Electric Car Website Review – If you are trying to present your brand as a technologically superior option, then only the very best designed electric car website will do. Tesla Motors does not disappoint in this case. Even if you have never heard of the company, this CSS website will make you want to drive one.

Website Reviewed: Tesla Motors

Website URL: http://www.teslamotors.com/

The landing page has an ever-changing set of photos, showing the cars navigating both classic mountain roads and normal everyday scenes. Can you already see yourself in one? Good. Click on ‘Go Electric’ and you will see another reason to want a Tesla: they are completely electric, the kind of car that you plug in to your garage wall. This tab contains information about why the car is better for the planet as well as answering questions about the car that many people may have.

There are only two models of Tesla car, each of which has its own tab on the electric car website. From here, you can find out anything you want about the cars… except the price. It’s okay; you probably can’t afford one anyway.

There are several ways to get more information. You can ask for a quote or even, if you have the money, order one. You can join the newsletter as well. There are no social media sites listed on the Tesla Electric Car Website, although we are sure they exist somewhere.

Creativity: 5 stars. The website is crisp, clean, and simply perfect for the brand being presented. The cars are shown in a variety of situations, in both photographs and videos. The cool gray makes the colors of the cars stand out and also brings attention to the red Tesla logo design.

Ease of use: 5 stars. It is very easy to answer basic questions about the range of the cars, their acceleration, and other issues that we think of when contemplating driving an electric car. In addition, the site is organized so you can focus on the model that interests you the most.

Functionality:  3 stars. It is easy enough to find the blog and newsletter signup as well as other information, but locating social networking sites is a real challenge. In fact, we were unable to find any. A brand this unique and interesting needs a Facebook page and a Twitter; many people who cannot afford to drive this car would love to follow the brand and become owners someday.

Content: 5 stars. The content is perfect, the right mix of sales and speed. It is professionally written and builds the brand. It also is informative and walks a fine line between being informative and being too technical.

Appropriateness: 5 stars. This website presents an upscale, luxury car brand that will appeal to the upscale audience who can afford it. Is there room for an electric luxury car? We think so. As gas prices seem to rise by the day, even the wealthy will soon be priced out of the market.

Overall: 4.6 out of 5 stars

Heavenly Star Logos seem to be popular in modern logo design. This may be due to the variety of connotations that the shapes have. They can represent wealth and fame, as with Hollywood stars. They can mean excellence and recall the days when a gold star meant you had studied your hardest. Last, they can represent the heavens, and all the sense of wonder and imagination that goes with them. The following ten logos are great examples of Heavenly Star Logos being used appropriately and beautifully in modern logo design.

Bakery websites… we hate to write about them, especially right before a meal. Yet, we seem to find many that are well-designed and beautiful. Perhaps it is something about the industry; perhaps something about the nature of a baker. Either way, get ready to be tempted by yet another.

Website Address: cakesweetcake.co.uk

Cake Sweet Cake specializes in wedding cakes, but they have a wide range of offerings. This website is organized so it is easy to see samplings of the main offering, but without excluding the smaller treats that build the brand. Pastel colors and girly fonts dominate the website, building a fun and yet frivolous brand that will appeal to engaged couples and anyone looking for a tasty yet stylish treat. However, earthy browns give a modern feeling and tone down the sugariness of the lighter hues.

There are subtle sales elements, such as the suggestion that the cupcakes make great gifts and can be gift wrapped as needed. There is also more obvious sales information, such as serving suggestions and the cost of different cakes. In all, this website makes it easy to see what the baker’s work looks like and whether you can afford it. If all bakeries made the process this easy, brides and grooms would be saved the trouble of numerous trips around town. It also assuages the fears of someone who worries that a certain type of cake might be too expensive. You can find out easily at this website, with no embarrassment involved.

Creativity: 5 stars. The background of this website is very creative; actually, the entire website is quite clever. It builds the brand while leaving the emphasis where it belongs: on the products. We love the slight angling and soft light in the photographs, which makes them feel like they sprung from a Martha Stewart magazine.

Ease of use: 5 stars. It is very easy to poke around and find out more about the baker and the products. In fact, most parts of the website can be accessed with a single click. The navigation bar is helpful as well.

Functionality:  5 stars. From the home page, you can view a menu, search the prices, or follow the brand on your choice of social media… just to name a few options. The website has many interesting and needful features, and most of them are accessible from the landing page in a single click. This is functionality at its best and most efficient.

Content: 4 stars. There are a few grammatical errors in the website, but it is otherwise well-written and descriptive. Combined with the photographs, which are professionally done and show the products to their best advantage, this site should come with a serious Food Porn alert.

Appropriateness: 5 stars. This website is very appropriate for a bakery. It has a fun and whimsical brand and color scheme, but also a professional touch. It will definitely be appropriate for engaged couples and sweets lovers in the bakery’s area.

Overall: 4.8 out of 5 stars

Online magazines are gaining popularity; after all, a website is a much cheaper and ecologically friendly way of starting a magazine and can gain fans until there is enough funding for a paper edition. Web magazines are especially becoming popular in niche and underground topics. Skateboarding Photo fits in both of those categories.

Website Address: skateboardingphoto.co.uk

As the name of the website suggests, this e-zine is all about skateboarding photos. The website landing page features a cascading line of current and previous issues along with a few miscellaneous announcements. Because there is only a cool black background and then the tiles, it is easy to make a choice… although the lack of a navigation bar makes me feel a little lost. Even after I found the navigation bar in the upper corner and clicked on the button that made it appear, I still felt a little lose because the bar only takes you home (where I already was) and allows you to like the website on Facebook. Not exactly a huge range of possibilities.

However, it is easy to find the main elements: issues of the online skateboarding magazine being promoted as well as the places where you can sign up for the email newsletter and become a Facebook fan. These are really good enough, and the magazine is excellent. In all, I thought this website deserved to be reviewed among the best CSS designs, but I have to sigh a little at the lost potential.

Creativity: 5 stars. The ezine is full of creativity, and I really liked the way the pictures are showcase by the relatively plain website theme. All elements are wisely chosen not to detract from the photos.

Ease of use: 2 stars. A navigation bar (a real one) would make this website so much easier to use and also ensure that internal pages were actually looked at once in a while—if they indeed exist. I poked around, but I could not find any other section of the website.

Functionality:  5 stars. This is one area in which the company excels. The links to the email list and the Facebook fan page are both very amusing and also go well with the magazine brand. This website manages to get the job done in a simple and yet edgy way.

Content: 4 stars. The content is well written, albeit sparse, and definitely intended to appeal to the skateboarding audience. This is important considering that the product being promoted is, after all, a magazine. However, there just are not enough words. People cannot find their way around.

Appropriateness: 5 stars. This website is definitely going to appeal to the magazine’s market. First, the black and white color palette has a cool feeling even as it emphasizes the beauty of the photos. Second, the photography used in the website is excellent. Last, all elements give a youthful feeling that this young subculture can relate to. I am not a skateboarder, but I enjoyed this website—and I were a skateboarder, I am sure I would have enjoyed it much more.

Overall: 4.2 out of 5 stars

We have always maintained that graphic artists need to have the most attractive and well-designed websites—especially those that work as web designers. However, we officially take that back, because we have found an industry with an even greater need for great CSS web design: blog theme designers.

Mojo Themes is a good example of this. Considering that the company is selling WordPress themes, they had better have a great site. People are looking at this website as evidence of their design skills. Moreover, because they are selling a large number of themes, they need a few organizational skills as well.

Website Address: mojo-themes.com

The center of the Mojo Themes brand is a little green monster with a pirate-like eye patch. He (or she) can be seen around the site, functioning as a mascot of sorts. This monster adds a little fun to an otherwise austere website. The Mojo Themes site indeed presents a great amount of information, but manages to keep it interesting and well organized.

Mojo Themes also functions as a sales website for freelance WordPress theme creators. We are assuming that this is a very new endeavor, because it seems like an off-shoot and has not been incorporated into the main website very well.

Creativity: 5 stars. The Mojo character is cute, and it provides a kind of comic relief to an otherwise serious website. However, it is not without creative accents: pops of color to emphasize information, for example, and other fun details.

Ease of use: 4 stars. The website is very easy to use, but it may contain a little too much information on the landing page. It can be tempting to include a little of everything on the homepage, but it is rarely a good idea. It can be a little overwhelming, and most people will visit internal pages anyway if they are really interested.

Functionality: 3 stars. Finding the social networking website for this company is a bit of a pain. You have to find the Contact page, and then scroll down a little once you are there. These social media links should be front and center, where they can help build the brand. We assure you that they would be more effective than endless tiles of themes that are too small to discern.

Content: 5 stars. There are a few small mistakes deep in the website—for example, on a sample restaurant menu, noodles are described as being ‘severed’ hot. However, these things are few and far between. For the most part, the website is well-written and correct, and it certainly has that professional touch.

Appropriateness: 5 stars. This website may be a little crowded and at times a little disorganized, but it is on the whole a wonderful website with a great brand. It fits a lot of information into a small site without too much bulging and crowding. We think that the simple theme used in the Mojo Themes website will make other people want to purchase their products.

Overall: 4.4 out of 5 stars

Are you a diehard lover of the Opera browser? Niche products such as this seem to inspire a great deal of emotion in the people who prefer them. If you love a good Opera every now and then, and you aren’t talking about a fat lady singing, then the My Opera community might be for you.

My Opera is a community of sorts for people who use the Opera web browser. However, it also functions somewhat like a social network. You must register as a user, but from there you can get support related to the product or interact with other Opera lovers via blogs, chat rooms, photo albums, and groups.

Website Address: http://my.opera.com/community/

The amount of information shared on this website is rather phenomenal. Just looking around the landing page, I can see tons of photos, videos, news stories and popular discussions. You can discuss your My Opera discussions on your social networks with an easy click, and you can even find out what the software engineers behind Opera are having for lunch that day via the Opera Lunch Menu Twitter. Pretty much every little bit of interaction has been squeezed out of this site, and good CSS web design gives a clean, well-organized edge.

If you planning a website that will contain a lot of small pieces, this is one method to consider. After all, the My Opera website is a virtual mosaic of small bits of information, but there is no denying that it works.

Creativity: 3 stars. The website is well-organized, well-ran, and very well-balanced—but it really is not that creative unless you count the photos and videos submitted by users (we don’t, by the way).

Ease of use: 5 stars. This is where the My Opera website really shines. It has a large and diverse website, but it is very easy to fine everything. In fact, you can find it all quickly, usually with just two or three clicks.

Functionality: 5 stars. This website does not just function as a social network, it allows you to interact with it via other social networks. You know it’s 2011 when you are stepping out to Facebook or Twitter to talk about another social network that you belong to! Links to social media are placed all over the website to make it easy to coordinate with other pursuits.

Content: 5 stars. The words are very well-written considering that this is not a product (or a website) from an English speaking country. The writing is humorous and fits in well with the fun, youthful brand.

Appropriateness: 5 stars. This website is meant to offer support, but more importantly, it is offering fellowship among lovers of a niche product. While many of the people on this website have a social networking presence elsewhere, they keep coming back here because the website makes it easy for them to find the latest news about their fave browser and also to interact with other enthusiasts.

Overall: 4.6 out of 5 stars

We posted a while back about a CSS coffee website that was so close to being perfect, but not quite—it was missing a lot of crucial information about the product. That’s why we are so happy to bring you another CSS website review of another coffee brand, one that is getting it right.

The Illy Issimo website avoids the brown coffee cliché and instead uses the brand’s silver and red brand colors. The product is front and center from the landing page onward. A can of the coffee is shown on the front page, along with a list of all of the flavors. The main photo is of a beautiful woman enjoying the product.

Website Address: us.illyissimo.com

Moving product also seems to be a priority. Prominently placed links on the landing page offer both a store locater and a link to online websites selling the product. Illy will even deliver cases of the product to your home or office. This CSS website is not just great at promoting a brand; it is great at selling the product. And, after all, that is where most business owners get their paychecks. This website is flawless, smooth, and as cool as the drinks the company is selling. It has a European feeling that will complement the Illy brand, and it also has the potential to serve as an ecommerce website. In short, Illy Issimo’s website has it all.

Creativity: 4 stars. Despite its good branding practices and the beautiful photography, there is nothing really remarkable about this website. It is a basic and stripped-down website, but nonetheless a well-designed and attractive one.

Ease of use: 5 stars. This website is extremely easy to peruse and offers quick links to shop or find out more about the product. Ease of use may be the main reason for the bare bones organization of the website. Whatever the motivation, we love it.

Functionality: 5 stars. Not only can you connect with the brand via different social networking websites, you can even buy the product. This website is versatile enough to do it all, and to do it on just a few pages. This website may not have all of the frills, but it has all of the necessary elements of both a branding website and an ecommerce website in the same streamlined package.

Content: 5 stars. The copy is for the most part well-written, although there are a few awkward bits of phrasing and grammatical errors (capitalizing ‘Master’, for example). The drink descriptions are scintillating and make us want to try the beverages.

Appropriateness: 4 stars. This website is a great fit both for the Illy brand and for the product being sold, Illy Issimo. While the colors tie into the parent brand, the website is obviously dedicated to the drink and does a great job of selling it. This is a product oriented website that is geared toward a young, savvy market where cold coffee is a necessity and drinking a great brand of it is just as important.

Overall: 4.2 out of 5 stars.

How do you make an old-fashioned prep school feel modern without doing away with the tradition altogether? The Raffles Institution website walks this fine line, presenting a brand that offers a traditional university preparatory education with modern features and facilities.

A crest, associated with prep schools all over the world, is placed on the home page but positioned to be part of the background. Photos and line drawings of students and facilities help to space out the writing and make the website easier to read, while providing insight into the actual school experience. A presidential recommend is placed on the landing page, which together with the crest gives the school a very official and substantial feeling.

Website Reviewed: Raffles Institution, Singapore

Website URL: http://admissions.ri.edu.sg/

Parents don’t just choose a school based on academics; they do so based on the school’s reputation and their personal perception of the type of education offered. This website will be instrumental in creating the right reputation and making parents want to choose this institution for their own children. It also simplifies the application process, which some schools seem to purposely complicate.

Why does a school like this need a website? This website will ensure that the school has ample applicants and can choose the best and most promising. This will eventually raise the school’s reputation. In addition, the website shows that the school is a professional entity, worthy of parents’ tuition dollars.

Creativity: 5 stars. The colors of the website include a traditional taupe background with blue-green accents. Blue-green is a calming and trustworthy color—important when you are dealing with a family’s prized possession, their child—but it is also modern and adds contrast to the neutral colors in the background.

Ease of use: 5 stars. The website is very well-organized, making it easy to access information. Each item on the navigation bar expands so interested parents can find information in a single click. There is a good mix of practical information and photos, making the website very navigable and easy to peruse. The admissions process, curriculum information, and other hard facts are explained clearly.

Functionality: 5 stars. An online application process makes it easier for parents, and likely easier for the school as well. It would be nice if there were printable paper applications as well, because some parents don’t like to give out personal information on the internet. However, the process is very well explained so people know exactly what step they are on and what they need to do to complete it.

Content: 5 stars. The content is exceptional. Only perfect grammar and spelling are used—we should be able to expect this from a school, but unfortunately many fall short. This is more impressive when you consider that the school is located in Singapore, which is not primarily an English-speaking country.

Appropriateness: 5 stars. The website is very appropriate for a school. Warning: it will make you want to send your children there! The mix of modern and traditional, scholastic and social, presents a brand that many interested parents will find very attractive.

We aren’t huge fans of multi-level marketing or direct sales, but Javita has one well-designed website. It offers a lot of information about the opportunity the company offers—the opportunity to work from home selling their special, healthier blend of coffee—and a little information about the product as well. Direct sales are rarely about the product, so this is probably the right mix for the brand. We aren’t saying that in a mean way; branding is important to all businesses, but exponentially more so for direct sales.

Website Reviewed: Javita
Website Address: javita.com

The site is a creamy brown color, which is perfect for a coffee brand. The logo, which ambitiously features a cup of coffee with sun-like rays emanating from it, is prominently featured in the navigation bar, again adding to the brand awareness. This website is easy to peruse and easy on the eyes, encouraging people to become part of this company.

The moral of this story is this: CSS website design can be used to create websites that are full of technical frills—we all know that. You can wow and amaze your audience at every turn. However, some companies don’t need that. Instead, they want to win hearts over to their brand. As the Javita website shows, simple and beautiful websites can be developed using CSS as well.

Creativity: 3 stars. The site has a great sense of brand and a great ‘flow’. However, it is definitely lacking in creative elements. There is nothing here that ‘wows’ the viewer.

Ease of use: 5 stars. This website is easy to browse and offers links in multiple places, including a navigation bar. The information is logically organized, and includes printable PDF documents explaining the business model in more depth. There is a member’s only section that we were unable to evaluate due to needing a referral, but we assume that it is similarly well-designed.

Functionality: 4 stars. You may be a little shocked at the number of social media links—you can connect with the company via a variety of networking websites or simply like them on your own pages. Because this industry is very brand oriented, these functions are highly necessary. This CSS website makes it easy for customers to interact and even to commit. However, it gives no help to people wanting to buy the coffee. No links, no nothing. This is a shame, and it reinforces the suspicion that this company is more about multi-level marketing than the product.

Content: 5 stars. The content is sales copy—intended to sell the brand to interested parties. It is well-written and correct in every way for the professional image that the company is aiming for.

Appropriateness: 4 stars. The website is very appropriate for a sales recruitment website—but not so much as a company product website. We could find only a few blurbs about the health benefits of the coffee being sold, but nothing else. If a person were interested in the Javita products, the Javita website would not be a help.

Overall: 4.2 out of 5 stars.

What do you think of when you hear the word ‘unfold’? Most of us think of paper, unfolding a note or letter. This is how the Unfold website has been designed, to make viewers feel that they are unfolding the information. Stylistically, this website is top-notch.

Bright red is a bold color for the business world, but it works here, especially with the bold geographic shapes and the black and white background colors. This agency is trying to send the message that they are different from the many others, a message that is driven home by the design of their website. Although there is always room for improvement, this website is obviously born from a superior sense of style and a solid understanding of web design.

Triangles dominate the website, which gives it a feeling of strength and also ties into the ‘folded’ theme. They are used mainly as navigational aids and links. Your eye goes to them immediately so this is a good design strategy that will make it easy for potential customers to navigate the page.

Creativity: 5 stars. We love the way the name has been turned into the main concept of this website. This speaks to the agency’s creative abilities as well as their technical skills in web design. The lines are clean and crisp, with bright red as a main color and other colors used as accent only. If you are trying to promote your company as a creative design business, a website such as this one is a good start.

Ease of use: 5 stars. This website is very simple, with only the most necessary information, which makes it very easy to navigate. You can scroll through it or click on a topic from the navigation bar to find the needed information. Having more than one way of accessing information ensures that even less proficient users can find what they need.

Functionality: 4 stars. There are Facebook and other social networking links, as well as a beautiful aerial map of the agency’s neighborhood, but the social networking links are classified under ‘Sharing’, which makes them difficult to locate as most people will click on ‘Contact’ for this information. Also, there is no portfolio, which is important in the design industry. Potential customers want to peruse past work and see if the agency has the right style for them.

Content: 4 stars. The text is simple and succinct, but not very interesting.  Considering the creative concept of the website design, we were hoping to find a little humor or edge. Don’t bother looking; it’s not there.

Appropriateness: 5 stars. This website is appropriate, both for the industry and for the name of the company. We like the way the name of the agency has been made the concept of the website. We think that this website is a great example of how CSS can be used creatively to build a brand and drive a concept home.

Overall: 4.6 out of 5 stars.

Are you ready for a different type of fashion magazine design? International fashion website Satellite Voices just may be the magazine for you. This online zine, which is marketed to an international audience, offers news from around the world along with fashion that can look beautiful in any context.

The Satellite Voices website is a little edgy, which is a good brand for an internet magazine presenting international style. It is easy to access any article on the landing page, and a navigation bar allows you to sort information by topic (these are very general) or region. A listing of articles similar to that seen in the front of a magazine would be a good addition because that is how people are used to dealing with a normal, paper publication.

We encountered numerous error messages while perusing the website, which is frustrating for website visitors. This combined with the rudimentary organizational scheme make the website difficult to navigate. While the brand is appealing, SatelliteVoices appears to be all form and little function, which is definitely detrimental. However, these are errors that could be easily changed (hint, hint?).

Creativity: 5 stars. The design itself is simple with a colorful, splotchy background reminiscent of graffiti or street art. However, this is merely a background note; the main photography is stark and beautiful, with professional quality and a focus on detail. Even so, the background adds a touch of youthful fun and says a lot about the brand being promoted.

Ease of use: 3 stars. It can be very difficult to navigate this website. You should be able to narrow the topics to read exactly what you are interested in—the way people flip through a magazine. Instead the website has categories based on country and region or very broad topic categories. Viewers therefore must either miss out on great articles or simple page through every single issue—and who has the time for that?

Functionality: 3 stars. Does this website even know that Facebook exists? There is no contact information anyone on the website, although even a Facebook page would do a lot to help customers feel connected to the brand. The website offers almost no special or fun functions, as well-designed as it otherwise is.

Content: 5 stars. There is very little content on this website, but what exists is well-written and proper in every way. We especially love the way the magazine offers a clean look despite having a variety of different items on every page. This balance is partially due to the lack of text, although the organization of articles into picture blocks helps out a little.

Appropriateness: 5 stars. This website is youthful and edgy, which is exactly the way that we would expect it to be. If offers the best of all worlds: a beautiful magazine based on style, with issues for different sections of the world, all for free and available from the privacy of your home.

Overall: 4.2 out of 5 stars.

Do you store your food according to the strictest food standards? Do you have a feed thermometer that you use to test your refrigerator and your cooked meat to ensure that they are the correct temperature? Unfortunately, many people do not pay attention to these little details, which may be why one third of Canadians have contracted a food borne disease. Twenty percent of British Columbian people do not use a meat or refrigerator thermometer on a regular basis, which would seem to suggest that they are not using one correctly. However, help is on the way! The government and several sponsoring organizations hope to make food safety fun with a website designed to teach citizens about the topic.

Simply storing meat at the correct temperature can cut back drastically on food borne disease. If you refrigerator is cold enough, bacteria cannot grow and spread as quickly. Under high temperatures, bacteria are killed altogether. In fact, you can make just a few simple changes and see a huge change in health and behavior. That is the point of this website. A bright superhero explains how to care for meat in a fun and nonjudgmental way. This makes it easy for households to learn about eating and storing foods, a dialogue that hopefully will lead to better storage and cooling practices in Canada.

Creativity: 5 stars. This website addresses a rather serious topic—food poisoning—with grace and humor. Not only is the website amusing, it offers good tips for people who are not aware of how to properly cook and store meats. Because many people do not know how to check the temperature in their refrigerator, it makes sense to have a website with detailed explanation.

Ease of use: 3 stars. There does not appear to be any navigation bar or other movement assistant. In fact, the only way to get around the site is to randomly click on links, or to scroll endlessly through the different pages. A navigation bar would be a welcome addition and make the website much easier to explore.

Functionality: 5 stars. The site is highly functional; there is a game at the top of the page (although in our opinion the link is not large enough) as well as buttons allowing viewers to share it through Facebook and Twitter. This website was designed to teach a valuable lesson, and it functions well in this capacity.

Content: 5 stars. The content is well-written and easy to understand. It explains a rather complicated topic (one that requires at least one full semester class in culinary school) in a way that can be quickly understood by an everyday citizen.

Appropriateness: 5 stars. The super hero theme is humorous and detracts in a pleasant way from the seriousness of the subject. We like the fifties retro theme; many housekeeping websites use a similar theme, so it has come to be associated with housekeeping in general. This website is bright and graphic, a great way of portraying the necessary information.

Overall: 4.6 out of 5 stars.

La Porte Sainte Claire is a classic French restaurant that has everything going for it. It is located in the best place for French food—a quaint village in France—and is in a building with plenty of antique charm. From the foods to the wine list to the ambience, this restaurant offers the best of classic France. The website is designed to complement this brand.

