“A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or company.”
–Marty Neumeier, ZAG

The next closest word to brand is reputation. And your personal reputation, like one of your business, organization or product, lies outside of your control. It’s really the perception or story that surrounds you, your organization and your product. Your brand is not so much what you say it is, but what they say it is. The best you can do is influence it. Your brand is someone’s gut-level perception about you. What do they think of when they think of you, your organization, or your product?

The word “branding” originated as a technique for owners to distinguish their livestock from others. As branding evolved over time, it came to be used as a term for companies to distinguish themselves from the competition. Branding is more than a symbol or stamp, it’s the message you’re trying to communicate. At it’s best, branding is a holistic approach—a collection of every touch point and what is communicated. What is the story you are telling?

“Branding is a company’s effort to build lasting value by delighting customers.”
–Marty Neumeier, ZAG

People establish a gut-level connection with an organization based on their values and perception long before they buy into their message. Branding at it’s most basic level provides answers to the simple need to differentiate one thing from another.

Branding is the art of surrounding who you are with a power and compelling story.

The reality is that people ask, if I buy this product, if I attend this event, if I give to this organization, “what does that make me?”

“When you persuade, speak of interest, not of reason.”
–Benjamin Franklin

So, we have to be in the business of shaping perceptions or else someone will do it for us. And we have to put resources into branding or we risk being discredited. This way we can overcome the stereotypes and start shaping peoples perceptions. Who is with me?

• Simple
• Versatile
• Memorable
• Relevant

Simple

People appreciate clean, simple, and basic logos. Some of the best logos demonstrate this principle well, and Nike, Apple, Fedex and Walmart are good examples. Having a simple logo allows for easy recognition. In fact, 75% of the top corporate companies use one or two colors in their logo. Having too many colors can make your logo difficult to see or convey the wrong message. Effective logos use one to three colors. Avoid the common mistakes of using too many colors or including raster images in your logo designs.

“Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication.”
–Leonardo da Vinci

Versatile

The best logos can be seen when they are very small on a pencil or very large on a billboard. Logos eventually end up on a variety of mediums and need to be able to be used in all kinds of situations. For this reason a logo should be designed in vector format, to ensure that it can be scaled to any size. A logo that is too vertical or horizontal will become difficult to read when enlarged or reduced in size. It doesn’t matter how fancy or cool your logo looks if it cannot be easily seen. Believe it or not, many logos use common San Serif fonts like Arial, Myriad or Verdana, while about one third of logos use Serif fonts like Times New Roman or Garamond.

“I like to work first in black and white to assure that the logo will look good in its simplest form. Color is very subjective and emotional- this can distract from the overall design. If you saw your logo in all red, that color may be the first thing that you respond to and not the composition of the design elements. I will not even consider submitting color suggestions to a client for review until they have signed off on a final black and white logo.”
–Patrick Winfield

Memorable

You want people to remember your logo long after they’ve seen it. Make your logo unique so that it will stick in the minds of your customers and be recognized next time they see it. People are inundated with hundreds of logos every day, so you want your logo to be distinctive, memorable, and clear.

“A great trademark is appropriate, dynamic, distinctive, memorable and unique.”
–Primo Angeli

Relevant

Finally, it doesn’t matter how well your logo follows the principles above if it doesn’t connect with qualities of your company and your target audience. You want people to associate your logo with your company. So your logo has to be relevant to your target audience.

“Good design, at least part of the time, includes the criterion of being direct in relation to the problem at hand – not obscure, trendy, or stylish. A new language, visual or verbal, must be couched in a language that is already understood.”
–Ivan Chermayeff

“Good design must be defined by appropriateness to audience and goals, and by its effectiveness, not by its adherence to Swiss design or the number of awards it wins.”
–Drew Davies

What principles do you think are most important when designing a logo? What are your favorite logos?

Overused font #1: Times New Roman

Microsoft used Times New Roman as the default for Word, the most popular word processing software, until 2007. Newspapers like to use Times New Roman. It’s commonplace on many websites. The funny thing about Times New Roman is that as much as it’s overused it probably will continue to stay in style for quite some time.

