Archive for year: 2016

Recently Choc Chip Digital was awarded the Elite 500 David Gugan award for it’s recent efforts in the 10 X 10 challenge. This award highlights Choc Chips fantastic work in business best practices and entrepreneurial work within the local community.

We are excited about the future of Choc Chip Digital and have our eyes set on a bigger and better 2017, continuing to service the local Geelong and Surfcoast business community with powerful websites and online marking which makes an impact!

If you are have a tired outdated website that’s failing to achieve your business needs or you are looking to take your business to the next level get in contact with us here at Choc Chip Digital though our website, email or call us on 5234 5360 .

If you’ve been using the internet long enough, you’re probably able to look back and see some of the shifts and trends that have happened over the years.

These shifts in web design happen because the market evolves, requiring new technology, better usability, and more importantly, designers are stepping up their game and keeping each other on their toes.

As more and more clever designers start tapping into the new technologies becoming available to them, the trends will continue shifting. The only way to keep up with the pack is to be able to spot them, and then learn how to implement the changes into your own designs.

This article will cover some of the shifts in design that we’ve seen over the last year, and where we think things are going to be heading into 2016, 2017, and beyond.  If you want to stay relevant as a web designer, you need to not only keep up with the changing landscape, but also be able to easily adapt, and develop the right mindset to spot potential shifts into the future, as well.

Photoshop is making it’s way out, along with image heavy designs.

When designers figured out that they could create a blocked design that could then be layered with high quality photoshop images, the internet changed in a big way.  Long gone were the days of static HTML pages, boring table layouts, and endless scrolling to see the entire page.

However, as increased numbers of designers jumped on board with CSS based layouts, and layering images to the backgrounds of their layout, site speed began to slow to a crawl.  

Around this time, internet bandwidth and speeds began to go up, so the image heavy designs weren’t nearly as noticeable.  The static HTML sites, during this time period, would load lightning fast.

These days, though, with more people browsing the internet on their mobile devices, history is beginning to repeat itself.  

Slower bandwidth, and image heavy designs are working to keep the users from actually visiting the site – instead, hitting the back button and looking for another site that loads quickly.

Most times, too, image heavy designs cannot load properly on smaller touch screen devices.  This leaves images looking chopped up, layouts broken, and the user wondering where they should be clicking.

There is no generally accepted standard, so take your mobile visitors into account, and start creating designs that do away with the heavy, slow loading images, in favor of a CSS heavier design that loads much quicker, provides additional effects, and is compatible with most of the touch and mobile devices available today.

Designing around time spent onsite.

Web user’s attention spans are not getting any longer.  In fact, when a visitor lands on your website, you’ve got mere milliseconds to grab their attention before they’re distracted and thinking about other things again.  

That means, if your website takes forever to load (because of heavy images, hint, hint), you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage before you ever get the chance to convert that visitor into a new customer.

When you manage to get the site loading quickly, and have captured enough of the visitor’s attention to keep them browsing around, it’s time to figure out what they’re doing on your site, the paths they’re traveling through, and how long they’re spending on each page.

By using click trackers and heat maps, you’ll be amazed at what really goes on behind the scenes, when a visitor is working their way through your site.  Take this data and start working to get your most critical content into the “hot” positions on your pages, and watch your overall conversion rates increase.

Content is the new architecture.

Websites got away with using landing pages alone, in years past.  From their homepages, to the pages used to showcase their products and services, designers figured out that bare minimum content was enough to get by.  The internet is evolving again, though.

Revisiting a user’s attention span, it takes more content these days to get a visitor interested in what you’re offering, where, before, you could simply get a landing page with a couple hundred words of compelling copywriting to convert them into a sale.

Blogging is taking over in 2016, even for large corporations.  Businesses of all sizes are realizing the benefits of providing longer, more engaging content to their readers, and are relying on enticing headlines to get the visitors to stop clicking around on their favorite sites, and get them to move over to their own website.

