Your website is the face of your business. It can be accessed from anywhere in the world at any time, and it’s role is to represent you exactly as you are (or preferably better, even). Because of this, customers use your company's website to make numerous assumptions about your brand at a glance.
Your website is the face of your business. It can be accessed from anywhere in the world at any time, and it’s role is to represent you exactly as you are (or preferably better, even). Because of this, customers use your company's website to make numerous assumptions about your brand at a glance.
Your website is often the first thing your target audience will see. Creating the layout and curating how your business communicates with the customer are vital parts of a successful website. A professionally designed website will directly influence customer perception of your brand and products for years to come, so that first impression needs to stick.
But what if this fails? How could you avoid it? How do you make it look more professional, attractive, and interesting for your customers or clients?
Do not allow your website to be an afterthought in your marketing efforts. Today we’ll take a look at how a bad website can hurt your business, and touch on how to avoid these classic mistakes so that your business’s online presence can thrive.
Many of your potential customers will have their first interaction with your brand online through your website. Something as simple as a convoluted or cluttered design can wreak havoc on user experience and can disqualify you from the start.
75% of consumers admit they judge a business’s credibility based on their website design.
Website clutter is a deterrent — remove any flash animations, auto-play videos, background music, and ad prompts. Your visitors and Google would be much happier if you did.
A poorly designed website can cause tracking problems and ultimately lower your ranking in Google and other search engines. It is also a massive turn-off to visitors, and once they leave, they won’t return. Confused and frustrated visitors simply won’t buy your product or service.
No one wants to land on a website that is complicated to navigate. If your page is not simple and easy to browse, you will lose otherwise motivated leads. If your message and navigation are not clear — clients will click away.
Your website should contain your address and phone number — making it easy for website visitors to contact you. Your content should be organized and easy to navigate. Get rid of any erroneous content that does not contribute to your overall brand message.
If your website doesn't clearly display your brand's aesthetic, products, or services, customers will simply look elsewhere to make their purchase. Clients will see others with similar services. Cut the fat and make your presentation as streamlined as possible to put as few steps in the way as possible between your audience getting to your site and completing the desired action.
If your website hasn’t taken accessibility into consideration, it is very likely that users with accessibility challenges will not find it easy to see your content correctly — for example, not having the correct color contrasts, use of fonts, navigation, or other development structures in place can make it difficult for some people to see your content. That’s an entire portion of your target audience that isn’t able to browse your site and become clients or customers because their ability to access your content was deemed nonessential. Don’t make that mistake!
On the other side of accessibility is mobile friendliness. According to Comscore, the number of website visitors accessing content online through their mobile devices has now surpassed those who use a desktop or laptop. This means that if your website is not mobile responsive, you are not allowing the majority of those online at any given moment to access your content properly.
In fact, Google has long-since moved to mobile-first indexing, meaning that if your site isn’t mobile responsive, not only are you providing a subpar experience to your website visitors, but you are also actively hurting your rankings via the Google search algorithm.
Clean websites are the key to accessibility. Without a mobile-friendly website, when users visit your site from their mobile device, everything will appear cluttered, messy, and designed for a landscape viewing experience, rather than a portrait one.
No one wants to scroll sideways through your site to get to the navigation bar or to have to zoom in to tap a button or type in a search bar on your site. Ensure that your site is mobile responsive and that you are meeting ADA guidelines for accessibility.
Having an identifiable brand name can make or break your business. So can your domain name. If you pick an exceptionally long domain or one not relevant to your business, you could potentially divert your target audience. Likewise, choosing a cheap hosting service, is often a poor choice, since a low-quality host can be down more often than you’d like and leave your customers unable to access your site. This is especially harmful for eCommerce sites.
Most consumers expect a website to load in 2 seconds or less. 79% of shoppers reported they would not return to purchase from a slow-loading website.
Like many of the other errors, choosing the wrong domain or hosting package could negatively impact your business by losing clients, losing sales, losing leads, or facing excessive downtime that your business can not afford. Saving a few dollars just to lose far more is a terrible investment - Don’t skimp on your hosting.
If you have a website that has been poorly developed, there is a good chance that it’s difficult for those with accessibility issues to view your website’s content. Problems such as the wrong color contrast, too-large or too-small fonts, difficult navigation, or any other poor design elements which are in place can make it difficult for some visitors to view your website or any of its content.
If your website is not reaching the audience it could be reaching — you’re missing out on valuable sales opportunities. If you have a website that harbors inaccessibility to a portion of your audience, be they disabled or able-bodied, you run the risk of word-of-mouth marketing leading to even more sales opportunities lost. Worse yet, not following ADA accessibility standards can run you afoul of legal penalties, even if it doesn’t necessarily affect your Google rankings.
At Carrboro Creative, we design 100% customized WordPress sites to fit your business’s needs. Our process is simple, straightforward, and personable. We’ll talk with you about your vision for your site, allow for multiple rounds of revisions as we hone in on your perfect design, and train you on how to update and maintain your site yourself. We even offer site maintenance packages on a monthly basis. Get in touch with us today to get a free quote. Start building your online presence the right way with Carrboro Creative.
Any successful website out there is made up of various useful concepts to make its web design efficient and unforgettable to those who will navigate it. Yes, designing a website is a challenging task. However, thinking beyond the box might be beneficial. Using your creativity and thinking about the future could help you come up with something unique.
Any successful website out there is made up of various useful concepts to make its web design efficient and unforgettable to those who will navigate it. Yes, designing a website is a challenging task. However, thinking beyond the box might be beneficial. Using your creativity and thinking about the future could help you come up with something unique.
Here are some helpful tips to help you create the website you've always wanted.
“Almost everyone (94%) says easy navigation is the most important website feature”, A survey conducted by Clutch. Couldn’t be true enough. Nobody likes to visit a messy and difficult-to-navigate website. Keep in mind that not everyone who visits your website is technically savvy. The paths to your site's sections and information should be obvious and simple to follow. Below are the guides for easy website navigation:
Implement the above-mentioned key points and take inspiration from famous websites online.
Let's start with the fundamentals. Responsive design refers to the creation of a website/webpage that is compatible with all smartphones, PCs, laptops, and other display devices, regardless of their aspect ratios. Right measurement, the height, and width of a display device are referred to as its aspect ratio. Many users right now access websites through mobile phones. As a result, website designers should react by creating a mobile version of their site. It should be compatible with a wide range of mobile phone brands, rather than only the most well-known smartphone brands such as the iPhone and Samsung. Consider other brand users as well.
Consider these tips for responsive design:
A good color mix attracts users, however, a bad color combination can distract them. This necessitates the selection of a suitable color palette for your website, which can create a pleasant atmosphere and thus have a positive impression on visitors. Every design element should reflect and communicate the identity of a brand. Photos, pictures, and other images break up the web page and balance out the text, giving the eyes a break from reading.
Colors often have tradeoffs. Checking to see if the color you chose is well-liked by others is beneficial. Because some colors may work well with a particular text while others may not, consistency is essential. Using white spaces and tones may help your website avoid too much visual clutter and mess. Focus on 3 to 4 tones for your website design. It gives more attraction and appeal to a site and gives your design a clear impression. Also making use of too many vibrant images is restricted. This mandates the selection of an appropriate color palette for your website, which can help to generate a pleasant ambiance and hence a positive impression on visitors.
All users interact with the system using a user interface, acting as a link between the user and the system. Having a good UI, more users will want to stay and spend more time accessing. It’s the job of the designer to make it user-friendly by keeping it looking clean and fresh. A good UI have these qualities:
Here are some critical questions to ask yourself in designing a website and to maintain a good UI:
Who wouldn’t want a quick-loading website? It creates a stress-free atmosphere for users. We all know that no person would want to access websites that take too much time to load. We can achieve this by optimizing the image sizes, combining code into a Central CSS or JavaScript file because it reduces requests from HTTP. Also, don’t forget to compress HTML, Javascript, and CSS to enhance the loading speed.
“The performance of the website must be smooth as butter, not slow as a sloth (that’s a terrible example).” Bad website performance will greatly create a bad impression of the company. Act and think wisely. Website testing tools, like Pingdom Tools, can help you test the speed of your website.
Knowing what’s going on inside the system or website is necessary. Feedback is a form of response to a task, an event after it has been completed or still in the process of being completed. An example scenario: You're utilizing a website to do some online transactions, and you have no understanding of what's going on in the system. Suddenly, you receive an email informing you that the transaction has failed. You should be thinking of different possibilities that are going to happen. These scenarios can be avoided.
It would have been better if the website provides suitable feedback regarding the transaction failure or the reason that caused it. Internet connection issues, a money limit in your bank or might be just a minor technical glitch of the website. Having progress feedback is the beneficial part of the design.
Users are well-informed. They are able to see through flimsy marketing lingos, they expect brands to be authentic and reliable. An appealing website should match its authenticity and design. Some websites’ content is just too good to be true, and it never feels nice seeing one.
So, entrust your website design to a professional one. These different principles may help you develop user-friendly websites. Without these guides, it can certainly be hard to achieve and develop a good and spontaneous website. Just remember that a website with excellent usability and user-friendliness will always flourish in the real world.
When done correctly, copywriting is a cost-effective way to boost your SEO, bring in visitors, and—ultimately—increase sales. It’s a necessary strategy for any successful marketer and offers a world of possibilities for any business.
When done correctly, copywriting is a cost-effective way to boost your SEO, bring in visitors, and—ultimately—increase sales. It’s a necessary strategy for any successful marketer and offers a world of possibilities for any business.
Today, we’ll take a look at our favorite tips for improving your copywriting to not only engage your audience, but also get in the Google algorithm’s good books and bump up your bottom line.
Think of why someone would be reading your article. Usually, the reader is looking for answers. And—let’s face it— no one wants to look very hard for them. The pacing of your copy will determine if the audience will have an enjoyable reading experience and if you’ll efficiently get your point across.
Keep your sentences short and savvy. Keep your paragraphs clear and to the point. Use callouts and breakout boxes to highlight important points. If you’ve made a unique statement, consider creating a new section after.
Readers aren’t looking for a complicated and intense reading piece. They don’t have the intention of reading a research article when they open your copy. They want to know what they can get from reading this, and they’re not looking to work for it.
You’ll have to ride a fine line of getting your point across while still providing easy-to-read copy. Make sure to limit technical jargon and stick to terms that a layperson can understand.
If there’s a first impression for copy, it’s the font. Readers will initially judge your copy based on the way its font looks. If it appears generic, the audience may perceive it as boring. If it’s hard to read, it may come off as sloppy or unprofessional.
Be sure to take into consideration colors, sizes, and types of font. Use websites of quality brands as inspiration when determining the characteristics of your fonts. Set yourself up for success early by creating a font hierarchy and sticking to it. Make sure your headings and body text are clearly differentiated and ensure that your fonts fit together and create a cohesive whole when applied to a webpage or blog post.
Punctuation serves the purpose of giving meaning to words. It provides flow and rhythm to your copy and can mean the difference between an impactful point and a throwaway line.. Apostrophes, semi-colons, exclamation points, and proper capitalization can all have a considerable impact on how your writing is digested by your readers.
It’s essential not to overuse the comma. You should only be using it at points you would take a breath while reading a sentence. Overusing commas can lead to run-on sentences and lost meaning.
When someone reads copy, they’re typically scanning the page before committing to reading it. They want to know what they’ll be getting from it and if it has the information they’re seeking.
To help draw people into your copy, use sub-headings to introduce each section. These sections will also serve to break up your copy into manageable chunks. Always bold your sub-headings and format them hierarchically. These headings serve two purposes:
This point is pretty straightforward — you should always use active voice when writing. By using active voice, you emphasize the subject performing the action rather than the action itself. This makes your writing flow smoother and gets the point across in a direct, easily digestible waythat has more impact and feels more natural to the reader.
Writing isn’t always the easiest thing to sit down and do. And it’s even easier to get distracted when it comes to copywriting. It’s important to minimize potential interruptions and allow yourself time to write.
One solution is to wholly commit to writing for a set amount of time. For some people, the ideal time is 20 minutes with a 5-minute break. For others, it may be 30 minutes of focus and 10 minutes of free time. Regardless of your preference, make sure you are only allowed to work on your writing during the productivity time. Turn your phone off, close unnecessary applications, and give yourself a private area to work.
The entire point of a copy is to deliver your audience with a clear call to action at the conclusion. The CTA serves to boost click-through rate and increase rankings in the search engine results pages. Without this, you’ve wasted your copy and failed to use it properly.
Make sure your call to action is evident and direct. Use action phrases such as “call today” or “try now” to improve engagement. You should include a clear link to your target, whether it’s a website or a link to a product, so that the reader can easily access the place you’re trying to send them.
Regardless of the kind of information that you want to provide to your clients and customers, if you don’t present it professionally, you aren’t likely to build that trust. Having all of the information that your client wants easily accessible to them proves that you are who you say you are and that you’ve taken the time to care about their browsing experience.
That’s where we come in. Carrboro Creative is a results-driven creative agency that offers website care plans, custom website design, brand development, graphic design, SEO, and more.
Contact us today for a free quote, and let us show you how we can help you with your content marketing and reputation building for your brand, business, and website.
Many people think that building a website is super easy. That’s not always the case. For a professional, customizable website that represents your business online, that drag and drop feature is not going to cut it. It’s important to understand that these generic tools also use generic templates that are not designed to meet your business’ needs in the long run, and if you want to do it once, you’ve got to do it right the first time.
Many people think that building a website is super easy. That’s not always the case. For a professional, customizable website that represents your business online, that drag and drop feature is not going to cut it. It’s important to understand that these generic tools also use generic templates that are not designed to meet your business’ needs in the long run, and if you want to do it once, you’ve got to do it right the first time.
Often, developing a website requires some coding experience, and should be done by a professional. When it comes to website development and design, having a website that meets customers’ standards will translate into higher traffic, better search rankings, and with time, a better conversion rate. Having your website professionally built is an investment in your business’ future.
At Carrboro Creative, we understand the importance of website design and reputation management. Our professionals provide responsive website design that is uniquely tailored to your goals for your business. We design strategic websites that streamline your user experience and simplify the process to make maintaining your website a breeze.
You may think it will be simple to build your website, but it's likely going to take you a lot more time than you are willing to put into it. Not only that, but if you are hoping to generate leads from your site, then any old generic website builder is not going to set you up for success. Today, we’ll take a look at some of the most important reasons why you shouldn’t DIY your website.
Proper professional website development will convert to better traffic and sales, by providing a clean design, better user experience, and proper tools for managing your site. A website that was designed poorly could have consequences for your business. In fact, 61% of users will not return to a poorly-designed website, and 40% of them will go to a competitor.
If a webpage is too cluttered, then potential customers might not even give it the time of day. A professional web designer will know to streamline your site and avoid many common mistakes like too many images, cluttered UI, locally hosted videos, or large blocks of text. As professionals, we understand that a website should make the product or service readily apparent and attractive to your target audience. Research shows that websites with simple visuals and easy-to-read text are easier to process and more desirable for customers.
Believe it or not, almost 70% of web pages miss having a call-to-action on their page. By having a call-to-action, you are inviting users to take a desired action and establish a connection with your company.
Having a well-written call to action increases click-through rates by up to 285%. A professional website designer will guide you on messaging and placement to get the most out of each of your webpages.
For professionals, website design is not just about the look of the site. It’s also about incorporating all elements of digital marketing. These elements include design, user experience, SEO, content, and even social media, making a website a cohesive project.
If you are DIYing your site, you simply won’t have the time or resources to make each of these elements come out exactly like you intend while still managing the day-to-day operations or focusing on big picture moves on your radar.
Building a website may seem like a lot of work. It is.
And that’s OK! Your website is your greatest marketing tool, and if you’re not experienced in maintaining your tools, you’re not alone. Most business owners aren’t.
That’s where we come in. Carrboro Creative is a results-driven creative agency that offers website care plans, custom website design, brand development, graphic design, SEO, and more. Contact us today for a free quote and let us show you how we can keep your website fresh, keep new visitors rolling in, and care for your website so you can get back to running your business.
Are you looking for a way to get customers to notice you? You have worked so hard, and your business is your passion, so what's next? We all want the work we put into our businesses to “pay-off,” but sometimes it can be a struggle to know where to start and how to get customers to notice your brand and for your website traffic to pick up..
Are you looking for a way to get customers to notice you? You have worked so hard, and your business is your passion, so what's next? We all want the work we put into our businesses to “pay-off,” but sometimes it can be a struggle to know where to start and how to get customers to notice your brand and for your website traffic to pick up..
Customers want to know what sets you apart from other businesses. Finding a way to reach them and show them what's in it for them can be a challenge if you don’t know where to begin. Lack of followthrough at this early stage can often discourage business owners from moving forward with their digital marketing efforts.
When a person invests so much of themselves into their new business, of course, their goal is to succeed. But what’s the process??
Let’s discuss how incorporating storytelling into web design can make all the difference in reaching your customers and spurring business growth.
You should allow customers to recognize you and your product or services instantly.
Think about some of the companies you recognize immediately.
What causes that immediate recognition? It’s a story! Think about Super Bowl ads. Budweiser commercials are immediately recognizable with the inclusion of their Clydesdale horses and the relationship between horses and nature, other animals, or even when the entire team of Clydesdale horses takes a bow in tribute to 9/11.
Customers pay attention when a business has a recognizable brand and uses that brand to tell a story. Humans respond to emotion. A story can cause a person to feel in-tune with your message, laugh, cry, and more. When a person feels emotion, they are drawn to the source of that emotion over and over again and a significant link has been established between your brand and that feeling. Even evoking frustration or negative feelings can have a place in the right sort of brand story, but must be done tastefully and with care.
