When it comes to design, investing in quality as soon as possible is the best way to get the most growth out of your business. Otherwise, you may find yourself working harder than necessary to earn customer trust and stand out from the competition. Here are five ways that investing in branding early can influence business growth:

First Impressions Matter

Image courtesy of FreePik

During a study at Carleton University in Ottawa, participants were shown websites for only 50 milliseconds and asked to rate them for visual appeal. The participants were then shown the websites for a longer time, and asked to rate the websites again. The study found that the participants rated the websites’ visual appeal consistently, regardless of how long they were shown them.

What does this mean for small business owners? You have 50 milliseconds to make a good impression on your potential customer, and quality design will play a major role.

Communicate visually with your customer

When properly designed, your logo can say a lot about your company. It may be the only opportunity to identify what your company does or to separate you from the competition in locations like app download stores and social media. As branding expert and author of Designing Brand Identity Alina Wheeler puts it:

“To rise above the clutter, a symbol or a logo is the fastest communication known to man. It unlocks associations with your brand on sight, so it’s important to get it right the first time around.”

Make your business memorable

A memorable logo doesn’t just help customers create a relationship between your company and its services, it can actually make them more engaged.

An online study conducted by branding firm Siegel+Gale found that memorable logos are 13 percent more likely to get consumers’ attention, 7 percent more likely to make them want to learn more about the brand, and 6 percent more likely to suggest a company is more unique than others in its category.

What makes a logo memorable? Simplicity.

“Simple was the word that came up above and beyond, more than anything else,” said Brian Rafferty, global director of research insights for Siegel+Gale. “When people were asked what makes a logo memorable, it was simplicity.”

Simple design is harder than it sounds, and many low-quality logos have complicated elements to mask their shortcomings. Don’t make the mistake of confusing complication with quality.

Stand out from the competition

As mentioned earlier, ready-made and generic logos can harm your business. Ready-made logos can be purchased by other businesses and could lead to brand confusion when shown next to competitors that went the same ready-made route. The generic elements often used in homemade designs have been seen so many times by customers they can begin to ignore them completely.

As the visual representation of everything your brand stands for, it’s important for your logo to be unique. Professional designers take the time to learn about your business and create a logo that represents your company in a way that a generic option never could.

Invest now or spend more later

Spending little to no money on logo design might make financial sense in the early phases of starting a business, but it is a short-sighted decision. If the competitive advantages of investing in quality design from the outset aren’t enough, the financial advantage is also clear. Low-quality or generic design has a short shelf-life and will likely require a redesign in the future.

Whether it is because you are unhappy with what the design says about your growing business, or you found that your logo design is not as flexible as your marketing strategies, a logo redesign is an additional expense that can be avoided by making the decision to invest in quality design from the start.
Ready to invest in good design? It’s not as expensive as you think! Thousands of businesses have turned to crowdSPRING to create professional, unique designs for their company for as little as $199. crowdSPRING’s Logo Design Service offers a step-by-step creative brief that helps you outline your company’s needs and allows you to select from over 100 entries on average.

The post Five Reasons Entrepreneurs Should Invest in Design Early appeared first on crowdspring Small Business Resource Center.

They come from more than 195 countries, speak hundreds of languages, cover all age groups, demographics, experience, religions, etc.

They’ve designed logos for companies in virtually every country of the world and in most languages spoken on Earth.

Here’s what we’ve learned over the past 10 years working with our community of designers, about great looking custom logo design:

1. A GOOD LOGO SHOULD BE STRONG/BALANCED

A logotype is an icon, whether it’s made up of just text or just a graphic symbol, or both of those elements.

It should reflect your company – its heart and soul – its personality. Keep your audience and products/services in mind because you want your logo to reflect your business.

Your company’s logo will be the cornerstone of your brand identity. Favor logos that have a strong, balanced look.

2. A GOOD LOGO SHOULD BE SIMPLE

Simplicity is vital.

A complex logo will be difficult to print and reproduce and may not fully engage your audience.