The website features pictures of the food and the restaurant, in deep colors that contribute to an upscale feeling. The navigation bar in the center of the page appears to have been made from old leather, while the web pages that slide out from under it are of an ivory parchment. This website does not even feel like a website; it is smooth, silky, and subtle.

This website is not just about feelings; it also offers a variety of functions in an easy to use format. You can reserve a table, communicate with the chef, and peruse the menu. You can locate the restaurant on a map or leave a comment about your meal. The possibilities are endless thanks to great CSS design.

Creativity: 5 stars. We love the way the information glides out from behind the leather bar when the category is clicked on. While this website looks a little overdone, it is well put together and creates a sumptuous, luxury brand. The deep colors and earth tones help the vibrant colors of the photos and the food to stand out.

Ease of use: 5 stars. It is very easy to find whatever you need, even if you do not speak French. Menu items include English descriptions below to make the website accessible to tourists. The website is well designed, and all aspects of the website can be accessed by clicking on a link on the bar in the center of the page.

Functionality: 4 stars. There are no links to social networking websites, which is an unfortunate oversight. However, customers can perform just about any function through this website, from reserving a table to finding out about the historical area in which it is located.

Content: 4 stars. The content is well-written in French and also includes English descriptions for different dishes. The English descriptions for many dishes are incomplete; it would be good to complete them and also to decide whether the website is going to be completely bilingual or French-only. As it is, there is a little bit of English in the descriptions of the different foods, but the rest of the site is entirely in French.

Appropriateness: 5 stars. This website is perfect for the brand of the restaurant and definitely has its fair share of rustic charm. While there are a few small issues, they do not interfere with the overall feeling of the website. It is very appropriate and a good example of how CSS can be used to create interesting effects in websites.

Overall: 4.6 out of 5 stars.

A quick disclaimer: Although there are aspects of the Egopop website that do not make sense (like, you know, the name), we really like the style and hope to see more from this designer.

That said, Egopop is the website of a freelance designer. It is designed to showcase the work of the artist while building a personal brand. The landing page features the name of the company in modern, bubbly lettering, with clay animals and critters arranged in front. As you move your mouse, you can see the scene from different perspectives. At the upper left side, there are links to other pages in the website, which are the portfolio, an about page and a contact page.

Website Reviewed: Egopop

Website URL: http://www.egopop.net/

This website is adorable inside and out. However, it is a little confusing, which is surprising considering that there are so few pages. The information is not arranged in a logical way, but rather fit together randomly on the pages. It is hard to predict exactly what will be on any given page. Also, we have concerns about how a rather juvenile website will function as a freelance website.

Creativity: 5 stars. From the adorable clay animals to the almost haphazard way that the information is organized, this website seems to ooze creativity.  It is almost gratuitously creative, but this ends up to be a powerful and even central part of the freelancer’s brand.

Ease of use: 3 stars. To be honest, the landing page feels a bit redundant. It does nothing to sell product and does not act as a hub for the website. Instead it is just there. Even with cute clay critters, this seems a bit much. In addition, the portfolio page is cluttered. It is difficult to see exactly what the designer did in each project and when.

Functionality: 4 stars. Social networking links to just about every site available are present on every page… except the contact page. This is an unfortunate oversight that make lead to a loss in sales. After all, many people will not brose around the website; they will click on contact and then leave the website altogether.

Content: 4 stars. The content is not bad, but there are a few glaring errors. For instance, on the About page, the artist switches repeatedly from first to third person and uses fragmented sentences. These are easy enough to fix, so we hope that the creator will proofread and make the necessary corrections.

Appropriateness: 3 stars. As we said in the first paragraph, we really like this website. However, there is no getting around the fact that it is not very appropriate as a business website. The website could be modified to keep its cute factor and its fun, fresh quality while making it a little more work appropriate. This is the internet equivalent of keeping stuffed animals in your work cubicle. Design is an adult profession… let’s act like it already.

Overall: 3.8 out of 5 stars.

In today’s video I talk about the 5 important elements of a brand and how you can pay attention to these elements to ensure your brand becomes whole and successful. I talked about your company logo design, the wording of your brand including content on your website and your marketing material, your company visual identity, your brand promise and how you will have to differentiate your brand to stand a chance of competing with other companies out there. I will be doing more brand element related videos in the future where I will be talking about other important items such as your brand essence, brand promise, your positional statement, your brand personality and more.

For full transcript read 5 Essential Parts Of A Brand.

Biotechnology may be big business, but it is one with little public support. Few people realize that many of their favorite products and most needed medications are a direct result of biotechnology companies and the research that they perform. Here are a few logo designs that do a great job of selling biotechnology for the innovative and extremely necessary field that it is.

As you can see from our examples, there are a few details that create a good biotechnology logo design. First, bright colors are often a good choice because they help to make this relatively misunderstood field seem a little friendlier. Second, fonts are used to balance the tone of the images, whether it is to add a serious, straightforward touch or a little bit of approachability. Last, images are important to communicate exactly what the company in question does. The average American will have only a foggy idea of what bioplastic research entails; the job of the logo design is to make this a little more clear. In addition, there are numerous fields of biotechnology, and a great logo design can help to differentiate a company from the many others in the field. We are all visual creatures, so a biotechnology logo design can quite literally speak a thousand words about the organization that it represents.

In today’s video, I talk about the importance of cultivating an online brand irrespective of wether your business online or offline. I explore the various fundamentals that you need to take into account and ensure you project a positive outlook for your business. Tips include Googling yourself and your business, getting on to social networks, interlinking your various online brand properties, broadcasting positive information about your business online and responding to negative feedback proactively and quickly. Even though the list might seem daunting for small business owners, it really is quite simple to understand and implement.

For the full transcript, read Building A Small Business Brand Online.

It is particularly important for design-oriented businesses to have well-designed websites. After all, a website should help to build your brand, which hopefully includes good aesthetic style, and also give customers a sense of what kind of work your company specializes in. The Andersson-Wise website is one of the best architecture websites we have seen this year because of the attention to branding, especially in the little details.

Website Reviewed: Andersson-Wise Architecture

Website URL: http://www.anderssonwise.com/

The website is black with white writing, which allows the photos of different projects to really pop. The font and other visual accents are all very simple, which again draws attention back to the photos. This is a firm that feels comfortable letting their work speak for itself.

A navigation bar makes it easy to access all parts of the website, which include past projects, a published book of the firm’s work, and more. There is an area for news and press as well as links to the company’s social media pages. This website gives the firm a very substantial and legitimate feeling, like it has a huge presence in the architecture world both locally and nationally. This is exactly the impression that the firm is trying to portray. People prefer to have their home or other large project completed by an established professional rather than an inexperienced newcomer to the scene. A website can be a crucial part of creating this impression.

Creativity: 5 stars. The use of simple design and colors to bring attention to the photographs and portfolio may seem obvious, but it is in fact a difficult thing to pull off. Andersson-Wise seems to do it effortlessly, which suggests that their design skills are Yoda-like.

Ease of use: 5 stars. There is a navigation bar that makes it easy to navigate the website and find exactlw what you need. In addition, the information is organized into logical categories, making it simple to find. Again, simplicity is the over-arching theme.

Functionality: 4 stars. You have to make your way to the contact page before you get any access to social networking pages, which is an unfortunate oversight. If we had our way, there would be links to Facebook on every page and viewers would be able to ‘Like’ and ‘Share’ different projects. This website is well-designed, but it needs to be a little more functional. We feel that the architects have chosen form over function when they could have had both.

Content: 4 stars. The writing is technically good, but very difficult to actually read. There are just too many abstract terms strung together. Putting things in everyday language, making the wording as simple and sophisticated as the rest of the design, would be a huge improvement.

Appropriateness: 5 stars. This website is very appropriate both for the brand and for the customers, showing the company to its best advantage and offering a lot of information. It shows off the company’s design skills and will give customers confidence in the architects’ skill.

Overall: 4.6 out of 5 stars.

In today’s video I talk about the power of the right tagline or slogan for your business and the salient features of an appropriate tag-line or slogan for your small business. Using a few well known examples of brand taglines, I illustrate the importance of having the right kind of slogan and what care you should take when trying to develop a slogan for your business. A word of caution though: every brand does not need a tagline. You should only adopt a tagline when your primary business name or brand does not sufficiently carry across the message of what your company does or your brand message. Some times a tagline can be a hinderance to your brand if it is either absolute, redundant or inconsequential.

The Mario Kart Wii Experience website is designed to promote this popular Wii game by giving owners of the game a chance to share about their experiences while acting as a product information website for people who do not own the game. The website has a similar aesthetic style to the game itself, with a white and gray background and brightly colored characters. Indeed, Nintendo is good at branding and this website shows their skill. Every element from the fonts to the placement of the links was designed with the core brand in mind.

Website Reviewed: Mario Kart Wii Experience

Website URL: http://www.nintendo.com.au/gamesites/mariokartwii/

However, this website is unexpected in several ways. We expect Nintendo to be good at marketing their products, but this website offers a range of experiences that will encourage people to play this game. On the landing page, there are several videos promoting the game, along with links to score sheets, social networking pages, and even a history of the Mario character. One of the most fun parts of this website is the numerous videos that users have submitted of themselves playing the game. Even if you are not a huge fan of the Mario Kart games, you will have fun browsing this site and checking out the different functions.

This website has numerous functions that are intended either for adults or for the most media-savvy children, such as the ability to send MarioKart weapons to friends via Facebook. These extras tie the website into other sites and allow older fans of the Mario franchise to enjoy the website as much as the kids do. Because this game is popular among a very wide age group, it can be difficult to design a website that markets to all, but the Mario Kart Wii Experience does an excellent job.

Creativity: 5 stars. The website aesthetic design may not be unexpected, but there are fun details that build the Mario Kart brand, such as the little racer at the bottom of every page who can be used to navigate the website. These details complete the experience and give a professional feeling to the website.

Ease of use: 4 stars. The home page is a little overwhelming and cluttered; it can take a few moments to get your bearings. However, once you settle in, it is easy to find what you seek.

Functionality: 5 stars. This is not just a website, but rather a multi-media experience. You can access extras and printables, upload movies of your family playing the game, virtual-bomb Facebook friends, or just about anything else you wish. It is hard to think of a website with more different functions.

Content: 5 stars. The content is well-written and designed to be understood by younger readers without annoying the older ones. This is a difficult line to walk, but Nintendo does it well.

Appropriateness: 5 stars. It is difficult to design a website that is appropriate for the many different types of people who play Mario games, but Nintendo has done it and done it well.

Overall: 4.8 out of 5 stars.

In today’e video, I talk about Martin Lindstorm’s popular and ground breaking book Brandwashed as an anchor for how brands manipulate our senses and our psyche and how small business can compete with such brandwashing. I take 3 examples from the book to illustrate the points. I also liked Martin’s previous book Buyology and perhaps would do another video on that down the line. Branding has become an obsession and I plan to do a whole series of brand related videos that would help small business owners get to grips with the mysterious world of branding. For a full transcript read Are Consumers Brandwashed?

How much do you love your earbuds? For many of us, these are throw-away items, an accessory destined to be left at the gym or ruined by a child’s sticky fingers. Yurbuds wants you to buy into your earbuds… or, at least, their earbuds. According to this website, earphones can be instrumental in helping you achieve your dreams.

Website Reviewed: YourBuds

Website URL: http://www.yurbuds.com/

Yurbuds are sports earphones that lock into the ear via a mechanism that looks painful but hopefully is not. They are designed to work well with a busy, athletic lifestyle. To underscore the important of such a lifestyle, the company has posted a ‘Gallery of Heroes’ with people wearing the earbuds with inspirational words written across their faces. You can share your own story (and photo) through a link to the company’s Facebook page. Although most of us would never dream of submitting a photo of ourselves with painted words across our face, many fans would simply for the bragging rights of having been on such a large company. This helps the company build fans, an important part of getting sales.

The black website is designed so that the accents (and the earphones) are red. This makes the product stand out and also gives a streamlined feeling. While the fonts in the website are not identical to that used in the logo design, they are related and similar in shape and form. Details like this may not be obvious to a person without a background in design, but to design junkies these are the hallmark of a professional website.

The product looks well designed as well. The company swears that they do not fall out and that they do not hurt (again, they screw into your ear), making them perfect for modern people with busy lives. Design is important, but we’ll be sticking to our good old fashioned earphones for now.

Creativity: 5 stars. The website is not particularly creative, but it is designed to draw attention to numerous photographs that are indeed very creative and well-done. The photographs create the impression that the product is intended for people of all ages and lifestyles.

Ease of use: 5 stars. The navigation bar makes it easy to find what you need, and the site is clearly organized. The website presents a large amount of information in a logical way, which can be difficult.

Functionality: 4 stars. There are numerous links to social networking pages as well as an ecommerce section in which you can buy the earphones along with other branded items such as t-shirts and armbands. There are also links to contests being held on the Facebook page. These are scattered throughout the site, but they might be better placed in the same location on every page.

Content: 3 stars. The content is minimal but written well. We wish there was a little more information on the sales pages; most people want a lot more specifics before spending fifty dollars on a pair of earphones. While the earphones are described in detail elsewhere on the website, there is almost no info on the actual sales product page.

Appropriateness: 5 stars. All content is appropriate for the audience.

Overall: 4.4 out of 5 stars.

In today’s video, I explore the importance of package design and consequential branding with an brief case study of Honest Tea (http://www.honesttea.com/) and how they have successfully managed to keep their package design fresh and exciting over a period of time. Although this video does not dwell into the actual specifics of how package design is implemented, I do hope it will inspire both designers and product based companies on taking a fresh look at the importance of package design that works.

When it comes to concepts, this website is one of the best that we have seen. The CSS website is set up like a module on the Red Planet, with the background a rusty red sky. As you scroll down through the website, the sky gradually darkens and becomes the deep ink color of outer space, then lightens as you approach Earth. The information is centered in shapes designed to look like space modules, except for the apps which are orbiting their own planet.

Website Reviewed: We Came From Mars

Website URL: http://wecamefrommars.com/

But enough about form and function. There are enough nerd pleasures on this website to thrill even a hard-core geek. One of the things that will especially amuse most of you is the way the pictures of employees are placed in space helmets to keep with the website’s theme and the company brand.  You can even see a few likes and dislikes, which makes you feel like you know the people behind the brand a little bit. This is a website that you will enjoy perusing; it has been set up thoughtfully, with all of the details tying into an original brand.

Creativity: 5 stars. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to come up with a planetary theme, but there is definite imagination used in the execution here. We like the way the Martian theme was developed without cartoony Martians. From the color scheme to the information, everything fits in with the Mars idea. This creative brand deserves an A+.

Ease of use: 3 stars. You could find your way around Mars no problem thanks to a navigation bar combined with a completely scrollable website. Except—oops—the links on the navigation bar did not always work. Some did nothing, while others took us to the wrong place. It’s unfortunate in such an otherwise excellent website. All other components seemed fully functional, however.

Functionality: 5 stars. We like being able to see videos of the apps in use; it made us want them on our own smartphones. There are also links to social networking pages as well as a contact page with addresses, telephone numbers and emails. It’s easy to contact this business by any method that you prefer. All companies should make it this easy to contact them!

Content: 5 stars. The content is well-written, but there is not a whole lot of detail. However, the lack of written detail is more than made up for by the videos allowing potential buyers to experience the app for themselves.

Appropriateness: 5 stars. The people who are interested in these games will really enjoy the website as well. It gives a great idea of the general flavor of the games, as well as insight into the technical skills and eye for detail possessed by the creators. There is just the right mixture of fun and seriousness. This website will be selling a lot of apps thanks to its great CSS design.

Overall: 4.6 out of 5 stars.

In today’s video i talk about building a customer focused brand by offering customers what they need rather than what you want or think they need and by showing and not telling our customers our brand story and giving them a great customer experience. Other tips include monitoring your customer experience, planning for the future and being relevant to your customers. Not an easy task but by not being customer focused, you will have a greater challenge getting your brand noticed.

The Red Velvet website uses CSS design to build a brand and also to make sales. It is a great well-rounded website that contains a variety of information, yet it feels organized and easy to navigate. If you have any experience whatsoever in design, you know what a challenge this can be.

Website Reviewed: Red Velvet Shop

Website URL: http://www.shopredvelvet.com/

When you land on the home page, you are treated to a scrolling picture bar showing popular ‘destinations’ on the site such as the Look Book and the Summer Sale. If none of these appeal to you, there is also a navigation bar at the top of the page as well as more links at the bottom. The color palette—white, gray, and linen—is designed to promote a feeling of simplicity while allowing the photography to take center stage.

One of the things that we love about this website is that it features multiple ways to browse the items for sale. You can take the traditional route by clicking on one of the categories on the navigation bar, or you can shop ‘by trend’. You can even click on favorites and see the various employees’ favorites, or if you are a regular visitor, check out just what is new to the website.

A few things we don’t like: when you click on the items’ product page, you have to read all about them and generally fall in love before getting to the bit about how they are unavailable. Also, a lot of the items are out of stock, which is, well, annoying to shoppers. This problem could easily be solved by leaving out of stock items off the category pages or at least placing them at the bottom. Also, social media links and other necessary information is tucked away in the footer, where few people will find it. However, these are small issues and do not detract from the overall good first impression we have of this website.

Creativity: 5 stars. The website is very creative, but what we really like is that it manages to keep a simple and minimalist feeling in the midst of the creativity. Anyone can throw colors at a screen; this brand took hard work and professional design.

Ease of use: 5 stars. The website is well-organized, with a place for everything and everything in its place. There is a huge range of products, but it is easy to find every one of them.

Functionality:  4 stars. Why would you hide social networking at the bottom of the page?

Content: 4 stars. There are a few small grammatical and punctuation errors in the text, such as in the product descriptions and the ‘About’ pages. This is in keeping with the informal, homespun brand being presented, but it does nothing to build a professional and trustworthy image. The photography and visual content is beautiful and well-designed.

Appropriateness: 5 stars. This fresh and flavorful website is very appropriate for the young, fashion forward audience that it is trying to reach.

Overall: 4.6 out of 5 stars

In today’s video I talk about the basics of your Facebook business page optimization and a few other details. This is not an exhaustive study of the Facebook business pages nor a tutorial but rather just a brief into that would benefit small business owners who are struggling to get to grips with what all the fuss is about Facebook Business Pages.

While most CSS websites amaze us with cool features, this one will warm the cockles of your heart with its sweet country charm. Calico patterns and sweet, hand-drawn animals surrounding happy people having tea combine to give this website a gentle, vintage feeling reminiscent of Beatrix Potter.

Website Reviewed: Jolly Duck Bunting
Website URL: http://jollyduckbunting.co.uk/

This website is selling homemade table linens and also rents out vintage china and tableware for parties. However, more than any single product the company is offering an old-fashioned dining experience. This makes the website very appropriate. The items are shown in pop-outs that make it easy to look at the items quickly. The high resolution images allowed by CSS are used well here because it allows potential customers to see the patterns of the fabric in detail and to examine the china closely. CSS is particularly effective for image-heavy websites because it loads quickly and allows the photos to have more SEO power.

Where is the logo? Where are the social media links? While the products seem lovely, this business is not doing enough to build its brand. We hope that this is a beginner’s mistake and that a little more attention to these elements is given in the future. Until then, this remains a beautiful example of how CSS website design can be used to create a unique feeling for unconventional businesses.

Creativity: 5 stars. The use of the bunting patterns in the web design is clever and also gives potential customers an idea of what the finished products will look like on a set table. The animals are cute and add to the brand by tying into the name of the company. We especially like using the flags hanging above the table as a navigation bar.

Ease of use: 5 stars. Because this website is offering a lot of bespoke items, the pricing can get complicated. However, the website offers enough information to make this easier to figure out. A contact page allows people to contact the seamstress/business owner with any questions. The information is logically organized and easy to access.

Functionality:  3 stars. You have to travel deep into the website to get any contact information, and there are no social networking websites. This is unfortunate because many people would probably interact with the brand on social media and thus be able to remember it later when they are planning a party. Social networking would also provide free marketing, which no small business can afford to pass up.

Content: 4 stars. The text is well written, and the pictures say more than their allotted thousand words about the products. However, there is a noticeable lack of finished products and tea parties in action. These elements would give people a better idea of exactly what they would be paying for.

Appropriateness: 5 stars. This website is very appropriate for its subject and creates a charming, vintage brand that is appropriate for its subject.

Overall: 4.4 out of 5 stars

In today’s video I talk about common question that a lot of our ecommerce and online store website customers ask me. Should we use videos on our ecommerce product pages and if so, how? Using video on your product pages would be a great way to engage your website visitors and make the sale. Of course there is also a little bit of risk involved in using Youtube videos on your website. There are also other alternative such as Vimeo and other video hosting websites that you can use.

A t-shirt website for a young t-shirt designer has two major challenges: building the company brand, and selling product. This was the lens that we used to view Inkefx. For the branding element, the website visuals create a creative brand with just a hint of darkness, which is very popular in this genre of clothing design.

Website Reviewed: Inkefx T-Shirt Website
Website URL: http://www.inkefx.com/

The brand is similar to many other t-shirts brands that are popular right now, which can be good (you know it appeals to the market) and bad (it does nothing to set the brand apart from others). Branding is very important because so many people buy t-shirts because of the brand and are indeed willing to pay very high sums for the right brand. Consider, for example, the success of Affliction and Ed Hardy, two businesses that have casual wear as their core product.

As for selling t-shirts, one of the major drawbacks is that the link to the t-shirt product pages says “Buy Now”. It is the wrong place for a call to action; a better strategy would be to have that links say “Find Out More” or similar. Many customers will want to see more about the brand before committing to buying and not realize that this is, in fact, the way to do so.

Creativity: 5 stars. The website is creative and shows off the creators’ skill, especially in the color palette. Distressed black with yellow as an accent color world well with the brand. The photography is also creative and shows the products from a variety of angles.

Ease of use: 4 stars. The shopping page is the landing page, which is a little confusing because there is a ‘Shop’ page on the landing bar that takes you home. There are a few other elements that conflict with easy use of the website, but these may be due to the relative newness of the brand.

Functionality:  4 stars. From the landing page alone, you can follow the brand on either Twitter or Facebook as well as ‘liking’ or ‘+1-ing’ the brand in social media; links are available in both the header and the footer, making them easy to find. In addition, there is a newsletter that users can sign up for if they would like to hear about sales and other website events. There are such a variety of ways to interact with the brand that many users will choose to do so.

Content: 3 stars. There are a few errors and run-on sentences here and there throughout the website, but they are minimal. However, one of our real issues with the content is that it is not ‘branded’—that is, it is not really in the same tone as the rest of the website.

Appropriateness: 5 stars. The visual aspects of the brand are very appropriate for the audience of young men in search of casual wear. The brand has the potential to ‘make it big’ if the website has minimal changes made.

Overall: 4.2 out of 5 stars

In today’s video I talk about the recent trend in pricing models – “Name your price” or “Pay what you wish” strategy. This kind of pricing model is not suitable for all businesses but for the ones it does work, it would be quite a unique and innovative way of gaining customers and making a difference. The strategy comes with both pros and cons.

We were a little surprised to see how simple, attractive, and well-designed Frontend 2011’s new website is. While you expect for a web conference to have a pretty stunning website, this one is still a pleasant surprise. The website looks like it has been created from black ink line drawings on a simple white media, with occasional pops of color to add emphasis.

Website Reviewed: Frontend 2011
Website UR: http://www.frontend2011.com/

Most of the writing is in a font that appears to be handwritten until you look very closely, which is a clever way of giving the website a homespun feeling. In addition, the pages on the Frontend 2011 website are lined with a drawing of a curtain and an audience, to give the feeling that you are seated in a movie theater. The information is placed where the movie screen normally would be, while the navigation bar is just above in the curtain. This gives the entire website a finished and uniform feeling while making it easy to find the information that you seek.