When creating a brand story, it is essential to keep that story focused and develop brand storytelling consistency. The customers’ eyes should be where you want them. Perhaps the story draws a question, and the conclusion surprises the customer. The story should allow your brand to stand out amongst competitors.
If, for example, Pepsi follows a particular storyline, then Coke should have a completely different brand message through storytelling. On rare occasions, it can be a brand strategy to build off a competitor’s story, but that story extension needs to be very strategic. An approach like that can easily backfire since it ties your brand to a competitor and creates a dependent narrative.
Your brand must be consistent. Again, for example, Budweiser forever associates with Clydesdales, not just any horse breed. Consider consistent storylines, colors, themes, fonts, and more.
Telling stories with words can be effective, but creating engaging stories, including photos and videos, are far more captivating. People are visual, and stories that engage more than one of the senses are more memorable.
Keep distractions to a minimum. Direct the customer to what you want them to see and feel. Allow them to feel their emotions and tie those emotions to your business.
The brand stories should answer questions, solve a problem and evoke emotion. The customer should understand who you are trying to reach, what you are trying to offer, how it can help them, and why they should invest in you.
Often the story will include fewer words and more photos and videos. Who loves a great story with a puppy finding his way home after getting lost just in time to celebrate with his favorite dog food? No words are even necessary, just visuals.
Have you ever seen a brand’s story and wonder what it was you just watched? That should never happen. Every story should allow a customer to know precisely what the story ties to, and it should be memorable.
Brand storytelling had previously been primarily through television or print. The world has changed so much in the last ten years, and brands can tell their stories through social media, any online presence, video games, and more.
We see brand storytelling on billboards, scoreboards, city buses, car wraps, and everywhere around us, and a good story makes all the difference in a business’s success.
Storytelling starts with web design. The first step in the building of your business sets the stage for all stories. Investing in support to create the best story for your brand is always a good idea.
For more professional tips on how to create a brand that ignites the passion of your audience, download our free ebook “5 Steps to Building a Successful Brand Identity”.
Still have questions or need some insight into building your brand? At Carrboro Creative, we’ve got you covered. Contact us today to find out more about how we can help you perfect your message and get recognized for all the right reasons.
If you have ever had an excellent business idea that has never quite come to fruition, it probably started with your brand. Sometimes the brand just isn’t quite portraying what you intended. So, how do you build a brand that hits the mark?
If you have ever had an excellent business idea that has never quite come to fruition, it probably started with your brand. Sometimes the brand just isn’t quite portraying what you intended. So, how do you build a brand that hits the mark?
It is critical to build your brand right the first time, so you don’t lose time, money, and opportunities. We work very hard to build a brand that sends precisely the message we want and hits the intended demographic. How can we focus on that brand and reach our intended target?
A brand identifies your business and, as such, allows you to gain a competitive advantage over others in your niche. Brand recognition by your audience is critical. You don’t want your audience to pass you by and head to your competitors. Your brand, built correctly, will build recognition with your audience and engender customer loyalty. A well-defined brand may well mean the difference between success and failure.
Perception is reality. Your brand will define how customers will perceive you. If your customer cannot understand who you are through your branding and imagery, it is a lost opportunity — one that you may not get again.
Your brand is far more than just a logo. Brand identity defines your business’s visual identity, voice, values, personality, and message. These components of your brand identity are how others will see you potentially forevermore.
There are many questions to consider when building a brand. You should put a great deal of time and effort into this exercise. It is not an exaggeration to say your brand will define your future success.
You want to motivate and inspire your customers to work with you. Asking yourself the appropriate questions will lead you to craft your brand in a way that is appealing to your audience and that resonates with them. Let’s take a look at just a few of the important questions you should be asking yourself:
Profile your ideal customer or client. If you don’t have a vision of who your customer is, define one. What does your customer need that you can help with? What difference can you make in your customers’ lives? What is their age, income level, marital status, and geographic location? How many children do they have? What is their career and what are their hobbies? Creating a profile of your target audience is crucial to understanding how to market your products or services to them adequately.
A great place to start building your brand is with a Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis of your competitors.
You can learn a great deal from your competitors and their success or failures.
Ultimately a customer wants to know “What’s in it for me?” How can you help with these pain points? What is the reason they should be loyal to you rather than a competitor? Doing your market research and answering these questions should be at the core of your offerings.
Many brands have a personality associated with them. What type of personality is your brand, and what personality traits will customers have to be attracted to your business?
Examples are:
Nailing down the voice of your brand stakes your personality in the ground and forms a tentpole of your business and marketing efforts.
You have competitors, and to compete with them, you need to do something differently. McDonald’s and Burger King are direct competitors with similar offerings in the same category. The only way they could be successful is to do things differently with their messaging, visuals, voice, and values, and as a result create differentiation where there otherwise would seemingly be none. Find your points of differentiation and make them a focal point for your marketing efforts.
In recent years, it is more evident that customers value businesses that do the right thing. As a business, it makes sense to do the right thing for both financial and ethical reasons. That used to be enough. But now, customers want to see that philanthropy in action. Consider what efforts you are willing to make to better the world and through which channels / with which partners you would like to make that happen. Disclose these efforts and partnerships clearly on your website and social media and build your brand’s ethos in a way that shows how and why you give back.
People like stories, and they gravitate towards business with a story they can identify with personally. In your story, tell the world who you are and why you do what you do. What motivates you to create, service, and exist? Giving the why behind your brand allows your audience to connect with you better and identify with your plight, gaining trust and loyalty along the way.
A successful brand doesn’t usually need to be defined. Brand understanding is critical, and if your brand is too complex, you won’t see positive results. Generally speaking, we are a world trending towards minimalism, and this philosophy holds with building a brand. Your message should be clear and your branding should speak for itself.
You want instant recognition of your brand with your logo.
Be particular with color choices as they all have emotions attached to them. For example, red is powerful and bold, while yellow is happy and energetic—research color choices and how they complement each other while developing your logo. Keep your logo simple and evocative. Use shapes and colors that fit with your brand’s vibe and vision and speak to what you do intrinsically.
One great example of this philosophy is FedEx. Not only does their logo contain their name, but it is a simplified font, with a simplified color scheme and a minimal negative space element (the arrow) that simply conveys exactly what the brand does. Moreover, the two colors in their logo vary based on the departments within FedEx that the logo is representing (air, ground, express, etc). Clever indeed.
The answer to this question is far more important than you might initially think. Customers want to partner with a business they can trust. After all, if you are not being honest about your values, ideals, and marketing, how can they trust you?
As a business, you need to believe in your brand and be genuine in messages, visuals, and more. Everything associated with your brand should be consistent and authentic. Do not confuse the customers with a lack of consistency or a sudden change in brand attitude or values, as this will inevitably crash and burn.
A solid brand is the cornerstone of every successful business. If your brand is lacking, your sales are lacking. If your brand is lacking, your audience isn’t as committed to you as they could be. If your brand is lacking, there are easy things you can do to grow your business to new heights.
For more professional tips on how to create a brand that ignites the passion of your audience, download our free ebook “5 Steps to Building a Successful Brand Identity”. Still have questions or need some insight into building your brand? At Carrboro Creative, we’ve got you covered. Contact us today to find out more about how we can help you perfect your message and get recognized for all the right reasons.
Your business’ core values are the foundation on which you build your business model and create the rubric for hiring your team. Whether you are a new business owner or have been around a while, there are many things to consider when defining your company’s values.
Your business’ core values are the foundation on which you build your business model and create the rubric for hiring your team. Whether you are a new business owner or have been around a while, there are many things to consider when defining your company’s values.
Some of the most common questions your business needs to answer are:
There are specific strategies and actions that you’ll want to take if you’re going to achieve results. These actions could stem from your company's core beliefs and values.
Core values are more than just fuzzy words on your company’s about page — they support your overarching purpose and are a driving force behind what you do.
Core values are the driving force behind operations, behaviors, and expectations for your company and its people.
With such importance behind a company’s core values and what they mean to your clients, how do you properly define and communicate what your values are?
In this article, we’ll touch on what a company’s core values represent, why they are important, and tips and strategies for defining your company’s values to your audience.
Company values are the principles upon which your company operates. Also known as core values, these beliefs are the foundation for how the company and its people function. It’s also how they communicate that with the community around them.
This is your company’s why. The values and behaviors your company exhibits will be on display for the world to see and will affect every aspect of the business, from working collaboratively to closing leads and after-sales service.
Besides the desire for people to believe in your mission and purpose, you want your audience to believe it when you say you’ll do business with integrity and open communication.
There are several benefits to defining your company’s core values and acting on them.
In defining your core values as a company, you’re also bringing people together to embody those behaviors, whether it is your employees, clients, or partners.
Toxic workplace culture is a growing problem in the workforce, especially so when company values aren’t intact. Developing a strong set of core values and sticking to them will help solidify your team members and keep them motivated as well.
When your company sticks to its principles, the benefits go much further than just attracting more clients. When a company vows to act on core values, it makes it easier to keep decisions aligned with those values.
When you set core values for your company, your clients, and the community around you, you will know exactly what to expect from your business and its people.
Core values aren’t a wish list for how you want people to see your company and its people. Defining your company values can be complex, as there are several factors to consider. Let’s look at 5 tips and strategies to help you define your company values.
Core values are important as they’re the guiding force helping your company grow and stretching organized culture. There is no right or wrong way to define your company values. There are some guiding principles, but every company has its own story to tell when it comes to values.
Knowing your company’s purpose is a great place to start when establishing core values.
To get started, ask yourself:
If your company taps into that purposeful potential, think about how that will motivate your team. Purpose tells them why you exist, and the core values will help define how you plan to get there.
Of course, the goal of any company is to stand out from the competition. So how do you implement that strategy into defining your core values?
Everything about your company is unique:
Avoid adopting values just because everyone else is using them in their companies. Tweak core values to align with your business goals and your people.
To make your values memorable, you need to incorporate them into everything you do. Think back to when you first wanted to start your company. Remember what your purpose was?
Now think, was there something about that purpose that could translate into a memorable core value for your company today? If you can remember what you stand for, it will be easier for your team to remember it as well.
To help with memorable core values, use them in every related employee process from the hiring methods, performance reviews, promotions, rewards — all the way to their last day of work. Employees should be constantly reminded that your company’s core values form the foundation of every decision the company makes.
Say you launch a product or service that goes completely wrong and really bothers the people around you. Unfortunately, this does happen on occasion, and it is your responsibility to fix the problem.
Sometimes, it means pulling the product. Other times, it means reaching out to the community and asking for input on what can be changed.
Regardless of the method you choose, you need to act on your company behaviors in every situation, even those that require tough decision-making.
Limiting your core values between 3 to 6 tenets will help you zero in on what truly matters most to your company and consistently emphasize those ideas.
Your core values should be:
By making sure your core values are comprehensive and straightforward, they’ll be much easier to remember and more likely to be recognized by every employee and customer.
I bet you’re thinking this is a lot to take in. It is!
Your brand says a lot about you. As a matter of fact, it’s everything about you. It’s okay if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed with information overload.
That’s where we come in. Carrboro Creative is a results-driven creative agency that offers website care plans, custom website design, brand development, graphic design, SEO, and more. Contact us today for a free quote, and let us show you how we can help you with your brand marketing and your brand archetype.
You’ve built a website and it looks fantastic. Some visitors are trickling in, but you’re not getting the conversion rates you had hoped for. You’ve got great products or services, but not enough of your visitors are buying them. How do you get those coveted conversions?
You’ve built a website and it looks fantastic. Some visitors are trickling in, but you’re not getting the conversion rates you had hoped for. You’ve got great products or services, but not enough of your visitors are buying them. How do you get those coveted conversions?
By utilizing CRO, you can increase conversions on your website — and a steady increase in website traffic. If you’re asking yourself, what is conversion rate optimization — we won’t leave you hanging.
We’re going to dive into what CRO is, why you should focus on it for your businesses well as 4 ways to get started.
Conversion Rate Optimization is the process of increasing the number of users performing a desired action from a mobile app or website.
Desired activities can include:
CRO involves creating ideas for elements on your mobile app or website which you can improve. Then, those theories get tested with A/B testing and multivariate testing.
CRO helps you lower your customer acquisition costs by obtaining more value from its users and visitors. When you optimize your conversion rate, you increase revenue per visitor, grow your business, and gain more customers.
The process of increasing inversions always has room to improve. The top businesses are continually enhancing their websites and apps to improve user experience and obtain more conversions.
For example, if you have a 25% conversion rate, that means only 25% of people who visit your website actually convert. You definitely want this number to be as high as possible.
CRO is beneficial to all types and sizes of businesses — no matter the industry. For example, business to business (BSB) and software as a service (SaaS) company’s lead generation is the focal point when it comes to engaging customers on your site. You’re gathering their information through various means — forms, sign-ups, surveys — with the hopes of turning them in to recurring customers.
It’s your duty to help your customers and clients find what they’re looking for, capture their interest, and support their buying choices. By focusing on CRO, you learn what works for engagement and what brings them in as reoccurring customers.
Conversion rate optimization enables you to optimize your website’s functionality while helping you to understand the whys and hows of your visitors’ behavior. Sadly, your site will never reach its maximum potential until you experiment with different areas and approaches to draw your visitors in.
Some benefits to focusing on CRO:
A downside, however, to just focus on numbers all the time is that you often forget the people behind them. So, focusing on understanding what drives, stops, and persuades users can help give them the best user experience possible — this is the user-centric approach.
Remember that a lot happens before conversions take place. A customer can start with a need or an idea, search around, do some reading on different websites, and many other things before completing the action you want.
Improving conversions doesn't involve simple problems. They're not all easy to identify, nor do they come with hard evidence. Sometimes there's an obvious problem blocking your production, and when solved, it increases your conversions significantly. But, more often than not, your website can be working perfectly, but your goals still aren't getting met.
Improving means you need to dig a little deeper to determine what's going on and how to resolve it.
CRO starts with examining the conversion goals for a web page or app screen. Success metrics depend on your type of business and your goals.
Some common conversion goals include:
After you establish the conversion metrics for your audience's digital interactions, you can then work on your digital customer experiences through CRO.
This is just the beginning. Let’s discuss 4 more ways to do CRO.
To calculate a conversion rate, you divide the number of conversions by the total number of visitors. Then, multiply the result by 100 to gain a percentage.
The average conversion varies from source to source, but it typically lies between 1% and 4%. However, this percentage isn't beneficial because conversion rates vary greatly depending on your goal. All websites and pages are different, and most companies don't share their conversion rate data with the general public.
So, thinking about conversion rates is probably not going to help you achieve your goals. Instead, it focused on the user-centric approach. Know your audience, understand them, and continue to learn more about what makes them get to the point of conversion.
A CRO best practice is a common belief that a specific optimization action will guarantee an increase in conversion rate. Some of these best practices include:
However, just because these are considered best practices does not always mean they are the best ones for your website. "Best practice" essentially means that it's from past data. This means it worked in the past but may not work now. Just because it worked for someone else doesn't mean it'll work for you.
But, at least one main principle is recommended to be valid most of the time, if not all the time. This is to spend time understanding your users and customers. These people are the ones you depend on for your conversion rates and will help improve them.
So, don't worry about other companies' success with their conversion rates. Focus on your consumers, and then you will get much further.
Once you have your conversion metrics, you can then identify which portion of your conversion funnel you want to optimize.
Begin by optimizing your conversion funnel portion, which receives the most significant piece of traffic or creates the most incredible numbers of conversions. These pages will help you see the results of your modifications quicker and have a more substantial impact on your business.
Some other places you can start are your greatest value pages or pages that aren't doing as well. When you improve those lacking areas, it will have the most significant impact on your results.
The brain, eyes, ears, and mouth are the primary tools you should understand for conversion rates. Understand your customers, empathize with their experience, and make conclusions based on the data you collect.
Other tools include:
This may seem like a lot of work. It is.
And that’s OK! Your website is your greatest marketing tool, and if you’re not experienced in maintaining your tools, you’re not alone. Most business owners aren’t.
That’s where we come in. Carrboro Creative is a results-driven creative agency that offers website care plans, custom website design, brand development, graphic design, SEO, and more. Contact us today for a free quote and let us show you how we can keep your website fresh, keep new visitors rolling in, and care for your website so you can get back to running your business.
When you’re diving headfirst into your business structure and design, you want to create something unique. From your website design to your marketing strategy, you’re developing a brand that will resonate with a new audience. And with a brand comes the need for a logo that fits your new identity.
When you’re diving headfirst into your business structure and design, you want to create something unique. From your website design to your marketing strategy, you’re developing a brand that will resonate with a new audience. And with a brand comes the need for a logo that fits your new identity.
Your business logo represents your brand, who you are, what you do, and how you’re different from the rest. It is unique to YOU.
But how do you make your logo memorable?
Your brand logo is the first thing that potential customers will see. From there, they can generally do two things — decide they want to look further into your company and the products/services you offer, or say, “This isn’t eye-catching, and I’m not interested.”
So how do you determine how to design your logo and what to include? What design elements could you be missing that make or break closing your next sale or client deal?
Let’s take a look at some key logo design principles to help you get started.
Say at some point you’ll want to rebrand or come up with a fresh look for your logo.
Did you design it so that it’s easy to duplicate?
A good logo is simple. Keeping this in mind when designing your logo will prove more manageable for you over time and keep it clean-cut and recognizable by your customers.
What do we mean by clean-cut? Keep the design simple. Make it clear, visible, and reflective of what your business is and does.
What about the simplicity of the design elements, like typography and color?
Don’t make your logo too busy - don’t overload it with too many colors or various overlapping points. Choose a simple color theme and a font that isn’t so busy that it distracts the eye or isn’t instantly legible.
