Graphic Design by West Rom Media

Graphic Design is essential to the human experience. People have 5 basic senses: visual, auditory, smell, touch, taste. It seems that these senses are at the root of our emotional response to stimulus. Intellectual and relational experiences come second to the response we have to our basic senses. Because of this fundamental truth, what we see and how we respond to it has a huge affect on how we will immediately respond to a situation.  Please know, I am not diminishing the importance of the other 4 basic senses, but I am merely concentrating on the visual element in this article. Therefore, the graphic design behind a companies message or branding has a significant effect on initial response of potential customers.  Madison Avenue discovered this principal 90 years ago.  This article will make the argument that graphic design is a cornerstone to a business' success.

Typically, the first impression a customer has for a business is a visual introduction.  This introduction may come in the form of a sign, business card, business brochure, television advertisement a vehicle wrap, a website, and many others. It is no small matter that the first impression is going to lead potential customers to become paying clients. Ignoring the importance of this fact will lead to diminished success in maximizing sales and profits.  In the end, for businesses in a capitalist country the bottom line is what it is all about.

Getting down to meat and potatoes.  Your business hinges on it's branding.  The "brand" is the personality of a business and includes many attributes.  Just like people demonstrate their personality in the way they walk, talk, dress, drive, and so on, businesses have the same set of attributes. For example, the way the staff dresses for work and answers the phone and responds to problems.  One of these personality traits is the visual portrayal of the company.  Metaphorically, the company's brand is the clothes it chooses to wear or the car it chooses to drive or the art work it likes best. It is necessary that visual portrayal of your company reflects the branding the company leaders want to pursue. To quote this exact reference:

"When it comes to your image; everything you do, own or produce should exude the goals of your business and how you want to be perceived."

Graphic design builds the identity that everyone will recognize you by.  Just as people are able to discern friends and family from the thousands and millions of other people by the appearance of their hair, face, and clothes, customers must be able to pick out your company from the crowd of others in the market place.  The most notable and easiest way to do this, is by the identity of the company through its visual image.  This is why logos, websites, business cards, company product packaging, and company required dress code matter.  The graphic design is the allurement and distinguishing element that brings customers to your company.  Customers will make judgements about your company based on the first impression of your image. As a graphic design and multimedia company it sounds self serving and bias, but simply evaluate your own behavior and how you react to new people and companies.  The history and evidence from many marketing research studies confirms graphic design is not an endeavor to be short changed in the marketing strategy of a business. Graphic design supports and visually defines a business' brand as a whole. The image transcends traditional language to a universal understanding.

Seth Hardison

The ROI (Return on investment) for a website generally starts with how many potential clients/customers will find a company's website. A great looking, great functioning website will do little if no one finds the website. Therefore, when a business embarks on the deployment of a website it needs to feel confident that the design will compliment what search engines are looking for. People and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) companies can make claims that they have the holy grail of knowledge that will put a website in Google's number 1 ranked spot for a given search query. Please be very cautious of  these claims. They can easily be using underhanded methods that will ultimately land your domain in Google's blacklist of no return. There are some very good above board ways to achieve good rankings with search engines. Ask the Website designer/developer about these best practices. The following are some thoughts to help with organic search results.

Domain name: If you have the luxury of picking a domain name before building a website, then try to pick a domain name that reflects the intent of the website. For example if your site sell's baseball cards, them pick something like bobsbaseballcards.com

Web Page Titles: Search engines often check the web page title for results. Be sure that each page of your website states the purpose of the web page. For example, Bob's Baseball Card Trading Home Page tells us that Bob has a baseball card trading company. The goal is to accurately describe
the page's content, have unique title's for each page and use titles that are brief and descriptive.

Meta Tags: A good practice is good use of meta tag description. Search engines use this information in generating a composite of a webpage. WARNING many meta tag types are not used by Google because of abuse. Keywords are and example of this. This particular tag has been abused and is no longer a factor in the search process. Nevertheless, it is important to write short relevant unique descriptions for each page in the meta description area. This meta description tag still gets some weight from search engines.

URLS: When your website is developed, it is good to have URLs that use understandable words. Www.bobsbaseballcards.com/12nlyny.html is not as useful as www.bobsbaseballcards.com/ny_yankees.html. The latter tells us that the webpage might be about New York Yankee base ball cards. The former is cryptic.

Navigation: Navigation should be clear and directory structure should mirror categories of the website. Additionally, the use of a breadcrumb list allows visitors to quickly navigate back to previous sections or the home page. Lastly, try to have text-based navigation. Search engines can have difficulty with images and animations. It is important to try to accommodate the search engines whenever possible.