Capital lettering in a modern font with serifs is used to call attention to certain parts of the text. As we mentioned before, color is also used very effectively because the simple white and black makes just about any hue stand out. The website is simple, but easy to navigate and friendly in feeling. It makes the event being promoted seem like it will be easy and fun as well. After all, if a group cannot manage to put together a working website, how will a convention with thousands of people be run? This website avoids this question by getting it right.

Creativity: 5 stars. We like the line drawings and the bespoke font; both go well with the other elements. They create a clean feeling while making it easy to draw attention to key bits of information. While black and white can feel a little austere, the cartoonish quality of this website lends a friendlier feeling.

Ease of use: 4 stars. It is easy to find what you need thanks to a navigation bar that is placed at the top of every page. Unfortunately, the names of the headings are a little confusing at first; hotel information is included under the heading ‘Practical’ while the heading ‘Sponsors’ has no list of sponsors.

Functionality: 4 stars. There are social networking links inside brightly colored balloons on the home page (balloons that disappear when you scroll over them, in fact). This is a fun addition, but email addresses are very difficult to locate, in tiny print at the end of a rather long page.

Content: 3 stars. The content is clever and written to appeal to a youthful market, but there are numerous spelling and grammar errors. We realize that this is a Norwegian conference, but why put a website in English if you are not going to translate it correctly?

Appropriateness: 5 stars. All content is appropriate for the audience.

Overall: 4.2 out of 5 stars.

In today’s video I talk about the powerful concept of remarketing and how you can use this to handle customer bounce on your ecommerce website. When you visit a website and look at products and then leave the website with out purchasing anything, Google remembers this via cookies and then serves ads on subsequent websites that are related to the website that you left with out making a purchase and in some cases, even the very same product you were looking at. This can be quite powerful but as with any kind of marketing strategy comes with some risks which I explore in this video.

Keywords are an important part of SEO—arguably the most important part. However, it can be difficult for even established website masters to identify what keywords and phrases will work best for them. Whether you are looking for organic or paid traffic, your keywords will determine your success in almost all cases. Here are a few ways to find the keywords that will drive traffic your way.

1. Think like a searcher. This is a very basic SEO concept, but one that seems to be overlooked by many. What phrases, adjectives, modifiers and even misspellings are commonly used by people looking for a website like yours? In order are people using these keywords? If you are having trouble getting inside the minds of your searchers, turn to your website analytics. You can see there what keywords are driving the most traffic your way and also which are producing the most income. In many cases, the results will surprise you—and hopefully inspire you as well. Similarly, identify what keywords are simply not working. Whether this is due to heavy competition or a simple lack of interest, its best to abandon these and focus on strategies that actually work.
2. Copy your competition. Not in a way that gets you blacklisted, of course! What I mean is to look at what keywords your biggest competitors are using. You can usually deduce this from their meta-tags, link anchor text, and other information. You don’t want to copy them exactly, but examining their strategy may give you a general idea of the direction you need to go in.
3. Don’t get distracted by volume. When you are just beginning a website, any traffic seems like a good thing. You become obsessed with page rank and numbers of unique daily visitors. However, in the long run traffic does not always equal income. In fact, if you are paying for search engine traffic, it can mean just the opposite. Consider your sales rate for key terms as well as your bounce rate. Focus not on the keywords that are bringing in the most people, but the ones that are bringing in the most money.
4. Avoid pay per click. Many people get caught up in the idea that they can get the same result of a high page rank from pay per click campaigns, and that these campaigns are therefore worth it. However, the easy way is rarely so easy, and this is no exception. Pay per click companies aren’t paying per sale, so look closely at your sales figures to see if you are getting your money’s worth. Hint: in most cases, you aren’t. Most of the time, you can get the same or better results from simply optimizing for the right phrases.
5. Consider negative matches. If you are running pay per click, or PPC campaigns (don’t say we didn’t tell you so!), you can at least use them for information. Pay close attention to what keywords are falsely driving traffic to your website. By ‘falsely’, we mean that they are bringing you traffic, but not bringing you sales. Sometimes when you look at this information, you see search terms that are clearly not right for your website. You can then set these as negative matches both for paid and organic results. This will ensure that you get only people who are actually interested, and take a chunk out of your ad budget as well.
6. Focus on long-tail keywords. That is, think of longer phrases that are both more likely to funnel highly directed traffic your way and less likely to put you in direct competition with the big guys in your field. These can often take you a long way, but check out the next suggestion as well.
7. Add shorter, higher volume phrases once you are established. Once you have built up a decent amount of income from long-tail or niche phrasing, you can begin to move in on your competitors’ territory by experimenting with short, high volume keywords. It seems counterintuitive to switch strategies once you have found one that really works, and we aren’t suggesting that. Add your high volume, short phrases to your long-tail keywords, but don’t replace them altogether.
8. Use keywords as business inspiration. When you see what terms are bringing the most traffic, you may find a few surprises. Perhaps people are visiting your website in search of a product or content idea that you are not offering—if you are really lucky, it might even be one that is simply not offered anywhere. This information can be used not just for SEO, but to plan the direction of your business so that you reach these untapped markets. Traffic will naturally flow toward this content because there is little else to serve them.
9. Evaluate and re-evaluate constantly. Using the above methods likely left you with a long list of keywords. Save this list, but don’t do anything with it yet except for gleaning the few most promising keywords from it. Focus on these few keywords and watch how much they earn. If a certain keyword is getting your website first page search engine results and earning you money, continue to focus on that word or phrase while introducing new and similar keywords from your list. If you are constantly in the process of changing and moving toward higher volume and higher selling phrases, your business is bound to grow in both page rank and income.
10. Avoid grey hat tactics. It may be tempting to go over to the dark side, especially when you see how much money the dark side is making. However, this is almost always a short term deal for them. Black hat sites have to constantly move and rebuild, never gaining a customer base or any kind of momentum. If you are trying to build a long term web business, stay with completely legitimate practices both in identifying keywords and in using them. All of your hard work and investment will pay off in the long term.

This week Google+ released the much awaited “business pages” feature and in this video I show you how to create a business page for your small business. Please note that creating a business page is not a big deal and is quite easy and intuitive. So you may wonder why I created a long vide for this. The reason is more to do with bringing awareness to small business owners about the importance of creating a Google+ business page and marketing it. So this is not a tutorial but rather a general discussion.

In many ways, the marketing world has been turned upside down. The ‘big’ marketing media such as television and publications are now secondary to blogs, social media, and other free means of gaining exposure. This gives small businesses an unprecedented advantage in the corporate world. You can turn your business into a success simply by getting people talking.

However, gaining this positive buzz often proves easier said than done. By the time you master a new strategy, it has already been replaced by newer, more effective methods. Here are a few guerilla marketing strategies that are hot right now and will likely be for the 2012.

Creative contests. There was a time when contests were relatively simple; you could have people drop their business card into a fishbowl and hold a weekly drawing, or some similar tactic. On the other hand, who wants to talk about that? Guerilla marketing is based on word-of-mouth, so design your contests to be both interesting and relevant.

Here’s a good example: a professional organizing company in Chicago, Hire Order, recently held a contest for the messiest desk. People sent in photos for the chance to win free services from the company. This provided three different kinds of positive buzz and exposure for the company. First, interested parties and the media paid attention quickly due to the uniqueness of the contest. It doesn’t hurt that the likely entrants were also prime potential customers. Second, there was more positive PR when the winner was announced. America is a country of voyeurs, and who doesn’t want to see what the messiest desk in the country looks like? Last, the company could use the end result as a case study to show potential customers what they do. And all it cost was a couple hours of time.

Instant expert Customers are more likely to buy from people they perceive as experts in the field. You can create an expert persona in a variety of ways, depending on your personal talents. If you are a charismatic person, you could volunteer to speak at an event, present an award, or otherwise place yourself in the public eye. This creates instant credibility, especially if you offer interesting information rather than a dry sales presentation.

If you are reluctant to get up in front of a crowd, there are still opportunities for building your star power. Try to participate in panel discussions regarding important issues in your community or even to sponsor a local team or event. Some people are good writers; if this is the case, you should begin submitting articles related to your business to both internet and local sources. Include links to these sources on your website and in your social networking pages. It is actually relatively easy to get published, but it still gives you the aura of an expert. Again, molding yourself into an expert costs only a few hours of time, but it can get your name out there and present your business as one of the best in its field.

In today’s video I talk about the possibility that you may be under pricing your services and how you can take a look at your pricing strategy and by adding value to your service, start to price your services for what they are worth. Looking at the competition and then pricing your services purely on price might not be such a great idea. Adding value to your service and then differentiating yourself in terms of price might be a better alternative.

Many economic experts are predicting that the economy may start growing rapidly in the near future. If you have played your cards right over the recession, this may mean a period of rapid growth for your small business. How you handle your company in good times is just as important as how you manage during downtimes. Here are a few tips for making the most of a period of rapid growth.

1. Invest in branding and logo design. When people are looking to spend money on products and services like yours, they will flock to the brand that is most compelling to them. Visual factors such as logo design are very important in these decisions because they will give your target audience a subconscious impression of your company before they even approach you. If you think your business is coming into a growth spurt, invest in professional branding and logo design services that will appeal to your market.
2. Delegate where possible. Make a plan now for how you will handle growth. What will your role be? In what areas are you the strongest? Often, in growth periods there is simply too much for a sole proprietor to handle. You will need to plan what duties will be outsourced and where you will send them. Decide now what you can do yourself, which functions will require a consultant, and which will require an employee. You will no longer be able to do it all yourself.
3. Choose customers wisely. You may enter a period where there is too much demand for your infrastructure. If this happens, don’t try to do it all. This will only lead to reduced quality and compromise your business. Instead, focus on the areas that bring in the most profit for the amount of time and energy they require. Many small businesses take whatever they can get in hard times, but this strategy will not work when you are growing rapidly.
4. Build your reserves. Growth requires capital, whether in the form of cash, credit, or easily liquidated stock. Prepare now by investigating new sources of investment and collecting the necessary documents. Apply for a line of credit early so it will be approved when you need it most. Try to foresee when a boom will happen for you and how you can identify it early enough to amass the capital that you need to grow with the times.
5. Remain calm and focused. Many small business owners assume that growth will be somehow easier and less stressful than recessions, but these periods present their own unique set of challenges. It is easy to get caught up in the day-to-day struggle of managing growth and lose sight of your big picture. Throughout the growth process, remain calm and focus on your long term plan. This will help you to make the right decisions, ones that will prepare you for less positive times while maximizing your potential.

Small business owners need to be fearless leaders that manage their brand with an eye toward current situations and the future. Creating a brand that can withstand changing times can be challenging, but it will pay off in the long run.

The idea of having 100s of designers presenting you with logo design ideas and the ability to pick one winner and pay just that designer might seem quite appealing. In fact it is like a fairy tale. If you do not think of the realities of such a model, you could have a rude awakening one day when you realize that you have been the victim of one of the pitfalls of such an operation.

The fact that the designers who compete on such design contest websites have to participate in literally hundreds or even thousands of contests to have a decent chance of winning a few contests and being able to pay their bills leads to a multitude of scenarios. These include throwing together poor quality designs that are just graphics (and some of them quite ugly) and not “logos” that do not work for your company or your target market, plagiarising and copying existing designs to cut out the time it would take to properly research, brainstorm and come up with creative ideas and more.

In this video I talk about these scenarios and how these contest sites could turn creative design into a commodity and how it would effect you the client and the poor designers who work under such conditions with out pay and on spec.

With so many low-energy and low-cost ways of promoting your small business brand on the internet, many people assume that they don’t need to promote their brand ‘in person’. While internet branding and marketing venues such as social networking are certainly important, live events can also be valuable in building your corporate image. Whether you choose to be a sponsor of a live event or set up a booth at a local convention or show, live events can help make that personal connection that is so important to your customers. Here are a few of the advantages of live event marketing:

1. Live event marketing allows you to get to know your consumer base. It is easy to lose touch with your customers when they are merely numbers in an analytics report or faces you see only in business contexts. However, getting to know your market a little more intimately will help you to lead your business in directions that are more customer-oriented.
2. Live event marketing allows your customers to get to know you. Have you ever bought cookies from a Girl Scout? Sure, they’re a little over-priced, but the salespeople are undeniably customer-friendly. You are probably even more likely to buy the cookies if it is a niece or a friend’s daughter selling them. While you can never match the cute factor of a little girl, you can bet that your customers will be more likely to buy from you if they have met the people behind your business.
3. Live event marketing builds buzz. In a consumer survey by Jack Morton, eight out of ten people said that they tell others after participating in an ‘experiential marketing event’—that is, a live event that allows them to see, sample, or otherwise interact with products. People remember and discuss real life experiences. If you have a great product but just cannot seem to generate that all-important word-of-mouth advertising, this may be the missing link.
4. Live event marketing promotes brand recognition. What do you remember most: things you read about, or things you actually do? Allowing customers to interact in-person with your small business brand will make it more memorable to them because they have an experience (hopefully a positive one!) to associate with your name and logo design. Live events set you apart from every other name in the industry and plant the seeds of brand loyalty.
5. Live event marketing allows customers to get to know your products. If you are having trouble generating sales, the problem might not be your products. It might just be that customers don’t know enough about them to really want to buy. If you set up a booth at an event and allow customers to interact with your products, they just might decide that they need them. This is the concept that makes all of those home party sales work so well. When consumers actually put their hands on a product and experience how it works, they can then picture how it would benefit them in their day-to-day lives.

In today’s video, I talk about the importance of listing your restaurant or any other service business that depends on local traffic in Google Maps and Google Places. With more and more people searching for local services via Google Maps, it would create a tremendous drive to your local business if you ensure that your small business is listed on Google Maps and that your listing is complete and properly optimized.

Is your restaurant business listed properly on Google Maps?

The term ‘small business’ covers a wide range of business models and brands. A small business might make seven figures and have multiple employees, or be a single mother supporting herself from her laptop. Many of these very small ‘Mom and pop’ or sole proprietor businesses find that the small business advice out there is geared toward much larger operations.

Nowhere is this more true than in the world of ecommerce. Very small businesses can benefit in huge ways from expanding to the internet, but they have very special needs and considerations in doing so. Here are a few tips for running and marketing your small ecommerce enterprise

1. Go professional from the beginning. One of the best ways to ensure that your website is a complete failure is to do a slipshod job from the beginning. Your small business logo design, brand, and website need to be professionally designed and created for easy maintenance and longevity. Even if you manage to make a success out of the situation, you will pushing your business on a rough, uphill course until the issues are corrected. Design services are very affordable, so invest in them from the beginning.
2. Act like the big companies. This is most important in the areas of security and privacy. Customers will absolutely not feel safe doing business with you if you do not have a posted privacy policy and a secure payment gateway. The same principle applies to checkout; you will lose customers left and right if your checkout is not efficient and fast.
3. Build your fan base. Your most important task, once your website and logo are complete that is, is to lure traffic and, more important, customers to your site. You can begin to do this in a variety of ways. Open up social networking account and beginning finding and friending everyone you know. Talk to people that you encounter throughout your day about your new web venture. Ask people to mention you; word of mouth is critical in a small business’s success, and even more crucial for very small businesses with very small marketing budgets.
4. Be a local choice. There are many online yellow pages out there as well as sites such as Yelp that direct people to local businesses. Register with all of these sites. Even in internet sales, most people prefer to deal with local small business owners. You can also market locally by acting locally—sponsor a local team or event, join Rotary or a similar business organization, and generally make your presence known within your community.
5. Lure new customers with special deals. Many customers will visit a website for a special deal and then continue coming back if they enjoyed the experience. Offer a special coupon, a freebie, or even reduced price shipping can encourage newcomers to take that first step from visitor to customers. Just be sure your deal is one that you can afford to extend in huge numbers—there are a lot of bargain hunters out there!

In this video I talk about an online store that a friend of mine runs and how he is looking at the wrong competition and running marketing and SEO campaigns based on that. It is very important that you identify who your competition really is to ensure that you do not end up wasting time and energy chasing the wrong one and making critical decisions based on it. In your business, take a closer look at who you think your competitors are and try to analyze and see if they indeed are.

Whether you have an established small business or are still in the planning phases, you may feel a little daunted by strategic analysis. Even the term is intimidating! However, strategic analysis is actually a simple, concrete way of evaluating your small business and identifying future challenges. Whatever the type of brand and company you own, it is important to think ahead and to be realistic about future challenges. Strategic analysis can help you accomplish this in just a few simple steps.

Look Within: Strengths and Weaknesses

The first step to evaluating your company is to identify what strengths and weaknesses you have within your structure and your brand. What kinds of traits are going to be an advantage over the next months and years? What weaknesses could pose a challenge? In many cases, finding this information can be as simple as looking at customer feedback. If you hear a certain complaint or compliment often, this is likely a strength or weakness to be considered.

If you are having trouble seeing your business objectively, try looking at your competitors. Often, you can see their strengths and weaknesses more clearly. It is easy then to see what makes your company unique. One common weakness is an unprofessional logo design or a lack of a cohesive company brand.

Once you have identified your strengths and weaknesses, you can plan for success. Build on your strengths and find ways to make them core elements of your brand. Deal with your weaknesses and ensure that they don’t have a negative impact on your future.

Identify External Factors: Opportunities and Threats

Once you have looked at factors within your company, both positive and negative, it is time to look outside yourself. This can be much more challenging, but again it is necessary. What potential opportunities will be presenting themselves in the next months? Will you have an opportunity to expand? Is a new and untapped market building in your community? On the other side of the coin, look at threats to your business. Perhaps a new competitor is coming to town, or an aspect of your business has the potential to gain negative publicity. Identifying these threats before they actually affect your business will allow you to keep the damage to a minimum.

Again, having a strong brand is one of the best ways to deal with external factors such as competition. Act now to solidify your customer base and prepare for future competition.

There is a simple way to remember the steps of strategic analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, or SWOT. The strengths and weaknesses refer to internal factors, while opportunities and threats are the factors outside your business.

Many small businesses feel that planning ahead is less important than dealing with the present because you never know what will happen tomorrow. However, no one likes to be ‘tossed around on the wind’. You can’t predict the future, but you can act now to give your small business brand the best possible chance of success.

In today’s video, I talk about unnecessary policies and processes on your ecommerce website and your sales flow that actually alienates your customers and drives them away. Of course this is just a very simple list but the idea is to get you thinking about what you may be doing on your website that is counter productive and breaking your sales funnel.

This is an important question, and if you are like many small business owners, the answer is ‘No’. Unfortunately, many people are aware of the sad fact that their brand is simply not as strong as it should be, but they don’t know where to start in identifying and fixing the problems. Here are a few questions that will help you see where your brand stands.

• Is your brand geared toward your customers? Maybe you love your logo design, products, service, and everything about your small business, but you are not the one who matters. Identify what aspects of your brand your customers will love and what aspects they might not like so much. This will help you to take steps that maximize the positive elements and eliminate the negative ones.
• Is your brand different from all others? There should be a clear and obvious reason to choose you over your competition. Maybe it is your prices or service; maybe it is a unique product or the fact that you are the only local choice. Whatever your advantage is, make it a key part of your branding and make sure all marketing focuses on it. If you can’t explain why you are a different and better choice, your customers probably can’t either.
• Is your brand in a growing industry? Don’t stay on a sinking ship; instead, fix the problems and steer into more friendly waters. For best results, your industry should be growing by leaps and bounds. Sure, there are ups and downs due to the economy and outside factors. However, you absolutely must be in a growing industry; anything else is small business suicide. If your industry is not rising on the whole, identify new products, services, and directions that can take you onto a path of growth.
• How are the numbers? We all hate paperwork, but (to return to our ship metaphor) you can’t steer your business in the right direction if you have no idea where you are or where you are headed. Are you gaining market share consistently? Is your business getting consistent cash flow? Are your profits increasing? How are your profit margins? These elements paint a very accurate (and sometimes startling) picture of your small business brand.
• Are you positioned for growth? Don’t let a big break sneak up on you, or it just might pass you by. Instead, actively look for opportunities to grow and make a plan for how you will maximize them. No business can afford to stay stagnant, so include growth as part of your long-term plan. If you are not positioned for growth, both in the short and long terms, failure is inevitable. Luckily, you probably still have time to rectify the situation.

Many small businesses fail, and sometimes this is simply inevitable. However, too many fail for a lack of thoughtful evaluation and planning. Answering these questions honestly should give you an idea of where your brand is weak and how you  can make the changes that will lead you to success.

In today’s video I talk about the 6 most important pages on your ecommerce website. This video is aimed at the beginner online business owner and hence might have some very obvious points. My aim to get you thinking about the important pages on your website and conducting an audit to ensure you are not ignoring the most obvious ones!

There are certain business concepts that are difficult to understand. Branding is one of these ideas. It is crucial to have a brand tailored specifically to your customers’ needs, but developing this brand can be easier said than done. While it is important to consult a branding professional when building your small business brand, you ultimately understand your business and your customers in a way that no outsider ever can. Here are five steps to building a solid, customer-focused brand that your market won’t be able to resist.

1. Offer what they need, not what you want. If your brand is the best option for your consumers, it will be an easy sell. However, many small business owners develop a sort of tunnel vision, pushing something that is simply not needed by their customer base. It sounds counter-intuitive, and it is certainly counter-productive, but it is definitely a common business mistake. However, fulfilling a customer need does not mean selling basic commodities or changing your product line. Take for instance laundry detergent. Few people perceive detergent as a need. Clean clothes, on the other hand, are a necessity. Guess which one Tide is selling in their advertisements. You rarely see a picture of the detergent itself, but rather clean laundry and happy middle class families.
2. Show them, don’t tell them. Humans are overwhelmingly visual animals. This can be seen in almost every sector of our existence—consider the difference in popularity between the Lord of the Rings films and the long, wordy novels that they are based upon. You need to make your brand as visual as possible, with logo design and other branded elements.
3. Create a great customer experience. Your customers aren’t just buying a product or service, they are buying into your company and the experience that you provide. Every step of the buying process should be customer-focused and consistent with your brand. Take the time to figure out exactly what elements will set you apart from the competition in a positive way. Further, be sure your employees and consultants understand your vision so they can offer a uniformly perfect experience every time.
4. Monitor your customer experience. As the old business saying goes, employees are more likely to do what you inspect than what you expect. Constantly monitor your website, your employees, and every aspect of your business to ensure that your customers are getting the positive experience that will keep them coming back.
5. Plan for the future. What your customer needs today may not be what they need tomorrow. In addition, you will likely find that the future brings tighter and more similar competition, especially if your brand proves to be very successful. For these reasons and myriad others, no businessperson can afford to rest on their laurels. You must constantly keep in touch with your customer base and make changes to your business, your products, and your brand in accordance with changes in the market. This is the only way to ensure that your brand stays customer-focused and remains as relevant in the future as it is today.

A little while ago, I made a video called How to fire your non-ideal customers. Today I talk about the ideal customers and where and how you can find them. There is not point in getting access to 1000s of site visitors when your conversion of the right kind of customer is not good. In fact, finding the right kind of customer ensures you keep your sanity and run a profitable business in the long run.

Move over traditional advertisement; alternative marketing is the wave of the small business future. Cross promotion is one of those alternative marketing methods. It allows you to cut your time and money invested in advertising in half while wooing a market that you otherwise might never have reached.

Cross promotion doesn’t have to be as difficult as it sounds. It basically is marketing your business together with other small businesses. These don’t have to be competitors (in fact they should not be), but rather different businesses with the same market that you serve. Not only is cross promotion generally cheaper than traditional marketing, it can be more effective as well. You gain credibility and a sense of presence by linking your business to others in the community. Here are a few ideas for cross-promoting your business brand with others in your community.

• Trade sign space at your establishments, giving partners and yourself a free advertisement space.
• Create a flyer or postcard with advertisements for both businesses, then send it to both of your mailing lists.
• Make an agreement to mention each other when you deal with customers or the general public.
• Offer a special coupon that can only be offered to customers of the partner store. These can be distributed by placing them in a basket or a Lucite box at both establishments.
• Offer freebies or samples at the partner store (if your product allows this).
• Sponsor a local team or event together.
• Get together regularly to compare notes and talk about what has worked for you and what hasn’t, not just in the cross promotion but in other areas of business.
• Offer special sales events involving both businesses.
• Link to each other’s websites and social marketing pages.