The cost of a logo has little to do with its complexity. On the contrary, some of the simplest logos may cost more to produce because simple design is actually hard to execute well.

Take a moment and think about brands that are successful and/or famous. Most likely, you’ve thought of companies like Nike, Apple, Volkswagen, Target, McDonald’s, etc.

What do they all have in common? They all have logos that are simple and easily recognized when printed by themselves, and when printed in solid black and white.

3. A GOOD LOGO SHOULD BE MEMORABLE

Your logo does not always need to describe what your business does. Have you ever seen a car manufacturer with a picture of a car as its logo? How about a shoe manufacturer? It would look silly to have a picture of a shoe….on a shoe.

When using icons in your logo, consider icons that could communicate your brand without the company name.

This will allow you to use the icon as a stand-alone image (on packaging design, for example).

For a person to retain and identify with a mark (your icon), a little mental tennis match must be played with it. If an icon is too blatantly obvious or easy to ‘read,’ the viewer often feels no sense of discovery or personal equity with it. But remember that too much abstraction can be dangerous because your message can be lost.

This is especially important when you’re just starting your business. You don’t yet have customers and people don’t know your brand. Your company’s logo is often the first thing they see – and you should make sure they remember it!

4. A GOOD LOGO SHOULD BE FLEXIBLE

A logo should be visible and distinguishable on a big billboard from 100 meters away or on a small business card from to 20 millimeters away. It should also work well in different size formats like for example on stationery, brochure, t-shirt design, and other marketing materials such as embroidery, stamping, embossing, etc.

A good logo will work well in many colors and in just one or two colors (yes, black is a color). A good logo will work well on light backgrounds as well as dark backgrounds, even on multicolored backgrounds.

5. A GOOD LOGO SHOULD USE COLORS INTELLIGENTLY

If you are looking for a color logo, consider the messaging that color sends to your customers. Do the colors reinforce and strengthen the intended core message/personality/mood you’re trying to communicate through the logo, or do they distract or neutralize?

For example, blue often communicates trust, loyalty, and freshness. The color blue is common in banking or finance.

Also, consider colors that work well with dark and white backgrounds. Because logos are often printed in black and white, chose a logo design that is viable and as strong or stronger in black and white.

Although gradients provide an aesthetically-pleasing effect on computers, consider possible future uses of the logo such as on letterheads, business cards, and merchandise.

Will the logo provide ease of printing and reproduction in and on all types of media?

A logo for a website or a band or a one-off project can be more rasterized and colorful than something that’s going to be printed in many different ways.

Think twice about including more than 3 colors in a logo – too many colors will increase the cost of production when printing and may make the logo more difficult to reproduce on business cards. Although such costs have decreased considerably, this remains good advice.

6. A GOOD LOGO SHOULD BE TIMELESS

Trends are good but innovation is better. (And fads are often deadly). A logo should have a long life expectancy. It will evolve and change over time, but the longer it stays the same at its heart, the better brand recognition you will get over time. Examples: Coca-Cola, Dior, Rolex.

A good logo will have a sense of timelessness about it. A logo that feels anchored in a certain time period is more likely to feel outdated or need substantial repurposing fairly quickly.

The best logos change very little yet feel fresh and vibrant every time. (Nike, IBM, Apple).

7. A GOOD LOGO SHOULD BE UNIQUE

Will it stand out among the clutter and the crowd?

Does the mark distinguish itself in a unique way from the competition, or is it predictable / default / bland — and thus unmemorable and ultimately invisible to the intended audience? With thousands upon thousands of fonts, billions of color combinations, and an infinite flow of design ideas, choose the logo that is most unique.

Try to avoid common logo cliches like “swoops,” “wooshes,” and “pinwheels;” these techniques are perhaps the most commonly used practices in the logo industry (just look around your house, you’ll see).

Avoid clip art like the plague, unless it’s significantly modified by the artist. It’s quite disturbing when you start noticing your logo, and things that look like it on many other people’s brands. That’s the quickest way to look low-budget and second-rate.