Think about the advertisements that you see these days.  When was the last time you saw an ad that took the user straight to a product’s landing page, and then only contained 100-200 words of copywriting?  Chances are, not that many.

Nowadays, you need to work on funneling the visitor through longer content that gets their mind off of being sold to, and then use the same content to funnel the visitors onto your sales page.  If the visitor gets a hint of being sold, they’re going to hit the back button, or go back to what they were doing before they landed on your site in the first place.

Touch first designs are becoming more popular.

You probably already know (or at least, should know) that responsive designs are a requirement in 2016.  You can’t just get away with having a desktop version and a separate mobile version of your site.  They need to be one, in the same.

Likewise, even desktops and laptops are following suit with mobile devices, and becoming touch screen.  As the internet’s population gets lazier, and lazier, you’re going to have to work harder, and harder to keep their attention focused on your site.

One great way to do that is by implementing those touch focused design elements into your layouts across the board.  

There are really no downsides to having flat buttons and other elements that come natural to touch users, because desktop users can still click a mouse and the same urge to click carries over from their mobile devices.

In other words, the same types of designs and layouts that work great for smartphones and tablets also work great for desktops — even as they become more touch focused.  If your website is easy to browse around on using a small screened smartphone, it’s going to be just as easy to navigate on a desktop computer.

That means you can write off creating designs solely for desktop computers, instead focusing on smaller screens, and then include responsive elements that also look good when they’re scaled up on a desktop computer.

Incorporating customer data to increase user experience.

Implementing heat maps into your custom designs is something that you should already be doing, and something that large advertising agencies picked up on long ago.  The heatmaps and click tracking that were mentioned previously in this article are precisely the type of information that you need to be tracking.

Instead of using it to test the efficacy of your advertising, though, you need to use them to figure out what visitors are doing on the internet, when they land onto a site, so that you can begin creating designs that are focused on getting the most important functionality into these “hot spots”.

On a separate not, it can also tell you where you are potentially losing out on visitors.  For instance, if you implement the tracking and notice that visitors are scrolling halfway through the page, you can begin to address any issues that may be happening around that area.  

Most times, changing up the page copy, adding in the next step for your visitor, or even figuring out what the next logical step for them may be will not only increase their usability, but also increase the amount of conversions you’re able to make on the same design — without feeling left in the dark about where visitors are dropping off.

Large brands and advertising agencies have used heat maps and click tracking for years.  Now, designers are finally starting to figure out the power of the technology, and using it to help them create better designs that focus more on usability and functionality and, more importantly, reducing your bounce rate, rather than just looking good.

Card layouts, Hero images, and Rich animations.

We’ve already told you that getting your visitor’s attention while they’re on a mobile device is next to impossible these days, but there are a few design elements that you can implement to help you make sure they don’t hit the back button too quickly.

Card layouts, “hero” images, and rich animations all help keep your visitor’s attention, while not weighing down your site too much, or causing it to load slowly.

Card layouts are designs like Netflix and Pinterest use.  They lay out multiple cards for visitors to browse through, and continually load more as the user scrolls further, and further down the page. These cards are also database driven (in most cases) and are designed to load more cards that are similar to what the user has already clicked, and prefers to see.  

Think about your Netflix dashboard and how they automatically deliver shows and movies that are related to the shows and movies you’ve previously watched.  That means, as a designer, it’s time to start learning how to control the database to start displaying the most relevant content to your visitors, based on their past browsing patterns.

“Hero” images are the large images that take up the entire section “above the fold” and depict the company, brand, or website in a shining light.  For example, check out the image below by Tatabrew (http://tatabrew.com/).  It displays the company’s image front and center, and requires that you scroll down to get to the actual content.  This has a huge impact on grabbing your visitor’s attention as quickly as possible.

The last design element that can get your user to stop what they’re doing and take notice are rich animations.  Much like a hero image, these animations occur when a user clicks on something, or runs their mouse over an element in your design.  