Cross promotions are not free, but in many cases they will cost you half of the price of doing a promotion yourself because you have a partner to split the cost with. However, it is crucial that you choose the right partner. Here are a few tips for choosing a promotional partner in your community.

• Choose someone who is not a direct competitor, but rather is offering a very different product to the same group of customers.
• Look for businesses that offer related products (a local spa and a local health club go together beautifully for example, as do a shoe store and a clothing store).
• Approach the business owner or manager in person or in writing during a slow time.
• Put your agreement in writing so both parties feel that their interests are protected.
• Choose a business that is as successful (or more successful) than yours.
• Make sure your brands, including visual identities and logo designs, don’t ‘clash’.

Cross promotions are not just a potentially lucrative and more authentic feeling marketing style, but a huge opportunity to reach out to untapped members of your target audience. If a business offers great service and a needed product, a customer will be very likely to take their recommendations for other local businesses.

The home page of your website design, especially if you have an ecommerce website, is one of the most critical elements of your business success. In this video I talk about the various factors you need to keep in mind while designing your ecommerce home page. The list is by no means exhaustive but it is a good place to start.

Home Page Design Boot Camp

If you are already tired of leading a life filled with acronyms, you’d better get over it! There are two acronyms that we can guarantee that you will be hearing more of in the future: CSS and SEO. These two acronyms represent topics that are currently changing the way websites operate.

Most of us already know what SEO is, but CSS is an even newer topic. CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a new design tool that allows website builders to create fast loading, original, attractive, and easily maintained websites. Best of all, CSS is incredibly search engine friendly, which means that a lot of potential customers will be viewing your mean, clean new website. Here are just a few of the many SEO advantages that CSS has to offer.

1. Prime placement of important SEO text. The unfortunate fact of web design is that what is meaningful to readers is not always so with search engines, and vice versa. With CSS, important wording can be moved to the top of the HTML file. Search engines automatically give more importance to text at the top of the webpage, so this can have a huge positive impact on how different search engines index and rank your website.  You can even place items in the HTML file independently of how they will actually appear to the viewer, allowing you to have a more natural flow without ‘burying’ important items in the eyes of search engine crawlers.
2. High weight HTML tags. CSS uses the familiar HTML tags that we are all used to, such as <h1>. This allows you to use headers as a way to show search engines what text is the most important to your page and thus to use important keywords to increase your site’s rank. It also allows you to construct menus using HTML tags, which yields the same SEO benefits while making it easy for users and search engine crawlers alike to access different parts of your website.
3. Easy to load pages. Your code to content ratio is very important both in loading speed and in search engine rankings. CSS creates beautiful, full featured websites with relatively low amounts of code to crawl through. This is because many CSS style sheets are externally linked instead of embedded. As with the other benefits we have listed, this makes it easier for users to access different areas of your site while giving you yet another SEO boost. Your readers and the search engine crawlers alike are more likely to explore your website thoroughly if it is quick and easy to do so.
4. Easy updating. CSS pages are incredibly easy for the webmaster to modify. This makes it easy for you to keep adding that all important fresh content while freeing up time for other endeavors. If you pay a webmaster to maintain your website, CSS will increase the amount of bang you get for your buck and prevent unexpected charges. In this way, as in many others, CSS offers the best of all worlds to both experienced users and total newbies.
5. Customizability. This is related to the previous benefit. Often, minor changes can be difficult to implement because you have to completely rewrite the HTML. With CSS, you can make minor changes to optimize success with visitors, however you define that. These changes can be made with a minimum of effort and without affecting your style or your SEO. With CSS, style, text, and SEO are completely different domains, making it easy to play with one without affecting the others.
6. Compatibility with a variety of browsers. Search engines are not currently ranking sites according to their compatibility with different browsers, but you will definitely benefit from being accessible to a variety of devices. CSS works well not just with computer users, but with PDAs and cell phones as well.

As with all innovations, it is easy to misuse CSS in ways that may be disastrous for your website. Here are a few “grey hat” or “black hat” techniques to avoid when using CSS to build a website.

1. Keyword stuffing. Many people think that the ease of using CSS to place keywords is an invitation to place a ton of them. It’s so easy to fill a page with words and then type the magic words, {display: none}, which hides them from viewers but leaves them perfectly visible to search engine crawlers.  However, search engines are getting better at detecting techniques such as this, so keyword stuffing just might get your site blacklisted altogether. Stick with placing keywords that make sense and using them sparingly to avoid getting red flagged.
2. Inappropriate image replacement. CSS allows you to use a technique known as image replacement, in which you basically tell search engines and text based browsers what is contained within an image. However, many people use this feature for keyword stuffing, which is not its intended use. Keep in mind that there are legitimate reasons to use image replacement, such as when you have a logo design with text in it that is important for SEO purposes. This is an example of a time when a CSS technique can be used for good or bad reasons. However you are using image replacement, there is a good chance that a search engine reader will interpret it as black hat and punish you with zero rank. Proceed with caution if you decide to use image replacement. A better way of dealing with the example given is to use an alt tag on all images.

CSS is gaining popularity quickly because of its easy use, unlimited style possibilities, and prime search engine management. This is due to the separation of content and style that the method has to offer. While CSS offers the perfect combination for web developers, it also gives almost unlimited possibilities for misuse. If you can resist the urge to trick search engines (and potential visitors) while using CSS to its best advantage, you will find that you get a result that is totally worth your effort.

I used to hate selling – both on the website and on the phone. On the website, this meant not working hard to ensure we are using the right language and the right sales process and on the phone, not being proactive and comfortable closing a sale. But after all these years tweaking our website, our sales process, our packages, and handling phone calls, I realize how much I love selling. I realized that I am actually helping customers find a service that they are looking for and selling actually is the process of helping them discover how your service or product fits into their requirement.

In this video I talk about a few tips on getting over the selling fear zone and get comfortable with selling.

Entrepreneurs are a representative of the American dream. Many people fantasize about turning their Big Idea into a lucrative and rewarding career, but only few people have the determination and vision to make it happen. Successful entrepreneurs are the real heroes in our nation because they show the rest of the country that dreams can be turned into reality.

Because we are so fascinated with entrepreneurs, they are the subject of many of the most famous Hollywood blockbusters. Their stories are particularly inspiring during bad economic times, when entrepreneurship becomes more attractive and more complicated to achieve at the same time. However, these stories are not just fantasies for would-be entrepreneurs; they are sources of inspiration and even ideas for people who are actually following their passion. Here are a few movies, old and new, that every entrepreneur should watch.

Citizen Kane

About the Film: This 1941 film is considered a cinema classic due to excellent character development and interesting film techniques. However, it is also based on the true life story of an entrepreneur whose name (and fortune) survives to this day: William Randolph Hearst. The main character, Charles Foster Kane, build a media empire with a mixture of passion and underhanded bids for power.

Real Life Entrepreneur Lesson: You can begin with nothing and still make it to the top. We love Kane’s ingeniousness, although we certainly do not recommend some of his techniques. Citizen Kane is often seen as a cautionary tale: don’t let the quest for power dominate your business decisions.

It’s a Wonderful Life

About the Film: You probably watch this 1946 movie every Christmas season for the heartwarming tale, but it is not just a holiday story. It is an entrepreneur story as well. George Bailey runs a family loan company that is placed in jeopardy when his uncle accidentally loses all of its money—literally loses it, because this is back in a time when a loan company would actually use paper money. Bailey considers suicide and is visited by an angel who shows him how different the world would be without him. He happily returns to his family on Christmas Eve and is bailed out by his neighbors, preventing the loss of his business.

Real Life Entrepreneur Lesson: The obvious lesson is not to be careless with finances, although most of you will not be carrying your wealth around town in paper dollars. However, another, more salient lesson is that you should never give up. Your business is making a difference, even if no guardian angel is available to spell it out.

Baby Boom

About the Film: Late eighties, power-suit-wearing business executive J.C. Wiatt is excited when she finds out that she has received an inheritance. Imagine her surprise when the inheritance is not property, but an infant. Humorous foibles ensue when she attempts to balance new motherhood and her career. In the end, she gives up and moves to the country. On a farm dotted with apple trees, she begins making baby food and builds an applesauce empire.

Real Life Entrepreneur Lesson: Entrepreneurship is often the best choice for ambitious parents because the corporate world simply is not accommodating of a parent’s needs for flexibility. You must look around you for inspiration and come up with a plan that allows you to have the work-life balance that you desire.

Cocktail

About the Film: Brian Flanagan, played by a young and less crazy Tom Cruise, is an aspiring entrepreneur who is studying for a business degree while serving drinks at night. He gets a job with a boss who teaches him how to be an amazing bartender and ends up moving to Jamaica to earn more money at a popular resort using the techniques he has learned. This eventually leads to Flanagan opening up his own bar, which is wildly successful.

Real Life Entrepreneur Lesson: While I would never downplay the importance of a business education, getting the right mentor can make the difference between success and failure. Flanagan learned the ins and outs of the bar business from his boss. The boss made some bad business decisions, but ultimately he taught Flanagan everything that he needed to achieve his goals—without a single book or term paper.

Chocolat

About the Film: This 2000 film tells the true story of Vianne Rocher, who would go on to become a famous chocolatier. Rocher moves to a new town as a single parent with a small daughter and opens a chocolate shop. She eventually wins over the provincial locals and becomes a success.

Real Life Entrepreneur Lesson: Rocher believes in her business, but she really focuses on quality and building a high quality brand. This eventually wins over the town, which builds the foundation for the international chocolate company which still exists today. She faces challenges squarely, but never loses her vision, which is definitely a lesson for modern entrepreneurs.

The Social Network

About the Film: Released just last year, this is the true life story of young billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. The idea for the website was developed in 2003 when Zuckerberg was a student at an Ivy League university. He decided to create an online social network for college students, which would eventually become open to the public and achieve the brand name status that it enjoys today. Myspace who? This story is inspirational because it shows us how a simple idea can turn into a fortune.

Real Life Entrepreneur Lesson: Don’t let anyone hold you back from your dream. Even if you are merely a young student, even if you face significant struggle (Zuckerberg was sued by former friends), even if your dream seems too big to come true, there is always a way to achieve success.

These movies provide so many more lessons than I can name here. I suggest viewing each of them when you have time and seeing what morals you can take away and apply to your own entrepreneurial dreams.

Have you signed up to Google Plus, the latest social media phenomenon. I did a video on the merits of this new social marketing platform and how you can benefit by getting on board now. At the moment, only individuals can open accounts. But business “pages” are on the way and once they are announced by Google, I am sure your small business page would really work well for you to connect with your target market.

Using Google Plus For Your Online Business Video

Every successful entrepreneur reaches a point where they need help. The obvious way of getting this help (if you can afford it) is hiring an employee. However, hiring and human resources is not on the average entrepreneur’s resume. It can be an easy enough skill to learn (considering that entrepreneurs tend to be fast learners anyway) if you know the dos and don’ts of the hiring process.

DO: Know what you want.

This may seem overly obvious, but consider: how many employers hastily jot out an ad without ever thinking about what they really need? You need to look around your business and do some serious thinking before even beginning the hiring process. If you are hiring for the first time, think about what duties you really want to hand off. What strengths and weaknesses will best complement your own? If you already have employees, you should think not just about what skills will enhance your team, but about what type of personality will fit best. You cannot put out a job ad with “bubbly and fun” or “thick-hided with an ironic sense of humor”, but you certainly can screen for these traits in employees.

DON’T: Write a garbage ad.

In case you have not flipped through the want ads lately, many businesses have very bad advertisements for open positions. They do little to market themselves to available talent. While there are many workers looking for jobs right now, the most capable employees are very much in-demand. The only way to get to them first is to make your want ad a way of marketing your business. Don’t give a dry list of demands and qualifications; focus on why the right person would want to work for you.

DO: Ask around.

If you were looking for a doctor, would you check the yellow pages? Most people would ask family and friends until they found the right person. You should approach hiring in the same way. Tell friends and family that you are looking for someone with a set list of qualifications and let them do the work for you. If you already have employees, be sure to ask them if they have acquaintances in the field. Often, word of mouth will bring in better qualified employees who are a better fit for your company.

DON’T: Make the hiring process too difficult.

Many employers impose huge amounts of challenges on would-be employees. The idea is that this gets rid of the people who are simply not motivated and leaves you with the most hard-working, qualified employees. In reality, this may leave you with just the people who have no respect for their own time. Make it easy for people to apply for a job, and you will end up with a more impressive pool of people to choose from when it comes time to pore through the resumes.

DO: Impose “smart gates”.

Smart gates are tasks that potential employees create in order to show you their abilities. We are not talking about a stupid English test; rather, ask something like: look at our website and tell us how you would improve it. This example may not work so well for you; a smart gate is only really smart if it is testing abilities and traits that will be the most important on the job, and if the average potential employee will not view it as a barrier.

DON’T: Disqualify people for the wrong reasons.

I have talked to many human resources people who had appalling rules. Whether they only hire people with good handshakes or never hire someone who has a colored resume, many have some way of narrowing down their candidates that has nothing to do with their ability to do their job. You should be hiring based on qualifications, interpersonal skills, creativity and other needed traits, not for their taste in shoes. Don’t cut people out for stupid reasons if there is a good chance that they would make great employees despite failing whatever silly test you have devised.

DO: Look for intelligence and common sense.

When I was in school, I was hired for a service job despite having no experience in the field. The manager’s reason was that I had people skills, which she could not really teach, while the other skills could easily be learned. I excelled in that job and stayed with the company until I graduated. When hiring, think about what you really need. Some jobs will require people skills, while others might need a good grasp of common sense. Look for these traits specifically, and don’t be afraid to give up some less desirable qualifications in favor of the ones you really need.

DON’T: Look for qualifications that you cannot afford.

One of the major mistakes in this economy is assuming that you can afford much more employee than before. This may be true on a temporary basis—you certainly may find someone who is out of work and simply wants a job—but in general, these people will leave as soon as something better comes along. You need to be very realistic about what kind of employee you can afford, not just to hire but to keep. Hiring is time-consuming and expensive; don’t set yourself up for having to do it again in a few months.

DO: Practice interviewing.

When you are interviewing, it is important to ask questions. However, you should not do all the talking. How can you find out anything about your potential employee if you don’t listen? Try to stick to questions and simply let the employee determine the direction and tone of the interview. This will allow you to get a really good idea of who the candidate is as a person.

DO: Train with a brain.

You have already decided what this employee will be doing, so design a training plan that maximizes their exposure to their job duties. Include specific goals, daily routines and more. Make sure you teach the employee everything that they need to know for their job, but not a whole lot more.

A video I made about your search not found error pages on your website and how you should take care not to frustrate your site vistors and how to properly handle these error pages to ensure your site visitors go back into your sales flow.

No Search Results On Your Website

For a full transcript visit: Not Getting The Right Results On Your Website?

Everyone who likes money should learn to be good with it. After all, for most entrepreneurs wealth does not come from a sudden windfall but rather from pennies stashed away here and there over the span of years. Money managing may be unpleasant, but there is one particular part of it that most people particularly hate: budgeting.

What does budget mean to you? To many of us, it has a somewhat negative connotation. We tend to think of earmarking funds for necessities along and leaving no money for more fun considerations. Budgeting does not have to be negative; if you are an entrepreneur, then it is completely necessary in fact. Here are a few budgeting faqs to get you started.

• List your priorities. This is an excellent exercise in simply learning to prioritize and manage time, but it can help with managing money as well. Think of the things that are essential to your business (rent, overhead, inventory, etc) and then move to the second place list. The most important items should receive the most money obviously.
• Don’t get hung up on the small stuff. When faced with any large task, it is easy to get hung up on the smaller aspects which, in the long run, are just not very important. Many entrepreneurs read that there is excellent budgeting software out there and lose focus on the budget itself. You should definitely research which types of software are right for you, but you can certainly begin making a budget without them. Many banks offer free software with a business account; these can be the right solution because the price is right and they are compatible with your bank account. Ditto goes for any other “detail” of your budget. Work on the big picture before filling in the details.
• Set up your budget with strategic priorities in mind. For example, many entrepreneurs need to see not just sales but sales channels. Your budget needs to be set up so that it is easy to examine how reality jives with your plans and modify accordingly. Accounting is so detailed that it can be difficult to discern these things, which is why budgeting and aggregation are important.
• Identify and watch for red flags. What issues could take down your business? In a constantly changing economy, often constantly changing for the worse, you need to identify these so that you can watch for them. For instance, maybe your margins are the most crucial thing right now. You need to incorporate these into your budget so you can easily see when you are getting off track. It is often relatively easy to correct these when they first occur, certainly easier than finding out when it is too late.
• Be consistent. You may be tempted to change categories in your budget as your needs change. This can be a good idea, but it comes with a major caveat. If you change categories often, then you may fail to recognize long term trends. These trends can be a key factor in making decisions and determining the direction of your company, so only make changes when they are truly necessary.
• Review your budget on a regular basis. I have found that a monthly budget review is perfect for identifying trends and making necessary changes. All budgets are wrong, even after years of honing them. Budgeting requires making guesses about what will happen in the future, which is never a precise task. The important thing is that you make a budget so you can compare the ideal financial situation for your entrepreneurial ventures with the reality. Regular reviews can help you to create a more accurate budget and also to identify problem areas.
• Involve employees. Many employees, even in smaller, more informal businesses, do not understand the ins and outs of their employer’s financial goals. If you have employees, you should involve them as much as possible in the ongoing budgeting process. Make them partners in the venture, even if only figuratively. Being aware of your company’s finances will encourage them to always make the best possible decisions and make them feel like a part of your business’s growth.
• Be prepared for the worst case scenario. Analysts are looking less and less optimistic about 2012. It is shaping up to be a year without growth, without credit and therefore a year without spending. You really need to step it up in order to be successful. Moreover, you need to be prepared for the possibility that your best efforts may still fall short. If you make a plan for dealing with financial strain before it even occurs, you will have a better chance of riding out the storm.
• Build sub-budgets. Change in the economic world means changes for entrepreneurs. You may need to introduce a new product, make a new marketing plan or even pull back spending. However, because these are possibilities and not definite plans, you probably do not want to incorporate them into your overall budget. You can still begin to work out how these things will affect your budget; simply make sub-budgets and budgets based on projections. It may seem like a lot of work, but you will be happy when the time comes to implement your plans!
• Don’t give up. It can be tempting to forget about budgeting and begin flying by the seat of your pants. After all, budgeting can take a lot of time, and it is discouraging when your budgets never seem to match the reality. Keep in mind that a budget is a goal—the way you would like to see money spent in your business. Even if your entrepreneurial ventures do not always meet the goals, you still profit from remaining aware of what you really want and need from your business.

Budgets are the only way to determine a path for your business and hold yourself accountable for staying on track. They do not take much time to manage once you have developed a system, but they can make all the difference in the success of your business. Don’t let a little work keep you from achieving your entrepreneurial dreams!

Todays video is about the different social networks available for the small business owner to target different types of customers. Besides the big social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus, there are tons more out there.

These social networks are targeted at various niche market segments and it would be wise to explore these options depending on your target market.

Social Network Websites Video

Shopping is a major part of the typical American mother’s life. Although we joke about women’s love of shopping, most of it is very necessary. They are responsible for procuring all of the food, clothing, cleaning supplies and other necessities of daily life in almost all households. The fact that moms shop is not changing, but the economy has certainly changed the way that they select and complete purchases. Today you are going to meet a customer who is very likely a part of your target consumer base: the new frugal mom.

Many consultancies are looking at the behavior of the new, frugal mom with good reason. When the economic crisis hit, many businesses found that their products were no longer selling. Old marketing strategies and old ways of approaching the market were suddenly not effective. The numbers show that people are still spending money, but many entrepreneurs are having trouble keeping their piece of the pie. Here are a few facts about the modern mom’s shopping habits.

1. She is still shopping. Although many people cut back when the recession hit like a ton of bricks, consumer spending has rebounded, especially among moms. You can only go so long without buying your children shoes or replacing a worn-out sofa. The new frugal mom is shopping once again, but she is buying in different ways and with different motivations.
2. She holds the purse strings. Women are currently in control of most discretionary funds in the nation, and mothers of households are a huge subgroup. Moms are making the decisions for their families, including their partners, so your messages should be as female-centric as possible if you are selling a product or service that is used by any member of a nuclear family.
3. She is reluctant to spend. The recession is the Great Depression of our times. It has left an indelible mark on the public psyche. Even in families that were not devastated by the recession, the mothers are aware that money is a limited resource in a way that they were not aware ten years ago. Although the new mom is still spending, she is giving more thought to her purchases and looking for value more than ever.
4. She is less brand loyal than ever. A recent study found that only a little more than a third of moms are still staying with the same brands. The recession created a survival mentality, in which many people simply went with the cheapest options regardless of personal brand preferences. This was an eye-opening experience for many women, who discovered that their favorite brands were not as superior as they had always assumed. Many of us tried a generic cleaning spray or a lower priced laundry detergent and were satisfied with the results. This has led to general questioning of brand loyalties. This, of course, is a huge opportunity for the many entrepreneurs out there who no longer have to break through a wall of brand loyalty in order to build a consumer base.
5. She is blind to traditional marketing. The only way to live without spending in the modern world is to develop mental blinders, to simply stop noticing or stop responding to marketing. This is what many people did several years ago. This means that you must reach them in new ways. Special deals, coupons, social media—those are the more effective ways of reaching the new frugal mom. Right now, peer-to-peer advertising is on the rise. If you can win over a few moms and get them to tell their friends about your product, you are set up for success.
6. She still wants quality where it counts. There were certain areas in which brand name consumption did not change. One of these was baby formula. People are willing to skimp in some areas, but not when it comes to their children’s health and well-being. Even in the worst economic situation, the mothers still will consistently spend on their children if they think the expense gives them an advantage. This is a powerful insight for entrepreneurs offering products for children; the new frugal mom still wants her children to eat, wear and play with the very best.
7. She has different values. Remember those old laundry detergent commercials promising whiter whites with no ‘ring around the collar’? The new mom could not care less whether her kindergartener has the whitest underpants on the playground. She cares about whether the detergent is safe, whether it will irritate her child’s sensitive skin, whether it will hurt the environment, and whether the packaging will fit neatly in her cupboard. The same story has occurred in almost every industry. The new frugal mom simply does not care about the same things as her own mother, or even her older sister. Get to know what she wants from your industry, and offer it.
8. She is incentive-oriented. The main incentive right now is saving money—getting the same quality for a lower price. Coupon usage has gone way up in the past few years for this reason. If you can offer a coupon or other special offer, the new frugal mom will be even more likely to choose your company. This is even more effective than simply offering a lower price, because the shopper sees herself as getting a high priced item for a bargain price. Suddenly it’s a bargain, not a compromise. Almost eighty percent of mom shoppers report that they will try a new service or product if they have a coupon for it.
9. She is developing new brand loyalties. That mom who just became a customer because of a coupon? She may have scrapped old brand loyalties, but she is busily building new ones. If you offer a great product and superior service, she may become a loyal customer. Don’t assume that those coupon-bearing customers are perpetual deal-seekers that won’t be back; in many cases, they are simply a new frugal mom who is open to trying a new brand if the price is right.

I made a video recently talking about the importance of having a good internal search on your website. This is not to be confused with search engine optimization. A well implemented internal search will help your website vistors get the information they are looking for.

It is inevitable that some times what a web vistors is looking for may not be on your website. But if you put a little thought into how your internal search is implemented and what your “no results found” page says. The ”no results found” page could be a great opportunity to ensure the vistor is not frustrated and continues with the conversion funnel.