8. A GOOD LOGO SHOULD USE TYPOGRAPHY WELL

Depending on the type of application; typefaces with serifs convey a sense of dignity & power, sans serifs are often more clean looking and offer either a sense of stability or whimsy (depending on the typeface).

Will the font work with what you currently have? Can it be read at small sizes? Is the letterspacing/word spacing well adjusted? (the larger the wording gets, the more obvious the flaws will be)

9. A GOOD LOGO SHOULD BE SUPPORTED THROUGH OTHER BRANDING

Don’t compare the logo you will be choosing to already famous brands in the world. Those brands are famous not because of their logo, but because of the people/vision behind that logo. So, always remember that the branding behind the logo is very very important.

10. A GOOD LOGO SHOULD BE VECTORIZED

Always request vector-based graphics. It’s often tempting to ask for complex illustrations in a logo. However, unless you plan on never using your logo outside of an on-screen/online application, a JPG or PSD isn’t going to cut it.

The post 10 Elements of a Good Logo appeared first on crowdspring Small Business Resource Center.

Good design is good business.

In fact, your company’s brand identity is everything visual about your company. Your visual assets have a huge impact on whether your company succeeds or fails.

This isn’t just a hunch, it’s backed by research that has proven the influence that visual appearance has on the decision-making process of customers.

According to a widely-cited study on visual appeal, it takes about 50 milliseconds for customers to form an opinion about your design, and in turn, your company. With .05 seconds to make a good impression, selecting the right design for your marketing is often the difference between gaining a new customer or increasing your bounce rate.

One of the major advantages of using crowdspring for design is the ability to receive designs from many different perspectives that will speak to your customers in different ways.

Though this choice can be empowering for some, for others it can create a difficult decision.

If design has such a major impact on the buying process for customers, how can you be sure you picked the right design when only going by your personal preference?

Many times, you can’t. But that’s okay! Using A/B testing, you can leverage multiple designs with your customers to help make sure you are using the perfect design to achieve your marketing goals.

A/B testing is especially important when you are starting your business. This is a great time to experiment since you don’t know what will work and what will fail.

A/B Testing

Most companies with a strong digital marketing presence know not to rely on personal preference when making design decisions.

Instead, they utilize A/B testing to deliver variations of designs to their customers and let customer response inform their decisions.

The best part? With the right tools, A/B testing is completely seamless for the customers, so companies they can implement the test into their regular marketing activities without missing a beat.

What to Test?

To get started with your own A/B testing, you first need multiple designs.

Crowdspring design projects can be set up to award multiple creatives, giving you the opportunity to select as many designs for testing as you’d like.

Two of the best design projects for A/B testing are Email Templates and Landing Pages.

The performance of emails and landing pages is easy to quantify: whereas a logo or illustration is up to interpretation, more clicks on an email or conversions from a landing page cannot be denied.

And there are some great tools available that make A/B testing Email Templates and Landing Pages extremely easy.

Email Templates

Marketing Emails are the most effective way to communicate with your customers, and it’s not even close. According to a report by global management firm McKinsey and Company,

E-mail remains a significantly more effective way to acquire customers than social media—nearly 40 times that of Facebook and Twitter combined.

Though more effective than social media, email requires good design to truly reach its potential for converting customers. Images, placement, and typography all play a role in the effectiveness of an email, so it is important to test what works and what doesn’t with multiple designs.

Most email marketing software allows you to run multiple types of A/B tests including subject lines and send times but focus only on testing the email’s “content” and keep everything else the same.

This will allow you to send 50% of your email list one Email Template, and 50% of your email list the other for an even test. A day after deploying the email, compare metrics like click-through rate (CTR) and conversions to see which template your customers preferred.

Landing Pages

Landing pages allow you to create a custom-tailored experience for your customers based on current marketing campaigns or targeting. According to John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing,

Today, landing pages have simply become a required element in the marketing toolbox for every imaginable business, including local brick and mortar types.