Most commonly, rich animations are used to bring in pop under forms that allow the users to subscribe via email. They’re also commonly used in navigation menus, background images, and slideshows.

Getting micro-commitments and interactions from the user.

In the age of mobile, getting your visitors to make “micro-commitments” to your website is the first step in getting them to convert into a subscriber, or a larger financial transaction down the road.  

Funneling visitors down the path you want to take them is becoming more critical, and requires a bit more creativity than simply stating “click here”.

Nowadays, you have to use the headlines in your content, and then expand on the headlines with extensive content marketing to ensure that visitors are going where you want them to, when you want them to.  

In times past, this was left up to the copywriters, but it is falling more and more on the designers desk to get the visitors taking smaller steps that add up to a bigger “yes” down the road.

As the visuals and layout of the design are being pulled up on smaller screens, the actual real estate available to work with is quickly diminishing.  

That means you’ve got to prioritize the design elements that you want to showcase at the top of the screen, and then move further down into the less-than-priority elements as the user scrolls.  

Getting this right requires a fine balance between design and content still, but going into the future it’s going to fall more on the designer’s hands to get this area right so that the copywriter has a good platform to start working with.

Flat, responsive designs are here to stay.

3D images and highlight text look great on desktop devices, but with the wide array of mobile devices available, it’s practically impossible to optimize your design for every single screen.  

That means designers can finally get away with being lazy, and implementing more “flat” elements into their templates.  It also means that the newer templates will continue to load faster, and faster, and remain compatible as new devices with varying screen sizes continue to roll out.

Designers realized the quick loading, flat, responsive designs are a hit with mobile users.  Taking it one step further, “parallax” scrolling has made it even easier to keep lengthy pages loading as fast as possible.

Unfamiliar with what “parallax” scrolling actually is?  Take a look at this link on fracking.  They are a prime example of how to properly pull off the infinite scroll, and combine it with the rich animations mentioned above.

Now, the design we just linked to is a pretty in-depth example of what flat designs are (no 3D images) coupled with parallax scrolling, so even if your skills aren’t quite to that level, it gives you a bar that’s just been set that you should start working towards.

Customer research and feedback plays a bigger role than ever.

When was the last time you got live feedback from actual users of the designs you’ve implemented?  

If you’re like most other designers, you slap together a bunch of code, make sure it works across multiple devices, that the code is clean, and then you set it up on a server for your client to take control.

This is a huge mistake, though, because real world usage research and feedback from visitors that are going to be navigating around the site on a regular basis is critical to not only make sure what you’re building actually works, but helping you learn and grow as a designer into the future.

Designers and clients aren’t the users of sites, so a truly functional design requires customer input and the use of tracking data to properly pull off.  Big brands do it, so why aren’t you?

The next time you’re putting a design together for a client, send some traffic to it and install a live chat box in the lower corner that pops up as a user scrolls.  Ask them directly for feedback on the usability of the site, and what they think could be improved.

Keep in mind, though, these are customers — not your fellow designers.  

You’re going to get all sorts of off-the-wall answers, but every now and then you will find a diamond in the rough that gives you a solid avenue to approach, in terms of improving the design, functionality, and usability.

It will also get you in the head of the visitors who use your designs every day, and get you out of the designer state of mind.

Branding and typography are more important than ever.

With flat designs allowing less design elements to help stand out, the overall branding strategy and typography are becoming more important.  Building a memorable design that’s still functional is a hurdle designers are trying to overcome in 2016.

Your branding includes quite a few different aspects, and is going to vary from client to client, and design to design.  

The colors that the client chooses, the type and style of logo they display front and center, the typography chosen, whether there are videos on the page, or if it’s a page selling products, everything pulls together to give the user an overall experience.

Taking it one step further, this branding experience is going to have to work with multiple different platforms, from social media, to display ads, and email marketing.  

That means it’s even tougher for you, as a designer, to give a consistent look and feel that’s going to work for your clients, for their customers, and be compatible on various platforms — not to mention devices.