Don’t Frustrate Your Website Visitors Video

For a full transcript of this video, please visit this link: Not Getting Right Results

Please ensure that if you have an ecommerce website, you do not just include your products in your internal search index but also your policy pages, informations pages, your blog and more. This will ensure that vistors find what they are looking for with out hassles and frustration.

If you are looking for a fast-growing field for your next entrepreneurial venture or even for a new product that will sell well, food just may be the right match for you. Food and food products are some of the hottest products being sold by entrepreneurs. Here is a little information on the genre and a few of the reasons that we think it is so hot right now.

A Growing Industry

The American restaurant business grew one and a half percent last year. This may not seem like a lot, but keep in mind that many industries barely remained flat or even lost ground. There are other good indicators as well; food co-op membership is at an all-time high, which packaged upscale and foreign foods are selling at higher rates than ever. Venture capitalists are catching on; it is much easier to get an investment in a restaurant right now than in other businesses. An entrepreneur recently was loaned $10 million for the development and opening of a restaurant based on the humble grilled cheese sandwich.

Because of the increase in consumer and investor interest, many entrepreneurs are becoming interested as well. But why do consumers care so much about food all of a sudden?

• Home and hearth connotations. American home life is less stable than it used to be, or at least we perceive it that way. What could be homier than a high quality meal? Whenever Americans are longing for simpler times, food is an easy answer. It takes years to create a traditional family, but a comforting meal can be had quickly. This is particularly true in the case of small businesses selling classic comfort foods, such as the grilled cheese sandwich restaurant discussed before.
• Health concerns. The obesity epidemic is rampant, which has led to heightened concerns about diet and health. If a product has been shown to lower the rate of certain diseases or to have other health benefits, many Americans will be interested. If you can offer a healthy product with comfort food appeal, the masses will beat down your door to buy it. Investors know that. In addition, many people have special health needs that are not being adequately met by most food manufacturers, such as the need for gluten free foods.
• Green fever. Many people feel that the environment is in a state of rapid decline. While most of us do not have the power to make huge changes, there is a lot to be said for making small changes that can add up quickly. Plus, buying green or locally sourced food is a good way to at least feel like you are making a difference. Green food and related items are big sellers right now for these reasons.
• Ethnic traditions. How better to experience a culture than to sample its eating traditions? Many Westerners are becoming hooked on exotic foods, with their new and interesting flavors and textures. Packaged exotic foods are enjoying particular success right now because they make it easy for people to sample new and interesting foods on a daily basis. In the restaurant business, people are interested in sampling cuisines that they have never tried before, such as Ethiopian and Taiwanese.

If you are thinking about getting into this in-demand line of business, you are not alone. It can be a very lucrative proposition if you approach it correctly and plan for success. Here are a few things to think about when planning a move into the booming food industry.

1. Start small. You cannot jump into a new line of business feet first; test the water by trying a single food product and seeing how it sells. Start with a product that can later become the core of your brand, and then expand once that is successful.
2. Know the regulations. Because of the potential for illness in poorly prepared food, there are many regulations for people who want to commercially prepare it. These vary from state to state and from area to area, so you will have to find out on your own which apply to you. The list will probably include ingredient labeling, health department inspections and special certifications for food handlers. Sometimes your local government gives special grants to cover these costs.
3. Get your products out there. People may be reluctant to try a new food product, which is why you need to give them ample opportunities to see, taste and experience it. Get a booth at your local farmer’s market and sell product or at least hand out small samples. Cater for friends and generally do everything that you can do to expose people to your product. In addition, you may want to send samples to bloggers who post about your particular niche. This type of word of mouth advertising can be very powerful.
4. Look for capital before you need it. Food businesses typically operate with very low margins, which can mean that there will be a long interval before you begin making a profit—or even break even. This means that you will likely need funding. Luckily, there are many venture capital firms and other lenders that are interested in food businesses. Compared to other industries, it is relatively easy to get the loans that you need in order to start your business.
5. Talk to an accountant. There are some tax considerations when opening a food business that don’t arise as quickly in most fields. First, most food businesses need employees almost from the start; there are special tax credits if this is the case for you. In addition, there may be research and development grants that can help you as you try out new recipes, or at least tax credits. In addition, there are now special deductions for companies that are completely domestically based, which will probably include you.

Food and food products make up a unique field, but also one that is uniquely lucrative. They can be a huge success when run by the right person. Are you that right person?

This question is probably the one most often posed to ecommerce websites: ‘where is my order?’ It is also one of the more frustrating, because in many cases the person being asked has no control over the delivery process. The best way to deal with this question, which constitutes 70% or more of all customer service contacts during the holiday season, is to prevent it in the first place. Here are a few ways of doing that.

How To Deal With Order Delay Issues Video

#1 Don’t Underestimate your delivery service. 

In other words, assume that something may go wrong. Underestimating your delivery means overestimating your delivery time. Pad your estimates by a small margin so that most customers will get their orders on time, and many will be surprised by an earlier-than-expected package.

#2 Offer an order tracking tool. 

This can cost some cash to set up and maintain, but you will save in customer service inquiries and also in reputation loss when packages are delivered late through no fault of your own. Include a link on your ecommerce website as well as sending one to customers immediately after their purchase is made. This will allow them to answer their question without your involvement. It also allows them to see that you have held up your end of the bargain by shipping the order in a timely manner. Many customers who are provided with order tracking information will field their questions to the delivery company rather than to you.

#3 Communicate about the purchase. 

Sometimes customers just want to be sure that their order was not lost in cyberspace. A little communication can calm their worries. Send an email when the order is received and another when it is shipped, preferably with tracking information and instructions within.

#4 Include shipping information in your FAQs and any other customer service pages. 

State your shipping policies (remember to pad the time as I suggested earlier) and answer the most common questions regarding order delivery. This gives visitors an idea of what to expect before they even make an order.

#5 Use fast shipping where possible. 

Sometimes it is only a tiny bit more to send something with faster shipping. When this is the case, choose the faster shipping when your profit margins allow it. Customers will be pleasantly surprised and you will have fewer headaches. This can be especially beneficial during the holidays, when many delivery services run behind schedule.

#6 Be sympathetic. 

You know what it is like to wait for a Christmas package due on the 23^rd or a school textbook for a class that started yesterday. It is stressful. In fact, one of the major objections to online shopping is the shipping issue, both the cost and the waiting time. By delivering as promised as often as possible, you will be proving that buying from your ecommerce website is the right choice.

#7 Make amends. 

When customers have to wait way too long for a package, they get bitter and blame you. Try to make amends by communicating your apologies and sending a coupon for their next purchase. Meanwhile, address issues that seem to be coming up often. Make sure you are as vigilant about shipping as you are about every other aspect of your ecommerce website.

Remember, a few small arrangements – especially if your online store is on a dependable platform like Ringgle.com, can ensure not only professionalism during the order process but also fewer customer service headaches.

Small businesses are the focus of much economic action right now. Although they create a huge percentage of new jobs in the United States (something like ninety percent last time I heard), help for small businesses has been noticeably lacking in the economic stimulation bills passed by the government. If anything, the government is making it harder and harder to become an entrepreneur and find success as one, even as billions of taxpayer dollars are funneled to the corporations that are “too big to fail.”

This brings up an important question: how important are small businesses and entrepreneurs to the American economy? Or, more succinctly, are they so important that the government needs to step in and help them? With 14 million people unemployed and the recession hitting its second dip, it is important that the government focus its energy and funds in areas that will make the most impact. Here are a few facts to keep in mind about this important topic.

• Small businesses are important as employers. At the last census, there were six million American companies with paid workers. Nine-tenths of these employ less than twenty people. However, because each of these businesses have such a small payroll, these companies actually account for only one-fifth of all jobs. Only? When you think about it, that comprises millions of working Americans who need their job as badly as someone working for a large corporation.
• Most small businesses stay small. The little shop on your corner is probably not the next Google or Apple. Eighty percent of businesses studied in 2000 to 2003 did not add a single employee. To be honest, not all people want to grow. Many entrepreneurs became such because they wanted a flexible schedule or other freedoms. These people don’t really want to add another employee, which brings us to our next point.
• Many small businesses are not growing because they don’t want to. Before we spend billions making it easier to entrepreneurs to grow their businesses, it is important to keep in mind that many actually do not want to be big businesses. Many small business people own service businesses in which immense growth is impossible—a doctor’s office or a plumbing business, for example. Others are involved in businesses in which scaling up would not significantly affect their profit margin and thus is not as attractive, such as a restaurant. Some entrepreneurs don’t want to make it big… they want to make it medium.
• Small businesses usually grow slowly. The small businesses that do want to grow and have the ability still may not be able to grow enough to collectively carry the economy out of a recession in the near future. Growth has been made even more difficult in recent years because investment capital and paying customers are both dwindling.
• Small businesses are hit harder by the economic “weather”. A recent study found that small businesses that lost employees lost around twenty percent of them. Meanwhile, large companies with more than 200 employees lost only eight percent. This means that while small businesses may not be the savior of the American economy, a lack of attention to them can certainly bring the economy down.
• Small businesses struggle to woo and to keep workers. It can be harder to keep employees or even to treat them the way you might want to when you lack infrastructure. Small business tend to pay employees less, but also to have smaller per-unit profits. This means that many small businesses really cannot afford to be more generous employers. In addition, small businesses are less likely to offer health benefits and about half as likely as their larger counterparts to offer any sort of retirement plan. When you are competing for talented employees, this can be very destructive. You may have to make do with less trained staff while the corporations get all the real players.
• Countries that depend on small businesses as a major part of their GDP usually do not fare as well. A joint study performed by economists at Dartmouth and Harvard found that a country’s wealth is inversely proportionate to the percentage of workers who are self-employed. It should be noted that a third world person selling firewood is not the same in terms of opportunity to succeed as someone who runs an American dental office. Nonetheless, part of this is due to the higher efficiency and productivity in the more differentiated workplaces that corporations can provide. Clearly, we cannot put the burden of economic recovery on our small businesses without putting our nation in peril.
• Small business monies are often given too indiscriminately. Some small businesses want to grow and are in a position where this is possible. Obviously, these are the businesses that should be targeted in any economic growth legislation. Wasting money on small businesses that plan to remain small or cannot grow may be just that: wasting money. I am all for helping small businesses and entrepreneurs, but we need to focus on growth right now.
• Americans love entrepreneurs and small businesses. No politician can be openly hostile to these without alienating a huge percentage of constituents. This means that many politicians may push small business breaks even if they will not really help us right now. It just makes Americans happy. I know as a small business owner it certainly makes me happy! But from an entirely unselfish point of view, I would like to see our nation get out of this slump, which means being very smart about every dollar spent.

What does this mean for the United States? Clearly a lack of attention to small businesses can really harm our economy. On the other hand, small businesses cannot be expected to create fast growth in either the economy or employment. Small businesses are by nature small, although they add up to a massive impact. While helping small businesses will always be an important part of any economic recovery legislation, we need to keep our expectations realistic and maintain a balanced approach.

There is no point in focusing your time and efforts on a segment of your customers that fit the “bad customer” profile. Wether you like it or not, there are always bound to be customers that do not fit your company and your brand. Such customers end up wasting your time, your marketing efforts and your customer service.

How To Fire Your Customers | Full Transcript of video

This can be described by the famous 80/20 rule where 80% of your business issues and problems and customer service head aches are a result of 20% of your customers. If you can identify who this 20% is and fire them, your business would improve dramatically.

In this video, I take a brief look at this issue and suggest a few ways of handling this situation. I am surprised that most businesses do not realize this. In our own business here on Logo Design Works, I did a similar audit and realized that customers of a particular service made up 75% of our customers service calls and email correspondence. This was the brochure design service. I then analyzed the revenue model and realized that the actual revenue from brochure design projects was less than 11% of our total sales.

Because brochure designs are for marketing purposes and clients do not really have a good marketing strategy before they approach us, the designs we create almost always fel short of their expectations. Perhaps these clients have been exposed to brochures created by large companies, who spend thousands of dollars on creating their marketing material and set their expectations high. But they want this service for less than $400 and still get the same results. On top of that printing issues and coordination between their printer and our designers took up a huge chunk of time.

So I made the conscious decision to discontinue offering Brochure Design services. When we get calls related to brochure design orders, we politely turn them down. This has improved our customer service record quite dramatically!

Consumers all over the United States are protesting Bank of America’s new fees for using debit cards. Most Americans are used to using their debit cards everywhere they go, and having free access to their money at all times. Paying even $5 per month seems to rub many people the wrong way. After all, it’s our money, right?

Why is Bank of America (and a handful of other banks) choosing now to alienate their customers? The answers are not complex at all. Every business could use more money. There is the added benefit that placing fees on a debit card encourages consumers to use their credit card instead, which in turn brings more money into the bank. In addition, this and other banks will be soon seeing a hit in a major source of income: swipe fees. In my opinion, recently passed legislation regulating swipe fees is the reason for

While many Americans went about their merry way, a battle was being fought over debit cards this spring: that of swipe fees. As many entrepreneurs are aware, these can be very high, even crippling for many small businesses. Through lobbying and intensive effort, the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law was passed, limiting the amount of money that banks can charge for debit card usage.

The Federal Reserve will heretofore be responsible for overseeing the way businesses pay for debit cards to be used at their website or location. The new law holds that banks can charge swipe fees that do not exceed 21 cents per purchase, although there may be a possible one cent added on for fraud prevention. This may seem like a lot of money per transaction if you are not familiar with the current swipe fees, which average almost fifty cents per transaction.

This cap has already begun. Market analysts estimated that it would cost $6.6 billion every year from the banking business as a whole. Small business owners and entrepreneurs have long been batted about at the whim of these huge banks. Year after year they raise fees and find sneaky little ways of charging us more for even less services. Their profits are more than the average entrepreneur can even imagine, yet they are always asking for government handouts.

Can you tell that I have little sympathy for the banks? I might feel a little worse for them if they had not already found a way to weasel around this limit on debit card charges. While Bank of America is the institution getting the most press, other large banks such as Chase, Sun Trust and Wells Fargo either plan to follow suit or are already implementing a new fee strategy.

In addition to absorbing the fees that banks are losing with this new legislation, the new fee for debit card usage will encourage customers to use their credit cards. Credit cards are not subject to the same fee regulations as debit cards, which means that banks can still charge sky high fees to merchants who accept them. In addition, credit cards also come with other money making potential, such as interest and fees.

If you are an entrepreneur who relies on debit card purchases, you are probably wondering: what can you do now? Many small business owners were counting on the new debit card cost cap to keep their expenses down and pad the recession-tightened profit margins a little bit. Instead, we are faced with the reality that many customers will be using their credit cards instead to avoid fees, which places us still at the mercy of the banks. However, there are a few ways that you can cut your swipe fees and keep a little more of your hard-earned money in this recession. Here are a few tips. Keep in mind that some may alienate customers, while others may involve intense negotiation with banks, so use at your own risk.

1. Negotiate with banks. Most of the swipe fees that you pay are set in stone by Mastercard, Visa and the other major credit card carriers. They are determined by some complicated algorithm that takes into account the size of your business, the amount of money being charged there and more. However, the rest of the swipe fees that you pay are negotiable, and they can really add up! The service fees charged directly by banks can be negotiated down, especially if you have an existing relationship with the bank in question.
2. Offer cash discounts. As Bank of America is soon to demonstrate, fees can have the effect of changing customer behavior. You can bet that more people are going to be using their credit cards, inconveniencing themselves immensely just to save $5 every month. This can be bad for your profit margins unless you introduce incentive to use another option: cash. Offering a discount for using cash or a fee for using credit can guide your customers toward behavior that reduces your overhead. Customers may be annoyed by this, but if you educate them about the reasons for this they may be more cooperative and happy to pay in cash.
3. Set a minimum purchase. This is a tactic that I see often at a gas station near me. They accept debit and credit cards, but there must be a five dollar minimum purchase. This keeps them from paying a fifty cent fee on a seventy-five cent pack of gum and it and it also encourages patrons to add to their purchases. Does it work? In my case, it seems to. I cannot count how many times I have popped in for a soda and bought several other items just to hit that limit. This practice used to be technically against the rules for many credit card carriers (those rogue minimart owners!) but it is now allowed. Just don’t be too greedy about the amount of the minimum purchase, and be sure you have your policy posted so there are no surprises.
4. Raise prices. This should always be the last resort, but it may be one that you must turn to in order to maintain your business through the changes in bank policies. If you decide that this is the only way for your business, be sure to raise prices in a slow and steady manner that won’t attract ire. If there is one thing we can learn from Bank of America, it is that customers get mad when they are suddenly forced to pay more for the same services.

If you are running any kind of business, there is always competition. There are huge companies out there that would love to squash you like a bug. For instance, no matter what you are offering, Amazon probably offers it as well. The big internet companies almost all started as little guys, and they built empires from doing a lot of the stuff right. This tempts a lot of newer, smaller online businesses to copy them.

Don’t Ruin Your Business by Copying the Big Guys Video


This is not an entirely bad idea. The Big Guys are dedicating a lot of money to figuring out why customers do what they do. They obviously have found a recipe for success. But there are a few things that you should absolutely not copy. Here are a few ways to completely destroy your small business by acting like a large one. Don’t try these at home!

Mistake #1 Requiring registration to buy. 

Why not require registration? Customers hate it. They simply despise it. Who wants to give out their mother’s maiden name just to buy a child’s toy? No one. Many customers will tolerate this from big companies because they know and trust them—and they know that they will be back, so the registration will save time in the long run. They don’t know that about your small business! Also, many customers are willing to put up with a certain amount of crap just to get the bargain basement price that these big guys offer. But you aren’t even going there, because of my next point:

Mistake #2 Undercutting prices. 

Even though it may be tempting and the only solution – never fight price wars! You cannot offer a lower price than the big guys. The Big Guys take their huge buying power and use it to strong-arm suppliers into giving them a great deal. They are paying less than you, have larger sales volume than you, and thus can afford to give a great price. Offering the best price and staying in business will not be possible for the small guys because we don’t have the size and leverage that you need to be a bully. We have to find other reasons for customers to choose us.

Mistake #3 Stepping out of your niche. 

As I said before, and you have probably noticed this as well, Amazon offers everything. It is one of many websites offering everything—Costco.com and Overstock both specialize in selling wide ranges of products. You might look around at all these Big Guys offering everything and get the idea that this is a good business model for the small guys. But it isn’t, and here’s why: you can’t afford it. Marketing to the masses is expensive, but that does not mean you should give up. People coming to your website are not looking for everything; they are looking for one thing. Niche sales allow you to be very targeted in marketing and inventory. Even Amazon started small, with just books. Once you are a Big Guy, you can expand; until then, stick to what you know.

Mistake #4 Not building trust. 

If you look around the Big Guys’ websites, you might notice a few things missing. For instance, some times there is no SSL certificate, no BBB accreditation, and generally no trust marks. This might lead you to assume that you don’t need these. Don’t get me wrong. Some sites do have such marks. The problem is: people already trust the Big Guys. They don’t need any extra assurance. You, on the other hand, are unknown. They need to understand why they can trust you. So offer them proof that you are trustworthy, in the form of visible site security and other trust marks.

So although it is nice to look at the big guys and learn a few marketing lessons from them, it would be prudent to know what your limitations are and ensure you do not make the above mistakes.

Simpson University with it’s rich heritage and culture turned to Logo Design Works when they wanted to re-brand their sports and athletics teams to help motivate the team members and to inspire them to achieve great results.

The resulting mascot was that of a hawk which represented the Simpson University Sports Team’s spirit and endurance. The fierce looking hawk was created to help inspire the young athletes. The mascot is now widely used in Simpson University.

Simpson University athletics started in the 1950’s and now is comprised of 11 sports. Playing in the Cal Pac conference gives Simpson one of the biggest NAIA conferences to compete in. The Cal-Pac conference is composed of Bethany University, Menlo College, William Jessup University, Holy Names University, Mills College, Pacific Union College, and Cal State Maritime.

Everyone talks about how to improve your search engine ranking, but where is the fun in that? Today, I thought I would take a break from the obvious and talk about a few ways that you can sink—that is, completely destroy—your search engine optimization and make your website Public Enemy #1 on Google’s list.

How To Become Google’s Enemy!

#1 Artificial link-building. 

You just opened a new website and—surprise—there are already 6000 links to it, all of them brand new? Sound fishy? It totally is. You are not the smartest person trying to sneak this one past Google. Accept that, and move on. Everyone knows that those links are fakes, Google included.

#2 Hiding text. 

CSS makes this really easy, but many people also try the classic trick of placing text in the background, in the same color so that it is not easy to see. The consumers may not see it, but the Google bots will. Another similar trick is placing lines and lines of junk in your code. There is even a WordPress plug-in that makes this easier—that is how common the practice is. The problem is that Google bots are programmed to spot these types of trick because they are so obvious. Either one may even get your website de-indexed, which is basically S.E.O death.

#3 Link farming. 

This is different from artificial link-building, because it is reciprocal and does not feel like you are doing anything really wrong, although I can assure you Google won’t see it that way. Unlike the other SEO fails, you have probably encountered this one because it is that common. Website owners create a dedicated links page and link to several or even hundreds of their online friends. In exchange, the friends link back to them. The problem with this is that none of these links are really relevant; after all, the really relevant links in Google’s opinion would be those of your competitors. In addition, it gives customers an easy exit route from your page—ouch.

#4 A lack of fresh information. 

It doesn’t matter if you add new text by hosting a blog, changing up your text, or even adding new products—just make sure there are regular additions and that they are relevant to your business. It is really that simple. Having no new text tells the bots to bump you even further down the page, while new text signals relevance. Just make sure that the text is unique, and that it uses the search engine terms you are trying to optimize for.

A lot of these tricks used to work, but so many people used them that Google began programming their bots to see right through them. That means, not only do these not help, they may be held against you or even destroy your website altogether! This can be a devastating issue for a new small business owner who simply did not know the rules, so make sure you avoid these four deadly mistakes mistakes.

Whether you are running a traditional, brick-and-mortar business or an ecommerce website, a professional website is something that every entrepreneur needs. A website forms the foundation of your internet presence and allows you to build your brand at very little cost. In addition, a website can streamline your business by allowing your customers to order, pay and manage their accounts online. There are so many good reasons to have a website and no good reasons not to—so what are you waiting for? Here are a few tips for getting the website that is right for your entrepreneurial plans.

• Decide what makes you different. Whether you are offering lower prices, a local alternative to big corporations or a unique product, it is important that you know why customers should choose you. If you don’t know this, your customers will not either! This core difference between you and your competition will form the basis of your brand.
• Discover your audience. Once you know what sets you apart from the other businesses in your genre, you should think about the type of people who are looking for you. Rest assured, regardless of you are offering, there is a market looking for it. It is simply a matter of finding that market, positioning your business as the right choice for them, and then making sure that they know about you. However, in order to position and publicize your business, you need to know who your message is intended to reach. You need to know more than basic demographic information, including what the market’s daily schedule looks like, how they prefer to shop and what their aesthetic preferences are.
• Talk to a professional. A professional website designer can help you to identify and define your core value proposition and target market, but it will cost you. It is better if you enter the design process already having given the matter a lot of thought. At this point, it is time to find a website designer who has built websites that are successful with your core market. Do not attempt to build a website yourself or use a template. This will lead to a generic-feeling website that will not be as effective with your market. You should also outsource logo design and other branding design elements; you can’t afford to cut corners in these areas because they will form the basis of your online presence.
• Consider going mobile. Once you know your audience, it should be easy to identify whether they are accessing the internet from a PC, a smartphone or even a tablet PC. If your market does a lot of shopping and information seeking from mobile devices, you should consider having mobile-friendly websites developed for their convenience. The more mobile your market is, the more likely they will be to ignore sites that are not mobile friendly and prefer ones that are.
• Incorporate social media. No entrepreneur can do without social networking in the modern world. It is simply a necessity. You should think carefully about which social networking websites are most appealing to your target audience and then create profiles. Give these profiles a lot of thought and make them as appealing as possible. Again, templates feel generic and tend to ‘turn off’ today’s marketing-savvy consumers.
• Be connected. Your social marketing profiles, website and physical locations should not exist as islands, but rather as an interconnected network. Make sure there are plenty of ways for visitors in one platform to find out about and interact with the others. Don’t just throw up a few icons or links; make a point of mentioning your other ‘homes’ and inviting people to visit.
• Entice customers. Your marketing needs to do more than inform; it needs to entice. Again, that unique value proposition that you developed in the first step will be crucial here. Consider what will be the most effective means of reaching your audience and what types of campaigns will appeal most to them. Some markets prefer businesses that partner with charities or are otherwise socially responsible; others are brought in by contests and giveaways. Knowing your audience is key. It will save you the time, money and effort of running marketing campaigns that are not successful.
• Don’t forget to optimize! Search engine optimization has gotten a bad name due to ‘black hat’ or disallowed techniques. However, SEO is the only way to bring customers to your website and thus an area that you can’t ignore. If you don’t understand how to best design your website to get top search engine rankings, discuss the matter with your website designer or even consider hiring an independent SEO consultant.