A/B testing on landing page is a little less straight-forward than splitting your email list in half and sending them two different designs.

Landing pages randomly show a variant of the landing page to a customer, who continues to see the same variant of that page on subsequent visits due to cookie tracking.

Use marketing psychology to find sections you can test on your landing pages.

For a fair test, each variant should be given a 50% chance to be shown to customers. According to best practice, over 100 visits to each page is required before making any meaningful assumptions. Once you have enough traffic, compare metrics like click-through rate (CTR), conversions, and bounce rate to see which performed best.

Let The Data Decide

Image courtesy of Mailchimp

At the conclusion of an A/B test, hopefully, you feel more confident about which design to continue using for your brand.

With a design selected, you can now try A/B testing other elements of your emails and landing pages including messaging, promotions, and pricing to better optimize for your audience.

And just because you found a winner doesn’t mean you should settle for too long. Continue to test new designs to help your brand evolve, using crowdspring creatives to provide a fresh perspective on your brand and letting data guide your decisions.

The post Optimize Your Next Design Project with A/B Testing appeared first on crowdspring Small Business Resource Center.

Print jobs can go a long way to further your business, but some people try to save money by avoiding hiring professional designers. Here are a few of the reasons why investing in professional design is key to good print jobs.

After all, your print materials are a key part of your company’s brand identity.

So, whether you’re starting your business or have been operating one for a decade, you should consider the cost of business cards. But you also should consider whether those business cards help or harm your business.

Readability

Perhaps the most fundamental aspect of design is to ensure that the intended message reaches the target audience.

Designers are trained to create work that is easily readable, and they know how to get key points across effectively.

In many cases, simply landing one additional client will more than cover the cost of paying for professional design, making the investment worthwhile.

Capture Attention

Printed material is worthless if it isn’t read, and professional designers know how to capture attention. It’s possible to add some elements to a printed piece without professional experience, but incorporating elements in a cohesive and effective manner requires expertise.

Furthermore, it’s important to ensure that attention-grabbing elements don’t interfere with the design’s readability; balancing these two elements is at the core of effective design work. Again, printed pieces are an investment, and the cost of professional work can pay for itself if it leads to more clients or customers.

Professional Impression

When people work with a company, they want to know they’re working with professionals.

Investing in professional design shows that your business values professionalism and sends a powerful message to potential clients or customers.

You only have one chance to make a first impression, and using a professional designer helps you make it as effective as possible.

Investing wisely is key to sustaining and growing your business, and design is no exception.

Avoid Reprinting

After your items have been printed, they can’t be reprinted again without requiring another investment.

When you pay for professional design, you pay for someone to scrutinize every detail before the job is sent to the printer.

Business owners and managers often try to save a bit of money by doing some of the work themselves.

While this can be great for certain tasks, printed material is too important for businesses to avoid hiring professionals. The cost of design work varies, but the investment is worthwhile for businesses of all sizes.

Make sure to hire a professional when designing printed material for your business.

The post Invest in Good Design for Quality Printed Materials appeared first on crowdspring Small Business Resource Center.

We’ve learned a lot about what appeals to those surfing the web, and how they use their sites once they get there. Websites are a key part of every company’s brand identity and can often make or break the success of a business.

The lessons we’ve learned gave rise to a moniker that’s all too familiar these days: user experience (UX).

In truth, the user experience designer has always been around.

It’s just that before we woke up to the fact that our design should revolve around the user, they were web designers. And even if the term wasn’t part of the vernacular yet, designers were taking into account the user experience even then.

Perhaps they weren’t as successful as one might hope, but let’s be clear: UX is not a new idea.

The fact that the significance of UX has risen in the minds of those judging and making decisions about website design is certainly positive, but even so, the perspective remains limited.

Yes, we’re moving beyond our personal preferences in favor of contemplating the broader demonstrated preferences of our audience. Yes, we’re making it a priority that folks can easily discern how to get to what they want.

But there’s one question we should be asking when we consider UX, and rarely do.

Why?