Site Maps: Site map files are very
important. Be sure to submit an XML site map to search engines and it is useful to provide a site map page to visitors. In the event the visitor gets disoriented navigating a web site, the site map could aid them in finding the page they are looking for.

CONTENT is king in the search engine world. It is also supremely important to successful websites. We do not want to cross the line of appearing to be spam when generating content but we do want a good mix of keyword phrases in the content that a search engine could find for a search result.
This is why I would suggest adding a blog component to a website. This helps the website owner add content about his business as it happens. This could be new offerings, or product commentary, or company news that may be interesting. Two goals are achieved: Search engines have new information to process and will give your site credit for new relevant information in the ranking. Additionally, your visitors will appreciate your commitment to new communication with customers and clients. Have a long term approach to content and
create the content with your visitors interest first. DO NOT and I repeat DO NOT hide text from users but is visible to search engines. This practice is likely to get your site black listed in the search engine world. Once this happens I am not sure if there is a remedy.

Anchor text needs to be descriptive in order for users and search engines to know what the page the site is linking to. This will be the case whether the link is internal to another page in your own web site or to and external web page. Keep it short, sweet and accurate.

Pictures: Web sites are meant to be enhanced by pictures. As the saying goes a picture is worth a thousand words. Here in lies the paradox of the search engine world. Pictures are not searchable and will not help your site be discovered or ranked by search engines. As a designer, I love
pictures, animation and script that allow the site to interactive, visually pleasing and fun. Unfortunately, this has to be balanced with search engine need for textual content. It is imperative that when using pictures an alt tag is also supplied. The description of the picture when a search engine realizes that there is a picture is
being displayed it knows what the picture is about. The alt tag is not visible to visitors unless the visitor has turned off displaying of pictures in there browser. There are some browsers that need the alt text in order to tell visually impaired people what a picture is about. Finally, it is not a bad idea to create an image site map file to help search engine bot know what pictures are about.

Headings: Use heading tags
(<h>...</h>). These html tags tell search engines that the text is important or a title to a topic on you website. It helps the search engines prioritize the content in the search results.

Links: Receiving links from other REPUTABLE directories and web sites will promote the ranking of your web site in search results. Please be choosey about who is linking to your site. Some search engines give weight to reputation of web sites. If you look like spam, smell like spam then you will
be earmarked as spam. Your web site might get a quick short-lived boost from poorly chosen SEO tactics but in the LONG run you will be black-marked.

In a web design, demand the highest ethical search engine optimization techniques to be employed. A company website should be seen a marathon  endeavor. Not a 50 meter sprint. Rewards will come to those who are patient, persistent, and consistent.

1. Content, Content, Content

This is reiterated over and over but it is the cornerstone of a great website. Provide credible, original content. To connect to the user and more importantly a potential customer, original content is the most important trait of a great Web site. Sites that have some information that's useful to the user stand out and will be revisited, while sites that provide only links to other sites will be forgotten. Content is King.

2. Current, valuable information

Web sites should be updated regularly. Keep the content business focused and to the point. Take your time to develop your content. If content appears to be rushed or lacking attention to detail, users will loose confidence. For the information to be valuable it should be well-edited.

3. Custom-tailor the information to user preferences

The Internet has supplied the world with available information never seen before. This can be overwhelming, if it can not be managed effectively. Sites that offer customization features allow the user to filter the content they see. These automated, database-driven sites adapt the content, advertising, and even the look to individual users. Technologies such as ASP, Coldfusion and PHP/MySQL allow webmasters to create dynamic, interactive, and adaptive Web sites.

4. Be easy to read. Users scan websites.

This fact demands content to be concise using plain language. It is paramount to be able to give users a reason to use your product or service and stay or return to your website. Having headings and lists will fill the user's need find information by scanning.

To promote this consider:

Alignment.. Does the website have order? Does the main visual element lead the user horizontally and vertically to the other design elements naturally? If the elements are out of place users will become uncomfortable and confused. They will leave.

Contrast.. Is there strong contrast to make an effective impression? Inappropriate lack of contrast makes reading more difficult. Contrast will create interest on the page and promote organization. Use schemes that make pages as easy to read as possible. Black text on white background is the best for reading. If other colors are chosen keep the contrast as strong as possible for text. I have seen plenty of examples of dark text or dark backgrounds that are difficult to read and generally unsettling. The most important elements should be easily perceived.

5. Be interactive and memorable.

Sites need to engage the user with a sense of fun or adventure. Users will return to a site that have a playful elements or implore the users input on the users terms. Blogs, forums and social media are great examples of this. Surveys and feed back promote user interaction. Also, this is a way for users to add content to your website. Additionally, the feed back can be used to refine and tailor the website to better serve users.