Once you have made it through these seven long steps, you should be rewarded with a website that is appealing to your market and a growing amount of traffic. However, if your website is not successful, one of these core entrepreneur website problems may be to blame. Here are the cardinal sins of business websites, to be avoided at all costs.

• Distractions. You don’t need a flashy, blinged-out website to attract most markets. In fact, too many distractions will make your business look less professional and distract customers from actually making their purchase.
• Confusing navigation. Your website designer can help with this. Your website needs to be organized into logical categories that are easy to understand. Customers should be able to find what they seek in just 2-3 clicks.
• Inappropriate size. There is a happy medium between having a website that is merely a few pages and running one that is a behemoth. Trim pages that are not necessary. Offer a well-rounded amount of information, but trims the frills that don’t make sales.
• Lack of updates. You cannot design a website and then leave it. Most small business websites require almost daily updates and tweaks. Customers like to know that the website they are visiting is current and often updated. It shows them that you are a professional and that any orders they make will be processed quickly.

Although you don’t really notice it, local marketing is all around you. Every time you open a telephone directory, turn on the radio or even go to your kid’s football game, local marketing is there. If you are like most people, you really don’t notice it. This is because local marketing tends to be really, really bad. Those little guys have all these advantages over larger corporations, but they just don’t know how to take them. If you are one of these little guys, avoid making the following mistakes.

Top 5 Local Marketing Mistakes Video

#1 Not putting your stats in marketing. 

All marketing for a local business should include your address, phone number and website. If you are near a well-known landmark, point that out. Otherwise, people who encounter your marketing will not know how to make that next step. Sure, they could always look you up. But they won’t. You can count on that. While you are at it, make sure this information is easy to find on your website and also through locally-focused websites like Yelp. By ‘easy to find’, I mean put your contact information somewhere obvious and ubiquitous, like your header and your footer.

#2 Failing to tag. 

If your business has a physical location, this needs to be in your title tags and meta tags. Why? Google bots are just as clueless as your customers. They cannot magically discern where you are located. If you want to come up on the first page of local search, and believe me, you do, then you need to tell the bots with your tags.

#3 Ignoring major local business sites. 

Yelp and Google Places are the two most important of these that I can think of, although there are certainly others. Why are they important? Consider the way a typical customer searches. They type something like, “shoe store Cleveland” into their browser, and one of the common local search sites will be the first to come up. The customer will then click on one of these reputable, recognizable sites and browse a bit. If your business is listed, they will then see it.

#4 DIY marketing.

If you plan a more complicated marketing scheme such as a television ad, an internet banner or even a simple flyer, please PLEASE consider hiring a graphic designer or at least someone with design experience. If you are going to go through the trouble and expense of creating a marketing campaign, let’s make sure it has a chance of bringing in new customers! There are so many pitfalls to design that I cannot even cover them here. Just take my word for it: DIY design is never a good idea.

#5 No means of measurement. 

Marketing is one of those “practice makes perfect” areas. You need to start somewhere, see what works, and change your plan as you go. The problem is that you will never know whether something works, much less how well it works, without having some form of measurement. The great thing about business is that most of it is highly measurable—you can look at traffic, leads, conversions, anything you want really.

Nextel has been through a lot of brand changes. In the United States, it merged with Sprint more than five years ago and kind of disappeared off of the radar when it comes to customers. However, the Nextel brand is still alive and kicking in other parts of the world, such as the booming Latin American market. In fact, Nextel has almost ten million customers. And, they are rebranding to be more inviting to these markets as well.

The old Nextel logo featured the name in an eggplant purple, with horizontal stripes through the last three letters that gave a sense of movement. The writing was all in upper case letters, which created a formidable impression. The new logo design, on the other hand, is as friendly as can be. The color is a youthful bright orange, and the lettering is all lower case—a device that is overused in modern logo design, but could actually be appropriate in this case. The X is the real change; it has been modified to resemble two arrows coming together.

The new slogan will be “Your World. Now.” This will, obviously, be translated into the appropriate languages for each audience. It is a simple tagline that should not create problems in translation. The two arrows in the logo design are meant to imply different ideas coming together.

The old Nextel logo design was, well, old. When I first heard about this rebranding, I thought, “Surely they are not still using the same logo from a decade ago!” But indeed they were. Yes, it is well past time to rebrand. I like the new wordmark; the kerning is well-done and the arrows are obvious without taking over the logo design. Communications is a fast moving business. A telecommunications logo design that seems passé and out of date says nothing good about the carrier that it represents. After all, who wants to be seen using last year’s cell phone?

The tagline is a little generic, but there is a good reason for that. It can be difficult to develop a phrase that translates well into a variety of languages. In fact, the only way to accomplish this is to be as simple as possible, which is exactly what Nextel did. I tend to associate the color orange with Cingular, but perhaps the Latin American market does not make this connection. In addition, there is a European company in the same line of business that is actually called Orange—and guess what color they use?

I am not familiar enough with Latin American markets to comment on whether this is an appropriate design for them, but this design would work perfectly well in the United States. It is a simple, memorable update that feels modern and fresh while still communicating what it needs to say. The Nextel logo design feels like a communications logo. The arrows forming an X is a device that has been done before, but not enough that it feels overdone.

There is nothing original or mind-blowing about this logo design, but it is definitely an improvement over the old. It is hard to imagine a logo design worse than the old one, in fact!

Most people develop their website and then focus on S.E.O. However, this is actually approaching website optimization backwards. In fact, many of the most effect ways of optimizing a website occur in the development phase.

Many websites are designed by professional developers, but then they have to be basically torn apart by S.E.O consultants in order to make the site show up in search engine results. The good news is that there are ways you can develop a website to get it right the first time. Here are some S.E.O tactics that you should keep in mind when planning and developing your site.

How to Build a Website Search Engines Love Video

#1 Know your Keywords

In the past, I have written extensively on finding and choosing keywords, but most you are probably current website holders looking for a way to improve an existing site. While it is never too late, you’ll get better results with a whole lot less effort if you develop your website after identifying which keywords you are planning to incorporate. You’ll still need to modify your site as your market changes, but you’ll be starting off on the right foot.

#2 Plan a Static U.R.L Structure

Dynamic URLs are common in modern web design, but they present an S.E.O nightmare for a variety of reasons. Develop your site without them. Choose static URLs and base them on your keywords from the very beginning.

#3 Think Outside the Site

Many of the best SEO development tools come from outside your actual site. Open accounts on your preferred social networking websites and place links and buttons prominently on every page of your website. Don’t overdo this—too many buttons ad doohickeys can be annoying—but definitely choose a few favorites. Also, sign up for Google Webmaster Tools. This will allow you to identify problems with search engines and respond to them before they become a site killer. Google will actually tell you how they see your site and notify you of issues—information that you can’t afford to go without.

#4 Follow the Pack

By this, I mean you develop your website according to the standards of whatever convention you are using. Whether you are using HTML, database or CSS, follow the rules religiously, even when breaking them seems to work. This will make it easier to modify your website as you go along. Keep in mind that if your website grows, you may need to delegate tasks to someone who won’t necessarily understand an unconventional system.

#5 Create an XML Sitemap

Many people neglect this step, but it is one of the most important SEO tricks. Once your site is up, generate an XML sitemap and submit it to search engines. This is easy to do with that Google Webmaster Tools account that you already opened! For best results, create your website so your sitemap updates whenever you make a change and notifies the search engines automatically.

#6 Plan to Analyze

The only way to keep your website relevant and high ranking is to regularly analyze and modify accordingly. Why not set yourself up for success from the start with analytical tools? Choose any package that appeals to your specifications and budget, but make sure your chosen tool allows you to track sources of revenue and traffic. A great tool is Google Analytics and it is absolutely free. I use it on all my sites.

#7 Leave Room for Text

A common mistake is getting so caught up in design that you forget to leave room for the stuff that will actually boost your page rank and income: content. Make sure all of your pages have ample space for keyword-rich text. This means at least 200 words of content along with appropriate, html headers as well.

#8 Avoid Duplicate Content

Search engines hate duplicate content, and even if you get away with it you are still cannibalizing your website. Give each concept, product, service, or whatever you are peddling its own URL and then leave it there. You can still link to this URL from a variety of internal sources, but it needs its own home. This is not just good for SEO, but good for website organization and management as well. As the adage goes, a place for everything and everything in its place.

#9 Title Consistently

Don’t design your pages like they are an island—pick a title convention that will be used throughout your website. Whatever the structure you choose, make your titles brief and descriptive with relevant keywords.

#10 Mark Non-Text Elements

The best example of a non-text element is a photograph. You need visual elements to make your site more palatable, but don’t let them be wasted space. Mark them with ALT Tag attributes that include keywords. Avoid going overboard here; search engines know how to spot this and will punish accordingly.

#11 Think Meta

Write a unique, professional meta description for every single page—not only will this help search engine crawlers, it will often show up in the search engine results as well. Consider this description one of the most important pieces of copy on the page. Use keywords and good sales practices to begin getting your customer’s attention before they even click on your link.

Similarly, allow for other meta tags from the very beginning. Depending on the type of website you are running, you may need canonical or robots tags. This is particularly important if you are using tracking codes.

#12 Redirect your Visitors

Redirects are another URL-related SEO strategy that can boost your page rank. You know that people can find you whether they type www or not. So you’re done, right? In fact, when they don’t type in the full URL, they are basically going to an internet generated duplicate of your website. This gets even more convoluted when other websites are linking to a non-www version. Identify your main URL and then program your website to redirect to it. This ensures that you get ‘credit’ with search engines for all of your external links. This can be done on the server side with an .HTACCESS file or with some CMS systems – like with the Ringgle platform, this can set up with the admin panel.

Similarly, you should never completely take down a page of your site, especially one with those valuable internal links. If you want to remove a page, 301 redirect it to its replacement. This way, you won’t lose any of your hard-won SEO footing.

These development strategies may seem simple, but when used together they can have a remarkable effect on your website’s page rank. Plan your website for success from the very beginning and continue to program according to good SEO practices for continued success in the future.

I like to keep up with the branding world for obvious reasons, which is why I tuned into the Today Show a while back to see the author of the latest book on the topic, titled Brandwashed. According to author Martin Lindstrom, who also wrote a book on neuromarketing called Buyology, brands are literally taking over our lives, from birth to death.

Martin Lindstrom is reporting from inside the belly of the beast, because he is a well-recognized branding expert who has worked on some of the sneakiest cases of brandwashing. He points out that by their third birthday, American children can recognize an average of one hundred logos. They tend to view these brands as friends, because children have not yet developed the natural suspicion that adults have. Studies have found that McDonalds can sell carrot sticks to children—that’s right, vegetables. Any dummy can sell crispy, salty French fries, but selling raw vegetables to toddlers requires some serious marketing power, as any parent can recognize.

Lindstrom points out the places where marketing is sincere and the places where it lies. One example he gives is Whole Foods. When you enter one of these markets, you walk past fresh-cut flowers, water fixtures and hand-chalked signs. These things subconsciously signal freshness to your brain. This is not dishonest at all, but as you go deeper into the store there are aspects that have been placed there to trick you. In the produce area, there is often a stack of old-fashioned boxes. This gives the impression that the fruit has been picked and transported in the traditional manner, which is what we want to believe. In fact, that stack of boxes is one single piece, which has been manufactured by Whole Foods and placed in every produce department in every store. Now, that is sneaky.

One good thing about new methods of branding is when it is used to give customers what they really want. For instance, when Calvin Klein developed the Euphoria perfume, they used focus groups. The women were dabbed with the cologne and asked to close their eyes and tell a story. The company kept tweaking the cologne until it produced the desired emotions. That is not customer manipulation, but rather giving the customer exactly what he or she wants.

How can a small business compete against this wave of branding? It is growing increasingly difficult, because customers are developing blinders—they are learning to overlook traditional branding simply because it is so ubiquitous. However, there are a few ways that you can overcome this. The most obvious is to market your business with integrity. Modern consumers have a finely tuned BS-meter. If you are unique, honest and authentic in your branding and logo design, you will stand out.

No legitimate logo designer or branding consultant will tell you to lie to your customers. I am completely against any deceptive behavior. I believe that branding should be about showing what makes your company and products unique, and putting your best foot forward. Customers can sense the difference between the real thing and a fake. Make sure your logo design and brand represent you completely, and you will have a chance in a brandwashed world.

Marketing is one of the most important parts of running a business. Most of the small businesses that fail, do so because of either a lack of marketing, or bad marketing. You need to get the word out about your business, and you can do so most effectively by avoiding the following five mistakes.

Do NOT Commit These Marketing Mistakes!

Mistake #5. Focusing on Marketing Rather Than Relationship Building. 

Marketing should be about creating a relationship with your customers. You probably know a lot about your customers, so put this knowledge to work! Compare it to dating: you don’t simply hand a lady a list of reasons to choose you; it takes a little more finesse than that! You need to build a relationship over time. If you have any experience with dating, you know that different women have different preferences; some want flowers and dinner at expensive restaurants, while others would rather spend an afternoon at the park. Customers are the same. That is why traditionally selling has been compared to seducing. Because you know your customers pretty well, you should be able to figure out what will really wow them and how to best deliver it.

Mistake #4. Fading Out of the Limelight. 

I have seen this so many times that it is beginning to feel like one of those depressing, predictable Greek tragedies. A small business owner will run a brilliant marketing campaign, which begins to gather momentum, and then the campaign ends and the owner simply stops. This is a mistake because you will never build momentum this way. Running a small business means that your marketing wheels must always be turning. Once you have your customers’ attention, don’t let it go! Do not give up the limelight, not even for a day.

Mistake #3. Marketing to Everyone. 

Some of the most popular marketing techniques are also the most expensive and least effective. Why do people use them? Because they fail to see the obvious. Whether you are running a small town business or an online empire, only a handful of the people who encounter your business are going to be potential customers. Marketing to everyone is expensive, and is a waste of time. Instead of doing this, put a little thought into where your customer is likely to visit and what types of nontraditional marketing will appeal to them. Focus on your primary target market first!

Mistake #2. Not Getting Help When Necessary. 

Most small business owners somehow believe that outsourcing marketing will be too expensive.. The surprising face is, marketing and branding consultants are not that expensive; in fact, when you consider what your own time is worth and take into account that it will take you at least twice as long to perform the same tasks, I bet you are probably going to save money by outsourcing a lot of your marketing.

Top Mistake #1. Doing Nothing. 

This is probably the most common mistake. You spend so much time planning, preparing and researching that you rarely get a marketing campaign off the ground. Remember what I said earlier about momentum: you need to be marketing constantly. Constantly. It is better to try something new and fail than to sit around second-guessing yourself. The only way to be a success is to take action: track results, learn from your mistakes and always look for new ideas to market your business.

The big story in the logo design world this week is that of Netflix/Qwikster. If you are familiar with Netflix, you know that there are two options: having DVDs arrive in your mail, and streaming them on your computer or gaming device. Netflix will now be only used in reference to the streaming aspect of the company, while the envelopes in your mailbox will bear the name Qwikster.

This is a risky move for the company. The Netflix brand works. People associate the name with receiving DVDs in the mail and many have come to look forward to receiving the familiar red envelopes. There are some risky changes to the pricing structure as well; while people were once allowed to use both services for a single low price, that same price will now get them one or the other. In other words, customers will need to pay twice what they are used to paying.

Every business eventually has to raise prices or change their services; it is a fact of doing business in the modern world. The cost of doing business is always increasing, so the costs passed on to the customer must increase as well. However, changing prices while changing up your brands at the same time can be a risky proposition. I’m sorry if this article overuses the word risky, but there is really no other way to describe the recent changes in the company.

The new Qwikster logo is not really up to snuff. It does not tie into the Netflix brand in any way; there are no similarities in font, colors or other visual devices. The font that it uses is nineties retro, which matches the twice-misspelled name. The Netflix name is simple and phonetically spelled; the new one defies English language logic. Moreover, the word Qwikster is a little disingenuous considering that it is the most time-consuming method getting a movie outside of buying it in an internet store. People can stream movies, rent them from Blockbuster or trot down to their local Redbox kiosk in less time than it takes for a movie to arrive in the post. The majority of customers are aware of this, so who is the company trying to fool?

The new logo does have a few possibilities, however. I like the shape of the letter Q, and it is possible that the name may be shortened simply to this letter in the future. The rest of the wording looks cheap—not as in inexpensive, but as in low quality. And what does the word Qwikster have to do with movies, anyway?

When you are offering two very different services, it can make sense to rebrand so that the two are distinctly different brands. However, this is not the case with Netflix’s streaming vs mail delivery methods. It is the same product—a movie—with a different means of delivery. No differentiation is needed. Further, changing the fee structure and the name at the same time may come across to customers as sneaky. In an age of intense mistrust toward corporations, no company can afford to make that mistake.

Social networking is one of the best ways to build an online business. After all, it is effective and mostly free—what is there not to love here? However, there are a few mistakes that can destroy your social media marketing. These are so common that it is a little sad. Okay, it is a LOT sad. And by avoiding these mistakes, you can give your online campaigns an automatic advantage. Here are a few things NOT to do:

How to prevent Social Media Marketing Failure

Mistake #1 Joining every social media website out there.

This may sound like a great idea in theory, but in practice, you have a life. You have things to do besides updating and typing. You might think that your schedule will suddenly rearrange itself so that you can spend your days clicking between windows at LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Yourspace and every-other-space, but it won’t. Even if you could spend all day on your iPhone, it would not help your business even a little. Why? Your customers aren’t using twenty different social networking sites. They are using just one or two. Figure out which those are and focus your energy there. You’ll still be reaching your customers, and you’ll have time to actually run your business as well.

Mistake #2 A lack of connection. 

A successful social media campaign will involve a spider web of links, between different social networking sites, your website and your physical locations. It should be a coordinated effort. You have to think of each profile and website as an island. The only way for customers to travel between them is for you to build bridges. Links are your bridges.

Mistake #3 Being a spectator. 

This can also be called a failure to have two-way communication. Customers like to deal with actual humans. You are probably already a human, so act like it. Social networking should be an ongoing dialogue between you and your customers. Don’t just post information—respond to comments and have a two-way dialog. Let people know: hey, there is a real person running this business!

Mistake #4 Lack of incentive to return or otherwise follow through. 

If you have a lot of traffic and not a lot of interaction, then you are probably committing this social marketing sin. Customers need a reason to Like your page, follow you, join your email list and whatever else you want for them to do. Offer high value—which usually comes in the form of information that they need. In addition, offer periodic coupons and special deals for ‘member’s only’. People need a reason to click, but not a huge reason. Any good reason will do.

Mistake #5 No means of measurement. 

There are a few things that make a social media marketing campaign a success. The most obvious are traffic and conversions, but there are other important factors as well. How are people interacting with your campaign? This is also known as: what do people actually do when they visit your social networking profile. You should also look at engagement, which usually can be measured by the amount of time that people linger. Why is running a social media campaign without measurement a fail? Because you will never know how to improve your efforts or even what improvement would look like.

Approach social media marketing in the right way and you can reap the rewards! Commit any one of these mistakes and your ROI will go down.

People outside of Texas have probably not heard of Reliant, but it is a major name in the state. Reliant boasts 1.5 million customers and is one of the largest energy companies in a state with a whole lot of energy companies. Even if you are not familiar with the energy company itself, you may be familiar with Reliant Park and Reliant Stadium, which are home to the NFL Houston Texans and hosted the 2004 Super Bowl.

Reliant was bought in 2009 by the national and redundantly named NRG Energy. The two companies have maintained separate brands and logo designs for these two years, but they recently introduced a new brand that will encompass both companies.

The old Reliant Energy Industry logo design featured the name of the company in italicized yet plain letters, with three dashes that are meant to resemble lighting. This logo has a lot of energy and definitely is appropriate for the company. However, it was less appropriate for the Park and Stadium because there was nothing festive or fun about it. The best thing we can say about this logo is that it is definitely an energy logo design.

The new logo design features the name of the company along with three colorful shapes that sould be interpreted as plus signs, sparks, flowers, stars, fireworks… really, whatever you want. I am going to give the company the benefit of the doubt and assume that these are sparks, which are at least related to the energy business. It is festive and more appropriate for the sports applications of this logo design. The company has already started using firework displays that tie into this logo design at Reliant Park, which is possibly the most interesting medium for a logo that I have heard of.

There are downsides to the new logo as well. It is not very relevant to the business, first of all. When we are dealing with electricity, sparks are not always a good thing. They are a sign that your wiring is bad, in fact. Also, sparks contain very little power. Maybe I am overthinking this, but I think the bolts were more powerful and compelling, although they definitely needed an update. Also, the lower case font is too weak for both the park and the business. Many people seem to turn to that lower case writing as a default lately, but it only really works with certain types of business. Energy is not one of them. However, this logo may work better for NRG Energy, the parent company, because there can be no confusion over their industry.

The energy business is changing. They are trying to seem more friendly, less threatening and more natural. We have seen many companies push any reference to coal, oil and carbon-based energy sources from their brands, instead embracing flowers, sunshine and, now, sparks.

This new design is better in many ways. It is more modern, and it works equally well for NRG and Reliant. A change was certainly necessary, but I don’t know if this was the right choice. It is certainly an improvement.

It’s a common story: you optimize your site, watch your rankings climb, make a few more changes, and then suddenly your Page Rank crashes. There are several things that can cause this, but the most common factor is that you have been identified as a potential keyword spammer by Google and penalized accordingly. Google is always on the lookout for SEO cheaters, but this can cause a problem for legitimate website admins who are simply trying to maintain a decent Page Rank. Here is a step-by-step guide to getting off the blacklist and staying off.

How To Survive Google Penalty

#1 Identify the problem. 

You can’t solve a problem before you know what it is. Often, the problem is that a website is over-optimized—that is, you simply have too high of a keyword to content ratio. Sometimes this happens organically; other times, the webmaster has been pushing the limits of legitimate SEO.  You should rule out other causes, such as server downtime and losing links, before you begin making major changes to your website.

#2 Check Google Webmaster Tools. 

Every webmaster, without exception, should have a Google Webmaster account, and identifying the cause of penalties is the main reason. Check for alerts and other warnings. This may tell you exactly what you are doing wrong and give you an idea of how to get back on Google’s good side as quickly as possible.

#3 Don’t try to fool users. 

One of the fastest ways to get ‘sandboxed’ by Google is to be deceptive. That is, to create content specifically for search engines that is not accessible to normal website viewers. This can be done using text that is the same color as your background, page cloaking, and other methods. Resorting to deception rarely works in life or in search engine optimization. Being honest and open is the best way to stay in Google’s good graces.

#4 Use anchor text judiciously. 

Because keyword stuffing is most often the problem, you need to start here. Make sure you can justify the keywords that you use as tags and in content. There’s no magic keyword density number, so let readability and common sense be your guide. Not that Google cares about your explanations; this merely will help you use keywords in a way that won’t get flagged in Google’s algorithm. As a bonus, this usually makes your website more readable and user-friendly as well. Be sure you are adding some fresh content when you are combing through your website, because this will boost your perceived value in search engine rankings.