Why do you want that button? That page? That step? That section? That call to action?

And the problem is that when we start asking those questions, the answers they elicit are usually pretty vague.

These questions are especially important when you’re just starting your new business and have little experience building business websites.

We talk of tradition and best practices. We talk about what information or ideas we think are important to the user. We use the principles of marketing psychology to drive our thinking. In other words, we demonstrate that we have not completely moved beyond the subjective in our approach to web design.

But if our answer to these questions is not user-focused, if the goal is not to provide value to the user, we’re missing the point of the website right out of the gates.

That’s not to say that best practices or certain types of information are not valuable.

There are good reasons certain constants exist on most websites. And this doesn’t mean that you should ignore data on how users interact with your website. Quite the opposite, in fact. Data can be immensely useful when creating and modifying web design.

The problem is that when this data is used to measure the efficacy of the how instead of the utility of the what, we’ve got a problem on our hands.

For example, let’s say you want to put a “Like Us on Facebook” button on your website. Makes sense, right? Most folks, when evaluating whether that button is working are going to evaluate the numbers and then try, try again. They’ll change the color. They’ll put it somewhere else. They’ll make it bigger or smaller. They’ll tweak the text.

But if the data consistently shows that next to no one is clicking that button no matter what changes are made, it becomes clear that you missed asking yourself why you need it there in the first place. Just because all the cool kids are doing something doesn’t mean it’s right for you.

So yes, by all means, make UX a priority. Test your designs and pivot when necessary.

But before you do any of that, don’t forget to ask yourself why you’re using that. If your calculus does a poor job of answering this question, it might be time to go back to the drawing board.

The post The Most Underutilized Question in Web Design appeared first on crowdspring Small Business Resource Center.

This is particularly true if you’re starting a new business.

Your competitors are moving forward, and you risk being left behind without a dedicated digital presence.

A website isn’t just a luxury; it’s a necessity. It provides a central hub for your customers and potential customers, offering a chance to engage, connect, and learn more about your company’s products and services.

With that in mind, let’s delve into the best practices and tips for designing a unique website for your small business or startup.

1. Prioritize simplicity, freshness, and uniqueness in design

When someone visits your website for the first time, they form an immediate first impression. This impression becomes a cornerstone of your brand identity.

If your site looks like a carbon copy of countless others because you’ve used an off-the-shelf template, you lose a golden opportunity to stand out.

Take “Cafe Delicia,” a local coffee shop, as an example. Instead of a run-of-the-mill coffee shop website design, Cafe Delicia could opt for a unique, minimalist design featuring a striking monochrome color scheme accentuated by vibrant images of their fresh brews. This approach captures the essence of their brand and distinguishes them from other local coffee shops.

Be sure your site showcases a professional logo design; clip art or a template-based logo won’t cut it.

Remember, your homepage, the most likely first contact point with potential customers, should answer critical questions like who you are and what you do.

When you consider the content to include on your homepage, remember that users typically read only 28% of the words during an average visit. Don’t overload your homepage with a lot of text and images. Consider the most important content and images you want your users to see and eliminate everything else.

Add less, not more.

Consider, too, that your visitors might be visiting from laptops and mobile phones, so try to avoid designing pages for a large monitor size or pages that use more complex features.

Tip: For a more sophisticated look, consider illustrations. Although images have dominated web design, more sites incorporate creative illustrations in their homepages. Illustrations can often engage the user in more personal ways.

Advanced Tip 1: Once you design your homepage, you can run straightforward tests to determine which buttons, colors, and pieces of content earn the most clicks. After all, marketing is as much a science as it is an art, and proper use of marketing psychology can fuel success. For more about A/B testing, read 7 Dead-Simple A/B Tests You Should Run on Your Homepage.

Advanced Tip 2: Particularly on your homepage – but also on any pages where you’re trying to persuade the user to take some action – think about what action you want the user to take and create a prominent “call to action” button.