Implement spacing into your design by using what design gurus call white space. Remember, not every bit of space needs to be used. Your logo needs to stand out, and using extra space will help with that.
When you’re creating anything related to your business, you want to keep it unique.
Think about some of the world’s most famous logos — Nike, Apple, McDonald’s, Instagram, even ESPN. They all have a logo unique to their market, and the designs are entirely original.
Keeping your logo along the same lines of simplicity and distinction will attract attention and set you apart from your competition.
Is your design original? Is it memorable?
Think about what your business is about and how it started. Consider your company values, as well as products and services that may be the focal point for your audience. Creating something that your audience has never seen before but will keep fresh in their minds is the ultimate goal behind developing a brand logo.
Of course, it also helps to be skilled in graphic design or have access to an experienced graphic designer who can customize fonts, shapes, colors, and more to suit your brand’s needs and make a one-of-a-kind logo.
Keep in mind that business is done differently than it was even a decade ago. You need to design — not just your website, but also your logo — in a versatile way.
If a potential customer accesses your website from a laptop one day and a mobile device the next, will the logo be the same?
Maintaining consistency between everything from computer to mobile device to print is crucial in the logo design process. You don’t want to lose any critical focal elements to your logo design if it doesn’t transition well between devices or prints.
Adapt your logo to a variety of places. Ensure it looks the same (including color, background, size, shape, etc.) so that the design’s originality and memorable nature isn’t compromised. Ensure that your logo is consistent across multiple formats for whichever purpose you need it for, including high resolution, mobile-friendly, and thumbnail options for each file type.
Let’s go back to the Nike, Apple, McDonald’s, and ESPN logos.
How long have these logos existed in those formats?
For decades, these companies have embraced new hordes of customers while sticking to what they know. The logo works because it is memorable, and why is it so memorable?
It withstands changes over time.
Sure, we all want to be on top of the best design trends, but if you look at your company 10 years from now, will the same logo mean something to you and your customers?
Your brand identity should withstand the test of time. If you have to keep changing your logo every couple of years, then you haven’t created something meaningful, recognizable, and timeless.
Impactful design can be hard to come up with unless you have the right creative team behind you.
At Carrboro Creative, our Carrboro-based design agency is a team of creatives that live and breathe graphic design. They artfully and skillfully take information and use design best practices to create visual hierarchies, simplify information, and develop graphics to help tell a story.
Need a brochure? Book? Brand Development? Web Design? We do it all. Our graphic designers will bring your idea to life digitally and in print and we love taking on new projects of all kinds. Get in touch today for a free quote on your next project and let’s work together.
The website is often a customer’s first impression of the business, and it’s essential to make it a good one - otherwise, you risk losing your audience at first glance. And typically, the fault lies in the design of the page itself rather than the business’ offerings or other efforts. Your website’s design is your primary marketing tool and the largest factor in how your audience perceives your brand - so you’ve got to make it count.
The website is often a customer’s first impression of the business, and it’s essential to make it a good one - otherwise, you risk losing your audience at first glance. And typically, the fault lies in the design of the page itself rather than the business’ offerings or other efforts. Your website’s design is your primary marketing tool and the largest factor in how your audience perceives your brand - so you’ve got to make it count.
The purpose of on-page optimization, or on-page SEO, is to make sure that your website is as close as possible to the top of a search engine’s list of suggestions. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essentially focused on making sure a website can meet as many criteria for a search engine’s algorithm as possible to make it the first thing people see when they look up a related topic or keyword phrase.
This, of course, is invaluable when determining a business’s online marketing presence. These algorithms can be divided into two categories that play roles in determining your website’s SEO rank.
These categories are:
In this article, we will discuss the importance of on-page SEO and the most essential on-page SEO factors.
On-page SEO encompasses all of the aspects you can control the most effectively. By owning the site, you can control the more technical issues and quality of content.
On-page SEO factors tend to be the easiest and most helpful fixes, so we recommend you take a moment to deal with them first. Let’s a look at some of the most important SEO factors to consider when building a site.
For obvious reasons, the information your site contains is the most critical aspect to check. This is why your audience is on the site and will be the first thing they will see. The quality of your content is what search engines will use to determine your search engine rankings for related keywords.
Check to make sure that your site provides:
Without these aspects, content is deemed less desirable or relevant by the search engine’s algorithm, and is far less likely to get promoted over other similar content
Title tags indicate the title of the web page. They are shown on search engine results pages. Title tags appear as a clickable headline for the result and play a vital role in usability, SEO, and even the site’s ability to be shared.
Title tags play a huge factor in expressing the purpose of your business’ site when done correctly. They must be accurate and provide clear information on your page’s content, as they are often the first impression many people will have. You can typically find title tags in either the search engine results pages, the web browser itself, or social networks.
This last factor is often overlooked but plays a considerable part in on-page SEO. Whoever visits your site should be able to find, navigate, and discover what they are looking for quickly and easily.. Your site may be full of useful information, but if your customers cannot navigate to the information they want in just a few seconds, they will look elsewhere for a user-friendly experience.
This may seem like a lot of work. It is.
And that’s OK! Your website is your greatest marketing tool, and if you’re not experienced in maintaining your tools, you’re not alone. Most business owners aren’t.
That’s where we come in. Carrboro Creative is a results-driven creative agency that offers website care plans, custom website design, brand development, graphic design, SEO, and more. Contact us today for a free quote and let us show you how we can keep your website fresh, keep new visitors rolling in, and care for your website so you can get back to running your business.
If you ask the average person what they think graphic design is, they'll probably tell you it's the ability to create images with computers. While not entirely unrelated--In reality-- it's a lot more complicated than that. Graphic design is the combination of text and imagery to communicate ideas. Businesses utilize graphic design to build logos, packaging, websites, advertisements, and all elements of their branding.
If you ask the average person what they think graphic design is, they'll probably tell you it's the ability to create images with computers. While not entirely unrelated--In reality-- it's a lot more complicated than that. Graphic design is the combination of text and imagery to communicate ideas. Businesses utilize graphic design to build logos, packaging, websites, advertisements, and all elements of their branding.
Small business branding's success is made on the competent utilization of graphic design to communicate your services and your values. With the help of a brand design agency, you can ensure that your design says exactly what you want about your business. Below are some of the most important things your brand design tells people about your business.
When you break it down, all visual communication relies on symbols. Even written languages like the English alphabet are just arbitrary symbols combined in different ways. Our brains seek out such images and work to ascribe meaning to them. That's why business logos are so important: they provide a visual that identifies a company instantly aside from their name.
We process and recognize images 60,000 times faster than we do text, so it's no surprise that logos and associated brand imagery become so recognizable and iconic.
That said, this rapid recognition means your logo needs to give an accurate "sense" of what your business is. This could represent brand values or a portrayal of what you want your customers to feel, like warmth or joy, through visual cues like color choice and line weight.
A customer's first encounter with your visual branding will form their first impression of your business. The ability to bring them back to that moment whenever they see your branding is a powerful thing, but it also requires consistent design choices across all the platforms you use to communicate.
Consistent tone requires a great deal of attention to maintain: things like fonts, color choices, text formatting, and even word choice play a role in shaping your branding.
However, it's this consistency that creates familiarity and loyalty among customers: if they like your branding and know what to expect from your business, they'll feel more compelled to choose your business over competitors.
A recurring problem in business branding is communicating what you want within a small amount of space. Being succinct is vital to leaving a meaningful impression on customers and holding their attention.
Even in mediums where space seemingly isn't an issue, like a webpage, keeping messaging brief while still communicating everything you want gives you an advantage over your competitors.
By its nature, graphic design utilizes images and text to allow visuals like images to carry the weight of communication. We see it most often with graphs and infographics, where you can quickly communicate complicated subjects in a simpler form through images and text.
The saying "less is more" holds true even when sharing ideas, and efficient graphic design makes this more powerful. Deciding what to present with text and representing with other visual means can determine who quickly information is processed correctly.
Every part of your branding comes together to form the basis of an identity you want to present to your public. With design playing into every visual aspect of this, it follows that your design choices will play a major role in your brand's identity.
It's yet another reason why you shouldn't make design choices lightly. The design elements you choose to represent your business may convey what you want. Still, without adequate knowledge or testing, they could fail to stand out against your competition, or worse, fail to catch customer attention at all.
A brand consultant or branding agency like Carrboro Creative will carefully balance your brand's message with a design that truly stands out, be it through your web presence, packaging, advertisements, or other visual mediums.
It can be difficult for a single person to have a broad enough view to consider all these things at once when working on designs for a business, but an experienced team can get it done.
And getting the design right the first time is important. You can always change it later if you feel it's necessary, but doing so costs time and money.
Impactful design can be hard to come up with unless you have the right creative team behind you.
At Carrboro Creative, our carrboro-based design agency is a team of creatives that live and breathe graphic design. They artfully and skillfully take information and use design best practices to create visual hierarchies, simplify information, and develop graphics to help tell a story.
Need a brochure? Book? Brand Development? Web Design? We do it all.
Our graphic designers will bring your idea to life digitally and in print and we love taking on new projects of all kinds. Get in touch today for a free quote on your next project and let’s work together.
If your website isn’t mobile-optimized, you (and your audience) are missing out. In 2021, mobile websites are essential.
If your website isn’t mobile-optimized, you (and your audience) are missing out. In 2021, mobile websites are essential.
Why? Because mobile devices are in almost everyone's hands, from smartphones to tablets, you want your business website to be accessible by every available device.
“Mobile is becoming not only the new digital hub, but also the bridge to the physical world. That’s why mobile will affect more than just your digital operations - it will transform your entire business.” - Thomas Husson, VP, and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
In 2020, smartphones were responsible for 50.8% of global website traffic. However, it’s been hovering around 50% since 2017. Global users are expected to increase to 3.8 billion worldwide by mid 2021.
“Mobile is not the future, it is now. Meet your customers in the environment of their choice, not where it is convenient for you.” - Cyndie Shaffstall, founder, Spider Trainers
A mobile responsive website is a website that is designed to be optimized for hand-held devices - tablets and smartphones. A mobile responsive website adapts to the size and aspect ratio of the screen it is being viewed on.
When a website visitor views a website from the computer, websites tend to utilize empty space to frame the content displayed in the center or the upper third. When you view this same website on a mobile device with a mobile responsive theme, these elements are typically stacked on top of each other. This is a clever tactic to ensure that the menus and imagery of your website is conveniently accessible and easily viewable on any device, whether vertically or horizontally laid out.
You want to create a responsive mobile website design that will do the following:
More traffic is generated from mobile devices, than computers - and that’s good news! The bad news is that mobile conversion rates can be more challenging to come by than those made through a desktop. Despite that - it’s not impossible, just a challenge.
That’s where a mobile responsive website design comes in. With a mobile responsive website, you can utilize the space to collect email addresses. When you email visitors your newsletter or other information, they’ll get a link that allows them to visit your website - on any device. While not everyone wants to be on another mailing list, offering an incentive can make capturing leads directly from your homepage a much easier feat.
Mobile devices are notorious for giving users more options. They offer choices and features with every new update and model release. Web design has also followed this pattern. Due to this growth, it is often difficult to fit all relevant information into a smaller screen.
Thankfully website designers build these elements into responsively designed sites, allowing for contextual resizing and formatting to present your content in exactly the way it was intended.
Your typical desktop webpage design is in landscape format. Mobile displays are primarily portrait format. With a portrait format, your space is limited, presenting you with the challenge of prioritizing certain information for immediate consumption, and making other content easily accessible through intuitive menus and prompts..
Leverage this space by cutting out non-critical content and move the critical information to the center. If you’re using a photograph, make sure it’s relevant to your business. The homepage menu should be clean, well-balanced, and convey your message clearly.
Once you’ve leveraged your available space, make sure you are putting a spotlight on your visual content. Your visual content is directly representative of your brand's image. Believe it or not, mobile screens can be great for storytelling because of how the content is laid out in a way that encourages user engagement..
By using a mobile responsive website design, you are encouraging a leaner desktop experience. Leaner desktop experiences are much more attractive, clean, and a lot less cluttered than your standard desktop web design.
Navigation is moved out of the way while branding logos are minimized, which allows your website visitor to focus on the welcome message.
With a leaner desktop design, the transition between mobile and computer is virtually seamless.
Whatever you do - don’t cram everything into the space. It’s human nature to want to fill up space, especially if we feel all of the information is relevant. But cramming simply won’t work. It makes the website look cluttered and messy.
A few things you can do for a mobile website design is:
The result is a cleaner, easier-to-read, mobile-friendly design.
This may seem like a lot of work. It is.
And that’s OK! Your website is your greatest marketing tool, and if you’re not experienced in maintaining your tools, you’re not alone. Most business owners aren’t.
That’s where we come in. Carrboro Creative is a results-driven creative agency that offers website care plans, custom website design, brand development, graphic design, SEO, and more. Contact us today for a free quote and let us show you how we can keep your website fresh, keep new visitors rolling in, and care for your website so you can get back to running your business.
81% of consumers believe that trusting a brand is extremely important in their buying journey. Unfortunately, only 33% of those same survey respondents indicated they actually trust the brands they buy from. Not only does this indicate that consumers are challenged to find brands they trust, it indicates that they’re consciously aware of brand behaviors that make a brand trustworthy.
81% of consumers believe that trusting a brand is extremely important in their buying journey. Unfortunately, only 33% of those same survey respondents indicated they actually trust the brands they buy from. Not only does this indicate that consumers are challenged to find brands they trust, it indicates that they’re consciously aware of brand behaviors that make a brand trustworthy.
This means that start-up companies find themselves stuck not knowing how to make their website, often the first impression you have on a client, into something their clients and customers can actually trust and find reliable.
It may be easy to simply overlook the importance of brand trust, since many consumers still buy from brands they don’t trust. What one may overlook with this mindset, however, is that you’re not likely to build returning customers that way, nor are you emphasizing a worthy point of differentiation with your audience. If you invest in building trust, you’re investing in returning and happy customers and clientele.
We’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite methods to make your website one that your clients and customers can fully trust and support.
One of the biggest fears consumers have is that the websites they access are not real businesses. Seems basic, but it’s fundamental for good reason. Since they’re in a virtual environment and are not physically touching or interacting with your products, customers may be uneasy giving their information to a site that isn’t verified as trustworthy. There are a few things that you can do to mitigate this issue at limited expense and hassle to your business.
Though it may seem a bit superfluous, getting yourself verified on Google My Business is one crucial step to getting your customers to trust your business. By doing so, your location, website, reviews and contact information will appear when customers look for you up. By having this information accessible to your customers, it shows that you have nothing to hide.
Googling a business and finding that it doesn’t have this basic information could be seen as a red flag, even if the company just never thought of verifying themselves.
You and your business can take getting verified one step further by getting verified as a business on social media platforms and on other websites associated with your business. The more social proof you have, the better.
Another way to verify yourself to your customers is through security certificates and trust seals. Over 30% of all reported fraud cases reported to the National Retail Federation happened in online shopping environments, potentially on websites seemingly just like your own.
By obtaining trust seals, you’re able to show that your website is a legitimate place to spend money. Most importantly, SSL certificates allow you to show that a viewer’s browser is on a secure connection to your web server and they’re at a decreased risk for cybersecurity attacks. That little green lock means a lot to your customers, after all, and it makes them more likely to trust you and your business.
Security certificates alone don’t guarantee that your consumers trust you. You have to prove to your customers that your website doesn’t condone or allow anyone to just steal their information.
One way you can do this is by including a clear and simple privacy policy regarding customers’ information on your website. In one case, adding a line about privacy information on the checkout page increased sales by over 15%.
Even though you may be an online-only business, providing proof of some physical presence is extremely important to showing your customers you’re a real company.
You can provide contact information, either through a form or some direct emails, to indicate to your website’s visitors that there are real people on the other side of the monitor and that the website doesn’t exist completely in a vacuum.
You can also include about-us pages using real photos of your employees to show your customers you are a real company with real people and a real company culture. Including links to product reviews is another way you can show your customers that others have purchased your products and services and have had an actual interaction with your brand. Don’t shy away from negative reviews either - ownership and recovery of a poor experience with your brand is an impactful way to prove to your prospective clients that you stand behind your products and services.
Regardless of the information you have that you want to provide to your clients and customers, if you don’t present it professionally, you aren’t likely to build that trust. Having all of the information that your client wants easily accessible proves to them that you are who you say you are and that you’ve taken the time to care about their browsing experience.
That’s where we come in. Carrboro Creative is a results-driven creative agency that offers website care plans, custom website design, brand development, graphic design, SEO, and more. Contact us today for a free quote, and let us show you how we can help you with your brand marketing and reputation building for your brand, business, and website.
Search Engine Optimization is talked about, and written about to no end, but it can still be a difficult concept to understand, especially in its more technical aspects. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of your website content. You need exposure to your brand through non-paid or organic search engine results, and SEO is the way to accomplish that.
Search Engine Optimization is talked about, and written about to no end, but it can still be a difficult concept to understand, especially in its more technical aspects. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of your website content. You need exposure to your brand through non-paid or organic search engine results, and SEO is the way to accomplish that.
SEO is as much about people as the search engines themselves. In addition to delivering content to the people you want to reach, you want to format it so that search engine crawlers can find it and present it to your audience.
Learning SEO methods may feel daunting, but this article will walk you through the top 5 ways to jumpstart SEO on your website and begin to increase traffic and conversions for your business.
SEO is the practice of creating and refining content found by search engine crawlers and increasing your website’s views and interactions. Search engines scour billions of pieces of content and evaluate factors to determine the content most likely to answer a question or search term.