Overused font #2: Arial/Helvetica

Arial on a PC (Helvetica on a Mac) is typically the first choice for designers that are tired of Times New Roman. The only problem is that after using Arial on everything from publications to websites, it becomes the next overused font. If you’re looking for a new font to use instead of Arial, try using Myriad (iPod, Macs, etc.)

Overused font #3: Impact

You’ll find Impact on billboards, posters and logos. It’s bold, but too narrow to be practical. Despite its drawbacks, it comes preloaded on millions of Windows machines and therefore has quickly become overused. Search for better bold fonts on www.dafont.com or your favorite font website.

Overused font #4: Papyrus

This font looks different than the standard typefaces that most people are used to seeing. To an amateur designer, this is font has a natural magnetic pull to it. In church environments and Christian circles this font really gets overused. Although it may seem decorative and stylish, avoid the desire to use this terrible font.

Overused font #5: Comic Sans

Think party invitations. Think fun. Think goofy. Comic Sans is commonplace in these areas—overused. This is another font that comes standard on PCs with Windows and unfortunately you find it everywhere.

Overused font #6: Copperplate

Copperplate is often not seen as an overused font. And it’s true, it doesn’t approach the amount of usage that Times New Roman and Arial do, but it still creeps its way into a lot of designs and logos. It’s the first choice for people that want an all caps font and because of that, it’s overused. There are many flavors of Copperplate and Copperplate Gothic, avoid them all.

Overused font #7: Bank Gothic

Bank Gothic runs a close second to Copperplate for the most overused all-capital-letter font. In fact the two fonts are fairly similar which is why they are over saturated in designs.

Overused font #8: Garamond

Most will agree that Garamond is a better choice than Arial and Times New Roman. And it’s slightly less used than those two fonts. Garamond finds its home on a lot of websites and designs.

Overused font #9: Brush Script

Sports, particularly baseball, like to use Brush Script. It tends to be the first choice for script fonts and therefore has been considered overused for some time.

Overused font #10: Courier

Courier is another font that will probably always exist and be in use, but still makes the top ten overused list. Courier is unique to our top ten list because it’s the only font that has fixed width letters. The letter i takes up as much space as the letter c or o. This was one of the early fonts used in DOS and other command based operating systems.

Additional Overused Fonts: Bauhaus, Bazooka

Next time you see someone use one of these fonts, just send them the URL of this web page and then they’ll know not to use that font again. If you have other fonts that you think should make the list of most overused fonts, then post a comment below.

Reason #1: Comparing Date Ranges

With version 2 of Google Analytics you can compare date ranges with a graph overlay feature that allows you to easily compare recent activity to the past. This visualization instantly charts the data in an informative way. After you see this feature, you’ll be hooked!

Reason #2: Site Overlay

Site Overlay allows you to see your website with indicators next to every link that display how many times the each link has been clicked on. This allows you to constantly improve your layout, design and page layout to optimize content for your visitors. Now you can track exactly where visitors go on your website each step of the way.

Reason #3: Automatically Email Reports

Google Analytics is loaded with reports you can run on your website. The newest feature in version 2, allows you to have your favorite reports email to you automatically at the frequency of your choice. This saves you from constantly logging into Google Analytics to check your stats or send them to your organization’s management.

Reason #4: Keywords & Referring Sites

Analytics is the best way to optimize your content, see the keywords search engines rank you for and recognize valuable links to you from other websites. With the ability to see the keywords people type into search engines to find your website and how often, you can gain valuable information about your audience and the search engines. Adding more content with your desired keywords is a great way to boost your rankings.

Reason #5: Extensive Visitor Data

The fifth and final reason you can’t afford to have a website without Google Analytics is that you will miss out on valuable information about your visitors. Analytics tells you the connection speed, screen resolution, web browser, location, and exit page of all your visitors. With this information you can make website re-designs and changes with confidence knowing what types of visitors you attract.

Sitll not convinced? Read about how Google Analytics has revolutionized the way websites work from other people who’ve used it.