2. Highlight your products and services effectively

Whether selling products or services, your offerings must be prominently showcased on your homepage. For instance, if you’re a boutique clothing store, crisp and appealing images of your trendy apparel can captivate visitors immediately.

However, avoid overloading your site with images or graphics. Select a few standout product shots to feature on your homepage, and reserve the rest for interior pages.

3. Ensure quick site load times

In the digital world, patience is scarce. Slow load times can deter potential customers and impact conversions.

If your site is heavy on graphics, ensure your hardware infrastructure and bandwidth can handle it. The cheapest hosting option may save you money but could cost you in slow and unreliable service.

Tip: want to compare how quickly two sites load compared to each other? Here’s a free tool you can use: whichloadsfaster.com

4. Make your site accessible and consistent

Design your site with accessibility in mind.

How will people with disabilities or slower internet connections experience your site?

Also, maintain a consistent web design and navigation across your site. Visitors who feel lost while navigating your site are more likely to leave.

Tip: Don’t create unrelated designs for different pages on your site. All the pages should have a similar overall layout and design.

5. Organize your site for optimal user experience

Search engines and people alike prefer well-organized websites. Your visitors generally seek specific information, so structure your site in an orderly and organized manner.

For example, a pet supply store could categorize products by animal type, and within each category, by food, toys, accessories, etc. This structure makes it easy for cat owners to find what they want without wading through dog or bird products.

Tip: Use bold, easy to read fonts and bullets to present critical information or to stress things you want the readers to notice. Add text color to highlight the most important information, but try to keep your use of text color and fonts to a minimum. You want to emphasize, not confuse.

Advanced Tip: action buttons/links should be unambiguous. For example, “Save” is different from “Submit.” Consider a user’s expectation when they click a button or link and ensure that your labels properly set those expectations. Make sure your copy reflects complete sentences and not isolated words or phrases whenever possible.

6. High-quality content is essential

Search engines index sites based on content quality and links, so the more valuable content you have, your site becomes more attractive.

But your visitors also appreciate good content.

Let’s consider a real estate business. Instead of simply listing properties for sale, they could provide articles on home-buying, tips for first-time buyers, what to look for during a home inspection, and more. This informative content establishes them as a knowledgeable resource, encouraging visitors to stay longer and return in the future.

Tip: Study your successful competitors – especially those in business longer than you. Look at their websites and study how they present their products and services to their customers and potential customers.

Advanced Tip: Consider using larger, more readable font sizes for your content. As screen resolution has improved, many displays show smaller fonts in a too-tiny-to-read size. Look at your favorite websites and consider which font sizes you prefer for viewing/reading. With few exceptions, you probably prefer sites that use larger fonts.

7. Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization, or SEO, enhances your website’s visibility on search engines.

For example, if you run a bike repair shop, you’d want your site to appear in searches for “bike repair near me” or “local bike shop.” SEO includes keyword optimization, meta descriptions, and quality backlinks, among other things.

8. Create a mobile-friendly website

With most people browsing the internet on their smartphones, having a mobile-friendly website is no longer optional—it’s a must.

Ensure your site’s design is responsive, meaning it adjusts to fit any device’s screen size.

9. Include clear calls-to-action

What do you want your site visitors to do?

Whether signing up for your newsletter, purchasing, or booking a service, clear calls-to-action guide your visitors to the next step.

For example, a personal trainer might use a call-to-action like “Book your first session now!” on their site to invite potential clients to get started.

10. Don’t forget about social media integration

Finally, integrate your social media accounts into your site.

Social media is a powerful tool for startups and small businesses, enabling you to engage with your audience and amplify your message. Include links to your social media profiles on your site and encourage your visitors to connect with you there.

Creating the best website for your small business or startup may seem daunting, but it’s a journey worth taking. A well-designed website can set the stage for your digital success, turning visitors into loyal customers.

Remember these best practices, and your website will become a valuable asset for your company. Every business is unique, so adapt these tips to fit your needs and goals.

The post Small Business Success: 10 Crucial Web Design Practices appeared first on crowdspring Small Business Resource Center.