Search engines discover and catalog available content on web pages, PDFs, images, videos, etc. This process is called “crawling and indexing.” The content is then ordered by how well it matches the query. This match is called “ranking.” Once you’ve created content to fit these criteria, your rank increases, and more people find your content.
On-page SEO focuses on optimizing individual web pages to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic from search engines. On-page refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO which refers to links and other external signals.
Content is the primary source of SEO value. Ensure your content is worthy of a top search result when a person searches for your product or service. Take time to consider these three questions when creating content:
1. Does my content answer a question for a potential customer?
2. Would I recommend this content to a friend?
3. Is a particular page worthy of a link?
Use the mantra “content is king” when considering the type of content you want to create. The more relevant your content is, the more valuable and likely it is to earn links from other websites.
One essential piece of creating content is using keywords. There are plenty of keyword search tools to use. The most popular is Google Keyword Planner. No matter what you use to search for popular keywords, knowing how to use them is crucial to increasing your search engine ranking.
You probably already have a few keywords in mind. The most common would be your products, services, and other topics your website addresses. These are great seed words to start with, but additional keywords will display, providing you even more keywords to use in your content.
A title tag labels your page both for real people and for search engines. In search engine results, your title tag serves as a headline, summarizing the page’s content. When you create an eye-catching title, it stands apart from similar titles across the results page. The title tag is defined in the <head> section of your webpage’s HTML code. The title tag appears in both the search engine results page as well as in the browser bar.
We recommend that you only use your brand name at the front of the title tag if your brand is well known and help sell your product or service. Otherwise, having the keyword or key phrase at the front is better.
Your meta description displays directly below your title tag. This description is a snippet of text that appears in search engine results under your headline. Sometimes, search engines pull a snippet of text from your page’s main body content instead. While a meta description doesn’t directly influence your web page’s position, it is very important to the human user.
When creating your meta description, write the text in a compelling way to entice people to click through to your website. Each page’s meta description should be 156 characters or less, as Google only displays 156 characters in the search results. When no meta description is entered, the first 156 characters of your page content will display.
When you write content, you usually preface it with a heading. These HTML header tags differentiate your headings from the rest of your content. Heading tags are also known as header tags. Header tags create a top-down hierarchy, where H1 has the most priority. If you use the headers out of order, the page structure is broken, and your SEO is less effective.
When just starting out with SEO, there are a few common mistakes you want to avoid. These mistakes can kill your SEO and make your site hard to crawl by Google and other search engines.
Getting found in a search result isn’t as simple as building a website and hoping it gets found. Optimizing your website for search is a multifaceted process — requiring ongoing optimization to ensure your site is up to date with Google’s evolving algorithms.
At Carrboro Creative, we specialize in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Content Creation, Link Building, and On-Page Optimization. Contact us today to find out how we can increase your site traffic and increase profits!
When you own a small business, it can be challenging to stand out in a sea of competitors — and keeping your audience engaged is even harder.
When you own a small business, it can be challenging to stand out in a sea of competitors — and keeping your audience engaged is even harder.
So how do you make an impression on your future customers without investing a fortune in advertising? The key is to build a strong brand.
A strong brand is more than just a great logo and some fancy graphics. It’s who you are and helps people connect with and remember you. A good graphic designer knows how important it is to not only make you look good, but also make you stand out everywhere.
If you want your business to be memorable, relatable, and — most importantly — profitable, then you need a designer that understands how to help you succeed. We’re going to show you three ways that a professional designer can help your small business.
Graphic design handled by a branding and marketing agency can play a key role in establishing small business branding. From creating logos and slogans to trademarked characters and iconic imagery, designers work with you to bring your vision to life.
Having a professionally designed logo or image associated with your business makes it easier for potential customers to see and remember you. The sole function of a branding agency is to help you establish a relationship with your audience and help you connect with as many people as possible through images and words that evoke trust and comfort.
Once you have their attention, you need to keep your audience engaged. The right branding agency will be forward-thinking in terms of how your business’s presence is felt online. There are many different ways that people access the web these days, and the user’s experience with an aesthetically pleasing website cannot be understated.
The agency should work with you to ensure that your web-based content is clean and functional across various platforms and devices, including personal computers, tablets, phones, and other smart devices that have internet browsing capability.
They can design every aspect of your online presence — your website, social media pages, landing pages, and much more.
Designers are constantly working with the latest software to not only create dynamic content, but to also create websites that are clean, intuitive, and that easily answer any questions your audience may have.
The right designer will also take into account how hands-on you want to be with maintaining your website. They will design a fully customized template for your business that will allow you to update and edit as needed without having to learn a programming language.
Graphic Designers are trained to take in all of the information you want your potential clients to know and put it together in a way that clarifies, simplifies, and organizes. Creating marketing tools that effectively get your message across is the designer’s number one priority.
Through the use of text, color, imagery, and composition the designer can help you establish the tone you wish to set. For print media and promotional materials, your designer can offer creative solutions to help keep your business’s name at the forefront of people’s minds.
A good branding and marketing firm will engage your audience and get them excited about your call to action. Remember that behind every successful marketing campaign there is a team who understands and is dedicated to their client’s needs. Your small business shouldn’t be any different. Even with a modest budget, a solid foundation can be made by selecting the right agency.
The power of cohesive design can make your brand identifiable. Not just that your audience can identify your business by a logo or a slogan, but that they identify with it.
Designers use fonts, colors, and composition to appeal to potential customers in a variety of ways. They can evoke laughter or sadness, nostalgia or wonder, comfort or consternation. In the right hands, the design of your small business website and marketing materials has the potential to create an emotional connection with your preferred audience. But how does your preferred audience find you?
Carrboro Creative understands the fundamental reasons why small businesses need the help of a branding agency, and we are proud to meet those needs.
Carrboro Creative is a digital branding and marketing team of creators, collaborators, and designers based in Carrboro, NC. We are a woman-owned agency specializing in the growth of small businesses, entrepreneurs, non-profits, and education institutions. Our agency will assist you in all aspects of your marketing and branding needs.
We look forward to speaking with you to see how we can help your small business take the next step forward. Contact us today for a free estimate.
When you think about an archetype, surely the first thing that comes to mind isn’t related to a business brand, but rather archetype is something associated with characters in a story.
When you think about an archetype, surely the first thing that comes to mind isn’t related to a business brand, but rather archetype is something associated with characters in a story.
An archetype often ties to themes and emotions that extend beyond the story, attaching itself to its readers. But did you know you can use archetypes in branding, too?
Thinking back to archetypes in stories, did you ever notice that your favorite characters always fell into broad categories, often stereotyped? Think about your favorite naive child who seems always to have the destiny to change the world. Or, the femme fatale who always seems to have the best one-liners and can put down an army.
These are archetypes. The characters in the stories are defined by those generic traits which explain who they are and what they stand for. It also shows us what motivates their actions throughout the story.
Archetypes don’t just exist within fictional stories. They exist everywhere - including brands.
Brand archetypes give brands a personality that makes them accessible and relatable to audiences with shared values.
So, what--or more accurately, who--are these brand archetypes, and why are they important?
Swiss psychologist Carl Jung has identified 12 archetypes. Between the 12, the spectrum is covered from a level of comfort to a level of excitement. A business must pick the correct archetype for its brand.
The goal of the Hero is to improve the world. They’re bold, honorable, courageous, and confident. The drawback with a Hero is that they can be perceived as arrogant and often aloof. For brand marketing, the hero makes a positive mark on the world and solves significant problems.
An example of a Hero: Tesla
The goal of the Innocent is just to be happy. They’re pure, optimistic, have a strong moral compass, and overall strive to be right and just all the time. Their drawback is they could be too naive or perceived as boring. For brand marketing, they work well with companies with strong values and are associated with morals.
An example of an Innocent: TOMS
The Outlaw’s goal is to break all rules and question authority. They’re wild, wanting to pave the way for change. Their drawback is sometimes they do not know when to stop and go-to for. For brand marketing they allow people to vent and they can be an agent for change or liberation from conformity or routine.
An example of an Outlaw: Harley-Davidson
The Everyman or Everywoman’s goal is to connect with others and have a sense of belonging. They tend to be the person next door, supportive and full of life. Their drawback is that they could blend in too much. For brand marketing, they would give a brand solid virtues and that sense of belonging in the crowd.
An example of a Regular: Lowe’s
The goal of the Ruler is to be the one in control. The one who creates order from chaos. The drawback is that Rulers tend to be too authoritative and lack a common connection. For brand marketing, they can restore order and help people become more organized through control over their future.
An example of a Ruler: Barclays
The goal of the Explorer is to share new experiences. They’re the ones pioneering the ways. Explorers are ambitious, adventurous, and independent. The drawback is that the Explorer doesn’t tend to fit into mainstream media. In brand marketing, they’re the authentic risk-takers that customers believe in. These brands represent trailblazing and freedom and appeal to the wanderlust of their audience.
An example of Explorer: Jeep
The goal of the Creator is to create something beautiful, full of meaning, and enduring value. Creatives tend to have an entrepreneurial spirit, be nonconformists, and have quite the imagination. Their drawback is that they tend to be impractical perfectionists. In brand marketing, they help customers create and foster their imagination through innovation.
An example of a Creative: LEGO
The goal of the Lover is to inspire love. They’re passionate and warm. Lovers tend to be idealistic and committed. The drawback to a Lover is that they could be too selfless. In brand marketing, they help customers feel appreciated, giving them connections to build lasting relationships and indulge in their needs in a way that makes them feel intimately understood and rewarded.
An example of a Lover: Godiva Chocolate
The goal of the Magician is to make all your dreams come true. They’re the visionaries full of charisma and imagination. The drawback to a Magician is that they tend to take high risks that occasionally lead to terrible outcomes. In brand marketing, the Magician will inspire change and help customers feel as though they can transform their world.
An example of a Magician: Disney
The goal of the Caregiver is to care for and protect others at all costs. They’re selfless, generous, and caring. The drawback to a Caregiver is that they are often taken advantage of and have a hard time saying, “no.” In brand marketing, the Caregiver helps people care for themselves and serves the public through providing ways in which they can care for each other.
An example of a Caregiver: Johnson & Johnson
The Sage’s goal is to help the people of the world gain insight and wisdom. They’re a trusted source of information full of wisdom and intelligence. The drawback to the Sage is that they can be too opinionated. In brand marketing, the Sage provides practical information and helps customers to understand the world better.
An example of a Sage: PBS
The goal of the Jester is to bring joy to the world. They’re light-hearted and fun with big personalities. The Jester’s drawback is that they can be seen as disrespectful and a chronic joker, which isn’t taken very seriously. In brand marketing, the Jester will help customers have a good time allowing them to be more spontaneous.
An example of a Jester: Old Spice
Now that you know the 12 archetypes, you’ll need to know who your target market is, have a good understanding of what your brand represents, and how your customers think about your product before you can utilize an archetype for your brand.
You need a brand archetype so you can:
I bet you’re thinking this is a lot to take in. It is!
Your brand says a lot about you. As a matter of fact, it’s everything about you. It’s okay if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed with information overload.
That’s where we come in. Carrboro Creative is a results-driven creative agency that offers website care plans, custom website design, brand development, graphic design, SEO, and more. Contact us today for a free quote, and let us show you how we can help you with your brand marketing and your brand archetype.
When it comes to your website, the longer, your visitors stick around - the better. It’s estimated that between 70% and 96% of your website visitors will never return after they click off your website.
When it comes to your website, the longer, your visitors stick around - the better. It’s estimated that between 70% and 96% of your website visitors will never return after they click off your website.
Website visitors can be converted into paying customers, and the easiest way to increase your chance of conversion is by getting those website visitors to stay on your website. When a visitor sticks around and engages on your website, there’s a greater chance they will convert.
It takes visitors 0.05 seconds to form an opinion about your website. In that time, they’ll decide whether they’re going to stay or go. It’s relatively easy to keep visitors engaged. Here are four ways you can keep visitors on your site longer.
Your visitors spend an average of 5.59 seconds looking at your written content. Website visitors don’t read - they scan. Don’t bombard your visitors with content they don’t need right away but give them a way to find it should they want to dig deeper if they choose to.
When visitors scan your content, they are doing so in an F pattern. Scanning in an F pattern means they are reading the first few lines followed by the first few words of the following lines searching for the information they came to find.
When providing content on the web - photos, titles, headings, and shorter paragraphs all work to break up more extended texts, provide value, and make things easier to scan.
Before a visitor clicks off your site, you want them to see your call-to-action (CTA), as this is how you convert those visitors into leads and, hopefully, paying customers. One of the best times to get your customers to take action is after they’ve finished scanning your post, so placing your CTA at the end is ideal.
Visitors will leave your site after finding what they’re looking for, but with the appropriate CTA, you’re giving them a reason to stick around longer.
Placing your CTA at the end of your content isn’t the only area to put it. Many visitors know they’re going to find a CTA at the end of a web page, but you’ll have readers that don’t want to continue scrolling or reading that long to get to it.
One way to battle this is to use a slide-in opt-in. Using a slider-opt-in allows you to place your CTA on the bottom right-hand corner of your website. As the visitor scrolls, so does your CTA - making it always available.
If you don’t like the idea of a scrolling, floating CTA, you can always post a CTA at the end of your page introduction or fitting it elsewhere in the article where it works with the heading topic.
Who is the admin? You? Then change the name. Give yourself authority.
Who likes admin? Probably nobody, to be honest. So, why do you make your visitors fill out a form upon arrival? Don’t slam your visitors with an immediate fill-out form if your desire is to keep them engaged on your website because this isn’t going to do it for you.
Do you allow comments on your blog post? We love this idea. When visitors are allowed to comment, that is engagement. It also gives new visitors something to engage with. Just let them comment, though. Don’t use this as your way of gathering leads. Let visitors comment on your posts without having to sign up and hand over their email or social media information. You’ll be shocked at how much more engagement you get.
If you want to keep visitors on your site longer and have them visit again, update your site regularly. This includes everything. If a visitor who has been to your site before returns and it looks like there is nothing new, they won’t stay. If they didn’t convert to a lead with their last visit, they’re surely not going to now, and they potentially won’t return ever again.
Add new content to your site as often as possible. Even set it up on a schedule for posting. Maybe you want to post on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. Or, Tuesday or Thursday. Perhaps your ideal schedule is one new post a week and then share older posts on other days. Whatever it is you decide that works best for your brand, do that and stick to it.
Keep your website fresh and new. While we realize many brands have the brand colors they stick to for their website, there are other changes you can make outside of branding colors and logos.
Some things you can change are:
While we don’t recommend that you change your main copy every week, it’s nice to make some minor changes every once in a while to keep things fresh. Vary up your content. Add new photo sets. Tease upcoming events or products. Add countdown timers for big reveals. Keep things interesting.
This may seem like a lot of work. It is.
And that’s OK! Your website is your greatest marketing tool, and if you’re not experienced in maintaining your tools, you’re not alone. Most business owners aren’t.
That’s where we come in. Carrboro Creative is a results-driven creative agency that offers website care plans, custom website design, brand development, graphic design, SEO, and more. Contact us today for a free quote and let us show you how we can keep your website fresh, keep new visitors rolling in, and care for your website so you can get back to running your business.
With more than half the world experiencing some sort of lockdown in 2020, eCommerce suddenly shifted to become (effectively) the only game in town for so many. Businesses that had their doors shut by the government had to shift their operations to an online environment, and many were not prepared for that change.
With more than half the world experiencing some sort of lockdown in 2020, eCommerce suddenly shifted to become (effectively) the only game in town for so many. Businesses that had their doors shut by the government had to shift their operations to an online environment, and many were not prepared for that change.
For the longest time, websites were just something trendy to have. Toss up a few blog posts, maybe some stock photos, or a few graphics. Perhaps pop in a link to your products or services, and include some contact information. Designs, graphics, and colors were not at the forefront of the design. Businesses wanted something up, and they wanted it up quickly just to have a web presence. 2020 has dictated that this is no longer an option.
IBM’s U.S. Retail Index report for 2020 states that “COVID-19 has accelerated retail trends by nearly five years.” The report goes on to say that there was:
With growth like that, it’s easy to see that the time is now to get your website up to speed with the market, and to focus on some elements to help you stand out from the crowd. Here we’ll show you the website design trends you need to know for 2021.
First and foremost, your website should always, always, always be mobile-friendly. With more and more users shopping from their phones and tablets, having a mobile-first design that incorporates responsive design has taken on a more significant role than in the past.
In fact, we’re going to say this one is non-negotiable. Mobile-ready websites have become increasingly important over the years. You’ve always wanted a website that could be accessed on various devices and screen sizes. Now, it’s mandatory.
When we say a website incorporates responsive design, that means the website features adjust according to the screen size and aspect ratio of the devices being used to view it. Designers are developing websites with desktop users in mind but making sure it's accessible for other screen sizes and pixel counts as a primary focus, so users can search, browse and shop easily on their device of choice.
According to Google, mobile-first websites are going to be ongoingly ranked higher in Google searches than websites without mobile responsiveness.
Page loading speed and responsive elements are crucial to your website’s success. 47% of consumers expect a website to load in less than two seconds and 40% will leave a website without taking an action if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load.
Web pages that load slowly send an immediate message to your visitors that your brand doesn't provide the quality you expect from someone worth doing business with. They will begin to wonder “If your website doesn't function the way it should, why would they expect any different from your products or services?”
Minimalism is back. Somewhere along the way in the world of web design, we lost track of the simple, clean, minimal web design for bright, fun, packed-full-of-punch design. Minimal and simple designs are modern and aesthetically pleasing to look at. Use menus to give your website visitors a way to navigate to all the punches your website holds.