Rate each of the following ten criteria on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest 10% of websites (worst) and 10 equaling the top 10% of websites. And an average rating of 5 would mean 50% of website are better and 50% of website are worse. So, now for the essentials.

General Impression & Message

When you first meet someone you form a general impression about him or her. It may not necessarily reflect who they are but nonetheless you still form an impression about them. When someone visits your website, they too will have a general impression about you, your organization or company. What is the impression your website is making? Is it professional? Creative? Boring? Cluttered? Dull? Fun? Informative? Ask yourself these questions through the eyes of other people.

Along with the general impression, your website also communicates a message. When you look at the items on someone’s refrigerator, you get a message. Often times they have family pictures or a calendar or other treasured memories. Look at your home page and ask yourself: what you are emphasizing? Often times we give more space to things of lesser importance without even realizing it.

Navigation

If you’ve ever traveled in another country, there’s a good possibility you may have gotten lost, especially if you were traveling in a new area that used a different language, vocabulary and driving laws. Websites also have foreign visitors, people with different vocabularies and experiences. How easy is your website to navigate? Is the navigation consistent and easy understood and found? Can people get to where they want to go quickly? Another question to ask yourself is: how easy is it to find less important links? Are they easily found? If they are the same color as the rest of the text on your website or the headings on your website, they are hiding. Are you using drop down menus with lists longer than 6-8 items? Are your sub-menus listed in alphabetical order or some other logical order that can be observed by an outsider? Do you use vocabulary that is common to everyone or just to the people that already know your organization’s vocabulary? These questions are helpful when evaluating your navigation. Apple.com has a great website navigation because no matter what section of their website you are on (iTunes, iPhone, etc) you still have the same consistent navigation at the top.

Maintainable

The maintainability of a website is often overlooked by ambitious or over creative web designers. They make a website it scores fairly well in the other web design essentials listed here but six months from now their website has most of the same information because the organization does not have the ability to easily update or expand their website. This problem is solved by implementing a Content Management System (also referred to as a CMS). Content Management Systems come in all sizes and forms and just because you have one doesn’t mean it’s the best fit for your organization or website needs. A few things to ask yourself before choosing a CMS are:

• How many users need to have access to the website?
• Can all users of the website have the same access or do they need different permissions?
• Do website changes need to be approved by someone or can they immediately go live?
• How well trained in HTML, programming, etc are the users who will be maintaining the site?
• How many pages does your website have?
• Do you want to host your own CMS or use a third-parties CMS that often includes hosting your website?
• What is your budget?
• Do you want it to be software based or a web-based CMS?

After you jot the answers down to these questions, consider what you would like the answer to these questions to be a year from now? Five years from now? Will more people be involved? Will there be more information that needs to be communicated?

Page Flow

Although page flow can be connected to Navigation, it focuses more on the layout of the page. Is it clean, simple and uncluttered? Beyond clicking on links, can users find the information they are looking for once they are on the page that has the information? Do all of the pages look the same? Do they follow the same format? It’s a good idea if the pages follow the same general format but necessarily good if every page looks like the next.

Current Information & Dynamic Content

How current is the information on your website? When was the last time your home pages and sub pages were updated? Does your calendar have old events on it? Is your website the most helpful place for visitors to get information about your organization or can they find just as much information in your brochure or bulletin? Do you provide enough information about events, products, and your organization to sufficiently inform your audience?

Reasons to Come Back

Current information is a big reason visitors will or will not return to your website. CNN.com is so good at posting current information that they can get visitors to come back over and over again. But often times this is not enough to get visitors to return. Implementing other reasons to return such as videos, games, auctions, event registrations, free stuff, chat, message boards, searches, rating systems, etc. and more reason for visitors to your website. What are the different audiences you are targeting? What are you hoping they will do once they have come to your website once? Does your website lure your visitors back again? Give your audience many good reasons to return and they probably will.

