Ability to Grow: Your brand has to grow with your business. You have to be able to expand your brand to take on any challenges that may arise. And, you have to be able to expand it to support the growth of your business, the promotion of any new products or services, new partnerships and to handle all the online media that you want to get into.

4. Flexibility: Your brand needs to be adaptable to changes in your business and in technology. You should also plan a bit of "wiggle room" in your brand so that it can be updated to keep in line with visual trends. And, your brand should be able to adapt to new coding and new media advances (lately, video) so that you can keep up with the times.

Do You Have A Gravatar Yet?

What Is A Gravatar?  A Gravatar is "A Globally Recognized Avatar". According to the Gravatar website, it's "an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog."

Why Get A Gravatar?
A Gravatar is a great tool for Brand Education (making it more likely that people will recognize your brand), Brand Consistency (making sure that the same image is associated with your brand in every post and application) and for building credibility online.

How Do You Get A Gravatar/ Best Practices:
1. Sign up for a Gravatar account at: http://en.gravatar.com/. You'll want to use the email that you'd like to have associated with your blog comments when signing up.
2. Choose your username. It's recommended that you use your real name to build trust and credibility.
3. Upload your icon. The best practice here is to use your headshot if at all possible - it builds more trust and credibility than using a logo as your Gravatar. Gravatar does have an online interface that will allow you to crop your icon to a square.

That's it! Now, when you post on blogs or websites, use the email address associated with your Gravatar account and your image will be displayed.

Opportunities For Online Brand Consistency

Building a consistent brand online can help your small business increase the "3 R's" of branding: Repetition, Recognizability and Reinforcement.  

What pieces should you consider when planning or extending your online brand? Here are a few options:

• Website
• Blog
• Email Newsletter
• Shopping Cart
• Twitter Page
• Facebook Fan Page
• LinkedIn
• YouTube Channel
• YouTube Videos
• Email Footer
• Partner Websites (where your logo appears)
• Ads
• Forums
• Your Gravatar (more on this in the next post)
• Your Ning page
• Author or Bio pages on other sites
• Radio Show Pages

Sources For Background Patterns For Your Website or Blog

Some resources to get great background patterns for your website or blog:

1. Purchase a pattern from www.istockphoto.com - they're inexpensive and often come in modifiable vector format. Search on "Seamless Pattern"

 

2. DIN Pattern. Modern patterns, constantly updated.

 
 

3. Schizoo: In German, which makes it a bit cryptic - but the images are universal.

 

4. Kollermedia.at: Separated into great categories like Dotted, Lined, Squares and Classic.

5.  Defcon-x: Real wood patterns.

 
 

Two Branded Wordpress Template Sites

I recently created these two Wordpress template sites based on the same original template (Arclite by Digital Nature). This goes to show how different you can make sites look that really have the same back-end!

Both of these clients will now get to enjoy some of the big advantages of working in Wordpress:

1. Their sites will be easier to update. They can now add pages, edit their text and add links without ever calling a designer.

2. Better Search Engine Optimization. I've installed some Wordpress Plugins that will make SEO a snap.

3. Being able to upload videos, images and files quickly and without hassle.

4. They can blog and have their website all in one easy-to-maintain place.

5. Since we did a Wordpress install on their own hosts, they don't have to pay for both website hosting fees and blog fees - Wordpress doesn't have monthly or annual fees.

 
 
 

Branding A Wordpress Template

I've been doing a bunch of Wordpress template customizations lately. You can find great templates that will allow you to edit the look considerably. Some tips:

1. Look for a template that allows for a header graphic.

2. Change the colors of headlines, links, backgrounds, etc. in the style sheet.

3. Consider a pattern for the background. It can change the look instantly.

4. Look at the navigation options. Make sure the navigation is roughly what you want, and then customize the fonts and colors to match your brand. You may also be able to edit the navigation image shapes - from ovals to rectangles, for example - depending on your template.

5. Change out the fonts in the style sheet to match your company's fonts.

6. Change the colors of the template's graphics in Photoshop using the Image >Adjustments > Hue/Saturation > Colorize command.