If you have a more complex website or company with a variety of services, it might be tricky to stick with a minimal site. One solution to this issue is to brand your services with different colors. This helps differentiate your robust offerings and make your services clear and distinct for your customers. We used this approach with the Carrboro Business Alliance to differentiate their About Page, Advocacy Work, and Programs.
To drive organic traffic to your business for relevant searches, your website needs to be optimized for SEO. SEO encompasses the proper use of keywords, headlines, meta descriptions, and alt text for images.
Permalink structure is also important and should be factored in. Search engines like Google and Bing favor URLs that are short and contain relevant keywords. With the default permalink structure for WordPress for instance, the URL for a blog post looks like:
yourwebsite.com/?p=987654321
Not a very good URL in terms of SEO or aesthetics.
Fortunately it’s not too hard to change your permalink structure. By doing so you can make your URLs better suited for SEO like the following:
https://www.yourwebsite.com/blog/website-design-trends/
While trends are showing a decline in stock photo use and an incline in illustrations, mixing photos with graphic illustrations is still very useful. Using a mixture of media creates an individual message of the site. All types of media posted on the website should be thought of as an opportunity for branding. Using a mixture helps you to stand out from the crowd - especially with your brand standing behind it.
We get it. Your head is spinning thinking about all of the changes you need to make. Or, maybe, you just need to get a fresh start on a brand new website. We get it. It’s easy to get overwhelmed. You don’t have to be, though.
At Carrboro Creative, no matter where you are at in your website journey, we can help you every step of the way. We will work with you to develop your brand, curate your brand design, and create a WordPress site for you that actually converts! We approach web design with small and medium sized businesses in mind. What that means is we use programs and plugins that make small edits easy for small business owners or admins.
Get in touch, and let’s make your site a winner.
You’ve been the visionary behind design concepts for your team in the past. You’ve had a hand in reating everything from PR material and email templates to themes, social media posts, graphics, and more, you’ve always operated on the “bigger is better” mindset with the business designs.
You’ve been the visionary behind design concepts for your team in the past. You’ve had a hand in reating everything from PR material and email templates to themes, social media posts, graphics, and more, you’ve always operated on the “bigger is better” mindset with the business designs.
But is bigger always better when you’re creating the hypothetical focal point of your brand?
You’ve recently been tasked with partnering with a graphic design studio to create a fresh logo that reflects the new direction the business is going in. You immediately take bits and pieces of the old logo and magnify them.
After all, the logo comes first, right?
Recognizing a brand doesn’t necessarily mean looking at the size of the logo. Rather, brand recognition is about other design elements that tie everything together.
When people see a logo, they think about the things your brand offers — It’s a reassurance factor. However, it’s only a small piece of business and strategy.
Connecting with your clients via other creative elements is just as important as the logo. Let’s take a look at some of the misconceptions behind “bigger is better” when it comes to your logo and branding.
Sure, the logo might be the first thing that new clients see, but the logo isn’t everything. People will be drawn in by what you can offer them, not just the size or style of your logo.
What else are you doing to attract business?
Giving potential or existing clients a reason to believe that your brand is the one to choose for your industry goes well beyond the logo into the realm of creativity and purpose behind your brand. The logo makes you recognizable; the brand makes you memorable.
The medium is the message. But does that mean the size of your logo has to be the focal point of it all?
When potential or existing clients are coming to your business website, they aren’t looking to see how flashy your logo is. They’re looking for a headline, call to action, or way to solve a problem.
Say a client is looking for a content marketing plan that you offer, but the logo is taking up more of the page than the description of services. They have to search for what they need rather than seeing a call to action from the start. Will you retain the business here?
Probably not. They aren’t looking for the logo. They’re looking for a solution.
The first thought most business owners and fresh designers have is to use all of the white space available. Fill it up with text, color, pictures, etc.
A good design incorporates white space. But increasing the logo isn’t necessarily the best use of any existing white space.
Consider the use of white space on your website. Let’s take the desktop version of the page. The logo looks great in that upper corner. But does the enlarged logo work in the same fashion when it comes to mobile devices?
Sizes of logos, navigation menu elements, photos, and textual elements must be considered when designing a website that is both desktop and mobile-friendly.
Implementing great user interface (UI) elements instead of solely focusing on logo size will help the customer take the desired action or solve a problem.
It’s true. Your logo will generally be what customers remember in looking for your business again. It creates a sense of familiarity that will be memorable for them when interacting with your business.
But does the logo have to be bigger to grab the user’s attention and boost your business?
Hierarchy is the order (of design elements) at which they get the user’s attention. Visual hierarchy in web design is critical in how a client views a business from the get-go. You want them to see the logo in that top half or “above the fold” of the landing page without scrolling.
With hierarchy, the user should know how to use the website, see a navigation menu or search bar, and what the purpose of the business is.
If your logo can convey all of that without any creative or textual user interface elements, you’ve done what most business owners can only dream of.
For designers and business owners alike, making sure the user isn’t overwhelmed and chooses to stick around is key. Present them with aesthetics and navigation that support the logo and branding, not the other way around.
Impactful design can be hard to come up with unless you have the right creative team behind you.
At Carrboro Creative, our carrboro-based design agency is a team of creatives that live and breathe graphic design. They artfully and skillfully take information and use design best practices to create visual hierarchies, simplify information, and develop graphics to help tell a story.
Need a brochure? Book? Brand Development? Web Design? We do it all.
Our graphic designers will bring your idea to life digitally and in print and we love taking on new projects of all kinds. Get in touch today for a free quote on your next project and let’s work together.
Just like your car needs regular tune-ups and your house needs routine maintenance, so does your website. A website isn’t one of those things that you build and then just let it be. Technology is constantly evolving and it does so at a rapid rate. It’s likely your website is going to need updating quite often.
Just like your car needs regular tune-ups and your house needs routine maintenance, so does your website. A website isn’t one of those things that you build and then just let it be. Technology is constantly evolving and it does so at a rapid rate. It’s likely your website is going to need updating quite often.
A website care plan is a set of bundled services grouped together to help keep your website running at its optimal performance. These care plan services can include performance, back-ups, security, real-time monitoring, virus protection, malware protection, and more.
Taking care of these things is a time-consuming process. Especially when you also consider the website updates. For example, if you are a WordPress user, you’ll have WordPress updates, plugin updates, theme and template updates fairly regularly and if you use a framework, you’ll have their updates as well.
A website care plan is a plan that can offer you peace of mind. It’s also a huge time-saver to have one in place. A website care plan can also provide you with a very valuable safety net.
When thinking about whether or not you need a website care plan, ask yourself these 3 questions.
For most business owners, a website is critical for business. For others, it may be the only way they do business as there is no brick and mortar storefront or office they occupy. Your website helps you to attract visitors and capture leads. From there, it can help you engage in your audience and convert those leads into revenue.
With a website care plan, you’ll have peace of mind that your website is always being cared for, and that your most major marketing and sales tools are functioning and representing your brand well.
You spend a good amount of money on having a website designed for your business. From here, your cost is just that to update it every few years, giving it a little makeover for freshness. But, if you look at it from the coding perspective, if you don’t have regular updates, the software which powers your site is being left open to phishers, hackers, malware, and plenty of other potentially undetected security risks.
A website care plan in place protects you from these threats and ensures your investment.
Let’s say you did have time to handle all of these tasks on your own, and you’re doing a great job of keeping up with them. You think you’ve done it all and you’ve done it all correctly, but something within your coding breaks, and now your website looks horrible, or something isn’t working correctly, and you don’t have the time to go dig through the code for the offending issue. You need your site to work now.
A website care plan ensures you have someone with experience that you can trust to help you get your website back up and running when unexpected circumstances inevitably occur.
Cybercrime is on the rise. There are over 1.8 billion websites online and that number is growing by the second, giving hackers more fish in their pond. Don’t be one they catch.
Even with regular updates, vulnerabilities happen. Plugins break and fail. Hosting services go down, websites crash, exploits are discovered, and login details are cracked.
Not all web hosting is set up to perform automatic updates. If there is no routine backup, you can potentially lose everything on your site without any recourse for recovering your data or your clients’. Having a care plan in place can save you from having to start over - from scratch.
You might be thinking you can do this yourself - and the reality is you can, but as a business owner or high level manager, you shouldn’t. Your time should be spent where it’s better suited to manage and grow your business, which is what you do best — not worrying about your website and wasting your time trying to hit the moving target that is website development.
Doing website maintenance is extremely time-consuming, and honestly, it should be a daily task. It can also be incredibly tedious. Instead, you should be focused on sales to make that day, or visitors to connect with, or leads to convert.
There’s a reason why professional website developers, website designers, and website maintenance companies exist. Maintaining your website is a full-time job. Let us worry about your website and the software powering it for you. Think of us as your geeky, silent partner watching your back..
Now that you’ve learned what a website care plan is and what’s really involved in maintaining your website day-in and day-out, you’re probably also noticing just how time-consuming it is going to be for you to keep up with all of the updates, monitoring, and changes all on your own.
That’s where we come in. Carrboro Creative is a results-driven creative agency that offers website care plans, custom website design, brand development, graphic design, SEO, and more. Contact us today for a free quote and let us show you how we can care for your website, so you can get back to running your business.
It’s always big news when design trends for the upcoming year are announced. With the new year just around the corner, it’s time to think about - out with the old and in with the new. I am sure we can all agree, we’re happy to do so with 2020.
It’s always big news when design trends for the upcoming year are announced. With the new year just around the corner, it’s time to think about - out with the old and in with the new. I am sure we can all agree, we’re happy to do so with 2020.
Here are our top graphic design trends for 2021. Whether you are looking for new social media graphics or a website design overhaul, we’ve got you covered.
If you’ve been around the internet for a while, you might see some familiar favorites return and some that never really left - and we’re not mad about it at all!
Muted colors feel safe and secure, and often nostalgic. Muted colors are easy on the eyes, feel natural, and appear organic. They have a lot of saturation compared to the more vivid colors. You’ll notice that is why many health and wellness companies have been using muted colors for their designs.
If you’re not familiar with muted colors, they’re vivid colors that have had their brighter edges taken off with an infusion of white, black, or other complimentary colors.
In 2020, graphic designers were using a lot of flowing and abstract shapes in their designs. This year they’ll be replaced with rigid, hard-edged geometric shapes and patterns. These hard edges create a great contrast against muted colors.
The goal of data visualizations should be to make complex data easy to read and understand. We live in a time where a lot of data is continuously being circulated. Using simple data visualizations can make communication more effective.
You probably see many brands already using flat icons and illustrations in their social media graphics and website designs. Whereas three-dimensional or photo-realistic icons and images were the trend a few years ago, simple, material-design influenced graphics are becoming the rage.
Flat icons can be a powerful tool for visual communication. With these simple icons, you can communicate your meaning in a lot less space than by using words. Plus, illustrations are way more creative than stock photos and grab readers’ attention.
Serif fonts are one of the oldest font styles being used today, dating all the way back to the 15th century. Because of their age, serif fonts are seen as classic, elegant, and trustworthy - evoking feelings of nostalgia. This is why we see many financial institutions using this font in their marketing and on websites.
Classic Serif fonts are not to be confused with sans serif fonts. Think of it like this - serif font has the little embellishments at the top and bottom of the letters. Sans serif is absent of those.
You may have started noticing more companies are using slide decks on Instagram and LinkedIn lately.
That is because they are a visual way of communicating a longer message than with just a single image post - and they get results! The algorithms on Instagram and LinkedIn seem to promote slide deck posts more than ones with a single image.
It’s likely many people will still be working remotely well into 2021. That means shooting new video content is going to be difficult.
Videos that make use of text on-screen to communicate messages are one way of getting around the need for new footage. You won’t need a whole crew to create videos. Instead, brands can create simple text heavy videos in a fraction of the time.
Colors can make or break a traditional marketing campaign, social media, web graphics, or website design. Thankfully we have the Pantone Color Institute to keep us up-to-date on color trends and hot color picks for each year.
For 2021, Pantone announced this year's colors would be Pantone 17-5104 Ultimate Gray and Pantone 13-0647 Illuminating. While the grey and yellow colors are very independent of each other, they complement and work very well together. Illuminating is a color of strength and positivity. Ultimate Gray is inspirational and gives hope - an amazing choice for 2021!
With all of these changes, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. You might be thinking - should I change the colors first? Should we just start with a whole new design? And, it’s easy to feel that way. You don’t have to feel that way, though.
At Carrboro Creative, our design agency is a team of creatives that live and breathe graphic design. They artfully and skillfully take information and use design best practices to create visual hierarchies, simplify information, and develop graphics to help tell a story. Need a brochure? Book? Album Cover? Website Design? We do it all. Our graphic designers will bring your idea to life digitally and in print.
Get in touch, and get a free quote today!
When you’re building a business, your marketing strategy is one of the core elements of your plan — until it isn’t. It’s easy to get caught up in the logistics of getting a product to market. And if you manage to net a lot of customers through word-of-mouth or general advertising, you may think marketing is something you can skip.
When you’re building a business, your marketing strategy is one of the core elements of your plan — until it isn’t. It’s easy to get caught up in the logistics of getting a product to market. And if you manage to net a lot of customers through word-of-mouth or general advertising, you may think marketing is something you can skip.
Make no mistake: if you want to grow your business, you need a good marketing strategy. So, what are you overlooking?
One of the biggest misconceptions among marketers is the assumption that you control your brand. Usually, people are referring to their logo, tagline, mission statement, etc. However, your brand is actually intangible — it’s what people say about your company. You can and should strive to align your brand with your core values and desired outcomes. For example:
To understand how branding works, let’s look at a failure: in 2008, Tropicana decided they needed a new look. They hired a marketing agency who had little understanding of branding. The result? A poorly designed beverage container that completely abandoned Tropicana’s well-established presence. Sales plummeted, and Tropicana scrapped the new design in just 30 days. This attempt failed because the agency didn’t connect with Tropicana’s loyal customers. Instead, they made the product unrecognizable to them. This example proves that a “new and improved” look (whether it was better is debatable) isn’t always a guarantee of more sales.
The key is to be consistent across all aspects of your marketing materials and ensure that the experience you provide is one that resonates with your target audience. If you’re just starting your business, do your research to make sure your marketing strategy is on track. If you’ve been in business for awhile, your strategy needs to be tweaked on a regular basis. Perhaps you thought your product would most resonate with Gen X but it’s actually pulling more Gen Z customers. Adjust accordingly!
It’s amazing how many businesses launch without answering a basic question: what’s in it for the customers? As the saying goes, there’s nothing new under the sun, which means that it’s nearly impossible to create a product or service that no one has seen before. That’s why your marketing strategy needs to de-emphasize your company’s amazing innovative skills and focus on the benefits you provide your target audience. In short, what value(s) are you proposing to them?
You have competitors. They’re unavoidable, even if you’re serving a niche market. You simply can’t compete on innovation alone, let alone price. The solution, then, is to compete on your value. What do you offer your customers that no one else does? Take the time to craft your value proposition: the definitive statement of why your customers should choose you.
We’ve all seen companies with woefully inconsistent marketing materials. While it’s true that you should adjust your content and design for each platform, no one should look at your website and Instagram and think they are different companies. Find the points of connection among all your channels. As we mentioned above, your goal should be to provide a consistent experience for your audience. Otherwise, they will feel confused and distrustful.
Take the time to refine your brand’s personality. How does your business “talk” and “dress”? Why do people like you and your product? What is your attitude toward customer service? What feelings do you cultivate in your customers? All these attributes play into your brand identity, and your design elements should affirm those characteristics. Imagine if Chanel or Calvin Klein used a whimsical font and neon color palette, or if Doritos were packaged in a slate grey bag with gold trim. These mismatches would be confusing and off-putting. Don’t make those mistakes with your business!
Above, we discussed the importance of a solid value proposition. Of course, writing it out isn’t enough. Your marketing strategy should include tactics to differentiate yourself from your competitors. Many new business owners assume “if you build it, they will come.” Sadly, this is not true. You cannot compete on the basis of “I’m the best/cheapest/most available.” Your differentiation has to be something that speaks to pain points.
For example, your business may offer something quite common, e.g. beauty products. What makes you different? Do you sell cruelty-free makeup? Can customers assemble their own eyeshadow palettes? Are your products made with eco-friendly materials? Will customers be able to virtually “try on” shades before buying online?
These are all ways that your marketing can (a) express your core business values while (b) connecting with your target audience’s pain points. You will never be able to compete with big beauty brands on price alone. Someone will always choose L’Oreal for premium products or e.l.f for a cheap alternative. When marketing your products, think of a way that your business can stand out from the crowd. Then, create materials that affirm that purpose.
When business owners assume that marketing doesn’t work, they’re often relying on outdated tactics or underdeveloped ideas. Marketing is a powerful way to get your product/service in front of the right crowd. To be successful at it, you need to develop a marketing strategy that affirms your company’s values and aligns your content with your customers’ interests. This is so much more than running ads or designing a logo: it’s a comprehensive guide to positioning your business.
Need expert help with your branding and marketing strategy? Contact us at Carrboro Creative — we’re here to help you cut through the noise and make an impact on your dream customers!
Nowadays, any business that doesn’t have an online presence is far behind the times. But it’s not enough to simply have a website. The internet is changing and evolving every single day, and your website has to evolve with it, or people will pass your site right by. Users can tell an outdated site from a modern one, and studies show that 55% of website visitors spend less than 15 seconds on a company’s website. That’s how long you have to make a good impression. And if you don’t, you’re losing valuable sales every single day.