6. Navigability

Users will need consistency. A consistent look and navigation will be essential to focusing the users attention on the real purpose of the website. Use common web conventions to keep users from feeling frustrated. Keep the website balanced between number of pages in the website and length of any particular page. Both of these are drawbacks. If users have to drill down through too many pages, they will leave. If users have to scroll down through too much information, they will leave. This is a delicate balance. Provide several ways to navigate the site, using both graphics and text.

7. Quick Load Time

Use efficient web design practices. Break up tables if you use them. Use CSS to manage display of items. Use graphics with files sizes less that 50KB. Use graphics with the simplicity idea in mind. Less is more. Be sure to use ALT=”” for graphics to promote better Search engine results. Finally be efficient with HTML coding. Do not add more spacing and unnecessary code to the design.

8. Simplicity

“Keep It Simple Stupid” should be the goal of a web design. Users do not have the patience for decoding complex websites. Use only elements that communicate the message of the site. Avoid ambiguous statements and graphics. They are looking for a particular answer to be readily available when they arrive at a website. They will typically leave after 10 seconds if they can not quickly determine how to get the answer. Additionally, good use of white-space gives the user an impression of simplicity, elegance and manageability.

9. Final thought

Remember, just because a company puts up a website, it does not mean anyone will come to it. In order to have a memorable site, you've got to offer something to the user: information, interactivity, or fun. Original or personalized content is important. To keep users coming back, you've got to have relevant, interesting, and possibly tantalizing content.

Seth Hardison

Tim Knox had this great article in Entrepreneur that makes just common sense. I felt like re-posting this article may help many small business owners come to a good decision on the value of a well designed web site.

Q: My business is very small, just me and two employees, and our product really can't be sold online. Do I really need a website?

A: That's a good question. In fact, it's one of the most important and most frequently asked questions of the digital business age. Before I answer, however, let's flash back to the very first time I was asked this question. It was circa 1998, during the toddler years of the internet.

I was giving a speech on the impact of the internet on small business at an association luncheon in Montgomery, Alabama. Back in 1998, which was decades ago in internet years, the future of e-commerce was anybody's guess, but even the most negative futurists agreed that all the signs indicated that a large portion of future business revenues would be derived from online transactions or from offline transactions that were the result of online marketing efforts.

So should your business have a website, even if your business is small and sells products or services you don't think can be sold online? My answer in 1998 is the same as my answer today: Yes, if you have a business, you should have a website. Period. No question. Without a doubt.

Also, don't be so quick to dismiss your product as one that can't be sold online. Nowadays, there's very little that can't be sold over the internet. More than 20 million shoppers are now online, purchasing everything from books to computers to cars to real estate to jet airplanes to natural gas to you name it. If you can imagine it, someone will figure out how to sell it online.

Let me clarify one point: I'm not saying you should put all your efforts into selling your wares over the internet, though if your product lends itself to easy online sales, you should certainly be considering it. The point to be made here is that you should at the very least have a presence on the web so that customers, potential employees, business partners and perhaps even investors can quickly and easily find out more about your business and the products or services you have to offer.

That said, it's not enough that you just have a website. You must have a professional-looking site if you want to be taken seriously. Since many consumers now search for information online prior to making a purchase at a brick-and-mortar store, your site may be the first chance you have at making a good impression on a potential buyer. If your site looks like it was designed by a barrel of colorblind monkeys, your chance at making a good first impression will be lost.

One of the great things about the internet is that it has leveled the playing field when it comes to competing with the big boys. As mentioned, you have one shot at making a good first impression. With a well-designed site, your little operation can project the image and professionalism of a much larger company. The inverse is also true. I've seen many big company websites that were so badly designed and hard to navigate that they completely lacked professionalism and credibility. Good for you, too bad for them.

You also mention that yours is a small operation, but when it comes to benefiting from a website, size does not matter. I don't care if you're a one-man show or a 10,000-employee corporate giant; if you don't have a website, you're losing business to other companies that do.

Here's the exception to my rule: It's actually better to have no website at all than to have one that makes your business look bad. Your site speaks volumes about your business. It either says, "Hey, look, we take our business so seriously that we have created this wonderful site for our customers!" or it screams, "Hey, look, I let my 10-year-old nephew design my site. Good luck finding anything!"

Your website is an important part of your business. Make sure you treat it as such.

Tim W. Knox is the founder, president and CEO of four successful technology companies: B2Secure Inc., a Web-based hiring management software company; Digital Graphiti Inc., a software development company; and Sidebar Systems, a company that creates cutting edge convergence software for broadcast media outlets; and Online Profits 4U, an e-business dedicated to helping online entrepreneurs start and prosper from an online, wholesale or drop-ship business.