#5 Avoid bad neighborhoods. 

In the SEO world, a ‘bad neighborhood’ is basically a link farm. Google is really good at identifying these. Any links to your site from these will be at best completely ignored or, at worst, held against you. Get rid of these links, because they flag your site as not really legitimate in the eyes of search engines and users. In most cases, you aren’t getting any traffic from them anyway.

#6 Build legitimate links. 

One other common cause of a Google penalty is that you are suspected of having links that were paid or traded for. One way of dealing with this is to stop (if you are indeed guilty of the offense) and focus on getting legitimate, organic links from websites that are related to your subject. Even if links aren’t the official reason for penalizing your website, having these organic links will build your Page Rank back up.

#7 Be wary of undeliverable promises. 

Sometimes webmasters are tempted to hire an SEO consultant to optimize their site. It works for a while, and then their Page Rank is back in the gutter. Here’s a hint: if someone promises a specific result that sounds too good to be true, it just might be. Black hat and gray hat SEO techniques unfortunately will work for a while until Google catches on. Avoid people who make promises that they can’t keep with white hat methods.

#8 Start a blog. 

Blogging—not on Blogger or another external site, but on your own dedicated website—is one of the best things that you can do for your website SEO. First, it ensures that you have a regular source of fresh, unique content, which search engines love. Second, it gives you a chance to experiment with new keywords and strengthen your site’s perceived relevance. It’s a win-win situation that you really can’t afford to miss. Try making a few short posts a week and see if that brings up your Page Rank.

#9 Look for duplicate content. 

Many people try to build organic links and otherwise stimulate traffic to their website by submitting articles to popular websites. Unfortunately, some take a shortcut and submit content that is very similar (or even identical) to that on their own site. Regardless of how it happened, this must be fixed as quickly as possible to get your website back in good standing. It is very important that your website content be completely unique.

#10 Submit a new sitemap to Google and other search engines. 

Once your website SEO issues have been “cleaned up”, redo your site map and resubmit it. This will give Google the chance to note that your site is free of problems and full of new, relevant content. You just may emerge with a higher page rank than ever thanks to the positive changes you have made!

Once you have completed these ten steps, all you can do is wait. If your Page Rank doesn’t begin a steady ascent in the near future, there is a good chance that you still have some problems. Getting ‘sandboxed’ is no fun, especially when it affects your profit as well as your ranking. However, in most cases, you can repair the damage and begin to rebuild your rank. The good news is that most of these changes are actually good for your website, so you will eventually emerge from your Google Penalty with a stronger, more optimized site.

One of the biggest mistakes that a business can make in logo design and branding is forgetting the customer. Ultimately, the customer is the most important factor in all marketing decisions. If you develop a logo that represents your products well yet presents no value for the customer, you have just wasted your time.

This may be the problem with the logo that Cigna has used for almost two decades now. Cigna is a company that offers health services such as insurance. It is based in Connecticut, which is a key part of the old logo design. The former logo features a tree, taken from an old New England quilt pattern. The teal color is calming and was quite stylish when the logo was introduced in the early nineties, along with a very corporate light gray. Trees convey health, growth and nature, making them ideal for a healthcare logo design. However, there is one key problem with this logo: where is the customer?

One of the problems with American health care is that people feel that they are no longer the focus of the system. Financial concerns and bureaucracy are the main priority, while the well-being of the patient/customer falls in a distant second place, if that. One important thing for a healthcare logo design to portray is that people are important to the business—that the customer is first. This can be an effective way of differentiating your business from the less customer focused competition. The old Cigna logo feels corporate. While it is an excellent representative of the business, the customer has been left out. Sure, it may be healthy, strong and growing—but why should I choose Cigna?

The new Cigna logo design is much better than the old one because it incorporates the symbol of the tree, but adds a person as the trunk. This gives the impression that the business is about health and growth, but that the customer is the core. The change in implication is huge even though the logo design retains the same basic shape. The color palette has been changed to one that is bright and inviting, although the logo is simple enough to be used in a single color where this is convenient, such as on stationary.

If you are running a business in an industry that customers view as intimidating, putting a human figure in your logo design can be very effective. This single image conveys the fact that you care about your customers (we hope that is a fact!). It makes your business feel more people-friendly, an impression that can make all the difference in whether people choose you over the competition. When combined with marketing and other branding strategies that create a people first feeling, these logo designs can be powerful indeed. In this case, Cigna is communicating that their customers are the basis of their company. They are not just saying it; they are showing it.

‘Local’ is the new black—or at least the new green. Many modern people are eager to support their communities and help the environment by buying local. This can be a boon for small business owners, but only if you market your small business brand as a local option.

One of the big challenges in developing and marketing your small business brand is that the cheapest and most available marketing methods are online. This means that you must adopt a hybrid approach that combines your local brand with online marketing strategies. Here are a few tools to help you get started.

How To Market Your Local Business Online

#1 Get listed with online classified ads.

Which is easier: digging through the yellow pages or getting the same information on the internet? With the emergence of high speed internet and smartphones, many customers will hop on their favorite device rather than picking up a phone book. However, many businesses make the mistake of not getting listed on the most popular online classifieds. Google, Bing, and Yahoo all have free local classifieds that will place local businesses at the top of a search. Google will even show the customer a map to your location. It only takes a few minutes to get your listed, so put it at the top of your ‘to-do’ list.

#2 Take advantage of social media.

When you think of social networking, you probably think of sites like Facebook and Twitter. While it is important to maintain a presence on these more traditional social media sites, it is equally important to develop a presence on websites that combine social networking with local search. You have probably heard of Yelp and CitySearch, and you may even be listed on these already thanks to customer reviews. However, you need to take control of these pages. You can give additional information about your business, respond to negative feedback (if there is any) and use them as an opportunity to communicate with potential customers in your community. Best of all, most of these sites are totally free.

#3 Offer online-only deals.

Recent studies have shown that small businesses are spending more on promotions than ever before, and online promotion sites are likely driving this trend. Sites such as Groupon allow you to offer exclusive deals for online customers. Because many people use these sites to find special deals, you can develop an entirely new customer base this way.

#4 Include your location in your search engine optimization.

Many small business owners have discovered and profited from the boost in internet traffic that results from search engine optimization. However, you may be losing out on foot traffic if you don’t include your city and/or suburb name in your keywords. Make sure your SEO gives your website a definite place that crawlers will pick up on.

#5 Encourage check-ins.

Many customers use their mobile phones to access the internet. Websites such as Facebook allow you to create a loyalty program that gives special points or deals to customers who check in on their phone while physically at your location. This encourages customers to physically walk into your locations—from there, it’s easy to make a sale.

These are just a few of the ways you can market your local business online. Just remember to always be on the lookout for an opportunity to engage your customers both offline and online.

Cellular South is a wireless communications company that is hobbled by its name. The word ‘South’ is unfortunately very limiting because most people in the north will simply assume that the company does not serve their area. In fact, Cellular South is the largest privately owned wireless provider in the country, both north and south, and it is adopting a new name and a new logo design that clearly portray this.

According to information released about the new brand, the ‘C’ is for ‘consumer’ and the ‘spire’ is short for ‘inspire’. The name has also been tied into the new logo design, which features a letter C with spires coming out from it. The aggressiveness of the spires has been softened by rounded lines and lower case lettering.

This is quite the improvement over the former logo design, which featured the familiar bars that let cell phone users know that they are in a service area. This may be appropriate for the industry, but the logo design had little to do with this brand in particular. The name was written in lower case letters—similar to the new logo. Another similarity between the two is the color, although the old blue palette was slightly more dated than the new one.

The new company will offer not just a new name and logo design, but a new range of services as well. The company released a statement that was full of ambiguous statements like “unique personalization in apps” and other industry jargon. Hopefully they will develop a more customer friendly lexicon before the new brand is released to the public eye.

Although spires would seem to be an obvious image because of the name, I have to wonder whether they will be effective here. Even in a rounded format such as this one, they are unfriendly and even threatening. In addition, the shape has little to do with the brand itself. Nothing about this logo design screams independently owned or wireless communications. We give the company kudos for moving outside the box when it comes to design, but we can only wish that they had considered exactly what they are trying to say.

There are so many wireless service providers in the United States that marketing and logo design are important as a way of differentiating a company from the competition. In addition, while the market is huge, encompassing almost every American from adolescence and up, many people choose their wireless provider based on perks—such as free or low cost telephones—and what their friends and family use. There is also the issue of being ‘in style’, because the teen market is very oriented toward products and services that their peer group prefers.

C-Spire has a hard row to hoe if it wants to grow any further given this tough market. It has to break through walls of brand loyalty and offer something unique. This logo design is a good start in differentiating the brand, but it may fall short simply because of the nature of the market.

A lot has been written about blogs as business and sales tools, but they can be valuable SEO tools as well. Although many experts are pointing to social networking as the media of the future, most of us still follow our favorite blogs and check in with them on a regular basis. In addition to entertainment value, a blog can improve your search engine optimization as well as inviting new people to your website and gaining valuable organic links. Many people look for quick fixes in SEO when in fact an occasional blog article can do wonders for improving your Page Rank over the long term. Here are a few ways to make your blog do double duty for your website—fostering sales and increasing your Page Rank at the same time.

Increase your profits with a business blog Video

#1 Make your blog part of your website. 

Most SEO experts recommend that you use WordPress if possible. While Blogger and similar websites make it easy to build and keep a blog, you need a platform that can be easily maintained on your own private site if you are trying to improve your Page Rank. WordPress is an blogging program that will make it easy to maintain and update your blog as a part of your overall website.

#2 Consistently offer fresh content. 

You should try to blog on a regular basis—once or more per day is ideal. Use keywords as much as possible, but focus on offering informative, well-written text. Google loves that stuff, and so do customers. The more helpful and informative your posts are, the more likely people will be to link to your posts. If you have trouble thinking of new things to talk about, do a simple search with your favorite keywords on social networking sites. There’s a good chance that whatever people are discussing, they are also searching for.

#3 Do the research. 

As with any other aspect of your website, it is important to research what terms and keywords are best for your blog. You should be focusing on timely, popular topics that are related to your business. Blogs are by nature interesting and enjoyable, so feel free to branch out into niche topics and try to have a little fun. This is an important area to keep tabs on, because the popular keywords change from day to day and sometimes even from hour to hour.

#4 Use your keywords as glossary and index terms. 

Tag every article with a relevant keyword and then make these keywords searchable on your website. This will increase your page ranking for these terms and make your blog easier for visitors to comb through.

#5 Be helpful. 

What is the best way to get organic, rank-building links to your blog? By being helpful and offering tips that people in your industry will want to pass on. If you are going to go through the trouble of building a blog, make sure the blog is informative and offers information that people will want to use and to pass on. As a bonus, add helpful links that make it easy for readers to ‘like’ your posts on Facebook and share them on other social networking websites.

#6 Syndicate. 

The best way of doing this is by including an RSS feed of your blog. For best results, use an RSS feed with the same domain name as your blog and website. RSS feeds will not only lead more people to your blog and thus your website, they will also help to build your SEO ranking by adding to your incoming links count.

#7 Stay on topic. 

Avoid the day-to-day stuff you would put in a paper journal and instead focus on topics related to your business. To put it plainly, don’t blog about your favorite restaurants unless you are running a restaurant or other food related business. Instead, talk about your industry. There are probably daily changes and news tidbits that can be reported and discussed. These will make it easy to organically work in keywords that will up your ranking and drive the right traffic to your website.

#8 Sound like an expert. 

You probably know a lot about your field and the products and services that you are selling. Use this knowledge base to entice and inform new customers—using keywords, of course. Don’t hide your light under a blanket; sound like the expert that you are. This will make people more likely to return to your blog for guidance and, eventually, to become loyal customers.

#9 Ask for backlinks. 

You don’t have to come out and formally request links to your blog articles, but you can certainly ask quietly by placing a “Link to this Article” tab at the bottom of every post. Often, people want to use their own blogs or social networking websites to discuss other blogs. Why not make it easy for them?

#10 Include a ‘call to action’. 

Even if you are building a blog for SEO purposes, you should still treat it as a sales tool. End every blog with a call to action that en-couRAges readers to become a conversion or a sale. You need as many conversions as possible to maintain a profitable business and to justify the time that is required in creating and maintaining an active blog.

Even if you aren’t convinced of the search engine value of a blog, there are several other good business reasons to create and maintain one. Blogs can increase exposure to your brand and increase sales on their own—and that’s not counting the higher traffic that comes from a higher Page Rank. They increase traffic to your website and also cause an increase in organic, relevant links, which Google counts heavily when determining your ranking. People like to read blogs. This media builds customer loyalty and brand loyalty (to your brand) like no other resource. Don’t let your business be without this valuable and proftable tool; start a blog today and see how this one media type can turn around your business around singlehandedly.

Discovery, a network that markets mainly to women and children with such hits as I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant and Jon & Kate Plus 8, is planning a new channel that will appeal mainly to ‘upscale men’. It is due to launch any day now and will be a replacement of the Discovery network channel known as HD Theater. The new channel is known as Velocity and will feature programming aimed at this market, which is currently underserved by other Discovery channels.

Like all television channels, this one has a logo design. The old logo was somewhat of a placeholder, and was merely used internally within Discovery. It featured a shiny chrome chevron with the name of the channel below in the signature Discovery font. The new logo design features the same core shape, but with a silver globe nestled in the corner of the chevron. The shiny metal is still present, but it is slightly darker, which gives a more masculine feeling. The font has been changed as well; it is now written in Futura. This stylistically matches the space age feeling of the logo a little better.

On the other hand, I cannot help but be reminded of another shiny object in similar shape (http://www.geekalerts.com/u/star-trek-starfleet-command-badge.jpg) . It conjures up images of geeky cool. The problem with this is that the nerd group (which I consider myself a part of) is already being wooed by other cable channels. If Discovery wants to reach an elite male audience, retro sci-fi may not be correct look.

From what I have heard, the new channel will feature several car shows. In this perspective, the logo design makes a little more sense. It is definitely reminiscent of a logo for a car company and rather looks like it belongs on the hood of some powerful machine. The inclusion of a globe detracts from this a little, moving the dial closer to the sci-fi side. On the other hand, the globe makes the logo design look less like a device meant to beam you up to the mother ship. I get that it is supposed to be a letter V, as in the name, but that is not the first thing I think when I see the design.

While many companies have a little wiggle room when it comes to a logo design—they can modify the design a little bit over time—Discovery Velocity does not have this luxury. The new channel has only has one chance to make a first impression on their core audience. If the target market checks out the channel and does not identify with it, Velocity will be stopped by a lack of momentum. It will become just another cable channel competing for the time of housewives and science geeks.

In some industries, it is important to make a first impression and to open shop with a bang. This can have more impact than anything else you do in the course of your business. Having a great logo design and visual identity is the first step to making this impact.

Sometimes the simplest logo design concepts are the most extraordinary.

San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum is an amazing place to spend a day, if you ever have the opportunity. The museum recently launched a new and visual identity package that is based on, simply, the letter A turned upside down. We have seen logos with inverted elements and lettering before, but this one is truly a first in that it uses just an upside down letter.

When I try to describe the concept, it sounds plain and boring. This is a case in which a design is more than the sum of its parts. The A is rendered somewhat three dimensionally in print due to the use of a gradient. The museum’s sign takes advantage of this element with a fully 3-D letter with the same lighting.

The old museum was not bad… in fact, it was quite good. It featured a red square—red is an auspicious color throughout much of Asia and even a common color for Chinese bridal gowns. We associate this color with the East more than any other. A square is a strong and powerful shape that grabs attention, especially when combined with a bright color. The custom font was simple yet brilliant. In fact, the only bad thing I could say about the old is that it is not as good as the new one.

There are many three dimensional logos out there, but many of them simply do not work. They often seem overly ‘blingy’, without any depth. They always look great on a computer screen, but not so much on paper. This logo is multifaceted without being limited. It will look great on brochures and on t-shirts, but it still has the power of three dimensions.

In addition, an upside down A is used in mathematics as a symbol meaning “for all.” The designer designed the logo knowing this, giving the math nerds among us a little thrill. Because the museum is intended not just for Asians, but for people of all ethnic backgrounds, this is appropriate and even brilliant. To avoid stating the obvious, I’ll leave out the stereotypical jokes about Asians being good at math.

In addition, the logo gives a sense of approaching an everyday object with a new perspective. If that is not art, what is? This bold logo offers a wide range of interesting ideas and interpretations, all in one easy to render and easy to remember package.

Will this spawn a rush of copycats and upside down logos on crowdsourcing sites? I predict that it will. After all, if a site is willing to repackage and sell the WWF panda image, upside down lettering is certainly up to plagiarism. However, the Asian Art Museum logo is simple and unique enough that we (and consumers) will know the copycats as soon as they appear. I am always writing that museums and design-related businesses need to make sure their own design is top-notch. This one certainly meets that criterion.

High fructose corn syrup is something of a dietary villain in modern times. It has been linked in studies to a wide range of health problems, most notably obesity and diabetes. As the name suggests, HFCS is a concentrated sugar taken from corn that is used in a syrup form. Because it has been publically implicated in so many different health issues, many people are beginning to avoid the product and choose processed foods that do not contain it.

High fructose corn syrup is certainly not a part of a healthy diet, but the corn industry feels that it is being unnecessarily demonized. Corn syrup is a problem because it is full of sugar. So why is it the only syrup being publically denounced? Many people are choosing cane sugar instead, without knowing that it is just as bad for their waistlines and their blood sugar levels. In order to salvage the market, the Corn Refiners Association launched a marketing campaign explaining that corn syrup is just sugar—chemically extracted sugar, but sugar nonetheless. In addition, the producers have begun dropping the high fructose corn syrup labeling in favor of calling their product simply ‘corn sugar’.

This may increase sales of products containing the product, but it does so in a sneaky way. Instead of educating the public or otherwise building their brand back from the ashes, the Corn Refiners Association is simply changing the name and hoping that the public does not notice. This almost seems like they are admitting guilt. Further, because the move has been brought to the public’s attention, it just might be a death knoll for the product.

The Food and Drug Administration recently stepped in and told the corn industry to stop. In order to change the name that the product has used for decades, the industry needs to get FDA approval. A representative claimed that it is misleading to change the name this late in the game, especially in a time of controversy. Needless to say, makers of beet sugar and cane sugar would also prefer that HFCS use its traditional moniker.

Obesity and diabetes are both rampant in the United States. I am willing to bet that every person reading this post has at least one relative or close friend dealing with these. Because people’s eating habits have not changed substantially, many believe that high fructose corn syrup and other ‘Frankenfoods’ may be subtly affecting the population’s metabolic rates. People are afraid, the same way that they would be in the wake of any other epidemic. It is not fair to blame corn syrup for all of our dietary woes, but the industry still should not be allowed to mislead consumers.

If your company ever is faced with brand disaster, it is important to have a plan. However, it is crucial that you not make the situation worse by trying to trick your audience. It is rare that a tactic like this works. Most of the time, as we are seeing in this case, the public finds out eventually.

Do you ever shop at Walgreens? Many people pop into this drugstore occasionally to pick up prescriptions and shampoo. The drugstore giant offers everything you need to maintain your health, except of course fresh food.

However, Walgreens is now offering fresh food in certain locations, with plans to expand the program to all stores if it works in the test markets. The fresh foods include deli products and produce. The company already carried fresh milk and dairy simply for customer convenience but this seems like a stretch for the brand.

Before we get into the reasons why this might not be a good idea, it is only fair to discuss why it might work. Walgreens is present in many urban markets that are classified as ‘food deserts’—that is, where fresh foods are not widely available. People in these markets may be likely to buy fresh food at Walgreens simply because it saves them from having to go all the way across town. In addition, buying fresh food at Walgreens may be convenient for people that are already picking up a few items. In a busy life, combining two errands is a very attractive proposition.

However, there is a very real danger in adding products that do not match the rest of your brand. First, Walgreens is dedicated valuable floor space to fresh foods which may or may not be well-received by the market. The company’s logo design and brand are centered on products related to health and personal care. Second, adding new products unsuccessfully can actually undermine sales of other products. Last, there is always a huge investment involved in adding new products. However, there is an equally huge chance of losing that investment.

Will people buy fresh food from a drug store? Something about it feels dirty. Although every Walgreens that I have visited is clean and well-lit, they nonetheless have a musty, drugstore smell that does not make me think of food. I could myself picking up a loaf of bread here and there, but not doing my entire weekly shopping there.

Walgreens had better be in this for the long haul, because it will take a while for people to adjust to the idea of buying food from a drugstore. If the store can maintain consistent quality and market their new products, it may be possible for them to move into the lucrative fresh foods market, especially in areas where there are few other options. Convenience seems to trump all for many people, and one stop shopping is as convenient as it gets!

This is definitely a risky proposition for any brand. If you are thinking about doing something like this, give it a lot of thought. Any new products will work best if they are directly related to the ones that you are currently selling or if they otherwise are a good match for your brand. In Walgreens’ case, fresh food just does not make sense… although it just might work.

There was a time when product placement on popular television programs was the biggest thing, but lately a new cowboy is in town. Branded video content is becoming increasingly big in the world of branding and marketing. This genre includes several key advantages over other forms of advertising. First, it costs little or nothing to place a video of any length on YouTube or another popular hosting website. Second, there are no time limits; if you want to spend 60 seconds or even sixty minutes developing your brand, you are free to do so. Another benefit is that there are no censors for online content; if your business is trying to appeal to a younger, edgier audience, this can be a real advantage.

There are so many advantages to branded video marketing that it can be difficult to name them all. In fact, many brands are jumping on this lucrative and fast-moving bandwagon. A good recent example is style powerhouse Chanel. Chanel recently released a video promoting their legendary brand called Night Train. In two minutes and twenty-two seconds, viewers can see a long and yet strangely magical Chanel ad. Although the new video does not really present any new information about the brand, it definitely drives home the salient aspects of the brand: sophistication, elitism, style, magic.

We’ll be seeing more videos like this one in the future from Chanel and here’s why: although there are costs associated with producing and filming a video such as this one, these are nothing compared to the cost of a television campaign. Further, because the time limits are determined only by the audience’s attention span, the film can be as long or as short as it needs to be, with no artificially imposed time limits.

If you decide to create a branded video for your own company, then you should consider the following tips for getting the most out of your marketing:

• Consider your audience. You will need to first decide whether video marketing is really right for your company. Afterward, you should think about the storyline, genre and techniques that will appeal most to your unique audience.
• Spring for a professional. You may be tempted to try on your film-making hat, but now is not the time. Get a professional to consult on your script if you are delving into cinematography. In addition, you should hire someone who knows how to film and also invest in professional equipment (even if you simply rent or borrow it). If you are trying to attract a new audience, going cheap will only ruin your efforts.
• Offer value. First, there needs to be inherent video in the commercial. It should be funny, inspiring or otherwise give viewers a reason to watch. Second, you need to express a different kind of value—your brand values. Ensure that customers leave the film with a good idea of what your brand is all about.
• Promote your video. Place it on YouTube, on your social networking sites and of course on your website. Make sure customers can find it and that it is easy to pass along to friends.

Most of us visit lakes occasionally. They are quite the destination in the summer, when swimming, fishing and water sports are popular ways of dealing with the heat. Nonetheless, most lakes have definite shortcomings. Although I rave about their natural beauty, many are kind of ugly in practice. Even at their best, they are dirty and require an immense amount of packing. Given these factors, it is surprising that spending weeks of our valuable summer vacation at the lake is somewhat of an all-American pastime.

Lake vacations tend to be popular not because of branding, but rather in spite of it. Can you think of a popular and commonplace ‘lake brand’? I can’t. This is one area of destination branding that seems largely untapped.

I recently discovered a blog dedicated to creating a logo design for each of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes. The author points out that lake logos tend to be ugly. A quick survey of the genre led me to agree with this statement. The goal of the blog is to create an attractive and modern logo design for Minnesota’s lakes, simply to rethink the entire genre.