Nowadays, any business that doesn’t have an online presence is far behind the times. But it’s not enough to simply have a website. The internet is changing and evolving every single day, and your website has to evolve with it, or people will pass your site right by. Users can tell an outdated site from a modern one, and studies show that 55% of website visitors spend less than 15 seconds on a company’s website. That’s how long you have to make a good impression. And if you don’t, you’re losing valuable sales every single day.
The items below (though not exhaustive) will help you identify what makes a site outdated and how it hurts your business.
Your design says a lot about your website. For starters, it’s the first thing people will notice about your site and, as was stated earlier, you have only a few seconds to make a good impression. We’ve all seen an outdated web design and cringed, meaning we all know what one looks like. Don’t let your site be the cringe-worthy one!
An outdated design makes it look like you don’t care about your business, and that you’re technologically challenged, unable to make the necessary changes. Worse, it could raise suspicions that there are other parts of your business equally outdated.
Not only does unkempt website design make your business look bad, it lowers your chance of appearing in web searches. Google takes into account site updates and “content freshness” when ranking search results. (More on SEO later.)
Roughly 91% of customers use online reviews to determine whether or not they want to use a product or service. If they don’t see any reviews about your business, it will likely make them wonder what you’re hiding.
If people can’t read reviews from other customers just like them about your business, they can’t get a good sense of what it’s really like to work with you. They’re going to instead opt for a business that to them seems more credible and open about its performance.
Not only do customers pay attention to online reviews when ranking your business, so does Google. The search engine prioritizes companies with lots of good reviews over ones with no reviews or even just a few reviews. The more reviews you post, the closer to the top of the search results page you get.
Security features become more and more sophisticated all the time. They often require frequent updates to give you access to their latest features. The same goes for vendor platforms like PayPal. They’re often updating their services to make online payments easier and more reliable.
If you’re not up to date on your cyber security and payment software, you are leaving yourself vulnerable to hackers and viruses. Not only could this result in legal troubles if customers’ information is stolen, it could leave you unable to process payments if your site goes down or users get too frustrated with an outdated or overcomplicated checkout process.
At Carrboro Creative, we design 100% customized WordPress sites to fit your business’s needs. Our process is simple, straightforward, and personable. We’ll talk with you about your vision for your site, allow for multiple rounds of revisions as we hone in on your perfect design, and train you on how to update and maintain your site yourself. We even offer site maintenance packages on a monthly basis. Get in touch with us today to get a free quote. Start building your online presence the right way with Carrboro Creative.
Your website is one of your business' most important marketing assets. It can attract new customers and help express your unique brand identity. Staying on top of your website’s design is critical to your business being competitive.
Your website is one of your business' most important marketing assets. It can attract new customers and help express your unique brand identity. Staying on top of your website’s design is critical to your business being competitive.
But what if your site isn’t up to par? Millions of websites go years without updates, and suffer from poor search results, lost sales, and even security vulnerabilities and hacks as a result.
A website redesign can ensure that your site is having its intended effect and staying up to date, make your site more user-friendly and visually appealing, and improve your marketing as a result. Undertaking a website redesign is a big project and there are several important considerations you'll want to take into account before beginning the process.
Let’s take a look at the important factors to consider before beginning a website redesign.
Before making any large changes to your website design, you need to determine which aspects of the site could benefit from an update.
Here are the important elements of your website you’ll want to evaluate:
Dive into your analytics platform and review how well your website visitors are converting into leads and sales. If you’re not hitting your target metrics, there may be parts of your website that need to be redesigned.
When visitors land on your homepage, what do they see? Your website should make it clear what industry you are in and what your business does. All important information should be easily found on the site.
If this is not the case, you likely have not clearly defined your buyer personas and are unsure which target audience you are trying to appeal to. This will ultimately lead to a lower conversion rate as each component of your website should be tied to a desired outcome.
Is your audience able to easily navigate the site to find what they are looking for? Take a look at your website's speed, responsiveness, security, and navigation menu to see if you are providing visitors a great user experience.
SEO determines where your website appears in search results for relevant search terms. The higher your web pages rank, the larger audience your business will reach. You can use Google Search Console to see where your website is ranking for important keywords.
If your website is not yielding the SEO results you desire, begin to analyze the on-page and technical factors that could be holding you back.
Some important questions you'll need to ask include:
Is your audience able to find the information they are looking for on your website? If the desired information is not present, you need to create a content strategy to produce relevant material. Find out what content is performing well so that you can use it as a template for future content. This plays into SEO and brand reputation as a whole, so don’t let the quality and consistency of your content fall by the wayside.
Once you have a clear idea which aspects of your website could use redesigning, you'll want to evaluate your budget and desired turnaround time. This is an important consideration as the amount that you are willing to pay for your website redesign will play a big role in the quality of service you receive.
Here are some of the important questions to ask yourself when determining the time and resources to invest in your redesign:
You may only want a simple redesign of some of the frontend elements of your website. Or perhaps you are looking for something more extensive like an entirely new platform or technology, new content, or a new digital marketing and SEO strategy. All these factors will impact your total budget for the project.
Ask yourself how much of your current content you plan to keep so you can begin to have a better understanding of how much new content you need.
You'll want to define the content needs of your website as early as possible. This will not only impact your project timeline and budget, but it will also help you find the right agency to partner with. Not all agencies are well-equipped to handle content creation so if you need a lot of content made you'll have to factor this into your selection process.
Like other areas of marketing, taking a look at your competitors when considering a website redesign is a helpful practice. It will provide you insight into what others in your industry are doing and how your business can differentiate itself.
Analyze the websites of your closest competitors and industry leaders and ask yourself the following questions:
Use this competitive analysis to help make your website better than the competition's. If you're going to invest the time and resources into a website redesign, you want to maximize your results.
The content management system (CMS) you use will determine what you are able to achieve with your website redesign. Not all platforms offer the same level of functionality or customization.
The platform you use needs to balance options and capabilities with the goals of your redesign project. Ask yourself which benefits and features are most important to delivering the perfect experience to your visitors and which you can do without.
We highly recommend WordPress as an all-around CMS and we start all our website redesign projects with a blank WordPress theme.
If you need assistance implementing a website redesign, a professional web design agency like Carrboro Creative can help. Our strategic designers focus on understanding your company and target audience to design digital experiences that convert. Your business doesn’t fit into a template and neither does your web design. We design fully custom WordPress websites for your organization. Contact us today and let’s make you a custom site that converts.
Your brand is more than just a name, a logo, and a tagline. It is a conversation with your audience that instills and reinforces the purpose and personality of your company. With countless businesses trying to stand out in a competitive marketplace, building a strong brand has become essential for companies looking to find success.
Your brand is more than just a name, a logo, and a tagline. It is a conversation with your audience that instills and reinforces the purpose and personality of your company. With countless businesses trying to stand out in a competitive marketplace, building a strong brand has become essential for companies looking to find success.
In the digital world, branding is even more important as it provides a tangible face to your business. Strong branding helps make your online presence more appealing to visitors and it encourages them to spend more time interacting with you. Building a brand that connects with customers requires consistent messaging at every point of interaction.
Let’s take a look at some of the best ways to use your brand identity to create a distinctive online presence and differentiate yourself from the competition.
The first step to creating a distinguished online presence is to hone in on the message you want your brand to convey.
You may have an assortment of messages that you would like to communicate to your online audience such as your selection of quality products, your great customer support, or your famous customers. However, it's important to note that the attention span of the visitors on your website is rather limited. If you attempt to highlight too many different elements, you may not effectively communicate any at all.
This is why you want to select certain aspects to use as a foundation and transform them into a story. Start by thinking of two to three values that best represent the core of your business. Create attractive visuals and simple wording to relay your concept and begin developing the recognizable persona of your brand.
Expand on this by giving authenticity to your communication and create stories where your core values are the heroes. For example, you can use testimonials from your customers or employees or facts regarding the history of your company.
In your story, focus on the characters and their emotions and how your business satisfies a particular need. Build a minimal plot and develop some actions to engage and captivate your visitors. The more you develop your storyline, the more you can use it throughout your marketing campaigns to create a cohesive brand identity.
The story making process may be long, but it is an effective way of focusing on the deep personality of your business, helping to convey why your brand is so different than others.
After you have selected the core values to build your online presence around, you'll have to communicate them in the best way possible.
Your website is the most valuable online marketing asset that you have and is the ideal choice for displaying your brand in a complete and structured manner.
Because you own your website, you are the master of the flow of information and have the advantage of choosing every piece of content to be able to guide visitors according to your objectives.
There needs to be a seamless and consistent connection between your communication across the internet and your website. Your messaging, colors, typeface, and theme should all be consistent.
If you are able to convey a connected message at every touchpoint, your brand will resonate with your audience and they will be more likely to remember you.
While your website should be the centerpiece of your online presence, it's important not to neglect other channels such as social media profiles, banners on other websites, paid advertisements, or content marketing on partners' platforms.
Each has its own benefits and brings an opportunity to deepen the connection with your target audience. You'll want to offer multiple perspectives of your story to fit the variety of platforms, all while maintaining a consistent brand messaging. Your material may look a little different on each channel but your core values and central theme of your message should remain the same.
Online branding allows you to connect with your audience in a more interactive way. This includes videos and interactive content but also a variety of communication channels such as live chat and other messaging applications.
Creating more collaborative content helps you create a greater relationship between your users and your brand, strengthening your brand in the process. By providing more collaborative and interactive ways to engage with your brand, you establish an image of openness that will help distinguish your business as one that gives more thought to the customer experience.
Like other aspects of marketing, it's difficult to know what is working without tracking key performance metrics. You want to consistently measure the impact of your marketing campaigns and the image of your brand to see if your efforts are having the intended effects. This will allow you to see if elements of your story need adjusting or if you should focus on, or change the messaging for different online channels.
To monitor the performance of your brand, you'll have to choose key performance indicators linked to your marketing goals. For example, if you are trying to present a brand image that resonates with young people, you'll want to evaluate demographics such as age to see if a substantial amount of your website visitors are young.
Creating a memorable online presence requires consistent messaging and use of well-thought-out design elements. When customers instantly know who you are based on your logo and colors, you are more than just the average business.
Carrboro Creative offers professional brand design services that increase perceived value, build customer loyalty, and help establish your online presence. Contact us today to design a brand that stands out and rakes in.
Is your website sending the right message to users? It takes online visitors less than a second to form a first opinion of your brand after viewing your company's website. If you don’t meet the user’s expectations at that moment, you may lose their potential business for good.
Is your website sending the right message to users? It takes online visitors less than a second to form a first opinion of your brand after viewing your company's website. If you don’t meet the user’s expectations at that moment, you may lose their potential business for good.
A poorly made website and ineffective content can have this effect on people. In this post, we’ll go through the different ways your website may be sending the wrong message to customers and what you can do to fix it.
Here are some of the ways your website is sending the wrong message to users:
A majority of website visitors will judge the credibility of your business based solely on its website design. It's important to make sure that your website is keeping up with web design trends as a design-build that doesn't fit your industry standards will cause visitors to question the trustworthiness of your business.
There are several different ways your website can communicate trustworthiness:
If your website is lacking in any of these regards, you will be sending an unintended message to your audience.
It cannot be overstated how important a fast loading website is to your business. 47% of consumers expect a website to load in less than two seconds and 40% will leave a website without taking an action if pages take longer than three seconds to load.
If your web pages load slowly you are sending an immediate message to your visitors that your brand doesn't provide the quality you expect from someone worth doing business with. They will begin to wonder “If your website doesn't function the way it should, why would they expect any different from your products or services?”
Another way you send the wrong message to visitors is by having a website that offers a frustrating user experience.
You have likely visited a website in the past that was difficult to use and understand how frustrating it can be. Imagine the message you are sending to users if your site provides a similar experience. Visitors will quickly start to feel that you don't care about your customers and will be less likely to do business with you.
A great user experience (UX) provides meaningful and easy to use interactions from the first time someone visits your site through the conversion into a customer.
This means having a user interface that provides a visual representation across devices that is consistent, intuitive, and aligns with your users’ expectations. It also means organizing your website's information with the expectations of users.
Effectively implementing these UX design principles can make the difference between someone staying on your site and converting into a loyal client or getting frustrated and leaving to go to a competitor's site in frustration.
At the core of the message your website is sending to visitors is the content itself. If your content is hollow or poorly researched, no amount of design elements or digital marketing will convince users to continue visiting your site.
People visit websites to look for solutions to their pain points. If your content fails to address these concerns, visitors will quickly determine that your business doesn't have the answers they are looking for and will go somewhere else.
The same can happen if your content is overly similar to other content that has been posted around the web. While the information may be helpful in and of itself, it is unlikely to be of use to someone who has read similar material on the subject.
You cannot always assume that your audience will like the same type of content that you like. Perhaps you prefer blog posts while they prefer podcasts. Knowing the types of content that work best with your audience will allow you to create material that matches their interests.
If you're producing misaligned content it can send the message that you are out of touch with your audience's interests.
Here are some helpful tips to ensure your website and content are sending the right message to your target audience:
The first step to conveying the proper message with your website is ensuring everything is working and up to date.
This means conducting a detailed audit of your site and checking for the following issues:
This is a thorough process but it is essential to ensuring that every page makes a strong impression.
Always keep the end-user in mind when creating content and designing your website. When you focus on creating a quality experience for your visitors you will create a well-designed website that leaves positive first impressions and establishes the credibility of your business.
A simple way to ensure that your website is sending the right message is to communicate with your audience to find out what they want and what they think of your current site.
Discover the pain points that they came to your site looking to solve. See what features they like and dislike and what form of content they value.
It is best to ask for this feedback directly. This can be done through surveys, polls, email campaigns, comments threads, or forums.
Your website is the most important marketing asset for your business. When you take the time to ensure everything is functioning at an optimal level and your content aligns with your audience's interests, you send the right message to your visitors and make them more likely to become repeat customers.
Carrboro Creative can help you design a winning website with our professional web design services. Our designers focus on understanding your business and your audience to craft a truly unique digital experience that converts. Period.
Get in touch today to see what we can do for your business, and let’s build a website that works for you, even when you’re off the clock.
Digital marketing. Print marketing. Which one is better? Which one is right for your business? Is your web design more important than your print collateral?
Digital marketing. Print marketing. Which one is better? Which one is right for your business? Is your web design more important than your print collateral?
Ah, those are the wrong questions.
The truth is, no matter what type of business you have or how large it is, you need both. Digital and print marketing are not adversaries vying for your love; they are partners in your success, and they work better as a team.
Digital marketing has not eliminated the need for print marketing; rather, it has changed the way we use print marketing. Instead of mailing out full product line catalogs, a business may choose to mail a postcard or coupon that promotes their website with an exclusive QR discount code, where the customer will find their entire product line. The examples of the symbiotic relationship between your website and print marketing are practically endless.
So now you know: you need both types of marketing collateral, and to think holistically about them. And the correct questions to ask are the “how” questions: “How do I decide what marketing collateral my business needs?” “How do I ensure my branding is cohesive across all my marketing collateral?”
Marketing collateral is the term used to include any media used to educate and guide your prospective customers. It should be focused on their needs with authentic, problem-solving content.
As you develop your collateral, consider your prospective customers and the journey they take from awareness to purchase and beyond. Your collateral should represent your business well, connect your brand with your audience, and communicate your value.
With digital marketing in the leading role and print as its supporting cast, it’s vital that your small business branding have a cohesive look across all your collateral, both digital and print.
Developing a brand style guide is a good practice that will ensure your staff and design partners stick to the parameters you’ve set. That way, you’ll be using style consistency to your advantage to place your brand at the front of your prospective customers’ minds no matter how they come in contact with it.
There are many things to consider when developing your brand style, but a few key ones are listed here.
Your logo should reflect what’s great about your business. It will wind up likely being the primary visual element your customers and prospects associate with your business, so it needs to look modern, have a great color scheme, and adapt well across different collateral.
It’s best to hire a graphic designer to create your logo — they will listen to your vision and bring innovative ideas to the table. Furthermore, a graphic designer will be able to create many versions of your logo: a light one for dark backgrounds, a dark one for light backgrounds, a full-color version, a black-and-white version, and versions with and without words. A graphic designer also knows how to ensure your logo is a proper vector, which means it can be infinitely scaled without losing any quality.
The colors you use on every bit of collateral should be the same as the ones in your logo — or complementary from a wider color palette. Your brand consistency depends on your collateral not only looking good, but having the same style and colors.
And of course, this goes for your print and digital collateral. The colors in your website design should complement the colors of your logo, and all your brochures, business cards, apps, etc., should reflect the same look.
A graphic designer is a valuable partner when determining what colors you wish to use in your marketing materials. They are trained in not only what colors correctly complement each other, but just as importantly, in the psychology of color. The colors you use in your brand marketing can have an effect in how your prospective customers perceive you. Graphic designers and web designers alike know this fact intimately, and incorporate these elements into their process.
The fonts you choose for your marketing collateral should reflect the image and level of formality you wish to project as a business. Limit your fonts to one font each for your heading, subheading, body text, and maybe an additional accent font.
Your marketing collateral is worth its weight in gold as you establish your brand, so work with a great graphic designer, web designer, or brand development specialist to make sure it’s doing exactly as you intend it to do. The difference between a well-crafted brand design and an unprofessional attempt can cost you in missed sales. Consider the following with your marketing collateral:
Now that you understand how your print and digital marketing collateral should support each other, you understand how important it is to have cohesive design and a strong brand strategy throughout.
Carrboro Creative partners with you in your marketing strategy, whatever your needs: From logo design to full web design packages or any print collateral you may need. Our graphic design team offers branding services that get to the heart of your target audience, and we create designs that sell. Period.
Ready to elevate your brand? Because that’s what we do at Carrboro Creative. Contact us for a free quote and find out how we make it easy for your brand to grow.