Source: Matcha Ocha

How to stay ahead of the design curve going into 2016, and beyond.

Some trends have come and gone, while others are going to be around for years to come.  If you want to step up your game as a designer, here’s the areas you need to be focusing on going into 2016:

• Photoshop and image heavy designs are becoming a thing of the past.
• Figure out how your visitors are spending their time on the site, then design around it.
• Keep your content front, and center, and use it to funnel visitors where you want them to go.
• Think about your touch-enabled visitors, because they’re becoming priority #1.
• Incorporate customer feedback and research into your designs to increase user experience.
• Use database driven card layouts, hero images, and rich animations to grab the visitor’s attention.
• Get “micro-commitments” from your visitors to lead them closer to a sale down the road.
• Flat, responsive designs aren’t going anywhere, anytime soon.
• Both customer, and client feedback will help you grow as a designer going into 2016.
• Branding and typography are more important than ever, and need to remain consistent.

If you’re ignoring any of these areas, you’re going to get left behind by the competition and the big brands who are spending millions of dollars every year on developing their websites.

What makes a good boss anyway? In a word: delegation.  An effective boss can’t do it all, but does have a vision on how it can be done by all in a cohesive way. How does the vision for your brand fit into these crucial components of successful branding? You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but make sure each of these spokes are strong to keep the gears turning towards success.

If your brand isn’t garnering the kind of recognition and returns you had envisioned, you might be considering overhauling your brand or marketing strategy, or even rebranding all together. Before you take that leap, consider the fact that using consistent branding is critical these days. The companies that benefit from a drastic change in branding are either too big to fail, or are returning to the branding strategies that they abandoned in a losing gamble.

When a brand deviates from its original colors, symbols, product, or message, the risk rarely pays off. One of very few brands that have been able to alter their logo frequently (daily in fact) is Google. Even with the Google doodles, the word is still implied in each image, and the brand overall is highly recognizable with its red, green, and yellow color scheme creating a visually consistent presence across Google’s brand.

In other brands, a change can sometimes cause a spike in revenue, but often causes a long term failure which ultimately leaves the company scrambling to reclaim the attention of customers who wonder where their favorite brand went. Brands need to be accessible often to the market, and sometimes even a well-established and seemingly infallible brand can suffer from a shift in branding.

Consider the “New Coke and Coke Classic” fiasco of the 1980’s, or Kentucky Fried Chicken’s recent plea for customer’s to give their “chicken a second chance” after a switch away from their original concept nearly crippled KFC years ago. The re-introduction of their mascot, Colonel Sanders, played by contemporary comedians, has given the brand relevance once again.

These major corporations can tolerate and rebound from near-disastrous marketing efforts, but for smaller businesses or new brands, lack of consistent branding can crush a company beyond recovery.

Conversely, those with solid branding campaigns have become so recognizable that they no longer need words to announce their presence, with their signature colors and symbols carrying the persona of their brand. The Nike swoosh, the Coca-Cola wave, and of course, Apple.

As the internet evolves, web designers, social media networking specialists, and writers are realizing something that the first franchisees of restaurants knew decades ago: customers need to feel the comfort of familiarity, regardless of where they may find you.

It is important to brand clearly, consistently, and early to achieve maximum customer recognition and loyalty. Your customers need to feel like they’re on the same site, regardless of where they find you. Seamless integration of all platforms is the goal.

Ever increasing social media options and the availability of information on a mobile platform means that more sites have customizable themes to match your existing brand. There are still many ways to make your site and brand unique and highly visible while making use of the existing tools and templates. Even though you are using the same tools as everyone else, stake your claim to the facets of branding and use them ceaselessly.

Let’s take a look at your toolbox.

Color is a strong design tool which makes an instant impact on how your customers feel.

Most designers are cognizant of at least the basic effects that colors have on the emotional response of their customers. And the customers are subconsciously aware and responsive, even if they have never heard of color association by instinct or social conditioning.