I browsed the website a bit. One of the things that I liked was that the logo designs did not use the images commonly seen in lake logos, like waves and water. Instead, most tie into the lake in question’s name. For example, Double Lake has shadowing that creates a double image, while Spur Lake features the image of a lake.

Most of the logos are rather simple and use obvious images relating to the name, but this is demanded by time. The writer is creating one logo per day, which is quite a challenge. Even at this rate, it will take a little over 27 years to design a logo for each one. I can only hope that the website owner does not have a full time day job!

There is a reason that I write about destination logos so much on this blog. Destination branding is becoming big business in the United States and indeed throughout the world. It may be one of the fastest growing genres of logo design, which makes it automatically interesting to the design geeks among us. The rules for destination logo design are still being written, which means that a single good design (or even a bad one) can have a huge amount of impact on the future of the industry.

One of the most important parts of destination branding actually has nothing to do with actual design. It is the all-important first step, that of determining exactly what sets the area apart and why people should visit it. Many of the logos in Branding 10,000 Lakes seem to fall short in this area, but the one-logo-per-day schedule surely has an adverse effect on the amount of forethought that can go into each design.

I admire the effort and stamina it must take to delve into such a huge design project. The designer behind Branding 10,000 Lakes has their work cut out for them.

Tyler, Texas is a small town of less than 100,000 people. However, it is somewhat of a popular tourist destination in its area. It is quaint and beautiful (I am told), known in Texas as ‘the Rose Capital’. This idea was expressed in its destination logo design.

The old Texas logo design featured the name of the city in cursive with a rose entwined in the swirling tail of the Y. The rose was yellow, referring to the folk song about the ‘Yellow Rose of Texas’. The writing was in purple, presumably to complement the color of the rose.

The logo design had a lot of good ideas behind the design, but it did not seem to work well. It simply was not a logo that invited me to visit the city. It apparently was not used much, because I could not even find it in decent resolution. To be fair, the old logo was 15 years old.

The new logo keeps many of the same elements, but in a more attractive way. The cursive is still present, although it has been updated. The rose is now red, set in a style that appears to be a wood block print or stamp. It is folksy and charming, but more modern. A tagline has been added as well, advertising Tyler as ‘a natural beauty’, which refers to the beautiful outdoors for which the area is known throughout Texas. The purple and yellow had to go, and they thankfully did.

The new logo design is definitely an improvement. It is more attractive and more modern, without losing any of the brand elements seen before. On the other hand, my key question remains unanswered: why should I visit Tyler, Texas?

Unfortunately, logo designing is not just about creating a pretty picture. If that was all there is to it, any artistically inclined teenager could play around in Photoshop and come up with something suitable. However, creating a great logo requires a mixture of design sense and branding sense. The designer has to have an innate feel for the market and understand how to visually address the customer. In this case, a professional logo designer would ask themselves: what am I trying to say here? The current logo tells people that they should visit this destination; a great one would tell them why they need to do so. It is a subtle difference that can make or break a logo, or even the company that it represents.

I feel no subconscious pull toward this area after viewing the logo. That, ultimately, will be the shortcoming inherent in this design. People should view a destination logo and feel two things: an awareness of the area, and a longing to experience it for themselves. In the first requirement, this logo design excels. In the second one, it falls flat.

Is your logo design telling customers why they should choose you over the competition? If not, it may be time for rebranding! The difference that design makes can be the difference that turns around your company.

Simplicity is always a good thing in design, or at least that is what we designers say all the time. However, this comes with a caveat. Simple logo design is good, but communication is key. Not all logos end up simple, and this does not make them bad; the goal is really to make sure that every part is as simple as it can be and that it earns its space by communicating a message.

For this reason, I am always pleased when I see a new logo design that takes the most important aspects of a design and distills them into a simpler and yet more meaningful package. A good example of this principle comes from across the Atlantic in Sweden, the home of simple Scandinavian design.

The old TV8 logo was a shiny, gradiented mess. It featured a circle with layered circles, similar to a bullseye. The white circle has been expanded into a letter 8. The effect is similar to a camera shutter, but the name and the red dot really detract from this effect. Moreover, the off center shine seems randomly placed. This is one image that simply does not work with the little bit of added dimension.

While many companies are changing their logos to look more three dimensional design and glossy, TV8 is actually moving in precisely the opposite direction. Gone are the red dot and the ‘Viasat’; instead part of a bubble or other orb has been placed at the outer edge of the image, which definitely brings out the shutter associations for me. The three dimensional shine has been removed, which really needed to happen. Despite all of the changes, the basic bones of the image (the 8 layered within a circle) remain. If anything, the simplicity serves to accent the basic structure. There is still a slight color gradient in some versions, but this is far less offensive than the glossy light in the old design.

One of the main reasons for the redesign is the change in primary audience for the channel. When it first started, TV8 was a current affairs channel with a focus on news. Suddenly the old TV Channel logo makes a little more sense. Now, the channel is making a gradual switch to lifestyle programming for adult audiences. The new logo design will definitely fit the new needs well. Moreover, I think that the new, simpler design makes the 8 a little easier to identify.

The previous look was relatively new, introduced in 2007 when parent company Viasat redesigned all of their logos to have layered circle motifs. We are gradually seeing these designs fade away and be replaced because the devise simply did not work well for many networks. However, in this case the layered circle is the perfect choice due to the shape of a number eight and also the references to a camera shutter. Moreover, a circle is a friendly shape, and the layered circles seem to pull my eyes in, almost hypnotically. In a genre with so many poorly conceived logos, it is nice to see one that is simple, attractive and appropriate for its audience.

Have you heard of Teletoon? The Canadians in my audience are nodding, while the Americans are saying “Heard of what?” Teletoon is basically Canada’s version of Cartoon Network, a television channel that offers a variety of animation programs for both children and adults. We wrote about the Cartoon Network rebranding when it happened a while back, and now we are seeing our neighbor to the north follow the same trend.

The old logo design was colorful and cartoonish, a fitting image for the network. The angling of the words gave it a comic book quality that was appealing to toon lovers of all ages. This logo design worked. It was a great representative of the channel, which holds the bar high for its replacement.

The new logo design turns the old ones shape into a three dimensional rendering, complete with shadowing and raised wording. The bright and eye-catching color scheme has been changed into a cooler yellow and white. The comic book quality and most of the character are gone, leaving the skeleton of the old logo.

Although it seems like 3-D would make the image more dynamic and alive, it actually seems to have just the opposite effect. The new logo design feels heavy and clunky. The color scheme just sucks. Despite the many reasons to dislike this logo, there is one thing about it that I really don’t like: it is not even a real redesign. The designers merely took the old logo design and rendered it in another format and color—poorly chosen ones at that. That’s not rebranding. It isn’t even a brand evolution. Anyone could have done this with a minimal amount of cheap software.

On the other hand, the new 3D logo design will be easier to render in the on-air animations that are so important right now. Also, the simpler color scheme will make it easier to build a brand color palette. On the other hand, this logo design (as with so many three dimensional ones) will not work well in off-air formats. On t-shirts and other 2-D materials, the logo design will lose what little charm it has. This will become more and more apparent when it is faxed or copied into a low-resolution format.

Television stations must have great TV Channel logos because branding is crucial to their success. Even before viewers view a program, they must make a conscious decision to turn to any given channel. Branding has a huge effect on this decision. The old logo design was dynamic and had the right mix of retro and modern—in short, it made me want to see what is on. The new one is overly technological yet lacks interest, which is hardly the impression that the channel is trying to make.

Think twice before going with a three dimensional logo design. For some companies, this can be a good strategy. However, for most people it simply does not work. As with most logo design devices, it can only work effectively in a few situations.

Bitdefender is one of the leading antivirus companies on the globe, although you would never know it from its software logo design. It is well-rounded and popular both in corporations and home computers because it offers superior protection. However, having a professional brand certainly never hurts anything. In fact, until recently at least, very few people really noticed this company even if they used it. That is certainly no way to build a brand.

The former logo design was one of the reasons that the branding.htm”>brand is not very well-known despite dominating the industry. Bitdefender’s logo featured the name in lower case, italicized lettering. Many aspects of the logo simply don’t make sense. For instance, the capital E’s in the middle of lower case lettering; who thought of that? The image is ambiguous and looks a bit like spider legs smashed into a circle for an added hint of style. As outlandish as that sounds, it is difficult to come up with a more plausible interpretation.

The new logo design is still unorthodox, but it is more attractive and makes a little more sense. First, the font is more appropriate, a bespoke type with pointed serifs that are definitely edgy. The capitalization makes sense, making the entire design easier to look at. The same basic color palette is used, but it has been modernized to include a darker, more soothing red. The image is that of the Dacian Dragon-wolf, a serpent-like creature that hails from Romania, where the company began. The Dacian people traditionally believed that this animal was their defender and that it was pretty much unbeatable. After all, when was the last time you went up to battle a dragon-wolf and didn’t run away? Be honest.

The new image is humorous, but it is memorable and certainly relevant both in meaning and in historic significance. Do you want an invincible dragon-wolf guarding your computer from viruses and spam? I know I do.

Moreover, the new logo design is simply more attractive. I think that the unattractiveness of the old one was the main issue with company recognition. Studies have found that people look longer at attractive faces and pictures; it would only stand to reason that we look away from less pleasant images and perhaps make a subconscious effort not to remember them. That can be a real downer if your company logo design is the one being ignored!

The only downside to the new logo design is that most people will not automatically associate the image with the Dacian Dragon-Wolf. The company will have to invest some time and effort into publicizing the meaning behind this image, but I think it will definitely pay off. The image had my attention long enough that I can remember it. The story behind it is just outlandish enough to be interesting and yet not so exotic as to be silly. It’s an interesting angle that will set the company apart from the competition and make it more memorable in a world where brand recognition is everything.

NBCUniversal has had some brand confusion since the merger of the two conglomerates in 2004. Their television production arm has been known recently as NBC Universal Television Studio, a long and unwieldy name. However, the brand retained the name Universal Media Studios in the logo and many of the other visuals. This is confusing, to say the least! The name has recently been shortened to Universal Television and the TV Channel logo design modified to match the Universal brand, creating more continuity.

The old logo featured the name of the studio in Universal’s signature font, along with a semi-circle representing the globe that has been a part of the brand for so long. One of the key problems with the logo design is that it just doesn’t execute well. The two different fonts just don’t work well together, and the arc rises too far above the wording. The various parts of the logo seem disconnected.

The new logo resolves these issues, along with the name issue that has plagued the company for so long. It uses a single font, with the word ‘universal’ written in bold lettering to make it the focus of the logo. The arc has been made wider and shorter to look more like a horizon. These may seem like small changes, but they add up to a much more attractive logo that just feels better.

This change in logo design and name may signal a lot of changes for the company. They recently introduced a new leadership team. A press release from the company called this a ‘rebuilding’ of the division, which suggests that it has been having recent problems. Indeed, many television networks are struggling to produce programs that will be popular with the ever-more-discerning audience. In a Jersey Shore world, it can be hard to gain the public’s attention without public indecency.

This logo drives home a point that we have made over and over at this blog: sometimes it takes only minor changes to turn a losing logo design into one that is both more attractive and better suited for its audience. The new logo is serious and austere the way designs from large conglomerates so often are, but it is certainly better than its predecessor. It is relevant in modern times while tying into the company’s past; who could ask for more?

We’ve written a lot about NBCUniversal on this blog because the conglomerate seems to be constantly changing their logos, probably due to growing pains left over from the merger. Another factor is that television is a constantly changing industry, so brands must change with it in order to be successful. If you are trying to find success in a rapidly changing industry with a large and growing market, you may find that rebranding is a continuous effort rather than a once-in-a-while proposition.

The magazine industry is under attack. While magazines, newspapers and other print periodicals were once a top means of entertainment in the United States, they have suffered massive losses as free entertainment on the internet has become the main way of passing time and getting information. Magazines all over the United States are responding by focusing on branding, developing new formats and new logo designs for their publications.

House Beautiful is the latest example of this trend. The magazine has traditionally used a rather simple logotype as a logo design. The type was tall and thin but rather plain, probably to prevent any stylistic clashes with the variety of homes and rooms published on the cover. The writing was published in colors that accented the cover to draw in reader interest at newsstands. This flexible color scheme will continue, but the font is changing as of this month’s issue. The writing has been pushed closer together and given curvy details that create a more distinctive feeling.

House Beautiful released a statement saying that the company feels its new logo is more youthful and feminine while also easier to read. However, I find it a little more difficult to read. Pushing the words together gives the text logo design a crowded feeling—like a cluttered room. The terminals definitely add interest and a youthful feeling, but they are almost girly. The fact that the terminals are placed only on certain letters keeps the logo from feeling too frilly, but it also makes them feel a little forced, especially in the word ‘House’. Putting the fancy detailing on the capital letters would probably resolve this issue.

One of the things that I really like about this logo design is that it has a general vintage feeling. However, it will still work well with a more modern cover because it has not gone full-on retro. It gives the magazine a more definite brand without limiting the editorial content. In short, while this logo definitely has a few issues, it is definitely an improvement and a much-needed update as well. The logo adds personality, while most magazine logo updates seem to be instead stripping it away.

The core problem in designing a magazine logo is that the magazine needs to appear to offer value. Americans are not afraid to pay for information, even if it is available for free, but the periodical needs to present a brand worth paying for. This logo design seems up to the task of building a House Beautiful brand among young home owners.

With seven million readers, House Beautiful is one of the most successful American home décor magazines and also the longest continuously published name in its genre. However, even the most established business (or magazine) needs an occasional brand update. This new logo design adds character while maintaining simplicity and flexibility, which makes it a winner. It is a great design that is well-executed and will be instrumental in building a larger readership.

Can you own a bird? When it comes to an actual feathered animal in a cage, then the answer is yes. When it comes to the sole rights to use the image of a bird in marketing, the issue becomes much more complicated. Popular cereal maker Kellogg’s is claiming that a nonprofit organization is violating their copyright by using a toucan in their logo design and marketing.

The main problem with Kellogg’s claims is that the only similarity that the Maya Archaeology Institute’s logo beats to the spokesanimal for Froot Loops is that they are both toucans. Toucan Sam is a cartoony, anthropomorphic creature, while the bird in the MAI logo is stylized and modern. In addition, the toucan is a bird that is local to the region that the MAI represents. In other words, the San Francisco based charity has good reason to use this bird in their advertising.

The MAI has been quick to point out these and other issues since receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the cereal company. In a legal brief, lawyers pointed out that Toucan Sam is not similar to an actual toucan bird, which is the image seen in the logo. The logo also features Mayan images such as a step pyramid. Because the company has no intention of entering the cereal market, the chances of confusion are slim to nil. Look at the two images; can you tell which is Toucan Sam? It was not hard for me to differentiate between the two.

The MAI’s purpose is to educate Guatemalan people about Mayan history and to support the preservation of Mayan architecture in the area. The images in the logo show the place that the organization is trying to protect. This is just one of many small nonprofit organizations that are doing important work around the globe. It seems unfortunate that they must take time away from this work to defend their brand.

Kellogg’s claims that their main concern is that MAI will use their logo design on t-shirts and other clothing, because Toucan Sam is also present on clothing. Again, would you be confused? We wouldn’t. In addition, Kellogg’s does not like the use of Mayan imagery because they have used this in the past and thus feel a misguided proprietary claim on it. We could not find any Mayan references on the company website except for a Mayan witch doctor who is the villain in a Froot Loops game. This is a negative reference and one that MAI will be happy to let Kellogg’s keep.

If the MAI cannot use either a toucan or Mayan images on their logo design, what kind of logo can they have? In this case, it seems that Kellogg’s is merely being a bully. Hopefully the courts will side with the MAI, although it will still come at great expense to the small nonprofit and take time and money away from their important work in Guatemala. At the time of writing, there is talk of a settlement, although we hope that this settlement includes allowing the MAI to use their current image.

Luxul is one of those companies that operates behind the scenes of daily life. It provides wireless and other IT solutions to a variety of businesses, including many hospitals and healthcare organizations, but most of us will not recognize this logo design. The unknown nature of this national leader is important because it is probably coming to an end. In addition to modifying their name, logo design and brand, the company is changing the way they market themselves and how they do business in general.

Wireless services and products such as ethernet switches and commercial grade routers may not be interesting, but they are necessary to the running of a modern business—and even a modern household. Luxul plans to begin marketing their company as a high quality and more technologically advanced option to more commercial companies. The new logo design is similar to the old one, except that it has dropped the ‘Wireless’ from the name, which is important because the company is introducing new networking services. In addition, the market has changed; while offering wireless services once set a company apart, it now is an assumed part of internet services.

The new marketing campaign is called ‘Simply Connected’ and will focus on simple solutions to networking problems. Many Americans have ongoing issues with their internet connection (call support, restart, begin again), and Luxul is trying to be the easy, common sense solution. Luxul’s new line is called Xen and offers pre-configured modular networks for both businesses and homes that are easy to install and easy to scale to the size that customers need. In addition, the company is offering a new mobile network service that will service people and companies that need access to their routers while out in the field.

One of the things that we dislike most about the old logo design is the ribbon that is wrapped around the X. This seems to make little sense for this industry. Unfortunately, this element has been kept in the new logo design. Indeed, the main change seems to be the removal of the word ‘Wireless’ and the addition of the new marketing campaign/tagline. The rebranding could have dealt with this and other issues in the logo design; unfortunately, it does not.

Whether your company or your industry is changing, it is important to change with the times. In this case, we see a company that is trying to remain relevant to existing customers while inviting a new and larger customer base to try their products. A new logo design and marketing campaign are two very effective ways of dealing with the issue. If your industry and your market are both changing, then you need to change as well.

How is your company keeping up with a rapidly changing world? If any aspect of your brand is out of date or no longer resonating with your customer base, talk to a logo designer about how you can make a change that will make all the difference.

Let the circus begin! We are just a few months away from another national election, and the Democratic National Committee has already unveiled their official Democratic National Convention logo design.

The design is very similar to the former campaign logo design for Obama, which is probably not an accident. The incumbent is the obvious choice for the 2012 candidate, and we pity the fool who runs against him for the nomination. This logo design seems to indicate that hiring is closed for this position. Obama 2012 it will be.

However, the circle is not just a shape associated with the letter O; it is a friendly and inclusive shape that aptly represents the image that the DNC wants to present. The colors of the American flag are present, although they have been modified slightly for a modern feeling. The image seems to be a crowd of people staring into a horizon somewhat triumphantly (see the hands clasped in victory?).

The circle is also the shape of a ring. I could jokingly suggest that this resembles the rings used in a circus… in fact, I just did. The 2012 election is shaping up to be crazier and more vicious than any we have seen in the past. It is hard to believe that the Presidential election is still more than a year away, because it has been the sole topic on the news for several months.

Elections are not determined based on logo design alone, although marketing is becoming an increasingly important part of the equation. If voters were choosing a President based solely on their logo, the Democrats would be winning. You see, the Republicans have also chosen a design for their 2012 National Convention. It features darker, more conservative colors along with the familiar elephant image and a few boring fonts. The Democrats have already won our votes for best logo, and they didn’t really have to try hard.

What do these images say about their respective parties? The DNC logo design feels hopeful and modern. It focuses on the likely Democratic candidate for presidency along with a crowd of people who represent their voting base. The RNC logo, on the other hand, is less firm in both its candidate and its target audience. They are not sure who their audience is anymore, but they know these people are conservative: hence a very conservative logo design. Because there are so many Republican presidential hopefuls and none have a clear advantage, there is no indication of the person being nominated.

The Republican National Committee logo design is hobbled by a lack of friendliness and also a lack of direction. The DNC logo design is not great, but it has a great deal more focus simply because the party itself has this advantage.

This is not an endorsement of a party or a candidate. Who you vote for is your own business. However, the Democratic marketing engine seems to be several steps ahead of that of their rivals, which gives them an important advantage in these early stages.

If you have been through the logo design process, you know that it can be intensive and challenging. When you end up with a design that works perfectly for your company, you feel protective of it, almost like a child. It is a hard-won victory that morally and legally belongs solely to your company.

No one protects their brands as vigilantly as large multinational corporation. There is a reason that you choose Nikes over the cheaper models at Target. There is a reason that you reach for certain products over others. You trust certain brands, and they have worked hard at building this loyalty. It rightfully belongs to them.

This is why these large (and small!) companies get very defensive, and even take the offensive, when their brands are threatened or misappropriated. Take Apple, for instance. This is one of the original computer brands. It has been through numerous ups and downs, and fought hard for its current place at the top of its industry. The Apple logo design is so common now that it is virtually ubiquitous, and people around the world associate the bitten apple image with the company that it represents.

If another company began to use the same or even a similar image for their own products, it could really hurt Apple. This, in fact, is what is occurring. Chinese company Sichuan Fangguo Food Co uses an image of an apple as their logo design. As they are expanding to the American market, they recently filed for a trademark for their image. The problem is that the logo is strikingly similar to that of both Apple and LG. In fact, if you look at the image, it is almost an amalgam of the two.

Sichuan Fangguo defends their logo design, claiming that it is a completely original design that incorporates the Chinese characters representing the company into a wholesome, food related image that perfectly represents their company. Apple has filed papers in hopes of stopping the purported imitation from being trademarked to another country. LG, which seems to be the real victim here, is silent on the matter, probably because Apple is a formidable enough opponent that the design has a good chance of being rejected by the powers that be.

A spokesperson from the Chinese food company states that when the company developed their logo design, they had never even heard of Apple. The company began as a state-run business in China and only recently went private. The whole bit about not having heard of this global giant seems unlikely and, in our opinion, undermines Sichuan Fangguo’s credibility in the matter. To make matters worse, the food company tried to register it in a variety of categories, including notebook computers and electronic diversion software (which means gadgets). Both are categories in which Apple dominates.

Whether it is a purposeful theft or an accident, the problem for Sichuan Fangguo will remain the same. If the image is determined to be too similar to the existing trademark of Apple, it cannot be used to represent another company in the United States.

Appropriated Logo Wins Award: If you have any familiarity with the world of advertising, you have probably heard of San Francisco advertising firm Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, known in the industry as GSP. If you are familiar with the world of logo design, you may have heard about the controversy surrounding this company’s new logo design.

GSP is one of the big names in advertising, having designed campaigns for notable names such as Chevrolet, Yahoo! and Got Milk? Despite its prominence, the agency is relatively new, opening less than three decades ago. They have received numerous industry awards for their advertising campaigns, and now they have received a design award for what appears to be a misappropriated logo.

Like many companies, GSP rebrands and changed logo design occasionally to stay relevant in their market. Rather than hiring a professional logo design agency for their latest change, the company partner Rich Silverstein did it himself. This is not an approach that we generally advocate, and in this case it ended badly.

The problem, as many design blogs pointed out, is that the new design is strikingly similar—an almost carbon copy, in fact—of the design used by a now closed company called S & Co. To be clear, there was probably no actual copyright infringement here; the original owner of the logo design has been dead long enough that the design is most likely in the common domain.

However, many people were incensed simply because of the deception involved. The company clearly tried to pass off the design as an original, not mentioning the source until it was pointed out repeatedly in the media. In fact, GSP entered their logo design into a design contest based in Cannes, along with a brief that included no indication of the fact that the image heavily borrowed from another. They ended up winning an award.

As many people like to point out, there is nothing new under the sun. Most designs borrow heavily from others, if not from actual copyrighted works as from certain schools and motifs. There are only so many ways to draw an idea. However, it is important that the original and rightful owners be given the credit they are due, and that the design is open for legal use. An executive in the advertising industry is well aware of the fine line between inspiration and plagiarism.

However, the creator of the logo design defends his decision to use a recycled logo with no reference to the original. In a statement sent to many both within and without the company, Rich Silverstein claims, “Our new logo is old… it’s not a coincidence that the logo looks like a 100 year old ligature. It was 100% intentional.”

Intentional or not, the way this logo design was introduced (and entered into a design contest with no note of the inspiration behind the design) feels a little dishonest. Because designers pride themselves on honest and integrity in work, it ruffled a lot of feathers.