Do you know who your brand is for? If you answered “my brand is for my business,” you may just be missing the mark.
Do you know who your brand is for? If you answered “my brand is for my business,” you may just be missing the mark.
In reality, your brand is for your audience. It’s a way to signal to your audience “this is the thing you are looking for.” It’s a way for you to show your target audience that you share their values. People have to buy products and services, but they WANT to buy products and use services from brands they trust.
As Seth Godin puts it, when people are looking at a brand, they are looking for “People like us [who] do things like this.”
So how do you build a brand identity that attracts the audience you want to attract?
There are five elements you need to consider when you are building your brand.
Nothing great starts without a strategy. Your brand strategy should encompass all of the elements that will make you unforgettable to your audience. A good strategy will bring consistency to your brand that ensures your audience will recognize you in an instant and understand what you stand for when they see you. There are six elements that go into creating a powerful brand strategy.
To create the right branding strategy for your business, you need to consider your:
Each of these elements should be viewed as a puzzle piece. When they all come together in the right way, the full picture of your brand becomes clear.
Your brand’s story is the most powerful weapon in your branding arsenal. Every business has one, whether you know it or not. There’s a reason you decided to start your own business. There’s a reason you left the corporate world, or never entered it in the first place.
Your story is what is going to inspire your audience to connect with you in a deeper way. Your story is what will turn your customers into loyal brand ambassadors. One of the hardest things a business owner will face is encouraging a customer to make a repeat purchase. When customers buy into your business and are engaged with your story, you can help them to gain confidence in further purchases and become a brand advocate.
You created your product or service with a specific audience in mind. You want your brand to appeal to them. When forming a brand identity, you really need to get into your customers' shoes before you create any visuals. Knowing exactly who your ideal audience is will set a solid foundation for the style, tone, and message your branding will encapsulate.
The important thing to remember when creating your brand is that your branding is not about what you like. It is about what will resonate with your ideal audience. It’s important to know what they like, what they’re looking for, and, most importantly, who they are before you begin to think about branding.
There are two types of identity you need to consider when constructing your brand identity: visual and voice.
Your visual identity refers to all the things your customers will see when they interact with your brand. This includes colors, pictures, graphics, typefaces, and your logo.
Your brand’s voice identity refers to the tone in which all of your copy is written. It could be modern, professional, laid-back, snarky, neutral, or a combination of characteristics.
When figuring out your brand’s visual and voice identities, it’s important to refer back to all of your audience research. A visual and voice identity targeting CIOs is going to be very different from a visual and voice identity targeting housewives.
Once you’ve settled on the other four things on this list, you need to write everything you’ve discovered and decided in one, easy-to-use guide so you and your employees know how to properly represent and speak to the brand you’ve worked so hard to get right. If you haven’t had one for your business previously, a brand style guide is essentially your business’s “go-to” manual for every element in your branding identity.
Designers, developers, and content creators can refer to this style guide to ensure brand continuity. If you engage with third parties such as a web designer, printing company, or marketer, it’s essential that they have a copy of your brand style guide so that they can work within your brand’s guidelines.
A solid brand is the cornerstone of every successful business. If your brand is lacking, your sales are lacking. If your brand is lacking, your audience isn’t as committed to you as they could be. If your brand is lacking, there are easy things you can do to grow your business to new heights.
For more professional tips on how to create a brand that ignites the passion of your audience, download our free ebook “5 Steps to Building a Successful Brand Identity”. Still have questions or need some insight into building your brand? At Carrboro Creative, we’ve got you covered. Contact us today to find out more about how we can help you perfect your message and get recognized for all the right reasons.
As a business owner, knowing when to outsource elements of your business can be challenging. Many companies don't have the resources or expertise needed to perform certain functions at a high level. Outsourcing these services to dedicated professionals can help your business offset gaps in your skill sets.
As a business owner, knowing when to outsource elements of your business can be challenging. Many companies don't have the resources or expertise needed to perform certain functions at a high level. Outsourcing these services to dedicated professionals can help your business offset gaps in your skill sets.
Let's take a look at the areas of your business you should consider outsourcing and how it can benefit your company:
Your website is at the center of all your marketing efforts and is one of the most important assets your company has.
While you can potentially save money by handling all your web design in-house, you run the risk of costing your business more down the road if it is not done properly or the talent you have on hand isn’t particularly versed in web design, backend development, and website maintenance. Here the steps you should take to determine if you could benefit from outsourcing web design:
You'll want to start by taking an honest look at the people and their varying skill sets in your business. Do you have the necessary people in place to create and maintain a successful website for your business? Here are some of the types of team members you'll need to create an effective website:
Some smaller businesses try to combine this diverse range of skills into a single position and have a dedicated webmaster to handle their site. These people may be able to make updates to the website but designing and building a website from scratch requires both technical and creative skills. Finding a team member that can handle both effectively is incredibly difficult. Entire web design agency teams work together to create high-functioning and attractive websites for businesses on a full-time basis, so allocating all that ongoing work to a single team member is taking a major risk and creating a heavily weighted single point of failure.
After you determine if you have the necessary talent in place to build or redesign your website, the next step is to figure out how to devote this personnel solely to these web design projects. Web design isn't a project that can be done on the side. It's an extensive project that takes considerable focus and a significant amount of time to be done correctly. It is for this reason that many businesses simply don't have the resources to handle all web design and development in-house.
By outsourcing your web design and development, your company can experience the following benefits:
Outsourcing graphic design continues to become more important to businesses as it helps companies expand the strength of their organization’s internal marketing team. Some of the benefits marketing teams can experience by outsourcing creative design talent include:
Branding involves much more than a logo and a tagline. It goes beyond what your customers see. It is also about how you make them feel and how you tap into their values. Eliciting desired reactions from your customers takes considerable strategy and creative thinking. Naturally, this takes time to develop. This is time that your company could spend focusing on its strengths and growing the business.
Statistically, the chances are your small-to-medium business might not have the necessary personnel to develop a branding strategy efficiently. Brand development isn't something you can master through classroom learning alone. It's an art that is constantly evolving and requires a creative approach, backed by solid research and quality data analysis.
By working with an agency that specializes in brand development, your business benefits from having a partner with real-world experience building brands across a wide range of industries and well-versed in how to penetrate your target market effectively. Better yet, your marketing team will grow into your brand identity with the assistance of a quality agency partner that can capitalize on your brand strengths and shore up areas of opportunity.
In today's competitive environment, it is nearly impossible to have a successful marketing campaign without some form of search engine optimization (SEO). Like the other business elements in this guide, you'll have the choice of handling your website's SEO in-house or outsourcing it to dedicated professionals. Here are some of the advantages of outsourcing your business' SEO:
To get meaningful results from SEO, it is critical to stay on top of all online marketing developments. For example, every time Google updates its algorithm, the landscape of the SEO world shifts.
Keeping track of all changes and the new best practices can be difficult for a small in-house team. However, staying on top of all marketing developments is at the core of an SEO firm's business. With experienced employees on hand, these companies designate personnel to optimize processes and strategies at the very core of their business, leading to an improvement in overall quality and efficiency.
Over time, outsourcing SEO can save you money when compared to handling it in-house. Building an SEO team from scratch requires various steps including finding and training staff, buying the appropriate tools and software, and paying staff and offering benefits. This can all add up quickly, especially if your business continues to expand. You'll also have to account for turnover, which can increase these costs even more if you constantly have to find and train new staff members.
However, when you partner with an SEO firm, you only pay for the services received. You don't have to pay to have staff on-hand all the time and you don't have to invest the resources to find and develop your team members. This gives you more control over your expenses and can help reduce your marketing costs. With an outsourced SEO team, you have the freedom to update when you need to, and the ability to save on expenses that would otherwise be dedicated to staffing and training.
Outsourcing some elements of your business can help your company grow while you focus on what you do best. Being the boss comes with a bevvy of tough choices, but selecting a creative partner for your business doesn’t have to be one of them.
No matter where you're at in your design journey, at Carrboro Creative we can help every step of the way. Our brand development services differentiate your business in a competitive marketplace because we know what works and what doesn’t. Our team of expert designers and marketers develop brands, websites, and designs that sell. Period.
How many loyal followers are you not reaching because of your outdated brand? How many leads are you giving away because your website is hard to use or isn’t optimized for mobile viewing? Bad design costs. We can help. Contact us today to jumpstart your brand.
Growing your brand’s website can be tough. After all, there are so many aspects packed into even the simplest site. A website is a sum of all of its parts-- from its conception down to its layout, all the way to content development, web design, and brand marketing.
Growing your brand’s website can be tough. After all, there are so many aspects packed into even the simplest site. A website is a sum of all of its parts-- from its conception down to its layout, all the way to content development, web design, and brand marketing.
Sometimes, it seems as though there are so many moving parts that small business owners end up feeling overwhelmed with keeping track of, maintaining, and improving their site, to the point where goals such as an increased online presence gets lost along the way. Thankfully, business owners don’t need to fend for themselves: all they need is a thorough and comprehensive website audit to get the right idea of where they are and what they should do next.
Simply put, a website audit is a process that evaluates and analyzes a given website’s visibility on search engines, particularly on Google.
Website audits usually check your website’s status on the following criteria:
These are some of the many aspects that can be processed in an audit, each based on data and analytics your site has gathered over its course. These aspects are considered important factors by search engine algorithms for ranking your website.
Website audits rely on gathering data and analyzing them, which can take weeks, sometimes even months, for a good and thorough inference.
One of the key goals of a website is to be found; a site’s purpose is defeated if no one discovers, visits, or interacts with it.
Website traffic can come from many channels such as social media, video promotions, advertisements, and search engines. Search engines potentially bring in a huge amount of traffic, since, unlike most of the other channels, over a billion people use search engines with the purpose to find and discover. Getting your content at the very top of the first page of any search result could lead to many clicks, increased conversions, and, consequently, an uptick in your quarterly revenue. Since search engines are run by algorithms, the purpose of SEO is to make sure that your website has a high likelihood of getting your website to the top of the results of a given search term.
A comprehensive report is given at the end of every audit. These reports contain data seen and weighed by search engines, and an estimated score of each aspect to help you gauge their quality. These reports not only contain numerical comparisons, but also give detailed lists of discrepancies and action items to help fix problem areas.
Many small businesses and startups have started considering automated auditing tools ever since they’ve begun circulating the digital market. Unfortunately, what you see is what you get with these tools, however, as most of them tend to give a simple general overview of your website’s grade in terms of online standards and not much else. What these tools lack are a better discernment of key figures (i.e. data instead of information) and firm grasp on what strategies to apply to the specific issues your website has.
At the end of the day, tools are just that: tools. The human behind the utility and the experience they have using it is what makes the tool effective and efficient, and this very concept is applicable to website auditing, as well. Professionals have a vastly more in depth level of experience with issues that may be blind spots to the algorithms of automated auditing tools, not to mention they often have access to more sophisticated tools that provide more actionable information for you and your business to build upon.
Have questions about maximizing your business’ online potential? We know, this sounds complicated. That’s why we make it easy. Our monthly SEO services are customized to fit the needs of you and your brand. Contact us today to find out how to get your website found.
The designers, brand consultants, and SEO specialists here at Carrboro Creative are committed to imparting business owners the tools and wisdom they need to ensure that their digital storefronts are of top-notch quality, both in design and functionality.
The saying that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” may hold true in some instances, but what catches the eye of your potential clients can definitely be directed with the right choices in graphic design. Not only can these choices help improve your professional appearance, increase brand recognition, and convey brand message, they help break up large amounts of information and make it more easily digestible. People are inundated with copious amounts of information on a daily basis, and many have taken the art of skimming to a whole new level without even getting past visuals.
The saying that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” may hold true in some instances, but what catches the eye of your potential clients can definitely be directed with the right choices in graphic design. Not only can these choices help improve your professional appearance, increase brand recognition, and convey brand message, they help break up large amounts of information and make it more easily digestible. People are inundated with copious amounts of information on a daily basis, and many have taken the art of skimming to a whole new level without even getting past visuals.
You need a design that is going to capture and hold your clients’ interests from the first glance, and one that introduces what you do before words are even spoken or read. Effective graphic design communicates an idea to a target audience and triggers a specific action. You are in charge of defining and conveying that action.
Effective graphic design offers a multitude of ways to get your company or organization out into the world in positive ways. It can increase sales, brand awareness, professional perception, and trust. Effective design conveys that you are thought leaders in your industry and that you know what you’re doing. In addition, it can inform consumers, thus leading them to the outcomes you desire (i.e., hiring your company/buying from you).
Graphic design is used to create a visual hierarchy that directs the viewer’s eye to what you want them to see first, second, third, etc. Effective design is achieved through the use of symmetry or intentional asymmetry, color and white space, balance, and a clear call to action.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of choices you have when it comes to graphic design. But, there are some things that you need to know to avoid ending up with an ineffective, or even disastrous, design. Two of the most common graphic design mistakes include putting too much information or text in the design and using too many different colors (unless it’s very intentional). Other mistakes that lead to an ineffective design are the inconsistent use of fonts, misalignment, and trying to include too much stuff. You want your graphic design to be completely clear on what it’s supposed to do, and paying attention to all of these elements will get you there.
Change can be scary, but it can also be the beginning of something grand — much like that feeling you had when you first launched your company, or first walked through the door of a new employer. As a company grows or changes, it’s important that its branding stay relevant. Styles change in time, so what was hip or engaging 10 years ago may feel outdated now. The time for rebranding may also come from the need for brand expansion, or the desire of an organization to reach a different audience they weren’t reaching before.
Change can be scary, but it can also be the beginning of something grand — much like that feeling you had when you first launched your company, or first walked through the door of a new employer. As a company grows or changes, it’s important that its branding stay relevant. Styles change in time, so what was hip or engaging 10 years ago may feel outdated now. The time for rebranding may also come from the need for brand expansion, or the desire of an organization to reach a different audience they weren’t reaching before.
Whatever your reason for rebranding, determining when to take the leap is unique to each organization. Before you decide, you need to determine why you want to rebrand. Are you making a change in organizational structure, audience, or product? Do you have a logo that hasn’t been updated in over five years, or does your brand feel stale? If you aren’t reaching your target audiences, the time to rebrand is now.
Just as the timeline to rebrand is unique to each company, so are the challenges you might face when confronted with the possibility of change. People can be averse to change, which may make taking the plunge to rebrand an internal or external challenge. And, besides the cost, branding involves effort and marketing analysis. If you plan to rebrand yourself, it’s important to work with a professional design team, so you don’t end up with confusing messaging or identity issues.
Of course, there is always the light at the end of the tunnel to look forward to. Rebranding can revitalize a company from the inside, leaving the entity as a whole something to be proud of. It can also modernize an outdated brand and give it new life. New branding can help companies reach new markets and different customer bases, help mitigate poor PR by changing how the organization is viewed, and can create separate identities or build trust in a company that is changing structure.
A successful website project is a collaboration between you and the design agency that you choose to work with. It’s a combination of the needs of your business and the skill and expertise of a great web design company.
A successful website project is a collaboration between you and the design agency that you choose to work with. It’s a combination of the needs of your business and the skill and expertise of a great web design company.
Our guide features five important steps that are crucial for a winning website project.
If you work together in tandem with your web designer on these, you’re going to end up with a project that everyone will be proud of.
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In today’s connected world, it’s incredibly important to have a web presence. And, not only a web presence, but one that is functional, attractive, and easy to use. It’s the first touch point for most potential clients, so the impression you make here matters. If your website isn’t working, there are some things you can do to determine where you need to make changes.
In today’s connected world, it’s incredibly important to have a web presence. And, not only a web presence, but one that is functional, attractive, and easy to use. It’s the first touch point for most potential clients, so the impression you make here matters. If your website isn’t working, there are some things you can do to determine where you need to make changes.
If you aren’t sure if your website is getting the attention you had hoped for, consider utilizing a free tool, such as Google Analytics, to see where your website may be lacking. Google Analytics can help you see where traffic is coming from, how long people are staying on your website, what pages they are visiting, and whether or not they are completing actions, such as placing orders, or scheduling consultations. When looking at these metrics, keep in mind what your goal was for building a website — have you achieved that goal with your current site?
Ease of use is a sticking point for a lot of websites. First-time users should be able to find what they are looking for within the first 15 seconds of arriving on your site. If your website is not intuitively organized, simple, and easy to navigate, you are going to lose potential clients or customers. You also need to feature high quality images. Pictures that are blurry, unfocused, the wrong size, or poorly shot reflect badly on your company. Stunning, high quality images engage your users and help create an immersive visual experience. On the other hand, literally, you need to make sure that your site is mobile device friendly. The number of mobile users now accounts for 51% of all web traffic.
To increase website traffic put time into improving your search engine optimization (SEO). Things that can affect SEO include: clear navigation structure, metadata, load times, alt text, mobile/tablet responsivity, links, new content, and copywriting. Another way to increase web visibility is to ensure your existing social media is connected, and if lacking, work to improve your overall social media presence. There are also paid options for advertising, such as Google Ads.
If you are still struggling to create a seamless user experience on your website, consider making a change and designing a better site. A professional design company knows what works and what doesn’t work, and can help you reach your website goals.
If you're reading this, you're probably trying to figure out how to continue business as usual during a global pandemic. Maybe you've been panicking and throwing around a few choice words to describe our current situation. I think it's safe to say as business owners, we're all going through this right now. While we might not have all the answers, we can help you with the next steps for moving your business online.
If you're reading this, you're probably trying to figure out how to continue business as usual during a global pandemic. Maybe you've been panicking and throwing around a few choice words to describe our current situation. I think it's safe to say as business owners, we're all going through this right now. While we might not have all the answers, we can help you with the next steps for moving your business online.