We all know the big ones: red is stimulating, blue is soothing, stereotypically pink is for girls and blue is for boys, etc. (See more specific examples below.) However, the viewer’s context and the rapidly changing social contexts must be considered when choosing a brand color.

The acknowledgment of gender fluidity has many parents rejecting “pinkwashing”, and manufacturers are responding. Some colors have contrasting meanings, as black can be both a symbol of mourning or of glamour, of authority or mystery. Subtle differences in hue, luminosity, saturation, and texture can send a detailed message to customers’ subconscious cannot be smoothly delivered any other way.

Colors that Elicit Emotional Responses

Red

Active, passionate, trustful, love, and intensity. Coca-Cola, Target and Red Bull

Yellow

Energy, optimism, and joy. Ferrari, Shell, and Best Buy

Orange

Creative, determined, unique. Home Depot, Fanta, Firefox

Pink

Often associated with feminine brands. It means love, warmth, sexuality and nurturing. Think Barbie, T-mobile, Oprah’s Oxygen Network.

Blue

Depth, stability, calm, trust, comfort, and reliability. Samsung, IBM, Intel, GE and Ford.

Green

Relaxing, peaceful, hopeful and natural. Think Starbucks, BP, or Heineken.

Brown

Associated with the Earth, reliability, support, dependability. UPS of course.

Black

Formal, mystery, bold, luxurious and serious.  Even shadows of shapes in brighter colors can achieve a similar effect.

Purple

Royalty, opulence, and pleasure. Wealth, quality, and creativity. Cadbury and Hallmark (though Hallmark is more about the gold crown than the purple field).

The 2016 death of iconic musician, Prince, (or, as he was later known due to a legal battle over his personal brand with Warner Brothers, “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince”) highlighted the effectiveness of a color to captivate an audience and become iconic in a global way.  On the day of his death, Niagara Falls was illuminated in a purple mist.

Originally this display was meant to acknowledge Queen Elizabeth’s birthday, but people instantly associated the color purple with Prince and assumed it was for him. Historically, purple has always been associated with royalty, so the musician made a logical and long-standing choice in alignment with an existing association.

His 1984 biopic film, “Purple Rain”, revived this association, and purple has become synonymous with Prince ever since. This was an epic example of controlled personal branding, wherein a musical Prince attained social hierarchy over the actual Queen.

Your brand may never be legendary for a generation (or maybe it will), but a timeless logo should be more than “pretty or cool.” Determine what feeling you want your brand to evoke and then choose your colors wisely.

If you select a color but it seems too intense, play with transparency, hue, shadows, and other subtle color design tricks to get it just right. Tiffany’s teal didn’t happen by accident, and their brand has been around since breakfast. (If you ever get a chance to make a movie that supports a brand, take it! Space Jam, Purple Rain, 8 Mile, come to mind.)

What’s Your Type? Typography: What’s In a Font?

See how those differing fonts caught your attention, but then maybe made you wonder if you were still reading the same information? Creative people are drawn to different fonts, but most have been conditioned by click-bait and scammers to be suspicious of radically or even slightly different fonts. Is it an ad? Is it a knock-off? Is it real information?

While it may be tempting to use dazzling new fonts to grab attention, consistency of your font is an important part of branding. With the exception of languages that have different alphabetical characters, the globally renowned brands that have their own unique font are instantly recognizable. (Think Disney, Coca-Cola.)

Until your brand transcends the need for words (McDonald’s, Apple, Starbuck’s), the next best thing is a font that is your brand’s signature. With some brands, the font is very similar to a commonly used font, but subtle differences make it uniquely theirs. Combined with the use of color, a unique font is achieved.