Professional

This seems like an obvious essential, but it frequently goes unchecked. Make you’re your website has correct spelling, grammar, good word choice, high quality photos and images, valid code and HTML and consistent styles. This helps promote the reputability of your website and organization. There are plenty of tools out there to help you with spelling, grammar, and validating your code, so use them. Also ask yourself about your organization’s logo…does it look professional or like the secretary designed it? I have nothing against secretaries but most of them are not experienced logo designers.

BUILDING A HIGHLY RANKED WEBSITE IN GOOGLE

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is all about getting search engines to rank your website at the top. I haven’t met anyone that has not wanted more visitors to their website. More visitors usually means more revenue, more prospects, more products sold, more people influenced, more people coming to your events… you want more people. So now the question to ask yourself is: are you optimizing your website for the search engines (as well as your visitors)? Do you have a lot of inbound links to your website? Do you have lots of content? Can the search engine bots crawl through your pages? If you’re using Javascript or especially Flash navigation, probably not. Do you have statistics about your website traffic? Do you use keywords, descriptions, alt image tags, etc? Unless you’ve spent a significant amount of time tweaking your website for the search engines (and you have comprehensive and convincing stats to back it up) then you are doing average at best at SEO.

Compatibility

Compatibility is an important web design benchmark. In simple terms it’s the ability for users to access your website. Browser compatibility, page loading speed, and screen resolution all play an important part in compatibility. Make sure you have website statistics about your visitors that contains these types of information.

Comparison to Competitors

Although one could argue that comparison to your competitors is not an essential… web design like so many other things is relative. Ten years ago in the earlier days of the internet, websites were using much more primitive technology, yet people still obtained information and used websites. But if you didn’t change your website in the last ten years it would slowly become outdated and ineffective. Technology is continuously advancing (just like your competitors) and knowing how your website ranks compared to them is important indicator about how your website is doing. Like most products, services and ratings, web design is in part based on your competition.

There are Photoshop Training Videos for most of the Adobe products including InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop Elements. These powerful programs support and work with Photoshop. Before mastering those tools make sure you are confident with your Photoshop skills. Photoshop training videos will boost your already impressive Photoshop skills with awe-generating effects used by today’s industry pros.

Purchase one of our Photoshop Videos that will dazzle people with your designs.

HOW TO HAVE A HIGHLY RANKED WEBSITE IN GOOGLE

After a big “gulp” and a pause to take in what he had just told me, I asked for clarification, “So, you can’t add new pages yourself, you have to pay the design company $250 for each new page?” With a big sigh, he said, “Yes.”

This story along with other questions I’ve been asked about hiring a design company have inspired me to write this article, “Before You Sign on the Dotted Line.” My desire is that by the time you’re finished reading this article you’ll be a little more informed when you review your web design contract (hopefully, before you’ve signed it).

WHAT TO LOOK FOR WHEN SELECTING A WEB DESIGN COMPANY

Scalability

the ability to add more pages once the website is complete without additional cost and make global changes without changing every page

This is very important for the your website in the long-term. In the short-term you probably have everything you want on your website but a few months from now you’ll want to add to your site. And you’ll only be inclined to do this if you are not paying out the nose for each page.

In addition to adding more pages without cost, you need to be able to make global changes to your website (changes across all pages) without updating every individual page manually. For example your copyright at the bottom of every page says 2007. When 2008 comes, you do not want to go to every page and change the seven to an eight. A good rule of thumb is that things that appear exactly the same on more than one page should be using some kind of include. This goes for CSS styles as well.

Content Management System (CMS)

the ability for one or more users to update content simultaneously without knowing HTML

An effective CMS can often be the difference between a thriving website and one that is outdated and boring. For the small business owner an effective CMS results in being able to update your website without learning all there is to know about web design, HTML and CSS. For the larger organization the result is the ability to have multiple people updating and adding to the website simultaneously (without knowing web design, HTML, yada yada).

Branding

having a consistent marketing presence which might include stationary, website, ads, products and commercials.

The key here when it comes to the web design company is the willingness for them to incorporate your logo and existing marketing look and feel or if you don’t have established branding, help you do that. This might involve additional work (and cost to you) but if you have confidence in the design company you’ve selected then having them design a logo and establish a color scheme could be well worth the investment.