If you've been thinking about re-doing or doing your website, now is the time. If you're not online, you're not being found. If you're new to the web design world and can't afford to hire a designer, checkout sites like Wix and Squarespace. Both services offer templates to get your started. A lot of these templates are designed for industry specific sites, so make sure you search your industry to see what's available. While these might not be great for growing your business longterm, they're enough to get you started.
If you can afford to hire a designer to design a new site, make sure you find one that fits the needs of your company. Does the designer primarily work with small or medium sized businesses? What is the price range for their services? What experience do they have? It's important to work with a designer that vibes with you and your company. After all, you're trusting them to capture your brand's essence and speak to your target audience. Web design is so much more than just making something look pretty. It's strategic and requires the ability to understand the in's and out's of your company. Find someone that fits.
If you are interested, we do free 30 minute consultations and would love to help you with your project. To help our community, we are offering 10% off our web design packages for all of March. Just mention this article or use the code "COMMUNITY".
There are a lot of unknowns right now. People are scared and confused so it's more important than every to have clear and concise messaging. What are you selling? Who are you selling to? What problems are you solving for your customer? These are the types of things you should be thinking about when writing copy for your website. If you're new to writing, do some research and see what other people in your industry are doing. DO NOT COPY THEM, but use them as inspiration for how to talk about your services or products.
If you are looking for help, there are plenty of copywriters ready to jump on the task, including ones at Carrboro Creative. We are passionate about helping business's thrive. Your success is our success. We can help you determine what you should be saying to sell your product or service in these tumultuous times.
I know, it sounds counterintuitive to spend money when things are so unknown. But, as the saying goes, it takes money to make money. I can't tell you how much business we have driven through our Google Ads alone. More than enough to cover the expense of it. There are several options you can explore when thinking of Digital Advertising. Here are a few to get started:
Google Smart Ads were designed for DIYers. The setup and maintenance process is simple. A google ads specialist will help walk you through the steps to get your google ads up and running. This option is great for those with limited budgets, as you don't have to pay for someone to optimize and maintain the ads. The downside is that you don't have someone monitoring your ads and optimizing to lower cost per click and increate return on investment. What does that mean? You'll save some money upfront, but end up paying more per click and potentially not reaching the right audiences. It's not ideal, but it's a good place to get started.
Google Ads (proper) is Google Ads pay-per-click advertising platform. As opposed to Google Smart Ads, Google Ads are totally customizable with so many options to narrow in on your target audience, test different messaging, and optimize your ads to get the lowest cost per click. Unless you have a background in digital advertising, this can be too much to manage yourself. That's why we partner with Follow Us Digital to do it for us (and our clients). Rachel at Follow Us Digital is a digital marketing wizard. I'm serious. Since working together, we've seen an INSANE increase in conversions and our ads are working better than ever. If you can, I highly recommend reaching out to her or another digital marketing agency to help with your ads.
Depending on the nature of your business, Social Media Advertising might be a great way to get in front of your audiences (especially while everyone is stuck at home forever scrolling through Facebook and Instagram). Make sure you figure out your objectives and target audience before getting started so you can take advantage of their targeting capabilities.
There are some great tools out there to move your meetings online. Here are some of our favorites:
Zoom: For online video conferences
Calendly: For online scheduling
Google Hangouts: Another great option for group meetings
Slack: Remote team communication
Transforming the nature of your business is very stressful. I know it probably feels like you need all of this done yesterday, so it's important to try and slow down a bit during these crazy times. You won't be able to move your business online if you've gone completely bat sh*t. So breatheee. Try yoga or meditation. There are plenty of apps and resources available, with some offering free memberships or trials. We personally love Headspace App. It's also a great time to support logo yoga businesses that are also moving online. One of our near and dear clients, Thousand Petals Yoga, has an 8-week online yoga basics course and will be adding streaming to adjust to this new marketplace.
There are many online e-commerce platforms to choose from when moving your business online. Deciding which platform to use depends on what kind of business you have, your comfortability with technology, and the amount of customization you want.
There are many online e-commerce platforms to choose from when moving your business online. Deciding which platform to use depends on what kind of business you have, your comfortability with technology, and the amount of customization you want.
WordPress is our go-to platform for all things web design. We love using WordPress for a lot of reasons, but more notably, the amount of customization it allows you without custom coding. There are so many plugins to choose from when trying to customize your site, meaning you can get your site looking exactly how you want without spending thousands on custom development. WooCommerce is a FREE WordPress plugin that allows you to transform any site into an e-commerce site. It gives you plenty of options for customizing your products and creating a beautiful site to display them. The drawback of WordPress + WooCommerce is that it's not as user-friendly as some of the other options. The backend is a bit clunky and can be visually overwhelming. If you're setting up an e-commerce site by yourself with no web design experience, we recommend trying a different platform.
Squarespace has been the go-to for novice web designers for years. It's easy-to-use interface and pre-made templates make it a good starting point for those who are technically challenged. Its e-commerce system is particularly user-friendly and stands out among its competitors. It's great for people who need to learn e-commerce quickly. While Squarespace is great for you DIYers, it's not as flexible as WordPress for achieving a custom look or integrating website functionality. Unlike WordPress, there are no plugins, so if you are looking for something special, you'll most likely have to hire a developer to help you.
Shopify has a fantastic, easy to use e-commerce backend. Even the most novice tech user can figure out how to add and edit products, manage orders, and keep their store up-to-date. Where it excels in its e-commerce functionality, it severely lacks in its design capabilities. In Shopify, you are completely bound by your theme and different themes have different options. For example, one theme might allow you to add a photo slider, while another theme may not. Often times, you'll spend hours designing a site using one theme, only to realize you can't do what you need to do and then you have to start over. If you're ok with a cookie cutter site, but an awesome backend ordering system, Shopify is definitely a great option for you.
Overall, we would recommend WordPress for those who are more comfortable with technology and Squarespace for those starting out. WordPress gives you design flexibility where Squarespace gives you an easy-to-use e-commerce system and helpful themes to get you started.
If DIY is a bit too scary for you, we'd love to help move you online. Fill out our free web design quote form and we'll get back to you within 48 hours.
Your brand is so much more than just having a recognizable image — it’s about telling the world who you are and what you do. Slapping together a DIY logo and saying “open for business,” isn’t going to guarantee a successful venture. You need to create a whole, cohesive image that makes you instantly recognizable by your customer, reflects your company’s personality, and instills confidence about your company’s ability to meet customers’ needs/demands. Branding is a series of strategic moves to place your company or organization in the spotlight of your field.
Your brand is so much more than just having a recognizable image — it’s about telling the world who you are and what you do. Slapping together a DIY logo and saying “open for business,” isn’t going to guarantee a successful venture. You need to create a whole, cohesive image that makes you instantly recognizable by your customer, reflects your company’s personality, and instills confidence about your company’s ability to meet customers’ needs/demands. Branding is a series of strategic moves to place your company or organization in the spotlight of your field.
Every company that is selling something, whether it’s a service or a product, needs branding. Branding increases awareness, so that people know who you are and what you do, and it increases your value. For example, if you look professional, you can charge more. It’s the same reason generics are less expensive than their branded counterparts. Branding also increases brand loyalty as clients become connected with “who” your company is and are willing to pay a price premium for your services. It can also increase company morale; leading employees to feel more connected to your mission and vision and want to get behind it. In addition, it lays the foundation for a cohesive set of marketing materials, such as: website, brochures, flyers, and email templates.
Your brand is influenced by your company or organization’s mission. You want your brand to encompass what you are trying to do. It should be influenced by your values (the beliefs that drive your company), and your differentiating factor; essentially, what makes you different/better than your competitors. A strong brand upholds your voice and personality (how you interact with your customers), and shows your visual identity. Visual identify includes: your logo, colors, typography, and marketing collateral.
To determine what you want your brand to say about your organization, look to your company’s personality and how customers or clients interact with you. For example, if your company is laid back, your brand should reflect that. If you need help determining what that looks like, consider working with a branding professional. They will take you through a series of exercises in a “brand workshop” to help determine your mission, vision, values, visual identity, etc.
Okay, you’ve finally decided that you need some help. Your website isn’t functioning properly, your logo is dated, your brand is stale, and you are ready for a change. Now, the work of finding a design agency begins. Before you hit the send button on that email to start getting quotes for the work to be done, there are a few things to consider.
Okay, you’ve finally decided that you need some help. Your website isn’t functioning properly, your logo is dated, your brand is stale, and you are ready for a change. Now, the work of finding a design agency begins. Before you hit the send button on that email to start getting quotes for the work to be done, there are a few things to consider.
Determine what your budget is, and what kind of services you require. The cost of services will vary depending on what you want done, but a good design firm will give you a clear and concise quote or charge you an hourly rate. Cost usually goes up with experience and demand; good designers charge anywhere from $75-$300/hr. Regardless of how the firm charges for their services, expect to a pay deposit to get work started. Make sure to ask how many ideas, concepts, and revisions are included in the total cost.
Look at the design agency's previous work. Ask yourself whether or not their style speaks to you. If you aren’t seeing a lot of work examples on their website, reach out and ask to see more. Also, seek out client retention rates and testimonials — are their customers happy with their work?
Communication between you and a potential design agency should be open and flowing. You should receive communication during every step of the process. The designer should contact you for questions and keep you updated as the design moves along. In addition, you should be able to ask questions about/during the process, and receive prompt responses. A firm that waits weeks to get back to your initial inquires isn’t going to change just because they have your money in their pocket.
Depending on the type of project, the time it takes to completion can vary. You can expect a logo design in a couple days to a couple weeks, but a full website build can take a month or longer. Your designer should be able to give you a project schedule or tell you if they can meet the deadlines you require.
You can expect the first part of the design process to include a scheduled consultation by phone or in person. Designers create and send a quote, collect a deposit, and begin work on client designs, concepts, test pages, etc. Clients then approve the work, or make changes or revisions to the work. Once the final product is complete, clients pay the remaining quote cost, and then receive their deliverables.
Our clients often fall into two categories: people who are starting a new business and people who are wanting to rebrand their current business. New business owners are often reluctant to pay a professional designer to create their logo. However, business owners that have been around a little realize the importance of hiring a professional designer. New business owners often try to do it all themselves, which can lead to stress, frustration, burn-out, and sub-par results. Seasoned business owners may have tried to create their logo the first time around, but are now realizing the pitfalls of DIY marketing.
Our clients often fall into two categories: people who are starting a new business and people who are wanting to rebrand their current business. New business owners are often reluctant to pay a professional designer to create their logo. However, business owners that have been around a little realize the importance of hiring a professional designer. New business owners often try to do it all themselves, which can lead to stress, frustration, burn-out, and sub-par results. Seasoned business owners may have tried to create their logo the first time around, but are now realizing the pitfalls of DIY marketing.
A logo serves three purposes. It tells people the name of your company, creates a visual symbol that people should recognize, and sets the tone for the rest of your brand. Trying to do it all yourself may save money in the short term, but can cost you in lost business, time spent away from generating sales, and the headache of learning a new skill.
A logo is one of the most important parts of your brand. When your logo is clean, properly formatted, and well-designed, your brand reflects a sense of professionalism that an amateur logo just can’t beat. Amateur logos or logos made by online generators can often be spotted a mile away. Unless you have generous artistic or design experience, it can be difficult to produce a logo that captures your brand, values, and mission without overwhelming or underwhelming your aesthetic.
In a world where we can research anything online, you need to be relevant and enticing. Humans are visual creatures. It's why platforms like Instagram and Facebook are so prominent in our lives. Having a logo that lets people know who you are, what you do, and what makes you different is becoming increasingly important to stay prominent. Logos that compliment and power your branding are vital, so make sure it’s done right.
Unless you have graphic design experience, you might not recognize all the pieces that actually go into a logo. A professionally made logo will often utilize color theory, typography, and carefully designed graphic elements to create a clever logo. Just having a cute icon and picking a font will come across as amateur. Professional logos are also flexible enough to be used in multiple formats including packaging, websites, signage, and social media.
You think you know what you want. Maybe had an idea for a logo that made sense to you and maybe those inside your business. But will that idea translate to your customers? Will it lend itself to a dynamic branding campaign? Will it work across multiple platforms?
Sometimes what you think is a good idea may not be what’s best for your company. A professional graphic designer and brand creator will be able to tell you what will work for your market and provide a logo that is versatile and speaks to your target consumer. They may even work with your concept, but create a professional logo from your idea.
You aren’t getting paid to create your own logo. Your time as a business owner is much more valuable than you think. If you spend hours trying to come up with a logo, website, and brand, you are losing that time to build your business. Hiring a professional designer to do your branding is similar to hiring an CPA to do your taxes. You don’t have the time, energy, or expertise, so you hire someone who knows what they are doing! If you are looking to grow your business, branding is one of the most important pieces. You wouldn’t want an amateur to do your taxes, so don’t trust an amateur with your brand.
Just like with fashion, certain trends dominate the logo design industry each year. In 2018, we saw a lot of minimal, geometric, and typography-heavy logos.
Just like with fashion, certain trends dominate the logo design industry each year. In 2018, we saw a lot of minimal, geometric, and typography-heavy logos.
We saw gradients entering the field in late 2018, but we're certain they will make a huge splash in 2019. It's easy to understand why. Gradients allow designers to use a variety of colors without it looking "too much". Colors seamlessly blend together, creating a cohesive and clean design.
How can you not like negative space logos? They're clean, clever, and look really cool. We expect to see a lot of creative negative space logos in 2019 (and hopefully get to design a few ourselves).
We've seen the rise of minimal logos in the last couple of years and they show no signs of abating. Minimal logos are super versatile and well received by a wide target audience.
In a world where we are overloaded with information, businesses are wanting to stand out with custom illustration. Whether it's delicate line art, or painting-esque design, we're sure you'll be seeing a lot more of it in 2019.
Another trend that's showing no signs of slowing down. Not that we're complaining. Vintage logos are a fun way to bring back the best design trends of the decades, with a modern touch.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a small business or a massive corporation, every company needs a professional website. We live in a world where everything is digital. Most consumers do their own research before hiring a service or buying a product. Without a professional website to direct them to, you’re missing out on their business.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a small business or a massive corporation, every company needs a professional website. We live in a world where everything is digital. Most consumers do their own research before hiring a service or buying a product. Without a professional website to direct them to, you’re missing out on their business.
If you already have a website, when’s the last time you updated it? Is the content relevant? Does the design still reflect your brand? Is it mobile responsive? With all of the changes in technology and design trends, it’s important to maintain your website to stay relevant.
INCREASE BRAND AWARENESS & TRUST?
Think about the last time you googled a restaurant to go to or a business to buy from. How long did you stay on their website if it was outdated or confusing? Did you trust that they were professionals if they had a poorly designed, unprofessional site?
Your website will generally be your consumers first interaction with your brand. We know how important first impressions are in real life. It’s important to make your online first impressions count, too.
Professionally designed sites with clear calls to action that are easy to use will show your prospects that you mean business.
Things like Google AdWords and Social Media are changing the way people find what they need. A store front or yellow page listing is no longer enough. A website is essential for reaching new target markets and prospects. Having a digital marketing plan will ensure you’re getting your site in front of the people who need it. Sure, you may be able to get by with a self made site for a while, but do you really want to invest advertising dollars directing people to a site you made yourself?
Your Competition Has a Website
It’s 2019. Chances are, your competition already has a website up and running. Between a professional site and no site (or one you made yourself), who do you think someone would choose? A website is an opportunity to show your prospects why you are better.
Websites are a great place to direct people who have questions about who you are or what you do. Instead of answering the same questions a million times, you can direct people to your website to learn more. This is one of our favorite parts about having a website. We save SO much time. Added plus, it’s a great way to keep all of your content in one place. That way, you know where the most up to date information is and can use it as the foundation for future marketing materials.
Let your website be your sales person. If you’re a brick & mortar store, create an e-commerce site and let it do the work. If you’re a B2B or B2C company, use your website as your sales pitch. We’ll help craft the perfect language and content to achieve your goals
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Empowering women as designers is multifaceted. In our presentation, we focused on how we can empower women entrepreneurs by elevating them with impactful graphic design and web design, how we empower women designers within the creative community, and how we can collectively empower women to start their own design businesses.
That's a lot, especially considering the national growth rate for all businesses was only 44%. Women are turning to entrepreneurship at incredible rates. While on the surface this seems fantastic, a lot of these women are turning to entrepreneurship of out necessity. Sexual harassment, underpayment, lack of support with household duties are a few examples of the many reasons women are leaving the traditional workforce. Our founders are no strangers to these issues. Carrboro Creative was created to help address some of these problems. So, as designers, what can we do?
You'll be surprised how many businesses in your community are owned by women. As a design agency, we actively seek out other women-owned businesses to collaborate with. Whether that's helping them with their web design, branding, or graphic design, or hiring them for their services. If your community isn't already diversified, start thinking of ways you can change that.
This isn’t just the case in the creative world. According to leanin.org, only 1 in 5 c-suite execs are women. On average, women are 18% less like to be promoted from entry-level to manager. Why is this? Well, a lot of it can come down to bias. Women who demonstrate leadership qualities are seen as demanding and bossy, while their male counterparts are seen as decisive. Without acknowledging these biases, we can't move forward. As business owners, leaders, managers, it's our responsibility to make this change for our employees. It's also our responsibility to make this change for our clients. Without representation in decision-makers, clients aren't getting what they want or need. According to research, 91% of female consumers feel advertisers don’t understand them. Seven in ten women go further to say they feel “alienated” by advertising (3). Men overwhelmingly dominate creative departments and their output. Consumers are obviously fed up, and the same can be said for women who own businesses and female designers themselves.