Consider the Facebook, Youtube, and LinkedIn fonts with other examples here: https://99designs.com/blog/creative-inspiration/fonts-behind-famous-wordmark-logos/

Logos might mean something completely different to your audience than they do to you. For example, there was a logo for AT&T (or maybe it was Sprint or Singular. I don’t know because they CHANGED it, proving my point…). This logo was a small blue square which appeared flexible, with the impression of a circle or most of a circle inside of it. One could not help but see a condom package, but I wonder if that was a phone company’s way of pandering to the “sex sells” mantra, or if it never crossed their minds and represented only a merging of 2 logos during the many convergences of phone companies after their monopoly was fractured.

Logo choice speaks volumes about your business and mission, but it also relies somewhat on the context of the viewer. What will yours say, and how will they relate?

Your logo has messages you specifically intended, as well as some you may not have intended. A streamlined, simple, or serious logo sends a different message than a silly or busy logo that “pops”. The old standby of “sex sells” can even sometimes backfire, as  StarBuck’s discovered when their split-tailed siren was met with rebuff in a 2008 rebranding flop.

Tone. Tone? Tone! T.O.N.E. tone . . .

What tone will you use in your content? Consider your literary syntax, the audience’s lifestyle, and the occasion for the remarks. Witty, funny, professional, sympathetic?

The tone used to address your audience can make or break your brand. The balance of hooking potential customers while keeping your content engaging to your target demographic requires the finesse of a skilled wordsmith.

Well-crafted content is invaluable, so don’t skimp here. It is better to invest in quality content that will maintain relevance and generate revenue right away than to cut corners and have to revise your content later. The logo, colors, and font are ways to pique your customers’ interest. Now, what extraordinarily compelling information do you have to share?

• Content done wrong: content that excludes a certain demographic, or alienates existing customers for new or vice versa  , content that switches tone for no particular reason, content that is reactionary instead of responsive
• Content done right: acknowledge and welcome, engage empower encourage, viral emotional hooks

Design is all about ease and comfort of the interactive experience.

Your design needs to be functional.  Errors in functionality leave negative emotions in your customer’s brain, with you or them realizing it.     

Most of your customers are accustomed to and prefer a vertical design with simple tap-and-go functionality. Make sure you can accommodate this. Few things will make a person back out of a website so quickly as having to navigate a wide format website on a mobile screen.

Easy navigation is critical, considering the micro attention span of most of your customer base. Certain features like a smart cart (one that saves customers’ selections) might cost more up front, but pay off big on the bottom line with brand loyal customers and repeat business.

This article shows some strong examples of functional designs and some that are too cluttered or do not support smooth navigation:

http://www.awwwards.com/6-web-design-trends-you-must-know-for-2015-2016.html

A word about card sorting or card stacking formats: These styles work well with customers who like to compartmentalize their experiences. For the viewer who likes things to be more cohesive and flow intuitively, this design can be enough to chase them away.

When it comes to customer service, your brand color should be gold, metaphorically speaking.  Treat others the way you would want to be treated (or even better, the way they want to be treated). The ways you handle customer service say a great deal about your brand. And you can bet the customers will have a lot to say about it too, either way.

Consider the big picture here. Unless your brand has no competition, a high level of customer satisfaction can give the edge needed to succeed in a tough market.

Both amazing and poor customer service can spread like wildfire these days. Some burns are good, and they will regenerate the forest you are cultivating. Others just leave you blistered and in shock, trying to soothe the wounds. Hire people who can put out the damaging fires and rekindle the warm ones, and make contacting them as easy as possible for your customers.

Ads Gone Mad?

There are differing schools of thought on whether advertising bolsters or cheapens a brand, and how to advertise without being a nuisance. While some sites are plastering their pages with ads and assaulting the news feeds of customers with direct offers, others are embracing the viral video subtlety that can be a boon to any campaign.

Videos with humor, emotional hooks, or that seem like they were sourced from a real person instead of a crafted ad campaign are all valuable advertising tools.  Using hashtags for crowd sourced content can work well, but be vigilant for trolls who can put that strategy in a tailspin if not handled right away.

No matter what you do, you will never please or appeal to everyone, so use your ad budget in a way that garners the attention in a memorable way.