HOW TO HAVE BRANDING SUCCESS WITH YOUR COMPANY LOGO

Straightforward Navigation

a simple, intuitive and scalable way for visitors to browse your website and find relevant content

Ask the design company about the navigation structure and how new pages will be incorporated into the navigational flow of your site. This will help them realize you plan to add pages in the near future and will hopefully result in a more thought out navigation. You want your navigation to be as intuitive to first time visitors as possible, unless of course you don’t want first time visitors (or returning visitors).

But wait, there’s more!

MORE THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFORE SIGNING ON THE DOTTED LINE.

Before diving into these search engine factors, let me say a few words to those who are in a hurry to hire a company to improve their search engine rankings: you can do it. You can do exactly what they do but save yourself hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month. If you’re interested, then keep reading.

The following is how to build a highly ranked website in 12 months time in Google. If you’re diligent you can do it faster but it’s important to know that it won’t happen over night. And if you can get ranked in Google, you’ll be in the other search engines.

1. Content is King.

Start building content. Whether you haven’t started your website yet or if you’ve already got one. The more quality content you have, the more search engines will link to you. Build at least 100 pages of content. I’m not talking about bogus content or link pages, I’m referring to real content.

2. Inbound Links to Your Pages

Another key factor for top search engine placement, is inbound links to your website. The more websites that link to your website, the more reputable and popular your website must be (and the higher your site will be ranked). Work on exchanging links with other websites by sending an email to other webmasters asking if they would put a link to your website in exchange for one on your website. You can also look for directory websites that allow you to submit a link.

Take advantage of cross linking your own pages by linking to them within your site. You do not want to have an all-star home page that out performs the rest of your website. If you find this happening then cross link to other pages to share the wealth.

3. Design

Keep your design simple. Avoid overusing flash, JavaScript and other programming. Make sure your website is compatible across different browsers and older versions. Look at Google itself to see how simplicity works rather well. Although design is important, elegant websites vs. ugly websites

4. Page Size

Keep your pages under 100k if at all possible. Compress your images for the web and focus on optimizing every byte of information. If your pages take a long time to load for even a minority of people it will not have positive results.

5. Content

Keep building new pages with fresh content and information. If you built a new page of information with 300-500 words each day, in a years time you would have 350+ pages of content. Personal blogging is not as effective as topical articles that a general audience will appreciate. Most people don’t read, they scan.

Use bold headings – lots of line breaks – short sentences – bold headings.

If viewers don’t find what they’re looking for in a few seconds, then they’ll push back and be on their way.

6. Outbound Links

Don’t be afraid to link to other websites. On every page link to a high-ranking quality website. This is especially effective if you can use keywords in the link text that you want your website to be ranked for.

7. Advanced Website Statistics

Install a free website statistics program on your website that will allow you to capture keywords that people type in search engines to find you. You also want to be able to track your unique visitors and page views over time. We recommend Google Analytics for this.

8. Keywords and Descriptions

It amazes me how many people have abandoned entering keywords and descriptions in the meta tags of their website. Although these are less valued than they once were, they still are important and should not be overlooked. Keep your keyword list to the top 30-40 keywords for your web page. Common keywords like the name of your organization should be one every page. You can also use this strategy for the start of your page titles.

9. Submit

Once you have built up your content, use a free search engine submission tool to submit your website to the popular search engines. You can also consider spending $100 with a company like Submit Express to submit your website to 75,000 search engines once a month for six months.

10. Time

The longer your website has been around the more trusted your website becomes. Think about people in a company. Would you rather ask the guy who’s been there forever or the new kid on the block? Older websites are tried and true. They are not a fad. If people still visit them, then they must have good content.

11. Content

Almost every time someone pays a lot of money to improve their search engine rankings, the company ends up writing content for their website. That is how important it is for you to have lots of quality content. If you have many people in your organization that could contribute to your online content, make sure you’re using an effective Content Management System (CMS) that allows everyone to have access the website areas they need to. Funneling all of the website updates through one person will quickly become a bottle-neck and limiting factor in your growth (and popularity). My favorite CMS to recommend for small to medium businesses or churches is WordPress.