Maintain the same branding in your advertisements that you use onsite, but if you are going for something intuitive and almost osmotic, consider including it in the background or at the end. Does your brand assimilate well with all of your marketing platforms? Does your logo look as good as an app icon as it does on the website or in print? Does it translate well in size?

Intuitively, it makes sense to market a brand to subcategories of the market through specific demographic appeal. This approach can backfire if it seems too much like pandering to the crowd. Present a cohesive concept and your brand will automatically attract the appropriate audience.

A consistent flow from one platform to another is critical. Is your brand as clear in a short tweet as it is in a viral video or a succinct ad? Anything that is a component of a branding element should be able to stand on its own, such as a gif or snippet from a longer video, a color or shape from the more detailed logo, the font that gives your brand’s tone its style.

Certain platforms can be opportunities to experiment with new ways to drive traffic. If that platform has a font they use for new deals or whatever, try it out. When in Rome! BUT, be prepared to integrate and implement your original elements too.

Social media managers are a thing now.

Maintaining your content tone on social media is critical and time consuming. Whoever will be tethered to social media for your brand needs to be a quick thinker (responsive but not reactionary) who is apprised and available always.  Your brand voice should have a unique personality and tone, but nothing that is difficult to replicate by multiple authors or changing circumstances behind the scenes.

If sometimes you are funny and sometimes you are serious, readers may not know when to engage or on what level. Whatever tone you choose for your brand, always respond to your audience promptly. If a customer feels ignored, they will make sure others know about it.

Business cards: Relic or Relevant?

All this talk about ways to make your brand strong online neglects a tried and true element, and ignores customers who rely on and revere their sense of touch. There are those who will always prefer tangibility over technology, a book over an e-reader.

These people have a loyalty to the presence of a brand. These are the people who will accept and use your business card or free promotional item. Remember to use relevant tangible items as often as the opportunity arises.

Fortunately there are services that will seamlessly print your elements on everything you need to present a cohesive tangible marketing strategy for your brand. And remember the original great idea, the free t-shirt. Short of those who will actually tattoo your brand on their body for the world to see, an eye catching t-shirt will get the word out for years, in all sorts of locations.

Making all of these facets of the branding gemstone shine takes talent and perseverance. It all comes down to the old decision of “diversify or specialize?”.  

If you nail your branding right the first time and adhere to your formula, you won’t need to wonder because your brand will outperform your expectations. Reflecting upon the persisting brands in the national and global economy, one can clearly see that crafting a brand without barriers that seems to transcend time and space is all about perseverance. Just keep doing you and it will all come together.

Most times, the value of forethought is only apparent in hindsight. It is not until these strategies have been implemented for a while that a comparison can be made on the effectiveness of any one element or the overall branding campaign.

Do it correctly now, or do it over later. Choose wisely though, because if your branding consistency is impervious to the temptation of change, you will be stuck with that brand when it is iconic and globally recognized.

Be:

Consistent in your branding strategies, and keep at it even if the pay-off isn’t immediately as visible as you had hoped.

Colorful with your logo and your font. Not necessarily several colors or bright colors, but YOUR brand’s signature color.

Concise in your message. Between the short attention spans and distractions, brevity id the order of the day.

Credible in your reputation and customer service. Conduct your business in such a way that if anyone were to deride your brand, no one would believe them.

Clear in your mission. Imagine the market as a muddy pond, and your job is to filter out all the confusion and competition through clear and accessible design that makes buying easy for your customers.

Cognizant of your demographic’s desires, resources, and abilities. Engage with them, not at them.

Contemporary and constant in your social media approach. This is a delicate balance, as one day you are in and the next you are out. One troll can cause an avalanche of negativity online. Be ready with responses for the what-ifs.

Classic in the strategies that always worked, and always will. Face to face interactions, business cards, free stuff, certificates. Work that face time.

Complete in your branding strategy. A wheel won’t turn for long if it is missing spokes. Keep all the elements tight and toned and turning!