12. Track Your Progress

In addition to installing some kind of advanced web statistics, you can check how many of your webpages are indexed in Google. Do this by going to Google and typing site:yourdomain.comb You’ll have to probably click the “repeat the search with the omitted results included” link at the bottom of the page. You can also type link:yourdomain.com to see how many pages are linking to you. These are helpful to make note of now and run again in 6 months or a year. You can also run these queries on other websites that rank higher than you to see how your site compares in these two areas.

Debatable Factors

These are other factors that may or may not have a slight influence in your ranking. They certainly won’t hurt your ranking if you do them and chances are if you’re reading this far down then you’ll want to try these as well.

Page Depth

Keep your pages in the root or only 3-4 layers deep in your website. Pages that take many clicks to get to will be harder to find.

Validation

Websites that validate are easier for search engine robots to read. Use W3′s Validation Service to validate each page of your website.

XML Sitemaps

Create a sitemap for your website that indexes the pages and tells the search engine robots what priority you would rank each page. For more information go to Google’s Webmaster Tools

Pitfalls

As with anything, there are a few words of caution…

Guaranteed Search Engine Placement

Some companies may be able to actually do this but it will come at a very steep price. And they’ll end up just doing for you what you could have done for yourself by following the above.

Automated Link Exchange

Do not fall for automated link exchanges where links are automatically added to your website with the promise yours will be added to other websites. They do not work and could actually bring down your rankings.

Brochure Syndrome

Don’t think that having an online brochure website with little or no dynamic content will get you more business or visitors. Your website should offer something fresh and new everyday.

Finally, realize that web design and search engine optimization (SEO) are two different specialties. Most of the time when you have your website professionally designed, they do exactly that, give you a professional look. However, that is not to be confused with search engine optimization and improving your website’s search engine rankings. Just because you have your website professionally designed does not mean you will get more people to your website (it may just help keep the visitors once they do come to your website).

FTP Background Information

Let me back up a few steps. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It’s a method of copying files from your computer to a web server (sort of like when you burn information onto a CD or DVD). A web server is a computer that is connected to the internet and setup to accept files and route domain names.

When users copy files to their web server, they are putting them out for others to see them. In our case, we are using GoDaddy as our web host or web server. When we copy files to their server into a specific location then when users type in johnnyflash.net, they are taken to the GoDaddy web servers and our web pages are displayed.

How do I find a web host?

There are thousands and thousands of web hosting providers. You’ll be surprised it is how many there are when you start looking for them. Some companies have their own web servers for their corporate web sites and some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) give their customers free web space.

There are also free web hosting companies that will allow you to make your website public for now fee. However, they do usually require an ad or banner ad displayed on your website in exchange.

How do I use FTP?

Once you’ve selected your web host, you’re almost ready to FTP your files to the web. First you’ll need an FTP program. Thankfully there are a number of good free FTP programs, so this won’t cost you any money. We recommend SmartFTP which can be downloaded from download.com. (Coincidentally, the word download means to copy a file from internet to your computer. The word upload means to copy a file from your computer to the internet).

While you’re waiting for that to download and install, make sure you have your ftp address, username and password handy for your web host because you’ll need that next.

After you have launched your FTP program, you should be asked for or have a place to enter your web hosting information. Once you’re connected to your web server then you should have two windows (one showing your computer and one showing the web server). By dragging files from your computer to the web server you are copying them to the internet.

Tips for FTP Success

Make sure you copy them to the WWW or PUBLIC_HTML folder on your web server or they may not be visible. Here are a few other tips for uploading your website:

• Lowercase no space file names
• Index.htm or index.html or index.php is usually the name of your home page (check to make sure)
• If you have a domain name registered make sure yourname.com and www.yourname.com works correctly.
• Consider adding Google Analytics or another visitor tracking tool that will allow you to monitor how many visitors you have to your website and gain valuable information about how they found your website.
• Start finding websites that are willing to link to you.

Congratulations, you’ve just uploaded your first website!